They stood about, gaping at each other, unable to realise what had happened to them. One of the windows of the drawing-room was open, and the subdued buzz of women's voices came through it to the terrace. Monotonously, exasperatingly, one querulous voice sent a fretful question through the bewildered speeches of the women ... "But what's it about? That's what I want to know. I've asked everybody, but nobody seems to know!" Some one made an inaudible reply to the querulous voice, and then it went on: "Serbia! That's what some one else said, but we aren't Serbia. We're England, and I don't see what we've got to do with it. If they want to go and fight, let them. That's what I say!..."
Gilbert and Henry sat in the middle of the group on the terrace, listening to what was being said about them. They had thrown the newspapers aside ... there was hysteria in the headlines ... and were sitting in a sort of stupor, wondering what would happen next. The buzzing voice, demanding to be told what the war was about,still droned through the window, irritating them vaguely until the man who had first brought the news got up from his seat, and went to the window and shut it noisily.
"Damn 'er," he said, as he came back to his seat. "'Oo cares whether she knows what it's about or not! What's it got to do with 'er any'ow. She won't 'ave to do none of the fightin'!"
Fighting!
Henry sat up and looked at the man. Why, of course, there would be fighting ... and perhaps England would be drawn into the war, and then!...
A girl came out of the hotel, with towels under her arm, and called to them. "Coming to bathe?" she said.
They looked at her vacantly. "Bathe!" said Henry.
"Yes. It's a ripping morning!"
They stood up, and looked towards the sea that was white with sunshine ... and then turned away again. It seemed to Henry as if, down there by the rocks, in a splash of sunlight, a corpse were lying ... festering.... He sat down again, mechanically picking up a newspaper and reading once more the telegrams he had already read many times.
"Come along," the girl said. "You might just as well bathe!"
Gilbert looked up at her and smiled. "I was just wondering," he said, "what one ought to do!"
The banks had closed, and there was an alarm about money and a deeper alarm about food.... Panic suddenly came upon them, and in a short while, visitors began to pack their trunks in their eagerness to get home. The women felt that they would be safer at home ... they wanted to be in familiar places. "I really ought to be at home to look after my house," a man said to Henry."They're a rough lot in our town, and if there's any shortage of food ... they'll loot, of course! I don't like breaking my holiday, but!..."
He did not complete his sentence ... no one ever completed a sentence then ... but went indoors....
And telegrams came incessantly, telegrams calling people home, telegrams announcing that others were not coming, telegrams containing information of the war....
"I suppose," said Gilbert, "if anything comes of this, well have to do something!..."
"Do something?" Henry murmured.
"Yes, I suppose so...."
Perkins came to him, Perkins who had an agency in Manchester.
"You know," he said, "I don't call this place safe. It's right on the coast ... slap-up against the sea ... and you know, if a German cruiser was to drop a shell right in the middle of us, we'd look damn silly, I can tell you!"
"We have a navy too," said Gilbert.
"Yes, I know all about that, but that wouldn't be much consolation to me if I was to get blown up, would it? You know, I do think they ought to draw the blinds down at night so's the light won't show out at sea. I mean to say, there's no sense in running risks, is there?"
"No ... no, of course not!"
"I think I'll go and suggest that to the proprietor. I've just been up to Manchester to see how things are going on there. Bit excited, of course. Nobody seems to know what to do, so they just sit down and cancel everything. Silly, I call it. I went to my office to get my letters, and every blessed one was cancelling an order. I mean to say, that's no way to go on ... losing their heads like that. And you know they'll need my stuff later on ... if we go in!"
"Your stuff?" Henry said.
"Yes. I deal in black!..."
"Christ!" said Gilbert, getting up and walking away.
"Your friend seems a bit upset, doesn't he?" Mr. Perkins murmured to Henry.
They went into Holyhead, and wandered aimlessly about the station. Marvellously, men in uniform appeared everywhere. The reservists, naval and military, had been called up, and while Gilbert and Henry stood in the station, a large number of them went away, leaving tearful, puzzled women on the platform. That morning the boots at the hotel had been called up to join his Territorial regiment. He had been carrying a trunk on his back, when the call came to him, and, chuckling, he dropped the trunk, and skipped off to get ready. "I'm wanted," he said ... and then he went off.
And still people went about, bemused and frightened, demanding what it was about....
"Well have to go in," some one said in the station. "I can't see how we can stay out!..."
"I can't see that at all," his neighbour replied. "We've got nothing to do with it!"
"If the Germans won't leave the Belgians alone!..."
Perkins interrupted again. "We've got a Belgian cook in our hotel," he said. "It ... it sort of brings it all home to you, that!"
There were rumours that the working-people were resolute against the war....
"And so are the employers," said Perkins. "I can tell you that. I've not met anybody yet who wants a war!"
And as the rumours flew about, they grew. One could see a rumour begin and swell and change and increase.
"I tell you what," said Perkins. "These Germans have been damn well asking for it, and I hope they'll damn well get it. I know a few Germans ... Manchester's full of 'em ... and I don't like 'em. As a nation, I don't like'em. They ... they get on my nerves, that's what they do!"
There was talk about German organisation, German efficiency, German militarism....
"They don't think anything of a civilian in Germany. The soldier's everything. And women ... oh, my God, the way they treat women! I've seen German officers ... I've seen 'em myself ... chaps that are supposed to be gentlemen ... going along the street, and shoving women off the pavement!..."
"You know," said Perkins, "I don't really think much of the Germans myself. I mean to say, they got no initiative. That's what's the matter with 'em. Do you know what a German does when he wants to go across the street? He goes up to a policeman and asks him. And what does the policeman do? Shoves him off the pavement!... I'd break his jaw for him if he shoved me!"
They stayed on, wondering sometimes why they stayed, and then at midnight, a troop train steamed into the station, and a crowd of tired soldiers alighted from the carriages and prepared to embark.
"My God, it's begun!" said Perkins. "Where you chaps going to?" he asked of a soldier.
