Looking for Grace

Front matter

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Chapter I

BLACKHEATH, as everybody knows, is not what it was. Its glory has departed. The mansions which, fifty years ago, housed the families of the elect are now, for the most part, degraded into boarding-establishments, or given over frankly to the rats by the executors of their late tenants. No longer around the Heath do crocodiles of well-bom damsels take their daily walks, nor the sons of gentlemen disport themselves with a football in their leisure hours. Footballs there are, and boy^ to play with them ; girls too, and quite nice girls, but they are not so exclusive, so refined, or so genteel as in the days when these words had real meanings of their own.

However, not to take a too gloomy view of what was once an aristocratic neighbourhood, Blackheath has still a certain cachet of its own for the older generation. It is still quite near to Woolwich, and many a retired veteran of either Service may yet be seen in his ample tweed knickerbockers playing golf on the links. It has never for a moment lost the proud disdain with which it looks down on Lewisham and Lee ; and, if there are some of us who despise it for a mouldy old relic of the past, there are others

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who value it the more highly on that account. There are those who would not exchange their dingy little Victorian house, with its clipped laurel hedge and its diunmy windows, for the smartest flat in town ; and many there are whose soul has never once pined for a motor car, nor yearned for the distinction of a telephone number.

The Massinghams had Uved in the large, square house facing the Heath ever since the day when young Wilfred had taken the vicar's daughter there as his bride, somewhere about the year eighteen hundred and eighty-nine; and were universally acknowledged as the head of a nimierous family whose roots were deep in the soil of the neighbourhood. Mrs. Waterson, who was Mrs. Massingham's half-sister, lived in Shooter's Hill Road with her ten children, or such of them as were left. Unde Percival, who was a childless widower, occupied a house in The Paragon. There were the Drakes at Woolwich; the Miss Mansons, who eked out the tiny pension their father had left them by taking in select paying guests ; and, in a new and commodious villa of which nobody approved, there were the Burton-Smiths, who were not quite-quite, but admitted because she had been a Neville-Ross.

Most of the philanthropic effort of the district was undertaken by the Massinghams, the work being done by the poorer relations, and the glory which accrued, if any, being allotted to those who headed the subscription lists ; and it is safe to say that nothing went on, either socially or otherwise, for miles round, but they had a hand in it. Front seats were reserved for them ; station-masters bowed when they travelled ; and the tradesmen who had the honour of servmg them sent them the best of their wares, and charged them higher prices than anyone else on their books. But, in spite of this lavish attention, they were not at all proud ; they took it all as a generous tribute of those whom Providence had placed beneath them, and their manner to each other, their friends and their servants, was cordial in the extreme. Outsiders, of course, did not exist.

It was half-past eight one bright February morning, and Mrs. Wilfred Massingham sat at the head of her breakfast table, wearing the same expression which for twenty-five years she had invariably worn at that hour of the day. Obviously, breakfast was a duty, and one which no Massingham would evade. Punctuality, too, and a certain sober cleanliness were evidently due to the occasion. One had only to look at her to see that she had never known what it was to feel like the morning after the night before : bacon had no terrors for her, the boiled egg was one of her household gods.

She was a well-preserved woman of about fifty, with a somewhat hard but persistently pleasant face ; her hair was frankly turning grey and was neatly dressed to suggest an impregnable virtue. Her firm, plump hands showed not the slightest sign of restlessness or even of activity ; and as she deliberately measured three teaspoonfuls of tea into the silver teapot, and poured over it water from the bubbling kettle before her, she looked — ^what indeed she had always tried to be — ^a thoroughly conscientious, God-fearing gentlewoman.

But this morning, in spite of her determined efforts to be quite ordinary, it was evident that something had interfered with her usually robust appetite. Her toast lay unheeded on her plate, and she sipped her tea mechanically, her eyes wandering with a sort of expectant disapproval towards the doorway. Not that she really minded Lovie's being a little late : everything was so extraordinary these days that one had to make allowances. And Lovie was such a comfort, had been so S3m[ipathetic and helpful during the trying events of the past month, that she might almost have asked for her breakfast in bed and it would not have been denied her.

Before the toast grew cold, a quick patter of footsteps was heard on the stairs, and a moment later a cheerful looking girl of about twenty entered the room.

