The morning paper had been brought in to Dodo with her letters, and she opened it quickly at the middle page. The German assault on Verdun was being pressed ever more fiercely; it seemed impossible that the town could hold out much longer. A second of the protecting forts had fallen, smashed and pulverised under the hail of devastating steel....
Dodo read no more than the summary of the news. It was bad everywhere; there was not a single gleam of sun shining through that impenetrable black cloud that had risen out of Central Europe nearly two years ago, and still poured its torrents on to broken lands. On the Eastern front of Germany the Russian armies were being pushed back; the British garrison in Kut was completely surrounded, and even the sturdiest of optimists could do no more than affirm that the fall of that town would not have any real bearing on the war generally. They had said precisely the same when, a few months ago, Gallipoli had been evacuated, just as when in the first stupendous advance of the enemy across France and Flanders, they had slapped their silly legs, and shouted that theGerman lines of communication were lengthening daily and presently the Allies would snip them through, so that all the armies of the Hun would drop neatly off like a thistle-head when you sever its stalk with a stick. At this rate how many and how grave disasters were sufficient to have any bearing on the war? Perhaps the fall of Verdun would be a blessing in disguise. The disguise certainly seemed impenetrable, but the optimists would pierce it....
Dodo pulled herself together, and remembered that she was an optimist too, though not quite of that order, and that it was not consistent with her creed to meditate upon irretrievable misfortunes, or indeed to meditate upon anything at all when there were a dozen private letters of her own to be opened at once, and probably some thirty or forty more connected with hospital work, waiting for her in the office. It certainly was not conducive to efficiency to think too much in these days, especially if nothing but depression was to be the result of thinking; and if all she could do was to see to the affairs of her hospital, it was surely better to do that than to speculate on present data about the result of the fall of Verdun.
A tap at her door, and David's voice demanding admittance reminded her that after she had attended to the immediate requirements of the hospital, she was to have a holiday to-day, as David was going to school for the first time to-morrow, and this day was dedicated to him. Thusthere was another reason for liveliness; it would never do to cast shadows over David's festival.
"Yes, darling, come in," she said. "I'm still in bed like a lazy-bones."
"Oh, get up at once, mummie," said David. "It's my day. Shall I fill your bath?"
"Yes, do. While it's filling I shall open my letters."
"But not answer them," said David. "You can do that to-morrow after I have gone. Isn't it funny? I don't want to go to school a bit, but I should be rather disappointed if I wasn't going."
"I know, darling. I'm rather like that, too. I hate your going, but I'm sending you all the same."
"Anyhow, I shan't cry," announced David.
Dodo glanced through her letters while David was busy with her bath. There was one from Jack, announcing that he would be here for the Sunday, and that was good. There was one from Edith, and that made her laugh, for it informed her that she would arrive to-night bringing her typewriter with her. The speed at which she was getting efficient appeared to be quite miraculous, if her machine had not been away being repaired, she would have typed this letter instead of writing it. She had knocked it over yesterday, and the bell wouldn't ring at the end of a line. She was learning shorthand as well, and it would be good practice for her to take down Dodo's businessletters from dictation, and type them for her afterwards....
"Ready!" shouted David from the bathroom next door. "And I've put in a whole bottle of something for a treat."
From the thick steam that was pouring through the open door it seemed certain that David had treated her to a bottle of verbena salts.
"Darling, that is kind of you," said Dodo cordially. "Now you must go downstairs, and say we'll have breakfast in half an hour."
"Less," said David firmly.
"Well, twenty-five minutes. You can begin if I'm late."
The rule on these festivals, such as birthdays and last days of the holidays, was that David should, with his mother as companion, do exactly what he liked from morning till night within reason, Dodo being the final court of appeal as to whether anything was reasonable or not. She was allowed to be reasonable too (not having to run, for instance, if she really was tired) and so when he had gone downstairs, she emptied the bath-water out and began again, since it was really unreasonable to expect her to get into the fragrant soup which David had treated her to. But she was nearly up to time, and in the interval he had learned the exciting news that the keeper's wife had given birth to twins. This led to questions on the abstruse subject of generation which appalled the parlour-maid. Dodo adhered to the gooseberrybush theory, and would not budge from her position.