"I dunno," the soldier answered. "Ireland, I think. I 'eard we was goin' to put down these bleedin' Orangemen that's bin makin' so much fuss lately, but some'ow I don't think that's it. 'Ere, mate," he added, thrusting a dirty envelope into Perkins's hand. "That's my wife's address. I 'adn't time to write to 'er ... we was sent off in a 'urry ... you might just drop 'er a line, will you an' say I'm off!..."
"Right you are," said Perkins.
"Tell 'er I think I'm off to France, see, on'y I don't know, see! There's a rumour we're goin' to Ireland, but I don't think so. You better tell 'er that. An' I'm all right, see. So far any'ow!..."
"God!" said Perkins, as the soldiers moved towards thetransport, "don't it make you feel as if you wanted to cry!..."
In the morning, they knew that England had declared war on Germany.
"Of course," said Gilbert, "we couldn't keep out of it. We simply had to go in!"
They had gone down to the bay to bathe. "This'll be my last," Gilbert muttered as they stripped, "for a while anyhow!"
"But you're not going yet," Henry said.
"I think so," Gilbert replied. "I don't know how the trains are running, but I shall try to get back to London to-night."
"But why?..."
"Oh, I expect they'll need chaps. Don't you think they will?"
"Do you mean you're going to ... enlist?"
"Yes. That seems the obvious thing to do. They're sure to need people," Gilbert answered.
"I suppose so," said Henry.
"I don't quite fancy myself as a soldier, Quinny. I'm not what you'd call a bellicose chap. I shan't enjoy it very much, and I expect I shall be damned scared when it comes to ... to charging and that sort of thing ... but a chap must do his share...."
"I suppose so," Henry said again.
It seemed to him to be utterly absurd that Gilbert should become a soldier, that his sensitive mind should be diverted from its proper functions to the bloody business of war.
"I've always jibbed a bit when I heard people talking about England in the way that awful stockbroker in the hotel talks about it," Gilbert was saying, "and I loathe the Kipling flag-flapper, all bounce and brag and bloodies ... but I feel fond of England to-day, Quinny, and nothing else seems to matter much. And anyhow fighting's such a filthy job that it ought to be shared by everybody that can take a hand in it at all. It doesn't seem rightsomehow to do your fighting by proxy. I should hate to think that I let some one else save my skin when I'm perfectly able to save it myself...."
"But you've other work to do, Gilbert, more important work than that. There are plenty of people to do that job, but there aren't many people to do yours. Supposing you went out and ... and got ... killed?..."
"There's that risk, of course," said Gilbert, "but after all, I don't know that my life is of greater value than another man's. A clerk's life is of as much consequence to him as mine is to me."
"I daresay it is, Gilbert, but is it of as much consequence to England? I know it sounds priggish to say that, but some lives are of more value than others, and it's silly to pretend that they're not."
"I should have agreed with you about that last week, Quinny. You remember my doctrine of aristocracy?... Well, somehow I don't feel like that now. I just don't feel like it. Those chaps we saw at Holyhead, going off to France ... I shouldn't like to put my plays against the life of any one of them. I couldn't help thinking last night, while I was lying in bed, that there I was, snugly tucked up, and out there ... somewhere!..." He pointed out towards the Irish Sea ... "those chaps were sailing to ... to fight for me. I felt ashamed of myself, and I don't like to feel ashamed of myself. You saw that soldier giving his wife's address to Perkins? Poor devil, he hadn't had time to say 'Good-bye' to her, and perhaps he won't come back. I should feel like a cad if I let myself believe that my plays were worth more than that man's life. And anyhow, if I don't write the plays, some one else will. I've always believed that if there's a good job to be done in the world, it'll get done by somebody. If this chap fails to do it, it'll be done by some other chap.... Will you come into Holyhead with me and enquire about trains? There's a rumour that a whole lot ofthem have been taken off. They're shifting troops about...."
Gilbert was to travel by the Irish mail the next day. He had made up his mind definitely to go to London and enlist, and Henry, having failed to dissuade him from his decision, resolved to go to London with him. They had talked about the war all day, insisting to each other that it could not be of long duration. There was a while, during the first two or three days' fighting, when the Germans seemed to have been held by the Belgians, that they had the wildest hopes. "If the Belgians can keep them back, what will happen when the French and British get at them?" But that time of jubilee hope did not last long, and again the air was full of rumours of disaster and misfortune. The Black Watch had been cut to pieces....
There was a sense of fear in every heart, not of physical cowardice, but of doubt of the stability of things. This horrible disaster had been foretold many times, so frequently, indeed, that it had become a joke, and novelists had written horrific accounts of the ills that would swiftly follow after the outbreak of hostilities. Credit would disappear ... and all that pretence at wealth, the pieces of paper and the scrips and shares, would be revealed at last as ... pieces of paper. Silver, even, would be treated with contempt, and there would be a scramble for gold. And people would begin to hoard things ... and no one would trust any one else. There would be suspicion and fear and greed and hate ... and very swiftly and very surely, civilisation would reel and topple and fall to pieces.... At any moment that might happen. So far, indeed, things were still steady ... calamity had not come so quickly as imaginative men had foretold ... but presently, when the slums ... the rich man's reproach ... had become hungrier than they usually were, there would be rioting ... and killing.... One began to be frightfully conscious of the slums ... and the rage of desperate, starving people. One imagined the obsessing thought in each mind:Here we are, eating and drinking and being waited upon ... and perhaps to-morrow!...
But no one, in forecasting the European Disaster, had made allowance for the obstinacy of man or taken into account the resisting power of human society. As if man, having built up this mighty structure of civilisation, would let it be flung down in a moment without trying to save some of it! As if man, having in pain and bloody sweat discovered his soul, would let it get lost without struggling to hold and preserve it!...
Gilbert and Henry came into the drawing-room, where the women were whispering to each other. Inexplicably, almost unconsciously, their voices had fallen to whispers ... as if they were in church or a corpse were above in a bedroom.... Four of the women were playing Bridge, but none of them wished to play Bridge; and as Gilbert and Henry entered the room, they put down their cards and looked round at them.
"Is there any more news?" one of them said, and Gilbert told them of the rumours that had been heard in Holyhead.