" Morning, auntie," she said, sliding hastily into her seat. " So sorry I'm late. I rushed down in my dressing-gown to look at the paper, and breakfast time came before I was ready for it. How did you sleep ? " she prattled on, as she lifted a shining cover and helped herself to a tiny curl of bacon.

" Not at aU well," said Aunt Margaret, " this terrible war is getting on my nerves. I had my hot milk as usual but somehow I could not get off ; it must have been quite two o'clock before I closed my eyes. I kept thinking about your poor uncle. Poor, dear Wilfred, how very sad it all is I "

" But you have been so splendid," said Lovie loyally, " so brave. I think the way you have gone through everything has been simply wonderful. Most women would have been utterly prostrate at losing a husband, and having a son go to the Front, all within a month."

" Of course Bernard has not gone yet," said his mother thoughtfully.

" And perhaps he never will go," added Lovie. " They can't surely send him until he learns something about soldiering ; at present he hardly knows one end of a rifle from the other, poor darling."

" No, I am not worrying about Bernard," said Mrs. Massingham. " I cannot help thinking that it is a great pity he has seen fit to throw up such a promising career, but that is a matter about which, as you know, I have decided to say no more. It was yoiur uncle who was in my mind last night. As I lay awake, I could not help going over the past, and thinking, wondering, whether I had always done my duty towards him. I have certainly tried to do so. Our house, as far as I could make it, was always a comfortable one. I never interfered with his fishing, although he was often away from me for weeks at a time and invariably came back with a bad cold.

" Even about Evans, I'm sure I have been most reasonable. As you know, I never liked Evans; but, seeing that he had been my husband's servant for so long, I put up with him, and have done so without a murmur for twenty-five years. Although I could not, in my own mind, approve of all his volunteering nonsense, so expensive and unnecessary, I have never really stood in his way ; and when war broke out, and he rushed off to the War Office offering himself for an emergency billet, and swearing that he was only forty-five — ^which was so obviously untrue — even then I said nothing. In fact, I did everything I possibly could to help him to get ready. And when, at the last, he refused to take that nice portmanteau with his bed linen and all his thick underclothing, I merely said, if you remember, ' Very well, my dear ; you know best.' " Her voice was growing very pathetic, and she dabbed her eyes with a large, immaculate handkerchief.

" You have lived so much with us, dear child, since the death of your parents, that it can be no secret to you that your uncle and I did not always understand each other. In spite of his genial maimer, he had a very cold nature ; and I myself am so warm-hearted that perhaps I did not always make sufficient allowance for what seemed to me a lack of natural affection. But, nevertheless, I have mourned him as truly as any wife ever mourned a husband. His death was a great grief to me, to say nothing of the shock of it coming so suddenly, and no funeral or anything to help one tide over the first few days ; and if I do not wear a cap, it is not from any lack of respect, but because — well, he always took such a pride in my appearance that I feel sure he would not have wished to see me look a middle-aged old frump, which is what I certainly do look like in those dreadful caps."

" Of course he woulchi't," said Lovie cheerfully. " I remember him saying one day that he didn't like widows."

" Did not like widows ! " exclaimed Mrs. Massingham incredulously. " But what a very strange thing to say I He so often spoke like that, without thinking, I am sure."

LCX)KING FOR GRACE

" Of course he did not mean his own widow," explained Lovie hastily. " It was that dingy, depressed look he objected to. He did so love us all to be merry and bright, didn't he ? And so we must try to be ; and you must try too, dear Aunt Margaret, it would please him."

" Yes, indeed, I will try," sighed Mrs. Massingham, rising with resolution from the table. " There is so much to be done, is there not ? AU the poor soldiers' wives to look after ; the wounded to care for; and the quantities of things which must be sent to the Front — to say nothing of those unhappy Belgians. When I think that, but for the grace of God, I myself might be a destitute refugee stranded in a foreign coimtry without a penny of my own, and obliged to wear other people's clothes, I feel I can never do enough for them in gratitude that I am not called upon to suffer in that way."

" I know," said Lovie thoughtfully, " one does feel like that sometimes. I hear Mrs. Burton- Smith is trying to arrange for another batch of them to come here. I wonder if we could — how do you think it would be if we took some in ? "

" In here ! In this house ? " exclaimed Mrs. Massingham aghast.

" It would be a very useful thing to do," urged Lovie persuasively. " I promise to look after them myself ; they would be no trouble at all to you."

