THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISHWOMAN
"Then he stood up, and trod to dust
Fear and desire, mistrust and trust,
And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,
And bound for sandals on his feet
Knowledge and patience of what must
And what things may be, in the heat
And cold of years that rot and rust
And alter; and his spirit's meat
Was freedom, and his staff was wrought
Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought."
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE,
Prelude, "Songs before Sunrise."
I
When my cousin Greville Hunter-Oakleigh went out with the Expeditionary
Force, Violet made me promise to write and keep him posted in all that
was going on in England. It was not till the end of April that a stray
shrapnel bullet sent him to join the rest of his battery, and in the
intervening nine months I wrote never less than twice a week. After his
death his effects were sent to his mother, and she forwarded me a sealed
packet. I was surprised and not a little touched to find that he had
kept all my letters--grimy, sodden with water and tied up in the
remains of an old puttee, but--so far as I could remember--a complete
series.
It was a strange experience to sit down and read them all over again. I
had written discursively and promiscuously--anything that came into my
head, anything that I thought would amuse him. There was the rumour of
the hour, the joke of the day, an astonishing assortment of other
people's opinions and prophecies, and a make-weight of personalia about
our common friends. So strange did I find my own words that I would have
denied authorship, were it not for the writing. The jokes of the day
died in their day, and the rumours endured until they were contradicted:
I cannot now believe I ever felt the spirits in which I wrote, or
believed the mushroom prophecies that cropped up in the night.
Yet I am glad to have the letters again in my possession. I keep no
diary, and this rambling chronicle has to take its place in showing me
the things we said and did in the first months of the war, not as we
should like to reconstruct them in our wisdom after the event, but as
they were thought or felt or done in all our folly and shortsightedness
and want of perspective. The old world had passed away, and these
letters show me the state of mind in which we sat up for the dawn.
Bertrand and I moved from Princes Gardens to a flat in Queen Anne's
Mansions, and the house, used temporarily for the reception of refugees,
was gradually transformed into a hospital as soon as we obtained
recognition from the War Office. I must insert a parenthesis to express
my admiration for my uncle at this time. In his eightieth year, and, at
the end of a generation of luxurious living, he spent his day raising
funds for the Red Cross, and his evenings as a Special Constable in
Knightsbridge. Like many another he felt that without incessant work the
war would be too much for him.
It is with the coming of the refugees that the letters to my cousin
Greville begin. Every morning we looked at our maps to find the black
line of the German advance thrust an inch or two nearer Paris: wild
stories of incredible cruelties were passed from lip to lip: our flash
of hope at the resistance of Liège died away with the fall of Namur. The
short-memoried Press told us later that we were too resolute to feel
panic or lose heart, but not one man in a hundred believed that our Army
could extricate itself from the German grip. By the rules of war the
retreat from Mons was an impossibility. We were driven to the outskirts
of Paris, the French Government transferred itself to Bordeaux; some
talked of gathering together the fragments on the Pyrenees, others
whispered that the French would make a separate peace.
And scattered before the conqueror like chaff or crawling maimed and
crushed between his feet, came the population of a prosperous and
independent kingdom. Night after night Bertrand and I waited at Charing
Cross or Victoria to meet the refugee trains; we watched the crowded
carriages emptying their piteous burden and saw the dazed, lost look on
the white faces of the draggled, black-clad women. So the slums of San
Francisco may have appeared in her last earthquake: an unreal, nightmare
crowd hurrying to and fro with a child in one arm and a hastily tied
bundle in the other, while the lamps of the station beat down like
limelight on their faces and showed in their eyes the terror that drives
men mad.
The Belgian exodus revealed to England one facet of modern war. Recruits
poured in by the hundred thousand, and hardly a village was too poor to
take upon itself the support of some of the refugees. We listened to the
broken tales of their endurance, and our thoughts went back to the land
they had left. For North France was sharing the fate of Belgium: our
armies retreated and still retreated.... I remember Bertrand pacing up
and down the dining-room and repeating the one word, "Men, Men, Men!"
Then without warning the men seemed found. I left the Admiralty one day
to call on my solicitor with a bundle of O'Rane's papers, but, instead
of discussing business, he said, "What's all this about the Russian
troops? A client of mine in Birmingham tells me there's been an enormous
number of Russians passing through the Midlands. What's it all about?"
I thought for a moment and then asked for an atlas. We had heard
nothing of the story in Whitehall, but the world was apparently humming
with the talk of Russian millions, and an army corps or so flung in to
reinforce our western troops might save the day. Together we traced a
route from Archangel to Scotland.
"What about the ice?" asked my solicitor.
"Where's an encyclopædia?" I demanded excitedly.
To our own perfect conviction we established that Archangel could be
kept ice-free till the end of August or--occasionally--of September. I
left the office and drove down to the Club. On the steps I met Loring in
uniform, with a suitcase in his hand.
"Russians?" he repeated; "I've just come up from Liverpool. All the
traffic's being held up for them. I saw train after train go through
Chester bung full of them."
