Sleep in Peace (35 page)

Frederick came home to find his wife no longer a virago, but a martyr. Again his home was well tended, his meals well prepared; but, Gwen's haggard face and exhausted air seemed to say, at what a cost! She would not allow Frederick to help her in any tasks about the house save the very heaviest; she shut him cheerfully into the dining-room and went to wash up; when, startled by her long absence, he went in search of her, he found her lying back in a chair, a damp plate and a towel in her hand, white and ill but still determined to do her duty. Frederick suffered almost more under this regime than under the previous rages; and Geoffrey, who was now talking and walking, watched it all from his luminous dark eyes, which in Frederick's opinion somewhat resembled his Uncle Spencer's.

Everything went wrong with this unlucky second baby, thought the wretched Frederick; its birth was delayed three weeks beyond
the expected date, and the prolonged delay made Gwen quite hysterical. The monthly nurse was in the house a fortnight doing nothing but have afternoon tea with Gwen and crochet miles of lace edging—the addition her extra stay would make to her bill made Frederick groan; but what else could be done? Then there was a false alarm in the middle of the night, and the doctor, roused for nothing, was very bad-tempered. When at last parturition began Gwen's conduct was by no means exemplary. The nurse, flustered and worried, said that she really didn't know what had come over Mrs. Hinchliffe, she was sure, so different was the patient from the last time she attended her; and she gazed reproachfully at Frederick as she spoke, plainly blaming him for the change. The labour was protracted and difficult; forceps were necessary. Geoffrey, who had been rapidly removed to Cromwell Place for the duration of the confinement, became extremely naughty, would not eat, screamed at meal-times, and broke a mug. Altogether, it was not surprising that an immense sigh of relief rose from all the Armisteads and Hinchliffes when at last Frederick, using his new telephone—the nurse had declined to remain on the case unless a telephone was installed, and Frederick, though he had previously resisted Gwen's desire for this luxury on the score of expense, conscientiously yielded—announced that he was now the father of a fine healthy daughter.

“A girl!” exclaimed Laura with interest. “What fun!”

She telephoned Grace, just home for her last summer vacation, and they agreed to pay their respects to the infant together, on the following afternoon.

Peace had descended on the home; the nurse smiled as she admitted them, Gwen was sitting up in bed against frilled pillows, in a pale blue bedjacket, composed and serene. She seemed disappointed that Grace had not brought Geoffrey to see her.

“Mother thought it too soon,” said Grace.

Gwen made a
moue
and urged her to bring him to-morrow.

“It will be a pity if I can't feed Baby, won't it,” she said.

Grace and Laura agreed as heartily as their inexperience allowed that it would be a pity, and asked to see the infant.

“Nurse has her somewhere,” said Gwen indifferently. Then, as the child belied this by a sleepy cry: “Oh, no; she's over there, in the cot.”

Grace and Laura bent over the wooden cot and found the baby, dressed, lying on a pillow. The child, with its fluff of downy fair hair, had a ludicrous air of Grace about its tiny features.

“She's a nice little thing,” exclaimed Laura, timidly touching the minute little fist.

“Won't it be a pity if I can't feed her?” said Gwen. “It will be awful, if I can't feed her. Will you stay and have tea with me?”

The nurse forbade this, however, and Grace and Laura soon found themselves in the hot sunshine of Prince's Road.

“You know, Grace,” said Laura, taking her friend's arm. “Gwen doesn't mean to feed that baby.”

“That's just what I thought,” returned Grace, drawing down the corners of her mouth sardonically and nodding.

They decided to take a walk together, and struck up towards the moors.

“I must tell you, Grace,” said Laura presently, “that I'm beginning to lose my religion.”

“Oh, Laura, I'm so
glad!”
cried Grace, bounding joyously. “Of course I wouldn't for the world have said anything to influence you, but I began to lose mine the first year I went to College. It's really impossible to believe in those old myths nowadays.”

“God can't be both all-good and all-powerful,” said Laura.

“Exactly,” agreed Grace.

“They pretend that human freedom of choice explains that difficulty,” said Laura. “But it doesn't. If God were all-powerful, He could arrange so that human beings always freely chose the right. If He
is
all-powerful, and does not arrange that, then He is not good. Imperfect as I am,” continued Laura earnestly, “if I were the all-powerful ruler of the world, I could not bear anyone in it
to have an instant's unhappiness; I couldn't bear anyone to sacrifice themselves for me. B,ut we are asked to believe that a perfect God, infinite in power and goodness, permits unhappiness and likes sacrifice—that He would not mind if, to take a small instance, I had to give up the School of Art. It's nonsense, Grace.”

“Exactly. And what evidence is there for a God, in any case?” said Grace. “History certainly shows no trace of guidance by a benevolent Divine Power.”

