A LMOST before the confusion of a new term had subsided,
Michael put his name down to play football again, and it was
something in the nature of an occasion when in the first
sweltering Middle-side game he scored six tries. Already his
contemporaries had forgotten that he was once a fleet and
promising three-quarter, so that his resurrection was regarded
as an authentic apparition, startling in its unexpectedness.
Michael was the only person not much surprized when he was
invited by Abercrombie to play as substitute for one of the
Seniors absent from a Big-side trial. Yet even Michael was
surprized when in the opening match between Classics and
Moderns he read his name on the notice-board as sixteenth man;
and when, through the continued illness of the first choice, he
actually found himself walking on to the field between the
black lines of spectators, he was greatly content. Yet the
finest thrill of all came when in the line-out he found himself
on the left wing with Alan, with Alan not very unlike the old
Alan even now in the coveted Tyrian vest of the Classical First
Fifteen.
Into that game Michael poured all he felt of savage detestation
for everything that the Modern side stood for. Not an opponent
was collared that did not in his falling agony take on the
likeness of Percy Garrod; not a Modern half-back was hurled
into touch who was not in Michael’s imagination insolent with
damnably destructive theories of life. It was exhilarating, it
was superb, it was ineffable, the joy of seeing Alan hand off a
Modern bounder
and swing the ball out low to him crouching vigilant upon the
left. It was intoxicating, it was divine to catch the ball,
and with zigzag leap and plunge to tear wildly on towards the
Modern goal, to hear the Classical lower boys shriek their
high-voiced thrilling exhortations, to hear the maledictions
of the enemy ricochetting from a force of speed that spun its
own stability. Back went the ball to Alan, shouting with
flushed face on his right, just as one of the Modern
three-quarters, with iron grip round Michael’s faltering
knees, fetched him crashing down.
“Good pass,” cried the delighted Classical boys, and “Well run, sir,
well run, sir!” they roared as Alan whizzed the ball along to the
dapper, the elusive, the incomparable Terry. “Go in, yourself,” they
prayed, as Terry like a chamois bounded straight at the despairing
full-back, then with a gasp that triumphed over the vibrant hush,
checked himself, and in one peerless spring breasted the shoulders of
the back to come thudding down upon the turf with a glorious try.
Now the game swayed desperately, and with Alan ever beside him
Michael lived through every heroic fight of man. They were at
Thermopylae, stemming the Persian charges with hack and thrust
and sweeping cut; they were at Platea with Aristides and
Pausanias, vowing death rather than subjugation; the body of
Terry beneath a weight of Modern forwards, crying, “Let me up,
you stinkers!” was fought for as long ago beneath the walls of
Troy the battle raged about the body of Patroclus. And when the
game was over, when the Moderns had been defeated for the first
time in four resentful years of scientific domination, when the
Classical Fifteen proudly strode from the field, immortal in
muddied Tyrian, it was easy enough to walk across the gravel
arm-in-arm with Alan and, while still the noise of the contest
and the cries of the onlookers echoed in their ears, it was
easy to span the
icy floes of two drifting years in one moment of careless,
artless intercourse.
“You’ll get your Second Fifteen colours,” said Alan confidently.
“Not this year,” Michael thought.
“You’ll get your Third Fifteen cap for a snip.”
“Yes, I ought to get that,” Michael agreed.
“Well, that’s damned good, considering you haven’t played for two
years,” Alan vowed.
And as he spoke Michael wondered if Alan had ever wished for his
company in the many stressful games from which he had been absent.
Michael now became one of that group of happy immortals in the
entrance-hall, whose attitudes of noble ease graced the hot-water pipes
below the ‘board’ on which the news of the school fluctuated daily.
This society, to which nothing gave admission but a profound sense of
one’s own right to enter it, varied from time to time only in details.
As a whole composition it was immutable, as permanent, as decorative
and as appropriate as the frieze of the Parthenon. From twenty minutes
past nine until twenty-seven minutes past nine, from twenty-five
minutes past eleven until twenty-eight minutes past eleven, from ten
minutes to three until two minutes to three the heroes of the school
met in a large familiarity whose Olympian laughter awed the fearful
small boy that flitted uneasily past and chilled the slouching senior
that rashly paused to examine the notices in assertion of an unearned
right. Even masters entering through the swinging doors seemed glad to
pass beyond the range of the heroes’ patronizing contemplation.
