Chapter VIII: Part THREE: I (2)

‘They have all done what I could not do. They have been through things I know I could not stand; and it is partly for my sake, for lots of old women like me, who seem not much use in the world, that they have done it; and it makes me very grateful to them, that is all I know.’

I went with Miss Mix several times, and wrote letters and read to them too, but I could not leave Eleanor much, now I had no nurse. Louise took her out for me then, but after Christmas Louise left us, and went into a Munition factory, and for several weeks I could get no one in her place. When I got another maid, she was very incompetent, and Sarah, the cook, did not like her at all. They quarrelled, and complained about each other a great deal; and then Sarah gave notice. She too went to work at Munitions; it was natural, I suppose, for they earned much higher wages. Mrs. Simms, the charwoman, cooked for us for a time, and at last I got a cook who was very old and deaf, and could not cook very much; but I was glad to get her, and she stayed for some time.

There was no time to do anything else while this was going on. I did part of the housework even then, for the old cook couldn’t, and the young maid was very slow. I did it badly, and it took me, too, a long time. I hated the housework; I hated the brooms and dusters; dreamed about them at night; and about the kitchen sink, where I had helped to wash up, while we had no cook. The brooms were kept in the bathroom, for we had no other place to keep them. There were pegs for them there to hang on, and a shelf I for polishes and dusters. I began to hate the bathroom too. It was a squalid bathroom, with a painted bath, that was painted green, and was chipped.

We had meant to put in a new bath, later on; but now of course we could not. The green bath worried me, and the paint wearing off; it seemed to get worse week by week, and the wall where the brushes hung was dirty.

Walter worked always in the evenings now. It was the only time he got for working at his book.

‘If I leave that altogether,’ he said, ‘I can’t live. It is the only thing that takes me away from the War.’

While he worked in his study, I sat downstairs and sewed. There was always mending to be done, and I mended. I did not mend well either; it seemed to me, at this time, that I could do nothing well.

And then, at the end of March, George Addington was killed.

XVII

I heard the news from Mollie, in a letter. The letter came at midday, by an unusual post, and I thought:

‘A letter from Mollie. How nice to hear from her!’

And I took it upstairs with me to read. Eleanor was asleep in her pram.

I sat down on my bed, and opened the letter. I thought of Mollie and how much I should like to see her.

‘George was killed on Wednesday,’ she wrote. ‘Shot through the head, leading an attack. He was killed instantaneously, and probably did not know that he was hit. I have had a telegram, that is all, from the War Office. It will be a long time before I can hear any more; three weeks at least, the letters take from there.

‘I can’t believe he is dead. It seems so strange, that one knew nothing about it on Wednesday, that one had no dream, no premonition nor anything. Oh, Helen, I wrote to him yesterday, and he was dead already——I should be glad, I know, that he was killed at once. It would be worse, much worse, if he were wounded and missing, as it might well have been; I keep telling myself that. I have written to Hugo at Ypres, to tell him of it. He will be badly cut up, I am afraid. He loved George very dearly; but he is bound to know soon; and to Guy too. I wish for Hugo’s sake, they were together.’

I sat a long time with the letter in my hand. I had not expected this, I had not somehow envisaged it at all. It seemed to me impossible, and not to be borne.

‘George dead! George killed!’ I repeated the words over and over to myself, and they had no meaning; and then I thought:

‘I shall never see George any more; never as long as I live; no one will see him any more.’

And then I thought:

‘I was unkind to George.’

I thought of George as I had last seen him, on the doorstep at Campden Hill Square. How he had come out with us, to say good-bye, and how he had smiled, that wide delightful smile, and yet he had looked sad; and how I had wondered what was the matter, and whether he had known the War would come.

And then I had not written to him when he joined the Army. I had written to Hugo, and to Guy, but not to him. I had meant to, of course. I had kept on meaning to, and putting it off, and then it had been too late.

I had written since, of course; I had written twice, and sent him a parcel of food; but that was not enough in a year and a half, I had meant to write oftener; he had said he enjoyed getting letters; I had meant to write regularly, but I was always bad at writing letters, and little things had got in the way.

Eleanor was asleep in the garden in her perambulator. I left her and went out; up the road, towards the Heath.

The road seemed full of soldiers, blue wounded soldiers. All roads were full of them at this time and when I came nearer I saw that they were blind. I dreaded the blinded soldiers; I hated to see them, for I had an idea, somehow, I don’t know why, that Hugo might be blinded. I passed the blinded soldiers, and got beyond them to the Heath. The trees were coming out; light green buds on the branches; and there were crocuses in the grass.

The sun came down through the branches, and shone on the crocuses. It was a fine day, and warm for March. I sat on a seat, and thought about George, and I thought:

‘It is all very well for the flowers, and for the buds on the trees; they come again after the winter; they are born again. There will be other boys growing up, and other men, but never George again. If the world goes on for millions of years, there will never be anyone who is what he was.’

