Section 1

MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH

BY H.G. WELLS

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY H.G. WELLS

CONTENTS

BOOK I

MATCHING'S EASY AT EASE

I MR. DIRECK VISITS MR. BRITLING

II MR. BRITLING CONTINUES HIS EXPOSITION

III THE ENTERTAINMENT OF MR. DIRECK REACHES A CLIMAX

IV MR. BRITLING IN SOLILOQUY

V THE COMING OF THE DAY

BOOK II

MATCHING'S EASY AT WAR

I ONLOOKERS

II TAKING PART

III MALIGNITY

IV IN THE WEB OF THE INEFFECTIVE

BOOK III

THE TESTAMENT OF MATCHING'S EASY

I MRS. TEDDY GOES FOR A WALK

II MR. BRITLING WRITES UNTIL SUNRISE

BOOK I

MATCHING'S EASY AT EASE

CHAPTER THE FIRST

MR. DIRECK VISITS MR. BRITLING

Section 1

It was the sixth day of Mr. Direck's first visit to England, and he was

at his acutest perception of differences. He found England in every way

gratifying and satisfactory, and more of a contrast with things American

than he had ever dared to hope.

He had promised himself this visit for many years, but being of a sunny

rather than energetic temperament--though he firmly believed himself

to be a reservoir of clear-sighted American energy--he had allowed all

sorts of things, and more particularly the uncertainties of Miss Mamie

Nelson, to keep him back. But now there were no more uncertainties about

Miss Mamie Nelson, and Mr. Direck had come over to England just to

convince himself and everybody else that there were other interests

in life for him than Mamie....

And also, he wanted to see the old country from which his maternal

grandmother had sprung. Wasn't there even now in his bedroom in New York

a water-colour of Market Saffron church, where the dear old lady had

been confirmed? And generally he wanted to see Europe. As an interesting

side show to the excursion he hoped, in his capacity of the rather

underworked and rather over-salaried secretary of the Massachusetts

Society for the Study of Contemporary Thought, to discuss certain

agreeable possibilities with Mr. Britling, who lived at Matching's Easy.

Mr. Direck was a type of man not uncommon in America. He was very much

after the fashion of that clean and pleasant-looking person one sees in

the advertisements in American magazines, that agreeable person who

smiles and says, "Good, it's the Fizgig Brand," or "Yes, it's a Wilkins,

and that's the Best," or "My shirt-front never rucks; it's a Chesson."

But now he was saying, still with the same firm smile, "Good. It's

English." He was pleased by every unlikeness to things American, by

every item he could hail as characteristic; in the train to London he

had laughed aloud with pleasure at the chequer-board of little fields

upon the hills of Cheshire, he had chuckled to find himself in a

compartment without a corridor; he had tipped the polite yet kindly

guard magnificently, after doubting for a moment whether he ought to tip

him at all, and he had gone about his hotel in London saying "Lordy!

Lordy! My _word!_" in a kind of ecstasy, verifying the delightful

absence of telephone, of steam-heat, of any dependent bathroom. At

breakfast the waiter (out of Dickens it seemed) had refused to know what

"cereals" were, and had given him his egg in a china egg-cup such as you

see in the pictures in _Punch_. The Thames, when he sallied out to see

it, had been too good to be true, the smallest thing in rivers he had

ever seen, and he had had to restrain himself from affecting a marked

accent and accosting some passer-by with the question, "Say! But is this

little wet ditch here the Historical River Thames?"

In America, it must be explained, Mr. Direck spoke a very good and

careful English indeed, but he now found the utmost difficulty in

controlling his impulse to use a high-pitched nasal drone and indulge in

dry "Americanisms" and poker metaphors upon all occasions. When people

asked him questions he wanted to say "Yep" or "Sure," words he would no

more have used in America than he could have used a bowie knife. But he

had a sense of rôle. He wanted to be visibly and audibly America

eye-witnessing. He wanted to be just exactly what he supposed an

Englishman would expect him to be. At any rate, his clothes had been

made by a strongly American New York tailor, and upon the strength of

them a taxi-man had assumed politely but firmly that the shillings on

his taximeter were dollars, an incident that helped greatly to sustain

the effect of Mr. Direck, in Mr. Direck's mind, as something standing

out with an almost representative clearness against the English

scene.... So much so that the taxi-man got the dollars....

Because all the time he had been coming over he had dreaded that it

wasn't true, that England was a legend, that London would turn out to be

just another thundering great New York, and the English exactly like New

Englanders....

Section 2

And now here he was on the branch line of the little old Great Eastern

Railway, on his way to Matching's Easy in Essex, and he was suddenly in

the heart of Washington Irving's England.

Washington Irving's England! Indeed it was. He couldn't sit still and

just peep at it, he had to stand up in the little compartment and stick

his large, firm-featured, kindly countenance out of the window as if he

greeted it. The country under the June sunshine was neat and bright as

an old-world garden, with little fields of corn surrounded by dog-rose

hedges, and woods and small rushy pastures of an infinite tidiness. He

had seen a real deer park, it had rather tumbledown iron gates between

its shield-surmounted pillars, and in the distance, beyond all question,

was Bracebridge Hall nestling among great trees. He had seen thatched

and timbered cottages, and half-a-dozen inns with creaking signs. He had

seen a fat vicar driving himself along a grassy lane in a governess cart

drawn by a fat grey pony. It wasn't like any reality he had ever known.

It was like travelling in literature.

Mr. Britling's address was the Dower House, and it was, Mr. Britling's

note had explained, on the farther edge of the park at Claverings.

Claverings! The very name for some stately home of England....

And yet this was only forty-two miles from London. Surely it brought

things within the suburban range. If Matching's Easy were in America,

commuters would live there. But in supposing that, Mr. Direck displayed

his ignorance of a fact of the greatest importance to all who would

understand England. There is a gap in the suburbs of London. The suburbs

of London stretch west and south and even west by north, but to the

north-eastward there are no suburbs; instead there is Essex. Essex is

not a suburban county; it is a characteristic and individualised county

which wins the heart. Between dear Essex and the centre of things lie

two great barriers, the East End of London and Epping Forest. Before a

train could get to any villadom with a cargo of season-ticket holders it

would have to circle about this rescued woodland and travel for twenty

unprofitable miles, and so once you are away from the main Great Eastern

lines Essex still lives in the peace of the eighteenth century, and

London, the modern Babylon, is, like the stars, just a light in the

nocturnal sky. In Matching's Easy, as Mr. Britling presently explained

to Mr. Direck, there are half-a-dozen old people who have never set eyes

on London in their lives--and do not want to.

"Aye-ya!"

"Fussin' about thea."

"Mr. Robinson, 'e went to Lon', 'e did. That's 'ow 'e 'urt 'is fut."

Mr. Direck had learnt at the main-line junction that he had to tell the

guard to stop the train for Matching's Easy; it only stopped "by

request"; the thing was getting better and better; and when Mr. Direck

seized his grip and got out of the train there was just one little old

Essex station-master and porter and signalman and everything, holding a

red flag in his hand and talking to Mr. Britling about the cultivation

of the sweet peas which glorified the station. And there was the Mr.

Britling who was the only item of business and the greatest expectation

in Mr. Direck's European journey, and he was quite unlike the portraits

Mr. Direck had seen and quite unmistakably Mr. Britling all the same,

since there was nobody else upon the platform, and he was advancing with

a gesture of welcome.

"Did you ever see such peas, Mr. Dick?" said Mr. Britling by way of

introduction.

"My _word_," said Mr. Direck in a good old Farmer Hayseed kind of voice.

"Aye-ya!" said the station-master in singularly strident tones. "It be a

rare year for sweet peas," and then he slammed the door of the carriage

in a leisurely manner and did dismissive things with his flag, while the

two gentlemen took stock, as people say, of one another.

Section 3

Except in the doubtful instance of Miss Mamie Nelson, Mr. Direck's habit

was good fortune. Pleasant things came to him. Such was his position as

the salaried secretary of this society of thoughtful Massachusetts

business men to which allusion has been made. Its purpose was to bring

itself expeditiously into touch with the best thought of the age.

Too busily occupied with practical realities to follow the thought of

the age through all its divagations and into all its recesses, these

Massachusetts business men had had to consider methods of access more

quintessential and nuclear. And they had decided not to hunt out the

best thought in its merely germinating stages, but to wait until it had

emerged and flowered to some trustworthy recognition, and then, rather

than toil through recondite and possibly already reconsidered books and

writings generally, to offer an impressive fee to the emerged new

thinker, and to invite him to come to them and to lecture to them and to

have a conference with them, and to tell them simply, competently and

completely at first hand just all that he was about. To come, in fact,

and be himself--in a highly concentrated form. In this way a number of

interesting Europeans had been given very pleasant excursions to

America, and the society had been able to form very definite opinions

upon their teaching. And Mr. Britling was one of the representative

thinkers upon which this society had decided to inform itself. It was to

broach this invitation and to offer him the impressive honorarium by

which the society honoured not only its guests but itself, that Mr.

Direck had now come to Matching's Easy. He had already sent Mr. Britling

a letter of introduction, not indeed intimating his precise purpose, but

mentioning merely a desire to know him, and the letter had been so

happily phrased and its writer had left such a memory of pleasant

hospitality on Mr. Britling's mind during Mr. Britling's former visit to

New York, that it had immediately produced for Mr. Direck an invitation

not merely to come and see him but to come and stay over the week-end.

And here they were shaking hands.

Mr. Britling did not look at all as Mr. Direck had expected him to look.

He had expected an Englishman in a country costume of golfing tweeds,

like the Englishman in country costume one sees in American illustrated

stories. Drooping out of the country costume of golfing tweeds he had

expected to see the mildly unhappy face, pensive even to its drooping

moustache, with which Mr. Britling's publisher had for some faulty and

unfortunate reason familiarised the American public. Instead of this,

Mr. Britling was in a miscellaneous costume, and mildness was the last

quality one could attribute to him. His moustache, his hair, his

eyebrows bristled; his flaming freckled face seemed about to bristle

too. His little hazel eyes came out with a "ping" and looked at Mr.

Direck. Mr. Britling was one of a large but still remarkable class of

people who seem at the mere approach of photography to change their

hair, their clothes, their moral natures. No photographer had ever

caught a hint of his essential Britlingness and bristlingness. Only the

camera could ever induce Mr. Britling to brush his hair, and for the

camera alone did he reserve that expression of submissive martyrdom Mr.

Direck knew. And Mr. Direck was altogether unprepared for a certain

casualness of costume that sometimes overtook Mr. Britling. He was

wearing now a very old blue flannel blazer, no hat, and a pair of

knickerbockers, not tweed breeches but tweed knickerbockers of a

remarkable bagginess, and made of one of those virtuous socialistic

homespun tweeds that drag out into woolly knots and strings wherever

there is attrition. His stockings were worsted and wrinkled, and on his

feet were those extraordinary slippers of bright-coloured bast-like

interwoven material one buys in the north of France. These were purple

with a touch of green. He had, in fact, thought of the necessity of

meeting Mr. Direck at the station at the very last moment, and had come

away from his study in the clothes that had happened to him when he got

up. His face wore the amiable expression of a wire-haired terrier

disposed to be friendly, and it struck Mr. Direck that for a man of his

real intellectual distinction Mr. Britling was unusually short.

For there can be no denying that Mr. Britling was, in a sense,

distinguished. The hero and subject of this novel was at its very

beginning a distinguished man. He was in the _Who's Who_ of two

continents. In the last few years he had grown with some rapidity into a

writer recognised and welcomed by the more cultivated sections of the

American public, and even known to a select circle of British readers.

To his American discoverers he had first appeared as an essayist, a

serious essayist who wrote about aesthetics and Oriental thought and

national character and poets and painting. He had come through America

some years ago as one of those Kahn scholars, those promising writers

and intelligent men endowed by Auguste Kahn of Paris, who go about the

world nowadays in comfort and consideration as the travelling guests of

that original philanthropist--to acquire the international spirit.

Previously he had been a critic of art and literature and a writer of

thoughtful third leaders in the London _Times_. He had begun with a

Pembroke fellowship and a prize poem. He had returned from his world

tour to his reflective yet original corner of _The Times_ and to the

production of books about national relationships and social psychology,

that had brought him rapidly into prominence.

His was a naturally irritable mind, which gave him point and passion;

and moreover he had a certain obstinate originality and a generous

disposition. So that he was always lively, sometimes spacious, and never

vile. He loved to write and talk. He talked about everything, he had

ideas about everything; he could no more help having ideas about

everything than a dog can resist smelling at your heels. He sniffed at

the heels of reality. Lots of people found him interesting and

stimulating, a few found him seriously exasperating. He had ideas in the

utmost profusion about races and empires and social order and political

institutions and gardens and automobiles and the future of India and

China and aesthetics and America and the education of mankind in

general.... And all that sort of thing....

Mr. Direck had read a very great deal of all this expressed

opiniativeness of Mr. Britling: he found it entertaining and stimulating

stuff, and it was with genuine enthusiasm that he had come over to

encounter the man himself. On his way across the Atlantic and during

the intervening days, he had rehearsed this meeting in varying keys, but

always on the supposition that Mr. Britling was a large, quiet,

thoughtful sort of man, a man who would, as it were, sit in attentive

rows like a public meeting and listen. So Mr. Direck had prepared quite

a number of pleasant and attractive openings, and now he felt was the

moment for some one of these various simple, memorable utterances. But

in none of these forecasts had he reckoned with either the spontaneous

activities of Mr. Britling or with the station-master of Matching's

Easy. Oblivious of any conversational necessities between Mr. Direck and

Mr. Britling, this official now took charge of Mr. Direck's grip-sack,

and, falling into line with the two gentlemen as they walked towards the

exit gate, resumed what was evidently an interrupted discourse upon

sweet peas, originally addressed to Mr. Britling.

He was a small, elderly man with a determined-looking face and a sea

voice, and it was clear he overestimated the distance of his hearers.

"Mr. Darling what's head gardener up at Claverings, _'e_ can't get sweet

peas like that, try _'ow_ 'e will. Tried everything 'e 'as. Sand

ballast, 'e's tried. Seeds same as me. 'E came along 'ere only the other

day, 'e did, and 'e says to me, 'e says, 'darned 'f I can see why a

station-master should beat a professional gardener at 'is own game,' 'e

says, 'but you do. And in your orf time, too, so's to speak,' 'e says.

'I've tried sile,' 'e says--"

"Your first visit to England?" asked Mr. Britling of his guest.

"Absolutely," said Mr. Direck.

"I says to 'im, 'there's one thing you 'aven't tried,' I says," the

station-master continued, raising his voice by a Herculean feat still

higher.

"I've got a little car outside here," said Mr. Britling. "I'm a couple

of miles from the station."

"I says to 'im, I says, ''ave you tried the vibritation of the trains?'

I says. 'That's what you 'aven't tried, Mr. Darling. That's what you

_can't_ try,' I says. 'But you rest assured that that's the secret of my

sweet peas,' I says, 'nothing less and nothing more than the vibritation

of the trains.'"

Mr. Direck's mind was a little confused by the double nature of the

conversation and by the fact that Mr. Britling spoke of a car when

he meant an automobile. He handed his ticket mechanically to the

station-master, who continued to repeat and endorse his anecdote at the

top of his voice as Mr. Britling disposed himself and his guest in the

automobile.

"You know you 'aven't 'urt that mud-guard, sir, not the slightest bit

that matters," shouted the station-master. "I've been a looking at

it--er. It's my fence that's suffered most. And that's only strained

the post a lil' bit. Shall I put your bag in behind, sir?"

Mr. Direck assented, and then, after a momentary hesitation, rewarded

the station-master's services.

"Ready?" asked Mr. Britling.

"That's all right sir," the station-master reverberated.

With a rather wide curve Mr. Britling steered his way out of the station

into the highroad.

Section 4

And now it seemed was the time for Mr. Direck to make his meditated

speeches. But an unexpected complication was to defeat this intention.

Mr. Direck perceived almost at once that Mr. Britling was probably

driving an automobile for the first or second or at the extremest the

third time in his life.

The thing became evident when he struggled to get into the high gear--an

attempt that stopped the engine, and it was even more startlingly so

when Mr. Britling narrowly missed a collision with a baker's cart at a

corner. "I pressed the accelerator," he explained afterwards, "instead

of the brake. One does at first. I missed him by less than a foot."

The estimate was a generous one. And after that Mr. Direck became

too anxious not to distract his host's thoughts to persist with his

conversational openings. An attentive silence came upon both gentlemen

that was broken presently by a sudden outcry from Mr. Britling and a

great noise of tormented gears. "Damn!" cried Mr. Britling, and "How

the _devil_?"

Mr. Direck perceived that his host was trying to turn the car into a

very beautiful gateway, with gate-houses on either side. Then it was

manifest that Mr. Britling had abandoned this idea, and then they came

to a stop a dozen yards or so along the main road. "Missed it," said Mr.

Britling, and took his hands off the steering wheel and blew stormily,

and then whistled some bars of a fretful air, and became still.

"Do we go through these ancient gates?" asked Mr. Direck.

Mr. Britling looked over his right shoulder and considered problems of

curvature and distance. "I think," he said, "I will go round outside the

park. It will take us a little longer, but it will be simpler than

backing and manoeuvring here now.... These electric starters are

remarkably convenient things. Otherwise now I should have to get down

and wind up the engine."

After that came a corner, the rounding of which seemed to present few

difficulties until suddenly Mr. Britling cried out, "Eh! _eh_! EH! Oh,

_damn_!"

Then the two gentlemen were sitting side by side in a rather sloping car

that had ascended the bank and buried its nose in a hedge of dog-rose

and honeysuckle, from which two missel thrushes, a blackbird and a

number of sparrows had made a hurried escape....

Section 5

"Perhaps," said Mr. Britling without assurance, and after a little

peaceful pause, "I can reverse out of this."

He seemed to feel some explanation was due to Mr. Direck. "You see,

at first--it's perfectly simple--one steers _round_ a corner and then

one doesn't put the wheels straight again, and so one keeps on going

round--more than one meant to. It's the bicycle habit; the bicycle

rights itself. One expects a car to do the same thing. It was my fault.

The book explains all this question clearly, but just at the moment

I forgot."

He reflected and experimented in a way that made the engine scold

and fuss....

"You see, she won't budge for the reverse.... She's--embedded.... Do you

mind getting out and turning the wheel back? Then if I reverse, perhaps

we'll get a move on...."

Mr. Direck descended, and there were considerable efforts.

"If you'd just grip the spokes. Yes, so.... One, Two, Three!... No!

Well, let's just sit here until somebody comes along to help us. Oh!

Somebody will come all right. Won't you get up again?"

And after a reflective moment Mr. Direck resumed his seat beside

Mr. Britling....

Section 6

The two gentlemen smiled at each other to dispel any suspicion of

discontent.

"My driving leaves something to be desired," said Mr. Britling with

an air of frank impartiality. "But I have only just got this car for

myself--after some years of hired cars--the sort of lazy arrangement

where people supply car, driver, petrol, tyres, insurance and everything

at so much a month. It bored me abominably. I can't imagine now how

I stood it for so long. They sent me down a succession of compact,

scornful boys who used to go fast when I wanted to go slow, and slow

when I wanted to go fast, and who used to take every corner on the

wrong side at top speed, and charge dogs and hens for the sport of it,

and all sorts of things like that. They would not even let me choose my

roads. I should have got myself a car long ago, and driven it, if it

wasn't for that infernal business with a handle one had to do when the

engine stopped. But here, you see, is a reasonably cheap car with an

electric starter--American, I need scarcely say. And here I am--going

at my own pace."

Mr. Direck glanced for a moment at the pretty disorder of the hedge in

which they were embedded, and smiled and admitted that it was certainly

much more agreeable.

Before he had finished saying as much Mr. Britling was talking again.

He had a quick and rather jerky way of speaking; he seemed to fire out a

thought directly it came into his mind, and he seemed to have a loaded

magazine of thoughts in his head. He spoke almost exactly twice as fast

as Mr. Direck, clipping his words much more, using much compacter

sentences, and generally cutting his corners, and this put Mr. Direck

off his game.

That rapid attack while the transatlantic interlocutor is deploying is

indeed a not infrequent defect of conversations between Englishmen and

Americans. It is a source of many misunderstandings. The two conceptions

of conversation differ fundamentally. The English are much less disposed

to listen than the American; they have not quite the same sense of

conversational give and take, and at first they are apt to reduce their

visitors to the rôle of auditors wondering when their turn will begin.

Their turn never does begin. Mr. Direck sat deeply in his slanting seat

with a half face to his celebrated host and said "Yep" and "Sure" and

"That _is_ so," in the dry grave tones that he believed an Englishman

would naturally expect him to use, realising this only very gradually.

Mr. Britling, from his praise of the enterprise that had at last brought

a car he could drive within his reach, went on to that favourite topic

of all intelligent Englishmen, the adverse criticism of things British.

He pointed out that the central position of the brake and gear levers in

his automobile made it extremely easy for the American manufacturer to

turn it out either as a left-handed or a right-handed car, and so adapt

it either to the Continental or to the British rule of the road. No

English cars were so adaptable. We British suffered much from our

insular rule of the road, just as we suffered much from our insular

weights and measures. But we took a perverse pride in such

disadvantages. The irruption of American cars into England was a recent

phenomenon, it was another triumph for the tremendous organising ability

of the American mind. They were doing with the automobile what they had

done with clocks and watches and rifles, they had standardised and

machined wholesale, while the British were still making the things one

by one. It was an extraordinary thing that England, which was the

originator of the industrial system and the original developer of the

division of labour, should have so fallen away from systematic

manufacturing. He believed this was largely due to the influence of

Oxford and the Established Church....

At this point Mr. Direck was moved by an anecdote. "It will help to

illustrate what you are saying, Mr. Britling, about systematic

organisation if I tell you a little incident that happened to a friend

of mine in Toledo, where they are setting up a big plant with a view to

capturing the entire American and European market in the class of the

thousand-dollar car--"

"There's no end of such little incidents," said Mr. Britling, cutting in

without apparent effort. "You see, we get it on both sides. Our

manufacturer class was, of course, originally an insurgent class. It was

a class of distended craftsmen. It had the craftsman's natural

enterprise and natural radicalism. As soon as it prospered and sent its

boys to Oxford it was lost. Our manufacturing class was assimilated in

no time to the conservative classes, whose education has always had a

mandarin quality--very, very little of it, and very cold and choice. In

America you have so far had no real conservative class at all. Fortunate

continent! You cast out your Tories, and you were left with nothing but

Whigs and Radicals. But our peculiar bad luck has been to get a sort of

revolutionary who is a Tory mandarin too. Ruskin and Morris, for

example, were as reactionary and anti-scientific as the dukes and the

bishops. Machine haters. Science haters. Rule of Thumbites to the bone.

So are our current Socialists. They've filled this country with the idea

that the ideal automobile ought to be made entirely by the hand labour

of traditional craftsmen, quite individually, out of beaten copper,

wrought iron and seasoned oak. All this electric-starter business and

this electric lighting outfit I have here, is perfectly hateful to the

English mind.... It isn't that we are simply backward in these things,

we are antagonistic. The British mind has never really tolerated

electricity; at least, not that sort of electricity that runs through

wires. Too slippery and glib for it. Associates it with Italians and

fluency generally, with Volta, Galvani, Marconi and so on. The proper

British electricity is that high-grade useless long-sparking stuff you

get by turning round a glass machine; stuff we used to call frictional

electricity. Keep it in Leyden jars.... At Claverings here they still

refuse to have electric bells. There was a row when the Solomonsons, who

were tenants here for a time, tried to put them in...."

Mr. Direck had followed this cascade of remarks with a patient smile and

a slowly nodding head. "What you say," he said, "forms a very marked

contrast indeed with the sort of thing that goes on in America. This

friend of mine I was speaking of, the one who is connected with an

automobile factory in Toledo--"

"Of course," Mr. Britling burst out again, "even conservatism isn't an

ultimate thing. After all, we and your enterprising friend at Toledo,

are very much the same blood. The conservatism, I mean, isn't racial.

And our earlier energy shows it isn't in the air or in the soil. England

has become unenterprising and sluggish because England has been so

prosperous and comfortable...."

"Exactly," said Mr. Direck. "My friend of whom I was telling you, was a

man named Robinson, which indicates pretty clearly that he was of

genuine English stock, and, if I may say so, quite of your build and

complexion; racially, I should say, he was, well--very much what you

are...."

Section 7

This rally of Mr. Direck's mind was suddenly interrupted.

Mr. Britling stood up, and putting both hands to the sides of his mouth,

shouted "Yi-ah! Aye-ya! Thea!" at unseen hearers.

After shouting again, several times, it became manifest that he had

attracted the attention of two willing but deliberate labouring men.

They emerged slowly, first as attentive heads, from the landscape. With

their assistance the car was restored to the road again. Mr. Direck

assisted manfully, and noted the respect that was given to Mr. Britling

and the shillings that fell to the men, with an intelligent detachment.

They touched their hats, they called Mr. Britling "Sir." They examined

the car distantly but kindly. "Ain't 'urt 'e, not a bit 'e ain't, not

really," said one encouragingly. And indeed except for a slight

crumpling of the mud-guard and the detachment of the wire of one of the

headlights the automobile was uninjured. Mr. Britling resumed his seat;

Mr. Direck gravely and in silence got up beside him. They started with

the usual convulsion, as though something had pricked the vehicle

unexpectedly and shamefully behind. And from this point Mr. Britling,

driving with meticulous care, got home without further mishap, excepting

only that he scraped off some of the metal edge of his footboard

against the gate-post of his very agreeable garden.

His family welcomed his safe return, visitor and all, with undisguised

relief and admiration. A small boy appeared at the corner of the house,

and then disappeared hastily again. "Daddy's got back all right at

last," they heard him shouting to unseen hearers.

Section 8

Mr. Direck, though he was a little incommoded by the suppression of his

story about Robinson--for when he had begun a thing he liked to finish

it--found Mr. Britling's household at once thoroughly British, quite

un-American and a little difficult to follow. It had a quality that at

first he could not define at all. Compared with anything he had ever

seen in his life before it struck him as being--he found the word at

last--sketchy. For instance, he was introduced to nobody except his

hostess, and she was indicated to him by a mere wave of Mr. Britling's

hand. "That's Edith," he said, and returned at once to his car to put it

away. Mrs. Britling was a tall, freckled woman with pretty bright brown

hair and preoccupied brown eyes. She welcomed him with a handshake, and

then a wonderful English parlourmaid--she at least was according to

expectations--took his grip-sack and guided him to his room. "Lunch,

sir," she said, "is outside," and closed the door and left him to that

and a towel-covered can of hot water.

It was a square-looking old red-brick house he had come to, very

handsome in a simple Georgian fashion, with a broad lawn before it and

great blue cedar trees, and a drive that came frankly up to the front

door and then went off with Mr. Britling and the car round to unknown

regions at the back. The centre of the house was a big airy hall,

oak-panelled, warmed in winter only by one large fireplace and abounding

in doors which he knew opened into the square separate rooms that

England favours. Bookshelves and stuffed birds comforted the landing

outside his bedroom. He descended to find the hall occupied by a small

bright bristling boy in white flannel shirt and knickerbockers and bare

legs and feet. He stood before the vacant open fireplace in an attitude

that Mr. Direck knew instantly was also Mr. Britling's. "Lunch is in the

garden," the Britling scion proclaimed, "and I've got to fetch you. And,

I say! is it true? Are you American?"

"Why surely," said Mr. Direck.

"Well, I know some American," said the boy. "I learnt it."

"Tell me some," said Mr. Direck, smiling still more amiably.

"Oh! Well--God darn you! Ouch, Gee-whizz! Soak him, Maud! It's up to

you, Duke...."

"Now where did you learn all that?" asked Mr. Direck recovering.

"Out of the Sunday Supplement," said the youthful Britling.

"Why! Then you know all about Buster Brown," said Mr. Direck. "He's

Fine--eh?"

The Britling child hated Buster Brown. He regarded Buster Brown as a

totally unnecessary infant. He detested the way he wore his hair and the

peculiar cut of his knickerbockers and--him. He thought Buster Brown the

one drop of paraffin in the otherwise delicious feast of the Sunday

Supplement. But he was a diplomatic child.

"I think I like Happy Hooligan better," he said. "And dat ole Maud."

He reflected with joyful eyes, Buster clean forgotten. "Every week," he

said, "she kicks some one."

It came to Mr. Direck as a very pleasant discovery that a British infant

could find a common ground with the small people at home in these

characteristically American jests. He had never dreamt that the fine

wine of Maud and Buster could travel.

"Maud's a treat," said the youthful Britling, relapsing into his native

tongue.

Mr. Britling appeared coming to meet them. He was now in a grey flannel

suit--he must have jumped into it--and altogether very much tidier....

Section 9

The long narrow table under the big sycamores between the house and the

adapted barn that Mr. Direck learnt was used for "dancing and all that

sort of thing," was covered with a blue linen diaper cloth, and that too

surprised him. This was his first meal in a private household in

England, and for obscure reasons he had expected something very stiff

and formal with "spotless napery." He had also expected a very stiff and

capable service by implacable parlourmaids, and the whole thing indeed

highly genteel. But two cheerful women servants appeared from what was

presumably the kitchen direction, wheeling a curious wicker erection,

which his small guide informed him was called Aunt Clatter--manifestly

deservedly--and which bore on its shelves the substance of the meal. And

while the maids at this migratory sideboard carved and opened bottles

and so forth, the small boy and a slightly larger brother, assisted a

little by two young men of no very defined position and relationship,

served the company. Mrs. Britling sat at the head of the table, and

conversed with Mr. Direck by means of hostess questions and imperfectly

accepted answers while she kept a watchful eye on the proceedings.

The composition of the company was a matter for some perplexity to Mr.

Direck. Mr. and Mrs. Britling were at either end of the table, that was

plain enough. It was also fairly plain that the two barefooted boys were

little Britlings. But beyond this was a cloud of uncertainty. There was

a youth of perhaps seventeen, much darker than Britling but with nose

and freckles rather like his, who might be an early son or a stepson; he

was shock-headed and with that look about his arms and legs that

suggests overnight growth; and there was an unmistakable young German,

very pink, with close-cropped fair hair, glasses and a panama hat, who

was probably the tutor of the younger boys. (Mr. Direck also was wearing

his hat, his mind had been filled with an exaggerated idea of the

treacheries of the English climate before he left New York. Every one

else was hatless.) Finally, before one reached the limits of the

explicable there was a pleasant young man with a lot of dark hair and

very fine dark blue eyes, whom everybody called "Teddy." For him, Mr.

Direck hazarded "secretary."

But in addition to these normal and understandable presences, there was

an entirely mysterious pretty young woman in blue linen who sat and

smiled next to Mr. Britling, and there was a rather kindred-looking girl

with darker hair on the right of Mr. Direck who impressed him at the

very outset as being still prettier, and--he didn't quite place her at

first--somehow familiar to him; there was a large irrelevant middle-aged

lady in black with a gold chain and a large nose, between Teddy and the

tutor; there was a tall middle-aged man with an intelligent face, who

might be a casual guest; there was an Indian young gentleman faultlessly

dressed up to his brown soft linen collar and cuffs, and thereafter an

uncontrolled outbreak of fine bronze modelling and abundant fuzzy hair;

and there was a very erect and attentive baby of a year or less, sitting

up in a perambulator and gesticulating cheerfully to everybody. This

baby it was that most troubled the orderly mind of Mr. Direck. The

research for its paternity made his conversation with Mrs. Britling

almost as disconnected and absent-minded as her conversation with him.

It almost certainly wasn't Mrs. Britling's. The girl next to him or the

girl next to Mr. Britling or the lady in black might any of them be

married, but if so where was the spouse? It seemed improbable that they

would wheel out a foundling to lunch....

Realising at last that the problem of relationship must be left to solve

itself if he did not want to dissipate and consume his mind entirely,

Mr. Direck turned to his hostess, who was enjoying a brief lull in her

administrative duties, and told her what a memorable thing the meeting

of Mr. Britling in his own home would be in his life, and how very

highly America was coming to esteem Mr. Britling and his essays. He

found that with a slight change of person, one of his premeditated

openings was entirely serviceable here. And he went on to observe that

it was novel and entertaining to find Mr. Britling driving his own

automobile and to note that it was an automobile of American

manufacture. In America they had standardised and systematised the

making of such things as automobiles to an extent that would, he

thought, be almost startling to Europeans. It was certainly startling to

the European manufacturers. In illustration of that he might tell a

little story of a friend of his called Robinson--a man who curiously

enough in general build and appearance was very reminiscent indeed of

Mr. Britling. He had been telling Mr. Britling as much on his way here

from the station. His friend was concerned with several others in one of

the biggest attacks that had ever been made upon what one might describe

in general terms as the thousand-dollar light automobile market. What

they said practically was this: This market is a jig-saw puzzle waiting

to be put together and made one. We are going to do it. But that was

easier to figure out than to do. At the very outset of this attack he

and his associates found themselves up against an unexpected and very

difficult proposition....

At first Mrs. Britling had listened to Mr. Direck with an almost

undivided attention, but as he had developed his opening the feast upon

the blue linen table had passed on to a fresh phase that demanded more

and more of her directive intelligence. The two little boys appeared

suddenly at her elbows. "Shall we take the plates and get the

strawberries, Mummy?" they asked simultaneously. Then one of the neat

maids in the background had to be called up and instructed in

undertones, and Mr. Direck saw that for the present Robinson's

illuminating experience was not for her ears. A little baffled, but

quite understanding how things were, he turned to his neighbour on his

left....

The girl really had an extraordinarily pretty smile, and there was

something in her soft bright brown eye--like the movement of some quick

little bird. And--she was like somebody he knew! Indeed she was. She was

quite ready to be spoken to.

"I was telling Mrs. Britling," said Mr. Direck, "what a very great

privilege I esteem it to meet Mr. Britling in this highly familiar way."

"You've not met him before?"

"I missed him by twenty-four hours when he came through Boston on the

last occasion. Just twenty-four hours. It was a matter of very great

regret to me."

"I wish I'd been paid to travel round the world."

"You must write things like Mr. Britling and then Mr. Kahn will send

you."

"Don't you think if I promised well?"

"You'd have to write some promissory notes, I think--just to convince

him it was all right."

The young lady reflected on Mr. Britling's good fortune.

"He saw India. He saw Japan. He had weeks in Egypt. And he went right

across America."

Mr. Direck had already begun on the liner to adapt himself to the

hopping inconsecutiveness of English conversation. He made now what he

felt was quite a good hop, and he dropped his voice to a confidential

undertone. (It was probably Adam in his first conversation with Eve, who

discovered the pleasantness of dropping into a confidential undertone

beside a pretty ear with a pretty wave of hair above it.)

"It was in India, I presume," murmured Mr. Direck, "that Mr. Britling

made the acquaintance of the coloured gentleman?"

"Coloured gentleman!" She gave a swift glance down the table as though

she expected to see something purple with yellow spots. "Oh, that is one

of Mr. Lawrence Carmine's young men!" she explained even more

confidentially and with an air of discussing the silver bowl of roses

before him. "He's a great authority on Indian literature, he belongs to

a society for making things pleasant for Indian students in London, and

he has them down."

"And Mr. Lawrence Carmine?" he pursued.

Even more intimately and confidentially she indicated Mr. Carmine, as it

seemed by a motion of her eyelash.

Mr. Direck prepared to be even more _sotto-voce_ and to plumb a much

profounder mystery. His eye rested on the perambulator; he leant a

little nearer to the ear.... But the strawberries interrupted him.

"Strawberries!" said the young lady, and directed his regard to his left

shoulder by a little movement of her head.

He found one of the boys with a high-piled plate ready to serve him.

And then Mrs. Britling resumed her conversation with him. She was so

ignorant, she said, of things American, that she did not even know if

they had strawberries there. At any rate, here they were at the crest of

the season, and in a very good year. And in the rose season too. It was

one of the dearest vanities of English people to think their apples and

their roses and their strawberries the best in the world.

"And their complexions," said Mr. Direck, over the pyramid of fruit,

quite manifestly intending a compliment. So that was all right.... But

the girl on the left of him was speaking across the table to the German

tutor, and did not hear what he had said. So that even if it wasn't

very neat it didn't matter....

Then he remembered that she was like that old daguerreotype of a cousin

of his grandmother's that he had fallen in love with when he was a boy.

It was her smile. Of course! Of course!... And he'd sort of adored that

portrait.... He felt a curious disposition to tell her as much....

"What makes this visit even more interesting if possible to me," he said

to Mrs. Britling, "than it would otherwise be, is that this Essex

country is the country in which my maternal grandmother was raised, and

also long way back my mother's father's people. My mother's father's

people were very early New England people indeed.... Well, no. If I said

_Mayflower_ it wouldn't be true. But it would approximate. They were

Essex Hinkinsons. That's what they were. I must be a good third of me at

least Essex. My grandmother was an Essex Corner, I must confess I've had

some thought--"

"Corner?" said the young lady at his elbow sharply.

"I was telling Mrs. Britling I had some thought--"

"But about those Essex relatives of yours?"

"Well, of finding if they were still about in these parts.... Say! I

haven't dropped a brick, have I?"

He looked from one face to another.

"_She's_ a Corner," said Mrs. Britling.

"Well," said Mr. Direck, and hesitated for a moment. It was so

delightful that one couldn't go on being just discreet. The atmosphere

was free and friendly. His intonation disarmed offence. And he gave the

young lady the full benefit of a quite expressive eye. "I'm very pleased

to meet you, Cousin Corner. How are the old folks at home?"

Section 10

The bright interest of this consulship helped Mr. Direck more than

anything to get the better of his Robinson-anecdote crave, and when

presently he found his dialogue with Mr. Britling resumed, he turned at

once to this remarkable discovery of his long lost and indeed hitherto

unsuspected relative. "It's an American sort of thing to do, I suppose,"

he said apologetically, "but I almost thought of going on, on Monday, to

Market Saffron, which was the locality of the Hinkinsons, and just

looking about at the tombstones in the churchyard for a day or so."

"Very probably," said Mr. Britling, "you'd find something about them in

the parish registers. Lots of our registers go back three hundred years

or more. I'll drive you over in my lil' old car."

"Oh! I wouldn't put you to that trouble," said Mr. Direck hastily.

"It's no trouble. I like the driving. What I have had of it. And while

we're at it, we'll come back by Harborough High Oak and look up the

Corner pedigree. They're all over that district still. And the road's

not really difficult; it's only a bit up and down and roundabout."

"I couldn't think, Mr. Britling, of putting you to that much trouble."

"It's no trouble. I want a day off, and I'm dying to take Gladys--"

"Gladys?" said Mr. Direck with sudden hope.

"That's my name for the lil' car. I'm dying to take her for something

like a decent run. I've only had her out four times altogether, and I've

not got her up yet to forty miles. Which I'm told she ought to do

easily. We'll consider that settled."

For the moment Mr. Direck couldn't think of any further excuse. But it

was very clear in his mind that something must happen; he wished he knew

of somebody who could send a recall telegram from London, to prevent him

committing himself to the casual destinies of Mr. Britling's car again.

And then another interest became uppermost in his mind.

"You'd hardly believe me," he said, "if I told you that that Miss Corner

of yours has a quite extraordinary resemblance to a miniature I've got

away there in America of a cousin of my maternal grandmother's. She

seems a very pleasant young lady."

But Mr. Britling supplied no further information about Miss Corner.

"It must be very interesting," he said, "to come over here and pick up

these American families of yours on the monuments and tombstones. You

know, of course, that district south of Evesham where every other church

monument bears the stars and stripes, the arms of departed Washingtons.

I doubt though if you'll still find the name about there. Nor will you

find many Hinkinsons in Market Saffron. But lots of this country here

has five or six hundred-year-old families still flourishing. That's why

Essex is so much more genuinely Old England than Surrey, say, or Kent.

Round here you'll find Corners and Fairlies, and then you get Capels,

and then away down towards Dunmow and Braintree Maynards and Byngs. And

there are oaks and hornbeams in the park about Claverings that have

echoed to the howling of wolves and the clank of men in armour. All the

old farms here are moated--because of the wolves. Claverings itself is

Tudor, and rather fine too. And the cottages still wear thatch...."

He reflected. "Now if you went south of London instead of northward it's

all different. You're in a different period, a different society. You're

in London suburbs right down to the sea. You'll find no genuine estates

left, not of our deep-rooted familiar sort. You'll find millionaires and

that sort of people, sitting in the old places. Surrey is full of rich

stockbrokers, company-promoters, bookies, judges, newspaper proprietors.

Sort of people who fence the paths across their parks. They do something

to the old places--I don't know what they do--but instantly the

countryside becomes a villadom. And little sub-estates and red-brick

villas and art cottages spring up. And a kind of new, hard neatness. And

pneumatic tyre and automobile spirit advertisements, great glaring

boards by the roadside. And all the poor people are inspected and rushed

about until they forget who their grandfathers were. They become villa

parasites and odd-job men, and grow basely rich and buy gramophones.

This Essex and yonder Surrey are as different as Russia and Germany. But

for one American who comes to look at Essex, twenty go to Godalming and

Guildford and Dorking and Lewes and Canterbury. Those Surrey people are

not properly English at all. They are strenuous. You have to get on or

get out. They drill their gardeners, lecture very fast on agricultural

efficiency, and have miniature rifle ranges in every village. It's a

county of new notice-boards and barbed-wire fences; there's always a

policeman round the corner. They dress for dinner. They dress for

everything. If a man gets up in the night to look for a burglar he puts

on the correct costume--or doesn't go. They've got a special scientific

system for urging on their tramps. And they lock up their churches on a

week-day. Half their soil is hard chalk or a rationalistic sand, only

suitable for bunkers and villa foundations. And they play golf in a

large, expensive, thorough way because it's the thing to do.... Now here

in Essex we're as lax as the eighteenth century. We hunt in any old

clothes. Our soil is a rich succulent clay; it becomes semi-fluid in

winter--when we go about in waders shooting duck. All our fingerposts

have been twisted round by facetious men years ago. And we pool our

breeds of hens and pigs. Our roses and oaks are wonderful; that alone

shows that this is the real England. If I wanted to play golf--which I

don't, being a decent Essex man--I should have to motor ten miles into

Hertfordshire. And for rheumatics and longevity Surrey can't touch us. I

want you to be clear on these points, because they really will affect

your impressions of this place.... This country is a part of the real

England--England outside London and outside manufactures. It's one with

Wessex and Mercia or old Yorkshire--or for the matter of that with Meath

or Lothian. And it's the essential England still...."

Section 11

It detracted a little from Mr. Direck's appreciation of this flow of

information that it was taking them away from the rest of the company.

He wanted to see more of his new-found cousin, and what the baby and the

Bengali gentleman--whom manifestly one mustn't call "coloured"--and the

large-nosed lady and all the other inexplicables would get up to.

Instead of which Mr. Britling was leading him off alone with an air of

showing him round the premises, and talking too rapidly and variously

for a question to be got in edgeways, much less any broaching of the

matter that Mr. Direck had come over to settle.

There was quite a lot of rose garden, it made the air delicious, and it

was full of great tumbling bushes of roses and of neglected standards,

and it had a long pergola of creepers and trailers and a great arbour,

and underneath over the beds everywhere, contrary to all the rules, the

blossom of a multitude of pansies and stock and little trailing plants

swarmed and crowded and scrimmaged and drilled and fought great massed

attacks. And then Mr. Britling talked their way round a red-walled

vegetable garden with an abundance of fruit trees, and through a door

into a terraced square that had once been a farmyard, outside the

converted barn. The barn doors had been replaced by a door-pierced

window of glass, and in the middle of the square space a deep tank had

been made, full of rainwater, in which Mr. Britling remarked casually

that "everybody" bathed when the weather was hot. Thyme and rosemary and

suchlike sweet-scented things grew on the terrace about the tank, and

ten trimmed little trees of _Arbor vitae_ stood sentinel. Mr. Direck was

tantalisingly aware that beyond some lilac bushes were his new-found

cousin and the kindred young woman in blue playing tennis with the

Indian and another young man, while whenever it was necessary the

large-nosed lady crossed the stage and brooded soothingly over the

perambulator. And Mr. Britling, choosing a seat from which Mr. Direck

just couldn't look comfortably through the green branches at the flying

glimpses of pink and blue and white and brown, continued to talk about

England and America in relation to each other and everything else under

the sun.

Presently through a distant gate the two small boys were momentarily

visible wheeling small but serviceable bicycles, followed after a little

interval by the German tutor. Then an enormous grey cat came slowly

across the garden court, and sat down to listen respectfully to Mr.

Britling. The afternoon sky was an intense blue, with little puff-balls

of cloud lined out across it.

Occasionally, from chance remarks of Mr. Britling's, Mr. Direck was led

to infer that his first impressions as an American visitor were being

related to his host, but as a matter of fact he was permitted to relate

nothing; Mr. Britling did all the talking. He sat beside his guest and

spirted and played ideas and reflections like a happy fountain in the

sunshine.

Mr. Direck sat comfortably, and smoked with quiet appreciation the one

after-lunch cigar he allowed himself. At any rate, if he himself felt

rather word-bound, the fountain was nimble and entertaining. He listened

in a general sort of way to the talk, it was quite impossible to follow

it thoughtfully throughout all its chinks and turnings, while his eyes

wandered about the garden and went ever and again to the flitting

tennis-players beyond the green. It was all very gay and comfortable and

complete; it was various and delightful without being in the least

_opulent_; that was one of the little secrets America had to learn. It

didn't look as though it had been made or bought or cost anything, it

looked as though it had happened rather luckily....

Mr. Britling's talk became like a wide stream flowing through Mr.

Direck's mind, bearing along momentary impressions and observations,

drifting memories of all the crowded English sights and sounds of the

last five days, filmy imaginations about ancestral names and pretty

cousins, scraps of those prepared conversational openings on Mr.

Britling's standing in America, the explanation about the lecture club,

the still incompletely forgotten purport of the Robinson anecdote....

"Nobody planned the British estate system, nobody planned the British

aristocratic system, nobody planned the confounded constitution, it came

about, it was like layer after layer wrapping round an agate, but you

see it came about so happily in a way, it so suited the climate and the

temperament of our people and our island, it was on the whole so cosy,

that our people settled down into it, you can't help settling down into

it, they had already settled down by the days of Queen Anne, and Heaven

knows if we shall ever really get away again. We're like that little

shell the _Lingula_, that is found in the oldest rocks and lives to-day:

it fitted its easy conditions, and it has never modified since. Why

should it? It excretes all its disturbing forces. Our younger sons go

away and found colonial empires. Our surplus cottage children emigrate

to Australia and Canada or migrate into the towns. It doesn't alter

_this_...."

Section 12

Mr. Direck's eye had come to rest upon the barn, and its expression

changed slowly from lazy appreciation to a brightening intelligence.

Suddenly he resolved to say something. He resolved to say it so firmly

that he determined to say it even if Mr. Britling went on talking all

the time.

"I suppose, Mr. Britling," he said, "this barn here dates from the days

of Queen Anne."

"The walls of the yard here are probably earlier: probably monastic.

That grey patch in the corner, for example. The barn itself is

Georgian."

"And here it is still. And this farmyard, here it is still."

Mr. Britling was for flying off again, but Mr. Direck would not listen;

he held on like a man who keeps his grip on a lasso.

"There's one thing I would like to remark about your barn, Mr. Britling,

and I might, while I am at it, say the same thing about your farmyard."

Mr. Britling was held. "What's that?" he asked.

"Well," said Mr. Direck, "the point that strikes me most about all this

is that that barn isn't a barn any longer, and that this farmyard isn't

a farmyard. There isn't any wheat or chaff or anything of that sort in

the barn, and there never will be again: there's just a pianola and a

dancing floor, and if a cow came into this farmyard everybody in the

place would be shooing it out again. They'd regard it as a most

unnatural object."

He had a pleasant sense of talking at last. He kept right on. He was

moved to a sweeping generalisation.

"You were so good as to ask me, Mr. Britling, a little while ago, what

my first impression of England was. Well, Mr. Britling, my first

impression of England that seems to me to matter in the least is this:

that it looks and feels more like the traditional Old England than any

one could possibly have believed, and that in reality it is less like

the traditional Old England than any one would ever possibly have

imagined."

He was carried on even further. He made a tremendous literary epigram.

"I thought," he said, "when I looked out of the train this morning that

I had come to the England of Washington Irving. I find it is not even

the England of Mrs. Humphry Ward."

CHAPTER THE SECOND

MR. BRITLING CONTINUES HIS EXPOSITION

Section 1

Mr. Direck found little reason to revise his dictum in the subsequent

experiences of the afternoon. Indeed the afternoon and the next day were

steadily consistent in confirming what a very good dictum it had been.

The scenery was the traditional scenery of England, and all the people

seemed quicker, more irresponsible, more chaotic, than any one could

have anticipated, and entirely inexplicable by any recognised code of

English relationships....

"You think that John Bull is dead and a strange generation is wearing

his clothes," said Mr. Britling. "I think you'll find very soon it's the

old John Bull. Perhaps not Mrs. Humphry Ward's John Bull, or Mrs. Henry

Wood's John Bull but true essentially to Shakespeare, Fielding, Dickens,

Meredith...."

"I suppose," he added, "there are changes. There's a new generation

grown up...."

He looked at his barn and the swimming pool. "It's a good point of yours

about the barn," he said. "What you say reminds me of that very jolly

thing of Kipling's about the old mill-wheel that began by grinding corn

and ended by driving dynamos....

"Only I admit that barn doesn't exactly drive a dynamo....

"To be frank, it's just a pleasure barn....

"The country can afford it...."

Section 2

He left it at that for the time, but throughout the afternoon Mr. Direck

had the gratification of seeing his thought floating round and round in

the back-waters of Mr. Britling's mental current. If it didn't itself

get into the stream again its reflection at any rate appeared and

reappeared. He was taken about with great assiduity throughout the

afternoon, and he got no more than occasional glimpses of the rest of

the Dower House circle until six o'clock in the evening.

Meanwhile the fountains of Mr. Britling's active and encyclopædic mind

played steadily.

He was inordinately proud of England, and he abused her incessantly. He

wanted to state England to Mr. Direck as the amiable summation of a

grotesque assembly of faults. That was the view into which the comforts

and prosperities of his middle age had brought him from a radicalism

that had in its earlier stages been angry and bitter. And for Mr.

Britling England was "here." Essex was the county he knew. He took Mr.

Direck out from his walled garden by a little door into a trim paddock

with two white goals. "We play hockey here on Sundays," he said in a way

that gave Mr. Direck no hint of the practically compulsory participation

of every visitor to Matching's Easy in this violent and dangerous

exercise, and thence they passed by a rich deep lane and into a high

road that ran along the edge of the deer park of Claverings. "We will

call in on Claverings later," said Mr. Britling. "Lady Homartyn has some

people there for the week-end, and you ought to see the sort of thing it

is and the sort of people they are. She wanted us to lunch there

to-morrow, but I didn't accept that because of our afternoon hockey."

Mr. Direck received this reason uncritically.

The village reminded Mr. Direck of Abbey's pictures. There was an inn

with a sign standing out in the road, a painted sign of the Clavering

Arms; it had a water trough (such as Mr. Weller senior ducked the

dissenter in) and a green painted table outside its inviting door. There

were also a general shop and a number of very pleasant cottages, each

marked with the Mainstay crest. All this was grouped about a green with

real geese drilling thereon. Mr. Britling conducted his visitor (through

a lych gate) into the church-yard, and there they found mossy,

tumble-down tombstones, one with a skull and cross-bones upon it, that

went back to the later seventeenth century. In the aisle of the church

were three huge hatchments, and there was a side chapel devoted to the

Mainstay family and the Barons Homartyn, with a series of monuments that

began with painted Tudor effigies and came down to a vast stained glass

window of the vilest commercial Victorian. There were also mediæval

brasses of parish priests, and a marble crusader and his lady of some

extinguished family which had ruled Matching's Easy before the Mainstays

came. And as the two gentlemen emerged from the church they ran against

the perfect vicar, Mr. Dimple, ample and genial, with an embracing laugh

and an enveloping voice. "Come to see the old country," he said to Mr.