"You're sure they were Russians?"
"Well, the blinds were down--quite properly. But one train pulled up
alongside of us, and a man in my carriage got out and spoke to them--_in
Russian_. A fellow who used to be our Consul-General in St. Petersburg.
_He_ ought to know."
I went from the Club to the City. The Stock Exchange was still closed,
but I found little clusters of men bareheaded in Throgmorton Street,
rapidly smoking cigarettes and discussing the great news.
"Brother of mine lives near Edinburgh," I heard one man say. "He keeps
four cars, and he's had 'em all commandeered to shift the beggars.
They're Russian troops, right enough. His chauffeur swears to it.
They're sending half down from Edinburgh and the rest from Glasgow, to
equalize the traffic. Fifty thousand, my brother says."
"Oh, I heard a hundred," his companion rejoined. "I've got some
relations at Willesden, and they saw them. Euston was simply packed with
trains, and they were stopping them outside as far as Willesden and
Pinner. My people went out yesterday morning about three o'clock and
gave the fellows something to eat and drink."
My cousin Greville was given the benefit of the Russian theme with all
the variants I could find, and if it served no other purpose it may have
shown him how little title the English people has to the traditional
qualities of sobriety and intelligence. While the rumour ran, I believed
and spread it; and, though the official contradiction came almost as a
personal affront, I console myself with Mr. Justice Templeton's dictum
when we met at the Club a few days later--"There may have been no
Russians, but I've hanged men on flimsier evidence and no doubt I shall
hang them again."
And side by side with the Russian myth came the mutilated Belgian
children and the German secret agents. On a Sunday morning when I was
spending the week-end in Hampshire, word was brought that a Belgian
child was in the next village--a child of five with both hands cut off
at the wrists. Within six hours the same story was told me of seven
different children in as many villages within a ten-mile radius. We were
beckoned on from hamlet to hamlet, always hastening to reach that 'next'
one where the myth had taken its origin. And when we returned, it was to
find an equally intangible neighbour had found his wife's German maid
stealing away under cover of night with a trunk full of marked ordnance
survey maps and suspicious, unintelligible columns of figures. That
atrocities and espionage were practised, I doubt not: the wild,
unsupported stories of those early weeks I take leave to discredit.
From time to time I regaled my cousin with the expert opinions I had
gleaned at fourth hand. At one moment Lloyd's were said to be taking a
premium of £85 to insure against the risk of the war going on after the
thirty-first of March. I invited Greville, appropriately enough, to dine
with me in honour of Peace on 1st April. At another time Sir Adolf
Erckmann was quoted as telling a committee of bankers that German credit
would collapse on 15th November. And once a week a new date was fixed
for the entry of Italy and the Balkan States into the war. The definite,
circumstantial character of the stories was the one feature more amazing
than their infinite variety.
It was long before the financial scare of the early days evaporated.
Everyone seemed to reduce his establishment, cut down his expenses and
perhaps live in only three or four rooms of his house. There was also a
deliberate, if rather sentimental, attempt to live more simply out of
consideration for the hardships of men at the Front. The gourmets of the
Eclectic Club ceased to drink champagne for a while, and the grumblers
gave committee and secretary a rest. There was no entertaining for the
first three months of the war, and when I started dining out again
towards the end of the year I found much talk of "War meals" and "what
we used to do before the war." You would also hear arrangements being
made for the purchase of clothes "on the day peace is signed"--as though
the pangs of asceticism were being quickly felt.
The personal notes in my letters make melancholy reading in retrospect.
Again and again I find such words as, "Have you seen that Summertown has
just been killed?" "Sinclair is home wounded." And, though many pages
were taken up with the names of friends who had taken commissions in one
or other regiment, the list of those who went out never to return grew
longer with every letter. My cousin outlasted all our common
acquaintances with the exception of Loring, Tom Dainton and O'Rane--and
of these three Dainton only survived him nine days.
After reading the last letter in the bundle and reminding myself of our
methods of making war, I could not help wondering what was to be made of
our strange national character. Our pose of indifference and triviality
deceived half Europe into thinking we were too demoralized to fight--and
the history of war has shown no endurance to equal the retreat from
Mons. Girls who had never stained their fingers with anything less
commonplace than ink, found themselves, after a few weeks' training,
established in base hospitals, piecing together the fragments of what
had once been men. The least military race in the world called an army
of millions into existence; and, while the Germans were being flung back
from the Marne, our women had to make shirts for the new troops, and our
colonels advertised in "The Times" for field-glasses to serve out to
their subalterns. As I sat up for the dawn the old problem which Loring
and I had discussed in the window-seat of 93D High Street still
presented itself for solution. Liberty and discipline were not yet
reconciled.
It was towards the end of November that Loring told me, in the course of
luncheon at the Club, that he stood in need of my services to help him
get married.