And a sense of wild anger and indignation possessed me. I felt:

‘This is wrong and wicked and a horrible mistake, this War that has killed George. What is it worth? What is it for? What can it ever achieve that will make up for him?’

And I felt:

‘It must be stopped. I have been asleep and woken up. I can’t let this War go on that has killed George.’

‘George killed! George _dead_!’ I repeated the words again. I felt as though the world had begun to reel, as though the foundations of my life had begun to crumble.

‘What next?

Guy too and Hugo . . . .’ The encroaching reality of the War struck through my last defences. I felt that I understood what it was, for the first time.

A clock in a church struck one, and I went home again. Eleanor would be waking up; she would be crying for me. I must hurry; I would be late, and all the way home I was thinking:

‘What can I do? I must do something to stop this War.’

Eleanor was awake and screaming. I went to her and got her up from her perambulator, and washed her, and gave her her dinner; and after dinner, I dressed her to go out, and put her back in the perambulator, and pushed her out on to the Heath. I had no time to think any more, for she kept talking to me in her insistent baby way, that in my heart I loved, but to-day, I wanted to be quiet. I wanted to get away somewhere and think. I felt excited, elated, somehow, as though I had discovered a truth of immense importance; something that was the key to all our trouble.

‘The War must be stopped. We must stop it now.’

The words kept repeating themselves through my head all the afternoon, and I felt that in a moment, if only I could get away by myself and be quiet, I should know how this could be done.

When Eleanor was in bed I could be quiet, and think about it. It would not be long now till she was in bed.

And then when I got her into bed, Walter came home.

He was unusually early, more than an hour before his time. He had such a headache, he said, he could not work any longer, and so he had come home. I was up in our bedroom when he came in, tucking Eleanor up. I sang to her always when she was in bed. She did not understand very much what I sang, so I sang all sorts of songs, and to-night I was singing the Agnus Dei that Guy and Cousin Delia used to sing. It seemed to fit in with what I felt to-night; the sins of the world; our sins; and the hope that help was at hand.

Walter came in heavily, and sat down on the bed.

‘Daddy came,’ said Eleanor, and popped up her head.

I looked round at Walter, surprised to see him there so soon. And then he told me about his headache. I could not take in what he said; it seemed unimportant and trivial; little things about some one a long way off.

I said:

‘George is killed,’ and stood looking at him, across Eleanor’s little cot.

He drew in his breath sharply, and put his hands up to his head. That was a gesture of his, familiar to me now.

I gave him Mollie’s letter, and he read it in silence.

‘For you’—he said at last, ‘and for me——’

And he dropped his hands limply on his knee.

I was astonished at the expression of acute personal sorrow on his face; he had not seemed to care much for George when he was alive. I went across to him, and sat beside him on the bed. I stroked his shoulder, I know, and tried to console him. I don’t know what I said. It happened like this so often now; these fits of despondency, almost of remorse, and my attempts to encourage him. It had become in a sense automatic. It seemed to me, at times, that I had no more to give; that I was drawing water from a well that was dry; but to-night it was different; I felt somehow beyond all that. I did not speak to him of my conviction, of what I felt myself about George, and George’s death. It was no use speaking to Walter of things like that, I knew.

We went to bed early on account of Walter’s headache. I, too, was glad to go.

‘Now I can be quiet and think,’ I said to myself.

And I lay awake a long time after Walter was asleep and looked up into the darkness.

And I thought:

‘What is it I must do? What is it I am just going to understand?’

It was very quiet in our road. There was no sound of traffic; only a dog in a garden not far off barked for a little while, and a cat called somewhere from a roof. A taxi hooted turning a corner at the end of the road, then it changed gear for going up the hill; there was a grating, grinding noise as it changed gear, and then that passed out of hearing. Some one walked past on the pavement, a man it seemed to be, walking very fast. Then again there were cats, and again a taxi horn, and after that for a long time, it was quite quiet.

And as I lay still and listened to the noises in the night, all my excitement seemed to ebb away, and I understood that I had discovered nothing, and that there was nothing I could do.

I could not stop the War, and nobody could. We were caught in it all of us, all nations, all people in the nations; it would go on, and more and more people would be killed; hundreds and thousands of people would be killed every day, and I could do nothing at all, and I understood too that George was dead, and that I had loved him dearly, and that he who was so full of promise, such a fine, splendid nature, would do nothing with his life; he was just at the beginning, and there would be no more.

XVIII

The next day, Walter had influenza. He was in bed for a week, and after that the cook got it, and then the housemaid. They were a long time getting better.

News came of a Republic in Ireland; fighting in the Dublin streets, repression, retaliation; then the fall of Kut. Then the Conscription Bill was passed.

In June, Claude Pincent was killed in Mesopotamia. A week after he was killed, they gave him a V.C. We had not seen him for a long time; people said that he had taken to drink or drugs or something, but I don’t suppose it was true.

