WAAC - Part 3

CHAPTER XVI

Towards midday we left the hut. There was no need to lock the door. Nobody would come there, Rupert said. He doubted if anybody remembered that a hut was there. The owner had been an old woman, and she was dead.

"Are many of our people doing this sort of thing?" I asked as we started along the half-hidden, grass-grown track which disappeared amongst the trees.

But he would not say.

We had walked in single file for half an hour or more, Rupert hobbling along with the help (apparently) of a stout stick, and looking, from behind, about a hundred years old, when the blue sky became visible beyond the trees. Five minutes more, and we emerged from the forest into open country and began to make our way towards a long white road where the dust was being blown up in clouds. There had been no wind in the forest.

Slowly we walked, or rather crawled, side by side Rupert had cut a stick for me in the forest, and the rate of progress of the worn-out old couple, as we appeared to be, could not have exceeded two miles an hour. To right and left, in front and behind, no human being was visible. About three miles ahead in the direction in which we were going a few small houses could just be seen. Nowhere else was there any habitation.

We talked in German now, the German of the peasants, and of old peasants at that. My father had been an excellent linguist. He spoke no less than seven languages fluently and had himself taught me French, Italian and German. Rupert's impersonation of the old German would have deceived German detectives. I felt that everything depended on my not failing.

Beyond the houses was a hamlet, perhaps thirty houses in all. At the entrance to one of them a middle-aged woman was gnawing a bit of black bread. She looked half starved. So did most of the people we saw.

"For the sake of Christ give me something to eat," Rupert said, going close up to her and peering at her through his dark spectacles. "I have had nothing to eat since the day before yesterday, and my poor wife ate her last crust yesterday morning. We have walked all the way from..." he gave the name of some village.

"What, you again?" the woman exclaimed in a hard voice. She looked me up and down. "Old things like you ought to be dead. Of what use are old people? All you do is eat food that our brave soldiers need so badly. Where are you going?"

Rupert, wheezing badly, said that he was going to the town, which was eight miles farther on. He was returning to the institution (a sort of workhouse) that he had come out of the last time he saw her. She had given him food then, he reminded her. Now he was taking his old wife back with him, "but we shall never get there without something to eat. We shall both die by the roadside."

"And a good thing too," the woman answered in the same hard voice. The dead were the happiest now. She wished that she were dead. Those —— English starving them all to death with their God-cursed blockade ... and then she used some blasphemous German adjectives.

"Wait," she said suddenly.

She disappeared into her ugly cottage. It had several broken windows, and a board hanging by a hinge. A minute later she returned with a hunk of black bread and a bit of hard sausage.

"Here," she said, pushing it into Rupert's outstretched hand. "And to hell with you and all like you!"

We were profuse in our expressions of gratitude. Then we turned to go, and she cursed us again.

We gnawed the bread and the hard sausage as we hobbled with our sticks through the village—this, Rupert told me afterwards, was to disarm suspicion. Nobody looked at us or paid the slightest attention. Two cars with officers rushed past. A civilian car came along and the driver cursed us for getting in his way, and also told us we ought both to be dead.

Beyond the village was a cross-roads. We turned to the right.

There was much traffic on this road. Rupert said it was the main road between two towns where troops were stationed. Nobody offered us a lift.

It was late evening when we reached the town. Everywhere there was great activity. One building was brilliantly lit. Some place of amusement. Most of the other houses were almost in darkness. Soldiers were everywhere.

Rupert had been there before, and knew his way about. We made our way through the crowd into a rather disreputable drinking-shop where almost as many women as soldiers were talking noisily, chiefly about the war and what was happening and what was going to happen, though there were notices displayed, as in France, warning everybody to be cautious and not to talk indiscreetly. Many of the men and women were what our men used to call "well oiled."

At the counter Rupert ordered some beer, and fumbled in his shabby clothes for some money. For perhaps ten minutes we stood there, exchanging an occasional remark. And all the while we listened intently.

From that drinking-shop we passed on to another, then to another, then to a fourth. They resembled one another, and everywhere the crowd of soldiers and women talked incessantly. They talked, many of them, without reserve, particularly those among them who had drunk too much. I mingled with the women as much as I could, and talked to some of them—fortunately I am able to speak German very fluently, and some of its dialects. Rupert stayed amongst the men. Our task was to listen to all that was being said, and to remember anything which might prove to be of use.

Finally, late at night, we trudged (apparently wearily) out of the town, and slept under a hedge where we could not be seen—though it was strictly verboten to sleep in the fields.

Thus day after day we went from town to town, and entered drinking-shops where soldiers foregathered with their women. Within a week we had each picked up many items of useful information—we often moved about separately but always on the alert, always listening intently. Nobody questioned us. Nobody suspected. How could they have suspected an old couple who looked so poor and so harmless?

It had been Rupert's idea that we should impersonate a poor old married couple. He had worked alone on the previous occasion, and gleaned a lot of information concerning the enemy's movements—or some of their movements—the whereabouts of this and that unit, their approximate strength, supplies of ammunition, and so forth.

"It is the man in the gutter who knows which horse will win a race—not the owners or the trainers," he used to say. "And it is the man in the gutter who picks up the most accurate bits of news about what is happening at the front."

When spying in the guise of an old, middle-class German, or dressed in German officer's uniform, as he had done once, he had not had great success. Men and women of the middle class remembered the posted notices and were for the most part reticent. If they happened to know something of what was going on they kept it to themselves, and they rarely spoke indiscreetly. When masquerading as an enemy officer he quickly realized that he would soon be discovered—indeed, he had been discovered finally, and shot at, and that was how he came to lose two fingers. Yet he had managed to hide himself and steal a suit of civilian clothes and two nights later reach the spot where the 'plane would, he knew, pick him up if the night were dark and windy. All this he confided to me while we were together in the enemy's territory.

The 'plane was to pick us up at the spot where it had dropped us, on the first dark and windy night after our seventh night across the lines. During those seven days we had collected much useful information, slept four nights under the stars, two nights in a poor lodging-house, and one night in the forest hut. We had covered a considerable distance, for several times we had been given lifts in commercial cars—not once in an army transport. We were back near the forest again, but the moon shone and the wind refused to blow and so we slept once more in the hut, and the night after that, and the night after. On the eleventh night clouds rolled up and rain threatened, and though there was little wind the 'plane circled overhead shortly after midnight—the "tune" of the British engine could readily be distinguished from that of German 'planes.

Rapidly it glided down, landing almost exactly where it had dropped us, and the flash of an electric torch was our signal. Hardly were we in the air when several enemy 'planes started in pursuit.

Then began our flight for life. The enemy 'planes were gaining on us, trying hard to get above us. Soon they opened fire, but our pilot dived and rose and twisted and turned—performed every sort of evolution. Beams of light shot up from the earth, guns below us flashed, shells exploded near us....

Then at last we knew we were back behind our lines.

A thrilling experience. The most thrilling I had, yet less terrifying than that night in the burning mill. A thrilling experience without casualties.

Granted some days' leave, I spent them in ——. I must not name that ruined town, for a reason to be given presently. I had stayed there with my father and my brother Henry during the summer of 1912, and was curious to see what it looked like now. I detested the Bases with their petty squabbles and futile gossip, and the silly friction there seemed always to be between units and between companies and between the regulars and the territorials and the temporary officers. It all seemed so suburban, if I may put it so—I don't wish to offend anybody's susceptibilities. But when I got there the spectacle of that formerly beautiful old city now lying in ruins so upset me that I almost cried. I looked for the hotel where the three of us had spent such happy days. Not a wall of it remained.

Christmas was approaching again, yet the end of the war was still not in sight. Rupert had disappeared some weeks before. He had told me that most likely I should not hear from him, as his movements would be uncertain. I missed him dreadfully—no wife could have longed to see her husband as I longed to see him again. Every night I longed for him, longed to feel his strong arms around me, his passionate kisses, listen to his hot words of endearment. And Gwen had vanished too and left me in silence. Had she tired of the war and gone home to her people? Dear little Gwen. What a plucky girl she was. Her presence had always cheered me, even during her bad attacks of "nerves."

A thing which upset me a good deal was the drastic treatment meted out to the American soldiers by some of their N.C.O.'s. If a British soldier failed to salute an officer he would be "ticked off" by the officer; if he failed twice, he would perhaps be given fatigue duty or some other simple punishment. But an American soldier failing to salute would as likely as not get a crack on the head from an N.C.O.'s wooden staff (it resembled a policeman's) which knocked him flat without stunning him. In one of our canteens the women reared up the first time they saw this happen, and threatened to mutiny if it again occurred in their canteen. The women in a Y.M.C.A. hut also entered a protest when an American soldier was knocked down in that way for some trifling offence.

The French had a queer punishment too; I suppose it was a form of field punishment. On two or three occasions I drove past poilus doing fatigue duty in the fields and holding in their mouths a bar some inches long—it may have been a bit of wood—from which depended a swinging weight. They grinned when we smiled at them, and tried to kiss their hands at us. With that contraption in their mouths they could not speak.

Whenever I wanted a Frenchman to do me a favour—civilian, policeman, or soldier of no matter what rank—I always began by offering him a cigarette. Generally the effect was magical; the offer of that cigarette seemed instantly to establish a sort of entente cordiale, even when the individual had at first seemed disposed to be surly. Of course for a pretty woman most Frenchmen would do anything, but there were some—not many—who were pretty-woman proof. Quite a lot of our own officers, on the other hand, were pretty-woman proof, and I rather admired them for it—most men become such weak creatures when they look into a pair of bright eyes. Who was the author who wrote: "L'amour est la faiblesse des grands hommes"? He might have added: "Et des petits hommes aussi."

I said earlier in this book that I am not enamoured of my own sex—as a body. But during the war the majority of those with whom I had to associate appeared to considerable advantage, if I may use a hackneyed phrase. They were not hypocritical, they were not spiteful, they were not jealous of one another; nor did they back-bite or display intolerance. There were exceptions, however. Three I met during the days I spent in the town I have referred to.

They came from my part of the English Midlands, and at home we had been acquaintances—no more. That, of course, was before the war. They hunted and danced and did the other things that I did and that everybody does who lives in the country and has no particular aim in life beyond trying to enjoy it. They had smiled delightfully when, those years ago, I had told them that I meant to become a hospital nurse and try to get out to France.

"But how splendid of you, Connie," one of them had exclaimed, opening her eyes wide.

"And how plucky!" the other had chimed in. "But you always were like that, weren't you? Always wanting to get about and do things and make yourself useful. I do hope you'll enjoy it, dear. I only wish I could do something...."

"And I, too," added the other (the third was not with them).

"But why can't you?" I said.

Then they looked at each other and gave a little giggle.

"Well, Connie, one can't exactly explain, can one?" the first speaker replied. "You see—well, your father is a parson. Parsons' daughters are expected to help and do the best they can for their fellow-creatures, aren't they? And I am sure you'll find it more interesting and I dare say more exciting than parish work. And you'll meet lots of nice men, I expect."

It was not so much what she said as the tone she said it in that stirred up something inside me. It was the only half-veiled attitude of patronage in the way they both spoke and looked that so annoyed me—"You see—your father is a parson," "only a parson" was the taunt implied. One of them was the daughter of a colonel in the Indian Army (retired); the other the only child of a rich bootmaker (also retired), and they had always tried to make me feel that therefore my social standing was inferior to theirs, that I was not "County" in the sense that they were "County." "And you'll meet lots of nice men, I expect." That remark, meant to sting, I could afford to disregard. I knew so well why it had been said, and how envious the two were of my good looks. Yet I would not have exchanged my looks for the bootmaker's daughter's prospective fortune, or my father for the retired colonel.




CHAPTER XVII

And now I met the two again—I had not seen them since that day—and their friend. All three were in charge of a canteen in ——.

When I went up to the counter they pretended at first not to see me, though I had recognized them at once.

"Why, Dawn," I exclaimed, "what a surprise! I had no idea that you, or any of you, were out here," which was true. "When did you join the Waacs?"

"I wish you wouldn't call us 'Waacs,'" she answered coldly, pushing a cup of tea across the counter to one of the men. "It's so common to talk like that. How are you, B——?" using my surname.

Then the other two joined her.

The manner of all three was distant, not to say cold. I guessed the reason. They had heard some scandal about me. As my mother knew of my attachment for Rupert, that was not surprising.

"We were sorry to hear of your father's death," one of them said presently. "His Will was published in the papers. I suppose you know that."

