WAAC - Part 2

CHAPTER VII

Ireland!

What a land flowing with milk and honey after the strict rationing that England was suffering from. What a contrast by comparison with those devastated areas in France with their miserable, half-starved refugees!


Eggs, butter, milk, cheese, meat, bread, sugar—everything in profusion. And golden sovereigns everywhere—there were no longer any in circulation in England.

I went to a bazaar in Dublin.

All sorts of rascals, card sharps, confidence crooks and others had been admitted in return for contributing £50 or £60 each to the charitable object of which the bazaar was in aid—or so I was told. Once in, they were at liberty to fleece anybody and everybody in any way they chose.

I went into a big marquee and watched the roulette. On every number on the green cloth were little piles of sovereigns. The croupier had before him a pile of gold which must have been worth several hundred pounds. Everybody gambled. There were two zeros. The second was said to be "in aid of the good cause."

"Sure and the Good Cause wins again!"

I can hear the croupier's raucous voice still, see his gleeful grin, and hear the ironical laughter as the gold was raked in. It was not counted. It was added to the pile held by the bank. So how could the rascals know how much to hand over to the Good Cause? Just a bit of bluff, but nobody seemed to care.

"That's right—knock your bloody head off before the Germans get it!" was shouted at me by a young Irishman one day, when I had banged my head whilst boarding a tram.

Those Irish girls, too. They were taking money from the British Government, and glad to get it, for driving cars, helping in messes and canteens, and so on. Yet many times I heard them (some of them) curse the English and say they hoped to God that Germany would win the war.

"Sure and I'd help the poor Kaiser to-morrow if I could," was said by several of them in my hearing. In our mess, too, you could see them listening intently when anything was said about "stores with escort," which meant, of course, arms or ammunition; for you don't send an armed escort with comestibles.

One day twenty soldiers and a sergeant marched out of (I think) Portobello Barracks with their rifles and equipment, etc., and were never seen again. They were traitors and had joined the rebels. A ton of gelignite—enough to blow up half Dublin, I was told—vanished from Amiens Street railway station. Lorries with fatigue parties went to North Wall quay one morning and demanded and signed for forty or fifty cases of rifles and a quantity of ammunition and rifle-grenades and drove away with the lot, unquestioned. They, too, were Sinn Feiners disguised as British soldiers, it was afterwards discovered. And other "regrettable incidents" of that sort happened. The Irish girls cheered when told. I don't say all. But some of them.

And how our Government blundered! You know how touchy the Irish are as a race. How they have all their feelers out and are ever ready to take offence, think they are being slighted or snubbed. Though professing to hate the English, the young men were furious at not being conscripted. They looked upon that, too, as another injustice. When (too late) attempts were made to induce some of them to join the colours, recruiters amongst the Roman Catholics were Protestants, and worse still, some were Presbyterians. It never occurred to our Big Wigs, apparently, that this amazing want of tact must annoy the Catholic population. It infuriated them. The mistake was due merely to thoughtlessness, no doubt—call it arrant stupidity if you like, for really it was that.

While I was at the Curragh a conspiracy for sending boots to England, filled with fresh butter, was discovered! The boots went to and fro in packing-cases containing each several dozen pairs. Profitable smuggling while it lasted.

A delightful spot, the Curragh. Plenty of tennis and other amusements, and race meetings about once a month. Hunting too, in the season. I had hunted with the Kildare before the war, and knew the country well. At that time the native population had all been charming. So hospitable, too. Particularly the farmers. But now...

One day a Great Brass Hat arrived, with his suite of Lesser Brass Hats. They came unexpectedly, made a surprise tour of inspection, paraded the women, paid compliments and commended here, found a few faults there—put the wind up everybody as surprise inspections always did.

After an excellent lunch they commandeered from several units many gallons of petrol. Special lorries came to fetch it. Then they all went away. Everybody felt relieved.

Some days later a tremendous strafe. Brass Hats? Not a bit of it. Sinn Feiners masquerading as Brass Hats!

It is often said that the Irish are born actors. Some of them in war-time were born rogues too.

Those few weeks on the Curragh were like a picnic. The probationers' training course in motor-driving was the softest thing on earth. Daily joy trips—they were that to all intents, for any man or woman not mentally deficient can learn in a few hours how to drive a Ford. All that was needed after that was a little practice in steering, particularly in traffic. During the rest of the day there was usually nothing to do—at most one was detailed to meet some senior officer at a railway station and convey him to his hut or billet.

He would sometimes be one of the amorous sort, particularly if he had dined well or the hour was late. And such strong breath—champagne, port, brandy, or all three—was unpleasant. But one had to put up with it, as with other disagreeable things. "Never thwart or annoy a senior officer if you can help it" was a motto among the women war-workers with whom I served.

I remember during the war seeing a play in one of the London theatres, to which wounded soldiers and sailors had been specially invited—they almost filled the house. With incredible want of tact the management had staged a war play for the poor fellows, with a realistic dressing-station scene in one of the acts. Towards the end of the act the beautiful heroine advanced towards the footlights, and in a voice tense with emotion, as the novelists say, cried out:

"No man who has been in the trenches does not long to get back there again!"

The laughter and cat-calls and ironical applause which greeted this outburst of mock patriotism held up the play for many minutes, causing the unfortunate actress in the end to burst into tears.

I had not been near the trenches, but I had seen enough of war already to detest it. Therefore even now I cannot understand why, after a short time on the Curragh, I longed to get back to France again. Delightful though the Curragh was, one felt that it lacked—something. Excitement? Nervous tension? "Atmosphere"? Possibly. Or perhaps one felt in one's inner consciousness that one had no right to be enjoying life and amusing oneself while there was so much to be done "out there."

And so I, too, tried to pull some wires—I had friends among the "people who mattered," men as well as women, including my father's old friend who had been a friend of Lord Roberts's. And within a month the pulling proved successful. Almost on the same day my driver got her order for France, and a week later we were on our way to Havre.

"You are both to go to Puchevillers," we were told at Havre. "Few women have been that far up."

Where was Puchevillers? We had no idea. We discovered it on our maps of France, a village close to Toutencourt, near Acheux and between Albert and Doullens. We gathered that there was a casualty clearing station there, and severe fighting not far away.

For some time I had not heard from Rupert, and I was growing anxious. For day by day my love for him increased. I was not an immoral woman—not "all things to all men," as some were—yet I longed for him again, was ready to do anything he might ask. What if he were wounded—killed! The bare thought made me feel faint and physically ill, and I tried to put it from me. Occasionally the thought would come to me that I might become a mother! What would happen to me in the event of such a tragedy? Many of my friends, or supposed friends, would turn their backs on me, particularly my circle of acquaintance in the Midlands, engaged in knitting socks and mufflers and organizing jumble sales and work-parties. How "the County" would purse their lips, raise their eyebrows! How they would chatter about me in undertones at their tea-parties! And my brother Lionel, who thought so little of the injury he had done Nurse T whom he had met at St. Omer—how ashamed he would be of his fallen sister! Yes, that was what he would call me, if he called me nothing worse; I knew what his talk was like regarding unmarried mothers. They were wantons, all of them, harlots, in his opinion, and he would have no mercy on me—not that I should want mercy from such a brother. So many men, I discovered during the war, who thought nothing of seducing girls, were wholly devoid of tolerance if a woman in their own rank of life gave way to temptation, surrendered under provocation to the strongest of natural impulses.

With an effort I at last changed my train of thought. My father had written some days before, saying that "all was well with Nurse T," and that until the event was over and she was convalescent he would attend to her wants for my sake—from which I rightly concluded that he had placed her in some nursing home and was defraying her expenses. One line in his letter had made me pause:


"If a thing like that happened to you, my darling ... it would be too dreadful—it would almost kill me.... Be careful. You know that I love you more than I love anybody in this world, and always shall, no matter what may happen to you...."


I folded the letter—I had just read it again—and tried to forget that line; and as I did so the girl who had come with me from Ireland came into the room. She looked serious and rather pale.

"We go up the line to-morrow," she said in a peculiar voice. Then she came over and put her arms around me, and I felt that she was breathing quickly.

"What is the matter, dear?" I asked, though I thought I already knew.

"Oh, I can't tell you—I can't; I feel so ashamed," she almost whispered, then burst into sobs on my shoulder.

"Don't be a little donkey," I said, smoothing her hair. "I felt frightened too the first time I was told I should soon be in the danger zone—I didn't go, after all. My mouth went all dry, and I felt horrible inside, just as you do now. It isn't really funk, darling. It's just nerves. You'll find out soon that I am right. It is how people feel when they get what is called stage fright, or have to make a public speech, things like that. You'll soon get over it. Everybody does." I had been told that so far women were not allowed near the trenches.

"How comforting you are, Connie," she said some moments later, dabbing her handkerchief on her eyes. "I should hate to be afraid—I never thought I should be."

"Well, don't let anybody see or think you are; that is the important thing. I've got some Easton Syrup and I'll give you some. It calms one's nerves in a wonderful way. You won't believe you ever felt—'afraid.'"

The train was packed with troops, and at Rouen more troops entrained. They had just come out from England, and they laughed and joked and sang. Slowly the train dragged its way along. If, as often happened, it stopped near a village, children in their dozens would come running out of the houses, stretching out their arms and calling "Beeskeet! Beeskeet!" and "Bullee beef!" The men threw them rations, and money too, which was strictly against orders. One day a tin of bully beef thus flung out of a train hit a little boy on the head and killed him.

For mile after mile along both sides of the railroad track lay empty ration tins in millions, thrown out of trains by troops going up the line. The French Government devised a scheme for collecting all this waste tin and making use of it. But the scheme never matured.

Nor was comic relief wanting on that journey. The temperature was about eighty, the sun blazed fiercely, and perspiration poured down our faces and our bodies. Once when the crawling train made one of its many stoppages the Tommies noticed that beside the track lay a big tank for watering locomotives. Without a moment's hesitation several of them stripped themselves naked, clambered down from the train and plunged into the water, amid shouts of amusement from their companions, whose heads protruded from the windows of every carriage.

The driver, of course, heard the uproar, and, being something of farceur, set his engine going. In very few seconds the bathers had sprung out of their "tub" and were pursuing the train without a stitch of clothing on. I remember wondering what Mrs. Grundy would have said had that incident happened at home!

Amiens once more. A change had come over the town even in those few weeks. There were more troops in the streets and many more refugees. And the air had a curious "flavour." We soon learnt what that "flavour" was. The town had some days before, we were told, had "a whiff of gas"—the last time I had heard that phrase I had been in a dentist's chair. Again my little friend was "nervy," and I had difficulty in comforting her. She ought, of course, never to have been sent near the danger zone. She was temperamentally unsuited to face danger—at least I thought so then.

I did not want her to be laughed at by the other women, some of whom were of the "catty" type and apparently without nerves of any sort, so I kept her with me as much as I could. I found out indirectly that Rupert's company had left Albert, but whither it had gone I was unable to discover.

"Somebody was asking for you to-day," my friend—I will call her Gwen, though that was not her name—said to me as we sat together at breakfast one morning in the principal hotel in ——, where I had leave to take my meals if I wanted to. Suddenly she looked across the room.

"There, that's the man," she added quickly, indicating him with her eyes.

A spasm shot through me. Rupert was breakfasting at a small table, alone. Almost immediately his glance met mine, but my smile met with no recognition. He stared at me for a moment or two, as though he didn't know me, then went calmly on with his meal.

I wanted to cry out. I thought for an instant that I should. Once or twice again I looked in his direction; but now the newspaper he was reading hid his face.

Could I have offended, annoyed him in any way? He had stopped writing while I was in Ireland, but not for a moment had I imagined that he might have taken offence; I had concluded that his silence must for some reason be unavoidable. Yet, seeing him there, I still felt a sense of relief—he was, at any rate, safe.

I knew that Gwen was looking from one to the other, no doubt wondering why, after inquiring for me, he should ignore me.

I pulled myself together.

"How did he come to inquire for me?" I said, trying to look unconcerned. "How did he know that you knew me?"

"He said he had been told by somebody, he didn't say who. He knew that we had arrived here together. I was sent in my car to the officers' mess of" (she named a unit) "to pick up some kit and dump it at the railway station, and I asked the first officer I saw if he could tell me where to find the adjutant. That was the officer I spoke to. What is his name?"

I told her. Just then he got up. Several British and several French officers were breakfasting in the room, and as he passed close to one of them he looked at him hard. He gave me another glance, but still showed no sign of recognition.

Hardly had he left the room when the British officer at whom he had stared pushed back his chair, and rose. Having collected his cap, he left the room by a different door—rather hurriedly, I thought.

Some moments later two shots rang out in the street, and, looking out of the window, I saw a car disappearing round a corner at high speed.

