CHAPTER XIII_Non-combatants and Others

ALIX, NICHOLAS, AND WEST

Nicholas, coming in ten minutes later, found Alix lying in his cane

chair, limp and white and sick.

'My dear,' he said after a glance, 'you seem very ill. You prescribe,

and I'll see if West has any in his medicine cupboard.'

'Sal-volatile, perhaps,' Alix murmured, and he went to find some. When

he came back, she was sitting up, with a more pulled-together air. She

sipped the sal-volatile, and gave him a dim, crooked smile.

'It's my feelings really, you know, not my body. It's only that I'm ...

shocked to death.'

Nicholas stood, short and square, with his back to the fire, looking

down on her with his small, keen, observant eyes.

'What's shocked you?'

'Me myself,' said Alix, forcing an unconcerned grin. 'Alone I did it.'

'What on earth's the matter, Alix?' asked Nicholas after a pause. 'Or

don't you want to talk about it?'

It wasn't his experience of his sister, who he had always known of a

certain exterior and cynical hardness where the emotions were concerned,

that she ever wanted to 'talk about it.' But this evening she seemed

queer, unlike herself, unstrung.

'Talking doesn't matter now,' said Alix, still swung between flippancy

and tears. 'All the talking that matters is done already.... Basil has

gone away, Nicky. He'll perhaps never come back.'

'Oh, he will. Basil does.' Nicholas looked away from her, down at the

fire.

'Yes,' said Alix. 'I expect he's sure to.... I told him I cared for

him,' she went on, in her clear, thin, indifferent voice, emptied of

emotion. 'He doesn't care for me, you know. He pretended he hadn't

understood. He pretended so hard that he broke your pipe. I was to tell

you he was sorry about it--no, that he was glad, I think....' Her voice

changed suddenly; anguish shook it. 'Can you make it any less bad,

Nicky?' There was a pause, while Nicholas, resting his arm on the

chimney-piece, stared down into the fire. He and Alix, like many

brothers and sisters, had always had a shyness about them about intimate

things. They were both naturally reserved; both fought shy of emotion as

far as they could. They were, in some ways, very like. Despair had

broken down Alix's reserve; Nicholas put his aside and considered her

case in his detached way, as if it were a mathematical problem.

'Bad?' he repeated, weighing the word. 'Well, the fact is bad, of

course--that you care and he doesn't. There's no altering that. It's his

fault, of course, for caring himself once and leaving off. Well, anyhow,

there it is. He's the poorer by it, not you.... But the other part--your

telling him--isn't bad. It was merely the truth; and it's simpler and

often more sensible to tell the truth about what one feels. I wouldn't

mind that, if I were you. Don't bring absurdities of sex etiquette into

it. They're mere conventions, after all; silly, petty, uncivilised

conventions. Aren't they?'

'Perhaps,' said Alix dully. 'I don't know.'

'Well, I do. Telling the truth is all right. It oughtn't to make things

worse.'

'No,' said Alix. 'It does, you know.'

Nicholas, giving the subject the attention of his careful mind, knew it

did. He couldn't theorise that away.

'Well,' he said at last, slowly, 'if it does, you might quite truly look

at the whole thing as a mental case; a case of nervous breakdown. The

war's playing the devil with your nerves--that's what it means. You do

things and feel things and say things, I dare say, that you wouldn't

have once, but that you can scarcely help now. You're only one of many,

you know--one of thousands. The military hospitals are full of them; men

who come through plucky and grinning but with their nerves shattered to

bits. There are the people, like Terry and plenty more, who come through

mentally undamaged, their balance not apparently upset, and the people

like John (at least I rather guessed so when I saw him) and thousands

more, who--well, who don't.... War's such an insane, devilish thing; its

hoofs go stamping over the world, trampling and breaking.... O Lord!

I've seen so much of it; it meets one all over the place. It makes one

simply sick. This affair of yours is nothing to some things I've come

upon lately.... West says the same, you know. Of course, as a parson, he

sees much more of people, in that way, than I do. He says lots of the

quite nice, decent women he visits have taken to getting drunk at the

pubs; partly they're better off than they were, of course, but it's

mostly just nerves. You don't drink at pubs, do you?'

'Not come to it yet,' said Alix.

'Well, you're lucky. I consider you're jolly lucky, considering the

state you've been in for some time, to have done nothing worse yet than

to have told a man you've every right to care for that you care for

him.'

Alix was crying now, quietly.

'And I have done worse things, too.... I tried to get him back from

Evie. I told her he didn't really care for her--that he had been just

the same with me. Oh, I know he did care for me a little, of course,

but--' she choked on a laugh, 'he didn't behave as he does with Evie, a

bit....'

'Probably not,' Nicholas admitted.

'Well, there you are; I behaved like a cad about it. That's worse than

drinking at pubs--much worse. It's even worse than telling him I

cared.... What can I do about it, Nicky? Is that part of the war disease

too?'

'Certainly,' said Nicholas promptly. 'Precisely the same thing, and

bears out all I was saying. And, as you remark, much worse than drinking

at pubs.... Sorry, but it does prove my case, you know. You don't do

that sort of thing in peace time, at least, do you?' he added with

impartial curiosity.

'I've forgotten about peace time.... No, I don't think I used to....

Suppose I shall have to tell Evie,' Alix added morosely. 'Though she

doesn't care for him, a bit.... What a bore.... All right, Nicky; I'll

try to look at myself as a mental case.... And what's left is that Basil

has gone.... I love him, you know, extraordinarily. I--Oh, Nicky, I love

him, I love him, I love him.' She passionately sobbed for a time.

Nicholas stood silent, thinking, till she lay back exhausted and quiet.

'I'm sorry,' she said huskily. 'I won't cry any more. That's all.'

Nicholas was looking at her consideringly.

'I wonder,' he murmured, 'what the best remedy for you is. Something

that takes your whole thoughts, I fancy, you want. Of course there's the

School. But it doesn't seem altogether to work. Some strong

counter-interest to the war, you want.'

'To take me outside myself,' Alix amplified for him. 'Perhaps you'd like

me to collect bus tickets or lost cats or something, to distract my

mind, Nicky dear.'

'I think not. Your mind, I should say, is distracted enough already. You

need to collect that, rather than bus tickets or cats.... To me it seems

a pity you should live at Violette. I think you should stop that.'

Alix said apathetically, 'I don't think it much matters where I live. I

can't live at Wood End. It's all war and war-work there, and I should go

mad--even madder than now. I might drink at pubs.... I thought Violette

would be a rest, because they none of them care about the war really, a

bit; but it isn't a rest any more. Ever since Paul ... I've known one

can't really put the war away out of one's mind: it can't be done. It's

hurting too many people too badly; it's no use trying to pretend it

isn't there and go on as usual. I can't. I can't even paint decently; my

work's simply gone to pot.'

'Sure to,' Nicholas agreed.

'I believe,' said Alix, 'it's jealousy that's demoralising me most.

Jealousy of the people who can be _in_ the beastly thing.... Oh, I do so

want to go and fight.... How can you not try to go, Nicky? I can't

understand that. Though of course you wouldn't get passed.

'It's quite easy,' returned Nicholas. 'I don't approve of joining in

such things.'

'But I want to go and help to end it.... Oh, it's rotten not being able

to; simply rotten.... Why _shouldn't_ girls? I can't bear the sight of

khaki; and I don't know whether it's most because the war's so beastly

or because I want to be in it.... It's both.... Oh bother, why were we

born at a time like this, as Kate calls it?'

'We weren't. The late 'eighties and early 'nineties were very different.

They probably unfitted us for the Sturm und Drang of the twentieth

century. Though, if you come to that, there was plenty of Sturm und

Drang in our own country at that period, as usual.... I suppose Poles

have no right to look for peace.... O Lord, how good it would be to see

Germany and Russia exterminate each other altogether! I believe I'd

cheat my way into the army and fight, if I thought I could help in

that.'

'I dare say we shall see it, if this war goes on much longer.... I've

been wondering lately,' went on Alix, 'if there isn't a third way in war

time. Not throwing oneself into it and doing jobs for it, in the way

that suits lots of people; I simply can't do that. And not going on as

usual and pretending it's not there, because that doesn't work.

Something _against_ war, I want to be doing, I think. Something to fight

it, and prevent it coming again.... I suppose mother thinks she's doing

that.'

'She does,' said Nicholas. 'Undoubtedly. I'm not sure I agree with her,

but that's a detail. She _thinks_ she's doing it.... Well, I gather

she'll be home very soon now.'

'And I suppose Mr. West thinks he's doing it, doesn't he--fighting war,

I mean, with his Church and things.'

'Yes, West thinks so too. Again, I don't particularly agree with his

methods, but that's his aim.'

'You don't particularly agree with any methods, do you?'

'No; I think they're mostly pretty rotten. And in this case I believe,

personally, we're up against a hopeless proposition. West calls it the

devil, and is bound by his profession to believe it will be eventually

overcome. I'm not bound to believe that any evil or lunacy will be

overcome; it seems to me at least an open question. Some have been, of

course; others have scarcely lessened in the course of these several

million years. However, as West remarks, the world, no doubt, is still

young. One should give it time. Anyhow, one has to; no other course is

open to us, however poor a use we may think it puts the gift to....

That's West, I think. Hullo, West; we've been talking about you. We were

discussing your incurable optimism.'

West looked tired. He shook hands with Alix and sat down by the window.

Alix did not feel it mattered that he should see she had been crying,

because clergymen, who visit the unfortunate, the ill-bred, the

unrestrained, must every day see so many people who have been crying

that they would scarcely notice.

'Incurable,' West repeated, and the crisp edge of his voice was

flattened and dulled by fatigue. 'Well, I hope it is. There are moments

when one sees a possible cure looming in the distance.'

'I was saying,' said Nicholas, 'that you're bound, by your profession,

to believe in the final vanquishing of the devil.'

'I believe I am,' West assented, without joy. 'I believe so.'

He cogitated over it for a moment, and added, 'But the devil's almost

too stupid to be vanquished. He's an animal; a great brainless beast,

stalking through chaos. He's got a hide like a rhinoceros, and a mind

like an escaped idiot: you don't know where to have him. He drags people

into his den and sits on them ... it's too beastly.... He wallows in his

native mud, full of appetites and idiot dreams, and his idiot dreams

become fact, and people make wars ... and get drunk. There are men and

women and babies tight all about the streets this evening. Saturday

night, you know.... Sorry to be depressing,' he added, more in his usual

alert manner; 'it's a rotten thing to be in these days.... The fog's bad

outside.'

Alix rose to go, and West stood up too. For a moment the three stood

looking at each other in the fog-blurred, firelit room, dubious,

questioning, grave, like three travellers who have lost their way in a

strange country and are groping after paths in the dark.... Nicholas

spoke first.