Of course I knew. And of course I knew why she spoke about it. My father had made a small bequest to Nurse T, to whom he had been so kind when her baby was expected. I might have guessed—though until then it had not occurred to me—that these girls and most of the people I had known in the Midlands, and naturally my mother, would put the worst construction on my dear father's disinterested little act of kindness.

The war had not broadened these girls' outlook. That was obvious. Yet not very surprising, for I gathered that during the months they had been in France they had not been near the danger zone—this town was safe from shelling now. There was, of course, no reason for them to go near it, but again I was forcibly struck by the difference that existed between the women—and the men too—who had seen something of the actual war, and those who had all the time remained in safety. It was rather remarkable.

"Dawn heard a lot about you when she was home on leave," one of them said a little later. "It was rumoured that you were married. Then the rumour was contradicted—by your mother. Nothing in it, I suppose?" glancing down at my hand.

"Nothing at all," I said. "If you believe the rumours we get out here about the war, as our friends at home used to believe the local gossip, you will soon feel convinced that we've no chance of winning the war."

None of them smiled.

"Still," Dawn remarked, half-shutting her eyes in the way she did when saying anything nasty, "there's seldom smoke without fire."

"Oh, there's plenty of fire," I rapped out at her. "That you know quite well. You needn't pretend that you haven't been told—told of my 'affair' with Rupert ——, as I expect you call it. Scandal of that nature couldn't escape being broadcast throughout the country-side in a county like ours."

More men were demanding tea, so the sirens floated away, glad of the excuse to end our talk. I saw them only once again while there, and they looked in the opposite direction.

Twelve years have passed since then. As I could not bear to return to my old home after the war, I had not seen them during those twelve years, until last December, when I caught a glimpse of one of them at a big in-aid-of entertainment in London. I noticed that she wore a wedding-ring, so naturally I did not obtrude. I knew that she would now, more than ever, dislike to be spoken to by a "fallen woman."

Just before Christmas I found myself in Rouen again. It was like returning to civilization. The town was crawling with English, French, American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and native troops. The hotels and restaurants were crowded every night, and the entire War Office staff seemed to have settled down in the Hôtel de la Poste—I think that was the name of it. But the hundreds of loose women who had infested the streets and the restaurants and the places of amusement the last time I had been there were gone. They were accused of spreading disease, I was told, and hounded out of the town.

Depôts which had consisted of a few huts had grown into huge camps. The hospital tents up on the hill had multiplied enormously. Instead of one ship landing troops once or twice a week, troopships now arrived sometimes twice a day, in addition to the ships loaded with supplies and with ammunition. The place had been transformed from a rather sleepy port into a Base humming with activity.

Again I got leave to stay at an hotel—the Hôtel d'Angleterre, facing the river. Officers crowded into it and crowded out. Liquor of many sorts flowed freely. Introductions were waived, perhaps because Christmas was so near, and everybody had begun to hope that at last the war must be nearing its end. Only one or two other women war-workers were staying there, and some nurses who were going home.

The officers bothered me a good deal, but fortunately no bounders were among them.

"We are getting up several theatrical performances," a young major said to me one afternoon. "Could we induce you to take part? We need a beauteous maiden to play the leading rôle in..." he laughed and named the play. "By the way, are you by chance related to...?" he named my brother Lionel. I told him I was, then quickly changed the subject.

The performance was to take place in a week's time, some days after Christmas, of course in aid of a war charity. The major—I will call him Jones, Major Jones—told me that before the war he had been a professional producer. For Lionel he appeared to have a strong admiration, which annoyed me. He had been on tour with him, he said. He presumed he was now fighting.

Anxious not to disgrace my family, I replied that my brother had "joined up long ago."

"Naturally he would," said Major Jones. "And come through all right so far, I hope?"

I told him that up to the present Lionel had not been wounded. I did not add that so far as I knew my gallant brother was still safe in England and drawing his adjutant's pay. I did not suspect that he was then in Ireland and shortly to experience the great adventure of his life.

What a ghastly entertainment that was; ghastly, that is to say, for the unfortunate audience! A musical comedy they called it, but it was neither musical nor comical. We enjoyed it, of course. Amateur players generally do enjoy their own performances. Major Jones did his best to compel his disgruntled and half-rebellious troup to imitate professional actors and actresses, but most of them were quite sure that they knew more about acting and production than he did. During rehearsals the leading characters quarrelled openly, and when he politely expostulated they stopped quarrelling and turned on him. Most of the women were V.A.D.'s, the rest motor-drivers and canteen girls. I am afraid they didn't like me much. They looked upon me as an outsider who had, as I overheard one of them say, "butted in and got all the fat for herself."

"I wish your brother were playing opposite you instead of that conceited pup," Major Jones said to me on the night of the dress rehearsal. "We might then have put up a decent show."

He seemed surprised when I did not reply.

Certainly the "young pup" was a trial. He belonged to some provincial company of amateurs and knew exactly how everything ought to be done, and tried once or twice to put our professional producer in his place.

"Look here, Major, when I produced 'The Best Girl of all' in the town hall at Slowcombe-in-the-Marsh, I made the girls come forward so ... and turn so ... and then retire so...."

"And you shall make them come forward so, and turn so, and then retire so, when you go back to Slowcombe-in-the-Marsh," was the Major's calm reply. "Meanwhile be good enough to shut up, and the company will do what I tell them."

Still, these rehearsals and the performance and the other Christmas-time amusements helped to divert our thoughts from the war, of which everybody was sick to death by that time. Nobody, indeed, seemed to take any further interest in it beyond wondering how soon it would all end. The war had grown stale. It had long ago lost its excitement. The adventure of taking part in it was a thing of the past. We all longed and longed for it to be over so that we might get home once more and live in some sort of comfort. One felt that these amusements were forced and artificial, that underneath them all was that unexpressed yearning for peace to be declared. I don't think that by the end of that year many of the men would have cared who won the war provided the fighting stopped.

On New Year's Eve came a letter from my sailor brother. What a joy that was! For over five months I had not heard from him. He wrote in good spirits, but the letter bore no address and no postmark. He spoke of our father's death and of Henry and Tom's death, yet his letter was comforting. I wondered if he had really felt in good spirits when he wrote.

Rupert was still silent, and the length of his silence began to frighten me. During that Christmas in Rouen I received three proposals of marriage, and one of the proposers was so insistent and persevering that I began to want to get away. At all sorts of hours he would turn up at the Angleterre, and almost every time he produced a present of some sort. It was most embarrassing. Finally, hoping to put an end to his repeated proposals, I told him that I was virtually engaged.

"What do you mean by 'virtually' engaged?" he exclaimed. "I don't believe that you are telling me the truth. And I shall not believe you unless you tell me who the man is."

Therefore I told him.

At once his expression changed.

"Good for you!" he burst out. "Rupert —— is my first cousin, my uncle's son. And he's got a wife already! Oh, don't tell me," he went on quickly. "I know all about old Rupert. A damn fine fellow, good soldier and all that, but he's got a woman in tow—everybody knows about it. You can't marry Rupert, dear, unless he commits bigamy."

"I am the woman he has in tow," I said gently. "But I didn't know that 'everybody knew about it.'"

He stared at me.

"You! But that's impossible. You must be lying!"

"I am not lying. Look."

I produced from inside my tunic a little photograph that Rupert had given me.

"My God!"

Poor boy, he was terribly upset. I told him that he must take back all the presents he had given me, but that he flatly refused to do. He was a fine, generous lad. Quite a lot of men would, under the circumstances, have drawn themselves up, possibly have insulted me. Oh, yes, they would. One or two had already insulted me on finding out about me.

"I am sorry," he said at last. "Of course, dear, I won't bother you any more. But I wish you had told me before, because you have no idea how dreadfully in love with you I am—dreadfully. I can well understand Rupert's having fallen for you, and you for him. I expect that even you don't know what a splendid chap he is. I could tell you things about him—things that he would never dream of telling you himself."

"Oh, I wish you would," I remember saying, hardly knowing what I said.

And so he told me. I had always suspected Rupert of being a hero of some sort. And my suspicion had been correct.

I let the boy kiss me before we parted, and I kissed him in return. He deserved it for his gallantry. I don't believe that many men would have proved so selfless.

I never saw him again. Months later I read that he had been killed in action. The news upset me more than I should have thought possible, seeing how little the thought and sight of death now distressed me or any of us.

Until that joy visit to Rouen—it really was a joy visit, for one's duties were negligible by comparison with the work one had grown accustomed to up the line—I had not realized what an extremely pleasant time some of the officers enjoyed who remained always at a Base. And how they must have chuckled—if they had a sense of humour—on getting letters from their relatives and friends at home expressing anxiety for their safety!

Among the most amusing of these gentlemen was a quaint character I became acquainted with whom you would have imagined to be Commander-in-Chief at least, by the way he talked. He always carried a box-respirator, a steel helmet, a revolver, a field-glass, a filter, various other gadgets which I forget, and on occasions a sword—though I know that he was never orderly officer. He knew exactly what was happening all along the front—though he had never been nearer the front than Abbeville—how the campaign was being conducted, and that it was not being conducted properly, that is to say not in the way that he would have conducted it. In his comfortable billet between a picture theatre and the best restaurant in the town were hung half a dozen large maps marked with little flags. Before those maps he would stand by the hour—if he could get a listener—pointing out "errors of judgment" and "unpardonable mistakes" that men like Haig and Foch had made. He would show you roads where they had turned left instead of keeping straight on (he indicated one road which he said an ammunition column ought to have followed; it had been made impassable by shell-holes weeks before—I happened to know, as I was there), and short cuts that might have been taken instead of the roundabout routes selected (again I could have corrected him, for those short cuts were mostly marsh-land), and so on and so forth. One afternoon five of us, five women drivers, stood solemnly listening to him, when it occurred to a little idiot amongst us to ask him what his own job was, what he was doing in Rouen.

"Me?" he said. "Oh, I am O.C. goats."

Goats were kept to provide food for the native troops. Still, he knew his job and probably did it well. Anything unknown to him concerning goats, their varieties, their ways and habits and peculiarities and the quantity and quality of their milk, cannot have been worth knowing. Before the war he had been a wine merchant in the City, he said.

I was becoming quite attached to Rouen with its quaint seventeenth-century streets and its cosy restaurants and general air of civilization, when an order came through—I was to go up the line again. I was to report first at Abbeville, stopping one night in Neufchatel on the way. With me would be four other cars, and I was to be in charge.




CHAPTER XVIII

I did not know why we had been ordered to stop in Neufchatel for a night, for we could easily have made Abbeville by nightfall.

I knew later.

We all had supper together in the little hotel where we had been instructed to garage our cars. The hotel was almost deserted. Only one table in addition to ours was occupied. But then Neufchatel is a small town, little more than a village.

The patronne, an infirm body who might have been sixty, or even seventy, was most attentive and obliging. During the meal she waddled over to us to find out if we had all we wanted, then asked if she might sit down near us for a few minutes.

Ah, this war! It was affreux. It would never end, she truly believed. Who could have imagined when it began that it would last so long? She was a widow, she told us, and her two sons had been killed. Look—that was her little grandson over there, and she pointed to a small boy standing in the doorway and smiling at us shyly, a pretty little boy, aged about eleven.

"Viens, mon chéri," she called to him.

He came over to us unwillingly, and we talked to him as one talks to small boys, jokingly, patronizingly. And what did the little man think of the war, one of the girls asked him in French.

At that he made a fearful grimace.

"Sales Allemands!" he exclaimed quite ferociously, and we all laughed.

His grandmother told us that several times he had been given a joy-ride to Abbeville by some of our Tommies, in their lorries. He loved that. And they would bring him back next day in one of the returning lorries—transport was daily passing through Neufchatel on its way to Rouen from Abbeville. The child's ambition, it seemed, was to be taken as far as Amiens. He was so interested in the war, the old patronne declared. Once she had heard him say: "Ah, if I could but kill one German myself!"

"Yes, I wish I could—I do wish I could!" the little boy here chipped in, again with that ferocious look which amused us so much. "Mesdemoiselles, could you too not take me in your cars to Abbeville? I would love to go again. The soldiers often take me."

His childish enthusiasm touched me. I think it touched us all. I wondered if there would be harm in my giving him that treat. It would not infringe any army regulation that I knew of. And the girls wondered the same. I think the child's appealing eyes stirred the mother instinct in them.

Well, I was in charge. It rested with me. But on second thoughts I decided that it would be injudicious. Some mishap might befall him....

He looked terribly disappointed when I broke it to him that I could not grant him that little favour. Tears came into his eyes, but his grandmother clasped him to her ample bosom and kissed the crown of his head and called him "mon petit chou" and said "voilà—voilà donc...."