"There's no point in waiting," he explained. "Vi and I have only got
ourselves to consider; it'll be quite private. If our date suits you,
we'll consider it fixed."
"Is the War Office giving leaves these times?" I asked.
"A week--between jobs. I'm chucking the Staff and joining Val in the
Guards. It's all rot, you know," he went on defensively, as though I
were trying to dissuade him. "I'm as fit to spend my day in a
water-logged trench as anyone out there; and anybody with the brain of a
louse could do my present work. Talking of Valentine, I'm coming to the
conclusion that he's one of the bravest men I've ever met."
"What's he been doing?" I asked.
"Lying awake at night with the thought of having to go out," Loring
answered. "You daren't talk war-talk with him; he's going through hell
at the prospect. But he sticks to it. And he'll probably break down
before he's been out three days--like any number of other fellows. Poor
old Val! I thought it might cheer him up if I got into his battalion."
He sat silent for a moment, drumming with his fingers on the table. "I
say, let's cut all the usual trimmings--if I get killed, I want you to
look after Vi. You'll be her trustee under the settlement, if you'll be
so kind; and, if there are any kids, I should like you to be guardian.
Will you do it? Thanks! Now let's come and get some coffee."
A fortnight later the wedding took place from Loring House. Lady Loring,
Amy, Mrs. Hunter-Oakleigh and I were the only persons present beside the
bride and bridegroom. Loring appeared for the last time in his staff
officer's uniform and shed it with evident relief as soon as we had
lunched. The honeymoon was being spent in Ireland, and, while Violet
changed into her going-away dress, we withdrew to the library for a last
smoke together.
"I am now a married man," he observed thoughtfully.
"I see no outward change," I said.
"No. All the same, it is different. For example, ought married men to
have secrets from their wives?"
"It depends on the secret."
He smoked for a few minutes without speaking and then got up and stood
in front of the fire with his back to me.
"You shall hear it," he said, half turning round, "and I'll be bound by
your decision. I had a call last night from Sonia Dainton."
I raised my eyebrows but said nothing.
"Vi'd been dining here," he went on, "and I'd just seen her home. When I
got back I was told a lady was waiting to see me. I found her in
here--alone. We hadn't met since the engagement was broken off."
He paused and turned his head away again.
"I don't know what _I_ looked like. _She_ was as white as paper. I asked
her to sit down, but she didn't seem to hear me. We neither of us seemed
able to start, but at last she managed to say, in a breathless sort of
fashion, 'You're being married to-morrow. I've come to offer you my best
wishes.' It sounds very conventional as I tell it, but last night ... I
mumbled out some thanks. Then she said, 'I want you to do something for
me.' I said I should be delighted. She hesitated a bit and fidgeted with
her fingers; then she sort of narrowed her eyes--you know the way she
has--and looked me in the face. 'I made your life unbearable for two
years,' she said. 'I'm not going to apologize--it's too late for that
kind of thing. I don't know why I did it; I'm not sure that I saw I
_was_ doing it. I want you to say you'll try to forgive me some day.'"
Loring paused again and then went on as though he were thinking hard. "I
was simply bowled over. Sonia Dainton of all people! I didn't think
she'd got the courage. I couldn't get a word out. She stood there
composed, without a tremor in her voice, only very pale and breathing
rather quickly--I was nearly crying ... the surprise ... the pain,
too.... You know, George, you can't forget things and people who've been
part of your life.... I caught up one of her hands and kissed it. Cold
as ice, it was! 'There's nothing to forgive, Sonia,' I said. 'Oh yes,
there is!' she answered. 'Then God knows I forgive it,' I said. The next
minute she was gone. I found myself sitting on the edge of that table
with my hand over my eyes, and, when I took the hand away, the room was
empty." He turned and faced me again. "Shall I tell that to my wife?"
"No," I advised him.
"I want to do justice to Sonia. I didn't know she'd got it in her."
"I give you my advice for what it's worth," I said.
"But, George, it was magnificent of her.... Why mustn't I tell Vi?"
"You oughtn't to have told me. Is she staying in town?"
"I don't know. We didn't have time for general conversation. Why d'you
ask?"
"I've no idea. I just felt I wanted to go and see her."
"What for?"
"My dear Jim, I haven't the faintest notion. Call it an impulse."
He looked at me interrogatively for a moment. "No, I'm afraid I can't
help."
It was not until the beginning of February that I saw her. I was
returning to dine at the flat in Queen Anne's Mansions when I met her
coming out into the courtyard.
"What brings you here?" I asked.
"I've been seeing your uncle again," she told me. "Again asking for a
job," she added.
"Have you been doing one of these courses?" I asked, remembering that on
a previous occasion Bertrand had been compelled to decline her offer of
assistance.
"I tried, but it was no good," she answered. "I fainted every time at
the sight of blood. Your uncle's going to give me something else to do.
Perhaps I shall see you when I get to work."