'That's your bell, isn't it, West? You two could walk together as far as

Gray's Inn Road.'

Nicholas lit the gas and settled down to write.

Alix and West went down the stairs and out into Fleet Street, and the

city in the fog was as black as a wood at night.

Alix thought, 'Christians must mind. Clergymen must mind awfully. It's

their business that's being spoilt. It's their job to make the world

better: they must mind a lot, and they can't fight either,' and saw

West's face, tired and preoccupied, in the darkness at her side.

'War Extra. 'Fishul. Bulgarian Advance. Fall of Kragujevatz,' cried a

newsboy, as best he could.

'It'll be all up with Serbia presently,' said West. 'Going under fast. A

wipe out, like Belgium, I suppose.... And we look at it from here and

can't do anything to stop it. Pretty rotten, isn't it?' His voice was

bitter.

'If we could go out there and try,' said Alix, 'we shouldn't feel so

bad, should we?'

He shook his head.

'No: not so bad. War's beastly and abominable to the fighters: but not

to be fighting is much more embittering and demoralising, I believe.

Probably largely because one has more time to think. To have one's

friends in danger, and not to be in danger oneself--it fills one with

futile rage. Combatants are to be pitied; but non-combatants are of all

men and women the most miserable. Older men, crocks, parsons, women--God

help them.'

'Yes,' Alix agreed, on the edge of tears again.

Then West seemed to pull himself up from his despondency.

'But really, of course, they've a unique opportunity. They can't be

fighting war abroad; but they can be fighting it at home. That's what

it's up to us all to do now, I'm firmly convinced, by whatever means we

each have at our command. We've all of us some. We've got to use them.

The fighting men out there can't; they're tied. Some of them never can

again.... It's up to us.... Good-bye, Miss Sandomir: my way is along

there.'

They parted at the corner of Gray's Inn Road. Alix saw him swallowed up

in black fog, called by his bell, going to his church to fight war by

the means he had at his command.

She got into her bus and went towards Violette, where no one fought

anything at all, but where supper waited, and Mrs. Frampton was anxious

lest she should have got lost in the fog.

PART III

DAPHNE

CHAPTER XIV

DAPHNE AT VIOLETTE

Daphne Sandomir was in the train between Cambridge and King's Cross. She

was always very busy in trains, as, indeed, everywhere else. On this

journey she was correcting the proofs of the chapter (Chapter IV.,

Education of the Children) which she was contributing to a volume by

seven authors, shortly to appear, to be entitled alliteratively _Is

Permanent Peace Possible_? and to come to the conclusion that it was.

Daphne Sandomir's interest in many things had always been so keen that

before the war you could not have picked out one as absorbing her more

than a score of others. She had been used to write pamphlets and address

meetings on most of them: eurhythmics, for instance, and eugenics, and

the economic and constitutional position of women, and sweated

industries, and baby creches, and suggestion healing, and health food,

and clean milk, and twenty other of the causes good people have at

heart.

Then had come the war, an immense and horribly surprising shock, to

which her healthy and vigorous mind, not shattered like some, had

reacted in new forms of energy.

There were in England no ladies more active through that desperate time

than Daphne Sandomir and her sister Eleanor Orme; but their activities

were for the most part different. Mrs. Orme was secretary of a Red Cross

hospital, superintended canteens, patrolled camps, relieved and

entertained Belgians and dealt them out clothes, was the soul of Women's

Work Committees, made body-belts, respirators and sand-bags, locked up

her cellar, bought war loan, and wrote sensible letters to the _Times_,

which usually got printed.

Mrs. Sandomir also relieved Belgians, got up Repatriation and

Reconstruction societies for them, spoke at meetings of the Union of

Democratic Control (to which society, as has been before mentioned, she

did not belong) and of other societies to which she did belong, held

study circles of working people to educate them in the principles making

for permanent peace, went with a motor ambulance to pick up wounded in

France, tried, but failed, like so many others, to attend the Women's

International Congress at the Hague, travelled round the world examining

its disposition towards peace, helped to form the S.P.P.P. (Society for

Promoting Permanent Peace), wrote sensible letters to the _Times_, which

sometimes got printed and sometimes not, articles in various

periodicals, pamphlets on peace, education and such things, and chapters

in joint books.

She had just returned now from her journey round the world, where she

had been interviewing a surprising number of the members of the

governments of the belligerent and neutral countries and making a study

of such of the habits and points of view of their subjects as could be

readily investigated by visitors. Immediately, she came from Cambridge,

where her home was, and where she had been starting a local branch of

the S.P.P.P., and addressing a meeting of the Heretics Society on the

Attitude of Neutral Governments towards Mediation without Armistice.

She was a tall, graceful, vigorous person, absurdly young and beautiful,

vivid, dark-eyed, clever, and tremendously in earnest about life. She

had lately (it seemed lately to herself and all who knew her) gone down

from Newnham, where she had done brilliantly in the Economics Tripos and

got engaged to Paul Sandomir, an exiled Pole studying the habits and

history of the English constitution at Fitzwilliam Hall. Their married

career had been stimulating and storm-tossed. Finally Paul Sandomir had

died in a Warsaw prison, worn out with consumption, revolution, and

excitement. The extreme energy of the parents had always reacted on the

children curiously, discounting enthusiasms, and flavouring their

activities with the touch of irony which one often notes in the families

of one or more very zealous parents. They greatly esteemed and loved

their father and mother. To them Daphne was one of the dearest and most

beautiful people in the world, if too stimulating. They felt, on the

whole, older than she was, and worldly-wise in comparison.

King's Cross. Daphne, taken by surprise, seized her scattered proofs and

crammed them into her despatch-box. Gathering her possessions to her,

she turned to see Alix at the carriage door.

'Oh--you dear child.... A porter, Alix. Do you see one? Yes, will you

take them to a taxi, please.' Relieved of them, she turned with her

quick, graceful movement and took the smaller Alix in her arms.

Physically, mentally, morally, it was certainly Daphne who had the

advantage.

They got into the taxi. Daphne said to the porter, 'I think you get

eighteen-and-six now, don't you? Are you married?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'How many children?'

'Nine, ma'am.'

'Oh, I think not. You're too young for that, really you are, you know.

Let's say four. Well, here's eightpence. Tell him Spring Hill, Clapton.

Thank you so much.'

The taxi sprang up the incline to the street.

'Of course,' said Daphne, frowning over it, 'eighteen-and-six is

shocking, with these high prices. Goodness only knows when we're going

to get it improved. But it's immoral to try and make it up by private

subsidies.... Is there anything the matter with our driver, child? You

seem to be interested in him.'

'I was only trying to discern how many children he's old enough to

have,' Alix explained. 'It seems nicer not to have to ask him; it's so

embarrassing not being able to believe his answer. I think five is the

outside limit, don't you, darling?'

Daphne put on her pince-nez and regarded the driver's back.

'Certainly not. Three, if that. In fact, I doubt if he's married at all.

But never mind now. I want to hear about you, child. Nicholas gave me a

rather poor account of you when he wrote the other day. He seemed to

think this Clapton life had been getting a little on your nerves.'

'Oh, I don't think so. I'm all right.'

Daphne regarded her consideringly.

'Nerves. Yes. You oughtn't to have any at your age, of course. No one

need, at any age. You should do eurhythmics. You'd find it changed the

whole of life--gave it balance, coherence, rhythm. I find it wonderful.

You must certainly begin classes at once.'

'I don't think I've time, mother. I'm going to the art school every

day.'

'I think you should make time. I hadn't much time while I was on my

travels, if you come to that. But I made some to practise my

eurhythmics. I knew how important it was to keep fit and balanced and

healthy, and that I should never be much use in influencing all those

people I interviewed (_so_ reasonable and delightful they mostly were,

Alix, and simply _longing_ for peace--I must tell you all about it)

unless I kept my own poise. It's the same for you. You'll never be any

use at painting or anything else while you're mentally and physically

incoherent and adrift. That's one thing settled--eurhythmics. And the

other is, you must leave this Pansy, or Violet, or whatever it is, at

once, of course, and we'll take a flat. What about these Frampton Tucker

people? Of course I know they're hopelessly dull and ordinary--I've met

Emily Frampton very seldom, but quite often enough. A kind little

mediocrity, the widow of a rather common man of business. Laurence

Frampton married her, for some incomprehensible reason of his own;

people do sometimes. He took her to Oxford with him, and only survived

it a year. They lived at Summertown. Her two girls were quite little

then. I believe she was quite happy. I met her once when I was staying

at Oriel.... She never took _in_ Oxford, of course; it was too many

miles outside her ken, and she very sensibly hardly attempted to belong

or mix. But she rather liked Summertown society, I remember. They lived

in a house called Thule, and kept six cats. I suppose she hasn't changed

at all, probably.'

'Probably not. She's very nice and kind.'

'Oh--all that.' Daphne waved it aside. 'Of course. But too stupid to be

tolerable, even as a background to your day's work, no doubt. I'm sorry

I've left you there so long, child. I should have thought of it before,

but it was all arranged without me, and I was too busy to send you

advice. I don't wonder you look a wreck.'

'I don't,' said Alix. 'And Cousin Emily's not bad. She's always giving

me hot milk--gallons of it. And ovaltine, to make me fat, she says.

She's awfully kind.'

'Encouraging you to think about your constitution. No wonder you're

nervy. What about the girls?'

'Oh ... they're quite good sorts.'

'The younger one is good-looking, isn't she?'

'Yes. Evie is beautiful. And jolly, and popular. Kate goes to church and

does parish work, and reads the _Daily Thrill_ aloud in the evenings.

Evie has young men. Her chief one just now is at the front; he's a

Gordon, of Gordon's jams.'

'That sink of iniquity! The girl can have no principle. But jam is going

to be nationalised very soon, I trust, like many better things. I hope

so. It richly deserves it.... Another thing, Alix--you must start health

food. I'm going to help Linda Durell to start a Health and Thrift Food

Shop, you know. Linda's terribly unbusinesslike, of course. So many

people are, if you come to that. And so many people don't eat the right

things at the right moments. That man Nicky lives with, now, who stayed

with us--he never seems to have the faintest notion of healthy feeding.

Goes out every morning before breakfast without an apple or a glass of

milk. One should _always_ begin the day with an apple, Alix--remember

that. But parsons are hopeless, of course. Such insane ideas about this

world not mattering, as if it wasn't the only one we've got. I've no

patience with religious people; can't think why Nicky lives with one of

them. Though, mind, I like this Mr. West in himself; he's quite sound on

most points of importance, and intelligent, too; I've been on Sweated

Industries committees with him, and I believe he's doing good work for

women's trade unions. Perhaps he'll change his mind about this church

business when he's older.'