Mrs. Massingham took up the poker and banged it vigorously on a large liunp of coal in the grate.

" They would be most uncomfortable here," she said firmly. " I could not possibly have them in the rooms we use ourselves, and Evans, I feel sure, would deeply resent any interference in the servants' quarters. I fully appreciate, dear child, your suggestion to take it all upon your own shoulders, but it is an impossible idea — your dear uncle would be the first one to say so if he were here."

" I believe Uncle Wilfred would like us to do it," persisted Lovie gently. " See how he dashed off to do what he could ; he gave up his Ufe without a moment's thought."

" I am fully aware of that," admitted Aunt Margaret with some heat. '* But giving up your life is one thing, and having a lot of strangers rushing up and downstairs all day and night, spoiling the carpets and upsetting the servants, is another. Your uncle was a perfectly just and reasonable man ; he would certainly never have allowed the house to be turned upside down from a mistaken sense of duty. Besides which, he did not care for Belgians, and the French language always annoyed him owing to his not understanding what it was all about. I am convinced he would never have permitted me to make any such sacrifice. What little money I have to give away they shall have with pleasure, because if they did not get it somebody else would ; but as to having them here, you must understand, once and for all, my dear child, that it is quite impossible."

" Very well, then," sighed Lovie philosophically, " I must just go on knitting, I suppose. But, oh dear, I am so tired of making mu£Sers, and it does seem so little to do when every one else is doing so much."

Both women looked up quickly as the obnoxious Evans entered the room, bearing some letters on his little silver tray. He was a shufiBing, untidy old man in rather disreputable black clothes, and a pair of dress shoes which had obviously belonged to some one with much larger feet ; and, as he approached his mistress, her eye travelled critically from his too shaggy head, past his doubtful collar, over his crumpled clothes, and rested with unmistakable disapproval on his ill-kept hands. However, with the habit of years still strong upon her, she smiled almost amiably at him as she took the letters from his tray.

" I thought the postman must have gone past," she observed pleasantly. "He's late this morning."

" It's a new man," said Evans conversationally. " I hear that Osbom has gone back to his old r^;iment. This young feller don't know the work. Should I clear the table ? " he went on, already hovering over the empty dishes.

" Please do," replied Mrs. Massingham, busy with her envelopes.

'' I see as there's a letter from the Front," commented Evans, as he folded up the table-napkins.

No reply was forthcoming, and he proceeded to gather up the plates, his rugged old face set in a look of grim suffering which was very pathetic, had there been any one to notice it.

" I don't suppose there's anything more about — 'im ? " he ventured at length, halting hopefully in the doorway.

But Mrs. Massingham did not even hear him. Her eyes were fixed on the letter before her ; the hand which held it trembled ever so little, and her lips were compressed into a tight line as though deteimined that no sound should escape them.

It seemed a long time to Lovie until her aunt reached the end of the page, and laid the letter down on her lap with a gesture of helpless resignation that was wholly new to her.

" What's the matter ? " asked the girl quickly.

Mrs. Massingham gazed at her with unseeing eyes. " I do not believe it/' she said faintly.

" Oh, what is it ? " cried Lovie in alarm. " Do tell me quickly."

" It is utterly untrue/' repeated Aunt Margaret in a firmer tone. "Who is this Mr. — ^Barnes? Have you ever heard of him ? "

'' May I see his letter ? " asked Lovie patiently. " Mr. Barnes, of course, was one of Uncle Wilfred's subalterns. I remember the name quite well."

" He has written me a preposterous letter about yoiur uncle," said Mrs. Massingham. *' You may go/' she added severely to the faithful Evans who was standing motionless in the doorway and listening with both his ears. " When I want you I will ring. Close the door, please."

" I'll come back and close it, me 'ands is full of dishes," said Evans obediently. " Don't you bother to close it, I won't be a minute."

" Oh, that terrible old man 1 " moaned Mrs. Massingham, sinking back into her chair. " I feel nearly distracted, Lovie. Will you be good enough to shut the door at once, please, and when you have done so read me the letter again. I cannot believe it, I will not. Perhaps I have made a mistake."

