March.—We bought the small place on the Surrey highlands and furnished it out of Rome; and set statues and cypresses and vases overflowing with flowers about the quaint terraces that run down to the valley; and we have a bit of Italy between pine-woods and wild moorland. We have called it the Villino.

The idea started as a week-end cottage. Gradually, however, we came to pay the flying visits to the London house and spend the most of our time in the country. Since the war began we have settled altogether on the span of earth which has become so endeared to us. Never was any home established in such a spirit of lightheartedness.

The new property has been our toy; something to laugh at while we enjoy it. It is absurd and apart and beloved and attractive; and though the great shadow that rose in August overcast the brightness of the Villino garden and all its prospects, we could yet look out upon the peace and the fairness and take comfort therefrom; turn with relief to the growing things and all the innocent interests that surround and centre in a country life.

It never dawned upon us that the garden itself could become a point of tragedy; that every pushing spike of bulb and every well-pruned rose-tree would have their special pang for our hearts, yet so it is. Never again shall we be able to look with the eyes of pure enjoyment on terrace and border, rose-arch and woodland.

Adam, the kindly gardener of our special plot of earth, has been struck down; hurled, by an inscrutable decree of Providence in the zenith of his activities, from life to death.

He was as much a part of the Villino as we ourselves; a just and kindly man, not yet forty; one of the handsomest of God’s creatures, and the most gentle-hearted. We cannot see the meaning of such a blow; we can only bow the head.

“Doesn’t it seem hard,” cried the daughter of the Villino, “that in these days there should be one unnecessary widow!”

The last time the Signora saw him alive was about a week before the tragedy. He had come into the funny little Roman drawing-room—all faint gay tints and flamboyant Italian gilt carved wood—carrying a large pot of arum lilies. He scarcely looked like an Englishman with his dark, rich colouring and raven hair prematurely grey; though he was so all-English, of England’s best, in his heart and mind.

A little Belgian child, on a visit to us, rushed up to him, chattering incomprehensibly. She is just three and very friendly; something in Adam’s appearance must have attracted her, for she left everything she had been playing with to run to him the moment he appeared.

This is how the Signora will always remember him, standing, big and gentle, looking down at the child with those kind, kind eyes.

There was never anyone so good to little animals. We used to say he was a true if unconscious brother of St. Francis, and loved all God’s small folk. Never was a sick cat or dog but Adam would have the nursing of it.

One would see him walking about the garden wheeling his barrow, with a great black Persian coiled round his neck like a boa. Nearly two years ago a little daughter was born to him here, to his great joy. She was always in her father’s arms during the free hours of the day; and not the least piteous incident of the tragedy was the way this baby, just beginning to babble a few words, kept calling for “Daddy, daddy,” while he lay next door in the tiny sitting-room he had taken such pleasure in, like a marble effigy, smiling, beautiful, awful, for ever deaf to her appeal.

He had been slightly ailing since an attack of influenza; but on the morning of his death he said to his wife that he felt as if he could do the work of six men that day. The kind of cruel light-heartedness which the Scotch call “being fey” was upon him. Like Romeo before the great catastrophe, “his bosom’s lord sat lightly on his throne.” Strange freaks of presentiment never to be explained on this side of the grave! There are those who feel the shadow of approaching fatality cloud their spirits—we have heard a hundred instances of certain forebodings of death during the present war—but this mysterious gaiety of the doomed is rarer and more awful. Yet Adam must have had his secret sad warnings too, for his poor wife found, to her astonishment, his insurance cards, his accounts made up to the end of the week on the Thursday of which he died, the ambulance badge he had been so proud of—all laid ready to her hand. He had set his house in order before the summons came. We have every reason to think that in a deeper, graver sense he was equally prepared.

“‘Whatever time my Saviour calls me, I shall be ready to go....’ Often and often,” Mrs. Adam told us, as her tears fell, “he has said those words to me.”

Like many another active, hard-working man, the thought of failing health, debility, old age, was abhorrent to him.

“He never could have borne a long illness.” Thus the widow tries to console herself—pitiful scraps of self-administered comfort with which poor humanity always attempts to parry the horror of an unmitigated tragedy!

There are strange secrets between the soul and God. Among the many wonders of the City of Light will be the simple solving of the riddles that have been so dark and tormenting to our earthly minds. From the very beginning of the war this honest Englishman had wanted to go out and serve his country. He was over age. His wife and two children depended on his labours, yet the longing never left him.

“I doubt but I’ll have to go yet,” was a phrase constantly on his lips.

He had joined the Ambulance Corps and, indeed, was on his way to that errand of mercy when he was stricken. Did he in those inner communes of the soul with God breathe forth his desire to give his life for his country, and was it somehow mystically accomplished? For death smote him and he fell and lay in his blood, as a soldier might. Who knows that the sacrifice was not accepted?

