Chapter VII

"Your hearts are lifted up; your hearts
That have foreknown the utter price;
Your hearts burn upward, as a flame
Of splendour and of sacrifice,"
_To Women_--LAWRENCE BINYON.

Wynchcombe Friars again--with the spirit of Mark haunting them in every room and at every turn of the grounds. Most intolerable were the little intimate things that conjured up his presence, the very tone of his voice: and--to crown all, there was Bobs. His ecstatic greeting, the sobbing squeals of joy that Mark so loved to hear; his rush beyond them, obviously in search of his master; shook the foundations of their fortitude. Not until now did Helen discover how much virtue had gone out of her: and the reaction, while it lasted, was a nightmare of which she afterwards felt heartily ashamed.

Sheila, thankful to be alone with her at such a time, quietly took the reins of government into her small, capable hands. On the day after their arrival she put Lady Forsyth to bed and practically kept her there for a week, soothing and stimulating, with massage, the nerves of her head and her spirit.

She had the peculiar love of the born healer for all things hurt or unhappy; and the reserve force in her, detected by Keith, had kept the poise of her spirit unshaken through all. But the hovering shadow of a smile no longer haunted her lips. She had learnt, by aspiration rather than petition, to draw freely upon the one unlimited Source of Strength; and young as she was, the older woman grew to rely upon her utterly during those days when the light within her was darkness.

Mercifully they found no strangers in the house; and Sir Richard's sisters promptly discovered plausible excuses for going home. Helen was evidently in good hands; and in no mood for any other company. So for a while they two had their shrine of sacred memories to themselves; and Lady Forsyth who had supposed she knew her Sheila through and through, began to feel as if she had never really known her--till now. Such still, strong natures are slow studies always. In the ordinary way of life, they seldom sparkle or allure. It needs the high demand to call forth the hidden elements that make them the salt of the earth. And now, in response to that high demand, the true Sheila shone out like a star in darkness.

Alone with her and the healing influences of home, Helen's courage revived apace; and with it her natural tendency to merge the personal in the larger view.

All over England, all over Europe, suspense or suffering, in some form, had become a paramount law of life. It was the price of patriotism. Men paid it with their blood and their mutilated bodies: women with their tears and mutilated lives. One in suffering, they had the more need, all of them, to be one in courage. And Mark himself had willed to give everything, without reserve, without regret. Bitter repining on her part were simple disloyalty to him: and there remained the saving mercy that her sorrow was tinged with hope.

There came a morning when she felt able to speak of these things to Sheila; even to tell her in detail of that talk in her turret-room; and their tacit, mutual resolve not to fail him in this last and hardest test of loyalty linked them closer than ever----

So far no word from Bel; and Lady Forsyth felt anxious, a little. Deep and real fellow-feeling had wakened her first genuine impulse of affection towards the girl. She had written almost as to a daughter. And on this very morning of her talk with Sheila, Bel's answer came:--heart-broken, purged of affectation, yet emphasising, in every line, her complete divergence of feeling and point of view.

"You will wonder, dear, why I haven't written sooner, but I'm an arrant coward inside, and I simply couldn't face putting the cold truth on paper. Your sweet letter, written while the shock was fresh upon you, was a heroic thing. One sees where Mark got his courage. If he'd only had a little less of it--he might be with us still. You will disapprove of that 'If.' But I'm too utterly crushed to invent correct sentiments. I can only put my own down anyhow, even if they're all wrong. Sweet of you to tell me of your private conviction. I hope to Heaven it may be true: but I have no sustaining faith to keep me going. Myself, I had a horrid feeling, that last night, that it was--the end. It's dear of you to say I can come when I like. But just now, having to work keeps one from collapse and I am sure you two are happier together. Later on--perhaps. Harry is an angel to me. But I'm not pleasant company these days. Nothing interests me now and I hate this abominable war worse than ever. If you hear any news, please wire. I got a letter from him--after yours. And it smashed me up. That's partly why I didn't write. Love to you and Sheila

from your desperately unhappy,
BEL."

Lady Forsyth handed the letter to Sheila. It was blotted at the end, where tears had dropped.

"Poor child! She cares more than I gave her credit for.--I wonder," she added, half to herself, "what he would think of that letter?"

