Chapter II: Part 2

If, at times, a doubt intrudes in regard to this British clinging to the past, it is when the door of the one village shop tinkles at my entrance, and I ask in vain for the common necessities which it is supposed to supply. Here are pictures of Queen Victoria and all the royal family, but no tapes, no trustworthy thread, no pins, at least no pins with points. I brought home a paper of these soft little British crowbars, but alas! fingers cannot drive them in; they but crumple if, in desperation, you urge them too vigorously. How can a nation rule the sea; above all, how can it conquer in a mechanical war when it cannot even make decent _pins_?

My mood softens as I stroll toward home; the glow of the blacksmith's forge fascinates me; there at least is tremendous strength, which is also skill, welding in this most ancient art, blow upon blow, old-fashioned horseshoes, which I am told are the best. Past quaint old doorways my path leads; the sight of these, and of fine old-fashioned faces behind the windowpanes, revives my normal mood of affection. What other people would, in reverence to wishes of those long dead, give out the dole of widows' bread at Westminster, the daily dole at Winchester, or administer the Leicester charity at Warwick in the spirit in which it was meant? What other people would be honest enough to do it? There is a basic honesty here which recalls the old tale of Lincoln and the money he saved for many years, in order to give back the identical coins with which he had been entrusted.

As I enter my own domain, I observe once more that my gate does not latch properly; all this time, when I have found it left open, I have reproached Peter.

"Peter, you did not shut the gate."

"No, Miss," rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand.

"You must be more careful."

"Yes, Miss."

This has happened several times; today I found that no power could make it really latch, and I confided the fact to Peter.

"Yes, Miss, I knew it all along, Miss."

"But why--" there I stopped; I should rather never know why than to try to penetrate the wooden impenetrability of mind of the British serving-man. There are no "whys" in their vocabularies, no "whys" in their minds, only "thus and so." Things are as they are; it has always been so; theirs to stand under the atlas weight of caste and class, prejudice and custom, not theirs to reason why, when they are blamed by their masters for things not their fault; theirs to go on digging, very respectfully digging.

"Peter, will you get some one to fix it, please?"

"Fix it, Miss?" He does not understand Americanese unless he chooses.

"Put it in order." I am quite red and haughty now, and as dignified as Queen Alexandra.

"I'll try, Miss. I expect that was broken a long time ago." Peter half salutes and goes on spading the earth for next year's flowers.

"Peter," I say severely, "the most lamentable thing about you English is that you are always 'expecting' things that have already happened. It's both grammatically and politically wrong to expect things in the past." He has not the slightest idea of my meaning, but of course he assents.

"You were a soldier once, weren't you?"

"Yes, Miss. It's a nasty business."

"Slavery," I venture, "would be worse."

"I can't say, really," answers Peter.

"Sometimes I wonder that you do not volunteer for this war, Peter," I suggest.

Stolid Peter goes on digging.

"There h'isn't any war, Miss!"

"But Peter, what do you mean?"

A fine look of cunning incredulity over-spreads Peter's broad face, as he stops and wipes his forehead, for this October day is warm.

"No, Miss; it is just a scare got up by the 'Ouse of Lords to frighting the common people."

"What for?" I ask stupidly.

"To take their minds off the 'Ouse of Lords; we had threatened their power, 'm, and they wish to keep their seats. It is what you call a roose."

"Peter," I say severely, "day by day we hear through the newspapers of terrible fighting going on all the time; how can you say such a foolish thing?"

"The newspapers, 'm," said Peter, with frightful audacity, "are corrupted, bought by the 'Ouse of Lords. They say what they are hordered to."

"The poor Belgians are pouring into this country," I say in wrath.

"Beg parding, Miss, but I haven't seen a Belgian," answers doubting Peter.

"Day by day we hear of recruits going by hundreds to the recruiting stations----"

"I'm not denying that they may be making up the army, 'm, and that there may be war some day; but that a war is on, I deny, 'm."

So this is what happens when the British lower classes begin to think! There really ought to be some better way of bridging the gulf between their old, automatic habits and the new working of their minds.

"They are carrying soldiers across the Channel by thousands," I say indignantly.

