To Love Part 31

"Doctors will be very needful in this war," one man had said at the Club.

"Yes, by Gad," another had answered. "We have got some devilish contrivances these days for killing our brother men."

Looked at from that point of view, the idea seemed strange, and d.i.c.k caught his breath on the thought. What would war mean? Hundreds of men would be killed--hundreds, why it would be more like thousands. He had read descriptions of the South African war, he had talked with men who had been all through it.

"We doctors see the awful side of war, I can tell you," an old doctor had once told him. "To the others it may seem flags flying, drums beating, and a fine uplifting spectacle; but we see the horrors, the shattered bodies, the eyes that pray for death. It's a ghastly affair."

And yet there was something in the thought which flamed at d.i.c.k's heart and made him throw his head up. It was the beating of drums, the call of the bugles that he heard as he thought of it; the blood tingled in his veins, he forgot that other pain which had driven him forth so restless a short hour ago.

The great dark waters of the river had some special message to give him this evening. He stood for a little watching them; lights flamed along the Embankment, the bridges lay across the intervening darkness like coloured lanterns fastened on a string. Over on the other side he could see the trees of Battersea Park, and beyond that again the huddled pile of houses and wharfs and warehouses that crowded down to the water's edge. He was suddenly aware, as he stood there, of a pa.s.sionate love for this old, grey city, this slow-moving ma.s.s of dark waters. It symbolized something which the thought of war had stirred awake in his heart. He had a hot sense of love and pride and pity all mingled, he felt somehow as if the city were his, and as if an enemy's hand had been stretched out to spoil it. The drumming, the flag-waving, and the noise of bugles were still astir in his imagination, but the river had called something else to life behind their glamour. It did not occur to him to call it love of country, yet that was what it was.

His walk brought him out in the end by the Houses of Parliament, and he found himself in the midst of a large crowd. It swayed and surged now this way and now that, as is the way of crowds. The outskirts of it reached right up to and around Trafalgar Square. When d.i.c.k had fought his way up Parliament Street he could see a ma.s.s of people moving about the National Gallery, and right above them Nelson's statue stood out black against the sky.

"If they want war, these bally Germans," someone in the crowd suddenly shouted in a very hoa.r.s.e and beery voice, "let's give it them."

"Yes, by G.o.d!" another answered. "Good old England, let's stand by our word."

"We have got men behind the guns," declaimed a third.

But such words were only as the foam thrown up by a great sea; the mult.i.tude did no real shouting, the spirit that moved them was too earnest for that. There were women among the crowd, their eager, excited faces caught d.i.c.k's attention. Some were crying hysterically, but most of them faced the matter in the same way that their menkind did. d.i.c.k could find no words to describe the curious feeling which gripped him, but he knew himself one of this vast mult.i.tude, all thinking the same thoughts, all answering to the same heart-beats. It was as if the meaning of the word citizen had suddenly been made clear to his heart.

He moved with the shifting of the crowd as far as Trafalgar Square, and here some of the intense seriousness of the strain was broken, for round and about the stately lions of Nelson's statue a noisy battle was raging. Several Peace parties, decked with banners inscribed "No War"

and "Let us have peace," were coming in for a very rough five minutes at the hands of the crowd. Rather to his own surprise d.i.c.k found himself partaking in the battle, with a sense of jubilant pride in his prowess to hit out. He had a German as his opponent, which was a stroke of luck in itself, but in a calmer moment which followed on the arrival of the police, he thought to himself that even that was hardly an excuse for hitting a man who was desirous of keeping the world's peace. Still the incident had exhilarated him, he was more than ever a part of the crowd, and he went with them as far as Buckingham Palace. Some impulse to see the King had come upon the people; they gathered in the square in front of the Palace, and waited in confident patience for him to appear.

d.i.c.k was standing at the far end of the Square, pressed up against the railings. In front of him stood two women, they were evidently strangers to each other, yet their excitement had made them friends, and they stood holding hands. One was a tall, eager-faced girl; d.i.c.k could not see the other woman's face, but from her voice he imagined her to be a good deal older and rather superior in cla.s.s to the girl. It was the younger one's spirit, however, that was infectious.