Sheila bit her lip and was silent, and they fell to discussing Lady Forsyth's latest scheme--country Cottage Homes for Children Orphaned by the War.

That morning proved a turning-point in their new, shadowed life. On all sides there was work crying out to be done. They had no right any longer to shut themselves up with their sorrow.

"If we believe he will come back, we must live up to our faith," Lady Forsyth said simply: and they did so, to the best of their power. Keith wrote every few days, just to keep in touch with them and report his movements. There was nothing else to report--as yet.

Among countless notes of sympathy and hope, and of admiration for Mark was none more uplifting to the mother's heart than the sincere and simple tribute of Colonel Munro.

"To the Regiment and to me personally," he wrote, "the loss is so great that although the worst is reported, we cannot give up hope. Neither will you, I feel sure, for many weeks to come. Forsyth's presence among us was an inspiration. It is not often in these dead-level days that one meets with a man who seems a natural-born king. Without exaggeration, that was how we felt about him. Unfortunately, those of his company who were with him last are also missing; but I feel convinced we shall hear of them all yet. I have named and described the men to Mr. Macnair, who writes that he is instituting a search on his own account. Good luck to him: and to you--the very best that heart can wish. Yours ever,

R. MUNRO."

Sheila shared that letter, and every other, even as she shared the difficult task of answering them all. In this respect, at least, she was grateful to Bel who had tacitly relinquished the sad, high privilege that was hers by right.

The cottage scheme involved much correspondence and occasional journeys to London: and it was then that they began to realise more acutely the contrast between the "War drama" as visualised by an island people, and the stern, yet stimulating actuality, just across the Channel.

There, even at the Base, the atmosphere was electrical with the spirit of the Front, with the enthusiasm and passion of a great imaginative race, for whom invasion was no "bogey" but a bloody and devastating fact. Here, the great unseen thing was frankly a sensation fitfully discerned through the fog of censored despatches; analysed, with bewildering brilliance, by literary strategists; and distorted by visionaries, who extolled "the war against War," and feverishly planned a new heaven on earth.

Happily for them, the real issues hung upon the vigil and the valour of a negligible minority who were only concerned to beat the Germans, and to make good, with their lives, the State's miscalculations and delays.

But the very advantages of the islander are a part of his many disabilities. Not only did realisation come slowly to England: but it came too often in the wrong guise. In London, the newspaper craze became a form of dram-drinking. Everything that could be said about the great obsession was repeated over and over, in every conceivable tone of voice: till a bewildered public began to wonder whether politicians believed in their high-sounding generalities or journalists in their inspired leaders.

Though social life had practically ceased, the pavements of the City were still thronged with men of military age, quite convinced, by the tone of certain journals, that their services were not urgently needed elsewhere; that the War would probably be over by Christmas; certainly by Easter. And, after all, were they not doing good work, necessary work, on the spot?

Lady Forsyth herself had reason to feel grateful, often, for the steadying effect of contact with the real thing--even the fringe of it: and her native sensibility to atmosphere made her feel, more keenly than most, the clash of contrast between the often unwholesome ferment of London and the immovable phlegm of the countryside. Coming home, tired in body and spirit, after a long day's work in Town, she would be beset by distracting doubts as to how this great and casual country of hers would emerge from the searching test of war.

It was then that Sheila, quick to read her mood, would slip behind her, unloose her hair, and with skilful finger-tips, magically pluck out weariness and doubts alike, till Lady Forsyth would catch at her hands and kiss them.

"Sheila, that's not mere massage. You seem to reach one's very soul."

And the girl stood smiling down upon her like a young goddess radiant with conscious power.

"That's because I'm loving you hard all the time," she said. "It's a heavenly gift. I used to feel--such a dumb thing. Now I can give it all out through my fingers, I feel free. And--Dearest," she added gravely, "you mustn't get disheartened because London, on the surface, seems unspeakable. The unspeakables are always on the surface. Underneath, there are hundreds of real workers and silent sufferers, doing and bearing things without trumpets or banners. And aren't our sailors and soldiers miracles to praise God for? Surely such leaven as that must end in leavening the whole lump----"

"You're a miracle to praise God for," Lady Forsyth began; but her lip trembled and she was silent.

Then Sheila, in her protecting mother-fashion, drew the older woman's head close to her breast. "Nearly three weeks now," she whispered. "We _must_ hear something soon."

