Saint's Progress
A short hour passed, then Noel said:
“I must tell Daddy, Cyril. I meant to tell him something this morning, only I thought I’d better wait, in case you didn’t.”
Morland answered: “Oh, Noel!” It was the staple of his conversation while they sat there.
Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:
“I shall go off my chump if we’re not married before I go out.”
“How long does it take?”
“No time, if we hurry up. I’ve got six days before I rejoin, and perhaps the Chief will give me another week, if I tell him.”
“Poor Daddy! Kiss me again; a long one.”
When the long one was over, she said:
“Then I can come and be near you till you go out? Oh, Cyril!”
“Oh, Noel!”
“Perhaps you won’t go so soon. Don’t go if you can help it!”
“Not if I can help it, darling; but I shan’t be able.”
“No, of course not; I know.”
Young Morland clutched his hair. “Everyone’s in the same boat, but it can’t last for ever; and now we’re engaged we can be together all the time till I’ve got the licence or whatever it is. And then – !”
“Daddy won’t like our not being married in a church; but I don’t care!”
Looking down at her closed eyes, and their lashes resting on her cheeks, young Morland thought:
‘My God! I’m in heaven!’
Another short hour passed before she freed herself.
“We must go, Cyril. Kiss me once more!”
It was nearly dinner-time, and they ran down. 4
Edward Pierson, returning from the Evening Service, where he had read the Lessons, saw them in the distance, and compressed his lips. Their long absence had vexed him. What ought he to do? In the presence of Love’s young dream, he felt strange and helpless. That night, when he opened the door of his room, he saw Noel on the window-seat, in her dressing-gown, with the moonlight streaming in on her.
“Don’t light up, Daddy; I’ve got something to say.”
She took hold of the little gold cross on his vest, and turned it over.
“I’m engaged to Cyril; we want to be married this week.”
It was exactly as if someone had punched him in the ribs; and at the sound he made she hurried on:
“You see, we must be; he may be going out any day.”
In the midst of his aching consternation, he admitted a kind of reason in her words. But he said:
“My dear, you’re only a child. Marriage is the most serious thing in life; you’ve only known him three weeks.”
“I know all that, Daddy” her voice sounded so ridiculously calm; “but we can’t afford to wait. He might never come back, you see, and then I should have missed him.”
“But, Noel, suppose he never did come back; it would only be much worse for you.”
She dropped the little cross, and took hold of his hand, pressing it against her heart. But still her voice was calm:
“No; much better, Daddy; you think I don’t know my own feelings, but I do.”
The man in Pierson softened; the priest hardened.
“Nollie, true marriage is the union of souls; and for that, time is wanted. Time to know that you feel and think the same, and love the same things.”
“Yes, I know; but we do.”
“You can’t tell that, my dear; no one could in three weeks.”
“But these aren’t ordinary times, are they? People have to do things in a hurry. Oh, Daddy! Be an angel! Mother would have understood, and let me, I know!”
Pierson drew away his hand; the words hurt, from reminder of his loss, from reminder of the poor substitute he was.
“Look, Nollie!” he said. “After all these years since she left us, I’m as lonely as ever, because we were really one. If you marry this young man without knowing more of your own hearts than you can in such a little time, you may regret it dreadfully; you may find it turn out, after all, nothing but a little empty passion; or again, if anything happens to him before you’ve had any real married life together, you’ll have a much greater grief and sense of loss to put up with than if you simply stay engaged till after the war. Besides, my child, you’re much too young.”
She sat so still that he looked at her in alarm. “But I must!”
He bit his lips, and said sharply: “You can’t, Nollie!”
She got up, and before he could stop her, was gone. With the closing of the door, his anger evaporated, and distress took its place. Poor child! What to do with this wayward chicken just out of the egg, and wanting to be full-fledged at once? The thought that she would be lying miserable, crying, perhaps, beset him so that he went out into the passage and tapped on her door. Getting no answer, he went in. It was dark but for a streak of moonlight, and in that he saw her, lying on her bed, face down; and stealing up laid his hand on her head. She did not move; and, stroking her hair, he said gently:
“Nollie dear, I didn’t mean to be harsh. If I were your mother, I should know how to make you see, but I’m only an old bumble-daddy.”
She rolled over, scrambling into a cross-legged posture on the bed. He could see her eyes shining. But she did not speak; she seemed to know that in silence was her strength.