Michael found a pedestal here, and soon idealized the heedless
stupidity of these immortals into a Lacedemonian rigour which
seemed to him very fine. He accepted their unimaginative
standards, their coarseness, their brutality
as virtues, and in them he saw the consummation of all that
England should cherish. He successfully destroyed a legend
that he was clever, and though at first he found it difficult
to combat the suspicion of æsthetic proclivities and religious
eccentricity, even of poetic ambitions which overshadowed his
first welcome, he was at last able to get these condoned as a
blemish upon an otherwise diverting personality with a tongue
nimble enough to make heroes guffaw. Moreover, he was a friend
of Alan, who with his slim disdain and perfectly stoic bearing
was irreproachable, and since Michael frankly admired his new
friends, and since he imparted just enough fantasy to their
stolid fellowship to lend it a faint distinction, he was very
soon allowed to preserve a flavour of oddity, and became in
time arbiter of whatever elegance they could claim. Michael on
his side was most anxious to conform to every prejudice of the
Olympians, esteeming their stolidity far above his own natural
demeanour, envious too of their profoundly ordinary point of
view and their commonplace expression of it.
Upon this assembly descended the news of war with the Transvaal, and
for three months at least Michael shared in the febrile elation and
arrogance and complacent outlook of the average Englishman. The
Olympians recalled from early schooldays the forms of heroes who were
even now gazetted to regiments on their way to the front, and who but a
little while ago had lounged against these very hot-water pipes.
Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates lamented their ill-luck in being born
too young, and consoled themselves with proclaiming that after all the
war was so easy that scarcely were they missing anything at all. Then
came the first low rumble of defeat, the first tremulous breath of
doubt.
Word went round that meetings were being held to stop the war,
and wrathfully the heroes mounted a London
Road Car omnibus, snatched the Union Jack from its socket, and
surged into Hammersmith Town Hall to yell and hoot at the
farouche Irishmen and dirty Socialists who were mouthing their
hatred of the war and exulting in the unlucky capture of two
regiments. The School Cadet Corps could not accept the mass of
recruits that demanded to be enrolled. Drums were bought by
subscription, and in the armoury down under the School tattoo
and rataplan voiced the martial spirit of St. James’.
One day Alan brought back the news that his Uncle Kenneth was ordered
to the front, that he would sail from Southampton in a few days. Leave
was granted Alan to go and say good-bye, and in the patriotic fervour
that now burned even in the hearts of schoolmasters, Michael was
accorded leave to accompany him.
They travelled down to Southampton on a wet, windy November day, proud
to think as they sat opposite one another in the gloomy
railway-carriage that in some way since this summons they were both
more intimately connected with the war.
In a dreary Southampton hotel they met Mrs. Ross, and Michael thought
that she was very beautiful and very brave waiting in the chilly
fly-blown dining-room of the hotel. Three years of marriage scarcely
seemed to have altered his dear Miss Carthew; yet there was a dignity,
a carven stillness that Michael had never associated with the figure of
his governess, or perhaps it was that now he was older, more capable of
appreciating the noble lines of this woman.
It gave Michael a sentimental pang to watch Mrs. Ross presiding
over their lunch as she had in the past presided over so many
lunches. They spoke hardly at all of Captain Ross’s departure,
but they talked of Nancy, and how well she was doing as
secretary to Lord Perham, of Mrs. Carthew, still among the
roses and plums of Cobble Place, and of a
hundred jolly bygone events. Mrs. Ross was greatly interested
to hear of Stella, and greatly amused by Michael’s arrangement
of her future.
Then Captain Ross came in, and after a few jokes, which fell very flat
in the bleak dining-room—perhaps because the two boys were in awe of
this soldier going away to the wars, or perhaps because they knew that
there was indeed nothing to joke about—said:
“The regiment comes in by the 2.45. We shall embark at once. What’s the
time now?”
Everyone, even the mournful waiter, stared up at the wall. It was two
o’clock.
“Half an hour before I need go down to the station,” said Captain Ross,
and then he began to whistle very quietly. The wind was getting more
boisterous, and the rain rattled on the windows as if, without, a
menacing hand flung gravel for a signal.
“Can you two boys amuse yourselves for a little while?” asked Captain
Ross.
“Oh, rather,” said Michael and Alan.
“I’ve just one or two things I wanted to say to you, dear,” said
Captain Ross, turning to his wife. They left the dining-room together.
Michael and Alan sat silently at the table, crumbling bread and making
patterns in the salt-cellar. They could hear the gaunt clock ticking
away on the stained wall above them. From time to time far-off bugles
sounded above the tossing wind. So they sat for twenty solemn minutes.
Then the husband and wife came back. The bill was paid; the door of the
hotel swung back; the porter said ‘Good luck, sir,’ very solemnly, and
in a minute they were walking down the street towards the
railway-station through the wind and rain.
“I’ll see you on the dock in a moment,” said Captain Ross.
“You’d better take a cab down and wait under cover.”