Lovie flashed over to the door and back again in a

LOOKING FOR GRACE ii

moment. Then she took up the letter which was still lying in her aunt's lap and began to read breathlessly :

" Dear Mrs. Massingham,

" I have been wanting to write to you for some time, but had the bad luck to be wounded and have only just come out of hospital. As I was with Col. Massingham at the time of his death, I think perhaps you will be glad to have news of his last hours. He was severely wounded by a piece of shrapnel in the left lung, and we feared from the first that there was little hope for him ; but we did all we could at the time, and he was taken without any delay to the Field Hospital. There he lingered for nearly three hours, not in much pain, I am glad to say, and practically unconscious for most of the time. However, just at the end, he had a ludd interval, and you will like to know that his last thoughts were for you. It appeared to me that he wished to send you a message of some kind, but I could not catch clearly what he said. I could only hear him murmuring, ' Grace, Grace, tell Grace I have done what I could.' I am afraid this will not be much comfort to you in your great trouble, but I feel it is my duty to let you know the little there is to say. His loss has left a place in the Brigade which wiH be very difficult to fill.

" With deep sympathy, I remain,

" Yours very truly,

" Cyril Barnes."

A deathly stillness followed the reading of this

Digitized by CjOOQIC illuminatiiig letter. The two women looked steadily at each other for some seconds without saying a word. Then Airs. Massingham spoke, in a voice which cut the silence like a saw : " Who is Grace ? " she demanded with austerity.

Chapter II

MRS. MASSINGHAM'S question acted like the proverbial stone dropped into a pond : the splash of it caused a httle ripple which widened and spread until it reached the very outside edge of her environments. Even to Lovie, unversed as she was in the ways of the world, there was a curious menace in those three words ; they seemed fraught with terrible significance, pregnant with a meaning which, as it dawned gradually on her understanding, filled her with bewilderment. In uneasy haste she tried to remember who Grace might be ; with furrowed brow racked her brains to evolve a likely Grace from amongst their acquaintances. But she could think of no one.

There was, of course, Mr. Grace who had dined with them one day last summer, and her fancy hovered hopefully over him until Aunt Margaret reminded her of the fatal message : " Tell her I have done what I could." There was also Grace, the housemaid who had married the milkman : a good, steady girl with a rabid devotion to duty, as evinced by the four babies with which she had presented her husband in four years; but not one likely to haunt the last hours of her Uncle Wilfred. Aunt

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Margaret agreed with her that it could not be that Grace.

Indeed, it seemed almost an impertinence to speculate on so delicate a subject, especially under the stony stare of disapproval which was gradually crystallising on Mrs. Massingham's face.

" Wild conjectures are no use to me at all," she said frigidly. " It would have been better, perhaps, if I had kept the matter to myself, and I wish now that I had done so. But on the spur of the moment, and being so upset that I hardly knew what I was doing, I foolishly passed you the letter."

" And I'm very glad you did," said Lovie sturdily. " Perhaps I can help you to think of some explanation. In the first place, I don't believe Uncle Wilfred ever said an3^hing of the sort ; and, even if he did, you know what delirious people are, they will say anything. I know, when I have ever such a sHght temperature, I fed too utterly mad for words : I should be just as likely to say ' Grace ' as ' Margaret.' "

" Perhaps you are right," admitted her aimt dubiously. "It is very difl&cult for me to believe that your uncle had an affair such as I am well aware many men have, unknown to their wives. He had his faults, we all have, but deceit was not one of them."

" I daresay Evans would know if there had been anything of the kind ? " suggested Lovie hopefully,

Mrs. Massingham stared. " It is not very likely that I should discuss a matter of this kind with Evans," she observed with hauteur.

" Of coiu^ not," agreed Lovie hastily.

*' If anyone at all is to be^consulted about it, I should naturally see Mr. Gouldsmith, your uncle's solicitor/' continued Mrs. Massingham.

" Yes, why not ? " assented Lovie. " But, on the other hand, would it not be just as well to let the whole thing slide ? Don't you think it's rather a pity to interfere? If Uncle Wilfred had any little things he did not wish you to know, it would be kinder not to try and find out."

" I totally disagree with you," said Aunt Margaret firmly. " If it should prove — which I do not think it will — but if, as I say, it should transpire that your uncle had a — ^a friend to whom he wished a message sent after his death, it is my duty to see that his wishes are carried out. Without, of course, intruding in any way upon his private affairs, I should not be happy in my own mind until I had fulfilled what I feel to have been his dying request. And besides that, although I hope I am not an inquisitive woman, because there is nothing I dislike more, it is only natural that I should wish to know something of an affair which has evidently been kept from me. Yes. I shall go up to town tMs morning and call on Mr. Gouldsmith. It will not be a pleasant duty, but I have never allowed my personal inclinations to stand in the way of what I feel I ought to do."

