My War Experiences in Two Continents Part 27

[Page Heading: VOLUNTARY RATIONING]

Miss Macnaughtan must surely have been one of the first people to begin voluntary rationing. We had the simplest possible meals during my visit, and although she was proud of her housekeeping, and usually gave one rather perfect food, on this occasion she said how impossible it was for her to indulge in anything but necessaries, when our soldiers would so soon have to endure hards.h.i.+ps of every kind. She said that we ought to be particularly careful to eat very little meat, because there would certainly be a shortage of it later on.

I recollect that there was some hitch about my departure from Norfolk Street on August 8th. It did not seem clear whether my Voluntary Aid Detachment was going to provide billets for all recalled members, and I remember my aunt's absolute scorn of difficulties at such a time.

"Of course, go straight to Kent and obey orders," she cried. "If you can't get a bed, come back here; but at least go and see what you can do."

That was typical of Miss Macnaughtan. Difficulties did not exist for her. When quite a young girl she made up her mind that no lack of money, time, or strength should ever prevent her doing anything she wanted to do. It certainly never prevented her doing anything she felt she _ought_ to do.

The war provided her with a supreme opportunity for service, and she did not fail to take advantage of it. Of her work in Belgium, especially at the soup-kitchen, I believe it is impossible to say too much. According to _The Times_, "The lady with the soup was everything to thousands of stricken men, who would otherwise have gone on their way fasting."

Among individual cases, too, there were many men who benefited by some special care bestowed on them by her. There was one wounded Belgian to whom my aunt gave my address before she left for Russia that he might have someone with whom he might correspond. I used to hear from him regularly, and every letter breathed grat.i.tude to "la dame ecossaise."

He said she had saved his life.

Miss Macnaughtan's lectures to munition-workers were, perhaps, the best work that she did during the war. She was a charming speaker, and I never heard one who got more quickly into touch with an audience. As I saw it expressed in one of the papers "Stiffness and depression vanished from any company when she took the platform." Her enunciation was extraordinarily distinct, and she had an arresting delivery which compelled attention from the first word to the last.

She never minced the truth about the war, but showed people at home how far removed it was from being a "merry picnic."

"They say recruiting will stop if people know what is going on at the Front," she used to tell them. "I am a woman, but I know what I would do if I were a man when I heard of these things. _I would do my durndest._"

All through her life the idea of personal service appealed to Miss Macnaughtan. She never sent a message of sympathy or a gift of help unless it was quite impossible to go herself to the sufferer.

She was only a girl when she heard of what proved to be the fatal accident to her eldest brother in the Argentine. She went to him by the next s.h.i.+p, alone, save for the escort of his old yacht's skipper, and a journey to the Argentine in those days was a big undertaking for a delicate young girl. On another occasion she was in Switzerland when she heard of the death, in Northamptons.h.i.+re, of a little niece. She left for England the same day, to go and offer her sympathy, and try to comfort the child's mother.

"When I hear of trouble I always go at once," she used to say.

I have known her drive in her brougham to the most horrible slum in the East End to see what she could do for a woman who had begged from her in the street--yes, and go there again and again until she had done all that was possible to help the sad case.

[Page Heading: ZEAL TO HELP OTHERS]

It was this burning zeal to help which sent her to Belgium and carried her through the long dark winter there, and it was, perhaps, the same feeling which obscured her judgment when her expedition to Russia was contemplated. She was a delicate woman, and there did not seem to be much scope for her services in Russia. She was not a qualified nurse, and the distance from home, and the handicap of her ignorance of the Russian language, would probably have prevented her organising anything like comforts for the soldiers there as she had done in Belgium. To those of us who loved her the very uselessness of her efforts in Russia adds to the poignancy of the tragedy of the death which resulted from them.

The old question arises: "To what purpose is this waste?" And the old answer comes still to teach us the underlying meaning and beauty of what seems to be unnecessary sacrifice: "She hath done what she could."

Indeed, that epitaph might fitly describe Miss Macnaughtan's war work.

She grudged nothing, she gave her strength, her money, her very life.

The precious ointment was poured out in the service of her King and Country and for the Master she served so faithfully.

I have been looking through some notices which appeared in the press after Miss Macnaughtan's death. Some of them allude to her wit, her energy and vivacity, the humour which was "without a touch of cynicism"; others, to her inexhaustible spirit, her geniality, and the "powers of sarcasm, which she used with strong reserve." Others, again, see through to the faith and philosophy which lay behind her humour, "Scottish in its penetrating tenderness."

In my opinion my aunt's strongest characteristic was a dazzling purity of soul, mind, and body. She was a person whose very presence lifted the tone of the conversation. It was impossible to think of telling her a nasty story, a "double entendre" fell flat when she was there. She was the least priggish person in the world, but no one who knew her could doubt for an instant her transparent goodness. I have read every word of her diary; there is not in it the record of an ugly thought, or of one action that would not bear the full light of day. About her books she used to say that she had tried never to publish one word which her father would not like her to have written.