“I cling to the notion of personal immortality,” observed Laura, “but I know it's weak of me.”

“Why do you want immortality, Laura?” said Grace, amused.

“I long for a time when I shall be justified, I expect,” said Laura. “Justified, explained, understood, assessed at my right value and allotted my right place. A Day of Judgment, you know—it's a comforting notion.”

“The idea of death is hateful to me,” said Grace with a shudder. “But I see no argument for life after death that any qualified historian, accustomed to sift evidence, could accept.”

“The bourne from which no traveller returns,”
commented Laura.

“Exactly. If God wants us to believe in immortality, why not send us some evidence! which a qualified historian could accept?”

“You and your qualified historian!” said Laura, laughing and charging her companion affectionately to the side of the narrow, stony lane.

“Well, it's so
unjust,”
argued Grace. “To expect us to believe so much on so little evidence. I wouldn't make a week's holiday depend on such flimsy trifles, much less eternal punishment.”

“And then Christianity,” began Laura.

“Christ was a great man,” said Grace soberly.

“Yes, indeed. But all these myths about Virgin Birth,” began Laura distastefully.

“Are simply borrowed from earlier religions. See Frazer,
Golden Bough,”
concluded Grace. “Then again,” she said: “How
can one believe in miracles? (I had my doubts of them even when I was at school!) or in Special Creation?”

“I don't know what that is,” said Laura.

“Oh, we were brought up on it,” explained Grace. “Man was specially created by God to sing His praise.”

“Fancy creating people just to sing one's own praises, to begin with!” said Laura distastefully.

“And how can human beings be regarded as separate, different from the animal creation? It's absurd,” argued Grace, giving scientific examples of the unity of all forms of life.

“Their muscles are just the same, certainly,” agreed Laura thoughtfully, remembering that Bernard Duchay was taking some kind of Science at Cambridge. “Still, there's something. Not exactly a soul, of course. But something. No other animal writes and paints and models, for instance—no other animal has invented art.”

“Beavers?” suggested Grace. “But no; you're right. Animals have no sense of beauty. And animals don't improve; they don't try to educate each generation beyond the last.”

“Education,” exclaimed Grace and Laura together.

They hooked fingers, wished, uttered the names of poets, and laughed. The childish formula gave them pleasure, but the knowledge of their secret and separate wishes, each half divined by the other, kept them silent for a time; for Laura's wish concerned the Board of Education National Competition, in which she had special hopes of her drawing of heather, while Grace's concerned Bernard Duchay.

They had now reached the Ellistone, and, proud of their sensible pleated skirts and their agility, strode across the chasm and established themselves on the summit of the high black rock. The rolling Pennine hills were unusually bright and clear to-day beneath the summer sun; the fields of the lower slopes deeply green, the peaty summits richly sepia. Laura threw herself down, rejoicing to feel the dark West Riding stone warm to her fingers; Grace
stood, erect and tall, oh the very edge of the precipitous descent to the tumbled heath below, and shading her eyes, gazed about her joyously. In this bright sunshine, and by contrast with the gay colours of the nearer hills, the grimy pall and barren slopes of the distant town looked particularly ugly.

“Would any sensible God permit Hudley?” demanded Grace, laughing.

“He would not,” agreed Laura emphatically. “But since He does, He ought to accept it as it is, as the result of His own muddling.”

“Edward lost his faith years ago,” said Grace. “He found religion altogether too illogical.”

“But Frederick still Relieves, I think,” said Laura.

“I'm afraid he does,” said Grace.

“Ah, well, he's a poet,” conceded Laura.

Grace sat down, and took out a packet of cigarettes.

“When are you going to learn to smoke, Laura?” she said.

“Now,” said Laura, extending an eager hand towards this symbol of the enlightened woman.

Between her inexperience and the wind on the Ellistone, she found the process not as easy as she expected; eventually, giggling, crouching behind a spur of rock and holding the cigarette between Grace's shielding hands, she managed to keep it alight.

“What
Papa would say if he knew I smoked in secret!” she exclaimed gleefully, puffing hard.

“Well, if you call the top of the Ellistone secret!” grinned Grace.

She began to tell Laura about her forthcoming cycling holiday with Margherita and Bernard Duchay, which was to take place in the following week, that of the annual Hudley holiday, the Hudley Wakes.

“Oh, Grace!” cried Laura, disappointed. “That's the week Ludo and I are going to Port Erin. You knew I wanted you to come.”

Grace's face fell. “But Laura,” she said, “I thought Ludo went to his Territorial camp in Wakes Week.”

“No, no. The week before. He's going to-morrow,” said Laura.

Grace was silent, and her air was concerned. After a moment she said: “I'm afraid I can't give up the cycling tour, Laura.”

“You mean you can't give up the opportunity of seeing Bernard Duchay,” said Laura, half joking, half in earnest.