Everybody remained calm. The officers went on eating their breakfast. A minute or two afterwards Rupert re-entered and came up to me. A little way behind him was the A.P.M.

"Would you recognize the officer who went out some moments ago?" Rupert said to me quickly, in an undertone.

"I think so," I replied. "He had a cut on the left side of his neck."

"Good. You may be of use to me. The man is a spy. I had breakfast here specially to keep an eye on him, and he has escaped again. Wait here. I'll be back in a moment."

He rejoined the A.P.M., and together they went out of the room.




CHAPTER VIII

When I went out, after finishing my breakfast, Rupert was waiting for me. He made a sign to me to follow him. In the street was a car, and he told me to get into it.

"Darling," he said, taking my hand as the car sped along, "I had to pretend not to recognize you. I am doing intelligence work now. That man was suspected of being a spy, but there were reasons why we couldn't at once take action or arrest him. He must have become suspicious suddenly, for the moment he was in the street he jumped into a car he had waiting there, and was off. He fired twice at a corporal who tried to intercept the car, but missed both times."

"But why had you to appear not to recognize me?" I asked.

"Because I think that spy had seen us together—in Albert. He was in the boat you went to Ireland in, and he spoke to you. He wore a hospital nurse's uniform then, so no wonder you didn't recognize him. The A.P.M. gets hold of all sorts of information of that sort and it is all carefully noted: we are on our way to the A.P.M. now. You will be shown portraits, photographs, of spies and suspected spies, and expected to impress their faces on your memory. The chief reason you are going there now is to see one portrait in particular and say if you, too, think it is the man with the cut on his neck."

It did not take me long to recall to mind talking in the boat to a hospital nurse. "She" had been quite friendly, and given me some cigarettes. Reflecting more carefully, it came back to me that "she" had asked me quite a lot of questions of one sort and another, most of which I had answered at haphazard.

At the A.P.M.'s office I at once identified the man I had seen at breakfast, from his photograph, though it showed him in mufti. I was then told that in his luggage at the hotel which he had left in such a hurry had just been found French, Austrian, German and British uniforms, the uniform of a French nurse and of a British Red Cross nurse, and some ordinary day frocks.[1]

When I look back on those war years after this lapse of time, and think of all that happened apart from the actual fighting, it seems to me that many of us, perhaps most of us (I am speaking now of women who served in the war area), must in some sort of way have taken leave of our senses—though we afterwards recovered them.

Because—think what we were like before the war, what our moral outlook was, how well we behaved, how easily we were shocked. Then reflect how all those ideas and all that good behaviour later on went overboard. It was extraordinary, amazing when you come to think about it. Nothing but war, nothing but a great and terrible war could have changed womanhood, or a considerable part of our womanhood, as that four years' campaign changed it. If before the year 1915 any man had dared to say certain things to me (tried to do certain things), I should have been furious. Yet by the end of 1915 or the beginning of 1916 one had become so accustomed to hearing coarse language and filthy stories—the stories and the language of some of the women I mixed with vied with the men's in nastiness—that one no longer felt even disconcerted.

Self-control, resistance to natural impulses and desires, also went by the board. In the forest of Rouvray, some miles above Rouen and close to the hospitals, also in the Forêt Verte (through stretches of which I often had to drive), I came several times upon spectacles which before the war would have upset me very much. But after a year or longer in the war atmosphere such sights did not upset me, though they rather disgusted me. They made me realize again how little removed from animals men and women are. There were nurses and drivers who, coming upon such spectacles, would afterwards talk quite openly about what they had seen, and joke about it—sometimes even mention names. Without wishing to boast, I can say with truth that right through the war I kept my own counsel in that respect. For to "split," as my brothers used to call it, to betray secrets one had no business to know, has always seemed to me to be an odious thing to do.

And I suppose it was because the war had so changed us, so lowered our moral standard, that when the one man in the world I had come to love truly and devotedly told me that in ten days he would be in the front line, I cast all principles aside.

I was alone with him in his billet. It was evening and almost dark. I was sitting in his big chair, looking at him, when a physical craving which had been gradually growing swept over me all at once—a wave of furious desire such as I had experienced that night in Amiens.

He stood a little way from me, knocking out his pipe, and in my eyes he must have read my thoughts, because suddenly his expression changed.

"Good God, Connie, don't look at me like that!" he exclaimed in a low, strained voice. "What do you think I am made of?"

He came over to me slowly, his eyes gazing into mine. He bent down and put his hands behind my head and drew it against his chest and feverishly kissed my hair.

"Rupert—oh Rupert!" the words burst from me before I could check myself, "I can't bear it any longer—take me—do anything you want—I am crazy for you—Rupert, I love you so utterly ... and so soon you will be leaving me ... Rupert ... darling ... my darling..."

I was in his arms, held closely to him. His lips were pressed on mine. His hands stroked me everywhere ... every fibre in me quivered ... ecstasy intoxicated my imagination....

And all the while it seemed to me that this was not my real self, that a new self possessed me, a self I could not control or calm, that in some way or other I lived during those minutes in a different world—a dream world from which later I should awaken.

And so those nine days of mad happiness passed.

A week after he had gone my orders came through. I was to join several ambulances on the following evening and proceed to Puchevillers. Not a convoy.

So for the moment my misery was to some extent allayed. There was so much to be seen to and done within the next twenty-four hours. The squadron leader, as she liked to be called, had instructions to give me. My little friend Gwen would be with us, I was glad to hear. I had taken her into my confidence and told her everything, and she had been so kind and sympathetic: for I had felt I must tell somebody, yet there was nobody else to whom I would have dreamed of revealing my secret.

For days the guns up the line had been rumbling at intervals. One had grown so accustomed to hearing them that now one hardly noticed them. Gwen seemed at last to have her nerves under control. Or perhaps she dreaded letting any of the women guess that she felt nervous. She had grown quite devoted to me, too deeply devoted for my peace of mind. Girls had been like that before, and I didn't like it.

I believe we were the first women drivers allowed so near the actual fighting. As yet there were very few of our women in France, other than nurses. I think the few drivers there were had transferred from nursing to driving. I forget what year this was, but we were well on in the war.

The guns were louder now. A curious thing I noticed many times in France was that sometimes the guns sounded louder when a long way off than when one came nearer to them. It had to do with air currents, I was told. Gwen found me in the dark, and asked me to give her some more Easton Syrup.

"I always feel safer when I am near you, darling," she whispered rather pathetically. "Oh, I do hope I shall not do something dreadful, run away or something. But the noise upsets me so. I keep on thinking, imagining all that is happening up there, picturing in my mind the terrible slaughter that is going on. I heard one of the girls say that we shall never take that place, that it has swamps and marshes all round it and our men can't get across. Isn't it all too horrible? And so stupid and unnecessary when you come to think about it."

I could not agree that it was unnecessary, but stupid—yes. The utter stupidity of all wars had long ago forced itself upon me. I gave her some of the syrup, and its effect was almost instantaneous. Some of the officers too used to take it, I heard afterwards.

Day was dawning when we came to Puchevillers. Its lanes with their little hedges made me think of Devonshire. When we had reported and parked our cars I went out into the undulating open country with Gwen. It looked like a great brown sea—the sun had shrivelled the grass—rolling away until lost to sight in the blue haze near the skyline, beyond which the battle raged. A long, white, curving road disappeared in the blue mist. To the left of us stood the huge hospital tents, for this was a casualty clearing station, the first I had seen. Several old women were working in the fields. A church bell was ringing for early Mass. A lark sang high up in the sky. And away over the rising ground, half hidden by the mist, the guns pounded and pounded. As a study in contrasts it was wonderful.

We wanted some tea. There was none to be had.

"Plenty of whisky, brandy and champagne," said the M.O. we had spoken to. "You'll find it in that tent. But wait here and I'll see what I can do for you."

He was in his shirt-sleeves, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. A red splash was on his chest. He came back presently, having been unable to get tea, and mixed stiff brandies-and-sodas—the first time I had drunk brandy-and-soda at five o'clock in the morning.

We passed an open bell-tent. Eight or ten M.O.'s in their shirt-sleeves were having drinks and talking. Their eyes were bloodshot and their hair in disorder, and they looked terribly worn out. Later we heard that they had been on duty over forty-eight hours, almost without sleep and with scarcely time to eat. There were fourteen M.O.'s at work in those tents, cutting, slicing, bandaging, working swiftly and almost in silence and without a thought for themselves. Wonderful men. At the Bases one heard the M.O.'s spoken of lightly, sometimes contemptuously; I had myself been tempted to consider them a poor lot, out chiefly to enjoy themselves when their light duties were done. How mistaken I had been I now realized. Were the M.O.'s adequately rewarded for what they did in the war? I think not. But then, they sought no reward or recognition. They were there to do their best and they never spared themselves. How different, I remember thinking, from the gentleman who had walked up and down the quay for a year at a Base, and then gone home with a D.S.O.!

In the rear of the hospital tents was another long road, white as the first, but straighter. That road, too, led to where the battle raged. Out of the clouds of dust a long procession slowly emerged. It looked like an endless snake, grey, with red crosses along its back, crosses that dwindled as the snake diminished in the distance.

At frequent intervals the snake would stop crawling. Then out of its head stretchers were gently lifted. Each car had four stretchers, each covered with a brown blanket. The stretchers were laid in rows upon the brown grass; nurses fluttered about them; orderlies came along with big cans of water. And whenever a M.O. could be spared from the tents he would come hurrying down to those rows of brown blankets. Meanwhile the grey snake with the red crosses had again crawled forward; and each time it halted the same thing took place.

Having been a V.A.D., I was called upon to help. In Base hospitals I had seen dreadful wounds, but those had been already treated and fully dressed. These men I was seeing now came direct from the battlefield viâ the dressing station, and their mutilated bodies were often horrible to look at. Here a boy in his teens with half his inside shot away. There a poor wretch with his face gone. Beyond him a sergeant—legs and arms paralysed. And yet, incredible as it may seem, hardly any of those victims murmured a complaint, in spite of the agonies that most of them must have suffered. Sometimes they would wince, even betray their agony by making some fearful grimace. But that was all. Until the time came when they were moved. The slight oscillation caused merely by lifting their stretchers made some of them scream out, or yell some frightful words. And then generally, if a nurse were near, they would try to express regret. Those apologies used (almost) to amuse me. They would have if anything could have provoked amusement in the midst of so much frightfulness. They would have amused me only because I had heard nurses themselves use words just as bad.

Only one man cried out while I was helping near the stretchers. He kept raising himself on one elbow, all the time shouting wildly:

"Drop fifty—repeat! Drop fifty—repeat!"

He died before his turn came to be carried into the tent, and for the rest of the day and in my dreams that night that cry of his went on ringing in my ears: "Drop fifty—repeat!"

For some days I was detained at the casualty clearing station, though they had no right to detain me. The shortage of nurses was so great, however, that any woman with even slight knowledge of nursing was commandeered if possible. I saw women nursing there who had been munition workers, and women who early in the war had answered Baroness Orczy's call; she it was who had inaugurated the Women of England's Active Service League, though others got most of the credit. Now the Married Men's Military Act was in full force, and I wondered if my brother Lionel would succeed much longer in bluffing the authorities and so escaping military service. He was, of course, not even married.

The thunder of the guns seemed to come from three directions. Rumours reached us of alleged victories and alleged disasters. There was said to be heavy fighting at Delville Wood still, and at Bapaume and Pozières and elsewhere. Indeed, there were rumours of fighting all along the line. But it was quite impossible to know what to believe, for the reports were so contradictory. Horrible war! How monstrous it all seemed. How iniquitous, how criminal that all these lives, young lives most of them, should be cut short like this, that men in their thousands should be cut to pieces, blinded, maimed for life, deprived of their reason. Sometimes now I wonder how we women came through it all without ourselves becoming insane. I suppose the secret was that, as I have already said, we all tried not to think—we had little time for thinking except when off duty, and then we were so exhausted that most of us fell asleep. Yet there were nights when I, and I expect others, cried ourselves to sleep at the inhumanity and brutality of it all.

I was glad to get away from those hospital tents at last, with their stifling odour of human bodies, and sweat, and disinfectants, and iodoform, and death, for I felt I could not much longer have endured the strain—I had been there over a week, or was it ten days? Gwen, too, had been commandeered, and the way she bore up astonished me—her first experience of nursing in the war area.

What would happen to her now, I wondered as we set out that night? Would she collapse—"show the white feather" as most people would call it—turn tail by "going sick," become suddenly hysterical? I determined to keep my eye on her and support her as best I could.



[1] I heard afterwards that this spy was traced to Havre, from Havre to Plymouth, thence to London, and thence to Cardiff, where he was caught.