The hospital was opened a few days later, but I saw nothing of Sonia
till the middle of March. The Admiralty kept me employed always for six
and sometimes for seven days a week: whenever I could get away on a
Sunday I used to sit in the wards talking to the men, but somehow never
met Sonia, whose activity seemed to range in some other part of the
building. It was not, indeed, till a severe turn of influenza laid me on
my back that she telephoned to know if she might come and sit with me.
"Have you been taking a holiday?" I asked, when she arrived. "I never
see you in Princes Gardens."
"Perhaps you don't look in the right place," she answered; and then
seeing my bed littered with books and papers, "You are surely not trying
to write, are you? You'll smother your sheets in ink. Why don't you
dictate to me if it's anything you're in a hurry for?"
"Oh, any time'll do for this," I said. "Tell me where you're to be found
in the hospital."
"All over the place," she answered, with a rather embarrassed smile.
"I've been in all three wards," I began.
"My dear George, I told you I didn't fly as high as a ward."
"Tell me what you do, Sonia," I said.
She spoke jestingly, but I chose to fancy that it required one effort to
undertake the work and another to talk about it.
"Well, sometimes I carry up trays," she said, "and sometimes I wash up.
And sometimes---- But really, George, this can't interest you. Tell me
what all the books are about."
"I'm trying to straighten out Raney's affairs," I said. "I had no time
till I was laid up."
Sonia dropped her handkerchief and picked it up rather elaborately.
"Is he hard hit--like everyone else?" she inquired casually. "Or perhaps
it's private, I oughtn't to ask."
"I'm afraid it won't be private much longer," I said. "At least--I
oughtn't to say that. I don't know yet."
"You mean--it's a big amount?"
"Roughly, fifteen thousand pounds," I said, referring to the
accountant's letter. "I'm going to talk it over with Bertrand, and we'll
see what we can do. It's such a hopeless time to try and sell
securities, that's the devil of it."
Sonia looked at me reflectively.
"And if you can't raise it, what happens? He goes bankrupt? Everything
he's got together in all these years--all gone?"
"That's about it."
"Um." She got up and began drawing on her gloves. "Well, I suppose he'll
survive it--like other people. I must go, George. How much longer are
they going to keep you in bed? Over Sunday? I can come and see you then;
it's my afternoon out. Don't try to write any more. I'll do it for you.
You ought to lie down and go to sleep; I'm afraid I've tired you."
"Indeed you haven't. And I've only got one more letter. I always write
to Raney on Thursday."
"Well, I shan't offer to do _that_ for you," she said, with a touch of
hardness in her tone. "Good-bye till Sunday."
I wrote my letter and composed myself for the night. One habit clung to
Raney in peace and war, sunshine and rain: he was the worst
correspondent in either hemisphere. Sometimes a friend would report
meeting him in Bangkok or Pernambuco or Port Sudan; sometimes a total
stranger would bring me a message from Mexico City; sometimes he would
arrive in person, expressing surprise that I should wonder what had
become of him. I should have pardoned his laxity were it not that like
all other bad correspondents he felt aggrieved if his friends omitted to
write to him. So I wrote and received no answer: every Thursday half an
hour was set religiously aside for him, and every morning for a time I
scanned the casualty lists for news of a graver kind.
Sonia was as good as her word and arrived on Sunday in time for tea. We
talked at random for a while, and then when one subject was exhausted
and I was casting about for another, she remarked without warning:
"I say, we've always been pretty good friends, haven't we, George? I
wonder why. I suppose we've always been distressingly candid to each
other."
"You've told me some things about yourself that still surprise me," I
said, thinking of her account of the motor tour with Webster.
"I expect they'd surprise _me_ if I could remember them," she answered,
with a return to her old manner. "D'you think you understand me?"
"God forbid!" I exclaimed.
"Well, will you oblige me by not trying to understand what I'm going to
tell you?"
"When you're as full of influenza as I am that's not difficult."
She looked at me for a moment, and her cheeks grew very red.
"Look here," she said, "for reasons of my own, I don't want David made
bankrupt."
She paused and I nodded.
"I haven't got fifteen thousand pounds or fifteen thousand pence. And I
can't raise it, either. But I can do something if other people will
help. If I find six thousand, can you or anybody else find the rest?"
"My dear Sonia," I said, "the whole thing's arranged. I talked to
Bertrand on Friday, and he's putting up the whole sum."
"The whole sum?" she repeated, and there was dismay in her tone; then
more hopefully, "But can he afford it?"
"It's not convenient," I said. "Very few people _would_ find it
convenient at a time like this, but he can do it."
"But that means he'll have to sell things, doesn't it? And you said it
was a bad time for selling."
I shrugged my shoulders. "That can't be helped. None of us carries
thousands loose in his pockets."
Sonia poured herself out another cup of tea.
"He surely needn't sell the whole fifteen thousand," she urged. "I've
told you I can do something."
"That only means _you_'ll have to sell, and--forgive me, Sonia--I
expect your people have been hit too."