"They say the Black Watch have been cut to pieces," he said.
The whispering stopped.... They could hear the clock's regular tick-tick....
"Oh, the poor men ... the poor men!" an old woman said, and her fingers began to twitch....
Almost mechanically, the Bridge players picked up their cards. "It's your lead, partner!" one of them said, and then she threw down her cards, and rising from her chair, went swiftly from the room.
"Oh, the poor men ... the poor men!" the old woman moaned.
They sat on the rocks after tea and while they sat there, they saw a great ship sailing up the sea, beautiful and proud and swift; and they jumped up and climbed to the highest point of the cliff to watch her go by. They knew her, for there had been anxiety about her for two days, and as they watched her sailing past, they cheered and waved their hands although no one on the great vessel could see them. A girl came running to them....
"What is it?" she said.
"It's theLusitania," they answered. "She's dodged them, damn them!"
"Oh, hurrah!" the girl shouted. "Hurrah! Hurrah!"
And then the strain lifted. TheLusitaniahad won home to safety. The Germans, greedy for this great prize, had failed to find her. Civilisation still held good ... if the world were to go down in the fight, it would go down proudly, hitting hard, hitting until the last....
It was odd, that journey from Holyhead to London, odd and silent; for all the way from Wales to Euston they passed but one train. They drove through the long stretch of England, past wide and windy fields where the harvesters were cutting the corn, through the dark towns of the Potteries, by the collieries where the wheels still revolved as the cages were lowered and raised, and then, plunging into the outer areas of London, they drove swiftly up to the station. In the evening, they went to Hampstead to see Roger and Rachel, and found them reading newspapers.
"I don't seem able to do anything else," said Roger. "I buy every edition that comes out. I read the damn things over and over, and then I read them again...."
Rachel nodded her head. "So do I," she said.
A girl came in, a friend of Rachel, who had been in Finland when the war began. She had hurried home by Berlin, where she had spent an hour or two, while waiting for a train, before England declared war on Germany....
"What were they like?" Gilbert asked.
"Wild with excitement. We went to a restaurant to get something to eat, and while we were there, the news came that Russia was at war with them.... My goodness! There was a Russian in the room, and they went for him!... I had my aunt with me, and I was afraid she'd get hurt, so we cleared out as quickly as we could, and when we got to the station, we had to fight to get into the train. My aunt fainted ... and they were beastly to us, oh, beastly! I tried to get things for her, but they wouldn't give us anything! They kept on telling us we'd be shot,and threatening us!... They were frightened, those big fat men were frightened. If you'd touched them suddenly, they'd have squealed ... like panic-stricken rabbits!..."
They sat and talked and talked, and gloom settled on them. What was to be the end of this horrible thing which no one had desired, but no one was able to prevent.
"I believe they all lost their nerve at the last," Roger said, "and they just ... just let things rip. They call it a brain-storm in America. They lost their heads ... and they let things rip. My God, what a thing to have happened!"
They sat in silence, full of foreboding, and then the girl who had come from Finland went home.
"It's all up with the Bar, I suppose!" said Roger, when he had let her out. "Whatever else people want to do, they won't want to go to law. Having a youngster makes things awkward!..."
"If you should need any money, Roger," said Gilbert, "you might let me know!"
"And me, Roger!" said Henry.
"Thanks awfully!" Roger replied. "I won't forget. I've got some, of course, and Rachel has a little. I daresay we'll manage. It can't last long. A couple of months, perhaps!..."
"I can't see how it can last longer. It's too big, and ... oh, it can't last longer!"
"Kitchener says three years!..."
"He wants to be on the safe side, I suppose, but my God, three years of ... of that!..."
Rachel got up suddenly. "You haven't seen my baby yet," she said.
"So we haven't," Gilbert exclaimed. "Where is it?"
"She's upstairs asleep. You must come quietly!..."
"It's a girl, then?" said Henry.
Rachel nodded, and led the way upstairs to the bedroom where the baby lay in her cot.
"Isn't she a darling?" she said, bending over the child.
They did not answer, afraid, as men are in the presence of a sleeping child, that they might disturb her; and while they stood looking at the cot, Rachel bent closer to her baby, and lightly kissed her cheek.
They moved away on tiptoe.
"What do you call her?" Henry whispered to Roger, as they left the bedroom.
"Eleanor," he answered. "That was my mother's name. Jolly little kid, isn't she?"
Gilbert turned and went back to the bedroom. Rachel was still bending over the baby, and she looked up at him warningly. He went up to the cot and, leaning towards Rachel, whispered, "Do you mind if I kiss her, too, Rachel? I'm going to enlist to-morrow, and perhaps I won't get so good a chance as this!..."
She stood up quickly and put her arms round him. "Oh, Gilbert!" she said, and then she drew him down, so that he could kiss the baby easily.
Henry told Roger of Gilbert's intention, while Rachel and Gilbert were in the bedroom with the baby.
"Enlist?" said Roger.
Henry nodded his head.
"Well, of course!..." Roger began, and then he stopped. "I suppose so," he said, moving towards the tray which Rachel had brought into the room earlier in the evening. "Whisky?" he said.
"No, thanks, Roger!" Henry answered. "He's going down to-morrow!"
"He'd better wait a few days. There's been a hell of a scrum already to join. Queues and queues of chaps, standing outside Scotland Yard all day. He'd better wait 'til the rush is over...."
"I think he'd rather like to be in the rush," Henry said.
Then Rachel came into the room, followed by Gilbert.
"Roger," she said, "Gilbert's going to enlist!..."
"So Quinny's just been telling me. Have a whisky, Gilbert?"
"No, thanks, old chap," said Gilbert, "but if you have a cigarette!..."
"I'll get them," Rachel exclaimed.
She brought the box of cigarettes to him, and while he was choosing one, she said to Roger, "I was so excited when he told me, that I got up and hugged him!"
"Good!" said Roger.
They walked home to Bloomsbury, where they had easily obtained rooms, for the sudden withdrawal of Germans and Austrians had left Bloomsbury in a state of vacancy. As they went down Haverstock Hill towards Chalk Farm, an old man lurched against them.