We went to bed early. Next morning—we were to start early—I was inspecting the cars when a sergeant-major came across the road and saluted.

"Miss ——?" he said.

I replied in the odious manner that our women had long ago adopted:

"Speaking."

He handed me an envelope marked "Urgent. Private."

I initialed it, tore it open, pulled out the slip of paper which it contained, and gave him back the envelope.

He saluted and retired.

On the slip of paper was scribbled in pencil:


"Bring the boy along. R."


That was all.

But I could have jumped with delight. Rupert! How did he know that I was here? Perhaps I should see him soon!

I looked again at the slip.

"Bring the boy along." What boy? Well, there was only one boy—that child at the hotel. But why bring him along?

A train of thought ran quickly through my brain. Rupert wanted the boy for some specific reason, of course. Could that reason be... But no. Impossible. Absurd!

When I informed the patronne that after all I saw no reason why her "petit chou" should not be given the joy-ride he wanted so much, she was enchanted. She grasped my hand in both her hands and said I was just like all the other English—so kind, always so aimable.

He sat beside me, but didn't talk much. I saw now that he was older than I had thought—twelve, or possibly thirteen. When he did talk it was always to say something about the war, ask my opinion about it, when I thought it would end, if we had more troops coming along.... The detestation he expressed again and again for the enemy was remarkable, almost as remarkable as his admiration for the British. I asked him about his father and the uncle who had been killed, where they were killed and how long ago, and he told me at once—he had the dates pat.

The first officer I saw when we pulled up in Abbeville was Rupert. He was talking to a sergeant-major, and came forward at once. But he did not smile. His face became stern when he noticed my companion.

"Who is that boy?" he said sharply, looking me straight in the eyes.

I told him. Then, reading something in his eyes, I added:

"I thought there would be no harm in my giving him a joy-ride. He has had joy-rides like this before."

"Has he, indeed! Well, he won't have any more. I never heard of such a thing."

He turned.

"Sergeant-major," he said, "take charge of this boy and see him sent back to Neufchatel at the earliest possible moment—in the next returning car or lorry."

"He can't go before to-morrow, sir."

"To-morrow will do. As early as possible. You must give him a shake-down to-night.

"Report at my billet at six this evening," he said to me; then told me where his billet was. And with that he walked away.

I got to his billet on the stroke of six. He opened the door himself, led the way into his room, shut the door, listened in silence for a moment, then took two steps forward and swept me into his arms.

He was covering me with kisses, pressing me to him with such force that he almost stifled me.

"Darling! Sweetheart! My God, what a joy having you again! If you knew how I have missed you..."

He loved me and fondled me for several minutes before at last letting me go.

"I couldn't write to you or tell you where I was," he said as we sat together on the dirty little French sofa that had black cotton-wool sticking out of one corner. "But I have known your movements—I took pains to be kept posted in them. And I have such lots to tell you. But first of all about that boy. My note must have astonished you. You don't know that that little swine and his pretended grandmother have for weeks been spying for the enemy and telling them quite a lot about movements of troops and so on. We discovered this a few days ago, and at once I got through and immediately it was arranged that you should bring up the convoy and stop at that hotel—the rest you know. That boy used to listen to the men's talk during his joyrides; then, when he was here, pretend that he was sick, and so hang about sometimes for several days. The men would give him money to go to the pictures at night, but we believe that he never once went. Instead he used to disappear and meet someone and repeat all that he had heard, and no doubt get well paid. All that has been practically proved."

"But he is French," I said.

"I know he is. And so is the old woman. Any stories she may have told you about the boy's father or any other relatives being killed in the war were all lies. Heaven knows who his father was. He may have been a German."

"What is to become of him now?"

"The sergeant-major you saw me speaking to has his orders. The boy will be kindly treated, as he was before, given money for the pictures, or whatever the place they go to is, and then he will be followed. To-morrow we shall know who his confederate is—probably a woman. You won't see the little brute again, or the old lady either. And that's that.

"And now let's talk about ourselves. I have an exciting bit of news for you. A fortnight ago my wife died—died suddenly in the sanatorium where she has been confined so long—so now..."

He had me in his arms again and wouldn't let me go. The supreme ecstasy of those moments! The joy of knowing that now nothing need separate us. We could become man and wife on the first opportunity. There would be no need to let an interval elapse after his wife's death, for few people knew he had a wife. Most of his acquaintances believed him to be unmarried, or a widower.

Now that she was dead he told me more about her, and of the misery he had endured during the time they had lived together.. At the time of their marriage she had already seemed rather "queer." Yes, it had all been a terrible mistake.

Well, I would make it up to him now. The war must be nearing its end. One heard that on all sides. The enemy were at last getting worn down. The fresh troops they were bringing up were many of them quite old, judging by the prisoners. Only the Russians in Germany still had the fighting spirit in them. And our blockade had had its effect. In addition more and more American troops were pouring into France, all young and strong and tremendously keen to fight. It was said, too, that an offensive on a mammoth scale was being planned by Foch, an offensive so gigantic that Germany must this time be crushed out of existence.

But we didn't want to think about the war now, and we tried not to. Rupert might have to leave Abbeville suddenly, so we determined to make the most of our time as long as we were together. Our love and passion for each other seemed to have increased, if that were possible. They knew about it in Abbeville, of course. The men laughed, but some of the women drivers and hospital nurses pretended to be shocked, and would look at me askance when I passed, or deliberately look the other way, or stare straight at me and cut me. Yet nothing could distress or annoy me. We should soon be married. What bliss that thought afforded me!

Another letter from my sailor brother. It hinted at news which I had not heard—that many ships had been sunk, some the enemy's, some ours. The hospital ship, Guildford Castle, had been torpedoed. I had a friend nursing in that ship.

Soon afterwards we heard that the Germans had launched a big attack along fifty miles of front beginning near Croiselles, and that we had been driven back. There had been a great onslaught at Vimy Ridge; roads leading to Amiens had been blown to pieces; our supply of ammunition delayed. Depressing, but the talk of Foch's coming blow continued, and it helped to reassure us.

Then came the order that Rupert had expected. He had to leave at once.

Our last night together—and another parting. How long would it be for this time? Now that we were free to marry our parting seemed even more heart-breaking. But perhaps when we met again the world would be at peace.

I was glad to get my own orders about a week later, for Abbeville, now that Rupert had gone, I found intolerable. I was to report at a village I had never heard of—its name I have forgotten—and there would be more ambulance work. From that I knew that the village must be somewhere near the line. It was. It was behind Passchendaele. I had not thought that women would be allowed near there.

I suppose the horrors of that attack and the withdrawal from Passchendaele were as frightful as any I had been near. Partly because the losses were so rapid and on so huge a scale, but also because the whole affair was apparently suicidal. Troops came pouring up, and pouring up, and still pouring up, and we saw them disappear in their thousands in the direction of Passchendaele amid the never-ending thunder and lightning of the guns which kept the air in an unceasing and vibrating roar. And as rapidly as they went up they would be brought back—what was left of them—mangled masses of blood, bits of men, limbs missing, groaning bodies with intestines visible, sometimes khaki shapes that screamed like maniacs when the stretchers were lifted out. Indeed, it was all worse, much worse than the scenes I had witnessed previously.

I have said I had thought I was case-hardened to spectacles of that description, but I discovered that I was not. Or were my worn-out nerves giving way at last? I seemed again to be living in a dream, suffering from hallucinations, enduring a monstrous and apparently unending nightmare. I heard people speak to me, but their words were meaningless. They seemed to talk some tongue I could not understand. And often their voices sounded a long way off.

We were told later that British casualties alone during those few weeks exceeded 300,000. How many men were killed in the Boer War that my father used to talk about when I was a small child? Surely not nearly so many.

Of course there came a shortage of M.O.'s, and everybody in England with a smattering of surgery, who could be spared, was rushed out to France. We heard that in Base hospitals the seriously wounded had sometimes to be nursed by the less seriously wounded. There was a shortage of ambulances too, so that other army transport was requisitioned and civilian transport was commandeered. Frequently the pillows, and even the blankets, would be stolen from our ambulances, for which we were held responsible. Heaven knows who the curs were who did a thing like that.

Always, since I had first seen them in action, those enormous guns had frightened me. Somehow I could not dispel from my imagination the foolish idea that they were alive, that they were some sort of inhuman monsters or devils who revelled in spreading death and devastation and all horrors. I have since been told that some of our war victims of insanity imagined that too, suffered from delusions and racking dreams which showed them guns in fantastic and living shapes terrorizing, terrifying and in other ways mentally torturing them. And I can believe it was so, for had I become insane—and more than once I thought I should—my mental tortures would, I know, have taken those awful forms.

Human endurance has its limit, and the limit of my endurance came during that Passchendaele butchery—guns, rifles, bombs, grenades, mine explosions, tanks, liquid fire, poison gas, when men became casualties much faster than the ticking of a clock.

I broke down, and was taken away, exactly how or when I have no recollection, for everything became a blank suddenly. I came gradually to consciousness in a billet far behind the lines, though not out of sound of the carnage. Gwen was with me. How she came to be there I did not know, or where she came from; yet I know that I owe my life to her. She nursed me back to comparative health, saved my reason too, I firmly believe. If ever there was a ministering angel, Gwen was one.




CHAPTER XIX

Day and night she watched me, nursed me, sat by me during my delirium. She found drugs and special food for me, how and where she never told me. I think she must have "won" them, the army word for pilfering or stealing. When at last I got better I asked her what I had talked about during those periods of delirium, but she would not tell me. All she would say was that my illness had taught her much more about me than she had known before—or suspected. Then she would laugh, and her laughter was infectious.

When fit to report for duty, I heard there had been strange happenings amongst the women workers. Friction, quarrels with superiors, almost a mutiny. Some had voluntarily thrown up their work. Others had been sent home. A woman in high authority had caused all the trouble, apparently. Too overbearing. Too autocratic. That was what they said. Men can bear being bullied by superior officers. Women cannot. They will do anything in reason that they are asked to do, no matter how irksome or distasteful or even dangerous. But women rebel against commands. "Ours not to reason why" was not written by a woman. We want to know the "reason why," particularly when ordered to do what is obviously the wrong thing. Eventually the truth was discovered, and the cause of all the trouble relieved of her authority.

Again I began to wonder what had become of Rupert. Since we had parted in Abbeville I had no news of him, and the doings since then had been so terrible. Had he been mixed up in that carnage? I hardly dared to think. General Foch was now in supreme command, which seemed to please everybody—English, French, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Americans. I met men of all those nations at about that time, and one and all had only praise for Foch as a man, an organizer, a commander and a splendid soldier.

"We shall get through now," was the phrase one heard on all sides.

At the Bases—also at home, I was told—the hatred of everybody for the enemy was intense. Among our fighting men this hatred was less pronounced, if it existed. The men engaged in the fighting had, I believe, a sort of secret respect for the enemy, for their courage, and cleverness. Also for their dogged perseverance in the face of what were fast becoming overwhelming odds. The German prisoners were sullen and resentful. The Austrian were not. The latter—those among them with whom I talked—were quite polite and seemed to be glad to be prisoners—almost happy at being captives. They were ready enough to talk, and it interested me to listen to them. With the German prisoners, however, I made little headway.

Not until after the unparalleled massacre of (I think) March and April, 1918, did that horrible smell—the battlefield smell—one had been forced to endure from time to time, and that I have already spoken of, sweep over northern France and many miles behind the lines. I imagine it to have been made up of the exhalation of putrescent water, stale poison gas, and the effluvia of dead bodies. It was revolting, sickening. It got into one's inside, so that one remained conscious of it even in one's sleep. It penetrated everything—clothing, blankets; one's very body reeked of it. Nor could one grow accustomed to it as one could to other things—things which crawled and stuck. I saw some hydraulically pressed blankets supposed to be vermin-proof "come alive" when pulled apart.

Most writers of war reminiscences have been content to portray the bloodshed horrors of the battlefields. Some have seemed to revel in describing those atrocities. They have barely mentioned that odious smell, the dirt and vermin, the hungry rats, the stinking mud, the blinding, stifling dust. Yet women of refinement accustomed, before the war, to beautiful surroundings and luxurious living, faced it all willingly, endured it without complaining. The war, I confess, made me prouder of my sex than I had ever been before. And the better bred those women were, the greater their fortitude and the stronger their self-control. Those inclined to grumble were almost always of coarser fibre.