CHAPTER IX

We set out after dark by a roundabout route in order not to meet incoming ambulances. Ahead of us and to right and left the flashes and the roar of the guns resembled a tremendous thunder-storm. I thought of Rupert—I believe I prayed as I drove along that he might not be up there. Since leaving Amiens I again had no news of him or from him—it would not have been possible for him to communicate even had he known my whereabouts.

Prayed! How foolish it seemed to pray. How futile to imagine there could be such a thing as a God, least of all a good God, while such horrors prevailed. As though a God supposed to be good and all-powerful would not at once have stopped the hideous carnage. If what we called God existed, then he must be some fiend lusting for blood, a sadist without heart or reason, revelling in what was happening on the earth.

I thought of our smug parsons at home preaching their silly little sermons every Sunday, telling people to be good, kind to one another and forgiving, while themselves squabbling over petty sacerdotal matters—the correct length of a stole, the wickedness of wearing a biretta and imitating the rites of Rome, and similar trivialities.

And at the Bases—those church parades that the men hated but were made to attend; the officer reading the lesson as though he believed what he read; the chaplain mournfully intoning the service in that unctuous clerical drawl which always amused (and annoyed) my father. Why were not all parsons like my father? Why could they not be men of perspicacity, broad-minded, considerate, tolerant, devoid of humbug and hypocrisy and make-believe?

Thoughts, thoughts, all sorts of thoughts crowded in upon me during that slow night drive with the thunder and flashes ever increasing in intensity. It was the first time for days that I had had time to think about anything but the agonized sufferers in those tents and what one could do to alleviate their pain a little.

And those doctors—M.O.'s as they were called—I must refer to them again. People talk about the kindness of women, talk of their sympathy, "ministering angels" and the rest of it. Why, those M.O.'s were the kindest, noblest, most self-sacrificing beings I had ever met in all my life. And the hospital orderlies too, many of them. I am certain that not one among all those doctors and orderlies would not willingly have sacrificed his life to save the life of a patient. I hoped that after the war I should meet some of them, but I never have. I suppose that now most of the M.O.'s are in private practice, perhaps in provincial towns and country villages, attending to old ladies with imaginary ailments and children with mumps or croup or adenoids or cutting their first teeth. Of another thing, too, I am sure—those surgeons never breathe one word about the splendid work they did out there among the maimed and mutilated men, that frightful human wreckage.

"Christ in Heaven!"

The cry came from just in front of me. A girl's voice—the driver of the car some yards ahead of mine. There had been a red flash above our heads and something had hit my car; the first shell I had seen explode near enough to kill me—I wish it had been the last.

The car in front of me had stopped. I got down and went forward.

"The bloody thing's bitched my radiator!"

Then she burst into tears and became hysterical.

It is not always an advantage to be cursed with a sense of humour. The contrast between that angry outburst and the display of weakness which had at once followed it actually made me laugh—though Heaven knows I felt frightened enough.

There was nothing for it but to tow the disabled car behind one of the other ambulances. The bombardment was still a long way ahead of us; the most magnificent display of fireworks imaginable—if only it had been less cruel. Where that solitary shrapnel had come from I cannot to this day imagine. On later occasions when I came under fire from shrapnel, one shell was always followed by more.

At last we reached the area where we had orders to wait. What stands out most prominently in my mind to-day, after the lapse of years, is the utterly appalling noise there was. No words can describe it, convey the least idea of what it was like, because it resembled nothing on earth. The big explosions and the explosions not so loud; the small shells bursting; the tak-tak-tak of the machine-guns; the rattle of rifle fire; and now and again explosions which sounded as though the world itself had been blown to pieces—if there is a hell it cannot be worse than the hell we saw that night.

Some lines I have read come back to me:

"Trunks, face downward in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads, lay in the filthy slime...."

No wonder women drivers were not allowed to come so near the actual fighting until much later; even we were not quite near it. I doubt if the majority would have been able to stand even the noise of the pandemonium that night. The men were astonished at seeing us.

I stumbled over someone kneeling, and saw she was tying a bootlace.

It was Gwen!

She looked up.

"Cheerio," she called.

"Gwen!" I exclaimed.

"It's me all right."

I could hardly believe it. Yet what had happened to her happened (later) to scores of girls who imagined they would never have courage enough to carry on. She had outgrown her fear—her "nerves." When I had assured her that she would, I had not believed that she would. I had said that only to give her confidence—if I could.

She finished tying the lace, and stood up.

"If only this racket would stop," she shouted to me above the din, and put her hands to her ears. "I've got a splitting headache."

At that instant there came another deafening explosion. I heard afterwards that a mine had been exploded—a "grotto" the men called it—"with glorious results." I forget how many men it was said to have blown to pieces.

"What was that, Connie?"

Gwen, at my elbow, had shouted the question to me. She might have been inquiring the score in a tennis match. She was lighting a cigarette.

"Gwen," I shouted back, "I think you are amazing. When I think of your hysterics and panicking only the other day.... Tell me how you feel."

Her hand was on my arm. It did not tremble.

There was a momentary lull in the roar.

"I feel as if I had been through some terrible ordeal, and come out of it none the worse. Isn't it queer? I used to think the only way to get courage was to make oneself blotto. I hope it will last."

The order came along that we were all to rest. I shared a tent with Gwen and two other drivers. But, though worn out, none of us could sleep. Excitement and the racket kept us awake. We sat there talking and drinking hot coffee.

Gwen had used the word "blotto." During those four years I saw much drunkenness. But not once did I see any woman worker intoxicated, or even what our Midland farmers call "market merry." That point is worth noting.

It is not my intention to disgust readers by piling on the agony, labouring the horrors of battle and of what one saw in hospitals. That has been done by other writers—overdone in my opinion. I have read war books whose authors appear to think their readers must be devoid of imagination, if not half imbecile. Or is it that they delight in wallowing in anatomical and gruesome portrayals of war victims in hospitals and in the trenches, and gloat over the bloodshed? I wonder if they saw what they describe, or draw on their imagination?

Owing partly to influence brought to bear in high quarters by my father's old friend who helped me at the outset (and possibly to the fact that my father was well connected), I was granted privileges. I had more liberty than most V.A.D.'s or drivers, and more authority. Also I was not compelled, as they were, to conform to petty regulations. That, you may say, was unjust. It was. But it was a case of each for herself during the war, and I know that every V.A.D. and every Waac who could pull a wire likely to benefit her, pulled it.

The work of driving ambulances with wounded back to the casualty clearing station at Puchevillers was extremely exhausting, particularly as one had to be careful to avoid holes in the road which might have made the ambulances bump, and the slightest bump could cause a wounded man exquisite pain. It was during one of these drives that a scrap of shell hit me, leaving a scar which remains to this day. That meant weeks in a nursing home in Southsea, at the end of which time the stitches were removed and I was once more pronounced fit for duty.

And during all those weeks I had no news of Rupert. He had my home address, whence letters would have been forwarded, and each morning I anxiously scanned the long lists of casualties.

While with my father on the sea front one afternoon he was staying in the town in order to be near me—he surprised me by saying:

"I wonder, Connie, who the father of Nurse T's child is? I tried once or twice to lead her on to tell me, but I saw it embarrassed her so I said no more. Have you any suspicion?"

"Why do you want to know, father?" I evaded the question by asking. For on no account must he suspect that it was Lionel.

"Well, I saw her sometimes, before the child arrived. One afternoon she was asleep. I thought I would sit there until she awoke, and—well, she began to murmur in her dreams."

As he stopped speaking his eyes met mine. They had an odd expression.

"I can't see what that has to do with her child's father," I said, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

"Can't you?" he replied, with the semblance of a smile. "Connie, before you went away you were quicker in the uptake. In her sleep she spoke of you—more than once. And another name. Did you ever speak to her of Lionel?"

"I may have," I said weakly.

"Yet you never told me she knew Lionel. Where did they meet? In France?"

Then I knew that he knew—that Nurse T must, in her sleep, have revealed her secret.

"Oh, father!" I exclaimed, "I kept the truth from you. I hoped that you would never know. Yes, her child is Lionel's. But Lionel didn't seduce her, though probably he thinks he did. Does mother know?"

"Dear me, no. She wouldn't understand. She would think I did wrong in befriending that nurse. You know how old-fashioned she is. It is not her fault."

While he was speaking a great wave of love for my father had swept over me. We were alone, and nobody was near. I put my hand impulsively on his.

"Father," I said, "you are so good, so generous, so broad-minded. I have always told you all my secrets since I was a tiny tot, haven't I? I wonder if you could bear to hear another secret—the greatest secret I have ever had? I have told only one living soul, a great friend of mine whom I can trust, a girl called Gwen ——. She was with me in France. An ambulance driver too."

I felt his fingers close tightly on mine, so tightly that they almost hurt. For a minute he did not speak. Then he said quietly:

"You needn't, my darling. I know it."

"Know it! But how? When?"

"Your eyes told me the first time I came to see you in the nursing home. It was a dreadful shock. Dreadful. And yet I hoped that you would tell me. I am glad you have."

I wanted to reply, but I couldn't. I sat there quite still, while my dear father still held my hand. And the thought came to me of girls I had known whose parents had driven them from home, turned them out into the streets—for that.

And after that I opened my heart to him, told him how it had all come about, told him about Rupert and how I loved him and how anxious I felt at not hearing from him.

"If his wife were to die do you think he would marry you?" he asked presently.

"I am certain—I know he would," I answered. "He has told me so more than once."

What a relief it was to know that my father knew now, and that he forgave me. It made me feel extraordinarily happy. Suddenly a thought occurred to me.

"Where is Lionel now?" I asked him. "Hasn't he been conscripted?"

It was strange that during those weeks in the nursing home we had not once spoken about Lionel.

"Why, yes," he replied quickly. "I thought you knew. He had to join up at last, and they made him a captain right away. He is in the A.S.C., at" (he mentioned a depôt near London). "He is adjutant."

A captain. Lionel. And adjutant. And Henry, who had been fighting for two years, still only a subaltern! I could have laughed aloud. Lionel deserved a Wangler's Medal. But perhaps later he would be transferred to some fighting force. I hoped he would be. Even if he remained in the A.S.C. and was sent to France he would see some of the fighting, some of the "fun"—unless he bluffed the medical board again (as I knew he must have done) and got kept at the Base. There he might be detailed to walk up and down a quay, become a M.L.O., and finish by getting his D.S.O. like that red-faced major.

Those weeks spent with my father at Southsea were wonderfully pleasant weeks, but I knew they must end soon. They ended sooner than I had expected, for after reporting I was again ordered out to France.

Should I meet Rupert? That was the first thought which came to me. And little Gwen, I wanted to see her again. She had written to me regularly while I was on sick leave, and told me as much as she dared to about what was happening. She had been driving an ambulance in different parts of France, and wondered why they kept on moving her from place to place. So far she had come through it all without a scratch, and that sense of fear, or nerves, had not returned.


"There is something very important I want to ask you," she said in the last letter I had from her, "but I can't put it in writing. Do tell me when you are coming out—if you do come out again. I want to see you most frightfully. I can't tell you how I have missed you during all these weeks, my own darling."


Poor Gwen. Such a lonely little person. She had told me she had no relatives, and an invalid mother. I was her only friend in the world, she said. It was pathetic.

That time they sent me to Marseilles. Our boat was shot at by a submarine which appeared on the surface suddenly—we crossed by day—but the torpedo went several yards behind us. The sensation while watching the torpedo coming at us through the water was most peculiar. And, when it missed, everybody began to laugh. What a funny race we are. I am sure the French or the Germans or the people of any race but ours would not have laughed—they might have sworn. The submarine was expected to fire again. Instead, it submerged itself.




CHAPTER X

Some days after my arrival in Marseilles I got a letter from Rupert, forwarded from home.

He was still "somewhere in France," and said jokingly that he had been "wounded in the thumb, but not mortally." He expected his seniority soon, and explained why he had again been silent so long. He had done a lot of flying and intelligence work, and, though due for leave, would not apply for it until he knew my movements. If I were coming to France again he "simply must see me," so would not want to go to England.

Then I was told to report in Paris. At once I wrote telling Rupert this, and suggesting that he might spend his leave, or some of it, in Paris. I got a letter a few days later telling me that his leave had been granted and he would be in Paris by the time the letter reached me. He would stay at an hotel in Rue de Rivoli.

And that was where we spent our deferred honeymoon. We called it our honeymoon, and if married people's honeymoons resemble paradise as closely as ours resembled it ... if there be a paradise...

Dreadful, you will say. So wicked. So immoral. Living in sin like that. But you who say that saw nothing of the war, or you would not say it, so you don't understand how the war (as I have already said) changed us. You are not, therefore, qualified to pass judgment. I had never before been in Paris, and, seeing what happened afterwards, I am not anxious to stay in Paris again.

The work we drivers had to do there was much less strenuous than ambulance driving up the line, though most of our drivers who had not been in the danger zone grumbled continually. I found myself with plenty of spare time, particularly in the afternoons, and this enabled me to run out to the Bois and to Versailles and other delightful spots with Rupert, and remain there sometimes several hours.

Does marriage kill love? I wonder. I have heard women—and men too—say that it kills love in less than a year. But it is wrong to generalize. A Frenchwoman who knew that Rupert and I were not married said to me one day, nodding her wise old head:

"Never marry, mademoiselle. Remain as you are, and your love for each other will last for ever."

Meanwhile Paris was in a state of turmoil. The Germans, repulsed in their attempts to reach the city, had begun to drop shells into it from a distance of eighty miles (so it was said)—only an occasional shell, but an occasional shell the size of those fired by Big Bertha—as the men nick-named the enormous German gun—tended to demoralize the civilian population.

Indeed, Paris at that time afforded a strange study in contrasts—all the war did that to some extent. In the slum districts the poor people looked upon the war as an act of God, and told you so quite seriously. "It is a great punishment for our sins from the good God," one woman said to me who had already lost five sons and was sending her sixth and last to be slaughtered.

"The good God." It was hard not to laugh at the thought of the poor creature having been so wicked that the good God deemed it necessary to murder all her sons—the vengeance of God indeed! They were patient and resigned, those ill-starred folk, and one could not but admire their stoicism. Among the well-to-do folk there were many shirkers—embusqués the French called them—just as there were in England. Most of them had money and tried to forget the war by spending money freely and attempting to be dissipated. But reckless dissipation, if ever justified, is justifiable only among men who, alive to-day, know that to-morrow they may be dead, and that almost for certain they will be dead in a few weeks' time at most. Many of our young officers were like that in Paris, determined to squeeze the last ounces of pleasure out of life during the brief time they had still to live. Particularly the Flying Corps, as it was then called. Most of the officers were little more than children; even the captains and some of the majors looked as though they had just come out of a schoolroom. And it was said that the 'planes they were made to fly were many of them un-airworthy.

Before, while in Rouen, I had become acquainted with a Flying Corps officer who, as he wore no badges, and said nothing about himself, I mistook for a subaltern. Quiet and unassuming, and, curiously enough, religious, he was the type of man that no woman can help liking. By the way he talked I judged him to be not greatly interested in the war, though, of course, anxious to do his bit. Each time I tried to focus our conversation on himself, he somehow managed to change the subject. What perhaps mostly appealed to me was the fact that he did not attempt to flirt. I had grown so tired of men of the "flirtatious" type.

Not long after he had left, to go up the line, I received a packet of English newspapers from my father, who sent me papers generally once a week. What my amazement was you can imagine when, in several of the papers, I found large portraits—some of them full-page portraits—of the Flying Corps officer with whom I had become so friendly. Under the pictures was printed:

Major Hawker, D.S.O., who has been
awarded the Victoria Cross.

And then there followed a detailed account of the wonderful deeds of valour he had performed.

We met a heroine in Paris during our "honeymoon," a French heroine, Mademoiselle Moreau, who had been decorated at the British Embassy with a medal for her wonderful courage in rescuing British wounded under fire. She, too, was quiet and unassuming, and the last thing in the world she wanted to talk about was what she had done. Such a pretty girl. I was told that half the men whose lives she had saved had ended by falling in love with her, and I am sure that must have been true. I almost myself fell in love with her beautiful dark eyes and smooth complexion and glorious hair. I dreaded that Rupert might fall a victim to her charms, and I believe he almost did, though he was proof against the attractions of most pretty women.

When returning from duty late one night, I saw a curious sight. An in-aid-of ball given by a French Society woman in her big house in a fashionable boulevard was just over, and the guests, French and British, were pouring out, chattering and laughing.

In a narrow street branching off the boulevard is—or was—a notorious maison de tolérance. I thought that after my years of war nothing remained that could astonish me, but I was mistaken. In amazement I saw quite a lot, certainly over a dozen, of the smart-looking men who had come away from the ball—where they must have danced with beautiful and refined women—push their way in through the green-baize doors of that horrible red-lamp establishment. That they could do so on such a night struck me as revolting.

Which reminds me of an incident that amused me—it might not have amused me had I been sleeping in the women's barracks. The women who were sleeping there almost mutinied.

Some of them having complained that the bedroom furniture supplied was inadequate, worn-out and "disgraceful," the barrack warden was ordered to provide something better. Being a Scotsman and none too well disposed towards the women, who had harried him rather too much, he bought up "a cheap line of second-hand furniture and equipment from a newly dismantled house"—that was his description of it.

All might have been well, had not the women accidentally discovered the "dismantled house" to be the lowest brothel in the town, recently suppressed for "irregularity of management and conduct."

The warden was severely reprimanded, and new furniture was provided. Yet even then the incensed women were not completely pacified.

Yes, the war provided humorous incident of one sort and another. In Paris a driver helped to add to it. She had a room on an upper floor of a queer little hotel in a back street in Clichy, where also were billeted some Australian N.C.O.'s. On coming in late one night she found, to her annoyance, that the morning's slops in her room had not been emptied.

The chambermaid had gone to bed, so what was to be done? Suddenly she remembered that residents in that Bohemian street sometimes emptied their slops out of the window into the street. So why not do as they did?

Opening her window, she cautiously held the full vessel out at arm's length, then gave it a jerk to empty it. As she did so the handle broke off and the vessel with its contents crashed through a glass roof below into a room where a party of Anzacs were playing jack-pot.

At once the whole place was in an uproar. The Australians swarmed up the stairs, thirsting to wreak vengeance on—somebody.

But they never found the somebody, for she had locked her door at once and switched off the light and jumped into bed.

Next morning she heard all about it, and expressed her indignation that anybody should have done such a thing. The language of those Australians, she assured me, was too awful to listen to.

In spite of all that was said and written about the entente cordiale and the wonderful friendship which the war had cemented between British and French, such friendship never existed—never began to exist. Our Tommies liked the Frenchwomen and the French girls, but cordially disliked the poilus, and Frenchmen as a body. In two towns I was in French and English shared the same barracks; yet they never fraternized. Officers and "other ranks" of both nations made no disguise of cold-shouldering each the other. You would now and again see a British officer chatting in a café or an estaminet with a French officer, or a Tommy with a poilu, but such sights were rare. Nor was lack of knowledge of the languages the cause, for we could make ourselves understood, and so could the French. And the women war-workers were the same. Ours disliked the French and the French disliked ours. The French did not, I think, understand our ways and habits; I think they thought us rather mad. They were puzzled and astonished and indignant that we English were always laughing and joking no matter how serious the situation. Our girls played games and our men played football within range of the enemy's guns. That I know amazed the French. The matron of a French hospital told me that she considered it to be an insult to the dead!

Yet I would say, in justice to the French, that the offensive manner and the aggressiveness of some of our officers afforded them cause for complaint. Many a time I have heard an English officer bawling in English at a Frenchman, as though by bawling he would make him understand. Others would use detestable adjectives when the Frenchman could not understand what was being said to him—but there was not a Frenchman who did not know the meaning of those adjectives. All that, of course, created bad blood. There are, unfortunately, cads in every nation, and a handful of cads can greatly increase any ill-feeling that may exist between nations.

Rupert's leave was coming to an end—had all British officers possessed his tact the alleged entente might have become a reality—when dreadful news reached me. I had not read it in the newspapers, but my father sent me the cutting.

My brother Henry was "reported missing, believed killed."

I had known that it must come, that day we had kissed each other good-bye on the platform of the little wayside station close to our home. Nothing but a miracle, I knew then, could save any regular officer of his rank from being killed in the fearful struggle just beginning—the subalterns and "other ranks" bore the brunt of the fighting. During the past two years, indeed, I had wondered how he had managed to escape, for his regiment had been in many engagements. And always at the back of my mind had lain the hope that the miracle would come about—that Henry would come through in safety.

"Believed killed." That "believed" comforted me a little, gave me hope. And Rupert—shall I ever forget his immense sympathy and the consolation he afforded me? But for him I should have broken down and been unable to carry on. Death had seemed a commonplace thing until now. One had seen so much of it. I had thought I had grown callous, it affected me so little, but now...

Rupert took me in his arms and kissed me again and again. He didn't say much then. He knew that I would understand how deeply he felt for me better than if he poured forth expressions of sorrow for my misery. I couldn't imagine Henry dead. It seemed at first impossible. And some days passed before I could bring myself to write to my father and to my mother. I thought it best to write to each separately.

I was with Rupert in the hotel. Our room overlooked the Rue de Rivoli. The window was open. From a distance came the rhythmic tramp of marching men. Nearer and nearer. Louder and louder. As they passed they broke into a chorus—that too-familiar chorus:

"Ma-de-moi-selle from Armentières,
She hasn't been kissed for years and year,
Ma-de-moi-selle from Armentières,
She hasn't been..."

More troops on their way up to the shambles. More men—ever more men—to be smashed and mangled and blinded and rendered insane.

I thought again of my brother.

"Christ in Heaven!"

That driver's blasphemous exclamation burst from me. I couldn't help it. I jumped up and slammed down the window. I couldn't bear this horror any longer—I couldn't. When would it all end? Or would it ever end?




CHAPTER XI

Summer had gone by. I had not seen Rupert since that exquisite time in Paris which had ended with the tragic news about Henry, but I had heard of him fairly often. He was somewhere in the region of Arras or Bethune, I had reason to believe. He had been flying, he said. He did not tell me that he had been flying over enemy country and dropped there disguised as a German—he spoke German like a native; he dared not tell me that in any case. And had he done so I should not have slept at night.

And Henry was still missing and believed killed.

Christmas was approaching. Never shall I forget the intense cold of those winters in France. Driving became at times almost agonizing, though we smothered our faces in creams and other cosmetics as many of the air pilots did. Had we not, our faces would soon have been skinless. The 'planes in use then were not covered in.

We were stationed close to a Flying Corps headquarters, and many of their young officers had scraped acquaintance with us. They probably were glad to meet women to talk to who had not designs on their slender purses. One or two proposed to me, and I refused them one after another, as tactfully as I could, in order not to hurt their feelings. For I would not for worlds willingly have hurt their feelings. They were such nice little boys, and, my heaven, how brave, how reckless! Every few days one or more would be reported missing. One saw them fly up into the air in their roaring machines, and wondered if they would come back. So many never did. It meant one place less at dinner in their mess, two places, perhaps three. That was all. Those who remained carried on as though nothing unusual had happened. To-morrow it might be their turn. They knew that well enough; but it seemed not to worry them.

Little Gwen was with me again. We were both honoured with an invitation to dine in the Flying Corps mess on Christmas night—or was it New Year's Eve? I forget.

But I shall not forget that evening. The boys must all have thought it would be their last Christmas, and they meant to make the most of it. They received us most graciously, most of them rather shyly. Their C.O. looked about my own age. Indeed, I could almost have imagined myself in peace-time giving him a box of chocolates or a jack-knife as a Christmas present! Yet he was, I could see, the right man in the right place—what a lot of men, not all of them young, were the wrong men in the wrong places!

That dinner was a banquet. And the wines—sherry, Moët and Chandon and Pol Roger in lashings—the King's health—more port—"Our guests." ...

There was not much shyness left by then. In the ante-room they grew noisy, uproarious. There was a piano and somebody played, played extremely well. And no wonder, seeing that before the war he had qualified in the Royal College of Music. And singing. Mostly choruses. And dancing—such dancing....

Some of them grew confidential, told me about themselves, their homes, their schools, the games they played before the war. One of them loved his lovely sister—went into his room specially to get her photograph to show to me. One or two furtively produced from some pocket a photograph of some bit of fluff with whom, they assured me, they were "hopelessly in love." Poor kids! They didn't know what love meant. But I didn't tell them so. More than one of them kissed me while we danced, and then half apologized. Said they couldn't help it. One declared he had done it "by accident" and hoped I would forgive him. I would have forgiven them anything that night. The C.O., while dancing with me, made excuses for some of them.

"Christmas, you know," he said. "One has to give them their heads a bit on a night like this."

A sedate young man, and I liked him. He was killed a month later.

To one bright youth it suddenly occurred that we might like a joy flight. The suggestion met with unanimous approval. I caught Gwen's eye, and saw her grimace, then laugh. Everyone was laughing. You would have thought not one of them had a care in the world. The C.O. had left the room, or he might have vetoed the proposal.

I went over to Gwen.

"We shall have to go through with it," I said. "We can die only once! I hope that boy won't be our pilot," and I indicated a little fellow sitting in a corner muttering to himself—the effect of the excellent champagne. I hated the idea of flying in pitch darkness with one of these lads just as much as Gwen did.

Two of them had left the ante-room to go out to the sheds. They were away a longish time. They came back at last looking disappointed. The sheds were locked, they said, and the sergeant-major had the key. And they couldn't find the sergeant-major.

I felt I could have hugged that sergeant-major. No doubt he had guessed that on Christmas night anything might happen!

The chief danger in night driving was the danger from shell-holes. One had to drive with extreme care, and you can drive with extreme care only when your lamps shine brightly, and our headlights refused to shine brightly unless we drove fast. Several times we overtook A.S.C. horse transport moving up with supplies, and then I made an interesting discovery. If, when shrapnel came over, the horse drivers carried on as usual, and as though nothing unusual were happening, the horses carried on as usual. But if, as happened once or twice, the drivers became excited and, to speak plainly, got the wind up, at once the horses would get their heads up and grow restless, almost unmanageable. I thought that was curious. It showed that in some way the drivers' fear or "nerves" transferred itself to their horses.

And here I would like to say a word about the A.S.C. Even during the war they were the butt of many gibes. At home they were looked down on by the fighting units. At the Bases in France the civilians seemed to think that all that the A.S.C. had to do was to drive about the town with lorry loads of rations, live on the fat of the land themselves, and not run any risks. But we who saw the work they did right up near the line, knew better. Twice I saw an A.S.C. motor-lorry blown sky high, and the drivers killed. At "suicide corner," as it was aptly nicknamed, A.S.C. casualties were considerable, I was told. And the A.S.C. never spared themselves. No matter what happened, those rations, or that munition, had to be "got there," and "get there" they did, by one means or another. It was said that on the whole the mules behaved better than the horses. Nothing seemed to upset a mule or disturb its equanimity. Even a sergeant whom I had heard declare that a mule could stand on one leg and lash out with the remaining three, assured me that under fire mules were "less temperamental like than 'orses."

A curious crowd, the A.S.C. They were of all ages, some of them quite old, and they appeared to have belonged to every imaginable profession and calling and trade before they joined up, and to have been collected from every corner of the world. Ourselves under A.S.C. orders, we had to mix to some extent with the A.S.C. officers and drivers, motor transport, horse transport and supplies. The oldest officer of the corps whom I met admitted to being seventy. His father, he told me, had been a bricklayer—and he was proud of it.

"And I can tell you this, miss," he said to me one day in a stage whisper, "those Sanitary Section coves are not one bit of blarsted good."

Often there was friction between the Sanitary Section and the A.S.C.—perhaps because the A.S.C.'s nickname for the Sanitary Section was not a pretty one.

Oh, that winter! The wet. The fog. Worst of all the mud. And the smell of that mud—until it froze hard. What made it smell like that, even behind the lines? Where battles had been fought the smell was different. One could "taste" the smell, if you understand what I mean. In battlefield mud was a "flavour" which seemed to penetrate right up one's nostrils and stay there. It became worse afterwards, as I shall explain later.

In the winter, too, rats would abandon the trenches to some extent and work backwards, and so molest us, or rather, raid our stores. Perhaps even they found the trenches too intensely cold. But one grew accustomed to them as to all else. In the hot weather there had been worse things than rats, in spite of the pains we were at to keep them out, and the efforts of the disinfecting and de-lousing people. I suppose there is really nothing to which one cannot force oneself to become inured.

It was during that winter that a young Canadian threw away his life, close to where we were. He had had one or two "quick ones" (drinks), I was told, and out of bravado offered to bet any man five francs that he would expose himself above a trench for some seconds, or it may have been a minute, though enemy snipers were believed to be watching. Some of his companions were fools enough to accept the bet, and he clambered up and stood there. Not a shot was fired. I have always believed that the German snipers must have guessed what had happened, and intentionally held their fire.

"And to show I didn't do it to get your bloody money," he exclaimed when back in the trench, "I'll do it again for nothing."

He clambered up once more—and was shot dead.

After that—so lacking in humour were some of the authorities—an order was issued that any officer or other rank wilfully exposing himself to the enemy would be court-martialed. Even we women got that order in a different form.

We constantly heard reports of enemy frightfulness, and, as I moved about a good deal in country which the enemy had occupied, I determined to find out if those reports were true. So in villages where horrible outrages were said to have been perpetrated I made very careful inquiries.

"Oh, yes," I was told, "those outrages were committed, there was no doubt of that—but not here. They took place..." and some village farther on would be named. But when I came to that village I received the same reply. Always there had been frightfulness, everybody knew that, but it was—not here. Always somewhere else, only a few miles away. Not once was I able to find a spot where crimes of frightfulness had actually taken place.

And so I wondered if those reports were false, or at least exaggerated. I hoped they were. The enemy spread reports that we committed acts of frightfulness, and I never came across a case of British frightfulness either. I suppose the odious maxim that "all is fair in love and war" prevailed on both sides, and so it was considered fair to spread broadcast atrocious lies. A friend of mine of social importance in England was rung up one day by a Person of Importance and asked to spread a terrible story.

"But is it true?" she asked.

"Don't worry about that," came the reply. "Just tell it to your friends—say you have it on good authority. That is all I ask."

She did not. A week or so later the story was told to her by an acquaintance who said she had it "on the best authority."

Thus were falsehoods spread and the flames of hatred fanned.

The transport drivers and some of the war correspondents saw far more of the war than the fighting troops, because they moved constantly in different parts of the line. I say "some" of the correspondents, because there were some who remained at the Bases in comfortable hotels, or in billets far behind the lines, and founded their reports on scraps of news gathered from various sources, reliable and unreliable. The rest of the "news" they evolved from their imagination. During the early months of the war three young men used to come into the hospital where I was nursing, in the hope of gleaning news from the wounded. Their passports were pre-war, yet for quite a long time they bluffed both French and British military authorities and civilian officials, and so saw what they wanted to see. Suddenly they disappeared, and we heard that Kitchener had packed them back to England. As the war progressed few correspondents were allowed to get near the front.

Spring was again in sight, and with its approach came the great thaw, and then the mud, the everlasting hateful mud increased. It became a nightmare. One lived surrounded by it. Many times even our light cars got stuck and had to be hauled out. Deep holes in the roads could not be seen because they were full to the brim with mud; yet one was supposed to avoid them and one got ticked off if one did not. There is a bit of road in France, somewhere near St. Quentin, I think, that is metalled with live shells, unless they have since been removed. For one night when ammunition was being rushed up to the front, twenty or so yards of roadway were found to have collapsed, smashed up by a shell or shells. There was nothing near at hand with which to repair it, and the ammunition couldn't wait. So after a brief consultation it was decided to mend the road with the only available "material," and that material was live shells. I wonder what that bit of road cost the Government, and if the Government ever heard of that Company Commander's brain wave?

The last time I drove through Albert a great statue at the top of the church had been hit by a shell, which, however, had not dislodged it. The image had fallen forward, and stopped when it reached a right angle, where it lay in a horizontal position, staring down at the earth.

Some of the French people believed that God had arrested its fall, as it was a sacred statue. I heard afterwards that some bright young Australians climbed to the top of the church and wired the statue to prevent its falling further, and that they intended, on the day the war ended, to cut the wires and let the statue crash—and thus lead the French to imagine that a second miracle had happened. Whether they ever did so I do not know.

I saw a good deal of the Australians from first to last, and though I am told they fought well and were wonderfully brave—but what troops were not brave?—I couldn't bring myself to like them. They were so rough and so uncouth—at least those I came across. They had no respect for women, and to walk alone after dark near where they were billeted was to court being insulted—to say the least. They would accost one openly as though one were a street walker, and sometimes make abominable suggestions before one could get away from them. They were as thick-skinned as their own kangaroos, thicker-skinned probably. Which astonished me, for the New Zealanders were not like that. They were courteous and considerate, and I never knew them solicit any woman in khaki. The French, too, hated the Australians, though both Australians and Americans squandered money recklessly. Personally I liked the Americans very much, officers and other ranks. Maybe I was lucky enough to meet the right "bunch."




CHAPTER XII

I got a shock one day.

Gwen came into my room when I was alone—we were in huts just then—put her arms round any neck, kissed me, and then whispered into my ear:

"Connie, I want a man most frightfully."

Though I no longer called myself a moral woman, "a respectable woman" as they would have said at home, I was horrified. Gwen had seemed to me to be so different from other girls I had been meeting, and so clean-minded. She had high ideals, too, and was the last girl I should have expected to say a thing like that—or feel like that. So the war atmosphere—that atmosphere which destroyed the souls of many of us, as it destroyed the bodies of others—had engulfed her too.

For a minute or two I couldn't answer. I held her close. I could feel her rapid breathing as she clung to me.

"I can't help it, Connie," she went on, as I remained silent. "I suppose you are shocked. It has been coming on gradually, this feeling, this desire, though I didn't dare tell you. I feared I might lose your friendship—if you knew. But to-night something overpowered me and I felt I just must tell you. Not angry with me, are you?"

Angry! Who was I to be angry or shocked? Though in my case it was different. I had surrendered because I loved Rupert. But Gwen was not in love. She did not pretend to be. With her it was merely animal desire.

"Gwen," I said at last, "you have upset me. But of course I am not angry, nor am I going to be nasty to you, as you seem to expect. I may be some things, but I am not a hypocrite. Tell me; when did you begin to feel—like that?"

She unbosomed to me herself then. She had first felt like that the first time she had been almost under shell-fire, that night, months ago, when she had suddenly found herself, her courage, her nerve—had "become brave," as she called it. Since then the desire had gradually increased. So what was she to do? She wanted me to tell her. Said I must tell her at once.

Had I been a man, and she a man, we should probably both have laughed, and, had we been stationed at a Base, have directed her to one of those abominable houses; or perhaps to some little girl in an estaminet who did that sort of thing. With we women it was different. It meant so much more. It might even mean an entire change of life—disgrace—ostracism. I was completely at a loss what to advise.

But the thing had to be faced. I couldn't begin to preach to her, tell her how wrong it was, how sinful to think of that sort of thing—I, of all people. Had she known nothing about me I might have lectured her, warned her. But she knew everything about me, for I had made her my confidante.

Then I began to feel annoyed.

"Confound her," I said to myself. "Why can't she behave as she ought to?"

My thought must have flashed into her brain, for the next moment she said:

"I suppose you think I ought to behave myself. I have tried to, darling, really and truly I have—and I have done nothing wrong as yet."

"Then why can't you go on doing nothing wrong, as you call it?"

"Why didn't you, Connie?"

That was a nasty thrust.

"Because I was in love," I said simply. "You are not in love. You want—just that. Any man would do for you, young or old or middle-aged. It is detestable to think about. You are like so many of the men we see out here who go to those horrid houses. I passed a queue of them the other night outside a red-lamp house. Ouch! How they can!"

"I didn't ask you to lecture me, Connie," she answered. "I asked you to advise me. There is nobody else I could ask, nobody I would dare ask. But you are such a darling...."

My brain began to work quickly. Something must be done, some advice be given—but what? Subconsciously I began to think of the young officers I knew.... Gwen couldn't go on like this.... If I didn't advise her she would act without telling me, do something rash or foolish, get hold of some dreadful person perhaps ... there were nasty people among the officers, good soldiers no doubt, but ... I thought of that hospital where many of them were sent.... I thought of Gwen being sent home ... ruined in health for life....

She was standing looking down at me where I sat, waiting for me to speak.

"Look here, darling," I said at last, pulling her on to my knee and kissing her. "This thing has to be faced. Heaven knows what your friends and my friends at home would say if they could hear what I am going to say..."

"They can't hear so it doesn't matter," she cut in quickly. "Go on. Only do be quick about it."

Then I told her. I knew a charming young subaltern, nice-minded, well-bred, rather shy. Good-looking, too, and considerate. I had reason to believe that in France he had lived a clean life—one of the nurses had told me so, though I don't know how she knew. He was alone in a cosy billet close to us, and spent his spare time in reading. I did not for a moment suppose that he had never approached a woman ... but...

It could be arranged without his suspecting anything. I told her that I would arrange it. I would introduce him to her.... I knew that he would like her. She was just the sort of little girl to appeal to him, unless I was much mistaken.

You think me a horrible woman, you people who sat safely at home? And so do you men who got no nearer to the danger zone than Rouen, or perhaps Abbeville or Amiens, because you convinced the Powers that Were that you were indispensable at your Base. At least I expect you do. I can hear you at your dinner-parties declaring that this book is "nothin' but a pack of lies," that you "don't believe the woman went out there at all," and I can hear indignant V.A.D.'s and Waacs and other women workers, fearful lest their own virtue should be held suspect, emphatically contradicting every statement that I have made. But, all the same, you know that what I say is true—true as regards those of us who went through it all, not true, perhaps, concerning those who were all the time far behind the lines. And you men who stayed miles behind the lines need not talk. If your wives knew how you conducted yourselves, particularly those among you who in those war years were already middle-aged or elderly, how astonished they would be—how terribly upset and shocked. Yet I expect that most of them would forgive you, because we women were born to forgive our menfolk.

