> 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
THE 
 WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 BY 
 
 MARGARET SHERWOOD 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1917 
 
Copyright, 1916, 
 BT LITTLE, BBOWX, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published, September, 1916 
 
 Reprinted, October. 1016 
 
 November, 11)16 (five times) 
 
 December, 1916 (five times) 
 
 February, 1917 
 
 i. J. I AEKHILL * CO., BoflTO, U.S.A. 
 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 AUGUST 25, 1914. At last I have 
 found the very place for our 
 housekeeping; I have been search 
 ing for days: did you know it, dear? The 
 quest that we began together I had to 
 follow after you went to the front; and, 
 through the crashes of tragic rumours 
 that have rolled through England, I have 
 gone on and on, not running away or try 
 ing to escape, but full of need to find the 
 right corner, the right wall against which 
 I could put my back and stand to face 
 these great oncoming troubles. I have 
 travrlk-d by slow trains across quiet coun 
 try which does not as yet know there is 
 war; I have- driven in an old-fashioned 
 stage or post wagon, you never told 
 me that there were such things left in 
 1 
 
THK WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 your country, past yellow harvest 
 fields in calm August weather; I have 
 even walked for miles by green hedge 
 rows, which wear here and there a belated 
 blossom, searching for that village of our 
 dreams where our home should be, quiet 
 enough for the work of the scholar, green 
 for two lovers of the country, and grey 
 with the touch of time. I knew that now 
 it could be almost anywhere; that it did 
 not matter if it were not near Oxford, and 
 it seemed to me that I should rather have 
 it a bit --but not too far away from 
 the "dreaming spires." So I went on 
 and on, with just one thought in my mind, 
 because I was determined to carry out our 
 plan to the full, and because I did not 
 dare stay still. There s a great strange 
 pain in my head when I am quiet, as if all 
 the mountains of the earth were pressing 
 down on it, and I have to go somewhere, 
 slip out from under them before they 
 crush me quite. 
 
 2 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 Often, at a distance, I thought that I 
 had found it; thatched roofs or red tiles, 
 or a lovely old Norman church tower 
 would make me sure that my search was 
 done; but again and again I found my 
 self mistaken, I can hardly tell you why. 
 You know without telling, as you must 
 know all I am writing before I make the 
 letters, and yet it eases my mind to write. 
 At no time did you seem very far as I 
 searched hill country and level lands, 
 watching haystacks and flocks of sheep, 
 sometimes through sunny showers of 
 English rain. 
 
 But now I have discovered our village, 
 the very one that I dreamed in childhood, 
 that you and I pictured together, and I 
 know that at last I have come home. I 
 knew it by the rooks, for I arrived late in 
 the afternoon, and the rooks were flying 
 homeward to the great elms by the church, 
 
 -groups of them, here, there, and every 
 where, black against the sunset. Such a 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 chattering and gossiping, as they went to 
 bed in the treetops! Such joy of home 
 and bedtime! I knew it by the grey 
 church tower in its shelter of green leaves, 
 and the ancient little stone church on the 
 top of the gentle hill among its old, old, 
 lichen-covered tombstones. 
 
 The village homes, in a straggling row, 
 looked half familiar; the grassy meadow 
 that rolls to the village edge, still more 
 so; and the quaint old Inn, where I spent 
 the night and where I am writing - 
 surely some of my ancestors, centuries 
 ago, slept at that very Inn, for I half re 
 member it all, low ceilings, latticed 
 windows, stone floor, and great, smother 
 ing feather bed. Everywhere, indoors and 
 out, I am aware of forgotten chords of 
 sympathy. Those small boys in short 
 trousers, trudging home on tired legs and 
 little bare feet - " did I pass that way a 
 long time ago? " Did some one back of 
 me in the march of life my ancestors 
 4 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 came from this East country grow tired 
 and rebel in a village like this and run 
 away to America ? In some way, by mem 
 ory, by prophecy, all seems mine; the 
 w r orn paths ; the hollowed door-stones ; the 
 ruddy faces moving up and down the 
 walled streets, and the quiet under the 
 grass in the churchyard. And you are 
 everywhere, interpreting, making me un 
 derstand, with that insight compounded 
 of silent humour and silent sympathy. I 
 am too tired to do anything to-night but 
 have my tea and bit of toast and egg, and 
 warm my fingers at the open fire, for the 
 evening is chill ; but to-morrow I shall go 
 searching for our house, and I know I 
 shall find it, for I have a curious sense that 
 this is not only the place for my home with 
 you, but that some far, far back sense of 
 home broods here. 
 
 The grey war-cloud drifts closer and 
 grows darker. Namur has fallen into 
 German hands; there are rumours God 
 5 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 grant that they are not true! that the 
 French and the English troops are re 
 treating. In spite of the entire confidence 
 of the people here in their island security, 
 there is fear in my heart for England, this 
 England which seems so remote from 
 cruel struggle, as if created in some mo 
 ment of Nature s relenting, when she was 
 almost ready to take back her fell purpose, 
 - it is so full of fragrances, of soft col 
 ours of flowers, of softer green of hedge 
 rows and meadows. There is something 
 in you, you Englishmen of finer type, 
 shaped by this beauty, quiet and self- 
 contained, of hill and dale and meadow. 
 Surely in you too I know this quietness, 
 this coolness, the still ways of the streams. 
 
 August 26. Past the grey church, and 
 down the hill, at the edge of the great 
 green meadow, and a bit apart from the 
 village, I found our house, with its wooden 
 shutters and its white front door closed, a 
 6 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 quaint old brick cottage, waiting for life 
 to come to it again. It has a brick front 
 walk, and a brick wall stands about it, save 
 at the back, where the stream that skirts 
 the meadow flows at the very garden 
 edge. Can you see it, the wistaria, the 
 woodbine, the honeysuckle over the wee 
 porch, the climbing, drooping, straggling 
 vines that make the whole little house look 
 oddly like a Skye terrier? It is all un 
 kempt ; grass grows in tufts between the 
 bricks, and weeds in the neglected grass. 
 The chimney needs repairing; some of the 
 little diamond panes in the latticed win 
 dows are broken, alas! I did not venture 
 inside the wrought-iron gate, for the en 
 compassing veneration for property rights 
 is strong upon me; not in the British Isles 
 shall I be caught trespassing! Can you 
 not imagine, as I can, how a dainty order, 
 satisfying even your fastidious taste, 
 could grow out of its present desolation, 
 with a little weeding here, a little trimming 
 7 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 there, a nail, a bit of board, a few bricks, 
 surely we could find a few old weath 
 ered ones to match. There must be 
 touches of the new, but careful preserva 
 tion of all the old, of all the eloquent worn 
 edges that tell of the coining and going 
 of past life. 
 
 Something anything to keep away 
 the thoughts I refuse to harbour. I can 
 not, I can not even yet, think of the mis 
 ery of this war. It beats in my ears, like 
 great hard waves ; it clangs and clamours, 
 strikes, comes in imagined horrible shrill 
 whistles and great explosions. There is 
 nothing in me that understands war; new 
 tracks will have to be beaten out in my 
 brain before I can grasp any of it. It is 
 a vast, unmeasured pain beyond my own 
 pain. 
 
 I have got to have a place of my own in 
 which to face them both, for a little while, 
 a little while, where I may stand and 
 think, perhaps even pray. 
 8 
 
THK WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 No one was about, except a shaggy 
 pony, grazing in the rich green meadow, 
 with a rough lock of hair over his eyes. I 
 find a little stone bridge across the 
 stream and try to make his acquaintance. 
 He lifts his head and looks at me through 
 his forelock, seems to respond with cor 
 diality to my overtures, whinnies, and 
 even takes a step or two toward me as I 
 draw near; then, when I can almost touch 
 him, gives a queer little toss of his head, 
 kicks up his heels, and dashes off to a rise 
 of ground, where he stands \vith a trium 
 phant air, his legs planted wide apart, 
 seeming to say: " Such be forever the fate 
 of those who try to catch and harness 
 me!" Then he falls to grazing again, 
 keeping one eye out to see whether I am 
 coming near. 
 
 Presently came an old man with a 
 rake, and I made some inquiries about the 
 house, but the haymaker s dialect w r as as 
 hard for me to understand as mine was 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 for him. I learned only that the little 
 ouse belonged to the All; that it had 
 been occupied by one of the functionaries 
 at the All ; it will be good for you, you 
 Englishman, to live in a little house once 
 inhabited by an unimportant person, good 
 for you to forget caste and class and bend 
 a bit, if need be, at your own front door! 
 Like yourself, young Master went with 
 the first adventurers to the war, the old 
 man said, and the All was closed. And 
 he added, with significant gestures witli 
 his rake, what he would do to " they 
 Germans ", if he once got hold of them. 
 I judged, by the red satisfaction in his 
 face, that the wooden rake in a shaking 
 old hand constituted for him a vision of 
 " preparedness for war." 
 
 So there it stands, on the edge of a 
 great estate that sweeps out to eastward; 
 low-lying lines of green in the west mean 
 forest, and that soft look of sky and cloud 
 in the east means the sea. It is absolutely 
 10 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 the place for which we looked so long and 
 will satisfy the home sense, so strong in 
 hoth of us. I wonder at my good fortune 
 in finding it, as I carried on the search 
 alone, and I refuse to entertain the idea 
 that I may not have it for my own. The 
 roof droops low over the windows; there 
 is a tall poplar hy the wrought-iron gate 
 way: the brick wall, vine-covered in 
 places, will shut us away from all the 
 world, beloved. Within we shall plant 
 our garden, and light our fire on the 
 hearth, and live our life together, you and 
 I, just you and I. 
 
 August 27. But can I get it? I am in 
 a prolonged state of suspense. Nobody in 
 the village seems to know anything, but 
 everybody is of firm conviction that some 
 body higher up knows everything, and 
 that all is well. 1 appealed to my land 
 lady; she very pleasantly informed me 
 with an air of great wisdom that it might 
 11 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 be I could ave it, it might be I couldn t; 
 nobody could say. No, she could not tell 
 me to whom to apply, with the All closed, 
 as it was, m, and the Squire away. 
 Standing there was barely standing- 
 place in her own over-furnished sitting 
 room, filled to its low ceiling with bric-a- 
 brac, whatnots with unshapely vases, tall 
 glass cases with artificial flowers or ala 
 baster vases under them, porcelain figures, 
 - one a genuine purple cow, she 
 seemed, as many a more imposing person 
 on this side of the water and the other 
 seems, a victim of property. 
 
 " An I do ave difficulty, Miss, in get- 
 tin about," she said, as her apron 
 knocked a Dresden china shepherdess and 
 a Spanish guitar player off an over 
 crowded table; "but I don t quite know 
 what to do about it." 
 
 " A broom! " I suggested. 
 
 " Broom? Oh, it s nicely swept, and 
 everything dusted regularly once a week, 
 12 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 m," she assured me. Oh, for one Ger 
 man bomb! 
 
 Luncheon time, and no solution of my 
 problem ; a futile visit to the postmistress, 
 who informed me that I should have to 
 wait until the war was over, and Master 
 came home to the Hall. I was meditating 
 an inquiry at the vicarage, though that 
 involved more audacity than I can easily 
 summon, when my landlord came riding 
 home on a big bony steed and had a con 
 ference with his wife in the kitchen. He, 
 it seems, is temporarily agent for the 
 property ; he has the keys to the little red 
 liouse and to my future destiny. I try 
 hard to think what will be pleasing to so 
 huge and so important a personage, as I 
 walk down the village street at his side, 
 two steps to his one. An unfortunate 
 conjecture about the retreat of the Brit 
 ish brings forth the emphatic statement 
 that the British never retreat. With a 
 train of thought of which I am, at the 
 13 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 time, unconscious, I tell him that I am an 
 American; he listens indifferently. I tell 
 him that my uncle is at the head of an 
 important New York banking house; he 
 at once becomes responsive and respectful. 
 We go through the little iron gate and up 
 the brick walk; out of a vast pocket he 
 takes an old wrought-iron key and un 
 locks the white front door. 
 
 As we entered, I had a curious sense 
 that you were inside; I never draw near 
 a closed door without a feeling that it may 
 open on your face. Instead, there was 
 only the blankness and the empty odour of 
 a house long closed, and yet it seemed hos 
 pitable, as if glad to have me come. I 
 examined every inch of it, peered into each 
 corner, and explored every nook and 
 cranny. It is just as it should be, with 
 low ceilings, old brown rafters, and brick 
 fireplaces, the one in the kitchen has a 
 crane. The little dining room is panelled, 
 the living room wainscoted; I like the dull 
 14 
 
HIE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 old oak woodwork and the solidity of 
 rything, which seems to belong to an 
 elder, stable order, not to this earth- 
 quakey world of to-day. The living room, 
 facing the south, and thus the meadow 
 and the brook, is sunny, but not over-light, 
 with its window seats and casement win 
 dows, diamond-paned. The stairs are 
 narrow and a bit cramped, but my land 
 lord of the Inn gives me permission ah, 
 I forgot to say that he tells me I may have 
 the house and grounds for fifty pounds a 
 year; fifty pounds for all this and a run 
 ning stream too! permission to make a 
 few changes which I hesitatingly sug 
 gested, and for which I shall pay, as the 
 rent is low. There must be a bathroom - 
 perhaps water can be piped from the 
 stream: a partition is to be knocked down, 
 and the stairs will then go up from the 
 living room, not in the little box wherein 
 they are at present enclosed. Where can 
 I find an old stair rail and newel post 
 15 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 suitable for the old house? Mine host 
 will himself attend to the roof and the 
 chimneys ; and he says that there are some 
 discarded diamond-paned windows lying 
 in an outhouse at the Inn, from which 
 glass may be taken to replace those that 
 are broken, if any one can be found to set 
 it properly. 
 
 He was amused that I wanted them, 
 amused by my pleasure in the old and 
 quaint. If he had his way, large new 
 panes of glass should go into all windows 
 wheresoever; he would like everything 
 shiny and varnishy. Naturally I did not 
 confess, when he apologized for the lack 
 of this and that, that I was glad of the 
 inconveniences, glad of relief from the 
 mechanical and tinkling comforts of our 
 modern life; he would never understand! 
 To speak of an old-fashioned American 
 would be to him a contradiction in terms; 
 yet in some ways we are one of the most 
 conservative people on earth, holding cer- 
 16 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 tain old ways of thought most tenaciously. 
 It is only our muscles that are modern! 
 I am very like a Pilgrim mother in my 
 convictions of right and wrong. 
 
 There is some deep reason why many 
 Americans care so profoundly for old 
 buildings, old furnishings, old habits which 
 we find here ; they typify inner character 
 istics which we must not forget in a young 
 land where changes come too swiftly. 
 There is a steadfastness about it all ; these 
 old stone houses wear a look as if they had 
 been built for something more immutable 
 than human life. Never as in these recent 
 wanderings have I had this sense of Eng 
 land, innermost England, of that endur 
 ing beauty of spirit best expressed in 
 Westminster and the old Gothic churches; 
 that England of ancient faiths and old 
 reverences. Delicate carving and soft 
 tinted glass bear witness to the richness 
 of inherited spiritual life and make visible 
 the soul of a people grown line, old, and 
 17 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 wise. Old shields, grey with hoary dust, 
 still hang on the tombs of those who have 
 fought and conquered, or have been de 
 feated; a sense of old sacredness lingers 
 at Oxford s heart, and yours. There 
 is something here which not all the sins 
 and shortcomings and decadences of con 
 temporary life can change; not the lux 
 ury and the selfishness of titled folk whose 
 high glass-guarded walls shut miles of 
 green land away from common people; 
 not the mistakes and they are many 
 of the government. Back of all this, and 
 beyond, is a something which means keep 
 ing, as no other nation keeps, the old and 
 sacred fire, safeguarding civilization from 
 the over-new, the merely efficient, the un- 
 remembering. 
 
 My new abode is lowly and cozy, with a 
 fine simplicity in the antique furniture, 
 carved chest, and plain chairs. The fun 
 damental things are here; you should see 
 the walnut table in the living room, with 
 18 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 its deep glow of red-brown colour. There 
 must be some new tilings, of course, fresh 
 chintzes, linen, kitchen utensils, but for 
 the most part only oil and turpentine and 
 a pair of good red sturdy English arms 
 are needed to remove a certain dinginess. 
 
 So I ve a home of my own, though 
 earth crashes and kingdoms fall and a 
 comet strikes against us and puts us out. 
 For a little I have a fortified spot wherein 
 to defy the worst that time can do. I am 
 a householder, on my own plot of ground, 
 crossing and re-crossing my own thres 
 hold; and the big wrought-iron key is in 
 my hand. There are ashes still upon the 
 hearth, from whose fire? New flame 
 shall go up from the old grey ashes, - 
 the central spark of home shall be rekin 
 dled here; and that is the whole story of 
 human life. 
 
 How fortunate, and how unusual, in so 
 small a house, that the hall leads all the 
 way through from green to green! We 
 19 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 shall get all the breezes that blow, for the 
 house faces the west, as all houses should 
 face; and always and forever we shall 
 hear the stream. There s a step there at 
 the back, down to the garden walk, that 
 you must remember, you who are so 
 absent-minded. 
 
 - 1 keep forgetting that you are dead. 
 
 September 6. I have been away for a 
 week, a week in which I have not dared 
 leave one moment unoccupied. To keep 
 my sanity, I must be busy all the time; 
 life cannot be cut short in this way. 
 When great forces have begun to stir 
 within you, like the gathering of all 
 waters far and near, you cannot safely 
 stop them all at once ; I must have, in the 
 weeks to come, some outlet for this surg 
 ing energy. 
 
 London is quiet, and awful with the 
 self-control of great tension. The war- 
 terror mounts, though few speak of it; 
 20 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 the Germans have crossed the Marne; 
 the French government has moved to 
 Bordeaux, and all the world seems totter 
 ing. Back in my charmed village, I wait 
 and listen. They would not take me at 
 the front; did you know that, the day 
 after you left, I made an attempt to 
 follow? No training, and physically un 
 fit, was the verdict. I thought that I 
 could perhaps prove to you in ret that of 
 which I could not convince you by argu 
 ment in our dispute the day we walked to 
 Godstow, that women have the kind of 
 courage possessed by men. 
 
 I live at the Inn during these days 
 while my house is being put in order. A 
 gla/icT lias been found who can re-set the 
 old diamond panes; carpenter and 
 plumber are hard at work. The hideous 
 wall-papers in the chambers have been 
 scraped off; they were so ugly that they 
 actually hurt. You always told me, you 
 remember, that I minded too much the 
 21 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 things that make for ugliness, that my 
 eye was too sensitive to evil-coloured and 
 unshapely things, and that I must live 
 more in the world of thought. The con 
 trast between these, in their wicked pur 
 ples and magentas, and the wonderful 
 cottage itself with its dim beauty of old 
 brick and dusky panelling, makes one 
 wonder at the potential depravity of the 
 heart of modern man or woman ! There s 
 a shop in London, I was going to take 
 you there, where they have reproduc 
 tions of quaint old papers, the kind made 
 a hundred years ago, with little land 
 scapes, and sheep and shepherds, and odd 
 flower designs. I chose three of these, 
 and they are going on at this minute; I 
 must go to see that they piece the two bits 
 of the shepherdess together neatly and do 
 not leave her head and her beribboned hat 
 dangling several inches above her em 
 broidered bodice. It is a relief to escape 
 from the purple cow and the hundred and 
 22 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 one china abominations in this sitting 
 room. 
 
 My landlady, fingering her black alpaca 
 dress apron, assures me as I go, that the 
 best of news, m, has come from the front ; 
 that the Germans are in full retreat, and 
 the French and the British are nearing 
 Berlin! If only this insular confidence 
 that for Britons there is no defeat be not 
 too rudely broken! 
 
 Don went with me; I went to Oxford 
 to get him during my w r eek away. I am 
 so glad, so very glad that you let me have 
 him when you went to war. He potters 
 along behind me or runs ahead, with all 
 his questing little fox-terrier soul in his 
 eyes, sure, like myself, that around some 
 corner, or on some blessed rise of ground, 
 we shall meet you. At each fresh disap 
 pointment he turns to me with that look 
 of perfect trust in his eyes that I, some 
 day when it seems fit, will give you back 
 to him. Within five minutes, at his first 
 U 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 visit to the little red house, he had sniffed 
 every corner, and he dropped with a deep 
 sigh of content on the warm brick walk, 
 knowing the place for his own. 
 
 The cloistered Oxford gardens, with 
 their incredibly smooth grass, were un 
 changed, but the immemorial quiet is 
 broken. Your Oxford is a new Oxford, 
 awake, struggling, suffering, nursing the 
 wounded, while the noblest of her sons 
 follow you to the war. Thinking of all 
 these things as I walk, I decide not to go 
 to the house, after all ; there is a sound of 
 hammering and an air of disquiet. I cross 
 the little stone bridge and follow the 
 stream; this, like the pony, is a new 
 neighbour with which I must become ac 
 quainted, and it proves more friendly 
 than that other. There is a touch of Sep 
 tember gold everywhere, of autumn per- 
 fectness in things, that belies wTong any 
 where upon the earth. And all the old 
 days float down the stream; something, 
 24 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 the way of the water with the grasses, the 
 ripple of the water, brings back May, and 
 my first English spring, and you. 
 
