the clouds of a thunderstorm were looming slowly up as ruth motored home, and soon after she got back a sudden deluge swept over thorpe. in ten minutes the garden paths were running with water unable to get into the sun-baked ground and every hand on the farm was busy getting young things into shelter.
“i said we should have rain soon,” announced miss mccox, after the triumphant manner of weather prophets, as she brought in bertram aurelius, busy trying to catch the falling silver flood with both hands.
“he has never seen rain before to remember. think of it!” said ruth. “and he isn’t a bit frightened. where are the other children?”
“a little wet, more or less, will do them no harm,” replied miss mccox. “they’re more in the river than out of it, i’m thinking, bringing in mess and what not.” she handed bertram aurelius, protesting for once vigorously, through the kitchen window to his mother. “it’s the young chicken up in the top field i’m after,” she added.
203ruth laughed as she picked up selina’s shivering little body which was cowering round her feet, and ran for the river. she liked the rush of the rain against her face, the eager thirst of the earth as it drank after the long drought, the scent of the wet grass. it was all very good. and if it only lasted long enough, it would make just all the difference in the world to the hay crop. the thunder was muttering along the hill-tops while she rescued the children from the shelter of a big tree, helped miss mccox with the young chicken, and hurriedly staked some carnations which should have been done days ago; then she fled for the house, barely in time to escape the full fury of the storm.
“the carnations could have been left,” said miss mccox, as she met her at the front door. “there’s no sense in getting your feet soaked at your age. i have a hot bath turned on for you and if you don’t go at once it will be cold.”
bathed, dressed, and glowing with content of mind and body, ruth watched the end of the storm from the parlour window. the big clouds were drifting heavily, muttering as they went, down towards the east, the rain still fell, but softly now, each silver streak shining separately in the blaze of sunlight from the west and presently, as ruth watched, a great rainbow, 204perfect and complete, arched in jewelled glory the sullen blackness of the retreating storm.
after her dinner she took the packet roger north had given her, and sat holding it between her hands in the big armchair by the window. the beautiful gracious old room was filling with the evening shadows, but here the light was still clear and full. the sunset lingered, although already the evening star was shining brightly. ruth sat there, as dick carey must often have sat after his day’s work, looking across his pleasant fields, dreaming dreams, thinking long thoughts, loving the beauty of it all.
here he must have thought and planned for the good and welfare of the farm. the crops and flowers and fruit, the birds and beasts. and in those last days, of the children who should come, calling him father, to own the farm one day, and love it as he had loved it.
masefield’s beautiful lines passed through ruth’s mind:
“if there be any life beyond the grave,
it must be near the men and things we love,
some power of quick suggestion how to save,
touching the living soul as from above.”
205she sat very still; the lamp, symbol of the life eternal, gleamed more brightly as the shadows deepened. the glow in the west died away, and the great stars shone with kindly eyes, just as it must have shone on dick carey, sitting there dreaming too, loving the beauty of it all.
and presently ruth became conscious of other things. curious and poignantly there grew around her, out of the very heart of the stillness, the sense of a great movement of men and things, the clash of warring instincts, an atmosphere of fierce passions, of hatred and terror, of tense anxiety, like an overstrained rod that must surely break, and yet holds. a terrible tension of waiting for something—something that was coming—coming—something that fell. she knew where she was now; for, through all the drenched sweetness of the fields and gardens, sickening, suffocating, deadly, came the smell of the great battlefields of the world. all of it was there—the sweat of men, the sour atmosphere of bivouac and dug-out, rotten sacking and wood, the fumes of explosives, the clinging horror of gas, the smell of the unattended death. it was all there, in one hideous whole. shuddering, clutching the letters tightly with clenched hands 206in her lap, ruth was back there again; again she was an atom in some awful scheme, again she knew the dread approach. the wait.... great roaring echoes rolled up and filled all space. sounds crashed and shattered, rent and destroyed.
and then, through it all, ruth felt—held it as it were between the hands of her heart—something so wonderful it took her breath away, and she knew it for what it was, through all the tumult, the horror, and the evil, the strong determined purpose of a man for a certain end. it grew and grew, in wonder and in glory, until her heart could no longer hold it, could no longer bear it, for it became the strong determined purpose of many men for a certain end. it joined and unified into a current of living light and fire, and sang as it flowed, sang so that the sounds of horror passed and fled and the melody of its flowing filled all space, the sound of the great song of the return.