Then Anthony Cowper was killed. He was a dear, merry fellow and enjoyed his life.

‘Guy will miss him very much,’ I thought.

Freddy Furze came home on leave in July. We saw him several times. I felt since George’s death, the precariousness of life and was grateful for people still alive.

In August, Rachel was born. I had hoped again for a son, but I minded less this time; perhaps because I had expected less, and had felt less about it altogether. I had been afraid that the baby must be affected by the War, and by my own state of mind all through the winter, but she was a fine child, even larger and stronger than the first.

Mrs. Sebright came to stay and look after Eleanor while I was in bed. She was very competent and managed Eleanor very well. She looked after the house too, and ordered the meals, and I had nothing to do; and I thought:

‘If only I could lie here for ever, and never get up and never have to go out into the world again.’

I did not want to read or even talk very much, only lie still and do nothing; and sometimes for nothing at all, I would lie and cry.

And then Hugo came home on leave, and I did not see him.

I did not know he was coming, and he came to see me.

I was resting in the afternoon. They had drawn the curtains and put me to sleep, but I was not asleep. I heard the front door bell, and heard the door open, but I did not know it was Hugo, and they sent him away.

They did not know him, of course, they did not know who he was; and they told him I was resting and could not be disturbed; it was too soon too to see visitors, the nurse said, he must come again in a few days.

And Hugo went away.

‘Tell her that I came,’ he said. ‘Give her my love.’

He did not come again in a few days, for he was down at Yearsly all that week and half the next, and then he was sent for to go back to France; his leave was cut short by four days, and he could not come again.

XIX

I must have been in a foolish state those first weeks after Rachel was born. I don’t believe I was ill really, but I felt very ill; and things worried me that should not have worried me at all.

I got bothered again about the bathroom; about the paint coming off the bath, and the wall that was dirty where the cedar mop hung up. I kept thinking about that bathroom over and over again; I could not get away from it. I thought how nice it would be to have another bathroom; all white tiles with nickel taps and glass shelves, like bathrooms I had seen in shops. I had never lived with a bathroom like that, for at Yearsly the bath was a big old-fashioned one in a wooden casing, and at Campden Hill Square it was the same. I don’t know why this got into my head, or why it stayed there, but it became an obsession. I kept planning how it would be, and where the glass shelf would be, and how many white tiles would be needed, though I knew, of course, that it could not be done; even if we had the money to spend, our bathroom was not big enough to be like the one I planned; but it kept me from thinking of the War, and about Hugo, and Guy, and George; it kept me also from thinking about getting up again with two babies to look after instead of one, and Mrs. Sebright gone away.

Walter found me crying one day when he came in to see me, and he asked me what was the matter, and I said that I did not like the bathroom, and the paint peeling off the bottom of the bath. That sounded so silly, that it made me cry more.

‘And the wall is all grey behind the mop,’ I said.

Walter put his hand to his head in his tired, bewildered way.

‘But, Helen dear,’ he said, ‘you can’t be crying about _that_?’

And I nodded my head.

‘I do so want a bathroom, all white, with tiles and glass shelves and shining taps,’ I said.

‘But, Helen, you know we can’t afford that sort of thing,’ he said, ‘even if it were reasonable to do it. Tiles are very expensive.’

I said:

‘I know; I know they are expensive; I know I shall never have a bathroom like that; that is why I am crying.’

Walter was trying to be kind.

‘You know, Helen,’ he said, ‘I sometimes think you don’t quite understand; quite apart from the question of whether we could afford it, do you think it would be right to spend a lot of money on white tiles and shelves when the War is going on? Do you quite realize what the War means? Hundreds and thousands of people being killed every day and maimed and blinded.’

I put out my hand to stop him:

‘No, no,’ I said, and my voice sounded unnatural and shaky and I could not control it. ‘I know all that; I know it would be wrong. Please don’t let us talk about it any more.’

Walter looked hurt and puzzled with me, and I could not explain.

That night I could not go to sleep for a long time, and when I did, I dreamt of Hugo being blinded.

Mrs. Sebright was very kind to me. She seemed to like me much better when I was ill and silly; some people are like that; they do like anyone better who is ill; and the Doctor was kind, the Doctor Chilcote whom I had had before. She said I must go away for change when I got up, and I said I couldn’t, I could not leave Walter and the house, I said; but she arranged it all.

I was to go with the children to Cousin Delia, to Yearsly, where I had not been for over a year; and Mrs. Sebright would stay with Walter, and the nurse would go with me for a week.

I was glad to have it arranged; I tried to look forward to it, but it did not seem real to me somehow; and when the nurse went away after that first week?

What would I do then, I wondered.

XX

Yearsly was now a hospital. Less serious cases were sent on from the big General Hospital, or convalescents. The garden was full of bright blue suits, as the streets in London had been. There were ten wounded soldiers there at this time. One of the Lacey girls was there with Cousin Delia to nurse them. How she made room for us I do not know, but there was room, and I had my own bedroom, and my old bed that I had had always when I was a girl.