One thing the war did for the women who went through it: it made them—with some exceptions—singularly tolerant. Many even of those County women who before the war I had rather despised because they seemed so banal and provincial and self-centred, I grew to admire and respect. For only then did I realize that their upbringing and their environment had been largely to blame for their stupidity and their selfishness. Pulled up by the roots from their native soil and replanted in the middle of the war area, they gradually developed an entirely changed mental attitude. They saw what others did, and set to work to do the same. The feeling of contempt they had entertained for those slightly beneath them socially, also for what are called the lower classes, vanished completely. That astonished me. I had imagined such a change to be impossible.

Four years of war. It was difficult to believe that the four had not been eight or ten, or more. Those peaceful days in the Midlands when one had lived for amusement and to kill time seemed to date back to one's infancy. How dreadful that one could have existed like that when there was so much to be done in the world. The war turned one topsy-turvy, altered one's whole outlook on life. I felt I could never be "pre-war" again. None of us ought ever to have been like that. But in those days one had not known, or even suspected.

One night I awoke suddenly. I thought someone had called to me. I struck a match and looked at my watch. Just half-past two. I heard the call again and knew that I had not been dreaming. Rupert's voice. I was certain of that.

My heart beat faster. I could hear it thumping. Rupert! Where was he? Why had he called to me? What was happening? What had happened?

My body became moist with perspiration I had lit the candle at my bedside, and I sat up and stared about me and at the shadowed corners of the little room. Then I listened. Would he call again? I hoped he would, and yet...

If he called again I should believe the worst.

He must be in danger, I told myself, or he would not have called to me. I looked again at my watch and noted the hour.

Miles away the guns rumbled, making my window rattle. My illness had left its effect; I felt weak, weary and depressed. What if those lovely days and nights were the last we should ever spend together? What if I were never to see Rupert again? Oh, life would be unbearable. I should have to end it that I might rejoin him.

Then I pulled myself together. No—not that. That would be to act the coward—only cowards and the mentally afflicted took their lives, Rupert had once said to me. Alive or dead, he would hate to think me a coward. And everybody in this war had been so brave.

But I could not get to sleep again. That voice had awakened me too thoroughly. At dawn I got up and dressed and went out.

A gorgeous sunrise, as most summer sunrises were in France. Some way down the road troops were clambering into lorries, complete with arms and equipment. On the word of command the drivers set their engines going. Another word of command and the lorries lumbered away along the road. In that direction lay the trenches. Mechanically I watched the lorries disappear. More fodder for the guns.

But it was only a temporary distraction. At the back of my mind lay the thought of that voice I had heard. I knew that I should get no rest before I had news of Rupert, no mental peace.

Later that day I was detailed to meet nurses coming up the line. Others were going home on leave. Some of the latter, I was told, had not had leave for three years and had now been ordered by the M.O. to go home and rest.

The first to come out of the railway station was the golden-haired girl who had been matron in the hospital to which I had reported on my first arrival in France, in 1914. The moment she saw me she rushed forward and actually fell upon my neck; she was that sort, temperamental, emotional.

"You perfect darling!" she exclaimed, to the astonishment and I think disgust of her colleagues. "Fancy meeting you again after all this while! How wonderful you are looking! More beautiful than ever. You were 'the lovely creature' to us—don't you remember?"

Then she told me all that she had done during the past years, and her language while she told me was as unrestrained and exaggerated as it had been when she had appointed me her second in command. She showed me, among other things, a letter from a Very High Personage expressing his satisfaction at and his gratitude for "the splendid way you have worked and the exceptional ability you have displayed..."—I remember the exact words. That had pleased her enormously, and she kept on referring to it.

"You look different, somehow," she said suddenly, looking me up and down critically.

She paused, and stared me in the eyes.

"B——," she said in a low tone, suddenly serious, "I have not been a nurse for nothing. Tell me the truth. You may as well, because I already know it. You are no longer the 'little Puritan' as we used to call you."

I couldn't feel annoyed with her, though I wanted to. She was so natural and frank and outspoken.

"What if I am not?" I said—I could think of nothing else to say.

"Only that I am sorry, B——. I've given up that sort of thing. I fell in love—really in love—and the beast let me down. Worse than that—he threatened to report me if I didn't pay him money."

"You surely didn't pay him!" I exclaimed.

"I had to. It would have been too awful to be sent home in disgrace. And I should have been had he done what he threatened to. Yes, I've had enough of men—though I have to nurse them, it's my job."

She had been in several Base hospitals and knew the scandal about everybody. Her talk, though it amused me, reminded me of pre-war provincial gossip and tittle-tattle, though it lacked the sting of most provincial gossip. She had stories about the lady—of whom everybody seemed to have heard—whose war work was a mystery but who arrived at a Base always on the date a certain famous general was due to arrive; and disappeared as soon as he was gone.

The number of interesting happenings not allowed to be reported in the newspapers was remarkable. When the King visited the troops in France a shell exploded exactly where he had been standing not five minutes before. Nobody at home ever heard about that. I suppose there was always the fear in England that news of that nature might create a scare—but would it have done so? I think not. The only happenings which created a scare in England were the air raids. Even then the only folk really terrified were the poorer classes who, when the alarm sounded, flocked like frightened sheep to take cover in the tube railway stations. I was in London during only two air raids, and those frantic people tearing headlong for the underground stations were pathetic to watch. It never occurred to them to think what would happen in the event of a panic underground; and it would have needed little to start a panic amongst a crowd in that highly-strung state.

Though I saw more of temporary officers than of officers of the regular army—comparatively few regular officers were left after the first eighteen months of the war—a point which struck me was that whereas the regulars always obeyed orders to the letter, the temporaries frequently did not, particularly orders which they knew were bad orders and ought therefore not to have been given. I know that on several occasions disasters were averted through temporary officers having disregarded an order and used their own judgment. And as nothing succeeds like success, the acts of disobedience were intentionally overlooked. The temporaries could afford to take risks of that description. As one of them said to me when we chanced to speak of this—"Soldiering's not my job; if I ever should get court-martialed it wouldn't ruin my career. With the regulars it is different. If I were a regular officer I'd obey orders to the letter, come what might."

Not being descended from soldier stock, I may be biased in favour of civilians. Against the regular officer I wish to say no word—he was a first-rate soldier and I am sure a splendid fighter. Yet I am bound to say that the temporaries with whom I came in contact were for the most part more tactful and generally more intelligent. They could, too, see most questions from both sides; usually the regulars could see things from their own side only. I remember—to give a small example of what I mean—a corporal being severely punished for outstaying his leave without permission. His excuse when he returned two days late was that his wife, was dying—she had just died.

"And did it not occur to you to telegraph and explain the circumstances and give the name and address of your wife's doctor, and ask if your leave might be extended?" his company commander (a regular officer) inquired rather nastily.

It did not occur to him (I feel sure it would have occurred to a temporary officer) that a long telegram from England would have cost at least ten or twelve shillings, and that perhaps the corporal had not the money—which happened to be the case.

Many similar instances of lack of acumen among some of the regular officers I could give if space allowed.

Once or twice during the past years my father's old friend at whose instigation I had become a V.A.D. had written to me. His first letter had come some weeks after the death of his friend, Lord Roberts. I had heard from him, too, soon after my father's death. Now I heard from him again.

It was one of those kindly-worded letters, quite free from "gush," yet straight from the heart, which only nice old men seem to be able to compose. He had heard of my illness—he did not say from whom—and I gathered from the letter that he was anxious about me. I had been abroad long enough, he said; I had "more than done my bit." The war must end soon, whichever side won. If I liked to come home now he would look on it as a favour if I would accept his hospitality "such as it was," for as long as I liked—the longer the better. That was how he put it.

The temptation to accept was great. I saw before me those peaceful pastures stretching away to the home covers, where, as a girl in my teens, I had sometimes accompanied the guns. How in those days I had hated seeing the pheasants crumple up and drop with a dull thud or go crashing into the underwood and bracken. And how I had loathed seeing a fox broken up or dug out after a glorious run—during which fox and all else had been for the time forgotten. Again I saw the fine old mansion with its well-appointed staff—much less well-appointed now, no doubt—and remembered the happy days I had spent there with my father—those cheery house parties—my coming-out ball which the old man had insisted must take place in his house and nowhere else....

To stay there would revive pleasant memories. The temptation to get away from the bestiality and bloodshed which had surrounded me so long, and find myself once more in congenial and civilized surroundings, was almost irresistible.

Then I thought of Rupert. What would he say if I didn't "stick it out," as most of the girls said they meant to do? He might disapprove, and I would not for worlds incur his disapproval. Even if he advised me to accept the invitation—supposing I were to be able to find out what he thought—I felt that secretly he would feel keen disappointment.

That dream? Though so vivid—yes, it must, after all, have been a dream—that dream had passed almost right out of my thoughts. There was another thing, however, a very serious thing, which had to be considered. What if, after all... I was not quite certain yet ... sometimes I dreaded that after all it might be going to happen....

Well, my dear father's old friend, fond of me though I knew him to be, had religious and rigid views. The shock of horror it would give him to be told, supposing it happened ... and his elderly unmarried sister who had shared his home for years and had never cared much about me....

No, the invitation must then and there be declined.

I would make some plausible excuse—my C.O. could not spare me; we women had still much work to do; with fighting all along the line ambulance drivers were badly needed; any excuse of that nature would suffice, for I knew that the old man would believe anything I told him. He would be pleased, too, in a way. He had been so anxious that I should do my bit. He would be gratified to know that I was still anxious to carry on in spite of all that I had gone through.




CHAPTER XX

We were in August, 1918. At no previous period had the joint offensives of the allies been so terrific—or the offensives of the enemy. We heard that General Byng's attack north of the Ancre had resulted in the capture of Beaucourt, Ablainzeville, Bucquoy, Meyermeville, Courcelles and other positions; that we had recaptured Albert—I wondered if the enemy had wreaked their vengeance on it since the happy hours I had spent there with Rupert; that we had secured over five thousand prisoners; that the French had captured Roye and Noyon; that the enemy were beginning to retreat.... These details I find I noted down.

And so once more our spirits began to rise. Faces looked less strained. Eyes rather less anxious. The end must be close at hand now, everybody said. The tanks were helping enormously ... the allies would be victors ... actually our women were beginning to talk about what they would be doing in a few weeks' time, back in their old homes.

A few weeks! The agony was to last for another few months.

But though our spirits rose, our nerves were still badly frayed. For over a year most of us had grown more and more irritable—peevish, snappy. It came from the prolonged mental strain. One could hardly say anything to anybody without receiving a retort that was acid or cynical. I was as bad as anybody, worse than some in that respect. And the men the same, the officers, I mean. To fight against it was useless, so we gave up trying—just let ourselves go.

Let ourselves go in other ways, too. Girls who had controlled their desires during all the time they had been in France, now lost control. And made no secret of it. They grew to be different, and that difference was reflected in their faces. The very expressions of some of them changed. Two, three, four years of bestial war turned women, virtuous to the verge of prudery, into creatures lacking all restraint, all sense of proportion. Some, who had been religious, underwent a transformation—spoke mockingly of religion and all that had to do with it. I heard some in the intensity of their emotional transition and the feverish condition of their nerves, say things that were horribly blasphemous. I hated that. Lack of moral sense is in the nature of mental disease. Blasphemy is not. Actually it shocked me.

Obviously things could not go on as they were. A crisis must come, and it came sooner than I expected. If you rub wood long enough you will get fire (it is said). And so the quickly increasing friction burst at last into flame. For no apparent reason a sort of mutiny broke out. It started when an Irish girl flew into a passion on being found fault with by a superior officer—threatening to strike her.

At once the spirit of rebellion spread. The girls—some of them—refused to obey orders. Their being put virtually under arrest inflamed their friends, who split themselves into little cliques. A small clique supported authority. The rest opposed it. Then the cliques began to quarrel one with another, violent quarrels. The pent-up feelings of everybody had at last found vent.

But suddenly the iron hand of authority struck them. Half a dozen were sent back to England. Another group was confined to camp. A third was severely reprimanded. Four girls were called to orderly room and addressed in person by a High Authority who had appeared unexpectedly—addressed behind closed doors. They had gone in with heads up, jaws set, fire in their eyes, splendidly defiant. They were not going to be dictated to, ordered to do this and that, "bullied like lodging-house slaveys," as one of them prettily put it.

They remained behind those closed doors for over half an hour. I happened to be passing as they came out. Their eyes no longer flamed. They no longer looked defiant or even held their heads up. Two were in tears.

What had been said to them we never found out. It must have been something serious, for from then onward there were no further signs of "rebellion." Peace, comparatively speaking, reigned among the women drivers, V.A.D.'s, canteen attendants and others.

A remark which I happened to overhear amused me. Two colonels who had come up from some Base were having an apéritif in an estaminet.

"At one time," one of them was saying, "I used to control cowboys on a Mexican estancia. I admit I found them a stiff proposition, but by comparison with these ... women ... damme ... I'd like to flog the lot!"

He caught sight of me, lowered his voice, and I heard no more.

Day after day prisoners came tramping through the village—dirty, footsore, with torn uniforms encrusted with mud, many of them capless. Thin, most of them, dejected, worn-out, utterly miserable. Our Tommies gave them cigarettes. The Americans gave them cigars, pipe tobacco and chewing gum. Though not sentimental, I felt sorry for them. I knew that they must loathe this war just as we loathed it, and be longing to get home again just as we were longing to.

Then, as they went on filing past, I wondered how our prisoners were being treated. One had heard awful stories of the enemy's barbarity; Lord Denbigh and others had addressed the troops on this very subject and drawn fearful verbal pictures of the enemy's brutality. But probably, I reflected, the enemy had harrowed the feelings of their troops with similar descriptions of British inhumanity.

Inhumanity! Well, again and again I saw camps prepared for the reception of German and Austrian prisoners, and camps prepared for the reception of our own troops. Without exception the former were luxurious by comparison with the latter.

And still I was without news of Rupert. Several months had passed since I had heard from him. Never before had he been so long silent. Anxiety for his safety seized me once more. I seldom saw a newspaper or any list of casualties. He might be wounded and in hospital. But if that were so he surely would have let me know, provided he knew my whereabouts. He had known my whereabouts before, followed my movements. But perhaps that was now no longer possible. By some means or other I must get news of him. In conversation with officers passing through the village, or reporting there, I made inquiries as tactfully as I could. None of them had heard the name. Yes, they had met officers of his regiment, and of his battalion ... but almost daily changes took place ... so many had been wounded, so many killed. A captain in his regiment had been sent home wounded. The captain who had replaced him had been wounded next day, and both had found themselves in the same hospital ship bound for Blighty.

"Funny, wasn't it?" added my informant.

I didn't think it "funny." Our sense of humour differed.

I met Gwen on my way back to my billet after being told that "funny" story.

"My heaven, Connie," she exclaimed, "what on earth's the matter? You do look down in the mouth. Why, darling, I believe you are going to cry!"

Tactless little idiot! I felt I would like to slap her, and I told her so pretty sharply. Because just then I did very badly want to cry. I was going back to my billet for no other reason than to lock the door and throw myself on my bed and cry my eyes out for a while.

My retort had hurt her. I saw that at once, and was seized with remorse. That I should have rapped out at her like that after the way she had nursed me and all that she had done for me....

"Gwen," I said, "forgive me—forget what I said. I know I look down in the mouth—and I do want to cry. I am feeling so rattled and my nerves are all on edge. I have not had news of Rupert for I don't know how long, and I've just been told that any number of officers in his battalion have been wounded or killed, one after another."

She took my hand and came with me to my billet. As we sat together on the bed she suddenly said:

"I have not told you my news. You worry about uncertainties and meet trouble half-way. If you suffered as I am suffering I believe you would go mad."

That brought me to my senses.

"You?" I exclaimed. "Oh, Gwen, I am sorry. What are you suffering from? What is your news? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I heard it only to-day. Reggie has been blinded. I was coming to tell you when we met. Reggie has been blinded."

"Reggie! You mean..."

"Yes," she interrupted. "Reggie F——, the boy you introduced to me when I told you—well, I needn't remind you. I told you afterwards that he had promised to marry me, and you laughed and said they all said that, or something of the sort. It was true, he was going to marry me...."

She almost choked, then added:

"Now he will probably try to break it off—but now I love him more than ever and he will need me more than ever, so I am applying for leave at once, and if I get it I shall try to go home in the same boat and look after him. And as soon as possible I will make him marry me."

Brave little soul. I put my arms round her and hugged and kissed her and did all I could to soothe her; for as she stopped speaking she had broken down completely and the tears were streaming down her face. What a wretch I had been to speak to her like that.

A peremptory order came through—why were army orders always so peremptory? I was to report elsewhere. There was severe fighting not many miles away, at Cambrai, it was said, in which the Canadians had joined forces with the English. I was to take charge of an ambulance convoy.

The order left me cold. Even a few months ago it would have thrilled me to some extent. But I was sick to death of the whole bloody business; all I longed for was dear old England—and Rupert. I didn't want to see more of the senseless butchery; I never wanted to see any of it, for that matter, though a year or two ago I had foolishly wanted to see something of "what was going on up there." What an age ago that seemed. And how listless I now felt. Then I remembered with a pang that I might at this moment be living peacefully in the delightful old Tudor house in the heart of the Midlands, near my old home, had I accepted my father's friend's offer of hospitality.

I found that the small town I was sent to resembled most of the little towns of the same size that I had seen. The task of inspecting ambulances and attending to my engines and making sure that the girls I was in charge of had all the gadgets prescribed by regulations had become mechanical. These drivers were strangers to me, so, as usual, I paraded them, asked them their names, and instructed them in their duties—though knowing full well that such instruction was superfluous. For every driver under my charge within the past eighteen months or more I had found to be thoroughly efficient and aware of all that she was expected to do. The duds had long ago all been weeded out.

It is curious that though the war destroyed in many of us our faith in religion, it did not destroy our superstitions; rather, it strengthened our belief in them.

Many a time I saw men as well as women blow out a match after lighting two cigarettes with it, though a third cigarette remained to be lit. The sight of crossed knives on the mess table actually upset some of our girls. And when one day a squint-eyed man looked out of a window, some of them clutched their thumbs inside their fists until they had passed out of his sight. All very childish, particularly when you remember the serious proposition we were up against, but I suppose that nothing will ever stamp out superstitions. As I write, there is a woman in London manufacturing mascots for cars, for which she charges never less than twenty-five guineas. For as long as the car has her mascot attached to it the driver cannot, she declares, meet with an accident through collision or in any other way. She has many clients, not all of them women.

What makes me think of all this now is that just before my convoy was due to start, a charming-mannered Roman Catholic padre spoke a few words to each driver, then handed to each a medal, begging her to wear it always. It would "shield them from danger," he solemnly declared. We accepted the medals, of course, for there could be no doubt that the padre meant well and honestly believed that his mascots would protect us. I believe I have mine still.

From what I saw of the many men I nursed in hospitals I think that the "other ranks" were less superstitious than their officers, except the Irish. The Irish were by far the most superstitious of any. Some of them almost mutinied when ordered to board a leave ship which they knew had on board a dead parson.

The fighting at Cambrai was a repetition of the fighting I had seen (from a distance) on and off during the past two years. Except that more tanks were used than ever before. There was the same deafening racket, the same stench, the same display of hideous wounds and mangled bodies, the same feverish non-stop surgical work of the M.O.'s, and the same self-sacrifice on the part of nurses, who were on duty day and night almost without a check.

What greatly impressed me was the amazing fortitude displayed by the Canadians, of whom I saw probably more then than I had seen at any previous time. Their language was occasionally lurid; they used adjectives and oaths which I had never heard before—I don't want to hear them again. But their marvellous self-restraint while M.O.'s operated upon some of them without an anaesthetic served as a lesson to us all—women as well as men—in downright stoicism.

And their consideration and their thoughtfulness! It was astonishing. They thought more about us than about themselves, were so anxious to spare our feelings—what feelings we had left. Yet many were rough fellows who had spent their lives, as one of them aptly put it, "right up against stark Nature." We hear talk at times about "the instincts of a gentleman." Those fellows had the true instincts of Nature's gentlemen—which are the soundest instincts of all.




CHAPTER XXI

Stories of British victories began to come in almost daily, but with our experience of inaccurate, exaggerated, or entirely false reports, we received them with caution. Cambrai had been taken and Le Cateau too—that we knew. There were rumours also of naval victories and sea tragedies.

The first trustworthy news of a recent sea tragedy that reached me came about a fortnight later, in a letter from my brother Lionel. I had not heard from him for months.


"You have of course heard," his letter began, "of the sinking of the mail steamer, Leinster, off the coast of Ireland, and the loss of over four hundred lives; but it is possible you do not know that I was on board her.

"My dear Connie, it was the most thrilling adventure of my life, but I hope never to repeat such an experience. We had not been long out from Dublin, when the Leinster was hit by two torpedoes and at once began to sink rapidly. There was no panic, and of course we all had our safety jackets, so as soon as the boats were full everybody else began jumping into the sea or sliding down ropes.

"The submarine made no attempt to save any of us; it had submerged again at once. I managed to reach a bit of floating wreckage, and I clung to it and it kept me from sinking. But the water was frightfully cold. Some of the lifeboats were overloaded, and all round me people in the water were crying out for help and imploring the boat people to save them.

"Not far from me a boy and a girl had hooked their hands on to the side of a boat and kept on begging the men in her to rescue them. This was one of the overloaded boats, and a major sat in the stern holding a revolver and swearing at them, and shouting that if either tried to clamber in he would shoot them both dead. The girl was quite pretty, a Canadian, and she was actually able to laugh and to call insulting things at the major. Rather wonderful, don't you think? Particularly as one of her arms was broken—she had broken it by falling on some wreckage when she let go the rope she was sliding down into the sea. She looked not much over twenty, and the man, who turned out to be her husband, was only a little older—a captain in the A.S.C. Again and again he implored the major to let his wife get into the boat, but it was no good.

"I was in the water for well over an hour, I should say, and all the time the captain and his wife clung to the boat, she with one hand only, he with one arm round her and supporting her. I could see they were getting too exhausted to hold on much longer, particularly the girl, when suddenly a huge wave capsized the boat, so that some moments later all the men who had been in it were struggling in the water.

"I let go my bit of wreckage and swam to the overturned boat and managed to scramble on to her and clutch hold of the keel. The captain and his wife also hung on to the boat, and one or two others. The major who had held the revolver tried to, but failed, and was drowned. We must have remained like that at least half an hour longer before we were all rescued....

"Well, Connie, that captain and his wife and I presently found ourselves in the same hospital. Their name is M——, and they come from Vancouver and were going back there. They have been married only a short time, and the pluck of both of them, particularly Mrs. M——, was really wonderful.... So I have had my adventure after all, you see. I have quite recovered now and feel none the worse. I was going on leave, and am on leave now and in London, as you see...."


He went on to tell me a lot more about himself, and then wrote, "and how are you getting on, Connie? ... And what is this rumour about you and some blithering officer being in love or engaged to be married or something? Nothing in it, I suppose—and I hope..." and so on and so on.

Then he had a lot to say about his C.O. on the Curragh, where for months he had been stationed, "and the C.O.'s perfectly charming wife and her equally charming unmarried sister...." His C.O.'s name was A——, Colonel A——, whom he described as "a wonderfully capable little Lancashire man—in private life head of some big manufacturing concern, I believe."

Apparently his C.O. and his C.O.'s wife had taken a fancy to him—he said they had—for several times they had invited him to their house to play tennis and shown him hospitality. But Lionel had not been adjutant while on the Curragh, and that he greatly regretted. "To be adjutant gives one such a good standing..." was one of his absurd remarks. Finally he hoped that "this jolly old war" would end soon, as he was "fed up with it and longing to get back to the stage." He had been acting a good deal in "shows" while in Ireland, and added, "they all think no end of my playing."

So that was my brother—Lionel. The only shirker in the family had managed to scrape through the war so far with a whole skin, "a blessed Providence must have guarded me all along," he had the effrontery to say. Then why had "a blessed Providence" not guarded poor brave Henry and Tom? The letter annoyed me intensely. Lionel was as self-satisfied and insufferable as ever, with his conceit and smugness, his tennis and his play-acting. Why, for him the war could have been little more than a sort of picnic or jamboree, with, I had not a doubt, lots of pretty girls to make love to—quite a lot had been there during my time on the Curragh.

It was during the fighting at Cambrai that I witnessed one of the most distressing of the many distressing sights that I beheld during the war. One of the wounded in my ambulance went suddenly mad—raving mad. He could not have been over twenty, and he looked about eighteen; he must have been at school when war broke out. He sat up all at once and began crying for his mother—"Oh, mummy, mummy, come to me—mummy, I want you so..." His voice was suddenly like a child's. Then he began to scream, and when he tried to utter words they were all jumbled up and impossible to make head or tail of. I don't think that anything during the whole of the war upset me more than that—it was so pathetic, so heart-rending. Tears poured down my face as I drove along as quickly as I dared—I was the leading ambulance of the convoy, so could set the pace we travelled at. I wanted to get out of earshot of those dreadful screams by reaching the casualty clearing station in the shortest possible time. The boy was an officer, and I discovered his name. Afterwards, in England, I found out where his home was and—I don't know quite why—I called at his home. He had, as I suspected, been an only child, and worshipped by his parents. Their gratitude at my having come to tell them about him exceeded all bounds; anything I had asked them then I believe they would have done for me. I did not, of course, tell them the truth. Their son had died in hospital (fortunately) some days later, and he had not, I assured them, suffered much. His end, I told them, had been peaceful. I trust they will never read these lines. If they do, I hope they will forgive me. All I wanted was to save them pain so soon after their son's death.

