Part 10

I don't know whether they notice how short a time I spend under ground--I never sit down there. I want to be up and out if possible, facing the danger, of which I am yet mortally afraid. I don't fancy death in a cellar and I fear I am like the tommies, a fatalist as regards bullets and bombs.

But I'm digressing shamefully. The warning came about seven, and just before nine, we heard the grating of the engines up aloft. It was so loud we thought there must be two or three, but we could not see anything. They went straight over London, approaching as usual from the North, and just missing us. They dropped a good many bombs, and the air was full of the noise of bursting shells, and the clatter of our anti-aircraft guns. Shrapnel was flying from them, even over our little town, and safety was only to be found indoors.

About midnight the marauders began to retrace their steps, if I may put it so, and came right overhead.

Then we beheld a wonderful and glorious sight. Our intrepid airmen, just like great gadflies winging through the night, were searching the sky for the enemy and presently one got above the stationary Zeppelin and found the range. It looked as if they were directly above the church opposite to us, but the actual conflict took place in the air about 8 miles away.

When he got the range he showed a green light, a signal to the anti-aircraft guns below to cease firing. We could not hear the shot that made an end of the monster, but presently we saw vivid streaks like forked lightning run along the side of the giant airship. The next moment, a mass of white flame, it toppled over and began slowly to descend. The cage became detached first and those who were near enough saw the body of its unfortunate occupant fall from it. It descended in a field behind the doctor's house at Potter's Bar, and such a cheer rent the air, ringing hoarse from a million throats, from London to the sea, that one felt positively thrilled, and forgot the night of fear. Some wept and some sang "God Save the King." The great solid satisfying fact that the death-dealing monster had been utterly destroyed sent us thankful to our beds. These awful happenings have their comic as well as their tragic side, and even with nerves strung to the highest pitch we are able to laugh.

We had the Holbrooks for the week end--the whole four of them. He is a typical John Bull, and he was much annoyed because a very keen game of bridge was interrupted. He resented the interference with his liberty and personal convenience. Nothing on earth would take him to the cellar, he simply planted himself with a very long pipe and a whiskey and soda in the library, where he sat with a suffering air, what we call the "O Lord, how long?" expression on his face. His women folk, thrilled and interested, for though they live in London their area has so far escaped intimate acquaintance with Zeppelins, could not be brought in from the street.

Mrs. Holbrook is just as amusing in her way as her spouse. Born in England of German parents, she is loyal to the core, and rejoices that she has never even seen Germany. She loathes the war and all it stands for, and she will never give her son until she is obliged to; she is the living personification of the line, "I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier." She can't understand, though she is a dear soul, the thrill and the pride with which we can give and give and give, not money, but our heart's blood till there is nothing left.

It is the waste of war which terrifies her. You see, she has no hope or belief in anything beyond this life. She just shakes her head if you speak to her of the souls that are marching on. "I hope you're right," she says, "but I don't believe it myself, when I am dead there will be an end of me; that's as far as I've got."

How awful to have to live up against such a blank wall--no wonder she clings to the material body of her son with frantic hands that will never let him go.

We got through the night at last, snatched an hour or two's sleep, and in the morning went over to Potter's Bar in the motor to see all that was left of the monster of the air.

The pretty little village swarmed with people "out for to see" just as our town swarmed with them when we got our share of attention from Count Zeppelin.

We tramped through indescribable mud to the sweet meadow where the wreckage lay; partly caught in the branches of a giant oak tree--then trailing away across the sward like the tail of some enormous rattlesnake. We did not see the engines--they had been removed in the small hours on a military truck. What we did see was the retrieval of the bodies from the wreckage--poor charred objects--perfectly unrecognisable. Mothers' sons every one, and somewhere in Germany their homes will be desolate because they do not return. I thought of that, but the temper of the crowd was hostile and bitter, and the feeling uppermost was grim satisfaction that they had met a righteous and deserved doom.

More of the dark fruits of war, the tempering and hardening of a naturally kindly people into a thirst for revenge.

