In January, 1917, it began to occur to Tom Whitelaw that he might have
to go and fight. He might possibly be killed. Worse than that, he might
be crippled or blinded or otherwise rendered helpless.
He had followed the war hitherto as one who looks on at tragedies
which have nothing to do with himself. Europe was to him no more
than a geographical term. Intense where his own aims and duties were
concerned, but lacking the imaginative faculty, he had never been able
to take England, France, and Germany as realities. The horrors of which
he read in newspapers moved him less than a big human story on the
stage. That the struggle might suck him into itself, smashing him as
a tornado smashes a tree, came home to him first at a Sunday evening
supper with the Ansleys.
"If it does come," Philip Ansley said, complacently, "a lot of you
young fellows will have to go and be shot up."
"I'm on," Guy announced readily. "If it hadn't been for the family I'd
have enlisted in Canada long ago."
His mother took this seriously. "Well that, thank God, can't happen to
us. Darling, with your--"
"Oh, yes, with my fat! Same old bunk! But, mother, I'm losing weight
like a snowbank in April. It's _running_ away. I'm exercising; I'm
taking Turkish baths; I don't hardly eat a damn thing. I weighed
two-fifty-three six weeks ago, and now I'm down to two-forty-nine."
"Don't worry," his father assured him. "You'll get there. You'll make a
fine target for Big Bertha. Couldn't miss you any more than she would a
whole platoon."
"Philip, how can you!"
"Oh, they're all crazy to go." He looked toward Tom. "Suppose you are
too. Exactly the big husky type they like to blow into hash."
Turning to help himself from the dish Pilcher happened to be passing,
Tom's eyes encountered Hildred's. Seated beside him, she had veered
round on hearing her father's words. The alarm in her face was a
confession.
"Oh, I can wait," he tried to laugh. "If I've got to go I will, but I'm
not tumbling over myself to get there."
A half hour later Mrs. Ansley and the three younger members of the
party were in the music room, where Guy was at the piano. The mother
sat on a gilded French canapé, making an excuse for keeping Hildred
beside her. Tom had already begun to guess that the friendship between
Hildred and himself was making Mrs. Ansley uneasy. For all these
years she had taken him as Guy's protégé with whom "anything of that
kind" was impossible. But lately she had so maneuvered as not to
leave Hildred and himself alone. Whether Hildred noticed it or not
he couldn't tell, since she never made a counter-move. If she was not
unconscious of her mother's strategy she let it appear as if she was.
All the while Guy chimed out the _Carillon de Cythère_ of Couperin
le Grand Mrs. Ansley patted Hildred's hand, and rejoiced in her two
children. Guy's touch was velvety because it was Guy's; Couperin le
Grand was a noble composer because Guy played him. Her amorphous person
quivered to the measure, with a tremor here and a dilation there, like
the contraction and expansion of a medusa floating in the sea.
But when Guy had tinkled out the final notes she bubbled to her feet.
"Darling, I don't think I ever heard you play as well as you're doing
this winter. I think if you were to give a private recital...."
In the general movement Tom lost the rest of this suggestion, but
caught on again at a whisper which he overheard.
"Hildred, I simply must go and take my corsets off. I've had them on
ever since I dressed for church. It's Nellie's evening out. I'll have
to ask you to come and help me."
But as her mother was kissing Guy good-night Hildred managed to say
beneath her breath, "Don't go away. I'll try to come back. There's
something I want to speak about."
Left to themselves, the two young men exchanged bits of college gossip
while Guy twirled on the piano stool. They had the more to say to each
other since they met less often than in their year at Gore Hall. Guy
was now in Westmorley Court, and Tom in one of the cheaper residential
halls in the Yard. Their associations would have tended to put them
apart, had not Guy's need of moral strengthening, to say nothing of a
dog-like loyalty, driven him back at irregular intervals upon his old
friend. Now and then, too, when his mother insisted on his coming home
for the Sunday evening meal, Hildred suggested that he bring Tom.
"Let's hike it in by the Embankment," was Guy's way of extending this
invitation. "I don't mind if you come along, and Hildred likes it. Dad
don't care one way or another. He isn't democratic like Hildred and me;
but he's only a snob when it comes to his position as one of the grand
panjandrums of Boston. Mother kicks, of course; but then she'd accept
the devil himself if I was to tote him behind me."
Long usage had enabled Tom to translate these sentiments into terms of
eagerness. Guy really wanted him. He was Guy's haven of refuge as truly
as when they had been growing boys. Every few weeks Guy turned from his
"bunch of sports," or his "bunch of sports" left him in the lurch, so
that he came back like a homing pigeon to its roost. Tom was fond of
him, was sorry for him, bore with him. Moreover, beyond these tactless
invitations there was Hildred.
They fell to talking of Tad Whitelaw. Guy swung round to the piano,
beating out a few bars of throbbing, deep-seated grief.
"One more little song and dance and Tad'll get this. Know what it is?"
Confessing that he didn't know, Tom learned that it was Händel's Dead
March in "Saul."
"Played at all the British military funerals, to make people who feel
bad enough already feel a damn sight worse. Be our morning and evening
hymn when we get into the trenches."