Direck. "So Good of you Americans to do that! So Good of you...."

There was some amiable sparring between the worthy man and Mr. Britling

about bringing Mr. Direck to church on Sunday morning. "He's terribly

Lax," said Mr. Dimple to Mr. Direck, smiling radiantly. "Terribly Lax.

But then nowadays Everybody _is_ so Lax. And he's very Good to my Coal

Club; I don't know what we should do without him. So I just admonish

him. And if he doesn't go to church, well, anyhow he doesn't go anywhere

else. He may be a poor churchman, but anyhow he's not a dissenter...."

"In England, you see," Mr. Britling remarked, after they had parted from

the reverend gentleman, "we have domesticated everything. We have even

domesticated God."

For awhile Mr. Britling showed Mr. Direck English lanes, and then came

back along narrow white paths across small fields of rising wheat, to

the village and a little gate that led into the park.

"Well," said Mr. Direck, "what you say about domestication does seem to

me to be very true indeed. Why! even those clouds up there look as

though they had a shepherd and were grazing."

"Ready for shearing almost," said Mr. Britling.

"Indeed," said Mr. Direck, raising his voice a little, "I've seen

scarcely anything in England that wasn't domesticated, unless it was

some of your back streets in London."

Mr. Britling seemed to reflect for a moment. "They're an excrescence,"

he said....

Section 3

The park had a trim wildness like nature in an old Italian picture;

dappled fallow deer grouped close at hand and looked at the two men

fearlessly; the path dropped through oak trees and some stunted bracken

to a little loitering stream, that paused ever and again to play at

ponds and waterfalls and bear a fleet of water-lily leaves; and then

their way curved round in an indolent sweep towards the cedars and

shrubberies of the great house. The house looked low and extensive to an

American eye, and its red-brick chimneys rose like infantry in open

order along its extended line. There was a glimpse of flower-bright

garden and terraces to the right as they came round the corner to the

front of the house through a path cut in the laurel bushes.

Mr. Britling had a moment of exposition as they approached the entrance.

"I expect we shall find Philbert from the Home Office--or is it the

Local Government Board?--and Sir Thomas Loot, the Treasury man. There

may be some other people of that sort, the people we call the Governing

Class. Wives also. And I rather fancy the Countess of Frensham is

coming, she's strong on the Irish Question, and Lady Venetia

Trumpington, who they say is a beauty--I've never seen her. It's Lady

Homartyn's way to expect me to come in--not that I'm an important item

at these week-end social feasts--but she likes to see me on the

table--to be nibbled at if any one wants to do so--like the olives and

the salted almonds. And she always asks me to lunch on Sunday and I

always refuse--because of the hockey. So you see I put in an appearance

on the Saturday afternoon...."

They had reached the big doorway.

It opened into a large cool hall adorned with the heads of hippopotami

and rhinoceroses and a stuffed lion, and furnished chiefly with a vast

table on which hats and sticks and newspapers were littered. A

manservant with a subdued, semi-confidential manner, conveyed to Mr.

Britling that her ladyship was on the terrace, and took the hats and

sticks that were handed to him and led the way through the house. They

emerged upon a broad terrace looking out under great cedar trees upon

flower beds and stone urns and tennis lawns and yew hedges that dipped

to give a view of distant hills. On the terrace were grouped perhaps a

dozen people for the most part holding teacups, they sat in deck chairs

and folding seats about a little table that bore the tea-things. Lady

Homartyn came forward to welcome the newcomers.

Mr. Direck was introduced as a travelling American gratified to see a

typical English country house, and Lady Homartyn in an habituated way

ran over the points of her Tudor specimen. Mr. Direck was not accustomed

to titled people, and was suddenly in doubt whether you called a

baroness "My Lady" or "Your Ladyship," so he wisely avoided any form of

address until he had a lead from Mr. Britling. Mr. Britling presently

called her "Lady Homartyn." She took Mr. Direck and sat him down beside

a lady whose name he didn't catch, but who had had a lot to do with the

British Embassy at Washington, and then she handed Mr. Britling over to

the Rt. Honble. George Philbert, who was anxious to discuss certain

points in the latest book of essays. The conversation of the lady from

Washington was intelligent but not exacting, and Mr. Direck was able to

give a certain amount of attention to the general effect of the scene.

He was a little disappointed to find that the servants didn't wear

livery. In American magazine pictures and in American cinematograph

films of English stories and in the houses of very rich Americans living

in England, they do so. And the Mansion House is misleading; he had met

a compatriot who had recently dined at the Mansion House, and who had

described "flunkeys" in hair-powder and cloth of gold--like Thackeray's

Jeames Yellowplush. But here the only servants were two slim, discreet

and attentive young gentlemen in black coats with a gentle piety in

their manner instead of pride. And he was a little disappointed too by a

certain lack of splendour in the company. The ladies affected him as

being ill-dressed; there was none of the hard snap, the "_There!_ and

what do you say to it?" about them of the well-dressed American woman,

and the men too were not so much tailored as unobtrusively and yet

grammatically clothed.

Section 4

He was still only in the fragmentary stage of conversation when

everything was thrown into commotion by the important arrival of Lady

Frensham, and there was a general reshuffling of places. Lady Frensham

had arrived from London by automobile; she appeared in veils and

swathings and a tremendous dust cloak, with a sort of nephew in her

train who had driven the car. She was manifestly a constitutionally

triumphant woman. A certain afternoon lassitude vanished in the swirl

of her arrival. Mr. Philbert removed wrappings and handed them to the

manservant.

"I lunched with Sir Edward Carson to-day, my dear," she told Lady

Homartyn, and rolled a belligerent eye at Philbert.

"And is he as obdurate as ever?" asked Sir Thomas.

"Obdurate! It's Redmond who's obdurate," cried Lady Frensham. "What do

you say, Mr. Britling?"

"A plague on both your parties," said Mr. Britling.

"You can't keep out of things like that," said Lady Frensham with the

utmost gusto, "when the country's on the very verge of civil war.... You

people who try to pretend there isn't a grave crisis when there is one,

will be more accountable than any one--when the civil war does come. It

won't spare you. Mark my words!"

The party became a circle.

Mr. Direck found himself the interested auditor of a real English

country-house week-end political conversation. This at any rate was like

the England of which Mrs. Humphry Ward's novels had informed him, but

yet not exactly like it. Perhaps that was due to the fact that for the

most part these novels dealt with the England of the 'nineties, and

things had lost a little in dignity since those days. But at any rate

here were political figures and titled people, and they were talking

about the "country."...

Was it possible that people of this sort did "run" the country, after

all?... When he had read Mrs. Humphry Ward in America he had always

accepted this theory of the story quite easily, but now that he saw and

heard them--!

But all governments and rulers and ruling classes when you look at them

closely are incredible....

"I don't believe the country is on the verge of civil war," said Mr.

Britling.

"Facts!" cried Lady Frensham, and seemed to wipe away delusions with a

rapid gesture of her hands.

"You're interested in Ireland, Mr. Dirks?" asked Lady Homartyn.

"We see it first when we come over," said Mr. Direck rather neatly, and

after that he was free to attend to the general discussion.

Lady Frensham, it was manifest, was one of that energetic body of

aristocratic ladies who were taking up an irreconcilable attitude

against Home Rule "in any shape or form" at that time. They were rapidly

turning British politics into a system of bitter personal feuds in which

all sense of imperial welfare was lost. A wild ambition to emulate the

extremest suffragettes seems to have seized upon them. They insulted,

they denounced, they refused every invitation lest they should meet that

"traitor" the Prime Minister, they imitated the party hatreds of a

fiercer age, and even now the moderate and politic Philbert found

himself treated as an invisible object. They were supported by the

extremer section of the Tory press, and the most extraordinary writers

were set up to froth like lunatics against the government as "traitors,"

as men who "insulted the King"; the _Morning Post_ and the

lighter-witted side of the Unionist press generally poured out a torrent

of partisan nonsense it is now almost incredible to recall. Lady

Frensham, bridling over Lady Homartyn's party, and for a time leaving

Mr. Britling, hurried on to tell of the newest developments of the great

feud. She had a wonderful description of Lady Londonderry sitting

opposite "that old rascal, the Prime Minister," at a performance of

Mozart's _Zauberflöte_.

"If looks could kill!" cried Lady Frensham with tremendous gusto.

"Sir Edward is quite firm that Ulster means to fight. They have

machine-guns--ammunition. And I am sure the army is with us...."

"Where did they get those machine-guns and ammunition?" asked Mr.

Britling suddenly.

"Ah! that's a secret," cried Lady Frensham.

"Um," said Mr. Britling.

"You see," said Lady Frensham; "it _will_ be civil war! And yet you

writing people who have influence do nothing to prevent it!"

"What are we to do, Lady Frensham?"

"Tell people how serious it is."

"You mean, tell the Irish Nationalists to lie down and be walked over.

They won't be...."

"We'll see about that," cried Lady Frensham, "we'll see about that!"

She was a large and dignified person with a kind of figure-head nobility

of carriage, but Mr. Direck was suddenly reminded of a girl cousin of

his who had been expelled from college for some particularly elaborate

and aimless rioting....

"May I say something to you, Lady Frensham," said Mr. Britling, "that

you have just said to me? Do you realise that this Carsonite campaign is

dragging these islands within a measurable distance of civil war?"

"It's the fault of your Lloyd George and his government. It's the fault

of your Socialists and sentimentalists. You've made the mischief and you

have to deal with it."

"Yes. But do you really figure to yourself what a civil war may mean for

the empire? Surely there are other things in the world besides this

quarrel between the 'loyalists' of Ulster and the Liberal government;

there are other interests in this big empire than party advantages? Yon

think you are going to frighten this Home Rule government into some

ridiculous sort of collapse that will bring in the Tories at the next

election. Well, suppose you don't manage that. Suppose instead that you

really do contrive to bring about a civil war. Very few people here or

in Ireland want it--I was over there not a month ago--but when men have

loaded guns in their hands they sometimes go off. And then people see

red. Few people realise what an incurable sore opens when fighting

begins. Suppose part of the army revolts and we get some extraordinary

and demoralising fighting over there. India watches these things. Bengal

may imitate Ireland. At that distance rebellion and treason are

rebellion and treason whether they are coloured orange or green. And

then suppose the Germans see fit to attack us!"

Lady Frensham had a woman's elusiveness. "Your Redmondites would welcome

them with open arms."

"It isn't the Redmondites who invite them now, anyhow," said Mr.

Britling, springing his mine. "The other day one of your 'loyalists,'

Andrews, was talking in the _Morning Post_ of preferring conquest by

Germany to Home Rule; Craig has been at the same game; Major Crawford,

the man who ran the German Mausers last April, boasted that he would

transfer his allegiance to the German Emperor rather than see Redmond in

power."

"Rhetoric!" said Lady Frensham. "Rhetoric!"

"But one of your Ulster papers has openly boasted that arrangements have

been made for a 'powerful Continental monarch' to help an Ulster

rebellion."

"Which paper?" snatched Lady Frensham.

Mr. Britling hesitated.

Mr. Philbert supplied the name. "I saw it. It was the _Irish

Churchman_."

"You two have got your case up very well," said Lady Frensham. "I didn't

know Mr. Britling was a party man."

"The Nationalists have been circulating copies," said Philbert.

"Naturally."

"They make it look worse than mere newspaper talk and speeches," Mr.

Britling pressed. "Carson, it seems, was lunching with the German

Emperor last autumn. A fine fuss you'd make if Redmond did that. All

this gun-running, too, is German gun-running."

"What does it matter if it is?" said Lady Frensham, allowing a

belligerent eye to rest for the first time on Philbert. "You drove us to

it. One thing we are resolved upon at any cost. Johnny Redmond may rule

England if he likes; he shan't rule Ireland...."

Mr. Britling shrugged his shoulders, and his face betrayed despair.

"My one consolation," he said, "in this storm is a talk I had last month

with a young Irishwoman in Meath. She was a young person of twelve, and

she took a fancy to me--I think because I went with her in an alleged

dangerous canoe she was forbidden to navigate alone. All day the eternal

Irish Question had banged about over her observant head. When we were

out on the water she suddenly decided to set me right upon a disregarded

essential. 'You English,' she said, 'are just a bit disposed to take all

this trouble seriously. Don't you fret yourself about it... Half the

time we're just laffing at you. You'd best leave us all alone....'"

And then he went off at a tangent from his own anecdote.

"But look at this miserable spectacle!" he cried. "Here is a chance of

getting something like a reconciliation of the old feud of English and

Irish, and something like a settlement of these ancient distresses, and

there seems no power, no conscience, no sanity in any of us, sufficient

to save it from this cantankerous bitterness, this sheer wicked mischief

of mutual exasperation.... Just when Ireland is getting a gleam of

prosperity.... A murrain on both your parties!"

"I see, Mr. Britling, you'd hand us all over to Jim Larkin!"

"I'd hand you all over to Sir Horace Plunkett--"

"That doctrinaire dairyman!" cried Lady Frensham, with an air of quite

conclusive repartee. "You're hopeless, Mr. Britling. You're hopeless."

And Lady Homartyn, seeing that the phase of mere personal verdicts drew

near, created a diversion by giving Lady Frensham a second cup of tea,

and fluttering like a cooling fan about the heated brows of the

disputants. She suggested tennis....

Section 5

Mr. Britling was still flushed and ruffled as he and his guest returned

towards the Dower House. He criticised England himself unmercifully, but

he hated to think that in any respect she fell short of perfection; even

her defects he liked to imagine were just a subtler kind of power and

wisdom. And Lady Frensham had stuck her voice and her gestures through

all these amiable illusions. He was like a lover who calls his lady a

foolish rogue, and is startled to find that facts and strangers do

literally agree with him.

But it was so difficult to resolve Lady Frensham and the Irish squabble

generally into anything better than idiotic mischief, that for a time he

was unusually silent--wrestling with the problem, and Mr. Direck got the

conversational initiative.

"To an American mind it's a little--startling," said Mr. Direck, "to

hear ladies expressing such vigorous political opinions."

"I don't mind that," said Mr. Britling. "Women over here go into

politics and into public-houses--I don't see why they shouldn't. If such

things are good enough for men they are good enough for women; we

haven't your sort of chivalry. But it's the peculiar malignant silliness

of this sort of Toryism that's so discreditable. It's discreditable.

There's no good in denying it. Those people you have heard and seen are

a not unfair sample of our governing class--of a certain section of our

governing class--as it is to-day. Not at all unfair. And you see how

amazingly they haven't got hold of anything. There was a time when they

could be politic.... Hidden away they have politic instincts even

now.... But it makes me sick to think of this Irish business. Because,

you know, it's true--we _are_ drifting towards civil war there."

"You are of that opinion?" said Mr. Direck.

"Well, isn't it so? Here's all this Ulster gun-running--you heard how

she talked of it? Isn't it enough to drive the south into open

revolt?..."

"Is there very much, do you think, in the suggestion that some of this

Ulster trouble is a German intrigue? You and Mr. Philbert were saying

things--"

"I don't know," said Mr. Britling shortly.

"I don't know," he repeated. "But it isn't because I don't think our

Unionists and their opponents aren't foolish enough for anything of the

sort. It's only because I don't believe that the Germans are so stupid

as to do such things.... Why should they?...

"It makes me--expressionless with anger," said Mr. Britling after a

pause, reverting to his main annoyance. "They won't consider any

compromise. It's sheer love of quarrelling.... Those people there think

that nothing can possibly happen. They are like children in a nursery

playing at rebellion. Unscathed and heedless. Until there is death at

their feet they will never realise they are playing with loaded

guns...."

For a time he said no more; and listened perfunctorily while Mr. Direck

tried to indicate the feeling in New England towards the Irish Question

and the many difficult propositions an American politician has to face

in that respect. And when Mr. Britling took up the thread of speech

again it had little or no relation to Mr. Direck's observations.

"The psychology of all this recent insubordination and violence

is--curious. Exasperating too.... I don't quite grasp it.... It's the

same thing whether you look at the suffrage business or the labour

people or at this Irish muddle. People may be too safe. You see we live

at the end of a series of secure generations in which none of the great

things of life have changed materially. We've grown up with no sense of

danger--that is to say, with no sense of responsibility. None of us,

none of us--for though I talk my actions belie me--really believe that

life can change very fundamentally any more forever. All this",--Mr.

Britling waved his arm comprehensively--"looks as though it was bound to

go on steadily forever. It seems incredible that the system could be

smashed. It seems incredible that anything we can do will ever smash the

system. Lady Homartyn, for example, is incapable of believing that she

won't always be able to have week-end parties at Claverings, and that

the letters and the tea won't come to her bedside in the morning. Or if

her imagination goes to the point of supposing that some day _she_ won't

be there to receive the tea, it means merely that she supposes somebody

else will be. Her pleasant butler may fear to lose his 'situation,' but

nothing on earth could make him imagine a time when there will not be a

'situation' for him to lose. Old Asquith thinks that we always have got

along, and that we always shall get along by being quietly artful and

saying, 'Wait and see.' And it's just because we are all convinced that

we are so safe against a general breakdown that we are able to be so

recklessly violent in our special cases. Why shouldn't women have the

vote? they argue. What does it matter? And bang goes a bomb in

Westminster Abbey. Why shouldn't Ulster create an impossible position?

And off trots some demented Carsonite to Germany to play at treason on

some half word of the German Emperor's and buy half a million rifles....

"Exactly like children being very, very naughty....

"And," said Mr. Britling with a gesture to round off his discourse, "we

do go on. We shall go on--until there is a spark right into the

magazine. We have lost any belief we ever had that fundamental things

happen. We are everlasting children in an everlasting nursery...."

And immediately he broke out again.

"The truth of the matter is that hardly any one has ever yet mastered

the fact that the world is round. The world is round--like an orange.

The thing is told us--like any old scandal--at school. For all

practical purposes we forget it. Practically we all live in a world as

flat as a pancake. Where time never ends and nothing changes. Who really

believes in any world outside the circle of the horizon? Here we are and

visibly nothing is changing. And so we go on to--nothing will ever

change. It just goes on--in space, in time. If we could realise that

round world beyond, then indeed we should go circumspectly.... If the

world were like a whispering gallery, what whispers might we not hear

now--from India, from Africa, from Germany, warnings from the past,

intimations of the future....

"We shouldn't heed them...."

Section 6

And indeed at the very moment when Mr. Britling was saying these words,

in Sarajevo in Bosnia, where the hour was somewhat later, men whispered

together, and one held nervously to a black parcel that had been given

him and nodded as they repeated his instructions, a black parcel with

certain unstable chemicals and a curious arrangement of detonators

therein, a black parcel destined ultimately to shatter nearly every

landmark of Mr. Britling's and Lady Frensham's cosmogony....

Section 7

When Mr. Direck and Mr. Britling returned to the Dower House the guest

was handed over to Mrs. Britling and Mr. Britling vanished, to reappear

at supper time, for the Britlings had a supper in the evening instead of

dinner. When Mr. Britling did reappear every trace of his vexation with

the levities of British politics and the British ruling class had

vanished altogether, and he was no longer thinking of all that might be

happening in Germany or India....

While he was out of the way Mr. Direck extended his acquaintance with

the Britling household. He was taken round the garden and shown the

roses by Mrs. Britling, and beyond the rose garden in a little arbour

they came upon Miss Corner reading a book. She looked very grave and

pretty reading a book. Mr. Direck came to a pause in front of her, and

Mrs. Britling stopped beside him. The young lady looked up and smiled.

"The last new novel?" asked Mr. Direck pleasantly.

"Campanella's 'City of the Sun.'"

"My word! but isn't that stiff reading?"

"You haven't read it," said Miss Corner.

"It's a dry old book anyhow."

"It's no good pretending you have," she said, and there Mr. Direck felt

the conversation had to end.

"That's a very pleasant young lady to have about," he said to Mrs.

Britling as they went on towards the barn court.

"She's all at loose ends," said Mrs. Britling. "And she reads like

a--Whatever does read? One drinks like a fish. One eats like a wolf."

They found the German tutor in a little court playing Badminton with the

two younger boys. He was a plump young man with glasses and compact

gestures; the game progressed chiefly by misses and the score was

counted in German. He won thoughtfully and chiefly through the ardour of

the younger brother, whose enthusiastic returns invariably went out.

Instantly the boys attacked Mrs. Britling with a concerted enthusiasm.

"Mummy! Is it to be dressing-up supper?"

Mrs. Britling considered, and it was manifest that Mr. Direck was

material to her answer.

"We wrap ourselves up in curtains and bright things instead of

dressing," she explained. "We have a sort of wardrobe of fancy dresses.

Do you mind?"

Mr. Direck was delighted.

And this being settled, the two small boys went off with their mother

upon some special decorative project they had conceived and Mr. Direck

was left for a time to Herr Heinrich.

Herr Heinrich suggested a stroll in the rose garden, and as Mr. Direck

had not hitherto been shown the rose garden by Herr Heinrich, he agreed.

Sooner or later everybody, it was evident, had got to show him that rose

garden.

"And how do you like living in an English household?" said Mr. Direck,

getting to business at once. "It's interesting to an American to see

this English establishment, and it must be still more interesting to a

German."

"I find it very different from Pomerania," said Herr Heinrich. "In some

respects it is more agreeable, in others less so. It is a pleasant life

but it is not a serious life.

"At any time," continued Herr Heinrich, "some one may say, 'Let us do

this thing,' or 'Let us do that thing,' and then everything is

disarranged.

"People walk into the house without ceremony. There is much kindness but

no politeness. Mr. Britling will go away for three or four days, and

when he returns and I come forward to greet him and bow, he will walk

right past me, or he will say just like this, 'How do, Heinrich?'"

"Are you interested in Mr. Britling's writings?" Mr. Direck asked.

"There again I am puzzled. His work is known even in Germany. His

articles are reprinted in German and Austrian reviews. You would expect

him to have a certain authority of manner. You would expect there to be

discussion at the table upon questions of philosophy and aesthetics....

It is not so. When I ask him questions it is often that they are not

seriously answered. Sometimes it is as if he did not like the questions

I askt of him. Yesterday I askt of him did he agree or did he not agree

with Mr. Bernard Shaw. He just said--I wrote it down in my memoranda--he

said: 'Oh! Mixt Pickles.' What can one understand of that?--Mixt

Pickles!"...

The young man's sedulous blue eyes looked out of his pink face through

his glasses at Mr. Direck, anxious for any light he could offer upon the

atmospheric vagueness of this England.

He was, he explained, a student of philology preparing for his

doctorate. He had not yet done his year of military service. He was

studying the dialects of East Anglia--

"You go about among the people?" Mr. Direck inquired.

"No, I do not do that. But I ask Mr. Carmine and Mrs. Britling and the

boys many questions. And sometimes I talk to the gardener."

He explained how he would prepare his thesis and how it would be

accepted, and the nature of his army service and the various stages by

which he would subsequently ascend in the orderly professorial life to

which he was destined. He confessed a certain lack of interest in

philology, but, he said, "it is what I have to do." And so he was going

to do it all his life through. For his own part he was interested in

ideas of universal citizenship, in Esperanto and Ido and universal

languages and such-like attacks upon the barriers between man and man.

But the authorities at home did not favour cosmopolitan ideas, and so he

was relinquishing them. "Here, it is as if there were no authorities,"

he said with a touch of envy.

Mr. Direck induced him to expand that idea.

Herr Heinrich made Mr. Britling his instance. If Mr. Britling were a

German he would certainly have some sort of title, a definite position,

responsibility. Here he was not even called Herr Doktor. He said what he

liked. Nobody rewarded him; nobody reprimanded him. When Herr Heinrich

asked him of his position, whether he was above or below Mr. Bernard

Shaw or Mr. Arnold White or Mr. Garvin or any other publicist, he made

jokes. Nobody here seemed to have a title and nobody seemed to have a

definite place. There was Mr. Lawrence Carmine; he was a student of

Oriental questions; he had to do with some public institution in London

that welcomed Indian students; he was a Geheimrath--

"Eh?" said Mr. Direck.

"It is--what do they call it? the Essex County Council." But nobody took

any notice of that. And when Mr. Philbert, who was a minister in the

government, came to lunch he was just like any one else. It was only

after he had gone that Herr Heinrich had learnt by chance that he was a

minister and "Right Honourable...."

"In Germany everything is definite. Every man knows his place, has his

papers, is instructed what to do...."

"Yet," said Mr. Direck, with his eyes on the glowing roses, the neat

arbour, the long line of the red wall of the vegetable garden and a

distant gleam of cornfield, "it all looks orderly enough."

"It is as if it had been put in order ages ago," said Herr Heinrich.

"And was just going on by habit," said Mr. Direck, taking up the idea.

Their comparisons were interrupted by the appearance of "Teddy," the

secretary, and the Indian young gentleman, damp and genial, as they

explained, "from the boats." It seemed that "down below" somewhere was a

pond with a punt and an island and a toy dinghy. And while they

discussed swimming and boating, Mr. Carmine appeared from the direction

of the park conversing gravely with the elder son. They had been for a

walk and a talk together. There were proposals for a Badminton foursome.

Mr. Direck emerged from the general interchange with Mr. Lawrence

Carmine, and then strolled through the rose garden to see the sunset

from the end. Mr. Direck took the opportunity to verify his impression

that the elder son was the present Mrs. Britling's stepson, and he also

contrived by a sudden admiration for a distant row of evening primroses

to deflect their path past the arbour in which the evening light must

now be getting a little too soft for Miss Corner's book.

Miss Corner was drawn into the sunset party. She talked to Mr. Carmine

and displayed, Mr. Direck thought, great originality of mind. She said

"The City of the Sun" was like the cities the boys sometimes made on the

playroom floor. She said it was the dearest little city, and gave some

amusing particulars. She described the painted walls that made the tour

of the Civitas Solis a liberal education. She asked Mr. Carmine, who was

an authority on Oriental literature, why there were no Indian nor

Chinese Utopias.

Now it had never occurred to Mr. Direck to ask why there were no Indian

nor Chinese Utopias, and even Mr. Carmine seemed surprised to discover

this deficiency.

"The primitive patriarchal village _is_ Utopia to India and China," said

Mr. Carmine, when they had a little digested the inquiry. "Or at any

rate it is their social ideal. They want no Utopias."

"Utopias came with cities," he said, considering the question. "And the

first cities, as distinguished from courts and autocratic capitals, came

with ships. India and China belong to an earlier age. Ships, trade,

disorder, strange relationships, unofficial literature, criticism--and

then this idea of some novel remaking of society...."

Section 8

Then Mr. Direck fell into the hands of Hugh, the eldest son, and

anticipating the inevitable, said that he liked to walk in the rose

garden. So they walked in the rose garden.

"Do you read Utopias?" said Mr. Direck, cutting any preface, in the

English manner.

"Oh, _rather_!" said Hugh, and became at once friendly and confidential.

"We all do," he explained. "In England everybody talks of change and

nothing ever changes."

"I found Miss Corner reading--what was it? the Sun People?--some old

classical Italian work."

"Campanella," said Hugh, without betraying the slightest interest in

Miss Corner. "Nothing changes in England, because the people who want to

change things change their minds before they change anything else. I've

been in London talking for the last half-year. Studying art they call

it. Before that I was a science student, and I want to be one again.

Don't you think, Sir, there's something about science--it's steadier

than anything else in the world?"

Mr. Direck thought that the moral truths of human nature were steadier

than science, and they had one of those little discussions of real life

that begin about a difference inadequately apprehended, and do not so

much end as are abandoned. Hugh struck him as being more speculative and

detached than any American college youth of his age that he knew--but

that might not be a national difference but only the Britling strain. He

seemed to have read more and more independently, and to be doing less.

And he was rather more restrained and self-possessed.

Before Mr. Direck could begin a proper inquiry into the young man's work

and outlook, he had got the conversation upon America. He wanted

tremendously to see America. "The dad says in one of his books that over

here we are being and that over there you are beginning. It must be

tremendously stimulating to think that your country is still being

made...."

Mr. Direck thought that an interesting point of view. "Unless something

tumbles down here, we never think of altering it," the young man

remarked. "And even then we just shore it up."

His remarks had the effect of floating off from some busy mill of

thought within him. Hitherto Mr. Direck had been inclined to think this

silent observant youth, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders

a little humped, as probably shy and adolescently ineffective. But the

head was manifestly quite busy....

"Miss Corner," he began, taking the first thing that came into his head,

and then he remembered that he had already made the remark he was going

to make not five minutes ago.

"What form of art," he asked, "are you contemplating in your studies at

the present time in London?"....

Before this question could be dealt with at all adequately, the two

small boys became active in the garden beating in everybody to

"dress-up" before supper. The secretary, Teddy, came in a fatherly way

to look after Mr. Direck and see to his draperies.

Section 9

Mr. Direck gave his very best attention to this business of draping

himself, for he had not the slightest intention of appearing ridiculous

in the eyes of Miss Corner. Teddy came with an armful of stuff that he

thought "might do."

"What'll I come as?" asked Mr. Direck.

"We don't wear costumes," said Teddy. "We just put on all the brightest

things we fancy. If it's any costume at all, it's Futurist."

"And surely why shouldn't one?" asked Mr. Direck, greatly struck by this

idea. "Why should we always be tied by the fashions and periods of the

past?"

He rejected a rather Mephistopheles-like costume of crimson and a scheme

for a brigand-like ensemble based upon what was evidently an old bolero

of Mrs. Britling's, and after some reflection he accepted some black

silk tights. His legs were not legs to be ashamed of. Over this he tried

various brilliant wrappings from the Dower House _armoire_, and chose at

last, after some hesitation in the direction of a piece of gold and

purple brocade, a big square of green silk curtain stuff adorned with

golden pheasants and other large and dignified ornaments; this he wore

toga fashion over his light silken under-vest--Teddy had insisted on the

abandonment of his shirt "if you want to dance at all"--and fastened

with a large green glass-jewelled brooch. From this his head and neck

projected, he felt, with a tolerable dignity. Teddy suggested a fillet

of green ribbon, and this Mr. Direck tried, but after prolonged

reflection before the glass rejected. He was still weighing the effect

of this fillet upon the mind of Miss Corner when Teddy left him to make

his own modest preparations. Teddy's departure gave him a chance for

profile studies by means of an arrangement of the long mirror and the

table looking-glass that he had been too shy to attempt in the presence

of the secretary. The general effect was quite satisfactory.

"Wa-a-a-l," he said with a quaver of laughter, "now who'd have thought

it?" and smiled a consciously American smile at himself before going

down.

The company was assembling in the panelled hall, and made a brilliant

show in the light of the acetylene candles against the dark background.

Mr. Britling in a black velvet cloak and black silk tights was a deeper

shade among the shadows; the high lights were Miss Corner and her

sister, in glittering garments of peacock green and silver that gave a

snake-like quality to their lithe bodies. They were talking to the

German tutor, who had become a sort of cotton Cossack, a spectacled

Cossack in buff and bright green. Mrs. Britling was dignified and

beautiful in a purple djibbah, and her stepson had become a handsome

still figure of black and crimson. Teddy had contrived something

elaborate and effective in the Egyptian style, with a fish-basket and a

cuirass of that thin matting one finds behind washstands; the small boys

were brigands, with immensely baggy breeches and cummerbunds in which

they had stuck a selection of paper-knives and toy pistols and similar

weapons. Mr. Carmine and his young man had come provided with real

Indian costumes; the feeling of the company was that Mr. Carmine was a

mullah. The aunt-like lady with the noble nose stood out amidst these

levities in a black silk costume with a gold chain. She refused, it

seemed, to make herself absurd, though she encouraged the others to

extravagance by nods and enigmatical smiles. Nevertheless she had put

pink ribbons in her cap. A family of father, golden-haired mother, and

two young daughters, sympathetically attired, had just arrived, and were

discarding their outer wrappings with the assistance of host and

hostess.

It was all just exactly what Mr. Direck had never expected in England,

and equally unexpected was the supper on a long candle-lit table without

a cloth. No servants were present, but on a sideboard stood a cold

salmon and cold joints and kalter aufschnitt and kartoffel salat, and a

variety of other comestibles, and many bottles of beer and wine and

whisky. One helped oneself and anybody else one could, and Mr. Direck

did his best to be very attentive to Mrs. Britling and Miss Corner, and

was greatly assisted by the latter.

Everybody seemed unusually gay and bright-eyed. Mr. Direck found

something exhilarating and oddly exciting in all this unusual bright

costume and in this easy mutual service; it made everybody seem franker

and simpler. Even Mr. Britling had revealed a sturdy handsomeness that

had not been apparent to Mr. Direck before, and young Britling left no

doubts now about his good looks. Mr. Direck forgot his mission and his

position, and indeed things generally, in an irrational satisfaction

that his golden pheasants harmonised with the glitter of the warm and

smiling girl beside him. And he sat down beside her--"You sit anywhere,"

said Mrs. Britling--with far less compunction than in his ordinary

costume he would have felt for so direct a confession of preference. And

there was something in her eyes, it was quite indefinable and yet very

satisfying, that told him that now he escaped from the stern square

imperatives of his patriotic tailor in New York she had made a

discovery of him.

Everybody chattered gaily, though Mr. Direck would have found it

difficult to recall afterwards what it was they chattered about, except

that somehow he acquired the valuable knowledge that Miss Corner was

called Cecily, and her sister Letty, and then--so far old Essex custom

held--the masculine section was left for a few minutes for some

imaginary drinking, and a lighting of cigars and cigarettes, after which

everybody went through interwoven moonlight and afterglow to the barn.

Mr. Britling sat down to a pianola in the corner and began the familiar

cadences of "Whistling Rufus."

"You dance?" said Miss Cecily Corner.

"I've never been much of a dancing man," said Mr. Direck. "What sort of

dance is this?"

"Just anything. A two-step."

Mr. Direck hesitated and regretted a well-spent youth, and then Hugh

came prancing forward with outstretched hands and swept her away.

Just for an instant Mr. Direck felt that this young man was a trifle

superfluous....

But it was very amusing dancing.

It wasn't any sort of taught formal dancing. It was a spontaneous retort

to the leaping American music that Mr. Britling footed out. You kept

time, and for the rest you did as your nature prompted. If you had a

partner you joined hands, you fluttered to and from one another, you

paced down the long floor together, you involved yourselves in romantic

pursuits and repulsions with other couples. There was no objection to

your dancing alone. Teddy, for example, danced alone in order to develop

certain Egyptian gestures that were germinating in his brain. There was

no objection to your joining hands in a cheerful serpent....

Mr. Direck hung on to Cissie and her partner. They danced very well

together; they seemed to like and understand each other. It was natural

of course for two young people like that, thrown very much together, to

develop an affection for one another.... Still, she was older by three

or four years.

It seemed unreasonable that the boy anyhow shouldn't be in love with

her....

It seemed unreasonable that any one shouldn't be in love with her....

Then Mr. Direck remarked that Cissie was watching Teddy's manoeuvres

over her partner's shoulder with real affection and admiration....

But then most refreshingly she picked up Mr. Direck's gaze and gave him

the slightest of smiles. She hadn't forgotten him.

The music stopped with an effect of shock, and all the bobbing, whirling

figures became walking glories.

"Now that's not difficult, is it?" said Miss Corner, glowing happily.

"Not when you do it," said Mr. Direck.

"I can't imagine an American not dancing a two-step. You must do the

next with me. Listen! It's 'Away Down Indiana' ... ah! I knew you

could."

Mr. Direck, too, understood now that he could, and they went off holding

hands rather after the fashion of two skaters.

"My word!" said Mr. Direck. "To think I'd be dancing."

But he said no more because he needed his breath.

He liked it, and he had another attempt with one of the visitor

daughters, who danced rather more formally, and then Teddy took the

pianola and Mr. Direck was astonished by the spectacle of an eminent

British thinker in a whirl of black velvet and extremely active black

legs engaged in a kind of Apache dance in pursuit of the visitor wife.

In which Mr. Lawrence Carmine suddenly mingled.

"In Germany," said Herr Heinrich, "we do not dance like this. It could

not be considered seemly. But it is very pleasant."

And then there was a waltz, and Herr Heinrich bowed to and took the

visitor wife round three times, and returned her very punctually and

exactly to the point whence he had taken her, and the Indian young

gentleman (who must not be called "coloured") waltzed very well with

Cecily. Mr. Direck tried to take a tolerant European view of this brown

and white combination. But he secured her as soon as possible from this

Asiatic entanglement, and danced with her again, and then he danced with

her again.

"Come and look at the moonlight," cried Mrs. Britling.

And presently Mr. Direck found himself strolling through the rose garden

with Cecily. She had the sweetest moonlight face, her white shining robe

made her a thing of moonlight altogether. If Mr. Direck had not been in

love with her before he was now altogether in love. Mamie Nelson, whose

freakish unkindness had been rankling like a poisoned thorn in his heart

all the way from Massachusetts, suddenly became Ancient History.

A tremendous desire for eloquence arose in Mr. Direck's soul, a desire

so tremendous that no conceivable phrase he could imagine satisfied it.

So he remained tongue-tied. And Cecily was tongue-tied, too. The scent

of the roses just tinted the clear sweetness of the air they breathed.

Mr. Direck's mood was an immense solemnity, like a dark ocean beneath

the vast dome of the sky, and something quivered in every fibre of his

being, like moonlit ripples on the sea. He felt at the same time a

portentous stillness and an immense enterprise....

Then suddenly the pianola, pounding a cake walk, burst out into ribald

invitation....

"Come back to dance!" cried Cecily, like one from whom a spell has just

been broken. And Mr. Direck, snatching at a vanishing scrap of

everything he had not said, remarked, "I shall never forget this

evening."

She did not seem to hear that.

They danced together again. And then Mr. Direck danced with the visitor

lady, whose name he had never heard. And then he danced with Mrs.

Britling, and then he danced with Letty. And then it seemed time for him

to look for Miss Cecily again.

And so the cheerful evening passed until they were within a quarter of

an hour of Sunday morning. Mrs. Britling went to exert a restraining

influence upon the pianola.

"Oh! one dance more!" cried Cissie Corner.

"Oh! one dance more!" cried Letty.

"One dance more," Mr. Direck supported, and then things really _had_ to

end.

There was a rapid putting out of candles and a stowing away of things by

Teddy and the sons, two chauffeurs appeared from the region of the

kitchen and brought Mr. Lawrence Carmine's car and the visitor family's

car to the front door, and everybody drifted gaily through the moonlight

and the big trees to the front of the house. And Mr. Direck saw the

perambulator waiting--the mysterious perambulator--a little in the dark

beyond the front door.

The visitor family and Mr. Carmine and his young Indian departed. "Come

to hockey!" shouted Mr. Britling to each departing car-load, and Mr.

Carmine receding answered: "I'll bring three!"

Then Mr. Direck, in accordance with a habit that had been growing on him

throughout the evening, looked around for Miss Cissie Corner and failed

to find her. And then behold she was descending the staircase with the

mysterious baby in her arms. She held up a warning finger, and then

glanced at her sleeping burthen. She looked like a silvery Madonna. And

Mr. Direck remembered that he was still in doubt about that baby....

Teddy, who was back in his flannels, seized upon the perambulator. There

was much careful baby stowing on the part of Cecily; she displayed an

infinitely maternal solicitude. Letty was away changing; she reappeared

jauntily taking leave, disregarding the baby absolutely, and Teddy

departed bigamously, wheeling the perambulator between the two sisters

into the hazes of the moonlight. There was much crying of good nights.

Mr. Direck's curiosities narrowed down to a point of great intensity....

Of course, Mr. Britling's circle must be a very "Advanced" circle....

Section 10

Mr. Direck found he had taken leave of the rest of the company, and

drifted into a little parlour with Mr. Britling and certain glasses and

siphons and a whisky decanter on a tray....

"It is a very curious thing," said Mr. Direck, "that in England I find

myself more disposed to take stimulants and that I no longer have the

need for iced water that one feels at home. I ascribe it to a greater

humidity in the air. One is less dried and one is less braced. One is no

longer pursued by a thirst, but one needs something to buck one up a

little. Thank you. That is enough."

Mr. Direck took his glass of whisky and soda from Mr. Britling's hand.

Mr. Britling seated himself in an armchair by the fireplace and threw

one leg carelessly over the arm. In his black velvet cloak and cap, and

his black silk tights, he was very like a minor character, a court

chamberlain for example, in some cloak and rapier drama. "I find this

week-end dancing and kicking about wonderfully wholesome," he said.

"That and our Sunday hockey. One starts the new week clear and bright

about the mind. Friday is always my worst working day."

Mr. Direck leant against the table, wrapped in his golden pheasants, and

appreciated the point.

"Your young people dance very cheerfully," he said.

"We all dance very cheerfully," said Mr. Britling.

"Then this Miss Corner," said Mr. Direck, "she is the sister, I presume,

is she? of that pleasant young lady who is married--she is married,

isn't she?--to the young man you call Teddy."

"I should have explained these young people. They're the sort of young

people we are producing over here now in quite enormous quantity. They

are the sort of equivalent of the Russian Intelligentsia, an

irresponsible middle class with ideas. Teddy, you know, is my secretary.

He's the son, I believe, of a Kilburn solicitor. He was recommended to

me by Datcher of _The Times_. He came down here and lived in lodgings

for a time. Then suddenly appeared the young lady."

"Miss Corner's sister?"

"Exactly. The village was a little startled. The cottager who had let

the rooms came to me privately. Teddy is rather touchy on the point of

his personal independence, he considers any demand for explanations as

an insult, and probably all he had said to the old lady was, 'This is

Letty--come to share my rooms.' I put the matter to him very gently.

'Oh, yes,' he said, rather in the manner of some one who has overlooked

a trifle. 'I got married to her in the Christmas holidays. May I bring

her along to see Mrs. Britling?' We induced him to go into a little

cottage I rent. The wife was the daughter of a Colchester journalist and

printer. I don't know if you talked to her."

"I've talked to the sister rather."

"Well, they're both idea'd. They're highly educated in the sense that

they do really think for themselves. Almost fiercely. So does Teddy. If

he thinks he hasn't thought anything he thinks for himself, he goes off

and thinks it different. The sister is a teacher who wants to take the

B.A. degree in London University. Meanwhile she pays the penalty of her

sex."

"Meaning--?" asked Mr. Direck, startled.

"Oh! that she puts in a great deal too much of her time upon housework

and minding her sister's baby."

"She's a very interesting and charming young lady indeed," said Mr.

Direck. "With a sort of Western college freedom of mind--and something

about her that isn't American at all."

Mr. Britling was following the train of his own thoughts.

"My household has some amusing contrasts," he said. "I don't know if you

have talked to that German.

"He's always asking questions. And you tell him any old thing and he

goes and writes it down in his room upstairs, and afterwards asks you

another like it in order to perplex himself by the variety of your

answers. He regards the whole world with a methodical distrust. He wants

to document it and pin it down. He suspects it only too justly of

disorderly impulses, and a capacity for self-contradiction. He is the

most extraordinary contrast to Teddy, whose confidence in the universe

amounts almost to effrontery. Teddy carries our national laxness to a

foolhardy extent. He is capable of leaving his watch in the middle of

Claverings Park and expecting to find it a month later--being carefully

taken care of by a squirrel, I suppose--when he happens to want it. He's

rather like a squirrel himself--without the habit of hoarding. He is

incapable of asking a question about anything; he would be quite sure it

was all right anyhow. He would feel that asking questions betrayed a

want of confidence--was a sort of incivility. But my German, if you

notice,--his normal expression is one of grave solicitude. He is like a

conscientious ticket-collector among his impressions. And did you notice

how beautifully my pianola rolls are all numbered and catalogued? He did

that. He set to work and did it as soon as he got here, just as a good

cat when you bring it into the house sets to work and catches mice.

Previously the pianola music was chaos. You took what God sent you.

"And he _looks_ like a German," said Mr. Britling.

"He certainly does that," said Mr. Direck.

"He has the fair type of complexion, the rather full habit of body, the

temperamental disposition, but in addition that close-cropped head, it

is almost as if it were shaved, the plumpness, the glasses--those are

things that are made. And the way he carries himself. And the way he

thinks. His meticulousness. When he arrived he was delightful, he was

wearing a student's corps cap and a rucksack, he carried a violin; he

seemed to have come out of a book. No one would ever dare to invent so

German a German for a book. Now, a young Frenchman or a young Italian or

a young Russian coming here might look like a foreigner, but he wouldn't

have the distinctive national stamp a German has. He wouldn't be plainly

French or Italian or Russian. Other peoples are not made; they are

neither made nor created but proceeding--out of a thousand indefinable

causes. The Germans are a triumph of directive will. I had to remark the

other day that when my boys talked German they shouted. 'But when one

talks German one _must_ shout,' said Herr Heinrich. 'It is taught so in

the schools.' And it is. They teach them to shout and to throw out their

chests. Just as they teach them to read notice-boards and not think

about politics. Their very ribs are not their own. My Herr Heinrich is

comparatively a liberal thinker. He asked me the other day, 'But why

should I give myself up to philology? But then,' he reflected, 'it is

what I have to do.'"

Mr. Britling seemed to have finished, and then just as Mr. Direck was

planning a way of getting the talk back by way of Teddy to Miss Corner,

he snuggled more deeply into his chair, reflected and broke out again.

"This contrast between Heinrich's carefulness and Teddy's

easy-goingness, come to look at it, is I suppose one of the most

fundamental in the world. It reaches to everything. It mixes up with

education, statecraft, morals. Will you make or will you take? Those are

the two extreme courses in all such things. I suppose the answer of

wisdom to that is, like all wise answers, a compromise. I suppose one

must accept and then make all one can of it.... Have you talked at all

to my eldest son?"

"He's a very interesting young man indeed," said Mr. Direck. "I should

venture to say there's a very great deal in him. I was most impressed by

the few words I had with him."

"There, for example, is one of my perplexities," said Mr. Britling.

Mr. Direck waited for some further light on this sudden transition.

"Ah! your troubles in life haven't begun yet. Wait till you're a father.

That cuts to the bone. You have the most delicate thing in the world in

hand, a young kindred mind. You feel responsible for it, you know you

are responsible for it; and you lose touch with it. You can't get at it.

Nowadays we've lost the old tradition of fatherhood by divine right--and

we haven't got a new one. I've tried not to be a cramping ruler, a

director, a domestic tyrant to that lad--and in effect it's meant his

going his own way.... I don't dominate. I hoped to advise. But you see

he loves my respect and good opinion. Too much. When things go well I

know of them. When the world goes dark for him, then he keeps his

trouble from me. Just when I would so eagerly go into it with him....

There's something the matter now, something--it may be grave. I feel he

wants to tell me. And there it is!--it seems I am the last person to

whom he can humiliate himself by a confession of blundering, or

weakness.... Something I should just laugh at and say, 'That's in the

blood of all of us, dear Spit of myself. Let's see what's to be

done.'..."

He paused and then went on, finding in the unfamiliarity and

transitoriness of his visitor a freedom he might have failed to find in

a close friend.

"I am frightened at times at all I don't know about in that boy's mind.

I know nothing of his religiosities. He's my son and he must have

religiosities. I know nothing of his ideas or of his knowledge about sex

and all that side of life. I do not know of the things he finds

beautiful. I can guess at times; that's all; when he betrays himself....

You see, you don't know really what love is until you have children. One

doesn't love women. Indeed you don't! One gives and gets; it's a trade.

One may have tremendous excitements and expectations and overwhelming

desires. That's all very well in its way. But the love of children is an

exquisite tenderness: it rends the heart. It's a thing of God. And I lie

awake at nights and stretch out my hands in the darkness to this

lad--who will never know--until his sons come in their time...."

He made one of his quick turns again.

"And that's where our English way makes for distresses. Mr. Prussian

respects and fears his father; respects authorities, attends, obeys

and--_his father has a hold upon him_. But I said to myself at the

outset, 'No, whatever happens, I will not usurp the place of God. I will

not be the Priest-Patriarch of my children. They shall grow and I will

grow beside them, helping but not cramping or overshadowing.' They grow

more. But they blunder more. Life ceases to be a discipline and becomes

an experiment...."

"That's very true," said Mr. Direck, to whom it seemed the time was ripe

to say something. "This is the problem of America perhaps even more than

of England. Though I have not had the parental experience you have

undergone.... I can see very clearly that a son is a very serious

proposition."

"The old system of life was organisation. That is where Germany is still

the most ancient of European states. It's a reversion to a tribal cult.

It's atavistic.... To organise or discipline, or mould characters or

press authority, is to assume that you have reached finality in your

general philosophy. It implies an assured end. Heinrich has his assured

end, his philological professorship or thereabouts as a part of the

Germanic machine. And that too has its assured end in German national

assertion. Here, we have none of those convictions. We know we haven't

finality, and so we are open and apologetic and receptive, rather than

wilful.... You see all organisation, with its implication of finality,

is death. We feel that. The Germans don't. What you organise you kill.

Organised morals or organised religion or organised thought are dead

morals and dead religion and dead thought. Yet some organisation you

must have. Organisation is like killing cattle. If you do not kill some

the herd is just waste. But you musn't kill all or you kill the herd.

The unkilled cattle are the herd, the continuation; the unorganised side

of life is the real life. The reality of life is adventure, not

performance. What isn't adventure isn't life. What can be ruled about

can be machined. But priests and schoolmasters and bureaucrats get hold

of life and try to make it _all_ rules, _all_ etiquette and regulation

and correctitude.... And parents and the love of parents make for the

same thing. It is all very well to experiment for oneself, but when one

sees these dear things of one's own, so young and inexperienced and so

capable of every sort of gallant foolishness, walking along the narrow

plank, going down into dark jungles, ah! then it makes one want to wrap

them in laws and foresight and fence them about with 'Verboten' boards

in all the conceivable aspects...."

"In America of course we do set a certain store upon youthful

self-reliance," said Mr. Direck.

"As we do here. It's in your blood and our blood. It's the instinct of

the English and the Irish anyhow to suspect government and take the

risks of the chancy way.... And manifestly the Russians, if you read

their novelists, have the same twist in them.... When we get this young

Prussian here, he's a marvel to us. He really believes in Law. He

_likes_ to obey. That seems a sort of joke to us. It's curious how

foreign these Germans are--to all the rest of the world. Because of

their docility. Scratch the Russian and you get the Tartar. Educate the

Russian or the American or the Englishman or the Irishman or Frenchman

or any real northern European except the German, and you get the

Anarchist, that is to say the man who dreams of order without

organisation--of something beyond organisation....

"It's one o'clock," said Mr. Britling abruptly, perceiving a shade of

fatigue upon the face of his hearer and realising that his thoughts had

taken him too far, "and Sunday. Let's go to bed."

Section 11

For a time Mr. Direck could not sleep. His mind had been too excited by

this incessant day with all its novelties and all its provocations to

comparison. The whole complicated spectacle grouped itself, with a

naturalness and a complete want of logic that all who have been young

will understand, about Cecily Corner.

She had to be in the picture, and so she came in as though she were the

central figure, as though she were the quintessential England. There she

was, the type, the blood, the likeness, of no end of Massachusetts

families, the very same stuff indeed, and yet she was different....

For a time his thoughts hovered ineffectively about certain details of

her ear and cheek, and one may doubt if his interest in these things was

entirely international....

Then he found himself under way with an exposition of certain points to

Mr. Britling. In the security of his bed he could imagine that he was

talking very slowly and carefully while Mr. Britling listened; already

he was more than half way to dreamland or he could not have supposed

anything so incredible.

"There's a curious sort of difference," he was saying. "It is difficult

to define, but on the whole I might express it by saying that such a

gathering as this if it was in America would be drawn with harder lines,

would show its bones more and have everything more emphatic. And just to

take one illustrative point: in America in such a gathering as this

there would be bound to be several jokes going on as it were, running

jokes and running criticisms, from day to day and from week to week....