Thence onwards for an hour or more all was noise, excitement and bustle
in contrast to the brooding, ominous calm of the dingy hotel. Regiments
were marching down to the docks; bands were playing; there were drums
and bugles, shouts of command, clatter of horses, the occasional rumble
of a gun-carriage, enquiries, the sobbing of children and women, oaths,
the hooting of sirens, a steam-engine’s whistle, and at last, above
everything else, was heard the wail of approaching pipes.
Nearer and nearer swirled the maddening, gladdening,
heart-rending tune they played; the Kintail Highlanders were
coming; they swung into view; they halted, company after
company of them; there were shouts of command very close;
suddenly Michael found his hand clenched and saw Captain Ross’s
grey eyes smiling good-bye; Alan’s sleeve seemed to have a
loose thread that wanted biting off; the sirens of the great
transport trumpeted angrily and, resounding through the sinking
hearts of those who were not going, robbed them of whatever
pluck was left. Everywhere in view sister, mother, and wife
were held for a moment by those they loved. The last man was
aboard; the gangway was hauled up; the screw pounded the water;
the ship began to glide away from the dock with slow, sickening
inevitableness. Upon the air danced handkerchiefs, feeble
fluttering envoys of the passionate farewells they flung to the
wind. Spellbound, intolerably powerless, the watchers on shore
waved and waved; smaller grew the faces leaning over the rail;
smaller and smaller, until at last they were unrecognizable to
those left behind; and now the handkerchiefs were waved in a
new fever of energy as if with the fading of the faces there
had fallen upon the assembly a fresh communal grief, a grief
that, no longer regarding personal heartbreaks, frantically
pursued the great graceful ship herself whose prow was
straining for the open sea. Still, though now scarcely even
were
human forms discernible upon the decks, the handkerchiefs
jigged on for horribly mechanic gestures, as if those who
waved them were become automatons through sorrow.
Glad of the musty peace of a railway-carriage after the tears and
confusion of the docks, Michael and Alan and Mrs. Ross spoke very
little on the journey back to London.
“Aren’t you going to stay the night with us at Richmond?” Alan asked.
“No, I must get down to Cobble Place. My large son has already gone
there with his nurse.”
“Your son?” exclaimed Michael. “Oh, of course, I forgot.”
So Alan and he put Mrs. Ross into her train and rode back together on
an omnibus, proud citizens of an Empire whose inspiration they had
lately beheld in action.
Next morning the Olympians on their frieze were considerably impressed
by Michael’s account of the stirring scene at Southampton.
“Oh, the war will be over almost at once. We’re not taking any risks.
We’re sending out enough men to conquer more than the Transvaal,” said
the heroes wisely.
But soon there came the news of fresh defeats, and when in the middle
of January school reassembled there were actually figures missing from
the familiar composition itself. Actually contemporary heroes had left,
had enlisted in the Volunteers and Yeomanry, were even now waiting for
orders and meantime self-consciously wandering round the school-grounds
in militant khaki. Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates passed with
incredible ease; boys were coming to school in mourning; Old Jacobeans
died bravely, and their deaths were recorded in the school magazine;
one Old Jacobean gained the Victoria Cross, and everyone walked from
prayers very proudly upon that day.
Michael was still conventionally patriotic, but sometimes
with the progress of the war a doubt would creep into his mind
whether this increasing blazonry of a country’s emotion were
so fine as once he had thought it, whether England were losing
some of her self-control under reverses, and, worst of all,
whether in her victories she were becoming blatant. He
remembered how he had been sickened by the accounts of
American hysteria during the war with Spain, whose weaker
cause, true to his earliest inclinations, he had been
compelled to champion. And now when the tide was turning in
England’s favour, when every other boy came to school wearing
a khaki tie quartered with blue or red and some of them even
came tricked out with Union Jack waistcoats, when the wearing
of a British general’s head on a button and the hissing of
Kruger’s name at a pantomime were signs of high emotion, when
many wastrels of his acquaintance had uniforms, and when the
patriotism of their friends consisted of making these
undignified supernumeraries drunk, Michael began to wonder
whether war conducted by a democracy had ever been much more
than a circus for the populace.
And when one bleak morning in early spring he read in a fatal column
that Captain Kenneth Ross had been killed in action, his smouldering
resentment blazed out, and as he hurried to school with sickened heart
and eyes in a mist of welling tears, he could have cursed everyone of
the rosetted patriots for whose vainglory such a death paid the price.
Alan, as he expected, was not at school, and Michael spent a restless,
miserable morning. He hated the idea of discussing the news with his
friends of the hot-water pipes, and when one by one the unimaginative,
flaccid comments flowed easily forth upon an event that was too great
for them even to hear, much less to speak of, Michael’s rage burst
forth:
“For God’s sake, you asses, don’t talk so much. I’m sick of
this war. I’m sick of reading that a lot of decent
chaps have died for nothing, because it is for nothing, if
this country is never again going to be able to stand defeat
or victory. War isn’t anything to admire in itself. All the
good of war is what it makes of the people who fight, and what
it makes of the people who stay at home.”