 Do you remember that my very first 
 glimpse of you was at the Union? You 
 were debating, very convincingly, on the 
 subject of disarmament, and proved the 
 possibility, the practicability, of peace 
 among nations. I was idly interested in 
 you; Gladys had whispered that you 
 were one of her friends. That night, 
 but never again, you were just one of 
 a type to me, with the fine, lean, English 
 look of race, the fine self-control of every 
 nerve and emotion and muscle. I noticed 
 that you were already beginning to have 
 a touch of the scholar stoop, and that you 
 were a shade, just a shade, too slender. 
 It was quite a surprise, and something of 
 a blow to me, to find you English men 
 not, on the whole, so stalwart as the men 
 in America. All our lives we have read 
 of the hale and hearty John Bull, yet our 
 25 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 first glimpse of you makes us think that 
 John Bull and Uncle Sam will have to 
 change places in the caricatures if this 
 transformation keeps on. 
 
 The hardest thing in the world for me 
 to understand is that the great things of 
 life may hang on mere trifles. If I had 
 not, acting on a moment s impulse, prom 
 ised to go into lodgings with Gladys in 
 Oxford because she would go there to 
 study Celtic, Icelandic, and Greek, I 
 should never have known you, never have 
 walked with you in glory through an Eng 
 lish spring, never have picked crocuses in 
 Iffley meadows and anemones in Bagley 
 wood, never have known that green rip 
 pling beauty of Oxford stream and 
 meadow and the piercing joy of life and 
 love that came with you. And now - 
 
 The vastness of my loss I can not even 
 grasp; my world is swept away from 
 under my feet, and I am alone, with noth 
 ing to stand on, nothing to reach in space. 
 26 
 
TIIK WORN DOORSTKT 
 
 Dying myself could hardly mean such 
 utter letting go; I am aware only of a 
 great blankness. I have not even tried to 
 measure my disaster, to understand. I 
 shall have all the rest of my life to learn 
 to understand; I come of a long-lived 
 race. 
 
 That which comes more often than my 
 sense of loss is the sense of my part in 
 letting you go, making you go! You re 
 member that August afternoon when we 
 drifted down the river, for you even for 
 got to row; the trailing willow branches 
 ruffled our hair and gently took off my 
 hat. It was a lazy, sunshiny, misty after 
 noon, such a happy afternoon, except for 
 the war-cloud beyond the peace and the 
 exquisite grey and green calm of Oxford. 
 You were wondering, idly enough, about 
 war; how was it to be justified? What 
 right bad England, with her love of 
 peaceful enlightenment, to take this swift 
 plunge into the awful horror? And you 
 27 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 went, my Lord Hamlet, with that deepen 
 ing look which showed a soul drawn far 
 within, into a long philosophic discussion 
 as to whether war is ever justifiable; no 
 one could adjust philosophic niceties of 
 thought better than you. Could a man 
 of ethical conviction, without outrage to 
 his better self, go into that barbaric hell? 
 All the time that your intellect was bal 
 ancing, weighing, and deciding "no!" 
 old impulses were stirring, old heroic fin 
 gers were tugging from their graves, old 
 simple-minded forebears were alive and 
 awake, impelling you. 
 
 The green, lovely banks grew dim ; the 
 shadows lengthened across the rippling 
 water, and sunset flushed the western sky 
 beyond the overhanging branches, while 
 you fought it out. When you turned and 
 asked me squarely, what could I say? It 
 had seemed so piteously, cruelly simple to 
 me from the first, so simple and so great! 
 Of course, I come of the practical Amer- 
 28 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 ican race. Back of me lie generations of 
 ancestors who have had to act and act 
 quickly without exhausting the ultimate 
 possibilities of thought on any subject. I 
 do not mean that they have clone unjusti 
 fiable things, but that they have had to 
 take life at the quick. When the Indian 
 brandished his tomahawk inside the door 
 at the baby in the cradle, some one had to 
 shoot and shoot instantly, without stop 
 ping to ask any authority whether shoot 
 ing was wrong. That actually happened 
 in my family; it was a little great-great- 
 great-great-great-grandmother of mine. 
 Her Pilgrim father was quite right. 
 Even if his mind told him that it was 
 unmg, which I judge was not the case, 
 there was something in him deeper down 
 and farther back than mere intellect; he 
 did the right thing and did it instinctively, 
 Lord Hamlet. Of course, in reality, his 
 intellectual problem had been settled 
 when he loaded his gun. 
 89 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 All life is transition, and always has 
 been. As I understand it, with one s an 
 cestor one has to load one s gun with one 
 hand, while reaching forward with the 
 other to one s descendant for the pipe of 
 peace. One has to keep collected, cen 
 tered, ready to do one s utmost in any 
 need; the luxury of the last shade of rea 
 soning is denied us as yet : our task is not 
 to fail at the crisis. 
 
 What could I say, when you asked me, 
 except the cruelly hard thing which I did 
 say? Back of me, as back of you, lie the 
 san e fighting, plucky ancestors. The 
 same heroic impulses that stirred their 
 dust stir mine, and yours, alas that it 
 has but feminine dust to stir in me! To 
 me, as to you, there is but one answer in 
 the world to a question like that. There 
 had never been any real doubt in my mind 
 as to what you would do; I think that 
 there had never been any real doubt in 
 your own mind. In the great moments, 
 30 
 
THE WORN DOORSTKP 
 
 life seems neither right nor wrong, but 
 something greater; it seems inevitable. 
 
 Poor Belgium and the baby in the cra 
 dle come back to my mind together, the 
 highly " efficient " tomahawk replaced by 
 the highly "efficient" siege guns. But 
 even apart from the high justice of this 
 issue, England was in trouble, England 
 was fighting. What was there for you 
 to do but help? I said only the one word 
 " go," and even now I can recall the still 
 ness and the wash of the ripples against 
 our boat and through the grasses. The 
 silence of perfect beauty rested on sky 
 and tree and water, and the river no 
 longer seemed a little inland stream flow 
 ing softly through grassy meadows with 
 retarding locks, but a flowing passageway 
 to some great sea. 
 
 The days that followed I count off on 
 my fingers as one counts a rosary; there 
 were not many, not so many as our pray 
 ers. Such little scraps of them, mere 
 31 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 fragments, come to me, shining fragments 
 which I treasure and shall always treasure 
 like bits of priceless jewels: in all my 
 mental store there is nothing quite so 
 precious. I was busy every minute, try 
 ing to console your mother and your sis 
 ter, who thought you ought not to go; 
 trying to make them see. It is as if the 
 sun were still illuminating those days, 
 making them forever radiant. It seemed 
 enough to live, to try, to give one s all, not 
 knowing; it was not hard then; nothing 
 could be hard in moments of exaltation 
 like those. 
 
 They were full too of homely toil ; such 
 queer things we had to do in getting you 
 ready, dear. Of course you were not a 
 trained soldier; how to become a trained 
 soldier in a week of short days is a harder 
 problem than many a one in philosophy. 
 When you decided that you would be a 
 despatch bearer and join the motorcycle 
 brigade, because thus you could go to the 
 32 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 front sooner, I am proud that I did not 
 say one word of protest, though I knew 
 that it was the most dangerous task of all. 
 Being a despatch bearer seemed a fitting 
 service for an intellectual leader. 
 
 How we laughed as you practised ri 
 ding! Lord Hamlet on a motorcycle, with 
 no time for thought, no time for scruple! 
 How we searched out rough bits of road 
 and watched you try to cross a newly- 
 mown meadow, where late poppies, I re 
 member, were blossoming in the stubble. 
 Once you struck a stone and fell, and 
 your mother amazed you by crying out. 
 I laughed and horrified her; but I kissed 
 its handles before you went. The motor 
 cycle had been to me the most hateful of 
 modern inventions, inexcusable, unmen 
 tionable. And here it became a symbol 
 of dauntless courage and highest service; 
 beyond the- bravery necessary for a charge 
 in battle is the bravery needed here; this 
 evil, roaring, puffing thing might turn 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 into the chariot that would carry you over 
 the borders of the sun. 
 
 That one brief hour that we found to 
 steal away to Bagley wood lingers yet. 
 The anemones were gone, but all about 
 was the soft midsummer murmur, and the 
 ripe fulness of August life. What prac 
 tical things we talked about! I think that 
 we sent you out fitted up as well as any 
 German soldier of them all. Who, in the 
 Kaiser s army, had a more complete or 
 smaller sewing kit? Who had thread 
 wound off on very diminutive bits of 
 cardboard to save the space that spools 
 would take, white linen and black linen 
 and khaki coloured, all very strong? 
 What Teuton could challenge you on the 
 score of buttons? It w r as good, it was very 
 good, in your mother to let me help. 
 
 You thought I never wavered; when 
 
 you were doubting, I was sure ; when you 
 
 were sure, you never knew that I wrote 
 
 you a note that last night and took back 
 
 34 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 my decision, saying that thinkers had 
 their own separate task, and that you 
 should stay. I burned it. ... I would 
 not have you back, dear, if it meant giving 
 up that inmost you I knew in those glori 
 fied few days. You have fulfilled your 
 self. 
 
 September 15. Who is going to keep 
 house for me that is the problem? 
 Somebody there must be to cook and clean 
 and polish ; a staff composed of one British 
 female is what I need, for I can do many, 
 very many things myself. 
 
 Mine host and my landlady took coun 
 sel ; I let them do a great deal of thinking 
 for me, for their minds are rusty from dis 
 use; you can actually hear a kind of 
 creaking when they try to make them go. 
 They finally decided that I was to drive 
 in a pony cart to a village off to eastward, 
 to consult Madge and Peter Snell, man 
 and wife, both from a different part of 
 35 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 the country, lately employed at the Hall 
 as under-cook and gardener, now out of 
 work because the Hall is closed. I read 
 ily agreed ; yes, I was used to driving, and 
 the directions first turn at the left, 
 then a bit of road and a turn at the right, 
 m, and then a long stretch across a dike 
 to a stone bridge and a stream and a vil 
 lage spire seemed clear enough. 
 
 But when my equipage is drawn up at 
 the Inn door, whom do I see but my way 
 ward friend of the meadow, harnessed to 
 an absurd little basket-cart as diminutive 
 as he. I am delighted to see him; is the 
 pleasure mutual? He gives me one look 
 out of his eyes that seems to say he will be 
 even with me yet ; Don leaps to a place of 
 honour in the cart, and we go flying down 
 the village street with sparks flashing from 
 the iron-shod little hoofs. Drive? Yes, I 
 am accustomed to driving horses, but not 
 Pucks, not changelings; I never, never 
 drove a mischievous kitten fastened to a 
 36 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 baby carriage! And that little "trap" 
 was a trap indeed! What breed my pony 
 is, as mortals reckon tilings, I do not 
 know; lie is too big for a Shetland, too 
 little for a horse; perhaps he is an Ex- 
 moor pony, or the product of some north 
 ern heath. We go gaily to the left, some 
 what perilously near a corner at the right, 
 and we are out racing over a long dike 
 built across what was once a low-lying 
 sea-meadow. Don looks up at me with 
 vast enjoyment in his eyes, and that little 
 quiver of the face that means a fox-terrier 
 smile. 
 
 About half-way across we come to a 
 ualc : there is nothing to do but for me 
 to get out to open it, and this I do. Swift 
 as a Hash, my Puck whirls about and goes 
 dashing for home; holding tightly to the 
 reins, I run also, latighing as I have not 
 laughed for days. Don, with his paws on 
 the edge of the cart, barks furiously. 
 Pulling and dragging with all my might, 
 37 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 at length I stop the pony. The little 
 wretch looks at me almost respectfully as 
 I turn him about, and he trots meekly 
 back; he was only trying me out, to see 
 of what stuff I was made. He stood as 
 firmly as the Tower of London as I shut 
 the gate and climbed into the cart. Then 
 came the stream and the stone bridge and 
 the village spire ; and a row of small gar 
 den plots with yellow, late summer things 
 blossoming in them, and Madge and Peter 
 standing by a garden gate. 
 
 I knew at first glance that they must 
 both come ; now that I think of it, I have 
 quite a garden, though it will seem little 
 to one who has worked at the All; there 
 are always heavy things to be done about 
 the kitchen, and Peter knows more than 
 he will admit about the drudgery neces 
 sary to sustain human life. Peter, it 
 seems, has been a soldier, has served in 
 the South African war, and is a time- 
 expired man who has beaten his sword into 
 38 
 
THE WORN DOORSTKP 
 
 a ploughshare, or is it a pruning 
 hook? But none of his accomplishments 
 is my real reason; the half-belligerent af 
 fection on the face of husband and wife 
 slums me that they should not be sepa 
 rated. 
 
 Madge, the look of anxiety already lift 
 ing from her smooth and comely face, 
 one sees that look here in many of the un 
 employed, looks questioningly at Peter 
 when I extend my invitation. I assure 
 him that I need a man to look after the 
 garden and the pony; at this Puck pricks 
 up his ears and gives me a half glance. 
 Yes, I have decided to have him, if I may, 
 for my very own. There is a remote 
 something in Peter s gait and bearing that 
 suggests the soldier, but it is the soldier 
 whose long leisure re-acts against the dis 
 cipline. 
 
 " But perhaps you were thinking of go 
 ing to the war? " I ask. 
 
 " No, Miss," said Peter, " I weren t." 
 39 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 He spoke so emphatically that I may 
 have raised my eyebrows ; perhaps I shook 
 my head. I shall be afraid of borrowing 
 unconsciously some of the pony s ges 
 tures; these strong personalities always 
 leave their impress. 
 
 " War," said Peter firmly, " is against 
 my principles. I am a socialist." 
 
 " It s a fine way to keep from serving 
 King and Country, being a socialist," said 
 Madge unkindly. Madge is evidently not 
 progressive. 
 
 " My fellow man," said Peter, striking 
 the gate post with a heavy fist, " is more 
 to me than King or Ouse of Lords." 
 
 " Or fellow woman, either," murmured 
 Madge, thinking that I did not hear. 
 
 From these advanced radical theories 
 Madge and I turn back, as women will, to 
 the old and homely needs of human life. 
 She fingers her apron. 
 
 " I m sure, Miss, if the laundry could 
 be put out - 
 
 40 
 
THE \\OKX DOORSTEP 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And a charwoman for the rough 
 ^nibbing - 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And if you wouldn t mind me know 
 ing little about waiting at table - 
 
 With but one person in the family, 
 that isn t very complex," I say reassur 
 ingly. Don looks reproachfully at me; 
 was I forgetting him? 
 
 I watched Don to see how he would 
 take them ; his manner was perfection, - 
 polite but distant, refusing any intimate 
 advances, but refraining from growling. 
 There was a certain approving conde 
 scension in his air, as if he thought they 
 \\TC quite well in tlieir way. He never 
 for a moment forgets that he is a gentle 
 man s dog, and his flair for social distinc 
 tions is as fine as that of any of his fellow 
 Oxford dons. That delicate snobbery 
 showed to-day in his air of connoisseur- 
 ship while lie weighed the matter with 
 41 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 daintily snuffing nose and then assumed 
 an air of invitation to these two to come 
 and keep their place. 
 
 I was delighted when they said that 
 they would come, and we trotted merrily 
 home to the shining companionship of the 
 hearth fire, flickering on pewter pots and 
 copper pans as on my landlady s red 
 cheeks ; to the comfort ah, that I, a 
 twentieth-century American, dare confess 
 it of a feather bed ! 
 
 September 29. Here I live in mine 
 own hired house, like the gentleman in the 
 Bible, who was it, Paul? I hope 
 only that he had one half the sense of en 
 tire possession that is mine. I look at 
 Madge and Peter, busy in kitchen and 
 garden, at Don, guarding the little iron 
 gate, at the pony grazing beyond the 
 stream, and I feel like a feudal lord. Es 
 pecially do I feel so when we rout out the 
 utensils in the kitchen, knives, forks, 
 42 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 skillets. Some of them surely antedate 
 the feudal era; they were probably left by 
 the cave men; their prehistoric shape, in 
 its ancient British clumsiness, looks as if 
 it might have archaeological, if not practi 
 cal, value. I shall use them for garden 
 ing; the forks will be a great help in 
 wrestling with mother earth. 
 
 Wrestle I do, indoors and out; I dare 
 not be idle, and besides, I like to do these 
 things. The Vicar s lady, passing, is 
 shocked to see me scraping the putty off 
 of my new-old diamond-paned windows; 
 but somebody had to get it off; Madge 
 couldn t, so why not I? Madge watches 
 me working about, torn between her old 
 attitude of maid at the Hall, with its fixed 
 ideas as to what the gentry should do, and 
 a something new that is slowly creeping 
 into her mind. Throughout England, I 
 am told, the gentry are doing things they 
 used not to do, for economy, for pos 
 sible service to the country in its day of 
 43 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 need. And it is slowly dawning on us all 
 that its need is great. The Germans have 
 been halted on the Marne, and we breathe 
 more easily, but it is rumoured that they 
 have brought their great siege guns up to 
 Antwerp, and the poor Belgians are 
 flocking over here in hordes. 
 
 Madge, as she sees me toiling over my 
 chintz curtains, and sees the bothersome 
 things come down to my undoing, wants 
 to know why I wished to come, quite by 
 myself; why I didn t take lodgings some 
 where, it would be far less trouble. She 
 doesn t understand in the least when I tell 
 her that I cannot endure the irrelevance 
 of lodgings, the antimacassars, the hide 
 ous bric-a-brac, the rooms packed full of 
 horrors, where I cannot collect my mind. 
 A home of your own is worth while, if 
 only to keep it bare of human clutter; 
 bad pictures intimidate me; ugly uphol 
 stery defeats my soul. Of provincial Eng 
 land I could say, if it weren t profane, 
 44 
 
TIIK WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 all thy tidies and thy ugly reps have gone 
 over me. The publicity of hotel or board 
 ing house I cannot endure, nor the kind 
 of tissue-paper life that one must live 
 there. Not among gilt cornices but beside 
 meadows and running waters I choose my 
 lot. Your relatives are kindness itself in 
 inviting me to stay with them, but just 
 now I cannot bear kindness; I want peo 
 ple to be as cruel as God! Was I not 
 lonely enough, after my own family had 
 vanished into the silence; why did you 
 come into my life only to leave me more 
 alone? 
 
 This is my apologia pro domicilio vieo, 
 but why, after all, should I need to ex 
 plain a longing for my own rooftree, my 
 own hearth, my own pathway leading to 
 my own front door? I must have come 
 into the world with a belief that for every 
 woman born was intended a little nook or 
 corner or cranny of her own. So here is 
 mini-, a quarter of a mile from the village, 
 45 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 not many miles from the sea, seventy odd 
 miles from London, and how far from that 
 heaven where you are? Can you tell me 
 the way and the length of the road? 
 Sometimes it seems set on the very edge 
 of eternity, and I keep expecting to see 
 stray cherubim, seraphim, and angels stop 
 to ask the rest of the \vay. 
 
 I haven t begun on the garden; in a 
 way I haven t let myself see it, there has 
 been so much to do in the house; but, if 
 you will believe it, and of course you will, 
 being an Englishman, a plum tree and a 
 pear tree are espaliered on the sunny 
 southern wall of the house, branching out 
 a bit over one of the windows. There are 
 two apple trees, a clump of holly, ferns 
 in a corner, rosebushes, and climbing roses. 
 I shall not know all the colours until next 
 summer, though some of them bloom late ; 
 I have discovered wiiite ones, and pale 
 yellow, and one of a deep and lovely red. 
 The garden is neglected, weedy, and grass- 
 46 
 
THK \VOHX DOOHSTKT 
 
 grown, hut I find hollyhocks, foxglove, 
 larkspur, and a forgotten violet bed. A 
 small kitchen garden borders my lady s 
 garden, and Peter shall till this. Don 
 walks up and down the paths with a step 
 so exactly fitted to your old pace in the 
 college gardens that I feel always a little 
 shock of surprise in not seeing you, as of 
 old, just ahead. 
 
 Scraps of conversation drift to me from 
 Madge and Peter when they happen to 
 work together; upon the invincibility of 
 the British they agree, and upon the fact 
 that no foe will ever dare set foot upon 
 the British isles, but in matters of social 
 opinion they are hopelessly at variance. 
 Madge is a conservative, standing 
 staunchly by the C hurch, the All, the 
 Ouse of Lords ; Peter is an extreme rad 
 ical, a "hatheist", as he solemnly in 
 formed me, eager for anything IH-W in 
 \\ord or thought, and usually misappro 
 priating both. He reads American paper- 
 47 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 covered novels, and a touch of transatlan 
 tic slang creeps now and then into his con 
 versation, or a queer abstract phrase from 
 some socialist lecturer whom he doesn t 
 understand but accepts entire. Many a 
 bit of stubborn debate comes to me 
 through open door or window, as Peter 
 defends his rights as man and scoffs at the 
 social system. 
 
 " Wy im at the All? Wy not me? " 
 was the last I heard. 
 
 "You!" said Madge scornfully. 
 
 You couldn t even stand up on the 
 
 floors, they are that shiny and polished." 
 
 With the fragrance of ripening fruit, 
 and the warmth of the brick wall about 
 me, September is September every 
 where, I sit here upon my own thresh 
 old, a worn old threshold made w r ise by 
 the coming and going of life through un 
 numbered years. There is something com 
 forting about a place where many lives 
 have been lived; the windows have a 
 48 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 strange air <>f wisdom, as if experience 
 itself were looking out. I am tired, phys 
 ically tired, with all the work, but I am 
 well content with it: are you? All within 
 is nearly finished. Your books, for your 
 mother gave me many of them, are in a 
 set of shelves I had made by the fireplace ; 
 my own in a low case that runs all across 
 one side of the room. The window seats 
 have chintz cushions; two easy chairs flank 
 the fireplace; the old walnut table with 
 reading lamp is placed where it can com 
 ma i id cither the flame of the hearth or the 
 sunset flame: do you like all this, I 
 wonder? In the little dining room a 
 stately armchair stands ready for you 
 always, as befits the master of the house, 
 and your place at table shall be always 
 set, the cover laid. So begins our divine 
 housekeeping, you on your side, I on mine 
 -alas! of the universe and life and 
 time. 
 
