Part 3

The sun was shining cheerfully as I wended my way through the gaping crowds which had come from God knows where, getting a sympathetic word and grip here and there from familiar friends.

And presently I came to the North House gate, Oh Cornelia!

It all looked so piteous in the clear sunlight, the shell of the dear home; the inextricable mass of plaster and bricks and broken wood work and all the belongings of a house. The crowds, there seemed to be millions of them, everywhere fell back to let me go in. Himself met me, smiling bravely, but a little grim about the eyes.

"We are going to breakfast at the Odell's," he said, "and after that you and Effie go off to Scotland; it is all arranged."

It was no use protesting--you know how Himself can look, and what it means when he says a thing has got to be done.

We hung about a little, and I had a sort of resentment because the public were all over the place where my house had been. They were not our own townsfolk, but incomers, who had arrived in motors, in horse traps, on bicycles from miles away. The North road was simply black with them. We went off presently in a cab to our kind neighbour's house, where we had a good breakfast and much sympathy, which seemed to put fresh heart into us. When we got back, it was to get ready for our journey to Scotland.

Somebody found my clothes; people I had never seen before seemed to be packing them up in trunks, not ours, which appeared mysteriously from the outside. Kind hands brought us lunch, already prepared, and so we got ready to go away. But before the end I had a hard task. Poor Tubby, the lovely old mother chow, had gone mad, or at least become dangerous through sheer terror. You know how sensitive she was. She had to be shot and nobody could get her out of the kennel but me. I went and dragged her forth and put the collar around her neck and took her to the place of execution, where the man with the gun was waiting.

How did I do it? God knows, Cornelia. But it was absolutely necessary for the safety of human creatures, and I know she has forgiven me in the happy hunting ground where she has gone. She knew I loved her; but when I heard the report of the gun the iron seemed to enter into my soul. Wang has gone too, and Satan, the impish and delicious Persian cat that became an inmate of this animal-loving house after you left, was found stark by the edge of the immense crater made in the front garden by the bursting shell. It wiped out his favorite laurel bush, under which we suppose he had been sleeping when the terror came.

He was not injured in any way--he died of the same concussion which split the old cedar tree and broke it right in two. Soon after eleven we trundled away to the station en route for London and Scotland, leaving Himself to make shift alone. It was his ordination, and we seemed too dazed to stand up against it. We have been here three days, and already Effie and I are both very restless. I expect in a few more days in spite of Himself we shall be speeding back, for there is much to do there. First and foremost we have to find another roof to cover us.

I will write as soon as I get back, and can co-ordinate my thoughts.

You and George will mourn with us, and I have no doubt George's sentiments on the subject of America entering without further parley will be vivified and strengthened. As I write I see the desolate ruins--the broken and desecrated household gods, the crowds of gaping strangers who regarded it as a spectacle without appearing to sense its tragedy. Other houses in the town were destroyed, but I have presently no knowledge or cognisance of them.

All sorrow and loss must be intensive at the first. This certainly is. It is a poor devilish kind of sport, to rain death upon non-combatants and sail away immune from punishment or reprisal. It makes women dumb and men desperate. I know what is in the mind of Himself. Loathing of the age limit, longing to defy the years and be out with the fighting forces in the field. I shall never keep him after this, Cornelia. He will slip through another door.

Is there a light? Yes, I remember kind faces I never saw before looking eloquently into mine, the clasp of strange but friendly hands, the offer of a score of homes. The gleam of brotherhood and sisterhood lightens the dark places of the earth, and defies organised and perfected cruelty to do its worst.

*III*

It is three weeks since I wrote my last letter--two weeks and three days since I came back--no, not home, only back. We have no home any more--as we used to have it, though we have found a roof to cover us.

I got your cablegram yesterday--it was dear of you to send it, but my spirit quailed at what it must have cost you to send such a lengthy despatch. Of course we knew how George and you would feel about it, and there was a curious softness in Himself's eyes when I showed it to him; we even discussed whether we should launch out into a similar extravagance. We decided, however, that no adequate presentment of what we were doing could be offered in any cablegram, and that we must ask you to wait for another letter. Himself even said, he would write it, but you know how he lives, and what stacks of unanswered ones lie in his pigeon-holes. I heard him say in an exasperated moment, that his private and particular hell would be a place where there were unending streams of letters of no importance, which he would be compelled to answer by return of post. It was he who suggested the one word, "reconstructing," and we both hope you grasped its full significance. It is a big word, and it means a lot. Before there can be reconstruction, there has to be destruction, and the Hun has done it very thoroughly for us.

