British Army, Faraday held a small meeting in a hall in a Bloomsbury
side street. The object of the meeting was to consider suitable methods
of influencing for the better the existing and lamentable condition of
popular opinion; the gathering was not open to the general public, only
the initiated being present. Some thirty to forty of the initiated,
chiefly secretaries, chairmen and other branch officials of the advanced
socialist group of which Faraday was leading light and president--for
the most part men, but with a sprinkling of women among them. They had
been summoned together by letter and word of mouth; the meeting was
private and consultative, described as for sympathizers only, and held
at the headquarters of the Central London Branch--a large room, sparsely
furnished with chairs and a platform, in the neighbourhood of Tottenham
Court Road. One of the more muscular members of the branch kept watch
and ward in the passage outside the hall, scrutinizing the comrades as
they neared the door, lest any uninitiated person or disturber of peace
should attempt to gain entry with the faithful; he was thrilled with a
vague and grandiose conviction that the meeting was of perilous
importance, passed in his familiars--they were all his familiars--with a
mysterious nod and compared himself to a sentinel on duty in a post of
extreme danger. He was a young man domiciled in the Hampstead Garden
Suburb, with uncut hair, a flowing tie and a latent, if hitherto
undeveloped sense of humour; and a year or two later, when the Army had
claimed him, and he stood in the Ypres salient, in a post of extreme
danger, he grinned unhappily between the shell-bursts as the night of
the meeting came back to him.
Among his thirty or forty familiars he passed in William Tully--who had
come to the hall mechanically, scarce knowing where his steps were
guiding him. No wind of the meeting had come to him, but the place was
one of his haunts--the Central London Branch, of which he was chairman,
assembled there on business once a week. Further, it was used as the
address of the Branch, and he was accustomed to call there almost daily
for his official letters or the transaction of small official business.
Thus it happened, at the close of a bewildered day, that he turned to it
almost by instinct.
Perhaps it was a sense of homelessness that drove him to its open
doors--for it was not until well towards evening that he had summoned up
courage to enter his own dwelling, the little flat he had not yet lived
in, made ready for himself and Griselda. If there had been anywhere
else to go perhaps he never would have entered it; but his bachelor
lodging, he knew, was let to a new tenant, and he had not money enough
in his pocket to pay for a lodging elsewhere. His day had been spent on
foot; after his refusal at the recruiting station he had walked he knew
not whither--here, there, through street after street, that he might not
stop and think; and when, in the late afternoon, he found himself
sitting on the turf of Primrose Hill, he could not, for the life of him,
remember the route by which he had reached it. Sheer weariness of body
drove him to shelter, and half an hour later he was dragging his feet up
the stairs that led to the flat.
The woman who was to "do" for himself and Griselda had been installed on
the premises for some days past; since the outbreak of war she had been
in hourly expectation of the arrival of her master and mistress and in
some perturbation at the continued lack of news from them. As William
was about to walk past the door she had opened to him she stayed him
with an inquisitive question--he could not remember the form it took but
knew that it must have referred to Griselda's absence, for he told her
abruptly that his wife had died in France. She threw up her hands with
a screaming exclamation as he hurried past her to shut himself into the
bedroom.
There, afraid of her curious sympathy and questions, he shut and locked
himself in; with the poignant loneliness of the brand-new furniture that
he and Griselda had chosen and lovingly admired; with the poignant
company of Griselda's photograph, smiling self-consciously from the
centre of the mantelpiece and set in an ornate silver frame that was one
of her wedding presents. He held it in his hands till the tears blinded
him, kissed it sobbing and laid it face downwards.
The "general," burning with inquisitive sympathy, induced him, after one
or two unsuccessful attempts, to open the door to her knocking; pressed
on him, in spite of denials, a scratch meal of tea and poached eggs, and
hovered round while he ate it. As befitted the occasion she held her
apron to her eyes while she extracted as much as she could in the way of
information. Later, as she washed up in the kitchen, she heard him
moving from one tiny room to another--consumed with a restless misery
and a restless wonder as to what he should do with his life. Still
later she heard him go out again; though he had hidden away the
self-conscious photograph, thrusting it out of sight into a drawer, the
brand-new furniture was always there and always waiting for Griselda.
