Elizabeth's Campaign Part 41

'DESMOND.'

Meanwhile in the seething world of London, where the war-effort of an Empire was gathered up into one mighty organism, the hush of expectancy grew ever deeper. Only a few weeks or days could now divide us from the German rush on Paris and the coast. Behind the German lines all was movement and vast preparation. Any day England might rise to find the last fight begun.

Yet morning after morning all the news that came was of raids, endless raids, on both sides--a perpetual mosquito fight, buzzing now here, now there, as information was wanted by the different Commands. Many lives were lost day by day, many deeds of battle done. But it all seemed as nothing--less than nothing--to those whose minds were fixed on the clash to come.

Then one evening, early in the second week in March, a telegram reached Aubrey Mannering at Aldershot. He rushed up to town, and went first to the War Office, where Chicksands was at work.

Chicksands sprang up to meet him.

'You've heard? I've just got this. I made his Colonel promise to wire me if--'

He pointed to an open telegram on his table:

"Desmond badly hit in raid last night. Tell his people. Authorities will probably give permission to come. Well looked after."

The two men stared at each other.

'I have wired to my father,' said Mannering, 'and am now going to meet him at King's Cross. Can you go and tell Pamela to get ready--or Margaret? But he'll want Pamela!'

Neither was able to speak for a moment, till Mannering said, 'I'll bring my father to Margaret's, and then I'll go and see after the permits.'

He lingered a moment.

'I--I think it means the worst.'

Chicksands' gesture was one of despair.

Then they hurried away from the War Office together.

CHAPTER XV

It was afternoon at Mannering.

Elizabeth was walking home from the village through the park. Still the same dry east-wind weather--very cold in the wind, very warm in the sun. If the German offensive began while these fine days held, they would have the luck of weather as we had never had it. Think of the drenching rains and winds of the Pa.s.schendaele attack! In the popular mind the notion of 'a German G.o.d' was taking actual concrete shape. A huge and monstrous form, sitting on a German hill, plotting with the Kaiser, and ordering the weather precisely as the Kaiser wished--it was thus that English superst.i.tion, aided by Imperial speeches and telegrams, began to be haunted.

Yet the world was still beautiful--the silvery stems of the trees, the flitting of the birds, the violet carpets underfoot. On the fighting line itself there was probably a new crop of poets, hymning the Spring with Death for listener, as Julian Grenfell and Rupert Brooke had hymned it, in that first year of the war that seems now an eternity behind us.

Moving along a path converging on her own, Elizabeth perceived the Squire. For the first time that morning he had put off their joint session, and she had not seen him all day. Her mind was now always uneasily aware of him--aware, too, of some change in him, for which in some painful way she felt herself responsible. He had grown strangely tame and placable, and it was generally noticed that he looked older. Yet he was more absorbed than ever in the details of Greek research and the labour of his catalogue. Only, of an evening, he read the _Times_ for a couple of hours, generally in complete silence, while Elizabeth and Mrs. Gaddesden talked and knitted.

An extraordinary softness--an extraordinary compa.s.sion--was steadily invading Elizabeth's mind in regard to him. Something suggested to her that he had come into life maimed of some essential element of being, possessed by his fellow-men, and that he was now conscious of the lack, as a Greek Faun might be conscious of the difference between his life and that of struggling and suffering men. Nothing, indeed, could less suggest the blithe nature-life which Greek imagination embodied in the Faun, than the bizarre and restless aspect of the Squire. This spare white-haired man, with his tempers and irritations, was far indeed from Greek joyousness. And yet the Greek sense of beauty, half intellectual, half sensuous, had always seemed to her the strongest force in him. Was it now besieged by something else?--was the Faun in him, at last, after these three years, beginning to feel the bitter grip of humanity?

'"Deeper"? I don't know what you mean. There is nothing "deep" in me!' She often recalled that saying of his, and the look of perplexity which had accompanied it.

To herself of late he had been always courteous and indulgent; she had hardly had an uncivil word from him! But it seemed to her that he had also begun to avoid her, and the suspicion hurt her amazingly. If indeed it were true, then leave Mannering she must.

He came up with her at a cross-road, and threw her a look of enquiry.

'You have been to the village?'

'To the hospital. Thirty fresh wounded arrived last night.'

'I have just seen Chicksands,' said the Squire abruptly. 'Arthur tells him the German attack must be launched in a week or two, and may come any day. A million men, probably, thrown against us.'

'So--the next few months will decide,' said Elizabeth, shuddering.

'My G.o.d!--why did we ever go into this war!' cried the man beside her suddenly, in a low, stifled voice. She glanced at him in astonishment. The new excuses, the new tenderness for him in her heart made themselves heard.

'It was for honour,' she breathed--'for freedom!'

'Words--just words. They don't stop bombs!'

But there was nothing truculent in the tone.

'You had a line from Mr. Desmond this morning?'

'Yes--a post card. He was all right.'

Silence dropped between them. They walked on through the beautiful wooded park. Carpets of primroses ran beside them, and ma.s.ses of wild cherry blossoms were beginning to show amid the beeches.

Elizabeth was vaguely conscious of beauty, of warm air, of heavenly sun. But the veil upon the face of all nations was upon her eyes also.

When they reached the house, the Squire said,

'I looked up the pa.s.sage in the _Persae_ that occurred to me yesterday. Will you come and take it down?'

They went into the library together. On a special table in front of the Squire's desk there stood a magnificent Greek vase of the early fifth century B.C. A king--Persian, from his dress--was sitting in a chair of state, and before him stood a small man apparently delivering a message. [Greek: Aggelos] was roughly written over his head.

The Squire walked up and down with a text of the _Persae_ in his hand.

'"This vase," he dictated, "may be compared with one signed by Xenophantos, in the Paris collection, the subject of which is the Persian king, hunting. Here we have a Persian king, identified by his dress, apparently receiving a message from his army. We may ill.u.s.trate it by the pa.s.sage in the _Persae_ of aeschylus, where Atossa receives from a messenger the account of the battle of Salamis--a pa.s.sage which contains the famous lines describing the Greek onslaught on the Persian fleet:

'"'Then might you hear a mighty shout arise--

'"'Go, ye sons of h.e.l.las!--free your fathers, free your children and your wives, the temples of your G.o.ds, and the tombs of your ancestors. For now is all at stake!...'

'"We may recall also the final summing-up by the [Greek: aggelos] of the Persian defeat--

'"'_Never, on a single day, was there so great a slaying of men._'"'

Elizabeth took down the words, first in Greek and then in English.

They rang in her ears, long after she had transcribed them. The Squire moved up and down in silence, absorbed apparently in the play which he went on reading.

Outside the light was failing. It was close on six o'clock, and summer time had not yet begun.

Suddenly the Squire raised his head.