I
This frightful war! On his brain like a weight. On his heart like a
pressing hand.
Came Christmas by which, at the outset, everybody knew it would be over,
and it was not over. Came June, 1915, concerning which, at the outset,
he had joined with Mr. Fortune, Twyning and Harold in laughter at his
own grotesque idea of the war lasting to the dramatic effect of a
culminating battle on the centenary of Waterloo, and the war had lasted,
and was still lasting.
"This frightful war!" The words were constantly upon his lips,
ejaculated to himself in reception of new manifestations of its
eruptions; forever in his mind, like a live thing gnawing there. Other
people seemed to suffer the war in spasms, isolated amidst the round of
their customary routines, of dejection or of optimistic reassurance. The
splendid sentiment of "Business as usual" was in many valiant mouths.
The land, in so far as provisions and prices were concerned, continued
to flow in milk and honey as the British Isles had always flowed in milk
and honey. In July a rival multiple grocer's shop opened premises
opposite the multiple grocer's shop already established in the shopping
centre of the Garden Home and Mabel told Sabre how very exciting it was.
The rivals piled their windows, one against the other, with stupendous
stacks of margarine and cheese at sevenpence the pound each; and then
one day, "Whatever do you think?" the new man interspersed his mountains
of margarine and cheese with wooden bowls running over with bright new
pennies, and flamed his windows with announcements that this was "The
Money-back Shop." You bought a pound of margarine for sevenpence and
were handed a penny with your purchase! And the next day, "Only fancy!"
the other man also had bright new pennies (in bursting bags from the
bank) and also bellowed that he too was a Money-back Shop.
"The fact is the war really hasn't mattered a bit," Mabel said. "I think
it's wonderful. And when you remember at the beginning how people rushed
to buy up food and what awful ideas of starvation went about; you were
one of the worst."
And Sabre agreed that it really was wonderful: and agreed too with
Mabel's further opinion that he really ought not to get so fearfully
depressed.
But he remained fearfully depressed. The abundance of food, and such
manifestations of plenty as the bowls and bags of bright new pennies
meant nothing to him. He knew nothing about war. Very possibly the
prophecies of shortage and restrictions and starvation were, in the
proof, to be refuted as a thousand other prophecies of the early days,
optimistic and pessimistic, were being refuted. What had that to do with
it? Remained the frightful facts that were going on out there in Belgium
and in Gallipoli and in Russia. Remained the increasing revelation of
Germany's enormous might in war and the revelation of what war was as
she conducted it. Remained the sinister revelation that we were not
winning as in the past we had "always won." Remained his envisagement of
England--England!--standing four-square to her enemies, but standing as
some huge and splendid animal something bewildered by the fury of the
onset upon it. Shaking her head whereon had fallen stunning and
unexpected blows, as it might be a lion enormously smashed across the
face; roaring her defiance; baring her fangs; tearing up the ground
before her; dreadful and undaunted and tremendous; but stricken; in sore
agony; in heavy amazement; her pride thrust through with swords; her
glory answered by another's glory; her dominion challenged; shaken,
bleeding.
England.... This frightful war!
II
Remained also, blowing about the streets, in the newspapers and at
meetings, in the mouths of many, and in the eyes of most, the new
popular question, "Why aren't you in khaki?" The subject of age, always
shrouded in a seemly and decorous modesty in England, and especially
since, a few years previously, an eminent professor of medicine had
unloosed the alarming theory of "Too old at forty", was suddenly ripped
out of its prudish coverings. One generation of men began to talk with
thoroughly engaging frankness and largeness about their age. They would
even announce it in a loud voice in crowded public conveyances. It was
nothing, in those days, to hear a man suddenly declare in an omnibus or
tramway car, "Well, I'm thirty-eight and I only wish to heaven I was a
few years younger." Other men would heartfully chime in, "Ah, same thing
with me. It's hard." And all these men, thus cruelly burdened with a few
more years than the age limit, would look with great intensity at other
men, apparently not thus burdened, who for their part would assume
attitudes of physical unfitness or gaze very sternly out of the window.