It was quiet at Yearsly, and the War seemed further off; even the soldiers did not bring it close, for they were getting better, and they were happy to be there.

It was like a dream somehow being there with the babies and the soldiers; the same and yet not the same; and the men were gone away from the garden and the farm.

I went down to the village with Cousin Delia, and saw the same people that I used to know, but they too were different. Old Joseph’s son had been killed, and John Elliot from the farm was missing, and all the young men were away.

It seemed more changed in a way at Yearsly than in London, or I realized the changes more distinctly.

The horses were gone too, commandeered by the Government, except Guy’s hunter, which he had got with him; and the flower garden was partly growing vegetables and partly run to grass, for old Joseph was alone now, with no young man to help him.

The roses were still the same, and the High Wood, and Cousin Delia was the same herself, as always.

It was like stopping still awhile to be with her. I did not think ahead; I tried not to think of going home.

Cousin Delia kept the nurse for a fortnight longer. She said I was not fit to look after the children myself.

I thought:

‘It is wrong; I ought to do it’; but I blessed her for the decision and was glad.

She spoke to me of Hugo’s visit. ‘You must see him on his next leave,’ she said.

She said he was well, but unhappy, how could one expect otherwise. She spoke of George too, and Mollie.

She said:

‘I wish I could have seen Mollie, but she cannot get away from her hospital. She is going to Salonika soon, that is better for her I think.’

XXI

When the time came for me to go home, I found it very hard.

I thought:

‘Supposing I were a soldier going back to the War.’

And I felt ashamed, but I did not dread it less. Cousin Delia too did not want to let me go. She said that I ought to have more help at home, a better maid, who would help me with the children; I said I would try to get one.

I dismissed the little girl I had, and got a good maid, who took the children out in the afternoons for me. It was much better while she stayed, and she stayed for about a year. Then the Air Raids began, and made her nervous, and then she went away.

Walter had been for his ten days’ holiday while I was at Yearsly. He went to the Roman Wall again, and walked about it by himself. He came back refreshed, and more cheerful for a time.

The battle of the Somme was in progress at this time. Guy got a D.S.O., and Freddy Furze was killed.

In September, two Zeppelins were brought down on the East Coast.

Prices were rising fast; food, and clothes, and wages. Coal was expensive too; it became more and more difficult to manage with the money we had. I tried to manage; I kept accounts of all I spent; I tried having herrings for lunch, and tea instead of coffee for breakfast I tried jam instead of butter; but it seemed to make no difference.

I had no new clothes this autumn, and Walter had none. He didn’t mind about it, but I did. I darned and mended, and it took me a long time; but Eleanor needed new clothes, and I had no time to make them when the mending was all done; it never was done.

I had to help Ada with the housework, as she helped me with the children. I was tired all the time, and that upset Rachel. I had not milk enough, and she began to flag. She slept badly at night, waking and screaming at four, at three, at two o’clock. Then I weaned her, and the interminable business of prepared foods began. It seemed to me that I spent hours in the day measuring and mixing milk, and cream, and water. No food suited Rachel. She lost weight, she was cross, she was sick. I grew anxious about her, and then frightened. I began to think she would die.

At last the food was right, and she recovered; but she was always a more restless child than Eleanor had been. She would not lie still in her cot when she was awake, but cried to be picked up.

Since the gardener left off coming, the garden had got untidy. I tried to cope with it, but there was so little time. The grass grew long and ragged, and we had no mowing machine. Walter said we could not buy one, till after the War.

I tried to cut the lawn with shears, but it was not a success. They would not cut it properly, and the stooping made my back ache. It ached very often now, and my feet ached and my head.

I thought:

‘It can’t go on much longer. It must end soon now.’

XXII

In December, our balance at the Bank was overdrawn.

Walter came in with his face all white and tense. He threw the pass-book on the table in front of me.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Overdrawn at last. I have been expecting this.’

I felt as though he had hit me, his voice was hostile; he looked as though he hated me.

I said:

‘Walter, I am sorry; I have done my best.’

‘I can’t understand it. Other women manage, why can’t you? Other women on smaller incomes than ours; my mother did.’

I said:

‘I know they do.’

He said:

‘I must earn more, I suppose. I must do examining or something of that sort in the evenings; I must give up my book—that was the last thing that kept me alive!’

I said:

‘Don’t do that, Walter. I will try again; perhaps we could manage better without a cook.’

He said:

‘You couldn’t cook; you can’t manage as it is; and your grandmother keeps telling me you are overworked.’

I did not know that Grandmother had said so. I did not know that she had noticed it at all.

I said:

‘I could learn to cook. I would rather do that than housework.’

He said:

‘Don’t talk nonsense!’

He clasped his head in his hands, and leaned across the table.