 Last night I laid a scarf of yours, which 
 49 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 I had been wearing, across your chair; 
 Don sniffed at it and whimpered, then 
 jumped up into the chair and whined pite- 
 ously. No, do not be afraid! I shall not 
 whine, even if my heart break. I shall 
 come to you smiling, beloved, and what 
 ever wrinkles are on my face shall not be 
 worn by tears. Everybody is game in 
 England now; I will be game too ! There 
 are no cowards among those who go to 
 fight, or those who are left at home: my 
 battlefield lies here. You need not think 
 I am going to mourn in loneliness ; I shall 
 not let you go, though you are dead; I 
 am going to live my life in and for you, 
 and every least wish I ever heard you ex 
 press shall be carried out. After dinner 
 Don and I sat on the rug in front of the 
 fire and talked about you ; it is sorry com 
 fort for both of us, but it is all we have. 
 For him, as for me, I think, the sense of 
 you comes more strongly in favoured 
 nooks and corners, by the fire on the 
 50 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 hearth, or by the living room windows in 
 the sunshine. He knows you better than 
 anybody else does, except me, and I some 
 times feel, at least, he remembers 
 farther back than I can, and I am envious 
 of him and of every one else who knew 
 you first. He has chosen his permanent 
 abiding-place, for he went close to the 
 right side of the hearth, sat down, wagged 
 his tail beseechingly, and held up one paw 
 as he does when he is begging for things. 
 
 So I have closed my little iron gate, - 
 Madge, Peter, Don, and I inside, and all 
 the world shut outside. Perhaps I am 
 moved by the instinct of the hurt animal 
 to go away by itself and hide. It cannot 
 be wrong now; henceforth I must live 
 in the past; the dropping of the latch will 
 be the signal, and the old days will slip 
 back one by one over the brick wall. I 
 shall establish a blockade; haven t I a 
 right? The pain, at times, is more than 1 
 can bear, and every face I see recalls the 
 51 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 sight of happy people, the sight of 
 wretched people alike. Safe, with my 
 sorrow, inside these walls; and outside, 
 the surge of great sorrows, anguish, per 
 plexity. 
 
 October 8. Of course I take long walks 
 day by day, yet nothing more intensifies 
 my sense of loss, perhaps, because we 
 walked so much together. The country 
 is as green as it was that July day when 
 we stopped and helped the haymakers in 
 the Oxford meadows, and they jeered 
 good-naturedly at our way of raking. I 
 have found relief in watching the harvest 
 ing and the gathering of the fruit ; look 
 ing resolutely at field and stream, center 
 ing mind and soul there, my grief softens 
 and grows more kind. Everywhere I see 
 the picturesque and finished charm of 
 English life. 
 
 As I climb the hill past the church, the 
 old, old woman who lives in the little 
 52 
 
THi: \VOHX DOOHSTKP 
 
 house by the lych gate, the churchyard 
 gate, the gate of the dead, and sells 
 <>ingerbread, biscuit, and ginger ale, is 
 putting out her wares. She is so old, so 
 much a part of the other world, she lives 
 so near the edge of this, that I half sus 
 pect her, as I catch a glimpse of the green 
 mounds through the rusted wrought-iron 
 bars, of ministering to those we cannot 
 see. None but the English would think 
 of selling gingerbread at heaven s gate! 
 Over the soft gurgle of ale from the stone 
 jars we exchange greetings; she is only 
 another of your daring and delightful in 
 congruities, seen in the gargoyles on your 
 cathedrals, the jokes in your tragedies, 
 and the licensed mischief of your Oxford 
 students on Commemoration Day. 
 
 The practical necessities of life take me, 
 perforce, beyond my own domain. I have 
 made the acquaintance of butcher and 
 baker; that of the candlestick maker is 
 still to come. The passing faces of people 
 53 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 in the village street, even of farmers stop 
 ping at the Inn, I begin to recognize ; the 
 latter look little more concerned about the 
 present crisis than do their stout nags. 
 Life goes quietly on here, as it has always 
 done, I fancy; steps are scrubbed, and 
 brasses of knocker and door latch are pol 
 ished until you can see your face there. 
 Is this encompassing calm mere apathy, 
 or is it conscious strength? In his little 
 shop the sleepy chemist wakens unwill 
 ingly to deal out his wares; the sleepy 
 service goes on as of old in the little church. 
 It is grey with dust; perhaps the care 
 taker does not think it worth while to dust 
 in war-time, yet I doubt whether he knows 
 there is war. In the bakeshop window 
 day by day are displayed the great clumsy 
 loaves of bread with the foolish little loaf 
 tucked on at one side. Why? There s 
 neither rhyme nor reason nor symmetry 
 in it ; the force of custom may be wise and 
 may be merely stupid. Here one gets 
 54 
 
TIIK \VOKX DOORSTEP 
 
 constantly an impression of the over 
 whelming power of old habit and has a 
 feeling that unless these people are 
 shocked out of some of their ancient ways, 
 disaster will follow. As I collect my 
 wares, I fall to wondering whether either 
 this nation, which worships its past, or wr. 
 who worship our future, is wholly right. 
 
 If, at times, a doubt intrudes in regard 
 to this British clinging to the past, it is 
 when the door of the one village shop 
 tinkles at my entrance, and I ask in vain 
 for the common necessities which it is sup 
 posed to supply. Here are pictures of 
 Queen Victoria and all the royal family, 
 but no tapes, no trustworthy thread, no 
 pins, at least no pins with points. I 
 brought home a paper of these soft little 
 British crowbars, but alas! fingers cannot 
 drive them in; they but crumple if, in 
 desperation, you urge them too vigor 
 ously. How can a nation rule the sea; 
 above all, how can it conquer in a mechan- 
 55 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 ical war when it cannot even make decent 
 pins? 
 
 My mood softens as I stroll toward 
 home; the glow of the blacksmith s forge 
 fascinates me; there at least is tremen 
 dous strength, which is also skill, welding 
 in this most ancient art, blow upon blow, 
 old-fashioned horseshoes, which I am told 
 are the best. Past quaint old doorways 
 my path leads ; the sight of these, and of 
 fine old-fashioned faces behind the win- 
 dowpanes, revives my normal mood of 
 affection. What other people would, in 
 reverence to wishes of those long dead, 
 give out the dole of widows bread at 
 Westminster, the daily dole at Winches 
 ter, or administer the Leicester charity at 
 Warwick in the spirit in which it was 
 meant? What other people would be 
 honest enough to do it? There is a basic 
 honesty here which recalls the old tale of 
 Lincoln and the money he saved for many 
 years, in order to give back the identical 
 56 
 
THE WOKX DOORSTEP 
 
 coins with which lie liad been entrusted. 
 
 As I enter my own domain, I observe 
 once more that my gate does not latch 
 properly; all this time, when I have 
 found it left open, I have reproached 
 Peter. 
 
 " Peter, you did not shut the gate." 
 
 " No, Miss," rubbing his forehead with 
 the back of his hand. 
 
 1 You must be more careful." 
 
 Yes, Miss." 
 
 This has happened several times; to 
 day I found that no power could make it 
 really latch, and I confided the fact to 
 Peter. 
 
 * Yes, Miss, I knew it all along, Miss." 
 
 "But why--" there I stopped; I 
 should rather never know why than to try 
 to penetrate the wooden impenetrability 
 of mind of the British serving-man. 
 There are no " whys " in their vocabula 
 ries, no " whys " in their minds, only 
 "thus and so." Things are as they are; 
 57 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 it has always been so; theirs to stand 
 under the atlas weight of caste and class, 
 prejudice and custom, not theirs to reason 
 why, when they are blamed by their mas 
 ters for things not their fault; theirs to 
 go on digging, very respectfully digging. 
 
 " Peter, will you get some one to fix it, 
 please?" 
 
 " Fix it, Miss? " He does not under 
 stand Americanese unless he chooses. 
 
 " Put it in order." I am quite red and 
 haughty now, and as dignified as Queen 
 Alexandra. 
 
 " I ll try, Miss. I expect that was 
 broken a long time ago." Peter half sa 
 lutes and goes on spading the earth for 
 next year s flowers. 
 
 " Peter," I say severely, " the most la 
 mentable thing about you English is that 
 you are always expecting things that 
 have already happened. It s both gram 
 matically and politically wrong to expect 
 things in the past." He has not the slight- 
 58 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 est idea of my meaning, but of course he 
 
 assents. 
 
 " You were a soldier once, weren t 
 
 you?" 
 
 " Yes, Miss. It s a nasty business." 
 " Slavery," I venture, " would be 
 
 worse." 
 
 " I can t say, really," answers Peter. 
 
 " Sometimes I wonder that you do not 
 volunteer for this war, Peter," I suggest. 
 
 Stolid Peter goes on digging. 
 
 " There h isn t any war, Miss! " 
 
 " But Peter, what do you mean? " 
 
 A fine look of cunning incredulity over 
 spreads Peter s broad face, as he stops 
 and wipes his forehead, for this October 
 day is warm. 
 
 " No, Miss; it is just a scare got up by 
 the Ouse of Lords to frighting the com 
 mon people." 
 
 * What for?" 1 ask stupidly. 
 
 " To take their minds off the Ouse of 
 Lords; we had threatened their power, 
 59 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 m, and they wish to keep their seats. It 
 is what you call a roose." 
 
 " Peter," I say severely, " day by day 
 we hear through the newspapers of terri 
 ble fighting going on all the time; how 
 can you say such a foolish thing? " 
 
 1 The newspapers, m," said Peter, with 
 frightful audacity, " are corrupted, 
 bought by the Ouse of Lords. They 
 say what they are bordered to. * 
 
 The poor Belgians are pouring into 
 this country," I say in wrath. 
 
 " Beg parding, Miss, but I haven t seen 
 a Belgian," answers doubting Peter. 
 
 " Day by day we hear of recruits going 
 by hundreds to the recruiting stations - 
 
 ; I m not denying that they may be 
 making up the army, m, and that there 
 may be war some day; but that a war is 
 on, I deny, m." 
 
 So this is what happens when the Brit 
 ish lower classes begin to think! There 
 really ought to be some better way of 
 60 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 bridging the gulf between their old, auto 
 matic habits and the new working of their 
 minds. 
 
 " They are carrying soldiers across the 
 Channel by thousands," I say indignantly. 
 
 "All bunkum, if you ll kindly excuse 
 the word, Miss. Did Robinson Crusoe 
 really happen? We ear of these things 
 going on, but do you know of anybody 
 who has actually been killed, m?" asks 
 Peter. 
 
 I looked at him, but I could not speak. 
 Where are you lying, dear, in that awful 
 field of death? 
 
 October 11. I was pruning and tying 
 up rose vines, by my \\Tought-iron gate 
 that stands ajar, when I heard a noise, - 
 first, a skurrying of feet, and a shout, then 
 a rush of something small and swift. The 
 tiniest grey kitten imaginable had dashed 
 in through the opening and was trembling 
 in a corner under my rosebush. I picked 
 61 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 it up and went quickly to the gate ; there 
 was a red-faced urchin waiting, his mouth 
 open, a stone in one hand ready to throw 
 at the kitten if it came out, but shy of en 
 tering, the British respect for a gate! 
 Neither my pleas nor my scolding brought 
 a shade of expression to his face; it was 
 as guileless, as soulless, as a jack-o - 
 lantern. I give the boy tuppence, and 
 tell him to go away, and to be kind to 
 animals; the kitten curls itself about my 
 neck and purrs, as I work in the earth. 
 Of course I shall keep it; I am glad that 
 the latch will not hold, and I shall not 
 even try to have it repaired. Perhaps my 
 garden may serve as a refuge for small 
 hunted things, suffering things. I might 
 have a ring put on my gate; you remem 
 ber the ring upon the cathedral door at 
 Durham to which a fugitive could cling? 
 All the village criminals I wonder who 
 the village criminals are? Probably the 
 ones who look least so! could cling to 
 62 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 it, and Peter could rescue them, and 
 Madge and 1 could give them tea. 
 
 And now to help on the millennium a 
 hit by establishing an intimacy between the 
 refun-ee kitten and snobbish little Don. In 
 his heart I think he wants to make friends; 
 but when a common kitten, with no pedi 
 gree and no Oxford training, spits at 
 him, what is he to do? He looks piteously 
 at me as I bid him be gentle ; sniffs in half 
 friendly fashion, and keeps his delicate 
 nose well away from the claws. Mean 
 while, how can I teach the kitten noblesse 
 oblige? I shall name it the Atom, be 
 cause, it being (so much of the time) in 
 visible, like the scientists I am unable to 
 tell whether or not it exists; and because 
 at moments it seems only a "mode of 
 motion." 
 
 Not long after came a little squeal, as 
 
 of a tiny pi.ir. my flower beds! I hurry 
 
 down; the gate is farther OJICM. and there 
 
 is a huge baby, a gingerbread baby, no, 
 
 <>:* 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 it is alive, but it has the shape of ginger 
 bread babies in the shops, and it has the 
 motions of a gingerbread baby, not a 
 joint in its body; " moving all together if 
 it move at all." Its round blue eyes, its 
 round red mouth look frightened in Don s 
 presence and mine; then, with another 
 little squeal, it flings itself upon Don, 
 who draws away, looks at me inquiringly, 
 with that questioning paw uplifted, shiv 
 ering a little, all his class-consciousness 
 astir: must he make friends with this? 
 
 It is a solid British lump, but friendly 
 beyond belief. In feeling that it would 
 further the entente cordiale between the 
 two peoples, I find myself making a play 
 house, with tiny pebbles. The infant 
 Briton is not so phlegmatic, after all; it 
 shouts with delight, flings itself upon my 
 knees, and embraces them so suddenly and 
 so lustily that I nearly fall over. ... I 
 must find out its name and send to Lon 
 don for a Teddy bear and some toys. My 
 64 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 gate is wide open, ever since Peter started 
 to escort home my uninvited guest. . . . 
 
 It proves quite a day for adventure, and 
 yet I have not been beyond my garden 
 wall. As I sit on my threshold to watch 
 the sunset, I see, pausing at that open 
 gate, a tired-looking woman, with her 
 baby in her arms. She starts to move 
 away, but I speak to her, and she enters; 
 at first glance I know that she is neither 
 tramp nor beggar and half divine her er 
 rand. Yes, she is a soldier s wife; he is 
 going in a few days to the front, and she 
 is walking a good part of the way from 
 the north of England to his training 
 camp at Salisbury Plain, to let him see 
 and say good-bye to the baby on whom he 
 has never set his eyes; it is only seven 
 \\ccks old and was born after he volun 
 teered. She had money enough to come 
 only a certain distance by train. 
 
 The mother is a north-country woman, 
 with a touch of Scotch about her, rkan 
 65 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 and sweet, though a bit dusty with the 
 long road. Of course I take her in for 
 the night; we have a wee guest-chamber. 
 Don and the kitten and I try to make 
 friends with the baby, but it merely 
 howls. Madge wanted to keep the trav 
 ellers in the kitchen, but I would not per 
 mit this and said that my soldier s wife 
 must dine with me. I forgot to say, I took 
 it for granted that Madge would know 
 enough to lay another cover at table and 
 was not prepared to see the stranger in 
 your place. Naturally, though I winced, 
 I could not make any change, and there 
 she sat, a bit awed; probably she would 
 have been happier in the kitchen with the 
 baby; but she brightened up and told 
 me some of the border legends, when 
 she found that I already knew some. 
 My desire to take her out of your chair 
 lasted through the soup and half-way 
 through the modest roast; when we 
 reached the salad, there was a hurt sense 
 66 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 somewhere within me that it was right. 
 I had become a Christian by the time the 
 dessert came on, and in the afterglow by 
 the fire, while she sang her baby to sleep 
 most enchantingly with an old north- 
 country song, I resolved to do just this: 
 keep your chair for wandering guests, 
 fugitives from these highways and 
 hedges. Your intense present life with 
 me, your subtle nearness needs, after all, 
 no help from outer object or material 
 thing. Alas for my blockade! . . . Forts 
 are proving useless, the war news says. 
 
 It sets me to thinking, and I sit by the 
 fire long after my guests have gone to 
 sleep. After all, it seems a pity to work 
 so hard over a house and to get it ready, 
 unless you get it ready for something. I 
 don t know how it could be managed in 
 a maiden lady s home, but what if I re 
 solved that all the things that should 
 happen in a house should happen here? 
 In my heart of hearts I know, in spite of 
 57 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 this blinding sorrow, that I do not want 
 to be shut off from the main streams of 
 human life. They used to tell me that I 
 have a genius for home; suppose I es 
 tablish this as a \vee home in a warring 
 universe for the use of whomsoever? 
 Not a Home with a large H, but a little 
 home, with a dog and a cat and a singing 
 teakettle. The Lord did not make me 
 for great causes, not for a philanthro 
 pist, nor a leader of men, nor a suffra 
 gette. I have no understanding of masses 
 of mankind, and so am lost in this era, 
 and hopelessly behind the times. Life 
 seems to me, as it did to my grandfather, 
 primarily as the conscientious fulfilment 
 of individual obligation, which inevitably 
 reaches out to other lives. The troubles 
 of individual men and women and chil 
 dren I used to understand, to try to help ; 
 perhaps I can again. Though it means 
 confessing that I belong to a type of 
 woman rapidly becoming extinct, all my 
 68 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 life long I have felt that I should be con 
 tent with a hearthstone and threshold of 
 my own, with natural relationships and 
 real neighbours. If I can understand and 
 pity and try to help, why am I not doing 
 it now, pig that I am? Birth, and death, 
 and marriage, and hours of common life! 
 Ah, if the little red house could only lend 
 itself once more to all human need! 
 
 October 15. My Jeannie Deans is 
 gone ; she was in such haste that she could 
 hardly wait for her breakfast. I got 
 mine host to drive her to the station, for 
 I shall not let her walk the rest of the way, 
 and I gave her all the money I could find 
 in the house, including all I could extract 
 from Madge s and Peter s pockets, and 
 from Madge s broken teapot. Unfortu 
 nately, it was not so much as I could 
 have wished, but it \\ill provide for a few 
 days. \ow we haven t ha pence in the 
 house ; so much the better, if the burglar 
 69 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 with whom I am threatened by the boding 
 village gossips should call; but I must 
 drive over to Shepperton, the market 
 town, and call at the Outland and County 
 Bank, and get some of those clean, crisp, 
 dainty notes that are a delight to touch. 
 
 It seems lonely without Jeannie ; Peter 
 has gone away over hill and dale to get 
 fertilizer for my garden; my house is 
 empty, swept, and garnished - - 1 have 
 been dreading the moment when every 
 thing would be done. I carry on Madge s 
 education, for I am trying to teach her 
 English history. Yesterday it was Will 
 iam the Conqueror; she did not believe a 
 word of it, but she very politely said: 
 "Just fancy!" Most of these people 
 know so little of their own history that 
 they scorn the idea that anything unfor 
 tunate ever happened to England and 
 scoff at a statement that she has ever been 
 worsted in a fight. It has always been 
 as it is, the King on the throne, the Vicar 
 70 
 
TIIK \VORX DOOKSTKP 
 
 in the pulpit, the Squire at the Hall, and 
 the island secure from all attack. To 
 butcher and baker and candlestick maker 
 in the village, danger or threatened 
 change is inconceivable; England s past 
 defeats sound to them like fairy stories 
 devised by enemies, though they lend a 
 willing ear to the tale of England s tri 
 umphs. Going back to ancient times, I 
 told Madge about the Danes and their 
 landing on this coast, about the burning 
 and pillaging done by these wild folk: all 
 that she remarked was: " How awk 
 ward! " I could not get her to entertain 
 for a moment the idea, though we are 
 only a few miles from the North Sea, 
 that the enemy could ever land on Eng 
 lish shores. ;c Ilengland rules the seas," 
 and that is all there is to it. Antwerp has 
 fallen, but even this does not shake the 
 prevailing sense of security. Antwerp is 
 not England! 
 
 In contemporary matters Madge is 
 71 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 quite interested ; she thinks great scorn of 
 the suffragettes: " Breaking the windows, 
 m, and biting Mr. Hasquith, m; it s 
 not for ladies to be taking part in public 
 matters; they aven t it in them! " I re 
 minded her of Queen Elizabeth, but she 
 had never heard of Queen Elizabeth, and 
 refused to entertain the idea that any such 
 woman had ever ruled England. Even 
 the tale of the Virgin Queen boxing the 
 courtiers ears she disbelieved with the 
 rest. She admitted Queen Victoria, but 
 said that it was " so different, m, and she 
 a mother and a grandmother." 
 
 Some of this went on while Madge \yas 
 doing up the guest room; she wanted 
 simply to spread the coverlid over the bed, 
 as it probably would not be used again 
 for a long time. I insisted, however, that 
 the bed be made ready with fresh sheets; 
 some one might stop at any minute, I ex 
 plained. Madge looked at me with ques 
 tion in her eye; her impression of me up 
 72 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 to this point is that I am an amiable luna 
 tic who may at any minute change to vio 
 lence. 
 