She had a tremendous capacity for affection, and when she once loved she loved most faithfully. Her devotion to her father and to her eldest brother influenced her whole life, and it would have been impossible for those she loved to make too heavy claims on her kindness.

[Page Heading: SOCIAL CHARM]

Miss Macnaughtan had great social charm. She was friendly and easy to know, and she had a wonderful power of finding out the interesting side of people and of seeing their good points. Her popularity was extraordinary, although hers was too strong a personality to command universal affection. Among her friends were people of the most varied dispositions and circ.u.mstances. Distinction of birth, position, or intellect appealed to her, and she was always glad to meet a celebrity, but distinction was no pa.s.sport to her favour unless it was accompanied by character. To her poorer and humbler friends she was kindness itself, and she was extraordinarily staunch in her friends.h.i.+ps. Nothing would make her "drop" a person with whom she had once been intimate.

In attempting to give a character-sketch of a person whose nature was as complex as Miss Macnaughtan's, one admits defeat from the start. She had so many interests, so many sides to her character, that it seems impossible to present them all fairly. Her love of music, literature, and art was coupled with an enthusiasm for sport, big-game shooting, riding, travel, and adventure of every kind. She was an ambitious woman, and a brilliantly clever one, and her clearness of perception and wonderful intuition gave her a quick grasp of a subject or idea. She had a thirst for knowledge which made learning easy, but hers was the brain of the poet and philosopher, not of the mathematician. Accuracy of thought or information was often lacking. Her imagination led the way, and left her with a picture of a situation or a subject, but she was very vague about facts and statistics. As a woman of business she was shrewd, with all a Scotchwoman's power of looking at both sides of a bawbee before she spent it, but she was also extraordinarily generous in a very simple and unostentatious way, and her hospitality was boundless.

Miss Macnaughtan was almost hypersensitive to criticism. Her intense desire to do right and to serve her fellow-beings animated her whole life, and it seemed to her rather hard to be found fault with. Indeed, she had not many faults, and the defects of her character were mostly temperamental.

As a girl she was unpunctual, and subject to fits of indecision when it seemed impossible for her to make up her mind one way or the other. The inconvenience caused by her frequent changes of times and plans was probably not realised by her. Later in life, when she lived so much alone, she did not always see that difficulties which appeared nothing to her might be almost insuperable to other people, and that in houses where there are several members of a family to be considered, no individual can be quite as free to carry out his own plans as a person who is independent of family ties. But when one remembered how splendidly she always responded to any claim on her own kindness one forgave her for being a little exacting.

Perhaps Miss Macnaughtan's greatest handicap in life was her immense capacity for suffering--suffering poignantly, unbearably, not only for her own sorrows but for the sorrows of others. Only those who appealed to her in trouble knew the depth of her sympathy, and how absolutely she shared the burden of the grief. But perhaps they did not always know how she agonised over their misfortunes, and at what price her sympathy was given.

[Page Heading: RELIGIOUS VIEWS]

My aunt was a pa.s.sionately religious woman. Her faith was the inspiration of her whole life, and it is safe to say that from the smallest to the greatest things there was never a struggle between conscience and inclination in which conscience was not victorious. As she grew older, I fancy that she became a less orthodox member of the Church of England, to which she belonged, but her love for Christ and for His people never wavered.

As each Sunday came round during her last illness, when she could not go to church, she used to say to a very dear sister, "Now, J., we must have our little service." Then the bedroom door was left ajar, and her sister would go down to the drawing-room and play the simple hymns they had sung together in childhood. And on the last Sunday, the day before her death, when the invalid lay in a stupor and seemed scarcely conscious, that same dear sister played the old hymns once more, and as the sound floated up to the room above those who watched there saw a gleam of pleasure on the dying woman's face.

My aunt had no fear of death. There had been a time, some weeks before the end, when her feet had wandered very close to the waters which divide us from the unknown sh.o.r.e, and she told her sisters afterwards that she had almost seemed to see over to the "other side," and that so many of those she loved were waiting for her, and saying, "Come over to us, Sally. We are all here to welcome you."

Perhaps just at the last, when her body had grown weak, the journey seemed rather far, and she clung to earth more closely, but such weakness was purely physical. The brave spirit was ready to go, and as the music of her favourite hymn pierced her consciousness when she lay dying, so surely the words summed up all that she felt or wished to say, and formed her last prayer in death, as they had been her constant prayer in life:

"In death's dark vale I fear no ill With Thee, dear Lord, beside me; Thy rod and staff my comfort still, Thy Cross before to guide me.

"And so through all the length of days Thy goodness faileth never; Good Shepherd, may I sing Thy praise Within Thy house for ever."