Jan and Her Job Part 56

They were sitting in the wrens' garden with the children.

"Earley's going," Tony said importantly.

"Earley!" Jan exclaimed. "Going where?"

"To fight, of course," little Fay chimed in.

"Oh, poor dear Earley!" Jan sighed.

"Happy, fortunate Earley," said Peter. "I wish I stood in his shoes."

Earley joined the Gloucesters because, he said, "he couldn't abear to think of them there Germans comin' anigh Mother and them childring and the ladies; and he'd better go and see as they didn't."

Mr. With.e.l.ls called the men on his place together and told them that every man who joined would have his wages paid to his wife, and his wife or his mother, as the case might be, could stop on in her cottage. And Mr. With.e.l.ls became a special constable, with a badge and a truncheon.

But he worried every soldier that he knew with inquiries as to whether there wasn't a chance for him in _some_ battalion: "I've taken great care of my health," he said. "I do exercises every day after my bath; I'm young-looking for my age, don't you think? And anyway, a bullet might find me instead of a more useful man."

No one laughed then at Mr. With.e.l.ls and his exercises.

Five days after the declaration of war Jan got a letter from Hugo Tancred. He was in London and was already a private in a rather famous cavalry regiment.

"They didn't ask many questions," he wrote, "so I hadn't to tell many lies. You see, I can ride well and understand horses. If I get knocked out, it won't be much loss, and I know you'll look after Fay's kiddies.

If I come through, perhaps I can make a fresh start somewhere. I've always been fond of a gamble, and this is the biggest gamble I've ever struck."

Jan showed the letter to Peter, who gave it back to her with something like a groan: "Even the wrong 'uns get their chance, and yet I have to go back and do a deadly dull job, just because it _is_ my job."

Peter went up to town and two days after came down again to "The Green Hart" to say good-bye. He had got his marching orders and was to sail in the _Somali_ from Southampton. Some fifteen hundred civilians and officers serving in India were sailing by that boat and the _Dongola_.

By every argument he could bring forward he tried to get Jan to marry him before he sailed. Yet just because she wanted to do it so much, she held back. She, too, she kept telling herself, had her job, and she knew that if she was Peter's wife, nothing, not even her dear Fay's children, could be of equal importance with Peter.

The children and Meg and the household had by much thinking grown into a sort of Frankenstein's monster of duty.

Her att.i.tude was incomprehensible to Peter. It seemed to him to be wrong-headed and absurd, and he began to lose patience with her.

On his last morning he sought and found her beside the sun-dial in the wrens' garden.

Meg had taken little Fay to see Lady Mary's Persian kittens, but Tony preferred to potter about the garden with the aged man who was trying to replace Earley. William was not allowed to call upon the kittens, as Fatima, their mother, objected to him vehemently, and Tony cared to go nowhere if William might not be of the party.

Peter came to Jan and took both her hands and held them.

"It's the last time I shall ask you, my dear. If you care enough, we can have these last days together. If you don't I must go, for I can't bear any more of this. Either you love me enough to marry me before I sail or you don't love me at all. Which is it?"

"I do love you, you know I do."

"Well, which is it to be?"

"Peter, dear, you must give me more time. I haven't really faced it all.

I can't do anything in such a hurry as that."

Peter looked at her and shook his head.

"You don't know what caring is," he said. "I can't stand any more of this. Do you see that motto on the sun-dial: 'I bide my time'--I've read it and read it, and I've said it over to myself and waited and hoped to move you. Now I can't wait any more."

He kissed her, dropped her hand, and turning from her went out through the iron gate and down the drive. For a moment Jan stood by the sun-dial as though she, too, were stone.

Then blindly she went up the steps into the empty nursery and sat down on an old sofa far back in the room. She leaned face-downward against the cus.h.i.+ons, and great, tearing sobs broke from her.

Peter was gone. He would never come back. She had driven him from her.

And having done so she realised that he was the one person in the world she could not possibly do without.

Tony's own hen had laid an egg. Carrying it very carefully in a cabbage-leaf, he went, accompanied by the faithful William, to show it to Auntie Jan, and was just in time to see Peter going down the drive.

He went through the wrens' garden and in by the window. For a moment he didn't see his aunt; and was turning to go again when a strange sound arrested him, and he saw her all huddled up at the head of the sofa, with hidden face and heaving shoulders.

He laid his egg on the table and went and pulled at her arm.

"What is the matter?" he asked anxiously. "And why has Peter gone?"

Jan raised her head; pride and shame and self-consciousness were dead in her: "He's gone," she sobbed. "He won't come back, and I shall never be happy any more," and down went her head again on her locked arms.

Tony did not attempt to console her. He ran from the room, and Jan felt that this was only an added pang of abandonment.

Down the drive ran Tony, with William galumphing beside him. But William was not happy, and squealed softly from time to time. He felt it unkind to leave a poor lady crying like that, and yet was constrained to go with Tony because Meg had left him in William's charge.

Tony turned out of the gate and into the road.

Far away in the distance was a man's figure striding along with incredible swiftness. Tony started to run all he knew. Now, seldom as William barked, he barked when people ran, and William's bark was so deep and sonorous and distinctive that it caused the swiftly striding man to turn his head. He turned his body, too, and came back to meet Tony and William.

Tony was puffed and almost breathless, but he managed to jerk out: "You must go back; she's ... crying dreadful. You _must_ go back. Go quick; don't wait for us."

Peter went.

Jan very rarely cried. When she did it hurt fiercely and absorbed all her attention. She was crying now as if she would never stop. If people seldom cry it has a devastating effect on their appearance when they do.

Jan's eyelids were swollen, her nose scarlet and s.h.i.+ny, her features all bleared and blurred and almost scarred by tears.

Someone touched her gently on the shoulder, and she looked up.

"My dear," said Peter, "you must not cry like this. I was losing my temper--that's why I went off."

Jan sprang to her feet and flung her arms round his neck. She pressed her ravaged face against his: "I'll do anything you like," she whispered, "if you'll only like it. I can't stand by myself any more."

This was true, for as she spoke her knees gave under her.

Peter held her close. Never had Jan looked less attractive and never had Peter loved her more, or realised so clearly how dear and foolish and wise and womanly she was.

"You see," she sobbed, "you said yourself everyone _must_ do his job, and I thought----"

"But surely," said Peter, "I _am_ your job--part of it, anyway."