"All bunkum, if you'll kindly excuse the word, Miss. Did Robinson Crusoe really happen? We 'ear of these things going on, but do _you_ know of anybody who has actually been killed, 'm?" asks Peter.

I looked at him, but I could not speak. Where are you lying, dear, in that awful field of death?

October 11. I was pruning and tying up rose vines, by my wrought-iron gate that stands ajar, when I heard a noise,--first, a skurrying of feet, and a shout, then a rush of something small and swift. The tiniest grey kitten imaginable had dashed in through the opening and was trembling in a corner under my rosebush. I picked it up and went quickly to the gate; there was a red-faced urchin waiting, his mouth open, a stone in one hand ready to throw at the kitten if it came out, but shy of entering,--the British respect for a gate! Neither my pleas nor my scolding brought a shade of expression to his face; it was as guileless, as soulless, as a jack-o'-lantern. I give the boy tuppence, and tell him to go away, and to be kind to animals; the kitten curls itself about my neck and purrs, as I work in the earth. Of course I shall keep it; I am glad that the latch will not hold, and I shall not even try to have it repaired. Perhaps my garden may serve as a refuge for small hunted things, suffering things. I might have a ring put on my gate; you remember the ring upon the cathedral door at Durham to which a fugitive could cling? All the village criminals--I wonder who the village criminals are? Probably the ones who look least so!--could cling to it, and Peter could rescue them, and Madge and I could give them tea.

And now to help on the millennium a bit by establishing an intimacy between the refugee kitten and snobbish little Don. In his heart I think he wants to make friends; but when a common kitten, with no pedigree and no Oxford training, spits at him, what is he to do? He looks piteously at me as I bid him be gentle; sniffs in half friendly fashion, and keeps his delicate nose well away from the claws. Meanwhile, how can I teach the kitten _noblesse oblige_? I shall name it the Atom, because, it being (so much of the time) invisible, like the scientists I am unable to tell whether or not it exists; and because at moments it seems only a "mode of motion."

Not long after came a little squeal, as of a tiny pig; my flower beds! I hurry down; the gate is farther open, and there is a huge baby, a gingerbread baby,--no, it is alive, but it has the shape of gingerbread babies in the shops, and it has the motions of a gingerbread baby,--not a joint in its body; "moving all together if it move at all." Its round blue eyes, its round red mouth look frightened in Don's presence and mine; then, with another little squeal, it flings itself upon Don, who draws away, looks at me inquiringly, with that questioning paw uplifted, shivering a little, all his class-consciousness astir: must he make friends with _this_?

It is a solid British lump, but friendly beyond belief. In feeling that it would further the _entente cordiale_ between the two peoples, I find myself making a playhouse, with tiny pebbles. The infant Briton is not so phlegmatic, after all; it shouts with delight, flings itself upon my knees, and embraces them so suddenly and so lustily that I nearly fall over.... I must find out its name and send to London for a Teddy bear and some toys. My gate is wide open, ever since Peter started to escort home my uninvited guest....

It proves quite a day for adventure, and yet I have not been beyond my garden wall. As I sit on my threshold to watch the sunset, I see, pausing at that open gate, a tired-looking woman, with her baby in her arms. She starts to move away, but I speak to her, and she enters; at first glance I know that she is neither tramp nor beggar and half divine her errand. Yes, she is a soldier's wife; he is going in a few days to the front, and she is walking a good part of the way from the north of England to his training camp at Salisbury Plain, to let him see and say good-bye to the baby on whom he has never set his eyes; it is only seven weeks old and was born after he volunteered. She had money enough to come only a certain distance by train.

