WAR STORIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 63, 15 March 1915, Page 8

WAR STORIES.

"SUCH AS DO STAND."

(fly VIOLA WOODS.)

"That- it may please Thee to strengthen such as do stand."—The Litany.

From morning till night I hear Mary running up and dowm the back stairs. There aTe four other servants, but if a bell is rung it is invariably answered by that willing footstep. The parlourmaid is called Lily, the cook Caroline, the housemaid Florrie, and nuree is just called Nurse; but if a voice sounds through the house it always seems to be calling Mary.

Dv Maurier, I think, hae said it is the most beautiful name in the whole world, and most dignified of all in our own ungracious tongue. This Mary wears it like a veil. To look at her is to wash one's hands among the innocent. She is thirteen, the mystical and visionary age of adolescence. Joan of Arc was thirteen when she first heard a voice telling her of the great pity there was in France; Bemadette was thirteen when she saw the blue and white apparition in the dark grotto of the Fyrenean valley; St. Agnes was thirteen under the miraculous gro.wth of golden hair; and St. Teresa could not have been so old I when she set out to find martyrdom.

I Temember them all when I look at Mary. Her thin fair hair is pushed away under a cap, as if to conceal a vanity; her small eyes, which remind mc somehow of moss, half-green, half-brown, are perpetually clouded by a dream; and her nose and upper lip have an upward tilt, like an aspiration. Habitually she is pale, -but at the slightest word she colours faintly from humility and gratitude. She should be kneeling with a shawl over her head and a lighted candle in her hand, or standing in some ploughed 'field in the North of France scaring the birds -with wide arms.

Instead of this, she is carrying coal and scraping the mud off my boots at the end of the day.

Not for one minute is she the servant who wishes to reign; no latent rebellion, no sleeping insolence smoulders behind her candid forehead; and it is perhaps as well for her physical well-being and mental peace that, unlike her prototypes id history, she has not discovered that hei frail body might be the reedy vehicle of transcendental experience, of great and enduring truth's.

Her boots are like nothing-on earth but the wayside leavings of a tramp, and the other day, when I questioned her as to the manner in which she was shod, she remarked cheerfully, "Mc father is out of work. I give mc money to m. mother."-

Kow I know from Mary that Caroline, Lily, Florrie, and particularly _Jur_e, represented such as do stand.

In the afternoon Caroline, Lily, and even Florrie, whose crank is a little uncertain, sit like queens stirring their tea, letting it drip meditatively from the spoon to the cup, finding "strangers," with roans of laughter at amorous mysteries into which Mary, has not yet ibeen initiated.

Mary sits, slice in hand, her ear ever alert for the certain interruption o£ the bell that shall summon her to the nursery, where nurse sits enthroned, stiff with elegance, calling for more bread and butter.

But most of all is Mary impressed by the fact that nurse has morning tea brought to her while she is yet in bed. To mc it appears rather extravagant and ultra modern, but to Mary it is nothing short of imperial. It impresses her even more than the sight" of nurse putting coal on the fire with a black velvet gauntlet. Xo one but such as do stand could have morning tea, and put coal on the fire with a black velvet glove. These things in themselves spell safety, capital, respectability to Mary, just as, in- the same -way, I feel instinctively that Lily "thinks I must belong to sucKae.do stand —God save the. mark!—because I happen to prefer "having breakfast in bed to facing a solitary meal downstairs. Strange that an act which might be interpreted as one of indolence should inspire respect. Strange that if I push my own pram or put coal on the lire with my own fingers I read in each vigilant domestic eye the sentence that I am no longer a real lady, I no longer" belong to such as do 6tand.

What would Mary say if I were to tell her that Cook, who sits so complacently reading the "People" with her feet on the fender, is threatened with dismissal because she doe_ not understand I savouries; that Lily, who lives up to her I name and neither toils nor spins, was. [caught talking to the policeman at eleven last night; and that nuree, even nurse, before many weeks have gone by, will be pushed out to make room for 6oinebody |else who can teach the children French?

Ah! Mary, when at the rumble of the drums you hurl yourself half out of the attic window,.you will know what .a blow has been struck to. such as do stand; you little dream how the morning tea has had to be abolished of late, and the velvet glove hung up. Such as do stand have locked the car in the garage because of the price of petrol. Such as do stand are asking if their dividends are going to be paid next quarter. Such as do stand are having high tea instead of ten-course dinners. Such as do stand are remaining celibate because of the question of settlements. Such as do stand may go in the shade for the rest of his days because someone who stands a little higher does not a<rree with him. Such as do stand are breaking the silence of yeans because they may be at the bottom of the sea to-morrow or pinned to the earth by a bullet to-night. And, as far as I can see, the only person who has absolutely nothing to lose, whose position is quite unassailable, who has wholly experienced that freedom which such as do stand are tremblingly beginning to taste, who is not woefully, pitifully in need of confirmation, is you, Mary, who know that the hard-earned half-a-crown on Saturday has to be yielded up to Home because "Father is out of work."

For you have no possessions. And, when I see you tramping across the fields from the hovel where you sleep, I know that the great material ideal of the destruction of the weak is a false one; that one's swift sympathy for the purely wholesome animal is merely emotional It is this pauperism that veritably inherits the earth; an idea to have any lasting constitution, any honest freedom, must be brought forth in a stalk, and for such as do stand there is no hope in the I wide world but to cry eternally for 'strength.