Everywhere now there was more and more talk of peace. All along the line the enemy was giving way. The French occupied Laon. The British occupied Ostend. General Plumer had captured Comines and Halluin and Werviecq and nearly two hundred guns. Douai had been taken. A feeling of exhilaration seized us. At last—at long last the end was coming—and the allies would be the victors. There was wild talk of a triumphal march into Berlin. The men told one another that by hook or by crook the Kaiser would be captured, loaded with chains, marched through the streets of Berlin! The Kaiser was the one man they all seemed to detest; next to him in order of detestation came the Crown Prince. Had you told the men that in less than twelve years' time the Kaiser would be writing long articles for the London newspapers they would have told you that you were "loopy." Had you added that in less than ten years' time Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper king, who throughout the war had been so rabidly pro-German and anti-British, would be entertained at dinner in the biggest hotel in London as the guest of honour of Englishmen of High Position, and that later he would buy a palatial castle in this country, you would probably have been certified insane. Yet those things came to pass.

And all the while, through all this excitement and turmoil, thoughts of Rupert continued to disturb me. Why had he not written? What could have become of him? I had written to a friend in England asking her to look through the newspaper files to find out if his name appeared in any casualty list, and she had replied some days later that she had done so but could not find his name. That cheered me a little. He must be doing intelligence work still, I told myself. And I remembered what Gwen had said about my anticipating trouble and meeting it half-way.

It was towards the end of October that I suddenly collapsed. The M.O. attributed the collapse to war strain, and ordered me home at once.

"Not another hour's work," he said, "or I won't be answerable for the consequences. You must go home to your people and live as quietly as possible. Do nothing. Think of nothing."

He paused, looking at me queerly.

"Have you anything on your mind?" he jerked out.

I lied. I assured him that I had nothing on my mind. Yes, I would "go home to my people," I told him.

My people!

Again we crept out of Havre under cover of night. No lights. Smoking strictly forbidden. The sea was smooth and we travelled at top speed. Like some phantom of darkness we entered Southampton Water.

London had changed again. No doubt now about London's at last realizing that England was in danger. Blackness everywhere. A curious hush. Even the expensive restaurants now rationed their patrons—so far as they dared.

"That bomb what nearly hit the Ritz, and the one in Piccadilly, woke 'em up a bit, miss," said the friendly old waiter at the Berkeley, whom I had known before the war, when I commented on the change. "Pity them bombs didn't come three years ago."

I travelled down to my native county, hired a car in the town, and drove out to the cemetery where my father was buried. Near the lodge of my home on the way back I pulled up. The dear old ivy-grown house looked as friendly as ever. Memories rushed in upon me—happy memories. My childhood. My brothers. My father. And now...

How the world had altered. And my life too; how different. I couldn't bear to look long at my old home, and, half-blinded with tears, I jerked the lever of the hired car and soon my home was far behind me.

All I wanted now was news of Rupert. I searched through a file of The Times, but found nothing in the casualty lists of the past few months. Never had I felt so wretched, so lonely. Lonely in London. It seemed incredible, with all the people I had known in London before the war. I tried to find some of them, but they had changed their addresses.

"Do nothing. Think of nothing." How could I? I engaged a couple of rooms on an upper floor in a small hotel in Shaftesbury Avenue, of all places. They overlooked the street and were not quiet. A quiet hotel I felt would be insufferable.

The chambermaid told me that her sister had been a V.A.D. too, in France. Had I met her? I had not, so far as I knew.

Her sister had died "not a twelve-month before," the chambermaid confided to me. "The poor dear—that ill she got—looked much as you do, miss, the last time I see her. I knew then she weren't long for this world. War strain was what the doctor said she 'ad, poor darling. You'll 'ave to be careful, miss. Very careful. You do look bad, you do."

Every day she told me something more about her sister's symptoms just before her death, described her appearance in detail, explained exactly how she had "passed away" and how beautiful she looked in her coffin.

"A lovely corpse she made, miss; everybody said so. Interred at Kensal Green, and a pretty penny the funeral cost me."

Then one day in Dover Street I met an officer I had known in France. He had lost an arm and was no longer in khaki. He insisted on my lunching with him at his club.

"By the way," he said during the meal, "I met a friend of yours near Pyronne some weeks ago. He was with the Australians. He remembered that I knew you, so he spoke to me about you."

"What was his name?"

"Rupert C."

I had to steady myself. Then I said calmly:

"Oh? How is he?"

"Fit as a fiddle. We had a snack together in his billet. Stout fellow. One of the best. I've seen him do things which deserved the V.C. He and I were at Cambridge together."

I wondered how much he knew. I felt sure that he must know. Yet not by a word or a look did he betray that he knew anything.

My spirits rose. This he noticed, for presently he said, smiling:

"You seem awfully bucked, Miss ——. The war has not done you much harm!"

"Bucked at seeing you, of course," I replied quickly. "I am glad we met. I've been back from France over a week and not met a soul I know until I met you. It's dreadfully depressing being alone in London."

"What about your people?"

"My father died some months ago, and I have lost two brothers in the war," I replied. "Those were 'my people.'"

"Good God. I am sorry. I'd no idea."

He looked embarrassed. Then, as he was going, he said:

"Can't we meet again, Miss ——?"

I said I should be delighted. He wanted my address, but I preferred not to give it—I had discovered my hotel to be none too respectable an establishment. So he gave me his.

On the threshold of his club, as I was leaving, he said quite simply:

"Next time we meet I'll tell you more about Captain C."

So he did know.




CHAPTER XXII

It occurred to me that I ought to give someone my address. Rupert might write to my home address—he had done so before—and at present nobody knew where to find me. One of the women's organizations might want to communicate—perhaps send some official document.

I rang up the lawyers who had acted for my father.

"That you, Miss ——?" came the voice of the senior partner when the clerk had put me through to him. "I am glad you rang up. We have been expecting to hear from you."

"Oh?" I said. "What about?"

"The letter we wrote to you."

"I have had no letter from you."

"But we posted one ten days or a fortnight ago—a most important letter. It went to your home address, I remember; we decided to send it there, not knowing your whereabouts in France. Have you been back long?"

I told him, then asked him what was in the letter.

"I would prefer to tell you in person," was his reply. "Can you come here? The sooner the better."

Wondering what it could be that he wanted to see me about and preferred not to speak about by telephone, I drove at once to the office in the City. Without delay I was shown into his room, where he sat alone. When the door had closed, he looked at me for some moments without speaking.

"I don't know if the information contained in our letter is going to give you a shock, Miss ——," he said, breaking the silence. "It contained bad news—but also good news. I believe you were acquainted—with a Captain C——, Captain Rupert C of the..." he named Rupert's regiment. "I am very sorry to have to tell you that—he is dead. He was shot down whilst flying near St. Mihiel, some weeks ago."

I couldn't speak. I couldn't think. I did not ask him to repeat what he had said. I had heard it too clearly. I just sat there, staring at him stupidly. I seemed to grow cold all over.

In a sort of mist I saw him get up and come to me. Then dully, I heard him say:

"I'll be back in a moment."

He went out of the room and returned with a glass of brandy, which he made me swallow.

"I know it is very terrible, Miss ——, but everything in this war has been terrible. I lost my only son in 1915, you know."

His hand rested lightly on my shoulder.

That pathetic little reminder about his son seemed to rouse me out of my lethargy. Though I could not yet realize that I should never see Rupert again, that the one and only love of my life had gone from me, that from now onward I should be a lone woman—that reminder struck home. I had thought only of myself—for a long time I had thought only of myself and my future happiness. When I came into this office that had still been the thought uppermost in my mind. I had forgotten the misery of the thousands on thousands who had lost husbands, fathers, brothers, sons. They had borne their terrible sorrow bravely. I must bear mine bravely.

"Forgive me," I said with an effort. "He was a very great friend of mine and this news has come so unexpectedly.... If you have nothing more to say I will go back to my hotel now...."

I tried to rise, but felt too weak to get up. His hand was on my shoulder still, and I remember that even during those moments of intense grief it seemed to soothe me a little.

"But I have more to say, my dear," he said in the kindest tone—he had never before called me "my dear." "I have something more to say—something very important. It may even ease your pain a little—though perhaps only a very little. Believe me, you have my very sincerest and deepest sympathy. Shall I tell you now?"

I nodded.

"Captain C was a very rich man. In a Will he made last year he left you a considerable legacy. After his wife's death he made a fresh Will, bequeathing to you alone everything in the world that he possessed."

That was the last straw. I had just managed to bear up when told of his death. This final proof of his intense love for me overwhelmed me. I broke down completely and burst into uncontrollable tears.

Of what happened after that I have only a confused recollection. I know that the kind old lawyer, who had long been a widower, insisted on driving me back to his own home, in Putney; that there I was put to bed and attended by his own doctor; and that for some nights a hospital nurse slept in my room. Later on, when convalescent, I was told that I had been delirious and that the doctor had feared that my brain might give way.

I wonder if the misery at losing a loved husband or father or brother or son is as intense as the agony of losing a lover? Heaven knows I had suffered when my father died and when news had come to me of the death of my brothers, but that suffering bore no comparison to the inconceivable torture I endured during those days which followed the news of Rupert's death. The ancient Greeks, I have been told, believed that when a man and a woman fell in love with each other the spirit of each passed into the other, so that if one of them died the spirit of the dead remained in the survivor, causing intense physical as well as mental agony. That, I believe, may be the truth, for never had I suffered or have I suffered since as I suffered then.

When almost quite well again I returned to my hotel, for the manager and the staff were so civil and obliging that I felt at home there. Later came a letter from my mother, who had not been to see me though the lawyer had thought it right that she should be informed of my illness, and of my temporary residence under his roof, also that she should be given my hotel address. Soon afterwards I was inundated with letters from charitable organizations and from strangers congratulating me on my "good fortune" and then setting forth their wants; also with letters from stockbrokers and financiers and speculators all bent on doing me a good turn by investing some of my fortune for me—the more the better—together with several letters proposing marriage. One and all went into the waste-paper basket.

No, one letter did not. It came from Gwen. She had only just heard of Rupert's death, and about the Will, she said, and she wrote at once to say...

I have that letter still, and shall keep it always. It is the kindest, most considerate, most genuinely sympathetic letter I have ever received. She seemed to be able to read my inmost thoughts, to realize with absolute precision exactly what I felt.

And she was married, she told me! She had married her friend who had been blinded—the letter came from his home in Yorkshire. I cannot express the joy I experienced on reading that. My mind went back to that day months ago when she had come to me and exclaimed: "Connie, I want a man most frightfully."

I remembered how taken aback I had been—shocked, even. She wanted a man. Any man—young—middle-aged—old. It didn't matter. And the man I had found for her had been—the right man!

How ironical. That I should have picked the right man for her like that, at haphazard. That my own beloved should have been taken from me on the eve of peace, after all he had gone through, the risks he had run, and the dangers he had escaped during four years. It destroyed whatever faith I had left in Providence. My mother would no doubt have exclaimed piously, had she known: "You may depend upon it, God knows best what is good for all of us."

The hotel management and staff of course knew about my change of fortune and became, some of them, more polite and obliging than they already were, some obsequious to the verge of servility. The manager "hoped he might be permitted" to congratulate me. His wife, all smirks, "begged leave" to do the same. My chambermaid became suddenly quite cheerful and assured me "there wasn't any lady in the land who better deserved to come into a fortune nor what you do, miss." It was all very gratifying, for it showed me once more the power of money. After that little outburst of emotion she presently went on to tell me that she had just been all the way to Kensal Green to visit her dear sister's grave, which she had found to be terribly neglected—its condition was "something shocking, reelly and trewly, miss." What it needed, I gathered from her talk, was a posh headstone (the adjective she used was far more genteel), but of course poor people like her couldn't afford to give their deceased relatives "no such luxuries" and—well, beggars couldn't be choosers, could they, miss?

Naturally I suggested paying for the headstone. How could I have done otherwise? Besides, "a lovely corpse" deserved a beautiful headstone. Would she like to order it and send me true bill, I asked, or would it suit her better if I handed her the cash?