The mother is a north-country woman, with a touch of Scotch about her, clean and sweet, though a bit dusty with the long road. Of course I take her in for the night; we have a wee guest-chamber. Don and the kitten and I try to make friends with the baby, but it merely howls. Madge wanted to keep the travellers in the kitchen, but I would not permit this and said that my soldier's wife must dine with me. I forgot to say, I took it for granted that Madge would know enough to lay another cover at table and was not prepared to see the stranger in your place. Naturally, though I winced, I could not make any change, and there she sat, a bit awed; probably she would have been happier in the kitchen with the baby; but she brightened up and told me some of the border legends, when she found that I already knew some. My desire to take her out of your chair lasted through the soup and half-way through the modest roast; when we reached the salad, there was a hurt sense somewhere within me that it was right. I had become a Christian by the time the dessert came on, and in the afterglow by the fire, while she sang her baby to sleep most enchantingly with an old north-country song, I resolved to do just this: keep your chair for wandering guests, fugitives from these highways and hedges. Your intense present life with me, your subtle nearness needs, after all, no help from outer object or material thing. Alas for my blockade!... Forts are proving useless, the war news says.

It sets me to thinking, and I sit by the fire long after my guests have gone to sleep. After all, it seems a pity to work so hard over a house and to get it ready, unless you get it ready for something. I don't know how it could be managed in a maiden lady's home, but what if I resolved that all the things that should happen in a house should happen here? In my heart of hearts I know, in spite of this blinding sorrow, that I do not want to be shut off from the main streams of human life. They used to tell me that I have a genius for home; suppose I establish this as a wee home in a warring universe for the use of whomsoever? Not a Home with a large H, but a little home, with a dog and a cat and a singing teakettle. The Lord did not make me for great causes,--not for a philanthropist, nor a leader of men, nor a suffragette. I have no understanding of masses of mankind, and so am lost in this era, and hopelessly behind the times. Life seems to me, as it did to my grandfather, primarily as the conscientious fulfilment of individual obligation, which inevitably reaches out to other lives. The troubles of individual men and women and children I used to understand, to try to help; perhaps I can again. Though it means confessing that I belong to a type of woman rapidly becoming extinct, all my life long I have felt that I should be content with a hearthstone and threshold of my own, with natural relationships and real neighbours. If I can understand and pity and try to help, why am I not doing it now, pig that I am? Birth, and death, and marriage, and hours of common life! Ah, if the little red house could only lend itself once more to all human need!

October 15. My Jeannie Deans is gone; she was in such haste that she could hardly wait for her breakfast. I got mine host to drive her to the station, for I shall not let her walk the rest of the way, and I gave her all the money I could find in the house, including all I could extract from Madge's and Peter's pockets, and from Madge's broken teapot. Unfortunately, it was not so much as I could have wished, but it will provide for a few days. Now we haven't ha'pence in the house; so much the better, if the burglar with whom I am threatened by the boding village gossips should call; but I must drive over to Shepperton, the market town, and call at the Outland and County Bank, and get some of those clean, crisp, dainty notes that are a delight to touch.

It seems lonely without Jeannie; Peter has gone away over hill and dale to get fertilizer for my garden; my house is empty, swept, and garnished--I have been dreading the moment when everything would be done. I carry on Madge's education, for I am trying to teach her English history. Yesterday it was William the Conqueror; she did not believe a word of it, but she very politely said: "Just fancy!" Most of these people know so little of their own history that they scorn the idea that anything unfortunate ever happened to England and scoff at a statement that she has ever been worsted in a fight. It has always been as it is, the King on the throne, the Vicar in the pulpit, the Squire at the Hall, and the island secure from all attack. To butcher and baker and candlestick maker in the village, danger or threatened change is inconceivable; England's past defeats sound to them like fairy stories devised by enemies, though they lend a willing ear to the tale of England's triumphs. Going back to ancient times, I told Madge about the Danes and their landing on this coast, about the burning and pillaging done by these wild folk: all that she remarked was: "How awkward!" I could not get her to entertain for a moment the idea, though we are only a few miles from the North Sea, that the enemy could ever land on English shores. "Hengland rules the seas," and that is all there is to it. Antwerp has fallen, but even this does not shake the prevailing sense of security. Antwerp is not England!

In contemporary matters Madge is quite interested; she thinks great scorn of the suffragettes: "Breaking the windows, 'm, and biting Mr. Hasquith, 'm; it's not for ladies to be taking part in public matters; they 'aven't it in them!" I reminded her of Queen Elizabeth, but she had never heard of Queen Elizabeth, and refused to entertain the idea that any such woman had ever ruled England. Even the tale of the Virgin Queen boxing the courtiers' ears she disbelieved with the rest. She admitted Queen Victoria, but said that it was "so different, 'm, and she a mother and a grandmother."