‘It has never happened before,’ he said, ‘to be overdrawn. It is a disgrace.’

I said:

Cousin John was overdrawn quite often; I don’t think it mattered much.’

He said:

‘Damn your Cousin John! _They_ have capital behind them. We have not.’

I said:

‘I have a little, Walter; couldn’t we use that?’

He said:

‘I won’t use your capital, and I won’t be helped by your relations. Do you know,’ he asked suddenly, ‘your grandmother offered to pay for a nurse for the children?’

I said:

‘I did not know.’

‘Yes,’ he said very bitterly. ‘She did, and I refused. I told her that you could manage without, as my mother had managed. I think I was rude to her. She was displeased with me.’

I wondered vaguely when all this had happened.

I thought:

‘How dear of Grandmother.’

We had stopped having lunch with her on Sundays. I had not seen her often since Rachel was born.

He got up again, abruptly, and left the room. I stayed alone and cried, and wished that I were dead.

Afterwards Walter was sorry.

He said he was sorry; he said he hardly knew what he had said.

He said:

‘I had such a headache, and the pass-book was the last straw. I was awfully upset. I was a beast.’

‘Dear, dear Helen,’ he said suddenly, ‘you must forgive me. You don’t know what you are to me.’

I said, of course, that it did not matter. I said again that I was sorry; but I felt him still unkind.

I thought:

‘He does not love me for what I am. He wants me different all the time. What I have and could give him is of no use to him.’

That winter wore through somehow, as the last had done, and on January 31st came the announcement of ‘Unrestricted Submarine Warfare.’

Walter looked grim.

He said:

‘We shall begin to feel it in earnest now.’

Prices were rising still, but gradually. There was no visible difference after this for some time.

Then the Russian Revolution came. That made me think of Sophia Lane Watson. I wondered where she was. I remembered her old enthusiasm for Russian Revolutionists. Would she be pleased at this, I wondered?

And then America came into the War.

XXIII

In June Guy came home on leave. He was at Yearsly first, and then three days in London. He stayed with Grandmother in Campden Hill Square. I went to see him there and he came up to me. He wanted to dance, he said, it was so good to be at home. ‘Let us be jolly,’ he said, ‘I have only two days more.’

So I went with him to a club, somewhere near Bond Street it was. We had dinner first in Soho, and then we went and danced. I had no dancing clothes now, except very old ones, but Guy did not mind.

‘That is the dress you used to wear,’ he said, and he was pleased.

It was like being born again to dance with Guy. The years between, and the War, seemed to fall away; it was as though all that had happened was wiped away, and we were back again in 1912 before the War, before even I was married.

We danced till two o’clock; then Guy saw me home. We would do it again the next night, we said.

Walter was in the study working, when I got home.

He said:

‘You are very late, you will be tired to-morrow.’

I said:

‘I think that I shall not be tired any more. I have come alive again.’

And I laughed, and kissed him.

Rachel woke up at half-past five, but I did not mind.

I thought:

‘We shall dance again to-night.’

And we did. We went to the same restaurant, and the same club, and we danced till nearly three.

‘This has been good,’ Guy said. ‘Thank you, Helen.’

And I said:

‘Thank you, Guy.’

He went back the next day, at a quarter to twelve. Mollie was in Salonika now; he had not seen her; I was sorry about that.

Cousin John and Cousin Delia came up to see him off. I saw them at the station. Then I went back to Walter, and the house, and the children, but for a long time it was better after that.

I wished that Walter could dance; he had promised me once that he would learn.

I asked him now; it was foolish of me.

He said:

‘I have no time to dance, and I don’t want to. I don’t understand, Helen, how you can bear to dance at a time like this.’

I said:

‘If Guy can bear to——’

He said:

‘Oh, Guy!’ and stopped short.

‘I think it is abominable,’ he said.

Afterwards he was sorry. Walter was always sorry afterwards, when he had been cross, but I could not forget the things he said. He broke his glasses soon after this, the rimless ones that he had bought to please me. He would not buy any more. He went back to the old spectacles with the black steel frames. I could not bear him in those spectacles.

XXIV

The children had whooping cough that summer. When it was better we went to the seaside. We took lodgings on the Norfolk coast; it was cheap to go there because of the War; people were afraid of the German Navy, and bombardments from the sea, and Zeppelins.

There was no bombardment, nothing while we were there, but it was very dreary. There were soldiers there as everywhere, and barbed wire along the cliffs. It was cold too and rainy.

Walter came down for a fortnight. The children still coughed a great deal, they coughed especially at night. Maud came for a bit too, and helped me with the children.

I thought:

‘That is kind of Maud—I have been horrid about Maud’—but even so, I was glad when she went away.

I was glad to leave that place. London was much better than that. We came home in September.

I went to see Grandmother at Campden Hill Square. She was away and there was a new maid who did not know me.

Mrs. Woodruffe was in the country, she said. She was expected back next month.