 After luncheon I made Peter go and 
 get the pony for me ; yes, the pony is now 
 exclusively my own, for as long a time as 
 I wish. He is almost the most interesting 
 personality I have ever known, wilful, 
 conscientious, full of conviction in regard 
 to what he considers his duty and what he 
 looks upon as his privileges. There are 
 spurts, attended by dashing heels and 
 swishing tail, of strict and spirited per 
 formance of his alloted tasks; there is 
 peasant stubbornness, attended by stiff 
 ened legs and tenacious hoofs, of resistance 
 to evil. He is British, or Scotch, to the 
 core. Evidently he feels that his ancestors 
 had a hand, a hoof, I mean, in the Magna 
 Charta, and all the liberty that is coming 
 to him he means to have, and all the obli 
 gations resting upon him he means to fufil, 
 in his own way, at his own time. Some- 
 73 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 times he will do far more than he is asked, 
 scornful of other people s ideas; has he 
 not his own? He is full of punctiliousness, 
 decency, order, when he feels like it; of 
 utmost freedom, even license also, when 
 he feels like it. Now and then he runs 
 away, purely, I think, on the principle of: 
 " British ponies never shall be slaves." 
 Gentle when you would least expect it, 
 fractious when you are most unprepared, 
 he looks upon whizzing motor cars with 
 calm tolerance, so unlike my own feeling 
 that I may well cultivate his acquaintance 
 in order to learn that wise indifference. 
 It is as if he were disdainful of anything 
 the modern world could invent to 
 frighten him or get in his way ; here is an 
 ancient British self-possession, a sense of 
 ownership in the soil. His ancestors were 
 here hundreds of years before these tri 
 fling modernisms appeared; William the 
 Conqueror and his Norman steeds were 
 but parvenus and upstarts to them. He 
 74 
 
THK \VOHX DOORSTEP 
 
 \vill shy at a floating feather, but I doubt 
 if lie would shy at a Zeppelin. Like many 
 another staunch character, he takes gal 
 lantly the real troubles of life, balking 
 only at the trifles. 
 
 " I should like to know," I said meekly, 
 as we started, " whether it is one of my 
 days for obeying you, or one of your days 
 for obeying me? When I find out, I shall 
 conduct myself accordingly." I got no 
 answer, yet I soon discovered. There is 
 really something uncanny about him; he 
 a to know more than horse or human 
 should know; to have foreknowledge of 
 events. I must not tell his master, or the 
 charges will be raised from five shillings 
 a week perhaps to eight; after all, eight 
 shillings for supernatural wisdom would 
 not he unreasonable! On the other band, 
 if it was just plain British contrariness, 
 eight shillings would be too much, as 
 is such an over-supply of the com 
 modity. 
 
 75 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 I was driving out in the forest to west 
 ward, and it is very beautiful with its 
 great oaks and birches, and its loveli 
 ness of yellowing fern. In spite of the 
 mellow Octoberness everywhere, I was 
 thinking sad thoughts; all day you can 
 drive here and yet hardly cross one man s 
 possessions; much of the land lies idle, 
 while people starve in England ; much of 
 it is preserved, the poor tame pheas 
 ants are as friendly as domestic hens. The 
 tax for charity here is one shilling four- 
 pence a pound; as I read this, I thought 
 of London with its starving poor, its rib 
 ald poor, and I wondered if this great 
 kingdom will vanish because the people 
 do not pull together better. The blind 
 selfishness of the upper class with their 
 glass-guarded walls is a greater menace 
 than the German siege guns. 
 
 I came to a cross road, or cross path, 
 grassy paths both, with creeping green 
 moss among the roots of the trees on either 
 76 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 side. It was hard to decide which way to 
 go; I chose the right and pulled the rein: 
 Puck chose the left and started. I tugged 
 at the right and told him to go on; he 
 said he wouldn t; again I told him, and 
 he shook his head, shook himself all over 
 with his head down, until his harness rat 
 tled. When I told him a third time, he 
 stamped, kicked, and pulled with all his 
 might to the left. Of course he got his 
 way; some people passed; I was not go 
 ing to be convicted of inadequate horse 
 manship, being only an American, so I 
 assumed a calm and masterful British 
 look, as if that were the way I had all 
 along meant to go, and we jogged on. 
 The self-satisfaction in that little crea 
 ture s air! He turned his head around 
 now and then, trying to see how I was 
 taking it; having had his own way, he 
 went at a jolly pace; he loves to start 
 rabbits and make the pheasants fly up. 
 Presently, at a turn in the road, he shied; 
 77 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 he did it quite theatrically, as if he had 
 worked it all out in his mind and had 
 achieved the intended effect. He ex 
 pected me to be startled and to rein him 
 in, fighting to control him, but I did noth 
 ing of the kind. I merely let the reins lie 
 loose and watched him; he subsided very 
 suddenly and dejectedly at having lost 
 his fun. 
 
 Then I saw what he was shying at and 
 stopped him; I think that he had known 
 all along what he was going to find! 
 There, under a great oak tree, partly hid 
 den by tall bracken, lay a girl with her 
 eyes closed, her hat partly off her head, 
 looking like one who was very tired and 
 had fallen in her tracks to go to sleep. In 
 a minute I was at her side, holding tightly 
 to the reins, for fear of what that little 
 wretch might do, but he was as immovable 
 as Stonehenge. 
 
 She was quite young, very wan and 
 pale, fairly well dressed but crumpled 
 78 
 
TIIK \VOKX 
 
 looking. Her hair was dark, and her 
 eyes, when she slowly opened them, 
 proved to be dark also. 
 
 I do not know yet whether she had 
 fainted, or whether she was asleep from 
 exhaustion ; her poor feet showed that she 
 had walked many miles, for the soles of 
 her shoes were worn through. At sight 
 of me she sat up, looking frightened, but, 
 evidently finding that I was not so terri 
 ble, at length smiled back, a faint little 
 smile. I knew enough to be silent at first; 
 this is something that I have learned from 
 animals: there are sympathies, under 
 standings, that antedate words. When I 
 asked her very softly if she were ill, she 
 shook her head, not understanding. I 
 tried French, and, though my French is 
 odd, I know, she brightened, clasped her 
 hands together, giving a great sigh, and 
 then tears began to roll down her f- 
 That villain of a pony looked around now 
 and then as if to say: " ffV/o was right 
 TO 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 about the road? You would never have 
 found her if I had not had my way." 
 
 If he had been commissioned by the 
 government to help in giving first aid, he 
 could not have acted with more sense of 
 responsibility than he did in helping me 
 take her home, standing motionless while 
 she climbed into the cart, so weak with 
 hunger, she confessed, that she could 
 hardly move, then speeding fast where 
 the road was smooth, and going very 
 slowly where the carters wheels have left 
 deep nits in the mossy soil. He really has 
 more than human sense at times! Don, 
 of his own accord, leaped in beside the 
 fugitive; at times I think that his spirit 
 is really becoming more catholic, and that 
 he demands less in the way of credentials 
 and introductions than of old. The girl s 
 pluck interested me, for, though she could 
 hardly hold herself upright, she refused 
 my help. Suddenly, from nowhere, a 
 phrase flashed into my mind, " L lnde- 
 80 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 pendence Beige ", and I knew what 
 afterward proved to be true- that she / 
 was one of the many Belgian refugees in 
 England, though why she was wandering 
 about by herself in this remote corner of 
 England I did not know until afterward. 
 As we jogged on, over the meadows and 
 through the village street, she held herself 
 so bravely that nobody stared, though she 
 was white to the lips. She even managed 
 to walk into the house, but, once inside, 
 sank down on the couch and fainted quite 
 away. Madge and I worked over her, 
 giving her drops of warm milk with a wee 
 hit of brandy, taking the shoes from her 
 poor blistered feet, and bathing them. 
 You should have heard Madge when I 
 told her that I thought the girl was one 
 <>! the fugitive Belgians; to take a red- 
 hot poker to the Kaiser seemed to be her 
 lightest wish for vengeance. 
 
 When our guest was in bed, all i l 
 
 and clean, with her hair brushed smoothly 
 
 81 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 from her forehead, I could see that she 
 was a sweet and wholesome maiden, with 
 a comely, housewifely air, and my heart 
 ached for her sufferings. She ate a little, 
 then lay with her eyes full of tears that 
 she would not let fall; she kept winking 
 her long lashes to keep them hack. Don 
 jumped up beside her and snuggled close; 
 she smiled, lifted her hand to his head for 
 a minute, then she went to sleep. Such 
 sleep I never saw, deep, long, dream 
 less ; hour by hour she lay there, not mov 
 ing all night long, for I crept in now and 
 then: I could not sleep. Don kept watch 
 until morning. 
 
 She did not waken until after ten ; there 
 was a flush in her cheeks, and her eyes 
 were starry, but in her face, young as she 
 seemed, was a foreshadowing of the worn 
 look of age and sorrow that the years 
 should bring, not the German army ! She 
 wore an air of wistful questioning to 
 which there is no answer, as she lay twist- 
 82 
 
TIIK \V()K\ DOORSTEP 
 
 ing weakly a simple ring about her third 
 finger. 
 
 \Ve had a funny time trying to talk; 
 La Fontaine s fables and Racine s Atlia- 
 II c, as taugbt in a young ladies finishing 
 school, are not the best basis for a conver 
 sation on the practical needs of life. I 
 wanted to ask her if she liked sugar and 
 cream in her coffee; all I could think of 
 was 
 
 " C etait pendant 1 horn ur d une profonde nuit, 
 Ma mere Jezebel devant moi s est montree." 
 
 I did succeed in telling her that this was 
 probably not as good as Belgian coffee; 
 she sipped it gratefully and nibbled her 
 toast, putting her band on mine and say 
 ing that it was " delicious, Mademoiselle, 
 but delicious. 91 
 
 My fugitive is still here; she was in 
 bed two days, and then I let her get up. 
 She is wearing one of my gowns, and she 
 spends much of her time in the garden in 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 the grapevine arbour, sitting very still, 
 with the shadow of the leaves upon her 
 face. Don stays with her much of the time, 
 and she seems to like this ; and the country 
 smell of the garden comforts her a little, 
 I think, the odour of the red apples ri 
 pening in the sun and of grapes that will 
 not quite ripen. She rarely moves, except 
 when a drifting autumn leaf falls on lap 
 or shoulder; it is as if body, mind, and 
 soul were exhausted by the awful shock 
 of her experience, and she could not 
 gather up her vital forces. I can only 
 dumbly wonder what terrors she has gone 
 through, what unspeakable things she has 
 seen. 
 
 Her name is Marie Lepont; father 
 and mother she has not, but she lived with 
 an aunt in a little villa near Brussels, - 
 with a garden like this, only plus grand, 
 and she had a lover ; oh, yes, for two years 
 she had been betrothed. I could not un 
 derstand all that she said, but she told of 
 84 
 
THE \VORX DOORSTEP 
 
 their awful suspense in waiting for the 
 Germans and of their taking refuge in the 
 cellar, the French for cellar I had 
 never learned, so she show r ed me my own. 
 Then came the flight, of old men, women, 
 children, and pitiful animals; sickness, 
 and falling by the way. Her aunt died 
 from sheer exhaustion in a peasant s hut 
 and was hastily buried at night. She 
 could hardly tell what had happened, 
 only that she was quite lost and separated 
 from everybody she had ever known. Her 
 lover was not in Brussels when the crisis 
 came, and she had had no tidings from 
 him. Evidently she had been swept over 
 in a great wave of terrified humanity and 
 had found herself on a steamer crowded 
 with refugees. She can remember very 
 little about the voyage, but with many 
 others she reached a receiving camp near 
 London, half ill and quite dazed. She 
 searched vainly for her lover, and, not be 
 ing able to discover any trace of him, 
 85 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 stole away from the camp in a state of 
 mental bewilderment to try to find him. 
 For days she walked, growing more and 
 more spent and hungry, for she was shy 
 about asking for food, and the country 
 people did not understand her, evidently 
 mistook her for a gypsy, and treated her 
 somewhat churlishly. When she reached 
 the forest she w r as happy, it was so cool 
 and shady there, but she had little to eat 
 save mushrooms. If I had tried to pluck 
 mushrooms for my sustenance, it would 
 have ended all my troubles! When I 
 found her, she had had nothing to eat for 
 more than twenty-four hours. 
 
 I watch her as she sits in the sunshine, 
 and I multiply her by hundreds and 
 thousands, innocent people, old folk and 
 babies, old men and women lying down 
 by the roadside to die, and the horror 
 comes like a great tidal wave, sweeping 
 all things before it, drowning all the joy 
 of life and the old sweet ways of living. 
 86 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 It breaks on the brick wall of my garden 
 and is driven back: I will not be over 
 whelmed by any anguisb of human fate, 
 my own, or that of any one else. Until 
 SOUR- wandering star strikes the earth and 
 shivers it to atoms, there is hope some 
 where, and there are things to do! And 
 Marie Lepont shall not be overwhelmed 
 cither, in spite of the terrible things she 
 sees, waking or sleeping, for she starts up 
 and cries out in the night; Don gives a 
 little comforting, reassuring bark, and she 
 goes to sleep again. I ve got to find her 
 lover for her, and how r shall I begin? 
 I ll go and ask the pony! 
 
 October 14. My fugitive fits quietly 
 into our life in the little red house, saying 
 little, trying to do much, and smiling 
 more and more. I do not talk to her, but 
 now and then I sit and sew with her; I 
 know that she is most domestic, and that 
 this will make her feel at home, but I 
 87 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 should hate to have her examine my seams 
 and hems, for I am no seamstress. I leave 
 her much alone with the animals, and that 
 seems to help more than anything else ; the 
 Atom spends much of its time on her 
 shoulder. She has begged to be allowed 
 to feed the chickens, for Madge has in 
 sisted on our having chickens, and Peter 
 has constructed a yard for them, with a 
 little house for winter, a bit down the 
 stream. Sea gulls come sailing on wide 
 beautiful white wings and descend to the 
 chicken yard, walk about and steal food, 
 to the helpless wrath of our fowls. Even 
 Hengist and Horsa retreat ; they are two 
 twin stately cocks, and William the Con 
 queror is a bigger one, with spurs. He is 
 quite the greatest coward in the yard, and 
 entirely in awe of his Matildas. It is thus 
 that I am making history concrete for 
 Madge; my long line of British queens 
 does credit to the dynasty, though they are 
 a bit miscellaneous in ancestry. Boadicea 
 88 
 
THK \\OHX DOOKSTKr 
 
 is a dark beauty, wild and fierce; my vain 
 est, long-necked, mi-brown ben is Queen 
 Kli/abrth: oh, the cackling when she lays 
 an egg! The large, fat, rather stupid one 
 is Queen Anne; I let Madge choose and 
 name Queen Victoria herself, and sin 
 selected a plump and comely grey fowl, 
 rather diminutive, with an imperative and 
 yet appealing cluck, who will make, I 
 know, an excellent wife and mother. It 
 is all very well to keep hens and to eat 
 their eggs, but I have given notice to 
 Madge that not one of these companions 
 of my daily life shall be sold to the butcher 
 or served upon my table. The ginger- 
 hn-ad baby comes giggling through the 
 gate at least once a day, and it has taken 
 a great fancy to Marie. It proves to be 
 the eleventh and youngest child of my 
 friend the blacksmith, and it has early de- 
 veloped, probably from constant associa 
 tion with so many swift feet, an abnormal 
 talent for running away. 
 89 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 From morning until night I am busy 
 with a thousand and one things, common 
 place things mostly, in the house, or the 
 village, or beyond. And wherever I go, 
 you seem near, with your long, thin stride, 
 and your preoccupied face, as if your feet 
 had a bit of difficulty in keeping up with 
 your mind. There is a strange sense al 
 ways, when I walk in the forest, or along 
 the highway, even when I go to Farmer 
 Wilde s to see about butter and vegeta 
 bles, that you are walking by my side. 
 
 Peter is very solicitous about the wel 
 fare of my guest, and I have seen him 
 looking at her with vast pity in his eyes. 
 
 " Peter," I reminded him, " you can no 
 longer say that you have not seen a Bel 
 gian refugee." 
 
 " No, Miss," was his only answer. He 
 digs and prunes, still arguing his coun 
 try s lack of need of him in this pretence 
 of war. 
 
 11 There s the British fleet, m," he ob- 
 90 
 
TIIK WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 .served, with line scorn. ;< It was bordered 
 out at the beginning of this so-called war, 
 and told to sink the henemy s fleet. Wot 
 ave we Yard of it since, m? Nothing, 
 nothing at all. It s just bluff, in: the 
 fleet is out on the igh seas for pleasure, 
 junketing at our expense. Douhtless all 
 the gentlemen enjoy a cruise." 
 
 Peter," I say solemnly, " don t you 
 really know that a German submarine 
 sank three British cruisers on the twenty- 
 second of September, the Iln^nc. the 
 r/v.v.v//, and the Aboulcir? Do you think 
 that the gallant men upon them went to 
 the bottom for pleasure?" 
 
 Peter turned a triile pale under the red 
 of his forehead and cheeks. 
 
 "I beard that rumour," he remarked, 
 
 with an attempt at airy skepticism, "and 
 
 I dessuy you believe it. I dessay you 
 
 think it actually happened. But I refuse 
 
 it; when was the British fleet 
 
 1 defeated! " 
 
 91 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 There was a tentative something, a 
 touch of question, in the bravado of his 
 denial. 
 
 " Peter," I suggest, " our fall garden 
 ing is not a national necessity; there is 
 greater need of you elsewhere. Why not 
 he a bomb-sweeper; you like the sea, I 
 believe? " Madge listens, her broom sus 
 pended in mid-air, as if it were listening 
 too. A look of embarrassment crosses 
 Peter s face, as he rubs his cheek. 
 
 1 The bombs are very explosive, I ve 
 eard, W 
 
 " Peter," I say, " if this is an imaginary 
 war, those are imaginary bombs and do 
 not explode." 
 
 " I m not so sure of that, Miss," says 
 Peter shrewdly. 
 
 Another British cruiser, the Hawke, 
 sunk October 16. There is wakening fear 
 in the hearts of the English people, and 
 there is deepening courage. The faces 
 that I see here and in the near-by towns, 
 92 
 
TIIK WORN DOOKSTKP 
 
 tlu- letters that I get, have one expression. 
 Party dill erenees have almost ceased to 
 exist in the political world, and in other 
 ways, T think, the nation is being welded 
 into one, as it has never been. Even the 
 voice of the Vicar s lady has lost something 
 of its condescension in speaking to com 
 mon folk; I saw her at the blacksmith s 
 as I took the gingerbread baby home for 
 the eighth time, and she spoke with less of 
 an air of coining down to the level of her 
 audience than I should have believed pos 
 sible. The gentry are behaving a bit less 
 as if the earth were their private monop 
 oly, and the subgentry, like our Vicaress, 
 are taking the cue. 
 
 A few days ago T went to London, 
 chiefly to get clothing for Marie and to 
 set on foot inquiries about her betrothed. 
 Nothing seemed greatly changed, save 
 that there were fewer people in the streets 
 and the restaurants, and that many uni 
 forms are in evidence. The theatres are 
 93 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 open, and people are going about their 
 work and their play in quite usual fashion, 
 but their faces wear a different expression, 
 an impersonal look, and a certain quiet 
 exaltation. Oh, if the real England, that 
 England that I know chiefly through the 
 expression of her inmost self in her match 
 less literature, and through you, could 
 only win over that other of high, exclud 
 ing walls and ancient entailed rights of 
 selfishness and of belittling snobbishness! 
 You will admit that something needs 
 righting in a social condition represented 
 by the tale of the two sisters at Oxford, - 
 one married to a tailor, one married to a 
 University professor, who did not dare 
 speak to each other in the street for fear 
 of consequences. I am hopelessly demo 
 cratic; the wonderfully good manners of 
 the perfectly trained English servant seem 
 to me vastly higher, as human achieve 
 ment, than the manner of the superior 
 who speaks brutally to him. The sur- 
 94 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 prised gratitude of many of the maids and 
 serub-women here when one addresses 
 them as if they really were human beings 
 is piteous. 
 
 Yet I know that though these things 
 be true, they reflect but the surface, not 
 the depths. Something in this crisis, 
 something even in Peter s crude attacks, 
 has roused a deep race instinct in me, long 
 dormant. Though my forebears set sail 
 for America in the 1630 s, my sense of tilt- 
 identity of our destiny with that of Eng 
 land deepens every day. I am ceasing to 
 say "your", and unconsciously slipping 
 into " our "; perhaps I have been trying 
 to eriticize, to point out the things that are 
 wrong, partly as a measure of self-protec 
 tion, for I am growing sorry that the Rev 
 olutionary \Var ever happened! I long 
 for England s victory in this war. know- 
 Hint she is right: I dimly susprc-t that 
 I should long for it were she right or 
 urong; and 1 I eel a little thrill of pride 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 that my home is in this England of yours, 
 of ours. 
 
 Even I, who am often indignant in 
 watching the Englishman s manner 
 toward those other Englishmen whom he 
 considers his social inferiors, can discern 
 his profound sense of responsibility 
 toward them. Forgetting the mistakes of 
 to-day, and thinking of the long develop 
 ment, one can but be aware in England of 
 a stable, enduring spirituality, a practical 
 idealism, unlike that of the earlier, ideal 
 istic Germany, a something tangential, 
 disassociated with life, in that it is a 
 constant sense of inner values working out 
 in everyday ways and habits. Those mys 
 tical habits of dreaming fine things that 
 are never done will not save the world. In 
 my growing love for England, I am more 
 and more aware of its disciplined, mellow 
 civilization, treasuring the old and sacred 
 in beliefs, in institutions, in buildings; its 
 right, controlling habits ; its thousand and 
 96 
 
THE WOUX DOORSTEP 
 
 one wise departures from the measure of 
 
 rule and thumb: its uncodified, unformu- 
 lated truth of action; its conduct far 
 more logically right than its laws. In 
 the very reproach oftenest brought 
 against England I find the deepest rea 
 son for trusting her, that she allows 
 human instinct a larger place and mere 
 intellectual theory a smaller place than 
 does any other nation in working out its 
 destiny. I am deeply puzzled by my 
 sense of the Englishman s wrong attitude 
 toward his supposed inferior while I rec- 
 on-ni/e that inner instinctive sense of 
 necessary adjustments, that genius for 
 living that makes them the best colonizers 
 in the world and makes their rule the most 
 lasting anywhere. 
 