Some of this went on while Madge was doing up the guest room; she wanted simply to spread the coverlid over the bed, as it probably would not be used again for a long time. I insisted, however, that the bed be made ready with fresh sheets; some one might stop at any minute, I explained. Madge looked at me with question in her eye; her impression of me up to this point is that I am an amiable lunatic who may at any minute change to violence.

After luncheon I made Peter go and get the pony for me; yes, the pony is now exclusively my own, for as long a time as I wish. He is almost the most interesting personality I have ever known,--wilful, conscientious, full of conviction in regard to what he considers his duty and what he looks upon as his privileges. There are spurts, attended by dashing heels and swishing tail, of strict and spirited performance of his allotted tasks; there is peasant stubbornness, attended by stiffened legs and tenacious hoofs, of resistance to evil. He is British, or Scotch, to the core. Evidently he feels that his ancestors had a hand, a hoof, I mean, in the Magna Charta, and all the liberty that is coming to him he means to have, and all the obligations resting upon him he means to fufil, in his own way, at his own time. Sometimes he will do far more than he is asked, scornful of other people's ideas; has he not his own? He is full of punctiliousness, decency, order, when he feels like it; of utmost freedom, even license also, when he feels like it. Now and then he runs away, purely, I think, on the principle of: "British ponies never shall be slaves." Gentle when you would least expect it, fractious when you are most unprepared, he looks upon whizzing motor cars with calm tolerance, so unlike my own feeling that I may well cultivate his acquaintance in order to learn that wise indifference. It is as if he were disdainful of anything the modern world could invent to frighten him or get in his way; here is an ancient British self-possession, a sense of ownership in the soil. His ancestors were here hundreds of years before these trifling modernisms appeared; William the Conqueror and his Norman steeds were but parvenus and upstarts to them. He will shy at a floating feather, but I doubt if he would shy at a Zeppelin. Like many another staunch character, he takes gallantly the real troubles of life, balking only at the trifles.

"I should like to know," I said meekly, as we started, "whether it is one of my days for obeying you, or one of your days for obeying me? When I find out, I shall conduct myself accordingly." I got no answer, yet I soon discovered. There is really something uncanny about him; he seems to know more than horse or human should know; to have foreknowledge of events. I must not tell his master, or the charges will be raised from five shillings a week perhaps to eight; after all, eight shillings for supernatural wisdom would not be unreasonable! On the other hand, if it was just plain British contrariness, eight shillings would be too much, as there is such an over-supply of the commodity.

I was driving out in the forest to westward, and it is very beautiful with its great oaks and birches, and its loveliness of yellowing fern. In spite of the mellow Octoberness everywhere, I was thinking sad thoughts; all day you can drive here and yet hardly cross one man's possessions; much of the land lies idle, while people starve in England; much of it is preserved,--the poor tame pheasants are as friendly as domestic hens. The tax for charity here is one shilling four pence a pound; as I read this, I thought of London with its starving poor, its ribald poor, and I wondered if this great kingdom will vanish because the people do not pull together better. The blind selfishness of the upper class with their glass-guarded walls is a greater menace than the German siege guns.

I came to a cross road, or cross path, grassy paths both, with creeping green moss among the roots of the trees on either side. It was hard to decide which way to go; I chose the right and pulled the rein; Puck chose the left and started. I tugged at the right and told him to go on; he said he wouldn't; again I told him, and he shook his head, shook himself all over with his head down, until his harness rattled. When I told him a third time, he stamped, kicked, and pulled with all his might to the left. Of course he got his way; some people passed; I was not going to be convicted of inadequate horsemanship, being only an American, so I assumed a calm and masterful British look, as if that were the way I had all along meant to go, and we jogged on. The self-satisfaction in that little creature's air! He turned his head around now and then, trying to see how I was taking it; having had his own way, he went at a jolly pace; he loves to start rabbits and make the pheasants fly up. Presently, at a turn in the road, he shied; he did it quite theatrically, as if he had worked it all out in his mind and had achieved the intended effect. He expected me to be startled and to rein him in, fighting to control him, but I did nothing of the kind. I merely let the reins lie loose and watched him; he subsided very suddenly and dejectedly at having lost his fun.