It was terrible for us—it seemed an unbelievable addition to her burthen of sorrow for the woman who loved him—but for him it may have been the glory and the crown.

When all human aid is unavailing, when everything that science can do to assist or relieve has been accomplished and fellow-creatures must stand aside and watch the relentless law of nature accomplish itself, then the value of religion is felt, as perhaps never before, even by the most devout.

Had poor Adam but belonged to the Old Faith the call for the priest would have been more urgent yet than the call for the doctor; we would have had the consolation of hearing the last Absolution pronounced over the unconscious form. The soul would have taken flight from the anointed body, strengthened by the ultimate rites; the child of the Church would have gone forth from the arms of the Church—from the arms of the earthly mother, to the mercy and justice of the heavenly Father.

We did what we could, his own clergyman being away. Never were we more impressed with the value of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. It is all very well to say that we must live so as to be ready to die; that as the tree grows so shall it fall. Here are trite axioms that will not stand a moment before the facts of life and the needs of humanity. They make no account of the mercy of the Creator on one side nor of the weakness of the failing spirit on the other. They forget the penitent thief on the cross, bidden to enter into Paradise upon the merit of a single cry. If the Church of our ancestors watches anxiously over the whole existence of her children; if she hovers about the cradle, how does she not hang over the deathbed to catch the faintest sigh of repentance; nay, how does she not “prevent” the least effort, pouring forth graces and supplications, anointing, absolving, pursuing the departing spirit beyond the very confines of the world, sublimely audacious, to the throne of God itself!

She has caught the precious soul, for whom the Lord died, before the infant mind was even aware of its own existence. She is not going to be robbed of her treasure at the end, if she can help it.

But our poor, dying Adam was not of this fold, and could have no such aid and sanctification for his passing. Even his afflicted wife quailed from the fruitless agony of witnessing his last moments. “Since I couldn’t do anything, ma’am, it’s more than I can bear.”

She went down to her cottage at the bottom of the garden to prepare a fit resting-place for the body, while in the garage the soul of her dearest accomplished its final and supreme act on earth.

We read the great prayers to ourselves—those wonderful prayers commensurate in dignity and grandeur to the awful moment. We cried upon the Angels and Archangels, upon the Thrones, the Cherubim and Seraphim; we bade the Patriarchs and the Prophets, the Doctors and Evangelists, the Confessors and Martyrs, the Holy Virgins and all the Saints of God to rush to his assistance. We supplicated that his place this day should be in peace and his abode in Holy Sion; we cast his sins upon the multitudes of the Divine mercies, and strong through the merits of Christ our appeal rose into triumph. With confidence we summoned the noble company of the Angels to meet him, the court of the Apostles to receive him, the army of glorious Martyrs to conduct him, the joyful Confessors to encompass him, the choir of blessed Virgins to go before him. We conjured Christ, his Saviour, to appear to him with a mild and cheerful countenance. And, with this great name upon our lips, we “compassed him about with angels, so that the infernal spirits should tremble and retire into the horrid confusion of eternal night.”

All the household, except the very young servants, knelt round him praying silently, since we did not dare obtrude our own tenets about the deathbed of another faith. The Master stood with his hand on his dying servant’s head; and so the end came very peacefully.

A belated curate appeared at the cottage as the daughter of the house went down to tell Mrs. Adam that all was over; but he fled before the sad burthen was carried in.

We had often noticed it before, but never so forcibly, this shying away of some excellent religious people from any contemplation of the immediate experience of the soul after death. Beyond sentences of comfort as stereotyped as they are vague, which place the departed “safe in the arms of Jesus,” one would almost believe that the average man had no very vivid sense of the future life at all. How otherwise explain the remarks, so frequently heard, that a sudden death is such a desirable end; that it was “such a comfort so-and-so didn’t know he was going”; how explain the attitude at the sick-bed, where the sufferer to the last is deluded with false hopes that he may be spared—what? the knowledge that he is summoned to the house of God, the last opportunity of preparation.

Even when Mrs. Adam’s clergyman came to see her, chief among his consolations was the remark, made in all sincerity: “That’s the kind of death I should prefer to die.”

Good Adam was ready to go, we know that; but can any man with a true sense of his own soul bring himself to wish to be taken in like manner? It is, after all, to wish for one’s self the death one would want for one’s dog. Without even belonging to a Church where the last stage is hallowed and made a culminating act of precious resignation and the highest virtue, it seems to us that the instinctive nobility of man should rebel against the craven doctrine that death is a thing to be huddled through, a step to be taken drugged and blindfolded, that the consciousness is to be chloroformed against the anguish of dissolution. It is to rob humanity of its supremest quality—the triumph of the spirit over the flesh, the noble acceptance of our lot, the dignity of the last renunciation.