 I consulted some of the chief authori 
 ties in the Belgian relief work in regard 
 
 Marie, - your England shows the real 
 humanity at the heart of her in this mag- 
 niiieent hospitality to an outraged nation. 
 97 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 - and I put advertisements into several 
 papers. At home all was well, save that 
 William the Conqueror had choked, try 
 ing to swallow a piece of English bacon 
 too large for him, and was dead. So per 
 ish all who lust for conquest! 
 
 October 24. Two days ago came a 
 domestic, not to say a social crisis. Two 
 of the county ladies called on me, accom 
 panied by the Vicaress; they must have 
 been told, I think, of my uncle the banker ! 
 Forgive this gibe, - - 1 could not resist 
 making it; we always disputed, you re 
 member, as to whether your countrymen 
 or mine were the more devout worshippers 
 of gold. To say truth, I have met these 
 ladies at one or two committee meetings 
 in our relief work, and I feel duly hon 
 oured by the call. I ring for Madge; 
 Madge does not appear; going to the 
 kitchen, I find it empty, the fire out, 
 water dripping forlornly from the faucet. 
 98 
 
TIIK WORN DOOKSTKT 
 
 The coal in the sitting room grate I re 
 plenish myself and face the horror of the 
 situation: three English ladies and no 
 tea! \o one knows better than I what 
 blasphemy it would be to omit the sacred 
 Hritish rite of tea, which is even more es- 
 tahlished than the Established Church. 
 Rising to the occasion, I heat water in a 
 little copper kettle on the coals in the 
 sitting room, " So resourceful, as all 
 Americans are," murmurs one lady. I 
 concoct tea, and it proves very good tea 
 indeed, served with appetizing little cakes 
 from yesterday s baking. My guests go 
 away mollified; not so am I! One of 
 them had so many scathing things to say 
 about England s policies at home and 
 abroad, the political friendship with Rus 
 sia, the desertion of Persia, the treatment 
 of Ireland, the mismanagement of the 
 present war, that 1 was driven to an 
 attitude of defence. Surely there is some 
 thing greater for English men and Eng- 
 99 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 lish women to do now than to stand 
 aloof and criticize! When I told her 
 that I thought it was a pity to con 
 fuse the soul of the English people with 
 mistakes of contemporary statesmen, she 
 looked at me blankly, nor could I make 
 her understand. It is odd for me, who 
 have so derided our Anglomaniacs and 
 superficial imitators of the English, to 
 come so hotly to the defence of England. 
 I hardly know myself what is going on 
 within me. It is the England-in-the- 
 long-run that I reverence, the England 
 of the great poetry, that soul of England 
 full of "high-erected thoughts", of 
 sunny faiths, and sweet humanities. And 
 of course, through you too, I know its 
 very best, the breeding that makes no 
 boast; its fine reserve; its self-control; 
 its matchless, silent courage. 
 
 It is a chilly day; Don and the Atom 
 cuddle side by side at the hearth; they 
 are great friends now. Marie returns 
 100 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 with bright eyes and red cheeks from a 
 walk. Presently home comes Peter, who 
 lias been away on some errand of his own, 
 to a fireless hearth and an empty room. 
 Home and garden and adjacent field he 
 searches in vain. 
 
 " She will ave gone to one of her 
 friends, Miss," says Peter stoutly, pro 
 ceeding to lay a fire. 
 
 I assent, but w r ith misgiving. Madge 
 had never failed before, nor had she even 
 gone away for half an hour without tell 
 ing me. As Peter helps me prepare a 
 simple meal to serve instead of dinner, I 
 turn the conversation toward military 
 training and matters of war. My own 
 contributions to the conversation, in re 
 gard to cavalry, infantry, and maneuver 
 ing I should not care to have Lord 
 Kitchener hear. Very casually I remark 
 that, if I were a man, 1 should like to be 
 tidier. 
 
 Would you now, Miss?" Peter re- 
 101 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 spends amiably, as he takes up the toast 
 ing-fork. 
 
 " There s a recruiting station at Shep- 
 perton," I suggest, as I cut the bread. 
 There are five thousand men encamped 
 for training in Wellington Park; and 
 I ve been told that there are several hun 
 dred in the nearest village, what is it, 
 Silverlea? I hardly see how you can go 
 about so much without seeing them." 
 
 It is odd, isn t it? " Peter answers 
 wonderingly. I found out afterward that 
 the villain had spent that very day at 
 Wellington Park, watching the recruits 
 drill. 
 
 As it grew later, more chilly and darker 
 on that autumn night, I could see the 
 British husband s awful wrath growing 
 within Peter; he evidently thought that 
 his wife had run away with some one. 
 Naturally I had no idea what had hap 
 pened, but I had my doubts of this. In 
 the first place, she was fundamentally 
 102 
 
THE \VOKX DOORSTEP 
 
 good ; in the second place, one Briton was, 
 I felt sure, enough for Madge. 
 
 Don and the Atom were the only mem 
 bers of the family who really enjoyed 
 their evening meal that day. They lapped 
 from the same saucer, though not at the 
 same moment, each politely waiting a 
 turn, the closest of allies, and doing a bit 
 after in the way of washing each other 
 up. Marie watched me with big, sympa 
 thetic brown eyes, and said nothing. 
 When nine o clock came, I was as worried 
 as was Peter, though I did not admit it. 
 We had decided that he should go to the 
 Inn for the pony, and that we would begin 
 a s\ -stematic search. He went to his room 
 to get ready and presently appeared, al 
 ternately red with wrath and pale with 
 anxiety. 
 
 My clothes, m, my Sunday clothes 
 are gone. Boots and all, in. And my 
 at, my Sunday at." 
 
 Despair could go no further than this 
 108 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 intonation of Peter s Sunday at; would 
 that any at had ever meant so much to 
 me! 
 
 " She as given them to ? im, Miss." 
 
 " To whom?" 
 
 " That s just what I don t know, m." 
 
 What could one think? Had Madge, 
 the admirable, indeed a lover? That was 
 unthinkable; there must have been some 
 accident. At least, there was nothing to 
 do but to notify mine host of the Inn, 
 and to present the case to the local Dog 
 berry. 
 
 We were ready to start, when I heard a 
 little click of my garden gate, and soft 
 footsteps came up the brick walk, down 
 which streamed the light of the porch 
 lamp. Red rage mounted to Peter s eyes. 
 " It s that man," he cried, " in my 
 clothes!" I kept a detaining arm on 
 Peter s sleeve, his second-best sleeve. 
 Where had his best been intriguing? 
 
 The kitchen door opened softly, very 
 104 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 softly : \ve stood breathless in the corner. 
 If it were a burglar, we were ready ; were 
 not all the massive British kitchen uten 
 sils near? The lamplight fell full upon 
 the face and form of a strange man, a 
 very strange man, the strangest I ever 
 saw, plump, round of face, with strag 
 gling, irregular locks of hair that had 
 been newly shorn, a decidedly strange 
 man, in Peter s clothes. 
 
 You you hussy!" said Peter, but 
 the sorry epithet expressed a world of 
 relief, even, I thought, of endearment. 
 
 One would have supposed that Madge 
 could not grow redder; yet her face be 
 came even more a flame. 
 
 " You, a respectable British female, * 
 said Peter, advancing with slow heaviness 
 of tread, as if Madge s end would really 
 come when he reached her and the Sunday 
 clothes; "You, a British female, and tl it- 
 wife of an honest man, out on the high 
 way in a man s clothes, ///// clothes." He 
 105 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 took hold of her arm, but gently; he 
 would not have dared do otherwise. His 
 wife looked at him steadily ; he could not 
 meet her glance, and his eyes fell. 
 
 "You re little better than a suffra 
 gette," he said weakly. 
 
 That may be," said Madge, not with 
 out a certain loftiness, touching her hair 
 with a novel feminine gesture, " that ma} 
 b e; but I am better than an able-bodied 
 man that doesn t hoffer himself to his 
 country. The suffragettes are fighting 
 for theirs." 
 
 Peter was stricken; he had nothing to 
 say. Don, arriving and unable to under 
 stand, barked wildly at Madge, and she 
 seemed to mind his remarks much more 
 than she had Peter s. I could help it no 
 longer, and I burst out laughing. 
 
 " Madge," I asked, " where have you 
 been?" 
 
 " I ve been to the recruiting station at 
 Shepperton, m," said Madge, with one 
 106 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 look at Peter. " I could bear it no 
 longer; not a finger raised for King or 
 Country." 
 
 Peter hung his head. 
 
 "Or the Ouse of Lords," Madge 
 added witheringly. " I ve been a-reading 
 and a-reading, m, in those papers of yours 
 about the French women that they find, 
 fighting side by side with the men, for 
 their country, and about the Russian 
 women fighting too ; but when I saw yes 
 terday that German women had been 
 found fighting, something gave way in 
 my ead. I think you call it brain-storm 
 in America, m. Those barbarian women, 
 from God knows where, fighting for King 
 and Country and their Ouse of Lords! I 
 said to myself that the Snell family 
 should send one man to the seat of war. 1 
 
 " I ve been a-considering," said Peter, 
 
 I ve IKTII a-tliinking it out." 
 
 * The present h our," glared Madge. 
 " is no time to think! " 
 107 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 That was evidently the exact view of 
 the European statesmen in August," 
 I ventured, but Madge and Peter 
 were too intent to catch my unkind 
 whisper. 
 
 " So I put on Peter s clothes," said 
 Madge, " and I went and walked to Shep- 
 perton and offered myself. Your Queen 
 Elizabeth w T ould have done as much." 
 
 My Queen Elizabeth, indeed! 
 
 "What did they say to you?" de 
 manded Peter. 
 
 : I shan t tell you," said Madge. 
 And she never did. 
 
 October 22. I am so excited that I can 
 hardly write; my fingers tremble and 
 make letters that look like bird-tracks. 
 What do you think has happened? Who 
 do you think stopped this afternoon at my 
 little iron gate? It seems a terrible thing, 
 an incredible thing to say, but I could 
 hardly have been happier about it 
 108 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 if it had been you. I have so much to do, 
 to think about, while Marie ? Her 
 little world had all been swept away. 
 
 I was weeding this neglected garden; 
 Peter, leaning on his spade, was eyeing 
 me with some disapproval. 
 
 " Ladies shouldn t be doing that ard 
 work, Miss," he observed. 
 
 " That s a queer opinion for a social 
 ist," I remarked, tugging at a burdock 
 root. He let me tug and went on with 
 the exposition of his political opinions, 
 quite unaware of my meaning. 
 
 " This need not keep you from work 
 ing, Peter," I suggested. " I ve no inten 
 tion of spading that bed." 
 
 He <liiL> his spade in with a little grunt. 
 
 "Everybody ought to work; that 
 should be the iirst article of your socialist 
 creed." 
 
 " It isn t, W said Peter eagerly. 
 
 "Wouldn t you respect the House of 
 Lords more if they actually worked, 
 109 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 Peter?" This brought him to a full 
 stop. 
 
 1 They do less arm as it is, Miss," he 
 said darkly. 
 
 Here we heard the gate creak; the 
 broken latch gives a little unnecessary 
 click. An odd figure was standing there, 
 looking like a tramp, with worn and bat 
 tered clothing, a Derby hat with holes in 
 it, and dark hair straggling over his fore 
 head. Don, catching sight of him, barked 
 furiously; I never heard him bark that 
 way. It was as if the whole outraged 
 spirit of the British upper classes were 
 crying out upon the poverty and the mis 
 ery they have helped create; it was a 
 perfect yelp of class-consciousness. This 
 naturally enlisted my sympathy on the 
 side of the tramp, and I scolded Don and 
 even slapped him a little. I ve told him 
 often enough that there is really nothing 
 so vulgar as display of a sense of social 
 superiority, and I do not like these re- 
 110 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 lapses from the democratic spirit that I 
 am trying to cultivate in him. 
 
 It was the way in which the tramp 
 watched me that made me suspect that he 
 was not a tramp at all; he had big, 
 brown, appealing eyes, like those of a 
 nice dog, not Don, but a friendly shep 
 herd dog. The way in which he took off 
 his battered hat enlightened me further, 
 as did his little wistful smile. His face 
 was a bit dirty, but my face has been dirty 
 in times past; so, doubtless, has yours, 
 Lord Hamlet. When I greeted him with 
 good afternoon, he took a piece of paper 
 from his pocket, and at first I wondered 
 if he were an Armenian with lace, going 
 about with a letter of introduction from a 
 pastor, or don t you have them in Eng 
 land? But he did not look like an Arme 
 nian, and he very evidently did not have 
 l.uv, or any other kind of luggage. The. 
 paper proved to be the advertisement that 
 I had put in a London paper, and as 
 111 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 I took it, it struck me that those holes in 
 his hat might be bullet holes. 
 
 You re not really Henri Dupre?" 
 I am," he said simply. My French is 
 fairly inadequate in my calmest moments ; 
 in times of excitement it is non-existent, 
 but he must have understood the joy in 
 my face, and the hand I held out in wel 
 come. He shook his head ; his hand was 
 not clean; my own was less so, and I was 
 so proud! As I told Peter, if I had 
 not been weeding, our guest would not 
 have been properly greeted. Don, the 
 wretched little creature, taking his cue 
 from me, was gaily barking a welcome in 
 a wholly different tone of voice from that 
 which he had used at first. You see, he 
 never would have known that the way 
 farer was respectable if he had not con 
 sidered himself properly introduced by 
 my handshake. 
 
 " Is Marie Lepont lien 
 
 I told him in my matter-of-fact way 
 112 
 
TIIK WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 that she was, and I said nothing more; 
 they might do their own explaining, I 
 thought, as they understood their own 
 language, not to speak of anything else, 
 far better than I. So I only motioned to 
 him and went on tiptoe to the corner of 
 the house; Marie was sitting in the gar 
 den, as she sits so often, in the rocking- 
 chair, knitting, knitting for the soldiers. 
 The air is full of the fragrance of ripen 
 ing apples, of falling leaves, and fading 
 fVrn. She is very quiet in the sunshine, 
 and the shadows of the grapevine leaves 
 upon her face hardly change for half an 
 hour at a time. I motioned to him, and 
 then I ran away, hack to my weeding, - 
 to anything. I f it were really he! I won 
 dered if even they felt an anguish so in 
 tense, a joy so intense as my own. It 
 must have lent me greater power than I 
 really have, for 1 tugged and tugged to 
 relieve my feelings: the himlock came 
 up. root and all, and 1 sat down rather 
 118 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 suddenly, panting. Peter remonstrated 
 mildly, shaking his head. 
 
 "You really shouldn t, Miss!" 
 
 " Then why don t you? " I asked. " It 
 was here all the time, and you have a 
 spade." 
 
 :< I ve ad no directions, Miss," he said 
 stiffly. " But I don t refer to the weed 
 ing; I dessay it is because you are an 
 American and don t understand, but you 
 really shouldn t let disrespectable people 
 in that way. He may be a burglar; he 
 may be robbing the ouse at this very min 
 ute. But why, if you don t mind me ask 
 ing, are you crying, Miss? " 
 
 I m not!" I answered indignantly. 
 I never cry. Peter, will you lend this 
 man your precious Sunday suit? " 
 
 ; Xever, Miss! " declared Peter, some 
 what heated, and mopping his forehead. 
 "A tramp like that!" 
 
 " You believe in the brotherhood of 
 man, don t you?" 
 
 114 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 "Of course I do; certingly I do." 
 
 M Madge," I called through the kitchen 
 window, " please start the heater and get 
 water ready for a bath. And please lay 
 out Peter s Sunday suit; he wants to 
 lend it to a brother man." 
 
 "Brother man, indeed!" ejaculated 
 Peter, and he went on digging. He is 
 getting a bed ready for next spring s 
 daffodils. 
 
 " Peter," I said with some severity, " I 
 want to see if I can respect your social 
 convictions; this is the first chance I have 
 had to test them." 
 
 "Yes, Miss," he answered, "but I 
 don t see what that has to do with me 
 Sunday suit." 
 
 Not a sound came from the garden; I 
 kept Don with me, not even lie should 
 break that moment. Then I told Peter 
 who had come, how the lovers had lost 
 each other in that mad rush for safety, 
 and how, for days. 1 had been trying to 
 115 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 find this man, for I was very sure that the 
 right man had come. Peter was spell 
 bound, nor could he dig a stroke while I 
 was talking. Then he began to work, 
 and he worked furiously, as I have not 
 seen him since he came. 
 
 " It s quite right, m, about the suit," 
 he said presently. 
 
 I worked for perhaps an hour, while 
 Peter dug like one inspired. Madge 
 heated water and got towels ready, peer 
 ing out curiously to see why. A touch of 
 evening chill came into the air; the 
 rooks began to go home, and filmy rose- 
 flushed clouds trailed over the sky at sun 
 set. Finally I shook the dirt off my 
 hands, finding myself very stiff as I tried 
 to stand. 
 
 "Peter," I asked, "what shall I do 
 next?" 
 
 " I think, m, I d start making a wed 
 ding cake," he answered, after due re 
 flection. 
 
 116 
 
THE WORN DOORSTKP 
 
 " For a futile political theorist, you do 
 have perfectly unexpected moments of in 
 sight," I told him. 
 
 " Yes, Miss," said Peter. 
 
 Silence, except for the rooks, the sound 
 of the brook, and a little wayward flutter 
 of the leaves where the wind was moving. 
 I went to the kitchen and added some 
 thing un-British and digestible to the 
 supper menu, then walked up and down, 
 wondering why a man probably famished 
 did not appear. Finally I decided that I 
 must investigate and tiptoed my way to 
 the corner of the house. Marie was still 
 sitting in her chair; her knitting was on 
 the ground beside her. The shadow of 
 the grapevine was gone, and her face was 
 alive with light from within and without. 
 The level shafts of sunlight that touched 
 it fell too on the red brick wall behind 
 her, where the espaliered pear tree was 
 etched in dark lines, and all the garden 
 a .soft glow of October gold. The 
 117 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 stranger was sitting on the ground with 
 his head against Marie s knees, and her 
 little shawl over his shoulders, sleeping 
 like a child that had found its way home. 
 
 As I crept near, Marie looked up, and 
 a heavenly smile came over her face. She 
 took my hand and held it, kissing it more 
 than once, and she said over and over: 
 * Mademoiselle; Mademoiselle," and 
 again, " Mademoiselle." 
 
 We let her lover stay as long as we 
 dared on the brick walk, covering him 
 warmly with steamer rugs. Later we 
 found that he had just reached England 
 and had hardly slept for a week. The 
 sunset faded, and the stars grew bright, 
 and still he leaned his head against 
 Marie s knee and slept the sleep of 
 exhaustion. 
 
 Presently we wakened him; there was 
 
 a great sound of splashing water; Marie 
 
 ran up-stairs to do her hair over again 
 
 and came down flushed like a rose, re- 
 
 118 
 
THE WORN DOOKSTKP 
 
 vitalized, alive as I had not dreamed she 
 could be alive, and at last our guest ap 
 peared, clean and smiling. He was evi 
 dently amused by the odd fit of Peter s 
 clothes, but too tired and too happy to 
 say much. I sped to the kitchen to make 
 the French omelette; Madge cannot do 
 it, no Briton could; it has to be manip 
 ulated in just the right fashion, turned at 
 the exact fraction of a second, and served 
 in just the right way. You should have 
 seen Don, when he found the stranger in 
 your place, apologizing, snuffing daintily, 
 touching him with a friendly and be 
 seeching paw, pretending that he had 
 always known! 
 
 Of course the lovers were holding hands 
 under the table; of course you, as an 
 Knu-lishman, would liavr thought them 
 effusive but I should have been terribly 
 hurt if they had not been effusive about 
 that omelette. When I rise to the occa 
 sion like this, I like to be appreciated; I 
 119 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 had nothing to complain of that night. 
 Tea and toast and jam; a few tears, and 
 much laughter, and a Sultana cake the 
 very kind that grew in Oxford windows 
 and graced our five o clock banquets; a 
 Sultana cake calls to my mind the pro- 
 foundest problems of life and destiny, so 
 many of them we discussed over the 
 crumbs, this, I am afraid, meant a 
 rather ascetic repast for the young Bel 
 gians, but I thought that anything more, 
 with their great draughts of happiness, 
 would be indigestible. Peter took Henri 
 to the Inn and got a room for him. 
 Though he was there more than three 
 weeks, mine host would not let me pay a 
 farthing, no, indeed! The Belgians 
 are the guests of the English nation, he 
 said, and he was glad to have his chance 
 to shelter one of them. 
 
 November 1. War, unceasing war in 
 the trenches, with rumours of a British 
 120 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 naval defeat in South American waters, 
 and little encouraging news save that the 
 Germans have failed to reach Dunkirk 
 and Calais. England s best are dying, 
 your kind, England s noblest sons rush 
 ing to the danger places, foolishly, 
 grandly brave. One can feel throughout 
 the country the great purpose shaping 
 itself to the needs of the moment, as it 
 does slowly but surely in this land. That 
 is the secret of this people: they can rise 
 to a challenge, meet any crisis whatever 
 when it comes; and though I know that 
 unpreparedness has cost them much, they 
 are greater and better than if they had 
 devoted their best energy for five and 
 twenty years to getting ready for war. 
 Enthusiasm kindles under the challenge 
 of disaster; the finest have already an 
 swered the call; the less fine make the 
 great refusal. You go, but Peter stays, 
 and Peter s kind all over England 
 stays. . . . 
 