He said with a sort of despair:
“You must let me talk it over with your aunt. She has a lot of good sense.”
“Yes.”
He bent over and kissed her hot forehead.
“Good night, my dear; don’t cry. Promise me!”
She nodded, and lifted her face; he felt her hot soft lips on his forehead, and went away a little comforted.
But Noel sat on her bed, hugging her knees, listening to the night, to the emptiness and silence; each minute so much lost of the little, little time left, that she might have been with him.
III
Pierson woke after a troubled and dreamful night, in which he had thought himself wandering in heaven like a lost soul.
After regaining his room last night nothing had struck him more forcibly than the needlessness of his words: “Don’t cry, Nollie!” for he had realised with uneasiness that she had not been near crying. No; there was in her some emotion very different from the tearful. He kept seeing her cross-legged figure on the bed in that dim light; tense, enigmatic, almost Chinese; kept feeling the feverish touch of her lips. A good girlish burst of tears would have done her good, and been a guarantee. He had the uncomfortable conviction that his refusal had passed her by, as if unspoken. And, since he could not go and make music at that time of night, he had ended on his knees, in a long search for guidance, which was not vouchsafed him.
The culprits were demure at breakfast; no one could have told that for the last hour they had been sitting with their arms round each other, watching the river flow by, talking but little, through lips too busy. Pierson pursued his sister-in-law to the room where she did her flowers every morning. He watched her for a minute dividing ramblers from pansies, cornflowers from sweet peas, before he said:
“I’m very troubled, Thirza. Nollie came to me last night. Imagine! They want to get married – those two!”
Accepting life as it came, Thirza showed no dismay, but her cheeks grew a little pinker, and her eyes a little rounder. She took up a sprig of mignonette, and said placidly:
“Oh, my dear!”
“Think of it, Thirza – that child! Why, it’s only a year or two since she used to sit on my knee and tickle my face with her hair.”
Thirza went on arranging her flowers.
“Noel is older than you think, Edward; she is more than her age. And real married life wouldn’t begin for them till after – if it ever began.”
Pierson experienced a sort of shock. His sister-in-law’s words seemed criminally light-hearted.
“But – but – ” he stammered; “the union, Thirza! Who can tell what will happen before they come together again!”
She looked at his quivering face, and said gently:
“I know, Edward; but if you refuse, I should be afraid, in these days, of what Noel might do. I told you there’s a streak of desperation in her.”
“Noel will obey me.”
“I wonder! There are so many of these war marriages now.”
Pierson turned away.
“I think they’re dreadful. What do they mean – Just a momentary gratification of passion. They might just as well not be.”
“They mean pensions, as a rule,” said Thirza calmly.
“Thirza, that is cynical; besides, it doesn’t affect this case. I can’t bear to think of my little Nollie giving herself for a moment which may come to nothing, or may turn out the beginning of an unhappy marriage. Who is this boy – what is he? I know nothing of him. How can I give her to him – it’s impossible! If they had been engaged some time and I knew something of him – yes, perhaps; even at her age. But this hasty passionateness – it isn’t right, it isn’t decent. I don’t understand, I really don’t – how a child like that can want it. The fact is, she doesn’t know what she’s asking, poor little Nollie. She can’t know the nature of marriage, and she can’t realise its sacredness. If only her mother were here! Talk to her, Thirza; you can say things that I can’t!”
Thirza looked after the retreating figure. In spite of his cloth, perhaps a little because of it, he seemed to her like a child who had come to show her his sore finger. And, having finished the arrangement of her flowers, she went out to find her niece. She had not far to go; for Noel was standing in the hall, quite evidently lying in wait. They went out together to the avenue.
The girl began at once:
“It isn’t any use talking to me, Auntie; Cyril is going to get a license.”
“Oh! So you’ve made up your minds?”
“Quite.”
“Do you think that’s fair by me, Nollie? Should I have asked him here if I’d thought this was going to happen?”
Noel only smiled.
“Have you the least idea what marriage means?”
Noel nodded.
“Really?”
“Of course. Gratian is married. Besides, at school – ”
“Your father is dead against it. This is a sad thing for him. He’s a perfect saint, and you oughtn’t to hurt him. Can’t you wait, at least till Cyril’s next leave?”