The Olympians roared with laughter, and congratulated Michael on his
humorous oration.
“Can’t you see that I’m serious? that it is important to be gentlemen?”
Michael shouted.
“Who says we aren’t gentlemen?” demanded a very vapid, but slightly
bellicose hero.
“Nobody says _you_ aren’t a gentleman, you ass; at least nobody
says you eat peas with a knife, but, my God, if you think it’s
decent to wear that damned awful button in your coat when
fellows are being killed every day for you, for your pleasure,
for your profit, for your existence, all I can say is I don’t.”
Michael felt that the climax of this speech was somewhat weak, and he
relapsed into silence, biting his nails with the unexpressed rage of
limp words.
“You might as well say that the School oughtn’t to cheer at a football
match,” said Abercrombie the Captain.
“I would say so, if I thought that all the cheerers never expected and
never even intended to play themselves. That’s why professional
football is so rotten.”
“You were damned glad to get your Third Fifteen cap,” Abercrombie
pointed out gruffly.
The laugh that followed this rebuke from the mightiest of the immortals
goaded Michael into much more than he had intended to say when he began
his unlucky tirade.
“Oh, was I?” he sneered. “That’s just where you’re quite wrong,
because, as a matter of fact, I don’t intend to play football
any more, if School Footer is simply to be a show for a lot of
wasters. I’m not going to exert myself like an acrobat in a
circus, if it all means nothing.”
The heroes regarded Michael with surprize and distaste; they shrank
from him coldly as if his unreasonable outburst in some way involved
their honour. They laughed uncomfortably, each one hiding himself
behind another’s shoulders, as if they mocked a madman. The bell for
school rang, and the heroes left him. Michael, still enraged, went back
to his class-room. Then he wondered if Alan would hate him for having
made his uncle’s death an occasion for this breach of a school’s code
of manners. He supposed sadly that Alan would not understand any more
than the others what he felt. He cursed himself for having let these
ordinary, obvious, fat-headed fools impose upon his imagination, as to
lead him to consider them worthy of his respect. He had wasted three
months in this society; he had thought he was happy and had
congratulated himself upon at last finding school endurable. School was
a prison, such as it always had been. He was seventeen and a schoolboy.
It was ignominious. At one o’clock he waited for nobody, but walked
quickly home to lunch, still fuming with the loss of his self-control
and, as he looked back on the scene, of his dignity.
His mother came down to lunch with signs of a morning’s tears, and
Michael looked at her in astonishment. He had not supposed that she
would be much affected by the death of Captain Ross, and he enquired if
she had been writing to Mrs. Ross.
“No, dear,” said Mrs. Fane. “Why should I have written to Mrs. Ross
this morning?”
“Didn’t you see in the paper?” Michael asked.
“See what?”
“That Captain Ross was killed in action.”
“Oh, no,” gasped his mother, white and shuddering. “Oh, Michael, how
horrible, and on the same day.”
“The same day as what?”
Mrs. Fane looked at her son for a moment very intently,
as if she were minded to tell him something. Then the
parlour-maid came into the room, and she seemed to change her
mind, and finally said in perfectly controlled accents:
“The same day as the announcement is made that—that your old friend
Lord Saxby has raised a troop of horse—Saxby’s horse. He is going to
Africa almost at once.”
“Another gentleman going to be killed for the sake of these rowdy swine
at home!” said Michael savagely.
“Michael! What do you mean? Don’t you admire a man for—for trying to do
something for his country?”
“It depends on the country,” Michael answered, “If you think it’s worth
while doing anything for what England is now, I don’t. I wouldn’t raise
a finger, if London were to be invaded to-morrow.”
“I don’t understand you, dearest boy. You’re talking rather like a
Radical, and rather like old Conservative gentlemen I remember as a
girl. It’s such a strange mixture. I don’t think you quite understand
what you’re saying.”
“I understand perfectly what I’m saving,” Michael contradicted.
“Well, then I don’t think you ought to talk like that. I don’t think
it’s kind or considerate to me and, after you’ve just heard about
Captain Ross’s death, I think it’s irreverent. And I thought you
attached so much importance to reverence,” Mrs. Fane added in a
complaining tone.
Michael was vexed by his mother’s failure to understand his point of
view, and became harder and more perverse every minute.
“Lord Saxby would be shocked to hear you talking like this, shocked and
horrified,” she went on.
“I’m very sorry for hurting Lord Saxby’s feelings,”
said Michael with elaborate sarcasm. “But really I don’t see
that it matters much to him what I think.”
