Chapter VI

"They stand to be her sacrifice,
The sons this Mother flings like dice,
To face the odds and brave the Fates...."
GEORGE MEREDITH.

The strain of Mark's sudden silence told increasingly upon the three of them. It was tacitly assumed that postal arrangements were disorganised. Each hoped that the others believed in that consoling fiction; but privately, they were sceptics all.

Helen continued to post his paper and her own thick envelope every other day in the hope that he was still to be found somewhere in the terrible maze of trenches that drew England's best and bravest as a magnet draws steel.

Meantime, they were thankful for unremitting work; for the constant movement and interest of life at the Base. Young officers, eager for action, might be bored to extinction by a few weeks in camp or in one of the crowded hotels; but an observer, blessed with humour and a large love of human nature, could not fail to find at every turn food for thought, for laughter and for tears.

War is neither all horror, nor all heroism, or it could not be waged by flesh and blood. Soldiers who can die like gods, or fight as the beasts that perish, are, in the intervals, men of like passions with their kind. And genuine soldiers were scarce among those who now poured into Boulogne, to fill the gaps in that dangerously thin line round Ypres: Territorials and schoolmasters, clergymen and clerks, lords of commerce and lords of the land; dissimilar in almost every essential, yet welded together by one common resolve, one common faith:--a crusade indeed!

And the manifold needs of a host undreamed of by the wildest, wickedest "militarists," demanded the existence of that other army chiefly congregated at the Base;--doctors, nurses, chaplains, ambulance folk, owners of private cars, and those sorrowful birds of passage--relations of dying or dangerously wounded men. On the quays, in streets and hotels they thronged, those incongruous fragments of the world's greatest drama; and Lady Forsyth never tired of watching them or listening to their snatches of talk. Neither weariness, nor nightmare visions, nor anxiety, even, could blunt the edge of her keen interest in the human panorama.

"Oh, Sheila, my lamb," she exclaimed one evening after a day of very varied emotions, "aren't people--all sorts and kinds of them--passionately interesting? Even when I'm laid on the uttermost shelf, I shall still be always peeping over the edge!"

"And you'll always find me peeping up at you!" the girl answered, smiling at the quaint conceit. "It's simply wonderful, being with you--through all this!"

A temporary lull in the stream of wounded was followed, too soon, by a renewed rush of hospital trains filled to overflowing; the harvest of a fresh German onslaught. But by this time there were more cars and more stretcher-bearers. Ambulance trains, splendidly equipped, were being hurried out from England; and the customs sheds at the station had become a great shelter, roughly partitioned into dressing-stations for those who had need of immediate care. From this seed of voluntary effort there sprung up, in time, a big stationary hospital, but by then the Forsyth-Macnair car was needed elsewhere.

Meantime, in every effort to minimise the sufferings of the men he served, Keith was actively to the fore. He even talked of running a second car. Helen herself was amazed at his energy and versatility--he whom she had hitherto regarded as a man wedded entirely to books and thought. But among all the surprises of a war rich in surprise, good and evil, were none more remarkable than such unlooked-for revelations of human capacity and character.

Still no sign of Mark, though there were many discoveries, sad and glad, on that ever-crowded platform: and one morning, on a day they did not soon forget, Sheila made a find on her own account that concerned them all more nearly than they knew.

It was a brilliant morning. Scarcely a cloud in the sky or a ripple on the sea; and they reached the station early to find a train had arrived before daylight. Stretcher cases had been left undisturbed; but those who could walk were strolling or limping up and down in the sun. Others, more seriously damaged, lay about in groups on the ground or propped against bales of goods; great gaunt Highlanders, Gunners and Guardsmen, Indians and Canadians--their coats, boots, and puttees caked with the mud of Flanders; heads and limbs swathed in bandages bright with blood; rough jokes on their lips; a ready gleam of laughter in their tired eyes. And the sun beat down upon them all; and the last of the flies gave them no peace.

It was a sight to contract the heart in pity and to lift it in pride of common human manhood that could so smilingly suffer and endure.

There must have been seven hundred of them, all told. To dress their wounds and remove them would be an arduous day's work; and only by very special efforts could they be fed. Red Cross and V.A.D. ladies hurried to and fro with food and hot drinks and words of welcome, hardly less acceptable.

Keith went off, at once, to help with the stretchers; and for a space the three were separated. Helen promptly attached herself to a Highlander whose face was obliterated in bandages, save for his mouth and one eye: and very soon Sheila came hurrying up to them, two spots of colour in her pale cheeks.

"Mums, _who_ d'you think I've found?--No, not Mark," she added quickly. "It's my very 'poor thing,' Mr. Seldon, of all people on earth. I knew he'd taken up motor cycling keenly; but I didn't dream he'd volunteer for despatch riding. Just shows you can never label people off-hand. It seems he had furlough due and wanted to be useful; so he's been running to and fro, in this awful fighting, and had his right leg smashed for a reward. When your Kiltie's had his breakfast, do come and be introduced."