Lady Forsyth shivered; but Sheila went resolutely on: "London wears you out, Mums, body and soul. Let's give it up for a little. There's plenty of work on the spot. It will hearten up Mark's people to see more of you. They must be anxious too, in their own way."

They were: and it was the very reflection of her own anxiety, the hovering question on every face, that at first made this paramount duty a very real ordeal. But it was Mark's work; and his mother found it by no means devoid of compensation. It drew them all closer together; it threw fresh light on Mark's individual fashion of upholding the aristocratic ideal among a free people; and it steadily strengthened her own conviction that there, where human nature is still untainted by industrialism, lies the true hope of England's future. She was sustained, also, by a private resolve that when Mark returned he should find, within the boundaries of his own kingdom, a right spirit towards the War.

Very soon she discovered an ally of equal enthusiasm and wider experience--Dr. Warburton, Headmaster of High Rough School. He had lost no time in getting to the Front, as Chaplain of the Forces, leaving High Rough in charge of Rex Maitland, to that gentleman's undisguised satisfaction. Already the fatal word "indispensable" had become a mark of distinction more coveted in some quarters than a decoration. Warburton, at home for the moment, on business connected with the school, spent most of his spare time trying to instil the spirit of the trenches into cottages and country shops, where impassioned leaders were dismissed as "hot air" and despatches full of foreign names were only half understood.

As an old friend of the family, he had been among the first admitted to see Helen, on her return from abroad: and the day after her talk with Sheila, he turned up at tea-time in the private hope that he might glean news of Mark.

His leonine head with its shock of grizzled hair, hawk's eyes under shaggy brows, and a Homeric laugh, gave a general impression of bigness, belied by his mere inches: but the man's inner stature corresponded unmistakably with the laugh and the lion's head.

Within a week, now, he would be back in France. "And high time, too," he added, thoughtfully sipping his tea. "I'll miss coming here. Otherwise--" he shot out his great moustache--"It's healthier at the Front in spite of the shells. The real spirit of England is in the trenches and on the sea."

As he spoke the door opened and a parlour-maid brought in the afternoon post.

"Ah--Keith," Lady Forsyth murmured, seizing a thin unstamped envelope and letting the rest fall into her lap.

Warburton rose, as if to put down his cup, and strolled across to the window. Presently a small sound of relief reached him and he turned quickly about. "Found him, have they?"

"Not yet," Helen answered with a brave smile. "But the Sergeant, who was wounded trying to help him, has made his way back to the Regiment after hair-breadth adventures. They're sending him home at once, Keith says. He has my address. He will write. Then I can go and see him." She spoke in short swift sentences, holding emotion in leash. Sheila had risen and was standing near the fire, ostensibly warming her hands. "He and another soldier managed to drag Mark to a farm. He was hit in the head. Unconscious. They could do no more. The Germans began shelling the place: and there they had to leave him with kind French people. They weren't even sure--if he was alive. That's all--so far." She tried to smile. "It doesn't lift the fog much, does it? But still, just to see this man who was with him----"

"Yes--yes," Warburton's regard held more of admiration than of pity. "Let me go with you--if the call comes in time," he added, and rather abruptly took his leave.

That night Lady Forsyth wrote to Bel. "Come to me for the week-end, dear," she added, "if you feel you can now, and would care to hear in detail what little I may have to tell. With any luck I ought to see Sergeant Macgregor before Saturday."

And in a very few days the summons came. It was from Aldershot; and Sheila decided to go with them. While they interviewed Macgregor she would love to make a round of the wards. For, in secret, she missed her "poor things" and the work at Boulogne.

It was hard not to hope for impossibilities; but the Sergeant's rather disjointed tale served neither to justify Helen's obstinate conviction, nor to dispel her secret fears. He was a red-headed man, square and sturdy, just able to hobble. His nerves were obviously shaken by all he had been through; and his emotion in speaking of that particular day made it the harder to restrain her own. Of the nature of Mark's wound he could tell her nothing except that there was blood all over his head and that they had bandaged it roughly--he and a British Tommy, who contributed his own mud-stained puttee, worn for weeks.

The mother winced at that. "Did he know you?" she asked quickly hoping he had not seen.