“He wants to see you before he sails,” said Mrs. Fane.
“To see me? Why?” gasped Michael. “Why on earth should he want to see
me?”
“Well, he’s—he’s in a way the head of our family.”
“He’s not taken much interest in me up to the present. It’s rather odd
he should want to see me now when he’s going away.”
“Michael, don’t be so bitter and horrid. Lord Saxby’s so kind, and
he—and he—might never come back.”
“Dearest mother,” said Michael, “I think you’re a little unreasonable.
Why should I go and meet a man now, and perhaps grow to like him—and
then say good-bye to him, perhaps for ever?”
“Michael, do not talk like that. You are selfish and brutal. You’ve
grown up to be perfectly heartless, although you can be charming. I
think you’d better not see Lord Saxby. He’d be ashamed of you.”
Michael rose in irritation.
“My dear mother, what on earth business is it of Lord Saxby’s how I
behave? I don’t understand what you mean by being ashamed of me. I have
lived all these years, and I’ve seen Lord Saxby once. He sent me some
Siamese stamps and some soldiers. I dare say he’s a splendid chap. I
know I liked him terrifically, when I was a kid, and if he’s killed I
shall be sorry—I shall be more than sorry—I shall be angry, furious
that for the sake of these insufferable rowdies another decent chap is
going to risk his life.”
Mrs. Fane put out her hand to stop Michael’s flowing tirade, but he
paid no attention, talking away less to her than to himself. Indeed,
long before he had finished, she made no pretence of listening, but
merely sat crying quietly.
“I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about this war,”
Michael declared. “I’m beginning to doubt whether it’s a just
war, whether we didn’t simply set out on it for brag and
money. I’m not sure that I want to see the Boers conquered.
They’re a small independent nation, and they have
old-fashioned ideas and they’re narrow-minded
Bible-worshippers, but there’s something noble about them,
something much nobler than there is in these rotten
adventurers who go out to fight them. Of course, I don’t mean
by that people like Captain Ross or Lord Saxby. They’re
gentlemen. They go either because it’s their duty or because
they think it’s their duty. And they’re the ones that get
killed. You don’t hear of these swaggerers in khaki being
killed. I haven’t heard yet of many of them even going to the
front at all. Oh, mother, I am fed up with the rotten core of
everything that looks so fine on the outside.”
Mrs. Fane was now crying loud enough to make Michael stop in sudden
embarrassment.
“I say, mother, don’t cry. I expect I’ve been talking nonsense,” he
softly told her.
“I don’t know where you get these views. I was always so proud of you.
I thought you were charming and mysterious, and you’re simply vulgar!”
“Vulgar?” echoed Michael in dismay.
Mrs. Fane nodded vehemently.
“Oh, well, if I’m vulgar, I’ll go.”
Michael hurried to the door.
“Where are you going?” asked his mother in alarm.
“Oh, Lord, only to school. That’s what makes a scene like this so
funny. After I’ve worked myself up and made you angry——”
“Not angry, dear. Only grieved,” interrupted his mother.
“You were more than grieved when you said I was vulgar. At
least I hope you were. But, after it’s all over,
I go trotting off like a good little boy to school—to
school—to school. Oh, mother, what is the good of expecting me
to believe in the finest fellows in the world being killed,
while I’m still at school? What’s the good of making me more
wretched, more discontented, more alive to my own futile
existence by asking me now, when he’s going away, to make
friends with Lord Saxby? Oh, darling mother, can’t you realize
that I’m no longer a little boy who wants to clap his hands at
the sight of a red coat? Let me kiss you, mother, I’m sorry I
was vulgar, but I’ve minded so dreadfully about Captain Ross,
and it’s all for nothing.”
Mrs. Fane let herself be petted by her son, but she did not again ask
Michael to see Lord Saxby before he went away to the war.
Alan was still absent at afternoon school, and Michael, disdaining his
place in the heroic group, passed quickly into the class-room and read
in Alison of Salamanca and Albuera and of the storming of Badajoz,
wondering what had happened to his country since those famous dates. He
supposed that then was the nation’s zenith, for from what he could make
out of the Crimean War, that had been as little creditable to England
as this miserable business of the present.
In the afternoon Michael thought he would walk over to Notting
Dale and see Mr. Viner—perhaps he would understand some of his
indignation—and this evening when all was quiet he must write
to Mrs. Ross. On his way down the Kensington Road he met
Wilmot, whom he had not seen since the summer, for luckily
about the time of the row Wilmot had been going abroad and was
only lately back. He recognized Wilmot’s fanciful walk from a
distance, and nearly crossed over to the opposite pavement to
avoid meeting him; but on second thoughts decided he would like
to hear a fresh opinion of the war.