As I expected, not only would it suit her better to handle the cash, but she thought it would save me the trouble of writing out a cheque and posting it to the tombstones manufacturer.

It was not until later on that one afternoon I chanced to notice a rather striking fur coat proceeding up Regent Street just in front of me. Something about the slope of the shoulders seemed somehow to be familiar, and as I overtook the coat I cast a quick glance at the profile.

Yes, I had not been mistaken. My chambermaid.

I never saw that posh headstone; but then I have never been to Kensal Green and my chambermaid did not suggest that I should go to see it. Indeed she made no further reference to it after I had given her the money to pay for it. Perhaps there was a residue after it had been paid for ... or perhaps it occurred to her that, after all, as her sister would never see the headstone ... or perhaps, she decided that the money might be better spent ... or perhaps...

You never know the working of a chambermaid's brain.

Of course Lionel wrote. His letter was more than ordinarily priggish. "His attention had been drawn" to the paragraph ... "he must say he was astonished.... It seemed rather peculiar, didn't it?..." Anyway he was "glad for your sake, Connie old thing..." and if I would like to do him a good turn there was a wonderful play which could be produced for less than two thousand pounds ... he had read it himself and it was "a sure winner" ... he would play the lead if he found the money....

He didn't find it.

One of the first cheques I signed—a very substantial cheque—went to Gwen, a belated wedding-present. She had stood by me through thick and thin—nursed and tended me hand and foot through my first illness—been so loyal—kept my secret so well—sympathized with and comforted me.

I ought to have been the happiest woman in London—rich, young, good-looking, and normally in excellent health. Probably I should have been but for that tragedy, in spite of the loss of my father and my brothers. Instead I was far from happy. All I had to think about was how best to make use of my very large fortune. I was determined to help all sorts of needy persons, put them on their legs. Indigent gentlewomen in particular I would assist. I had seen so many of them, women of good education brought up in comfortable surroundings and never taught any profitable occupation, left suddenly penniless and of course too proud to solicit aid. I had always felt dreadfully sorry for them. People born poor and brought up in poverty seemed to be looked after by charitable organizations and institutions, even though they chose recklessly to bring a baby into the world every year without caring to think if it would starve or not. And most of the clergy encouraged them to produce children—I had known that before my father and I had discussed that sort of thing. It was almost unbelievable. Yes, I would make the best possible use of the fortune Rupert had left me. Not out of philanthropy. Out of selfishness. Because I knew that to help others was the best way to ensure what happiness there was left for me in the world.

Thinking deeply of all this as I sauntered along the Embankment one morning, I sat down on a bench there to rest. A minute or two later a big policeman approached.

"I wouldn't sit there, miss, if I was you," he said.

"But why not?" I asked in astonishment.

"Well, maybe you've been serving out in France and so don't mind 'em," he replied with a grin.

"What on earth are you talking about?" I said, mystified. Or was he trying to pull my leg?

"Lice, miss. Them big body lice. There's lots on them benches most mornings. Them benches is slept on at night—and not by the likes of you, miss."

But at the word "lice" I had sprung up with a little scream. One had been forced to put up with them in France, sometimes; but I was no longer in France—thank God.

Rupert had taught me never to leave anything to chance, never to use the phrase "it's all right" if there seemed to be a possibility of the matter referred to not being all right.

"Always make sure," he had said to me many a time; and during our trip to Germany, as he had called our flight into the enemy's country, half a dozen overheard words had more than once led to our eventually making some useful discovery.

And so when, after leaving the Embankment, I stood reading the playbills outside a theatre and noticed a man shrug his shoulders and make a grimace of disgust as some little street urchins came along singing our National Anthem—I wondered why the man had done that. Would any patriotic Englishman have shrugged his shoulders and made a grimace like that because he heard the National Anthem being sung, no matter how badly? Particularly at a time like this.

So, though only a tiny incident, it intrigued me. The man appeared to be waiting for somebody, and while I remained staring at the playbills longer than I need have done, a woman came out of the theatre through a side door. At once the man went up to her and, without raising his hat, spoke to her in an undertone.

I rarely forget a face, and I remembered hers. But where had I seen it before? The two were walking away together, slowly, still in conversation. I followed a little way behind them. That woman. Who was she? Then suddenly I remembered. Shortly before the war I had been in London with my father and he had taken me to supper with some Bohemian friends of his. That woman had been among them and we had talked to each other. She had told me—it all came back to me now—that she was secretary to a music impresario—and yes, she had told me she was German by birth but a naturalized Englishwoman.

Presumably she was employed at the theatre we had just left, as she had come out through a door of the administration. Odd that the man she was now with should metaphorically have spat on the ground on hearing our National Anthem sung.

They walked all the way up to Soho Square, all the time deep in conversation, and went into a house there—a house with offices. I went in too, and walked slowly up the stairs behind them. On the second floor the man unlocked a door with a latchkey, went in, followed by the woman, and shut the door. There was no name on the door. I went on past the door and up to the top of the house, as though looking for some other office—this to allay any possibility of their suspecting that I was interested in their movements. Then I came down the stairs again and went out.

A taxi was passing and I hailed it.

"Drop me in Whitehall," I said.

I knew Sir —— ——. He was a friend of my father's. I sent in my card with a line written on it that I should like to see him personally on a matter which might be of importance.

Some days later when I came in for lunch at my hotel I found a telephone message written on a scrap of paper. It ran:


"A gentleman rang up at noon to thank you for calling to see him last Wednesday. He says you did quite right. He gave no name, but said you would understand."


That was all. From that day to this I have not seen Sir —— ——. I have often wondered what those two people were about, and what happened to them.

We now daily expected to hear that peace had been proclaimed. Twice already news had come to my hotel that the war was over, but the report had rightly been discredited. All sorts of fantastic stories were being spread—the Kaiser had died suddenly of heart disease; had been assassinated; had committed suicide. Foch or Haig, or both, had ordered all troops to withdraw. The Royal Academy had been bombed from an aeroplane; it had been—over a year ago—and this was the first the public had heard of it, which shows how well the War Office kept some of its secrets—not all. I wondered who spread all the lies, and why they were spread. Some practical joker, perhaps, for even during the war there existed people with a distorted sense of humour. One of the most outrageous reports—at first widely credited—was that thousands of enemy troops had effected a landing between Blackwater and the Naze, were marching on London, and had already reached Chelmsford!




CHAPTER XXIII

It was Armistice night.

I sat at my window overlooking Shaftesbury Avenue, watching the seething crowd of half-mad revellers surging this way and that, shouting, singing, waving Union Jacks, adding to the pandemonium with rattles and horns and squeaking instruments—some actually letting off fireworks, as though we had not seen enough "fireworks" in France!

I was alone. And being sober I was strangely affected by the curious spectacle. It made me reflect. What proportion of that half-intoxicated crowd had helped in the war in any capacity? Not a big proportion, I felt sure. Probably the noisiest had done least of all. Wedged in the swaying mob—a slowly moving mass of humanity—were women in uniform, but the bulk of the mass was not in uniform.

Then, by gradual degrees, I seemed to inhale the mental "atmosphere" which rose up from the street below, for presently a feeling of restlessness took possession of me. I felt I could no longer stay seated there, calm and alone—a quiet, unemotional, unthrilled observer. Something urged me to get up, to go out and join those wild revellers. I wanted not to—but the "something" dragged me. I tried not to go....

In the downstairs lounge and in every ground-floor room in the hotel were people packed together, beside themselves. The place was like a Bedlam. I was seized and kissed by men and women, as others were but to have tried to resist would have been useless. The hotel manager, catching sight of me, hoisted me on to his shoulder amid squeals of delight from everybody. It was all horrible—yet somehow on that night one seemed to mind it less. On any other occasion, at any other time, the whole thing would have revolted me and made me want to hide. But my will-power, my self-control, now no longer functioned. I had been swept mentally as well as physically into the frenzied melting-pot of Armistice night.

"For meself, I'm sorry the jolly old war's over," a half-intoxicated youth beside me was shouting into a friend's ear. He waved his glass above his head. "Yes, bloody sorry it's over. Here's to the next —— —— old war!" and he drained his glass.

His sentiment annoyed me as much as his disgusting language.

"What have you done in the jolly old war, my lad?" I called to him.

The unexpected question seemed to sober him a little. For some moments he peered at me with bleary, blinking eyes.

"What have I done?" he got out at last. "Mor'n you've done, my pet. For mor'n two years I've been sizin' shells—sizin' shells, hear what I say? Yes, an' gettin' seven quid a week for doin' it. Seven quid for mor'n two years. That's why I'm sorry the ruddy war's over, same as you'd be if you was me—see?"

I went into the street. Piccadilly Circus was a solid block of pedestrians and vehicles mixed up. If nobody was crushed to death that night it was a miracle. Pushed this way and that, jostled, squeezed, only with extreme difficulty was I at last able to board a 'bus and climb on to its top.

And on the top I met a friend face to face. The one-armed captain with whom a few weeks ago I had lunched.

"Splendid!" he exclaimed. "Who'd have thought of meeting you in this galère?"

He had nobody with him, he said. And later he insisted on my having supper with him.

"At the club again," he added. "Impossible to get into any restaurant to-night. London once more lit up. Marvellous, isn't it? Worth going through the war to see a sight like this."

During supper he congratulated me on my good fortune. Someone had told him about it, he said.

"Poor old Rupert," he went on. "He must have been dead when we were speaking of him the other day. Great friend of yours, I suppose."

"Oh, for God's sake shut up!" I remember rudely exclaiming. Then I hastily apologized.

"It's I who ought to apologize, Miss ——," he answered quickly. "I was a fool to speak like that. Do please forgive me."

People said the revelry on Armistice night was less intensive than the "Mafeking" on the declaration of peace after the Boer War. That I do not believe to have been possible.

Almost immediately after the Armistice the chief topic of conversation in London—at least among the people I was now meeting—was the fortunes amassed by "the lucky ones." Yes, they called them that. Comparatively poor men had become rich. Rich men had become enormously wealthy. Many of the latter could not have helped becoming enormously wealthy (had they wanted not to do so), for shipowners, food contractors, manufacturers of khaki and others had been compelled to cater for the Government. Yet, without a doubt, underhand work was done by a body of men who were determined to make as much money as possible out of the war. I almost got into trouble for accepting an invitation to lunch with a Government contractor with whom I had become acquainted at the Deptford Supply Depôt whilst on leave. Fortunately my C.O. at the time was a woman of intelligence; also fortunately she knew all about me.

"I want to have a talk with you," she said one afternoon. "Come to me at six this evening."

And when we met at six that evening she explained to me the enormity of my "crime." To lunch with or accept hospitality from a contractor, or even from a contractor's representative, was in the eyes of the War Office tantamount to accepting a bribe. She told me of a subaltern who, having thoughtlessly accepted a gift of cigars from an army contractor's representative, had got himself into very hot water indeed.

Those contracts! I could tell some tales about some of them. But even after all these years it might be injudicious.

Yes, I am glad I went through the war. But never again. Never. Never. Nor do I care to dwell upon its memory, as I have had to do whilst writing this book. Since the war I have travelled up and down the world—I have wandered in North and South America, in China and Japan and the Malay States, in Australia and New Zealand, India and Africa and Arabia, and in Europe. Except in a few of the more uncivilized States of Central Europe, I have found educated people everywhere to be strongly antagonistic to war. Not necessarily on humanitarian grounds. Humanitarianism is at a low ebb in some countries still. But on common sense and practical grounds. They say to one another: "After all, of what use was the Great War? Who but a small section of the world's community benefited by it? It threw the world back a hundred years at least. War is senseless, stupid, unnecessary, and ruinous to every nation involved in it." Yet my opinion—and I have travelled always with my eyes and ears open—is that if we go on telling one another that another war will come, must come, is inevitable—it will come.

During the many months I travelled in the United States I never heard an American declare that America won the war, though, as I have said already, before I crossed the Atlantic I had been assured that I should find all Americans in their own country boasting that it did. And in every country I visited I met men who had fought on one or other of our fronts, and some who had fought against us. They were back in civil life, and though some appeared to have enjoyed the excitement, such as it was—so much of the war was intensely monotonous—not one of them wanted ever to serve in another campaign. Many declared quite frankly that if another war broke out they would stay at home and sell something to a Government!

"Not heroic, miss, I know, but next time we'll let others pull the chestnuts out of the fire," so many of them said, or expressed themselves to that effect.