I knew she had been at Yearsly. I had hoped that she was back. The maid did not offer me tea, and I did not ask her for it. I felt disappointed to an absurd degree. I walked across Campden Hill to Kensington Church, and thought of my wedding there four years before. I took a bus from there down to Chelsea and walked past Mollie’s flat. The blinds were down and there were no flowers in the window-boxes. That was natural, of course, with Mollie far away. I turned back again towards the bridge. I went into the little tea shop where we used to have meals very often. Here too the waitress was new, everything was changed; different and strange. It seemed as though I had been away for years and years.

And then as I sat and waited for some tea, I caught sight of my own face in a looking-glass that was hanging on the wall; and I realized suddenly with a shock that my own face was changed. I looked so shabby, so provincial, somehow, and dull. I had not realized before that I looked like that now. I had hardly thought of my own appearance for so long.

I stared at myself in that looking-glass, and felt ready to cry.

How was it that I had not seen myself like this before?

I looked at myself every morning, of course, when I did my hair, but I had not really looked for months, even when I dressed to go out with Guy. Was I getting old? I was nearly thirty now, was that really old?

I had seen myself so often in the same looking-glass before, an oval looking-glass it was, in a dark lacquered frame. I had sat so often at this same table with Mollie, and George, and Guy, and Hugo. Would they all be changed when I saw them again? If I did see any of them—George I would never see.

I tried to remember his face as he had last sat there, in that little restaurant, at that same table; but I could not remember any particular time as the last.

He at least had not faded nor tarnished:

‘They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man,

The Lads who will die in their glory and never be old.’

I repeated the lines to myself, and they made me happy, with their familiar beauty. I remembered the first time that I had read them, lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, at Campden Hill Square. A big, deep sofa with a green Morris chintz.

I had had a bad cold; it was winter and the fire was burning in the grate. I had watched the light flickering on the ceiling as I lay on my back, and repeated the lines with wonder and delight to myself. All this came back to me.

I had thought them so true, so full of meaning; and how little I had really understood.

Now I was oppressed and overpowered by the dread of old age, of deterioration, and change, and loss. It was gone already, the wonder of youth, and light, and life; it was slipping through my fingers before I had had time to realize and enjoy it. This was not life, this daily drudgery, this struggle to keep going, to get through, to exist. I was marking time, we were all marking time, waiting and waiting for the strain to relax, for the War to end; and meantime our youth was going.

Before in the old days we had been waiting, too, but that had been different. We had been waiting then for something to begin, to happen, this was waiting for something to end, to stop happening.

The waitress brought my tea. The toast was spread with a very rank margarine. The cake tasted of cocoa butter, and I remembered what delicious bread and butter they used to give us here.

I sat still for a long time after my tea, looking out at the familiar view; the trees, the wide road, and the river. Then I paid my bill and walked up the street to my bus.

XXV

A few days after this the Air Raids began.

We had heard, of course, that they would come. There had been the Zeppelin raids; people had talked of bombardment from the air; of London being destroyed; of German plans for more and larger aeroplanes than anyone had seen; but it had not seemed very real. And now, when the first raid came, I did not realize what it was.

I was undressing in my bedroom; it was about half-past ten, and I heard the warning whistles. Then came the shouts through a megaphone, ‘Take cover; take cover,’ a rhythmical, rather melancholy shout, like a sort of refrain. I stood still with my hairbrush in my hand; I remember that I was brushing my hair. The gas was turned low for fear of waking the baby, Rachel was the baby, in her cot at the end of the room; and it flickered a little in the draught from the open window, though the blinds were tightly drawn. I was thinking, I don’t know why, of a summer holiday when I was a child, with Guy and Hugo, at Yearsly. I was thinking of the high trees, and the swishing sound of the branches against the house; and I remembered how at first, when I was very little, I had been almost frightened of that sound, and afterwards I had got to love it.

It was a quiet place, unshaken, unshakeable, so it seemed to me; even being a hospital had not changed it really.

And Cousin Delia too, she was always the same. I thought of her calm face with the mass of grey hair swept upwards from the forehead, and those great grey eyes of hers, that were like Guy’s, but quieter. I could picture her face older, sadder, with more shadowed eyes, but I could not picture it harassed or worried or upset, nor marked with the fear or strain of the War.

And a great longing for Cousin Delia came over me, a longing for the quiet security of Yearsly, for the old high trees and the swishing branches, the sun-dried brick of the walled garden, the pear trees outspread against the wall, and the jasmine gate, and the droning of the bees. Inside that garden it was always sheltered and warm, outside the wind rocked through the beech trees, the clouds trailed rolling shadows across the wide green lawns, the high grass swayed and bent, like waves at sea, but the peace and quiet remained unbroken.

I thought of Guy and Hugo as boys, as they had been in those early summers when first I was there, boys in the branches of the beech trees in the High Wood, calling to each other among the calling of the rooks; and regret came over me, poignant, impersonal regret, at the inevitable pathos of existence; the relentlessness of time, and change, and the haunting dearness of the past.