 121 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 November 5. Peter does not stay! 
 Peter is going to the war! For several 
 days he has been very critical of civiliza 
 tion, very severe upon his country and her 
 rulers; at times he seemed to think him 
 self the only real pillar of Church and 
 State. Some struggle was going on 
 within him; I have learned enough of 
 him to know that if he expresses a feeling, 
 it is one he does not have! For him, as 
 for me, the horror of the present moment 
 has been intensified by coming into con 
 tact with those who have actually suf 
 fered. All that I could understand of 
 Henri Dupre s account I have translate^ 
 into English for Peter s benefit, and the 
 sight of the bullet-riddled hat has plunged 
 him in deep thought. 
 
 He saw your picture, the picture of you 
 in khaki. Madge, unpermitted, had taken 
 it into the kitchen to polish the frame of 
 oak. Peter looked at it uneasily. 
 
 " A friend of yours, Miss? " 
 122 
 
THK WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 " Yes, Peter." 
 
 " At the front, m? " 
 
 "At the front, Peter," I answered. 
 I could not have said anything else, and 
 even if I live to be a hundred, I shall not 
 think of you any other way except as at 
 the front, fighting if need be, carrying 
 messages across the danger zone, with no 
 thought of danger. 
 
 It was a great advance in Peter to ad 
 mit the existence of a front; he has per 
 sisted in declaring the war a bit of sensa 
 tional romance, devised by the House of 
 Lords for their own entertainment. It 
 was a brooding Peter who busied himself 
 with rubbing up the knives, he has been 
 unusually attentive- to Madge since her 
 escapade; his mind seemed to be running 
 on troubles greater than his own. 
 
 " Do you know where our army is sup 
 posed to be now, m?" he asked, when I 
 told him that we had no good news from 
 the seat of war. 
 
 123 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 Our army! We were getting on! I 
 gave him my best information about our 
 hard-pressed line in the west. 
 
 " It s astonishing that those Germans 
 are able to fight at all, m, when they have 
 once met the British," said Peter gloom 
 ily, polishing a huge carving knife as if it 
 were a sword. :< Meeting the French, that 
 is different; they are a flighty people 
 and very hexcitable." 
 
 Your knowledge of history needs to 
 be brought up to date, Peter," I ventured. 
 " Anything less flighty than that magnif 
 icent people of France at this present 
 moment the world has never seen." 
 
 " It must be very difficult, m, fight 
 ing on the Continent, for one who does not 
 speak the foreign tongues. And I 
 couldn t eat frogs, m; I d almost rather 
 ave the Germans as allies ; sausages aren t 
 as bad as frogs by alf." 
 
 Later I heard him muttering to him 
 self. 
 
 124 
 
THE WORN DOORSTKT 
 
 "If the Ouse of Lords is really in 
 trouble," said Peter, fighting the great 
 fight with self, " if the Ouse of Lords 
 really needs me - Of course, the throne 
 is more or less a figure ead, but I shouldn t 
 like to see it fall just now, especially it 
 the henemy is coming. ... I should like 
 to himpress them as much as possible." 
 was when he was sweeping the walk that 
 I heard him say: " And I should like to 
 see Bobs once more." 
 
 But one day determined Peter s future 
 destiny and his rank as a man and a 
 Briton. Peter had gone to the coast, with 
 Puck and the cart, spending the night at 
 a sister s on the way. He had some busi 
 ness at Yarmouth, he said. I devised 
 some errands for him and encouraged his 
 going. I thought that it would perhaps 
 prove to be his farewell to his sister before 
 going to war. 
 
 Those were strange days, the days of 
 Peter s absence,- tense, full of nameless 
 125 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 anxiety. That early-morning feeling of 
 suspense, of expectancy, lasted into the 
 afternoon; and one early morning had 
 brought us the unmistakable sound of 
 guns from the sea. Peter came rattling 
 home in the late afternoon, a pale, dis 
 traught Peter, who seemed to have lost 
 several pounds. He came into the gar 
 den where I was tying up rosebushes for 
 the winter; at first he seemed unable to 
 speak, but at last gasped out, " Those 
 
 Germans!" and the gasp ended in 
 
 a little sob. As I watched him, I found 
 myself sharing his trembling indignation. 
 
 " German ships, m, men-of-war, stand 
 ing off our coast, bombarding; it has 
 never been attacked before. I saw them 
 with my own eyes; I eard them with my 
 own ears! " 
 
 The firing, then, had had the signifi 
 cance that we dreaded. It began at about 
 seven o clock in the morning on Novem 
 ber third, terrifying the peaceful folk of 
 126 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 the seacoast town, shell after shell, report 
 af terreport for nearly half an hour. Peter, 
 who was getting an early start for home, 
 had taken Puck and the cart to a house 
 on the outskirts of the town, where he was 
 getting a hag of very superior fertilizer. 
 Then came the great noise and the splash 
 ing ; little if any actual damage was done 
 to buildings or to people, yet Peter con 
 tended that Puck was actually struck on 
 the shoulder by some fragment of splin 
 tering wood or flying stone dislodged by 
 a shell. Those shells may have missed 
 their intended mark, but they went home 
 to the heart of the time-expired man, 
 Peter Snell. He knew at last that there 
 was a war, and I knew what he him 
 self had not yet realized that he was 
 going to it. 
 
 Peter lacks descriptive powers; I got 
 from him little idea of the actual BOOM in 
 all the fright and confusion. When lie- 
 had found that there was nothing he could 
 127 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 do to help, he had sped toward home, in 
 tent on carrying out his unavowed pur 
 pose. Asking how Puck, now standing 
 with drooping head at the gate, had be 
 haved at the crisis, I got the account that 
 I expected, and, as we petted this vet 
 eran of the war and dressed a small hurt 
 on his shoulder, I heard how he, the most 
 antic pony in the British Isles, had held 
 his ground, had jumped only moderately, 
 had endured the crashing and the splash 
 ing, standing with his four legs braced in 
 the sand, trembling all over, while Peter, 
 dazed a bit at first, came to his senses. 
 
 " And I will say, m, that he showed 
 more ead than I ad myself, for the reins 
 were loose on his back, I aving dropped 
 them to put in the bag of fertilizer. E 
 never offered to run, m! " 
 
 Puck, the war veteran, took our praises 
 modestly, making no claim to be recog 
 nized as a hero; he helps me understand 
 the British temper, not to say the British 
 128 
 
THE WORN DOOKSTKP 
 
 constitution. No paper theories for him! 
 The unwritten law of common sense 
 available when needed is admirably em 
 bodied in him. That power of keeping 
 your head while others lose theirs is what 
 wins in the long run, and despite the dis 
 couragement of this present moment, I 
 feel confident that the English will win 
 in the end. The Germans plan, theorize, 
 show great forethought, but are lost with 
 out a programme. Life does not go by 
 plans and charts; no known precautions 
 can foresee its emergencies. Unless some 
 chemical or electric invention of the Teu 
 tons can remove the element of uncer 
 tainty from existence, surely victory will 
 go to the people who can meet the unfore 
 seen ; pull themselves together and know, 
 without forethought, what to do in an 
 instant s danger. All these meditations 
 passed through my head as Puck shook 
 his mam, making light of his adventure, 
 and trotted away down the street to his 
 129 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 stable with an unmistakable air of " Eng 
 land expects every pony to do his duty." 
 
 The country thrills with indignation, 
 surprise, and increasing resolution; the 
 impossible has happened, and these invio 
 late shores have been desecrated by attack. 
 
 Peter is away, Peter in khaki, with 
 something already gone from his laggard 
 step, with firmer and more self-respecting 
 tread, recalling the old training which he 
 was beginning to forget. Surely, because 
 of his experience as a soldier, they will let 
 him go soon to the front. The sympathy 
 and the admiration in the eyes of our fugi 
 tives have nerved him, as nothing else has 
 done, for the great adventure. I heard 
 Henri giving him some French lessons, 
 strictly along the line of requests for food 
 and drink; the French will make up in 
 swiftness of understanding what he lacks 
 in pronunciation. His last days with 
 Madge have been funny and tragic too. 
 Her first remark, on hearing of the Yur- 
 130 
 
THE WORN DOORSTKP 
 
 mouth incident, was along the old line of 
 urging him to war. 
 
 " Some minds," she remarked firmly, 
 " need shot and shell to open em." But 
 I could not help noticing that when he 
 began to talk about going, she stopped 
 talking about it. Her face has been trag 
 ically comic as she has watched him, in 
 a Falstaff " 1 1 e-that-died-o - Wednesday " 
 mood, packing his belongings. I heard 
 the sound of loud sobbing in the kitchen 
 as she made herself a cup of tea the after 
 noon he went away. Could it be Madge 
 who was muttering questions as to why 
 the King didn t go to war himself if he 
 wanted war? 
 
 November 25. A wedding, actually a 
 wedding, in the little red house, which 
 wakens gladly to its ancient responsibili 
 ties! Weddings enough have I seen, but 
 this is the first that I ever managed from 
 start to finish; it was much more my own 
 181 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 than if I had been married myself, for I 
 had to do all the planning, coach the act 
 ors, superintend the catering, and do the 
 decorating with my own hands. The only 
 thing I did not attempt was performing 
 the ceremony. 
 
 We had such joyous weeks, after the 
 banns were published! Marie, I am sure, 
 quite forgot her sorrow; I quite forgot 
 you, most of the time, I mean in my 
 upper and superficial mind. Down 
 under, of course, in the vital part of my 
 soul, you are I, I am you: there is no 
 remembering or forgetting, for I am liv 
 ing your life and mine in a fashion pro 
 found and strange. We were busy every 
 minute, busy with the outer things of life 
 that ride on the surface of the deep cur 
 rents, bobbing up and down in the 
 sunshine. 
 
 First, there was Marie s trousseau. She 
 begged me with tears to get her nothing 
 more; but a girl must have clothing, be 
 132 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 she married or single, so we purchased 
 much muslin, " calico," they call it, oh, 
 horrors! What can one think of a nation 
 that calls cotton flannel " swan s-down 
 calico " ? We found a little sewing 
 woman in the village, and she did her in 
 efficient best on an ancient sewing ma 
 chine. Much of the finishing we had to 
 do ourselves, so afternoons we sat in the 
 garden and stitched. My buttonholes 
 would not call forth commendations from 
 any ladies journal, but what they lacked 
 in delicacy they made up in strength. 
 Buttonholes for war, I consoled myself, 
 as I saw the barricades that I had erected 
 round the little gashes, are a different 
 matter from buttonholes for peace. 
 
 Marie s ready-made travelling suit, for 
 which I sent to London, fitted fairly well; 
 as did the boots for both of them. When 
 they overwhelmed me with thanks, I had 
 to talk very earnestly with them; at least 
 I am growing more fluent, and they never 
 133 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 laugh, only once or twice I have seen the 
 corners of their mouths twitching uncon 
 trollably, and once tears came into Marie s 
 eyes as she tried to keep from laughing. 
 They are exquisitely courteous, and would 
 die rather than be rude. I summoned all 
 my resources from grammar, dictionary, 
 and heroic plays; at last the world has 
 faced an occasion that justifies the gran 
 diloquence of French tragedy. 
 
 I told them that we were honouring our 
 selves in being allowed to care for any 
 members of this stricken, dauntless nation. 
 More than anything that could be done 
 for them had they done for the world; 
 how could we ever repay our debt to this 
 little people with its heroic young King? 
 What I was doing I did, not for them 
 (think of having sufficient French to be 
 able to prevaricate in it already!), but for 
 my country and their country and for 
 England; it was not a personal but an in 
 ternational matter. They may not have 
 134 
 
TIIK WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 understood all my syntax, but my general 
 meaning they understood perfectly, and 
 Don helped me very greatly by sitting on 
 his hind legs and offering to shake hands, 
 first with one and then with the other. 
 He, at least, understands my academic 
 French ! 
 
 There had to be a wedding dress ; I in 
 sisted on a white one; it was only China 
 silk, made with a simplicity which, I pre 
 sume, outraged Marie s grandmother s 
 traditions. As I explained to her, if she 
 goes back to London to help the authori 
 ties with the refugees, while Henri returns 
 to Belgium to enter the army, she could 
 doubtless loan this gown for other wed 
 dings, for among the fugitives many-- I 
 hoped many another pair of lovers 
 would perhaps be reunited. At this, her 
 eyes filled with tears, and she uttered 
 not another word of remonstrance; she 
 starts on a quest to find others to wear 
 it. 
 
 185 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 So she wore the white frock at her 
 wedding, and the house was brave in its 
 bridal array! Yellowing ferns, autumn 
 leaves, and great golden chrysanthemums 
 and white decked the living room ; outside 
 the dim red and gold of the autumn woods 
 in hazy distance recalled the ancient man 
 uscripts that you showed us in the sacred 
 recesses of the Bodleian. To think that I 
 should live to see a Roman Catholic priest 
 marrying two young folk by my fireplace ! 
 Marie and Henri were quite polite but 
 very determined to be married according 
 to the rites of their own Church, and it 
 was done. His Reverence plainly did not 
 want to officiate at my house, but not in 
 vain have I associated with Puck, choos 
 ing him for guide, philosopher, and 
 friend, and obstinacy won. Henri wore 
 a new dark tweed business suit which 
 Peter insisted on giving him; he is a fine- 
 looking man when you see him clothed 
 and in his right mind, the torn hat van- 
 136 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 ished. Both faces have a look of sorrow 
 and of shock that should not be on faces 
 so young, but there is also a look of in 
 tense and quiet happiness. Even if they 
 are separated again, they will have had 
 something of the joy of life in these brief 
 hours and days since they found each 
 other. 
 
 Our wedding feast was the simplest 
 ever set before mortals, unless possibly 
 our Pilgrim fathers and mothers had a 
 simpler in starvation days in the old col 
 ony, with bride cake made perhaps of 
 Indian meal! We had tables in the gar 
 den, and a few simple things to eat and 
 drink, centering in that wedding cake 
 upon which Peter had insisted. Had not 
 Madge and I spent a whole morning over 
 it, with its raisins and its currants, its 
 spiers and its chopped nuts? :< Leave off 
 the frosting, m!" Madge had ejaculated 
 in horror. " That would be a heathing 
 thing to do! " \Vhcn I told her that for 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 most people nowadays the frosting was 
 rubbed off of life, she looked at me as if 
 she thought me mad. So she does, but 
 harmless mad. 
 
 Perhaps the mild November air, which 
 harmonizes all things, sad, soft and 
 sweet, helped harmonize the diverse 
 elements at that wedding feast. There 
 were the Vicar and the Roman priest 
 peacefully grazing as one; the Vicaress 
 was affably chatting with mine host and 
 hostess as on equal terms; one of my 
 county ladies was entertaining the little 
 dressmaker who cannot sew. I did my 
 best in inviting them to outrage as many 
 conventions as possible ; they submitted to 
 the necessities of the occasion, and still the 
 House of Lords stands, or sits, King 
 George is on his throne, and the kingdom 
 has not fallen. 
 
 I hope it never will! 
 
 It had been hard to induce the Vicar to 
 come, but I reminded him that our Church 
 138 
 
TIIK WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 had been a Roman Catholic Church before 
 Queen Elizabeth s day, and that, in the 
 holy ground of the churchyard, Roman 
 Catholic dust was mingled with Church of 
 England dust. How, at this cruel mo 
 ment in the world s history, the truth cries 
 out that there should be no struggle be 
 tween Christian and Christian, only 
 between Christian and Pagan! He came; 
 high and low alike nibbled our little cakes 
 and consumed our ices, and drank the 
 simple beverage made of lemons and other 
 ingredients served from a wonderful old 
 blue punch bowl. Ay, we were all allies 
 that day! 
 
 So they were married and feted, and 
 when it was all over, mine host drove 
 them to the railway station, and I fol 
 lowed with Puck and the pony cart, Don 
 sitting l>eside me, and the gingerbread 
 baby with two of its brothers sitting on the 
 other side. The village windows and 
 doorways were crowded with friendly 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 faces, for the story of the two re-united 
 lovers had spread far, and many a kindly 
 good-bye was spoken by people who had 
 never met them. I had determined that 
 Puck, who had found Marie, and to whom 
 the happy outcome of the story was due, 
 should have a place of honour at the part 
 ing moment, but Marie s last glimpse of 
 him showed him indignantly shaking off 
 the white rosettes that had been fastened 
 to his headstall. 
 
 They waved back quite a merry fare 
 well, and then they disappeared, vanishing 
 behind the great cloud of tragedy that 
 hangs so close. I can see only suffering 
 ahead of them. They consented to take 
 a loan from me, not to be repaid until their 
 country is free, and they promised again 
 and again to let me know if they came to 
 want. 
 
 It is lonely to-night, beloved, under my 
 roof. 
 
 140 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 December 27. Winter is gentler here 
 than at home, bringing at times enfolding 
 grey mist and hours of rain ; yet we have- 
 had many days of clear and sunny cold, 
 and snow lias fallen on the roof of the 
 little red house. My royal family of fowls 
 lives a subdued but happy life in the house 
 of Peter s making ; Puck has taken up his 
 residence at the Inn, for cold has come, and 
 Peter is far away. The English robin 
 stays with us evidently throughout the 
 winter; the rooks have not deserted; and 
 we are visited daily by silver-winged gulls 
 which come all the way from the sea for the 
 food we put out. 
 
 My home with the little " h " is seldom 
 empty ; for two of these winter weeks we 
 had here two small Belgian boys, eight 
 and ten years old, very red of cheek and 
 black of hair, and very much hoy. What 
 a two weeks! The Atom immediately re 
 treated to the loft over the kitchen, com 
 ing down only for its meals. It found 
 14,1 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 a warm corner by the chimney where it 
 cuddled in safety. 
 
 Don clung close to my side; he would 
 not make friends. His dictum was that 
 he would associate with either the aris 
 tocracy or the peasantry, but that the 
 lower middle class he would not tolerate. 
 Those boys, who had tried to tie a tin 
 can to his tail, Ins tail, that organ of fine 
 expressiveness, equal to English prose 
 style at its best, were not gentlemen, 
 and he would have nothing to do with 
 them. 
 
 I was glad to see that the suffering of 
 the past weeks had not ruined their young 
 lives, but I admit a failure in managing 
 my guests. Even Madge could do noth 
 ing with them, though her hand is heavy; 
 I do not approve of corporal punishment, 
 but life in theory and life in practice 
 seem amazingly different at times, and I 
 looked the other way. They demanded 
 the tail feathers of Hengist and Horsa for 
 142 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 their play of American Indian, and I dis 
 covered as I defeated their purpose that 
 they thought they were living with an 
 Indian lady and were trying to garb 
 themselves appropriately. I rose to the 
 challenge as best I could; have I not 
 vowed, whatever happens, never to be an 
 " old maid " ? I romped with them in the 
 meadow, played " tag," and helped them 
 make boats to sail on the stream, but I had 
 no control over them. Puck was the only 
 perfectly successful disciplinarian, and 
 whenever they tried to climb on his back, 
 or ride by clinging to his tail, his quick 
 little hind heels fortunately only his 
 fore feet are shod accomplished what 
 neithei coaxing, admonition, nor enforced 
 last in ( <> could aeeomplish. They were not 
 really bad, only dwelling in that Stone 
 Age through which so many men-children 
 pass. A neighbouring fanner and his wi IV 
 wanted to adopt them, and T thankfully 
 let them go, calling in the village carpen- 
 143 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 ter to help Madge and me make the nec 
 essary repairs. 
 
 There was peace, we are told, for a few 
 hours on Christmas day in the trenches; 
 hut Christmas should mean lasting peace! 
 The attack, less than two weeks ago, on 
 our undefended coast towns, Hartlepool, 
 Scarborough, Whithy, has enkindled as 
 nothing else has done the dull glow of 
 English wrath. The recruiting goes more 
 swiftly; a number of young men have 
 gone from our village in the last few days ; 
 the blacksmith s shop is closed, and the 
 forge fire is out, he has gone to work 
 in a munition factory. We who stay are 
 knitting for the trenches and sewing for 
 the hospitals; I never dreamed that I 
 should live to know such human anguish 
 and human want, yet it is good to learn 
 that one need not stand alone, bearing the 
 pain of life in solitude. I have joined 
 every possible relief association and have 
 pledged almost my uttermost penny. We 
 144 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 are even selling eggs for the hospital 
 funds; spite of cold weather, the Ma 
 tildas, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Anne, and 
 Queen Victoria are rising magnificently 
 to the crisis. The London people are 
 using the house occasionally as a tempo 
 rary shelter for one or two people at a 
 time before permanent places are found 
 for them. The Inn also serves for this, 
 and mine hostess and I have many a 
 conference; fortunately, in the haste and 
 confusion, some of the bric-a-brac is get 
 ting broken; one alabaster vase and one 
 glass case covering artificial flowers have 
 disappeared. 
 
 Madge has amused me by finding a 
 way to express, in rather original fashion, 
 her deepening sympathy with humankind 
 A courting is going on in our kitchen; 
 every Friday night tin- lovers come, she 
 from the village-, IK- from a farm lying 
 lu-yond the Hall; and every Friday night 
 Madge either goes to bed early, or 
 145 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 out to see her friends. The girl is a coun 
 try lass rather ill-treated by a mistress 
 who shall be nameless; she has no place 
 to receive her lover, save the stone wall of 
 the bridge across the stream. She steals 
 here in the dusk on her one free evening; 
 why not? The young man is a perfectly 
 suitable wooer, and they are safer in my 
 kitchen than out in the cold. Yet I admit 
 that I feel a bit guilty when I very form 
 ally return the very formal greeting of 
 the unconscious mistress. 
 
 Just now, no one is staying with us, 
 and there is blessed quiet. Through the 
 silences in the little house, old moods, old 
 laughter, old half -merry tears come back; 
 you blend with all my days. Sometimes 
 I feel, not as at first, that this is the end 
 of things for me, but as if it were a little 
 truce of God while I am waiting. To-day 
 I found my first grey hairs; there were 
 two, one on each temple; have you any to 
 match them, I wonder? Ah, I keep for- 
 146 
 
THK \VOKX DOORSTEP 
 
 feting, forgetting; keep thinking of you 
 as still alive and suffering in this war. 
 Remembering, I envy you; the many 
 years ahead look formidable. 
 