“Why, here’s a delightful meeting,” said Wilmot, “I have been wondering
why you didn’t come round to see me. You got my cards?”
“Oh, yes, rather,” said Michael.
“I have been in Greece and Italy. I wish you had been with me. I
thought of you, as I sat in the ruined rose-gardens of Paestum. You’ve
no idea how well those columns of honey-coloured Travertine would
become you, Michael. But I’m so glad to see that you have not yet
clothed yourself in khaki. This toy war is so utterly absurd. I feel as
if I were living in a Christmas bazaar. How dreadfully these puttees
and haversacks debase even the most beautiful figures. What is a
haversack? It sounds so Lenten, so eloquent of mortification. I have
discovered some charming Cyprian cigarettes. Do come and let me watch
you enjoy them. How young you look, and yet how old!”
“I’m feeling very fit,” said Michael loftily.
“How abruptly informative you are! What has happened to you?”
“I’m thinking about this war.”
“Good gracious,” cried Wilmot in mincing amazement. “What an
odd subject. Soon you will be telling me that by moonlight you
brood upon the Albert Memorial. But perhaps your mind is full
of trophies. Perhaps you are picturing to yourself in
Piccadilly a second column of Trajan displacing the amorous and
acrobatic Cupid who now presides over the painted throng. Come
with me some evening to the Long Bar at the Criterion, and
while the Maori-like barmaids titter in their _dévergondage_ ,
we will select the victorious site and picture to ourselves the
Boer commanders chained like hairy Scythians to the chariot of
whatever absurd general chooses to accept the triumph awarded
to him by our legislative _bourgeoisie_ .”
“I think I must be getting on,” said Michael.
“How urgent! You speak like Phaeton or Icarus, and pray remember the
calamities that befell them. But seriously, when are you coming to see
me?”
“Oh, I’m rather busy,” said Michael briefly.
Wilmot looked at him curiously with his glittering eyes for a moment.
Then he spoke again:
“Farewell, Narcissus. Have you learnt that I was but a shallow pool in
which to watch your reflection? Did I flatter you too much or not
enough? Who shall say? But you know I’m always your friend, and when
this love-affair is done, I shall always be interested to hear the
legend of it told movingly when and where you will, but perhaps best of
all in October when the full moon lies like a huge apricot upon the
chimneys of the town. Farewell, Narcissus. Does she display your graces
very clearly?”
“I’m not in love with anybody, if that’s what you mean,” said Michael.
“No? But you are on the margin of a strange pool, and soon you will be
peeping over the bulrushes to stare at yourself again.”
Then Mr. Wilmot, making his pontifical and undulatory adieu, passed on.
“Silly ass!” said Michael to himself. “And he always thinks he knows
everything.”
Michael turned out of the noisy main road into the sylvan
urbanity of Holland Walk. A haze of tender diaphanous green
clung to the boles of the smirched elms, softening the sooty
decay that made their antiquity so grotesque and so
dishonourable. Michael sat down for a while on a bench,
inhaling the immemorial perfume of a London spring and
listening to the loud courtship of the blackbirds in the ragged
shrubberies that lined the railings of Holland Park. He was not
made any the more content with himself by this effluence of
revivified effort
that impregnated the air around him. He was out of harmony
with every impulse of the season, and felt just as tightly
fettered now as long ago he used to feel on waits by this same
line of blackened trees with Nurse to quell his lightest step
towards freedom. Where was Nurse now? The pungent odour of
privet blown along a dying wind of March was quick with old
memories of forbidden hiding-places, and he looked up, half
expectant of her mummified shape peering after his straying
steps round the gnarled and blackened trunk of the nearest
elm. Michael rose quickly and went on his way towards Notting
Dale. This Holland Walk had always been a haunted spot, not at
all a place to hearten one, especially where at the top it
converged to a silent passage between wooden palings whose
twinkling interstices and exudations of green slime had always
been queerly sinister. Even now Michael was glad when he could
hear again the noise of traffic in the Bayswater Road. As he
walked on towards Mr. Viner’s house he gave rein to fanciful
moralizings upon these two great roads on either side of the
Park that ran a parallel course, but never met. How foreign it
all seemed on this side with unfamiliar green omnibuses
instead of red, with never even a well-known beggar or
pavement-artist. The very sky had an alien look, seeming
vaster somehow than the circumscribed clouds of Kensington.
Perhaps after all the people of this intolerably surprizing
city were not so much to be blamed for their behaviour during
a period of war. They had nothing to hold them together, to
teach them to endure and enjoy, to suffer and rejoice in
company. These great main roads sweeping West and East with
multitudinous chimney-pots between were symbolic of the whole
muddle of existence.