“He might never have one, you see.”
The heart of her whose boys were out there too, and might also never have another leave; could not but be responsive to those words. She looked at her niece, and a dim appreciation of this revolt of life menaced by death, of youth threatened with extinction, stirred in her. Noel’s teeth were clenched, her lips drawn back, and she was staring in front of her.
“Daddy oughtn’t to mind. Old people haven’t to fight, and get killed; they oughtn’t to mind us taking what we can. They’ve had their good time.”
It was such a just little speech that Thirza answered:
“Yes; perhaps he hasn’t quite realised that.”
“I want to make sure of Cyril, Auntie; I want everything I can have with him while there’s the chance. I don’t think it’s much to ask, when perhaps I’ll never have any more of him again.”
Thirza slipped her hand through the girl’s arm.
“I understand,” she said. “Only, Nollie, suppose, when all this is over, and we breathe and live naturally once more, you found you’d made a mistake?”
Noel shook her head. “I haven’t.”
“We all think that, my dear; but thousands of mistakes are made by people who no more dream they’re making them than you do now; and then it’s a very horrible business. It would be especially horrible for you; your father believes heart and soul in marriage being for ever.”
“Daddy’s a darling; but I don’t always believe what he believes, you know. Besides, I’m not making a mistake, Auntie! I love Cyril ever so.”
Thirza gave her waist a squeeze.
“You mustn’t make a mistake. We love you too much, Nollie. I wish we had Gratian here.”
“Gratian would back me up,” said Noel; “she knows what the war is. And you ought to, Auntie. If Rex or Harry wanted to be married, I’m sure you’d never oppose them. And they’re no older than Cyril. You must understand what it means to me Auntie dear, to feel that we belong to each other properly before – before it all begins for him, and – and there may be no more. Daddy doesn’t realise. I know he’s awfully good, but – he’s forgotten.”
“My dear, I think he remembers only too well. He was desperately attached to your mother.”
Noel clenched her hands.
“Was he? Well, so am I to Cyril, and he to me. We wouldn’t be unreasonable if it wasn’t – wasn’t necessary. Talk, to Cyril, Auntie; then you’ll understand. There he is; only, don’t keep him long, because I want him. Oh! Auntie; I want him so badly!”
She turned; and slipped back into the house; and Thirza, conscious of having been decoyed to this young man, who stood there with his arms folded, like Napoleon before a battle, smiled and said:
“Well, Cyril, so you’ve betrayed me!”
Even in speaking she was conscious of the really momentous change in this sunburnt, blue-eyed, lazily impudent youth since the day he arrived, three weeks ago, in their little wagonette. He took her arm, just as Noel had, and made her sit down beside him on the rustic bench, where he had evidently been told to wait.
“You see, Mrs. Pierson,” he said, “it’s not as if Noel were an ordinary girl in an ordinary time, is it? Noel is the sort of girl one would knock one’s brains out for; and to send me out there knowing that I could have been married to her and wasn’t, will take all the heart out of me. Of course I mean to come back, but chaps do get knocked over, and I think it’s cruel that we can’t take what we can while we can. Besides, I’ve got money; and that would be hers anyway. So, do be a darling, won’t you?” He put his arm round her waist, just as if he had been her son, and her heart, which wanted her own boys so badly, felt warmed within her.
“You see, I don’t know Mr. Pierson, but he seems awfully gentle and jolly, and if he could see into me he wouldn’t mind, I know. We don’t mind risking our lives and all that, but we do think we ought to have the run of them while we’re alive. I’ll give him my dying oath or anything, that I could never change towards Noel, and she’ll do the same. Oh! Mrs. Pierson, do be a jolly brick, and put in a word for me, quick! We’ve got so few days!”
“But, my dear boy,” said Thirza feebly, “do you think it’s fair to such a child as Noel?”
“Yes, I do. You don’t understand; she’s simply had to grow up. She is grown-up – all in this week; she’s quite as old as I am, really – and I’m twenty-two. And you know it’s going to be – it’s got to be – a young world, from now on; people will begin doing things much earlier. What’s the use of pretending it’s like what it was, and being cautious, and all that? If I’m going to be killed, I think we’ve got a right to be married first; and if I’m not, then what does it matter?”
“You’ve known each other twenty-one days, Cyril.”