The Kiltie's one eye beamed at the familiar allusion from so engaging a morsel of girlhood; and he nearly choked himself in a gallant effort to empty his steaming cup of coffee at a gulp. But Sheila noticed nothing. She was engrossed in her regenerate "poor thing": rather more so than Lady Forsyth quite approved.

She, herself, found him not unattractive; dark as a gypsy, with thoughtful eyes that followed Sheila wherever she moved.

"That _you_ should have found me! The most amazing luck!" he kept repeating, at intervals, apparently taking it for granted that Lady Forsyth understood the situation.

And, indeed, Helen caught herself wondering was it out of pure consideration for him that the girl chiefly confined her ministrations to men in his neighbourhood? She even came back to ask for details of the culminating adventure that had possibly cost him a leg.

"There's just a shred of hope they may save it," he added philosophically. "And I'm hanging on to that. Anyway it's not likely now, I'd be quarrelling with my fate! I told you I was coming over. Didn't you get my letter?"

"No. It'll probably follow me here. Now--I mustn't stay talking. Shall I ask Mr. Macnair to get you for our car?"

"Do; angel of mercy!"

Snatches, in this vein, Helen overheard as she came and went upon her own errands and her swift brain sprang half-way to meet possible developments not entirely to her liking. Still--she was sorry for the man and glad when Keith secured him as a passenger.

They left him finally at the hospital where Mona was beginning to earn distinction; and Sheila promised to look him up later. Then back they rattled again to that eternally familiar Gare.

This time they lighted on Maurice Lenox--not wounded, but shivering with fever, his nerves all ajar from sleeplessness and shell fire. The hope that he might give them news of Mark was soon extinguished. Maurice had run across him earlier in the day, and had since heard great things of his capacity and courage; but where the regiment was at present he had not the ghost of an idea.

Maurice himself was a rather damaged edition of the lively clever boy they had known at Inveraig. He declared that the horrors of war "made in Germany" exceeded the wildest cinematographs in his brain. He had only been "forward" three times for training purposes; but every time "the luck" had been against him. He thanked his stars he had got out of it alive; and had not the remotest desire to go back.

After her talk with him, Helen wilted visibly; and by the end of their strenuous morning she looked so white and strained that Keith prescribed an afternoon of complete rest. The station work was too urgent for Sheila and himself to cry off altogether; but they would come back early and cheer her loneliness.

Helen accepted her fate the more readily because, from the moment of waking, her spirit had been shadowed by a too-familiar sensation. Some large event was hovering near. For this reason she felt reluctant to leave the Hotel; and when the waiter brought in her tea-tray with two envelopes on it, she did not even need to look at the writing. Her instincts--as Mark had once said--were infallible.

The second letter was from his Colonel; but that could wait.

Page on close written page she scanned, while absently sipping her tea; till her heart brimmed over afresh with love and pride; and gratitude that, in spite of all, she had him still. She could not help contrasting the tone of his letter with the talk of Maurice that morning. No insistence, here, on horrors, or on hell fire; no easy optimism, either, as regards the gigantic task in hand.

"Every day makes it clearer," he wrote, "that we've a thundering hard job before us and that our line round here is dangerously thin. Officers and men are about equally exhausted by the long strain and insufficient reliefs; and enemy movements all suggest that they're cheerfully reckoning to extinguish us in time for Christmas in Town. Bless their innocent hearts! They've yet to reckon with Tommy's talent for hanging on with his back teeth, even when a good few of them have been extracted!

"Mums, he's simply a human miracle; and we're all head over ears in pride of him, though we don't let on to any great extent. We've had a welcome breather in billets the last three days. But there are big doings on; and I expect we'll soon go forward again. Look out for a field PC and be of good heart till you get one. 'Who dies if England lives?' That's the only sane way to look at it.

"Just had three ripping letters from you and Sheila and Bel. It does a man's heart good, in the midst of all this, to get such delicious whiffs of home. You sound a shade anxious. But fretting's waste of strength, little Mums, and your Highland laddie's going strong. The C.O.'s a mighty man of valour. Talks of making me Adjutant when Collins takes up his staff job; all for love of you, I'll swear! And--talking of love, I've one word for your very private ear. If old Keith should suddenly startle you by an offer of marriage, don't say 'No' if you can help it. Mind, I'm not sure if he will. But I've reason to suppose he may. What matter, after all, the difference in years--you that, at fifty, can still behave like a child of ten!"

Helen read and re-read those amazing words in a very mixed frame of mind. An offer of marriage--! Mark's imagination was running away with him. More than once of late she had wondered if Keith cared for Sheila. But herself--! Impossible. Undeniably it warmed her heart, true lover of love that she was: yet Keith was right. She could still, at times, feel that Other so near her, in spirit, as to make the idea of a second husband seem little short of sacrilege.

Dropping Mark's letter in her lap, she covered her face. "Richard--Richard!" she whispered, and yielded herself to the vague yet intimate sense of his presence, that gradually enfolded her and as gradually faded, leaving her doubly alone.