“But what do I want?” Michael asked himself so loudly that an
errand-boy stayed his whistling and stared after him until he
turned the corner.
“I don’t know,” he muttered in the face of a fussy little woman, who
jumped aside to let him pass.
Soon he was deep in one of Mr. Viner’s arm-chairs and, without waiting
even to produce one of the attenuated pipes he still affected,
exclaimed with desolating conviction:
“I’m absolutely sick of everything!”
“What, again?” said the priest, smiling.
“It’s this war.”
“You’re not thinking of enlisting in the Imperial Yeomanry?”
“Oh, no, but a friend of mine—Alan Merivale’s uncle—has been killed. It
seems all wrong.”
“My dear old chap,” said Mr. Viner earnestly, “I’m sorry for you.”
“Oh, it isn’t me you’ve got to pity,” Michael cried. “I’d be glad of
his death. It’s the finest death a fellow can have. But there’s nothing
fine about it, when one sees these gibbering blockheads shouting and
yelling about nothing. I don’t know what’s the matter with England.”
“Is England any worse than the rest of the world?” asked Mr. Viner.
“All this wearing of buttons and khaki ties!” Michael groaned.
“But that’s the only way the man in the street can show his devotion.
You don’t object to ritualism, do you? You cross yourself and bow down.
The church has colours and lights and incense. Do all these dishonour
Our Lord’s death?”
“That’s different,” said Michael. “And anyway I don’t know that the
comparison is much good to me now. I think I’ve lost my faith. I am
sorry to shock you, Mr. Viner.”
“You don’t shock me at all, my dear boy.”
“Don’t I?” said Michael in slightly disappointed tones.
“You forget that a priest is more difficult to shock than anyone on
earth.”
“I like the way you take yourself as a typical priest. Very few of them
are like you.”
“Come, that’s rather a stupid remark, I think,” said Mr. Viner coldly.
“Is it? I’m sorry. It doesn’t seem to worry you very much that I’ve
lost my faith,” Michael went on in an aggrieved voice.
“No, because I don’t think you have. I’ve got a high enough opinion of
you to believe that if you really had lost your faith, you wouldn’t
plunge comfortably down into one of my arm-chairs and give me the
information in the same sort of tone you’d tell me you’d forgotten to
bring back a book I’d lent you.”
“I know you always find it very difficult to take me seriously,”
Michael grumbled. “I suppose that’s the right method with people like
me.”
“I thought you’d come up to talk about the South African War. If I’d
known the war was so near home, I shouldn’t have been so frivolous,”
said the priest. His eyes were so merry in the leaping firelight that
Michael was compelled against his will to smile.
“Of course, you make me laugh at the time and I forget how serious I
meant to be when I arrived, and it’s not until I’m at home again that I
realize I’m no nearer to what I wanted to say than when I came up,”
protested Michael.
“I’m not the unsympathetic boor you’d make me out,” Mr. Viner said.
“Oh, I perfectly understand that all this heart-searching
becomes a nuisance. But honestly, Mr. Viner, I think I’ve done
nothing long enough.”
“Then you do want to enlist?” said the priest quickly.
“Why must ‘doing’ mean only one thing nowadays? Surely South Africa
hasn’t got a monopoly of whatever’s being done,” Michael argued. “No, I
don’t want to enlist,” he went on. “And I don’t want to go into a
monastery, and I’m not sure that I really even want to go to church
again.”
“Give up going for a bit,” advised the priest.
Michael jumped up from the chair and walked over to the bay-window,
through which came a discordant sound of children playing in the street
outside.
“It’s impossible to be serious with you. I suppose you’re fed up with
people like me,” Michael complained. “I know I’m moody and irritating,
but I’ve got a lot to grumble about. I don’t seem to have any natural
inclination for any profession. I’m not a musical genius like my young
sister. That’s pretty galling, you know, really. After all, girls can
get along better than boys without any special gifts, and she simply
shines compared with me. I have no father. I’ve no idea who I was,
where I came from, what I’m going to be. I keep on trying to be
optimistic and think everything is good and beautiful, and then almost
at once it turns out bad and ugly.”
“Has your religion really turned out bad and ugly?” asked the priest
gently.
“Not right through, but here and there, yes.”
“The religion itself or the people who profess it?” Mr. Viner
persisted.
“Doesn’t it amount to the same thing ultimately?” Michael
parried. “But leave out religion for the moment, and consider
this war. The only justification for such a war is the moral
effect it has on the nations engaged. Now, I ask you, do you
sincerely believe there has been a trace of any purifying
influence since we started waving
Union Jacks last September? It’s no good; we simply have not
got it in us to stand defeat or victory. At any rate, if the
Boers win, it will mean the preservation of something. Whereas
if we win, we shall just destroy everything.”
