"Life is good, joy runs high,
Between English earth and sky;
Death is death, but we shall die
To the song on your bugles blown--England,
To the stars on your bugles blown."
W. E. HENLEY.
Dick went out into the still night air from the close atmosphere of
Joan's room, his mind a seething battleground of emotions--anger, and
hurt pride, and a still small sense of pain, which as time passed grew
so greatly in proportion that it exceeded both the other sensations. He
had said very bitterly to Joan that she had broken his dream, but,
because it had been broken, it none the less had the power to hurt
intolerably. Each fragment throbbed with a hot sense of injustice and
self-pity. He had not the slightest idea what to do with himself: every
prospect seemed equally distasteful. He walked, to begin with, furiously
and rather aimlessly down in the direction of the Embankment. The
exercise, such as it was, dulled his senses and quieted a little the
tumult of his mind. He found himself thinking of other things. The men
to-day in his Club had been discussing the possibility of war, they had
been planning what they would do; instinctively, since the thought of
Joan and the scene he had just left were too tender for much probing,
his mind turned to that. As he stamped along he resolved, without
thinking very deeply about it, that he would volunteer for active
service, and speculated on the possibility of his getting taken on at
once.
"Doctors will be very needful in this war," one man had said at the
Club.
"Yes, by Gad," another had answered. "We have got some devilish
contrivances these days for killing our brother men."
Looked at from that point of view, the idea seemed strange, and Dick
caught his breath on the thought. What would war mean? Hundreds of men
would be killed--hundreds, why it would be more like thousands. He had
read descriptions of the South African war, he had talked with men who
had been all through it.
"We doctors see the awful side of war, I can tell you," an old doctor
had once told him. "To the others it may seem flags flying, drums
beating, and a fine uplifting spectacle; but we see the horrors, the
shattered bodies, the eyes that pray for death. It's a ghastly affair."
And yet there was something in the thought which flamed at Dick's heart
and made him throw his head up. It was the beating of drums, the call of
the bugles that he heard as he thought of it; the blood tingled in his
veins, he forgot that other pain which had driven him forth so restless
a short hour ago.
The great dark waters of the river had some special message to give him
this evening. He stood for a little watching them; lights flamed along
the Embankment, the bridges lay across the intervening darkness like
coloured lanterns fastened on a string. Over on the other side he could
see the trees of Battersea Park, and beyond that again the huddled pile
of houses and wharfs and warehouses that crowded down to the water's
edge. He was suddenly aware, as he stood there, of a passionate love for
this old, grey city, this slow-moving mass of dark waters. It symbolized
something which the thought of war had stirred awake in his heart. He
had a hot sense of love and pride and pity all mingled, he felt somehow
as if the city were his, and as if an enemy's hand had been stretched
out to spoil it. The drumming, the flag-waving, and the noise of bugles
were still astir in his imagination, but the river had called something
else to life behind their glamour. It did not occur to him to call it
love of country, yet that was what it was.
His walk brought him out in the end by the Houses of Parliament, and he
found himself in the midst of a large crowd. It swayed and surged now
this way and now that, as is the way of crowds. The outskirts of it
reached right up to and around Trafalgar Square. When Dick had fought
his way up Parliament Street he could see a mass of people moving about
the National Gallery, and right above them Nelson's statue stood out
black against the sky.
"If they want war, these bally Germans," someone in the crowd suddenly
shouted in a very hoarse and beery voice, "let's give it them."
"Yes, by God!" another answered. "Good old England, let's stand by our
word."
"We have got men behind the guns," declaimed a third.
But such words were only as the foam thrown up by a great sea; the
multitude did no real shouting, the spirit that moved them was too
earnest for that. There were women among the crowd, their eager, excited
faces caught Dick's attention. Some were crying hysterically, but most
of them faced the matter in the same way that their menkind did. Dick
could find no words to describe the curious feeling which gripped him,
but he knew himself one of this vast multitude, all thinking the same
thoughts, all answering to the same heart-beats. It was as if the
meaning of the word citizen had suddenly been made clear to his heart.
He moved with the shifting of the crowd as far as Trafalgar Square, and
here some of the intense seriousness of the strain was broken, for
round and about the stately lions of Nelson's statue a noisy battle was
raging. Several Peace parties, decked with banners inscribed "No War"
and "Let us have peace," were coming in for a very rough five minutes at
the hands of the crowd. Rather to his own surprise Dick found himself
partaking in the battle, with a sense of jubilant pride in his prowess
to hit out. He had a German as his opponent, which was a stroke of luck
in itself, but in a calmer moment which followed on the arrival of the
police, he thought to himself that even that was hardly an excuse for
hitting a man who was desirous of keeping the world's peace. Still the
incident had exhilarated him, he was more than ever a part of the crowd,
and he went with them as far as Buckingham Palace. Some impulse to see
the King had come upon the people; they gathered in the square in front
of the Palace, and waited in confident patience for him to appear.