By way of banishing ghosts she opened the Colonel's letter and read, with uplifted heart, his sincere and soldierly praise of her son whom he hoped very soon to secure for his Adjutant. The first moment it was possible, he added, Mark should have a few days' leave. No man in the battalion had earned a better right to it. Moreover, in the recent fighting, he had shown such conspicuous gallantry that his name was to be sent up for a decoration.

Such news made royal atonement for anxiety; and she was still reading when there came a knock at the door.

"Entrez!" she said casually, supposing the man had come for her tea-things. Then she found that he was holding a salver towards her; and on the salver lay a telegram.

At sight of it all the wheels of her being stopped dead. Everything seemed slipping away from her. Mechanically, she took the envelope and rose to her feet.

The waiter, too often a messenger of sorrow, vanished swiftly: and Helen Forsyth stood alone reading, with dazed iteration, the bald announcement that the War Office regretted to report her son Lieutenant Sir Mark Stuart Forsyth "Wounded and Missing, believed killed."

Her immobility was the measure of her anguish; and the shock was the greater coming at a moment when his voice had almost sounded in her ears.

Still mechanically, she picked up that precious letter and, for the first time, looked at the date. It was a week old.

Life without Mark----!

She pressed a hand across her tearless eyes: and while she stood so, the door opened again. She started violently. A crazy hope of reprieve flashed through her brain. But it was only Keith.

The paper she held and the look in her eyes enlightened him: and before he could master his voice, she had recovered hers.

"Keith--it's _come_!" she cried holding out the telegram. "God help us!"

A sudden faintness overwhelmed her, and she put both hands to her head. Keith saw her sway just perceptibly; and without an instant's hesitation he put an arm round her shoulders.

"Helen--my dear," was all he could say, as she leaned limply against him, shaken with sharp, tearless sobs.

Once, in despair at the sheer impotence of speech, he laid his hand on her head; a moment--no more. Then very gently he led her to the sofa, and she lay there, her rebel spirit broken by this last and cruelest blow.

He picked up the telegram; re-read it, and put it on the mantelpiece. Its work was not yet done. The news would hit Sheila hard. And Miss Alison. Had Helen thought of that?

She was thinking of it now.

"Keith," she sat upright, her eyes tearless still. "I've just remembered--poor Bel! Shall we wire or write?"

"A letter would be more merciful," he said.

"Very well. I don't know how to write it. But I'll try." She sat silent, gazing at a photograph of Mark in uniform. Then: "Keith--he _is alive_. I am sure of it," she said slowly in a voice of impressive quietness and conviction. "While I was lying there something--Someone told me. If he were not, he would have come to me, as Derek came. With all three of them, I had the warning. So, unless he does come, I shall cling to my conviction."

"Yes:--cling to it," he said. "You've always seen true. Meantime, I'll take the car to the Front and not cease from searching, till I find him or some trace of him. You two must go home at once."

"_Home_--?" She shivered.

"Have faith--and patience," he said gently. "Throw all your energy into some sort of work less painful than the work here."

"But Sheila will hate leaving it. Her whole heart is given to the wounded."

"A very large part of it is given to you. And now--you are one of them; one of the wounded in spirit, whose names appear in no casualty lists."

At last, to his relief, he saw tears in her eyes. She brushed them away and rose to her feet.

"I must try and write to Bel. And oh--there were letters from him and the Colonel. You must read them----"

Suddenly she remembered--and went hot all over at thought of how he had held her while she was immersed in grief. Dexterously abstracting Mark's last sheet, she handed him the rest and went back to the escritoire.

For a while Keith sat watching her, love and pain and pity contending in his heart. Then he opened the letters. It was the first time she had given him one of Mark's to read.

Hers to Bel scarcely filled a sheet. But it took a long time to write; and before it was finished, Sheila came in, visibly refreshed by an hour's talk with Mona and Seldon, who was not to lose his leg.

Hearing her step, Lady Forsyth put down her pen and covered her face.

Keith, feeling like an executioner, again took up the telegram that was propped against a vase; and involuntarily Sheila put up a hand as if he had struck her.

"So soon?" she breathed, looking beyond him at Helen's bowed head.

"Not the worst--yet," Keith answered handing her the paper.

She took in the contents at a glance; and for a long minute she stood gazing at it; lifeless as a statue; white to the lips, their first tremor resolutely stilled.

Presently she came back, as it were, from a long way off. "We can still hope--and pray," she said just above her breath.

Then, turning from him, she hurried over to Helen; and Keith went out, leaving them together----

Next morning there were hasty preparations to catch the midday boat. Keith's idea had been to cross with them and see them safe on English ground: but in the end there was no resisting Helen's urgent plea that he would not waste so many precious hours on them.

She promised him a telegram from Dover, and another from Wynchcombe Friars. Then, Helen-like, when it came to the actual pang of parting, she impulsively clutched his arm.

"Oh--_take care_ of yourself," she said with smothered intensity. "Both of you gone: and we alone--waiting----"

"For the fulfilment of your conviction," he reminded her. "Be sure _I_ shall not rest till I have found him."

"Do you suppose I doubt that?" she asked, a new tenderness in her eyes.

But even to him she could not speak her inmost fear--"What if Mark were wounded and in German hands?"