Part 56 (1/2)

They were sitting in the wrens' garden with the children.

”Earley's going,” Tony said importantly.

”Earley!” Jan exclaimed. ”Going where?”

”To fight, of course,” little Fay chimed in.

”Oh, poor dear Earley!” Jan sighed.

”Happy, fortunate Earley,” said Peter. ”I wish I stood in his shoes.”

Earley joined the Gloucesters because, he said, ”he couldn't abear to think of them there Germans comin' anigh Mother and them childring and the ladies; and he'd better go and see as they didn't.”

Mr. With.e.l.ls called the men on his place together and told them that every man who joined would have his wages paid to his wife, and his wife or his mother, as the case might be, could stop on in her cottage. And Mr. With.e.l.ls became a special constable, with a badge and a truncheon.

But he worried every soldier that he knew with inquiries as to whether there wasn't a chance for him in _some_ battalion: ”I've taken great care of my health,” he said. ”I do exercises every day after my bath; I'm young-looking for my age, don't you think? And anyway, a bullet might find me instead of a more useful man.”

No one laughed then at Mr. With.e.l.ls and his exercises.

Five days after the declaration of war Jan got a letter from Hugo Tancred. He was in London and was already a private in a rather famous cavalry regiment.

”They didn't ask many questions,” he wrote, ”so I hadn't to tell many lies. You see, I can ride well and understand horses. If I get knocked out, it won't be much loss, and I know you'll look after Fay's kiddies.

If I come through, perhaps I can make a fresh start somewhere. I've always been fond of a gamble, and this is the biggest gamble I've ever struck.”

Jan showed the letter to Peter, who gave it back to her with something like a groan: ”Even the wrong 'uns get their chance, and yet I have to go back and do a deadly dull job, just because it _is_ my job.”

Peter went up to town and two days after came down again to ”The Green Hart” to say good-bye. He had got his marching orders and was to sail in the _Somali_ from Southampton. Some fifteen hundred civilians and officers serving in India were sailing by that boat and the _Dongola_.

By every argument he could bring forward he tried to get Jan to marry him before he sailed. Yet just because she wanted to do it so much, she held back. She, too, she kept telling herself, had her job, and she knew that if she was Peter's wife, nothing, not even her dear Fay's children, could be of equal importance with Peter.

The children and Meg and the household had by much thinking grown into a sort of Frankenstein's monster of duty.

Her att.i.tude was incomprehensible to Peter. It seemed to him to be wrong-headed and absurd, and he began to lose patience with her.

On his last morning he sought and found her beside the sun-dial in the wrens' garden.

Meg had taken little Fay to see Lady Mary's Persian kittens, but Tony preferred to potter about the garden with the aged man who was trying to replace Earley. William was not allowed to call upon the kittens, as Fatima, their mother, objected to him vehemently, and Tony cared to go nowhere if William might not be of the party.

Peter came to Jan and took both her hands and held them.

”It's the last time I shall ask you, my dear. If you care enough, we can have these last days together. If you don't I must go, for I can't bear any more of this. Either you love me enough to marry me before I sail or you don't love me at all. Which is it?”

”I do love you, you know I do.”

”Well, which is it to be?”

”Peter, dear, you must give me more time. I haven't really faced it all.

I can't do anything in such a hurry as that.”

Peter looked at her and shook his head.