The moment came when he could no longer suffer its company and went out
into the street to avoid it. Other purpose in walking he had none--and
thus it happened that, mechanically and without intent, he drifted into
the Bloomsbury side-street where Faraday held his meeting.
The important doorkeeper would have greeted him with more than a
nod--would gladly, in fact, have detained him after his four weeks'
absence to exchange comments and views on the European situation; but
William, in entering, made no response to his "Hallo, back again!" which
it may be he did not even hear. He walked straight past the sentinel
and into the bare familiar room--where everything, from the seats to
their occupants, was just as it had been and where every face was known
to him. Time, for a moment, turned back in its traces and yesterday
unrolled before his eyes. He gazed at it and sat down slowly--by
himself in the last row of chairs.... Edwardes, the Central London
secretary, was hugging his ankle as he always hugged it, and Mrs.
Jay-Blenkinsop, the formidable treasurer of the Golder's Green branch,
frowned through her pince-nez at the speaker with her chin uplifted as
of old, wore the same capacious sandals--her crossed knees showed
them--and the same cold-gravy-coloured robe. And her son, young
Jay-Blenkinsop, as his habit was, sprawled sideways on one chair and
curled his long limbs round another. It was all as it had been; and
Faraday, on the platform, was speaking with the accents of yesterday.
The important doorkeeper was not the only comrade who had noticed
William's return: one or two heads were turned as he came in, but for
the most part the audience was intent on the words of the speaker. The
heads that turned made some sign of pleased recognition to which William
responded automatically, unknowing that he did so. From his seat near
the door his eyes wandered slowly over the platform, the hall and its
occupants--slowly and with a dull and detached curiosity. What he saw
there and heard was unreal, like a scene in an unconvincing play; he had
a sense of looking at these people from a great way off, of hearing
their voices from a distance. Something separated and held him removed
from them.... He had great difficulty in giving his attention to what
the speaker was saying; yet in the old days Faraday had always stirred
him and to-night he was speaking well.
From thirty to forty convinced adherents assembled at a private
conference are not the material upon which a public orator usually
throws away his best endeavours; but Faraday that night was speaking not
so much to his audience as to himself. Unadmitted, even to his secret
soul, he had great and fierce need of conviction; it was with his own
doubts that he wrestled, at his own head that he flung both his jeers
and his arguments. He was of a finer because more intelligent mould
than the Edwardeses and Jay-Blenkinsops who heard him and who were still
thinking of the European tragedy as a red herring drawn by the cunning
politician across the path of progress. Not for him was their happy
imperviousness to the new idea, and, looking down from his platform on
their assembled faces, it may have struck him, not pleasantly, that
these people were in part of his making; they were, at any rate, the
product of a system of which he, in common with politicians of every
creed, had not scrupled to make full use.
Be that as it may, he spoke feelingly and well that night; far better
and more feelingly than was needed by the numbers, the attitude and
calibre of his audience, which was comfortably and stubbornly determined
to agree with him before he opened his mouth. He had not come to the
meeting with intent to be so lengthy and urgent; he had planned to be
nothing more than brief and business-like, to give and invite
suggestions for a vigorous prosecution of the anti-war campaign; but
when he rose to open the discussion he was carried away by his own
doubts and emotions; and the "few remarks" he had thought to make flared
out into a veritable speech. He fought with and poured scorn on himself
in the name of others, rallying his feebleness with argument and
sneering at his own hesitations. Thus he spoke eloquently and deserved
the applause which greeted him when he sat down.
Edwardes followed him, in response to the invitation for suggestions: a
little be-spectacled Labour man whose ideal was a world of committees.
There had been something alive about Faraday's outpouring; it was the
speech of a man who, however resentfully, understood that the world had
moved. But as Edwardes quacked earnestly about branch propaganda as an
antidote to militarism and a means of diffusing the international idea,
the sense of unreality descended again upon William. Branch
propaganda--little leaflets and meetings--when guns made a pulp of flesh
and blood, and men were being shot against walls! Resolutions in
minute-books against wrongs like Griselda's and his own! For the first
time for many days he felt a desire to laugh, and, if it had not been
for his sense of the distant unreality of the proceedings, perhaps he
would have been moved to actual expression of perverted and unmirthful
mirth.
It was young Jay-Blenkinsop who made the proceedings real to him; and,
but for his intervention at the end of the discussion, it is probable
that William himself would have taken no part in it. He would have
listened for a little, perhaps to the end, and then crept out to his
loneliness; but Jay-Blenkinsop roused him and swept him out of himself
... Edwardes quacked earnestly for ten minutes or so: the aggrieved
outpourings of a soul to which the really serious fact of the war was
that it had caused a certain amount of backsliding and even desertion
amongst the weaker brethren of his branch; and when he sat down, after a
moment of silence, Jay-Blenkinsop rose to his feet. (In the dark ages
that had ended a week ago William thought highly of Edgar
Jay-Blenkinsop, esteeming him a youth of great promise.) With his hands
in his pockets, his broad shoulders lolled against the wall and his
hair, as usual, drooped over an eyebrow, he drawled out fine scorn upon
the leaders of the Labour Party for their treachery to the cause of the
People and their lack of the sense of Brotherhood. There was no
particular purport in his vaguely scathing remarks, which (the meeting
being nominally for business purposes) might well have been ruled out of
order; but he was enjoying the sound of his own full voice and his
mother gazed up at him admiringly.
It was more himself than his vague remarks that made William flare and
see red--his six feet of conceited boyhood propped sprawlingly against
the wall. As he listened he was gripped with a sudden hatred of
Jay-Blenkinsop, a hatred that had its roots in envy of his physical
perfections; it was for lack of that broad deep chest and those long
strong limbs that the recruiting officer would have none of him ... and
a muscular boy, a potential soldier, lolled hands in pockets and cracked
ignorant jests at men who knew better than he did, at the agony of such
as himself. As the young man drawled onward William breathed fast and
thickly and clutched at the chair in front of him: till Jay-Blenkinsop,
having sufficiently scarified the official representatives of Labour,
went on to some smartly turned gibes at the recruiting campaign and the
gulls who were caught by its appeals. One of his sarcasms brought him
the ready laugh he had counted on--and something on which he had not
counted; at the tail of the laugh came, imperative and raucous, the
order, "Sit down, you young fool!"
Every head in the room went round with indignation to William--whom most
of the gathering, Faraday included, now noticed for the first time. He
was on his feet, stiffened and pallid with passion; but after the cry
that had cut short Jay-Blenkinsop he stood silent, with his lips apart
and his hands clutching at a chair-back. His fingers knotted and worked
as they clutched and his mouth was twisted and quivering; he stood like
an animal backed into a corner, defying the astounded eyes and the open
incredulous mouths of those who had once been his comrades ... Most
incredulous of all was the mouth of Mrs. Jay-Blenkinsop, who gaped in
amazement at the unprovoked attack on her son.
"May I ask----?" began Edgar Jay-Blenkinsop, less slowly and languidly
than usual--whereat William, hearing the silence broken, also found
words to his tongue.
"You may ask," he interrupted, "oh yes, you may ask! Anything you like.
But for God's sake don't lay down the law and make ignorant
assertions--for God's sake don't do that. You mustn't lay down the law
until you know something, until you've really tried to find out. Then,
perhaps, you'll have a right to speak; now when I hear you, I--I----"
From sheer sense of the inadequacy of words his voice tailed huskily
away; then, with an odd little snarl at his auditors, he burst out
savagely afresh: "You child, you great impudent jackanapes! You stand
there and dare to make jokes about the hell that other men have burned
in. The flames and the blood and the guns and people dying in the road.
You talk blank foolery and laugh about it--you laugh and turn up your
nose. You think you're clever--and enlightened--and it sickens me,
sickens me to hear you!"
He finished on a note that was almost a scream, and they looked at him
aghast and dumfoundered. It was his face that held them even more than
his disconcerting words--all but Edgar Jay-Blenkinsop, who, pricked in
his vanity, would have accepted the challenge and started again had not
Faraday silenced him with a turn of the head and a gesture. Still more
pricked in his vanity he slid to a chair, muttering sulkily and red to
the neck.
"Tully----" began Faraday with reproof in his voice--but Tully defied
even his mentor. Not savagely and with contempt, as he had defied and
decried Jay-Blenkinsop, but as one who had a right to be heard.
"He mustn't talk like that till he knows something. It's child's
talk--ridiculous babble. I know what I'm saying--I've come from it--and
I've a right to tell him what I know. Not one of you here has seen what
I have--you're just guessing. When a shell bursts ... I've seen a man
with his legs like red jelly and a horse..." he choked at the memory.
"That's being a soldier--let him fight and he'll find it out. Now he
thinks it's what he said just now--a sort of game that they like.
Everything he said was mean little nonsense--how dare you listen to it
and laugh at his silly little jokes? What's the good of saying that it
shouldn't happen? Of course it shouldn't happen--we all know that--of
course it shouldn't happen, but it does. And you can't stop it with
sneers about soldiers and Kitchener.... It's hell and the mouth of
hell--I've seen it. He says he wouldn't lift a finger to keep them out.
Do you know why he says that? It's because he can't imagine what it
means. I would. I'd die to keep them out, because I've seen ... I've
seen a man shot--not a soldier, just an ordinary man--put against a wall
and shot while his wife howled like a dog. Two men--and their wives
standing by. They might do that to him if they came--has he ever
thought of that?--while his mother howled like a dog." He shot out a
quivering finger at the open-mouthed Mrs. Jay-Blenkinsop. "And his
women--would he let them do as they liked with his women? They would if
they came here--he can take my word for it they would. Would he ask
them in politely and shake hands and give them drinks and let them? ...
If they came, people would run from them, leaving everything they
had--beggars. Would he like to be driven and beaten and made to work
like a slave? I've had that--I've been driven and beaten and made to
work. And I've run from them and starved and hidden because I was
afraid. And my wife died--they killed her----"
There was a gasp, a rustle of movement and a sudden straightening of
backs. Every one in the room knew Griselda Tully, many quite
intimately, and not a few had been at her wedding; amazement and wrath
against the disturber of the peace gave way to a real consternation, and
in the silence that followed the momentary rustle William heard
Faraday's "Good God!" ... They stared at him in dumb consternation,
dimly conscious, perhaps, that they were in the presence of an eternal
fact, and that the little man who stabbed at them with a trembling
forefinger was the embodiment of that sense of injustice and agony which
makes men cry to Heaven for vengeance and, Heaven failing them, take the
sword and smite for themselves. Dolly Murgatroyd, Griselda's bridesmaid,
who had twice accompanied Griselda to Holloway, saw and shrank from the
reality of that tortured revolt which for years she had striven to
simulate under the lash of her leaders' bombast.... In face of the fact
that was William their theories wilted and failed them, and the new
black suit of their comrade Tully was to them as the writing on the wall
at the feast of Belshazzar--and came, like that other writing on the
wall, at the moment when the evil from which they had hidden their faces
was an evil actually accomplished. In each man's heart was a faint
reflection of the amaze that had fallen on William and Griselda when
their world first crumbled about them.
The sudden movement, the chairman's exclamation and the abashed silence
that followed it checked William and brought him to a standstill; speech
failed him and he stood with his mouth half open while the meeting
stared at him motionless. There was a blank period of tension, of
awkward stillness hi the presence of emotion, and then Faraday coughed
uncertainly and moved. Probably he intended to say something, perhaps
to adjourn the meeting; but his movement and the breaking of silence
with his cough gave William back his voice and he spoke before Faraday
began.