Then I saw what he was shying at and stopped him; I think that he had known all along what he was going to find! There, under a great oak tree, partly hidden by tall bracken, lay a girl with her eyes closed, her hat partly off her head, looking like one who was very tired and had fallen in her tracks to go to sleep. In a minute I was at her side, holding tightly to the reins, for fear of what that little wretch might do, but he was as immovable as Stonehenge.

She was quite young, very wan and pale, fairly well dressed but crumpled looking. Her hair was dark, and her eyes, when she slowly opened them, proved to be dark also.

I do not know yet whether she had fainted, or whether she was asleep from exhaustion; her poor feet showed that she had walked many miles, for the soles of her shoes were worn through. At sight of me she sat up, looking frightened, but, evidently finding that I was not so terrible, at length smiled back,--a faint little smile. I knew enough to be silent at first; this is something that I have learned from animals: there are sympathies, understandings, that antedate words. When I asked her very softly if she were ill, she shook her head, not understanding. I tried French, and, though my French is odd, I know, she brightened, clasped her hands together, giving a great sigh, and then tears began to roll down her face. That villain of a pony looked around now and then as if to say: "_Who_ was right about the road? You would never have found her if I had not had my way."

If he had been commissioned by the government to help in giving first aid, he could not have acted with more sense of responsibility than he did in helping me take her home, standing motionless while she climbed into the cart, so weak with hunger, she confessed, that she could hardly move,--then speeding fast where the road was smooth, and going very slowly where the carters' wheels have left deep ruts in the mossy soil. He really has more than human sense at times! Don, of his own accord, leaped in beside the fugitive; at times I think that his spirit is really becoming more catholic, and that he demands less in the way of credentials and introductions than of old. The girl's pluck interested me, for, though she could hardly hold herself upright, she refused my help. Suddenly, from nowhere, a phrase flashed into my mind, "L'Independence Beige", and I knew--what afterward proved to be true--that she was one of the many Belgian refugees in England, though why she was wandering about by herself in this remote corner of England I did not know until afterward. As we jogged on, over the meadows and through the village street, she held herself so bravely that nobody stared, though she was white to the lips. She even managed to walk into the house, but, once inside, sank down on the couch and fainted quite away. Madge and I worked over her, giving her drops of warm milk with a wee bit of brandy, taking the shoes from her poor blistered feet, and bathing them. You should have heard Madge when I told her that I thought the girl was one of the fugitive Belgians; to take a red-hot poker to the Kaiser seemed to be her lightest wish for vengeance.

When our guest was in bed, all fresh and clean, with her hair brushed smoothly from her forehead, I could see that she was a sweet and wholesome maiden, with a comely, housewifely air, and my heart ached for her sufferings. She ate a little, then lay with her eyes full of tears that she would not let fall; she kept winking her long lashes to keep them back. Don jumped up beside her and snuggled close; she smiled, lifted her hand to his head for a minute, then she went to sleep. Such sleep I never saw,--deep, long, dreamless; hour by hour she lay there, not moving all night long, for I crept in now and then: I could not sleep. Don kept watch until morning.

She did not waken until after ten; there was a flush in her cheeks, and her eyes were starry, but in her face, young as she seemed, was a foreshadowing of the worn look of age and sorrow that the years should bring, not the German army! She wore an air of wistful questioning to which there is no answer, as she lay twisting weakly a simple ring about her third finger.

We had a funny time trying to talk; La Fontaine's fables and Racine's _Athalie_, as taught in a young ladies' finishing school, are not the best basis for a conversation on the practical needs of life. I wanted to ask her if she liked sugar and cream in her coffee; all I could think of was

"C'était pendant l'horreur d'une profonde nuit,
Ma mère Jézebel devant moi s'est montrée."

I did succeed in telling her that this was probably not as good as Belgian coffee; she sipped it gratefully and nibbled her toast, putting her hand on mine and saying that it was "delicious, Mademoiselle, but delicious."