There would be jokes about your writing and your influence and jokes

about Miss Corner's advanced reading.... You see, in America we pay much

more attention to personal character. Here people, I notice, are not

talked to about their personal characters at all, and many of them do

not seem to be aware and do not seem to mind what personal characters

they have....

"And another thing I find noteworthy is the way in which what I might

call mature people seem to go on having a good time instead of standing

by and applauding the young people having a good time.... And the young

people do not seem to have set out to have a good time at all.... Now in

America, a charming girl like Miss Corner would be distinctly more aware

of herself and her vitality than she is here, distinctly more. Her

peculiarly charming sidelong look, if I might make so free with

her--would have been called attention to. It's a perfectly beautiful

look, the sort of look some great artist would have loved to make

immortal. It's a look I shall find it hard to forget.... But she doesn't

seem to be aware in the least of it. In America she would be aware of

it. She would be distinctly aware of it. She would have been _made_

aware of it. She would have been advised of it. It would be looked for

and she would know it was looked for. She would _give_ it as a singer

gives her most popular song. Mamie Nelson, for example, used to give a

peculiar little throw back of the chin and a laugh.... It was talked

about. People came to see it....

"Of course Mamie Nelson was a very brilliant girl indeed. I suppose in

England you would say we spoilt her. I suppose we did spoil her...."

It came into Mr. Direck's head that for a whole day he had scarcely

given a thought to Mamie Nelson. And now he was thinking of her--calmly.

Why shouldn't one think of Mamie Nelson calmly?

She was a proud imperious thing. There was something Southern in her.

Very dark blue eyes she had, much darker than Miss Corner's....

But how tortuous she had been behind that outward pride of hers! For

four years she had let him think he was the only man who really mattered

in the world, and all the time quite clearly and definitely she had

deceived him. She had made a fool of him and she had made a fool of the

others perhaps--just to have her retinue and play the queen in her

world. And at last humiliation, bitter humiliation, and Mamie with her

chin in the air and her bright triumphant smile looking down on him.

Hadn't he, she asked, had the privilege of loving her?

She took herself at the value they had set upon her.

Well--somehow--that wasn't right....

All the way across the Atlantic Mr. Direck had been trying to forget her

downward glance with the chin up, during that last encounter--and other

aspects of the same humiliation. The years he had spent upon her! The

time! Always relying upon her assurance of a special preference for him.

He tried to think he was suffering from the pangs of unrequited love,

and to conceal from himself just how bitterly his pride and vanity had

been rent by her ultimate rejection. There had been a time when she had

given him reason to laugh in his sleeve at Booth Wilmington.

Perhaps Booth Wilmington had also had reason for laughing in his

sleeve....

Had she even loved Booth Wilmington? Or had she just snatched at him?...

Wasn't he, Direck, as good a man as Booth Wilmington anyhow?...

For some moments the old sting of jealousy rankled again. He recalled

the flaring rivalry that had ended in his defeat, the competition of

gifts and treats.... A thing so open that all Carrierville knew of it,

discussed it, took sides.... And over it all Mamie with her flashing

smile had sailed like a processional goddess....

Why, they had made jokes about him in the newspapers!

One couldn't imagine such a contest in Matching's Easy. Yet surely even

in Matching's Easy there are lovers.

Is it something in the air, something in the climate that makes things

harder and clearer in America?...

Cissie--why shouldn't one call her Cissie in one's private thoughts

anyhow?--would never be as hard and clear as Mamie. She had English

eyes--merciful eyes....

That was the word--_merciful_!

The English light, the English air, are merciful....

Merciful....

They tolerate old things and slow things and imperfect apprehensions.

They aren't always getting at you....

They don't laugh at you.... At least--they laugh differently....

Was England the tolerant country? With its kind eyes and its wary

sidelong look. Toleration. In which everything mellowed and nothing was

destroyed. A soft country. A country with a passion for imperfection. A

padded country....

England--all stuffed with soft feathers ... under one's ear. A

pillow--with soft, kind Corners ... Beautiful rounded Corners.... Dear,

dear Corners. Cissie Corners. Corners. Could there be a better family?

Massachusetts--but in heaven....

Harps playing two-steps, and kind angels wrapped in moonlight.

Very softly I and you,

One turn, two turn, three turn, too.

Off we go!....

CHAPTER THE THIRD

THE ENTERTAINMENT OF MR. DIRECK REACHES A CLIMAX

Section 1

Breakfast was in the open air, and a sunny, easy-going feast. Then the

small boys laid hands on Mr. Direck and showed him the pond and the

boats, while Mr. Britling strolled about the lawn with Hugh, talking

rather intently. And when Mr. Direck returned from the boats in a state

of greatly enhanced popularity he found Mr. Britling conversing over his

garden railings to what was altogether a new type of Britisher in Mr.

Direck's experience. It was a tall, lean, sun-bitten youngish man of

forty perhaps, in brown tweeds, looking more like the Englishman of the

American illustrations than anything Mr. Direck had met hitherto. Indeed

he came very near to a complete realisation of that ideal except that

there was a sort of intensity about him, and that his clipped moustache

had the restrained stiffness of a wiry-haired terrier. This gentleman

Mr. Direck learnt was Colonel Rendezvous. He spoke in clear short

sentences, they had an effect of being punched out, and he was refusing

to come into the garden and talk.

"Have to do my fourteen miles before lunch," he said. "You haven't seen

Manning about, have you?"

"He isn't here," said Mr. Britling, and it seemed to Mr. Direck that

there was the faintest ambiguity in this reply.

"Have to go alone, then," said Colonel Rendezvous. "They told me that he

had started to come here."

"I shall motor over to Bramley High Oak for your Boy Scout festival,"

said Mr. Britling.

"Going to have three thousand of 'em," said the Colonel. "Good show."

His steely eyes seemed to search the cover of Mr. Britling's garden for

the missing Manning, and then he decided to give him up. "I must be

going," he said. "So long. Come up!"

A well-disciplined dog came to heel, and the lean figure had given Mr.

Direck a semi-military salutation and gone upon its way. It marched with

a long elastic stride; it never looked back.

"Manning," said Mr. Britling, "is probably hiding up in my rose garden."

"Curiously enough, I guessed from your manner that that might be the

case," said Mr. Direck.

"Yes. Manning is a London journalist. He has a little cottage about a

mile over there"--Mr. Britling pointed vaguely--"and he comes down for

the week-ends. And Rendezvous has found out he isn't fit. And everybody

ought to be fit. That is the beginning and end of life for Rendezvous.

Fitness. An almost mineral quality, an insatiable activity of body,

great mental simplicity. So he takes possession of poor old Manning and

trots him for that fourteen miles--at four miles an hour. Manning goes

through all the agonies of death and damnation, he half dissolves, he

pants and drags for the first eight or ten miles, and then I must admit

he rather justifies Rendezvous' theory. He is to be found in the

afternoon in a hammock suffering from blistered feet, but otherwise

unusually well. But if he can escape it, he does. He hides."

"But if he doesn't want to go with Rendezvous, why does he?" said Mr.

Direck.

"Well, Rendezvous is accustomed to the command of men. And Manning's

only way of refusing things is on printed forms. Which he doesn't bring

down to Matching's Easy. Ah! behold!"

Far away across the lawn between two blue cedars there appeared a

leisurely form in grey flannels and a loose tie, advancing with manifest

circumspection.

"He's gone," cried Britling.

The leisurely form, obviously amiable, obviously a little out of

condition, became more confident, drew nearer.

"I'm sorry to have missed him," he said cheerfully. "I thought he might

come this way. It's going to be a very warm day indeed. Let us sit about

somewhere and talk.

"Of course," he said, turning to Direck, "Rendezvous is the life and

soul of the country."

They strolled towards a place of seats and hammocks between the big

trees and the rose garden, and the talk turned for a time upon

Rendezvous. "They have the tidiest garden in Essex," said Manning. "It's

not Mrs. Rendezvous' fault that it is so. Mrs. Rendezvous, as a matter

of fact, has a taste for the picturesque. She just puts the things about

in groups in the beds. She wants them, she says, to grow anyhow. She

desires a romantic disorder. But she never gets it. When he walks down

the path all the plants dress instinctively.... And there's a tree near

their gate; it used to be a willow. You can ask any old man in the

village. But ever since Rendezvous took the place it's been trying to

present arms. With the most extraordinary results. I was passing the

other day with old Windershin. 'You see that there old poplar,' he said.

'It's a willow,' said I. 'No,' he said, 'it did used to be a willow

before Colonel Rendezvous he came. But now it's a poplar.'... And, by

Jove, it is a poplar!"...

The conversation thus opened by Manning centred for a time upon Colonel

Rendezvous. He was presented as a monster of energy and self-discipline;

as the determined foe of every form of looseness, slackness, and

easy-goingness.

"He's done wonderful work for the local Boy Scout movement," said

Manning.

"It's Kitchenerism," said Britling.

"It's the army side of the efficiency stunt," said Manning.

There followed a digression upon the Boy Scout movement, and Mr. Direck

made comparisons with the propaganda of Seton Thompson in America.

"Colonel Teddyism," said Manning. "It's a sort of reaction against

everything being too easy and too safe."

"It's got its anti-decadent side," said Mr. Direck.

"If there is such a thing as decadence," said Mr. Britling.

"If there wasn't such a thing as decadence," said Manning, "we

journalists would have had to invent it."...

"There is something tragical in all this--what shall I call

it?--Kitchenerism," Mr. Britling reflected "Here you have it rushing

about and keeping itself--screwed up, and trying desperately to keep the

country screwed up. And all because there may be a war some day somehow

with Germany. Provided Germany _is_ insane. It's that war, like some

sort of bee in Rendezvous' brains, that is driving him along the road

now to Market Saffron--he always keeps to the roads because they are

severer--through all the dust and sunshine. When he might be here

gossiping....

"And you know, I don't see that war coming," said Mr. Britling. "I

believe Rendezvous sweats in vain. I can't believe in that war. It has

held off for forty years. It may hold off forever."

He nodded his head towards the German tutor, who had come into view

across the lawn, talking profoundly with Mr. Britling's eldest son.

"Look at that pleasant person. There he is--_Echt Deutsch_--if anything

ever was. Look at my son there! Do you see the two of them engaged in

mortal combat? The thing's too ridiculous. The world grows sane. They

may fight in the Balkans still; in many ways the Balkan States are in

the very rear of civilisation; but to imagine decent countries like this

or Germany going back to bloodshed! No.... When I see Rendezvous

keeping it up and keeping it up, I begin to see just how poor Germany

must be keeping it up. I begin to realise how sick Germany must be

getting of the high road and the dust and heat and the everlasting drill

and restraint.... My heart goes out to the South Germans. Old Manning

here always reminds me of Austria. Think of Germany coming like

Rendezvous on a Sunday morning, and looking stiffly over Austria's

fence. 'Come for a good hard walk, man. Keep Fit....'"

"But suppose this Balkan trouble becomes acute," said Manning.

"It hasn't; it won't. Even if it did we should keep out of it."

"But suppose Russia grappled Austria and Germany flung herself suddenly

upon France--perhaps taking Belgium on the way."

"Oh!--we should fight. Of course we should fight. Could any one but a

congenital idiot suppose we shouldn't fight? They know we should fight.

They aren't altogether idiots in Germany. But the thing's absurd. Why

_should_ Germany attack France? It's as if Manning here took a hatchet

suddenly and assailed Edith.... It's just the dream of their military

journalists. It's such schoolboy nonsense. Isn't that a beautiful pillar

rose? Edith only put it in last year.... I hate all this talk of wars

and rumours of wars.... It's worried all my life. And it gets worse and

it gets emptier every year...."

Section 2

Now just at that moment there was a loud report....

But neither Mr. Britling nor Mr. Manning nor Mr. Direck was interrupted

or incommoded in the slightest degree by that report. Because it was too

far off over the curve of this round world to be either heard or seen at

Matching's Easy. Nevertheless it was a very loud report. It occurred at

an open space by a river that ran through a cramped Oriental city, a

city spiked with white minarets and girt about by bare hills under a

blazing afternoon sky. It came from a black parcel that the Archduke

Francis Ferdinand of Austria, with great presence of mind, had just

flung out from the open hood of his automobile, where, tossed from the

side of the quay, it had descended a few seconds before. It exploded as

it touched the cobbled road just under the front of the second vehicle

in the procession, and it blew to pieces the front of the automobile and

injured the aide-de-camp who was in it and several of the spectators.

Its thrower was immediately gripped by the bystanders. The procession

stopped. There was a tremendous commotion amongst that brightly-costumed

crowd, a hot excitement in vivid contrast to the Sabbath calm of

Matching's Easy....

Mr. Britling, to whom the explosion was altogether inaudible, continued

his dissertation upon the common-sense of the world and the practical

security of our Western peace.

Section 3

Lunch was an open-air feast again. Three visitors had dropped in; they

had motored down from London piled up on a motor-cycle and a side-car; a

brother and two sisters they seemed to be, and they had apparently

reduced hilariousness to a principle. The rumours of coming hockey that

had been floating on the outskirts of Mr. Direck's consciousness ever

since his arrival, thickened and multiplied.... It crept into his mind

that he was expected to play....

He decided he would not play. He took various people into his

confidence. He told Mr. Britling, and Mr. Britling said, "We'll make you

full back, where you'll get a hit now and then and not have very much to

do. All you have to remember is to hit with the flat side of your stick

and not raise it above your shoulders." He told Teddy, and Teddy said,

"I strongly advise you to dress as thinly as you can consistently with

decency, and put your collar and tie in your pocket before the game

begins. Hockey is properly a winter game." He told the maiden aunt-like

lady with the prominent nose, and she said almost enviously, "Every one

here is asked to play except me. I assuage the perambulator. I suppose

one mustn't be envious. I don't see why I shouldn't play. I'm not so old

as all that." He told Hugh, and Hugh warned him to be careful not to get

hold of one of the sprung sticks. He considered whether it wouldn't be

wiser to go to his own room and lock himself in, or stroll off for a

walk through Claverings Park. But then he would miss Miss Corner, who

was certain, it seemed, to come up for hockey. On the other hand, if he

did not miss her he might make himself ridiculous in her eyes, and

efface the effect of the green silk stuff with the golden pheasants.

He determined to stay behind until she arrived, and explain to her that

he was not going to play. He didn't somehow want her to think he wasn't

perfectly fit to play.

Mr. Carmine arrived in an automobile with two Indians and a gentleman

who had been a prospector in Alaska, the family who had danced overnight

at the Dower House reappeared, and then Mrs. Teddy, very detached with a

special hockey stick, and Miss Corner wheeling the perambulator. Then

came further arrivals. At the earliest opportunity Mr. Direck secured

the attention of Miss Corner, and lost his interest in any one else.

"I can't play this hockey," said Mr. Direck. "I feel strange about it.

It isn't an American game. Now if it were baseball--!"

He left her to suppose him uncommonly hot stuff at baseball.

"If you're on my side," said Cecily, "mind you pass to me."

It became evident to Mr. Direck that he was going to play this hockey

after all.

"Well," he said, "if I've got to play hockey, I guess I've got to play

hockey. But can't I just get a bit of practice somewhere before the game

begins?"

So Miss Corner went off to get two sticks and a ball and came back to

instruct Mr. Direck. She said he had a good eye. The two small boys

scenting play in the air got sticks and joined them. The overnight

visitor's wife appeared from the house in abbreviated skirts, and

wearing formidable shin-guards. With her abundant fair hair, which was

already breaking loose, so to speak, to join the fray, she looked like a

short stout dismounted Valkyr. Her gaze was clear and firm.

Section 4

Hockey as it was played at the Dower House at Matching's Easy before the

war, was a game combining danger, physical exercise and kindliness in a

very high degree. Except for the infant in the perambulator and the

outwardly calm but inwardly resentful aunt, who wheeled the child up and

down in a position of maximum danger just behind the unnetted goal,

every one was involved. Quite able-bodied people acquainted with the

game played forward, the less well-informed played a defensive game

behind the forward line, elderly, infirm, and bulky persons were used

chiefly as obstacles in goal. Several players wore padded leg-guards,

and all players were assumed to have them and expected to behave

accordingly.

Proceedings began with an invidious ceremony called picking up. This was

heralded by Mr. Britling, clad in the diaphanous flannels and bearing a

hockey stick, advancing with loud shouts to the centre of the hockey

field. "Pick up! Pick up!" echoed the young Britlings.

Mr. Direck became aware of a tall, drooping man with long hair and long

digressive legs in still longer white flannel trousers, and a face that

was somehow familiar. He was talking with affectionate intimacy to

Manning, and suddenly Mr. Direck remembered that it was in Manning's

weekly paper, _The Sectarian_, in which a bitter caricaturist enlivened

a biting text, that he had become familiar with the features of

Manning's companion. It was Raeburn, Raeburn the insidious, Raeburn the

completest product of the party system.... Well, that was the English

way. "Come for the pick up!" cried the youngest Britling, seizing upon

Mr. Direck's elbow. It appeared that Mr. Britling and the overnight

dinner guest--Mr. Direck never learnt his name--were picking up.

Names were shouted. "I'll take Cecily!" Mr. Direck heard Mr. Britling

say quite early. The opposing sides as they were picked fell into two

groups. There seemed to be difficulties about some of the names. Mr.

Britling, pointing to the more powerful looking of the Indian gentlemen,

said, "_You_, Sir."

"I'm going to speculate on Mr. Dinks," said Mr. Britling's opponent.

Mr. Direck gathered that Mr. Dinks was to be his hockey name.

"You're on _our_ side," said Mrs. Teddy. "I think you'll have to play

forward, outer right, and keep a sharp eye on Cissie."

"I'll do what I can," said Mr. Direck.

His captain presently confirmed this appointment.

His stick was really a sort of club and the ball was a firm hard cricket

ball.... He resolved to be very gentle with Cecily, and see that she

didn't get hurt.

The sides took their places for the game, and a kind of order became

apparent to Mr. Direck. In the centre stood Mr. Britling and the

opposing captain, and the ball lay between them. They were preparing to

"bully off" and start the game. In a line with each of them were four

other forwards. They all looked spirited and intent young people, and

Mr. Direck wished he had had more exercise to justify his own alert

appearance. Behind each centre forward hovered one of the Britling boys.

Then on each side came a vaguer row of three backs, persons of gentler

disposition or maturer years. They included Mr. Raeburn, who was

considered to have great natural abilities for hockey but little

experience. Mr. Raeburn was behind Mr. Direck. Mrs. Britling was the

centre back. Then in a corner of Mr. Direck's side was a small girl of

six or seven, and in the half-circle about the goal a lady in a motoring

dust coat and a very short little man whom Mr. Direck had not previously

remarked. Mr. Lawrence Carmine, stripped to the braces, which were

richly ornamented with Oriental embroidery, kept goal for our team.

The centre forwards went through a rapid little ceremony. They smote

their sticks on the ground, and then hit the sticks together. "One,"

said Mr. Britling. The operation was repeated. "Two," ... "Three."

Smack, Mr. Britling had got it and the ball had gone to the shorter and

sturdier of the younger Britlings, who had been standing behind Mr.

Direck's captain. Crack, and it was away to Teddy; smack, and it was

coming right at Direck.

"Lordy!" he said, and prepared to smite it.

Then something swift and blue had flashed before him, intercepted the

ball and shot it past him. This was Cecily Corner, and she and Teddy

were running abreast like the wind towards Mr. Raeburn.

"Hey!" cried Mr. Raeburn, "stop!" and advanced, as it seemed to Mr.

Direck, with unseemly and threatening gestures towards Cissie.

But before Mr. Direck could adjust his mind to this new phase of

affairs, Cecily had passed the right honourable gentleman with the same

mysterious ease with which she had flashed by Mr. Direck, and was

bearing down upon the miscellaneous Landwehr which formed the "backs" of

Mr. Direck's side.

"_You_ rabbit!" cried Mr. Raeburn, and became extraordinarily active in

pursuit, administering great lengths of arm and leg with a centralised

efficiency he had not hitherto displayed.

Running hard to the help of Mr. Raeburn was the youngest Britling boy, a

beautiful contrast. It was like a puff ball supporting and assisting a

conger eel. In front of Mr. Direck the little stout man was being alert.

Teddy was supporting the attack near the middle of the field, crying

"Centre!" while Mr. Britling, very round and resolute, was bouncing

straight towards the threatened goal. But Mrs. Teddy, running as swiftly

as her sister, was between Teddy and the ball. Whack! the little short

man's stick had clashed with Cecily's. Confused things happened with

sticks and feet, and the little short man appeared to be trying to cut

down Cecily as one cuts down a tree, she tried to pass the ball to her

centre forward--too late, and then Mrs. Teddy had intercepted it, and

was flickering back towards Mr. Britling's goal in a rush in which Mr.

Direck perceived it was his duty to join.

Yes, he had to follow up Mrs. Teddy and pick up the ball if he had a

chance and send it in to her or the captain or across to the left

forwards, as circumstances might decide. It was perfectly clear.

Then came his moment. The little formidably padded lady who had dined at

the Dower House overnight, made a gallant attack upon Mrs. Teddy. Out of

the confusion of this clash the ball spun into Mr. Direck's radius.

Where should he smite and how? A moment of reflection was natural.

But now the easy-fitting discipline of the Dower House style of hockey

became apparent. Mr. Direck had last observed the tall young Indian

gentleman, full of vitality and anxious for destruction, far away in the

distance on the opposing right wing. But now, regardless of the more

formal methods of the game, this young man had resolved, without further

delay and at any cost, to hit the ball hard, and he was travelling like

some Asiatic typhoon with an extreme velocity across the remonstrances

of Mr. Britling and the general order of his side. Mr. Direck became

aware of him just before his impact. There was a sort of collision from

which Mr. Direck emerged with a feeling that one side of his face was

permanently flattened, but still gallantly resolved to hit the

comparatively lethargic ball. He and the staggered but resolute Indian

clashed sticks again. And Mr. Direck had the best of it. Years of

experience couldn't have produced a better pass to the captain....

"Good pass!"

Apparently from one of the London visitors.

But this was _some_ game!

The ball executed some rapid movements to and fro across the field. Our

side was pressing hard. There was a violent convergence of miscellaneous

backs and suchlike irregulars upon the threatened goal. Mr. Britling's

dozen was rapidly losing its disciplined order. One of the sidecar

ladies and the gallant Indian had shifted their activities to the

defensive back, and with them was a spectacled gentleman waving his

stick, high above all recognised rules. Mr. Direck's captain and both

Britling boys hurried to join the fray. Mr. Britling, who seemed to Mr.

Direck to be for a captain rather too demagogic, also ran back to rally

his forces by loud cries. "Pass outwardly!" was the burthen of his

contribution.

The struggle about the Britling goal ceased to be a game and became

something between a fight and a social gathering. Mr. Britling's

goal-keeper could be heard shouting, "I can't see the ball! _Lift your

feet!_" The crowded conflict lurched towards the goal posts. "My shin!"

cried Mr. Manning. "No, you _don't!_"

Whack, but again whack!

Whack! "Ah! _would_ you?" Whack.

"Goal!" cried the side-car gentleman.

"Goal!" cried the Britling boys....

Mr. Manning, as goal-keeper, went to recover the ball, but one of the

Britling boys politely anticipated him.

The crowd became inactive, and then began to drift back to loosely

conceived positions.

"It's no good swarming into goal like that," Mr. Britling, with a faint

asperity in his voice, explained to his followers. "We've got to keep

open and not _crowd_ each other."

Then he went confidentially to the energetic young Indian to make some

restrictive explanation of his activities.

Mr. Direck strolled back towards Cecily. He was very warm and a little

blown, but not, he felt, disgraced. He was winning.

"You'll have to take your coat off," she said.

It was a good idea.

It had occurred to several people and the boundary line was already

dotted with hastily discarded jackets and wraps and so forth. But the

lady in the motoring dust coat was buttoning it to the chin.

"One goal love," said the minor Britling boy.

"We haven't begun yet, Sunny," said Cecily.

"Sonny! That's American," said Mr. Direck.

"No. We call him Sunny Jim," said Cecily. "They're bullying off again."

"Sunny Jim's American too," said Mr. Direck, returning to his place....

The struggle was resumed. And soon it became clear that the first goal

was no earnest of the quality of the struggle. Teddy and Cecily formed a

terribly efficient combination. Against their brilliant rushes,

supported in a vehement but effective manner by the Indian to their

right and guided by loud shoutings from Mr. Britling (centre), Mr.

Direck and the side-car lady and Mr. Raeburn struggled in vain. One

swift advance was only checked by the dust cloak, its folds held the

ball until help arrived; another was countered by a tremendous swipe of

Mr. Raeburn's that sent the ball within an inch of the youngest

Britling's head and right across the field; the third resulted in a

swift pass from Cecily to the elder Britling son away on her right, and

he shot the goal neatly and swiftly through the lattice of Mr. Lawrence

Carmine's defensive movements. And after that very rapidly came another

goal for Mr. Britling's side and then another.

Then Mr. Britling cried out that it was "Half Time," and explained to

Mr. Direck that whenever one side got to three goals they considered it

was half time and had five minutes' rest and changed sides. Everybody

was very hot and happy, except the lady in the dust cloak who was

perfectly cool. In everybody's eyes shone the light of battle, and not a

shadow disturbed the brightness of the afternoon for Mr. Direck except a

certain unspoken anxiety about Mr. Raeburn's trousers.

You see Mr. Direck had never seen Mr. Raeburn before, and knew nothing

about his trousers.

They appeared to be coming down.

To begin with they had been rather loose over the feet and turned up,

and as the game progressed, fold after fold of concertina-ed flannel

gathered about his ankles. Every now and then Mr. Raeburn would seize

the opportunity of some respite from the game to turn up a fresh six

inches or so of this accumulation. Naturally Mr. Direck expected this

policy to end unhappily. He did not know that the flannel trousers of

Mr. Raeburn were like a river, that they could come down forever and

still remain inexhaustible....

He had visions of this scene of happy innocence being suddenly blasted

by a monstrous disaster....

Apart from this worry Mr. Direck was as happy as any one there!

Perhaps these apprehensions affected his game. At any rate he did

nothing that pleased him in the second half, Cecily danced all over him

and round and about him, and in the course of ten minutes her side had

won the two remaining goals with a score of Five-One; and five goals is

"game" by the standards of Matching's Easy.

And then with the very slightest of delays these insatiable people

picked up again. Mr. Direck slipped away and returned in a white silk

shirt, tennis trousers and a belt. This time he and Cecily were on the

same side, the Cecily-Teddy combination was broken, and he it seemed was

to take the place of the redoubtable Teddy on the left wing with her.

This time the sides were better chosen and played a long, obstinate,

even game. One-One. One-Two. One-Three. (Half Time.) Two-Three. Three

all. Four-Three. Four all....

By this time Mr. Direck was beginning to master the simple strategy of

the sport. He was also beginning to master the fact that Cecily was the

quickest, nimblest, most indefatigable player on the field. He scouted

for her and passed to her. He developed tacit understandings with her.

Ideas of protecting her had gone to the four winds of Heaven. Against

them Teddy and a sidecar girl with Raeburn in support made a memorable

struggle. Teddy was as quick as a cat. "Four-Three" looked like winning,

but then Teddy and the tall Indian and Mrs. Teddy pulled square. They

almost repeated this feat and won, but Mr. Manning saved the situation

with an immense oblique hit that sent the ball to Mr. Direck. He ran

with the ball up to Raeburn and then dodged and passed to Cecily. There

was a lively struggle to the left; the ball was hit out by Mr. Raeburn

and thrown in by a young Britling; lost by the forwards and rescued by

the padded lady. Forward again! This time will do it!

Cecily away to the left had worked round Mr. Raeburn once more. Teddy,

realising that things were serious, was tearing back to attack her.

Mr. Direck supported with silent intentness. "Centre!" cried Mr.

Britling. "Cen-tre!"

"Mr. Direck!" came her voice, full of confidence. (Of such moments is

the heroic life.) The ball shot behind the hurtling Teddy. Mr. Direck

stopped it with his foot, a trick he had just learnt from the eldest

Britling son. He was neither slow nor hasty. He was in the half-circle,

and the way to the goal was barred only by the dust-cloak lady and Mr.

Lawrence Carmine. He made as if to shoot to Mr. Carmine's left and then

smacked the ball, with the swiftness of a serpent's stroke, to his

right.

He'd done it! Mr. Carmine's stick and feet were a yard away.

Then hard on this wild triumph came a flash of horror. One can't see

everything. His eye following the ball's trajectory....

Directly in its line of flight was the perambulator.

The ball missed the legs of the lady with the noble nose by a kind of

miracle, hit and glanced off the wheel of the perambulator, and went

spinning into a border of antirrhinums.

"Good!" cried Cecily. "Splendid shot!"

He'd shot a goal. He'd done it well. The perambulator it seemed didn't

matter. Though apparently the impact had awakened the baby. In the

margin of his consciousness was the figure of Mr. Britling remarking:

"Aunty. You really mustn't wheel the perambulator--_just_ there."

"I thought," said the aunt, indicating the goal posts by a facial

movement, "that those two sticks would be a sort of protection.... Aah!

_Did_ they then?"

Never mind that.

"That's _game!_" said one of the junior Britlings to Mr. Direck with a

note of high appreciation, and the whole party, relaxing and crumpling

like a lowered flag, moved towards the house and tea.

Section 5

"We'll play some more after tea," said Cecily. "It will be cooler then."

"My word, I'm beginning to like it," said Mr. Direck.

"You're going to play very well," she said.

And such is the magic of a game that Mr. Direck was humbly proud and

grateful for her praise, and trotted along by the side of this creature

who had revealed herself so swift and resolute and decisive, full to

overflowing of the mere pleasure of just trotting along by her side. And

after tea, which was a large confused affair, enlivened by wonderful and

entirely untruthful reminiscences of the afternoon by Mr. Raeburn, they

played again, with fewer inefficients and greater skill and swiftness,

and Mr. Direck did such quick and intelligent things that everybody

declared that he was a hockey player straight from heaven. The dusk,

which at last made the position of the ball too speculative for play,

came all too soon for him. He had played in six games, and he knew he

would be as stiff as a Dutch doll in the morning. But he was very, very

happy.

The rest of the Sunday evening was essentially a sequel to the hockey.

Mr. Direck changed again, and after using some embrocation that Mrs.

Britling recommended very strongly, came down in a black jacket and a

cheerfully ample black tie. He had a sense of physical well-being such

as he had not experienced since he came aboard the liner at New York.

The curious thing was that it was not quite the same sense of physical

well-being that one had in America. That is bright and clear and a

little dry, this was--humid. His mind quivered contentedly, like sunset

midges over a lake--it had no hard bright flashes--and his body wanted

to sit about. His sense of intimacy with Cecily increased each time he

looked at her. When she met his eyes she smiled. He'd caught her style

now, he felt; he attempted no more compliments and was frankly her

pupil at hockey and Badminton. After supper Mr. Britling renewed his

suggestion of an automobile excursion on the Monday.

"There's nothing to take you back to London," said Mr. Britling, "and we

could just hunt about the district with the little old car and see

everything you want to see...."

Mr. Direck did not hesitate three seconds. He thought of Gladys; he

thought of Miss Cecily Corner.

"Well, indeed," he said, "if it isn't burthening you, if I'm not being

any sort of inconvenience here for another night, I'd be really very

glad indeed of the opportunity of going around and seeing all these

ancient places...."

Section 6

The newspapers came next morning at nine, and were full of the Sarajevo

Murders. Mr. Direck got the _Daily Chronicle_ and found quite animated

headlines for a British paper.

"Who's this Archduke," he asked, "anyhow? And where is this Bosnia? I

thought it was a part of Turkey."

"It's in Austria," said Teddy.

"It's in the middle ages," said Mr. Britling. "What an odd, pertinaceous

business it seems to have been. First one bomb, then another; then

finally the man with the pistol. While we were strolling about the rose

garden. It's like something out of 'The Prisoner of Zenda.'"

"Please," said Herr Heinrich.

Mr. Britling assumed an attentive expression.

"Will not this generally affect European politics?"

"I don't know. Perhaps it will."

"It says in the paper that Serbia has sent those bombs to Sarajevo."

"It's like another world," said Mr. Britling, over his paper.

"Assassination as a political method. Can you imagine anything of the

sort happening nowadays west of the Adriatic? Imagine some one

assassinating the American Vice-President, and the bombs being at once

ascribed to the arsenal at Toronto!... We take our politics more sadly

in the West.... Won't you have another egg, Direck?"

"Please! Might this not lead to a war?"

"I don't think so. Austria may threaten Serbia, but she doesn't want to

provoke a conflict with Russia. It would be going too near the powder

magazine. But it's all an extraordinary business."

"But if she did?" Herr Heinrich persisted.

"She won't.... Some years ago I used to believe in the inevitable

European war," Mr. Britling explained to Mr. Direck, "but it's been

threatened so long that at last I've lost all belief in it. The Powers

wrangle and threaten. They're far too cautious and civilised to let the

guns go off. If there was going to be a war it would have happened two

years ago when the Balkan League fell upon Turkey. Or when Bulgaria

attacked Serbia...."

Herr Heinrich reflected, and received these conclusions with an

expression of respectful edification.

"I am naturally anxious," he said, "because I am taking tickets for my

holidays at an Esperanto Conference at Boulogne."

Section 7

"There is only one way to master such a thing as driving an automobile,"

said Mr. Britling outside his front door, as he took his place in the

driver's seat, "and that is to resolve that from the first you will take

no risks. Be slow if you like. Stop and think when you are in doubt. But

do nothing rashly, permit no mistakes."

It seemed to Mr. Direck as he took his seat beside his host that this

was admirable doctrine.

They started out of the gates with an extreme deliberation. Indeed twice

they stopped dead in the act of turning into the road, and the engine

had to be restarted.

"You will laugh at me," said Mr. Britling; "but I'm resolved to have no

blunders this time."

"I don't laugh at you. It's excellent," said Mr. Direck.

"It's the right way," said Mr. Britling. "Care--oh damn! I've stopped

the engine again. Ugh!--ah!--_so!_--Care, I was saying--and calm."

"Don't think I want to hurry you," said Mr. Direck. "I don't...."

They passed through the tillage at a slow, agreeable pace, tooting

loudly at every corner, and whenever a pedestrian was approached. Mr.

Direck was reminded that he had still to broach the lecture project to

Mr. Britling. So much had happened--

The car halted abruptly and the engine stopped.

"I thought that confounded hen was thinking of crossing the road," said

Mr. Britling. "Instead of which she's gone through the hedge. She

certainly looked this way.... Perhaps I'm a little fussy this

morning.... I'll warm up to the work presently."

"I'm convinced you can't be too careful," said Mr. Direck. "And this

sort of thing enables one to see the country better...."

Beyond the village Mr. Britling seemed to gather confidence. The pace

quickened. But whenever other traffic or any indication of a side way

appeared discretion returned. Mr. Britling stalked his sign posts,

crawling towards them on the belly of the lowest gear; he drove all the

morning like a man who is flushing ambuscades. And yet accident overtook

him. For God demands more from us than mere righteousness.

He cut through the hills to Market Saffron along a lane-road with which

he was unfamiliar. It began to go up hill. He explained to Mr. Direck

how admirably his engine would climb hills on the top gear.

They took a curve and the hill grew steeper, and Mr. Direck opened the

throttle.

They rounded another corner, and still more steeply the hill rose before

them.

The engine began to make a chinking sound, and the car lost pace. And

then Mr. Britling saw a pleading little white board with the inscription

"Concealed Turning." For the moment he thought a turning might be

concealed anywhere. He threw out his clutch and clapped on his brake.

Then he repented of what he had done. But the engine, after three

Herculean throbs, ceased to work. Mr. Britling with a convulsive clutch

at his steering wheel set the electric hooter snarling, while one foot

released the clutch again and the other, on the accelerator, sought in

vain for help. Mr. Direck felt they were going back, back, in spite of

all this vocalisation. He clutched at the emergency brake. But he was

too late to avoid misfortune. With a feeling like sitting gently in

butter, the car sank down sideways and stopped with two wheels in the

ditch.

Mr. Britling said they were in the ditch--said it with quite unnecessary

violence....

This time two cart horses and a retinue of five men were necessary to

restore Gladys to her self-respect....

After that they drove on to Market Saffron, and got there in time for

lunch, and after lunch Mr. Direck explored the church and the churchyard

and the parish register....

After lunch Mr. Britling became more cheerful about his driving. The

road from Market Saffron to Blandish, whence one turns off to Matching's

Easy, is the London and Norwich high road; it is an old Roman Stane

Street and very straightforward and honest in its stretches. You can see

the cross roads half a mile away, and the low hedges give you no chance

of a surprise. Everybody is cheered by such a road, and everybody drives

more confidently and quickly, and Mr. Britling particularly was

heartened by it and gradually let out Gladys from the almost excessive

restriction that had hitherto marked the day. "On a road like this

nothing can happen," said Mr. Britling.

"Unless you broke an axle or burst a tyre," said Mr. Direck.

"My man at Matching's Easy is most careful in his inspection," said Mr.

Britling, putting the accelerator well down and watching the speed

indicator creep from forty to forty-five. "He went over the car not a

week ago. And it's not one month old--in use that is."

Yet something did happen.

It was as they swept by the picturesque walls under the big old trees

that encircle Brandismead Park. It was nothing but a slight

miscalculation of distances. Ahead of them and well to the left, rode a

postman on a bicycle; towards them, with that curious effect of

implacable fury peculiar to motor cycles, came a motor cyclist. First

Mr. Britling thought that he would not pass between these two, then he

decided that he would hurry up and do so, then he reverted to his former

decision, and then it seemed to him that he was going so fast that he

must inevitably run down the postman. His instinct not to do that pulled

the car sharply across the path of the motor cyclist. "Oh, my God!"

cried Mr. Britling. "My God!" twisted his wheel over and distributed his

feet among his levers dementedly.

He had an imperfectly formed idea of getting across right in front of

the motor cyclist, and then they were going down the brief grassy slope

between the road and the wall, straight at the wall, and still at a good

speed. The motor cyclist smacked against something and vanished from the

problem. The wall seemed to rush up at them and then--collapse. There

was a tremendous concussion. Mr. Direck gripped at his friend the

emergency brake, but had only time to touch it before his head hit

against the frame of the glass wind-screen, and a curtain fell upon

everything....

He opened his eyes upon a broken wall, a crumpled motor car, and an

undamaged motor cyclist in the aviator's cap and thin oilskin overalls

dear to motor cyclists. Mr. Direck stared and then, still stunned and

puzzled, tried to raise himself. He became aware of acute pain.

"Don't move for a bit," said the motor cyclist. "Your arm and side are

rather hurt, I think...."

Section 8

In the course of the next twelve hours Mr. Direck was to make a

discovery that was less common in the days before the war than it has

been since. He discovered that even pain and injury may be vividly

interesting and gratifying.

If any one had told him he was going to be stunned for five or six

minutes, cut about the brow and face and have a bone in his wrist put

out, and that as a consequence he would find himself pleased and

exhilarated, he would have treated the prophecy with ridicule; but here

he was lying stiffly on his back with his wrist bandaged to his side and

smiling into the darkness even more brightly than he had smiled at the

Essex landscape two days before. The fact is pain hurts or irritates,

but in itself it does not make a healthily constituted man miserable.

The expectation of pain, the certainty of injury may make one hopeless

enough, the reality rouses our resistance. Nobody wants a broken bone or

a delicate wrist, but very few people are very much depressed by getting

one. People can be much more depressed by smoking a hundred cigarettes

in three days or losing one per cent. of their capital.

And everybody had been most delightful to Mr. Direck.

He had had the monopoly of damage. Mr. Britling, holding on to the

steering wheel, had not even been thrown out. "Unless I'm internally

injured," he said, "I'm not hurt at all. My liver perhaps--bruised a

little...."

Gladys had been abandoned in the ditch, and they had been very kindly

brought home by a passing automobile. Cecily had been at the Dower

House at the moment of the rueful arrival. She had seen how an American

can carry injuries. She had made sympathy and helpfulness more

delightful by expressed admiration.

"She's a natural born nurse," said Mr. Direck, and then rather in the

tone of one who addressed a public meeting: "But this sort of thing

brings out all the good there is in a woman."

He had been quite explicit to them and more particularly to her, when

they told him he must stay at the Dower House until his arm was cured.

He had looked the application straight into her pretty eyes.

"If I'm to stay right here just as a consequence of that little shake

up, may be for a couple of weeks, may be three, and if you're coming to

do a bit of a talk to me ever and again, then I tell you I don't call

this a misfortune. It isn't a misfortune. It's right down sheer good

luck...."

And now he lay as straight as a mummy, with his soul filled with

radiance of complete mental peace. After months of distress and

confusion, he'd got straight again. He was in the middle of a real good

story, bright and clean. He knew just exactly what he wanted.

"After all," he said, "it's true. There's ideals. _She's_ an ideal. Why,

I loved her before ever I set eyes on Mamie. I loved her before I was

put into pants. That old portrait, there it was pointing my destiny....

It's affinity.... It's natural selection....

"Well, I don't know what she thinks of me yet, but I do know very well

what she's _got_ to think of me. She's got to think all the world of

me--if I break every limb of my body making her do it.

"I'd a sort of feeling it was right to go in that old automobile.

"Say what you like, there's a Guidance...."

He smiled confidentially at the darkness as if they shared a secret.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

MR. BRITLING IN SOLILOQUY

Section 1

Very different from the painful contentment of the bruised and broken

Mr. Direck was the state of mind of his unwounded host. He too was

sleepless, but sleepless without exaltation. The day had been too much

for him altogether; his head, to borrow an admirable American

expression, was "busy."

How busy it was, a whole chapter will be needed to describe....

The impression Mr. Britling had made upon Mr. Direck was one of

indefatigable happiness. But there were times when Mr. Britling was

called upon to pay for his general cheerful activity in lump sums of

bitter sorrow. There were nights--and especially after seasons of

exceptional excitement and nervous activity--when the reckoning would be

presented and Mr. Britling would welter prostrate and groaning under a

stormy sky of unhappiness--active insatiable unhappiness--a beating with

rods.

The sorrows of the sanguine temperament are brief but furious; the world

knows little of them. The world has no need to reckon with them. They

cause no suicides and few crimes. They hurry past, smiting at their

victim as they go. None the less they are misery. Mr. Britling in these

moods did not perhaps experience the grey and hopeless desolations of

the melancholic nor the red damnation of the choleric, but he saw a

world that bristled with misfortune and error, with poisonous thorns and

traps and swampy places and incurable blunderings. An almost

insupportable remorse for being Mr. Britling would pursue

him--justifying itself upon a hundred counts....

And for being such a Britling!...

Why--he revived again that bitter question of a thousand and one unhappy

nights--why was he such a fool? Such a hasty fool? Why couldn't he look

before he leapt? Why did he take risks? Why was he always so ready to

act upon the supposition that all was bound to go well? (He might as

well have asked why he had quick brown eyes.)

Why, for instance, hadn't he adhered to the resolution of the early

morning? He had begun with an extremity of caution....

It was a characteristic of these moods of Mr. Britling that they

produced a physical restlessness. He kept on turning over and then

turning over again, and sitting up and lying back, like a martyr on a

gridiron....

This was just the latest instance of a life-long trouble. Will there

ever be a sort of man whose thoughts are quick and his acts slow? Then

indeed we shall have a formidable being. Mr. Britling's thoughts were

quick and sanguine and his actions even more eager than his thoughts.

Already while he was a young man Mr. Britling had found his acts elbow

their way through the hurry of his ideas and precipitate humiliations.

Long before his reasons were marshalled, his resolutions were formed. He

had attempted a thousand remonstrances with himself; he had sought to

remedy the defects in his own character by written inscriptions in his

bedroom and memoranda inside his watch case. "Keep steady!" was one of

them. "Keep the End in View." And, "Go steadfastly, coherently,

continuously; only so can you go where you will." In distrusting all

impulse, scrutinising all imagination, he was persuaded lay his one

prospect of escape from the surprise of countless miseries. Otherwise he

danced among glass bombs and barbed wire.

There had been a time when he could exhort himself to such fundamental

charge and go through phases of the severest discipline. Always at last

to be taken by surprise from some unexpected quarter. At last he had

ceased to hope for any triumph so radical. He had been content to

believe that in recent years age and a gathering habit of wisdom had

somewhat slowed his leaping purpose. That if he hadn't overcome he had

at least to a certain extent minimised it. But this last folly was

surely the worst. To charge through this patient world with--how much

did the car weigh? A ton certainly and perhaps more--reckless of every

risk. Not only to himself but others. At this thought, he clutched the

steering wheel again. Once more he saw the bent back of the endangered

cyclist, once more he felt rather than saw the seething approach of the

motor bicycle, and then through a long instant he drove helplessly at

the wall....

Hell perhaps is only one such incident, indefinitely prolonged....

Anything might have been there in front of him. And indeed now, out of

the dreamland to which he could not escape something had come, something

that screamed sharply....

"Good God!" he cried, "if I had hit a child! I might have hit a child!"

The hypothesis flashed into being with the thought, tried to escape and

was caught. It was characteristic of Mr. Britling's nocturnal

imagination that he should individualise this child quite sharply as

rather plain and slender, with reddish hair, staring eyes, and its ribs

crushed in a vivid and dreadful manner, pinned against the wall, mixed

up with some bricks, only to be extracted, oh! _horribly_.

But this was not fair! He had hurt no child! He had merely pitched out

Mr. Direck and broken his arm....

It wasn't his merit that the child hadn't been there!

The child might have been there!

Mere luck.

He lay staring in despair--as an involuntary God might stare at many a

thing in this amazing universe--staring at the little victim his

imagination had called into being only to destroy....

Section 2

If he had not crushed a child other people had. Such things happened.

Vicariously at any rate he had crushed many children....

Why are children ever crushed?

And suddenly all the pain and destruction and remorse of all the

accidents in the world descended upon Mr. Britling.

No longer did he ask why am I such a fool, but why are we all such

fools? He became Man on the automobile of civilisation, crushing his

thousands daily in his headlong and yet aimless career....

That was a trick of Mr. Britling's mind. It had this tendency to spread

outward from himself to generalised issues. Many minds are like that

nowadays. He was not so completely individualised as people are supposed

to be individualised--in our law, in our stories, in our moral

judgments. He had a vicarious factor. He could slip from concentrated

reproaches to the liveliest remorse for himself as The Automobilist in

General, or for himself as England, or for himself as Man. From remorse

for smashing his guest and his automobile he could pass by what was for

him the most imperceptible of transitions to remorse for every accident

that has ever happened through the error of an automobilist since

automobiles began. All that long succession of blunderers became Mr.

Britling. Or rather Mr. Britling became all that vast succession of

blunderers.

These fluctuating lapses from individuation made Mr. Britling a

perplexity to many who judged only by the old personal standards. At

times he seemed a monster of cantankerous self-righteousness, whom

nobody could please or satisfy, but indeed when he was most pitiless

about the faults of his race or nation he was really reproaching

himself, and when he seemed more egotistical and introspective and

self-centred he was really ransacking himself for a clue to that same

confusion of purposes that waste the hope and strength of humanity. And

now through the busy distresses of the night it would have perplexed a

watching angel to have drawn the line and shown when Mr. Britling, was

grieving for his own loss and humiliation and when he was grieving for

these common human weaknesses of which he had so large a share.

And this double refraction of his mind by which a concentrated and

individualised Britling did but present a larger impersonal Britling

beneath, carried with it a duplication of his conscience and sense of

responsibility. To his personal conscience he was answerable for his

private honour and his debts and the Dower House he had made and so on,

but to his impersonal conscience he was answerable for the whole world.

The world from the latter point of view was his egg. He had a

subconscious delusion that he had laid it. He had a subconscious

suspicion that he had let it cool and that it was addled. He had an

urgency to incubate it. The variety and interest of his talk was largely

due to that persuasion, it was a perpetual attempt to spread his mental

feathers over the task before him....

Section 3

After this much of explanation it is possible to go on to the task which

originally brought Mr. Direck to Matching's Easy, the task that

Massachusetts society had sent him upon, the task of organising the

mental unveiling of Mr. Britling. Mr. Direck saw Mr. Britling only in

the daylight, and with an increasing distraction of the attention

towards Miss Cecily Corner. We may see him rather _more_ clearly in the

darkness, without any distraction except his own.

Now the smashing of Gladys was not only the source of a series of

reproaches and remorses directly arising out of the smash; it had also a

wide system of collateral consequences, which were also banging and

blundering their way through the Britling mind. It was extraordinarily

inconvenient in quite another direction that the automobile should be

destroyed. It upset certain plans of Mr. Britling's in a direction

growing right out from all the Dower House world in which Mr. Direck

supposed him to be completely set and rooted. There were certain matters

from which Mr. Britling had been averting his mind most strenuously

throughout the week-end. Now, there was no averting his mind any more.

Mr. Britling was entangled in a love affair. It was, to be exact, and

disregarding minor affinities, his eighth love affair. And the new

automobile, so soon as he could drive it efficiently, was to have played

quite a solvent and conclusive part in certain entangled complications

of this relationship.

A man of lively imagination and quick impulses naturally has love

affairs as he drives himself through life, just as he naturally has

accidents if he drives an automobile.

And the peculiar relations that existed between Mr. Britling and Mrs.

Britling tended inevitably to make these love affairs troublesome,

undignified and futile. Especially when they were viewed from the point

of view of insomnia.

Mr. Britling's first marriage had been a passionately happy one. His

second was by comparison a marriage in neutral tint. There is much to be

said for that extreme Catholic theory which would make marriage not

merely lifelong but eternal. Certainly Mr. Britling would have been a

finer if not a happier creature if his sentimental existence could have

died with his first wife or continued only in his love for their son. He

had married in the glow of youth, he had had two years of clean and

simple loving, helping, quarrelling and the happy ending of quarrels.

Something went out of him into all that, which could not be renewed

again. In his first extremity of grief he knew that perfectly well--and

then afterwards he forgot it. While there is life there is imagination,

which makes and forgets and goes on.

He met Edith under circumstances that did not in any way recall his lost

Mary. He met her, as people say, "socially"; Mary, on the other hand,

had been a girl at Newnham while he was a fellow of Pembroke, and there

had been something of accident and something of furtiveness in their

lucky discovery of each other. There had been a flush in it; there was

dash in it. But Edith he saw and chose and had to woo. There was no

rushing together; there was solicitation and assent. Edith was a

Bachelor of Science of London University and several things like that,

and she looked upon the universe under her broad forehead and

broad-waving brown hair with quiet watchful eyes that had nothing

whatever to hide, a thing so incredible to Mr. Britling that he had

loved and married her very largely for the serenity of her mystery. And

for a time after their marriage he sailed over those brown depths

plumbing furiously.

Of course he did not make his former passion for Mary at all clear to

her. Indeed, while he was winning Edith it was by no means clear to

himself. He was making a new emotional drama, and consciously and

subconsciously he dismissed a hundred reminiscences that sought to

invade the new experience, and which would have been out of key with it.

And without any deliberate intention to that effect he created an

atmosphere between himself and Edith in which any discussion of Mary was

reduced to a minimum, and in which Hugh was accepted rather than

explained. He contrived to believe that she understood all sorts of

unsayable things; he invented miracles of quite uncongenial mute

mutuality....

It was over the chess-board that they first began to discover their

extensive difficulties of sympathy. Mr. Britling's play was

characterised by a superficial brilliance, much generosity and extreme

unsoundness; he always moved directly his opponent had done so--and then

reflected on the situation. His reflection was commonly much wiser than

his moves. Mrs. Britling was, as it were, a natural antagonist to her

husband; she was as calm as he was irritable. She was never in a hurry

to move, and never disposed to make a concession. Quietly, steadfastly,

by caution and deliberation, without splendour, without error, she had

beaten him at chess until it led to such dreadful fits of anger that he

had to renounce the game altogether. After every such occasion he would

be at great pains to explain that he had merely been angry with himself.