Several of the younger employees of Fortune, East and Sabre's joined up
(as the current phrase had it) in the first weeks of the war. In the
third month Mr. Fortune assembled the hands and from across the
whale-like front indicated the path of duty and announced that the
places of all those who followed it would be kept open for them. "Hear,
hear!" said Twyning. "Hear, hear!" and as the men were filing out he
took Sabre affectionately by the arm and explained to him that young
Harold was dying to go. "But I feel a certain duty is due to the firm,
old man. What I mean is, that the boy's only just come here and I feel
that in my position as a partner it wouldn't look well for me
practically with my own hand to be paying out unearned salary to a chap
who'd not been four months in the place. Don't you agree, old man?"
Sabre said, "But we wouldn't be paying him, would we? Fortune said
salaries of married men."
"Ah, yes, old man, but between you and me he's going to do it for
unmarried men as well, as the cases come up."
"Why didn't he tell them so?"
Twyning's genial expression hardened under these questions, but he said,
still on his first note of confidential affection, "Ah, because he
thinks they ought to do their duty without being bribed. Quite right,
too. No, it's a difficult position for me. My idea is not to give way to
the boy's wishes for a few months while he establishes his position
here, and then, if men are still wanted, why of course he'll go. Sound,
don't you think, old man?"
Sabre disengaged his arm and turned into his own room. "Well, I think
this is a business in which you can't judge any one. I think every man
is his own judge."
An astonishing rasp came into Twyning's voice. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-six. Why?"
Twyning laughed away the rasp. "Ah, I'm older. I daresay you'll have a
chance later on, if the _Times_ and the _Morning Post_ and those class
papers have their way. And you've got no family, have you, old man?"
III
That was in the third month of the war. But by June, 1915, the position
on these little points had hardened. In June, "Why aren't you in khaki?"
was blowing about the streets. Questions looked out of eyes. Certain men
avoided one another. And in June young Harold joined up. Sabre greeted
the news with very great warmth. Towards Harold he had none of the
antipathy that was often aroused in him by Harold's father. He shook the
good-looking young man very heartily by the hand. "By Jove, I'm glad.
Well done, Harold. That's splendid. Jolly good luck to you."
Later in the morning Twyning came in. He entered abruptly. His air, and
when he spoke, his manner, struck Sabre as being deliberately
aggressive. "Well, Harold's gone," he said.
"Yes, I'm jolly glad for the boy's sake. I was just congratulating him.
I think it's splendid of him."
Twyning breathed heavily through his nose. "Splendid? Hur! He wanted to
go long ago. Well, he's gone now and I hope you're satisfied."
Sabre turned in his chair and questioned Twyning with puckered brows.
"Satisfied? What on earth do you mean--satisfied?"
"You always thought he ought to go. You're one of those who've sent him
off. My boy saw it."
"You're talking nonsense. I've never so much as mentioned the subject to
Harold. I told you long ago that I think every man's his own judge, and
sole judge, in this business."
Twyning always retracted when Sabre showed signs of becoming roused.
"Ah, well, what does it matter? He's gone now. He'll be in this precious
khaki to-night. No one can point at him now." He drew out a handkerchief
and wiped his eyes slowly. He stared inimically at Sabre. "I'll tell you
one thing, Sabre. You wait till you've got a son, then you'll think
differently, perhaps. You don't know what my boy means to me. He's
everything in the world to me. I got him in here so as to have him with
me and now this cursed war's taken him. You don't know what he is, my
boy Harold. He's a better man than his father, I'll tell you that. He's
a good Christian boy. He's never had a bad thought or said a bad word."
He broke off. He rammed his handkerchief into his trouser pocket. As
though the sight of Sabre sitting before him suddenly infuriated him he
broke out, "It's all right for you sitting there. You're not going.