“Perhaps!” cried Grace with a sudden joyous grin.

“You're awfully interested in men, Grace, aren't you?” mused Laura.

“Yes. I think they're fascinating creatures,” admitted Grace cheerfully. “Don't you?”

“No, not in the least,” said Laura with truth. “But don't think,” she added hastily, “that I grudge it to you, Grace.”

Grace was silent again; she sat chucking small dark stones up and down in one hand, her handsome head bent, while the wind played in her tawny hair. Presently she lifted her eyes to the distant hills, and spoke in her most serious tone, uttering each word very precisely. “I mean to marry, Laura,” she said. “I shall be disappointed if I don't. The P. was saying the other day that her generation of women had had to give up their potential children in order to establish woman's right to work; it remained for our generation to establish woman's right to both work and children.”

Laura considered. “You mean,” she said, “to prove that a married woman needn't necessarily be like Gwen.”

“Exactly,” agreed Grace with emphasis.

It was the evening of the Saturday before Hudley Wakes Week; the fires in the boilers had been drawn, and the tall chimneys were muted, no longer pouring their dark smoke into the air. Since noon the exodus had been continual; the approaches to the station were full of textile workers, their wives and families, carrying bulging Japanese baskets, on their way to Blackpool and the Isle of Man. Laura, who had seen the crowds on her way to Cromwell Place, spoke of them now, with the intention of reassuring Mr. Hinchliffe by this tacit evidence that everything was proceeding just as usual—there could be no need to worry, surely, if Hudley went for its annual holiday just as before. Mr. Hinchliffe, however, was not so easily reassured. He paced the dining-room in torment, pausing uneasily to push up his moustache. Grace and Mrs. Hinchliffe, sewing, and Laura with her hands in her lap, watched him covertly in varying degrees of distress.

“Our entente with France does not amount to an alliance, and carries with it neither naval nor military obligations—it's so odd he doesn't telegraph,” said Mr. Hinchliffe.

“He probably doesn't think it necessary, Father,” urged Grace.

“What does the chastisement or otherwise of a small barbaric state like Servia matter to us?” pursued Mr. Hinchliffe irritably. “Are we to let our Jingoes push us into war?”

Laura, feeling that in Mr. Hinchliffe's view the Armisteads came under the heading of Jingoes, flushed uncomfortably. She
was silent, however, for she really did not understand the situation in Europe, and so was quite unable to answer Mr. Hinchliffe's insinuations. As she never did more than glance at the newspapers, she was quite taken aback when the
Yorkshire Post
suddenly, as it seemed to her, last Monday morning came out with six columns under the general heading:
Impending European War
. She hurriedly consulted Mr. Armistead and Grace, and discovered that an Austrian Archduke had been murdered in Servia a few weeks ago, Austria had therefore sent an ultimatum to Servia, Servia had rejected some of its terms, Austria was therefore preparing to invade Servia, and Russia was mobilising in Servia's defence. As the week went on the headlines grew larger; Sir Edward Grey made “mediatory proposals” to the Powers concerned, which were said to have a “tranquillising effect”; but next day Austria and Servia began to fight, the headlines spread across two columns; on the following day the gravity of the outlook became “unrelieved”; and now Germany had sent ultimatums to Russia and to France. What Russia had to do with Servia, what Germany had to do with Russia, and where France came in, Laura had not the slightest notion; she was absolutely convinced, however, that if Germany began to fight, England would have to fight her. She had heard too much from Ludo about “Der Tag,” not to be sure of that. And Edward was in Hamburg on business. On one and the same page of the
Hudley Guardian
to-day there could be seen: first, the announcement, beneath the heading
Technical College Distinctions
, that Armistead, L., had won a Board of Education bronze medal for drawing of plant form; then under
Personal
that Mr. Edward H. Hinchliffe, son of Alderman Henry Hinchliffe, was travelling in Germany as the representative of Messrs. Henry Hinchliffe & Co., and lastly, beneath
Britishers on the Continent
, a statement from the Foreign Office that citizens of Great Britain travelling in countries where mobilisation was taking place would be in no danger, though they might be subjected to considerable inconvenience. The same paragraphs precisely
figured in the Liberal
Hudley News
, which lay spread out on the Hinchliffes' table now. It gave one a curious feeling, thought Laura, a strange, exciting feeling, to see one's name, and the names of one's friends, in the paper like that—almost as if one were personally concerned in these great historical events which were taking place. The statement from the Foreign Office, too, mentioned “enquiries from persons desiring to travel on the Continent”, and Laura knew that Mr. Hinchliffe was one of those persons who had made enquiries as to the safety of Continental travellers. He had positively telegraphed to the Foreign Office about Edward! It was amazing, it was frightening, and Laura's heart beat fast. Would there be war? England!