'I don't believe he will. It seems to mean rather a lot to him, doesn't

it? To him it's the way of jogging the world on. As committees are to

you.'

'My dear, I detest committees. Most of their members are too stupid and

tiresome for words individually, and their collective incompetence is

quite unthinkable. But what other way is there in this extraordinarily

stick-in-the-mud world?'

Alix shook her head. Indeed, she didn't know. She felt helpless to give

the world any sort of jog out of its mud, by any means whatsoever.

Daphne caught the blank look of her eyes, and suddenly put her strong

arm round the thin, small body.

'My poor baby, you must get strong, you know, and happy. No one needs to

be ailing or depressed if they'll just say to themselves, 'I am going to

be well and strong and to stand up to the world. I'm not going to give

in to it. I am the master of my body and soul.' I said that when our

darling died; I kept on saying it, and I came through on it. There was

too much to do to give way. There is still. We've got to be strong

women, for our own sakes and the world's--especially we who have the

brains to be some use if we try. The poor old world needs help so very

badly just now, with all the fools there are who hinder and block the

way. You and I have both got to help, Alix.... There _is_ so much to get

done.'

Daphne, holding her close, lightly kissed the thin fingers she held.

Alix thought, 'Mother is splendid, of course. But she's bigger than I

am, and stronger, and she hardly ever feels ill, and she doesn't know

how Paul died, and she's not in love with Basil and didn't tell him so.

And I believe she's so keen and busy that she doesn't have time to think

about the war, except about how to stop it.... Perhaps that's the

way--to be thinking only how to stop it and prevent another.... _Is_

that the way?'

Alix became aware, from the clasp of Daphne's hands on hers, their firm,

light pressure, full of purpose, that Daphne was willing her to health

and happiness, trying, in fact, suggestion. Daphne believed in health

suggestion, as well as health food. She belonged to societies for

promoting both. She had often in the past made health suggestions to

Alix, but Alix had not always taken them. At the present moment Alix,

overcome by the contrast between her mother's undying hope and purpose

for her and her own inability to justify them, giggled weakly, in the

sudden way she had.

'I'm sorry, darling,' she apologised. 'No, I'm not hysterical, only

footling. I'm sorry I'm such a rotter and no credit to you and no use to

the world. But I'm all right really, you know. I don't need healing a

bit.'

Daphne held her from her, scrutinised her critically, and said, 'You're

suffering from hyperaesthesia. How many cigarettes are you smoking a

day?'

'Nine. No, I'm too young for that, like the porter--let's say three. Oh,

I don't know--I don't count really. Quite few. Cousin Emily doesn't

really like it much. She and Kate don't smoke at all, and Evie's only

just learning. We're not a vicious household; our chief excesses are

chocolates and hot milk.'

'Well, my outside rule is five, you know, in peace time, and now it's

three. I should advise only two for you. Linda Durell is for starting

and selling Health Cigarettes, but I won't have it, I think they are too

disgusting. One must draw the line somewhere.... Is this Clapton? Who

_lives_ in Clapton, by the way? I know the secretary of the Women's Wage

Increase Committee does--but who else? Of course people _used_ to, in

the nineteenth century. Your great-grandfather did. And Cowper, I

think--or was it Dr. Watts? Some one who wrote hymns. Those look like

good people's houses there.'

'Yes. Oh, bishops live here, and retired generals, and stockbrokers, and

thousands of babies. And the Vinneys. And lots of dreadfully common

people, Kate says. They all play tennis in the Park. This is Spring

Hill.'

'So I see. And there's Primmerose. Tell him to stop.'

'No, darling, Primmerose is some one else's. It's Violette we want; do

remember, mother, because the Primmerose people are common, and we don't

like being confused. Here we are.'

They got out. Daphne, having decided without discussion the probable

size of the chauffeur's family, judicially tipped him and told him to

return for her at half-past five. She then entered Violette and met Mrs.

Frampton in the hall. Mrs. Frampton, like Alix and so many others, was

much smaller than she was; Daphne had to bend graciously to shake hands.

Mrs. Frampton was a little shy of the tall, distinguished, clever,

beautiful cousin of her clever, distinguished, little-known second

husband. Daphne, was, in a manner, a public personage; most people knew

her name. She had for long been at once ornamental and useful, a

fountain-head of a perpetually vigorous stream of energies, some

generally approved, others regarded by many as harmful, that watered

England; but Violette, for good or ill, was outside their furthest

spraying. Mrs. Frampton looked from far off, as she had looked at

Professor Frampton, at the brilliant, not-to-be-understood energies of a

worker in worlds by her not realised. This makes one shy, even if one

believes oneself to be a denizen of a superior world, and Mrs. Frampton

lacked this consolation. She was a humble person, and knew that Daphne

and Professor Frampton had the best of it.

They sat in the drawing-room, where there would soon be tea. Daphne

looked round the room with an inward gasp: she really hadn't expected it

to be quite so bad as this. The Summertown drawing-room, which she

vaguely remembered, had been a little the drawing-room of her cousin

Laurence. She took it all in rapidly, and, as if hypnotised, came back

to rest on 'Thou seest me' and the watching Eye.

'My poor child,' she thought. 'I must take her away _at once_. It's a

wonder she's not actually had a _crise de nerfs_, with the wretched

nervous system she inherits from Paul, and that Eye always watching

her....'

Mrs. Frampton meanwhile was amiably talking, nervous but pleased.

'It's been so delightful having dear Alix all these months. So nice for

the girls, too. We've made quite a little party of young people, haven't

we, Alix? And other young people drop in quite frequently--Alix's

brother, of course, which is always so very nice--he's wonderfully

clever, isn't he--and that pleasant Mr. Doye, who lost his finger; I'm

sure we quite miss him now he's gone back to the army again; and friends

of my girls, and friends of Alix's. Often we're quite a party. It keeps

us all quite cheerful and merry, even in these dreadful days, doesn't

it, Alix?'

'Yes,' said Alix.

'Only this child works so hard at her drawing and painting all day, she

doesn't get much time for play. I'm sure they work them too hard at

these art schools. She looks quite overdone and poorly, don't you think

so, Mrs. Sandomir?'

'Oh, she'll be all right directly,' said Daphne, who didn't approve of

discussing people's poor health in their presence, thinking it made them

worse.

'It's mostly nerves and fancy, I expect,' she added, giving a light pat

to Alix's arm. 'Shouldn't be given way to. I expect you've been spoiling

her.'

'No, I haven't--no, indeed.' Mrs. Frampton was pleased. 'I _have_

thought she looked thin and below par often, and I've made her take lots

of milk, and that nice ovaltine, and even malt and cod-liver oil, but

she wouldn't go on with that. There's a very nice stuff that's being

advertised everywhere now--Fattine--and I want her to try that.'

'Oh, Alix was always thin. I don't believe in worrying with medicines.

We mustn't make her sorry for herself by talking about her like this....

That's Evie, isn't it? _She_ doesn't look as if she needed medicine,

anyhow. I should like to have her for an advertisement in the windows of

my Health Food shop.'

Evie was followed by Kate, Florence, and tea. Daphne thought Kate and

the tea-cups both deplorable. Kate had been going round her district

with parish magazines. She hadn't succeeded (district visitors never do)

in collecting all the pennies for them, and told her mother which

persons hadn't paid.

'And of course that Mrs. Fittle, in Paradise Court, lay low and

pretended to be out, as usual. I expect she was--' Kate pursed her lips,

which meant drunk. Mrs. Frampton nodded intelligently.

'The Clapton people are terribly difficult to deal with,' Kate explained

to Daphne. 'Dreadfully ungrateful, too, very often. The clergy and

workers may do anything for them, but it's all no more than what's their

due, and no thanks, only grumbles. Do you find them like that in

Cambridge?' (which was the town in which Daphne, if she had one

anywhere, presumably had a district).

'Not a bit,' said Daphne briskly. 'The idea of expecting me to find

anything so commonplace,' was her inward comment. 'This girl is the

worst of the lot.'

'Kate does a great deal of parish work,' Mrs. Frampton explained. 'She's

quite busy always, with church things.'

'Yes?' Daphne was vague, hiding how much she disapproved of church

things.

'Now I'm afraid I'm used to a rather different sort of service from

those Kate attends,' Mrs. Frampton continued. 'I'm old-fashioned, I

know. Kate's church goes a touch too high for me.'

Something in her visitor's face, a certain blankness, suggested to her

that probably Daphne knew no difference between high and low, but

condemned both with impartial unfairness. She remembered that Alix

hadn't been brought up to go to any sort of church. Alix, being of a

later generation, had indeed a fairly open mind on these matters; but

Daphne, the product of a more pronounced and condemning age, rejected

with emphasis. The Christian religion, as taught in churches, was to her

pernicious, retrograde, the hampering relic of a darker age. Some

glimmering of this attitude filtered through to Mrs. Frampton, and

flustered her. She added, 'But of course we can't all think the same way

about things, can we?... I hope you enjoyed your trip round the world,

Mrs. Sandomir.'

'Very much, thank you.'

'You visited the Balkans, didn't you? That must have been very alarming

and wild. I'm sure it was wonderfully brave of you to go there, with all

this upset, and all the natives so unsettled. I'm afraid I shouldn't

have had the courage.'

'The upset,' said Daphne, 'was less advanced than it is now, when I was

there. I had a most interesting time....' But not really, in the main,

suitable to tell Mrs. Frampton about, so she rapidly selected.

'The Bulgarian babies--you never saw anything so pleasant. You'd love

them, Mrs. Frampton. You should go there some time. And their teeth come

through when they're about six weeks old, for some reason. It's just as

well, because their ideas about milk cleanliness are most behindhand. I

talked to a sort of mothers' meeting about it, but I don't think they

even began to understand. I expect my Bulgarian wasn't idiomatic enough.

Oh dear, the _dirt_ of those infants....'

'Fancy! It does seem a wickedness not to keep little babies clean,

doesn't it? There's one at a house in this road--Primmerose--and I'm

sure it goes to one's heart to see the way it's kept.'

Kate said, fastidiously, 'Those Primmerose people aren't nice in any

way, I'm afraid. There are some very regrettable people come settling

round here lately--people one can't dream of knowing. It's a great

pity.'

'People will settle, won't they,' Daphne said vaguely. 'It's better

perhaps than being unsettled, like the Balkan people.' Daphne never

punned except in absence of mind, rightly believing the habit to rise

from weakness of intellect; but she was thinking now not of Clapton nor

of the Balkan people, but of an address she was giving that evening to a

meeting of the N.U.W.S.S. on her recent experiences, and which she had

only inadequately prepared. She pulled herself together, however, and

became charming, attentive, and intelligent for the rest of tea.