“No; twenty-one years! Every day’s a year when – Oh! Mrs. Pierson, this isn’t like you, is it? You never go to meet trouble, do you?”
At that shrewd remark, Thirza put her hand on the hand which still clasped her waist, and pressed it closer.
“Well, my dear,” she said softly, “we must see what can be done.”
Cyril Morland kissed her cheek. “I will bless you for ever,” he said. “I haven’t got any people, you know, except my two sisters.”
And something like tears started up on Thirza’s eyelashes. They seemed to her like the babes in the wood – those two!
IV
1
In the dining-room of her father’s house in that old London Square between East and West, Gratian Laird, in the outdoor garb of a nurse, was writing a telegram: “Reverend Edward Pierson, Kestrel, Tintern, Monmouthshire. George terribly ill. Please come if you can. Gratian.” Giving it to a maid, she took off her long coat and sat down for a moment. She had been travelling all night, after a full day’s work, and had only just arrived, to find her husband between life and death. She was very different from Noel; not quite so tall, but of a stronger build; with dark chestnut-coloured hair, clear hazel eyes, and a broad brow. The expression of her face was earnest, with a sort of constant spiritual enquiry; and a singularly truthful look: She was just twenty; and of the year that she had been married, had only spent six weeks with her husband; they had not even a house of their own as yet. After resting five minutes, she passed her hand vigorously over her face, threw back her head, and walked up stairs to the room where he lay. He was not conscious, and there was nothing to be done but sit and watch him.
‘If he dies,’ she thought, ‘I shall hate God for His cruelty. I have had six weeks with George; some people have sixty years.’ She fixed her eyes on his face, short and broad, with bumps of “observation” on the brows. He had been sunburnt. The dark lashes of his closed eyes lay on deathly yellow cheeks; his thick hair grew rather low on his broad forehead. The lips were just open and showed strong white teeth. He had a little clipped moustache, and hair had grown on his clean-cut jaw. His pyjama jacket had fallen open. Gratian drew it close. It was curiously still, for a London day, though the window was wide open. Anything to break this heavy stupor, which was not only George’s, but her own, and the very world’s! The cruelty of it – when she might be going to lose him for ever, in a few hours or days! She thought of their last parting. It had not been very loving, had come too soon after one of those arguments they were inclined to have, in which they could not as yet disagree with suavity. George had said there was no future life for the individual; she had maintained there was. They had grown hot and impatient. Even in the cab on the way to his train they had pursued the wretched discussion, and the last kiss had been from lips on lips yet warm from disagreement.
Ever since, as if in compunction, she had been wavering towards his point of view; and now, when he was perhaps to solve the problem – find out for certain – she had come to feel that if he died, she would never see him after. It was cruel that such a blight should have come on her belief at this, of all moments.
She laid her hand on his. It was warm, felt strong, although so motionless and helpless. George was so vigorous, so alive, and strong-willed; it seemed impossible that life might be going to play him false. She recalled the unflinching look of his steel-bright eyes, his deep, queerly vibrating voice, which had no trace of self-consciousness or pretence. She slipped her hand on to his heart, and began very slowly, gently rubbing it. He, as doctor, and she, as nurse, had both seen so much of death these last two years! Yet it seemed suddenly as if she had never seen death, and that the young faces she had seen, empty and white, in the hospital wards, had just been a show. Death would appear to her for the first time, if this face which she loved were to be drained for ever of light and colour and movement and meaning.
A humblebee from the Square Garden boomed in and buzzed idly round the room. She caught her breath in a little sob…
2
Pierson received that telegram at midday, returning from a lonely walk after his talk with Thirza. Coming from Gratian so self-reliant – it meant the worst. He prepared at once to catch the next train. Noel was out, no one knew where: so with a sick feeling he wrote:
“DEAREST CHILD,
“I am going up to Gratian; poor George is desperately ill. If it goes badly you should be with your sister. I will wire to-morrow morning early. I leave you in your aunt’s hands, my dear. Be reasonable and patient. God bless you.
“Your devoted
“DADDY.”