she was no longer a lonely atom in a scheme she could not understand, no longer a stranger and a pilgrim in a weary land, but part of an amazing and stupendous whole, working in unison, making for an end glorious beyond conception. limits of time and space were wiped out, but when the strange and wonderful happening had passed over, never then, or at 207any later time, had she any doubt as to the reality of the experience. she knew and understood, though, with the apostle of old, she could have said, “whether in the body or out of the body i cannot tell.”
but suddenly the body claimed her again, and ruth seer did what was a very unusual thing with her—she put her face between her hands and cried and cried till they were wet with tears, her whole being shaken as by the passing of a great wind.
when, some time later, she opened the packet she found the few pages of diary much what she had somehow expected. just the short notes of a man pressed for every minute of his time, because every minute not given to definite duty was spent with, or for, his men. his love and care for them were in every line of those hasty scraps of writing, kept principally, it seemed to ruth, so that nothing for each one might be forgotten. it was that personal touch that struck her most forcibly. not one of his men had a private trouble but he knew it and took steps to help, not one was missing but he headed the search party if prior duties did not prevent, not one died without him if it were in any way possible for him to be there. that lean brown hand which she knew—had seen—what a sure thing it had been to 208hold. from the little hastily scribbled scraps it could be pieced together. that wonderful life which he, and many another, had led in the midst of hell. the light was fading when she took the letter out of its thin unstamped envelope, but dick carey’s writing was very clear, each word somewhat unusually far apart.
“dear old roger (it ran),—
“we have been badly knocked about, and are here to refit. seven of our officers killed and four wounded; 348 out of 726 men killed and wounded—some horribly maimed—my poor fellows. this is butchery, not war. the colonel was wounded early in the day and i was in command. kelsey is gone, and marriott, and little kennedy, of those you knew. writing to mothers and wives is hard work. you might go and see mrs. kelsey. she would like it. i have not a scratch and am well, but the damnable horror of this war is past belief. i have told vi as little as possible, and nothing of the following. poor von sch?de was brought into our lines, strangely enough, last evening, terribly mutilated. they had to amputate both legs and right arm at the clearing station. i managed to get down after things were over to see him. but he was still unconscious. we are in a ruined chateau on the right of —— forest. there is a lake in which we can bathe—a godsend.
“just midnight; and while i write a nightingale is singing. it goes on though the roar of the guns is echoing through the forest like a great sigh, and even 209the crash of an occasional shell does not disturb it. i suppose born and bred to it. my god, what wouldn’t i give to wake up and hear the nightingales singing to the river at thorpe and find this was only an evil dream!
“20th. von sch?de is gone. i was with him at the end, but it was terrible. i could not leave him and yet perhaps it would have been better. he seemed mad with hatred. poor fellow, one can hardly wonder. it was not only himself, so mutilated, but he seemed convinced, certain, that they were beaten. he cursed england and the english. me and mine and thorpe. even vi. it was indescribably horrible. the evil of this war incarnate as it were——”
the letter broke off, and ended with the scrawled initials
“yrs., r. c.”
and an undecipherable postscript:
“don’t tell vi.”
had he been called away hurriedly by the falling shell which had buried his men? the envelope was addressed in another writing. she felt it must have been so. very swiftly he had followed the man who had died cursing him and his, out into the world where thought and emotion, unclogged by this physical matter, are so much the more powerful and uncontrolled. 210had they met, these two strong spirits, moving on different lines of force, working for different ends? what had been let loose when karl von sch?de had died in that british clearing station, cursing “england and the english, me and mine and thorpe. even vi.” the great emotional forces, so much greater than the physical body which imprisons them, what power was there when freed; this hatred in a man of great and cultivated intellect, whose aim had been no mean or contemptible thing, whose aim had been power, what was that force on the other side of death? how much could it accomplish if, with added knowledge, it so willed?
ruth shivered in the warm june night. a sense of danger to the farm stole over her. a warning of something sinister, impending, brooding, as the great thunder-cloud had loomed up before it burst. she stepped out over the low window-ledge on to the terrace, looked across the sleeping beauty before her. still she held the papers in her hand. a glimmering moon was rising behind the trees, a little faint wind whispered among the leaves. they made black patterns on the silvered grass as it moved them very gently. the wind fell, and with it a great stillness. and out of the stillness came to ruth seer a word.
211she went back into the sitting-room, dark now except for the light of the little lamp, and knelt before it, and prayed.
and her prayer was just all the love and the pity she could gather into her heart for the strong spirit that had gone out black, and bitter, and tortured, and filled with hate. the spirit that had been karl von sch?de.