'And what did you think of the United States?' Mrs. Frampton inquired.

'Will they come in, do you think, or won't the President let them,

whatever occurs? You met the President, didn't you? How did he strike

you?'

'Oh, delightful. Like most governments; they're nearly all charming

personally, I believe. So much stronger, as a rule, in the heart than in

the head. They mean so much good and do much harm, poor dears. A curse

seems to dog them. They're the victims of an iniquitous and insane

system; and they lack fore-sight and sound judgment so terribly, for all

their good intentions.'

'You would scarcely say the Kaiser had good intentions,' Mrs. Frampton

suggested dubiously.

Daphne said, 'I don't know him, but I'm told he has all sorts, good and

bad, like other mischievous people.'

'We all know, anyhow, where good intentions pave the way to,' said Kate,

more epigrammatic than usual, so that Mrs. Frampton said, 'Hush, dear,'

and added, 'He'll have to face the consequences of his actions some day,

when he's called to give account of his life. Perhaps we oughtn't to

forestall his condemnation, poor man.'

Daphne said, 'Indeed, I'm quite sure we ought. Condemnation will be

singularly little use at the moment you refer to,' and then, because

that moment would be a fruitless, and indeed most unsuitable, topic of

conversation between her and Mrs. Frampton, she left it, and talked

about flats in town, a subject which she and Violette regarded from

standpoints very nearly as far sundered as those from which they

contemplated the last judgment.

After tea, Mrs. Frampton said she and Kate and Evie would now go away

and leave Daphne and Alix alone together, which they did.

The door shut behind them, and Daphne passed her long, capable hand over

her forehead and shut her eyes for a moment.

'My dear child--what you have been through! It must end at once. So

kind, and so unthinkably trying! No wonder--oh well, never mind, you'll

soon be all right now.... Do they know _anything_ about anything that

matters? No, quite obviously not.'

'I'd rather they didn't, mother. I don't like the things that matter.

I've been quite comfortable.'

'Comfortable! With that Eye! Nonsense, child.... The idea of our

_having_ such relations, even by marriage.... Laurence Frampton was

really too queer. I've often wondered whether his head wasn't a little

going when he did it; he had been peculiar in several ways. Quite

suddenly voted conservative--which year was it, now? I think myself life

had tired him; people wanted to abolish Greek in Responsions, and so on,

and he had some worries in his college, and private money difficulties

too, I believe; Oxford people are so extravagant sometimes; so he fell

back on a little cushiony wife as one might on to a pillow, and died

quietly soon afterwards. Most tragic, really; such a brilliant fellow he

was.... Now there's my taxi back again. I'm going first to Nicky's, then

to dine at the Club with Francie Claverhouse, before addressing the

N.U.W.S.S. By the way, I'm fearfully out of temper with them--have you

been following their policy lately? They've been _criminally_ weak on

Conscription.... We shall have to have a split, as usual.... Good-bye,

darling. Run and fetch your cousin Emily to say good-bye to me. No, only

your cousin Emily; I can't speak to Kate, she's the epitome of all the

ages of the drab and narrow feminine. And Evie is immoral, and carries

on with Gordon's jam. It isn't right that you should be here. None of

them have any principles.'

While she talked, Daphne was collecting her bags, papers and furs, with

her quick, graceful, decisive movements. Alix watched her, feeling, as

she sometimes did in her mother's presence, as if she sucked up all the

ozone in the air and left none for her.

They found Mrs. Frampton in the hall, full of shy and beaming kindness.

Daphne took her hand and looked down on her cordially.

'I must be flying. I'll look in to-morrow, if I may.... Good-bye, and

thank you so much for being good to the child.'

The narrow Kate and the immoral Evie appeared in the background, and

Daphne had to shake hands with them after all before escaping into the

taxi.

Violette watched her drive away up Spring Hill.

Evie thought how handsome she was, and how well she wore her clothes.

Kate was not quite certain she wasn't a touch fast.

Alix thought, 'How jolly it must be to be like mother, so certain and so

strong.'

Mrs. Frampton thought, 'She seems so nice and clever, but a little

alarming, perhaps,' and said to Alix, 'Your mother seems wonderfully

well and busy. I expect she's always quite full of plans and occupations

and interests, isn't she?'

'Yes,' said Alix.

CHAPTER XV

ALIX AT A MEETING

Daphne took Alix from Violette to stay with her at her club. It was the

end of November. Daphne proposed that they should spend a fortnight in

town, till the end of the art school term, then go down to their house

at Cambridge for the Christmas vacation. She meant to spend this period

holding meetings about the county of Cambridgeshire with a view to

starting village branches of the Society for Promoting Permanent Peace.

Meetings--branches--study circles--this was the machinery behind the

ideals. Daphne, at times irrelevant, inconsequent, prejudiced,

whimsical, perverse, was an idealist and a business woman.

She made Alix come to meetings while they were in town. She saw in Alix

the raw material of a member of the S.P.P.P. She said, 'You mustn't be

selfish, darling. You are a little selfish, you know, and you're old

enough now to leave it off. You try to hide from things, like an

ostrich. You try and pretend they don't exist. In point of fact, they

do, and you know it. You know it all the time: you can't forget it, so

you waste your trouble trying. You must leave that to the Violettes.

They can ignore. You can't.... Ignoring: that's always been the curse of

this world. We shut our eyes to things--poverty, and injustice, and

vice, and cruelty, and sweating, and slums, and the tendencies which

make war, and we feed ourselves on batter, and so go on from day to day

getting a little fatter--and so the evils too go on from day to day

getting fatter, till they get so corpulent and heavy that when we do

open our eyes at last, because we have to, they can scarcely be moved at

all. It's sheer criminal selfishness and laziness and stupidity. Mr.

West was talking about it the other day. I like that young man; he

believes in all the right things. And in so many of the wrong ones as

well--I can't imagine why. I told him I couldn't imagine why; and he

said he found the same difficulty about me. So there we are. However,

what was I saying? Oh yes--laziness, selfishness and stupidity. It's

those three we've got to fight. We've got to replace them by hard

working, hard living, and hard thinking. And the last must come first.

We've got to _think_, and make every one think.... One of the worst

things about a war is that so many of the best thinkers are in the

middle of it, and can't think, and may never be able to think again. I

don't in the least agree with those complacent young men and women who

believe that no one over forty either can or will think. 'The war has

let the old men loose upon the world,' I believe is the phrase.

Conceited rubbish, of course. They won't talk it when they and their

friends are forty-eight, like me. Personally I know just about as many

young fools and obscurantists and militarists as elderly ones. Any

number of both. It's not a question of age; it's temperament and

training. But still, grant that the young men of fighting age form a

very large proportion in each nation of the clearest intellects and the

keenest idealists and the best workers for truth, and that they are

nearly all now in action, or put out of action. Grant that many of them

will never come back, that many others will come back weakened

physically and mentally and incapable of the work they might have done

before, and some perhaps with their mental vision a little blinded and

perverted by what they've had to play a part in for so long. That's the

worst tragedy of all, of course, that possible perversion. Better never

come back at all.' Daphne's voice shook momentarily, but she went on

bravely: 'Paul would have been a fine worker. He was going to be very

like his father. Well, Paul's gone under--a sacrifice to the Brute.

Thousands of other finely-wrought instruments like Paul have been

smashed and lost to the world.... It's an irreparable tragedy, of

course.... But we who are left and who are free have got to do their

work as well as our own. And we've got to begin at once. There's no time

to be lost.'

Daphne consulted her watch, and added, 'You'd better come to a meeting

of the S.P.P.P. at Queen's Hall with me after dinner, dearest. It would

interest and instruct you. Several people are going to speak, including

me.'

'It's all right when _you_ speak,' said Alix. 'But some of them are

rather the limit, really, mother.'

'Oh, my dear, of course. The very outside edge: over it. What does it

matter? It's causes that count, thank goodness, not the people who work

for them. When you're my age you'll have learnt to _swallow_ people,

without getting indigestion. Now we must have dinner at once, and then

you shall come and begin to practise impersonal idealism. It _is_ so

important.'

Alix supposed it must be. Meetings are so very mixed, speeches so

unequal, people so various.

Lack of clear thinking--that, as Daphne had said, was probably what was

wrong with nearly every one. Perhaps it is the commonest defect, and the

most irritating. It makes people talk sentimental rubbish. It makes them

lump other people together in masses and groups, setting one group

against another, when really people are individual temperaments and

brains and souls, and unclassifiable. It makes them say (Alix picked out

all these utterances in the Queen's Hall to-night, among many other

utterances truer and sounder and more relevant--indeed, indubitably

sound, relevant and true) that young men are good and intelligent and

pacificist (no, pacifist) and admire Romain Rolland, and elderly men

bad, stupid and militarist, and admire Bernhardi. That women are the

guardians of life, and therefore mind war more than men do. That

democracies are inherently and consistently peaceful enough (stated) and

intelligent enough (assumed) to prevent wars from ever occurring if the

reins of foreign policy were in their hands. ('Rubbish,' muttered

Daphne. 'He's missing the whole point, which is to _make_ democracies

so, by a long and difficult education. Every one knows they've not much

sense yet.') That the reason why war is objectionable is that the human

body is sacred and should be inviolate. What did that mean, precisely,

Alix wondered? That women are the chief sufferers from war. A debatable

point, anyhow; and what did it matter, and why divide humanity into

sexes, further than nature has already done so? That among the newspaper

owners and members of the governments of each nation were some so

misguided and lacking in financial fore-sight as to encourage wars

because they had some shares in armament industries, and hoped,

presumably, to recoup themselves therefrom for the heavy financial

losses which they, in common with all other members of the community,

must suffer in case of war. 'Fools they must be,' Alix commented, and

speculated that these covetous individuals, even granting that they had

pinned their hopes entirely on the financial issue, must be feeling

pretty badly sold. For their other and nicer shares would be declining;

their income-tax was enormous (and they probably had to pay super-tax

too, which was even worse); the papers they owned were losing the

advertisements they lived by; and their food cost them more. A bad

look-out for these covetous ones.

From this the speaker got on to capitalism in general. Well, Alix was

entirely with him there.

A new speaker (much better, quite good, in fact) was speaking of secret

ententes, as speakers will at these meetings. The Moroccan crisis ...

that was rather interesting. The Balance of Power. A rotten theory, but

surely, as things were, necessary? Yes, as things were; but not as they

were going to be. For there must, in time, be General Disarmament.

Disarmament. A fancy some lean to and others hate, no doubt. But most

hate it. The question was, would they hate it more after this war, or

less? _Si vis bellum, para bellum_; that was the true version of that

saying. True, for it had been proved so. Look at the Germans, preparing

for war for years; look at all the other nations, also preparing for

years. And now they had all got it. That is what armies and fleets lead

to. So, instead of armies and fleets, let us have International Councils

for Arbitration. A Concert of Europe.

