Elizabeth's Campaign Part 46

Elizabeth's tender look and gesture answered. He gazed at her in silence, gathering strength for some effort that was evidently on his mind.

'Father minds awfully,' he said at last, his look clouding. 'And there's no one--to--to cheer him up.'

'He loves you so,' said Elizabeth, with difficulty, 'he always has loved you so.'

The furrow on his brow grew a little deeper.

'But that doesn't matter now--nothing matters but--'

After a minute he resumed, in a rather stronger voice--'Tell me about the woods--and the ash trees. I did laugh over that--old Hull telling you there were none--and you--Why, I could have shown him scores.'

She told him all the story of the woods, holding his hot hand in her cool ones, damping his brow with the eau-de-cologne the nurses gave her, and smiling at him. Her voice soothed him. It was so clear and yet soft, like a song,--not a song of romance or pa.s.sion, but like the cheerful crooning songs that mothers sing. And her face reminded him even more of his mother than Pamela's. She was not the least like his mother, but there was something in her expression that first youth cannot have--something comforting, profound, sustaining.

He wanted her always to sit there. But his mind wandered from what she was saying after a little, and returned to his father.

'Is father there?' he asked, trying to turn his head, and failing.

'Not yet.'

'Poor father! Elizabeth!' he spoke the name with a boyish shyness.

'Yes!' She stooped over him.

'You won't go away?'

Elizabeth hesitated a moment, and he looked distressed.

'From Mannering, I mean. Do stay, Broomie!'--the name slipped out, and in his weakness he did not notice it--'Pamela knows--that she was horrid!'

'Dear Desmond, I will do everything I can for Pamela.'

'And for father?'

'Yes, indeed--I will be all the help I can,' repeated Elizabeth.

Desmond relapsed into silence and apparent sleep. But Elizabeth's heart smote her. She felt she had not satisfied him.

But before long by the mere natural force of her personality, she seemed to be the leading spirit in the sick-room. Only she could lead or influence the Squire, whose state of sullen despair terrified the household. The nurses and doctors depended on her for all those lesser aids that intelligence and love can bring to hospital service. The servants of the house would have worked all night and all day for her and Mr. Desmond. Yet all this was scarcely seen--it was only felt--'a life, a presence like the air.' Most of us have known the same experience--how, when human beings come to the testing, the values of a house change, and how men and women, who have been in it as those who serve, become naturally and noiselessly its rulers, and those who once ruled, their dependents.

It was so at Mannering. A tender, unconscious sovereignty established itself; and both the weak and the strong grouped themselves round it.

Especially did Elizabeth seem to understand the tragic fact that as death drew nearer the boy struggled more painfully to live, that he might know what was happening on the battlefield. He would have the telegrams read to him night and morning. And he would lie brooding over them for long afterwards. The Rector came to see him, and Desmond accepted gratefully his readings and his prayers. But they were scarcely done before he would turn to Elizabeth, and his eager feverish look would send her to the telephone to ask Arthur Chicksands at the War Office if Haig's mid-day telegram was in--or any fresh news.

On the 20th of March, Chicksands, who had been obliged to go back to his work, came down again for the night. Desmond lay waiting for him, and Arthur saw at once that death was much nearer. But the boy had himself insisted on strychnine and morphia before the visit, and talked a great deal.

The military news, however, that Chicksands brought him disappointed him greatly.

'Not _yet_?'--he said miserably--'_not yet_?'--breathing his life into the words, when Chicksands read him a letter from a staff officer in the Intelligence Department describing the enormous German preparations for the offensive, but expressing the view--'It may be some days more before they risk it!'

'I shall be gone before they begin!' he said, and lay sombre and frowning on his pillows, till Chicksands had beguiled him by some letters from men in Desmond's own division which he had taken special trouble to collect for him.

And when the boy's mood and look were calmer, Arthur bent over him and gave him, with a voice that must shake, the news of his Military Cross--for 'brilliant leaders.h.i.+p and conspicuous courage' in the bit of 'observation work' that had cost him his life.

Desmond listened with utter incredulity and astonishment.

'It's not me!'--he protested faintly--'it's a mistake!'

Chicksands produced the General's letter--the Cross itself. Desmond looked at it with unwilling eyes.

'I call it silly--perfectly silly! Why, there were fellows that deserved it ten times more than I did!'

And he asked that it should be put away, and did not speak of it again.

In all his talk with him that night, the elder officer was tragically struck by the boy's growth in intelligence. Just as death was claiming it, the young mind had broadened and deepened--had become the mind of a man. And in the vigil which he kept during part of that night with Martin, the able young surgeon who had brought Desmond home, and was spending his own hard-earned leave in easing the boy's death, Chicksands found that Martin's impression was the same as his own.

'It's wonderful how he's grown and _thought_ since he's been out there. But do we ever consider--do we ever realize--enough!--what a marvellous thing it is that young men--boys--like Desmond--should be able to live, day after day, face to face with death--consciously and voluntarily--and get quite used to it? Which of us before the war had ever been in real physical danger--danger of violent death?--and that not for a few minutes--but for days, hours, weeks? It seems to make men over again--to create a new type--by the hundred thousand. And to some men it is an extraordinary intoxication--this conscious and deliberate acceptance--defiance!--of death--for a cause--for their country. It sets them free from themselves. It matures them, all in a moment--as though the bud and the flower came together. Oh, of course, there are those it brutalizes--and there are those it stuns. But Desmond was one of the chosen.'

The night pa.s.sed. The Squire came in after midnight, and took his place by the bed.

Desmond was then restless and suffering, and the nurse in charge whispered to the Squire that the pulse was growing weaker. But the boy opened his eyes on his father, and tried to smile. The Squire sat bowed and bent beside him, and nurses and doctors withdrew from them a little--out of sight and hearing.

'Desmond!' said the Squire in a low voice.

'Yes.'

'Is there anything I could do--to please you?' It was a humble and a piteous prayer. Desmond's eyes travelled over his father's face.

'Only--love me!' he said, with difficulty. The Squire grew very white. Kneeling down he kissed his son--for the first time since Desmond was a child.

Desmond's beautiful mouth smiled a little.

'Thank you,' he said, so feebly that it could scarcely be heard.

When the light began to come in he moved impatiently, asking for the newspapers. Elizabeth told him that old Perley had gone to meet them at the morning train at Fallerton, and would be out with them at the earliest possible moment.

But when they came the boy turned almost angrily from them. 'The s.h.i.+pping Problem--Attacks on British Ports--Raids on the French Front--Bombardment of German Towns--Curfew Regulations'--Pamela's faltering voice read out the headings.

'Oh, what rot!' he said wearily--'what rot!'

After that his strength ebbed visibly through the morning.

Chicksands, who must return to town in the afternoon, sat with him, Pamela and Elizabeth opposite--Alice and Margaret not far away. The two doctors watched their patient, and Martin whispered to Aubrey Mannering, who had come down by a night train, that the struggle for life could not last much longer.

Presently about one o'clock, Aubrey, who had been called out of the room, came back and whispered something to Chicksands, who at once went away. Elizabeth, looking up, saw agitation and expectancy in the Major's look. But he said nothing.

In a few minutes Chicksands reappeared. He went straight to Desmond, and knelt down by him.

'Desmond!' he said in a clear voice, 'the offensive's begun. The Chief in my room at the War Office has just been telephoning me. It began at eight this morning--on a front of fifty miles. Can you hear me?' The boy opened his eyes--straining them on Arthur.