“Michael, what do you think is the important thing for this country at
this moment?” Mr. Viner asked.
“Well, I suppose I still think it is that the people—the great mass of
the nation, that is—should be happier and better. No, I don’t think
that’s it at all. I think the important thing is that the people should
be able to use the power that’s coming to them in bigger lumps every
day. I’d like to think it wasn’t, I’d like to believe that democracy
always will be as it always has been—a self-made failure. But against
my own will I can’t help believing that this time democracy is going to
carry everything before it. And this war is going to hurry it on. Of
course it is. The masses will learn their power. They’ll learn that
generals can make fools of themselves, that officers can be done
without, that professional soldiers can be cowards, but that simply by
paying we can still win. And where’s the money coming from? Why, from
the class that tried to be clever and bluff the people out of their
power by staging this war. Well, do you mean to tell me that it’s good
for a democracy, this sudden realization of their omnipotence? Look
here, you think I’m an excitable young fool, but I tell you I’ve been
pitching my ideals at a blank wall like so many empty bottles and——”
“Were they empty?” asked Mr. Viner. “Are you sure they were empty? May
they not have been cruses of ointment the more precious for being
broken?”
“Well, I wish I could keep one for myself,” Michael said.
“My dear boy, you’ll never be able to do that. You’ll always be
too prodigal of your ideals. I should have no
qualms about your future, whatever you did meanwhile. And, do
you know, I don’t think I have many qualms about this England
of ours, however badly she behaves sometimes. I’m glad you
recognize that the people are coming into their own. I wish
that _you_ were glad, but you will be one day. The Catholic
religion must be a popular religion. The Sabbath was made for
man, you know. Catholicism is God’s method of throwing bottles
at a blank wall—but not empty bottles, Michael. On the whole,
I would sooner that now you were a reactionary than a
Dantonist. Your present attitude of mind at any rate gives you
the opportunity of going forward, instead of going back; there
will be plenty of ideals to take the places of those you
destroy, however priceless. And the tragedy of age is not
having any more bottles to throw.”
During these words that came soothingly from Mr. Viner’s firm lips
Michael had settled himself down again in the arm-chair and lighted his
pipe.
“Come, now,” said the priest, “you and I have muddled through our
discussion long enough, let’s gossip for a change. What’s Mark Chator
doing?”
“I haven’t seen much of him this term. He’s still going to take orders.
I find old Chator’s eternal simplicity and goodness rather wearing.
Life’s pretty easy for him. I wish I could get as much out of it as
easily,” Michael answered.
“Well, I can’t make any comment on that last remark of yours without
plunging into platitudes that would make you terribly contemptuous of
my struggles to avoid them. But don’t despise the Chators of this
world.”
“Oh, I don’t. I envy them. Well, I must go. Thanks awfully for putting
up with me again.”
Michael picked up his cap and hurried home. When he reached
Carlington Road, he was inclined to tell his
mother that, if she liked, he would go and visit Lord Saxby
before he sailed; but when it came to the point he felt too
shy to reopen the subject, and decided to let the proposal
drop.
He was surprized to find that it was much easier to write to Mrs. Ross
about her husband than he thought it would be. Whether this long and
stormy day (he could scarcely believe that he had only read the news
about Captain Ross that morning) had purged him of all complexities of
emotion, he did not know; but certainly the letter was easy enough.
64 C ARLINGTON R OAD .
_My dear Mrs. Ross,_
_I can’t tell you the sadness of to-day. I’ve thought about
you most tremendously, and I think you must be gloriously
proud of him. I felt angry at first, but now I feel all
right. You’ve always been so stunning to me, and I’ve never
thanked you. I do want to see you soon. I shall never
forget saying good-bye to Captain Ross. Mother asked me to
go and say good-bye to Lord Saxby. I don’t suppose you ever
met him. He’s a sort of cousin of ours. But I did not want
to spoil the memory of that day at Southampton. I haven’t
seen poor old Alan yet. He’ll be in despair. I’m longing to
see him to-morrow. This is a rotten letter, but I can’t
write down what I feel. I wish Stella had known Captain
Ross. She would have been able to express her feelings._
_With all my love,_
_Your affectionate_
_Michael._
In bed that night Michael thought what a beast he had made of
himself that day, and flung the blankets feverishly away from
his burnt-out self. Figures of well-loved people kept trooping
through the darkness, and he longed to
converse with them, inspired by the limitless eloquence of the
night-time. All that he would say to Mr. Viner, to Mrs. Ross,
to Alan, even to good old Chator, splashed the dark with fiery
sentences. He longed to be with Stella in a cool woodland. He
almost got up to go down and pour his soul out upon his
mother’s breast; but the fever of fatigue mocked his impulse
and he fell tossing into sleep.