I had better go back, I think, to where I left off. I told you, I remember, that after three days both Effie and I grew restless, and on the sixth we wired Himself that we were coming back and that he must find a place for us. We knew that he was still sleeping on a shake-down in the corner of the drawing room where the free winds of Heaven blew in upon him--and the rain when it chanced that way.

You know how he loved everything in the house, how much of it was his individual choice, only the grouping left to me. And he was hanging on desperately to the remnant of his treasure house--though forbidden by official orders to touch anything until the representative from the Government Air Raid Insurance should come to inspect the premises, and the damage.

When we arrived we found it arranged for us to stay at the Wrights' house. You remember how you liked them, free, jolly, unconventional people, who understand hospitality in the big sense, which makes you feel at home in their house. I can never forget what they have done for us at this time; and they were only two out of many. Effie remained only long enough to collect her kit and go back to her beloved Camiers--of course the house couldn't mean as much to her; and for the time being she is detached from us and her usual surroundings. She went off gaily and gladly, not aware I am sure of the heartache she left behind. She will be the heroine of a great adventure when she gets back to her comrades. But I am sure she will never tell how fearlessly she carried herself through it.

To us--that is to me, principally, is left the work of reconstruction.

We have got the loan of a house from a kind neighbour who volunteered to find his family other quarters. They all felt that Himself must have quarters as near as possible to the old place, so that his patients could easily find him, and his professional work be carried on.

You will remember the house, a wide red brick many-windowed structure, standing sheer on the street just opposite St. Andrew's Church. You will particularly remember it because you asked me what style of architecture its porch was supposed to represent. I replied that I had been told it was Chinese Chippendale.

You said, "Whatever is that, anyway?" And we both laughed. Behold us then, installed in the house of the Chinese Chippendale porch. It's just round the corner from the North House, less than two minutes' walk. It is very strange and rather awful, I find, to live with other people's things. They don't belong to you. There is no intimate touch, and you don't in the least want to arrange them or show them to the best advantage.

There are more chairs in this house than in any house I have ever seen or heard tell of--the sort you don't want to sit on.

It is too full of everything for comfort, but the beds are beautiful, and it is such a relief to have a shelter, that we never can be grateful enough.

Cornelia, I wonder if you will understand that I was two whole days here, nearly three, indeed, before I dared to go round the corner. I simply couldn't; but at last, quite early one morning before many people were about, and Himself was safely out of the way, I stole round. There was a policeman at the gate, for there were heaps of things that could easily be removed by predatory hands. Wooden barricades had been erected everywhere, and what windows were left were boarded over. The man touched his hat to me, but did not open his mouth. He was an understanding creature, who saw how it was with me.

Before I went inside I took a bird's-eye view of what had happened outside. There was a great gap in the wall of the kitchen garden which flanked the street, a gap big enough to let a horse and cart through. In this street just by the kerb you could see where the crater made by a shell explosion had been filled up. I forget whether I mentioned in my first letter how that particular shell had broken the water main, causing a small deluge to add to the general horror of that night of desolation. I went into the garden through the gap, and round about, to the river's brim, thankful to find little damage, except much trampling of the lawns. The gardeners, I think, had gone to their breakfast--at least, I did not see either of them. All the time I kept my eyes averted from the house; but when I came behind the cedar tree, half of which was torn away, showing a hideous scar all over its beautiful body, I could not help seeing. I gripped myself tight, and ran, just ran up the sloping lawn across the terrace, and right in. I don't know how I can describe it. I feel as if I must not even try. Nothing had been touched. It was sealed, so to speak, by Government orders. A few things had been covered up to prevent the rain damaging them. It was just awful, indescribable, heartrending. The dining room was pitch dark, but a candle standing on the seat of a broken chair with matches beside it invited me to inspection. I can't describe what I saw, and there seemed to be a faint odour of sulphur and brimstone redolent of the bottomless pit. The drawing room had suffered least, though part of the ceiling had fallen on the piano, marring its beautiful top. The shake-down on which Himself had slept all the time we were away, stood in what looked like the safest corner. He had set up a screen to keep the night winds off his dear head. I just sat down there and after a minute tears came. They were the first I had shed and they were blessed. They relieved the tightness of my heart, the band across my brain. Afterwards I was able to climb in and about, taking stock and inventory of what had happened. I thought that with luck a few sticks might be retrieved, and mended up, but knew that all my cupboards must be bare of the glass and china which every housewife holds most dear. You remember the cupboard in the dining room with its priceless store of Waterford and old English glass? There is not so much as a salt cellar left.

A cup here and there, with the handle off, or a gash in its side is all that is left of my Crown Derby, my old Worcester, my Lowestoft. It is all very awful. But these are only things. They don't at this moment matter. What does matter is that the monster of war has laid its foul desecrating hand on the sanctuary of my home.