 Do you remember the day we took our 
 fifteen-mile walk from Oxford in May, 
 and sat to rest on the flat grey stones in 
 an old, old village churchyard, with a 
 tangle of wild vines at our feet, and prim 
 roses and violets blossoming near, do 
 you remember that we talked of immor 
 tality and decided that when one died it 
 was death, that having lived was enough? 
 At least you did; I always had u ma doots 
 o ma doots." I think it was just May 
 that made us feel that way, the fra 
 grances, the bird songs, the sun-flecked 
 clouds over the Cumnor Hills: you too 
 were far more influenced by things out 
 side the world of pure thought than you 
 ev knew, my philosopher: have I not 
 u you mistaking a sunbeam for an op 
 timistic s\ Holism . We doubted, dear, but 
 147 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 we were wrong; you do not die; you are 
 more intensely alive than ever. 
 
 I am stealing a little time to try to do 
 a portrait of you, though it is long since 
 I have had a brush in my hand ; you know 
 that I was something but not much of an 
 artist. What were the half-gifts meant 
 for, I wonder, all the aspiration that goes 
 into them, the denied hope? I used to 
 suffer because I could not create the 
 things I saw and dreamed, but that kind 
 of suffering has vanished utterly, life 
 flows out in so many ways. There s a bit 
 of attic with a north light near the Atom s 
 lair that I have fitted up as a studio, and 
 I have unpacked there my easel and can 
 vases. To-day I shut myself up and be 
 gan my portrait of you, merely sketching, 
 for the outlines blurred. I had a curious 
 experience. So clear is my inner vision of 
 you that it blinded my eyes, and that 
 which was in my mind a perfect picture 
 would prove, if I left the room and came 
 148 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 back to look at it afresh, a set of meaning 
 less lines. 
 
 December 30. For three days I tried 
 and tried in vain ; then came sudden suc 
 cess, for your very mouth half smiled at 
 me from the canvas where I had been put 
 ting random strokes. As I work, I feel 
 that I never before really knew you; 
 deeper understanding comes to me of your 
 doubts, your resolutions, your long 
 growth, and what you are. Little things 
 long forgotten come drifting back, con 
 cerning your boyhood in the old rectory, 
 the hard awakening of an English public 
 school. Chance remarks that you made 
 carelessly long ago waken in memory and 
 reveal you to me anew. The first time I 
 realized the depth of feeling within you 
 was when I caught a glimpse of you lis 
 tening to music at a concert in the Sheldo- 
 nian theatre; once, at least, your over- 
 guarded face betrayed the real you. I 
 149 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 learned to know your quiet sympathy, 
 your concealed sensitive understanding of 
 the needs of humankind, and to compre 
 hend your difficulty in showing it, making 
 it available. You built up the excluding 
 barrier of an Englishman s expression 
 between you and the world ; only animals 
 and children dared break through. I can 
 see them yet rubbing their fuzzy heads 
 against you, from the big Angora at 
 Greyfriars, to little Lady Matilda at 
 Witton Hall. 
 
 December 31. I cannot finish this por 
 trait, for the eyes baffle me, and each time 
 I try you seem to be looking at me ap- 
 pralingly, as if you wanted me to express 
 something that I but dimly see. My pres 
 ent knowledge of you seems in some 
 strange way to outstrip your remembered 
 face. My sketch- for T shall leave it a 
 mere sketch suggests all your suffer 
 ing and all my sorrow, and yet not all is 
 150 
 
TIIK \\OKX DOORSTEP 
 
 said. What knowledge have you now 
 that I do not share? Tell it very gently 
 in the quiet, and I shall know; am I not 
 always listening? I am hungry for your 
 wisdom of death. 
 
 January 12, 1915. Deepening cold 
 drives us all closer to the hearth; perhaps 
 it is only in winter that one gets the full 
 flavour of home. Don curls up by the fire 
 with me, or takes glorious cross-country 
 walks. The little old gingerbread woman 
 of the lych gate has disappeared; I half 
 suspect her of crawling temporarily into 
 one of the graves to keep warm. In snug 
 farmyards, by great sunny ricks of hay, 
 the eattle of the countryside shelter them 
 selves contentedly. Xow, even more than 
 in summer, this land seems home from end 
 to end; in every nook and corner is some 
 thing of the appeal of the fireside; no 
 other country so suggests from shore to 
 shore one great threshold and hearth. Its 
 151 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 churchyards, with their dead softly 
 tucked in, the comforting grass above ; its 
 low-roofed villages; its individual homes 
 in their great loveliness wear one expres 
 sion. 
 
 There are wonderful sunsets over the 
 brown earth or white snow. This is that 
 England on whose domain the sun never 
 sets, yet it sets most exquisitely day by 
 day, did they but know. 
 
 For a week we had with us a little nun, 
 who prayed and prayed, looking about 
 her with big, frightened eyes. Luckily, 
 my acquaintance with His Reverence, who 
 officiated at Marie s wedding, solved the 
 problem, and she went gladly to the shel 
 ter of a convent roof. Then for a few 
 days we cared for an old, old man, who 
 swore and swore, softly, constantly, but 
 with an air of question, as if no oaths could 
 quite meet the need of the present mo 
 ment. It was most incongruous, for he 
 was very evidently a gentleman, and he 
 152 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 very evidently thought that he was ex 
 pressing himself politely, even if inade 
 quately. My knowledge of the French 
 language was greatly extended, but this 
 new vocabulary is, alas! as unavailable for 
 the uses of ordinary life as that which I 
 learned from Corneille! Our fugitive was 
 a most pathetic old creature whose mind 
 had been somewhat unsettled by suffering 
 and exile. Fortunately a relative of his 
 was discovered, a prosperous Belgian 
 merchant living in the outskirts of Lon 
 don, and my guest bade me a profane but 
 grateful farewell. A few days care 
 seems but little to offer these flitting 
 guests on their sorrowful journey, but it 
 is a great relief to me to do even this little, 
 and as each one goes, I feel like saying 
 " Thank you! " as the well-trained British 
 waiter says when you deign to take some- 
 tin Tig from the offered plate. 
 
 We really need Peter s advice, think 
 of that: Peter s advice, which I have 
 158 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 scorned to take! In our zeal we became 
 victims of one bit of imposture, which, 
 however, did not involve us in irretrievable 
 loss, only spoons! Two dark-skinned 
 folk presented themselves one cold, wintry 
 day when all the desolation of the earth 
 seemed dripping down in icy rain. They 
 asked for food, telling us that they were 
 Belgian refugees in need of help; evi 
 dently the habits of this household have 
 been rumoured abroad. We were a bit 
 suspicious, but resolved to err upon the 
 right side. While Madge was cooking and 
 I had gone to order fresh supplies, they de 
 camped with my spoons and my purse, 
 luckily a very lean purse. Don had 
 simply absented himself; he no longer 
 trusts his instincts, finding himself in 
 
 a world whose standards he does not 
 
 f 
 
 comprehend. The old order changes, giv 
 ing place to new; old caste distinctions 
 are ignored, and he has not as yet had time 
 to learn new mental habits. He has found 
 154 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 for himself a little agnostic den in a cor 
 ner behind the kitchen range, and he goes 
 there when he cannot make up his mind. 
 When we discovered our loss and began 
 our search, he came out wagging his tail 
 with a self-congratulatory air to say, " I 
 told you so! " But he had not told us so; 
 he had only deserted us when we needed 
 him most. Our light-fingered guests have 
 been found in a gypsy tribe passing 
 through to the north, but my spoons have 
 not been found. Must I lap my supper 
 from a saucer with Don and the Atom? 
 
 January 19. As I sit by the fire and 
 toast my toes in my few minutes of 
 blessed idle ness, I cannot help living over 
 old days and hours, and I see again the 
 dusk of that evening when you and your 
 family escorted me to Tlinksey to hear the 
 nightingales; the sunshine of that after 
 noon when you and I searched in vain the 
 meadows beyond lifley for pink-tipped 
 155 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 English daisies. Often I find myself 
 again arguing things out with you, even 
 getting a bit angry now and then, for 
 getting that you cannot answer. Many 
 and many a dispute we had, many and 
 many a disagreement, with the invariable 
 outcome of deeper understanding. 
 
 Sometimes the unshared jests hurt most 
 of all; what has become of your humour, 
 dear, that rare, dry humour that betrayed 
 itself most plainly in your eyes? When 
 first I knew you, I thought that you had 
 no sense of humour; I soon found that it 
 was deeper than my own, because of your 
 insight into the irony of the human pre 
 dicament. At times it touched the tragic. 
 I learned to understand your quiet enjoy 
 ment in watching people, your wordless 
 jests, and the silent drollery of your half 
 smile. How you loved to tease me about 
 the foibles of my countrymen. 
 
 " Xo other people," you would say, 
 " would come dashing into the courtyard 
 156 
 
THE WOKX DOORSTEP 
 
 of a French hotel, with flags flying from 
 the carriage, singing their national hymn 
 at the top of their voices ; no other people 
 would motor swiftly to the entrance of a 
 French cathedral, crying out : You do the 
 inside, and we ll do the outside, and it 
 won t take us more than five minutes! 
 And there is always the pleasing memory 
 of the lady from Montana who deplored 
 the inadequacy of the Louvre because the 
 pictures couldn t compare with the exhibi 
 tion that they had had in the winter at 
 Wilkins Bluff. But of course this repre 
 sents a class of Americans that you would 
 not know." 
 
 That was the day we had tea by the 
 river; I was hot with helping you get the 
 1 oat past the lock, hot with making the 
 tea, and I >re\v hotter still. 
 
 " I admit that we are vulgar, and loud- 
 voiced, and ostentatious," I told you; 
 "but we aren t selfish, and we aren t in 
 solent. On the contrary, we are usually 
 157 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 quixotically good-natured and generous. 
 We do not look in blank surprise as the 
 British do if any one questions their 
 right to be served before all other people 
 with the choicest of everything. You have 
 little idea of what we suffer who meet 
 many of the travelling English of to-day, 
 with their quiet and total selfishness in 
 securing and sitting upon all that is best. 
 Of course, this represents a class of the 
 English that you would not know." This 
 you forgave, but you never quite forgave, 
 I fear, my wicked suggestion that the 
 moat about the Bishop s palace was pre 
 served in order to keep out the poor and 
 needy. 
 
 But the things about which we quar 
 relled were only surface things; I knew 
 and loved my England more than I ever 
 admitted to you; and you, for all your 
 criticism of my countrymen (much of it 
 was abundantly justified) , had divined the 
 spirit of idealism in our democracy. The 
 158 
 
THE WORN DOOKSTKP 
 
 development of the individual in righteous 
 freedom for you, as for us, was the great 
 hope of the world. Under all the crude- 
 ness of America, under the arrogance of 
 England, lives, and has lived from earliest 
 days, a something great and fine, shared 
 by republican France, a passion for 
 liberty. The little things do not matter if 
 the great convictions at the heart of na 
 tions are akin; have not people of late 
 cared too much about little things? If 
 our two peoples become aware of the 
 greatness of their common destiny, will 
 they not stop fussing about the American 
 accent and English incivility? As I walk 
 alone nowadays, I try to drive this haunt 
 ing, insistent world-suffering from my 
 mind by dreams of a great future- wherein 
 your country and mine go hand in hand, 
 helping secure for all time liberty for the 
 human race. 
 
 Each has something to contribute that 
 the other lacks. I really think that we, 
 159 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 in our sense of the dignity of the individ 
 ual man, in willingness to forego shades 
 and differences of taste for the sake of 
 something greater, have outgrown you. 
 You, with your keen insight, had divined 
 the need of democracy, had accepted it 
 in theory, but found the inevitable conse 
 quences hard to accept. Nothing is more 
 agreeable than good taste; perhaps there 
 are things more profoundly important. 
 Dare I say that I think we have out 
 stripped you in generosity of act and of 
 thought ? 
 
 But you are greater than we, and your 
 life runs in deeper channels than our own, 
 in that you keep faith with the past, re 
 fusing to let the hard-won spiritual 
 achievement of the race be swept away by 
 the externalism of the present. To you, 
 as to no other people, we look to save the 
 world from the terrible material forces, 
 without conscience, without insight, which 
 threaten to dominate the whole of life. 
 160 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 You who refuse to give up fine standards 
 of an elder day are the influence that we 
 of America greatly need, for in matters 
 intellectual, we are all too prone to be led, 
 and have been too much cowed by this 
 later Germany who forgets. 
 
 February 1. We are living on, as best 
 we may, through cold and thaw and cold 
 again. The horror of that January night, 
 when human beings and birds wakened, 
 with fear dropping from the sky, when 
 innocent women and children were killed 
 by bombs from German Zeppelins, lin 
 gers and OTOWS deeper. The tension was 
 greatest for those who could not hear 
 what the birds heard, but listened to the 
 great outcry of blackbirds, pheasants, and 
 other winged things, to the loud cawing of 
 the rooks, and wondered and w r aited in 
 nameless anguish. There seems to be no 
 refuge in earth or sky or sea. Can this 
 world of shot and shell and eon<juering 
 161 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 chemicals be that world that was so beau 
 tiful, and that suddenly seemed so 
 strangely safe when you came into my 
 life? 
 
 March 10. Such days of excitement 
 and of strain! My little house has per 
 formed its supreme service, has shel 
 tered a body, while the soul was going out. 
 
 It began three days ago; I was walk 
 ing down the village street with Don at 
 my heels, when I noticed a large touring 
 car at the Inn, with a group of people 
 very much excited, gesticulating and talk 
 ing with a vehemence that usually means 
 Latin blood. Mine hostess of the Inn 
 was running to and from the car with bot 
 tles and flannel cloths; turpentine on 
 warm flannel is her cure for every human 
 ailment. Then I saw in the car an old, 
 old lady quite ill, evidently leaning 
 heavily on the shoulder of a younger 
 woman. I shall not soon forget the look 
 162 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 of that grey-white face under the snow- 
 white hair and hlack widow s bonnet, set 
 in a group of strange faces, among which 
 I remember one of a little boy, watching 
 breathlessly with his mouth wide open, 
 and a smaller girl, staring apathetically 
 with her eyes full of tears that looked as 
 if they had long been there. I did not 
 need to be told that this oddly-assorted 
 set of people were refugees. I had seen 
 too many utter strangers, from diverse 
 surroundings, hastily gathered together, 
 clad in velvet, clad in rags, to share one 
 suffering. 
 
 I found that they were being taken 
 from London, where they had been cared 
 for for many weeks, to different destina 
 tions in the northern counties, but the 
 man in charge had evidently lost his way 
 and was making an unnecessary detour 
 toward the coast. He could not speak 
 their language, nor they his, and he 
 seemed entirely at a loss in this dilemma. 
 !<;:* 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 Oh, the loneliness, and the desolation, and 
 the bitter shame of it all ! 
 
 " The old lady s took ill, of a sudden, 
 m," said the landlady, stopping her little 
 trot near me. 
 
 I asked the younger woman, whose face 
 was very kindly, if this was her mother, 
 but she shook her head. 
 
 I don t know who she is; I never saw 
 her until we started." 
 
 Then I begged and pleaded ; the chauf 
 feur looked greatly relieved, and so did 
 mine hostess, though she remonstrated 
 that it would be quite too much for me. 
 
 "Are you sure, Miss, that you want 
 her? We don t know what it is; it may 
 be contagious." 
 
 :< I don t care what it is! " I said so sud 
 denly that Don barked out; there was a 
 little feeling of joy within me at the 
 thought that there might be danger; it is 
 hard to be shut out from the great danger 
 that circles the world. 
 164 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 So the big touring car was turned 
 about, with much puffing and panting; my 
 little iron gate was opened wide to let two 
 men carry the poor old creature to my 
 guest room, and I sent the others on, with 
 such comforts as I could supply. The 
 small boy went nibbling a cookie, the little 
 girl with hers in her hand, too dazed to 
 eat it. Haven t you ever seen a frightened 
 little bird holding something in its mouth, 
 not daring to swallow? 
 
 The village doctor and Madge and I 
 worked for hours over the fugitive. She 
 only looked at us with eyes that had in 
 them all the weariness of the world since 
 the dawn of time. There was evidently 
 no malady; actual physical pain did not 
 seem to be there; only overwhelming 
 mental pain or shock that means destruc 
 tion of the very forces of life. She was 
 not unconscious, nor was she fully con 
 scious <>f what was t u< in ( _r <>n around her. 
 The comfort of warm water on her body, 
 L60 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 the comfort of soothing drink she hardly 
 realized, nor could she swallow, except 
 with great difficulty and reluctance. Just 
 once she stretched herself out at full 
 length with a look of relief, and lay mo 
 tionless. 
 
 I shall never know what weary ways 
 she had trodden in her escape from the 
 swift ruin of war, nor how in her tottering 
 age she had escaped at all. She seemed 
 to be one who, her life long, had walked 
 the same peaceful paths over and over, as 
 her forefathers had done before. Was she 
 one of those who, driven from home and 
 fireside, had lain down in the dust of the 
 road, longing to die? Contagious! 
 Heartbreak does seem contagious in these 
 days; who shall escape? Who can wish 
 to, when other hearts break? 
 
 Life can never bring me anything so 
 strange, perhaps it can never bring me 
 anything so wonderful, as this silent com 
 panionship with a soul that had almost 
 166 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 passed. She did not understand the 
 words I used, hut she did understand that 
 we were trying to help her; though her 
 lips were still, her eyes followed us, - 
 eyes full of knowledge that can not come 
 before the last. She did not try to thank 
 us, dwelling in some world of instinctive 
 understanding, making one feel that the 
 long ages of much speaking were folly. 
 She had let go of all tangible things and 
 was no longer aware of time or circum 
 stance; there was no look of fear in her 
 eyes, no look of sorrow; she was done 
 with earth and with feeling, having 
 neither reproaches nor regrets. She had 
 gone beyond pain, beyond joy, beyond 
 those simple human affections that linger 
 to the last, to some region of ultimate 
 peace, or of quiet beyond peace. 
 
 The falling of March rain upon the 
 roof; sunshine, with the notes of the re 
 turning birds; the cawing of the rooks, 
 and the soft ripple of the brook even 
 1C7 
 
THE WORX DOORSTEP 
 
 Madge was subdued by the majesty of it 
 all and forgot to rail at the Kaiser, or to 
 storm in misplaced aspirates at the Ger 
 mans. A world beyond hate was with us, 
 where it was good to be. 
 
 The end was hardly different from the 
 days that went before; there was no mo 
 tion, no outburst, only a quiet ceasing of 
 that which had hardly been breathing. 
 Our departing guest folded her wrinkled 
 hands upon her breast herself, as if to 
 save us trouble, and so I found her. Who 
 was she? Who belonged to her? Where 
 are the children and grandchildren who 
 should have been gathered about her bed? 
 
 The doctor and the village nurse took 
 charge of her; when she was ready for 
 burial, more quiet than earth itself, one 
 never knows quiet until one sees it so, - 
 I put roses beside her; one of the county 
 ladies keeps me supplied from her con 
 servatory. Yet I hesitated; it seemed 
 wrong to recall in this presence any mere 
 168 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 tangible and visible beauty, or aught from 
 the \\orld of things. The lovely contours 
 and outlines, the perfume of the roses 
 reproached me, as if I were pursuing her 
 to bring her back to mere self, hampering 
 her escape. With her we seemed to be 
 swept away into some great consciousness 
 that meant relief from individual sorrow, 
 - sharing her rest, a repose so deep that 
 it rested us for all the days to come. 
 
 Madge mourned over her as if it were 
 her own mother, I hardly know why: 
 could it have been merely the three days 
 of trying to care for her? Or was she 
 touched, in some depth of her nature 
 never reached before, by the grandeur of 
 that loneliness? 
 
 There was a brief service in the little 
 church on the hill, a sound of song, of 
 praying: but nothing in the burial service 
 could quite express the pathos of that mo- 
 nunt when we buried some one s mother, 
 not even knowing her name. We left her 
 169 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 in the churchyard, within hearing of the 
 stream, where deep shadows fall on grave 
 after grave. This cold winter grass which 
 grows above the other graves will soon, 
 with the quickening of spring, cover hers 
 also; already it is freshening, and cro 
 cuses peep out here and there. 
 
 There is no name to put on a stone at 
 her head. It is perhaps at best folly to 
 mark the resting-places of the dead, yet I 
 had a feeling that no token of respect 
 must be lacking, and I begged that an 
 old grey tombstone, standing by the 
 churchyard wall, a stone so old that all 
 that was carved on it has been worn away, 
 might be placed at her head. It has told 
 the passing of one human soul, and shall 
 tell that of another; in its grey, fine- 
 worn beauty it symbolizes the vast imper 
 sonality of the end. 
 
 I come here now even oftener than I 
 used. Surely death has never appeared 
 so gentle, so much a member of the fam- 
 170 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 ily, as in these English churchyards with 
 their sweet hoininess. It seems fitting 
 that we meet " My sister, the Death of 
 the Body " on these grass-grown paths 
 which wear a look of every day and com 
 mon happenings. The little river, the 
 lichen-grown stones, the sense of long 
 continuance, give one a feeling that there 
 are no gaps, no fissures between life and 
 death, that the sight of the eyes slips in 
 evitably into the vision of the soul. The 
 sky seems near in England, with the 
 crumbling grey of old Xorman tower and 
 churchyard wall touching its veiled blue, 
 and the low white clouds almost within 
 reach; the old home-like look of the flat 
 stones makes one feel as if the sleepers 
 are still, as it were, sitting on the thresh 
 old, or on the old bench by the door. 
 There is no sense of distance or separa 
 tion, no feeling of far away. 
 