A jolly sound notion, thought Alix, but wished the speaker would meet

rather more precisely the obvious difficulties in the way of this method

of keeping the peace. It certainly _was_ a sound notion: one felt that

it could, after much shaping and experimenting and failure, be workable,

be made something of. There was no earthly reason why not. And certainly

the more it was discussed and publicly aired in all the nations, the

better for its chances. But people were apt, on this subject, not to be

quite practical enough; they often laid stress on the advantages of the

principle, rather than on its detailed methods of working. Of course the

advantages, if it could be worked, were incontrovertible; surely no one

could be found to question them.

And here Alix found a weakness she had vaguely felt before in the

standpoint taken by many of these people. Many of them (not nearly all,

but many) seemed to imply, 'We, a select few of us called Pacificists,

hate war. The rest of you rather like it. We will not allow you to have

it. WE will stop it.' As if some of a race stricken with agonising

plague had risen up and said to the rest, 'You, most of you, are content

to be ill and in anguish and perishing. But WE do not like it. WE insist

on stopping it and preventing its recurrence.' An admirable resolution,

but ill-worded. What they meant, what they would mean if they thought

and spoke accurately, was surely, 'We all loathe this horror--how should

any one not loathe it? We all want to stop it occurring again, and WE

have thought of a way which we believe may work. This is it....'

That was sense; that was what was wanted, that any one who thought they

had found a way should use it and expound it to the rest. But oh, it

wasn't sense, it was madness, to talk as if people differed in aim and

desire, not merely in method. For there was one desire every one had in

these days, beneath, through and above their thousand others. People

wanted money, wanted victory, wanted liberty, wanted economic

individualism, wanted socialism, wanted each other, wanted love, wanted

beauty, wanted virtue, wanted a vote, wanted fame, wanted genius, wanted

God, wanted things to drink, even to eat, wanted more wages, wanted less

taxes, less work, wanted children, wanted adventure, wanted death,

wanted democracy, oligarchy, anarchy, any other archy, wanted new

clothes, wanted a new heaven or a new earth or both, wanted the old back

again, wanted the moon. They wanted any or all of these things and a

thousand more; but through them, above them, beneath them, a quenchless

fire of longing, burning, searing and consuming more passionately as the

crazy weeks of frustration swung by, they wanted peace.... Even some who

wanted nothing else in this world or any other just had energy to want

peace. There were those so tired and so forlorn and so battered and

broken that they could scarcely want at all; they had lost too much.

They had almost too utterly lost their health, or their courage, or

their limbs, or their hope, or their faith, or their sons, husbands,

brothers, lovers and friends, or their minds, to want anything from life

except its end; but still, with broken, drifting, numbed desires, they

wanted peace....

All the heterogeneous crowd of humanity, so at variance in almost

everything else, was just now surely one in the common bond of that

great desire. They swayed, that heterogeneous crowd, into Alix's giddy

vision; she saw them thus strangely, perhaps unwelcomely, linked, in

incongruous fellowship, those who had possibly never before believed

themselves to want the same things. The one desire linked, in all the

warring nations, socialists and individualistic men of business,

capitalists and wage-earners, slum landlords and slum dwellers, judges

and criminals, soldiers and conscientious objectors, catholics and

quakers, atheists and priests, prize-fighters and poets, representatives

of societies differing so widely in some ways as the Fellowship of

Reconciliation and the National Service League, the W.S.P.U. and the

Anti-Suffrage Society, the Union of Democratic Control and the

Anti-German League, the German Social and Democratic Party and the

Radicals; the staffs of journals as widely sundered by temperament and

habit as the _Times_ and the _Manchester Guardian_, the _Morning Post_

and the _Daily News_, the _Spectator_ and the _English Review_,

the _Vorwaerts_ and the _Kreuz Zeitung_, the _Church Times_, the

_Freethinker_ and the _Record_.

Alix saw humanity as a great mass-meeting, men and women, 'clergymen,

lawyers, lords and thieves,' hand in hand, lifting together one confused

voice, crying for peace, peace, where there was no peace. Where there

could not yet be, nor ever had been, peace, because ... because of what?

That really seemed the question to be solved. Because, one supposed, of

some anti-peace elements in every country, in every class, in every

interest, nay, in every human being, that somehow subverted and hindered

the great desire.

An odd world, certainly, and paradoxical, and curiously tragic. But lit

by glimmers of hope....

More and more through that evening Alix came to believe that these

so-called Pacificists (idiotic name--as if every one wasn't Pacificist)

really _had_ found a way, really had, if not exactly their hands on the

ropes, anyhow their feet on a road that might possibly lead somewhere.

It was the same rather breathless feeling of possible ways out, or in,

that she had about the Church sometimes. Only sometimes; for at other

times she happened on people who belonged to the Church who made her

feel that there were no roads out, or in, or anywhere, but only dull

enclosures, leading nowhere; and she hadn't yet attained to the

impersonal idealism Daphne urged on her (so necessary, so difficult a

thing) which could swallow people for the sake of the causes they stood

for. She attached too much importance to people.

She was glad when a young, keen-faced, humorous woman, with a charming

voice, began to speak about Continuous Mediation without Armistice. A

fascinating subject, competently handled. A continuous conference of the

neutral nations, to convey the ever-changing desires of the belligerents

to one another, to inquire into the principles of international justice

and permanent peace underlying them, to discuss, to air proposals, to

suggest, to promote understanding between belligerents. It couldn't,

anyhow, do much harm, and might do much good. It would express the views

of impartial observers (are any observers impartial, Alix wondered?) on

these vexed questions; it would express through intermediaries the views

of the peace-seekers in each warring nation to the peace-makers in the

others, now that they were hindered from direct speech together. For so

many thousands in the enemy countries are longing for peace; there must

be no mistake about that. Of course, thought Alix, impatient again. How

should there be any mistake about so obvious a thing? The only

difficulty was that each country longed for peace on its own terms;

peace, as they would say, with honour; and no country liked its enemies'

terms. This continuous mediation business would perhaps draw them nearer

together, make them see more nearly eye to eye. It certainly seemed

sound.

'They're talking sense all right,' said one young officer to another,

behind Alix.

Then Daphne spoke, on the attitude towards war of the common people in

the neutral and belligerent nations, on principles of education, and

particularly on the training of children in sound international

ideals--her special subject. She told of how in Austria the Women's

Committee for Permanent Peace had issued an appeal to parents and

teachers urging them to counteract the influences exciting children to

race hatred, and train them in respect for their enemies and

constructive national service.

A comprehensive subject, treated with breadth, detail, and clarity. The

young officers again approved.

Alix thought how fine a person Daphne looked and was: gracious,

competent, vivid, dominating, alive. Possessed of some poise, some

strength, some inner calm.... What was it, exactly, and why? One saw it

in some religious people. Perhaps in them and in Daphne it was the same

thing: they both had a definite aim; they both knew where they were

trying to go, and why. Perhaps that is what makes for strength and calm,

thought Alix. Daphne wasn't running away from things, or from life: she

was facing them and fighting them.

'She's good, isn't she?' said one of the officers. 'I like hearing Mrs.

Sandomir. She never talks through her hat. So many of these Pacifist and

Militarist people do.'

Alix was glad Daphne had a sense of humour, and didn't rant or

sentimentalise. She could talk of the part to be played by women in the

construction of permanent peace without calling them the guardians of

the race or the custodians of life. She didn't draw distinctions, beyond

the necessary ones, between women and men; she took women as human

beings, not as life-producing organisms; she took men as human beings,

not as destroying-machines. She spoke about propaganda work to be

undertaken by the S.P.P.P. in the country districts; she suggested

methods; she became very practical. Alix listened with interest, for

that was what Daphne was going to do in Cambridgeshire in the Christmas

vacation. It sounded, as foreshadowed, sensible and useful, though of

course you never know, with meetings in the country, till you try, and

not always then.

Enough, more than enough, no doubt, has been said of a meeting so

ordinary as to be familiar in outline to most people. That it was not

familiar to Alix, who had hitherto avoided both meetings and literature

on all subjects connected with the war, is why it is here recorded in

some detail. There was some more of it, but it need not be here set

down.

When it was over, Daphne and Alix returned to the club. They sat in the

writing-room and talked and smoked before going to bed.

'Rather sensible, on the whole, I thought,' said Alix, lighting Daphne's

cigarette. She had more colour than usual, and her eyes were bright and

sleepless. Daphne glanced at her sidelong.

'Glad you approved,' she said. 'The S.P.P.P. _is_ rather sensible,

on the whole: just that.... What about joining it, on those grounds?

It will only bind you to approve of its general programme, and,

when you can, assist in it. And its programme is really purely

educational--training people (beginning with ourselves) in the kind of

thinking and principles which seem to make for international

understanding and peace. You'd better join us. We're fighting war, to

the best of our lights, and with the weapons at our command. One can't

do more than that in these days, and one can scarcely do less. One

mayn't be very successful, and one may be quite off the lines; but one

has to keep trying in the best way one personally knows. One can't be

indifferent and inert nowadays.... Well?'

Alix leant forward and dropped her cigarette end into the fire.

'Well,' she returned, and thought for a moment, and added, 'I wonder.

I'm not really good at joining things, you know.'

'You are not,' Daphne agreed, decisively. 'You sit on hedges,

criticising the fields on both sides and wondering what good either of

them is going to be to you. Such a paltry attitude, my dear!

Unpractical, selfish, and sentimental; though I know you think you hate

sentimentality. It's quite time you learnt that there's no fighting with

whole truths in this life, and all we can do is to seize fragments of

truth where we can find them, and use them as best we can. Poor weapons,

perhaps, but all we've got. That's how I see it, anyhow.... Well,

darling, at least it can't do any _harm_ to try and get children and

grown-up people taught to get some understanding of international

politics and the ways to keep the peace, or to look upon arbitration as

a possible, practical, and natural substitute for war--can it, now? If

it only in the end results in improving ever so slightly the mental

attitude of a person here and there, adding ever so little to the

political information of a village in each county, it will have done

_something_, won't it? And--you never know--it may do quite a lot more

than that. You must remember we've got branches in all the belligerent

countries now. Free discussion of these things gets them into the air,

so to speak; trains people's ways of thought; and thought, collective

thought, is such a solid driving-power; it gets things done. Thoughts

are alive,' said Daphne, waving her cigarette as she talked,

'frightfully, terrifyingly, amazingly alive. They fly about like good

and bad germs; they cause health or disease. They can build empires or

slums; they can assault and hurt the soul' (unconsciously in moments of

enthusiasm, Daphne sometimes used a prayer-book phrase stored in her

memory cells from childhood, for her father had been a bishop), 'or they

can save it alive. They can make peace and make war. They made _this_

war: they must make the new peace. Thought is _everything_. We've got to

make good, sane, intelligent thought, how ever and where ever we can,

all of us.... Come and work with me in Cambridgeshire next week and help

me to make it, my dear.'