Browning, the most virile of our poets, cries:

Yet this curious evasion of the inevitable is only the natural outcome of a looseness of theology which, while it admits the dogma of right and wrong, of free will and human responsibility, hurls the perfect and the imperfect, the saint and the sinner alike, into the same heaven without an instant’s transition. As very few now believe in hell, it is no unfair conclusion to draw that the mere fact of death seems, in the eyes of most people, to qualify the soul for eternal bliss. It is idle to ask what becomes of the generally accepted doctrine of moral responsibility, why, if all are alike and certain to be saved, anyone should put himself to the disagreeable task of resisting temptation, much less strive after perfection here below; but failure to provide help for the dying is the direct consequence of the denial of future expiation.

“What man is there among you who, if his son shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone?”

The Viaticum, the bread of life, is denied to the passing soul, and the draught of comfort of devout prayer withheld from the beloved in the fires of expiation; but the tombstone will be considered with loving thought, and erected over the insensible dust.

The Old Faith shows a profound knowledge of and tenderness for the mere human side in its hour of anguish, even while providing for the paramount needs of the soul. There is one, one only comfort for the bereaved—to be able to help still, and of that they are deprived.

“It isn’t as if I could do any good,” said poor Mrs. Adam, when she turned away from her husband’s deathbed.

She had the power to do such infinite good if she had only known it. What prayer could be so far-reaching as that of the cry of the wife for the chosen one, from whom God alone reserved Himself the right to part her? What act of resignation could be so meritorious as that of her who was making the sacrifice of her all?

“I sent down to tell them to ring the passing-bell,” said the widow. She was eager to accomplish every detail of respectful ceremony that had been left to her.

The passing-bell! Touching institution of the ages of belief, the call for prayers for the soul in its last struggle, the summons to friend and stranger, kindly neighbour and stray passer-by, the cry of the mother for the last alms for her child!

“Oh,” exclaimed our daughter that night, reflecting on these things, “my heart burns when I think how the poor have been robbed of their faith!”

And the mighty lesson which the ancient Church taught by her attitude to the dying is that by calmly turning the eyes of the faithful towards the need for preparation, the duty of warning the sick in time, the immeasurable gain of the last Sacraments as compared to the loss of an unfounded earthly hope, she is giving the only possible comfort alike to the living and the dying; she is placing within reach of the mourners just the one factor that makes their grief bearable—the power of being of use.

Mrs. MacComfort, our Irish cook, who is as near a saint herself as one can ever hope to meet, said to us, the tears brimming in her soft eyes: “Oh, doesn’t it make us feel ashamed of ourselves when we see what our holy religion is, and how little we live up to it!”

And, indeed, that our poor fellow-countrymen are so good without these helps is at once a wonder and a rebuke to us. Mrs. Adam made her sacrifice with a most touching submission: “God must know best.”

“When they came down and told me there’d been an accident, my hands were in the washtub, miss,” she told one of us later, “and as I ran up the garden drying them in my apron, I was praying God all the while that he would give me strength to bear what I might have to see.”

God never refuses such a prayer as that. Adam was an example. It is astonishing the effect the death of this simple gardener has made in the district, and the testimonies of his worth keep coming in. It shows how wide the influence one good man can exercise in any class of life—

In a narrower sense we shall ourselves always feel that something of him has gone into the soil of our little garden, for which he worked so faithfully. Some of the fragrance of that humble soul will rise up from the violet beds and hang about the roses.

We have been the more disposed to draw these parallels between the Old Faith and its substitute because, by a curious coincidence, Adam’s was the second death to fling sadness over the Villino.

The first was not a personal loss, like that of a servant in the house. It concerned, indeed, a being whom only one of us had seen. It happened far away in the bloody swamps of the Yser; yet, none the less, the tidings filled the little household with mourning.

Among the many exiles flying to our shores from the horror of the advancing Hun were two young mothers with their children—two charming, delicately nurtured, high-born, high-minded women, whose husbands were, one, an officer in the Belgian army, the other, a volunteer working in the ambulance at Calais. The soldier’s wife, the niece of an old friend of ours, a gay, courageous creature, who twice had gone into the line of fire to see her husband, was never tired of speaking to us of “Charley.” He seemed in the end to have become almost a familiar among us. We knew by his photographs that he was handsome, and, by the portions of his letters which she read to us, that he was tender and deep-feeling and strong of courage.

Some weeks ago Charley’s wife left to live with her sister; her cousin still remained with us. It was the latter who was sent for to the telephone that evening when the shadow of death rolled up suddenly and hung over the little house.

An unforgettable moment when she turned from the instrument, crying in accents that pierced one: “Charley tuÉ! Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, Charley tuÉ!”

