1
A month after Gilbert and Ninian had left England, Henry went to London
for a couple of days on business connected with his books. Mrs. Graham
had asked him to return to Boveyhayne instead of going to Ireland, until
he was fully well again, and he had gladly accepted her invitation. He
had written a few pages of a new book that pleased him, and he was
anxious to complete the story before he entered the Army. Writing irked
him, but he could not abstain from writing ... some demon drove him to
it, forcing him to his desk when all his desire was to be out in the
lanes with Mary or sailing about the bay with Tom Yeo and Jim
Rattenbury. There were times when he loathed this labour of writing
which came between him and the pleasure of living, so that he sometimes
saw foxgloves and bluebells and primroses and violets and wild
daffodils, not as the careless beauty of a Devonshire lane, but as
picturesque material for a description in one of his chapters. And his
beastly creatures would not lie still in his study until he returned to
attend to them, but insisted on following him wherever he went,
thrusting themselves upon his notice continually, whether the time was
opportune or not. He would walk with Mary, perhaps to Hangman's Stone,
and suddenly he would hear her saying, "What are you thinking of,
Quinny?" and he would come out of his silence with a start, and say,
"Oh, my book, Mary!" and find that he had been walking by her side,
unaware of her, unaware of anything but these abominable paper people
who deluged his mind with their being ... and when they got to
Hangman's Stone, he thought always, "What a good title for a story!"
"But I can't leave it alone," he would say to himself, and then he would
compare himself to a drunkard, eager to be quit of his drink, but unable
to conquer his craving. And he had pride in it, too. That was what
distinguished him from the drunkard and the drug-taker. They had no
pride in their drunkenness or their drugged senses, but he had pride in
his books, and constantly in his mind was the desire that before he
joined the Army, he should leave another book behind him, that his life
should be expressed substantially in a number of novels, so that if he
should die in battle, he would have left something by which men might
remember him.
He had talked to Mary about his position, but she had insisted that this
was a decision he must make for himself. Her view, and the view of her
mother, was that a woman ought not to take the responsibility of urging
a man to endure the horror and danger of such a war as this. "Women
can't go into the trenches themselves," Mrs. Graham said, "and they've
no right to ask any one else to go!" That was what his father had said.
"But somebody must go, and there are people who have to be told about
things," he objected.
"I think," Mrs. Graham answered, "I'd rather be killed than be defended
by a man who was white-feathered into doing it, and I know I should
never be happy again if I'd nagged at a man until he joined the Army,
and he was killed.... I think that some women will have haunted minds
after this War!"
"It's the Government's job to say who shall go and who shall stay," Mary
added. "That's what they're there for, and it's mean of them to shuffle
out of their responsibility and let a lot of flappers and old maids do
their work for them!"
Then their talk had taken a new turn, and in the end it was settled that
Mary and he were to be married when the new book was finished, and then
he would join the Army. There had been a difficulty with Mrs. Graham,
but Mary over-ruled her.
"I won't let him go until he marries me," she said, shutting her lips
firmly and looking very resolutely at her mother.
"Roger and I might go in together," Henry suggested. "I had a letter
from him saying he thought he would join soon. Rachel's going to live in
the country...."
"She can come here if she likes," Mrs. Graham interjected. "You'd better
tell her that when you go to town. She can stay with us until the war's
over...."
"There's the baby, of course!" Henry reminded her.
"I know," she answered. "I'd like to hear a baby in this house
again...."
2
London was strangely sensitive, easily exalted, easily depressed,
listening avidly to rumours, even when they were clearly absurd. It was
the least English of the cities, far, far less English than the villages
and country towns. London's nerves were often jangled, but the nerves of
Boveyhayne were never jangled. London jumped up and down like a
Jack-in-the-box, but Boveyhayne moved steadily on. There were times when
London was so un-English as to believe that England might be beaten ...
but Boveyhayne never imagined that for a moment. Boveyhayne did not
think of the defeat of England, because it had never occurred to
Boveyhayne that England could be beaten. Old Widger would sometimes say,
"They Germans be cunning!" or "Us'll 'ave to 'it a bit 'arder avore us
knocks 'un out!" but Old Widger never imagined for a moment that "'un,"
as he always called the Kaiser, would not sooner or later get knocked
out, and so he went on with his work, pausing now and then to say,
"'Er's a reg'lar cunnin' old varmint, 'er be!" almost with as much
admiration as if he were talking of a fox or an otter that had eluded
the hounds many times. But the cunningest fox falls to the hounds in the
end of some chase, and Widger did not doubt that "Keyser" would fall,
too. Boveyhayne, was very English in its reserves and its dignity.
London might squeal for reprisals, but Boveyhayne never squealed. When
the Germans torpedoed a merchant ship, Old Widger said, "It hain't very
manly, be it, sir?" and that was all. Old Widger was not indifferent or
without imagination ... but he had self-respect, and he could not squeal
like a frantic rabbit even when he was in pain. He could hit, and he
could hit hard, but he did not care to claw and scratch and bite!...
Henry disliked London then, but he comforted himself with the thought
that it resembled all capital cities, that its population was not a
native population, but one that shifted and changed and had no
tradition. Old Widger had lived in the same cottage all his life: his
father had lived there too; and his family, for several generations
before his father, had lived and worked in Boveyhayne. They had habits
and customs so old that no one knew the meaning of them. When Widger's
wife died, Widger and his family had gone to church on the Sunday after
her burial, as all the Boveyhayne bereaved do, and had sat through the
service, taking no part in it, neither kneeling to pray nor rising to
sing nor responding to the invocations. But Old Widger did not know why
he had behaved in that fashion, nor did any one in Boveyhayne. "Don't
seem no sense in it," he said, but nevertheless he did it, and nothing
on earth would have prevented him from doing it. It was the custom....
But there was no custom in London. There were no habits, no traditions,
nothing to hold on to in times of crisis or distress. There was no one
in London who had been born and had spent all his life in one house, in
a house, too, in which his father had been born and had lived and had
died. People took a house for three years ... and then moved to another
one. Locality had no meaning for them ... they hardly knew the names of
their neighbours ... they were not surrounded by cousins ... the roads
and streets had no meaning or memories for them ... they were just
thoroughfares, passages along which one walked or drove to a railway
station or a shopping centre....
And while Old Widger, if the thought had been put into his mind, would
stoutly have answered, "Us ain't never been beat!" a Londoner would have
answered, "My God, supposing we are beaten?..." Victory might be long in
being won. Widger would admit that. But "us ain't never been beat" he
would maintain. The Londoner would admit that victory might never be won
... and in making the admission, de-nationalised himself. Widger,
obstinate, immovable, imperturbable, kindly, unvengeful and resolute,
was English to the marrow ... and when Henry thought of England as a
conquering country, he thought of it as a nation of Widgers, not as a
nation of Cockneys.
"And it _is_ a nation of Widgers," he said to himself. "The Cockneys
shout more, print more, and they squeal a lot, but the Widgers are in
the majority!"
It was not until night fell that Henry's love of London was restored.
When the sky-signs were put out, and the shop-lights were diminished,
and the running flames announcing the merits of this one's whisky and
that one's tea were quenched, London became again an ancient city that a
man could love....
"It's worth fighting for?" Henry murmured to himself as he stood on the
terrace of Trafalgar Square, before the National Gallery, and looked
about him at the dusk-softened outlines and the rich highways of
shadows. One would not fight for the England that squealed through the
ha'penny papers ... one would gladly throttle that England ... one would
not fight for the England of the Stock Broker and the Mill Owner ... but
one would fight hard, fight until death, for the England of Old Widger
and the England of this darkened, dignified and beautiful London.
3
He had attended to his business with his publishers, and was walking
along the Strand towards Charing Cross, when he became aware of a thrill
of emotion running through the crowd that stood on either side of the
road.
"What is it?" he said to a bystander.
"The wounded!" was the answer.
He pressed forward, and stood on the edge of the pavement, and as he did
so, the ambulances came put of the station. There was a moment of deep,
hurting silence, and then came cheers and waving handkerchiefs and sobs.
... There was a parson standing at Henry's elbow, and he cheered as if
he were intoning ... little sterilised hurrahs ... and there was a woman
who murmured continually, "Oh, God bless them! God bless them all!"
while she cried openly, unrestrainedly. Unceasingly, the ambulances
seemed to pass on to the hospitals, and the soldiers, pale from their
wounds and tired after their journey by sea and train, lay back in queer
disregard of the crowd that cheered them. Now and then, one moved his
hand in greeting or smiled ... but most of them were irresponsive,
dazed, perhaps hearing still the sound of the smashing artillery and the
cries of the maimed and dying, unable to believe that they were back
again in a place where there was no fighting, where men and women walked
and talked and did their work and took their pleasure in disregard of
death and a bloody and abrupt end.... There was a private motor-car in
the middle of the procession of ambulances, and inside it was a wounded
officer with his wife ... and she did not care who looked on nor what
was said, she held him in her arms and kissed him and would not let him
go....
"Oh, my God," Henry murmured to himself, as the cars went by, "I can't
bear this!..."
He wanted to kill Germans ... it seemed to him then that nothing else
mattered but to kill Germans ... that one must put aside the generous
beliefs, the kindly intentions, one's work, one's faith, everything ...
and kill Germans; unceasingly, without relenting ... kill Germans; that
for every wound these men bore, for every drop of blood they had lost,
for every pang they had endured, for every tear that their women had
shed ... one must kill Germans.
He withdrew from the crowd. Somewhere near at hand, there was a
recruiting office. He remembered to have seen a large guiding sign
outside St. Martin's Church. He would go there!...
He had to wait until the procession of motor-ambulances had passed by,
and then he crossed the street and went to find the recruiting office.
"I'm excited," he said to himself. "I'm full of emotion. That's what I
am. I'm over-wrought. Those soldiers!..."
In his mind, he could see the woman in the motor-car, hugging her
wounded husband ... and a soldier, lying on a stretcher in an ambulance,
with his head swathed in bandages, near a little window ... feebly
trying to wave his hand to the crowd....
"It's no good being sloppy," he told himself. "One can't win a war by
... spilling over. One's got to keep one's head!"
He turned the corner of the Church and saw the recruiting office,
covered with posters, in a narrow lane. He walked towards it, slackening
his pace as he did so ... and then he walked past it.
"I can't go in now," he thought. "I must see Roger first ... and there's
the book to finish ... and Mary!..."
4
He had seen Roger and Rachel, and was now on his way back to
Boveyhayne.... Roger had agreed that he would not join without Henry. "I
can't go yet," he had said. "When I've saved a little more, I'll go in.
I want to leave Rachel and Eleanor as secure as I can!"
There was another boom in recruiting just then, following on another
German outrage.
"It'll take them some time to shape the crowd they're getting now,"
Roger had said, "so that we won't be hindering them if we hang back for
a while. I should have thought you'd want to go into an Irish regiment,
Quinny!"
"It doesn't very much matter, does it, what the regiment is?" Henry had
answered. "The labels are more or less meaningless now. And I'd like to
be with some one I know!"
He had given Mrs. Graham's invitation to Rachel, and Rachel had sent her
thanks to Mrs. Graham. She would be glad to go to Boveyhayne when
everything was settled.
Things were clearer now. In a little while, Mary and he would be
married. Then he could go with Roger. He would have to see his lawyers
in Dublin ... there would be a marriage settlement to make and business
connected with the estate to settle ... and that done, and his book
ready for the printers, he would be free.
"I wish the next two months were over," he said to himself.
He had to change at Salisbury, and while he was waiting for the slow
train to Exeter, he met Mullally. He had looked at him, vaguely
wondering who he was and why his face should seem familiar, until
recollection had come to him, and then, with a return of the old
aversion, he had turned away, hoping that Mullally had not seen or
recognised him. But Mullally had recognised him, and, unable as ever to
understand that his acquaintance was not wanted, he came to Henry and
held out his hand.
"I thought it was you," he said. "I wasn't sure at first, but when you
turned away ... there was something about your back that was familiar
... I knew it was you. _How_ are you? I haven't seen you since you left
Rumpell's, though I've heard of you, of course, and read of you, too!
You've become quite well-known, haven't you?"
Henry smiled feebly, an unfriendly, unresponsive, mirthless smile, as
was his wont when he was in the presence of people whom he disliked.
"I've often wondered about you," Mullally went on, unembarrassed by
Henry's obvious wish to get away from him.
"Oh, yes," Henry replied, saying to himself, "I wish to God my train
would come in!"
"Yes, I've often wondered about you," Mullally went on. "And about
Farlow and Graham and Carey. You were great friends, you four, weren't
you? I'd have called you 'The Heavenly Twins' only there were four of
you, and 'quadruplets' is a difficult word for a nickname, don't you
think? I mean to say 'The Heavenly Quadruplets' doesn't sound nearly so
neat as 'The Heavenly Twins.' It's funnier, of course! What's become of
them all? I saw somewhere that Farlow'd written a play, but I didn't see
it. I've read one or two of your books, by the way. Quite good, I
thought! What did you say'd become of them?"
"Carey's in London ... at the Bar," Henry answered. "I've just been
staying with him. He's married!..."
"Dear me! And has he any ... little ones?"
Oh, that was like Mullally! He would be sure to say "little ones" when
he meant "children."
"He has a daughter!"
"Oh, indeed! He must be very gratified. And Farlow and Graham, how are
they, and what are they doing?"
"Farlow's in Gallipoli and Graham's in France!..."
"Oh, this dreadful war," Mullally exclaimed, wrinkling his features.
"I'm greatly opposed to it. I've been addressing meetings on the
subject!"
"Have you?" Henry asked with more interest than he had previously shown.
"Yes, I'm totally opposed to it. All this secret diplomacy and race for
armaments ... that's at the bottom of it all. My dear Quinn, some
members of the Cabinet have shares in armament works. It's easy enough
to see why we're at war!..."
Henry could not prevent himself from laughing.
"Do you mean to say you think they got up the war on purpose so's to get
bigger dividends on their armament shares?"
Mullally shrugged his shoulders. "I don't wish to impute motives," he
said. "No, I should not care to do that. I believe in the good
intentions of my fellow man, but all the same, it's very peculiar. It
looks bad!..."
"You always were a bloody fool, Mullally, and you're a bloodier one now.
Good afternoon!" said Henry, turning to look at the train which was now
entering the station.
He hurried to secure a carriage, and while he was settling his bag on
the rack, he heard the voice of Mullally bleating in his ear.
"I'm going to Exeter, too," he said. "I'll just get in with you. I have
a third class ticket, but if they ask for the excess, I can pay it!"
"Oh, damn!" said Henry to himself.
5
"I can understand the difficulty you have in believing that people could
behave so ... so basely," Mullally said, as the train carried them out
of Salisbury.
"I don't believe it at all," Henry answered, "and I think that any one
who does believe it is a malicious-minded ass!"
"But they hold the shares ... you can see the list of shareholders at
Somerset House for yourself ... and they'll take the profits. I'm quite
willing to believe in the goodness of the average man ... in fact, I've
denounced the doctrine of Original Sin very forcibly before now ... but
I must say that there's something very suspicious about this business.
Very suspicious. And you know some of the soldiers are really
rather!..."
"Rather what?" said Henry.
"Well, I don't like saying anything about anybody, but some of them are
not all that they should be. They should set an example, and they don't.
I've heard some very startling things about the behaviour of the
soldiers. Very startling things. I don't want to say anything that may
sound unpleasant, but I suggest that you should read the Report of the
Registrar-General when it comes out. It will cause some consternation, I
can promise you. Young women, Quinn, simply can't be kept away from the
soldiers, and I've been told ... well!..."
Again he shrugged his shoulders, and turned his palms upwards and raised
his eyebrows. A Member of Parliament had written to the _Morning Post_
about it ... a Conservative member of Parliament, not a Liberal or a
Socialist, mark you, but a Conservative....
"Two thousand cases expected in one town," Mullally whispered. "Knows it
for a fact. Seen the girls!..."
Mullally proposed a calculation. They were to work out the number of
unmarried girls who would shortly become mothers, using the Conservative
M.P.'s letter as a basis of calculation.
"Thousands and thousands," he prophesied. "Hundreds of thousands. _All_
illegitimate. I believe, of course, that we make too much fuss about the
marriage laws, Quinn, but still ... there are limits, don't you think? I
mean, we must make changes slowly, not in this ... this drastic fashion.
But what are you to expect? When the very Cabinet Ministers are proved
to have shares in munition works, is it any wonder that the common
soldier runs riot?..."
"I get out at the next station," said Henry.
"Do you?" said Mullally. "But I thought you didn't change until you got
to Whitcombe Junction?"
"I don't" said Henry, "but I get out at the next station!"
"I see," said Mullally.
"About time," Henry thought.
6
After dinner, he asked Mary to walk to the village with him.
"Isn't it late?" Mrs. Graham objected.
"Oh, no," he answered. "It's a beautiful moonlight night, and I feel I
want to stretch my legs. I've been cooped up in the train best part of
the day. Come along, Mary!"
"I'll just get my coat," she said.
When they were ready, he put his arm in hers, and they walked down the
long lane, past the copse and through the pine trees, to the village.
"It's very quiet to-night," Mary said.
"Extraordinarily still," he answered.
There was no one in the village street and there were no lights shining
from any of the windows, except from the bedroom of a cottage near the
sea.
"They've all gone to bed very early, haven't they?" he said, glancing
about the deserted street.
"But it isn't early, Quinny," she replied. "It's quite late. It must be
nearly ten o'clock. We had dinner much later to-night because your train
was so long in getting in!"
"Well, they're missing a gorgeous night, all of them," he exclaimed,
holding her tightly.
They walked to the fisherman's shelter and stood against the iron rail
on top of the low cliff. The moon had made a broad path of golden light
across the bay, from the shingle to the pinnacle on the nearer of the
two headlands, and they could see the golden water flowing through the
hole in the cliff.
"I'd love to bathe now," Mary said. "I'd love to swim all along that
splash of moonlight to the caves and back again...."
A belated sea-gull cried wearily overhead and then flew off to its nest
in the cliffs.
"The water's awfully black looking outside the moonlight," Henry
exclaimed.
"Ummm!" she answered.
They shivered a little in the cold air, and instinctively they drew
closer to each other. Beneath them, lying high on the shingle, were the
trawlers, lying ready for the morning when the fishermen would push them
down into the sea.
"Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury are going to have a motor put into their
trawler," Mary said. "It'll make a lot of difference to them. They'll be
able to go out even when there isn't any wind."
Henry did not answer. He had a strange sense of fear that was
inexplicable to him. He seemed to be outside himself, outside his own
fear, looking on at it and wondering what had caused it. He felt as if
something were pulling at him, trying to force him to look round ... and
he was afraid to look round.... He shuddered violently.
"Are you cold, Quinny?" Mary said anxiously, turning to him.
"Yes," he answered quickly, wishing to account for his sudden shivering
in a way that would not alarm her. "We'd better go back!..."
What was the matter? Why was he so suddenly afraid and so strangely
afraid? If it had been dark, very dark, and he had been alone ... but it
was bright moonlight ... so bright that one could almost see to read ...
and Mary was with him ... and yet he was afraid to look round at the
White Cliff. Something inside him, apart from him, seemed to feel that
if he looked up the long steep path over the White Cliff ... _he would
see something_.
"Come on, Mary!" he said, turning to go, and turning in such a way that
he could not see the Cliff.
They walked rapidly up the street.... "That'll warm me," he explained
to Mary ... and as he walked, he was afraid to look back.
"What the devil's the matter with me?" he kept saying to himself until
they reached the end of the lane leading to the Manor.
"You're walking too quickly, Quinny!" Mary said, holding back.
"I'm sorry, dear," he exclaimed, slackening his pace reluctantly.
He had never had this sensation before ... as if a fear had been stuck
on to him, a fear that was not part of his nature, a thing outside him
trying to get inside him.... He forgot that Mary had complained of the
rapidity with which he was walking, and he set off again. The pine trees
had a black, ominous look, and the sound of the wind blowing through
their needles was like continuous moaning.
"Are you trying to win a race, Quinny?" Mary said.