My fugitive is still here; she was in bed two days, and then I let her get up. She is wearing one of my gowns, and she spends much of her time in the garden in the grapevine arbour, sitting very still, with the shadow of the leaves upon her face. Don stays with her much of the time, and she seems to like this; and the country smell of the garden comforts her a little, I think,--the odour of the red apples ripening in the sun and of grapes that will not quite ripen. She rarely moves, except when a drifting autumn leaf falls on lap or shoulder; it is as if body, mind, and soul were exhausted by the awful shock of her experience, and she could not gather up her vital forces. I can only dumbly wonder what terrors she has gone through, what unspeakable things she has seen.

Her name is Marie Lepont; father and mother she has not, but she lived with an aunt in a little villa near Brussels,--with a garden like this, only _plus grand_, and she had a lover; oh, yes, for two years she had been betrothed. I could not understand all that she said, but she told of their awful suspense in waiting for the Germans and of their taking refuge in the cellar,--the French for cellar I had never learned, so she showed me my own. Then came the flight, of old men, women, children, and pitiful animals; sickness, and falling by the way. Her aunt died from sheer exhaustion in a peasant's hut and was hastily buried at night. She could hardly tell what had happened, only that she was quite lost and separated from everybody she had ever known. Her lover was not in Brussels when the crisis came, and she had had no tidings from him. Evidently she had been swept over in a great wave of terrified humanity and had found herself on a steamer crowded with refugees. She can remember very little about the voyage, but with many others she reached a receiving camp near London, half ill and quite dazed. She searched vainly for her lover, and, not being able to discover any trace of him, stole away from the camp in a state of mental bewilderment to try to find him. For days she walked, growing more and more spent and hungry, for she was shy about asking for food, and the country people did not understand her, evidently mistook her for a gypsy, and treated her somewhat churlishly. When she reached the forest she was happy, it was so cool and shady there, but she had little to eat save mushrooms. If I had tried to pluck mushrooms for my sustenance, it would have ended all my troubles! When I found her, she had had nothing to eat for more than twenty-four hours.

I watch her as she sits in the sunshine, and I multiply her by hundreds and thousands, innocent people, old folk and babies, old men and women lying down by the roadside to die, and the horror comes like a great tidal wave, sweeping all things before it, drowning all the joy of life and the old sweet ways of living. It breaks on the brick wall of my garden and is driven back; I will not be overwhelmed by any anguish of human fate, my own, or that of any one else. Until some wandering star strikes the earth and shivers it to atoms, there is hope somewhere, and there are things to do! And Marie Lepont shall not be overwhelmed either, in spite of the terrible things she sees, waking or sleeping, for she starts up and cries out in the night; Don gives a little comforting, reassuring bark, and she goes to sleep again. I've got to find her lover for her, and how shall I begin?

I'll go and ask the pony!

October 14. My fugitive fits quietly into our life in the little red house, saying little, trying to do much, and smiling more and more. I do not talk to her, but now and then I sit and sew with her; I know that she is most domestic, and that this will make her feel at home, but I should hate to have her examine my seams and hems, for I am no seamstress. I leave her much alone with the animals, and that seems to help more than anything else; the Atom spends much of its time on her shoulder. She has begged to be allowed to feed the chickens, for Madge has insisted on our having chickens, and Peter has constructed a yard for them, with a little house for winter, a bit down the stream. Sea gulls come sailing on wide beautiful white wings and descend to the chicken yard, walk about and steal food, to the helpless wrath of our fowls. Even Hengist and Horsa retreat; they are two twin stately cocks, and William the Conqueror is a bigger one, with spurs. He is quite the greatest coward in the yard, and entirely in awe of his Matildas. It is thus that I am making history concrete for Madge; my long line of British queens does credit to the dynasty, though they are a bit miscellaneous in ancestry. Boadicea is a dark beauty, wild and fierce; my vainest, long-necked, red-brown hen is Queen Elizabeth; oh, the cackling when she lays an egg! The large, fat, rather stupid one is Queen Anne; I let Madge choose and name Queen Victoria herself, and she selected a plump and comely grey fowl, rather diminutive, with an imperative and yet appealing cluck, who will make, I know, an excellent wife and mother. It is all very well to keep hens and to eat their eggs, but I have given notice to Madge that not one of these companions of my daily life shall be sold to the butcher or served upon my table. The gingerbread baby comes giggling through the gate at least once a day, and it has taken a great fancy to Marie. It proves to be the eleventh and youngest child of my friend the blacksmith, and it has early developed, probably from constant association with so many swift feet, an abnormal talent for running away.