God send it may end soon--before we are all so changed that we shall bear no semblance to our former selves.

*X*

I seem to have reached the end of my letter just about the time I wrote to you last and the doctor, whom in the absence of Himself, I had to call in, ordered me to go away and take a complete rest--you know the formula--but dear God, how can we rest in a world where there is no rest, and with the thunder of the guns in our ears night and day. It is the Somme fighting now, in which we have lost so many of those we love.

I think I gave up the day I got a telegram telling me Dick had been killed at Trones Wood. You remember Dick, and Isabel, that lovely pair for whom I wrote the little book, "Letters to a War Bride."

I don't quite know how to tell you what he was like--a most gallant gentle Knight without fear and without reproach--yet so full of fun, that somehow laughter sang in the heart wherever he came--the laughter that doeth good like a medicine. The last time I saw him, Isabel had come down from Palace Gate to spend a few days and Dick came marching through with his Fusiliers, en route from Colchester to France. He and his Major dined with us--and I never saw him again--nor ever will see him now, till we meet on the other side.

No doubt we are naturally drawn towards those whom nature has richly endowed. He was as handsome as a dream--tall, dark with flashing tender eyes and a smile that was never far away from his lips. A man of peace if ever there was one, yet he was dedicated to war, in order that peace may be established for all time as "one of those things that cannot be shaken."

They were a beautiful pair; she with her slender, delicate charm, her braids of red gold hair, her pathetic eyes. I have never seen such love. It often made me afraid. And now he sleeps there on the Somme where we have already left ninety thousand like him. Great God, and yet there are those who ask when Britain is going to come into the war and why she doesn't bear her share!

I felt I had to go to her, but she was far away at her father's place in Scotland and I was not able to go. My marching orders were drastic. Himself ordered me to Harrogate, where he said he would come the moment he could get forty-eight hours' leave.

So I got me ready, and Janet went part of the way, branching off at York, for Hull. I arrived at Harrogate like a person in a dream, seeking a cure. A cure from what? Inside my heart were wounds for which there never could be any cure this side the grave. I found I was nearer the breaking point than I knew, for when I got to bed there I found I was not able to get up again. The heart had gone clean out of me. I remember Himself arriving from out of some void at six o'clock in the morning, and his face as he stood over me asking me questions, taking temperatures and doing all the things the Doctor has to do when he is up against his job.

Then there were consultations and telephones and people coming in and out of the room. Strange men asking questions and looking at me, and at one another, with grave faces. I seemed so out of it all, and when I heard them say outside of the door, "We'd better tell her," something flashed through me with a thrill of unexplicable, inconceivable joy. I had come to the end, the door was ajar, and I should get away clean and forever from the fever and the fret--the holding up when you feel yourself wilting, the carrying on when there is nothing to carry on with.

Tired? There is no word that can begin to describe how tired I was. Then they came in and told me I should have to have an operation immediately--within an hour or two. I just smiled and said, "Very well."

The next thing I was being carried down the hotel stairs on a stretcher to the ambulance, where they laid me down rolled in a blanket--a nurse was at the head and Himself sitting like a grim sentinel at the foot--we never spoke to one another, not a single word. You have never seen him look like that, Cornelia--you have only heard his laugh, and seen his dancing eyes, while he tried to tease you and to imitate what he called the Yankee twang.

As for me my eyes were fixed on the tender blue of the sky--flecked with those wonderful delicious little fleecy clouds like foam flakes on an azure sea, and all the time I wondered whether soon I would be up and away beyond them.

It was to a private hospital they took me and I had to lie in a weird kind of bed there till the hour came. I had no fear or apprehension--I had just given up. Himself and I did not talk. When you have been so long together surely everything has been said. But I saw his face hard and set and sharp in the clear light, and understood that the bond had stood the test.

The operation was successful, but when I awoke and found I was still in the land of the living, I wept with sheer disappointment. I had relaxed my hold, given up, wanted to be free. But apparently there is work still to be done, but where, oh where, am I to find strength to do it?