An hour in her business-room after breakfast was sufficient to set in order the things that she must personally attend to, and she came out on to the lawn, where David had decreed that croquet should form the first diversion of the day. It was deliciously warm, for the spring which was bursting into young leaf and apple-blossom on the day that Dodo had gone up to town three weeks ago was now, in these last days of April, trembling on the verge of summer. A mild south-westerly wind drove scattered clouds, white and luminous, across the intense blue, and their shadows bowled swiftly along beneath them, islands of moving shade surrounded by the living sea of sunlight. Below the garden the beech-wood stood in full vesture of milky green, and the elms still only in leaf-bud, shed showers of minute sequin-like blossoms on the grass. The silver flush of daisies in the fields was beginning to be gilded with buttercups, the pink thorn-trees, after these weeks of mellow weather were decking themselves with bloom, and the early magnolias against the house were covered with full-orbed wax-like stars. Thrushes were singing in the bushes, the fragrance of growing things loaded the air, and David from sheer exuberance of youth and energy was hopping over the croquet-hoops till his mother was ready. Sight, smell and hearing were glutted with the sense of the ever-lasting youth of the re-awakening earth, and as shestepped out on to the terrace, Dodo recaptured in body and soul and spirit, for just one moment, the immortal glee of springtime. The next moment, she saw a few yards down the terrace, a bath-chair being slowly wheeled along. Two boys on crutches walked by it, its occupant had his whole face as far as his mouth, swathed in bandages.... And before she knew it, a whole gallery of pictures was flashed on to her mind. Hospital ships were moving out of port, and putting into port again, if they escaped the deadly menace of the seas; long trains with the mark of the Red Cross on them were rolling along the railways, and discharging their burdens of pain. Down the thousand miles of front the pitiless rain of shells was falling, Verdun tottered, in Kut....
Dodo pulled herself together, and overtook the bath-chair.
"Why, what a nice day you've ordered to come out on for the first time, Trowle," she said. "Drink in the sun and the wind: doesn't it feel good after that beastly old house? Ashley, if you go that pace already on your crutches, you'll be taken up for exceeding the speed-limit in a week's time. As for you, Richmond, you're a perfect fraud; nobody could possibly be as well as you look. Isn't it lovely for me? I've got a whole holiday, because my boy is going to school to-morrow and we're going to play games together from morning till night. He's waiting for me now. If any of you want to be useful—not otherwise—youmight stroll down to the lodge across there, and tell them I shall come in to see the keeper's wife sometime to-day. She's had twins. I never did. Yes, David, I'm coming."
David had never forgotten that remarkable game of croquet he once witnessed when Prince Albert Hun, as he was now called, and Miss Grantham both cheated, and this morning as a reasonable diversion, he chose to impersonate him and cheat too. Naturally he announced this intention to his mother, who therefore impersonated Miss Grantham, as a defensive measure, and the game became extremely curious. David, of course, imitated the Albert Hun mode of play, but, having adjusted his ball with his foot so as to be precisely opposite his hoop, and having bent down in the correct attitude to observe his line, he found that Dodo had taken the hoop up, and so there was nothing to go through.
"Oh, I've finished being a Hun," he said, when he made this depressing discovery. "Let's play properly again. What made him so fat?"
"Eating," said Dodo. "You'll get fat, too, if you go on as you did at breakfast."
"But I was hungry. I could have eaten a croquet-ball. Should I have been sick?"
"Probably. Get on! Hit it!"
"All right. And why did Princess Hun always creak so when she bent down. Do you remember? Did she ever have twins like Mrs. Reeves? Can I have twins?"
"Yes, darling, I hope you'll have quantities some time," said Dodo.
"Can I have them to-day?" asked David. "Let's go to the kitchen-garden, and look among the gooseberry bushes."
"No, there's not time for you to have them to-day."
"Then I shall wait till I go to school. Ow! I've hit you," screamed David suddenly losing interest in other matters. "Now I shall send you away to the corner, and I shall go through a hoop, and I shall——"
David careering after the ball, tripped over a hoop which he had not observed, and fell down.
Thereafter came an expedition to the trout-stream, and since their efforts to throw a fly only resulted in the most amazing tangles and the hooking of tough bushes, it was necessary to suborn a gardener to supply them with worms, and to promise to say nothing about it, for fear Jack should have a fit. With this wriggling lure, so much more sensible if the object of their fishing was to entrap fish (which it undoubtedly was) David caught two trout and the corpse of an old boot which gave him a great deal of trouble before it could be landed, since, unlike trout, boots seemed to be absolutely indefatigable and could pull forever. Then David distinctly saw a kingfisher come out of a hole in the bank (naturally the other side of the stream) and had to take off his shoes and stockings and wade across, as there was a firmlegend that the British Museum would give you a thousand pounds for an intact kingfisher's nest. He dropped a stocking into the water, and this was irrevocably lost, but on the other hand he found a thrush's nest, though no kingfisher's. But as he was totally indifferent as to whether he had two stockings or one or none, the fact of finding a thrush's nest contributed a gain on balance. After that, it was certainly time to have lunch, as was apparent when they got back to the house and found it close on half-past three. So they decided to miss out tea, or rather combine it with supper, and continue looking for birds' nests.