'Well,' said Alix again. 'I might do that. Come and watch you, I mean,

and listen. I think I will do that.'

It was late. Every one in the club except them had gone to bed. They

went too.

Alix thought, in bed, 'Fighting war. That's what Mr. West said we must

all be doing. Fighting war. I suppose really it's the only thing

non-combatants can do with war, to make it hurt them less ... as they

can't go....' She wrenched her mind sharply away from that last familiar

negation, that old familiar bitterness of frustration. 'I suppose,' she

thought, 'it may make even that hurt less....'

On that thought, selfish by habit as usual, a thought not suggested by

Daphne, who was not selfish, she fell asleep.

CHAPTER XVI

ON PEACE

On the tenth of December, Daphne, Alix, and Nicholas went down to

Cambridge. Liverpool Street Alix found restful. Liverpool Street, as the

jumping-off place for East Anglia, has a soothing power of its own.

Stations often have, probably because they indicate ways of escape,

never the closed door.

But Cambridge, which they reached all too soon, was not restful.

Cambridge city, even out of term time, even during terms such as these,

which all the young thinkers are keeping in trenches overseas, is too

conscious of the world's complexities and imminent problems and

questionable destinies, to be peaceful. Cambridge is the brain of

Cambridgeshire, which, having all its more disturbing thinking thus done

for it, can itself remain quiet, like a brainless animal.

Daphne's sphere of work did not include Cambridge, which already thought

about these things, and heard, gladly and otherwise, Mr. Ponsonby on

Democratic Control and Lord Bryce on International Relations, and many

other people on many other subjects. All she did in Cambridge was to

foster and stimulate the life of the already existing branch of the

S.P.P.P., and to make it her centre for propaganda in Cambridgeshire.

Nicholas and Alix, having been brought up in Cambridge, did not know

Cambridgeshire much. Alix discovered Cambridgeshire, through this quiet,

pale December. There are moments in some lives when it is the only shire

that will do. Many feel the same about Oxfordshire; more about

Shropshire, Sussex, Worcestershire, Hampshire, or the north, or the

southwest. The present writer once knew some one who felt it about

Warwickshire, but these, probably, are few. Most people may like

Warwickshire, to live in or walk in or bicycle in, but will give it no

peculiar place as healer or restorer. It is, perhaps, essentially a

shire for the prosperous, the whole in body and mind; it has little to

give, beyond what it receives. But Cambridgeshire, 'of all England the

shire for men who understand,' in its quiet, restrained way gives. It is

not for the rich, and not for sentimentalists, and not for Americans;

but it is for poets and dreamers. To those who leave it and return it

has a fresh and sad significance, like the face of a once familiar and

understood but half-forgotten friend, whose point of view has become

strange. New meanings, old meanings reasserted, rise to challenge them;

the code of values inherent in those chalky plains that are the setting

of a quiet city seem to emerge in large type. Cambridge is of a quite

different spirit. In Cambridge is intelligence, culture, traditionalism,

civilisation, some intellectualism, even some imagination, much

scholarship, ability, and good sense, above all a high idealism, a

limitless fund of generous chivalry, that would be at war with the

world's ills, the true crusading spirit, that can never fit in with the

commercial.

And round it, strangely, lies Cambridgeshire, quiet, chalky, unknown,

full of the equable Anglian peoples and limitless romance; the country

of waste fens and flat wet fields and dreamy hints of quiet streams, and

grey willows, and level horizons melting into blue distance beyond blue

distance, and straight white roads linking ancient village to ancient

village, and untold dreams; and probably not one Cambridge person in two

hundred understands anything at all about it; they are too civilised,

too urban, too far above the animal and the peasant. Here and there some

Cambridge poet, or painter, or even archaeologist, has caught the spirit

of Cambridgeshire; but mostly Cambridge people are too busy, and too

alive, to try. You need to be of a certain vacancy....

But, though they understand so little of it, in times of need it

sometimes raises quiet hands of healing to them. Sometimes, again, it

doesn't.

Alix, wandering over it with Daphne, who held meetings, found it grey,

toneless, faintly-hued, wintry, with larks carolling over the chalky

downs and brown ploughed fields. That country south of Cambridge seemed

to her the truest Cambridgeshire, rather than the level plains of Ely

and the fenlands, and rather than the border regions of the north-west,

where Royston, among its huddle of strange hills, broods with its hint

of a hostile wildness. Royston is rather terrifying, unless you use it

for golf, and Daphne had a poor meeting there.

Meetings in Cambridgeshire are often poor, that is the truth (excepting

only in election time, when apathy gives place to fierce excitement).

Whether they are about National Service, or Votes for Women, or Tariff

Reform, or Free Trade, or Welsh Disestablishment, or Recruiting, or

Peace--you cannot really rely on them. Cambridgeshire, rightly believing

that the day for toil was given, for rest the night, does not lightly

thwart this dispensation of Providence. And the few borderland hours of

twilight or lamplight which providence has set between these two spaces

of time, are, there seems little doubt, given us for the purposes of

tea, smoking, conversing, and courting. So meetings do not really come

in.

But Daphne held them, all the same, and some people came. She usually

held them in the village schoolroom. Sometimes she got the vicar's

permission to address the children during school hours, sometimes that

of the vicar's wife to speak to the Mothers' Meeting while it met. But

she preferred evening meetings, because of her lantern slides, which

showed the photographs she had taken on her travels of men, women, and

children in the other villages of other countries, thinking, so she

said, the same thoughts as these men, women, and children in

Cambridgeshire, saying, in their queer other tongues, the same things,

playing, very often, with the same toys. (This, of course, was by way of

Promoting International Sympathy.)

The women and children liked these meetings and slides. The women, being

open-hearted, kindly, impressionable, pacific, saw what Daphne meant,

and said, 'To think of it! I expect those mothers, pore things, miss

their boys that are fighting, the same as we do ours. Well, it isn't

their fault, is it? it's all that wicked Keyser.'

The children said merely, 'Oo-ah! look at that!'

Then Daphne would go on from that starting-point to expound that it

wasn't all, not quite all, that wicked Keyser. That it was, in fact, in

varying degrees, not only all governments but all peoples, who had made

war possible and so landed themselves at last in this.

This was less popular. The women didn't mind it; they were receptive and

open to conviction, and didn't much mind either way, and were prepared

to say, 'Well, to be sure, we're none of us very good Christians yet,

are we?' For ideas didn't matter to them very much, nor the wrongs and

rights of the war, but the fact of the war did. But some man behind, who

had made up his mind on this business and knew that black was black and

white was white, would sometimes observe, with vigour and decision,

'Pro-Hun.'

'I am not a pro-anyone,' said Daphne, 'nor an anti-anyone. But I am, in

a general way, pro-peace and anti-war, as I am sure we all are in this

room.' Then those who believed themselves to differ would shout 'Fight

to a finish,' and 'Crush all Germans,' and 'Smash the Hun, _then_ you

may talk of peace,' and 'Here's some soldiers back here, you hear what

_they've_ got to say about it,' and other things to the same purpose;

and once or twice they sang patriotic songs so loud that the meeting

closed in disorder. But at other times they gave Daphne a chance to

explain that she meant by peace, peace in general and in future, not a

premature end to this particular war. That end, she remarked, must now

be left to be decided by others; it was the future they were all

concerned with. When once she got through to this point, the room

usually began to listen again, and heard, with varying degrees of

attention, interest and tolerance, how they could help to make a

permanent peace, and even put up good-humouredly with hearing how they

had helped, for some centuries, to make war, by encouraging

commercialism, capitalism, selfishness, ignorance, and bad habits of

thought.

On the whole, and with exceptions, so far as Cambridgeshire listened to

Daphne at all, it was receptive and not unkind. The villages, of course,

varied, as villages will. In some the squire and the vicar and the other

chief people would not allow the meeting at all, rightly thinking it

pacificist. In others they allowed it and came, and sat in front, and

differed, asking Daphne if she had not heard the recommendation, _Si vis

pacem, para bellum_, and remarking that while we are in a war is not the

time to talk of peace. 'You might as well say,' said Daphne 'that while

we are suffering from a plague is not the time to talk of measures to

prevent its recurrence.'

Villages, as has been said, differ. Some, for instance, are more

intelligent than others. Great Shelford is rather intelligent, and means

well; many of its inhabitants are leisured, and will readily, if

advised, form study circles and read recommended literature. In fact,

they did. Quite a promising little nucleus of the S.P.P.P. was

established there. Sawston, two miles and a half away, is otherwise; so

is Whittlesford. Of Linton, Pampisford, Landbeach, Waterbeach, the

Chesterfords, and Duxford, it were better, in this connection, not to

speak. Frankly, they did not understand or approve the S.P.P.P. They

thought it Pro-German.

'That silly word,' said Daphne helplessly, to Nicholas, after a rather

exhausting evening at Sawston. (Nicholas's own evening had been restful,

for he had spent it at home, reading Russian fairy-stories.) 'What does

it _mean_? Do they mean _anything_ by it? Do they _know_ what they

mean?'

'Oh, they know all right,' returned Nicholas, grinning. 'They mean you

have exaggerated sympathies with the Hun.'

'Have I?' Daphne wondered. 'Well, I suppose one tries to have some

sympathies with every one--even with nations which prepare for and start

wars and brutally destroy small adjacent nations in the process. But as

little, almost as little, with these as it is possible to have.... When

will people understand that what we're out to do is not to sympathise or

to apportion blame, but simply to learn together the science of

reconstruction--no, of construction rather, for we've got to make what's

never yet been. People do so leave things to chance--mental and

spiritual things. When it's a case of reconstructing material things, as

we shall have to do in Belgium and France after the war, no one will be

allowed to help without proper training; people are training for it

already, taking regular courses in the various branches of constructive

science. But we seem to think that the nations can build themselves up

spiritually without any learning or preparing at all, just because it's

not towns and villages and trades and wealth and agriculture that will

need building up, but only intelligence and beauty and sanity and mind

and morals and manners. The building up has got to be done in the same

industrious and practical spirit; you can't leave spiritual things to

grow into the right shape for themselves, any more than material ones.

You've got to have your constructionists, with their constructive

programmes; you can't leave things to luck, sit down and say 'Trust in

Time, the great mender,' or 'Wait and see.' Time isn't a mender of

anything: time, unused, is like an aged idiot plodding along a road

without signposts into nowhere.... We can't each go about our individual

businesses grabbing our share of the world without troubling ourselves

to get a grasp of the whole and help to shove it along the right track.