He was alone in his third-class compartment, and, leaning forward, watched the ruined Abbey across the river till it was out of sight. Those old monks had lived in an age surely not so sad as this. They must have had peaceful lives, remote down here, in days when the Church was great and lovely, and men laid down their lives for their belief in her, and built everlasting fanes to the glory of God! What a change to this age of rush and hurry, of science, trade, material profit, and this terrible war! He tried to read his paper, but it was full of horrors and hate. ‘When will it end?’ he thought. And the train with its rhythmic jolting seemed grinding out the answer: “Never – never!”
At Chepstow a soldier got in, followed by a woman with a very flushed face and curious, swimmy eyes; her hair was in disorder, and her lip bleeding, as if she had bitten it through. The soldier, too, looked strained and desperate. They sat down, far apart, on the seat opposite. Pierson, feeling that he was in their way, tried to hide himself behind his paper; when he looked again, the soldier had taken off his tunic and cap and was leaning out of the window. The woman, on the seat’s edge, sniffing and wiping her face, met his glance with resentful eyes, then, getting up, she pulled the man’s sleeve.
“Sit dahn; don’t ‘ang out o’ there.”
The soldier flung himself back on the seat and looked at Pierson.
“The wife an’ me’s ‘ad a bit of a row,” he said companionably. “Gits on me nerves; I’m not used to it. She was in a raid, and ‘er nerves are all gone funny; ain’t they, old girl? Makes me feel me ‘ead. I’ve been wounded there, you know; can’t stand much now. I might do somethin’ if she was to go on like this for long.”
Pierson looked at the woman, but her eyes still met his resentfully. The soldier held out a packet of cigarettes. “Take one,” he said. Pierson took one and, feeling that the soldier wanted him to speak, murmured: “We all have these troubles with those we’re fond of; the fonder we are of people, the more we feel them, don’t we? I had one with my daughter last night.”
“Ah!” said the soldier; “that’s right. The wife and me’ll make it up. ‘Ere, come orf it, old girl.”
From behind his paper he soon became conscious of the sounds of reconciliation – reproaches because someone had been offered a drink, kisses mixed with mild slappings, and abuse. When they got out at Bristol the soldier shook his hand warmly, but the woman still gave him her resentful stare, and he thought dreamily: ‘The war! How it affects everyone!’ His carriage was invaded by a swarm of soldiers, and the rest of the journey was passed in making himself small. When at last he reached home, Gratian met him in the hall.
“Just the same. The doctor says we shall know in a few hours now. How sweet of you to come! You must be tired, in this heat. It was dreadful to spoil your holiday.”
“My dear! As if – May I go up and see him?”
George Laird was still lying in that stupor. And Pierson stood gazing down at him compassionately. Like most parsons, he had a wide acquaintance with the sick and dying; and one remorseless fellowship with death. Death! The commonest thing in the world, now – commoner than life! This young doctor must have seen many die in these last two years, saved many from death; and there he lay, not able to lift a finger to save himself. Pierson looked at his daughter; what a strong, promising young couple they were! And putting his arm round her, he led her away to the sofa, whence they could see the sick man.
“If he dies, Dad – ” she whispered.
“He will have died for the Country, my love, as much as ever our soldiers do.”
“I know; but that’s no comfort. I’ve been watching here all day; I’ve been thinking; men will be just as brutal afterwards – more brutal. The world will go on the same.”
“We must hope not. Shall we pray, Gracie?”
Gratian shook her head.
“If I could believe that the world – if I could believe anything! I’ve lost the power, Dad; I don’t even believe in a future life. If George dies, we shall never meet again.”
Pierson stared at her without a word.
Gratian went on: “The last time we talked, I was angry with George because he laughed at my belief; now that I really want belief, I feel that he was right.”
Pierson said tremulously:
“No, no, my dear; it’s only that you’re overwrought. God in His mercy will give you back belief.”
“There is no God, Dad”
“My darling child, what are you saying?”
“No God who can help us; I feel it. If there were any God who could take part in our lives, alter anything without our will, knew or cared what we did – He wouldn’t let the world go on as it does.”
“But, my dear, His purposes are inscrutable. We dare not say He should not do this or that, or try to fathom to what ends He is working.”
“Then He’s no good to us. It’s the same as if He didn’t exist. Why should I pray for George’s life to One whose ends are just His own? I know George oughtn’t to die. If there’s a God who can help, it will be a wicked shame if George dies; if there’s a God who can help, it’s a wicked shame when babies die, and all these millions of poor boys. I would rather think there’s no God than a helpless or a wicked God – ”