I thought:

‘It will never be so again. Never in millions of years.’

I heard the shrill prolonged whistling in the street, and the hurrying rush of feet, the sing-song, almost musical cadence of the ‘Take cover,’ as it drew nearer and louder, and then passed further on and away down another street, but I did not give my mind to it; it did not recall my thoughts; and then the guns began; first one, then another, then a third, at intervals of a few minutes first, then closer together, then in bursts. One big anti-Aircraft Station was close behind us on Parliament Hill. The report of its gun boomed out, with an almost deafening roar; the windows rattled and the doors shook.

And then I realized that an Air Raid had begun, and I felt excited, and wondered if I should be afraid.

I crossed to the window and looked out. It was a brilliant moonlight night, searchlights still swung across the sky, crossing, intersecting, passing each other, but the moonlight dimmed their brightness, and I thought:

‘How beautiful it is.’

I looked up in the sky for Zeppelins or aeroplanes, but I could see nothing; only the tiny fleecy clouds, high up, incredibly high up, luminous and unearthly in the moonlight.

The street outside was empty, but further down in the bigger thoroughfares I could still hear the whistles and the warning cries and the shuffle of feet.

I felt my heart beating, but I was not afraid. I wondered:

‘What next? What will happen now?’

Then there was a stir inside the house; feet on the stairs, the opening and shutting of doors.

Walter came in from the study. I had forgotten Walter; and Maud came downstairs from her bedroom; I had forgotten that Maud was staying with us just then.

They pulled me back from the window.

Maud said:

‘Quick, we must get the children downstairs.’

She went to the cot and picked Rachel up.

She said:

‘Ada has taken Eleanor down already.’

Walter said:

‘That’s right, Maud: that’s right. Hurry up, Helen, why are you waiting?’

He took me by the shoulder and pushed me in front of him across the room, turning out the gas as he passed, and I went where he pushed me. I felt quite passive, and as though I were a long way off, and looking on We sat downstairs in the dining-room; the servants were there already with Eleanor. She was pink with sleep and rather puzzled. They had wrapped her up in a rug, and she sat on Walter’s knee. I took Rachel on mine; she was still fast asleep.

We could hear the shrapnel like hailstones on the roof, and in the street, and the long wail of the shells, and then between, came the sound of engines, a droning sinister sound.

And I thought:

‘A bomb might fall and kill us any moment; it might fall now, while I think.’

But it had no meaning for me at all, and I thought:

‘How funny we look sitting here in our dressing-gowns.’

For only Walter was still dressed, and I thought how funny the old cook looked with her hair down her back, and I thought Maud looked much nicer than she did in her ordinary clothes.

Maud was trying to talk to the maids, to distract their attention from the noise, and I noticed the tremor in her voice.

And I thought:

‘How funny that is; Maud is quite frightened.’

Now came a dropping of bombs, louder, more reverberating explosions, one after another. I counted seven in quick succession, then there was a lull. Again we could hear the whizzing of the engines, louder and louder, and then less loud, and again the barrage and the wailing of the shells and again the pattering like hailstones in the street.

Ada and the cook shuddered and shut their eyes.

Eleanor asked:

‘Why is there such a noise?’

Maud said:

‘Gun practice, my dear child. They are practising with guns.’

And she seemed satisfied, she was still half asleep.

And I thought:

‘Those bombs have fallen somewhere; they have fallen on something; people must have been killed.’

But it did not mean much to me even so.

Maud said violently:

‘And they call this War. I don’t.’

I said:

‘But what else is it?’

Maud said:

‘Murder. Massacre.’

And the cook and Ada nodded their heads.

The funny old cook with her grey plait of hair sat up very straight in her chair.

She said:

‘I could find it in my heart to be a second Charlotte Corday.’

I was surprised at her, and I could not remember what Charlotte Corday had done.

She shook her fist and said:

‘That Emperor William.’

And I thought again:

‘How funny it all is.’

And then I thought:

‘It is wrong to think it funny.’

And we sat there till the firing died away.

There was silence for a while and then ‘All Clear’ sirens were sounded.

Maud drew a deep breath and stood up.

Walter passed his hands across his forehead.

He said:

‘At last. Now we can go to bed.’

And I thought:

‘It is over now. That was an air raid.’

And then I thought:

‘George is dead; and Guy and Hugo are out there, where it goes on all the time.’

And I shivered and felt cold.

Walter said:

‘I wonder how Mother stood it.’

And Maud said:

‘She ought not to be alone.’

XXVI

The next night there was another raid, and every night that week. Walter was all on edge.

The children became fretful with their nights disturbed. I thought it would be better to stay in our beds, quietly, as though nothing was happening, but Walter said that was silly.

He said we must take the reasonable precautions. So we sat downstairs, night after night, Walter and I, and the servants, with the children half asleep.