Dodo was the least envious of mankind, but she was inclined that day, when the sunset began to flame in the west and kindle the racing clouds, to be jealous of Joshua, and if she had thought that any peremptory commands to the sun and moon would have had the smallest effect on their appointed orbits, she would certainly have told them to remain precisely where they were until further notice. All day she had been playing truant; she had slipped her collar, and gone larking in the spring time. With none other except David, could she have done that; there was no one intimately dear to her who would not have shoo'd her back into the environment of the war. Jack even, the friend of her heart, must have asked about the hospital, and told her about the remount camp, and given her the latest War Office news about Verdun and Kut. But Dodo could lose herselfin love with David, and all day he had never brought her up gasping to the surface again. The most tragic of his recollections concerned his going to school to-morrow, and knit up with that was the joy of new adventures, and the grandeur of leaving home quite alone with trousers and a ticket of his own. His world all day had been the real world to her, and it was with the sense of an intolerable burden to be shouldered again that she saw the evening begin to close in. Often had the complete childish unconsciousness of any terrific tragedy going on enabled her to slip the collar to get a drop of water from this boyish Lazarus, who alone was able to cross for her the "great gulf fixed," and now the giver of a little water was off to embark on other adventures. With an intuition wholly without bitterness Dodo knew that in a week's time she would be getting ecstatic letters from him on the joys of school and the excitement of friendship with other boys. She loved the thought of those letters coming to her; she would have been miserable if she had pictured David really missing her. She had no doubt that he would be glad beyond words to see her again, but in the interval there would be cricket to play, and friends to make, and cakes to share and stag beetles to keep. It was intensely right that a new life should absorb him, for that was the way in which young things grew to boyhood and manhood and learnt the part they were to play in the world. But as far as she herself went (leavingthe consideration of the big affairs outside) she imaged herself as a raven croaking on a decayed bough.... Jack would come and croak too; Edith would croak; everybody except those delicious beings aged twelve or under, croaked, unless they were too busy to croak. But to David the war, that aching interminable business was just a pleasant excitement, like the kitchen chimney being on fire, or a water-pipe bursting. There were a quantity of agreeable soldiers in the house, who sometimes told him about shrapnel and heavy stuff and snipers, and to him the war was just that; an exciting set of stories connected with the smashing up of the Hun. He had a world of his own, of the things that truly and rightly concerned him. The most thrilling at the moment was the fact of going to school to-morrow, after that came the lost stocking and the other diversions of the day. Since morning he had wiled Dodo from herself, and as they sat down with great grandeur to a splendid combination of tea and supper, which included treacle pudding, the two trout and bananas, reasonably chosen by David for the last debauch, Dodo's jealousy of Joshua surged within her. In an hour from now, David would have gone to bed, and then she would go upstairs to say good-night to him, and come down again to welcome Edith and her typewriter and slide back into the old heart-breaking topics.
Dodo had made a glorious pretence of being greedy about treacle pudding, in order to showhow much she appreciated David's housekeeping. Thus, when the hour for bed-time came, he got up, rather serious.
"Oh, Mummie," he said, "I shall never forget to-day, if I live to be twenty."
"My darling, have you enjoyed it? Have you enjoyed it just as much as you can enjoy anything?" said Dodo, feeling the shades of the prison-house closing round. "Ihave."
"To-morrow at this time," said David solemnly, "you'll be here and I shan't."
Dodo heard her heart-cords thrumming; joy was the loudest because the child she had brought into the world, flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone was a boy already, and with the flicking round of the swift years would soon be a man, and for the same reason there was regret and aching there because never again would she see one who was part of herself, her life, swelling into bud, and thereafter blossoming....
"Oh, David," she said, "your darling body will be there, and I shall be here, but that's nothing at all. There's love between us, isn't there, and what on earth can part that? You'll understand that some day. Hasn't to-day been delicious? Well, it was only delicious because you were you and I was I. Just think of that for a second! You wouldn't have cared about catching boots with Albert Hun."
He opened his eyes very wide.
"Why, I should have hated it!" he said. "Itwas the boot and you, Mummie, that made it lovely. Is that it?"
"It's it and all of it," said she. "Off you go. I shall come to say good-night before dinner."
David wrinkled up his nose.
"Dinner after treacle-pudding and bananas!" he shouted. "Who'll be fat?"