Nevertheless he felt, and would not let himself think (while she

concluded from incidental heated phrases), that that was not the

complete truth about the outbreak.

Slowly they got through the concealments of that specious explanation.

Temperamentally they were incompatible.

They were profoundly incompatible. In all things she was defensive. She

never came out; never once had she surprised him halfway upon the road

to her. He had to go all the way to her and knock and ring, and then she

answered faithfully. She never surprised him even by unkindness. If he

had a cut finger she would bind it up very skilfully and healingly, but

unless he told her she never discovered he had a cut finger. He was

amazed she did not know of it before it happened. He piped and she did

not dance. That became the formula of his grievance. For several unhappy

years she thwarted him and disappointed him, while he filled her with

dumb inexplicable distresses. He had been at first so gay an activity,

and then he was shattered; fragments of him were still as gay and

attractive as ever, but between were outbreaks of anger, of hostility,

of something very like malignity. Only very slowly did they realise the

truth of their relationship and admit to themselves that the fine bud

of love between them had failed to flower, and only after long years

were they able to delimit boundaries where they had imagined union, and

to become--allies. If it had been reasonably possible for them to part

without mutual injury and recrimination they would have done so, but two

children presently held them, and gradually they had to work out the

broad mutual toleration of their later relations. If there was no love

and delight between them there was a real habitual affection and much

mutual help. She was proud of his steady progress to distinction, proud

of each intimation of respect he won; she admired and respected his

work; she recognised that he had some magic, of liveliness and

unexpectedness that was precious and enviable. So far as she could help

him she did. And even when he knew that there was nothing behind it,

that it was indeed little more than an imaginative inertness, he could

still admire and respect her steady dignity and her consistent

honourableness. Her practical capacity was for him a matter for

continual self-congratulation. He marked the bright order of her

household, her flowering borders, the prosperous high-born roses of her

garden with a wondering appreciation. He had never been able to keep

anything in order. He relied more and more upon her. He showed his

respect for her by a scrupulous attention to her dignity, and his

confidence by a franker and franker emotional neglect. Because she

expressed so little he succeeded in supposing she felt little, and since

nothing had come out of the brown depths of her eyes he saw fit at last

to suppose no plumb-line would ever find anything there. He pursued his

interests; he reached out to this and that; he travelled; she made it a

matter of conscience to let him go unhampered; she felt, she

thought--unrecorded; he did, and he expressed and re-expressed and

over-expressed, and started this and that with quick irrepressible

activity, and so there had accumulated about them the various items of

the life to whose more ostensible accidents Mr. Direck was now for an

indefinite period joined.

It was in the nature of Mr. Britling to incur things; it was in the

nature of Mrs. Britling to establish them. Mr. Britling had taken the

Dower House on impulse, and she had made it a delightful home. He had

discovered the disorderly delights of mixed Sunday hockey one week-end

at Pontings that had promised to be dull, and she had made it an

institution.... He had come to her with his orphan boy and a memory of a

passionate first loss that sometimes, and more particularly at first, he

seemed to have forgotten altogether, and at other times was only too

evidently lamenting with every fibre of his being. She had taken the

utmost care of the relics of her duskily pretty predecessor that she

found in unexpected abundance in Mr. Britling's possession, and she had

done her duty by her sometimes rather incomprehensible stepson. She

never allowed herself to examine the state of her heart towards this

youngster; it is possible that she did not perceive the necessity for

any such examination....

So she went through life, outwardly serene and dignified, one of a great

company of rather fastidious, rather unenterprising women who have

turned for their happiness to secondary things, to those fair inanimate

things of household and garden which do not turn again and rend one, to

aestheticisms and delicacies, to order and seemliness. Moreover she

found great satisfaction in the health and welfare, the growth and

animation of her own two little boys. And no one knew, and perhaps even

she had contrived to forget, the phases of astonishment and

disillusionment, of doubt and bitterness and secret tears, that spread

out through the years in which she had slowly realised that this

strange, fitful, animated man who had come to her, vowing himself hers,

asking for her so urgently and persuasively, was ceasing, had ceased, to

love her, that his heart had escaped her, that she had missed it; she

never dreamt that she had hurt it, and that after its first urgent,

tumultuous, incomprehensible search for her it had hidden itself

bitterly away....

Section 4

The mysterious processes of nature that had produced Mr. Britling had

implanted in him an obstinate persuasion that somewhere in the world,

from some human being, it was still possible to find the utmost

satisfaction for every need and craving. He could imagine as existing,

as waiting for him, he knew not where, a completeness of understanding,

a perfection of response, that would reach all the gamut of his feelings

and sensations from the most poetical to the most entirely physical, a

beauty of relationship so transfiguring that not only would she--it went

without saying that this completion was a woman--be perfectly beautiful

in its light but, what was manifestly more incredible, that he too would

be perfectly beautiful and quite at his ease.... In her presence there

could be no self-reproaches, no lapses, no limitations, nothing but

happiness and the happiest activities.... To such a persuasion half the

imaginative people in the world succumb as readily and naturally as

ducklings take to water. They do not doubt its truth any more than a

thirsty camel doubts that presently it will come to a spring.

This persuasion is as foolish as though a camel hoped that some day it

would drink from such a spring that it would never thirst again. For the

most part Mr. Britling ignored its presence in his mind, and resisted

the impulses it started. But at odd times, and more particularly in the

afternoon and while travelling and in between books, Mr. Britling so far

succumbed to this strange expectation of a wonder round the corner that

he slipped the anchors of his humour and self-contempt and joined the

great cruising brotherhood of the Pilgrims of Love....

In fact--though he himself had never made a reckoning of it--he had

been upon eight separate cruises. He was now upon the eighth....

Between these various excursions--they took him round and about the

world, so to speak, they cast him away on tropical beaches, they left

him dismasted on desolate seas, they involved the most startling

interventions and the most inconvenient consequences--there were

interludes of penetrating philosophy. For some years the suspicion had

been growing up in Mr. Britling's mind that in planting this persuasion

in his being, the mysterious processes of Nature had been, perhaps for

some purely biological purpose, pulling, as people say, his leg, that

there were not these perfect responses, that loving a woman is a thing

one does thoroughly once for all--or so--and afterwards recalls

regrettably in a series of vain repetitions, and that the career of the

Pilgrim of Love, so soon as you strip off its credulous glamour, is

either the most pitiful or the most vulgar and vile of perversions from

the proper conduct of life. But this suspicion had not as yet grown to

prohibitive dimensions with him, it was not sufficient to resist the

seasons of high tide, the sudden promise of the salt-edged breeze, the

invitation of the hovering sea-bird; and he was now concealing beneath

the lively surface of activities with which Mr. Direck was now familiar,

a very extensive system of distresses arising out of the latest, the

eighth of these digressional adventures....

Mr. Britling had got into it very much as he had got into the ditch on

the morning before his smash. He hadn't thought the affair out and he

hadn't looked carefully enough. And it kept on developing in just the

ways he would rather that it didn't.

The seventh affair had been very disconcerting. He had made a fool of

himself with quite a young girl; he blushed to think how young; it

hadn't gone very far, but it had made his nocturnal reflections so

disagreeable that he had--by no means for the first time--definitely

and forever given up these foolish dreams of love. And when Mrs.

Harrowdean swam into his circle, she seemed just exactly what was wanted

to keep his imagination out of mischief. She came bearing flattery to

the pitch of adoration. She was the brightest and cleverest of young

widows. She wrote quite admirably criticism in the _Scrutator_ and the

_Sectarian_, and occasionally poetry in the _Right Review_--when she

felt disposed to do so. She had an intermittent vein of high spirits

that was almost better than humour and made her quickly popular with

most of the people she met, and she was only twenty miles away in her

pretty house and her absurd little jolly park.

There was something, she said, in his thought and work that was like

walking in mountains. She came to him because she wanted to clamber

about the peaks and glens of his mind.

It was natural to reply that he wasn't by any means the serene mountain

elevation she thought him, except perhaps for a kind of loneliness....

She was a great reader of eighteenth century memoirs, and some she

conveyed to him. Her mental quality was all in the vein of the

friendships of Rousseau and Voltaire, and pleasantly and trippingly she

led him along the primrose path of an intellectual liaison. She came

first to Matching's Easy, where she was sweet and bright and vividly

interested and a great contrast to Mrs. Britling, and then he and she

met in London, and went off together with a fine sense of adventure for

a day at Richmond, and then he took some work with him to her house and

stayed there....

Then she went away into Scotland for a time and he wanted her again

tremendously and clamoured for her eloquently, and then it was apparent

and admitted between them that they were admirably in love, oh!

immensely in love.

The transitions from emotional mountaineering to ardent intimacies were

so rapid and impulsive that each phase obliterated its predecessor, and

it was only with a vague perplexity that Mr. Britling found himself

transferred from the rôle of a mountainous objective for pretty little

pilgrims to that of a sedulous lover in pursuit of the happiness of one

of the most uncertain, intricate, and entrancing of feminine

personalities. This was not at all his idea of the proper relations

between men and women, but Mrs. Harrowdean had a way of challenging his

gallantry. She made him run about for her; she did not demand but she

commanded presents and treats and surprises; she even developed a

certain jealousy in him. His work began to suffer from interruptions.

Yet they had glowing and entertaining moments together that could temper

his rebellious thoughts with the threat of irreparable loss. "One must

love, and all things in life are imperfect," was how Mr. Britling

expressed his reasons for submission. And she had a hold upon him too in

a certain facile pitifulness. She was little; she could be stung

sometimes by the slightest touch and then her blue eyes would be bright

with tears.

Those possible tears could weigh at times even more than those possible

lost embraces.

And there was Oliver.

Oliver was a person Mr. Britling had never seen. He grew into the scheme

of things by insensible gradations. He was a government official in

London; he was, she said, extraordinarily dull, he was lacking

altogether in Mr. Britling's charm and interest, but he was faithful and

tender and true. And considerably younger than Mr. Britling. He asked

nothing but to love. He offered honourable marriage. And when one's

heart was swelling unendurably one could weep in safety on his patient

shoulder. This patient shoulder of Oliver's ultimately became Mr.

Britling's most exasperating rival.

She liked to vex him with Oliver. She liked to vex him generally. Indeed

in this by no means abnormal love affair, there was a very strong

antagonism. She seemed to resent the attraction Mr. Britling had for

her and the emotions and pleasure she had with him. She seemed under the

sway of an instinctive desire to make him play heavily for her, in time,

in emotion, in self-respect. It was intolerable to her that he could

take her easily and happily. That would be taking her cheaply. She

valued his gifts by the bother they cost him, and was determined that

the path of true love should not, if she could help it, run smooth. Mr.

Britling on the other hand was of the school of polite and happy lovers.

He thought it outrageous to dispute and contradict, and he thought that

making love was a cheerful, comfortable thing to be done in a state of

high good humour and intense mutual appreciation. This levity offended

the lady's pride. She drew unfavourable contrasts with Oliver. If Oliver

lacked charm he certainly did not lack emotion. He desired sacrifice, it

seemed, almost more than satisfactions. Oliver was a person of the most

exemplary miserableness; he would weep copiously and frequently. She

could always make him weep when she wanted to do so. By holding out

hopes and then dashing them if by no other expedient. Why did Mr.

Britling never weep? She wept.

Some base streak of competitiveness in Mr. Britling's nature made it

seem impossible that he should relinquish the lady to Oliver. Besides,

then, what would he do with his dull days, his afternoons, his need for

a properly demonstrated affection?

So Mr. Britling trod the path of his eighth digression, rather

overworked in the matter of flowers and the selection of small

jewellery, stalked by the invisible and indefatigable Oliver, haunted

into an unwilling industry of attentions--attentions on the model of the

professional lover of the French novels--by the memory and expectation

of tearful scenes. "Then you don't love me! And it's all spoilt. I've

risked talk and my reputation.... I was a fool ever to dream of making

love beautifully...."

Exactly like running your car into a soft wet ditch when you cannot get

out and you cannot get on. And your work and your interests waiting and

waiting for you!...

The car itself was an outcome of the affair. It was Mrs. Harrowdean's

idea, she thought chiefly of pleasant expeditions to friendly inns in

remote parts of the country, inns with a flavour of tacit complicity,

but it fell in very pleasantly with Mr. Britling's private resentment at

the extraordinary inconvenience of the railway communications between

Matching's Easy and her station at Pyecrafts, which involved a journey

to Liverpool Street and a long wait at a junction. And now the car was

smashed up--just when he had acquired skill enough to take it over to

Pyecrafts without shame, and on Tuesday or Wednesday at latest he would

have to depart in the old way by the London train....

Only the most superficial mind would assert nowadays that man is a

reasonable creature. Man is an unreasonable creature, and it was

entirely unreasonable and human for Mr. Britling during his nocturnal

self-reproaches to mix up his secret resentment at his infatuation for

Mrs. Harrowdean with his ill-advised attack upon the wall of Brandismead

Park. He ought never to have bought that car; he ought never to have

been so ready to meet Mrs. Harrowdean more than halfway.

What exacerbated his feeling about Mrs. Harrowdean was a new line she

had recently taken with regard to Mrs. Britling. From her first rash

assumption that Mr. Britling was indifferent to his wife, she had come

to realise that on the contrary he was in some ways extremely tender

about his wife. This struck her as an outrageous disloyalty. Instead of

appreciating a paradox she resented an infidelity. She smouldered with

perplexed resentment for some days, and then astonished her lover by a

series of dissertations of a hostile and devastating nature upon the

lady of the Dower House.

He tried to imagine he hadn't heard all that he had heard, but Mrs.

Harrowdean had a nimble pen and nimbler afterthoughts, and once her mind

had got to work upon the topic she developed her offensive in

half-a-dozen brilliant letters.... On the other hand she professed a

steadily increasing passion for Mr. Britling. And to profess

passion for Mr. Britling was to put him under a sense of profound

obligation--because indeed he was a modest man. He found himself in an

emotional quandary.

You see, if Mrs. Harrowdean had left Mrs. Britling alone everything

would have been quite tolerable. He considered Mrs. Harrowdean a

charming human being, and altogether better than he deserved. Ever so

much better. She was all initiative and response and that sort of thing.

And she was so discreet. She had her own reputation to think about, and

one or two of her predecessors--God rest the ashes of those fires!--had

not been so discreet. Yet one could not have this sort of thing going on

behind Edith's back. All sorts of things one might have going on behind

Edith's back, but not this writing and saying of perfectly beastly

things about Edith. Nothing could alter the fact that Edith was his

honour....

Section 5

Throughout the week-end Mr. Britling had kept this trouble well battened

down. He had written to Mrs. Harrowdean a brief ambiguous note saying,

"I am thinking over all that you have said," and after that he had

scarcely thought about her at all. Or at least he had always contrived

to be much more vividly thinking about something else. But now in these

night silences the suppressed trouble burst hatches and rose about him.

What a mess he had made of the whole scheme of his emotional life! There

had been a time when he had started out as gaily with his passions and

his honour as he had started out with Gladys to go to Market Saffron.

He had as little taste for complications as he had for ditches. And now

his passions and his honour were in a worse case even than poor muddy

smashed up Gladys as the cart-horses towed her off, for she at any rate

might be repaired. But he--he was a terribly patched fabric of

explanations now. Not indeed that he had ever stooped to explanations.

But there he was! Far away, like a star seen down the length of a

tunnel, was that first sad story of a love as clean as starlight. It had

been all over by eight-and-twenty and he could find it in his heart to

grieve that he had ever given a thought to love again. He should have

lived a decent widower.... Then Edith had come into his life, Edith that

honest and unconscious defaulter. And there again he should have stuck

to his disappointment. He had stuck to it--nine days out of every ten.

It's the tenth day, it's the odd seductive moment, it's the instant of

confident pride--and there is your sanguine temperament in the ditch.

He began to recapitulate items in the catalogue of his escapades, and

the details of his automobile misadventures mixed themselves up with the

story of his heart steering. For example there was that tremendous

Siddons affair. He had been taking the corner of a girlish friendship

and he had taken it altogether too far. What a frightful mess that had

been! When once one is off the road anything may happen, from a crumpled

mud-guard to the car on the top of you. And there was his forty miles an

hour spurt with the great and gifted Delphine Marquise--for whom he was

to have written a play and been a perfect Annunzio. Until Willersley

appeared--very like the motor-cyclist--buzzing in the opposite

direction. And then had ensued angers, humiliations....

Had every man this sort of crowded catalogue? Was every

forty-five-year-old memory a dark tunnel receding from the star of

youth? It is surely a pity that life cannot end at thirty. It comes to

one clean and in perfect order....

Is experience worth having?

What a clean, straight thing the spirit of youth is. It is like a bright

new spear. It is like a finely tempered sword. The figure of his boy

took possession of his mind, his boy who looked out on the world with

his mother's dark eyes, the slender son of that whole-hearted first

love. He was a being at once fine and simple, an intimate mystery. Must

he in his turn get dented and wrinkled and tarnished?

The boy was in trouble. What was the trouble?

Was it some form of the same trouble that had so tangled and tainted and

scarred the private pride of his father? And how was it possible for Mr.

Britling, disfigured by heedless misadventures, embarrassed by

complications and concealments, to help this honest youngster out of his

perplexities? He imagined possible forms of these perplexities.

Graceless forms. Ugly forms. Such forms as only the nocturnal

imagination would have dared present....

Oh, why had he been such a Britling? Why was he still such a Britling?

Mr. Britling sat up in his bed and beat at the bedclothes with his

fists. He uttered uncompleted vows, "From this hour forth ... from this

hour forth...."

He must do something, he felt. At any rate he had his experiences. He

could warn. He could explain away. Perhaps he might help to extricate,

if things had got to that pitch.

Should he write to his son? For a time he revolved a long, tactful

letter in his mind. But that was impossible. Suppose the trouble was

something quite different? It would have to be a letter in the most

general terms....

Section 6

It was in the doubly refracting nature of Mr. Britling's mind that while

he was deploring his inefficiency in regard to his son, he was also

deploring the ineffectiveness of all his generation of parents. Quite

insensibly his mind passed over to the generalised point of view.

In his talks with Mr. Direck, Mr. Britling could present England as a

great and amiable spectacle of carelessness and relaxation, but was it

indeed an amiable spectacle? The point that Mr. Direck had made about

the barn rankled in his thoughts. His barn was a barn no longer, his

farmyard held no cattle; he was just living laxly in the buildings that

ancient needs had made, he was living on the accumulated prosperity of

former times, the spendthrift heir of toiling generations. Not only was

he a pampered, undisciplined sort of human being; he was living in a

pampered, undisciplined sort of community. The two things went

together.... This confounded Irish business, one could laugh at it in

the daylight, but was it indeed a thing to laugh at? We were drifting

lazily towards a real disaster. We had a government that seemed guided

by the principles of Mr. Micawber, and adopted for its watchword "Wait

and see." For months now this trouble had grown more threatening.

Suppose presently that civil war broke out in Ireland! Suppose presently

that these irritated, mishandled suffragettes did some desperate

irreconcilable thing, assassinated for example! The bomb in Westminster

Abbey the other day might have killed a dozen people.... Suppose the

smouldering criticism of British rule in India and Egypt were fanned by

administrative indiscretions into a flame....

And then suppose Germany had made trouble....

Usually Mr. Britling kept his mind off Germany. In the daytime he

pretended Germany meant nothing to England. He hated alarmists. He hated

disagreeable possibilities. He declared the idea of a whole vast nation

waiting to strike at us incredible. Why should they? You cannot have

seventy million lunatics.... But in the darkness of the night one cannot

dismiss things in this way. Suppose, after all, their army was more

than a parade, their navy more than a protest?

We might be caught--It was only in the vast melancholia of such

occasions that Mr. Britling would admit such possibilities, but we might

be caught by some sudden declaration of war.... And how should we face

it?

He recalled the afternoon's talk at Claverings and such samples of our

governmental machinery as he chanced to number among his personal

acquaintance. Suppose suddenly the enemy struck! With Raeburn and his

friends to defend us! Or if the shock tumbled them out of power, then

with these vituperative Tories, these spiteful advocates of weak

tyrannies and privileged pretences in the place of them. There was no

leadership in England. In the lucid darkness he knew that with a

terrible certitude. He had a horrible vision of things disastrously

muffled; of Lady Frensham and her _Morning Post_ friends first

garrulously and maliciously "patriotic," screaming her way with

incalculable mischiefs through the storm, and finally discovering that

the Germans were the real aristocrats and organising our national

capitulation on that understanding. He knew from talk he had heard that

the navy was weak in mines and torpedoes, unprovided with the great

monitors needed for a war with Germany; torn by doctrinaire feuds;

nevertheless the sea power was our only defence. In the whole country we

might muster a military miscellany of perhaps three hundred thousand

men. And he had no faith in their equipment, in their direction. General

French, the one man who had his entire confidence, had been forced to

resign through some lawyer's misunderstanding about the Irish

difficulty. He did not believe any plans existed for such a war as

Germany might force upon us, any calculation, any foresight of the thing

at all.

Why had we no foresight? Why had we this wilful blindness to

disagreeable possibilities? Why did we lie so open to the unexpected

crisis? Just what he said of himself he said also of his country. It was

curious to remember that. To realise how closely Dower House could play

the microcosm to the whole Empire....

It became relevant to the trend of his thoughts that his son had through

his mother a strong strain of the dark Irish in his composition.

How we had wasted Ireland! The rich values that lay in Ireland, the

gallantry and gifts, the possible friendliness, all these things were

being left to the Ulster politicians and the Tory women to poison and

spoil, just as we left India to the traditions of the chattering army

women and the repressive instincts of our mandarins. We were too lazy,

we were too negligent. We passed our indolent days leaving everything to

somebody else. Was this the incurable British, just as it was the

incurable Britling, quality?

Was the whole prosperity of the British, the far-flung empire, the

securities, the busy order, just their good luck? It was a question he

had asked a hundred times of his national as of his personal self. No

doubt luck had favoured him. He was prosperous, and he was still only at

the livelier end of middle age. But was there not also a personal

factor, a meritorious factor? Luck had favoured the British with a

well-placed island, a hardening climate, accessible minerals, but then

too was there not also a national virtue? Once he had believed in that,

in a certain gallantry, a noble levity, an underlying sound sense. The

last ten years of politics had made him doubt that profoundly. He clung

to it still, but without confidence. In the night that dear persuasion

left him altogether.... As for himself he had a certain brightness and

liveliness of mind, but the year of his fellowship had been a soft year,

he had got on to _The Times_ through something very like a

misapprehension, and it was the chances of a dinner and a duchess that

had given him the opportunity of the Kahn show. He'd dropped into good

things that suited him. That at any rate was the essence of it. And

these lucky chances had been no incentive to further effort. Because

things had gone easily and rapidly with him he had developed indolence

into a philosophy. Here he was just over forty, and explaining to the

world, explaining all through the week-end to this American--until even

God could endure it no longer and the smash stopped him--how excellent

was the backwardness of Essex and English go-as-you-please, and how

through good temper it made in some mysterious way for all that was

desirable. A fat English doctrine. _Punch_ has preached it for forty

years.

But this wasn't what he had always been. He thought of the strenuous

intentions of his youth, before he had got into this turmoil of amorous

experiences, while he was still out there with the clean star of youth.

As Hugh was....

In those days he had had no amiable doctrine of compromise. He had

truckled to no "domesticated God," but talked of the "pitiless truth";

he had tolerated no easy-going pseudo-aristocratic social system, but

dreamt of such a democracy "mewing its mighty youth" as the world had

never seen. He had thought that his brains were to do their share in

building up this great national _imago_, winged, divine, out of the

clumsy, crawling, snobbish, comfort-loving caterpillar of Victorian

England. With such dreams his life had started, and the light of them,

perhaps, had helped him to his rapid success. And then his wife had

died, and he had married again and become somehow more interested in his

income, and then the rather expensive first of the eight experiences had

drained off so much of his imaginative energy, and the second had

drained off so much, and there had been quarrels and feuds, and the way

had been lost, and the days had passed. He hadn't failed. Indeed he

counted as a success among his generation. He alone, in the night

watches, could gauge the quality of that success. He was widely known,

reputably known; he prospered. Much had come, oh! by a mysterious luck,

but everything was doomed by his invincible defects. Beneath that

hollow, enviable show there ached waste. Waste, waste, waste--his heart,

his imagination, his wife, his son, his country--his automobile....

Then there flashed into his mind a last straw of disagreeable

realisation.

He hadn't as yet insured his automobile! He had meant to do so. The

papers were on his writing-desk.

Section 7

On these black nights, when the personal Mr. Britling would lie awake

thinking how unsatisfactorily Mr. Britling was going on, and when the

impersonal Mr. Britling would be thinking how unsatisfactorily his

universe was going on, the whole mental process had a likeness to some

complex piece of orchestral music wherein the organ deplored the

melancholy destinies of the race while the piccolo lamented the secret

trouble of Mrs. Harrowdean; the big drum thundered at the Irish

politicians, and all the violins bewailed the intellectual laxity of the

university system. Meanwhile the trumpets prophesied wars and disasters,

the cymbals ever and again inserted a clashing jar about the fatal delay

in the automobile insurance, while the triangle broke into a plangent

solo on the topic of a certain rotten gate-post he always forgot in the

daytime, and how in consequence the cows from the glebe farm got into

the garden and ate Mrs. Britling's carnations.

Time after time he had promised to see to that gate-post....

The organ _motif_ battled its way to complete predominance. The lesser

themes were drowned or absorbed. Mr. Britling returned from the rôle of

an incompetent automobilist to the rôle of a soul naked in space and

time wrestling with giant questions. These cosmic solicitudes, it may

be, are the last penalty of irreligion. Was Huxley right, and was all

humanity, even as Mr. Britling, a careless, fitful thing, playing a

tragically hopeless game, thinking too slightly, moving too quickly,

against a relentless antagonist?

Or is the whole thing just witless, accidentally cruel perhaps, but not

malignant? Or is it wise, and merely refusing to pamper us? Is there

somewhere in the immensities some responsive kindliness, some faint hope

of toleration and assistance, something sensibly on our side against

death and mechanical cruelty? If so, it certainly refuses to pamper

us.... But if the whole thing is cruel, perhaps also it is witless and

will-less? One cannot imagine the ruler of everything a devil--that

would be silly. So if at the worst it is inanimate then anyhow we have

our poor wills and our poor wits to pit against it. And manifestly then,

the good of life, the significance of any life that is not mere

receptivity, lies in the disciplined and clarified will and the

sharpened and tempered mind. And what for the last twenty years--for all

his lectures and writings--had he been doing to marshal the will and

harden the mind which were his weapons against the Dark? He was ready

enough to blame others--dons, politicians, public apathy, but what was

he himself doing?

What was he doing now?

Lying in bed!

His son was drifting to ruin, his country was going to the devil, the

house was a hospital of people wounded by his carelessness, the country

roads choked with his smashed (and uninsured) automobiles, the cows were

probably lined up along the borders and munching Edith's carnations at

this very moment, his pocketbook and bureau were stuffed with venomous

insults about her--and he was just lying in bed!

Suddenly Mr. Britling threw back his bedclothes and felt for the matches

on his bedside table.

Indeed this was by no means the first time that his brain had become a

whirring torment in his skull. Previous experiences had led to the most

careful provision for exactly such states. Over the end of the bed hung

a light, warm pyjama suit of llama-wool, and at the feet of it were two

tall boots of the same material that buckled to the middle of his calf.

So protected, Mr. Britling proceeded to make himself tea. A Primus stove

stood ready inside the fender of his fireplace, and on it was a brightly

polished brass kettle filled with water; a little table carried a

tea-caddy, a tea-pot, a lemon and a glass. Mr. Britling lit the stove

and then strolled to his desk. He was going to write certain "Plain

Words about Ireland." He lit his study lamp and meditated beside it

until a sound of water boiling called him to his tea-making.

He returned to his desk stirring the lemon in his glass of tea. He would

write the plain common sense of this Irish situation. He would put

things so plainly that this squabbling folly would _have_ to cease. It

should be done austerely, with a sort of ironical directness. There

should be no abuse, no bitterness, only a deep passion of sanity.

What is the good of grieving over a smashed automobile?

He sipped his tea and made a few notes on his writing pad. His face in

the light of his shaded reading lamp had lost its distraught expression,

his hand fingered his familiar fountain pen....

Section 8

The next morning Mr. Britling came into Mr. Direck's room. He was pink

from his morning bath, he was wearing a cheerful green-and-blue silk

dressing gown, he had shaved already, he showed no trace of his

nocturnal vigil. In the bathroom he had whistled like a bird. "Had a

good night?" he said. "That's famous. So did I. And the wrist and arm

didn't even ache enough to keep you awake?"

"I thought I heard you talking and walking about," said Mr. Direck.

"I got up for a little bit and worked. I often do that. I hope I didn't

disturb you. Just for an hour or so. It's so delightfully quiet in the

night...."

He went to the window and blinked at the garden outside. His two younger

sons appeared on their bicycles returning from some early expedition. He

waved a hand of greeting. It was one of those summer mornings when

attenuated mist seems to fill the very air with sunshine dust.

"This is the sunniest morning bedroom in the house," he said. "It's

south-east."

The sunlight slashed into the masses of the blue cedar outside with a

score of golden spears.

"The Dayspring from on High," he said.... "I thought of rather a useful

pamphlet in the night.

"I've been thinking about your luggage at that hotel," he went on,

turning to his guest again. "You'll have to write and get it packed up

and sent down here--

"No," he said, "we won't let you go until you can hit out with that arm

and fell a man. Listen!"

Mr. Direck could not distinguish any definite sound.

"The smell of frying rashers, I mean," said Mr. Britling. "It's the

clarion of the morn in every proper English home....

"You'd like a rasher, coffee?

"It's good to work in the night, and it's good to wake in the morning,"

said Mr. Britling, rubbing his hands together. "I suppose I wrote nearly

two thousand words. So quiet one is, so concentrated. And as soon as I

have had my breakfast I shall go on with it again."

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

THE COMING OF THE DAY

Section 1

It was quite characteristic of the state of mind of England in the

summer of 1914 that Mr. Britling should be mightily concerned about the

conflict in Ireland, and almost deliberately negligent of the

possibility of a war with Germany.

The armament of Germany, the hostility of Germany, the consistent

assertion of Germany, the world-wide clash of British and German

interests, had been facts in the consciousness of Englishmen for more

than a quarter of a century. A whole generation had been born and

brought up in the threat of this German war. A threat that goes on for

too long ceases to have the effect of a threat, and this overhanging

possibility had become a fixed and scarcely disturbing feature of the

British situation. It kept the navy sedulous and Colonel Rendezvous

uneasy; it stimulated a small and not very influential section of the

press to a series of reminders that bored Mr. Britling acutely, it was

the excuse for an agitation that made national service ridiculous, and

quite subconsciously it affected his attitude to a hundred things. For

example, it was a factor in his very keen indignation at the Tory levity

in Ireland, in his disgust with many things that irritated or estranged

Indian feeling. It bored him; there it was, a danger, and there was no

denying it, and yet he believed firmly that it was a mine that would

never be fired, an avalanche that would never fall. It was a nuisance, a

stupidity, that kept Europe drilling and wasted enormous sums on

unavoidable preparations; it hung up everything like a noisy argument in

a drawing-room, but that human weakness and folly would ever let the

mine actually explode he did not believe. He had been in France in 1911,

he had seen how close things had come then to a conflict, and the fact

that they had not come to a conflict had enormously strengthened his

natural disposition to believe that at bottom Germany was sane and her

militarism a bluff.

But the Irish difficulty was a different thing. There, he felt, was need

for the liveliest exertions. A few obstinate people in influential

positions were manifestly pushing things to an outrageous point....

He wrote through the morning--and as the morning progressed the judicial

calm of his opening intentions warmed to a certain regrettable vigour of

phrasing about our politicians, about our political ladies, and our

hand-to-mouth press....

He came down to lunch in a frayed, exhausted condition, and was much

afflicted by a series of questions from Herr Heinrich. For it was an

incurable characteristic of Herr Heinrich that he asked questions; the

greater part of his conversation took the form of question and answer,

and his thirst for information was as marked as his belief that German

should not simply be spoken but spoken "out loud." He invariably

prefaced his inquiries with the word "Please," and he insisted upon

ascribing an omniscience to his employer that it was extremely irksome

to justify after a strenuous morning of enthusiastic literary effort. He

now took the opportunity of a lull in the solicitudes and

congratulations that had followed Mr. Direck's appearance--and Mr.

Direck was so little shattered by his misadventure that with the

assistance of the kindly Teddy he had got up and dressed and come down

to lunch--to put the matter that had been occupying his mind all the

morning, even to the detriment of the lessons of the Masters Britling.

"Please!" he said, going a deeper shade of pink and partly turning to

Mr. Britling.

A look of resignation came into Mr. Britling's eyes. "Yes?" he said.

"I do not think it will be wise to take my ticket for the Esperanto

Conference at Boulogne. Because I think it is probable to be war between

Austria and Servia, and that Russia may make war on Austria."

"That may happen. But I think it improbable."

"If Russia makes war on Austria, Germany will make war on Russia, will

she not?"

"Not if she is wise," said Mr. Britling, "because that would bring in

France."

"That is why I ask. If Germany goes to war with France I should have to

go to Germany to do my service. It will be a great inconvenience to me."

"I don't imagine Germany will do anything so frantic as to attack

Russia. That would not only bring in France but ourselves."

"England?"

"Of course. We can't afford to see France go under. The thing is as

plain as daylight. So plain that it cannot possibly happen....

Cannot.... Unless Germany wants a universal war."

"Thank you," said Herr Heinrich, looking obedient rather than reassured.

"I suppose now," said Mr. Direck after a pause, "that there isn't any

strong party in Germany that wants a war. That young Crown Prince, for

example."

"They keep him in order," said Mr. Britling a little irritably. "They

keep him in order....

"I used to be an alarmist about Germany," said Mr. Britling, "but I have

come to feel more and more confidence in the sound common sense of the

mass of the German population, and in the Emperor too if it comes to

that. He is--if Herr Heinrich will permit me to agree with his own

German comic papers--sometimes a little theatrical, sometimes a little

egotistical, but in his operatic, boldly coloured way he means peace. I

am convinced he means peace...."

Section 2

After lunch Mr. Britling had a brilliant idea for the ease and comfort

of Mr. Direck.

It seemed as though Mr. Direck would be unable to write any letters

until his wrist had mended. Teddy tried him with a typewriter, but Mr.

Direck was very awkward with his left hand, and then Mr. Britling

suddenly remembered a little peculiarity he had which it was possible

that Mr. Direck might share unconsciously, and that was his gift of

looking-glass writing with his left hand. Mr. Britling had found out

quite by chance in his schoolboy days that while his right hand had been

laboriously learning to write, his left hand, all unsuspected, had been

picking up the same lesson, and that by taking a pencil in his left hand

and writing from right to left, without watching what he was writing,

and then examining the scrawl in a mirror, he could reproduce his own

handwriting in exact reverse. About three people out of five have this

often quite unsuspected ability. He demonstrated his gift, and then Miss

Cecily Corner, who had dropped in in a casual sort of way to ask about

Mr. Direck, tried it, and then Mr. Direck tried it. And they could all

do it. And then Teddy brought a sheet of copying carbon, and so Mr.

Direck, by using the carbon reversed under his paper, was restored to

the world of correspondence again.

They sat round a little table under the cedar trees amusing themselves

with these experiments, and after that Cecily and Mr. Britling and the

two small boys entertained themselves by drawing pigs with their eyes

shut, and then Mr. Britling and Teddy played hard at Badminton until it

was time for tea. And Cecily sat by Mr. Direck and took an interest in

his accident, and he told her about summer holidays in the Adirondacks

and how he loved to travel. She said she would love to travel. He said

that so soon as he was better he would go on to Paris and then into

Germany. He was extraordinarily curious about this Germany and its

tremendous militarism. He'd far rather see it than Italy, which was, he

thought, just all art and ancient history. His turn was for modern

problems. Though of course he didn't intend to leave out Italy while he

was at it. And then their talk was scattered, and there was great

excitement because Herr Heinrich had lost his squirrel.

He appeared coming out of the house into the sunshine, and so distraught

that he had forgotten the protection of his hat. He was very pink and

deeply moved.

"But what shall I do without him?" he cried. "He has gone!"

The squirrel, Mr. Direck gathered, had been bought by Mrs. Britling for

the boys some month or so ago; it had been christened "Bill" and adored

and then neglected, until Herr Heinrich took it over. It had filled a

place in his ample heart that the none too demonstrative affection of

the Britling household had left empty. He abandoned his pursuit of

philology almost entirely for the cherishing and adoration of this busy,

nimble little creature. He carried it off to his own room, where it ran

loose and took the greatest liberties with him and his apartment. It was

an extraordinarily bold and savage little beast even for a squirrel, but

Herr Heinrich had set his heart and his very large and patient will upon

the establishment of sentimental relations. He believed that ultimately

Bill would let himself be stroked, that he would make Bill love him and

understand him, and that his would be the only hand that Bill would ever

suffer to touch him. In the meanwhile even the untamed Bill was

wonderful to watch. One could watch him forever. His front paws were

like hands, like a musician's hands, very long and narrow. "He would be

a musician if he could only make his fingers go apart, because when I

play my violin he listens. He is attentive."

The entire household became interested in Herr Heinrich's attacks upon

Bill's affection. They watched his fingers with particular interest

because it was upon those that Bill vented his failures to respond to

the stroking advances.

"To-day I have stroked him once and he has bitten me three times," Herr

Heinrich reported. "Soon I will stroke him three times and he shall not

bite me at all.... Also yesterday he climbed up me and sat on my

shoulder, and suddenly bit my ear. It was not hard he bit, but sudden.

"He does not mean to bite," said Herr Heinrich. "Because when he has bit

me he is sorry. He is ashamed.

"You can see he is ashamed."

Assisted by the two small boys, Herr Heinrich presently got a huge bough

of oak and brought it into his room, converting the entire apartment

into the likeness of an aviary. "For this," said Herr Heinrich, looking

grave and diplomatic through his glasses, "Billy will be very grateful.

And it will give him confidence with me. It will make him feel we are in

the forest together."

Mrs. Britling came to console her husband in the matter.

"It is not right that the bedroom should be filled with trees. All sorts

of dust and litter came in with it."

"If it amuses him," said Mr. Britling.

"But it makes work for the servants."

"Do they complain?"

"No."

"Things will adjust themselves. And it is amusing that he should do such

a thing...."

And now Billy had disappeared, and Herr Heinrich was on the verge of

tears. It was so ungrateful of Billy. Without a word.

"They leave my window open," he complained to Mr. Direck. "Often I have

askit them not to. And of course he did not understand. He has out

climbit by the ivy. Anything may have happened to him. Anything. He is

not used to going out alone. He is too young.

"Perhaps if I call--"

And suddenly he had gone off round the house crying: "Beelee! Beelee!

Here is an almond for you! An almond, Beelee!"

"Makes me want to get up and help," said Mr. Direck. "It's a tragedy."

Everybody else was helping. Even the gardener and his boy knocked off

work and explored the upper recesses of various possible trees.

"He is too young," said Herr Heinrich, drifting back.... And then

presently: "If he heard my voice I am sure he would show himself. But he

does not show himself."

It was clear he feared the worst....

At supper Billy was the sole topic of conversation, and condolence was

in the air. The impression that on the whole he had displayed rather a

brutal character was combated by Herr Heinrich, who held that a certain

brusqueness was Billy's only fault, and told anecdotes, almost sacred

anecdotes, of the little creature's tenderer, nobler side. "When I feed

him always he says, 'Thank you,'" said Herr Heinrich. "He never fails."

He betrayed darker thoughts. "When I went round by the barn there was a

cat that sat and looked at me out of a laurel bush," he said. "I do not

like cats."

Mr. Lawrence Carmine, who had dropped in, was suddenly reminded of that

lugubrious old ballad, "The Mistletoe Bough," and recited large worn

fragments of it impressively. It tells of how a beautiful girl hid away

in a chest during a Christmas game of hide-and-seek, and how she was

found, a dried vestige, years afterwards. It took a very powerful hold

upon Herr Heinrich's imagination. "Let us now," he said, "make an

examination of every box and cupboard and drawer. Marking each as we

go...."

When Mr. Britling went to bed that night, after a long gossip with

Carmine about the Bramo Samaj and modern developments of Indian thought

generally, the squirrel was still undiscovered.

The worthy modern thinker undressed slowly, blew out his candle and got

into bed. Still meditating deeply upon the God of the Tagores, he thrust

his right hand under his pillow according to his usual practice, and

encountered something soft and warm and active. He shot out of bed

convulsively, lit his candle, and lifted his pillow discreetly.

He discovered the missing Billy looking crumpled and annoyed.

For some moments there was a lively struggle before Billy was gripped.

He chattered furiously and bit Mr. Britling twice. Then Mr. Britling was

out in the passage with the wriggling lump of warm fur in his hand, and

paddling along in the darkness to the door of Herr Heinrich. He opened

it softly.

A startled white figure sat up in bed sharply.

"Billy," said Mr. Britling by way of explanation, dropped his capture on

the carpet, and shut the door on the touching reunion.

Section 3

A day was to come when Mr. Britling was to go over the history of that

sunny July with incredulous minuteness, trying to trace the real

succession of events that led from the startling crime at Sarajevo to

Europe's last swift rush into war. In a sense it was untraceable; in a

sense it was so obvious that he was amazed the whole world had not

watched the coming of disaster. The plain fact of the case was that

there was no direct connection; the Sarajevo murders were dropped for

two whole weeks out of the general consciousness, they went out of the

papers, they ceased to be discussed; then they were picked up again and

used as an excuse for war. Germany, armed so as to be a threat to all

the world, weary at last of her mighty vigil, watching the course of

events, decided that her moment had come, and snatched the dead archduke

out of his grave again to serve her tremendous ambition.

It may well have seemed to the belligerent German patriot that all her

possible foes were confused, divided within themselves, at an extremity

of distraction and impotence. The British Isles seemed slipping steadily

into civil war. Threat was met by counter-threat, violent fool competed

with violent fool for the admiration of the world, the National

Volunteers armed against the Ulster men; everything moved on with a kind

of mechanical precision from parade and meeting towards the fatal

gun-running of Howth and the first bloodshed in Dublin streets. That

wretched affray, far more than any other single thing, must have

stiffened Germany in the course she had chosen. There can be no doubt of

it; the mischief makers of Ireland set the final confirmation upon the

European war. In England itself there was a summer fever of strikes;

Liverpool was choked by a dockers' strike, the East Anglian agricultural

labourers were in revolt, and the building trade throughout the country

was on the verge of a lockout. Russia seemed to be in the crisis of a

social revolution. From Baku to St. Petersburg there were

insurrectionary movements in the towns, and on the 23rd--the very day of

the Austrian ultimatum--Cossacks were storming barbed wire entanglements

in the streets of the capital. The London Stock Exchange was in a state

of panic disorganisation because of a vast mysterious selling of

securities from abroad. And France, France it seemed was lost to all

other consideration in the enthralling confrontations and denunciations

of the Caillaux murder trial, the trial of the wife of her ex-prime

Minister for the murder of a blackmailing journalist. It was a case full

of the vulgarest sexual violence. Before so piquant a spectacle France

it seemed could have no time nor attention for the revelation of M.

Humbert, the Reporter of the Army Committee, proclaiming that the

artillery was short of ammunition, that her infantry had boots "thirty

years old" and not enough of those....

Such were the appearances of things. Can it be wondered if it seemed to

the German mind that the moment for the triumphant assertion of the

German predominance in the world had come? A day or so before the Dublin

shooting, the murder of Sarajevo had been dragged again into the

foreground of the world's affairs by an ultimatum from Austria to Serbia

of the extremest violence. From the hour when the ultimatum was

discharged the way to Armageddon lay wide and unavoidable before the

feet of Europe. After the Dublin conflict there was no turning back. For

a week Europe was occupied by proceedings that were little more than the

recital of a formula. Austria could not withdraw her unqualified threats

without admitting error and defeat, Russia could not desert Serbia

without disgrace, Germany stood behind Austria, France was bound to

Russia by a long confederacy of mutual support, and it was impossible

for England to witness the destruction of France or the further

strengthening of a loud and threatening rival. It may be that Germany

counted on Russia giving way to her, it may be she counted on the

indecisions and feeble perplexities of England, both these possibilities

were in the reckoning, but chiefly she counted on war. She counted on

war, and since no nation in all the world had ever been so fully

prepared in every way for war as she was, she also counted on victory.

One writes "Germany." That is how one writes of nations, as though they

had single brains and single purposes. But indeed while Mr. Britling lay

awake and thought of his son and Lady Frensham and his smashed

automobile and Mrs. Harrowdean's trick of abusive letter-writing and of

God and evil and a thousand perplexities, a multitude of other brains

must also have been busy, lying also in beds or sitting in studies or

watching in guard-rooms or chatting belatedly in cafés or smoking-rooms

or pacing the bridges of battleships or walking along in city or

country, upon this huge possibility the crime of Sarajevo had just

opened, and of the state of the world in relation to such possibilities.

Few women, one guesses, heeded what was happening, and of the men, the

men whose decision to launch that implacable threat turned the destinies

of the world to war, there is no reason to believe that a single one of

them had anything approaching the imaginative power needed to understand

fully what it was they were doing. We have looked for an hour or so into

the seething pot of Mr. Britling's brain and marked its multiple

strands, its inconsistencies, its irrational transitions. It was but a

specimen. Nearly every brain of the select few that counted in this

cardinal determination of the world's destinies, had its streak of

personal motive, its absurd and petty impulses and deflections. One man

decided to say _this_ because if he said _that_ he would contradict

something he had said and printed four or five days ago; another took a

certain line because so he saw his best opportunity of putting a rival

into a perplexity. It would be strange if one could reach out now and

recover the states of mind of two such beings as the German Kaiser and

his eldest son as Europe stumbled towards her fate through the long days

and warm, close nights of that July. Here was the occasion for which so

much of their lives had been but the large pretentious preparation,

coming right into their hands to use or forgo, here was the opportunity

that would put them into the very forefront of history forever; this

journalist emperor with the paralysed arm, this common-fibred, sly,

lascivious son. It is impossible that they did not dream of glory over

all the world, of triumphant processions, of a world-throne that would

outshine Caesar's, of a godlike elevation, of acting Divus Caesar while

yet alive. And being what they were they must have imagined spectators,

and the young man, who was after all a young man of particularly poor

quality, imagined no doubt certain women onlookers, certain humiliated

and astonished friends, and thought of the clothes he would wear and

the gestures he would make. The nickname his English cousins had given

this heir to all the glories was the "White Rabbit." He was the backbone

of the war party at court. And presently he stole bric-à-brac. That will

help posterity to the proper values of things in 1914. And the Teutonic

generals and admirals and strategists with their patient and perfect

plans, who were so confident of victory, each within a busy skull must

have enacted anticipatory dreams of his personal success and marshalled

his willing and unwilling admirers. Readers of histories and memoirs as

most of this class of men are, they must have composed little eulogistic

descriptions of the part themselves were to play in the opening drama,

imagined pleasing vindications and interesting documents. Some of them

perhaps saw difficulties, but few foresaw failure. For all this set of

brains the thing came as a choice to take or reject; they could make war

or prevent it. And they chose war.

It is doubtful if any one outside the directing intelligence of Germany

and Austria saw anything so plain. The initiative was with Germany. The

Russian brains and the French brains and the British brains, the few

that were really coming round to look at this problem squarely, had a

far less simple set of problems and profounder uncertainties. To Mr.

Britling's mind the Round Table Conference at Buckingham Palace was

typical of the disunion and indecision that lasted up to the very

outbreak of hostilities. The solemn violence of Sir Edward Carson was

intensely antipathetic to Mr. Britling, and in his retrospective

inquiries he pictured to himself that dark figure with its dropping

under-lip, seated, heavy and obstinate, at that discussion, still

implacable though the King had but just departed after a little speech

that was packed with veiled intimations of imminent danger...

Mr. Britling had no mercy in his mind for the treason of obstinate

egotism and for persistence in a mistaken course. His own temperamental

weaknesses lay in such different directions. He was always ready to

leave one trail for another; he was always open to conviction, trusting

to the essentials of his character for an ultimate consistency. He hated

Carson in those days as a Scotch terrier might hate a bloodhound, as

something at once more effective and impressive, and exasperatingly,

infinitely less intelligent.

Section 4

Thus--a vivid fact as yet only in a few hundred skulls or so--the vast

catastrophe of the Great War gathered behind the idle, dispersed and

confused spectacle of an indifferent world, very much as the storms and

rains of late September gathered behind the glow and lassitudes of

August, and with scarcely more of set human intention. For the greater

part of mankind the European international situation was at most

something in the papers, no more important than the political

disturbances in South Africa, where the Herzogites were curiously

uneasy, or the possible trouble between Turkey and Greece. The things

that really interested people in England during the last months of peace

were boxing and the summer sales. A brilliant young Frenchman,

Carpentier, who had knocked out Bombardier Wells, came over again to

defeat Gunboat Smith, and did so to the infinite delight of France and

the whole Latin world, amidst the generous applause of Anglo-Saxondom.

And there was also a British triumph over the Americans at polo, and a

lively and cultured newspaper discussion about a proper motto for the

arms of the London County Council. The trial of Madame Caillaux filled

the papers with animated reports and vivid pictures; Gregori Rasputin

was stabbed and became the subject of much lively gossip about the

Russian Court; and Ulivi, the Italian impostor who claimed he could

explode mines by means of an "ultra-red" ray, was exposed and fled with

a lady, very amusingly. For a few days all the work at Woolwich Arsenal

was held up because a certain Mr. Entwhistle, having refused to erect a

machine on a concrete bed laid down by non-unionists, was rather

uncivilly dismissed, and the Irish trouble pounded along its tiresome

mischievous way. People gave a divided attention to these various

topics, and went about their individual businesses.

And at Dower House they went about their businesses. Mr. Direck's arm

healed rapidly; Cecily Corner and he talked of their objects in life and

Utopias and the books of Mr. Britling, and he got down from a London

bookseller Baedeker's guides for Holland and Belgium, South Germany and

Italy; Herr Heinrich after some doubt sent in his application form and

his preliminary deposit for the Esperanto Conference at Boulogne, and

Billy consented to be stroked three times but continued to bite with

great vigour and promptitude. And the trouble about Hugh, Mr. Britling's

eldest son, resolved itself into nothing of any vital importance, and

settled itself very easily.

Section 5

After Hugh had cleared things up and gone back to London Mr. Britling

was inclined to think that such a thing as apprehension was a sin

against the general fairness and integrity of life.

Of all things in the world Hugh was the one that could most easily rouse

Mr. Britling's unhappy aptitude for distressing imaginations. Hugh was

nearer by far to his heart and nerves than any other creature. In the

last few years Mr. Britling, by the light of a variety of emotional

excursions in other directions, had been discovering this. Whatever Mr.

Britling discovered he talked about; he had evolved from his realisation

of this tenderness, which was without an effort so much tenderer than

all the subtle and tremendous feelings he had attempted in

his--excursions, the theory that he had expounded to Mr. Direck that it

is only through our children that we are able to achieve disinterested

love, real love. But that left unexplained that far more intimate

emotional hold of Hugh than of his very jolly little step-brothers. That

was a fact into which Mr. Britling rather sedulously wouldn't look....