Dick was standing at the far end of the Square, pressed up against the
railings. In front of him stood two women, they were evidently strangers
to each other, yet their excitement had made them friends, and they
stood holding hands. One was a tall, eager-faced girl; Dick could not
see the other woman's face, but from her voice he imagined her to be a
good deal older and rather superior in class to the girl. It was the
younger one's spirit, however, that was infectious.
"Isn't it fine?" she was saying. "Aren't you proud to be English? I feel
as if my heart was going to jump out of my mouth. They are our men," she
went on breathlessly; "it is a most wonderful thought, and of course
they will win through, but a lot of them will die first. Oh, I do hate
the Germans!" Her whole face flushed with passionate resentment.
"One need not hate a nation because one goes to war with it," the other
woman answered. Dick thought her voice sounded very tired.
"Yes, one need," the girl flamed. "We women can't fight, but we can
hate. Perhaps we shouldn't hate so much if we could fight," she added as
a concession.
"I am married to a German," Dick heard the other woman say bitterly. "I
can't hate him."
He saw the girl's quick face of horror and the way she stood away from
her companion, but just at that moment some impulse surged the crowd
forward and he lost sight of them. Yet the memory of the woman's voice
and the words she had said haunted him. War would mean that, then, the
tearing apart of families, the wrecking of home life.
"The King, the King!" the crowd yelled and shouted in a million voices.
"God save the King."
Dick looked up to the Palace windows; a slight, small figure had come
out on to one of the balconies and stood looking down on the faces of
the people. Cheer upon cheer rose to greet him, the multitude rocked and
swayed with their acclamation, then above the general noise came the
sound of measured music, not a band, but just the people singing in
unison:
"God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King,
God save the King."
The notes rose and swelled and filled the air, the cry of a nation's
heart, the loyalty of a people towards their King.
The sheer emotion of it shook Dick out of the sense of revelry which had
come upon him during his fight. He pushed his way through the crowd, and
climbed over the railings into the darkness of St. James's Park. It was
officially closed for the night, but Dick had no doubt that a small
bribe at the other side would let him out. The Queen and the little
Princes had joined the King on the balcony. Looking back he could see
them very faintly, the Prince was standing to the salute, the Queen was
waving her handkerchief.
His Club was crowded with men, all equally excited, all talking very
fast. Someone had just come back from the House. War was a dead
certainty now, mobilization had been ordered, the Fleet was ready.
"Our Army is the problem, there will have to be conscription," was the
general vote.
Dick stayed and talked with the rest of them till long after twelve.
Morning should see him offering his services to the War Office; if they
would not have him as a doctor he could always enlist. One thing was
certain, he must by hook or by crook be amongst the first to go.
"We will have to send an Expeditionary Force right now," the general
opinion had been, "if we are to do any good."
Dick thought vaguely of what it would all mean: the excitement, the
thrill, an army on the march, camp life, military discipline, and his
share of work in hospital. "Roll up your sleeves and get at them," his
South African friend had described it to him. "I can tell you, you don't
have much time to think when they are bringing in the wounded by the
hundred."
Not till just as he was turning into bed did he think again of Joan.
Such is the place which love takes in a man's thoughts when war is in
the balance. The knowledge of her deceit and his broken dream hurt him
less in proportion, for the time he had forgotten it. He had been brutal
to her, he realized; he had left her crouched up on the floor crying her
heart out. Why had she cried?--she had achieved her purpose, for she
could only have had one reason in asking the other man to meet him. He
could only suppose that he had frightened her by his evident bad temper,
and for that he was sorry. He was not angry with her any longer. She had
looked very beautiful in her clinging black dress, with the red rose
pinned in at her throat. And even the rose had been a gift from the
other man. Well, it was all ended; for two years he had dreamed about
love, for one hour he had known its bitterness. He would shut it
absolutely outside of his life now, he would never, he need never,
thanks to the new interests which were crowding in, think of Joan again.
He opened his window before getting into bed and leaned out. The streets
were deserted and quiet, the people had shouted themselves hoarse and
gone home. Under the nearest lamp-post a policeman stood, a solid,
magnificent figure of law and order, and overhead in a very dark sky
countless little stars shone and twinkled. On the verge of war! What
would the next still slumbering months bring to the world, and could he
forget Joan? Is not love rather a thing which nothing can kill, which no
grave can cover, no time ignore?