"Isn't it fine?" she was saying. "Aren't you proud to be English? I feel as if my heart was going to jump out of my mouth. They are our men," she went on breathlessly; "it is a most wonderful thought, and of course they will win through, but a lot of them will die first. Oh, I do hate the Germans!" Her whole face flushed with pa.s.sionate resentment.

"One need not hate a nation because one goes to war with it," the other woman answered. d.i.c.k thought her voice sounded very tired.

"Yes, one need," the girl flamed. "We women can't fight, but we can hate. Perhaps we shouldn't hate so much if we could fight," she added as a concession.

"I am married to a German," d.i.c.k heard the other woman say bitterly. "I can't hate him."

He saw the girl's quick face of horror and the way she stood away from her companion, but just at that moment some impulse surged the crowd forward and he lost sight of them. Yet the memory of the woman's voice and the words she had said haunted him. War would mean that, then, the tearing apart of families, the wrecking of home life.

"The King, the King!" the crowd yelled and shouted in a million voices.

"G.o.d save the King."

d.i.c.k looked up to the Palace windows; a slight, small figure had come out on to one of the balconies and stood looking down on the faces of the people. Cheer upon cheer rose to greet him, the mult.i.tude rocked and swayed with their acclamation, then above the general noise came the sound of measured music, not a band, but just the people singing in unison:

"G.o.d save our gracious King, Long live our n.o.ble King, G.o.d save the King."

The notes rose and swelled and filled the air, the cry of a nation's heart, the loyalty of a people towards their King.

The sheer emotion of it shook d.i.c.k out of the sense of revelry which had come upon him during his fight. He pushed his way through the crowd, and climbed over the railings into the darkness of St. James's Park. It was officially closed for the night, but d.i.c.k had no doubt that a small bribe at the other side would let him out. The Queen and the little Princes had joined the King on the balcony. Looking back he could see them very faintly, the Prince was standing to the salute, the Queen was waving her handkerchief.

His Club was crowded with men, all equally excited, all talking very fast. Someone had just come back from the House. War was a dead certainty now, mobilization had been ordered, the Fleet was ready.

"Our Army is the problem, there will have to be conscription," was the general vote.

d.i.c.k stayed and talked with the rest of them till long after twelve.

Morning should see him offering his services to the War Office; if they would not have him as a doctor he could always enlist. One thing was certain, he must by hook or by crook be amongst the first to go.

"We will have to send an Expeditionary Force right now," the general opinion had been, "if we are to do any good."

d.i.c.k thought vaguely of what it would all mean: the excitement, the thrill, an army on the march, camp life, military discipline, and his share of work in hospital. "Roll up your sleeves and get at them," his South African friend had described it to him. "I can tell you, you don't have much time to think when they are bringing in the wounded by the hundred."

Not till just as he was turning into bed did he think again of Joan.

Such is the place which love takes in a man's thoughts when war is in the balance. The knowledge of her deceit and his broken dream hurt him less in proportion, for the time he had forgotten it. He had been brutal to her, he realized; he had left her crouched up on the floor crying her heart out. Why had she cried?--she had achieved her purpose, for she could only have had one reason in asking the other man to meet him. He could only suppose that he had frightened her by his evident bad temper, and for that he was sorry. He was not angry with her any longer. She had looked very beautiful in her clinging black dress, with the red rose pinned in at her throat. And even the rose had been a gift from the other man. Well, it was all ended; for two years he had dreamed about love, for one hour he had known its bitterness. He would shut it absolutely outside of his life now, he would never, he need never, thanks to the new interests which were crowding in, think of Joan again.

He opened his window before getting into bed and leaned out. The streets were deserted and quiet, the people had shouted themselves hoa.r.s.e and gone home. Under the nearest lamp-post a policeman stood, a solid, magnificent figure of law and order, and overhead in a very dark sky countless little stars shone and twinkled. On the verge of war! What would the next still slumbering months bring to the world, and could he forget Joan? Is not love rather a thing which nothing can kill, which no grave can cover, no time ignore?

CHAPTER XXVIII

"Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below."

ANON.

The wave of enthusiasm caused by the War swept even f.a.n.n.y into its whirlpool of emotion. For several days she haunted the streets, following now this crowd, now that; buying innumerable papers, singing patriotic songs, cheering the soldiers as they pa.s.sed. She wanted to dash out into the road, to throw her arms round the young soldiers and to kiss them, she was for the time being pa.s.sionately in love with them.