Mr. Britling was probably much franker and more open-eyed with himself

and the universe than a great number of intelligent people, and yet

there were quite a number of aspects of his relations with his wife,

with people about him, with his country and God and the nature of

things, upon which he turned his back with an attentive persistence. But

a back too resolutely turned may be as indicative as a pointing finger,

and in this retrogressive way, and tacitly even so far as his formal

thoughts, his unspoken comments, went, Mr. Britling knew that he loved

his son because he had lavished the most hope and the most imagination

upon him, because he was the one living continuation of that dear life

with Mary, so lovingly stormy at the time, so fine now in memory, that

had really possessed the whole heart of Mr. Britling. The boy had been

the joy and marvel of the young parents; it was incredible to them that

there had ever been a creature so delicate and sweet, and they brought

considerable imagination and humour to the detailed study of his minute

personality and to the forecasting of his future. Mr. Britling's mind

blossomed with wonderful schemes for his education. All that mental

growth no doubt contributed greatly to Mr. Britling's peculiar

affection, and with it there interwove still tenderer and subtler

elements, for the boy had a score of Mary's traits. But there were other

things still more conspicuously ignored. One silent factor in the slow

widening of the breach between Edith and Mr. Britling was her cool

estimate of her stepson. She was steadfastly kind to this shock-headed,

untidy little dreamer, he was extremely well cared for in her hands, she

liked him and she was amused by him--it is difficult to imagine what

more Mr. Britling could have expected--but it was as plain as daylight

that she felt that this was not the child she would have cared to have

borne. It was quite preposterous and perfectly natural that this should

seem to Mr. Britling to be unfair to Hugh.

Edith's home was more prosperous than Mary's; she brought her own money

to it; the bringing up of her children was a far more efficient business

than Mary's instinctive proceedings. Hugh had very nearly died in his

first year of life; some summer infection had snatched at him; that had

tied him to his father's heart by a knot of fear; but no infection had

ever come near Edith's own nursery. And it was Hugh that Mr. Britling

had seen, small and green-faced and pitiful under an anaesthetic for

some necessary small operation to his adenoids. His younger children had

never stabbed to Mr. Britling's heart with any such pitifulness; they

were not so thin-skinned as their elder brother, not so assailable by

the little animosities of dust and germ. And out of such things as this

evolved a shapeless cloud of championship for Hugh. Jealousies and

suspicions are latent in every human relationship. We go about the

affairs of life pretending magnificently that they are not so,

pretending to the generosities we desire. And in all step-relationships

jealousy and suspicion are not merely latent, they stir.

It was Mr. Britling's case for Hugh that he was something exceptional,

something exceptionally good, and that the peculiar need there was to

take care of him was due to a delicacy of nerve and fibre that was

ultimately a virtue. The boy was quick, quick to hear, quick to move,

very accurate in his swift way, he talked unusually soon, he began to

sketch at an early age with an incurable roughness and a remarkable

expressiveness. That he was sometimes ungainly, often untidy, that he

would become so mentally preoccupied as to be uncivil to people about

him, that he caught any malaise that was going, was all a part of that.

The sense of Mrs. Britling's unexpressed criticisms, the implied

contrasts with the very jolly, very uninspired younger family, kept up

a nervous desire in Mr. Britling for evidences and manifestations of

Hugh's quality. Not always with happy results; it caused much mutual

irritation, but not enough to prevent the growth of a real response on

Hugh's part to his father's solicitude. The youngster knew and felt that

his father was his father just as certainly as he felt that Mrs.

Britling was not his mother. To his father he brought his successes and

to his father he appealed.

But he brought his successes more readily than he brought his troubles.

So far as he himself was concerned he was disposed to take a humorous

view of the things that went wrong and didn't come off with him, but as

a "Tremendous Set-Down for the Proud Parent" they resisted humorous

treatment....

Now the trouble that he had been hesitating to bring before his father

was concerned with that very grave interest of the young, his Object in

Life. It had nothing to do with those erotic disturbances that had

distressed his father's imagination. Whatever was going on below the

surface of Hugh's smiling or thoughtful presence in that respect had

still to come to the surface and find expression. But he was bothered

very much by divergent strands in his own intellectual composition. Two

sets of interests pulled at him, one--it will seem a dry interest to

many readers, but for Hugh it glittered and fascinated--was

crystallography and molecular physics; the other was caricature. Both

aptitudes sprang no doubt from the same exceptional sensitiveness to

form. As a schoolboy he exercised both very happily, but now he was

getting to the age of specialisation, and he was fluctuating very much

between science and art. After a spell of scientific study he would come

upon a fatigue period and find nothing in life but absurdities and a

lark that one could represent very amusingly; after a bout of funny

drawings his mind went back to his light and crystals and films like a

Magdalen repenting in a church. After his public school he had refused

Cambridge and gone to University College, London, to work under the

great and inspiring Professor Cardinal; simultaneously Cardinal had been

arranging to go to Cambridge, and Hugh had scarcely embarked upon his

London work when Cardinal was succeeded by the dull, conscientious and

depressing Pelkingham, at whose touch crystals became as puddings,

bubble films like cotton sheets, transparency vanished from the world,

and X rays dwarfed and died. And Hugh degenerated immediately into a

scoffing trifler who wished to give up science for art.

He gave up science for art after grave consultation with his father, and

the real trouble that had been fretting him, it seemed, was that now he

repented and wanted to follow Cardinal to Cambridge, and--a year

lost--go on with science again. He felt it was a discreditable

fluctuation; he knew it would be a considerable expense; and so he took

two weeks before he could screw himself up to broaching the matter.

"So _that_ is all," said Mr. Britling, immensely relieved.

"My dear Parent, you didn't think I had backed a bill or forged a

cheque?"

"I thought you might have married a chorus girl or something of that

sort," said Mr. Britling.

"Or bought a large cream-coloured motor-car for her on the instalment

system, which she'd smashed up. No, that sort of thing comes later....

I'll just put myself down on the waiting list of one of those bits of

delight in the Cambridge tobacco shops--and go on with my studies for a

year or two...."

Section 6

Though Mr. Britling's anxiety about his son was dispelled, his mind

remained curiously apprehensive throughout July. He had a feeling that

things were not going well with the world, a feeling he tried in vain to

dispel by various distractions. Perhaps some subtler subconscious

analysis of the situation was working out probabilities that his

conscious self would not face. And when presently he bicycled off to

Mrs. Harrowdean for flattery, amusement, and comfort generally, he found

her by no means the exalting confirmation of everything he wished to

believe about himself and the universe, that had been her delightful

rôle in the early stages of their romantic friendship. She maintained

her hostility to Edith; she seemed bent on making things impossible. And

yet there were one or two phases of the old sustaining intimacies.

They walked across her absurd little park to the summer-house with the

view on the afternoon of his arrival, and they discussed the Irish

pamphlet which was now nearly finished.

"Of course," she said, "it will be a wonderful pamphlet."

There was a reservation in her voice that made him wait.

"But I suppose all sorts of people could write an Irish pamphlet. Nobody

but you could write 'The Silent Places.' Oh, _why_ don't you finish that

great beautiful thing, and leave all this world of reality and

newspapers, all these Crude, Vulgar, Quarrelsome, Jarring things to

other people? You have the magic gift, you might be a poet, you can take

us out of all these horrid things that are, away to Beautyland, and you

are just content to be a critic and a disputer. It's your surroundings.

It's your sordid realities. It's that Practicality at your elbow. You

ought never to see a newspaper. You ought never to have an American come

within ten miles of you. You ought to live on bowls of milk drunk in

valleys of asphodel."

Mr. Britling, who liked this sort of thing in a way, and yet at the same

time felt ridiculously distended and altogether preposterous while it

was going on, answered feebly and self-consciously.

"There was your letter in the _Nation_ the other day," she said. "Why

_do_ you get drawn into arguments? I wanted to rush into the _Nation_

and pick you up and wipe the anger off you, and carry you out of it

all--into some quiet beautiful place."

"But one _has_ to answer these people," said Mr. Britling, rolling along

by the side of her like a full moon beside Venus, and quite artlessly

falling in with the tone of her.

She repeated lines from "The Silent Places" from memory. She threw quite

wonderful emotion into her voice. She made the words glow. And he had

only shown her the thing once....

Was he indeed burying a marvellous gift under the dust of current

affairs? When at last in the warm evening light they strolled back from

the summer-house to dinner he had definitely promised her that he would

take up and finish "The Silent Places."... And think over the Irish

pamphlet again before he published it....

Pyecrafts was like a crystal casket of finer soil withdrawn from the

tarred highways of the earth....

And yet the very next day this angel enemy of controversies broke out in

the most abominable way about Edith, and he had to tell her more plainly

than he had done hitherto, that he could not tolerate that sort of

thing. He wouldn't have Edith guyed. He wouldn't have Edith made to seem

base. And at that there was much trouble between them, and tears and

talk of Oliver....

Mr. Britling found himself unable to get on either with "The Silent

Places" or the pamphlet, and he was very unhappy....

Afterwards she repented very touchingly, and said that if only he would

love her she would swallow a thousand Ediths. He waived a certain

disrespect in the idea of her swallowing Edith, and they had a beautiful

reconciliation and talked of exalted things, and in the evening he

worked quite well upon "The Silent Places" and thought of half-a-dozen

quite wonderful lines, and in the course of the next day he returned to

Dower House and Mr. Direck and considerable piles of correspondence and

the completion of the Irish pamphlet.

But he was restless. He was more restless in his house than he had ever

been. He could not understand it. Everything about him was just as it

had always been, and yet it was unsatisfactory, and it seemed more

unstable than anything had ever seemed before. He was bored by the

solemn development of the Irish dispute; he was irritated by the

smouldering threat of the Balkans; he was irritated by the suffragettes

and by a string of irrational little strikes; by the general absence of

any main plot as it were to hold all these wranglings and trivialities

together.... At the Dower House the most unpleasant thoughts would come

to him. He even had doubts whether in "The Silent Places," he had been

plagiarising, more or less unconsciously, from Henry James's "Great Good

Place."...

On the twenty-first of July Gladys came back repaired and looking none

the worse for her misadventure. Next day he drove her very carefully

over to Pyecrafts, hoping to drug his uneasiness with the pretence of a

grand passion and the praises of "The Silent Places," that beautiful

work of art that was so free from any taint of application, and alas! he

found Mrs. Harrowdean in an evil mood. He had been away from her for ten

days--ten whole days. No doubt Edith had manoeuvred to keep him. She

hadn't! _Hadn't_ she? How was he, poor simple soul! to tell that she

hadn't? That was the prelude to a stormy afternoon.

The burthen of Mrs. Harrowdean was that she was wasting her life, that

she was wasting the poor, good, patient Oliver's life, that for the sake

of friendship she was braving the worst imputations and that he treated

her cavalierly, came when he wished to do so, stayed away heartlessly,

never thought she needed _little_ treats, _little_ attentions, _little_

presents. Did he think she could settle down to her poor work, such as

it was, in neglect and loneliness? He forgot women were dear little

tender things, and had to be made happy and _kept_ happy. Oliver might

not be clever and attractive but he did at least in his clumsy way

understand and try and do his duty....

Towards the end of the second hour of such complaints the spirit of Mr.

Britling rose in revolt. He lifted up his voice against her, he charged

his voice with indignant sorrow and declared that he had come over to

Pyecrafts with no thought in his mind but sweet and loving thoughts,

that he had but waited for Gladys to be ready before he came, that he

had brought over the manuscript of "The Silent Places" with him to

polish and finish up, that "for days and days" he had been longing to do

this in the atmosphere of the dear old summer-house with its distant

view of the dear old sea, and that now all that was impossible, that

Mrs. Harrowdean had made it impossible and that indeed she was rapidly

making everything impossible....

And having delivered himself of this judgment Mr. Britling, a little

surprised at the rapid vigour of his anger, once he had let it loose,

came suddenly to an end of his words, made a renunciatory gesture with

his arms, and as if struck with the idea, rushed out of her room and out

of the house to where Gladys stood waiting. He got into her and started

her up, and after some trouble with the gear due to the violence of his

emotion, he turned her round and departed with her--crushing the corner

of a small bed of snapdragon as he turned--and dove her with a sulky

sedulousness back to the Dower House and newspapers and correspondence

and irritations, and that gnawing and irrational sense of a hollow and

aimless quality in the world that he had hoped Mrs. Harrowdean would

assuage. And the further he went from Mrs. Harrowdean the harsher and

unjuster it seemed to him that he had been to her.

But he went on because he did not see how he could very well go back.

Section 7

Mr. Direck's broken wrist healed sooner than he desired. From the first

he had protested that it was the sort of thing that one can carry about

in a sling, that he was quite capable of travelling about and taking

care of himself in hotels, that he was only staying on at Matching's

Easy because he just loved to stay on and wallow in Mrs. Britling's

kindness and Mr. Britling's company. While as a matter of fact he

wallowed as much as he could in the freshness and friendliness of Miss

Cecily Corner, and for more than a third of this period Mr. Britling was

away from home altogether.

Mr. Direck, it should be clear by this time, was a man of more than

European simplicity and directness, and his intentions towards the young

lady were as simple and direct and altogether honest as such intentions

can be. It is the American conception of gallantry more than any other

people's, to let the lady call the tune in these affairs; the man's

place is to be protective, propitiatory, accommodating and clever, and

the lady's to be difficult but delightful until he catches her and

houses her splendidly and gives her a surprising lot of pocket-money,

and goes about his business; and upon these assumptions Mr. Direck went

to work. But quite early it was manifest to him that Cecily did not

recognise his assumptions. She was embarrassed when he got down one or

two little presents of chocolates and flowers for her from London--the

Britling boys were much more appreciative--she wouldn't let him contrive

costly little expeditions for her, and she protested against compliments

and declared she would stay away when he paid them. And she was not

contented by his general sentiments about life, but asked the most

direct questions about his occupation and his activities. His chief

occupation was being the well provided heir of a capable lawyer, and

his activities in the light of her inquiries struck him as being light

and a trifle amateurish, qualities he had never felt as any drawback

about them before. So that he had to rely rather upon aspirations and

the possibility, under proper inspiration, of a more actively

serviceable life in future.

"There's a feeling in the States," he said, "that we've had rather a

tendency to overdo work, and that there is scope for a leisure class to

develop the refinement and the wider meanings of life."

"But a leisure class doesn't mean a class that does nothing," said

Cecily. "It only means a class that isn't busy in business."

"You're too hard on me," said Mr. Direck with that quiet smile of his.

And then by way of putting her on the defensive he asked her what she

thought a man in his position ought to do.

"_Something_," she said, and in the expansion of this vague demand they

touched on a number of things. She said that she was a Socialist, and

there was still in Mr. Direck's composition a streak of the

old-fashioned American prejudice against the word. He associated

Socialists with Anarchists and deported aliens. It was manifest too that

she was deeply read in the essays and dissertations of Mr. Britling. She

thought everybody, man or woman, ought to be chiefly engaged in doing

something definite for the world at large. ("There's my secretaryship of

the Massachusetts Modern Thought Society, anyhow," said Mr. Direck.) And

she herself wanted to be doing something--it was just because she did

not know what it was she ought to be doing that she was reading so

extensively and voraciously. She wanted to lose herself in something.

Deep in the being of Mr. Direck was the conviction that what she ought

to be doing was making love in a rapturously egotistical manner, and

enjoying every scrap of her own delightful self and her own delightful

vitality--while she had it, but for the purposes of their conversation

he did not care to put it any more definitely than to say that he

thought we owed it to ourselves to develop our personalities. Upon which

she joined issue with great vigour.

"That is just what Mr. Britling says about you in his 'American

Impressions,'" she said. "He says that America overdoes the development

of personalities altogether, that whatever else is wrong about America

that is where America is most clearly wrong. I read that this morning,

and directly I read it I thought, 'Yes, that's exactly it! Mr. Direck is

overdoing the development of personalities.'"

"Me!"

"Yes. I like talking to you and I don't like talking to you. And I see

now it is because you keep on talking of my Personality and your

Personality. That makes me uncomfortable. It's like having some one

following me about with a limelight. And in a sort of way I do like it.

I like it and I'm flattered by it, and then I go off and dislike it,

dislike the effect of it. I find myself trying to be what you have told

me I am--sort of acting myself. I want to glance at looking-glasses to

see if I am keeping it up. It's just exactly what Mr. Britling says in

his book about American women. They act themselves, he says; they get a

kind of story and explanation about themselves and they are always

trying to make it perfectly plain and clear to every one. Well, when you

do that you can't think nicely of other things."

"We like a clear light on people," said Mr. Direck.

"We don't. I suppose we're shadier," said Cecily.

"You're certainly much more in half-tones," said Mr. Direck. "And I

confess it's the half-tones get hold of me. But still you haven't told

me, Miss Cissie, what you think I ought to do with myself. Here I am,

you see, very much at your disposal. What sort of business do you think

it's my duty to go in for?"

"That's for some one with more experience than I have, to tell you. You

should ask Mr. Britling."

"I'd rather have it from you."

"I don't even know for myself," she said.

"So why shouldn't we start to find out together?" he asked.

It was her tantalising habit to ignore all such tentatives.

"One can't help the feeling that one is in the world for something more

than oneself," she said....

Section 8

Soon Mr. Direck could measure the time that was left to him at the Dower

House no longer by days but by hours. His luggage was mostly packed, his

tickets to Rotterdam, Cologne, Munich, Dresden, Vienna, were all in

order. And things were still very indefinite between him and Cecily. But

God has not made Americans clean-shaven and firm-featured for nothing,

and he determined that matters must be brought to some sort of

definition before he embarked upon travels that were rapidly losing

their attractiveness in this concentration of his attention....

A considerable nervousness betrayed itself in his voice and manner when

at last he carried out his determination.

"There's just a lil' thing," he said to her, taking advantage of a

moment when they were together after lunch, "that I'd value now more

than anything else in the world."

She answered by a lifted eyebrow and a glance that had not so much

inquiry in it as she intended.

"If we could just take a lil' walk together for a bit. Round by

Claverings Park and all that. See the deer again and the old trees. Sort

of scenery I'd like to remember when I'm away from it."

He was a little short of breath, and there was a quite disproportionate

gravity about her moment for consideration.

"Yes," she said with a cheerful acquiescence that came a couple of bars

too late. "Let's. It will be jolly."

"These fine English afternoons are wonderful afternoons," he remarked

after a moment or so of silence. "Not quite the splendid blaze we get in

our summer, but--sort of glowing."

"It's been very fine all the time you've been here," she said....

After which exchanges they went along the lane, into the road by the

park fencing, and so to the little gate that lets one into the park,

without another word.

The idea took hold of Mr. Direck's mind that until they got through the

park gate it would be quite out of order to say anything. The lane and

the road and the stile and the gate were all so much preliminary stuff

to be got through before one could get to business. But after the little

white gate the way was clear, the park opened out and one could get

ahead without bothering about the steering. And Mr. Direck had, he felt,

been diplomatically involved in lanes and by-ways long enough.

"Well," he said as he rejoined her after very carefully closing the

gate. "What I really wanted was an opportunity of just mentioning

something that happens to be of interest to you--if it does happen to

interest you.... I suppose I'd better put the thing as simply as

possible.... Practically.... I'm just right over the head and all in

love with you.... I thought I'd like to tell you...."

Immense silences.

"Of course I won't pretend there haven't been others," Mr. Direck

suddenly resumed. "There have. One particularly. But I can assure you

I've never felt the depth and height or anything like the sort of Quiet

Clear Conviction.... And now I'm just telling you these things, Miss

Corner, I don't know whether it will interest you if I tell you that

you're really and truly the very first love I ever had as well as my

last. I've had sent over--I got it only yesterday--this lil' photograph

of a miniature portrait of one of my ancestor's relations--a Corner just

as you are. It's here...."

He had considerable difficulties with his pockets and papers. Cecily,

mute and flushed and inconvenienced by a preposterous and unaccountable

impulse to weep, took the picture he handed her.

"When I was a lil' fellow of fifteen," said Mr. Direck in the tone of

one producing a melancholy but conclusive piece of evidence, "I

_worshipped_ that miniature. It seemed to me--the loveliest person....

And--it's just you...."

He too was preposterously moved.

It seemed a long time before Cecily had anything to say, and then what

she had to say she said in a softened, indistinct voice. "You're very

kind," she said, and kept hold of the little photograph.

They had halted for the photograph. Now they walked on again.

"I thought I'd like to tell you," said Mr. Direck and became

tremendously silent.

Cecily found him incredibly difficult to answer. She tried to make

herself light and offhand, and to be very frank with him.

"Of course," she said, "I knew--I felt somehow--you meant to say

something of this sort to me--when you asked me to come with you--"

"Well?" he said.

"And I've been trying to make my poor brain think of something to say to

you."

She paused and contemplated her difficulties....

"Couldn't you perhaps say something of the same kind--such as I've been

trying to say?" said Mr. Direck presently, with a note of earnest

helpfulness. "I'd be very glad if you could."

"Not exactly," said Cecily, more careful than ever.

"Meaning?"

"I think you know that you are the best of friends. I think you are,

oh--a Perfect Dear."

"Well--that's all right--so far."

"That _is_ as far."

"You don't know whether you love me? That's what you mean to say."

"No.... I feel somehow it isn't that.... Yet...."

"There's nobody else by any chance?"

"No." Cecily weighed things. "You needn't trouble about that."

"Only ... only you don't know."

Cecily made a movement of assent.

"It's no good pretending I haven't thought about you," she said.

"Well, anyhow I've done my best to give you the idea," said Mr. Direck.

"I seem now to have been doing that pretty nearly all the time."

"Only what should we do?"

Mr. Direck felt this question was singularly artless. "Why!--we'd

marry," he said. "And all that sort of thing."

"Letty has married--and all that sort of thing," said Cecily, fixing her

eye on him very firmly because she was colouring brightly. "And it

doesn't leave Letty very much--forrader."

"Well now, they have a good time, don't they? I'd have thought they have

a lovely time!"

"They've had a lovely time. And Teddy is the dearest husband. And they

have a sweet little house and a most amusing baby. And they play hockey

every Sunday. And Teddy does his work. And every week is like every

other week. It is just heavenly. Just always the same heavenly. Every

Sunday there is a fresh week of heavenly beginning. And this, you see,

isn't heaven; it is earth. And they don't know it but they are getting

bored. I have been watching them, and they are getting dreadfully bored.

It's heart-breaking to watch, because they are almost my dearest people.

Teddy used to be making perpetual jokes about the house and the baby and

his work and Letty, and now--he's made all the possible jokes. It's only

now and then he gets a fresh one. It's like spring flowers and

then--summer. And Letty sits about and doesn't sing. They want something

new to happen.... And there's Mr. and Mrs. Britling. They love each

other. Much more than Mrs. Britling dreams, or Mr. Britling for the

matter of that. Once upon a time things were heavenly for them too, I

suppose. Until suddenly it began to happen to them that nothing new ever

happened...."

"Well," said Mr. Direck, "people can travel."

"But that isn't _real_ happening," said Cecily.

"It keeps one interested."

"But real happening is doing something."

"You come back to that," said Mr. Direck. "I never met any one before

who'd quite got that spirit as you have it. I wouldn't alter it. It's

part of you. It's part of this place. It's what Mr. Britling always

seems to be saying and never quite knowing he's said it. It's just as

though all the things that are going on weren't the things that ought to

be going on--but something else quite different. Somehow one falls into

it. It's as if your daily life didn't matter, as if politics didn't

matter, as if the King and the social round and business and all those

things weren't anything really, and as though you felt there was

something else--out of sight--round the corner--that you ought to be

getting at. Well, I admit, that's got hold of me too. And it's all mixed

up with my idea of you. I don't see that there's really a contradiction

in it at all. I'm in love with you, all my heart's in love with you,

what's the good of being shy about it? I'd just die for your littlest

wish right here now, it's just as though I'd got love in my veins

instead of blood, but that's not taking me away from that other thing.

It's bringing me round to that other thing. I feel as if without you I

wasn't up to anything at all, but _with_ you--We'd not go settling down

in a cottage or just touring about with a Baedeker Guide or anything of

that kind. Not for long anyhow. We'd naturally settle down side by side

and _do_ ..."

"But what should we do?" asked Cecily.

There came a hiatus in their talk.

Mr. Direck took a deep breath.

"You see that old felled tree there. I was sitting on it the day before

yesterday and thinking of you. Will you come there and sit with me on

it? When you sit on it you get a view, oh! a perfectly lovely English

view, just a bit of the house and those clumps of trees and the valley

away there with the lily pond. I'd love to have you in my memory of

it...."

They sat down, and Mr. Direck opened his case. He was shy and clumsy

about opening it, because he had been thinking dreadfully hard about it,

and he hated to seem heavy or profound or anything but artless and

spontaneous to Cecily. And he felt even when he did open his case that

the effect of it was platitudinous and disappointing. Yet when he had

thought it out it had seemed very profound and altogether living.

"You see one doesn't want to use terms that have been used in a thousand

different senses in any way that isn't a perfectly unambiguous sense,

and at the same time one doesn't want to seem to be canting about things

or pitching anything a note or two higher than it ought legitimately to

go, but it seems to me that this sort of something that Mr. Britling is

always asking for in his essays and writings and things, and what you

are looking for just as much and which seems so important to you that

even love itself is a secondary kind of thing until you can square the

two together, is nothing more nor less than Religion--I don't mean this

Religion or that Religion but just Religion itself, a Big, Solemn,

Comprehensive Idea that holds you and me and all the world together in

one great, grand universal scheme. And though it isn't quite the sort of

idea of love-making that's been popular--well, in places like

Carrierville--for some time, it's the right idea; it's got to be

followed out if we don't want love-making to be a sort of idle,

troublesome game of treats and flatteries that is sure as anything to

lead right away to disappointments and foolishness and unfaithfulness

and--just Hell. What you are driving at, according to my interpretation,

is that marriage has got to be a religious marriage or else you are

splitting up life, that religion and love are most of life and all the

power there is in it, and that they can't afford to be harnessed in two

different directions.... I never had these ideas until I came here and

met you, but they come up now in my mind as though they had always been

there.... And that's why you don't want to marry in a hurry. And that's

why I'm glad almost that you don't want to marry in a hurry."

He considered. "That's why I'll have to go on to Germany and just let

both of us turn things over in our minds."

"Yes," said Cecily, weighing his speech. "_I_ think that is it. I think

that I do want a religious marriage, and that what is wrong with Teddy

and Letty is that they aren't religious. They pretend they are religious

somewhere out of sight and round the corner.... Only--"

He considered her gravely.

"What _is_ Religion?" she asked.

Here again there was a considerable pause.

"Very nearly two-thirds of the papers read before our Massachusetts

society since my connection with it, have dealt with that very

question," Mr. Direck began. "And one of our most influential members

was able to secure the services of a very able and highly trained young

woman from Michigan University, to make a digest of all these

representative utterances. We are having it printed in a thoroughly

artistic mariner, as the club book for our autumn season. The drift of

her results is that religion isn't the same thing as religions. That

most religions are old and that religion is always new.... Well, putting

it simply, religion is the perpetual rediscovery of that Great Thing Out

There.... What the Great Thing is goes by all sorts of names, but if you

know it's there and if you remember it's there, you've got religion....

That's about how she figured it out.... I shall send you the book as

soon as a copy comes over to me.... I can't profess to put it as clearly

as she puts it. She's got a real analytical mind. But it's one of the

most suggestive lil' books I've ever seen. It just takes hold of you and

_makes_ you think."

He paused and regarded the ground before him--thoughtfully.

"Life," said Cecily, "has either got to be religious or else it goes to

pieces.... Perhaps anyhow it goes to pieces...."

Mr. Direck endorsed these observations by a slow nodding of the head.

He allowed a certain interval to elapse. Then a vaguely apprehended

purpose that had been for a time forgotten in these higher interests

came back to him. He took it up with a breathless sense of temerity.

"Well," he said, "then you don't hate me?"

She smiled.

"You don't dislike me or despise me?"

She was still reassuring.

"You don't think I'm just a slow American sort of portent?"

"No."

"You think, on the whole, I might even--someday--?"

She tried to meet his eyes with a pleasant frankness, and perhaps she

was franker than she meant to be.

"Look here," said Mr. Direck, with a little quiver of emotion softening

his mouth. "I'll ask you something. We've got to wait. Until you feel

clearer. Still.... Could you bring yourself--? If just once--I could

kiss you....

"I'm going away to Germany," he went on to her silence. "But I shan't be

giving so much attention to Germany as I supposed I should when I

planned it out. But somehow--if I felt--that I'd kissed you...."

With a delusive effect of calmness the young lady looked first over her

left shoulder and then over her right and surveyed the park about them.

Then she stood up. "We can go that way home," she said with a movement

of her head, "through the little covert."

Mr. Direck stood up too.

"If I was a poet or a bird," said Mr. Direck, "I should sing. But being

just a plain American citizen all I can do is just to talk about all I'd

do if I wasn't...."

And when they had reached the little covert, with its pathway of soft

moss and its sheltering screen of interlacing branches, he broke the

silence by saying, "Well, what's wrong with right here and now?" and

Cecily stood up to him as straight as a spear, with gifts in her clear

eyes. He took her soft cool face between his trembling hands, and kissed

her sweet half-parted lips. When he kissed her she shivered, and he held

her tighter and would have kissed her again. But she broke away from

him, and he did not press her. And muter than ever, pondering deeply,

and secretly trembling in the queerest way, these two outwardly sedate

young people returned to the Dower House....

And after tea the taxicab from the junction came for him and he

vanished, and was last seen as a waving hat receding along the top of

the dog-rose hedge that ran beyond the hockey field towards the village.

"He will see Germany long before I shall," said Herr Heinrich with a

gust of nostalgia. "I wish almost I had not agreed to go to Boulogne."

And for some days Miss Cecily Corner was a very grave and dignified

young woman indeed. Pondering....

Section 9

After the departure of Mr. Direck things international began to move

forward with great rapidity. It was exactly as if his American

deliberation had hitherto kept things waiting. Before his postcard from

Rotterdam reached the Dower House Austria had sent an ultimatum to

Serbia, and before Cecily had got the letter he wrote her from Cologne,

a letter in that curiously unformed handwriting the stenographer and the

typewriter are making an American characteristic, Russia was mobilising,

and the vast prospect of a European war had opened like the rolling up

of a curtain on which the interests of the former week had been but a

trivial embroidery. So insistent was this reality that revealed itself

that even the shooting of the Dublin people after the gun-running of

Howth was dwarfed to unimportance. The mind of Mr. Britling came round

from its restless wanderings to a more and more intent contemplation of

the hurrying storm-clouds that swept out of nothingness to blacken all

his sky. He watched it, he watched amazed and incredulous, he watched

this contradiction of all his reiterated confessions of faith in German

sanity and pacifism, he watched it with all that was impersonal in his

being, and meanwhile his personal life ran in a continually deeper and

narrower channel as his intelligence was withdrawn from it.

Never had the double refraction of his mind been more clearly defined.

On the one hand the Britling of the disinterested intelligence saw the

habitual peace of the world vanish as the daylight vanishes when a

shutter falls over the window of a cell; and on the other the Britling

of the private life saw all the pleasant comfort of his relations with

Mrs. Harrowdean disappearing in a perplexing irrational quarrel. He did

not want to lose Mrs. Harrowdean; he contemplated their breach with a

profound and profoundly selfish dismay. It seemed the wanton termination

of an arrangement of which he was only beginning to perceive the extreme

and irreplaceable satisfactoriness.

It wasn't that he was in love with her. He knew almost as clearly as

though he had told himself as much that he was not. But then, on the

other hand, it was equally manifest in its subdued and ignored way that

as a matter of fact she was hardly more in love with him. What

constituted the satisfactoriness of the whole affair was its essential

unlovingness and friendly want of emotion. It left their minds free to

play with all the terms and methods of love without distress. She could

summon tears and delights as one summons servants, and he could act his

part as lover with no sense of lost control. They supplied in each

other's lives a long-felt want--if only, that is, she could control her

curious aptitude for jealousy and the sexual impulse to vex. There, he

felt, she broke the convention of their relations and brought in serious

realities, and this little rift it was that had widened to a now

considerable breach. He knew that in every sane moment she dreaded and

wished to heal that breach as much as he did. But the deep simplicities

of the instincts they had tacitly agreed to bridge over washed the piers

of their reconciliation away.

And unless they could restore the bridge things would end, and Mr.

Britling felt that the ending of things would involve for him the most

extraordinary exasperation. She would go to Oliver for comfort; she

would marry Oliver; and he knew her well enough to be sure that she

would thrust her matrimonial happiness with Oliver unsparingly upon his

attention; while he, on the other hand, being provided with no

corresponding Olivette, would be left, a sort of emotional celibate,

with his slack times and his afternoons and his general need for

flattery and amusement dreadfully upon his own hands. He would be

tormented by jealousy. In which case--and here he came to verities--his

work would suffer. It wouldn't grip him while all these vague demands

she satisfied fermented unassuaged.

And, after the fashion of our still too adolescent world, Mr. Britling

and Mrs. Harrowdean proceeded to negotiate these extremely unromantic

matters in the phrases of that simple, honest and youthful

passionateness which is still the only language available, and at times

Mr. Britling came very near persuading himself that he had something of

the passionate love for her that he had once had for his Mary, and that

the possible loss of her had nothing to do with the convenience of

Pyecrafts or any discretion in the world. Though indeed the only thing

in the whole plexus of emotional possibility that still kept anything of

its youthful freshness in his mind was the very strong objection indeed

he felt to handing her over to anybody else in the world. And in

addition he had just a touch of fatherly feeling that a younger man

would not have had, and it made him feel very anxious to prevent her

making a fool of herself by marrying a man out of spite. He felt that

since an obstinate lover is apt to be an exacting husband, in the end

the heavy predominance of Oliver might wring much sincerer tears from

her than she had ever shed for himself. But that generosity was but the

bright edge to a mainly possessive jealousy.

It was Mr. Britling who reopened the correspondence by writing a little

apology for the corner of the small snapdragon bed, and this evoked an

admirably touching reply. He replied quite naturally with assurances and

declarations. But before she got his second letter her mood had changed.

She decided that if he had really and truly been lovingly sorry, instead

of just writing a note to her he would have rushed over to her in a

wild, dramatic state of mind, and begged forgiveness on his knees. She

wrote therefore a second letter to this effect, crossing his second one,

and, her literary gift getting the better of her, she expanded her

thesis into a general denunciation of his habitual off-handedness with

her, to an abandonment of all hope of ever being happy with him, to a

decision to end the matter once for all, and after a decent interval of

dignified regrets to summon Oliver to the reward of his patience and

goodness. The European situation was now at a pitch to get upon Mr.

Britling's nerves, and he replied with a letter intended to be

conciliatory, but which degenerated into earnest reproaches for her

"unreasonableness." Meanwhile she had received his second and tenderly

eloquent letter; it moved her deeply, and having now cleared her mind of

much that had kept it simmering uncomfortably, she replied with a

sweetly loving epistle. From this point their correspondence had a kind

of double quality, being intermittently angry and loving; her third

letter was tender, and it was tenderly answered in his fourth; but in

the interim she had received his third and answered it with considerable

acerbity, to which his fifth was a retort, just missing her generous and

conclusive fifth. She replied to his fifth on a Saturday evening--it was

that eventful Saturday, Saturday the First of August, 1914--by a

telegram. Oliver was abroad in Holland, engaged in a much-needed

emotional rest, and she wired to Mr. Britling: "Have wired for Oliver,

he will come to me, do not trouble to answer this."

She was astonished to get no reply for two days. She got no reply for

two days because remarkable things were happening to the telegraph wires

of England just then, and her message, in the hands of a boy scout on a

bicycle, reached Mr. Britling's house only on Monday afternoon. He was

then at Claverings discussing the invasion of Belgium that made

Britain's participation in the war inevitable, and he did not open the

little red-brown envelope until about half-past six. He failed to mark

the date and hours upon it, but he perceived that it was essentially a

challenge. He was expected, he saw, to go over at once with his

renovated Gladys and end this unfortunate clash forever in one striking

and passionate scene. His mind was now so full of the war that he found

this the most colourless and unattractive of obligations. But he felt

bound by the mysterious code of honour of the illicit love affair to

play his part. He postponed his departure until after supper--there was

no reason why he should be afraid of motoring by moonlight if he went

carefully--because Hugh came in with Cissie demanding a game of hockey.

Hockey offered a nervous refreshment, a scampering forgetfulness of the

tremendous disaster of this war he had always believed impossible, that

nothing else could do, and he was very glad indeed of the irruption....

Section 10

For days the broader side of Mr. Britling's mind, as distinguished from

its egotistical edge, had been reflecting more and more vividly and

coherently the spectacle of civilisation casting aside the thousand

dispersed activities of peace, clutching its weapons and setting its

teeth, for a supreme struggle against militarist imperialism. From the

point of view of Matching's Easy that colossal crystallising of

accumulated antagonisms was for a time no more than a confusion of

headlines and a rearrangement of columns in the white windows of the

newspapers through which those who lived in the securities of England

looked out upon the world. It was a display in the sphere of thought and

print immeasurably remote from the real green turf on which one walked,

from the voice and the church-bells of Mr. Dimple that sounded their

ample caresses in one's ears, from the clashing of the stags who were

beginning to knock the velvet from their horns in the park, or the

clatter of the butcher's cart and the respectful greeting of the butcher

boy down the lane. It was the spectacle of the world less real even to

most imaginations than the world of novels or plays. People talked of

these things always with an underlying feeling that they romanced and

intellectualised.

On Thursday, July 23rd, the Austro-Hungarian minister at Belgrade

presented his impossible ultimatum to the Serbian government, and

demanded a reply within forty-eight hours. With the wisdom of retrospect

we know now clearly enough what that meant. The Sarajevo crime was to be

resuscitated and made an excuse for war. But nine hundred and

ninety-nine Europeans out of a thousand had still no suspicion of what

was happening to them. The ultimatum figured prominently in the morning

papers that came to Matching's Easy on Friday, but it by no means

dominated the rest of the news; Sir Edward Carson's rejection of the

government proposals for Ulster was given the pride of place, and almost

equally conspicuous with the Serbian news were the Caillaux trial and

the storming of the St. Petersburg barricades by Cossacks. Herr

Heinrich's questions at lunch time received reassuring replies.

On Saturday Sir Edward Carson was still in the central limelight, Russia

had intervened and demanded more time for Serbia, and the _Daily

Chronicle_ declared the day a critical one for Europe. Dublin with

bayonet charges and bullets thrust Serbia into a corner on Monday. No

shots had yet been fired in the East, and the mischief in Ireland that

Germany had counted on was well ahead. Sir Edward Grey was said to be

working hard for peace.

"It's the cry of wolf," said Mr. Britling to Herr Heinrich.

"But at last there did come a wolf," said Herr Heinrich. "I wish I had

not sent my first moneys to that Conference upon Esperanto. I feel sure

it will be put off."

"See!" said Teddy very cheerfully to Herr Heinrich on Tuesday, and held

up the paper, in which "The Bloodshed in Dublin" had squeezed the "War

Cloud Lifting" into a quite subordinate position.

"What did we tell you?" said Mrs. Britling. "Nobody wants a European

war."

But Wednesday's paper vindicated his fears. Germany had commanded Russia

not to mobilise.

"Of course Russia will mobilise," said Herr Heinrich.

"Or else forever after hold her peace," said Teddy.

"And then Germany will mobilise," said Herr Heinrich, "and all my

holiday will vanish. I shall have to go and mobilise too. I shall have

to fight. I have my papers."

"I never thought of you as a soldier before," said Teddy.

"I have deferred my service until I have done my thesis," said Herr

Heinrich. "Now all that will be--Piff! And my thesis three-quarters

finished."

"That is serious," said Teddy.

"_Verdammte Dummheit!_" said Herr Heinrich. "Why do they do such

things?"

On Thursday, the 30th of July, Caillaux, Carson, strikes, and all the

common topics of life had been swept out of the front page of the paper

altogether; the stock exchanges were in a state of wild perturbation,

and food prices were leaping fantastically. Austria was bombarding

Belgrade, contrary to the rules of war hitherto accepted; Russia was

mobilising; Mr. Asquith was, he declared, not relaxing his efforts "to

do everything possible to circumscribe the area of possible conflict,"

and the Vienna Conference of Peace Societies was postponed. "I do not

see why a conflict between Russia and Austria should involve Western

Europe," said Mr. Britling. "Our concern is only for Belgium and

France."

But Herr Heinrich knew better. "No," he said. "It is the war. It has

come. I have heard it talked about in Germany many times. But I have

never believed that it was obliged to come. Ach! It considers no one. So

long as Esperanto is disregarded, all these things must be."

Friday brought photographs of the mobilisation in Vienna, and the news

that Belgrade was burning. Young men in straw hats very like English or

French or Belgian young men in straw hats were shown parading the

streets of Vienna, carrying flags and banners portentously, blowing

trumpets or waving hats and shouting. Saturday saw all Europe

mobilising, and Herr Heinrich upon Teddy's bicycle in wild pursuit of

evening papers at the junction. Mobilisation and the emotions of Herr

Heinrich now became the central facts of the Dower House situation. The

two younger Britlings mobilised with great vigour upon the playroom

floor. The elder had one hundred and ninety toy soldiers with a

considerable equipment of guns and wagons; the younger had a force of a

hundred and twenty-three, not counting three railway porters (with

trucks complete), a policeman, five civilians and two ladies. Also they

made a number of British and German flags out of paper. But as neither

would allow his troops to be any existing foreign army, they agreed to

be Redland and Blueland, according to the colour of their prevailing

uniforms. Meanwhile Herr Heinrich confessed almost promiscuously the

complication of his distresses by a hitherto unexpected emotional

interest in the daughter of the village publican. She was a placid

receptive young woman named Maud Hickson, on whom the young man had, it

seemed, imposed the more poetical name of Marguerite.

"Often we have spoken together, oh yes, often," he assured Mrs.

Britling. "And now it must all end. She loves flowers, she loves birds.

She is most sweet and innocent. I have taught her many words in German

and several times I have tried to draw her in pencil, and now I must go

away and never see her any more."

His implicit appeal to the whole literature of Teutonic romanticism

disarmed Mrs. Britling's objection that he had no business whatever to

know the young woman at all.

"Also," cried Herr Heinrich, facing another aspect of his distresses,

"how am I to pack my things? Since I have been here I have bought many

things, many books, and two pairs of white flannel trousers and some

shirts and a tin instrument that I cannot work, for developing privately

Kodak films. All this must go into my little portmanteau. And it will

not go into my little portmanteau!

"And there is Billy! Who will now go on with the education of Billy?"

The hands of fate paused not for Herr Heinrich's embarrassments and

distresses. He fretted from his room downstairs and back to his room, he

went out upon mysterious and futile errands towards the village inn, he

prowled about the garden. His head and face grew pinker and pinker; his

eyes were flushed and distressed. Everybody sought to say and do kind

and reassuring things to him.

"Ach!" he said to Teddy; "you are a civilian. You live in a free

country. It is not your war. You can be amused at it...."

But then Teddy was amused at everything.

Something but very dimly apprehended at Matching's Easy, something

methodical and compelling away in London, seemed to be fumbling and

feeling after Herr Heinrich, and Herr Heinrich it appeared was

responding. Sunday's post brought the decision.

"I have to go," he said. "I must go right up to London to-day. To an

address in Bloomsbury. Then they will tell me how to go to Germany. I

must pack and I must get the taxi-cab from the junction and I must go.

Why are there no trains on the branch line on Sundays for me to go by

it?"

At lunch he talked politics. "I am entirely opposed to the war," he

said. "I am entirely opposed to any war."

"Then why go?" asked Mr. Britling. "Stay here with us. We all like you.

Stay here and do not answer your mobilisation summons."

"But then I shall lose all my country. I shall lose my papers. I shall

be outcast. I must go."

"I suppose a man should go with his own country," Mr. Britling

reflected.

"If there was only one language in all the world, none of such things

would happen," Herr Heinrich declared. "There would be no English, no

Germans, no Russians."

"Just Esperantists," said Teddy.

"Or Idoists," said Herr Heinrich. "I am not convinced of which. In some

ways Ido is much better."

"Perhaps there would have to be a war between Ido and Esperanto to

settle it," said Teddy.

"Who shall we play skat with when you have gone?" asked Mrs. Britling.

"All this morning," said Herr Heinrich, expanding in the warmth of

sympathy, "I have been trying to pack and I have been unable to pack. My

mind is too greatly disordered. I have been told not to bring much

luggage. Mrs. Britling, please."

Mrs. Britling became attentive.

"If I could leave much of my luggage, my clothes, some of them, and

particularly my violin, it would be much more to my convenience. I do

not care to be mobilised with my violin. There may be much crowding.

Then I would but just take my rucksack...."

"If you will leave your things packed up."

"And afterwards they could be sent."

But he did not leave them packed up. The taxi-cab, to order which he had

gone to the junction in the morning on Teddy's complaisant machine, came

presently to carry him off, and the whole family and the first

contingent of the usual hockey players gathered about it to see him off.

The elder boy of the two juniors put a distended rucksack upon the seat.

Herr Heinrich then shook hands with every one.

"Write and tell us how you get on," cried Mrs. Britling.

"But if England also makes war!"

"Write to Reynolds--let me give you his address; he is my agent in New

York," said Mr. Britling, and wrote it down.

"We'll come to the village corner with you, Herr Heinrich," cried the

boys.

"No," said Herr Heinrich, sitting down into the automobile, "I will part

with you altogether. It is too much...."

"_Auf Wiedersehen!_" cried Mr. Britling. "Remember, whatever happens

there will be peace at last!"

"Then why not at the beginning?" Herr Heinrich demanded with a

reasonable exasperation and repeated his maturer verdict on the whole

European situation; "_Verdammte Bummelei!_"

"Go," said Mr. Britling to the taxi driver.

"_Auf Wiedersehen_, Herr Heinrich!"

"_Auf Wiedersehen!_"

"Good-bye, Herr Heinrich!"

"Good luck, Herr Heinrich!"

The taxi started with a whir, and Herr Heinrich passed out of the gates

and along the same hungry road that had so recently consumed Mr. Direck.

"Give him a last send-off," cried Teddy. "One, Two, Three! _Auf

Wiedersehen!_"

The voices, gruff and shrill, sounded raggedly together. The dog-rose

hedge cut off the sight of the little face. Then the pink head bobbed up

again. He was standing up and waving the panama hat. Careless of

sunstroke....

Then Herr Heinrich had gone altogether....

"Well," said Mr. Britling, turning away.

"I do hope they won't hurt him," said a visitor.

"Oh, they won't put a youngster like that in the fighting line," said

Mr. Britling. "He's had no training yet. And he has to wear glasses. How

can he shoot? They'll make a clerk of him."

"He hasn't packed at all," said Mrs. Britling to her husband. "Just come

up for an instant and peep at his room. It's--touching."

It was touching.

It was more than touching; in its minute, absurd way it was symbolical

and prophetic, it was the miniature of one small life uprooted.

The door stood wide open, as he had left it open, careless of all the

little jealousies and privacies of occupation and ownership. Even the

windows were wide open as though he had needed air; he who had always so

sedulously shut his windows since first he came to England. Across the

empty fireplace stretched the great bough of oak he had brought in for

Billy, but now its twigs and leaves had wilted, and many had broken off

and fallen on the floor. Billy's cage stood empty upon a little table in

the corner of the room. Instead of packing, the young man had evidently

paced up and down in a state of emotional elaboration; the bed was

disordered as though he had several times flung himself upon it, and his

books had been thrown about the room despairfully. He had made some

little commencements of packing in a borrowed cardboard box. The violin

lay as if it lay in state upon the chest of drawers, the drawers were

all partially open, and in the middle of the floor sprawled a pitiful

shirt of blue, dropped there, the most flattened and broken-hearted of

garments. The fireplace contained an unsuccessful pencil sketch of a

girl's face, torn across....

Husband and wife regarded the abandoned room in silence for a time, and

when Mr. Britling spoke he lowered his voice.

"I don't see Billy," he said.

"Perhaps he has gone out of the window," said Mrs. Britling also in a

hushed undertone....

"Well," said Mr. Britling abruptly and loudly, turning away from this

first intimation of coming desolations, "let us go down to our hockey!

He had to go, you know. And Billy will probably come back again when he

begins to feel hungry...."

Section 11

Monday was a public holiday, the First Monday in August, and the day

consecrated by long-established custom to the Matching's Easy Flower

Show in Claverings Park. The day was to live in Mr. Britling's memory

with a harsh brightness like the brightness of that sunshine one sees at

times at the edge of a thunderstorm. There were tents with the exhibits,

and a tent for "Popular Refreshments," there was a gorgeous gold and

yellow steam roundabout with motor-cars and horses, and another in green

and silver with wonderfully undulating ostriches and lions, and each had

an organ that went by steam; there were cocoanut shies and many

ingenious prize-giving shooting and dart-throwing and ring-throwing

stalls, each displaying a marvellous array of crockery, clocks, metal

ornaments, and suchlike rewards. There was a race of gas balloons, each

with a postcard attached to it begging the finder to say where it

descended, and you could get a balloon for a shilling and have a chance

of winning various impressive and embarrassing prizes if your balloon

went far enough--fish carvers, a silver-handled walking-stick, a bog-oak

gramophone-record cabinet, and things like that. And by a special gate

one could go for sixpence into the Claverings gardens, and the sixpence

would be doubled by Lady Homartyn and devoted next winter to the

Matching's Easy coal club. And Mr. Britling went through all the shows

with his boys, and finally left them with a shilling each and his

blessing and paid his sixpence for the gardens and made his way as he

had promised, to have tea with Lady Homartyn.

The morning papers had arrived late, and he had been reading them and

re-reading them and musing over them intermittently until his family had

insisted upon his coming out to the festivities. They said that if for

no other reason he must come to witness Aunt Wilshire's extraordinary

skill at the cocoanut shy. She could beat everybody. Well, one must not

miss a thing like that. The headlines proclaimed, "The Great Powers at

War; France Invaded by Germany; Germany invaded by Russia; 100,000

Germans march into Luxemburg; Can England Abstain? Fifty Million Loan to

be Issued." And Germany had not only violated the Treaty of London but

she had seized a British ship in the Kiel Canal.... The roundabouts were

very busy and windily melodious, and the shooting gallery kept popping

and jingling as people shot and broke bottles, and the voices of the

young men and women inviting the crowd to try their luck at this and

that rang loud and clear. Teddy and Letty and Cissie and Hugh were

developing a quite disconcerting skill at the dart-throwing, and were

bent upon compiling a complete tea-set for the Teddy cottage out of

their winnings. There was a score of automobiles and a number of traps

and gigs about the entrance to the portion of the park that had been

railed off for the festival, the small Britling boys had met some

nursery visitors from Claverings House and were busy displaying skill

and calm upon the roundabout ostriches, and less than four hundred miles

away with a front that reached from Nancy to Liège more than a million

and a quarter of grey-clad men, the greatest and best-equipped host the

world had ever seen, were pouring westward to take Paris, grip and

paralyse France, seize the Channel ports, invade England, and make the

German Empire the master-state of the earth. Their equipment was a

marvel of foresight and scientific organisation, from the motor kitchens

that rumbled in their wake to the telescopic sights of the

sharp-shooters, the innumerable machine-guns of the infantry, the supply

of entrenching material, the preparations already made in the invaded

country....

"Let's try at the other place for the sugar-basin!" said Teddy, hurrying

past. "Don't get _two_ sugar-basins," said Cissie breathless in

pursuit. "Hugh is trying for a sugar-basin at the other place."

Then Mr. Britling heard a bellicose note.

"Let's have a go at the bottles," said a cheerful young farmer. "Ought

to keep up our shooting, these warlike times...."

Mr. Britling ran against Hickson from the village inn and learnt that he

was disturbed about his son being called up as a reservist. "Just when

he was settling down here. It seems a pity they couldn't leave him for a

bit."

"'Tis a noosence," said Hickson, "but anyhow, they give first prize to

his radishes. He'll be glad to hear they give first prize to his

radishes. Do you think, Sir, there's very much probability of this war?

It do seem to be beginning like."

"It looks more like beginning than it has ever done," said Mr. Britling.

"It's a foolish business."

"I suppose if they start in on us we got to hit back at them," said Mr.

Hickson. "Postman--he's got his papers too...."

Mr. Britling made his way through the drifting throng towards the little

wicket that led into the Gardens....

He was swung round suddenly by a loud bang.