"I shall have to make a pretence to keep Mrs. Arbuthnot from feeling awkward," said Dodo.
"I see.Nowyou've promised to come to say good-night? It's a con—something."
"Tract," said Dodo.
Dodo kept her part of the contract. But there was never anyone so deliciously fast asleep as was David when she went to perform it. He lay with his cheek on his hand, and his hair all over his forehead, and his mouth a little open with breath coming long and evenly. His clothes lay out ready for packing in the morning, and the immortal warless day was over.
She went downstairs again, smiling to herself that David slept so well, back into the cage. The evening papers had been brought by Edith who was singing in the bathroom. Verdun still held out, and the news of the fall of the second defensive fort was unconfirmed. On the other hand, Trowle, the boy with the bandaged face, who had taken his first outing to-day, had a high temperature, and the matron had asked Dr. Ashe to come and see him. So there was David asleep and Edith singing, and Verdun untaken, and Trowle with ahigh temperature. Dodo felt that, on balance, she ought to have been very gay. But Trowle, one of a hundred patients, had a high temperature. She was worried at that in a way she wouldn't have been worried a year ago. If only they would stop maiming and gassing each other for a few days, or if only the hospital could be empty for a week!
By the middle of next morning, David had set off without tears according to promise. Trowle's temperature much abated, only indicated a slight chill, and Verdun still held out. Dodo had dictated a couple of letters to Edith, who with swoops and dashes of her pencil took them down on a block of quarto paper, and while Dodo opened the rest of her correspondence was transferring them on to her typewriter. She worked with a high staccato action, as if playing a red-hot piano. As she clicked her keys, she conversed loudly and confidently.
"Go on talking, Dodo," she said. "All I am doing is purely mechanical, and I can attend perfectly. There! when the bell rings like that, I know it is the end of a line, and I just switch the board across, and it clicks and makes a new empty line for itself. You should learn to typewrite; it is mere child's play. I shall never write a letter in my own hand again. We ought all to be able to use a typewriter; you can dash things off in no time. I think the work you have been doing here is glorious, but you ought to type. Let me see, you said something in this letter about aspirin. I've got 'aspirin' mixed up with thenext word in my shorthand notes. Just refer back, and tell me what you said about aspirin."
Dodo turned up a letter which she thought was done with. "We want aspirin tabloids containing two grains," she said.
"That was it!" said Edith triumphantly. "You said 'grains,' and it looked like 'graceful' on my copy. Are you sure you didn't say 'graceful'? Now that's all right. I move the line back and erase 'graceful.' No, that stop only makes capitals instead of small letters. I'll correct it when the sheet is finished. Let me see; oh, yes, that curve there means 'as before.' It's all extraordinarily simple if you once concentrate upon it. The whole of this transcribing which looks like a conjuring trick—oh, I began writing 'conjuring trick'—is really like the explanation of a conjuring trick, which—did I type 'before,' or didn't I? Do go on talking. I work better when there is talking going on. I shan't answer, but the fact that there is some distraction makes me determined not to be distracted. Conscious effort, you know...."
"Jack comes to-night," said Dodo, continuing the opening of her letters, "and we'll play quiet aged lawn-tennis to-morrow afternoon."
Edith paused with her hands in the air.
"Why quiet and aged?" she said, plunging them on to the keys again. The bell rang.
"Because the lights are low and I'm very old," said Dodo.
Edith forgot to move the machine, and began writing very quickly over the finished line.
"Nonsense!" she said. "You must be fierce and strong and young with all the lights on. I mustn't talk. Something's happened. But all that concerns us now is to be as efficient as we possibly can. We can't afford to make mistakes. We must——"
She pulled out the sheet she had been working on, and gazed at it blankly.
"Dear Sir," she repeated, "'The Marchioness—' is it spelled like March or Marsh, Dodo? Oh, March; yes. I'll correct that. 'Aspirin in graceful conjuring trick,' that should be grains, and then four large Qs in a row. Oh, that was when I made a mistake with the erasing key. Very stupid of me. And what's happened to the last line? It's written over twice. Have you got any purple ink, Dodo? I always like correcting in the same coloured ink as the type; it looks neater. Well, if you have only got black that will have to do."
Edith shook the stylograph Dodo gave her to make it write, and a fountain of pure black ink poured on to the page.
"Blotting-paper," she said in a strangled voice.
Dodo began to laugh.
"Oh, Edith, you are a tonic," she said, "and I want it this morning. My dear, don't waste any more time over that, but tell me if you never feel in crumbs as I do. I think it's reaction fromyesterday. I escaped. I played with David all day, and forgot about cripples and Kut and Verdun, and now I'm back in the cage again, and David's gone, and—and I'm a worm. If I followed my inclination, I should lie down on the floor and roar for the very disquietness of my heart, as the other David says."