It was her one pathetic and rather mistaken method of expressing the patriotism which surged up in her. She could not have explained this sensation, she only knew that something was so stirred within her that she wanted to give--to give of her very best to these men who symbolized the spirit of the country to her. Poor, hot-hearted little f.a.n.n.y; she and a great many like her came in for a good deal of blame during the days that followed, yet the instinct which drove them was the same that prompted the boys to enlist. If f.a.n.n.y had been a man she would have been one of the first at the recruiting station. So submerged was she in her new excitement that Joan and d.i.c.k in their trouble slipped entirely out of her mind, only to come back, with the knowledge that she had failed to do anything to help, when, on coming back one afternoon to Montague Square, she saw Mabel standing on the steps of No. 6. To be correct, Mabel had just finished talking to Mrs. Carew and was turning away. f.a.n.n.y hastened her walk to a run and caught the other up just as she left the step.

"You were asking to see Joan, Miss Rutherford," she panted. "Won't you come in and let me tell you about her?"

Mabel had hardly recognized her. f.a.n.n.y, dressed up in her best to meet Joan's possible future relations, and f.a.n.n.y in her London garments, which consisted of a very tight dress slit up to well within sight of her knee, and a rakish little hat, were two very different people. And whereas the f.a.n.n.y of Sevenoaks had been a little vulgar but most undeniably pretty, this f.a.n.n.y was absolutely impossible--the kind of person one hardly liked to be seen talking to. Yet there was something in the girl's face, the frank appeal of her eyes, perhaps, that held Mabel against her will.

"The woman tells me that Miss Rutherford has left," she spoke stiffly.

"I was really only going to call upon her."

"Yes, I know she's gone," f.a.n.n.y nodded, "back to her people. But there is something between her and your brother that awfully badly wants to be explained. Won't you come in and let me tell you? Oh, do, please do."

She had caught hold of the other's sleeve and was practically leading her back up the steps. Mabel had not seen d.i.c.k since he had left Sevenoaks. He had written a note to their hotel saying he was most awfully busy, his application for service had been accepted, but pending his being attached to any unit he was putting in the time examining recruits. He had not mentioned Joan, Mabel had noticed that; still she had promised to call and make it up with the girl, and Mabel was a person who always religiously kept her promises. But if there had been any disagreement, as f.a.n.n.y's anxiety to explain showed, then surely it was so much the better. Here and now she would wash her hands of the affair and start hoping once again for something better for d.i.c.k.

f.a.n.n.y had opened the door by this time and had led the way inside. "My room is three flights up," she said. "Will you mind that? Also it is probably dreadfully untidy. It generally is."

This was where Mabel, following the wise guidance of her head, ought to have said: "I am not coming, I really haven't time," or some excuse of that sort. Instead she stepped meekly inside and followed the girl upstairs. Perhaps some memory of d.i.c.k's face as he had spoken of Joan prompted her, or perhaps it was just because she felt that in some small way she owed Joan a reparation.

f.a.n.n.y's room was certainly untidy. Every chair was occupied by an a.s.sortment of clothes, for before she had gone out that morning f.a.n.n.y had had a rummage for a special pair of silk stockings that were the pride of her heart. She bundled most of the garments on to the bed and wheeled forward the armchair for Mabel to sit in.

"I never can keep tidy," she acknowledged. "It used to make Joan fair sick when we shared rooms on tour. Joan is so different from me."

Suddenly she threw aside pretence and dropped down on her knees before the armchair, squatting back on her heels to look at Mabel. "That is what I do want you to understand," she said, earnestly. "Joan is as different to me as soap to dirt. She is a lady, you probably saw that; I am not. She is good; I don't suppose I ever have been. She is clean all through, and she loves your brother so much that she wanted to break her heart to keep him happy." She looked down at her hands for a second, then up again quickly. "I'll tell you, it won't do any harm. Mind you, usually, I say a secret is a secret though I mayn't look the sort that can keep one. Joan told me about it at the beginning when I chaffed her about his loving her; and he does, you know he does. It seems that when she first came to London she had funny ideas in her head--innocent, I should call it, and sort of inclined to trust men--anyway, she lived with some man and there was to have been a baby," she brought the information out with a sort of gasp.

"I knew that," Mabel answered, "and because of it I tried to persuade my brother not to marry her."