"All the young chaps," he mumbled thickly. "Thash wot sticks in my gizzard! All the young chaps! Gawblimey, why don't they tyke the ole ones!..."
"Steady on," Gilbert exclaimed, catching his arm and holding him up. "You'll fall, if you're not careful!"
"Don't marrer a damn wherrer I do or not!" He reeled a little, and Gilbert caught hold of him again. "I woul'n be a young chap," he muttered, "not for ... not for nothink. You ... you're a young chap, ain't you? Yesh you are! You needn't tell me you ain't! I can see as wellsh anythink! You're a young chap ri' enough. Well ... well, Gawd, 'elp you, young feller! Thash all I got to sy ... subjec!' Goo-ni', gen'lemen!" He staggered off the pavement, and went half way across the deserted street. Then he turned and looked at them for a few moments. "Ain't it a bloody treat, eih?" he shouted to them. "Ain'tit a bloody treat?"
"Drunk," said Gilbert.
Henry did not reply, and they walked on through Chalk Farm, through Camden Town, into the tangle of mean streets by Euston, and then across the Euston Road to Bloomsbury. They did not speak to each other until they were almost at their destination.
"It's awfully quiet," said Henry, turning and looking about him.
"I don't see any one," Gilbert answered, "except that old fellow ahead of us!..."
"No!"
They walked on, and when they came up to the old man, who walked slowly, and heavily in the same direction, they called "Good-night!" to him. He looked round at them, an old, tired, bewildered man, and he made a gesture with his hands, a gesture of despair. "Ach, mein freund!" he said brokenly, and again he made the suppliant motion with his hands.
"Poor old devil!" Gilbert muttered almost to himself.
They went to their rooms at once, too tired to talk to each other, and Henry, hurriedly undressing, got into bed. But he could not sleep. "I suppose I ought to join, too!" he said to himself, as he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. "Gilbert and I could go together!..."
But what would be the good of that? The war would be over quite soon. Even Roger thought it would be over in a couple of months, and if that were so, there would be no need for him to throw up his work and take to soldiering. "It'll be over before Gilbert's got through his training. Long before!..."
"Anyhow, I can wait until the rush is over. I might as well go on working as stand outside Scotland Yard all day,waiting to be taken on.... Or I could apply for a commission!..."
He lay very still, hoping that he would fall asleep soon, but sleep would not come to him. He sat up in bed, and glanced about the room.
"I suppose," he said aloud, "they're fighting now!"
He lay down again quickly, thrusting himself well under the bedclothes and shut his eyes tightly. "Oh, my God, isn't it horrible!" he groaned.
He saw again that crowd of hurried soldiers detraining at Holyhead, thinking that perhaps they were going to Ireland, but not quite sure ... and he could see them stumbling up the gangways of the transport, each man heavily accoutred; and sometimes a man would laugh, and sometimes a man would swear ... and then the ship sailed out of the harbour, rounding the pier and the breakwater, churning the sea into a long white trail of foam as she set her course past the South Stack.... They could see the lights on her masthead diminishing as she went further away, and then, as the cold sea wind blew about them, they shivered and went home.... Now, lying here in this stillness, warm and snug, Henry could see those soldiers, huddled together on the ship. He could imagine them, murmuring to one another, "I say, d'ye think wearegoin' to Ireland?" and hear one answering, "You'll know in three hours. We'll be therethen, if we are!" and slowly there would come to each man the knowledge that their journey was not to Ireland, but to France, and there would be a tightening of the lips, an involuntary movement here and there and then.... "Well, o' course, we're goin' to France! 'Oo the 'ell thought we was goin' anywhere else?" The ship would carry them swiftly down the Irish Sea and across the English Channel ... and after that!...
"Some of them may be dead already," he murmured to himself.
Torn up suddenly from their accustomed life, hurriedthrough the darkness along the length of England, and then, after long, cold nights on the sea, landed in France and set to slaying....
"And they won't know what's it for?"
But did that matter? Would it be any better if they were aware of the cause of the fight? One lived in a land and loved it. Surely, that was sufficient?
In his mind, he could still see the soldiers, but always they were moving in the dark. He could see very vividly the man who had asked Perkins to write to his wife ... and it seemed to him that he was still demanding of passers-by that they should write to her. "Tell 'er I'm all right," he kept on saying. "So far, any'ow!..."
He turned over on his side, dragging the clothes about his head, and tried to shut out the vision of the soldiers marching through the fields of France, but he could not shut it out. They still marched, endlessly, ceaselessly marched....
When they got to Scotland Yard, there was a great crowd of men waiting to be enlisted.
"You'd better come again, Gilbert," Henry said. "You'll have to hang about here all day, and then perhaps you won't be reached!"
"I think I'll hang about anyhow," Gilbert answered.
He had become queerly quiet since the beginning of the War. The old, light-hearted, exaggerated speech had gone from him, and when he spoke, his words were abrupt and colourless. He took his place at the end of the file of men, and as he did so, the man in front of him, a fringe-haired, quick-eyed youth with a muffler round his neck, turned and greeted him. "'Illoa, myte!" he said with the cheery friendliness of the East End. "You come too, eih?"
Gilbert answered, "Yes, I thought I might as well!"
"Well 'ave to wyte a 'ell of a time," the Cockney went on. "Some of 'em's bin 'ere since six this mornin'. Gawblimey, you'd think they was givin' awy prizes. I dunno wot the 'ell I come for. I jus' did, sort of!..."
Some one standing by, turned to a recruiting sergeant and whispered something to him, pointing to the guttersnipes in the queue.
"Fight!" said the recruiting sergeant. "Gawd love you, guv'nor, they'd fight 'ell's blazes, them chaps would!"
Henry tried again to induce Gilbert to fall out of the queue and wait until there was more likelihood of being enlisted quickly, but Gilbert would not be persuaded.
"You'll have to get something to eat," Henry urged. "They'll never get near you until this evening, and if you've got to fall out to get food, you might as well fall out now!"
"I think I'll wait," Gilbert repeated. "Perhaps," he went on, "you'll get me some sandwiches. Get a lot, will you. This chap in front of me doesn't look as if he'd brought anything!"
"You could get a commission, Gilbert, easily," Henry said.
"I don't think I should be much good as an officer, Quinny.... Go and get the sandwiches like a decent chap!"
Henry went away to do as Gilbert had bidden him, and after a while, he returned with a big packet of sandwiches and apples.
"I shan't wait, Gilbert," he said. "I can't stand about all day. I'll come back when the rush is over...."
"But why, Quinny?"
"I'm going to join, too, with you!..."
"You're going to join?... That's awf'lly decent of you, Quinny!"
"Decent! Why? It isn't any more decent than your joining is!"
"P'raps not, but I always think it's very decent of an Irishman to fight for England. If there doesn't seem any chance of my getting in to-day, I'll come back to tea. There's a fellow here says this is the second day he's been waiting!"
Henry went away. He walked along the Embankment towards Blackfriars, and when he had reached the Temple, he turned up one of the steep streets that link the Embankment to Fleet Street.
"I'll go and see Delap," he said to himself.
Delap was the editor of a weekly paper for which Henry had sometimes written articles. Delap, however, was not at the office, but Bundy, the manager of the paper, who was also the financier, was there.
"It's all up with us," said Bundy. "We're closing down next week!"
"Closing down!"
"Yes. We're bust. Damn it, we're getting on splendidly, too. Just turning the corner! We should have had a magnificent autumn if it hadn't been for this...."
He came away from Bundy, and walked aimlessly down Fleet Street. "Lots of other people would have had a fine autumn if it hadn't been for this," he thought to himself, and then he saw Leadenham and Crowborough, who worked on theCottenham Guardian. They were very pale and tired-looking.
"Hilloa!" he said, slapping Leadenham on the back.
Leadenham jumped ... startled! "Oh, it's you," he said, smiling weakly.
"Yes. What's up? You look frightened!" He turned to greet Crowborough.
"Well, we're all rather jiggered by this," Leadenham replied. "We're going to get something to eat. Come with us?"
They went into a tea-shop and sat down. "Is theGuardianall right?" Henry asked.
"Oh, yes," said Leadenham wearily, "as right as anything is. Nobody in Fleet Street knows how long his job'll last. Half the men on theDaily Circlehave had the sack. Some of our chaps have gone! Fleet Street's full of men looking for jobs. About fifty papers have smashed up since the thing began ... sporting papers mostly. It frightens you, this sort of thing!..."
He came away from Fleet Street as quickly as possible. The nervous, hectic state of the journalists made him feel nervous too.
"I'd better get among less jumpy people," he said to himself, and he hurried towards Charing Cross. And there he met Jimphy. He did not recognise him at first, for Jimphy was in khaki, and he would have passed on without seeing him, had Jimphy not caught hold of his arm and stopped him.
"Cutting a chap, damn you!" said Jimphy....
"Good Lord, I didn't know you!"
"Thought you didn't. Where you going?"
"Oh, nowhere. Just loafing about. Gilbert's down at Scotland Yard trying to enlist."
"Is he, begad? Everybody seems to be trying to enlist. He'd much better try to get a commission. I'm going home now. You come with me, Quinny. Hi, hi!..." He hailed a taxi-cab, and, without waiting to hear what Henry had to say, bundled him into it.
"Lord," he exclaimed, as he leant back in the cab, "it's years an' years an' years since I saw you. Well, what do you think of this for a bally war, eh? Millions of 'em ... all smackin' each other. I'm going out soon!" He leant out of the window and shouted at the driver, "Hi, you chap, hurry up, will you!
"I don't seem able to get anywhere quick enough nowadays," he said as he sat back again in his seat. "You know," he went on, "we've never been to the Empire yet, you an' me. Damned if we have! Never mind! We'll go when the War's over!"
There were half a dozen women in the drawing-room with Cecily when Henry and Jimphy entered it. In addition to the women, there were a photographer and Boltt. The photographer had finished his work and was preparing to depart, and Boltt was talking in his nice little clipped voice about the working-class. It appeared that the working-class had not realised the seriousness of the situation. The other classes had been quick to understand and to offer themselves, but the working-class.... No! Oo, noo! Boltt had written an article in theEvening Gazettefull of gentle reproach to the working-class, but without effect. The working-class had taken no notice. "Democracy, dear ladies," said Boltt, with a downward motion of his fingers. "Democracy!" A newspaper, a Labour newspaper, had been rather rude to Boltt. It had put some intimate, he might say, impertinent, questions to Boltt, but Boltt had borne this impertinent inquisition with fortitude. He had not made any answer to it....
"Hilloa, Paddy!" Lady Cecily called across the room to Henry. "Aren't you at the war?"
"Well, no, I only got to London...."
"Oh, but everybody's going. Jimphy and everybody! Except Mr. Boltt, of course. He's unfit or something. Aren't you, Mr. Boltt?"
"Ah, if I were only a young man again, Lady Cecily!..."
"But he's writing to the papers, and that's something, isn't it?" Cecily interrupted. "And I'm making mittens for the soldiers. We're all making mittens. Except Mr. Boltt, of course."
"Who was the johnny who's just gone out?" Jimphy demanded. "Was he the chap who sells the stuff you make the mittens out of?..."
"Oh, no, Jimphy, he was a photographer. We're all to have our photographs in theDaily Reflexion...."
"Except Mr. Boltt?" Henry asked maliciously.
"No, Mr. Boltt's to be in it too. Holding wool. I've been photographed in three different positions ... beginning to knit a mitten, half-way through a mitten, and finishing a mitten. I was rather anxious to be taken with a pile of socks, but I can't knit socks!..."
"You can't knit mittens either," said Jimphy.
It appeared that Lady Cecily's maid was allowed to undo her mistress's false stitches and finish the mittens properly....
"Well, of course, I'm not really a knitter," Cecily admitted, "but I feel I must do something for the country. I've a good mind to take up nursing. I met Jenny Customs this morning, and she says it's quite easy, and the uniform is rather nice...."