"Ah canna rightly tell, ma leddy," was the unsatisfactory reply. "Ah kneeled in the mud and ah said: 'Ye ken verra weel who I am, sir?' An' he smiled crooked-like an' pit up his hand to stroke me cheek like a bairn. An' there came a sound in his thrapple. But niver a word. The Lord shield him from the hands o' they Jairman blayguards."

But Helen knew, now, that the tide of war had rolled over the village where they had left her son: and for the moment hope and courage were dead within her.

Warburton left for France next day, having promised to look up Keith: and Bel arrived with Harry to stay over Sunday. Lady Forsyth had smiled, not without understanding, at her request that Harry might "come too." Even in her sorrow Bel was still a victim to fear of being bored: and Harry's masculine attitude of worship and service was more of an asset than she knew.

Lady Forsyth discovered many fresh points in common with Harry; but the change in Bel, obvious to both, troubled her beyond measure. Not merely was her smiling serenity subdued by grief: but it seemed overlaid with a fine film of hardness from which things painful or emotional glanced off like arrows from a surface of steel. She would neither look at the papers, nor talk of the war. This fact alone made conversation difficult; but for Helen this stumbling-block was as nothing to its inner significance. The strain and pain of war, that was steadily softening and enlarging Sheila, appeared to be having the opposite effect on Bel. Deliberately she turned her eyes away from beholding the world's anguish and heroism: deliberately she hardened her heart against its effect upon herself; so that she seemed in danger of losing even the surface softness that had been no small part of her charm.

Plainly, her love for Mark, however sincere, had no alchemic power to transmute the dross in her to gold. Would his return, such as he was now, dissolve that film of hardness? Or was the girl laying up further tragedy for herself and others?

Alone with Lady Forsyth, Bel was gentle and affectionate, yet completely aloof. She listened to Macgregor's story with set lips and a fine line between her brows. Though the mother's voice shook and tears threatened, Bel's eyes were dry.

"And after that--you can _still_ manage to hope?" was all she said.

"Dear, it is not so much hope with me, as--belief," Lady Forsyth answered gently, and Bel's sigh had a faint note of exasperation.

"You are amazing," she said. "And--so like him." Then with a swift dramatic gesture, she rose and seemed to fling away her mantle of composure. "Oh, this brutal, senseless war!" she cried, her eyes still hard, her low voice tense with feeling. "A man like that--splendid, strong, gifted--smashed up like a bit of matchboard. And what earthly use has it been to any one--his sacrifice or our pain?"

The older woman listened to that strange outburst with something very like relief. It proved that Bel was not hard all through and it cried aloud the very thoughts that had visited her own heart in the small hours when all the wheels run low.

"Bel--Bel!" she remonstrated gently, "that is _the_ question one dare not ask. It's hard not to. No one knows that better than I do. But the answer is, if Mark, and others of his quality, had taken that point of view, where would England be now?"

"Oh England!" She dismissed her country with a faint shrug. "Mark would be here with us, safe and whole. That's all I know--or care."

Her voice still had its low bitterness; but it shook a little now and going over to the window she sat awhile looking out upon the wood and the terrace where she had walked with him in that other life, gone beyond recall.

Vaguely she heard the door open. Then a low sound from Lady Forsyth made her look round sharply. Helen had risen--her lips were set and pale.

Bel glanced at the open letter she held out to her. It was a formal intimation, garnished with formal regret, that Lieutenant Sir Mark Forsyth, formerly reported missing, in November, was now officially reported killed. The scanty information received in the past three weeks gave no grounds for supposing otherwise.

"Of course this was bound to come," Helen said mechanically.

But Bel pushed aside the paper and covered her face.

Helen stood silent a moment; then she found courage to repeat her own conviction.

"Dear, they may report what they please. Mark _is_ alive. I know it."

Bel simply shook her head.

"You don't believe me?"

"No."

"But--you won't go into mourning. Bel, you mustn't."

"No--no. I detest mourning."

The muffled voice broke suddenly. Lady Forsyth put an arm round the girl's shoulders and Bel leaned against her sobbing like a child. Then, with a shivering sigh, she released herself and hurried out of the room.

Lady Forsyth picked up that hateful slip of paper and dropped it into the fire. Mark was alive:--nothing could shake her belief in that. But he was wounded--and in German hands. Her inmost fear had come true.