The war was well advanced when I first saw gassed men. And never will that awful spectacle be blotted from my memory. It was almost dark, and they lay in rows along both sides of a road between two lines of poplars. Though the engine of my car was running—and it was not a silent engine—I could hear them plainly. What that sound was like I cannot describe. It was unlike any sound I had ever heard before, and I hope that I may not live to hear it again; the coughing of a flock of sheep is the nearest approach to it that I can think of. We helped the orderlies, and other soldiers who stood by, to lift them on to stretchers and slide the stretchers into the cars, and all the while, and all the way back to the tents, that heart-rending gasping for life went on. Mercifully, some of them died on the way. Some seemed to suffer less agony if we propped them in a sitting posture instead of letting them lie flat. And the smell of the gas which clung about their clothes. The memory of it even now makes me feel almost sick.

I have a theory as regards gas. Only a woman's theory, but women's theories, you know, sometimes prove to be correct. There is, as I write these lines, an agitation to outlaw poison gas in war. In the next war—if it ever comes, which God forbid—poison gas must be banned by every nation taking part in it. It must be outlawed now. Its manufacture must be stopped. It is too horrible. Too inhuman. That is what the agitators say.

On the contrary, because it is too horrible and too inhuman its manufacture must not be stopped. War is an organized, carefully premeditated atrocity. Who premeditates and organizes war? Certainly not those who will be foremost to take part in it, whose own lives will be endangered, who will themselves suffer loss financially. War is premeditated and organized by men who know that their own lives and the lives of those who are near and dear to them will not be endangered by it. War is organized by men who, whilst shouting about patriotism and the duty of every man to defend his own country and help to protect the weaker nations, know that they themselves are going to benefit by it enormously. Who were the men who directly benefited by the Great War? The men who took part in it either as victors or conquered? I live always with my ears open, and I know as well as you do who the Great People were whom the Great War benefited, who rubbed their hands when it started and would have regretted its ending had their avarice not by then been gratified.

"Go out and fight!" "Go and do your bit!" "What, not in khaki? You ought to be ashamed!" Thus spoke the war lords, who themselves remained at home. The nations were made the cats' paws. Everybody who could fight was pushed out and made to fight. The war lords knew that they themselves would be safe.

And so they will be in the next war if poison gas is outlawed.

Don't let it be outlawed. Increase its output. And let the whole world know that the poison gases being manufactured to-day are thirty times more powerful, more horrible, more deadly, than any that was used in the late war. Tell the world the truth—that if we have another war not the fighting men alone, but every civilian in every town in every country engaged in the war, not excepting the war lords and their kinsfolk and all their belongings, will be put out of existence, and then see if any human being who is not a maniac will lift a finger to help to start a war. Oh, no, there will be no more war so long as that terror, the terror of poison gas, hangs like the sword of Damocles over the heads of men who, if that terror were removed, would be potential war promoters. And who are the men who so much want to outlaw poison gas? They pose as advocates of humanity, express horror at the thought of their fellow-creatures being done to death in lingering internal agony; yet if they knew that another war would raise them on a pinnacle of wealth and that during its progress they themselves could live in safety, far from the scenes of carnage, they would advocate war to-morrow.

I have spoken about fear. The more I saw of the war the more convinced I became that very few men indeed are cowards, no matter to what nation they may belong. And by the word men I mean also women. But I believe that the great majority of us, both men and women, were afraid of being afraid when the crisis came. And we were afraid that others would think we were afraid.

I have many times tried to analyse what fear, or what we call fear, actually is. And what I am now sure of is that it is an excess of uncontrollable emotion. I have seen men literally trembling with this uncontrollable emotion before rising to make a speech at a big public dinner—men, that is, who were unaccustomed to public speech-making. I have seen actors, even famous actors, trembling in the same way before the curtain went up on a first-night performance. I have seen steeplechase-riders shivering through uncontrollable emotion while saddling their mounts—amateur riders, I will admit—yet no sooner were they in the saddle than they became calm and collected. And during the war I saw men sitting on their horses, with chattering teeth, not long before they charged. Uncontrollable emotion, suppressed excitement, crise de nerfs, call it what you like. It was not fear, any more than it was fear that made a corporal tremble from head to foot and become "dithery" one afternoon while shrapnel was coming over; because some time afterwards that corporal was decorated for exceptional valour in the field.

A sight which made a deep impression on me was the expression in the faces of some infantry just back from a bayonet charge, its sole British survivors. The lines about their tight-set jaws, the look in their eyes, in the eyes of all of them—if those men were not demented, temporarily stark and staring mad, then nobody ever has been stark and staring mad. I could not look at them for long. They almost made my heart stop. Yet when I saw them some days later the expression was no longer there; they were again completely normal.

Standing near, I happened to overhear the talk of one or two.

"Yes," one of them was saying, "I 'ear from me old missis larst night, an' she tell me them dahlias I told yer abaht, Bill, was comin' on fine. Five of 'em's purple and the rest is..."

And another:

"An' so 'e says ter me, 'Yer mustn't write in yer letters 'ome as the orficers is doin' their best,' 'e says; 'but yer might say' ('e was jokin', like, was the Capt'in), 'yer might say as 'ow the orficers loves bein' orderly orficers, an' readin' King's Regs., an' so on,' 'e says."

"And what did you say, Tom?"

"Me? Oh, I says to 'im, 'Well, sir,' I says, 'I didn't say as you was doin' yer best, sir'—an' 'e didn't 'arf laugh; I wonder why?"

A third was explaining how he had caught a fox cub and was making a little cage for it out of a ration box, so that one of his "mates," going on leave, could take it home to his children.

"The kiddies'll like that 'ere French fox...."

And to think that the week before those simple-minded men had been murdering their fellow-creatures in a frenzy of maniacal passion!




CHAPTER XIII

During the war actors and singers serving in the army, and all who before had been entertainers of any sort, seemed to cling together. It used to be said that any officer or "other rank" discovered, on his landing in France for the first time, to be an entertainer, was at once ear-marked for a Base, there to amuse senior officers and staff officers! I do not say that that was true.

Though there were play-actors who made good officers, the members of that profession did not, as a whole, show up well during the war; by that I mean that many sound and fit young actors did not join up until conscripted—a proportion of them even then escaped service. Professional footballers, too, might have done better, and certain cricketers whose names now shout at us from the newspaper placards managed to shirk serving. This I was told by more than one M.O. On the other hand, clerks and shop-assistants and other sedentary workers did, many of them, more than their share, which was surprising. And kept their heads, too, which was more surprising. I had been brought up among people in the habit of speaking contemptuously of young men of the clerk type and the shop-assistant type (if ever they condescended to think about such folk). Having seen how those "creatures" conducted themselves during the war, the grit they possessed and the courage they displayed, I hold them now in very high esteem. They had nothing to gain by joining up early, and a great deal to lose. And many of them did lose a great deal.

The ghastly winter was coming to an end—never had I believed such cold to be possible—and there were rumours of a big offensive. After the monotony and gloom and general depression and the disappointments of the past few months the knowledge that something was at last going to happen was inspiriting. How those men in the trenches had been able to survive the frightful cold and the mud and all the other abominations has always seemed to me to be miraculous. I have travelled a great deal since the war, and the cold of places like northern Canada and the northern States is as nothing by comparison.

Rupert and I had met several times, and, as he put it, "renewed our honeymoon." I suppose I hardly need say that no man but Rupert ever attracted me other than platonically. He was the one man in my life to whom I could abandon myself wholly, for whom I would have done anything in the world—given my life, had that been necessary. The reason we were able to meet was that he came occasionally to report at the headquarters where I was stationed during the winter. His work of spying—"intelligence work" he called it—must have been interesting, and to some extent exciting, but never would he tell me what it was or where he had been.

"You might talk about it in your sleep," he said when one day I tried to draw him out. "And you would not be the first to reveal secrets whilst asleep."

I had a letter from my mother at about that time. She rarely wrote. When she did her letters usually had a sting in them. This one had a big sting. Certainly she did not beat about the bush.


"DEAR CONNIE," she wrote, "I have heard from somebody who has seen a good deal of you and knows all that you are doing, that you have been living with a man, that you live with him still sometimes—in sin. I am not going to say what I think about you, how shocked and utterly disgusted I am that a daughter of mine, a daughter for whom I have done so much, for whom I have sacrificed a great part of my life, should repay me by becoming a common prostitute. Your father has tried to defend you, make excuses for you; but then ever since I had the misfortune to marry him I have known all about his secret life and his intrigues. He and I no longer speak. I consider you to be no longer a daughter of mine, and I hope never to see you again. Please do not ever attempt to come to the Rectory, for I have given orders that you are not to be admitted. If your father still wishes to see you I cannot prevent his doing so. But he shall never see you here if I can prevent it. And I shall prevent it.

"Your heart-broken MOTHER."


"Heart-broken." But for that word the letter would have infuriated me. My mother heart-broken! I had sometimes wondered if she had a heart at all. And the way she had treated my dear father from so far back as I could remember! One point in the letter did enrage me. That monstrous lie that my father had led a secret life and had intrigues. That I knew to be utterly false. I felt as I folded the letter that I could have struck my mother for saying such a thing.

But when Rupert had read it he looked serious. "Who told her about you?" he said.

"I have not the slightest idea," I replied truthfully. "Some woman most likely."

"Probably. At the same time that letter makes me anxious. It won't do for that slander to get about amongst your friends. It would make things so unpleasant for you when you go on leave—and afterwards."

"Rupert, darling," I remember exclaiming, "how Victorian you are! Do you suppose I care two snaps what my so-called friends think or say about me? So long as I have you to love, and you go on loving me, that is all that matters so far as I am concerned. We can't marry, because the law prevents it. But we can love each other just the same. And as we were made for each other who can blame us if we live together?"

I told him about Gwen, and what I had done, and at first he was really indignant. If she had those feelings, he declared, that was her funeral and nobody else's. Certainly no concern of mine, and I had acted quite wrongly. I ought to have left her to look after herself, settle her own feelings, or if she wanted to give herself to a man, let her find her own man. Supposing her parents should come to know what I had done? Why, her father would come and murder me....

I let him go on, watched him grow warmer and warmer. When at last he stopped, I marshalled my battery of arguments to prove that, in acting as I had, I had done what was best for Gwen. When I dropped a hint regarding that hospital to which soldiers afflicted with Disease were sent, and told him the number who, I had been told, reported there weekly, he calmed down a little. It had been to save Gwen from risk of a far greater evil that I had affected the introduction.

"And when the war is over," I said, "she will go back to respectability, just as I and so many other women will, and nobody will be the wiser unless somebody 'splits' about them."

"Somebody will split, you may be sure of that," he answered. "Hasn't somebody split about you already? I feel that I am to blame for dragging your name in the mud. And now, Connie, I have to talk about something else, something even more serious, for it has to do with the war. Connie, you can help me—I want your help. Can I depend on you?"

"Don't be silly," I replied, "if it is anything I can do."

"You can do it all right, but—it's not an easy job. You will have to assume a disguise. But nobody at all, not even the authorities, suspects what I propose doing with you."

"It sounds exciting. Do I dress up as a man?"

"No, as an old woman, and make up as an old woman. I have leave to draft you from your present job, or of course I shouldn't ask you."

"What has the old woman got to do?"

"To listen, look—and remember."

"Where?"

"In a mill on the outskirts of a forest. Come and look at my map, and I'll show you the exact spot."

That was all he said then, so far as I can recollect.

Some days later I found myself in a loft up against a roof. Since early morning I had been there, peering through an opening between planks forming the shell of the mill. I was watching a stretch of straight, monotonous road. The mill stood five hundred or so yards from the road, and about the same distance from an apparently unending forest. A high wind blew, had been blowing all day, and it whistled in the rooms beneath me. What I had been looking for had not come along, though there had been a lot of transport—lorries with supplies, lorries with ammunition, lorries with troops. It was now nearly dark, but Rupert had told me on no account to show a light.

I felt very cold, and the waiting and watching had been tedious in the extreme. It must have been past eleven when I heard somebody trying to get in. This did not surprise me, and I clambered down the ladder and went across the creaking floor. A flight of wooden steps outside the mill led from the ground up to the door. Above the howling wind somebody outside called three words in French, and I called out in the same tongue the words that Rupert had told me to. Then I pulled back the block bolt and the door flew open, blown in by the gale. Two men came quickly in—I could not see them against the black night—and I forced back the door behind them and pushed the bolt into its mortise. An electric torchlight flashed in my face, and remained there.

My heart beat very fast. Would they penetrate my disguise?

Then one of them spoke in French, and I replied in the patois of an old Frenchwoman. Questions were put to me in quick succession, but I was ready with the answers. In reply to a question that I had been expecting I produced from under my old skirt the fat envelope which Rupert had given me, and placed it in the hand which emerged from the darkness.

"You have done well," said the voice, after the contents of the envelope had been examined. "Here is your reward. Come again on Tuesday, before daylight, and wait until we come—we may not come that day, or the next day, or the next. But you must wait. You will be well paid again."

He had rather a nice voice. After that he asked questions concerning our troops, mentioned units, inquired their whereabouts—mentioned Rupert's name and questioned me about him. I told him that my replies were "correct to the best of my knowledge," and that seemed to satisfy. The information I had given him had, of course, been entirely false.

As they opened the door to go, a terrific gust of wind tore in, almost carrying me off my feet. With difficulty I forced the door to when they had gone, then hurried up the ladder to the loft, ran across to the opening through which I had been staring all day, and flashed my electric torch five times in quick succession.

My task was done, and I lay down on the bare boards. I was cold and stiff and terribly tired, so tired that I knew I should soon be asleep. I believe I was asleep when something made me start up.

A smell of burning!

In a moment I was on my feet and clambering down the ladder. I could smell the smoke but could not see it. It came from down below. Terrified, I ran to the door and thrust back the block bolt. The door would not open. It was fastened outside!

Now I could hear the fire crackling. Subconsciously I was aware that outside shots were being fired. Frenzied with terror as the door refused to yield, I began to cry out loudly. But the howling wind drowned my voice. Then all at once the door flew open. A light flashed in my eyes. I screamed....

Someone seized me and the light went out. A hand was pressed upon my mouth and Rupert's voice shouted in my ear:

"Stop that damned noise!"

I was picked up and carried out, and down the flight of wooden steps. Close by was an unlighted car, and Rupert pushed me into it. Two men occupied the front seat. I could not see them in the darkness, but their legs got in my way. They sat in silence and motionless. The car shot away across the grass, then swerved into the road. Suddenly its headlights shone out. Rupert was beside me.

"A near escape," he said. "I didn't think they meant to burn their spy; but in war and love everything is justifiable, isn't it? Look."

The car swept round a curve. Away to the left a red glare was in the sky. The gale beat the flames of the blazing mill down upon the land and out across it in a crimson flag.

The glare lit up the inside of the car, and I almost cried out. Propped up on the seat facing us were two men in British uniforms. On their tunics there was blood. Their mouths gaped. Their lifeless eyes seemed to stare into ours.

"What a glorious bit of luck," I heard Rupert saying. "The third fellow, who got away into the forest, has got the plans you gave him—the dud maps and plans!"




CHAPTER XIV

During the months I had known him I had found out little about Rupert, because I had not tried to. He rarely spoke about himself or any of his relatives or friends, and it had not occurred to me that he might possess a title. Not until after the adventure which I have just described did he become communicative concerning himself. Then it was I learnt that he was closely related to an influential diplomat. He knew my father's cousins, also my father's old friend who on the outbreak of the war had suggested my doing my bit. Actually Rupert had at that time indirectly helped me to "enlist," little thinking that one day he would come to know me and that things would happen which had happened.

"Don't tell me that 'the world is very small,'" he said when he had told me this. "I hate platitudes and people who repeat them. But I have always found that one can't meet many people without discovering mutual acquaintances."

He was delighted with what I had done, he said. He had discovered—how, he did not explain—that three enemy spies were somewhere about, working in touch with each other, more or less, and wearing British uniforms. They had as accomplice an old Frenchwoman, who was able to supply them with certain plans and information. The whereabouts of this old woman Rupert had discovered, and when arrested she had the plans on her. She assured him the spies had never actually seen her, so at once he decided to make somebody impersonate her—and at once thought of me. The packet he had given me contained false plans and incorrect information. His chief difficulty lay in discovering the day and the time when the spies would meet the old woman in the mill, and from which direction they would come. They might come in a car along the road, she told him, or out of the forest, or even across country.

So now I knew why Rupert had been able to "commandeer" me, how he came to have so free a hand. For months past he had virtually controlled my movements without my suspecting it.

"It seems dreadful that those spies should have tried to burn their accomplice," I happened to say to him. "I hate the phrase you used that day—'in war that all is justifiable.'"

He laughed.

"But all is fair in war—and love, Connie dear," he replied. "Spies have been caught who were spying for both sides and getting paid by both sides. I shall not be surprised if we find out presently that that old woman, too, was playing the double game. Those three spies—two of them I had to shoot in self-defence—probably suspected that their old woman would let them down after taking the money from them, and they therefore decided not to take any sporting chances."

"What will become of her now?"

"Don't ask me that. All I can tell you is that she will not be shot. And now, Connie, I have another job of work for you if you care to undertake it; not so risky as the last—I can detail somebody else if you prefer not to do it. It will mean your going to London."

The prospect thrilled me, and I told him so. Somehow I longed to see London again. I wanted to see how things at home had changed; or if they had changed at all.

So then he unfolded his plan. He had thought it out himself, he said, and believed he had made it fool-proof. There was still in London a woman of foreign origin who before the war had been secretly notorious. Society had received her in those days, and she had known everybody. She still conducted her two establishments near Bond Street, though many people wondered why she was not interned. Rumours, of course, were rife. It was sometimes hinted that for years she had secretly been employed as procuress to certain prominent members of the Government, and to rich degenerates, and that she was herself very rich. It was also said that because of the knowledge she possessed concerning the private lives of people haut placé, none dared interfere with her.

"But I mean to interfere," Rupert said, "and you are going to help me. Most people have a weak spot, and this woman is no exception. I have discovered that what is often said of her is true—she loves having her fortune told. Every time a new charlatan comes along she at once consults her—or him. Well, you will be the next charlatan, and she will come to consult you. And when she comes you will ask her questions and tell her things—I will coach you in what you will have to say and ask—which will, I am pretty sure, make her compromise herself and so force the Government either to intern her or hound her out of the country. For I am convinced that in London she is spying for the enemy, and keeping them posted in what is happening, so far as she is able to."

I left for England some days later. In London Rupert had a suite of rooms engaged for me, not far from Berkeley Square. They were on the first floor, and luxuriously furnished in Oriental style. The apartment in which I was to interview my client I myself draped, lighting it dimly in a manner which imparted to it an atmosphere of Eastern mystery.

One card only of invitation I had printed, an elaborate, expensive-looking affair with strange arabesques and geometrical figures and an incomprehensible cipher (incomprehensible to me, too), complete with an engraving of the pole star and some Egyptian hieroglyphics. This I posted to her in a registered envelope marked "Private and Confidential." Then I robed myself with scrupulous care in the trappings of the Eastern mystic and clairvoyante I was supposed to represent, and sat down and waited.

I waited only one day. Then my telephone rang, and I was told that a lady wished to make an appointment. No, she would not give her name. How soon could I see her?

This message was brought to me by a girl whom Rupert had appointed to act as my secretary—a cousin of his. I thought it diplomatic to say that I was too busy to see anybody until early in the following week.

She kept her appointment to the minute, and was admitted by the Egyptian dressed in Egyptian costume whom I had hired from a London stores.

The dim light was so arranged that she could not see me distinctly, whereas I could see her face quite clearly. And what an evil face! Coarse, sensual, almost degraded. I could well imagine that she had been, and probably was still, one of the worst types of adventuress.

She was burning with curiosity to be told all about herself, her past and her future. Every question I put to her she answered readily. Not once or twice, but half a dozen times she unwittingly compromised herself. Concealed behind a curtain, my secretary took down in shorthand everything she said. For fully an hour I kept her there. Even then she showed no sign of wanting to end the interview. She kept on asking me questions, some of them quite extraordinary.

As soon as she had gone I sent a code telegram to Rupert. Two days later the woman disappeared from her shops. What happened to her or became of her I was not told.

Though I had been in London over a fortnight, I had not told my father. I could not go home, after that letter from my mother, so I had thought it best to let him think that I was still in France.

London had changed a good deal. The streets had grown darker than ever at night. Air raids were dreaded more than before, and formed one of the principal topics of conversation. One felt, too, that in spite of their outward calm the public had turned panicky. The man in the street rationed himself and his family, but the rich folk went on eating and drinking much as they had always done. The theatres were crowded and so were the restaurants, chiefly with khaki. Yet the gaiety of the night life was obviously forced. Faces looked strained. One could see that the public, realizing at last that the danger of conquest had become grave, nevertheless tried to drive the idea out of their minds. Young men not in khaki had grown far fewer. Everywhere women carried on men's jobs—they drove cars, served as waitresses in men's West End clubs where formerly such an innovation would not have been tolerated, were 'bus conductors, railway guards, post-women, farm-hands, engine cleaners, even street scavengers. And very efficiently they seemed to carry out those duties.

It was wrong of me not to have seen my father, but how could I suspect what was so soon to happen—that I was to get another blow, a double blow this time?

I was back again in France. General Foch had been appointed Chief of Staff of the French Army. I had been there barely three weeks when news came to me that my brother Tom's kite balloon had been brought down in flames and that Tom was dead. Four days later came a telegram from my mother. My father had had a stroke and his condition was critical.

I wanted to rush home at once. At any cost I must see my father once more.

Rupert, now virtually my C.O., was adamant.

"Impossible," he said. Then, after closing the door, he took me in his arms and kissed me.

"You know, darling," he murmured, "I would do anything you ask—if I could. Anything in the world. But we are at war and you are serving just as much as any fighting man is serving. I want you badly at the moment—you have helped me so much and are going to help me much more. Besides, your father would most likely be dead before you got home. You must do as I tell you—or rather as I ask you...."

He was right. Next day I had a wire saying that my father had died, and giving the date of the funeral.

I shall never forget the letter my mother wrote to me after the funeral. I cannot print it. She upbraided me for my "callousness" in not coming home for the funeral, called me ungrateful, hard-hearted—and something much worse. But my boiling indignation soon subsided, for suddenly an access of terrible grief at the loss of both my father and my brother Tom and the recollection that Henry, my favourite brother, was still missing, overwhelmed me. I thought that I literally should have died of misery.

And perhaps I should have but for Rupert. His consideration and kindness and sympathy were as great as any woman's could have been—greater. Though he had so much to occupy his thoughts, and his duties were so important, he found time to spend with me during those dreadful days. And wisely, he kept me busy, to keep my mind from brooding. For I was anxious, too, about my naval brother, from whom I had not heard for several months.

"I want you to return to ambulance work for a little while," Rupert said to me one morning. "They are short of drivers, and I can spare you at the moment, though I never know how soon I may want you again. I am leaving here at once—I mustn't tell you where for, or what I am going to do."

I spent that night with him, and reported next day where he had told me to. He had told me he thought that, where I was going, I should find Gwen, and I did.

That, at any rate, afforded me comfort. We had so much to talk about and she had so much to tell me. I had not seen her for some months, and she looked much more grown up. She no longer ever felt "afraid," she said, and for that, she declared, she had me to thank. And she told me about the youth with whom, those months ago, I had brought her into touch.

"He is going to marry me," she said, "as soon as the war is over."

I remember that I smiled.

"Don't be silly, Gwen," I said. "They all say that. Why, he has hardly left his mother's apron strings. He'll change his mind a dozen times before he really marries."

That annoyed her. She told me that I had grown cynical, which was true. But I had seen so much of men and come to know their ways so well that it was not surprising. And many things had embittered me. The boy I had introduced to her was quite an attractive youth, and I sincerely hoped that he would marry her, but still I had my doubts. He might prove to be the exception. One never knew.

The country we were in now was all new to me, but it was just as ugly and monotonous as the rest of the line, or as much of the line as I had seen. One day while we were resting we noticed a fatigue party digging in a shell-hole that was half full of water. Curiosity made us walk across to see what was happening. Protruding from a side of the hole was a long boot—and there was something in the boot. The men were digging up a body, and we watched, fascinated, as unpleasant spectacles will sometimes fascinate. The man had evidently been buried by the shell that had burst and made the hole, and before long they got him out.

An officer—a captain. But the body was not decomposed. It was dried up almost like a mummy's, and shrunken. The officer (or N.C.O., I forget which) in charge of the fatigue party removed the identity disc and emptied all the pockets. There was a gold cigarette-case with a fleur-de-lis in diamonds at one corner, a knife, a corkscrew, a clinical thermometer, several letters and some money. These the officer tied up in his pocket-handkerchief. The body was left there. I suppose it was buried later, and that the contents of his pockets were sent to his home.

One did not meet many cuddle-pups, as we used to call them, because I think that most of them wangled to remain at home, or at a Base, but we came across a few.

It was Gwen who introduced a delightful specimen to me. A subaltern in the A.S.C., aged about twenty-six. He was about the most precious thing I met during the war. In the horse transport, commonly called H.T., he had only recently come out. He showed me with pride his various properties. Among them was a solid leather suit-case, concave underneath, with a contraption of leather straps to buckle it to the cantle of the saddle. Then he opened it.