"But it isn't their money, it's mine!" she exclaimed impatiently. "And I
_have_ sold already. You say people don't carry thousands loose in their
pockets, but I'm afraid I do."
Her hand dived into the bag on her wrist and produced a cheque for six
thousand and a few odd pounds. I tried to decipher the signature.
"Who are Gregory and Mantell?" I asked.
"'Gregory and Maunsell,'" she corrected me.
"Of Bond Street? Have you been selling your jewellery, Sonia?"
"Just a few old things I didn't want," she answered airily.
I looked at the cheque and then at her. She was wearing neither ring nor
brooch nor bracelet. Even her little gold watch was gone from her wrist.
"I'll accept the cheque," I said, "with all the pleasure in life."
"There's a condition," she stipulated. "You must never tell a living
soul----"
I handed the cheque back to her.
"I won't take it on these terms."
"But you must!"
"I'm afraid no power on earth can compel me. I insist on complete
liberty to tell the whole world, or keep it to myself--just as I think
fit."
She looked at me for a moment, and her voice softened. "I think you
might do this for me," she said.
I shook my head.
"Oh, all right!" She walked across the room and bent over the fire with
the cheque in one hand and the poker in the other.
I raised myself on my elbow.
"If you burn that cheque, Sonia ..."
She turned a flushed and angry face on me.
"It's mine. I can do what I like with it!"
"Unquestionably. My uncle also is mine. If you burn that cheque, I
shall advise Bertrand to take no further steps to help Raney."
She came back from the fire and stood by my bedside, with an expression
of mingled perplexity and stubbornness on her face.
"I think you're a perfect beast, George," she said.
I held out my hand for the cheque.
II
It was at the end of this month or the beginning of April that Loring's
battalion went to the Front. They had, like almost everyone else, had
one or two false alarms, but this time the order was not countermanded.
After taking leave of his wife he hurried up to town and dined with me
his last night in England.
"According to the statistics I've got about another sixteen days of
life," he observed, as we left the Admiralty and walked along the Mall
to the Club. "Second Lieutenants seem to last as much as a fortnight
sometimes."
"Then I hope you'll get rapid promotion," I said. "The sooner you cease
to be a Second Lieutenant the better."
He laughed a little bitterly.
"My dear George, it's only a question of time. I may get wounded, of
course, but otherwise all this year's vintage will be destroyed. You've
been snatching at straws of hope--the Russian steam-roller, the Italian
diversion in the south, the starvation of Germany, the socialist
revolution, the smash up of credit ... what's the latest? Oh, the
capture of Constantinople. That's not going to end the war. You'll only
get peace by killing Germans, and they'll kill as many of you as you
kill of them. The people who may possibly survive will be the fellows
who enlist about two years hence. If you've got a cigarette, I'll steal
it."
I handed him my case.
"You're tolerably cheerful about it," I remarked.
As he paused to light the cigarette, the flare of the match showed
nothing but an expression of mild boredom.
"I'm neither one thing nor the other," he said. "I simply don't think
about the war, it's too absurd! Millions of men, thousands of millions
of money, chucked away in a night. And why? Because Germans breed like
rabbits, scamper outside their own country and want still to be called
Germans; and we won't let 'em. There's no quarrel between individual
Germans and individual British--or wasn't, till they made swine of
themselves in Belgium. It's the stupidest war in history. However, we're
in and we must come out on top, otherwise our wives and sisters will be
cut open. Hallo! here's the Club." He flung away his cigarette and stood
for a moment looking up at the lighted doorway. "I wonder if I shall
ever come _here_ again?"
"Many times, I hope," said I, and with an indulgent smile he accompanied
me in to dinner.
As we went upstairs to the smoking-room an hour later he told me--what
indeed I had already heard from my sister Beryl--that Violet was
expecting a child.
"I hope it's a boy," he said, cutting his cigar with a good deal of
deliberation. "They have the best time--or did in the old days. I wonder
what your new After-the-War world is going to be like. You're a lucky
man, George; you'll have known life before _and_ after the Flood; you'll
be able to tell the kid what sort of animal his father was." He handed
me a match and then lit his own cigar. "Jove, we've known each other a
devil of a long time, George."
"And an uncommon good time it was. We haven't seen the end of it yet."
He seemed to think the point hardly worth contesting and paced
restlessly to and fro, until he came to a standstill by the window.
"Come here, George," he said, after a moment's contemplation of the
scene without.
I crossed the room and looked into the darkened street. A shaded lamp
threw its foggy circle of light on to the pavement and house-front of
the opposite side. A party of men and girls were walking down the road
with arms linked: as they came under the light the left-flank man
shouted, "Left wheel!" and the line swung round on to the pavement and
stood marking time before a row of recruiting posters pasted against the
wall. Two of the men were in uniform, three in mufti; all were
hilarious, and, as the line wheeled back and resumed the march down the
street, the sound of an untuneful voice, encouraged by shrill,
unrestrained laughter, floated up to the window.
"It's a long, long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's--right there."