 It is not sad to leave her here, now 
 when the whole earth seems one great 
 171 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 family of the sorrowing, where the chil 
 dren and the grandchildren of many other 
 folk are so near. 
 
 May 20. Spring, with the thawing of 
 the icicles, and the sunshine growing 
 warmer on the southern wall of the house, 
 -spring comes back in the old and 
 lovely way to a world never in such an 
 guish before. What an April, to bring 
 the cowardly murder of soldiers in the 
 trenches by volumes of poisonous gasl 
 What a May, to bring the L/us-itania 
 massacre of hundreds of innocent men, 
 women, and children at sea! What a 
 Germany, quite, quite mad: 
 
 " O what a noble mind is here o erthrown, 
 The soldier s, scholar s 
 
 but I am not quoting correctly and am too 
 busy to look up the lines. I dare not 
 even try to speak of my sense of these 
 things; words are lacking to express it, 
 172 
 
THE WORN DOORSTKP 
 
 but surely this marks the parting of the 
 ways. To me it seems that the time has 
 come for the nations of the earth would 
 that my own would join them to band 
 together once more in a holy crusade and 
 do battle with the Pagan, not for the 
 tomb of our Lord, but for the faith He 
 taught. 
 
 As time goes on, I see more clearly 
 what the real England stands for. My 
 mind works slowly, for I am but a prac- 
 tieal American; it isn t as if I were a 
 thinker like yourself, who could reason 
 things out on purely intellectual grounds. 
 The war between my great love of Eng 
 land and my indignant sense of things 
 that are wrong gives way to something 
 more impersonal* as I have more chance 
 to see the way in which her customs serve 
 humanity. Complete fulfillment of her 
 great purposes has not yet been achieve d. 
 yet surely the human race has got no 
 further: liberty for the individual, fair 
 173 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 play, these watchwords of England 
 are the hope of the human race. What 
 other land could rule many alien peoples 
 and make them so proudly content? As 
 England has kept faith with the past, she 
 has, barring some great mistakes, kept 
 faith with humanity. The recent magnif 
 icent bravery of the Canadians in the bat 
 tles with flaming gas only intensifies the 
 splendour of the voluntary tribute of Eng 
 land s colonies to England in distress. 
 Earth has not seen the like of this empire 
 resting on the will of man ; from the four 
 quarters of the globe, Canada, Australia, 
 Xew Zealand, India, they come sailing 
 swiftly home, counting it great gain to 
 die for that for which she stands. It 
 means that at the heart of England is 
 something too precious to lose, a faith in 
 the working possibility of human freedom. 
 Crude races, races old and outworn, need 
 to learn at her feet the practical way of 
 making good this immemorial hope of the 
 174 
 
TIIK WORN DOOKSTKP 
 
 race. Under her rule, the individual lias 
 his chance of self-government; if he fails 
 to take it, falling into the net of sloth and 
 old habit as he often does in England, the 
 fault is his own. His individual con 
 science is left him ; he is not compelled to 
 become a soulless cog in a gigantic con 
 scienceless mechanism. 
 
 I do not care what Mr. Asquith has 
 done wrong; what Mr. Joseph Chamber 
 lain did wrong; what King George the 
 Third and all the Georges have done or 
 failed to do: I trust this people as I trust 
 no other. Guilty of sins and blunders 
 they may be and are, but the blunder is 
 followed by the honest effort to find again 
 and do the right; you come down always 
 to a groundwork of character, sincerity, 
 integrity. England has been in a way the 
 conscience of the world. What other 
 race-name is a word to conjure with? All 
 over the earth where confusion COMICS, it 
 i* whispered: "The troubles are dying 
 175 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 down; the English are drawing near." 
 And in the councils of the world, her voice 
 has been the great arbiter of right and 
 wrong. 
 
 No one here now can doubt that Eng 
 land is going through that great anguish 
 wherein the soul of a people is re-born. 
 The unity, the calm, the quickening deter 
 mination are part of a great spring-time 
 that will lead, God grant, to harvest days 
 of peace. There is slow knitting up of the 
 sinews of war; more and more her sons 
 respond to the call which still leaves them 
 free to choose; old England is getting 
 ready as ever, resolved, incredulous of de 
 feat; the spring knows it; the rooks 
 know it, busy in their elm tree parliament. 
 The great sorrow and the great endeavour 
 have turned the very soil of the country 
 into holy ground. Among my bonfires of 
 spring, for I like to keep that old, re 
 ligious rite of purification, I burned 
 half a dozen volumes of recent English 
 176 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 fiction, decadent, erotic; a volume or two 
 of flippant and sensational criticism; and 
 one of affected futurist poetry, or some 
 brand like unto it. They belong to the 
 England whose follies and foibles are be 
 ing burned in a great fire of affliction; they 
 are not worthy of this great England 
 that is emerging from the flame. 
 
 As I write, the tinkle of the English 
 sheep bells from afar comes like the very 
 sound of peace. 
 
 February, with the vanishing of the ici 
 cles, brought snowdrops and crocuses. All 
 kinds of growing things of which I had 
 not dreamed came peeping up in this old 
 garden: crocuses, purple and gold, grow 
 in a little clump where the wind just fails 
 to reach them; royal daffodils nod and 
 sway, or stand erect and golden, those 
 from new planting outshining the rest. 
 In March the violets were out, and prim- 
 fnllowed; the pony s meadow is full 
 of tlu in. t!eep in the grass; and these are 
 177 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 only a part of the lovely procession of 
 flowers, bluebells, anemones, and un 
 numbered others. 
 
 To me it seemed that the birds came 
 very early, birds that are strangers to 
 me, birds that I know ; and we were glad 
 once more in the companionship of wings. 
 I was thankful when the swallows came, 
 circling, flying high, flying low; wrens, 
 old friends of mine, are building under my 
 porch roof; a merry little blue tit, a 
 friend quite new, disports himself among 
 the leaves. I have heard the cuckoo call 
 ing, calling beyond the stream ; you were 
 the first to tell me that this was the 
 cuckoo s note. English larks are very 
 near neighbours; every day I can hear 
 them singing at " heaven s gate." 
 
 We have all been as busy as bees since 
 the melting of the snow, humans and ani 
 mals alike. Back with the first sugges 
 tion of warmer sunshine Ilengist and 
 Ilorsa began to crow; alas for William 
 178 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 the Conqueror, who will never crow 
 again! and my many queens of the hen- 
 yard began to lay and cackle as boast 
 fully as in times of peace. Every living 
 thing came crawling out of hole and 
 hiding-place and took up its task; the 
 little gingerbread woman came back to 
 the lych gate to sit in the sun ; Puck, once 
 more one of the family, as he grazes be 
 yond the stream, trotted merrily to Shep- 
 perton again and again to bring seeds 
 and young plants, for 1 intend to have a 
 garden that will astonish Peter when 
 Peter comes back from the war. It seems 
 to me that there is an added touch of de 
 termination in the pony s gait and in the 
 toss of his shaggy head since he became a 
 hero of the war, an upholder of the king 
 dom, a defender of the faith. 
 
 Madge is the busiest of all living 
 tilings and will not be idle- for a moment 
 for fear of "thinking lon.u p ." Xevcr was 
 there such a lie-scrubbed, I)e-pol5shed, 
 
 179 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 shining house as the little red house! I 
 tremble for my own face when I see her 
 with the soap and sand, the brass polish, 
 the silver polish, the long-handled mop, 
 and the wooden pail. It is Madge with 
 a changed face, with deepening lines be 
 tween the eyes, a worrying, anxious 
 Madge, who steals the newspaper and 
 reads it in the kitchen before she brings 
 it to me. I cannot help noticing that she 
 talks less and less of the glory of Eng 
 land and more and more about Peter. 
 Laconic post cards with peculiar spelling 
 tell us that Peter is alive and well in the 
 trenches. Peter, because of his old expe 
 rience as soldier, was allowed to go speed 
 ily to the front, and is now at close quar 
 ters with the enemy. 
 
 In earliest April, the little red house 
 sheltered the grand adventure, the great 
 est adventure, for death seems safe and 
 easy by the side of the great adventure of 
 being born. I had a whole family quar- 
 180 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 tered here, father, mother, and two small 
 winsome children, boy and girl; we tucked 
 them away where we could. And a wee 
 man-child came into the world during 
 their stay here, with much pomp and cir 
 cumstance and attendance of mine host 
 ess from the Inn, and of the village doc 
 tor, whose lot in life has evidently been to 
 stand helpless and aghast, watching mor 
 tals who will venture into a world which 
 seems to be no safe place for them. If 
 it had rested with him, small Jean would 
 have had no chance at all; but Madge 
 and mine hostess came to the rescue, and 
 all went well, on to that first little weird 
 lonely cry. 
 
 It was little bigger than the Atom. It 
 slept, during all its first days, a troubled, 
 puckered sleep. Don worshipped it, and 
 whenever it cried, <rave an anxious whine 
 or a sharp short bark. In the Atom s loft 
 I unearthed a prehistoric cradle that may 
 have been left by the Danes or the Sax- 
 181 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 ons. Of course I know that rocking is 
 most unhygienic, but I thought that if this 
 little, frightened fugitive mother found 
 any comfort in rocking her baby by the 
 fireside, rock it she should. It isn t, I 
 believe, supposed to injure anything ex 
 cept the brain, and the brain counts for 
 so little nowadays in the contemporary 
 ideal of development that I am sure small 
 Jean will have enough left to play his part 
 in the civilization of the future. He had, I 
 noticed, square and sturdy little fists, and 
 he may be some day one of the many who 
 will fight for England, when England s 
 guests defend the door so generously 
 opened to shelter them. The Atom in 
 sisted upon sharing the cradle; why not? 
 It had discovered the cradle in the first 
 place and had a certain right to it. So it 
 curled up in a corner, and Jean gurgled 
 and grew fat and rosy in its companion 
 ship. It was a joy to have a real baby in 
 the house while the birds were building, 
 182 
 
THE \VOHX DOORSTEP 
 
 and the spring flowers budding, and the 
 young ferns uncurling in the forest. 
 
 The father of the family was a 
 farmer whose house and barns had been 
 wiped out of existence within ten minutes 
 one cruel winter day. Mine host has 
 found a place for him; another man is 
 needed on one of the farms belonging to 
 the estate ; a small house there was vacant, 
 and thither they have moved, bag and bag 
 gage, baby and baby s cradle. They 
 wanted the Atom, but the Atom and I 
 have lived through such haj?d clays to 
 gether, cheek to cheek, that I could not 
 let it go. The new house is not far, quite 
 within Puck distance, and Don and I make 
 frequent calls. 
 
 May 30. May, witli its young leavrs. 
 its radiance of blossoming fruit tree s, its 
 spring greenness, never have I known 
 such green, lingers yet, with its sweet 
 spring chill and its ripple of slow English 
 188 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 streams among the grasses. Such a world 
 of beauty, and a world of sorrow ! Petals 
 of apple blossom drift even through the 
 open doorway, and everywhere is the 
 murmur of the little wind among the 
 leaves. I sit in my garden, under my 
 apple trees, or walk where the sunshine 
 filters down, clear and still, through the 
 lime trees in the lane, thinking of many 
 things. Close by the stream, at my gar 
 den s edge, grow palest purple irises, and 
 at times they seem spirit lilies, delicate as 
 light, growing beside you in your far 
 place. 
 
 A few days ago Don dug one of 
 your books out of the case, he loves to 
 touch them with his faithful paw. It was 
 Dante s Paradiso and as it fell open I saw 
 that you had marked certain words with 
 my name: " dolce guida e cara," " sweet 
 guide and dear." That was too beautiful 
 a thing to say of a mere mortal woman. 
 
 I find myself thinking consciously less 
 184 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 about you as the days go on; a touch in 
 the darkness, a gleam across the stars, a 
 whisper by the river, so you come back 
 to me; but the different things we said 
 and did do not return with quite such 
 sharp distinctness and sharp pain. Yet I 
 exist more and more in you, living your 
 life and mine too, spirit to spirit. 
 
 Loneliness seems forever impossible 
 since you went out and left the gate ajar, 
 and all the world came in, and all its sor 
 rows. The griefs that enter, in some 
 strange way solace my own, and this in 
 creasing sense of the anguish of the world 
 is lightened and lifted by sharing it with 
 other folk. It is good to feel so passion 
 ately and so utterly a part of all that lives 
 and throbs and suffers. Though the life 
 that goes on in the little red house must 
 inevitably lack Something of the human 
 warmth and joy that we should have 
 known together, more life and greater en 
 ters, I think, than would have been ours 
 is:, 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 if our old dream of happiness had come 
 true. One can bear whatever happens, so 
 long as it makes one understand. 
 
 I started out in loneliness to tell my 
 story, to you and to myself, for comfort 
 in the long silences, and lo! I have no 
 story; I do not seem to be merely I; I 
 have gone out of myself and cannot find 
 my way back. In this relieving great 
 ness is, perhaps, dim foreknowledge of 
 what is to come. I have nothing left to 
 ask of life, no demands to make: a little 
 service, work, and sleep, and then ? 
 
 June 15. Peter, can it be Peter, with 
 that expression upon his face? He is 
 really here, and a transfiguring look of 
 suffering has worn away forever a some 
 thing of earth and of stubbornness, a 
 Peter who seems to have gained greatly 
 in strength and in stature, although one 
 arm is gone, and an empty sleeve hangs 
 by his side. If I had known how to 
 180 
 
THK \VOHX DOORSTEP 
 
 .salute I should have saluted Peter when 
 I saw him home from the war; mentally 
 I do it whenever I see him working with 
 his one poor hand in my garden beds. 
 One of the first things he said to me when 
 he came home was that he was going to 
 Shepperton to try to get work that a one- 
 armed man could do, selling papers or 
 something of the kind. But Peter, who 
 has faced the enemy and the poisonous 
 gases, flinched before my countenance 
 when I heard this. Peter knows now that 
 the little red house and the garden can 
 never get on without him. 
 
 It is odd to see the animals with him; 
 Don cannot be attentive enough, but you 
 would expect a dog to understand. Puck 
 is a wonder, standing as meekly as a lamb 
 to let himself be harnessed by a one-armed 
 man, though he used to dance an ancient 
 British war-dance as the straps went on. 
 The old racial love of fair fighting shines 
 out in him; man to man it used to be, or 
 187 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 man to pony, when both were able-bodied, 
 but he will take no advantage of a handi 
 cap. He seldom shies now, even at a 
 feather or a floating leaf, but he watches 
 constantly in every direction, waiting for 
 some great danger in which he can com 
 port himself with perfect self-control for 
 the sake of a one-armed man; defying the 
 whole modern era to invent a mechanism 
 that can frighten him. I should like an 
 equestrian statue of Puck not shying at a 
 Zeppelin! 
 
 Madge is pathetic; she has lost her old 
 moorings of prejudice and conviction and 
 sails in an uncharted sea of life. Church 
 and State are to her only a shade less rep 
 rehensible than the Germans, since Peter 
 came home without an arm. While Peter, 
 completely changed, and loyal to the gov 
 ernment, for the country he has served so 
 well is his country indeed, sits with her 
 on the bench by the kitchen door in the 
 twilight, full of affectionate talk of 
 188 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 " Kitchener " and " Bobs " his grief 
 over Lord Roberts death was both sin 
 cere and personal Madge mutters 
 fiercely against the Ouse of Lords for its 
 selfishness and its incompetence. If 
 women ruled, all would be different! Her 
 condemnation of the government would 
 suggest that she is in a fair way to become 
 both an anarchist and a suffragette. She 
 never would have let Peter go a step to 
 war if she had supposed that he would be 
 wounded. 
 
 Peter came home, not with a Victoria 
 Cross, but with an Iron Cross, and I can 
 never tell whether he is joking or in ear 
 nest when he explains his possession of it. 
 When I asked him how he got it, he re 
 plied: " I bestowed it upon meself, Miss." 
 It seems that he had taken it from a Ger 
 man with whom he had fought in a terri 
 ble bayonet charge. 
 
 " He was a man, he was," Peter says 
 admiringly. " If I got the better of the 
 189 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 man who had earned it, it stands to rea 
 son that I m a better man than him and fit 
 to wear it." So Peter wears his Iron 
 Cross, to the wonder and admiration of the 
 farmers baiting their horses at the Inn, the 
 blacksmith s eleven children, and the in 
 habitants in general of our village. How 
 much he tells those eager listeners of the 
 horrors he has seen I do not know, but 
 sometimes from that bench by the kitchen 
 door, I hear fragments of his tales of suf 
 fering that make me sick and faint. Yet 
 he is very reticent in regard to it, having 
 evidently a feeling that he must protect 
 others from knowing what he has known. 
 As I make his acquaintance anew I real 
 ize that his great loss is truly exceeding 
 gain; there is more of his real self in his 
 wakened mind and soul than he lost in 
 his arm. 
 
 But Peter, invalided home, returned not 
 alone. It seemed to me, as he came up the 
 walk, that he was over-heavily weighed 
 190 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 down by luggage, though he had a brother 
 soldier to help him. 
 
 "If you please, m," said Peter dif 
 fidently, when our first greetings were 
 over, " I ve taken the liberty of bringing 
 
 some one ome." 
 
 " Nothing could please me better," I 
 said, holding out a welcoming hand to the 
 tall soldier at his side. 
 
 " If you please, m," said Peter, grin 
 ning, if heroes can be said to grin, - 
 " she s inside-/ 
 
 He opened the big old-fashioned basket 
 lie was carrying, made of osier, a kind 
 that I remember seeing in my grand 
 mother s attic many years ago, and there 
 O Pharaoh s daughter, how I under 
 stand you now!- was a little child of 
 perhaps ten months, asleep. She had 
 M.t t dark hair, hands a hit too thin for a 
 baby, eyes that proved to be, when she 
 wakened and opeiu d them, big and brown; 
 and a mouth that had learned and not for- 
 191 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 gotten, like so many sorrowful mouths to 
 day, how to smile. 
 
 "Where did you find her?" Madge 
 and I cried out in one breath. 
 
 " She was in the village where I was 
 taken when I was wounded; you will 
 hexcuse me, m, but I cannot say its name, 
 I really cannot. A woman had taken 
 charge of her for weeks; she had been 
 found quite deserted by the roadside, I be 
 lieve, m, earlier in the war, when people 
 were trying to escape from the henemy. 
 The nurse used to bring her into the os- 
 pital just to let the soldiers see her." 
 
 Peter was disappointed that I could not 
 speak, but speak I could not. 
 
 " She s a French baby, m," he added. 
 " I took a great fancy to her, and when I 
 came away I told them- 
 
 " What did you tell them, Peter? " I 
 
 asked sternly. The little thing had 
 
 grasped my finger and was trying to pull 
 
 herself up. It was the first touch from 
 
 192 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 any of my fugitives that seemed to come 
 from my very own, and I knew that the 
 French baby had come into my life to 
 stay. 
 
 " Knowing your abits, Miss, I told 
 them I thought I knew a good ome for 
 her, so they sent her on with a nurse who 
 was coming back, reserved for me, as it 
 were. They kindly allowed me to bring 
 her down from London meself, but I ad 
 difficulty in olding her, so I took out me 
 clothes and put them in a paper, and she 
 fitted very nicely in the basket." 
 
 Peter still mistook my silence for hesi 
 tation. 
 
 " I thought if you didn t care to adopt 
 her, I would, m ; but from what they told 
 me about her clothing and all and from 
 the look of her, I fancy she s rather your 
 class than mine, m." 
 
 I couldn t aspire to your class, Peter," 
 I said ; " you belong among the heroes. 
 We will all adopt her, you and Madge 
 193 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 and I and Don and Puck and the Atom 
 and our English queens. Among us all 
 she will get a well-rounded training." 
 
 The stream is rippling past with its old 
 music; the pony is grazing in the 
 meadow; my June roses glow within my 
 garden, yellow, white, and deep red; and 
 still the vast sea of human sorrow breaks, 
 breaks against my garden wall, and no 
 one knows whither its tides may draw. Is 
 it thus that the whole earth must gain the 
 finer knowledge that comes alone through 
 suffering and learn how false are the gods 
 it has been following with swift feet? 
 
 I hardly dare confess my foolishness, 
 but when I saw Peter that day of his re 
 turn come down the village street with a 
 tall khaki-clad figure beside him, I 
 thought for one whole blissful, awful mo 
 ment that he had found you, living, and 
 had brought you home. Through many 
 such moments I could not live; all the joy 
 194 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 and the anguish of time and of eternity 
 were crowded into it. Yet even in that 
 flash I knew that no mere human contact 
 could ever bring you so close as you are 
 now to me. Separated by walls of mere 
 flesh and bone, there could no longer be 
 this entire one-ness of soul with soul. 
 You, beloved, are forever too near to 
 touch. What death may be I know not, 
 but it is something far different from what 
 we mortals think. 
 
 Then I saw that Peter s companion was 
 only another British Tommy, who needed 
 my hospitality; and I helped make ready 
 his beef and beer with great gladness in 
 my heart. 
 
 . . . Content for you. Men from old 
 time have died for the faith they held, 
 and men have died for dreams. T know 
 no faith, no dream better worth dying for 
 than this for which you gave your life, the 
 dream of human freedom. It is our race 
 pride that a passion for liberty was kin- 
 195 
 
THE WORN DOORSTEP 
 
 died early in our remotest forebears ; there 
 is no nobler task than keeping this divine 
 spark alive upon the human hearth. In 
 my moments of insight I know that life 
 has no greater boon than a chance to die 
 for one s faith, and you have died for this. 
 I would not take from you, even if I 
 could, your hour of glory, your great hour 
 of death. 
 
 THE END 
 
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