Among the cowboys of Canada whose villages and camps I stayed in—splendid men, most of them, so courteous and so considerate, they could teach some of our London youths a lesson in that respect—I loved to sit and listen to their stories of the war. What varied and wonderful experiences some of them had had. Cave men to look at many were, rough of speech, yet wholly devoid of nonsense and hypocrisy—sound through and through. If I had a young sister I would sooner let her loose among those cowboys than I would let her loose in many a West End drawing-room, judging by my own experiences here in London.

The war brought about a great revolution in the thoughts and ideas of people in many parts of the world. Yet in our own dear little island there still dwell country folk on whom it made no lasting impression. They sat at home during those four years, and over their teacups chattered about the war; they read the little that was allowed to be published about it in the newspapers; they raised their eyes and registered distress and horror when the casualty lists grew longer and longer; they hoped and prayed that the war might soon end. But they were never in touch with it mentally; they never caught the spirit of the war or allowed it to affect or soften their natures in any way; and when it was all over their outlook on life remained exactly as it had been in pre-war years.

I have revisited the war area only once. After my years of travel I summoned up courage.

I went to see the spot where my beloved lies buried.

He had died about the day I had dreamed that he had called me. Or was it no dream? Can that voice I heard actually have been his?

I went to see places I had known, and battlefields I had known. The battlefields had disappeared. A completely new country-side had spread over the land. I could find no familiar landmark. Not one. And the bombarded towns, what had become of them? Where had these new cities with modern architecture and strange streets sprung from? They looked like enormous toy towns taken out of sawdust and tissue paper and put together.

It was summer. Motor-coaches packed with excursionists rolled along the roads between the rows of tall poplars, and along the white, straight roads beyond them without poplars. Along that dread road where the endless grey snake with the red crosses upon its back had crawled and crawled, hooting cars and chars-à-bancs rushed. I stopped my car at Puchevillers and tried to find the site where the hospital tents had stood—the casualty clearing station.

I could not locate it.

And the trenches. Yes, there were trenches. But what trenches! Whitewashed sandbags of cement. Whitewashed bays. Whitewashed duckboards. No mud. No dust. They must clean them daily with vacuum cleaners!

Yes, you can go into those spotless trenches. And you can pick up one of the dummy rifles supplied for the amusement of "visitors to the battlefields," and you can stand on the firestep and rest the rifle and pull the trigger and play at being soldiers.

"Look out, Maudie—I'm going to shoot you!"

Click.

Great fun.

"Oh, Charlie, just look what I've come to—a lovely great dugout! Let's explore it together."

Blasts on a hooter in the distance. More blasts as it approaches.

"We stop here one hour, ladies and gentlemen. You'll have plenty of time for lunch after visiting the trenches."

Visiting the trenches!

Crowds are "visiting the trenches" as I stand there. Many are young people. There is rough horseplay as they scamper in and out. Squeals of merriment. Occasionally a shriek. Then...

"Come along, Florrie, and 'ave yer lunch. We ain't got not too much time. 'Ere, Albert—open this."

A cork pops.

And on this hallowed spot men in their dozens, in their hundreds perhaps, died in agony.

The visitors mean no harm, of course. They just don't think. Perhaps some of them try not to think, as we tried not to think during those years.

They are singing "Tipperary."

My God! That is more than I can bear. When I hear "Tipperary" I see again those columns marching—marching—marching, singing it in chorus—marching to their death and worse than death, to their agony of gas and mutilation.

Here and there lonely figures—men—women—middle-aged, old, stand silent. Some of the men have taken off their hats. They, too, are thinking—looking backward. They appear unconscious of the presence of the picnic parties and of the young people playing at being soldiers.

"En voiture s'il vous plait, mesdames et messieurs."

"Our next stopping-place will be Vimy Ridge, where you can have your tea and then..."

Herbert Asquith's lines creep into my brain:

"One last salute: the bayonets clash and glisten;
With arms reversed we go without a sound:
One more has joined the men who lie and listen
To us who march upon their burial ground."




------ READ ------

WAAC
DEMOBILIZED

By the SAME AUTHOR.

Her Private Affairs
---- 1918-1930 ----




T. WERNER LAURIE LTD., 24 & 26, Water Lane, E.C.4.


THE STORY OF A TERRIBLE LIFE

BY

BASIL TOZER

Author of "Recollections of a Rolling Stone," etc.

Though this book is banned by most of the lending libraries, it has
been read and approved by the great majority of serious-minded men and
women throughout Great Britain, America, Australia and South Africa.

"The Story of a Terrible Life" is in no way prurient or pornographic.
It tells the true life story of a notorious female trafficker with whom
the author--whose "Recollections of a Rolling Stone" will be
remembered--was at one time compelled to associate.

"The Story of a Terrible Life" has led already to the drafting of a
Parliamentary Bill which will render "the obtaining of women by
conspiracy, fraud or intimidation ... punishable with penal servitude
for seven years, and in its worst forms for ten years."



NOTABLE NOVELS


CHARLOTTE LOWENSKOLD. By SELMA LAGERLÖF.


ELECTRIC LOVE. By VICTORIA CROSS.
LOVERS AND LUGGERS. By GURNEY SLADE.
THE CHRONICLES OF A GIGOLO. By JULIAN SWIFT.
UP NORTH. By Captain T. LUND.
NUMBER 56. By CATULLE MENDES.
JIM TRENT. By REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN.
THIS YEAR, NEXT YEAR. By J. W. DRAWBELL.
WESTON OF THE ROYAL NORTH-WEST MOUNT POLICE. By Captain T. LUND.
PIERRE AND JEAN. By GUY DE MAUPASSANT.
BEATRICE. By ARTHUR SCHNITZLER.


POTIPHAR'S WIFE. By EDGAR C. MIDDLETON.
THE FREE LOVERS. By R. W. KAUFFMAN.
OVER LIFE'S EDGE. By VICTORIA CROSS.


THE ADVENTURES OF JOHN JOHNS.


ECLECTIC LIBRARY (New Vols.)

BEFORE ADAM. By JACK LONDON.
BANNED BY THE CENSOR. By EDGAR MIDDLETON.
THE GENERAL'S RING. By SELMA LAGERLÖF.


THE CATHEDRAL SERIES


THE CATHEDRALS OP ENGLAND AND WALES. By T. FRANCIS BUMPUS. With 8
Illustrations in colour and 52 Half-tone Pictures.

THE CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES OF ITALY. By T. FRANCIS BUMPUS. 8
Illustrations in colour and 71 Half-tone Plates.

THE CATHEDRALS OF FRANCE. Royal 8vo. (10 x 6 3/4). Cloth Gilt. With
8 Illustrations in colour from the original paintings by ROBERT
MARSHALL and 70 Half-tone Plates.

THE CATHEDRALS OF BELGIUM. By T. FRANCIS BUMPUS. With Illustrations
in colour from water-colours, paintings, and many Half-tone Plates.

ANCIENT LONDON CHURCHES. By T. FRANCIS BUMPUS. Author of "The
Cathedrals of England and Wales," "The Cathedrals of Northern France,"
etc. With Frontispiece in three colours by GORDON HOME and 35
Illustrations by W. J. ROBERTS and F. WILTON FEN.

OLD ENGLISH TOWNS. By E. M. LANG and WILLIAM ANDREWS. A New Edition
in one volume with a three-coloured Frontispiece and 31 Half-tone
Plates.



THE LIBRARY OF SEX EDUCATION


LOVE AND MARRIAGE. By WINFIELD SCOTT HALL. Author of "Sexual
Knowledge."

THE STERILIZATION OF THE GREAT UNFIT. By WALTER M. GALLICHAN.

THE TRUTH ABOUT BIRTH CONTROL. By GEORGE RYLEY SCOTT, F.R.A.I.

SEXUAL APATHY AND COLDNESS IN WOMEN. By WALTER M. GALLICHAN.

SEXUAL KNOWLEDGE. By WINFIELD SCOTT HALL, M.D. Illustrated.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MARRIAGE. With a Chapter on "Birth Control." By
WALTER M. GALLICHAN.

STERILE MARRIAGES. By J. DULBERG, M.D., J.P.

A TEXTBOOK OF SEX EDUCATION. By WALTER M. GALLICHAN.

LETTERS TO A YOUNG MAN ON LOVE AND HEALTH. By WALTER M. GALLICHAN.

THE FRUIT OF THE FAMILY TREE. By ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM. Illustrations.



THE ROMANCES OF PIERRE LOTI

A very dignified issue of the works of this great author at a popular
price. Cloth, with coloured frontispiece.

Sir Edmund Gosse said: "Pierre Loti at his best was unquestionably the
finest descriptive writer of his day."

"Beautifully printed on excellent paper, solidly and handsomely bound,
the volumes are nothing less than marvels of cheapness."--Sunday Times.

"The format is altogether attractive and the delicate tinted
frontispiece expresses at once the spirit of the dream."--The Observer.


LIST OF THE SERIES

A TALE OF THE PYRENEES.
THE SAHARA.
INDIA.
EGYPT.
MOROCCO.
SIAM.
CONSTANTINOPLE.
JERUSALEM.
JAPAN.
MADAME PRUNE.
A TALE OF BRITTANY.
THE ICELAND FISHERMAN.
THE MARRIAGE OF LOTI.
THE LIFE OF LOTI.




THE STORIES OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Newly translated into English by MARJORIE LAURIE

Volume 1 BEL AMI.
Volume 2 A LIFE.
Volume 3 BOULE DE SUIF.
Volume 4 THE HOUSE OF MADAME TELLIER.
Volume 5 MASTER PASSION.
Volume 6 NOTRE COEUR.
Volume 7 MONT-ORIOL.
Volume 8 YVETTE AND OTHER STORIES.
Volume 9 TALES OF DAY AND NIGHT.
Volume 10 PIERRE AND JEAN.
Volume 11 THE LIFE OF MAUPASSANT. By ROBERT H. SHERARD.



BY UPTON SINCLAIR

BOSTON.
OIL. A Novel.
SYLVIA'S MARRIAGE.
LOVE'S PILGRIMAGE.
THE JUNGLE.
THE MILLENNIUM.
THEY CALL ME CARPENTER.
THE SPY.


BY JOAN CONQUEST

THE SALE.
CHASTITY.
AN EASTERN LOVER.
DESERT LOVE.
FORBIDDEN.
HAWK OF EGYPT.
LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE.


BY MAURICE DEKOBRA

THE MADONNA OF THE SLEEPING CARS.
WINGS OF DESIRE.
THE PHANTOM GONDOLA.
FLAMES OF VELVET.
VENUS ON WHEELS.
THE CRIMSON SMILE: Stories of Russian Humour.


THE NOVELS OF ARTHUR BINSTEAD ("The Pitcher")

With Introduction by J. B. BOOTH, author of "Master and Men."

VOL 1. A PINK 'UN AND A PELICAN--PITCHER IN PARADISE.
VOL 2. HOUNDSDITCH DAY BY DAY--GALS' GOSSIP--MORE GALS'
GOSSIP--MOP FAIR.






The Sale By Joan Conquest
Chastity " Joan Conquest
Desert Love " Joan Conquest
The Hawk of Egypt " Joan Conquest
Leonie of the Jungle " Joan Conquest
An Eastern Lover " Joan Conquest
Madonna of the Sleeping Cars " Maurice Dekobra
The Crimson Smile " Maurice Dekobra
The Phantom Gondola " Maurice Dekobra
Wings of Desire " Maurice Dekobra
Serenade to the Hangman " Maurice Dekobra
Anna Lombard " Victoria Cross
Over Life's Edge " Victoria Cross
Daughters of Ishmael " R W. Kauffman
Story of a Terrible Life " Basil Tozer
Waac, a Woman's Story of the War " Anonymous
Schoolgirl " Carman Barnes
Damaged Goods (novelized) " Upton Sinclair
Story of a Terrible Life " Basil Tozer
Queens of Kungehalla " Selma Lagerlof
The General's Ring " Selma Lagerlof
The Constant Simp " Nell Martin
Before Adam " Jack London
Chronicles of a Gigolo " Julian Swift
This Year, Next Year " J. W. Drawbell
Beatrice " Arthur Schnitzler


Adventures of JohnJohns By Frederic Carrel
Adventures of a Coquette " Gaston Leroux
The Floating Prison " Gaston Leroux
Cheri-Bibi and Cecily " Gaston Leroux
Forbidden " Joan Conquest
Mrs. Mason's Daughters " M. Eiker
The Tale of a Manor " Selma Lagerlof


The Cottage on the Fells By H. de Vere Stacpoole
What the Butler Winked at " Eric Horne


[End of WAAC: The Woman's Story of the War by Anonymous]
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