It was lined in pale blue silk and fitted with every article necessary for the toilet—silver-backed hair-brushes and combs, little crystal jars with silver screw tops, silver-topped bottles which looked suspiciously like scent bottles, razors and shaving-brushes and tubes of shaving paste and toothpaste, a large folding mirror with a small one alongside it—the latter a magnifier—and many other things.

"So handy, isn't it?" he said, ogling me. "Look in the glass, dear, and you'll see a lovely lady. One just straps it on behind one's saddle, and then no matter where one finds oneself one has everything at hand. Look—this is to boil one's shaving water," and he pulled out a little silver vessel.

Before I had known him a quarter of an hour he had told me that his mother was an honourable, who his father was, where he had been at school, the College at Oxford where he had completed his education, that he had formerly been in the Guards, and other information about himself and his past life. I heard afterwards that his beautiful suit-case was discovered by his Company Commander and confiscated. Still, I dare say he would have fought well enough had the occasion arisen or had he found himself in a tight place. Some of those cuddle-pups who seemed so effeminate and futile fought like tigers, I was told more than once.




CHAPTER XV

Most men who fought in the war will tell you that though they gradually grew accustomed to danger from shells, rifle and machine-gun fire, and so on, they never got accustomed to poison gas, that gas always went on putting the wind up them.

That was what I found. I had been wounded twice by shrapnel, not seriously, yet after a while the explosions and the awful noise during an engagement no longer made my mouth go dry, or made me want to be sick, or terrified me. There is truth in that French saying, C'est le premier pas qui coûte—that I had found, too, in relation to my association with Rupert. In regard to danger, one felt hideously frightened, "nervy," the first, second and perhaps the third time one found oneself within killing distance of shrapnel. After that the strain lessened, and went on lessening. But gas...

There was something so insidious and inhuman about gas. It caused such frightful and unnecessary agony, all except the tear gas, which though painful in the extreme, did not torture. I thank God that I was never gassed, though once I got a breath of it. But I had seen victims of gas often enough to stand ever in dread of it. And the gas gangrene which so often followed. I could hardly bear to nurse men who had been badly gassed.

Life in our area had been comparatively quiet for some weeks; I say comparatively with reason, for it was rarely really quiet; so far as I can remember. There had been wounded to be conveyed to the hospital, sometimes to private billets; supplies to be taken here or there; officers to be driven from place to place; but that was all. Except for a small amount of joy riding in a feeble attempt to forget the war.

I detested some of those joy rides, because there were officers who wanted to be driven about merely because they had a pretty girl to drive them. And on those occasions being driven by a pretty girl meant trying to flirt with her—and sometimes worse. I don't know if it was the actual fighting which inflamed these men's passion, or the fact that many had for so long been kept away from women, and that even when not deprived of women's society the best they could get was the company of professional prostitutes. It was extremely tiresome at times, yet one had to put up with it. Had one not done so the officers—or some of them—would, I know, have retaliated by reporting that one was inefficient. During the war I met men who were fully as spiteful as a spiteful woman.

It was in the summer of that year that I saw American troops for the first time. They were, I think, some of the earlier contingents, and their fine physique impressed me—I was told they came from Alabama. Tall, naturally straight without the aid of drill, the drilling I saw them do rather amused me. No order was given, apparently. One word was shouted, and at once the men hurried into formation, without caring (it seemed to me) how they got there. Their adjutant told me they had been stationed in Winchester for some time on their arrival in England from America. He had been greatly attracted by Winchester, I gathered, and was under the impression that all our English provincial towns were built on that pattern. I regretted having to disillusion him.

They were the most unsophisticated body of men I have ever met, and anxious to learn everything one could tell them about the conduct of the war, army regulations, the duties of the women, the ranks and duties of the British officers they met, what the various badges meant, also all that one could tell them about England. The adjutant I have spoken of told me that the first thing he meant to see in London—if he ever got there—was "your Albert Memorial." He said that since he was a small boy he had longed to see the Albert Memorial! After that he wanted to see "your Westminster Bridge, where Wordsworth wrote his sonnets"! Did Wordsworth write sonnets on Westminster Bridge? I fear that my education was sadly neglected, for I was never told that. But of course I didn't tell him so.

He showed me a French franc and an English shilling.

"Say," he said, "what's the difference here? They're sure alike."

I explained. He looked hard at the head on each coin.

"But it's sure the same guy on both," he said, puzzled.

We did not treat the Americans with courtesy; but perhaps in other areas they did. An English officers' mess and an American officers' mess were but a few hundred yards apart, yet those English officers showed the Americans no hospitality whatever, at least during the weeks I was there. That betrayed great want of tact. I know that no Scottish unit would have cold-shouldered the Americans. Perhaps friendliness was established when they got up near the front. We were far behind the lines at the time I refer to.

"What ho, Yanks! Joined up a bit late, 'aven't yer?"

That was the sort of taunt one heard from our Tommies, and the Americans didn't like it, naturally. The Australians hated the Americans. The New Zealanders fraternized with the Americans. One day a partly intoxicated Australian hooligan held something out to an American.

"Hold this a moment, mate," he said.

The American took hold of it and it exploded, blowing off three of his fingers. The Australian laughed. But you find that species of swine in every nation, I suppose.

Several hills had been captured, and our ambulances were busy again. More slaughter, more shambles, more hateful waste of life. But we drivers had grown callous—perhaps I should say hardened. We could look on death and horrible wounds now without a quiver. But about the future we were anxious. Depressing rumours were everywhere. The newspapers gave no news. The enemy hordes were apparently inexhaustible. According to statistics almost the whole of the German Army had been destroyed some months ago, yet they rolled up in their thousands still, company after company, battery after battery. Their ammunition, too, held out—that also had all been expended, according to statistics. The recent arrival of the Americans, however, cheered us to some extent. They had been in action and had done well. Afterwards at the Bases one heard the Americans jeered at. They boasted of having won the war, it was said. Some of them may have, but I never heard one of them say anything of the sort. And apart from all pretence—did they not win the war? I mean, if America had not joined us in the nick of time, when our men of fifty (I think it was fifty, and married men at that) were being conscripted, should we have won the war?

My opinion is that we should not, and some of our officers who knew what they were talking about thought so too. Even Foch declared, it was said, that Germany would have conquered had America remained neutral.

After an absence of over two months, Rupert turned up unexpectedly. He looked terribly ill and had lost two fingers of his left hand. He would not tell me what had happened.

For a fortnight or more we saw a lot of each other. He was depressed, pessimistic. I had never before seen him pessimistic, and it worried me. But his tremendous affection helped to ease the tension.

"I don't believe this bloody war is ever going to end," he exclaimed one night. "The enemy are still fearfully strong. I've just been in Germany, and I know. Killing them is like killing flies; for every two you kill, three more come along. Darling Connie"—he had me in his arms—"you mustn't worry if I don't come through—do you hear what I say? We've had a good time together, and I'd willingly go through the war again if I had never met you and I knew that the war would bring us together. You are the loveliest ... darlingest..."

But that was more than I could bear. I flung my arms about him again and held him tight, and cried and cried. I couldn't help it. The thought that he might not "come through" seemed to render me insane. I implored him never to say a thing like that again.

So he went on to talk about what we would do together when the war was over. First of all we would travel and travel—he loved travelling as much as I did. We could not, of course, live in England after peace had been declared, as we were living now. Nosey Parkers would nose out the truth, and people would talk, and I should be cut. Not that that would distress me, as I told him. But the possibility of a scandal, and my name being bandied about, seemed to upset him. If only his wife would die ... he had never loved her, he had confided that to me before ... he was a rich man and had a title, and her relatives had been instrumental in bringing about the marriage, to all intents against his will. And less than two years afterwards it had become necessary to have her looked after.

My God, how we loved each other! Surely no man and woman can ever have loved each other more. We had been born to love each other, there could be no doubt about that. No woman had ever before appealed to him, he had told me often, and certainly no other man had ever appealed to me—or has since—or ever will. It was love combined with passion. My very soul became part of his, and his part of mine.

We had just finished dressing, one morning, when a dispatch-rider arrived in great haste. There was, as usual, the long buff envelope—"On His Majesty's Service" marked "Urgent and Confidential." He tore it open, and the envelope enclosed in it. When he had read the contents he initialed the envelope and gave it back to the dispatch-rider.

Then he turned to me. He looked very grave.

"Connie, you must be brave—I mean extra brave," he said in a queer voice.

I could feel my heart thumping as he gazed into my eyes. I guessed what he was going to say. He was ordered on some mission from which he thought he might not return. But I had guessed wrongly.

"Darling," he said after a pause, holding my arms in a tight grip, "I want you to help me once more. This is going to be the riskiest thing I have yet asked you to do. I want you, because I know nobody else whom I could trust as I can trust you. At the same time if you would rather not..."

Oh, the relief of that moment! He was not going to his death. All he wanted was that I should again help him. And all I longed for always was to be able to help him in any way and every way.

We talked it over at breakfast, and after breakfast went to our room in order to arrange the details. Again the idea was his, and again he was going to act on his own initiative and responsibility, and quite secretly.

I had been in the air only once. A joy flight at a Base, when a rather wild young pilot had insisted on taking me up. I did not enjoy that experience. One was not in an enclosed "bus" as one is to-day, and the sensation made me feel dizzy and seasick. And by way of a joke the pilot came down to earth in a vertical spiral—I think he called it the "falling leaf" descent. He thought it fun. I did not. It needed a strong whisky-and-soda to make me feel normal again—the only time, I think, I have really appreciated whisky-and-soda.

Little did I dream that one day I should fly over the enemy's lines and into their country.

And then it happened.

I felt utterly reckless. After all, what did it matter if one were killed—now? My beloved father and two of my brothers were dead; possibly my sailor brother too. There was no other person I cared about in the world but Rupert. And he was with me.

It was a dark night. Far beneath us lights and fires twinkled. One could see guns flashing many miles away. Below us Very lights shot up—they seemed to rise a few inches only. Mere specks of light spreading out.

We knew we were not seen, or enemy 'planes would have been after us and those nasty things they called "archies" have been bursting somewhere near us. The sensation of sneaking, as it were, into the enemy's country under cover of night was thrilling. Yet I felt comparatively calm.

The 'plane dipped its nose. We were descending, gliding towards the earth. I was dressed once more to resemble an old woman, a German frau this time. A wonderful make-up. Rupert had supervised its every detail, and I should not have known myself had I looked into a mirror.

The engine changed its tune. It was slowing down. We were running very fast along a stretch of level ground. The propeller stopped revolving and we came to a standstill.

To the left I could discern a black outline in the darkness. Trees. A wood or a forest. Rupert was helping me to get out. Then the engine roared once more, the 'plane ran away and vanished, and almost at once we heard it soaring overhead.

We were alone. A high wind was blowing, had been blowing since we started—no doubt the reason we had not been attacked, as the 'plane could not be heard. Rupert, disguised as an old German with a beard, took me by the hand, led me along. Now we were among the trees—apparently a forest. Rupert seemed able to see in the dark. Or how could he have found his way through that blackness in the way he did?

"I was here some weeks ago," he said to me. "We have not much farther to go."

It was a warm night. We slept close together in the dilapidated hut deep down in that forest, on a bed of leaves. When at last day dawned and I looked out I could see nothing but trees. Rupert was still asleep. On one side of the hut lay a grass-grown track which disappeared amongst the trees.

I got up and prepared breakfast, using rations we had brought with us. Perfect stillness reigned. What astonished me was that not a bird could be seen or heard. I had noticed that in the French forests too. Had the war frightened them away?

Until nearly midday we sat talking—an ideal spot for love-making. Rupert brought out his maps again, and some plans which he had drawn, and together we studied them carefully.

"You must photograph them on your brain," he said. "Remember, a single false move may mean that we get shot at dawn. Don't you feel afraid, now that we are here, right in the enemy's country?"

Somehow I did not, I don't know why, and I told him so. Perhaps it was difficult to imagine that in this silent solitude danger could be near.

He seemed surprised.

"You certainly have pluck," he said. "A fellow with me last time felt so scared he could hardly speak. I sent him back again and carried on alone."

Then, for a while, we forgot about the war; at least I know I did. And I think I felt happier than ever in my life before. And I thought of Gwen, and wondered if many, or any of our women in France were engaged in work of the sort I was doing then. I had heard it said that Sir Robert Baden Powell—as he was then—was doing "intelligence work" in the heart of the enemy's country. I asked Rupert if it were true.

He laughed, but would not answer. To this day we have not been told what that wonderful old man did during those four eventful years, when nobody ever heard of him. It was the sort of adventure he would, I know, have loved. Perhaps after his death the truth will be revealed.

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