" Very well, then," assented Lovie, with the easy acquiescence of one who knows that protest is useless, '' shall I ring up and say that he is to expect you ? "

"Please do," said Mrs. Massingham, *'and tell Cook to come upstairs for her orders. I really do not feel equal to going down into the kitchen this morning, after all I have been through."

So Aunt Margaret went up to town, in her expensive mourning cloak, and a hat which had been transformed by a clever milliner into something not quite so lugubrious as usual ; and Lovie tucked herself up into a huge arm-chair by the fire and settled down for a quiet hour with her despised muffler.

As her needles clicked, her thoughts raced ahead, and a tiny pucker gathered on her brow that could not possibly have been caused by the intricacies of the work she was doing. Several times she laid it down, and gazed for a few moments before her with eyes which saw nothing ; and occasionally her whole face lightened with a little reminiscent smile, as of some sweet secret in her heart. From which signs the intelligent reader will doubtless recognise the familiar symptoms of Love, in its first and harmless stage.

Lovie, being only twenty, and a very nice girl, attractive and sympathetic withal, was, of course, in love ; and it says a good deal for her bringing-up that this was the first experience which, in her whole life, had caused her any uneasiness whatever. Not that there was an3^hing about the affair to call for special anxiety or apprehension ; a more experienced eye would have welcomed with enthusiasm a road to happiness so clear and well-defined. But Lovie, although a clever little woman in many wa}rs, was still a child at heart ; and the fact that Bernard and she were first cousins, and that the idea of their ever being ans^hing else had never once entered the mind of Bernard's mother, seemed to her to constitute a serious obstacle in the course of True Love.

It had been such a surprise when Bernard, on the night that he left home to join his regiment for the first time, had suddenly seized her in his arms and kissed her in his rough boyish fashion ; and yet not really a surprise, for, she told herself, she had surely always known the world could hold only one man for her. When it was all over, and they tried to look in each other's eyes, both had been too shy to speak, and Lovie smiled to herself as she remembered his halting apology and the words he had softly breathed into her hair : " Good-bye, little Lovie. If I coijie back — when I come back, you won't forget, will you ? "

It had all passed like a wonderful dream, on the dimly Ughted landing upstairs. She could still hear Aunt Margaret's voice, telling Evans to mind the paint as he lumbered downstairs with a bulky kit bag. A clatter of dishes had come up from the kitchen, and she remembered the rough feel of his new timic against her cheek, the unfamiliar leather belt, as she slipped her arm round his huge waist.

Then he was gone ; and she peeped over the banisters and watched his sleek head as he bowed it to kiss his mother good-bye ; saw his hearty handshake for old Evans. A moment later the front door had closed behind him, and she was alone, her heart aching with a painful sort of rapture, so that she hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry.

Over a week had passed since that eventful evening, a most delicious dream week ; for Love hung like a golden haze around her, and she lived in a sweet world of her own : a world where materiaUsm had no sway and " disillusion " was a word unknown.

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Her reverie was interrupted by the entrance of old Evans, who glided almost furtively into the room. She smiled kindly at him, because Bernard liked him. He was intent, it appeared, upon making up the fire, but it was a tedious process, and what with sweepings and brushings^ putting on of coals, and poking them into their appointed comers, several minutes elapsed before he had finished it to his own satisfaction.

As he rose stiffly from his knees, he sighed deeply.

" It's a sad thing to be getting old, Miss Lovie," he remarked dismally, '' to feel that nobody wants yer.'*

" But you mustn't feel that, Evans," said Lovie. " We do want you. What should we do without you?"

" Him that wants me is gone," said Evans grimly. " Other people can get along without me, I know that well enough."

"Don't be a silly old man," observed Lovie, counting her stitches.

"Her tone's changed considerable, has yer aunt's," pursued Evans with unabated gloom. " It's ' I'll ring when I want yer, Evans. Close the door ' — and her sitting there with a letter in her 'and from the Front. You'd never think I'd served 'im close on forty years, the way I'm tret."

" You can't expect my aunt to read you her letters," Lovie reminded him reprovingly. "We all know hgw attached you were to my uncle, but you must be reasonable, mustn't you ? "