There was a King in Egypt Part 66

In this last half-hour, perhaps the last she would ever spend with him, there seemed to be nothing important enough to say. She certainly could not speak of the things which were in her heart. When people realize that they are together for perhaps the last time on earth, is there anything which is more eloquent than silence?

It was Freddy who came to the rescue; he talked to save Margaret's dignity. With his keen eye and appreciation of her character, he knew the fight she was making for self-control. His talk was of his men and of his life as an officer in the Army, and of the politics of the day.

When he spoke of Ireland and of the satisfactory way in which she was behaving, their eyes met.

The question in Margaret's eyes was answered by a shake of his head and an immediate change of topic.

"Are you liking your work?" he said quickly.

"It's not thrilling, but it's doing my bit."

"Splendid!" he said, and Margaret knew that he understood.

A little silence followed, and then Freddy said, in rather a shamed voice, "Look here, Meg, we'd better be practical. I've left all my things in order--if I don't come back, you won't have any difficulty.

Of course, all I've got will be yours. There are a few things I know you'll always look after, things I specially value."

Meg's throat was bursting and her lips began to quiver, but she choked back her emotions and regained her self-control. It came to her quite suddenly, just after speech had seemed hopeless.

"I understand--the Egyptian things. You can trust them to me."

"I know I can," he said. "And do take care of yourself. . . . We'd better be making a move, I suppose."

They both got up and shook their uniforms free of crumbs.

"I'm jolly thankful I managed to get the work in the Valley pretty well settled before this happened."

"It was a bit of luck," Margaret said. "Doesn't it seem a shame that all that wonderful work and all intellectual life must come to a standstill, everything must be put aside for the one job that counts--the killing of human beings? That is now the one and only thing that matters; the most effectual way of killing ma.s.ses of men is the problem which scientific minds have set before them!"

Freddy looked keenly at her for a moment. Was Meg still imbued with Michael's anti-war views? England was at that moment tuned to such a pitch of war-enthusiasm that there was but one popular feeling and belief--that this war was sent to cleanse and purify the world, that it was a blessing in disguise, that but for this war England would have gone to the dogs. Anyone who dared to express an opinion contrary to this myth was condemned as pro-German or unpatriotic.

Meg felt her brother's eyes questioning her. "Never fear," she said.

"If I don't think that the war was necessary as the chosen means of arresting England in her downward course, I know that it has got to be fought to the finish, I know that the Allies have to prove that they will not submit to Prussian militarism dominating Europe. I never believed in the rottenness of England, and surely the spirits of our young men who are fighting ought to prove that it isn't? England decadent, indeed!"

"You're right," Freddy said. "England wasn't a bit rotten--or, at least, no rottener than she ever was, only the rottenness was all dragged into the limelight. Things are discussed in papers and from pulpits to-day which were never even spoken of between fathers and sons or husbands and wives in days gone by. If the war will stop all the absurd talk about England going to the d.i.c.kens, it won't be fought for nothing. We've decried our country long enough."

They had only four minutes before they had to part. Margaret was beginning to feel numb and speechless. Were these four minutes to be the last she would ever spend with Freddy, and were they to go on talking as if he was only going back to Oxford after the long vacation?

Two more minutes pa.s.sed and they had said nothing that mattered. Truly words were given to hide our thoughts!

As Margaret looked up at the clock, Freddy put his arms round her and held her closely to him. This was Meg's first tender embrace since her farewell with Michael. It was very nearly her undoing.

"Good-bye, old girl," was all that Freddy said; it was all he could say.

Meg clung to him and kissed him silently. Freddy felt her agony. It was greater than his own, for he had many responsibilities on his mind, and the excitement of actually going to take part in the "real thing."

He kissed her with a tenderness which was almost a lover's.

Meg was still silent. She dared not attempt to speak; she knew that Freddy would hate tears. The next moment, after a closer hug, he put her decisively from him.

"Time's up, old girl! I must look after my men. We are very much alone, we two. I wish I could have left you in someone's care."

"I'm so glad," Meg said, a little brokenly, "so glad it's just we two.

I've never had to share you with anyone--you've always been my very own."

Margaret knew that Freddy had made a covert allusion to the fact that if Michael had not failed her, she would, in the event of his death, have had a lover to comfort her. She chose to ignore his meaning, to speak as if Michael had no place in her thoughts. Freddy was not to be worried by things which were past and over. The war had made her independent.

Freddy understood perfectly. They had reached the barrier; his men were filing through the open gateway to the platform.

"Good-bye," he said again, hurriedly. "Don't wait in this awful crowd--I shan't be able to speak to you any more." His eyes looked into hers tenderly. "G.o.d bless you, Meg! I hate leaving you all alone."