It's uneducated; it's like the modern Cretan, so different from his

early ancestors, who saw life steadily and saw it whole--at least that's

what one gathers from his remains.' (Daphne had, just before the war,

been in Crete, excavating.)

Nicholas said, 'You over-rate the early Cretan. I've noticed it before.

You over-rate him. He wasn't all you think; and anyhow, he had a smaller

island to think out; any one could have got a grasp of Cretan affairs.

He was probably really as selfish as--as Alix, or me.'

'I can't imagine,' said Daphne, considering him with disapproval, 'why

you don't join the S.P.P.P., Nicky, or some other good educative

society, and help me a little.'

'I? I never join anything. I never agree with anybody. I don't want to

educate any one. Why should I? I leave these things to enthusiasts, with

faith, like you and West. I've no faith in my own ideas being any better

than other people's, so I let them go their ways and I go mine.'

'You won't always do that,' Daphne told him, encouraging him, because

she had faith in the spirit of his fathers, which looked despite himself

out of his eyes. 'When you're my age....'

'I shall then,' said Nicholas, 'doubtless be suffering from what is, I

believe, called by the best people 'the more embittered temper and

narrower faith of age.' You need entertain no further hopes for me

then.'

During the Hauxton meeting, which was in the schoolroom on the afternoon

of new year's eve, Alix sat on the low churchyard wall in faint sunshine

and looked over brown fields and heard the larks. Hauxton is quiet, and

smells of straw, and has a little grey church with a Norman door. Its

road runs east and west, and there are geese on the little green. On

this last afternoon of the year it lay quietly asleep in the pale winter

sunshine. Whenever the little east wind moved, wisps and handfuls of

straw drifted lightly down the road. The larks carolled and twittered

exuberantly over bare fields. From time to time a flock of chaffinches

rose suddenly from the ricks and flew, a chattering flutter of wings,

down the wind. Beyond the fields, cold, faintly-hued horizons brooded.

Hauxton looked drowsily to the sunset and the dawn, to the past and

future, to the old year and the new.

'The future is dubious,' Daphne had been saying in the schoolroom,

before Alix came out. Well, of course futures always are, if you come to

that. 'In this dim, dubious future, let us see that we build up one

positive thing, which shall not fail us....' And by that, of course, she

meant Peace.

Peace: yes, peace must be, of course, a positive thing. Here, in

Hauxton, was peace; a bare, austere, quiet peace, smelling of straw. No

one had had to make that peace; it just was. But the world's peace must

be made, built up, stone on stone. No, stones were a poor figure. Peace

must be alive; a vital, intricate, intense, difficult thing. No

negation: not the absence of war. Not the quiet, naturally attained

peace of Samuel Miller and Elizabeth his wife, who slept beneath a grey

headstone close to the churchyard wall, having drifted into peace after

ninety and ninety-five years of living, and having for their engraven

comment, 'They shall come to the grave in the fullness of years, like as

a shock of corn cometh in in his season.' Not that natural peace of the

old and weary at rest; but a young peace, passionate, ardent,

intelligent, romantic, like poetry, like art, like religion. Like

Christmas, with its peace on earth, goodwill towards men. Like all the

passionate, restless idealism that the so quiet-seeming little Norman

church stood for....

Alix believed that it stood for the same things that Daphne stood for.

It too would say, build up a living peace. It too would say, let each

man, woman, and child cast out first from their own souls the forces

that make against peace--stupidity (that first), then commercialism,

rivalries, hatreds, grabbing, pride, ill-bred vaunting. It too was

international, supernational. It too was out for a dream, a wild dream,

of unity. It too bade people go and fight to the death to realise the

dream. Only it said, 'In _my_ name they shall cast out devils and speak

with new tongues,' and the S.P.P.P. said, 'In the name of humanity.'

There was, no doubt, a difference in method. But at the moment Alix had

more concern with the likenesses, with the common aim of the fighters

rather than with their different flags.

The pale sun dipped lower in the pale west, and was drowned in haze. It

was cold. The little wind from the east whispered along the bare hedges.

The year would soon be running down into silence, like an old clock.

Daphne and the meeting came out of the school. Alix went to meet her.

Daphne looked satisfied, as if things had gone well. The few women and

many children coming out of the meeting looked good-hearted, and still

full of Christmas cheer.

'Such dears,' said Daphne, as they got into the car. (Lest a damaging

impression of Daphne be given, it may be mentioned that she always drove

her own car herself, and only, in war time, used it for meetings for the

public good and for taking out wounded soldiers.) 'So attentive and

nice. I left pamphlets; and I'm coming again after the Christmas holiday

to speak to the children in school. I told them about German and

Austrian babies.... The mothers loved it.... It's _fun_ doing this.

People are such dears, directly they stop misunderstanding what one is

after. Understanding--clear thinking--it nearly all turns on that;

everything does. Oh for more _brains_ in this poor old muddle of a

world! Educate the children's brains, give them right understanding, and

then let evil do its worst against them, they'll have a sure base to

fight it from.'

Alix thought of and mentioned the Intelligent Bad, who are surely

numerous and prominent in history.

But Daphne said: 'Cleverness isn't right understanding. I mean something

different from that. I mean the trained faculty of looking at life and

everything in it the right way up. It's difficult, of course.'

Alix thought it was probably impossible, in an odd, upside-down world.

The sun set. The face of Cambridgeshire, the face of the new year, the

face of the incoherent world, was dim and inscrutable, a dream lacking

interpretation. So many people can provide, according to their several

lights, both the dream and the interpretation thereof, but with how

little accuracy!

The Sandomirs, in their house in Grange Road, saw the new year in. They

drank its health, as they did every year. Daphne, though she suddenly

could think of nothing but Paul, who would not see the new or any other

year, nevertheless drank unflinching to the causes she believed in.

'Here's to the new world we shall make in spite of everything,' she

said. 'Here's to construction, sanity, and clear thinking. Here's to

goodwill and mutual understanding. Here's to the clearing away of the

old messes and the making of the new ones. Here's to Freedom. Here's to

Peace.'

'Heaven help you, mother,' Nicholas murmured drowsily into his glass.

'You don't know what you're saying. All your toasts are incompatible,

and you don't see it. And what in the name of anything do you mean by

Freedom? The old messes I know, and the new ones I can guess at--but

what is Freedom? Something, anyhow, which we've never had yet.'

'Something we shall have,' said Daphne.

'You think so? But how improbable! After war, despotism and the strong

hand. You don't suppose the firm hand is going to let go, having got us

so nicely in its grasp. Rather not. War is the tyrant's opportunity. The

Government's beginning to learn what it can do. After all this Defending

of the Realm, and cancelling of scraps of paper such as Magna Carta and

Habeas Corpus, and ordering the press, and controlling industries and

finance and food and drink, and saying, 'Let there be darkness' (and

there was darkness)--you don't suppose it's going to slip back into

_laissez-faire_, or open the door to mob rule? The realm will go on

being defended long after it's weathered this storm, depend on it. And

quite right too. Lots of people will prefer it; they'll be too tired to

want to take things into their own hands: they'll only want peace and

safety and an ordered life. They'll be too damaged and sick and have

lost too much to be anything but apathetic. Peace, possibly (though

improbably): but Freedom, no. Anyhow, it's what neither we nor any one

else have ever had, so we shouldn't recognise it if we saw it.... There

are too many pips in this stuff,' he grumbled. 'Much too many.'

Daphne finished hers and stood up, as midnight struck, with varying

voices and views as to the time, from various church clocks in Cambridge

city. 'So,' she said, 'that's the end of _that_ year. No doubt it is as

well.... And now I'm going to bed. I've a great deal to do to-morrow.'

She went to bed. She had a great deal to do on all the days of the

coming year. But the first thing she did (in common with many others

this year) was to cry on the stairs, because it was a year which Paul

would never see, Paul having been tipped out by the last year in its

crazy career and left behind by the wayside.

Nicholas and Alix lay languidly, in fraternal silence, in their chairs.

They never went to bed or did anything else with Daphne's prompt

decision. At a quarter past twelve Alix said, 'I'm thinking of joining

this funny society of mother's.'

Nicholas opened his small blue eyes at her.

'You are? I didn't know you joined things.'

'Nor did I,' said Alix. 'But I'm beginning to believe I do.... I think I

shall very probably join the Church, too, before long.'

Nicholas opened his eyes much wider, and sat up straight.

'The _Church_? The Church of England, do you mean?'

'I suppose that would be my branch, as I live in England. Just the

Christian Church, I mean.... Do you think mother'll mind much?'

Nicholas cogitated over this.

'Probably,' he concluded. 'She doesn't like it, you know. She thinks it

stands for darkness.'

'That's so funny,' said Alix, 'when really it seems to me to stand for

all the things she stands for--and some more, of course.'

'Exactly,' Nicholas agreed. 'It's the "more" she takes exception to.'

'Oh well,' Alix sighed a little. 'Mother's very large-minded, really.

She'll get used to it.'

Nicholas was looking at her curiously, but not unsympathetically.

'Why these new and sudden energies?' he inquired presently. 'If you

don't mind my asking?'

'It's what I told you once before,' Alix explained, and the memory of

that anguished evening attenuated her clear, indifferent voice, making

it smaller and fainter. 'As I can't be fighting in the war, I've got to

be fighting against it. Otherwise it's like a ghastly nightmare,

swallowing one up. This society of mother's mayn't be doing much, but

it's _trying_ to fight war; it's working against it in the best ways it

can think of. So I shall join it.... Christianity, so far as I can

understand it, is working against war too; must be, obviously. So I

shall join the Church.... That's all.'

'H'm.' Nicholas looked dubious. 'Not quite all, I fancy. There are

things to believe, you know. You'll have to believe them--some of them,

anyhow.'

'I suppose so. I dare say it's not so very difficult, is it?'

'Very, I believe. I've never tried personally, but so I am told by those

who have.'

'Oh well, I don't care. Lots of quite stupid people seem to manage it,

so I don't see why I shouldn't. I shall try, anyhow. I think it's worth

it,' said Alix with determination.

'Well,' said Nicholas, after a pause, 'I dare say you're right. Right to

try things, I mean. I suppose it's more intelligent.'

For a moment the paradox in the faces of both brother and sister was

resolved, and idealism wholly dominated cynicism.

'Well,' said Nicholas again, 'here's luck!'

He finished his punch. It had, as he had said, too many pips, so that he

drank with care and rejections rather than hope.

CHAPTER XVII

NEW YEARS EVE

On this (surely) most unusual planet, nothing is more noticeable than

the widely differing methods its inhabitants have of spending the same

day. One person's new year's eve, for instance, will be quite different

from another.

Even within the Orme family, they were different. Margot spent the

evening at a canteen concert. She took a prominent part in the

programme, having a charming, true and well-trained contralto voice. She

sang charming songs with it, some of them a little above the taste of

the majority of soldiers, but pleasing to the more musical, others not.

It was a long and miscellaneous programme, varying from Schubert and

Mendelssohn to 'Stammering Sam' and 'Turn the lining inside out till the

boys come home,' so every one was pleased.

Dorothy Orme was assisting at a dance at the hospital. (You must do

something with soldiers on new year's eve; it is particularly urgent

that they should be kept indoors, because of the Scotch.) It was a jolly

dance, and both the soldiers and nurses enjoyed it extremely. When

twelve struck they joined hands and sang 'Auld Lang Syne,' and every one

hopefully wished every one else a Happy new year. (Only two Jocks had

got out and kept their Hogmanay elsewhere and quite elsehow--a

creditably small proportion out of forty men.) Dorothy got home by two,

said it had been a topping evening and she was dead tired, and went to

bed.

At Wood End, Mr. and Mrs. Orme entertained Belgians. Nine Belgian

children, and parents and guardians to correspond. They played games,

and danced a little, and fished for presents with a rod and line in a

fish-pond in a corner of the dining-room, where Mr. Orme lay curled up,

secretive and helpful, so that the right things got on to the right

hooks.

It was a great success, and ended at ten. Mrs. Orme's head ached, and

Mr. Orme's back.

They had had a great deal to do; they had had Mademoiselle Verstigel to

help them, but none of their children, who were all busy elsewhere, and

whom, therefore, they did not grudge. They were generous with their

children, as well as with their time, energy and money.

Betty Orme, who has hitherto been only remotely referred to in these

pages, spent the evening driving three nurses and a doctor from Fruges

to Lillers. She was a steady, level-headed child, with a fair placid

face looking out from a woollen helmet, and wide blue eyes like Terry's.

She acted chauffeur to a field hospital, drove perfectly, repaired her

car with speed and efficiency, and was extremely useful. Her nerves,

health, and temper were of the best brand; horrors left her unjarred and

merely helpful.

The nurse at her side, a garrulous person, said, 'Why, it's new year's

eve, isn't it? How funny. I've only just remembered that!... I wonder

what they're all doing at home, don't you?'

But Betty was only wondering whether her petrol was going to last out

till Lillers.

'I know I'd a lot rather be out here, wouldn't you?' said the talkative

nurse.

'Rather,' said Betty abstractedly.

Even through their helmets and motorcoats and thick gloves they felt the

wind very cold, and a few flakes of snow began to drift down from a

black sky.

'More snow,' said Betty. 'It really _is_ the limit.... I wonder if it'll

be finer next year.'

John Orme was in a trench, not far from Ypres. It was bitterly cold

there; snow drifted and lay on his platoon standing to, their feet in

freezing mud. They were standing to at that hour of the night (11.30

P.M.) because they had been warned of a possible enemy attack. They had

been badly bombarded earlier in the evening, but that was over. There

had been four men hit. The stretcher-bearers hadn't come for them yet;

they lay, roughly first-aided, in the mud. John, vigilantly strolling up

and down, seeing that no one slept (John was a very careful and

efficient young officer), passed a moaning boy with his arm blown off

and his tunic a red mess, and said gently, 'Hang on a bit longer,

Everitt. They won't be long now.' Everitt merely returned, beneath his

breath, 'My God, sir! Oh, my _God_!' He could not hang on at all, by any

means whatever. And there were no morphia tablets left in the

platoon.... John turned away.

Some one said, 'New year'll be in directly, Ginger. How's this for a

bright and glad new year?'

John remembered, for the first time, that it was December the 31st. It

didn't mean anything more to him than the 30th. After all, it must be

some day, even in this timeless and condemned trench.

He didn't believe in this attack, anyhow. It had been a ration party

rumour, and ration parties are full of unfulfilled forecastings. But he

wished he had a morphia tablet for that poor chap....

Terry Orme was in his dug-out, which was called Funk Snuggery. It was a

very noisy night. The enemy seemed to be having a special new year's eve

hate. Whizz-bangs, sugar-loaves, beans, all sorts and conditions and

shapes of explosive missiles filled the earth and heavens with unlovely

clamour. It was disturbing to Terry, who was reading Moussorgsky. (Terry

belonged to that small but characteristic class of persons who read

themselves to sleep with music. John preferred Mr. Jorrocks.) Terry dug

his fingers into his ears, and perused his score.

There was another man in Funk Snuggery. The other man looked at his

watch, waited three minutes, and said 'Happy new year.' Terry, stopping

his ears, did not respond, till he shouted it louder.

Terry looked up. 'What's that?' he inquired. 'Oh, is it? Fancy! Thanks;

the same to you.... But I _shan't_ be happy this year unless they let me

hear myself think. Beastly, isn't it?... They say after a time it spoils

one's ear. Wouldn't that be rotten. Have a stick?'

The stick was of chocolate, and they each sucked one in drowsy silence.

It was next year, and still they would not let Terry hear himself think.

He put away Moussorgsky with a sigh, and curled up to go to sleep.

Hugh Montgomery Gordon was in billets, in a village in Artois. He and a

friend went out for a stroll in the evening; they visited an

_estaminet_, where they found poor wine but a charming girl. They told

her it was new year's eve; she told them it was _la veille du jour de

l'an_. They taught her to say 'Happy new year' and other things. She and

they all spent a very enjoyable evening.

'Absolutely it, isn't she?' said Hugh Montgomery Gordon languidly to his

friend as they walked back to their billets. 'Don't know when I've seen

anything jollier.' He yawned and went indoors, and spent the rest of the

year playing auction.

Basil Doye, in camp on the Greek mountains, sat and smoked in a tent

assaulted and battered by a searching north-east wind from Bulgaria. He

and his platoon had been occupied all day in digging trenches, and

spreading wire entanglements which caught and trapped unwary Greek

travellers on their own hills. Basil Doye was tired and bored and cold,

in body and mind. A second lieutenant who shared the tent was telling

him a funny story of a bomb the enemy had dropped on Divisional H.Q.

last night, and of the General and staff, pyjama-clad, rushing about

seeking shelter and finding none.... But Basil was still bored and cold.

'O Lord!' said the other subaltern presently, 'the year'll soon be done

in. It's going out without having given us a scrap with the Bulgars; how

sickening!... Why in anything's name couldn't they have sent us out here

_earlier_, if at all?'

'Our government,' said Basil, abstracted and unoriginal, 'is slow and

sure. Slow to move and sure to be too late. That's why. So here we are,

sitting on a cold hill in a draught, with nothing doing, nor likely to

be.'

To himself he was saying, 'She'd fit on these hills; she'd belong here,

more than to Spring Hill. She's a Greek really ... that space between

the eyes, and the way she steps ... like Diana.... Oh, strafe it all,

what's the good of thinking?' Savagely he flung away his cigarette.

A great gust of wind from Bulgaria flung itself upon the tent and blew

it down. Then the sleet came, and the new year.

West was in church. The lights were dim, because of Zeppelins. The vicar

was preaching, on the past and the future, from the texts 'They shall

wax old, as doth a garment; as a vesture shalt thou lay them aside, and

they shall be changed,' and 'Behold, I make all things new.'

The year was going to be changed and made new in nineteen minutes and a

half. West (and the vicar too, perhaps), though tired and despondent

(the week after Christmas is a desperate time for clergymen, because of

treats), were holding on to hope with both hands. A desperate time: a

desperate end to a desperate year. But clergymen may not, by their

rules, become desperate men. They have to hope: they have to believe

that as a vesture they shall be changed, and that the new will be better

than the old. If they did not succeed in believing this, they would be

of all men the most miserable.

West sat in his stall, looking, so the choirboys opposite thought, at

them, to see if any among them whispered, or any slept. But he did not

see them. He was looking through and beyond them, at the vesture, ragged

and soaked with blood, which so indubitably wanted changing. Once his

lips moved, and the words they formed were: 'How long, O Lord, how

long?' Which might, of course, refer to a number of things: the war, or

the vicar's sermon, or the present year, or, indeed, almost anything.

The sermon ended, and there was silent prayer till twelve o'clock

struck. Then, as is the habit on these occasions, they sang hymn 265 (A.

and M.).

Violette had a new year's eve party. A quiet party; only the Vinneys to

chat and play quiet card games and see the new year in.

At half-past eleven they had done with cards, and were conversing. Kate

had gone to church at eleven. Vincent and Sidney Vinney were now in

khaki; they had, in view of the coming compulsion scheme, joined the

army (territorials) and got commissions. Vincent, being married, had

applied for home service only. Sidney, as he had just pointed out to

Evie, might get sent anywhere at any moment. But Evie, receiving letters

from Hugh Montgomery Gordon at the battle front, and, indeed, from many

others, was not to be touched by Sid Vinney.

Evie was talking to young Mrs. Vinney about the fashions.

'Those new taffeta skirts at Robinson's are ten yards wide, I should

think. You wouldn't believe it, the amount there is to them. And quite a

yard off the ground. We shall have to think so much about our _feet_

this next year. Feet--well, more than that, too!'

Mrs. Vinney said, 'Well, do you know, I don't think it's _right_, at a

time like this. Not _ten_ yards. I say nothing against six; because we

women must try and carry on, and look smart and so on. It would never do

for the men to come home and find us skimpy and dowdy and peculiar, like

some of those suffragettes.... What I say is, it'll be lucky for the

girls with neat ankles this year....'

They said a little more like this, till it was time to mix the punch.

Then they drank it, and said 'Here's how,' and 'A very happy new year to

all and many _of_ them,' and 'Here's to our next festive gathering,' and

'Here's to the ladies,' and 'Luck to our soldiers,' and other things

respectively suitable. Then the Vinneys went home to bed, because Mrs.

Vinney did not approve of making nights of it at times like these.

Soon after twelve Kate came back from church.

Kate said, 'It's turned so cold outside, I shouldn't wonder if we get

snow.... Those Primmerose people are spending a terribly loud evening; I

heard it all across the common. You'd think people would want to be

somewhat quieter on new year's eve, and this year in particular' (with

all these sorrows and Zeppelins about, she meant). 'A quiet evening with

a few friends is one thing; but it doesn't seem quite fitting to have

all that shouting and banjos. And I could smell the drink as I passed,

for they had a window open, and it was wafted right out at me.'

'Well now,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'just fancy that!'

The year of grace 1915 slipped away into darkness, like a broken ship

drifting on bitter tides on to a waste shore. The next year began.

THE END

End of Project Gutenberg's Non-combatants and Others, by Rose Macaulay