Never mind. My boy Harold's gone. You're satisfied. All right."
Sabre got up. "Look here, Twyning, I'm sorry for you about Harold. I
make allowances for you. But--"
When Twyning was angry his speech sometimes betrayed that on which he
was most sensitive. "I don't want you to make no allowances for me. I
don't--"
"You've repeated the stupid implication you made when you first came
in."
Twyning changed to a hearty laugh. "Oh, I say, steady, old man. Don't
let's have a row. Nothing to have a row about, old man. I made no
implication. Whatever for should I? No, no, I simply said '_All_ right.'
I say people have sent my boy Harold off, and I'm merely saying '_All_
right. He's gone. Now perhaps you're satisfied.' Not you, old man. Other
people." He paused. His tone hardened. "_All_ right. That's all, old
man. _All_ right."
IV
Not very long after this incident occurred another incident. In its
obvious aspect it was also related to the "Why aren't you in khaki?"
question; Sabre apprehended in it a different bearing.
One morning he stepped suddenly from his own room into Mr. Fortune's in
quest of a reference. Twyning and Mr. Fortune were seated together in
deep conversation. They were very often thus seated, Sabre had noticed.
At his entry their conversation abruptly ceased; and this also was not
new.
Sabre went across to the filing cabinet without speaking.
Mr. Fortune cleared his throat. "Ah, Sabre. Ah, Sabre, we were just
saying, we were just saying--" His hesitation, and the pause before he
had begun quite clearly informed Sabre that what he was now about to say
was not going to be--precisely--what he had just been saying. "We were
just saying what a very unfortunate thing, what a very deeply
unfortunate thing it is that none of us principals are of an age to do
the right thing by the Firm by joining the Army. I'm afraid we've got
one or two shirkers downstairs, and we were just saying what a splendid,
what an entirely splendid thing it would be if one of us were able to
set them an example."
Sabre faced about from the cabinet towards them. Twyning in the big
chair had his elbow on the arm and was biting his nails. Mr. Fortune,
revolved to face the room, was exercising his watch chain on his
whale-like front.
"Yes, it's a pity," Sabre said.
"I'm glad you agree. I knew you would. Indeed, yes, a pity; a very great
pity. For myself, of course, I'm out of the question. Twyning here is
getting on for forty and of course he's given his son to the war;
moreover, there's the business to be thought of. I'm afraid I'm not
quite able to do all I used to do. You--of course, you're married too,
and there we are! It does, as you say, seem a great pity." The watch
chain, having been generously exercised, was put to the duty of heavy
tugs at its reluctant partner. Mr. Fortune gazed at his watch and
remarked absently, "I hear young Phillips of Brown and Phillips has
persuaded his wife to let him go. You were at the school with him,
Sabre, weren't you? Isn't he about your age?"
Sabre spoke very slowly. Most furious anger had been rising within him.
It was about to burst when there had suddenly come to its control the
thought, "These two aren't getting at you for any love of England, for
any patriotic reason. That's not it. Don't bother about that. Man alive,
don't mix them up in what you feel about these things. Don't go
cheapening what you think about England. Theirs is another reason." He
said very slowly, "I never told you, perhaps I ought to have told you at
the time, that I was refused for the Army some while ago."
Mr. Fortune's watch slipped through his fingers to the full length of
his chain. Twyning got up and went over to a bookcase and stared at it.
Mr. Fortune heaved in the line with an agitated hand over hand motion.
"I'd no idea! My dear fellow, I'd no idea! How very admirable of you!
When was this? After that big meeting in the Corn exchange the other
day?"
"Don't tell them when it was," said Sabre's mind. He said, "No, rather
before that. I was rejected on medical grounds."
"Well, well!" said Mr. Fortune. "Well, well!" He gave the suggestion of
being unable to array his thoughts against this surprising turn of the
day. "Most creditable. Twyning, do you hear that?"
Twyning spun around from the bookcase and came forward. "Eh? Sorry, I'm
afraid I wasn't listening."
"Our excellent Sabre has offered himself for enlistment and been
rejected."
Twyning said, "Have you, by Jove! Jolly good. What bad luck being turned
down. What was it?"
Sabre moved across to his room. "Heart."
"Was it, really? By Jove, and you look fit enough, too, old man. Fancy,
heart! Fancy--Jolly sporting of you. Fancy--Oh, I say, old man, do let's
have a look at your paper if you've got it on you. I want to see one of
those things."
Sabre was at his door. "What paper?"
"Your rejection paper, old man. I've never seen one. Only if you've got
it on you."
"I haven't got one."
"Not got one! You must have, old man."
"Well, I haven't. I was seen privately. I'm rather friendly with them up
at the barracks."
"Oh, yes, of course. Wonder they didn't give you a paper, though."
"Well, they didn't."
"Quite so, old man. Quite so. Funny, that's all."
Sabre paused on the threshold. He perfectly well understood the
villainous implication. Vile, intolerable! But of what service to take
it up?--To hear Twyning's laugh and his "My dear old chap, as if I
should think such a thing!" He passed into his room. The thought he had
had which had arrested his anger at Mr. Fortune's hints, revealing this
incident in another light, was, "They want to get rid of me."
V
In August, the anniversary month of the war, he again offered himself
for enlistment and was again rejected, but this time after a longer
scrutiny: the standard was not at its first height of perfection.
Earnshaw, Colonel Rattray, all the remnant of his former friends, were
gone to the front: Sabre submitted himself through the ordinary channels
and this time received what Twyning had called his "paper." He did not
show it to Twyning, nor mention either to him or to Mr. Fortune that he
had tried again. "Again! most creditable of you, my dear Sabre." "Again,
have you, though? By Jove, that's sporting of you. Did they give you a
paper this time, old man?" No. Not much. Feeling as he felt about the
war, acutely aware as he was of the partners' interest in the matter,
that, he felt, could not be borne.
But on this occasion he told Mabel.
The war had not altered his relations with Mabel. He had had the feeling
that it ought to bring them closer together, to make her more
susceptible to his attempts to do the right thing by her. But it did not
bring them closer together: the accumulating months, the imperceptibly
increasing strangeness and tension and high pitch of the war atmosphere
increased, rather, her susceptibility to those characteristics of his
which were most impossible to her. He felt things with draught too deep
and with burthen too capacious for the navigability of her mind; and
here was an ever-present thing, this (in her phrase) most unsettling
war, which must be taken (in her view) on a high, brisk note that was as
impossible to him as was his own attitude towards the war to her. The
effect of the war, in this result, was but to sunder them on a new
dimension: whereas formerly he had learned not to join with her on
subjects his feelings about which he had been taught to shrink from
exposing before her, now the world contained but one subject; there was
no choice and there was no upshot but clash of incompatibility. His
feelings were daily forced to the ordeal; his ideas daily exasperated
her. The path he had set himself was not to mind her abuse of his
feelings, and he tried with some success not to mind; but (in his own
expression, brooding in his mind's solitude) they riled her and he had
nothing else to offer her; they riled her and he had set himself not to
rile her. It was like desiring to ease a querulous invalid and having in
the dispensary but a single--and a detested--palliative.
Things were not better; they were worse.--But he made his efforts. The
matter of telling her (when he tried in August) that he thought he ought
to join the Army was one, and it came nearest to establishing pleasant
relations. That it revealed a profound difference of sensibility was
nothing. He blamed himself for causing that side to appear.
Her comment when, on the eve of his attempt, he rather diffidently
acquainted her with his intention, was, "Do you really think you ought
to?" This was not enthusiastic; but he went ahead with it and made a
joke, which amused her, about how funny it would be if she had to start
making "comforts" for him at the War Knitting League which she was
attending with great energy at the Garden Home. He found, as they
talked, that it never occurred to her but that it was as an officer that
he would be going, and something warned him not to correct her
assumption. He found with pleased surprise quite a friendly chat afoot
between them. She only began to fall away in interest when he, made
forgetful by this new quality in their contact, allowed his deeper
feelings to find voice. Once started, he was away before he had realised
it, in how one couldn't help feeling about England and how utterly
glorious would be his own sensations if he could actually get into
uniform and feel that England had admitted him to be a part of her.
She looked at the clock.
His face was reddening in its customary signal of his enthusiasm. He
noticed her glance, but was not altogether checked. He went on quickly,
"Well, look here. I must tell you this. I'll tell you what I'll say to
myself first thing if I really do get in. A thing out of the Psalms. By
Jove, an absolutely terrific thing, Mabel. In the Forty-fifth. Has old
Bag--has Boom Bagshaw told you people up at the church what absolutely
magnificent reading the Psalms are just now, in this war?"
She shook her head. "We sing them every Sunday, of course. But I don't
see how the Psalms--you mean the Bible Psalms, don't you?--can have
anything to do with war."
"Oh, but they have. They're absolutely hung full of it. Half of them are
the finest battle chants ever written. You ought to read them, Mabel;
every one ought to be reading them these days. Well, this verse I'm
telling you about. I say, do listen, I won't keep you a minute. It's in
that one where there comes in a magnificent chant to some princess who
was being brought to marriage to some foreign king--"
Mabel's dispersing attention took arms. "To a princess! However can it
be? It's the Psalms. You do mean the Bible Psalms, don't you?"
He said quickly, "Oh, well, never mind that. Look here, this is it. I
shall say it to myself directly I get in, and then often and often
again. It ought to be printed on a card and given to every recruit. Just
listen:
"Good luck have thou with thine honour; ride on, because of the
word of truth, of meekness and of righteousness: and thy right hand
shall show thee terrible things.
"Isn't that terrific? Isn't it tremendous? By Jove, it--"
For the first time in her married life she looked at him, in this
humour, not distastefully but curiously. His flushed face and shining
eyes! Whatever about? He was perfectly incomprehensible to her. She got
up. She said, "Yes--but 'Ride on'--of course you're not going in the
cavalry, are you?"
He said, "Oh, well. Sorry. It's just a thing, you know. Yes, it's your
bedtime, I'm afraid. I've kept you up, gassing. Well, dream good luck
for me to-morrow."
His thoughts, when she had gone from the room, went, "A better evening!
That's the way! I can do it, you see, if I try. That other thing doesn't
matter. I was a fool to drag that in. She doesn't understand. Yes,
that's the way!"
He sat late, happily. If only he could get past the doctor to-morrow!
VI
That's the way! But on the following evening the way was not to be
recaptured. The old way was restored. He was enormously cast down by his
rejection. When he got back that night he went straight in to her. "I
say, they've rejected me. They won't have me." His face was working.
"It's that cursed heart."
She slightly puckered her brows. "Oh--d'you know, for the minute I
couldn't think what on earth you were talking about. Were you rejected?
Well, I must say I'm glad. Up at the Knitting League Mrs. Turner was
saying her son saw you at the recruiting office after you were rejected
and that it was into the ranks you were going. You never told me that. I
must say I don't think you ought to have thought about the ranks
without telling me. And I wouldn't have liked it. I wouldn't have liked
it at all. I think you ought to be very thankful you were rejected. I'm
sure I am."
He said flatly, "_Why_ are you? Thankful--good lord--you don't
know--what do you mean, I ought to be thankful?"
"Because you ought to be an officer, if you go at all. It's not the
place for you in your position. And apart from anything else--" She gave
her sudden burst of laughter.
He felt arise within him violent and horrible feelings about her. "What
are you laughing at?"
"Well, do just imagine what you'd look like in private soldier's
clothing!" She laughed very heartily again.
He turned away.