"Good-bye, Freddy."

Margaret's lips said the words bravely. In her heart they expressed their old and grander meaning.

She had turned her back on the khaki-clad men who were filing on to the departure-platform. Her silent prayer mingled with hundreds of others, travelling from proud, torn hearts, to the listening ear of the Master of that which is ordained.

CHAPTER XVIII

The news of Freddy's death reached Margaret only a fortnight later; it came to her from the War Office in the ordinary official way. He had not died, as he would have wished to have died, in action, in a great offensive against the enemy; he had been sniped, shot through the head when he raised its brightness for half a minute above the parapet of his trench. His courage and ability had never been put to the test; he had fallen like a first year's bird hit by a deadly shot.

His youth and brains and beauty were the offerings which he had laid on the altar of Liberty. Fame had been denied him.

As England's blackest days pa.s.sed, and Margaret read in the papers the horrible accounts of the poisonous gas which was blinding and suffocating our men at the front, and when hospital nurses told her of the pitiful "gas" cases which they had seen, Freddy's painless death became almost a thing to be thankful for.

Pessimism was running its course. Germany's triumphs were magnified, the Allies' work belittled. She had come to think that it could only have been a case of time before he would either have been permanently injured or killed; the death-rate of officers was terrible. Freddy had died as he had lived, an almost perfect example of England's manhood--a striking proof that her decadence was an ugly scandal, whose birthplace was Berlin. It was one of Germany's many clever forms of propaganda, intended to undermine England's prestige in the eyes of neutrals when the "great day" came.

CHAPTER XIX

A few weeks after Freddy's death a curious thing happened to Margaret, a thing which shook her nerves and disturbed the automatic calm into which she had drilled her thoughts.

She was still a hard-working pantry-maid, doing the same daily round of apparently unwarlike work. She was thankful that she had got it to do, and considered herself lucky, for the waiting lists of able and eager V.A.D.'s, whose names were down at hospitals and convalescent homes, ran into many figures, girls who were longing to be given any sort of occupation, however humble, which would place them amongst the women of England who were really in touch with the agony of the world. Margaret had still the promise before her of promotion, the hope that eventually she would reach the wards. Time would make its demands on the long lists of V.A.D.'s who were unemployed and eager for work. It would not be long before they would all be required. Someone else would step into her humble post when she was promoted. It was merely a case of patience and pluck; the voluntary hospitals were dependent on voluntary aid. She gave hers gladly.

It was a very lonely, self-contained Margaret who wandered about London during her "off-hours." Two hours gave her very little time for making expeditions or seeing the sights of London, which were all unknown to her, so she spent the greater part of her time in the secluded garden-square close to her lodgings. It always reminded her of a small public garden in Paris, in the old-fashioned quarter of the city, in which she had lived for a year with a French family while she was perfecting her French. The odd mixture of people who frequented it, and monopolized the seats in it for hours at a time, interested her.

The work which they brought with them was as diverse as it was peculiar. Not a few of the regular habitues made a home of it, even on wet days, only returning to their shelter to sleep. Youth and elegance seldom entered it, except, it might be, when a pair of lovers, of non-British birth, drifted into it, seeking refuge from the madding crowd.

A London church, as black and white with smoke and the wearing winds of time as the marble churches of Lombardy, raised its belfry, of unnamable architecture, picturesquely above the square on one side, while a portion of its graveyard, which had been incorporated in the garden-square, and which seemed to Margaret in its shabby condition much older and more pathetically forlorn than the temple-tombs under the Theban hills, attracted the aged and the melancholy.

Margaret was the only lady who ever patronized the bench-seats in this secluded city oasis. Her V.A.D. uniform, and perhaps her air of unconscious dignity, defended her from any unpleasantness. She had never met with disrespect or lack of courtesy.

One of her chosen companions, an elderly, haggard woman, with a keen sense of humour and traces of lost beauty, who always brought a bundle of old rags and clothes to pick down, had made friends with her almost immediately. She proved a source of great amus.e.m.e.nt to Margaret. The woman's occupation had caused her much speculation.

She soon discovered, for the woman was not at all reticent, that she had been a low comedian and a dancer at Drury Lane Theatre, and like most comedians, high tragedy was her pa.s.sion, and had been her ambition.

Margaret's off-hours flew on wings while she listened to the woman's accounts of her dramatic experiences. She had seen her days of prosperity and undoubtedly enjoyed much admiration. She was no grumbler and still retained an appet.i.te for life. The sparrows and the fat pigeons which waited for the crumbs which fell from the pockets of the clothes she unpicked were her friends; her dreams of the past were her recreations.