"I shouldn't," said Edith loudly. "I want to dance and sing because I am helping to destroy those putrid Huns. Every letter I typewrite—I'll copy this one out again by the way, as no one in the world could read it—is another nail in their odious coffin. I don't care whether Verdun is lost or Kut or anything else. It's not my business. And it's not your's either, Dodo. You mustn't think; there's too much to do; there's no time for thinking. But what has happened to you is that you're overtired. I shall speak to Jack about it."
"My dear, you will do nothing of the kind," said Dodo. "It would be quite useless to begin with, for I should do exactly as I pleased, and it would only make Jack anxious."
Edith ran an arpeggio scale up her typewriter.
"When I feel tired or despondent," she said, "which isn't often, I read about German atrocities. Then I get on the boil from morning till night."
Dodo shook her head.
"No," she said. "Living surrounded by the wounded doesn't have that effect on me or anyoneelse. If you allow yourself to think, it simply makes you sick at heart. Two days ago a convoy of men who had been gassed came in, and instead of feeling on the boil, I simply ached. We are beginning to use gas too, and ... my heart aches when I think of German boys being carried back into hospitals in the state ours are in. I suppose I ought to be pleased that they are being gassed too. But I'm not. And I began so well. I was simply consumed with fury, and thought that that was the way to wage war. So it is no doubt. But what do you prove by it? Was anything ever so senseless? The world has gone mad."
Edith fitted a new sheet into her machine.
"I know it has, and the best thing to do is to go mad too, until the world is sane again," she said. "You haven't had your house knocked to bits by a bomb. Now I'm going to begin the aspirin letter once again. I don't want to think and you had better not, either."
Dodo laughed.
"I know," she said. "And will the aspirin letter be ready for the post? It goes in a quarter of an hour."
"It will have to be," said Edith. "After that I insist on your coming out to play a few holes at golf before lunch. I shall work all afternoon. Give me a sheaf of letters to write, Dodo."
This time something quite unprecedented happened to Edith's machine, for six of the keys including the useful "e" would not act at all, andDodo, already much behindhand with her morning's work, left her furiously tinkering with it. The aspirin letter was in consequence indefinitely delayed, and Dodo had to telegraph instead. Later in the day, the machine being still quite unuseable, Edith put it into its box and despatched it for repair to London, with a letter of blistering indignation. A day or two must elapse before it came back, and she devoted herself to shorthand, and gave a little series of concerts consisting of her own music to the astonished patients.
David wrote happily from school, Trowle's temperature went down, Verdun held out, and the convoy of gassed men did well. Under this stimulus, Dodo roused herself for the effort of not thinking. She did not even think how odd it was for her, to whom activity was so natural, to be obliged to make efforts. The days mounted into weeks and the weeks into months, and she ceased looking forward and looking back. It was enough to get through the day's work, and every day it was a little too much for her. So too was the effort to keep her mind absorbed in the actual work which lay to hand. That perhaps tired her more than the work itself.
Dodo was lying in bed, just aware that a strip of sunlight on the floor was getting broader. She was not precisely watching it, but, half-consciously she knew that it had once been a line of light and was now an oblong, the rest of her perceptions were concerned with the fact that it was extremely pleasant to have been commanded in a way that made argument impossible, to remain where she was, and not to get up or think of doing so until the doctor had visited her, for there was nothing so repugnant to her mind at the moment as the idea of doing anything. She believed that she had breakfasted in a drowsy manner, and believed (with perfect truth) that she had gone to sleep again afterwards, for now the sunlight made a broad patch on the floor. Collecting her reasoning faculties, and remembering that her room looked due south, she arrived at the brilliant conclusion that the morning must have progressed towards noon. That seemed something of a discovery, and having arrived at that conclusion she went to sleep again.
She dreamed—the dream being about as vivid as her waking consciousness—that she was achicken, and was being put up to auction in the operating theatre. Two bidders were interested in her, but they could not buy her till she awoke; One of the bidders was Jack, who stood on the left of her bed, the other the hospital doctor, on the right, before whose advent she was not allowed to get up. Then her dream was whisked off her brain in the manner of a blanket being pulled from her bed, and becoming wide awake, she was aware that this disconcerting dream was, as the retailers of incredible stories say, "largely founded on fact," for there was Jack on one side of her bed and Doctor Ashe on the other. They did not look like bidders at an auction at all, nor, as her waking consciousness assured her, did they look at all anxious. