To Love Part 35

"G.o.d gave us grace to love you Men whom our hearts hold dear; We too have faced the battle Striving to hide our fear.

"G.o.d gave us strength to send you, Courage to let you go; All that it meant to lose you Only our sad hearts know.

"Yet by your very manhood Hold we your honour fast.

G.o.d shall give joy to England When you come home at last."

Not till she felt Mabel's soft warm lips on her cheek and knew herself held in the other's arms, did Joan wake to the fact that the marriage was finished and that she was d.i.c.k's wife. All the morning she had moved and answered questions and smiled, when other people smiled, in a sort of trance, out of which she was afraid to waken. The only fact that stood out very clear was that d.i.c.k was going away in the afternoon; every time she saw a clock it showed that the afternoon was so many minutes nearer.

"You have got to help me to be brave," she had said to d.i.c.k the night before. "Other women let their men go, and make no outward fuss. I don't want to be different to them."

"And you won't be," he had answered, kissing her. "If you feel like crying, just look at me, and as your lord and master, I'll frown at you to show that I don't approve."

He himself was in the wildest, most hilarious of spirits. As he had said to Joan, the thought of death had only touched upon his mind for a second; now the mere idea of it seemed ridiculous. He was going out to help in a great fight, and he was going to marry Joan. She would be waiting for him when he came back; what could a man want more?

The Rutherfords came up on Friday to spend the night before the wedding in town, and in the evening Joan and d.i.c.k went to a theatre. It was, needless to say, his idea, but he did it with a notion that it would cheer Joan up. If you want to know real misery, sit through a musical comedy with someone you love more than the whole world next to you, and with the knowledge that he is going to the War the next day in your heart. Joan thought of it every moment. When the curtain was up and the audience in darkness, d.i.c.k would slip his hand into hers and hold it, but his eyes followed the events on the stage, and he could laugh quite cheerfully at the funny man's antics. Joan never even looked at them; she sat with her eyes on d.i.c.k, just watching him all the time. When they had driven back to the hotel at which the Rutherfords were staying, and in the taxi d.i.c.k had taken her into his arms and rather fiercely made her swear that she loved him, that she was glad to be marrying him, some shadow from her anguish had touched on him, it seemed he could not let her go. "d.a.m.n to-morrow!" he said hoa.r.s.ely, and held her so close that the pressure hurt, yet she was glad of the pain as it came from him.

She could not ask him into the hotel, for they had no private sitting-room, so they said good-night to each other on the steps, with the taxi driver and the hotel porter watching them.

"To-morrow, then, at twelve," d.i.c.k had whispered. "But I am going to bring Mabel round before then; she gets up at about eleven, I think."

"To-morrow," Joan answered; her eyes would not let him go.

They stood staring at each other for a minute or two while the taxi-cab driver busied himself with the engine of his car, and the hall porter walked discreetly out of sight. Then d.i.c.k lifted his hand quickly to the salute and turned away.

"Drive like h.e.l.l!" he said to the man. "Anywhere you please, but end me up at the Junior Conservative Club."

"Couldn't even kiss her," communed the man to himself. "That's the worst of being a toff. Can't kiss your girl if anyone else happens to be about."

Mabel had been very nice to Joan the next morning. She had buried all thoughts of jealousy and dismay, and when she looked into the other girl's eyes she forgave her everything and was only intensely sorry for her. Mrs. Grant had, very fortunately, as d.i.c.k said, stuck to her opinion and refused to have anything to do with the wedding. She had said good-bye to d.i.c.k on Friday morning with a wild outburst of tears, but he could not really feel that it meant very much to her.

"Mother will have forgotten in a week that she disapproved," Mabel told Joan. "You must very often come and spend the day with us."

Then they had driven down to the registry office, all four of them, and in a dark, rather dingy little room, a man with a curiously irritating voice had read aloud something to them from a book. Now they stood outside in the sunshine again, Mabel had kissed Joan, and Uncle John was blinking at her out of old eyes that showed a suspicion of tears in them. A big clock opposite told her the time was a quarter to one; in an hour and three-quarters d.i.c.k would be gone.

They had lunch in a little private room at a restaurant close to Victoria Station. Joan tried to eat, and tried to laugh and talk with the others, because Mabel had whispered to her on the way in: "You've got to help d.i.c.k through the next hour, it isn't going to be easy for him." And that had made Joan look at him with new eyes, and she could see that his face was very white, and that he seemed almost afraid to look at her.

After lunch Mabel and Colonel Rutherford went on ahead and left the two young people to say their good-bye alone. When they had gone d.i.c.k pushed the things in front of him on the table aside, and laid his head down on his hands. "My G.o.d!" she heard him say, "I wish I had not got to go."

He had been so pleased before, so excited over his different preparations, so wildly keen to be really on the move at last. Joan ran to him quickly; kneeling on the floor by his side, throwing her arms around him. Her own fears were forgotten in her desire to make him brave again.

"It won't be for long, d.i.c.k," she whispered. "I know something right inside my heart tells me that you will come back. It is only like putting aside our happiness for a little. Dear, you would be wretched if you could not go. Just having me would not make up to you for that."

He turned and caught her to him quickly. "If I had had you," he said harshly, "it would be different. It would make going so much easier."

"You will come back," she answered softly. Her eyes held his, their hearts beat close and fast against each other.

"It seems," he said a minute or two later, "that it is you who are helping me not to make a fuss, and not the other way about as we arranged." He stood up, slowly lifting her with him. "It is time we were off, Joan," he said. "And upon my soul, I need some courage, little girl. What can you do for me?"

"Well, if I cry," suggested Joan, her head a little on one side--she must be cheerful, she realized; it was funny, but in this she could be stronger than he, and she must be for his sake--"I am sure you would get so annoyed that the rest would be forgotten."

"If I see you cry," he threatened, "I shall get out even after the train has started, and that will mean all sorts of slurs on my reputation."

They walked across to Victoria Station and came in at once to a scene of indescribable noise and confusion. Besides d.i.c.k's unit there was a regiment going. The men stood lined up in the big square yard of the station. Some had women with them, wives and mothers and sweethearts; children clung to the women's skirts, unnoticed and frightened into quietness by the sight and sound of their mothers' grief. Railway officials, looking very important and frightfully overworked, ran in and out of the crowd. The train was standing at the platform, part of it already full, nearly every window had its little group of anxious-faced women, trying to say good-bye to their respective relatives in the carriage.

d.i.c.k and Joan walked the length of the train, and found that d.i.c.k's man had stowed away his things and reserved a place for his master in one of the front carriages. Then Colonel Rutherford and Mabel joined them and they all talked, trying to keep up an animated conversation as to the weather; would the Channel crossing be very rough; what chance was there of his going to Boulogne instead of to Havre; Joan stood close to d.i.c.k, just touching him; there was something rather pathetic in the way she did not attempt to close her hand upon the roughness of his coat, but was content to feel it brushing against her. The regimental band had struck up "Tipperary"; the men were being marshalled to take their places in the train. Joan wondered if the band played so loud and so persistently to drown the noise of the women's crying. One young wife had hysterics, and had to be carried away screaming. They saw the husband, he had fallen out of the ranks to try and hold the girl when the crying first began, now he stood and stared after her as they carried her away. Quite a boy, very white about the face, and with misery in his eyes. Joan felt a wave of resentment against the woman; she had no right, because she loved him, to make his going so much the harder to bear.

A porter ran along the platform calling out, "Take your seats, please, take your seats." Uncle John was shaking hands and saying good-bye to d.i.c.k, "I'll look after her for you," Joan heard him say. Then Mabel moved between them for a second, and pulling down d.i.c.k's head, kissed him. After that, it seemed, she was left alone with d.i.c.k; Colonel Rutherford and Mabel had gone away. How desperately her hand for the second clutched on to the piece of his coat that was near to her! She could not let him go, could not, could not. The engine whistle emitted a long thin squeak, the soldiers at the back of the train had started singing the refrain of "Tipperary." Just for a second his arms were round her, his lips had brushed against hers. That was all it amounted to, but she had looked up at him and she had seen the need in his eyes.

"Good-bye," she whispered. There was not a vestige of tears or fright in her voice. "You will be back soon, d.i.c.k. It is never good-bye."

"No," he agreed. "Never good-bye."

Then he had gone; not a minute too soon, for the train had already started. She could not even see his face at the window, a great blackness had come over her eyes, but she stood very straight held, waving and smiling.

A crowd of the soldiers' wives ran past her up the platform, trying to catch on to the hands held out to them from the windows. The men cheered and sang and sang again. It could only have been one or two seconds that she stood there, then slowly the blackness lifted from her eyes. A word had risen in her heart, she said it almost aloud; the sound of it pushed aside her tears and brought her a strange comfort. "England." It was the name that had floated at the back of her prayers always when she prayed for d.i.c.k. She was glad that he had gone, even the misery in her heart could not flood out that gladness: "Who dies, if England lives?"

Mabel was standing near her and slipped her hand into hers. "Come away, dear," she heard Mabel say; "Colonel Rutherford has got a taxi for us."

Joan was grateful to Mabel. She realized suddenly that the other woman, who had also loved d.i.c.k, had been content to stand aside at the last and leave them alone. She turned to her like a child turns for comfort to someone whom instinctively it knows it can trust.

"I have been good," she said, "haven't I? I haven't shed a tear. d.i.c.k said I wasn't to, and, Mabel, you know, I am glad that he has gone.

There are some things that matter more than just loving a person, aren't there?"

"Honour, and duty, and the soul of man," Mabel answered. She laughed, a little strange sound that held tears within it. "Oh, yes, Joan, you are right to be glad that he has gone. It will make the future so much more worth having."

"Yes," Joan whispered. Her eyes looked out over the crowded station; the little groups of weeping women; the sadder faces of those who did not weep and yet were hopeless. Her own eyes were full of great faith and a radiant promise. "He will come back, I know he will come back," she said.

Outside the band played ceaselessly and untiringly to drown the sound of the women's tears:

"It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go; It's a long way to Tipperary To the dearest girl I know.

"Farewell, Piccadilly, farewell, Leicester Square, It's a long, long way to Tipperary But my heart's right there."

THE END