From morning until night I am busy with a thousand and one things, commonplace things mostly, in the house, or the village, or beyond. And wherever I go, you seem near, with your long, thin stride, and your preoccupied face, as if your feet had a bit of difficulty in keeping up with your mind. There is a strange sense always, when I walk in the forest, or along the highway, even when I go to Farmer Wilde's to see about butter and vegetables, that you are walking by my side.

Peter is very solicitous about the welfare of my guest, and I have seen him looking at her with vast pity in his eyes.

"Peter," I reminded him, "you can no longer say that you have not seen a Belgian refugee."

"No, Miss," was his only answer. He digs and prunes, still arguing his country's lack of need of him in this pretence of war.

"There's the British fleet, 'm," he observed, with fine scorn. "It was hordered out at the beginning of this so-called war, and told to sink the henemy's fleet. Wot 'ave we 'eard of it since, 'm? Nothing, nothing at all. It's just bluff, 'm; the fleet is out on the 'igh seas for pleasure, junketing at our expense. Doubtless all the gentlemen enjoy a cruise."

"Peter," I say solemnly, "don't you really know that a German submarine sank three British cruisers on the twenty-second of September, the _Hague_, the _Cressy_, and the _Aboukir_? Do you think that the gallant men upon them went to the bottom for pleasure?"

Peter turned a trifle pale under the red of his forehead and cheeks.

"I heard that rumour," he remarked, with an attempt at airy skepticism, "and I dessay you believe it. I dessay you think it actually happened. But I refuse to believe it; when was the British fleet ever defeated?"

There was a tentative something, a touch of question, in the bravado of his denial.

"Peter," I suggest, "our fall gardening is not a national necessity; there is greater need of you elsewhere. Why not be a bomb-sweeper; you like the sea, I believe?" Madge listens, her broom suspended in mid-air, as if it were listening too. A look of embarrassment crosses Peter's face, as he rubs his cheek.

"The bombs are very explosive, I've 'eard, 'm."

"Peter," I say, "if this is an imaginary war, those are imaginary bombs and do not explode."

"I'm not so sure of that, Miss," says Peter shrewdly.

Another British cruiser, the _Hawke_, sunk October 16. There is wakening fear in the hearts of the English people, and there is deepening courage. The faces that I see here and in the near-by towns, the letters that I get, have one expression. Party differences have almost ceased to exist in the political world, and in other ways, I think, the nation is being welded into one, as it has never been. Even the voice of the Vicar's lady has lost something of its condescension in speaking to common folk; I saw her at the blacksmith's as I took the gingerbread baby home for the eighth time, and she spoke with less of an air of coming down to the level of her audience than I should have believed possible. The gentry are behaving a bit less as if the earth were their private monopoly, and the subgentry, like our Vicaress, are taking the cue.

A few days ago I went to London, chiefly to get clothing for Marie and to set on foot inquiries about her betrothed. Nothing seemed greatly changed, save that there were fewer people in the streets and the restaurants, and that many uniforms are in evidence. The theatres are open, and people are going about their work and their play in quite usual fashion, but their faces wear a different expression, an impersonal look, and a certain quiet exaltation. Oh, if the real England, that England that I know chiefly through the expression of her inmost self in her matchless literature, and through you, could only win over that other of high, excluding walls and ancient entailed rights of selfishness and of belittling snobbishness! You will admit that something needs righting in a social condition represented by the tale of the two sisters at Oxford,--one married to a tailor, one married to a University professor,--who did not dare speak to each other in the street for fear of consequences. I am hopelessly democratic; the wonderfully good manners of the perfectly trained English servant seem to me vastly higher, as human achievement, than the manner of the superior who speaks brutally to him. The surprised gratitude of many of the maids and scrub-women here when one addresses them as if they really were human beings is piteous.