Loring let fall the blind and returned to his chair.
"England at war!" he remarked.
"Try to understand the people you're dealing with," I said. "A million
men have enlisted to that tune."
"I'm not complaining. I dislike all popular songs. 'Lillibullero' drove
my king out of Ireland, and the 'Marseillaise' drove the Church out of
France. Democracy in the ascendant has a taste for songs, and I don't
like democracy in the ascendant. But that's all by the way. I'm thinking
of the comedy of life--Germany with her 'Wacht am Rhein' prodding her
soldiers into battle with a bayonet, and ourselves with our own methods.
A pretty scene, you know: five men and four women--all drunk. Three of
the men plastered with the penny flags of the patriotic life, two of
them actually in uniform and ready to uphold the neutrality of Belgium
and avenge Louvain--who'd _heard_ of Louvain before it was sacked?--the
women all drunk on a separation allowance. And they stand nine abreast,
shouting a music-hall song and looking at a poster that says, 'Women of
England, is your best boy in khaki?' If you're fool enough ever to
fight, I suppose you're doubly a fool for trying to keep some dignity in
the business." He sighed perplexedly. "I dare say it's no worse than the
'Wacht am Rhein' and the bayonet--material absolutism against uneducated
democracy."
"Is there anything in the world you think worth fighting for?" I asked,
as I handed him his coffee.
"Any ideal."
"The democracy won't always be uneducated."
"It will as long as you and I have anything to do with it," he answered.
"As a caste we're played out, George, and our only hope of power is to
keep people's stomachs full and their heads empty. For God's sake don't
perpetrate the hypocrisy of imagining we're an intelligenza with those
posters in sight. I've been thinking a bit in camp lately, George."
"Do you fire these views off in mess?" I asked.
"To a handful of schoolboys who think war's the greatest fun in the
world? No! But it makes you think when you see a pasty-faced clerk
dragged from his office-stool, given a chest, turned into a man and then
flung across the Channel to be blown limb from limb. I don't think it's
worth it unless we've got some ideal--hardly worth praying to be
'slightly wounded,' which, I understand, is the ambition of every man
over thirty. I see the opportunity, but I don't see anyone ready to
grasp it."
"A lot depends on the length of the war," I suggested.
I had in mind the lessons of South Africa and the incorrigible buoyancy
of the English temperament. If the war ended in a week, there would be
found jaunty spirits to explain that their victory was won without
preparation, all in the day's work, that they had pottered over to the
Front to kill time before the opening of the London Season. In their
rush back to the old life they would be accompanied by everyone who
boasted what he would do or buy a drink on the day peace was signed. A
longer war with its swelling casualty lists might chasten the temper of
England, or equally it might provoke a Merveilleuses reaction and set
men harking back to the fashions of "the good old days" before the
fourth of August.
"It's a gloomy look out either way," said Loring when we parted that
night. "Good-bye old man. We meet in heaven if not before."
Three days later I received a call from Sonia. Since my bout of
influenza she had formed the habit of coming in three or four times a
week when her work at the hospital was over, and we used to talk for an
hour and exchange letters from friends and relations at the Front. On
this occasion she arrived earlier than her wont and sent a message that
she wished to see me at once. Hurriedly finishing my dressing, I went in
and found her standing in front of the fire, very pale and with eyes red
with weeping.
"I hope nothing's wrong ..." I began.
She gave a little choking sob and stumbled into my arms.
"Tom's killed!" she cried.
"Sonia!"
She nodded convulsively. "Father's just heard from the War Office. He
wired to me. It was two days ago."
I led her to a sofa and tried to say something that would not sound too
hackneyed. Tom and I had drifted apart, but for five years we had shared
a study at school, and I knew the loss that his death would bring to the
family. The Dainton history, as I read it, was one of successive
failures. With the accepted ingredients of happiness in their
possession, Sir Roger had never been allowed to live the unobtrusive
country life of his ambition, Lady Dainton never quite achieved the
social conquest of her dreams, Tom had married a wife who disappointed
his parents, and Sonia had not married at all. The only one who seemed
to get the best out of existence was Sam, equally at home with his
regiment in India and in London, and entirely unaffected by the
pretentious schemings of Crowley Court.
"I want you to lend me some money," Sonia went on, as the first passion
of weeping spent itself. "I haven't enough to get home, and I want to be
with mummie."
I emptied my note case on to the table.
"Have you dined?" I asked.
She shook her head as though the mention of food nauseated her, but I
insisted on her eating a cutlet and drinking a little wine. When my
uncle came in, she made an effort to calm herself and, as we drove to
Waterloo and travelled down to Melton, she was able to speak composedly
of the days of twenty years before when we played and fought together in
our school holidays.
"You're going to be brave, Sonia?" I asked, as the train steamed into
the station.
"I shan't cry any more," she promised, giving my hand a little squeeze.
"And you will give your mother some message of sympathy from me?"
"But you're coming up to the house?"