It was the gun proclaiming the start of the balloon race.

He stood for some moments watching the scene. The balloon start had

gathered a little crowd of people, village girls in white gloves and

cheerful hats, young men in bright ties and ready-made Sunday suits,

fathers and mothers, boy scouts, children, clerks in straw hats,

bicyclists and miscellaneous folk. Over their heads rose Mr. Cheshunt,

the factotum of the estate. He was standing on a table and handing the

little balloons up into the air one by one. They floated up from his

hand like many-coloured grapes, some rising and falling, some soaring

steadily upward, some spinning and eddying, drifting eastward before the

gentle breeze, a string of bubbles against the sky and the big trees

that bounded the park. Farther away to the right were the striped

canvas tents of the flower-show, still farther off the roundabouts

churned out their music, the shooting galleries popped, and the swing

boats creaked through the air. Cut off from these things by a line of

fencing lay the open park in which the deer grouped themselves under the

great trees and regarded the festival mistrustfully. Teddy and Hugh

appeared breaking away from the balloon race cluster, and hurrying back

to their dart-throwing. A man outside a little tent that stood apart was

putting up a brave-looking notice, "Unstinted Teas One Shilling." The

Teddy perambulator was moored against the cocoanut shy, and Aunt

Wilshire was still displaying her terrible prowess at the cocoanuts.

Already she had won twenty-seven. Strange children had been impressed by

her to carry them, and formed her retinue. A wonderful old lady was Aunt

Wilshire....

Then across all the sunshine of this artless festival there appeared, as

if it were writing showing through a picture, "France Invaded by

Germany; Germany Invaded by Russia."

Mr. Britling turned again towards the wicket, with its collectors of

tribute, that led into the Gardens.

Section 12

The Claverings gardens, and particularly the great rockery, the lily

pond, and the herbaceous borders, were unusually populous with

unaccustomed visitors and shy young couples. Mr. Britling had to go to

the house for instructions, and guided by the under-butler found Lady

Homartyn hiding away in the walled Dutch garden behind the dairy. She

had been giving away the prizes of the flower-show, and she was resting

in a deck chair while a spinster relation presided over the tea. Mrs.

Britling had fled the outer festival earlier, and was sitting by the

tea-things. Lady Meade and two or three visitors had motored out from

Hartleytree to assist, and Manning had come in with his tremendous

confirmation of all that the morning papers had foreshadowed.

"Have you any news?" asked Mr. Britling.

"It's _war!_" said Mrs. Britling.

"They are in Luxemburg," said Manning. "That can only mean that they are

coming through Belgium."

"Then I was wrong," said Mr. Britling, "and the world is altogether mad.

And so there is nothing else for us to do but win.... Why could they not

leave Belgium alone?"

"It's been in all their plans for the last twenty years," said Manning.

"But it brings us in for certain."

"I believe they have reckoned on that."

"Well!" Mr. Britling took his tea and sat down, and for a time he said

nothing.

"It is three against three," said one of the visitors, trying to count

the Powers engaged.

"Italy," said Manning, "will almost certainly refuse to fight. In fact

Italy is friendly to us. She is bound to be. This is, to begin with, an

Austrian war. And Japan will fight for us...."

"I think," said old Lady Meade, "that this is the suicide of Germany.

They cannot possibly fight against Russia and France and ourselves. Why

have they ever begun it?"

"It may be a longer and more difficult war than people suppose," said

Manning. "The Germans reckon they are going to win."

"Against us all?"

"Against us all. They are tremendously prepared."

"It is impossible that Germany should win," said Mr. Britling, breaking

his silence. "Against her Germany has something more than armies; all

reason, all instinct--the three greatest peoples in the world."

"At present very badly supplied with war material."

"That may delay things; it may make the task harder; but it will not

alter the end. Of course we are going to win. Nothing else is thinkable.

I have never believed they meant it. But I see now they meant it. This

insolent arming and marching, this forty years of national blustering;

sooner or later it had to topple over into action...."

He paused and found they were listening, and he was carried on by his

own thoughts into further speech.

"This isn't the sort of war," he said, "that is settled by counting guns

and rifles. Something that has oppressed us all has become intolerable

and has to be ended. And it will be ended. I don't know what soldiers

and politicians think of our prospects, but I do know what ordinary

reasonable men think of the business. I know that all we millions of

reasonable civilised onlookers are prepared to spend our last shillings

and give all our lives now, rather than see Germany unbeaten. I know

that the same thing is felt in America, and that given half a chance,

given just one extra shake of that foolish mailed fist in the face of

America, and America also will be in this war by our side. Italy will

come in. She is bound to come in. France will fight like one man. I'm

quite prepared to believe that the Germans have countless rifles and

guns; have got the most perfect maps, spies, plans you can imagine. I'm

quite prepared to hear that they have got a thousand tremendous

surprises in equipment up their sleeves. I'm quite prepared for sweeping

victories for them and appalling disasters for us. Those are the first

things. What I do know is that the Germans understand nothing of the

spirit of man; that they do not dream for a moment of the devil of

resentment this war will arouse. Didn't we all trust them not to let off

their guns? Wasn't that the essence of our liberal and pacific faith?

And here they are in the heart of Europe letting off their guns?"

"And such a lot of guns," said Manning.

"Then you think it will be a long war, Mr. Britling?" said Lady Meade.

"Long or short, it will end in the downfall of Germany. But I do not

believe it will be long. I do not agree with Manning. Even now I cannot

believe that a whole great people can be possessed by war madness. I

think the war is the work of the German armaments party and of the Court

party. They have forced this war on Germany. Well--they must win and go

on winning. So long as they win, Germany will hold together, so long as

their armies are not clearly defeated nor their navy destroyed. But once

check them and stay them and beat them, then I believe that suddenly the

spirit of Germany will change even as it changed after Jena...."

"Willie Nixon," said one of the visitors, "who came back from Hamburg

yesterday, says they are convinced they will have taken Paris and St.

Petersburg and one or two other little places and practically settled

everything for us by about Christmas."

"And London?"

"I forgot if he said London. But I suppose a London more or less hardly

matters. They don't think we shall dare come in, but if we do they will

Zeppelin the fleet and walk through our army--if you can call it an

army."

Manning nodded confirmation.

"They do not understand," said Mr. Britling.

"Sir George Padish told me the same sort of thing," said Lady Homartyn.

"He was in Berlin in June."

"Of course the efficiency of their preparations is almost incredible,"

said another of Lady Meade's party.

"They have thought out and got ready for everything--literally

everything."

Section 13

Mr. Britling had been a little surprised by the speech he had made. He

hadn't realised before he began to talk how angry and scornful he was at

this final coming into action of the Teutonic militarism that had so

long menaced his world. He had always said it would never really

fight--and here it was fighting! He was furious with the indignation of

an apologist betrayed. He had only realised the strength and passion of

his own belligerent opinions as he had heard them, and as he walked back

with his wife through the village to the Dower House, he was still in

the swirl of this self-discovery; he was darkly silent, devising

fiercely denunciatory phrases against Krupp and Kaiser. "Krupp and

Kaiser," he grasped that obvious, convenient alliteration. "It is all

that is bad in mediævalism allied to all that is bad in modernity," he

told himself.

"The world," he said, startling Mrs. Britling with his sudden speech,

"will be intolerable to live in, it will be unendurable for a decent

human being, unless we win this war.

"We must smash or be smashed...."

His brain was so busy with such stuff that for a time he stared at Mrs.

Harrowdean's belated telegram without grasping the meaning of a word of

it. He realised slowly that it was incumbent upon him to go over to her,

but he postponed his departure very readily in order to play hockey.

Besides which it would be a full moon, and he felt that summer moonlight

was far better than sunset and dinner time for the declarations he was

expected to make. And then he went on phrase-making again about Germany

until he had actually bullied off at hockey.

Suddenly in the midst of the game he had an amazing thought. It came to

him like a physical twinge.

"What the devil are we doing at this hockey?" he asked abruptly of

Teddy, who was coming up to bully after a goal. "We ought to be drilling

or shooting against those infernal Germans."

Teddy looked at him questioningly.

"Oh, come on!" said Mr. Britling with a gust of impatience, and snapped

the sticks together.

Section 14

Mr. Britling started for his moonlight ride about half-past nine that

night. He announced that he could neither rest nor work, the war had

thrown him into a fever; the driving of the automobile was just the

distraction he needed; he might not, he added casually, return for a day

or so. When he felt he could work again he would come back. He filled up

his petrol tank by the light of an electric torch, and sat in his car in

the garage and studied his map of the district. His thoughts wandered

from the road to Pyecrafts to the coast, and to the possible route of a

raider. Suppose the enemy anticipated a declaration of war! Here he

might come, and here....

He roused himself from these speculations to the business in hand.

The evening seemed as light as day, a cool moonshine filled the world.

The road was silver that flushed to pink at the approach of Mr.

Britling's headlight, the dark turf at the wayside and the bushes on the

bank became for a moment an acid green as the glare passed. The full

moon was climbing up the sky, and so bright that scarcely a star was

visible in the blue grey of the heavens. Houses gleamed white a mile

away, and ever and again a moth would flutter and hang in the light of

the lamps, and then vanish again in the night.

Gladys was in excellent condition for a run, and so was Mr. Britling. He

went neither fast nor slow, and with a quite unfamiliar confidence.

Life, which had seemed all day a congested confusion darkened by

threats, became cool, mysterious and aloof and with a quality of

dignified reassurance.

He steered along the narrow road by the black dog-rose hedge, and so

into the high road towards the village. The village was alight at

several windows but almost deserted. Out beyond, a coruscation of lights

burnt like a group of topaz and rubies set in the silver shield of the

night. The festivities of the Flower Show were still in full progress,

and the reduction of the entrance fee after seven had drawn in every

lingering outsider. The roundabouts churned out their relentless music,

and the bottle-shooting galleries popped and crashed. The

well-patronised ostriches and motorcars flickered round in a pulsing

rhythm; black, black, black, before the naphtha flares.

Mr. Britling pulled up at the side of the road, and sat for a little

while watching the silhouettes move hither and thither from shadow to

shadow across the bright spaces.

"On the very brink of war--on the brink of Armageddon," he whispered at

last. "Do they understand? Do any of us understand?"

He slipped in his gear to starting, and was presently running quietly

with his engine purring almost inaudibly along the level road to

Hartleytree. The sounds behind him grew smaller and smaller, and died

away leaving an immense unruffled quiet under the moon. There seemed no

motion but his own, no sound but the neat, subdued, mechanical rhythm in

front of his feet. Presently he ran out into the main road, and heedless

of the lane that turned away towards Pyecrafts, drove on smoothly

towards the east and the sea. Never before had he driven by night. He

had expected a fumbling and tedious journey; he found he had come into

an undreamt-of silvery splendour of motion. For it seemed as though even

the automobile was running on moonlight that night.... Pyecrafts could

wait. Indeed the later he got to Pyecrafts the more moving and romantic

the little comedy of reconciliation would be. And he was in no hurry for

that comedy. He felt he wanted to apprehend this vast summer calm about

him, that alone of all the things of the day seemed to convey anything

whatever of the majestic tragedy that was happening to mankind. As one

slipped through this still vigil one could imagine for the first time

the millions away there marching, the wide river valleys, villages,

cities, mountain-ranges, ports and seas inaudibly busy.

"Even now," he said, "the battleships may be fighting."

He listened, but the sound was only the low intermittent drumming of his

cylinders as he ran with his throttle nearly closed, down a stretch of

gentle hill.

He felt that he must see the sea. He would follow the road beyond the

Rodwell villages, and then turn up to the crest of Eastonbury Hill. And

thither he went and saw in the gap of the low hills beyond a V-shaped

level of moonlit water that glittered and yet lay still. He stopped his

car by the roadside, and sat for a long time looking at this and musing.

And once it seemed to him three little shapes like short black needles

passed in line ahead across the molten silver.

But that may have been just the straining of the eyes....

All sorts of talk had come to Mr. Britling's ears about the navies of

England and France and Germany; there had been public disputes of

experts, much whispering and discussion in private. We had the heavier

vessels, the bigger guns, but it was not certain that we had the

preeminence in science and invention. Were they relying as we were

relying on Dreadnoughts, or had they their secrets and surprises for us?

To-night, perhaps, the great ships were steaming to conflict....

To-night all over the world ships must be in flight and ships pursuing;

ten thousand towns must be ringing with the immediate excitement of

war....

Only a year ago Mr. Britling had been lunching on a battleship and

looking over its intricate machinery. It had seemed to him then that

there could be no better human stuff in the world than the quiet,

sunburnt, disciplined men and officers he had met.... And our little

army, too, must be gathering to-night, the little army that had been

chastened and reborn in South Africa, that he was convinced was

individually more gallant and self-reliant and capable than any other

army in the world. He would have sneered or protested if he had heard

another Englishman say that, but in his heart he held the dear

belief....

And what other aviators in the world could fly as the Frenchmen and

Englishmen he had met once or twice at Eastchurch and Salisbury could

fly? These are things of race and national quality. Let the German cling

to his gasbags. "We shall beat them in the air," he whispered. "We shall

beat them on the seas. Surely we shall beat them on the seas. If we have

men enough and guns enough we shall beat them on land.... Yet--For years

they have been preparing...."

There was little room in the heart of Mr. Britling that night for any

love but the love of England. He loved England now as a nation of men.

There could be no easy victory. Good for us with our too easy natures

that there could be no easy victory. But victory we must have now--or

perish....

He roused himself with a sigh, restarted his engine, and went on to find

some turning place. He still had a colourless impression that the

journey's end was Pyecrafts.

"We must all do the thing we can," he thought, and for a time the course

of his automobile along a winding down-hill road held his attention so

that he could not get beyond it. He turned about and ran up over the

hill again and down long slopes inland, running very softly and smoothly

with his lights devouring the road ahead and sweeping the banks and

hedges beside him, and as he came down a little hill through a village

he heard a confused clatter and jingle of traffic ahead, and saw the

danger triangle that warns of cross-roads. He slowed down and then

pulled up abruptly.

Riding across the gap between the cottages was a string of horsemen, and

then a grey cart, and then a team drawing a heavy object--a gun, and

then more horsemen, and then a second gun. It was all a dim brown

procession in the moonlight. A mounted officer came up beside him and

looked at him and then went back to the cross-roads, but as yet England

was not troubling about spies. Four more guns passed, and then a string

of carts and more mounted men, sitting stiffly. Nobody was singing or

shouting; scarcely a word was audible, and through all the column there

was an effect of quiet efficient haste. And so they passed, and rumbled

and jingled and clattered out of the scene, leaving Mr. Britling in his

car in the dreaming village. He restarted his engine once more, and went

his way thoughtfully.

He went so thoughtfully that presently he missed the road to

Pyecrafts--if ever he had been on the road to Pyecrafts at

all--altogether. He found himself upon a highway running across a

flattish plain, and presently discovered by the sight of the Great Bear,

faint but traceable in the blue overhead, that he was going due north.

Well, presently he would turn south and west; that in good time; now he

wanted to feel; he wanted to think. How could he best help England in

the vast struggle for which the empty silence and beauty of this night

seemed to be waiting? But indeed he was not thinking at all, but

feeling, feeling wonder, as he had never felt it since his youth had

passed from him. This war might end nearly everything in the world as he

had known the world; that idea struggled slowly through the moonlight

into consciousness, and won its way to dominance in his mind.

The character of the road changed; the hedges fell away, the pine trees

and pine woods took the place of the black squat shapes of the hawthorn

and oak and apple. The houses grew rarer and the world emptier and

emptier, until he could have believed that he was the only man awake and

out-of-doors in all the slumbering land....

For a time a little thing caught hold of his dreaming mind. Continually

as he ran on, black, silent birds rose startled out of the dust of the

road before him, and fluttered noiselessly beyond his double wedge of

light. What sort of bird could they be? Were they night-jars? Were they

different kinds of birds snatching at the quiet of the night for a dust

bath in the sand? This little independent thread of inquiry ran through

the texture of his mind and died away....

And at one place there was a great bolting of rabbits across the road,

almost under his wheels....

The phrases he had used that afternoon at Claverings came back presently

into his head. They were, he felt assured, the phrases that had to be

said now. This war could be seen as the noblest of wars, as the crowning

struggle of mankind against national dominance and national aggression;

or else it was a mere struggle of nationalities and pure destruction and

catastrophe. Its enormous significances, he felt, must not be lost in

any petty bickering about the minor issues of the conflict. But were

these enormous significances being stated clearly enough? Were they

being understood by the mass of liberal and pacific thinkers? He drove

more and more slowly as these questions crowded upon his attention until

at last he came to a stop altogether.... "Certain things must be said

clearly," he whispered. "Certain things--The meaning of England.... The

deep and long-unspoken desire for kindliness and fairness.... Now is the

time for speaking. It must be put as straight now as her gun-fire, as

honestly as the steering of her ships."

Phrases and paragraphs began to shape themselves in his mind as he sat

with one arm on his steering-wheel.

Suddenly he roused himself, turned over the map in the map-case beside

him, and tried to find his position....

So far as he could judge he had strayed right into Suffolk....

About one o'clock in the morning he found himself in Newmarket.

Newmarket too was a moonlit emptiness, but as he hesitated at the

cross-roads he became aware of a policeman standing quite stiff and

still at the corner by the church.

"Matching's Easy?" he cried.

"That road, Sir, until you come to Market Saffron, and then to the

left...."

Mr. Britling had a definite purpose now in his mind, and he drove

faster, but still very carefully and surely. He was already within a

mile or so of Market Saffron before he remembered that he had made a

kind of appointment with himself at Pyecrafts. He stared at two

conflicting purposes. He turned over certain possibilities.

At the Market Saffron cross-roads he slowed down, and for a moment he

hung undecided.

"Oliver," he said, and as he spoke he threw over his steering-wheel

towards the homeward way.... He finished his sentence when he had

negotiated the corner safely. "Oliver must have her...."

And then, perhaps fifty yards farther along, and this time almost

indignantly: "She ought to have married him long ago...."

He put his automobile in the garage, and then went round under the black

shadow of his cedars to the front door. He had no key, and for a long

time he failed to rouse his wife by flinging pebbles and gravel at her

half-open window. But at last he heard her stirring and called out to

her.

He explained he had returned because he wanted to write. He wanted

indeed to write quite urgently. He went straight up to his room, lit his

reading-lamp, made himself some tea, and changed into his nocturnal

suit. Daylight found him still writing very earnestly at his pamphlet.

The title he had chosen was: "And Now War Ends."

Section 15

In this fashion it was that the great war began in Europe and came to

one man in Matching's Easy, as it came to countless intelligent men in

countless pleasant homes that had scarcely heeded its coming through all

the years of its relentless preparation. The familiar scenery of life

was drawn aside, and War stood unveiled. "I am the Fact," said War, "and

I stand astride the path of life. I am the threat of death and

extinction that has always walked beside life, since life began. There

can be nothing else and nothing more in human life until you have

reckoned with me."

BOOK II

MATCHING'S EASY AT WAR

CHAPTER THE FIRST

ONLOOKERS

Section 1

On that eventful night of the first shots and the first deaths Mr.

Britling did not sleep until daylight had come. He sat writing at this

pamphlet of his, which was to hail the last explosion and the ending of

war. For a couple of hours he wrote with energy, and then his energy

flagged. There came intervals when he sat still and did not write. He

yawned and yawned again and rubbed his eyes. The day had come and the

birds were noisy when he undressed slowly, dropping his clothes anyhow

upon the floor, and got into bed....

He woke to find his morning tea beside him and the housemaid going out

of the room. He knew that something stupendous had happened to the

world, but for a few moments he could not remember what it was. Then he

remembered that France was invaded by Germany and Germany by Russia, and

that almost certainly England was going to war. It seemed a harsh and

terrible fact in the morning light, a demand for stresses, a certainty

of destruction; it appeared now robbed of all the dark and dignified

beauty of the night. He remembered just the same feeling of unpleasant,

anxious expectation as he now felt when the Boer War had begun fifteen

years ago, before the first news came. The first news of the Boer War

had been the wrecking of a British armoured train near Kimberley. What

similar story might not the overdue paper tell when presently it came?

Suppose, for instance, that some important division of our Fleet had

been surprised and overwhelmed....

Suppose the Germans were already crumpling up the French armies between

Verdun and Belfort, very swiftly and dreadfully....

Suppose after all that the Cabinet was hesitating, and that there would

be no war for some weeks, but only a wrangle about Belgian neutrality.

While the Germans smashed France....

Or, on the other hand, there might be some amazing, prompt success on

our part. Our army and navy people were narrow, but in their narrow way

he believed they were extraordinarily good....

What would the Irish do?...

His thoughts were no more than a thorny jungle of unanswerable questions

through which he struggled in un-progressive circles.

He got out of bed and dressed in a slow, distraught manner. When he

reached his braces he discontinued dressing for a time; he opened the

atlas at Northern France, and stood musing over the Belgian border. Then

he turned to Whitaker's Almanack to browse upon the statistics of the

great European armies. He was roused from this by the breakfast gong.

At breakfast there was no talk of anything but war. Hugh was as excited

as a cat in thundery weather, and the small boys wanted information

about flags. The Russian and the Serbian flag were in dispute, and the

flag page of Webster's Dictionary had to be consulted. Newspapers and

letters were both abnormally late, and Mr. Britling, tiring of supplying

trivial information to his offspring, smoked cigarettes in the garden.

He had an idea of intercepting the postman. His eyes and ears informed

him of the approach of Mrs. Faber's automobile. It was an old,

resolute-looking machine painted red, and driven by a trusted gardener;

there was no mistaking it.

Mrs. Faber was in it, and she stopped it outside the gate and made

signals. Mrs. Britling, attracted by the catastrophic sounds of Mrs.

Faber's vehicle, came out by the front door, and she and her husband

both converged upon the caller.

Section 2

"I won't come in," cried Mrs. Faber, "but I thought I'd tell you. I've

been getting food."

"Food?"

"Provisions. There's going to be a run on provisions. Look at my flitch

of bacon!"

"But--"

"Faber says we have to lay in what we can. This war--it's going to stop

everything. We can't tell what will happen. I've got the children to

consider, so here I am. I was at Hickson's before nine...."

The little lady was very flushed and bright-eyed. Her fair hair was

disordered, her hat a trifle askew. She had an air of enjoying unwonted

excitements. "All the gold's being hoarded too," she said, with a crow

of delight in her voice. "Faber says that probably our cheques won't be

worth _that_ in a few days. He rushed off to London to get gold at his

clubs--while he can. I had to insist on Hickson taking a cheque.

'Never,' I said, 'will I deal with you again--never--unless you do....'

Even then he looked at me almost as if he thought he wouldn't.

"It's Famine!" she said, turning to Mr. Britling. "I've laid hands on

all I can. I've got the children to consider."

"But why is it famine?" asked Mr. Britling.

"Oh! it _is_!" she said.

"But why?"

"Faber understands," she said. "Of course it's Famine...."

"And would you believe me," she went on, going back to Mrs. Britling,

"that man Hickson stood behind his counter--where I've dealt with him

for _years_, and refused absolutely to let me have more than a dozen

tins of sardines. _Refused!_ Point blank!

"I was there before nine, and even then Hickson's shop was

crowded--_crowded_, my dear!"

"What have you got?" said Mr. Britling with an inquiring movement

towards the automobile.

She had got quite a lot. She had two sides of bacon, a case of sugar,

bags of rice, eggs, a lot of flour.

"What are all these little packets?" said Mr. Britling.

Mrs. Faber looked slightly abashed.

"Cerebos salt," she said. "One gets carried away a little. I just got

hold of it and carried it out to the car. I thought we might have to

salt things later."

"And the jars are pickles?" said Mr. Britling.

"Yes. But look at all my flour! That's what will go first...."

The lady was a little flurried by Mr. Britling's too detailed

examination of her haul. "What good is blacking?" he asked. She would

not hear him. She felt he was trying to spoil her morning. She declared

she must get on back to her home. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she

said. "I've got no end of things to do. There's peas! I want to show

cook how to bottle our peas. For this year--it's lucky, we've got no end

of peas. I came by here just for the sake of telling you." And with that

she presently departed--obviously ruffled by Mrs. Britling's lethargy

and Mr. Britling's scepticism.

Mr. Britling watched her go off with a slowly rising indignation.

"And that," he said, "is how England is going to war! Scrambling for

food--at the very beginning."

"I suppose she is anxious for the children," said Mrs. Britling.

"Blacking!"

"After all," said Mr. Britling, "if other people are doing that sort of

thing--"

"That's the idea of all panics. We've got not to do it.... The country

hasn't even declared war yet! Hallo, here we are! Better late than

never."

The head of the postman, bearing newspapers and letters, appeared

gliding along the top of the hedge as he cycled down the road towards

the Dower House corner.

Section 3

England was not yet at war, but all the stars were marching to that end.

It was as if an event so vast must needs take its time to happen. No

doubt was left upon Mr. Britling's mind, though a whole-page

advertisement in the _Daily News_, in enormous type and of mysterious

origin, implored Great Britain not to play into the hands of Russia,

Russia the Terrible, that bugbear of the sentimental Radicals. The news

was wide and sweeping, and rather inaccurate. The Germans were said to

be in Belgium and Holland, and they had seized English ships in the Kiel

Canal. A moratorium had been proclaimed, and the reports of a food panic

showed Mrs. Faber to be merely one example of a large class of excitable

people.

Mr. Britling found the food panic disconcerting. It did not harmonise

with his leading _motif_ of the free people of the world rising against

the intolerable burthen of militarism. It spoilt his picture....

Mrs. Britling shared the paper with Mr. Britling, they stood by the bed

of begonias near the cedar tree and read, and the air was full of the

cheerful activities of the lawn-mower that was being drawn by a

carefully booted horse across the hockey field.

Presently Hugh came flitting out of the house to hear what had happened.

"One can't work somehow, with all these big things going on," he

apologised. He secured the _Daily News_ while his father and mother read

_The Times_. The voices of the younger boys came from the shade of the

trees; they had brought all their toy soldiers out of doors, and were

making entrenched camps in the garden.

"The financial situation is an extraordinary one," said Mr. Britling,

concentrating his attention.... "All sorts of staggering things may

happen. In a social and economic system that has grown just anyhow....

Never been planned.... In a world full of Mrs. Fabers...."

"Moratorium?" said Hugh over his _Daily News_. "In relation to debts and

so on? Modern side you sent me to, Daddy. I live at hand to mouth in

etymology. Mors and crematorium--do we burn our bills instead of paying

them?"

"Moratorium," reflected Mr. Britling; "Moratorium. What nonsense you

talk! It's something that delays, of course. Nothing to do with death.

Just a temporary stoppage of payments.... Of course there's bound to be

a tremendous change in values...."

Section 4

"There's bound to be a tremendous change in values."

On that text Mr. Britling's mind enlarged very rapidly. It produced a

wonderful crop of possibilities before he got back to his study. He sat

down to his desk, but he did not immediately take up his work. He had

discovered something so revolutionary in his personal affairs that even

the war issue remained for a time in suspense.

Tucked away in the back of Mr. Britling's consciousness was something

that had not always been there, something warm and comforting that made

life and his general thoughts about life much easier and pleasanter than

they would otherwise have been, the sense of a neatly arranged

investment list, a shrewdly and geographically distributed system of

holdings in national loans, municipal investments, railway debentures,

that had amounted altogether to rather over five-and-twenty thousand

pounds; his and Mrs. Britling's, a joint accumulation. This was, so to

speak, his economic viscera. It sustained him, and kept him going and

comfortable. When all was well he did not feel its existence; he had

merely a pleasant sense of general well-being. When here or there a

security got a little disarranged he felt a vague discomfort. Now he

became aware of grave disorders. It was as if he discovered he had been

accidentally eating toadstools, and didn't quite know whether they

weren't a highly poisonous sort. But an analogy may be carried too

far....

At any rate, when Mr. Britling got back to his writing-desk he was much

too disturbed to resume "And Now War Ends."

"There's bound to be a tremendous change in values!"

He had never felt quite so sure as most people about the stability of

the modern financial system. He did not, he felt, understand the working

of this moratorium, or the peculiar advantage of prolonging the bank

holidays. It meant, he supposed, a stoppage of payment all round, and a

cutting off of the supply of ready money. And Hickson the grocer,

according to Mrs. Faber, was already looking askance at cheques.

Even if the bank did reopen Mr. Britling was aware that his current

balance was low; at the utmost it amounted to twenty or thirty pounds.

He had been expecting cheques from his English and American publishers,

and the usual _Times_ cheque. Suppose these payments were intercepted!

All these people might, so far as he could understand, stop payment

under this moratorium! That hadn't at first occurred to him. But, of

course, quite probably they might refuse to pay his account when it fell

due.

And suppose _The Times_ felt his peculiar vein of thoughtfulness

unnecessary in these stirring days!

And then if the bank really did lock up his deposit account, and his

securities became unsaleable!

Mr. Britling felt like an oyster that is invited to leave its shell....

He sat back from his desk contemplating these things. His imagination

made a weak attempt to picture a world in which credit has vanished and

money is of doubtful value. He supposed a large number of people would

just go on buying and selling at or near the old prices by force of

habit.

His mind and conscience made a valiant attempt to pick up "And Now War

Ends" and go on with it, but before five minutes were out he was back at

the thoughts of food panic and bankruptcy....

Section 5

The conflict of interests at Mr. Britling's desk became unendurable. He

felt he must settle the personal question first. He wandered out upon

the lawn and smoked cigarettes.

His first conception of a great convergent movement of the nations to

make a world peace and an end to militant Germany was being obscured by

this second, entirely incompatible, vision of a world confused and

disorganised. Mrs. Fabers in great multitudes hoarding provisions,

riotous crowds attacking shops, moratorium, shut banks and waiting

queues. Was it possible for the whole system to break down through a

shock to its confidence? Without any sense of incongruity the dignified

pacification of the planet had given place in his mind to these more

intimate possibilities. He heard a rustle behind him, and turned to face

his wife.

"Do you think," she asked, "that there is any chance of a shortage of

food?"

"If all the Mrs. Fabers in the world run and grab--"

"Then every one must grab. I haven't much in the way of stores in the

house."

"H'm," said Mr. Britling, and reflected.... "I don't think we must buy

stores now."

"But if we are short."

"It's the chances of war," said Mr. Britling.

He reflected. "Those who join a panic make a panic. After all, there is

just as much food in the world as there was last month. And short of

burning it the only way of getting rid of it is to eat it. And the

harvests are good. Why begin a scramble at a groaning board?"

"But people _are_ scrambling! It would be awkward--with the children and

everything--if we ran short."

"We shan't. And anyhow, you mustn't begin hoarding, even if it means

hardship."

"Yes. But you won't like it if suddenly there's no sugar for your tea."

Mr. Britling ignored this personal application.

"What is far more serious than a food shortage is the possibility of a

money panic."

He paced the lawn with her and talked. He said that even now very few

people realised the flimsiness of the credit system by which the modern

world was sustained. It was a huge growth of confidence, due very

largely to the uninquiring indolence of--everybody. It was sound so long

as mankind did, on the whole, believe in it; give only a sufficient loss

of faith and it might suffer any sort of collapse. It might vanish

altogether--as the credit system vanished at the breaking up of Italy by

the Goths--and leave us nothing but tangible things, real property,

possession nine points of the law, and that sort of thing. Did she

remember that last novel of Gissing's?--"Veranilda," it was called. It

was a picture of the world when there was no wealth at all except what

one could carry hidden or guarded about with one. That sort of thing

came to the Roman Empire slowly, in the course of lifetimes, but

nowadays we lived in a rapider world--with flimsier institutions. Nobody

knew the strength or the weakness of credit; nobody knew whether even

the present shock might not send it smashing down.... And then all the

little life we had lived so far would roll away....

Mrs. Britling, he noted, glanced ever and again at her sunlit

house--there were new sunblinds, and she had been happy in her choice of

a colour--and listened with a sceptical expression to this

disquisition.

"A few days ago," said Mr. Britling, trying to make things concrete for

her, "you and I together were worth five-and-twenty thousand pounds. Now

we don't know what we are worth; whether we have lost a thousand or ten

thousand...."

He examined his sovereign purse and announced he had six pounds. "What

have you?"

She had about eighteen pounds in the house.

"We may have to get along with that for an indefinite time."

"But the bank will open again presently," she said. "And people about

here trust us."

"Suppose they don't?"

She did not trouble about the hypothesis. "And our investments will

recover. They always do recover."

"Everything may recover," he admitted. "But also nothing may recover.

All this life of ours which has seemed so settled and secure--isn't

secure. I have felt that we were fixed here and rooted--for all our

lives. Suppose presently things sweep us out of it? It's a possibility

we may have to face. I feel this morning as if two enormous gates had

opened in our lives, like the gates that give upon an arena, gates

giving on a darkness--through which anything might come. Even death.

Suppose suddenly we were to see one of those great Zeppelins in the air,

or hear the thunder of guns away towards the coast. And if a messenger

came upon a bicycle telling us to leave everything and go inland...."

"I see no reason why one should go out to meet things like that."

"But there is no reason why one should not envisage them...."

"The curious thing," said Mr. Britling, pursuing his examination of the

matter, "is that, looking at these things as one does now, as things

quite possible, they are not nearly so terrifying and devastating to the

mind as they would have seemed--last week. I believe I should load you

all into Gladys and start off westward with a kind of exhilaration...."

She looked at him as if she would speak, and said nothing. She suspected

him of hating his home and affecting to care for it out of politeness to

her....

"Perhaps mankind tries too much to settle down. Perhaps these stirrings

up have to occur to save us from our disposition to stuffy comfort.

There's the magic call of the unknown experience, of dangers and

hardships. One wants to go. But unless some push comes one does not go.

There is a spell that keeps one to the lair and the old familiar ways.

Now I am afraid--and at the same time I feel that the spell is broken.

The magic prison is suddenly all doors. You may call this ruin,

bankruptcy, invasion, flight; they are doors out of habit and

routine.... I have been doing nothing for so long, except idle things

and discursive things."

"I thought that you managed to be happy here. You have done a lot of

work."

"Writing is recording, not living. But now I feel suddenly that we are

living intensely. It is as if the whole quality of life was changing.

There are such times. There are times when the spirit of life changes

altogether. The old world knew that better than we do. It made a

distinction between weekdays and Sabbaths, and between feasts and fasts

and days of devotion. That is just what has happened now. Week-day rules

must be put aside. Before--oh! three days ago, competition was fair, it

was fair and tolerable to get the best food one could and hold on to

one's own. But that isn't right now. War makes a Sabbath, and we shut

the shops. The banks are shut, and the world still feels as though

Sunday was keeping on...."

He saw his own way clear.

"The scale has altered. It does not matter now in the least if we are

ruined. It does not matter in the least if we have to live upon potatoes

and run into debt for our rent. These now are the most incidental of

things. A week ago they would have been of the first importance. Here we

are face to face with the greatest catastrophe and the greatest

opportunity in history. We have to plunge through catastrophe to

opportunity. There is nothing to be done now in the whole world except

to get the best out of this tremendous fusing up of all the settled

things of life." He had got what he wanted. He left her standing upon

the lawn and hurried back to his desk....

Section 6

When Mr. Britling, after a strenuous morning among high ideals,

descended for lunch, he found Mr. Lawrence Carmine had come over to join

him at that meal. Mr. Carmine was standing in the hall with his legs

very wide apart reading _The Times_ for the fourth time. "I can do no

work," he said, turning round. "I can't fix my mind. I suppose we are

going to war. I'd got so used to the war with Germany that I never

imagined it would happen. Gods! what a bore it will be.... And Maxse and

all those scaremongers cock-a-hoop and 'I told you so.' Damn these

Germans!"

He looked despondent and worried. He followed Mr. Britling towards the

dining-room with his hands deep in his pockets.

"It's going to be a tremendous thing," he said, after he had greeted

Mrs. Britling and Hugh and Aunt Wilshire and Teddy, and seated himself

at Mr. Britling's hospitable board. "It's going to upset everything. We

don't begin to imagine all the mischief it is going to do."

Mr. Britling was full of the heady draught of liberal optimism he had

been brewing upstairs. "I am not sorry I have lived to see this war," he

said. "It may be a tremendous catastrophe in one sense, but in another

it is a huge step forward in human life. It is the end of forty years of

evil suspense. It is crisis and solution."

"I wish I could see it like that," said Mr. Carmine.

"It is like a thaw--everything has been in a frozen confusion since that

Jew-German Treaty of Berlin. And since 1871."

"Why not since Schleswig-Holstein?" said Mr. Carmine.

"Why not? Or since the Treaty of Vienna?"

"Or since--One might go back."

"To the Roman Empire," said Hugh.

"To the first conquest of all," said Teddy....

"I couldn't work this morning," said Hugh. "I have been reading in the

Encyclopædia about races and religions in the Balkans.... It's very

mixed."

"So long as it could only be dealt with piecemeal," said Mr. Britling.

"And that is just where the tremendous opportunity of this war comes in.

Now everything becomes fluid. We can redraw the map of the world. A week

ago we were all quarrelling bitterly about things too little for human

impatience. Now suddenly we face an epoch. This is an epoch. The world

is plastic for men to do what they will with it. This is the end and the

beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French

Revolution or the Reformation.... And we live in it...."

He paused impressively.

"I wonder what will happen to Albania?" said Hugh, but his comment was

disregarded.

"War makes men bitter and narrow," said Mr. Carmine.

"War narrowly conceived," said Mr. Britling. "But this is an indignant

and generous war."

They speculated about the possible intervention of the United States.

Mr. Britling thought that the attack on Belgium demanded the

intervention of every civilised power, that all the best instincts of

America would be for intervention. "The more," he said, "the quicker."

"It would be strange if the last power left out to mediate were to be

China," said Mr. Carmine. "The one people in the world who really

believe in peace.... I wish I had your confidence, Britling."

For a time they contemplated a sort of Grand Inquest on Germany and

militarism, presided over by the Wisdom of the East. Militarism was, as

it were, to be buried as a suicide at four cross-roads, with a stake

through its body to prevent any untimely resuscitation.

Section 7

Mr. Britling was in a phase of imaginative release. Such a release was

one of the first effects of the war upon many educated minds. Things

that had seemed solid forever were visibly in flux; things that had

seemed stone were alive. Every boundary, every government, was seen for

the provisional thing it was. He talked of his World Congress meeting

year by year, until it ceased to be a speculation and became a mere

intelligent anticipation; he talked of the "manifest necessity" of a

Supreme Court for the world. He beheld that vision at the Hague, but Mr.

Carmine preferred Delhi or Samarkand or Alexandria or Nankin. "Let us

get away from the delusion of Europe anyhow," said Mr. Carmine....

As Mr. Britling had sat at his desk that morning and surveyed the

stupendous vistas of possibility that war was opening, the catastrophe

had taken on a more and more beneficial quality. "I suppose that it is

only through such crises as these that the world can reconstruct

itself," I said. And, on the whole that afternoon he was disposed to

hope that the great military machine would not smash itself too easily.

"We want the nations to feel the need of one another," he said. "Too

brief a campaign might lead to a squabble for plunder. The Englishman

has to learn his dependence on the Irishman, the Russian has to be

taught the value of education and the friendship of the Pole.... Europe

will now have to look to Asia, and recognise that Indians and Chinamem

are also 'white.'... But these lessons require time and stresses if

they are to be learnt properly...."

They discussed the possible duration of the war.

Mr. Carmine thought it would be a long struggle; Mr. Britling thought

that the Russians would be in Berlin by the next May. He was afraid they

might get there before the end of the year. He thought that the Germans

would beat out their strength upon the French and Belgian lines, and

never be free to turn upon the Russian at all. He was sure they had

underrated the strength and energy of the French and of ourselves. "The

Russians meanwhile," he said, "will come on, slowly, steadily,

inevitably...."

Section 8

That day of vast anticipations drew out into the afternoon. It was a

day--obsessed. It was the precursor of a relentless series of doomed and

fettered days. There was a sense of enormous occurrences going on just

out of sound and sight--behind the mask of Essex peacefulness. From this

there was no escape. It made all other interests fitful. Games of

Badminton were begun and abruptly truncated by the arrival of the

evening papers; conversations started upon any topic whatever returned

to the war by the third and fourth remark....

After lunch Mr. Britling and Mr. Carmine went on talking. Nothing else

was possible. They repeated things they had already said. They went into

things more thoroughly. They sat still for a time, and then suddenly

broke out with some new consideration....

It had been their custom to play skat with Herr Heinrich, who had shown

them the game very explicitly and thoroughly. But there was no longer

any Herr Heinrich--and somehow German games were already out of fashion.

The two philosophers admitted that they had already considered skat to

be complicated without subtlety, and that its chief delight for them had

been the pink earnestness of Herr Heinrich, his inability to grasp

their complete but tacit comprehension of its innocent strategy, and his

invariable ill-success to bring off the coups that flashed before his

imagination.

He would survey the destructive counter-stroke with unconcealed

surprise. He would verify his first impression by craning towards it and

adjusting his glasses on his nose. He had a characteristic way of doing

this with one stiff finger on either side of his sturdy nose.

"It is very fortunate for you that you have played that card," he would

say, growing pinker and pinker with hasty cerebration. "Or else--yes"--a

glance at his own cards--"it would have been altogether bad for you. I

had taken only a very small risk.... Now I must--"

He would reconsider his hand.

"_Zo!_" he would say, dashing down a card....

Well, he had gone and skat had gone. A countless multitude of such links

were snapping that day between hundreds of thousands of English and

German homes.

Section 9

The imminence of war produced a peculiar exaltation in Aunt Wilshire.

She developed a point of view that was entirely her own.

It was Mr. Britling's habit, a habit he had set himself to acquire after

much irritating experience, to disregard Aunt Wilshire. She was not,

strictly speaking, his aunt; she was one of those distant cousins we

find already woven into our lives when we attain to years of

responsibility. She had been a presence in his father's household when

Mr. Britling was a boy. Then she had been called "Jane," or "Cousin

Jane," or "Your cousin Wilshire." It had been a kindly freak of Mr.

Britling's to promote her to Aunty rank.

She eked out a small inheritance by staying with relatives. Mr.

Britling's earlier memories presented her as a slender young woman of

thirty, with a nose upon which small boys were forbidden to comment. Yet

she commented upon it herself, and called his attention to its marked

resemblance to that of the great Duke of Wellington. "He was, I am

told," said Cousin Wilshire to the attentive youth, "a great friend of

your great-grandmother's. At any rate, they were contemporaries. Since

then this nose has been in the family. He would have been the last to

draw a veil over it, but other times, other manners. 'Publish,' he said,

'and be damned.'"

She had a knack of exasperating Mr. Britling's father, a knack which to

a less marked degree she also possessed in relation to the son. But Mr.

Britling senior never acquired the art of disregarding her. Her

method--if one may call the natural expression of a personality a

method--was an invincibly superior knowledge, a firm and ill-concealed

belief that all statements made in her hearing were wrong and most of

them absurd, and a manner calm, assured, restrained. She may have been

born with it; it is on record that at the age of ten she was pronounced

a singularly trying child. She may have been born with the air of

thinking the doctor a muff and knowing how to manage all this business

better. Mr. Britling had known her only in her ripeness. As a boy, he

had enjoyed her confidences--about other people and the general neglect

of her advice. He grew up rather to like her--most people rather liked

her--and to attach a certain importance to her unattainable approval.

She was sometimes kind, she was frequently absurd....

With very little children she was quite wise and Jolly....

So she circulated about a number of houses which at any rate always

welcomed her coming. In the opening days of each visit she performed

marvels of tact, and set a watch upon her lips. Then the demons of

controversy and dignity would get the better of her. She would begin to

correct, quietly but firmly, she would begin to disapprove of the tone

and quality of her treatment. It was quite common for her visit to

terminate in speechless rage both on the side of host and of visitor.

The remarkable thing was that this speechless rage never endured. Though

she could exasperate she could never offend. Always after an interval

during which she was never mentioned, people began to wonder how Cousin

Jane was getting on.... A tentative correspondence would begin, leading

slowly up to a fresh invitation.

She spent more time in Mr. Britling's house than in any other. There was

a legend that she had "drawn out" his mind, and that she had "stood up"

for him against his father. She had certainly contradicted quite a

number of those unfavourable comments that fathers are wont to make

about their sons. Though certainly she contradicted everything. And Mr.

Britling hated to think of her knocking about alone in boarding-houses

and hydropathic establishments with only the most casual chances for

contradiction.

Moreover, he liked to see her casting her eye over the morning paper.

She did it with a manner as though she thought the terrestrial globe a

great fool, and quite beyond the reach of advice. And as though she

understood and was rather amused at the way in which the newspaper

people tried to keep back the real facts of the case from her.

And now she was scornfully entertained at the behaviour of everybody in

the war crisis.

She confided various secrets of state to the elder of the younger

Britlings--preferably when his father was within earshot.

"None of these things they are saying about the war," she said, "really

matter in the slightest degree. It is all about a spoilt carpet and

nothing else in the world--a madman and a spoilt carpet. If people had

paid the slightest attention to common sense none of this war would have

happened. The thing was perfectly well known. He was a delicate child,

difficult to rear and given to screaming fits. Consequently he was never

crossed, allowed to do everything. Nobody but his grandmother had the

slightest influence with him. And she prevented him spoiling this carpet

as completely as he wished to do. The story is perfectly well known. It

was at Windsor--at the age of eight. After that he had but one thought:

war with England....

"Everybody seemed surprised," she said suddenly at tea to Mr. Carmine.

"I at least am not surprised. I am only surprised it did not come

sooner. If any one had asked me I could have told them, three years,

five years ago."

The day was one of flying rumours, Germany was said to have declared war

on Italy, and to have invaded Holland as well as Belgium.

"They'll declare war against the moon next!" said Aunt Wilshire.

"And send a lot of Zeppelins," said the smallest boy. "Herr Heinrich

told us they can fly thousands of miles."

"He will go on declaring war until there is nothing left to declare war

against. That is exactly what he has always done. Once started he cannot

desist. Often he has had to be removed from the dinner-table for fear of

injury. _Now_, it is ultimatums."

She was much pleased by a headline in the _Daily Express_ that streamed

right across the page: "The Mad Dog of Europe." Nothing else, she said,

had come so near her feelings about the war.

"Mark my words," said Aunt Wilshire in her most impressive tones. "He is

insane. It will be proved to be so. He will end his days in an

asylum--as a lunatic. I have felt it myself for years and said so in

private.... Knowing what I did.... To such friends as I could trust not

to misunderstand me.... Now at least I can speak out.

"With his moustaches turned up!" exclaimed Aunt Wilshire after an

interval of accumulation.... "They say he has completely lost the use of

the joint in his left arm, he carries it stiff like a Punch and

Judy--and he wants to conquer Europe.... While his grandmother lived

there was some one to keep him in order. He stood in Awe of her. He

hated her, but he did not dare defy her. Even his uncle had some

influence. Now, nothing restrains him.

"A double-headed mad dog," said Aunt Wilshire. "Him and his eagles!... A

man like that ought never to have been allowed to make a war.... Not

even a little war.... If he had been put under restraint when I said so,

none of these things would have happened. But, of course I am nobody....

It was not considered worth attending to."

Section 10

One remarkable aspect of the English attitude towards the war was the

disposition to treat it as a monstrous joke. It is a disposition

traceable in a vast proportion of the British literature of the time. In

spite of violence, cruelty, injustice, and the vast destruction and

still vaster dangers of the struggles, that disposition held. The

English mind refused flatly to see anything magnificent or terrible in

the German attack, or to regard the German Emperor or the Crown Prince

as anything more than figures of fun. From first to last their

conception of the enemy was an overstrenuous, foolish man, red with

effort, with protruding eyes and a forced frightfulness of demeanour.

That he might be tremendously lethal did not in the least obscure the

fact that he was essentially ridiculous. And if as the war went on the

joke grew grimmer, still it remained a joke. The German might make a

desert of the world; that could not alter the British conviction that he

was making a fool of himself.

And this disposition kept coming to the surface throughout the

afternoon, now in a casual allusion, now in some deliberate jest. The

small boys had discovered the goose step, and it filled their little

souls with amazement and delight. That human beings should consent to

those ridiculous paces seemed to them almost incredibly funny. They

tried it themselves, and then set out upon a goose-step propaganda.

Letty and Cissie had come up to the Dower House for tea and news, and

they were enrolled with Teddy and Hugh. The six of them, chuckling and

swaying, marched, in vast scissor strides across the lawn. "Left," cried

Hugh. "Left."

"Toes _out_ more," said Mr. Lawrence Carmine.

"Keep stiffer," said the youngest Britling.

"Watch the Zeppelins and look proud," said Hugh. "With the chest out.

_Zo!_"

Mrs. Britling was so much amused that she went in for her camera, and

took a snapshot of the detachment. It was a very successful snapshot,

and a year later Mr. Britling was to find a print of it among his

papers, and recall the sunshine and the merriment....

Section 11

That night brought the British declaration of war against Germany. To

nearly every Englishman that came as a matter of course, and it is one

of the most wonderful facts in history that the Germans were surprised

by it. When Mr. Britling, as a sample Englishman, had said that there

would never be war between Germany and England, he had always meant that

it was inconceivable to him that Germany should ever attack Belgium or

France. If Germany had been content to fight a merely defensive war upon

her western frontier and let Belgium alone, there would scarcely have

been such a thing as a war party in Great Britain. But the attack upon

Belgium, the westward thrust, made the whole nation flame unanimously

into war. It settled a question that was in open debate up to the very

outbreak of the conflict. Up to the last the English had cherished the

idea that in Germany, just as in England, the mass of people were

kindly, pacific, and detached. That had been the English mistake.

Germany was really and truly what Germany had been professing to be for

forty years, a War State. With a sigh--and a long-forgotten

thrill--England roused herself to fight. Even now she still roused

herself sluggishly. It was going to be an immense thing, but just how

immense it was going to be no one in England had yet imagined.

Countless men that day whom Fate had marked for death and wounds stared

open-mouthed at the news, and smiled with the excitement of the

headlines, not dreaming that any of these things would come within three

hundred miles of them. What was war to Matching's Easy--to all the

Matching's Easies great and small that make up England? The last home

that was ever burnt by an enemy within a hundred miles of Matching's

Easy was burnt by the Danes rather more than a thousand years ago....

And the last trace of those particular Danes in England were certain

horny scraps of indurated skin under the heads of the nails in the door

of St. Clement Danes in London....

Now again, England was to fight in a war which was to light fires in

England and bring death to English people on English soil. There were

inconceivable ideas in August, 1914. Such things must happen before they

can be comprehended as possible.

Section 12

This story is essentially the history of the opening and of the

realisation of the Great War as it happened to one small group of people

in Essex, and more particularly as it happened to one human brain. It

came at first to all these people in a spectacular manner, as a thing

happening dramatically and internationally, as a show, as something in

the newspapers, something in the character of an historical epoch rather

than a personal experience; only by slow degrees did it and its

consequences invade the common texture of English life. If this story

could be represented by sketches or pictures the central figure would be

Mr. Britling, now sitting at his desk by day or by night and writing

first at his tract "And Now War Ends" and then at other things, now

walking about his garden or in Claverings park or going to and fro in

London, in his club reading the ticker or in his hall reading the

newspaper, with ideas and impressions continually clustering, expanding,

developing more and more abundantly in his mind, arranging themselves,

reacting upon one another, building themselves into generalisations and

conclusions....

All Mr. Britling's mental existence was soon threaded on the war. His

more or less weekly _Times_ leader became dissertations upon the German

point of view; his reviews of books and Literary Supplement articles

were all oriented more and more exactly to that one supreme fact....

It was rare that he really seemed to be seeing the war; few people saw

it; for most of the world it came as an illimitable multitude of

incoherent, loud, and confusing impressions. But all the time he was at

least doing his utmost to see the war, to simplify it and extract the

essence of it until it could be apprehended as something epic and

explicable, as a stateable issue....

Most typical picture of all would be Mr. Britling writing in a little

circle of orange lamplight, with the blinds of his room open for the

sake of the moonlight, but the window shut to keep out the moths that

beat against it. Outside would be the moon and the high summer sky and

the old church tower dim above the black trees half a mile away, with

its clock--which Mr. Britling heard at night but never noted by

day--beating its way round the slow semicircle of the nocturnal hours.

He had always hated conflict and destruction, and felt that war between

civilised states was the quintessential expression of human failure, it

was a stupidity that stopped progress and all the free variation of

humanity, a thousand times he had declared it impossible, but even now

with his country fighting he was still far from realising that this was

a thing that could possibly touch him more than intellectually. He did

not really believe with his eyes and finger-tips and backbone that

murder, destruction, and agony on a scale monstrous beyond precedent was

going on in the same world as that which slumbered outside the black ivy

and silver shining window-sill that framed his peaceful view.

War had not been a reality of the daily life of England for more than a

thousand years. The mental habit of the nation for fifty generations was

against its emotional recognition. The English were the spoilt children

of peace. They had never been wholly at war for three hundred years, and

for over eight hundred years they had not fought for life against a

foreign power. Spain and France had threatened in turn, but never even

crossed the seas. It is true that England had had her civil dissensions

and had made wars and conquests in every part of the globe and

established an immense empire, but that last, as Mr. Britling had told

Mr. Direck, was "an excursion." She had just sent out younger sons and

surplus people, emigrants and expeditionary forces. Her own soil had

never seen any successful foreign invasion; her homeland, the bulk of

her households, her general life, had gone on untouched by these things.

Nineteen people out of twenty, the middle class and most of the lower

class, knew no more of the empire than they did of the Argentine

Republic or the Italian Renaissance. It did not concern them. War that

calls upon every man and threatens every life in the land, war of the

whole national being, was a thing altogether outside English experience

and the scope of the British imagination. It was still incredible, it

was still outside the range of Mr. Britling's thoughts all through the

tremendous onrush and check of the German attack in the west that opened

the great war. Through those two months he was, as it were, a more and

more excited spectator at a show, a show like a baseball match, a

spectator with money on the event, rather than a really participating

citizen of a nation thoroughly at war....

Section 13

After the jolt of the food panic and a brief, financial scare, the vast

inertia of everyday life in England asserted itself. When the public

went to the banks for the new paper money, the banks tendered

gold--apologetically. The supply of the new notes was very insufficient,

and there was plenty of gold. After the first impression that a

universal catastrophe had happened there was an effect as if nothing had

happened.

Shops re-opened after the Bank Holiday, in a tentative spirit that

speedily became assurance; people went about their business again, and

the war, so far as the mass of British folk were concerned, was for some

weeks a fever of the mind and intelligence rather than a physical and

personal actuality. There was a keen demand for news, and for a time

there was very little news. The press did its best to cope with this

immense occasion. Led by the _Daily Express_, all the halfpenny

newspapers adopted a new and more resonant sort of headline, the

streamer, a band of emphatic type that ran clean across the page and

announced victories or disconcerting happenings. They did this every

day, whether there was a great battle or the loss of a trawler to

announce, and the public mind speedily adapted itself to the new pitch.

There was no invitation from the government and no organisation for any

general participation in war. People talked unrestrictedly; every one

seemed to be talking; they waved flags and displayed much vague

willingness to do something. Any opportunity of service was taken very

eagerly. Lord Kitchener was understood to have demanded five hundred

thousand men; the War Office arrangements for recruiting, arrangements

conceived on a scale altogether too small, were speedily overwhelmed by

a rush of willing young men. The flow had to be checked by raising the

physical standard far above the national average, and recruiting died

down to manageable proportions. There was a quite genuine belief that

the war might easily be too exclusively considered; that for the great

mass of people it was a disturbing and distracting rather than a vital

interest. The phase "Business as Usual" ran about the world, and the

papers abounded in articles in which going on as though there was no war

at all was demonstrated to be the truest form of patriotism. "Leave

things to Kitchener" was another watchword with a strong appeal to the

national quality. "Business as usual during Alterations to the Map of

Europe" was the advertisement of one cheerful barber, widely quoted....

Hugh was at home all through August. He had thrown up his rooms in

London with his artistic ambitions, and his father was making all the

necessary arrangements for him to follow Cardinal to Cambridge.

Meanwhile Hugh was taking up his scientific work where he had laid it

down. He gave a reluctant couple of hours in the afternoon to the

mysteries of Little-go Greek, and for the rest of his time he was either

working at mathematics and mathematical physics or experimenting in a

little upstairs room that had been carved out of the general space of

the barn. It was only at the very end of August that it dawned upon him

or Mr. Britling that the war might have more than a spectacular and

sympathetic appeal for him. Hitherto contemporary history had happened

without his personal intervention. He did not see why it should not

continue to happen with the same detachment. The last elections--and a

general election is really the only point at which the life of the

reasonable Englishman becomes in any way public--had happened four years

ago, when he was thirteen.

Section 14

For a time it was believed in Matching's Easy that the German armies had

been defeated and very largely destroyed at Liège. It was a mistake not

confined to Matching's Easy.

The first raiding attack was certainly repulsed with heavy losses, and

so were the more systematic assaults on August the sixth and seventh.

After that the news from Liège became uncertain, but it was believed in

England that some or all of the forts were still holding out right up to

the German entry into Brussels. Meanwhile the French were pushing into

their lost provinces, occupying Altkirch, Mulhausen and Saarburg; the

Russians were invading Bukovina and East Prussia; the _Goeben_, the

_Breslau_ and the _Panther_ had been sunk by the newspapers in an

imaginary battle in the Mediterranean, and Togoland was captured by the

French and British. Neither the force nor the magnitude of the German

attack through Belgium was appreciated by the general mind, and it was

possible for Mr. Britling to reiterate his fear that the war would be

over too soon, long before the full measure of its possible benefits

could be secured. But these apprehensions were unfounded; the lessons

the war had in store for Mr. Britling were far more drastic than

anything he was yet able to imagine even in his most exalted moods.

He resisted the intimations of the fall of Brussels and the appearance

of the Germans at Dinant. The first real check to his excessive

anticipations of victory for the Allies came with the sudden

reappearance of Mr. Direck in a state of astonishment and dismay at

Matching's Easy. He wired from the Strand office, "Coming to tell you

about things," and arrived on the heels of his telegram.

He professed to be calling upon Mr. and Mrs. Britling, and to a certain

extent he was; but he had a quick eye for the door or windows; his

glance roved irrelevantly as he talked. A faint expectation of Cissie

came in with him and hovered about him, as the scent of violets follows

the flower.

He was, however, able to say quite a number of things before Mr.

Britling's natural tendency to do the telling asserted itself.

"My word," said Mr. Direck, "but this is _some_ war. It is going on

regardless of every decent consideration. As an American citizen I

naturally expected to be treated with some respect, war or no war. That

expectation has not been realised.... Europe is dislocated.... You have

no idea here yet how completely Europe is dislocated....

"I came to Europe in a perfectly friendly spirit--and I must say I am

surprised. Practically I have been thrown out, neck and crop. All my

luggage is lost. Away at some one-horse junction near the Dutch frontier

that I can't even learn the name of. There's joy in some German home, I

guess, over my shirts; they were real good shirts. This tweed suit I

have is all the wardrobe I've got in the world. All my money--good

American notes--well, they laughed at them. And when I produced English

gold they suspected me of being English and put me under arrest.... I

can assure you that the English are most unpopular in Germany at the

present time, thoroughly unpopular.... Considering that they are getting

exactly what they were asking for, these Germans are really remarkably

annoyed.... Well, I had to get the American consul to advance me money,

and I've done more waiting about and irregular fasting and travelling on

an empty stomach and viewing the world, so far as it was permitted, from

railway sidings--for usually they made us pull the blinds down when

anything important was on the track--than any cow that ever came to

Chicago.... I was handed as freight--low grade freight.... It doesn't

bear recalling."

Mr. Direck assumed as grave and gloomy an expression as the facial

habits of years would permit.

"I tell you I never knew there was such a thing as war until this

happened to me. In America we don't know there is such a thing. It's

like pestilence and famine; something in the story books. We've

forgotten it for anything real. There's just a few grandfathers go

around talking about it. Judge Holmes and sage old fellows like him.

Otherwise it's just a game the kids play at.... And then suddenly here's

everybody running about in the streets--hating and threatening--and nice

old gentlemen with white moustaches and fathers of families scheming and

planning to burn houses and kill and hurt and terrify. And nice young

women, too, looking for an Englishman to spit at; I tell you I've been

within range and very uncomfortable several times.... And what one can't

believe is that they are really doing these things. There's a little

village called Visé near the Dutch frontier; some old chap got fooling

there with a fowling-piece; and they've wiped it out. Shot the people by

the dozen, put them out in rows three deep and shot them, and burnt the

place. Short of scalping, Red Indians couldn't have done worse.

Respectable German soldiers....

"No one in England really seems to have any suspicion what is going on

in Belgium. You hear stories--People tell them in Holland. It takes your

breath away. They have set out just to cow those Belgians. They have

started in to be deliberately frightful. You do not begin to

understand.... Well.... Outrages. The sort of outrages Americans have

never heard of. That one doesn't speak of.... Well.... Rape.... They

have been raping women for disciplinary purposes on tables in the

market-place of Liège. Yes, sir. It's a fact. I was told it by a man who

had just come out of Belgium. Knew the people, knew the place, knew

everything. People over here do not seem to realise that those women are

the same sort of women that you might find in Chester or Yarmouth, or in

Matching's Easy for the matter of that. They still seem to think that

Continental women are a different sort of women--more amenable to that

sort of treatment. They seem to think there is some special Providential

law against such things happening to English people. And it's within

two hundred miles of you--even now. And as far as I can see there's

precious little to prevent it coming nearer...."

Mr. Britling thought there were a few little obstacles.

"I've seen the new British army drilling in London, Mr. Britling. I

don't know if you have. I saw a whole battalion. And they hadn't got

half-a-dozen uniforms, and not a single rifle to the whole battalion.

"You don't begin to realise in England what you are up against. You have

no idea what it means to be in a country where everybody, the women, the

elderly people, the steady middle-aged men, are taking war as seriously

as business. They haven't the slightest compunction. I don't know what

Germany was like before the war, I had hardly gotten out of my train

before the war began; but Germany to-day is one big armed camp. It's all

crawling with soldiers. And every soldier has his uniform and his boots

and his arms and his kit.

"And they're as sure of winning as if they had got London now. They mean

to get London. They're cocksure they are going to walk through Belgium,

cocksure they will get to Paris by Sedan day, and then they are going to

destroy your fleet with Zeppelins and submarines and make a dash across

the Channel. They say it's England they are after, in this invasion of

Belgium. They'll just down France by the way. They say they've got guns

to bombard Dover from Calais. They make a boast of it. They know for

certain you can't arm your troops. They know you can't turn out ten

thousand rifles a week. They come and talk to any one in the trains, and

explain just how your defeat is going to be managed. It's just as though

they were talking of rounding up cattle."

Mr. Britling said they would soon be disillusioned.

Mr. Direck, with the confidence of his authentic observations, remarked

after a perceptible interval, "I wonder how."

He reverted to the fact that had most struck upon his imagination.

"Grown-up people, ordinary intelligent experienced people, taking war

seriously, talking of punishing England; it's a revelation. A sort of

solemn enthusiasm. High and low....

"And the trainloads of men and the trainloads of guns...."

"Liège," said Mr. Britling.

"Liège was just a scratch on the paint," said Mr. Direck. "A few

thousand dead, a few score thousand dead, doesn't matter--not a red cent

to them. There's a man arrived at the Cecil who saw them marching into

Brussels. He sat at table with me at lunch yesterday. All day it went

on, a vast unending river of men in grey. Endless waggons, endless guns,

the whole manhood of a nation and all its stuff, marching....

"I thought war," said Mr. Direck, "was a thing when most people stood

about and did the shouting, and a sort of special team did the fighting.

Well, Germany isn't fighting like that.... I confess it, I'm scared....

It's the very biggest thing on record; it's the very limit in wars.... I

dreamt last night of a grey flood washing everything in front of it. You

and me--and Miss Corner--curious thing, isn't it? that she came into

it--were scrambling up a hill higher and higher, with that flood pouring

after us. Sort of splashing into a foam of faces and helmets and

bayonets--and clutching hands--and red stuff.... Well, Mr. Britling, I

admit I'm a little bit overwrought about it, but I can assure you you

don't begin to realise in England what it is you've butted against...."

Section 15

Cissie did not come up to the Dower House that afternoon, and so Mr.

Direck, after some vague and transparent excuses, made his way to the

cottage.

Here his report become even more impressive. Teddy sat on the writing

desk beside the typewriter and swung his legs slowly. Letty brooded in

the armchair. Cissie presided over certain limited crawling operations

of the young heir.

"They could have the equal of the whole British Army killed three times

over and scarcely know it had happened. They're _all_ in it. It's a

whole country in arms."

Teddy nodded thoughtfully.

"There's our fleet," said Letty.

"Well, _that_ won't save Paris, will it?"

Mr. Direck didn't, he declared, want to make disagreeable talk, but this

was a thing people in England had to face. He felt like one of them

himself--"naturally." He'd sort of hurried home to them--it was just

like hurrying home--to tell them of the tremendous thing that was going

to hit them. He felt like a man in front of a flood, a great grey flood.

He couldn't hide what he had been thinking. "Where's our army?" asked

Letty suddenly.

"Lost somewhere in France," said Teddy. "Like a needle in a bottle of

hay."

"What I keep on worrying at is this," Mr. Direck resumed. "Suppose they

did come, suppose somehow they scrambled over, sixty or seventy thousand

men perhaps."

"Every man would turn out and take a shot at them," said Letty.

"But there's no rifles!"

"There's shot guns."

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of," said Mr. Direck. "They'd

massacre....

"You may be the bravest people on earth," said Mr. Direck, "but if you

haven't got arms and the other chaps have--you're just as if you were

sheep."

He became gloomily pensive.

He roused himself to describe his experiences at some length, and the

extraordinary disturbance of his mind. He related more particularly his

attempts to see the sights of Cologne during the stir of mobilisation.

After a time his narrative flow lost force, and there was a general

feeling that he ought to be left alone with Cissie. Teddy had a letter

that must be posted; Letty took the infant to crawl on the mossy stones

under the pear tree. Mr. Direck leant against the window-sill and became

silent for some moments after the door had closed on Letty.

"As for you, Cissie," he began at last, "I'm anxious. I'm real anxious.

I wish you'd let me throw the mantle of Old Glory over you."

He looked at her earnestly.

"Old Glory?" asked Cissie.

"Well--the Stars and Stripes. I want you to be able to claim American

citizenship--in certain eventualities. It wouldn't be so very difficult.

All the world over, Cissie, Americans are respected.... Nobody dares

touch an American citizen. We are--an inviolate people."

He paused. "But how?" asked Cissie.

"It would be perfectly easy--perfectly."

"How?"

"Just marry an American citizen," said Mr. Direck, with his face beaming

with ingenuous self-approval. "Then you'd be safe, and I'd not have to

worry."

"Because we're in for a stiff war!" cried Cissie, and Direck perceived

he had blundered.

"Because we may be invaded!" she said, and Mr. Direck's sense of error

deepened.

"I vow--" she began.

"No!" cried Mr. Direck, and held out a hand.

There was a moment of crisis.

"Never will I desert my country--while she is at war," said Cissie,

reducing her first fierce intention, and adding as though she regretted

her concession, "Anyhow."

"Then it's up to me to end the war, Cissie," said Mr. Direck, trying to

get her back to a less spirited attitude.

But Cissie wasn't to be got back so easily. The war was already

beckoning to them in the cottage, and drawing them down from the

auditorium into the arena.

"This is the rightest war in history," she said. "If I was an American I

should be sorry to be one now and to have to stand out of it. I wish I

was a man now so that I could do something for all the decency and

civilisation the Germans have outraged. I can't understand how any man

can be content to keep out of this, and watch Belgium being destroyed.

It is like looking on at a murder. It is like watching a dog killing a

kitten...."

Mr. Direck's expression was that of a man who is suddenly shown strange

lights upon the world.

Section 16

Mr. Britling found Mr. Direck's talk very indigestible.

He was parting very reluctantly from his dream of a disastrous collapse

of German imperialism, of a tremendous, decisive demonstration of the

inherent unsoundness of militarist monarchy, to be followed by a world

conference of chastened but hopeful nations, and--the Millennium. He

tried now to think that Mr. Direck had observed badly and misconceived

what he saw. An American, unused to any sort of military occurrences,

might easily mistake tens of thousands for millions, and the excitement

of a few commercial travellers for the enthusiasm of a united people.

But the newspapers now, with a kindred reluctance, were beginning to

qualify, bit by bit, their first representation of the German attack

through Belgium as a vast and already partly thwarted parade of

incompetence. The Germans, he gathered, were being continually beaten in

Belgium; but just as continually they advanced. Each fresh newspaper

name he looked up on the map marked an oncoming tide. Alost--Charleroi.

Farther east the French were retreating from the Saales Pass. Surely the

British, who had now been in France for a fortnight, would presently be

manifest, stemming the onrush; somewhere perhaps in Brabant or East

Flanders. It gave Mr. Britling an unpleasant night to hear at Claverings

that the French were very ill-equipped; had no good modern guns either

at Lille or Maubeuge, were short of boots and equipment generally, and

rather depressed already at the trend of things. Mr. Britling dismissed

this as pessimistic talk, and built his hopes on the still invisible

British army, hovering somewhere--

He would sit over the map of Belgium, choosing where he would prefer to

have the British hover....

Namur fell. The place names continued to shift southward and westward.

The British army or a part of it came to light abruptly at Mons. It had

been fighting for thirty-eight hours and defeating enormously superior

forces of the enemy. That was reassuring until a day or so later "the

Cambray--Le Cateau line" made Mr. Britling realise that the victorious

British had recoiled five and twenty miles....

And then came the Sunday of _The Times_ telegram, which spoke of a

"retreating and a broken army." Mr. Britling did not see this, but Mr.

Manning brought over the report of it in a state of profound

consternation. Things, he said, seemed to be about as bad as they could

be. The English were retreating towards the coast and in much disorder.

They were "in the air" and already separated from the Trench. They had

narrowly escaped "a Sedan" under the fortifications of Maubeuge.... Mr.

Britling was stunned. He went to his study and stared helplessly at

maps. It was as if David had flung his pebble--and missed!

But in the afternoon Mr. Manning telephoned to comfort his friend. A

reassuring despatch from General French had been published and--all was

well--practically--and the British had been splendid. They had been

fighting continuously for several days round and about Mons; they had

been attacked at odds of six to one, and they had repulsed and

inflicted enormous losses on the enemy. They had established an

incontestable personal superiority over the Germans. The Germans had

been mown down in heaps; the British had charged through their cavalry

like charging through paper. So at last and very gloriously for the

British, British and German had met in battle. After the hard fighting

of the 26th about Landrecies, the British had been comparatively

unmolested, reinforcements covering double the losses had joined them

and the German advance was definitely checked ... Mr. Britling's mind

swung back to elation. He took down the entire despatch from Mr.

Manning's dictation, and ran out with it into the garden where Mrs.

Britling, with an unwonted expression of anxiety, was presiding over the

teas of the usual casual Sunday gathering.... The despatch was read

aloud twice over. After that there was hockey and high spirits, and then

Mr. Britling went up to his study to answer a letter from Mrs.

Harrowdean, the first letter that had come from her since their breach

at the outbreak of the war, and which he was now in a better mood to

answer than he had been hitherto.

She had written ignoring his silence and absence, or rather treating it

as if it were an incident of no particular importance. Apparently she

had not called upon the patient and devoted Oliver as she had

threatened; at any rate, there were no signs of Oliver in her

communication. But she reproached Mr. Britling for deserting her, and

she clamoured for his presence and for kind and strengthening words. She

was, she said, scared by this war. She was only a little thing, and it

was all too dreadful, and there was not a soul in the world to hold her

hand, at least no one who understood in the slightest degree how she

felt. (But why was not Oliver holding her hand?) She was like a child

left alone in the dark. It was perfectly horrible the way that people

were being kept in the dark. The stories one heard, "_often from quite

trustworthy sources_," were enough to depress and terrify any one.

Battleship after battleship had been sunk by German torpedoes, a thing

kept secret from us for no earthly reason, and Prince Louis of

Battenberg had been discovered to be a spy and had been sent to the

Tower. Haldane too was a spy. Our army in France had been "practically

_sold_" by the French. Almost all the French generals were in German

pay. The censorship and the press were keeping all this back, but what

good was it to keep it back? It was folly not to trust people! But it

was all too dreadful for a poor little soul whose only desire was to

live happily. Why didn't he come along to her and make her feel she had

protecting arms round her? She couldn't think in the daytime: she

couldn't sleep at night....

Then she broke away into the praises of serenity. Never had she thought

so much of his beautiful "Silent Places" as she did now. How she longed

to take refuge in some such dreamland from violence and treachery and

foolish rumours! She was weary of every reality. She wanted to fly away

into some secret hiding-place and cultivate her simple garden there--as

Voltaire had done.... Sometimes at night she was afraid to undress. She

imagined the sound of guns, she imagined landings and frightful scouts

"in masks" rushing inland on motor bicycles....

It was an ill-timed letter. The nonsense about Prince Louis of

Battenberg and Lord Haldane and the torpedoed battleships annoyed him

extravagantly. He had just sufficient disposition to believe such tales

as to find their importunity exasperating. The idea of going over to

Pyecrafts to spend his days in comforting a timid little dear obsessed

by such fears, attracted him not at all. He had already heard enough

adverse rumours at Claverings to make him thoroughly uncomfortable. He

had been doubting whether after all his "Examination of War" was really

much less of a futility than "And Now War Ends"; his mind was full of a

sense of incomplete statements and unsubstantial arguments. He was

indeed in a state of extreme intellectual worry. He was moreover

extraordinarily out of love with Mrs. Harrowdean. Never had any

affection in the whole history of Mr. Britling's heart collapsed so

swiftly and completely. He was left incredulous of ever having cared for

her at all. Probably he hadn't. Probably the whole business had been

deliberate illusion from first to last. The "dear little thing"

business, he felt, was all very well as a game of petting, but times

were serious now, and a woman of her intelligence should do something

better than wallow in fears and elaborate a winsome feebleness. A very

unnecessary and tiresome feebleness. He came almost to the pitch of

writing that to her.

The despatch from General French put him into a kindlier frame of mind.

He wrote instead briefly but affectionately. As a gentleman should. "How

could you doubt our fleet or our army?" was the gist of his letter. He

ignored completely every suggestion of a visit to Pyecrafts that her

letter had conveyed. He pretended that it had contained nothing of the

sort.... And with that she passed out of his mind again under the stress

of more commanding interests....

Mr. Britling's mood of relief did not last through the week. The

defeated Germans continued to advance. Through a week of deepening

disillusionment the main tide of battle rolled back steadily towards

Paris. Lille was lost without a struggle. It was lost with mysterious

ease.... The next name to startle Mr. Britling as he sat with newspaper

and atlas following these great events was Compiègne. "Here!" Manifestly

the British were still in retreat. Then the Germans were in possession

of Laon and Rheims and still pressing south. Maubeuge surrounded and cut

off for some days, had apparently fallen....

It was on Sunday, September the sixth, that the final capitulation of

Mr. Britling's facile optimism occurred.

He stood in the sunshine reading the _Observer_ which the gardener's boy

had just brought from the May Tree. He had spread it open on a garden

table under the blue cedar, and father and son were both reading it,

each as much as the other would let him. There was fresh news from

France, a story of further German advances, fighting at Senlis--"But

that is quite close to Paris!"--and the appearance of German forces at

Nogent-sur-Seine. "Sur Seine!" cried Mr. Britling. "But where can that

be? South of the Marne? Or below Paris perhaps?"

It was not marked upon the _Observer's_ map, and Hugh ran into the house

for the atlas.

When he returned Mr. Manning was with his father, and they both looked

grave.

Hugh opened the map of northern France. "Here it is," he said.

Mr. Britling considered the position.

"Manning says they are at Rouen," he told Hugh. "Our base is to be moved

round to La Rochelle...."

He paused before the last distasteful conclusion.

"Practically," he admitted, taking his dose, "they have got Paris. It is

almost surrounded now."

He sat down to the map. Mr. Manning and Hugh stood regarding him. He

made a last effort to imagine some tremendous strategic reversal, some

stone from an unexpected sling that should fell this Goliath in the

midst of his triumph.

"Russia," he said, without any genuine hope....

Section 17

And then it was that Mr. Britling accepted the truth.

"One talks," he said, "and then weeks and months later one learns the

meaning of the things one has been saying. I was saying a month ago that

this is the biggest thing that has happened in history. I said that

this was the supreme call upon the will and resources of England. I

said there was not a life in all our empire that would not be vitally

changed by this war. I said all these things; they came through my

mouth; I suppose there was a sort of thought behind them.... Only at

this moment do I understand what it is that I said. Now--let me say it

over as if I had never said it before; this _is_ the biggest thing in

history, that we _are_ all called upon to do our utmost to resist this

tremendous attack upon the peace and freedom of the world. Well, doing

our utmost does not mean standing about in pleasant gardens waiting for

the newspaper.... It means the abandonment of ease and security....

"How lazy we English are nowadays! How readily we grasp the comforting

delusion that excuses us from exertion. For the last three weeks I have

been deliberately believing that a little British army--they say it is

scarcely a hundred thousand men--would somehow break this rush of

millions. But it has been driven back, as any one not in love with easy

dreams might have known it would be driven back--here and then here and

then here. It has been fighting night and day. It has made the most

splendid fight--and the most ineffectual fight.... You see the vast

swing of the German flail through Belgium. And meanwhile we have been

standing about talking of the use we would make of our victory....

"We have been asleep," he said. "This country has been asleep....

"At the back of our minds," he went on bitterly, "I suppose we thought

the French would do the heavy work on land--while we stood by at sea. So

far as we thought at all. We're so temperate-minded; we're so full of

qualifications and discretions.... And so leisurely.... Well, France is

down. We've got to fight for France now over the ruins of Paris. Because

you and I, Manning, didn't grasp the scale of it, because we indulged in

generalisations when we ought to have been drilling and working.

Because we've been doing 'business as usual' and all the rest of that

sort of thing, while Western civilisation has been in its death agony.

If this is to be another '71, on a larger scale and against not merely

France but all Europe, if Prussianism is to walk rough-shod over

civilisation, if France is to be crushed and Belgium murdered, then life

is not worth having. Compared with such an issue as that no other issue,

no other interest matters. Yet what are we doing to decide it--you and

I? How can it end in anything but a German triumph if you and I, by the

million, stand by...."

He paused despairfully and stared at the map.

"What ought we to be doing?" asked Mr. Manning.

"Every man ought to be in training," said Mr. Britling. "Every one ought

to be participating.... In some way.... At any rate we ought not to be

taking our ease at Matching's Easy any more...."

Section 18

"It interrupts everything," said Hugh suddenly. "These Prussians are the

biggest nuisance the world has ever seen."

He considered. "It's like every one having to run out because the house

catches fire. But of course we have to beat them. It has to be done. And

every one has to take a share.

"Then we can get on with our work again."

Mr. Britling turned his eyes to his eldest son with a startled

expression. He had been speaking--generally. For the moment he had

forgotten Hugh.

CHAPTER THE SECOND

TAKING PART

Section 1

There were now two chief things in the mind of Mr. Britling. One was a

large and valiant thing, a thing of heroic and processional quality, the

idea of taking up one's share in the great conflict, of leaving the

Dower House and its circle of habits and activities and going out--.

From that point he wasn't quite sure where he was to go, nor exactly

what he meant to do. His imagination inclined to the figure of a

volunteer in an improvised uniform inflicting great damage upon a

raiding invader from behind a hedge. The uniform, one presumes, would

have been something in the vein of the costume in which he met Mr.

Direck. With a "brassard." Or he thought of himself as working at a

telephone or in an office engaged upon any useful quasi-administrative

work that called for intelligence rather than training. Still, of

course, with a "brassard." A month ago he would have had doubts about

the meaning of "brassard"; now it seemed to be the very keyword for

national organisation. He had started for London by the early train on

Monday morning with the intention of immediate enrolment in any such

service that offered; of getting, in fact, into his brassard at once.

The morning papers he bought at the station dashed his conviction of the

inevitable fall of Paris into hopeful doubts, but did not shake his

resolution. The effect of rout and pursuit and retreat and retreat and

retreat had disappeared from the news. The German right was being

counter-attacked, and seemed in danger of getting pinched between Paris

and Verdun with the British on its flank. This relieved his mind, but

it did nothing to modify his new realisation of the tremendous gravity

of the war. Even if the enemy were held and repulsed a little there was

still work for every man in the task of forcing them back upon their own

country. This war was an immense thing, it would touch everybody....

That meant that every man must give himself. That he had to give

himself. He must let nothing stand between him and that clear

understanding. It was utterly shameful now to hold back and not to do

one's utmost for civilisation, for England, for all the ease and safety

one had been given--against these drilled, commanded, obsessed millions.

Mr. Britling was a flame of exalted voluntaryism, of patriotic devotion,

that day.

But behind all this bravery was the other thing, the second thing in the

mind of Mr. Britling, a fear. He was prepared now to spread himself like

some valiant turkey-gobbler, every feather at its utmost, against the

aggressor. He was prepared to go out and flourish bayonets, march and

dig to the limit of his power, shoot, die in a ditch if needful, rather

than permit German militarism to dominate the world. He had no fear for

himself. He was prepared to perish upon the battlefield or cut a valiant

figure in the military hospital. But what he perceived very clearly and

did his utmost not to perceive was this qualifying and discouraging

fact, that the war monster was not nearly so disposed to meet him as he

was to meet the war, and that its eyes were fixed on something beside

and behind him, that it was already only too evidently stretching out a

long and shadowy arm past him towards Teddy--and towards Hugh....

The young are the food of war....

Teddy wasn't Mr. Britling's business anyhow. Teddy must do as he thought

proper. Mr. Britling would not even advise upon that. And as for Hugh--

Mr. Britling did his best to brazen it out.

"My eldest boy is barely seventeen," he said. "He's keen to go, and I'd

be sorry if he wasn't. He'll get into some cadet corps of course--he's

already done something of that kind at school. Or they'll take him into

the Territorials. But before he's nineteen everything will be over, one

way or another. I'm afraid, poor chap, he'll feel sold...."

And having thrust Hugh safely into the background of his mind

as--juvenile, doing a juvenile share, no sort of man yet--Mr. Britling

could give a free rein to his generous imaginations of a national

uprising. From the idea of a universal participation in the struggle he

passed by an easy transition to an anticipation of all Britain armed and

gravely embattled. Across gulfs of obstinate reality. He himself was

prepared to say, and accordingly he felt that the great mass of the

British must be prepared to say to the government: "Here we are at your

disposal. This is not a diplomatists' war nor a War Office war; this is

a war of the whole people. We are all willing and ready to lay aside our

usual occupations and offer our property and ourselves. Whim and

individual action are for peace times. Take us and use us as you think

fit. Take all we possess." When he thought of the government in this

way, he forgot the governing class he knew. The slack-trousered Raeburn,

the prim, attentive Philbert, Lady Frensham at the top of her voice,

stern, preposterous Carson, boozy Bandershoot and artful Taper, wily

Asquith, the eloquent yet unsubstantial George, and the immobile Grey,

vanished out of his mind; all those representative exponents of the way

things are done in Great Britain faded in the glow of his imaginative

effort; he forgot the dreary debates, the floundering newspapers, the

"bluffs," the intrigues, the sly bargains of the week-end party, the

"schoolboy honour" of grown men, the universal weak dishonesty in

thinking; he thought simply of a simplified and ideal government that

governed. He thought vaguely of something behind and beyond them,

England, the ruling genius of the land; something with a dignified

assurance and a stable will. He imagined this shadowy ruler miraculously

provided with schemes and statistics against this supreme occasion which

had for so many years been the most conspicuous probability before the

country. His mind leaping forwards to the conception of a great nation

reluctantly turning its vast resources to the prosecution of a righteous

defensive war, filled in the obvious corollaries of plan and

calculation. He thought that somewhere "up there" there must be people

who could count and who had counted everything that we might need for

such a struggle, and organisers who had schemed and estimated down to

practicable and manageable details....

Such lapses from knowledge to faith are perhaps necessary that human

heroism may be possible....

His conception of his own share in the great national uprising was a

very modest one. He was a writer, a footnote to reality; he had no trick

of command over men, his rôle was observation rather than organisation,

and he saw himself only as an insignificant individual dropping from his

individuality into his place in a great machine, taking a rifle in a

trench, guarding a bridge, filling a cartridge--just with a brassard or

something like that on--until the great task was done. Sunday night was

full of imaginations of order, of the countryside standing up to its

task, of roads cleared and resources marshalled, of the petty interests

of the private life altogether set aside. And mingling with that it was

still possible for Mr. Britling, he was still young enough, to produce

such dreams of personal service, of sudden emergencies swiftly and

bravely met, of conspicuous daring and exceptional rewards, such dreams

as hover in the brains of every imaginative recruit....

The detailed story of Mr. Britling's two days' search for some easy and

convenient ladder into the service of his threatened country would be a

voluminous one. It would begin with the figure of a neatly brushed

patriot, with an intent expression upon his intelligent face, seated in

the Londonward train, reading the war news--the first comforting war

news for many days--and trying not to look as though his life was torn

up by the roots and all his being aflame with devotion; and it would

conclude after forty-eight hours of fuss, inquiry, talk, waiting,

telephoning, with the same gentleman, a little fagged and with a kind of

weary apathy in his eyes, returning by the short cut from the station

across Claverings park to resume his connection with his abandoned

roots. The essential process of the interval had been the correction of

Mr. Britling's temporary delusion that the government of the British

Empire is either intelligent, instructed, or wise.

The great "Business as Usual" phase was already passing away, and London

was in the full tide of recruiting enthusiasm. That tide was breaking

against the most miserable arrangements for enlistment it is possible to

imagine. Overtaxed and not very competent officers, whose one idea of

being very efficient was to refuse civilian help and be very, very slow

and circumspect and very dignified and overbearing, sat in dirty little

rooms and snarled at this unheard-of England that pressed at door and

window for enrolment. Outside every recruiting office crowds of men and

youths waited, leaning against walls, sitting upon the pavements, waited

for long hours, waiting to the end of the day and returning next

morning, without shelter, without food, many sick with hunger; men who

had hurried up from the country, men who had thrown up jobs of every

kind, clerks, shopmen, anxious only to serve England and "teach those

damned Germans a lesson." Between them and this object they had

discovered a perplexing barrier; an inattention. As Mr. Britling made

his way by St. Martin's Church and across Trafalgar Square and marked

the weary accumulation of this magnificently patriotic stuff, he had his

first inkling of the imaginative insufficiency of the War Office that

had been so suddenly called upon to organise victory. He was to be more

fully informed when he reached his club.

His impression of the streets through which he passed was an impression

of great unrest. There were noticeably fewer omnibuses and less road

traffic generally, but there was a quite unusual number of drifting

pedestrians. The current on the pavements was irritatingly sluggish.

There were more people standing about, and fewer going upon their

business. This was particularly the case with the women he saw. Many of

them seemed to have drifted in from the suburbs and outskirts of London

in a state of vague expectation, unable to stay in their homes.

Everywhere there were the flags of the Allies; in shop windows, over

doors, on the bonnets of automobiles, on people's breasts, and there was

a great quantity of recruiting posters on the hoardings and in windows:

"Your King and Country Need You" was the chief text, and they still

called for "A Hundred Thousand Men" although the demand of Lord

Kitchener had risen to half a million. There were also placards calling

for men on nearly all the taxicabs. The big windows of the offices of

the Norddeutscher Lloyd in Cockspur Street were boarded up, and

plastered thickly with recruiting appeals.

At his club Mr. Britling found much talk and belligerent stir. In the

hall Wilkins the author was displaying a dummy rifle of bent iron rod to

several interested members. It was to be used for drilling until rifles

could be got, and it could be made for eighteen pence. This was the

first intimation Mr. Britling got that the want of foresight of the War

Office only began with its unpreparedness for recruits. Men were talking

very freely in the club; one of the temporary effects of the war in its

earlier stages was to produce a partial thaw in the constitutional

British shyness; and men who had glowered at Mr. Britling over their

lunches and had been glowered at by Mr. Britling in silence for years

now started conversations with him.

"What is a man of my sort to do?" asked a clean-shaven barrister.

"Exactly what I have been asking," said Mr. Britling. "They are fixing

the upward age for recruits at thirty; it's absurdly low. A man well

over forty like myself is quite fit to line a trench or guard a bridge.

I'm not so bad a shot...."

"We've been discussing home defence volunteers," said the barrister.

"Anyhow we ought to be drilling. But the War Office sets its face as

sternly against our doing anything of the sort as though we were going

to join the Germans. It's absurd. Even if we older men aren't fit to go

abroad, we could at least release troops who could."

"If you had the rifles," said a sharp-featured man in grey to the right

of Mr. Britling.

"I suppose they are to be got," said Mr. Britling.

The sharp-featured man indicated by appropriate facial action and

head-shaking that this was by no means the case.

"Every dead man, many wounded men, most prisoners," he said, "mean each

one a rifle lost. We have lost five-and-twenty thousand rifles alone

since the war began. Quite apart from arming new troops we have to

replace those rifles with the drafts we send out. Do you know what is

the maximum weekly output of rifles at the present time in this

country?"

Mr. Britling did not know.

"Nine thousand."

Mr. Britling suddenly understood the significance of Wilkins and his

dummy gun.

The sharp-featured man added with an air of concluding the matter: "It's

the barrels are the trouble. Complicated machinery. We haven't got it

and we can't make it in a hurry. And there you are!"

The sharp-featured man had a way of speaking almost as if he was

throwing bombs. He threw one now. "Zinc," he said.

"We're not short of zinc?" said the lawyer.

The sharp-featured man nodded, and then became explicit.

Zinc was necessary for cartridges; it had to be refined zinc and very

pure, or the shooting went wrong. Well, we had let the refining business

drift away from England to Belgium and Germany. There were just one or

two British firms still left.... Unless we bucked up tremendously we

should get caught short of cartridges.... At any rate of cartridges so

made as to ensure good shooting. "And there you are!" said the

sharp-featured man.

But the sharp-featured man did not at that time represent any

considerable section of public thought. "I suppose after all we can get

rifles from America," said the lawyer. "And as for zinc, if the shortage

is known the shortage will be provided for...."

The prevailing topic in the smoking-room upstairs was the inability of

the War Office to deal with the flood of recruits that was pouring in,

and its hostility to any such volunteering as Mr. Britling had in mind.

Quite a number of members wanted to volunteer; there was much talk of

their fitness; "I'm fifty-four," said one, "and I could do my

twenty-five miles in marching kit far better than half those boys of

nineteen." Another was thirty-eight. "I must hold the business

together," he said; "but why anyhow shouldn't I learn to shoot and use a

bayonet?" The personal pique of the rejected lent force to their

criticisms of the recruiting and general organisation. "The War Office

has one incurable system," said a big mine-owner. "During peace time it

runs all its home administration with men who will certainly be wanted

at the front directly there is a war. Directly war comes, therefore,

there is a shift all round, and a new untried man--usually a dug-out in

an advanced state of decay--is stuck into the job. Chaos follows

automatically. The War Office always has done this, and so far as one

can see it always will. It seems incapable of realising that another

man will be wanted until the first is taken away. Its imagination

doesn't even run to that."

Mr. Britling found a kindred spirit in Wilkins.

Wilkins was expounding his tremendous scheme for universal volunteering.

Everybody was to be accepted. Everybody was to be assigned and

registered and--_badged_.

"A brassard," said Mr. Britling.

"It doesn't matter whether we really produce a fighting force or not,"

said Wilkins. "Everybody now is enthusiastic--and serious. Everybody is

willing to put on some kind of uniform and submit to some sort of

orders. And the thing to do is to catch them in the willing stage. Now

is the time to get the country lined up and organised, ready to meet the

internal stresses that are bound to come later. But there's no

disposition whatever to welcome this universal offering. It's just as

though this war was a treat to which only the very select friends of the

War Office were to be admitted. And I don't admit that the national

volunteers would be ineffective--even from a military point of view.

There are plenty of fit men of our age, and men of proper age who are

better employed at home--armament workers for example, and there are all

the boys under the age. They may not be under the age before things are

over...."

He was even prepared to plan uniforms.

"A brassard," repeated Mr. Britling, "and perhaps coloured strips on the

revers of a coat."

"Colours for the counties," said Wilkins, "and if there isn't coloured

cloth to be got there's--red flannel. Anything is better than leaving

the mass of people to mob about...."

A momentary vision danced before Mr. Britling's eyes of red flannel

petticoats being torn up in a rapid improvisation of soldiers to resist

a sudden invasion. Passing washerwomen suddenly requisitioned. But one

must not let oneself be laughed out of good intentions because of

ridiculous accessories. The idea at any rate was the sound one....

The vision of what ought to be done shone brightly while Mr. Britling

and Mr. Wilkins maintained it. But presently under discouraging

reminders that there were no rifles, no instructors, and, above all, the

open hostility of the established authorities, it faded again....

Afterwards in other conversations Mr. Britling reverted to more modest

ambitions.

"Is there no clerical work, no minor administrative work, a man might be

used for?" he asked.

"Any old dug-out," said the man with the thin face, "any old doddering

Colonel Newcome, is preferred to you in that matter...."

Mr. Britling emerged from his club about half-past three with his mind

rather dishevelled and with his private determination to do something

promptly for his country's needs blunted by a perplexing "How?" His

search for doors and ways where no doors and ways existed went on with a

gathering sense of futility.

He had a ridiculous sense of pique at being left out, like a child shut

out from a room in which a vitally interesting game is being played.

"After all, it is _our_ war," he said.

He caught the phrase as it dropped from his lips with a feeling that it

said more than he intended. He turned it over and examined it, and the

more he did so the more he was convinced of its truth and soundness....

Section 2

By night there was a new strangeness about London. The authorities were

trying to suppress the more brilliant illumination of the chief

thoroughfares, on account of the possibility of an air raid. Shopkeepers

were being compelled to pull down their blinds, and many of the big

standard lights were unlit. Mr. Britling thought these precautions were

very fussy and unnecessary, and likely to lead to accidents amidst the

traffic. But it gave a Rembrandtesque quality to the London scene,

turned it into mysterious arrangements of brown shadows and cones and

bars of light. At first many people were recalcitrant, and here and

there a restaurant or a draper's window still blazed out and broke the

gloom. There were also a number of insubordinate automobiles with big

head-lights. But the police were being unusually firm....

"It will all glitter again in a little time," he told himself.

He heard an old lady who was projecting from an offending automobile at

Piccadilly Circus in hot dispute with a police officer. "Zeppelins

indeed!" she said. "What nonsense! As if they would _dare_ to come here!

Who would _let_ them, I should like to know?"

Probably a friend of Lady Frensham's, he thought. Still--the idea of

Zeppelins over London did seem rather ridiculous to Mr. Britling. He

would not have liked to have been caught talking of it himself.... There

never had been Zeppelins over London. They were gas bags....

Section 3

On Wednesday morning Mr. Britling returned to the Dower House, and he

was still a civilian unassigned.

In the hall he found a tall figure in khaki standing and reading _The

Times_ that usually lay upon the hall table. The figure turned at Mr.

Britling's entry, and revealed the aquiline features of Mr. Lawrence

Carmine. It was as if his friend had stolen a march on him.

But Carmine's face showed nothing of the excitement and patriotic

satisfaction that would have seemed natural to Mr. Britling. He was

white and jaded, as if he had not slept for many nights. "You see," he

explained almost apologetically of the three stars upon his sleeve, "I

used to be a captain of volunteers." He had been put in charge of a

volunteer force which had been re-embodied and entrusted with the care

of the bridges, gasworks, factories and railway tunnels, and with a

number of other minor but necessary duties round about Easinghampton.

"I've just got to shut up my house," said Captain Carmine, "and go into

lodgings. I confess I hate it.... But anyhow it can't last six

months.... But it's beastly.... Ugh!..."

He seemed disposed to expand that "Ugh," and then thought better of it.

And presently Mr. Britling took control of the conversation.

His two days in London had filled him with matter, and he was glad to

have something more than Hugh and Teddy and Mrs. Britling to talk it

upon. What was happening now in Great Britain, he declared, was

_adjustment_. It was an attempt on the part of a great unorganised

nation, an attempt, instinctive at present rather than intelligent, to

readjust its government and particularly its military organisation to

the new scale of warfare that Germany had imposed upon the world. For

two strenuous decades the British navy had been growing enormously under

the pressure of German naval preparations, but the British military

establishment had experienced no corresponding expansion. It was true

there had been a futile, rather foolishly conducted agitation for

universal military service, but there had been no accumulation of

material, no preparation of armament-making machinery, no planning and

no foundations for any sort of organisation that would have facilitated

the rapid expansion of the fighting forces of a country in a time of

crisis. Such an idea was absolutely antagonistic to the mental habits of

the British military caste. The German method of incorporating all the

strength and resources of the country into one national fighting machine

was quite strange to the British military mind--still. Even after a

month of war. War had become the comprehensive business of the German

nation; to the British it was an incidental adventure. In Germany the

nation was militarised, in England the army was specialised. The nation

for nearly every practical purpose got along without it. Just as

political life had also become specialised.... Now suddenly we wanted a

government to speak for every one, and an army of the whole people. How

were we to find it?

Mr. Britling dwelt upon this idea of the specialised character of the

British army and navy and government. It seemed to him to be the clue to

everything that was jarring in the London spectacle. The army had been a

thing aloof, for a special end. It had developed all the characteristics

of a caste. It had very high standards along the lines of its

specialisation, but it was inadaptable and conservative. Its

exclusiveness was not so much a deliberate culture as a consequence of

its detached function. It touched the ordinary social body chiefly

through three other specialised bodies, the court, the church, and the

stage. Apart from that it saw the great unofficial civilian world as

something vague, something unsympathetic, something possibly

antagonistic, which it comforted itself by snubbing when it dared and

tricking when it could, something that projected members of Parliament

towards it and was stingy about money. Directly one grasped how apart

the army lived from the ordinary life of the community, from

industrialism or from economic necessities, directly one understood that

the great mass of Englishmen were simply "outsiders" to the War Office

mind, just as they were "outsiders" to the political clique, one began

to realise the complete unfitness of either government or War Office for

the conduct of so great a national effort as was now needed. These

people "up there" did not know anything of the broad mass of English

life at all, they did not know how or where things were made; when they

wanted things they just went to a shop somewhere and got them. This was

the necessary psychology of a small army under a clique government.

Nothing else was to be expected. But now--somehow--the nation had to

take hold of the government that it had neglected so long....

"You see," said Mr. Britling, repeating a phrase that was becoming more

and more essential to his thoughts, "this is _our_ war....

"Of course," said Mr. Britling, "these things are not going to be done

without a conflict. We aren't going to take hold of our country which we

have neglected so long without a lot of internal friction. But in

England we can make these readjustments without revolution. It is our

strength....

"At present England is confused--but it's a healthy confusion. It's

astir. We have more things to defeat than just Germany....

"These hosts of recruits--weary, uncared for, besieging the recruiting

stations. It's symbolical.... Our tremendous reserves of will and

manhood. Our almost incredible insufficiency of direction....

"Those people up there have no idea of the Will that surges up in

England. They are timid little manoeuvring people, afraid of property,

afraid of newspapers, afraid of trade-unions. They aren't leading us

against the Germans; they are just being shoved against the Germans by

necessity...."

From this Mr. Britling broke away into a fresh addition to his already

large collection of contrasts between England and Germany. Germany was a

nation which has been swallowed up and incorporated by an army and an

administration; the Prussian military system had assimilated to itself

the whole German life. It was a State in a state of repletion, a State

that had swallowed all its people. Britain was not a State. It was an

unincorporated people. The British army, the British War Office, and the

British administration had assimilated nothing; they were little old

partial things; the British nation lay outside them, beyond their

understanding and tradition; a formless new thing, but a great thing;

and now this British nation, this real nation, the "outsiders," had to

take up arms. Suddenly all the underlying ideas of that outer, greater

English life beyond politics, beyond the services, were challenged, its

tolerant good humour, its freedom, and its irresponsibility. It was not

simply English life that was threatened; it was all the latitudes of

democracy, it was every liberal idea and every liberty. It was

civilisation in danger. The uncharted liberal system had been taken by

the throat; it had to "make good" or perish....

"I went up to London expecting to be told what to do. There is no one to

tell any one what to do.... Much less is there any one to compel us what

to do....

"There's a War Office like a college during a riot, with its doors and

windows barred; there's a government like a cockle boat in an Atlantic

gale....

"One feels the thing ought to have come upon us like the sound of a

trumpet. Instead, until now, it has been like a great noise, that we

just listened to, in the next house.... And now slowly the nation

awakes. London is just like a dazed sleeper waking up out of a deep

sleep to fire and danger, tumult and cries for help, near at hand. The

streets give you exactly that effect. People are looking about and

listening. One feels that at any moment, in a pause, in a silence, there

may come, from far away, over the houses, faint and little, the boom of

guns or the small outcries of little French or Belgian villages in

agony...."

Such was the gist of Mr. Britling's discourse.

He did most of the table talk, and all that mattered. Teddy was an

assenting voice, Hugh was silent and apparently a little inattentive,

Mrs. Britling was thinking of the courses and the servants and the boys,

and giving her husband only half an ear, Captain Carmine said little and

seemed to be troubled by some disagreeable preoccupation. Now and then

he would endorse or supplement the things Mr. Britling was saying.

Thrice he remarked: "People still do not begin to understand."...

Section 4

It was only when they sat together in the barn court out of the way of

Mrs. Britling and the children that Captain Carmine was able to explain

his listless bearing and jaded appearance. He was suffering from a bad

nervous shock. He had hardly taken over his command before one of his

men had been killed--and killed in a manner that had left a scar upon

his mind.

The man had been guarding a tunnel, and he had been knocked down by one

train when crossing the line behind another. So it was that the bomb of

Sarajevo killed its first victim in Essex. Captain Carmine had found the

body. He had found the body in a cloudy moonlight; he had almost fallen

over it; and his sensations and emotions had been eminently

disagreeable. He had had to drag the body--it was very dreadfully

mangled--off the permanent way, the damaged, almost severed head had

twisted about very horribly in the uncertain light, and afterwards he

had found his sleeves saturated with blood. He had not noted this at the

time, and when he had discovered it he had been sick. He had thought the

whole thing more horrible and hateful than any nightmare, but he had

succeeded in behaving with a sufficient practicality to set an example

to his men. Since this had happened he had not had an hour of dreamless

sleep.

"One doesn't expect to be called upon like that," said Captain Carmine,

"suddenly here in England.... When one is smoking after supper...."

Mr. Britling listened to this experience with distressed brows. All his

talking and thinking became to him like the open page of a monthly

magazine. Across it this bloody smear, this thing of red and black, was

dragged....

Section 5

The smear was still bright red in Mr. Britling's thoughts when Teddy

came to him.

"I must go," said Teddy, "I can't stop here any longer."

"Go where?"

"Into khaki. I've been thinking of it ever since the war began. Do you

remember what you said when we were bullying off at hockey on Bank

Holiday--the day before war was declared?"

Mr. Britling had forgotten completely; he made an effort. "What did I

say?"

"You said, 'What the devil are we doing at this hockey? We ought to be

drilling or shooting against those confounded Germans!' ... I've never

forgotten it.... I ought to have done it before. I've been a

scout-master. In a little while they will want officers. In London, I'm

told, there are a lot of officers' training corps putting men through

the work as quickly as possible.... If I could go...."

"What does Letty think?" said Mr. Britling after a pause. This was

right, of course--the only right thing--and yet he was surprised.

"She says if you'd let her try to do my work for a time...."

"She _wants_ you to go?"

"Of course she does," said Teddy. "She wouldn't like me to be a

shirker.... But I can't unless you help."

"I'm quite ready to do that," said Mr. Britling. "But somehow I didn't

think it of you. I hadn't somehow thought of _you_--"

"What _did_ you think of me?" asked Teddy.

"It's bringing the war home to us.... Of course you ought to go--if you

want to go."

He reflected. It was odd to find Teddy in this mood, strung up and

serious and businesslike. He felt that in the past he had done Teddy

injustice; this young man wasn't as trivial as he had thought him....

They fell to discussing ways and means; there might have to be a loan

for Teddy's outfit, if he did presently secure a commission. And there

were one or two other little matters.... Mr. Britling dismissed a

ridiculous fancy that he was paying to send Teddy away to something that

neither that young man nor Letty understood properly....

The next day Teddy vanished Londonward on his bicycle. He was going to

lodge in London in order to be near his training. He was zealous. Never

before had Teddy been zealous. Mrs. Teddy came to the Dower House for

the correspondence, trying not to look self-conscious and important.

Two Mondays later a very bright-eyed, excited little boy came running to

Mr. Britling, who was smoking after lunch in the rose garden. "Daddy!"

squealed the small boy. "Teddy! In khaki!"

The other junior Britling danced in front of the hero, who was walking

beside Mrs. Britling and trying not to be too aggressively a soldierly

figure. He looked a very man in khaki and more of a boy than ever. Mrs.

Teddy came behind, quietly elated.

Mr. Britling had a recurrence of that same disagreeable fancy that these

young people didn't know exactly what they were going into. He wished he

was in khaki himself; then he fancied this compunction wouldn't trouble

him quite so much.

The afternoon with them deepened his conviction that they really didn't

in the slightest degree understand. Life had been so good to them

hitherto, that even the idea of Teddy's going off to the war seemed a

sort of fun to them. It was just a thing he was doing, a serious,

seriously amusing, and very creditable thing. It involved his dressing

up in these unusual clothes, and receiving salutes in the street....

They discussed every possible aspect of his military outlook with the

zest of children, who recount the merits of a new game. They were

putting Teddy through his stages at a tremendous pace. In quite a little

time he thought he would be given the chance of a commission.

"They want subalterns badly. Already they've taken nearly a third of our

people," he said, and added with the wistfulness of one who glances at

inaccessible delights: "one or two may get out to the front quite soon."

He spoke as a young actor might speak of a star part. And with a touch

of the quality of one who longs to travel in strange lands.... One must

be patient. Things come at last....

"If I'm killed she gets eighty pounds a year," Teddy explained among

many other particulars.

He smiled--the smile of a confident immortal at this amusing idea.

"He's my little annuity," said Letty, also smiling, "dead or alive."

"We'll miss Teddy in all sorts of ways," said Mr. Britling.

"It's only for the duration of the war," said Teddy. "And Letty's very

intelligent. I've done my best to chasten the evil in her."

"If you think you're going to get back your job after the war," said

Letty, "you're very much mistaken. I'm going to raise the standard."

"_You_!" said Teddy, regarding her coldly, and proceeded ostentatiously

to talk of other things.

Section 6

"Hugh's going to be in khaki too," the elder junior told Teddy. "He's

too young to go out in Kitchener's army, but he's joined the

Territorials. He went off on Thursday.... I wish Gilbert and me was

older...."

Mr. Britling had known his son's purpose since the evening of Teddy's

announcement.

Hugh had come to his father's study as he was sitting musing at his

writing-desk over the important question whether he should continue his

"Examination of War" uninterruptedly, or whether he should not put that

on one side for a time and set himself to state as clearly as possible

the not too generally recognised misfit between the will and strength of

Britain on the one hand and her administrative and military organisation

on the other. He felt that an enormous amount of human enthusiasm and

energy was being refused and wasted; that if things went on as they were

going there would continue to be a quite disastrous shortage of gear,

and that some broadening change was needed immediately if the swift

exemplary victory over Germany that his soul demanded was to be ensured.

Suppose he were to write some noisy articles at once, an article, for

instance, to be called "The War of the Mechanics" or "The War of Gear,"

and another on "Without Civil Strength there is no Victory." If he wrote

such things would they be noted or would they just vanish

indistinguishably into the general mental tumult? Would they be audible

and helpful shouts, or just waste of shouting?... That at least was what

he supposed himself to be thinking; it was, at any rate, the main

current of his thinking; but all the same, just outside the circle of

his attention a number of other things were dimly apprehended, bobbing

up and down in the flood and ready at the slightest chance to swirl into

the centre of his thoughts. There was, for instance, Captain Carmine in

the moonlight lugging up a railway embankment something horrible,

something loose and wet and warm that had very recently been a man.

There was Teddy, serious and patriotic--filling a futile penman with

incredulous respect. There was the thin-faced man at the club, and a

curious satisfaction he had betrayed in the public disarrangement. And

there was Hugh. Particularly there was Hugh, silent but watchful. The

boy never babbled. He had his mother's gift of deep dark silences. Out

of which she was wont to flash, a Black Princess waving a sword. He

wandered for a little while among memories.... But Hugh didn't come out

like that, though it always seemed possible he might--perhaps he didn't

come out because he was a son. Revelation to his father wasn't his

business.... What was he thinking of it all? What was he going to do?

Mr. Britling was acutely anxious that his son should volunteer; he was

almost certain that he would volunteer, but there was just a little

shadow of doubt whether some extraordinary subtlety of mind mightn't

have carried the boy into a pacifist attitude. No! that was impossible.

In the face of Belgium.... But as greatly--and far more deeply in the

warm flesh of his being--did Mr. Britling desire that no harm, no evil

should happen to Hugh....

The door opened, and Hugh came in....

Mr. Britling glanced over his shoulder with an affectation of

indifference. "Hal-_lo!_" he said. "What do you want?"

Hugh walked awkwardly to the hearthrug.

"Oh!" he said in an off-hand tone; "I suppose I've got to go soldiering

for a bit. I just thought--I'd rather like to go off with a man I know

to-morrow...."

Mr. Britling's manner remained casual.

"It's the only thing to do now, I'm afraid," he said.

He turned in his chair and regarded his son. "What do you mean to do?

O.T.C.?"

"I don't think I should make much of an officer. I hate giving orders to

other people. We thought we'd just go together into the Essex Regiment

as privates...."

There was a little pause. Both father and son had rehearsed this scene

in their minds several times, and now they found that they had no use

for a number of sentences that had been most effective in these

rehearsals. Mr. Britling scratched his cheek with the end of his pen.

"I'm glad you want to go, Hugh," he said.

"I _don't_ want to go," said Hugh with his hands deep in his pockets. "I

want to go and work with Cardinal. But this job has to be done by every

one. Haven't you been saying as much all day?... It's like turning out

to chase a burglar or suppress a mad dog. It's like necessary

sanitation...."

"You aren't attracted by soldiering?"

"Not a bit. I won't pretend it, Daddy. I think the whole business is a

bore. Germany seems to me now just like some heavy horrible dirty mass

that has fallen across Belgium and France. We've got to shove the stuff

back again. That's all...."

He volunteered some further remarks to his father's silence.

"You know I can't get up a bit of tootle about this business," he said.

"I think killing people or getting killed is a thoroughly nasty

habit.... I expect my share will be just drilling and fatigue duties and

route marches, and loafing here in England...."

"You can't possibly go out for two years," said Mr. Britling, as if he

regretted it.

A slight hesitation appeared in Hugh's eyes. "I suppose not," he said.

"Things ought to be over by then--anyhow," Mr. Britling added, betraying

his real feelings.

"So it's really just helping at the furthest end of the shove," Hugh

endorsed, but still with that touch of reservation in his manner....

The pause had the effect of closing the theoretical side of the

question. "Where do you propose to enlist?" said Mr. Britling, coming

down to practical details.

Section 7

The battle of the Marne passed into the battle of the Aisne, and then

the long lines of the struggle streamed north-westward until the British

were back in Belgium failing to clutch Menin and then defending Ypres.

The elation of September followed the bedazzlement and dismay of August

into the chapter of forgotten moods; and Mr. Britling's sense of the

magnitude, the weight and duration of this war beyond all wars,

increased steadily. The feel of it was less and less a feeling of crisis

and more and more a feeling of new conditions. It wasn't as it had

seemed at first, the end of one human phase and the beginning of

another; it was in itself a phase. It was a new way of living. And still

he could find no real point of contact for himself with it all except

the point of his pen. Only at his writing-desk, and more particularly at

night, were the great presences of the conflict his. Yet he was always

desiring some more personal and physical participation.

Hugh came along one day in October in an ill-fitting uniform, looking

already coarser in fibre and with a nose scorched red by the autumnal

sun. He said the life was rough, but it made him feel extraordinarily

well; perhaps man was made to toil until he dropped asleep from

exhaustion, to fast for ten or twelve hours and then eat like a wolf. He

was acquiring a taste for Woodbine cigarettes, and a heady variety of

mineral waters called Monsters. He feared promotion; he felt he could

never take the high line with other human beings demanded of a corporal.

He was still trying to read a little chemistry and crystallography, but

it didn't "go with the life." In the scanty leisure of a recruit in

training it was more agreeable to lie about and write doggerel verses

and draw caricatures of the men in one's platoon. Invited to choose what

he liked by his family, he demanded a large tuckbox such as he used to

have at school, only "_much_ larger," and a big tin of insect powder.

It must be able to kill ticks....

When he had gone, the craving for a personal share in the nation's

physical exertions became overpowering in Mr. Britling. He wanted, he

felt, to "get his skin into it." He had decided that the volunteer

movement was a hopeless one. The War Office, after a stout resistance to

any volunteer movement at all, decided to recognise it in such a manner

as to make it ridiculous. The volunteers were to have no officers and no

uniforms that could be remotely mistaken for those of the regulars, so

that in the event of an invasion the Germans would be able to tell what

they had to deal with miles away. Wilkins found his conception of a

whole nation, all enrolled, all listed and badged according to capacity,

his dream of every one falling into place in one great voluntary

national effort, treated as the childish dreaming of that most ignorant

of all human types, a "novelist." _Punch_ was delicately funny about

him; he was represented as wearing a preposterous cocked hat of his own

design, designing cocked hats for every one. Wilkins was told to "shut

up" in a multitude of anonymous letters, and publicly and privately to

"leave things to Kitchener." To bellow in loud clear tones "leave things

to Kitchener," and to depart for the theatre or the river or an

automobile tour, was felt very generally at that time to be the proper

conduct for a patriot. There was a very general persuasion that to

become a volunteer when one ought to be just modestly doing nothing at

all, was in some obscure way a form of disloyalty....

So Mr. Britling was out of conceit with volunteering, and instead he

went and was duly sworn and entrusted with the badge of a special

constable. The duties of a special constable were chiefly not to

understand what was going on in the military sphere, and to do what he

was told in the way of watching and warding conceivably vulnerable

points. He had also to be available in the event of civil disorder. Mr.

Britling was provided with a truncheon and sent out to guard various

culverts, bridges, and fords in the hilly country to the north-westward

of Matching's Easy. It was never very clear to him what he would do if

he found a motor-car full of armed enemies engaged in undermining a

culvert, or treacherously deepening some strategic ford. He supposed he

would either engage them in conversation, or hit them with his

truncheon, or perhaps do both things simultaneously. But as he really

did not believe for a moment that any human being was likely to tamper

with the telegraphs, telephones, ways and appliances committed to his

care, his uncertainty did not trouble him very much. He prowled the

lonely lanes and paths in the darkness, and became better acquainted

with a multitude of intriguing little cries and noises that came from

the hedges and coverts at night. One night he rescued a young leveret

from a stoat, who seemed more than half inclined to give him battle for

its prey until he cowed and defeated it with the glare of his electric

torch....

As he prowled the countryside under the great hemisphere of Essex sky,

or leant against fences or sat drowsily upon gates or sheltered from

wind and rain under ricks or sheds, he had much time for meditation, and

his thoughts went down and down below his first surface impressions of

the war. He thought no longer of the rights and wrongs of this

particular conflict but of the underlying forces in mankind that made

war possible; he planned no more ingenious treaties and conventions

between the nations, and instead he faced the deeper riddles of

essential evil and of conceivable changes in the heart of man. And the

rain assailed him and thorns tore him, and the soaked soft meadows

bogged and betrayed his wandering feet, and the little underworld of the

hedges and ditches hissed and squealed in the darkness and pursued and

fled, and devoured or were slain.

And one night in April he was perplexed by a commotion among the

pheasants and a barking of distant dogs, and then to his great

astonishment he heard noises like a distant firework display and saw

something like a phantom yellowish fountain-pen in the sky far away to

the east lit intermittently by a quivering search-light and going very

swiftly. And after he had rubbed his eyes and looked again, he realised

that he was looking at a Zeppelin--a Zeppelin flying Londonward over

Essex.

And all that night was wonder....

Section 8

While Mr. Britling was trying to find his duty in the routine of a

special constable, Mrs. Britling set to work with great energy to attend

various classes and qualify herself for Red Cross work. And early in

October came the great drive of the Germans towards Antwerp and the sea,

the great drive that was apparently designed to reach Calais, and which

swept before it multitudes of Flemish refugees. There was an exodus of

all classes from Antwerp into Holland and England, and then a huge

process of depopulation in Flanders and the Pas de Calais. This flood

came to the eastern and southern parts of England and particularly to

London, and there hastily improvised organisations distributed it to a

number of local committees, each of which took a share of the refugees,

hired and furnished unoccupied houses for the use of the penniless, and

assisted those who had means into comfortable quarters. The Matching's

Easy committee found itself with accommodation for sixty people, and

with a miscellaneous bag of thirty individuals entrusted to its care,

who had been part of the load of a little pirate steam-boat from Ostend.

There were two Flemish peasant families, and the rest were more or less

middle-class refugees from Antwerp. They were brought from the station

to the Tithe barn at Claverings, and there distributed, under the

personal supervision of Lady Homartyn and her agent, among those who

were prepared for their entertainment. There was something like

competition among the would-be hosts; everybody was glad of the chance

of "doing something," and anxious to show these Belgians what England

thought of their plucky little country. Mr. Britling was proud to lead

off a Mr. Van der Pant, a neat little bearded man in a black tail-coat,

a black bowler hat, and a knitted muffler, with a large rucksack and a

conspicuously foreign-looking bicycle, to the hospitalities of Dower

House. Mr. Van der Pant had escaped from Antwerp at the eleventh hour,

he had caught a severe cold and, it would seem, lost his wife and family

in the process; he had much to tell Mr. Britling, and in his zeal to

tell it he did not at once discover that though Mr. Britling knew French

quite well he did not know it very rapidly.

The dinner that night at the Dower House marked a distinct fresh step in

the approach of the Great War to the old habits and securities of

Matching's Easy. The war had indeed filled every one's mind to the

exclusion of all other topics since its very beginning; it had carried

off Herr Heinrich to Germany, Teddy to London, and Hugh to Colchester,

it had put a special brassard round Mr. Britling's arm and carried him

out into the night, given Mrs. Britling several certificates, and

interrupted the frequent visits and gossip of Mr. Lawrence Carmine; but

so far it had not established a direct contact between the life of

Matching's Easy and the grim business of shot, shell, and bayonet at the

front. But now here was the Dower House accomplishing wonderful idioms

in Anglo-French, and an animated guest telling them--sometimes one

understood clearly and sometimes the meaning was clouded--of men blown

to pieces under his eyes, of fragments of human beings lying about in

the streets; there was trouble over the expression _omoplate d'une

femme_, until one of the youngsters got the dictionary and found out it

was the shoulder-blade of a woman; of pools of blood--everywhere--and

of flight in the darkness.

Mr. Van der Pant had been in charge of the dynamos at the Antwerp Power

Station, he had been keeping the electrified wires in the entanglements

"alive," and he had stuck to his post until the German high explosives

had shattered his wires and rendered his dynamos useless. He gave vivid

little pictures of the noises of the bombardment, of the dead lying

casually in the open spaces, of the failure of the German guns to hit

the bridge of boats across which the bulk of the defenders and refugees

escaped. He produced a little tourist's map of the city of Antwerp, and

dotted at it with a pencil-case. "The--what do you call?--_obus_, ah,

shells! fell, so and so and so." Across here he had fled on his

_bécane_, and along here and here. He had carried off his rifle, and hid

it with the rifles of various other Belgians between floor and ceiling

of a house in Zeebrugge. He had found the pirate steamer in the harbour,

its captain resolved to extract the uttermost fare out of every refugee

he took to London. When they were all aboard and started they found

there was no food except the hard ration biscuits of some Belgian

soldiers. They had portioned this out like shipwrecked people on a

raft.... The _mer_ had been _calme_; thank Heaven! All night they had

been pumping. He had helped with the pumps. But Mr. Van der Pant hoped

still to get a reckoning with the captain of that ship.

Mr. Van der Pant had had shots at various Zeppelins. When the Zeppelins

came to Antwerp everybody turned out on the roofs and shot at them. He

was contemptuous of Zeppelins. He made derisive gestures to express his

opinion of them. They could do nothing unless they came low, and if they

came low you could hit them. One which ventured down had been riddled;

it had had to drop all its bombs--luckily they fell in an open field--in

order to make its lame escape. It was all nonsense to say, as the

English papers did, that they took part in the final bombardment. Not a

Zeppelin.... So he talked, and the Britling family listened and

understood as much as they could, and replied and questioned in

Anglo-French. Here was a man who but a few days ago had been steering

his bicycle in the streets of Antwerp to avoid shell craters, pools of

blood, and the torn-off arms and shoulder-blades of women. He had seen

houses flaring, set afire by incendiary bombs, and once at a corner he

had been knocked off his bicycle by the pouff of a bursting shell....

Not only were these things in the same world with us, they were sitting

at our table.

He told one grim story of an invalid woman unable to move, lying in bed

in her _appartement_, and of how her husband went out on the balcony to

look at the Zeppelin. There was a great noise of shooting. Ever and

again he would put his head back into the room and tell her things, and

then after a time he was silent and looked in no more. She called to

him, and called again. Becoming frightened, she raised herself by a

great effort and peered through the glass. At first she was too puzzled

to understand what had happened. He was hanging over the front of the

balcony, with his head twisted oddly. Twisted and shattered. He had been

killed by shrapnel fired from the outer fortifications....

These are the things that happen in histories and stories. They do not

happen at Matching's Easy....

Mr. Van der Pant did not seem to be angry with the Germans. But he

manifestly regarded them as people to be killed. He denounced nothing

that they had done; he related. They were just an evil accident that had

happened to Belgium and mankind. They had to be destroyed. He gave Mr.

Britling an extraordinary persuasion that knives were being sharpened in

every cellar in Brussels and Antwerp against the day of inevitable

retreat, of a resolution to exterminate the invader that was far too

deep to be vindictive.... And the man was most amazingly unconquered.

Mr. Britling perceived the label on his habitual dinner wine with a

slight embarrassment. "Do you care," he asked, "to drink a German wine?

This is Berncasteler from the Moselle." Mr. Van der Pant reflected. "But

it is a good wine," he said. "After the peace it will be Belgian....

Yes, if we are to be safe in the future from such a war as this, we must

have our boundaries right up to the Rhine."

So he sat and talked, flushed and, as it were, elated by the vividness

of all that he had undergone. He had no trace of tragic quality, no hint

of subjugation. But for his costume and his trimmed beard and his

language he might have been a Dubliner or a Cockney.

He was astonishingly cut off from all his belongings. His house in

Antwerp was abandoned to the invader; valuables and cherished objects

very skilfully buried in the garden; he had no change of clothing except

what the rucksack held. His only footwear were the boots he came in. He

could not get on any of the slippers in the house, they were all too

small for him, until suddenly Mrs. Britling bethought herself of Herr

Heinrich's pair, still left unpacked upstairs. She produced them, and

they fitted exactly. It seemed only poetical justice, a foretaste of

national compensations, to annex them to Belgium forthwith....

Also it became manifest that Mr. Van der Pant was cut off from all his

family. And suddenly he became briskly critical of the English way of

doing things. His wife and child had preceded him to England, crossing

by Ostend and Folkestone a fortnight ago; her parents had come in

August; both groups had been seized upon by improvised British

organisations and very thoroughly and completely lost. He had written to

the Belgian Embassy and they had referred him to a committee in London,

and the committee had begun its services by discovering a Madame Van der

Pant hitherto unknown to him at Camberwell, and displaying a certain

suspicion and hostility when he said she would not do. There had been

some futile telegrams. "What," asked Mr. Van der Pant, "ought one to

do?"

Mr. Britling temporised by saying he would "make inquiries," and put Mr.

Van der Pant off for two days. Then he decided to go up to London with

him and "make inquiries on the spot." Mr. Van der Pant did not discover

his family, but Mr. Britling discovered the profound truth of a comment

of Herr Heinrich's which he had hitherto considered utterly trivial, but

which had nevertheless stuck in his memory. "The English," Herr Heinrich

had said, "do not understanding indexing. It is the root of all good

organisation."

Finally, Mr. Van der Pant adopted the irregular course of asking every

Belgian he met if they had seen any one from his district in Antwerp, if

they had heard of the name of "Van der Pant," if they had encountered

So-and-so or So-and-so. And by obstinacy and good fortune he really got

on to the track of Madame Van der Pant; she had been carried off into

Kent, and a day later the Dower House was the scene of a happy reunion.

Madame was a slender lady, dressed well and plainly, with a Belgian

common sense and a Catholic reserve, and André was like a child of wax,

delicate and charming and unsubstantial. It seemed incredible that he

could ever grow into anything so buoyant and incessant as his father.

The Britling boys had to be warned not to damage him. A sitting-room was

handed over to the Belgians for their private use, and for a time the

two families settled into the Dower House side by side. Anglo-French

became the table language of the household. It hampered Mr. Britling

very considerably. And both families set themselves to much unrecorded

observation, much unspoken mutual criticism, and the exercise of great

patience. It was tiresome for the English to be tied to a language that

crippled all spontaneous talk; these linguistic gymnastics were fun to

begin with, but soon they became very troublesome; and the Belgians

suspected sensibilities in their hosts and a vast unwritten code of

etiquette that did not exist; at first they were always waiting, as it

were, to be invited or told or included; they seemed always

deferentially backing out from intrusions. Moreover, they would not at

first reveal what food they liked or what they didn't like, or whether

they wanted more or less.... But these difficulties were soon smoothed

away, they Anglicised quickly and cleverly. André grew bold and

cheerful, and lost his first distrust of his rather older English

playmates. Every day at lunch he produced a new, carefully prepared

piece of English, though for some time he retained a marked preference

for "Good morning, Saire," and "Thank you very mush," over all other

locutions, and fell back upon them on all possible and many impossible

occasions. And he could do some sleight-of-hand tricks with remarkable

skill and humour, and fold paper with quite astonishing results.

Meanwhile Mr. Van der Pant sought temporary employment in England, went

for long rides upon his bicycle, exchanged views with Mr. Britling upon

a variety of subjects, and became a wonderful player of hockey.

He played hockey with an extraordinary zest and nimbleness. Always he

played in the tail coat, and the knitted muffler was never relinquished;

he treated the game entirely as an occasion for quick tricks and

personal agility; he bounded about the field like a kitten, he

pirouetted suddenly, he leapt into the air and came down in new

directions; his fresh-coloured face was alive with delight, the coat

tails and the muffler trailed and swished about breathlessly behind his

agility. He never passed to other players; he never realised his

appointed place in the game; he sought simply to make himself a leaping

screen about the ball as he drove it towards the goal. But André he

would not permit to play at all, and Madame played like a lady, like a

Madonna, like a saint carrying the instrument of her martyrdom. The

game and its enthusiasms flowed round her and receded from her; she

remained quite valiant but tolerant, restrained; doing her best to do

the extraordinary things required of her, but essentially a being of

passive dignities, living chiefly for them; Letty careering by her, keen

and swift, was like a creature of a different species....

Mr. Britling cerebrated abundantly about these contrasts.

"What has been blown in among us by these German shells," he said, "is

essentially a Catholic family. Blown clean out of its setting.... We who

are really--Neo-Europeans....

"At first you imagine there is nothing separating us but language.

Presently you find that language is the least of our separations. These

people are people living upon fundamentally different ideas from ours,

ideas far more definite and complete than ours. You imagine that home in

Antwerp as something much more rounded off, much more closed in, a cell,

a real social unit, a different thing altogether from this place of

meeting. Our boys play cheerfully with all comers; little André hasn't

learnt to play with any outside children at all. We must seem incredibly

_open_ to these Van der Pants. A house without sides.... Last Sunday I

could not find out the names of the two girls who came on bicycles and

played so well. They came with Kitty Westropp. And Van der Pant wanted

to know how they were related to us. Or how was it they came?...

"Look at Madame. She's built on a fundamentally different plan from any

of our womenkind here. Tennis, the bicycle, co-education, the two-step,

the higher education of women.... Say these things over to yourself, and

think of her. It's like talking of a nun in riding breeches. She's a

specialised woman, specialising in womanhood, her sphere is the home.

Soft, trailing, draping skirts, slow movements, a veiled face; for no

Oriental veil could be more effectual than her beautiful Catholic

quiet. Catholicism invented the invisible purdah. She is far more akin

to that sweet little Indian lady with the wonderful robes whom Carmine

brought over with her tall husband last summer, than she is to Letty or

Cissie. She, too, undertook to play hockey. And played it very much as

Madame Van der Pant played it....

"The more I see of our hockey," said Mr. Britling, "the more wonderful

it seems to me as a touchstone of character and culture and

breeding...."

Mr. Manning, to whom he was delivering this discourse, switched him on

to a new track by asking what he meant by "Neo-European."

"It's a bad phrase," said Mr. Britling. "I'll withdraw it. Let me try

and state exactly what I have in mind. I mean something that is coming

up in America and here and the Scandinavian countries and Russia, a new

culture, an escape from the Levantine religion and the Catholic culture

that came to us from the Mediterranean. Let me drop Neo-European; let me

say Northern. We are Northerners. The key, the heart, the nucleus and

essence of every culture is its conception of the relations of men and

women; and this new culture tends to diminish the specialisation of

women as women, to let them out from the cell of the home into common

citizenship with men. It's a new culture, still in process of

development, which will make men more social and co-operative and women

bolder, swifter, more responsible and less cloistered. It minimises

instead of exaggerating the importance of sex....

"And," said Mr. Britling, in very much the tones in which a preacher

might say "Sixthly," "it is just all this Northern tendency that this

world struggle is going to release. This war is pounding through Europe,

smashing up homes, dispersing and mixing homes, setting Madame Van der

Pant playing hockey, and André climbing trees with my young ruffians; it

is killing young men by the million, altering the proportions of the

sexes for a generation, bringing women into business and office and

industry, destroying the accumulated wealth that kept so many of them in

refined idleness, flooding the world with strange doubts and novel

ideas...."

Section 9

But the conflict of manners and customs that followed the invasion of

the English villages by French and Belgian refugees did not always

present the immigrants as Catholics and the hosts as "Neo-European." In

the case of Mr. Dimple it was the other way round. He met Mr. Britling

in Claverings park and told him his troubles....

"Of course," he said, "we have to do our Utmost for Brave Little

Belgium. I would be the last to complain of any little inconvenience one

may experience in doing that. Still, I must confess I think you and dear

Mrs. Britling are fortunate, exceptionally fortunate, in the Belgians

you have got. My guests--it's unfortunate--the man is some sort of

journalist and quite--oh! much too much--an Atheist. An open positive

one. Not simply Honest Doubt. I'm quite prepared for honest doubt

nowadays. You and I have no quarrel over that. But he is aggressive. He

makes remarks about miracles, quite derogatory remarks, and not always

in French. Sometimes he almost speaks English. And in front of my

sister. And he goes out, he says, looking for a Café. He never finds a

Café, but he certainly finds every public house within a radius of

miles. And he comes back smelling dreadfully of beer. When I drop a

Little Hint, he blames the beer. He says it is not good beer--our good

Essex beer! He doesn't understand any of our simple ways. He's

sophisticated. The girls about here wear Belgian flags--and air their

little bits of French. And he takes it as an encouragement. Only

yesterday there was a scene. It seems he tried to kiss the Hickson girl

at the inn--Maudie.... And his wife; a great big slow woman--in every

way she is--Ample; it's dreadful even to seem to criticise, but I do so

_wish_ she would not see fit to sit down and nourish her baby in my poor

old bachelor drawing-room--often at the most _unseasonable_ times.

And--so lavishly...."

Mr. Britling attempted consolations.

"But anyhow," said Mr. Dimple, "I'm better off than poor dear Mrs.

Bynne. She secured two milliners. She insisted upon them. And their

clothes were certainly beautifully made--even my poor old unworldly eye

could tell that. And she thought two milliners would be so useful with a

large family like hers. They certainly _said_ they were milliners. But

it seems--I don't know what we shall do about them.... My dear Mr.

Britling, those young women are anything but milliners--anything but

milliners...."

A faint gleam of amusement was only too perceptible through the good

man's horror.

"Sirens, my dear Mr. Britling. Sirens. By profession."...

Section 10

October passed into November, and day by day Mr. Britling was forced to

apprehend new aspects of the war, to think and rethink the war, to have

his first conclusions checked and tested, twisted askew, replaced. His

thoughts went far and wide and deeper--until all his earlier writing

seemed painfully shallow to him, seemed a mere automatic response of

obvious comments to the stimulus of the war's surprise. As his ideas

became subtler and profounder, they became more difficult to express; he

talked less; he became abstracted and irritable at table. To two people

in particular Mr. Britling found his real ideas inexpressible, to Mr.

Direck and to Mr. Van der Pant.

Each of these gentlemen brought with him the implication or the

intimation of a critical attitude towards England. It was all very well

for Mr. Britling himself to be critical of England; that is an

Englishman's privilege. To hear Mr. Van der Pant questioning British

efficiency or to suspect Mr. Direck of high, thin American superiorities

to war, was almost worse than to hear Mrs. Harrowdean saying hostile

things about Edith. It roused an even acuter protective emotion.

In the case of Mr. Van der Pant matters were complicated by the

difficulty of the language, which made anything but the crudest

statements subject to incalculable misconception.

Mr. Van der Pant had not the extreme tactfulness of his so typically

Catholic wife; he made it only too plain that he thought the British

postal and telegraph service slow and slack, and the management of the

Great Eastern branch lines wasteful and inefficient. He said the workmen

in the fields and the workmen he saw upon some cottages near the

junction worked slowlier and with less interest than he had ever seen

any workman display in all his life before. He marvelled that Mr.

Britling lit his house with acetylene and not electric light. He thought

fresh eggs were insanely dear, and his opinion of Matching's Easy

pig-keeping was uncomplimentary. The roads, he said, were not a means of

getting from place to place, they were a _dédale_; he drew derisive maps

with his finger on the table-cloth of the lane system about the Dower

House. He was astonished that there was no Café in Matching's Easy; he

declared that the "public house" to which he went with considerable

expectation was no public house at all; it was just a sly place for

drinking beer.... All these were things Mr. Britling might have remarked

himself; from a Belgian refugee he found them intolerable.

He set himself to explain to Mr. Van der Pant firstly that these things

did not matter in the slightest degree, the national attention, the

national interest ran in other directions; and secondly that they were,

as a matter of fact and on the whole, merits slightly disguised. He

produced a pleasant theory that England is really not the Englishman's

field, it is his breeding place, his resting place, a place not for

efficiency but good humour. If Mr. Van der Pant were to make inquiries

he would find there was scarcely a home in Matching's Easy that had not

sent some energetic representative out of England to become one of the

English of the world. England was the last place in which English energy

was spent. These hedges, these dilatory roads were full of associations.

There was a road that turned aside near Market Saffron to avoid Turk's

wood; it had been called Turk's wood first in the fourteenth century

after a man of that name. He quoted Chesterton's happy verses to justify

these winding lanes.

"The road turned first towards the left,

Where Perkin's quarry made the cleft;

The path turned next towards the right,

Because the mastiff used to bite...."

And again:

"And I should say they wound about

To find the town of Roundabout,

The merry town of Roundabout

That makes the world go round."

If our easy-going ways hampered a hard efficiency, they did at least

develop humour and humanity. Our diplomacy at any rate had not failed

us....

He did not believe a word of this stuff. His deep irrational love for

England made him say these things.... For years he had been getting

himself into hot water because he had been writing and hinting just such

criticisms as Mr. Van der Pant expressed so bluntly.... But he wasn't

going to accept foreign help in dissecting his mother....

And another curious effect that Mr. Van der Pant had upon Mr. Britling

was to produce an obstinate confidence about the war and the nearness

of the German collapse. He would promise Mr. Van der Pant that he should

be back in Antwerp before May; that the Germans would be over the Rhine

by July. He knew perfectly well that his ignorance of all the military

conditions was unqualified, but still he could not restrain himself from

this kind of thing so soon as he began to speak Entente

Cordiale--Anglo-French, that is to say. Something in his relationship to

Mr. Van der Pant obliged him to be acutely and absurdly the protecting

British.... At times he felt like a conscious bankrupt talking off the

hour of disclosure. But indeed all that Mr. Britling was trying to say

against the difficulties of a strange language and an alien temperament,

was that the honour of England would never be cleared until Belgium was

restored and avenged....

While Mr. Britling was patrolling unimportant roads and entertaining Mr.

Van der Pant with discourses upon the nearness of victory and the subtle

estimableness of all that was indolent, wasteful and evasive in English

life, the war was passing from its first swift phases into a slower,

grimmer struggle. The German retreat ended at the Aisne, and the long

outflanking manoeuvres of both hosts towards the Channel began. The

English attempts to assist Belgium in October came too late for the

preservation of Antwerp, and after a long and complicated struggle in

Flanders the British failed to outflank the German right, lost Ghent,

Menin and the Belgian coast, but held Ypres and beat back every attempt

of the enemy to reach Dunkirk and Calais. Meanwhile the smaller German

colonies and islands were falling to the navy, the Australian battleship

_Sydney_ smashed the _Emden_ at Cocos Island, and the British naval

disaster of Coronel was wiped out by the battle of the Falklands. The

Russians were victorious upon their left and took Lemberg, and after

some vicissitudes of fortune advanced to Przemysl, occupying the larger

part of Galicia; but the disaster of Tannenberg had broken their

progress in East Prussia, and the Germans were pressing towards Warsaw.

Turkey had joined the war, and suffered enormous losses in the Caucasus.

The Dardanelles had been shelled for the first time, and the British

were at Basra on the Euphrates.

Section 11

The Christmas of 1914 found England, whose landscape had hitherto been

almost as peaceful and soldierless as Massachusetts, already far gone

along the path of transformation into a country full of soldiers and

munition makers and military supplies. The soldiers came first, on the

well-known and greatly admired British principle of "first catch your

hare" and then build your kitchen. Always before, Christmas had been a

time of much gaiety and dressing up and prancing and two-stepping at the

Dower House, but this year everything was too uncertain to allow of any

gathering of guests. Hugh got leave for the day after Christmas, but

Teddy was tied; and Cissie and Letty went off with the small boy to take

lodgings near him. The Van der Pants had hoped to see an English

Christmas at Matching's Easy, but within three weeks of Christmas Day

Mr. Van der Pant found a job that he could do in Nottingham, and carried

off his family. The two small boys cheered their hearts with paper

decorations, but the Christmas Tree was condemned as too German, and it

was discovered that Santa Claus had suddenly become Old Father Christmas

again. The small boys discovered that the price of lead soldiers had

risen, and were unable to buy electric torches, on which they had set

their hearts. There was to have been a Christmas party at Claverings,

but at the last moment Lady Homartyn had to hurry off to an orphan

nephew who had been seriously wounded near Ypres, and the light of

Claverings was darkened.

Soon after Christmas there were rumours of an impending descent of the

Headquarters staff of the South-Eastern army upon Claverings. Then Mr.

Britling found Lady Homartyn back from France, and very indignant

because after all the Headquarters were to go to Lady Wensleydale at

Ladyholt. It was, she felt, a reflection upon Claverings. Lady Homartyn

became still more indignant when presently the new armies, which were

gathering now all over England like floods in a low-lying meadow, came

pouring into the parishes about Claverings to the extent of a battalion

and a Territorial battery. Mr. Britling heard of their advent only a day

or two before they arrived; there came a bright young officer with an

orderly, billeting; he was much exercised to get, as he expressed it

several times, a quart into a pint bottle. He was greatly pleased with

the barn. He asked the size of it and did calculations. He could "stick

twenty-five men into it--easy." It would go far to solve his problems.

He could manage without coming into the house at all. It was a ripping

place. "No end."

"But beds," said Mr. Britling.

"Lord! they don't want _beds_," said the young officer....

The whole Britling family, who were lamenting the loss of their

Belgians, welcomed the coming of the twenty-five with great enthusiasm.

It made them feel that they were doing something useful once more. For

three days Mrs. Britling had to feed her new lodgers--the kitchen motors

had as usual gone astray--and she did so in a style that made their

boastings about their billet almost insufferable to the rest of their

battery. The billeting allowance at that time was ninepence a head, and

Mr. Britling, ashamed of making a profit out of his country, supplied

not only generous firing and lighting, but unlimited cigarettes, cards

and games, illustrated newspapers, a cocoa supper with such little

surprises as sprats and jam roly-poly, and a number of more incidental

comforts. The men arrived fasting under the command of two very sage

middle-aged corporals, and responded to Mrs. Britling's hospitalities by

a number of good resolutions, many of which they kept. They never made

noises after half-past ten, or at least only now and then when a

singsong broke out with unusual violence; they got up and went out at

five or six in the morning without a sound; they were almost

inconveniently helpful with washing-up and tidying round.

In quite a little time Mrs. Britling's mind had adapted itself to the

spectacle of half-a-dozen young men in khaki breeches and shirts

performing their toilets in and about her scullery, or improvising an

unsanctioned game of football between the hockey goals. These men were

not the miscellaneous men of the new armies; they were the earlier

Territorial type with no heroics about them; they came from the

midlands; and their two middle-aged corporals kept them well in hand and

ruled them like a band of brothers. But they had an illegal side, that

developed in directions that set Mr. Britling theorising. They seemed,

for example, to poach by nature, as children play and sing. They

possessed a promiscuous white dog. They began to add rabbits to their

supper menu, unaccountable rabbits. One night there was a mighty smell

of frying fish from the kitchen, and the cook reported trout. "Trout!"

said Mr. Britling to one of the corporals; "now where did you chaps get

trout?"

The "fisherman," they said, had got them with a hair noose. They

produced the fisherman, of whom they were manifestly proud. It was, he

explained, a method of fishing he had learnt when in New York Harbour.

He had been a stoker. He displayed a confidence in Mr. Britling that

made that gentleman an accessory after his offence, his very serious

offence against pre-war laws and customs. It was plain that the trout

were the trout that Mr. Pumshock, the stock-broker and amateur

gentleman, had preserved so carefully in the Easy. Hitherto the

countryside had been forced to regard Mr. Pumshock's trout with an

almost superstitious respect. A year ago young Snooker had done a month

for one of those very trout. But now things were different.

"But I don't really fancy fresh-water fish," said the fisherman. "It's

just the ketchin' of 'em I like...."

And a few weeks later the trumpeter, an angel-faced freckled child with

deep-blue eyes, brought in a dozen partridge eggs which he wanted Mary

to cook for him....

The domesticity of the sacred birds, it was clear, was no longer safe in

England....

Then again the big guns would go swinging down the road and into

Claverings park, and perform various exercises with commendable

smartness and a profound disregard for Lady Homartyn's known objection

to any departure from the public footpath....

And one afternoon as Mr. Britling took his constitutional walk, a

reverie was set going in his mind by the sight of a neglected-looking

pheasant with a white collar. The world of Matching's Easy was getting

full now of such elderly birds. Would _that_ go on again after the war?

He imagined his son Hugh as a grandfather, telling the little ones about

parks and preserves and game laws, and footmen and butlers and the

marvellous game of golf, and how, suddenly, Mars came tramping through

the land in khaki and all these things faded and vanished, so that

presently it was discovered they were gone....

CHAPTER THE THIRD

MALIGNITY

Section 1

And while the countryside of England changed steadily from its lax

pacific amenity to the likeness of a rather slovenly armed camp, while

long-fixed boundaries shifted and dissolved and a great irreparable

wasting of the world's resources gathered way, Mr. Britling did his duty

as a special constable, gave his eldest son to the Territorials,

entertained Belgians, petted his soldiers in the barn, helped Teddy to

his commission, contributed to war charities, sold out securities at a

loss and subscribed to the War Loan, and thought, thought endlessly

about the war.

He could think continuously day by day of nothing else. His mind was as

caught as a galley slave, as unable to escape from tugging at this oar.

All his universe was a magnetic field which oriented everything, whether

he would have it so or not, to this one polar question.

His thoughts grew firmer and clearer; they went deeper and wider. His

first superficial judgments were endorsed and deepened or replaced by

others. He thought along the lonely lanes at night; he thought at his

desk; he thought in bed; he thought in his bath; he tried over his

thoughts in essays and leading articles and reviewed them and corrected

them. Now and then came relaxation and lassitude, but never release. The

war towered over him like a vigilant teacher, day after day, week after

week, regardless of fatigue and impatience, holding a rod in its hand.

Section 2

Certain things had to be forced upon Mr. Britling because they jarred so

greatly with his habits of mind that he would never have accepted them

if he could have avoided doing so.

Notably he would not recognise at first the extreme bitterness of this

war. He would not believe that the attack upon Britain and Western

Europe generally expressed the concentrated emotion of a whole nation.

He thought that the Allies were in conflict with a system and not with a

national will. He fought against the persuasion that the whole mass of a

great civilised nation could be inspired by a genuine and sustained

hatred. Hostility was an uncongenial thing to him; he would not

recognise that the greater proportion of human beings are more readily

hostile than friendly. He did his best to believe--in his "And Now War

Ends" he did his best to make other people believe--that this war was

the perverse exploit of a small group of people, of limited but powerful

influences, an outrage upon the general geniality of mankind. The

cruelty, mischief, and futility of war were so obvious to him that he

was almost apologetic in asserting them. He believed that war had but to

begin and demonstrate its quality among the Western nations in order to

unify them all against its repetition. They would exclaim: "But we can't

do things like this to one another!" He saw the aggressive imperialism

of Germany called to account even by its own people; a struggle, a

collapse, a liberal-minded conference of world powers, and a universal

resumption of amiability upon a more assured basis of security. He

believed--and many people in England believed with him--that a great

section of the Germans would welcome triumphant Allies as their

liberators from intolerable political obsessions.

The English because of their insularity had been political amateurs for

endless generations. It was their supreme vice, it was their supreme

virtue, to be easy-going. They had lived in an atmosphere of comedy, and

denied in the whole tenor of their lives that life is tragic. Not even

the Americans had been more isolated. The Americans had had their

Indians, their negroes, their War of Secession. Until the Great War the

Channel was as broad as the Atlantic for holding off every vital

challenge. Even Ireland was away--a four-hour crossing. And so the

English had developed to the fullest extent the virtues and vices of

safety and comfort; they had a hatred of science and dramatic behaviour;

they could see no reason for exactness or intensity; they disliked

proceeding "to extremes." Ultimately everything would turn out all

right. But they knew what it is to be carried into conflicts by

energetic minorities and the trick of circumstances, and they were ready

to understand the case of any other country which has suffered that

fate. All their habits inclined them to fight good-temperedly and

comfortably, to quarrel with a government and not with a people. It took

Mr. Britling at least a couple of months of warfare to understand that

the Germans were fighting in an altogether different spirit.

The first intimations of this that struck upon his mind were the news of

the behaviour of the Kaiser and the Berlin crowd upon the declaration of

war, and the violent treatment of the British subjects seeking to return

to their homes. Everywhere such people had been insulted and

ill-treated. It was the spontaneous expression of a long-gathered

bitterness. While the British ambassador was being howled out of Berlin,

the German ambassador to England was taking a farewell stroll, quite

unmolested, in St. James's Park.... One item that struck particularly

upon Mr. Britling's imagination was the story of the chorus of young

women who assembled on the railway platform of the station through which

the British ambassador was passing to sing--to his drawn

blinds--"Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles." Mr. Britling could

imagine those young people, probably dressed more or less uniformly in

white, with flushed faces and shining eyes, letting their voices go,

full throated, in the modern German way....

And then came stories of atrocities, stories of the shooting of old men

and the butchery of children by the wayside, stories of wounded men

bayoneted or burnt alive, of massacres of harmless citizens, of looting

and filthy outrages....

Mr. Britling did his utmost not to believe these things. They

contradicted his habitual world. They produced horrible strains in his

mind. They might, he hoped, be misreported so as to seem more violent or

less justifiable than they were. They might be the acts of stray

criminals, and quite disconnected from the normal operations of the war.

Here and there some weak-minded officer may have sought to make himself

terrible.... And as for the bombardment of cathedrals and the crime of

Louvain, well, Mr. Britling was prepared to argue that Gothic

architecture is not sacrosanct if military necessity cuts through it....

It was only after the war had been going on some months that Mr.

Britling's fluttering, unwilling mind was pinned down by official

reports and a cloud of witnesses to a definite belief in the grim

reality of systematic rape and murder, destruction, dirtiness and

abominable compulsions that blackened the first rush of the Prussians

into Belgium and Champagne....

They came hating and threatening the lands they outraged. They sought

occasion to do frightful deeds.... When they could not be frightful in

the houses they occupied, then to the best of their ability they were

destructive and filthy. The facts took Mr. Britling by the throat....

The first thing that really pierced Mr. Britling with the conviction

that there was something essentially different in the English and the

German attitude towards the war was the sight of a bale of German comic

papers in the study of a friend in London. They were filled with

caricatures of the Allies and more particularly of the English, and they

displayed a force and quality of passion--an incredible force and

quality of passion. Their amazing hate and their amazing filthiness

alike overwhelmed Mr. Britling. There was no appearance of national

pride or national dignity, but a bellowing patriotism and a limitless

desire to hurt and humiliate. They spat. They were red in the face and

they spat. He sat with these violent sheets in his hands--_ashamed_.

"But I say!" he said feebly. "It's the sort of thing that might come out

of a lunatic asylum...."

One incredible craving was manifest in every one of them. The German

caricaturist seemed unable to represent his enemies except in extremely

tight trousers or in none; he was equally unable to represent them

without thrusting a sword or bayonet, spluttering blood, into the more

indelicate parts of their persons. This was the _leit-motif_ of the war

as the German humorists presented it. "But," said Mr. Britling, "these

things can't represent anything like the general state of mind in

Germany."

"They do," said his friend.

"But it's blind fury--at the dirt-throwing stage."

"The whole of Germany is in that blind fury," said his friend. "While we

are going about astonished and rather incredulous about this war, and

still rather inclined to laugh, that's the state of mind of Germany....

There's a sort of deliberation in it. They think it gives them strength.

They _want_ to foam at the mouth. They do their utmost to foam more.

They write themselves up. Have you heard of the 'Hymn of Hate'?"

Mr. Britling had not.

"There was a translation of it in last week's _Spectator_.... This is

the sort of thing we are trying to fight in good temper and without

extravagance. Listen, Britling!

"_You_ will we hate with a lasting hate;

We will never forgo our hate--

Hate by water and hate by land,

Hate of the head and hate of the hand,

Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown,

Hate of seventy millions, choking down;

We love as one, we hate as one,

We have _one_ foe, and one alone--

ENGLAND!"

He read on to the end.

"Well," he said when he had finished reading, "what do you think of it?"

"I want to feel his bumps," said Mr. Britling after a pause. "It's

incomprehensible."

"They're singing that up and down Germany. Lissauer, I hear, has been

decorated...."

"It's--stark malignity," said Mr. Britling. "What have we done?"

"It's colossal. What is to happen to the world if these people prevail?"

"I can't believe it--even with this evidence before me.... No! I want to

feel their bumps...."

Section 3

"You see," said Mr. Britling, trying to get it into focus, "I have known

quite decent Germans. There must be some sort of misunderstanding.... I

wonder what makes them hate us. There seems to me no reason in it."

"I think it is just thoroughness," said his friend. "They are at war. To

be at war is to hate."

"That isn't at all my idea."

"We're not a thorough people. When we think of anything, we also think

of its opposite. When we adopt an opinion we also take in a provisional

idea that it is probably nearly as wrong as it is right. We

are--atmospheric. They are concrete.... All this filthy, vile, unjust

and cruel stuff is honest genuine war. We pretend war does not hurt.

They know better.... The Germans are a simple honest people. It is

their virtue. Possibly it is their only virtue...."

Section 4

Mr. Britling was only one of a multitude who wanted to feel the bumps of

Germany at that time. The effort to understand a people who had suddenly

become incredible was indeed one of the most remarkable facts in English

intellectual life during the opening phases of the war. The English

state of mind was unlimited astonishment. There was an enormous sale of

any German books that seemed likely to illuminate the mystery of this

amazing concentration of hostility; the works of Bernhardi, Treitschke,

Nietzsche, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, became the material of countless

articles and interminable discussions. One saw little clerks on the way

to the office and workmen going home after their work earnestly reading

these remarkable writers. They were asking, just as Mr. Britling was

asking, what it was the British Empire had struck against. They were

trying to account for this wild storm of hostility that was coming at

them out of Central Europe.

It was a natural next stage to this, when after all it became manifest

that instead of there being a liberal and reluctant Germany at the back

of imperialism and Junkerdom, there was apparently one solid and

enthusiastic people, to suppose that the Germans were in some

distinctive way evil, that they were racially more envious, arrogant,

and aggressive than the rest of mankind. Upon that supposition a great

number of English people settled. They concluded that the Germans had a

peculiar devil of their own--and had to be treated accordingly. That was

the second stage in the process of national apprehension, and it was

marked by the first beginnings of a spy hunt, by the first denunciation

of naturalised aliens, and by some anti-German rioting among the mixed

alien population in the East End. Most of the bakers in the East End of

London were Germans, and for some months after the war began they went

on with their trade unmolested. Now many of these shops were wrecked....

It was only in October that the British gave these first signs of a

sense that they were fighting not merely political Germany but the

Germans.

But the idea of a peculiar malignity in the German quality as a key to

the broad issue of the war was even less satisfactory and less permanent

in Mr. Britling's mind than his first crude opposition of militarism and

a peaceful humanity as embodied respectively in the Central Powers and

the Russo-Western alliance. It led logically to the conclusion that the

extermination of the German peoples was the only security for the

general amiability of the world, a conclusion that appealed but weakly

to his essential kindliness. After all, the Germans he had met and seen

were neither cruel nor hate-inspired. He came back to that obstinately.

From the harshness and vileness of the printed word and the unclean

picture, he fell back upon the flesh and blood, the humanity and

sterling worth, of--as a sample--young Heinrich.

Who was moreover a thoroughly German young German--a thoroughly Prussian

young Prussian.

At times young Heinrich alone stood between Mr. Britling and the belief

that Germany and the whole German race was essentially wicked,

essentially a canting robber nation. Young Heinrich became a sort of

advocate for his people before the tribunal of Mr. Britling's mind. (And

on his shoulder sat an absurdly pampered squirrel.) s fresh, pink,

sedulous face, very earnest, adjusting his glasses, saying "Please,"

intervened and insisted upon an arrest of judgment....

Since the young man's departure he had sent two postcards of greeting

directly to the "Familie Britling," and one letter through the friendly

intervention of Mr. Britling's American publisher. Once also he sent a

message through a friend in Norway. The postcards simply recorded

stages in the passage of a distraught pacifist across Holland to his

enrolment. The letter by way of America came two months later. He had

been converted into a combatant with extreme rapidity. He had been

trained for three weeks, had spent a fortnight in hospital with a severe

cold, and had then gone to Belgium as a transport driver--his father had

been a horse-dealer and he was familiar with horses. "If anything