"And they won't take me in the Army. Although my wife has been killed
they won't take me in the Army. I'm not tall enough; I'm only five foot
five, and they won't take me. I've seen my wife die--she died in the
road--and they refused me when I tried to enlist. If I were only two
inches taller--God in Heaven, if I were two inches taller!"
The high, tight voice broke suddenly and he wept with his face in his
hands. For the space of a painful moment there was no sound in the room
but his sobs--no man knowing what to do or where to turn his eyes until
Faraday came down from the platform. The tread of his feet on the
gangway broke the spell of embarrassed silence--and chairs were moved
softly and the occupants looked away from William as Faraday took him
very gently by the arm and led him out into the street.
*CHAPTER XVI*
There was to be a gulf henceforth between William and Faraday, and the
twain who had once lived so near together were to see but little of each
other; yet it was Faraday who gave him the first word of comfort as he
walked by the side of his former disciple on the road to William's flat.
"If," he said suddenly and awkwardly--they were nearing their
destination and it was the first time he had opened his lips since he
led William out of the hall--"if it's this recruiting business, this
refusal, that's adding to your trouble, I don't think you need be too
much discouraged. Honestly--you see it isn't necessarily final. I know
for a fact they're refusing men now, because they can't equip them as
fast as they come in. They haven't the uniforms, the accommodation, or
the arms, and that's why they sent up the standard for recruits with a
rush. But if the thing's as big as they say--the common talk is that
Kitchener has prophesied three years of it, and it's very likely
true--they'll be wanting every man who'll come in before they've done
with it. Not only the big chaps--every one. It will merely be a
question of a few months--at the outside only a few months. So I
shouldn't take this refusal to heart."
His message of comfort cost Faraday something to deliver; it was the
sheer wretchedness of the broken little man beside him that moved him to
deny his principles, by implication if not in so many words. The only
audible reply that he received was a sniff, but even in the darkness he
knew that his inconsistency had not been wasted, and that William had
gained from it some measure of help and consolation. He said no more,
and they parted with constraint on the pavement outside the flat--to
tread through the future ahead of them their separate and several ways.
Faraday did not go back to his meeting; he left it to break up or pursue
as it would, while he walked the streets restlessly alone.
Between the uttering and fulfilment of Faraday's prophecy William's way,
for the next few weeks, was the way of drift and uncertainty; it was
also the way of great loneliness, an experience entirely new to him.
Loneliness not only by reason of the loss of his wife, but because of
the gap that the war had made between himself and his former associates.
With the ending of his platform and committee career he was cut off,
automatically and completely, from the fellowship of those who had been
his co-workers in the various causes and enthusiasms he had once
espoused and advocated. It was not that all of his former co-workers
would have disagreed with his altered point of view; his was not the
only perversion to militarism the stalwarts had to deplore; it was
merely that he ceased to meet them. All the same the new isolation in
which he lived was largely due to his own initiative or lack of it,
since many, even among the stalwarts would have given him kindly welcome
and done their best to be of help to him personally; but after the
meeting in Bloomsbury he felt small desire to seek them out. On the
contrary, he shrank into himself and avoided, as far as possible, any
contact with those whose very presence would remind him of the busy,
self-satisfied life he had passed in their company, of the vanished,
theoretical world where he had met Griselda and loved her. It was a real
misfortune that his small private income, though to a certain extent
affected by the war, was yet sufficient to keep a roof over his head and
supply him with decent necessaries of food and clothing. Thus, he was
not driven to the daily work of hand or brain that might have acted as a
tonic to the lethargic hopelessness of his mood. Nature had not made
him versatile and he had lived in a groove for years; and, his
occupation as a public speaker gone, he was left without interest as
well as without employment. More than once, goaded into spasmodic
activity by some newspaper paragraph, he offered himself vaguely for
war-work--only to be discouraged afresh by the offer of an entirely
unsuitable job or by delays and evasions which might have discouraged
men more competent and energetic than himself.