"You'll both find it easier to meet if I'm not there," I said. "There's
a train back soon after one."
She flung her arm suddenly round my neck.
"George, I feel I was always such a beast to him!" she whispered.
A day or two later the official announcement appeared in the Press, and
within a fortnight a less than usually belated dispatch gave an account
of the fighting in which he had met his end. A British trench had been
lost, regained and once more lost. As our troops fell back the first
time, Captain Dainton stayed to assist a wounded subaltern, and it was
as the two struggled from the trench into the open that a bullet passed
through Tom's heart. Thanks to his assistance, the subaltern, Lieutenant
Longton, had regained the British lines, and the name of Captain Dainton
was included in the list of recommendations at the end of the dispatch.
Sonia came round the same evening and asked me to accompany her the
following Sunday to a private hospital in Portland Place. Longton had
been invalided home and was anxious to see any relations of the man who
had saved his life. Lady Dainton had already called, but Sonia wanted a
first-hand account of her brother's last engagement.
We were unable to add very much to the information given us in the
dispatch. It was an affair of seconds--an arm stretched out, a hoist on
to the shoulders, a few yards zigzag running, a sudden fall. Longton had
crawled back on all fours to his own trench, with a rain of bullets
piercing his clothes and furrowing the earth all round him.
"Are you badly hit?" I asked him, when his story was told.
There was a bandage round his head, but he seemed in the finest health
and spirits.
"It just touched the skull," he told me. "I think I must have had a
moment of concussion. I remember feeling a twenty-ton weight hit me on
the top of the head, then a complete blank. The next thing was the
feeling that I was being picked up, and I found myself being trotted
back with my arms round Dainton's neck. I was perfectly all right by the
time I got back to our reserve trench and when the counter-attack
started I went along with the rest of them. It was only when we'd been
beaten back a second time that I thought I'd better be cleaned up before
I got any dirt into the wound."
"Are you in much pain?" Sonia asked.
"I get a bit of a headache sometimes, but I feel as fit as ten men.
That's what makes it so sickening to lie here. I want to go out again."
He was a good-looking, fair-haired boy of nineteen, with blue eyes and a
ready smile. His face, neck and hands were tanned deep brown with
exposure to the sun and wind. He gave me the impression of not having a
nerve in his body.
"As you _want_ to get back," I said, "there's no harm in my telling you
you're the first man I've heard say that."
The smile died from his eyes and his whole expression hardened.
"I want to kill some more of the beggars," he said, "before I can die
happy." He broke off suddenly with an unexpected laugh. "Lord! if my
father heard me! I'm the son of a parson, you know; I'm supposed to be
taking orders some time or other. But first of all I must get level over
your brother, Miss Dainton, and another man."
"Who's the other man?" Sonia asked. "I may know him if he was a friend
of my brother's."
"Oh, he wasn't in our battalion at all. When we got to the reserve
trenches I found him sitting very comfortably on someone else's
overcoat: he'd lost his way in the retreat and seemed inclined to stay
with us. I didn't mind--we were too much thinned out for that; besides,
I couldn't make out if he'd been hit or what, he was staring all about
him and jumping at every sound. I think he must have been wounded,
'cause when we started our counter-attack he staggered out and came a
cropper over the wire and everything else. Awful plucky thing to do, you
know; some of our fellows weren't half keen on attacking--nerve a bit
shaken, you know. I gave the order, and for a second or two nothing
happened. Then this chap shouted out, 'Come on, you men!' and went over
the top of the trench like a two-year-old. The others followed after
that, but I couldn't drag them out, myself. The fellow must have been
pretty bad from the way he kept going over. I tried to send him back,
but it was no use."
"Was he killed?" I asked, as Longton paused.
"I'm not sure it wasn't worse. We got dear old Seven Dials----"
"Got _what_?" I asked.
"That was the name of the trench," Longton explained. "We held it for a
bit, and then the Bosches shelled us out again. They got hold of this
chap, and when we made our second counter-attack that evening we found
him hanging from the supports of a dug-out, with his feet six inches off
the ground and a bayonet through either hand. Crucified." He drew breath
and burst out with concentrated fury, "My _God_! those devils!... I was
in hospital by that time; I never saw him. If I had ...! We met on the
ambulance train, and he was raving with delirium. I did what I could for
the poor brute.... He was too bad; I couldn't make out what he wanted."
He sat up in bed with blazing eyes, as the picture repainted itself in
his memory, then with a sudden shiver seemed to recall where he was.
"I'm sorry, Miss Dainton. These are the things one's supposed to forget
when one comes back to England. But--well, it might have been me but for
your brother, and I'm going to make somebody pay for it."
"But--what happened to him?" Sonia asked, with horror in her eyes.
"Where is he?"
Longton shook his head.
"I should think it's long odds he's dead. All the way back to Boulogne
he was raving ... oh, Lord! Here comes the sister! It's all right
Sister; I'm not getting excited!"
Sonia bade him good-bye and clutched my arm until we got out into the
street.
III
As soon as Longton was well enough to be allowed out of the hospital, I
arranged one or two small parties to keep him amused till the time came
for his next medical board. Sonia would not dine in public so soon after
her brother's death, but we all met on one occasion at the flat, on
another I took Longton to the Carlton, and on yet another Bertrand
insisted on our both dining with him at the Club and spending the
evening at a music-hall.
Longton enjoyed everything and was only disappointed because I sent him
home to bed each night at eleven-thirty instead of going on to a night
club. I cannot say that a trying day's work at the Admiralty in the
middle of a war is the best or even a good preparation for appreciating
the lighter relaxations of London. Frankly, I was not sorry when
Longton, with a wry face, departed to the parental vicarage in
Worcestershire.
It was Bertrand who seemed to derive the most lasting, if also the
grimmest, satisfaction from our bout of mild dissipation.
"When the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be," he murmured, as we
put Longton into a taxi on the last night and dispatched him to
Paddington. "August to April. The war's only been going on eight months,
George."
"'Only'?"
"The Devil's almost well again. I don't see him ordering his cowl and
sandals."
I knew quite well what he meant, for in the first week of August we had
dined together at the Eclectic Club and marvelled at the new spirit of
uncomplaining frugality in unexpected quarters. By April the grumblers
grumbled again and no longer attempted to live as simply as soldiers
under fire.
"We were quite sorry for the Belgians," my uncle went on. "We couldn't
do too much for them; they were the one topic of conversation----"
"They're still that," I said.
"Yes. Women who have not seen their husbands killed or their daughters
violated can always raise a laugh by saying, 'How are _your_ Belgian
atrocities getting on? I _can_'t get my creatures to take baths.'"
Bertrand heaved a sigh. "So the great nations of the world help the
weak. I'm glad they keep the streets darkened--we must have something to
remind us we're at war. And of course we can't get alcohol after ten."
"Unless you know the manager personally," I said, "or call it by another
name."
Bertrand linked his arm in mine and leaned on my shoulder.
"George, there are moments when I think we deserve to be beaten," he
said. "Not the fellows who are fighting--they ought to win, they _will_
win. But it would be a rough-and-ready poetic justice if they marched to
Berlin to find the German Army had gone up in air-ships and was wiping
out the people at home. I wouldn't mind driving about with a light to
show 'em where to go. We'd clear out a few politicians first--fellows
who are trying to grab Cabinet rank out of the turmoil of the war, other
fellows who are using the war as an excuse for fomenting some dirty
conspiracy to attack a class or push a nostrum thrice-damned in times of
peace. And we'd clear out the Press. And the strike leaders. And the
women who flutter about in Red Cross uniforms and high-heeled patent
leather shoes seeking whom they may devour."
"I could spare the Erckmann group," I added.
"It takes more than a war to drive _them_ out of the limelight," said my
uncle. "I had supper at the Empire Hotel the other night, and they were
all there--Erckmann (by the way, he calls himself Erskine now) and Mrs.
Welman and that fellow Pennington _et illud genus omne_."
"I thought they were running a hospital near Boulogne," I said. "There
was some scandal or other in connexion with it."
Bertrand nodded. "The authorities don't allow anybody to go to it now,
so there's nothing for the promoters to do but come back to England. I
met Mrs. Welman as I was putting on my coat, and she said, 'Isn't this
war dreadful? There'll be no Season this year.' I said to her, 'Mrs.
Welman, the saddest thing about this war is the number of people who
haven't been killed.'"
As we turned into St. James's Park, Bertrand paused and swept his arm
demonstratively round.
"Little has been left of the London I knew as a boy," he said--"or of
the England, or the world, for that matter. It's all changed--except
Man. I'm old, George: devilish near eighty. Half a century ago, when I
was your age, I used to think we were moving slowly upwards; our laws,
our sports, our whole attitude of mind, everything seemed to be becoming
more humane. Bless my soul! I went to cockfights when I was a youngster!
And I've seen men hanged in public outside Newgate.... When the war came
I watched my ideals being blown away like cobwebs over the mouth of a
gun.... I--I outgrew that phase. And though there was a reaction and I
thought I saw the country sobering, hang me if I haven't outgrown that
phase too! If we non-combatants can't keep the promises we made to
ourselves eight short months ago ... is it only want of imagination,
George?... There's but one person I see much whose life has been changed
by the war--and I don't know how long it will last there. You know your
friend Miss Dainton washes saucepans and cleans grates?"
"And a number of other things," I said.
"Her brother's death----"
"It began before that, Bertrand."
"I believe it did. She's got pluck, that girl. I shall be sorry to lose
her."
"Is she leaving the hospital?"
He nodded.
"She's strained her heart. Nothing serious, but she's got to rest. As
soon as I can get someone to take her place she's leaving me. Well,
she's the one and pretty well the only one. George, I can't believe the
people of this country is the rotten stuff it pretends to be!"