Yet I know that though these things be true, they reflect but the surface, not the depths. Something in this crisis, something even in Peter's crude attacks, has roused a deep race instinct in me, long dormant. Though my forebears set sail for America in the 1630's, my sense of the identity of our destiny with that of England deepens every day. I am ceasing to say "your", and unconsciously slipping into "our"; perhaps I have been trying to criticize, to point out the things that are wrong, partly as a measure of self-protection, for I am growing sorry that the Revolutionary War ever happened! I long for England's victory in this war, knowing that she is right; I dimly suspect that I should long for it were she right or wrong; and I feel a little thrill of pride that my home is in this England of yours, of ours.

Even I, who am often indignant in watching the Englishman's manner toward those other Englishmen whom he considers his social inferiors, can discern his profound sense of responsibility toward them. Forgetting the mistakes of to-day, and thinking of the long development, one can but be aware in England of a stable, enduring spirituality, a practical idealism, unlike that of the earlier, idealistic Germany,--a something tangential, disassociated with life,--in that it is a constant sense of inner values working out in everyday ways and habits. Those mystical habits of dreaming fine things that are never done will not save the world. In my growing love for England, I am more and more aware of its disciplined, mellow civilization, treasuring the old and sacred in beliefs, in institutions, in buildings; its right, controlling habits; its thousand and one wise departures from the measure of rule and thumb; its uncodified, unformulated truth of action; its conduct far more logically right than its laws. In the very reproach oftenest brought against England I find the deepest reason for trusting her, that she allows human instinct a larger place and mere intellectual theory a smaller place than does any other nation in working out its destiny. I am deeply puzzled by my sense of the Englishman's wrong attitude toward his supposed inferior while I recognize that inner instinctive sense of necessary adjustments, that genius for living that makes them the best colonizers in the world and makes their rule the most lasting anywhere.

I consulted some of the chief authorities in the Belgian relief work in regard to Marie,--your England shows the real humanity at the heart of her in this magnificent hospitality to an outraged nation,--and I put advertisements into several papers. At home all was well, save that William the Conqueror had choked, trying to swallow a piece of English bacon too large for him, and was dead. So perish all who lust for conquest!

October 24. Two days ago came a domestic, not to say a social crisis. Two of the county ladies called on me, accompanied by the Vicaress; they must have been told, I think, of my uncle the banker! Forgive this gibe,--I could not resist making it; we always disputed, you remember, as to whether your countrymen or mine were the more devout worshippers of gold. To say truth, I have met these ladies at one or two committee meetings in our relief work, and I feel duly honoured by the call. I ring for Madge; Madge does not appear; going to the kitchen, I find it empty, the fire out, water dripping forlornly from the faucet. The coal in the sitting room grate I replenish myself and face the horror of the situation: three English ladies and no tea! No one knows better than I what blasphemy it would be to omit the sacred British rite of tea, which is even more established than the Established Church. Rising to the occasion, I heat water in a little copper kettle on the coals in the sitting room,--"So resourceful, as all Americans are," murmurs one lady. I concoct tea, and it proves very good tea indeed, served with appetizing little cakes from yesterday's baking. My guests go away mollified; not so am I! One of them had so many scathing things to say about England's policies at home and abroad, the political friendship with Russia, the desertion of Persia, the treatment of Ireland, the mismanagement of the present war, that I was driven to an attitude of defence. Surely there is something greater for English men and English women to do now than to stand aloof and criticize! When I told her that I thought it was a pity to confuse the soul of the English people with mistakes of contemporary statesmen, she looked at me blankly, nor could I make her understand. It is odd for me, who have so derided our Anglomaniacs and superficial imitators of the English, to come so hotly to the defence of England. I hardly know myself what is going on within me. It is the England-in-the-long-run that I reverence, the England of the great poetry, that soul of England full of "high-erected thoughts", of sunny faiths, and sweet humanities. And of course, through you too, I know its very best,--the breeding that makes no boast; its fine reserve; its self-control; its matchless, silent courage.

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 manoeuvering 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.