Maud had gone to Mrs. Sebright, and taken her down to the school. ‘People should leave London, who could,’ she said, ‘it was foolish to stay behind.’

And then the raids stopped for a bit, and the nights were quiet, and we slept again and were glad.

Afterwards, when they came, we stayed in bed.

Food was now difficult to get. There were voluntary rations. I spent hours every week weighing and measuring them out. People who kept to the rations put cards up in their windows. We kept to the rations, but we did not put up a card. The taste of beans and lentils became sickening to us all.

Ada gave notice, on account of the air raids, and it was a long time before I got another maid.

The long months of the winter passed on slowly, harder and more difficult than the last. No sugar, no fat, no fuel, and the weary hours of waiting in a queue for the horrid food we got.

I got to loathe the shops where I had to market; the butcher’s shop in the High Street, where I waited every Tuesday and Saturday, the grocer’s where I waited hours, to be told in the end that the margarine had given out, that there were no beans, that tea had risen again in price; I had to take the children very often, and Rachel was heavy now to hold. I watched the other women in the queue, working women mostly, more tired and draggled than me, with children more fretful than mine, and wondered at their patience; and sometimes I wondered if they really minded it all as much as I did.

It was so cold that Winter. I had never known such cold; perhaps it was the lack of fats that made one cold, Maud said so anyway; and there was so little coal. We shut the drawing-room up, and the study too, and lived in the dining-room downstairs. There we could have a fire; and Walter at his office was warm; but I was always cold; and I thought of Guy and Hugo in the trenches; Hugo had always felt the cold so much, and then I thought:

‘George will not feel cold any more, at all.’

Walter and I saw each other very little. He worked almost always in the evenings after dinner; examination papers now, to make more money, not his proto-Hittite Script; and on Saturdays and Sundays as a rule. He was not happy, I knew; how could he be? but we were like people in a fog; we could not see light, nor each other, we could only struggle for breath, to keep alive; and again we said:

‘It cannot last much longer. It is bound to end very soon.’

My grandmother was still at Yearsly. Cousin Delia had kept her there.

XXVII

In February, Hugo came home on leave, and I saw him. He wrote to me that time and said he was coming. He would be in London for a few days first, and then at Yearsly.

His letter came at breakfast time amid the clatter of plates and feeding the children. I opened it, and could think of nothing else.

Three days later, Hugo himself came. I was coming back from my afternoon walk with the children, pushing the heavy perambulator up the hill, thinking, wondering if he would come to-day. Suddenly I saw him at the end of the road, coming to meet me; a long way off still, but unmistakably Hugo.

I had not seen him in khaki before, and the silhouette was strange, and although I had expected it, it was a shock; but I knew his walk, and I knew the poise of his head. I stopped the perambulator and stood still.

My heart leaped up and throbbed. I had a wild impulse to turn round and run away. I had been counting the hours until this moment, but now that it had come, I was afraid. I dreaded this meeting with Hugo in a way that surprised myself. I felt it to be charged with emotion, painful, stirring emotion, as of all the past revoked; of lost youth, and lost joy, and that terrifying sense of regret for the passage of time and of life. As I hesitated, he saw me. He took off his cap and waved it and I had no choice, I waved back and went on to meet him.

We seemed a long time reaching each other. Then we shook hands, and stood still. I looked into Hugo’s face, and he looked into mine; it seemed at first, as though we had nothing to say.

Hugo’s face frightened me; he was smiling now, the faint half hesitating smile I knew so well, but there was something new in the very smile, in his mouth, above all in his eyes, a desperate, haunted expression, that I had not seen before.

I said:

‘I am glad to see you, Hugo, it is good of you to come up here.’

He said:

‘Why, of course I came.’

He turned to the children, and looked at them with an amused, half puzzled expression, and then back to me.

‘I can’t get used to the idea of you with children, you know,’ he said; and then he added abruptly: ‘they are neither of them like you.’

I said:

‘No; they are like Walter’s family, both of them.’

I had not admitted this before, to anyone, nor yet that I minded about it, but I did.

‘I wish I had a child,’ said Hugo suddenly, staring away across the street. ‘A son—you must have a son, Helen.’

And he turned back to me.

I said:

‘Yes, I hope I shall, next time.’

We walked on slowly, towards the house. The children were unusually quiet, staring with round eyes at Hugo.

We talked of Guy; Hugo had seen him at Amiens, and of Mollie, still nursing in Salonika. We did not talk of George. Then we reached the door of the garden and went in.

I pushed the door open and we went inside. The garden with its uncut grass looked sordid and forlorn. I was sorry Hugo should come to it like that.

I opened the door of the house with my latchkey, and lifted the children out. Eleanor ran tumbling up the steps and across the hall, Rachel I had to carry. I set her on a chair in the hall and came back for the perambulator.

Hugo helped me to lift it up the steps, and past the umbrella stand.