It was when we afterwards learnt the details of the tragedy, which were piteous in the extreme as far as it affected the wife, that the noble consolations of our religion emerged in all their beauty.

The officer had announced an approaching leave, and the joyful anticipation of his little family was commensurate to the love they bore him. As one instance of that love, let it be noted here that his small son, only six years old, could never hear the name of his absent father without tears.

The wife was alone in the garden, resting from the fatigues of a morning spent in preparing for that visit, when a telegram arrived, badly transcribed, in French. She could at first only make out her husband’s name, her brother’s signature, and the words, “Shall be at Calais to-day.”

She danced into the house in ecstasy, crying to the children: “Papa is coming; papa and Uncle Robert are coming.”

And it was only on the stairs that a second glance at the sheet in her hand revealed the fatal word “tuÉ.”

A cousin—another young exiled wife and mother—who lived in close proximity, was summoned by the distracted maid, and writes in simple language of the scene of agony: “As soon as I got into the little house,” she says, “I heard her dreadful sobs; I ran to her. ‘Charley is killed, Charley is killed!’ she cried to me. I have never seen anyone in such a state. She was almost in convulsions. I put my arms about her. ‘Make your sacrifice; offer it up for the good of his soul,’ I said to her. ‘No, no! I cannot,’ she said. At first she could not, but I held her close, and after a little I said to her: ‘Say the words after me: “O my God, I accept your will for the good of his soul.”’ And once she had said it she did not go back on it. From that moment she was calm.”

So calm, indeed, that the unhappy young creature had the strength of mind to go in to her children, terrified at the sound of her weeping, and smilingly reassure them, talk and play with them, till their bedtime. She meant to start that night for Calais, and did not wish her little ones to know of their loss till her return.

All her energies were strained to the single purpose—to see him once again before he was laid to rest. She had her desire. The journey was an odyssey of physical and mental pain, but by sheer determination she won through, and found her brother, who had obtained leave of absence from his regiment to meet her. By him she was conveyed to a little village at the back of the Belgian line, where, in a chapel belonging to a convent, the dead man lay.

It had been his last day in the trenches. The next was to begin his brief holiday. He had been posted in that celebrated Maison du Passeur, among the slimy waters, destined to be the scene of one more tragedy. There was an alarm that certain enemy snipers were lurking about, and a small patrol had been ordered to take stock of them.

“I will not,” said the young officer, “allow my men to go into danger without me.”

It was not his duty—it was scarcely even advisable—but he took up a soldier’s carbine and went forth with it. He was actually taking aim when the sergeant beside him saw him fail and slowly collapse. There was, perhaps, a noise of cannon to confuse the man’s senses, for he heard no shot. There was certainly no start or shock apparent. He called out: “Mon lieutenant, qu’avez vous?” believing it was a sudden attack of weakness. When he went to his lieutenant he found that he was dead. He had been struck by a bullet under the eye, so well and truly aimed that it had instantly ended the young, vigorous life, as far as this world is concerned. The only mark on his calm face, when his wife saw it, was that small purple spot, where the wound had closed again.

We have seen a snapshot taken of him as he lay wrapped in his country’s flag. It is a noble, chiselled countenance, looking younger than the thirty-two years of his life, set in a great serenity, with yet that stamp of austere renunciation, of supreme sacrifice, measured and accepted, which we sometimes behold in the face of the dead.

The whole regiment congregated in the little chapel the afternoon of the day which brought the widow to her calvary. The building was decorated with groups of flags, and about the bier were heaped the wreaths of his brother officers, dedicated nearly all in the same words:

“To the comrade fallen on the field of honour,”

“To the comrade who has given his life for his country.”

In the midst of a profound silence the Colonel read L’Ordre du Jour, which, by King Albert’s command, conferred upon the fallen Guide the Order of Leopold—for valour—and the bereaved wife was given the decoration to pin over the cold heart that had been so warmly hers. There was a muffled roll of drum, and all present sang the “BrabanÇonne.” So much for the comfort which the world could still give.

Next morning the funeral Mass was said at the altar. The bier lay at the foot of the step, so close that each time the priest turned round to say Dominus vobiscum, his hands were uplifted over the dead. And the widow and all the officers of the regiment kneeling round received Holy Communion for, and in memory of, the slain.

It is not possible—although we know her grief to be as ardent as was her attachment to him—that this widow can mourn as those who have no hope.

The chaplain of the regiment told her that her husband had been to Confession and Holy Communion the morning he had entered into the trenches, three days before. “Have no fear, my child,” said the priest, “he made his Confession as he did everything, with all his heart.”

Blessed religion, which across the deathbed shows us the heavens opening for the departed soul, and bids the holy angel guard even the grave where rests the body, hallowed for the resurrection!