"But don't you require to be trained?" Henry asked dubiously.
"Oh, yes, if you're a professional. But I'm not. I'm doing it for the country. Jenny Customs went to a First Aid Class, and learnt quite a lot about bandaging. She can change sheets while the patient is in bed, and she says he can scarcely tell that she's doing it. I should love to be able to do that. She told me a lot of things, and I really know the first lesson already. I can shake a bottle of medicine the proper way!..."
"Can't we have tea or something?" said Jimphy. "Oh, by the way, Cecily, Quinn says that chap Gilbert Farlow's hanging about Scotland Yard...."
"Goodness me, what for?" Cecily demanded in a startled voice. "He hasn't done anything, has he?"
"No, of course he hasn't. He's trying to enlist!"
"Enlist!" she said.
"Yes. Silly ass not to ask for a commission!" said Jimphy.
Boltt burbled about the priceless privilege of youth. If only he were a youngster once again!...
They drank their tea, while Jimphy discoursed on thewar. Henry had entered Cecily's house with a feeling of alarm, wondering whether she would be friendly to him, wondering whether he would be able to look into her eyes and not care ... and now he knew that he did not care. There was something incredibly unfeeling and trivial about Cecily, something ... vulgar. While the world was still reeling from the shock of the War, she was arranging to be photographed with mittens that she had not made and could not make. The portrait would be reproduced in theDaily Reflexionunder the title of "Lady Cecily Jayne Does Her Bit." ... But she was beautiful, undeniably she was beautiful. As he looked at her, she raised her eyes, conscious perhaps of his stare, and smiled at him....
"She'd smile at anybody," he said to himself. "If she had any feeling at all for me, she'd be angry with me!"
She came to him. "I wish you'd tell Gilbert to come and see me," she said, sitting down beside him.
"Very well," he answered, "I will!"
"I'm sure he'll look awfully nice in khaki. And I should love to see him saluting Jimphy. He'll have to do that, you know, if he's a private...."
He got away as soon as he could decently do so, and went back to Bloomsbury. "That isn't England," he told himself, "that mitten-making, posturing crew!" and he remembered the great queues of men, standing outside Scotland Yard, struggling to get into the Army, and suffering much discomfort in the effort.
"Perhaps," he said to himself, "Gilbert's at home now. I wonder if he managed to get in!"
A man and a woman were standing at the corner of a street, talking, and he overheard them as he passed.
"'Illoa, Sarah," the man said, "w'ere you goin', eih?"
"Goin' roan' the awfices," she answered, "to see if I kin get a job o' charin'!"
"Gawblimey!" said the man, laughing at her.
"Well, you got to do somethink, 'aven't you? No good sittin' on your be'ind an' 'owlin' because there's a war on, is there?"
There was more of the spirit of England in that, Henry thought, than in Cecily's mitten-making....
Gilbert was not at home when he reached the Bloomsbury boarding-house. "Still trying, I suppose," Henry thought.
There was a telegram for him. His father was ill again, "seriously ill" was the message, and he was needed at home.
He hurriedly wrote a note to be given to Gilbert when he returned, in case he should not see him again, but before he had begun his packing, Gilbert came in.
"It's all right," he said. "I've joined. I've had a week's leave.... I'm damned tired!"
"My father's ill again, Gilbert. I've just had a telegram, and I'm going back to-night!..."
"I'm awf'lly sorry, Quinny!" Gilbert said, quickly sympathetic.
"I met Jimphy at Charing Cross. He's in khaki. He took me back to tea. Cecily's making mittens!..."
"She would," said Gilbert.
"She told me to tell you to go and see her!"
"Did she, indeed?"
"You'll stay here, I suppose," Henry went on, "until you're called up?" Gilbert nodded his head. "Let me know what happens to you afterwards, will you?"
"Righto!"
"I'll come back as soon as I can, Gilbert!"
Mr. Quinn died at Christmas. The old man, weakened by his long illness, had been stunned by the War, and when his second illness seized him, he made no effort to resist it. He would lie very quietly for a long while, and then a paroxysm of fury would possess him, and he would shake his fist impotently in the air. "If they wanted a war," he shouted once, "why didn't they go and fight it themselves. They were paid to keep the peace, and ... and!..."
He fell back on his pillow, exhausted, and when Henry, hurrying up the stairs to him the moment he heard the shout, reached him, he was gasping for breath. "It's all right, son!" he said when he had recovered himself. "It's all right!..."
"It's foolish of you, father, to agitate yourself like that," Henry said to him, putting his arms round him and lifting him into a more comfortable position.
"I can't help it, Henry, when I think of ... of all the young lads!... By God, they'd no right to do it!..."
"Hush, father!..."
"They'd no right to do it! You'd think they were greedy for blood ... young men's blood!" He pointed to an English newspaper lying on the floor. "Did you read that paper?" he said.
"Yes."
"Houndin' them into it," the old man went on. "Yellin' for young men! By God, I'd be ashamed ... parsons an' women an' old men that can't fight themselves,houndin' young men into it! If they'd any decency, they'd shut up...."
"All right, father!"
"The man that owns this paper ... whatshisname!..."
"It doesn't matter, does it? Lie still and be quiet!"
"I can't be quiet. Like a damned big monster, yellin' for boys to eat. Has he any childher, will you tell me?..."
"I don't know, father!"
"Of course he hasn't. An' here he is, yelpin' in his damned rag every day, 'Fee-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a young man!' Why don't they shove him at the Front ... the very front!"
"You must keep quiet, father!"
"All right, Henry, all right!"
He was silent for a few minutes, and then he began again, in a quieter voice. "I'd have put the men that made it, the whole lot of them, in the front rank, and let them blow themselves to blazes. Old men sittin' in offices, an' makin' wars, an' then biddin' young men to pay the price of them! By God, that's mean! By God, that's low!..."
"But old men couldn't bear the strain of it, father!" Henry interjected, and he recalled some of the horrors of the trenches where the soldiers had stood with the water reaching to their waists; but Mr. Quinn insisted that the old men should have fought the war they made.
"Who cares a damn whether they can bear it or not," he said. "Let 'em die, damn 'em! They're no good!" He turned quickly to Henry, and demanded, "What good are they? Tell me that now!" but before Henry could make an answer to him, he went off insistently, "They're no good, I tell you. I know well what they're like ... sittin' in their clubs, yappin' an' yappin' an' demandin' this an' demandin' that, an' gettin' on one another's nerves; an' whatever happens it's not them that suffers for it: it'sthe young lads that pays for everything. Look at the way the old fellows go on in Parliament, Henry! By God, I want to vomit when I read about them! Yappin' an' yappin' when they should be down on their knees beggin' God's forgiveness...."
He spoke as if he were not himself an old man, and it did not seem strange to Henry that he should speak in that fashion, for Mr. Quinn's spirit had always been a young spirit.
"An' these wee bitches with their white feathers," he went on, "ought to be well skelped. If I had a daughter, an' she did a thing like that, by God, I'd break her skull for her!"
"I suppose they think they're doing their duty, father, and they're young!..."
"There's women at it, too. I read in the paper yesterday mornin' that there was grown women doin' it. There's nobody has any right to bid a man go to that except them that's been to it themselves. If the women an' the parsons an' the old men can't fight for their country, they can hold their tongues for it, an' by God they ought to be made to hold them...."
He asked continually after Gilbert.
"He's a sergeant now, father. He's been offered a commission, but he won't take it!..."
"Why?"
"Oh, one of his whimsy-whamsies, I suppose. He says the non-commissioned officers are the backbone of the Army, and he prefers to be part of the backbone. You remember Ninian Graham, father?"
"I do, rightly!..."
"He's come home to join. He's in the Engineers!"
Mr. Quinn did not make any answer to Henry. He slipped a little further into the bed, and lay for a long while with his eyes closed, so long that Henry thought he had fallen asleep; but, just when Henry began to tiptoefrom the room, he opened his eyes again, and suddenly they were full of tears.
"The fine young fellows," he said. "The fine young lads!"
And at Christmas, he died. He had called Henry to him that morning, and had enquired about "The Fennels," which had lately been published after a postponement and much hesitation, and about the new book on which Henry was now working.
"That's right," he said, when he heard that Henry was working steadily on it. "It'll keep your mind from broodin'. How's the Ulster book goin'?"
"'The Fennels'?"
"Ay. You had hard luck, son, in bringing out your best book at a time like this, but never matter, never matter!..."
"I don't know how it's doing. It's too soon to tell yet. The reviews have been good, but I don't suppose people are buying books at present!"
"You've done a good few now, Henry!"
"Five, father."
"Ay, I have the lot there on that ledge so's I can take them down easily an' look at them. I feel proud of you, son ... proud of you!"
He began to remind Henry of things that had happened when he was a boy. His mind became flooded with memories. "Do you mind Bridget Fallon?" he would say, and then he would recall many incidents that were connected with her. "Do you mind the way you wanted to go to Cambridge, an' I wouldn't let you," and "Do you mind the time you took the woollen balls from Mr. Maginn's house?...."
Henry remembered. Mr. Maginn, the vicar of Ballymartin, had invited Henry to spend the afternoon with his nephew and niece and some other children. They had played a game with balls made of coloured wool, and while they were playing, Henry, liking the pattern of one of them, had put it into his pocket. It had been missed, and there had been a search for it, in which Henry had joined. He was miserable, and he wanted to confess that he had the ball, but every time he opened his lips to say that he had it, he felt afraid, and so he had refrained from speaking. He felt, too, that every one knew that he had taken it, but still he could not confess that he had it, and when they said, "Isn't it queer? I wonder where it's gone!" he had answered, "Yes, isn't it queer?" They had abandoned the search, and had played another game, but all the pleasure of the party was lost for Henry. He kept saying to himself, "You've got it.You'vegot it!..."
He had hurried home after the party was over, and when he reached the shrubbery, he dug a hole and buried the ball in it. He had closed his eyes as he took it out of his pocket, so that he should not see the bright colours of it, and had heaped the earth on to it as if he could not conceal it quickly enough ... but burying it had not quieted his mind. He felt, whenever he met Mr. Maginn, that the vicar looked at him as if he were saying to himself, "You stole the woollen ball!...." At the end of the month, he had gone to his father and told him of it, and Mr. Quinn had cocked his eye at him for a moment and considered the subject.
"If I were you, Henry," he had said, "I'd dig up that ball and take it back to Mr. Maginn and just tell him about it!"
Henry could remember how hard it had been to do that, how he had loitered outside the gates of the vicarage for an hour, trying to force himself to go up to the door and ask for the vicar ... and how kind Mr. Maginn had been when, at last, he had made his confession!
Oh, yes, he remembered!...
"You were a funny wee lad, Henry," Mr. Quinn said, taking his son's hand in his. "Always imaginin' things!" He thought for a second or two. "I suppose," he went on, "that's what makes you able to write books ... imaginin' things! Ay, that's it!"
They sat in quietness for a while, and then Mr. Quinn fell asleep, and Henry went down to the library and worked again on his new novel, for which he had not yet found a title; and in his sleep, Mr. Quinn died.
Henry had finished a chapter of the book, and he put down his pen, and yawned. He was tired, and he thought gratefully of tea. Hannah would bring a tray to his father's room. There would be little soda farls and toasted barn-brack, and perhaps she would have made "slim-jim," and there would be newly-churned butter and home-made jam, which Hannah, in her Ulster way, would call "Preserve." ...
He got up from the table and went into the hall.
"Will tea be long, Hannah?" he called down the stairs, leading to the kitchens.
"Haven't I it near ready?" she answered.
He had gone up the staircase at a run, and had entered his father's room, expecting to see him sitting up....
"Hilloa," he said, stopping sharply, "still asleep!" and he went out of the room and called softly to Hannah, now coming up the stairs, to take the tray to the library. "He's asleep, Hannah!" he said almost in a whisper.
"He's never asleep at this hour," she answered.
And somehow, as she said that, he knew. He went back into the room and leant over his father, listening....
"Is he dead, Master Henry?" Hannah said, as she came into the room. She had left the tray on a table on the landing.
Henry straightened himself and turned to her. "Yes, Hannah!" he said quietly.
The old woman threw her apron over her head and let a great cry out of her. "Och, ochanee!" she moaned, "Och, och, ochanee!..."
He had none of the terror he had had when Mrs. Clutters lay dead in the Bloomsbury house. He went into the room and stood beside his father's body. The finely moulded face had a proud look and a great look of peace. "I don't feel that he's dead," Henry murmured to himself. "I shall never feel that he's dead!"
"I wasn't with him enough," he went on. "I left him alone too often...."
Extraordinarily, they had loved each other. Underneath all that roughness of speech and violence of statement, there was great tenderness and understanding. He spoke his mind, and more than his mind, but he was generous and quick to retract and quicker to console. "I'm an Ulsterman," he said once. "Ulster to the marrow, an' begod I'm proud of it!"
"But I'm Irish too," he added, turning to John Marsh as he said it, fearful lest he should have hurt John's feelings. "Begod, it's gran' to be Irish. I pity the poor devils that aren't!..."
He was a great lover of life, exulting in his strength and vigour, shouting sometimes for the joy of hearing himself shout. "And shy, too," Henry murmured to himself, "shy as a wren about intimate things!"
The sight of his father's placid face comforted him. One might cry over other people, but not overhim. Henry felt that if he were to weep for his father, and the old man, regaining life for a moment were to open his eyes and see him, he would shout at him, "Good God, Henry, what areyou cryin' about? Go out, man, an' get the fresh air about you!..."
He put his hand out and touched the dead man.
"All right, father!" he said aloud....
There was much to do after the burial, and it was not until the beginning of the Spring that Henry left Ballymartin. He had completed his sixth novel, and had asked that the proofs should be sent to him as speedily as possible so that he might correct them before he left Ireland, and while he was waiting for them, he had travelled to Dublin for a few days, partly on business connected with his estate and partly to see his friends. Mr. Quinn had spent a great deal of money on his farming experiments, the more freely as he found that Henry's books brought him an increasing income, and so Henry had decided to let the six hundred acres which Mr. Quinn himself had farmed. At first, he had thought of selling the land, but it seemed to him that his father would have liked him to keep it, and so he did not do so. He settled his affairs with his solicitors, and then returned to Ballymartin; but before he did so, he spent an evening with John Marsh, whom he found still keenly drilling.
"But why are you drilling now?" he asked. "This hardly seems the time to be playing at soldiers, John!"
"I'm not playing, Henry. Iama soldier!"
It was difficult to remember how many armies there were in Ireland. The Ulster Volunteers still sulked in the North. The National Volunteers had split. The politicians, alarmed at the growth of the Volunteer Movement among their followers, had swooped down on the Volunteers and "captured" them. John Marsh and Galway and their friends had seceded, and, under the presidency of a professor of the National University, John MacNeill, had formed a new body, called the Irish Volunteers. The politicians, failing to understand the temper of their time, worked to discourage the growth of the Volunteer Movement, and the result of their efforts was that the more enthusiastic and courageous of the National Volunteers seceded to the Irish Volunteers.
"We're growing rapidly," John said to Henry. "They're flocking out of the Nationals into ours as hard as they can. We've got Thomas MacDonagh and Patrick Pearse and a few others with us, and we're trying to link up with Larkins' Citizen Army. Mineely's urging Connolly on to our side, but Connolly's more interested in the industrial fight than in the national fight. But I think we'll get him over!"
Their objects were to defend themselves from attack by the Ulster Volunteers if attack were made, to raise a rebellion if the Home Rule Bill were not passed into law, and to resist the enactment of conscription in Ireland. The burden of their belief was still the fear of betrayal. "But you're going to get Home Rule," Henry would say to them, and they would answer, "We'll believe it when we see the King opening the Parliament in College Green. Not before. We know what the English are like...."
Henry had suggested to them that they should offer the services of their volunteers to the Government in return for the immediate enactment of the Bill, but they saw no hope of such an offer being accepted and honoured. "The minute they'd got us out of the way, they'd break their word," said Galway. "Our only hope is to stay here and make ourselves as formidable as we can. You can't persuade the English to do the decent thing ... you can only terrorise them into it. Look at the way the Ulster people have frightened the wits out of them!..."
"But the Ulster people haven't frightened the wits out of them. I can't understand you fellows! You sit here with preconceived ideas in your heads, and you won't checkthem by going to see the people you're theorising about. You keep on saying the same thing over and over again, and you won't listen to any one who tells you that you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick!..."
"My dear Henry," said John, "our history is enough for us. Even since the war, the English have tried to belittle the Irish. They've done the most inept, small things to annoy us. They'd have got far more men from Ireland than they have done, if they 'd behaved decently; but they couldn't. They simply couldn't do the decent thing to Ireland. That's their nature.... I'd have gone myself!..."
"You?"
"Yes. I think the Germans are in the wrong. I think they've behaved badly, and anyhow, I don't like their theory of life. But the English couldn't treat us properly. We wanted an Irish Division, with Irish officers, and Irish colours, and Irish priests ... but no! They actually stopped some women in the South from making an Irish flag for the Irish regiments!... What are you to do with people like that. If they aren't treacherous, they're so stupid that it's impossible to do anything with them, and we'd much better be separate from them!"
"I should have thought that Belgium showed the folly of that sort of thing," said Henry. "A little country can't keep itself separate from a big one. It'll get hurt if it does."
"Belgium fought, didn't she?" John answered. "I daresay we should get beaten, too, but we could fight, couldn't we?"
Henry went away from them in a state of depression. It seemed impossible to persuade them to behave reasonably. Fixed and immovable in their minds was this belief that England would use them in her need ... and then betray them when her need was satisfied.
He went back to Ballymartin and corrected his proofs.
"I'll go over to England next week," he said to himself when he had revised the final proofs and posted them to his publishers.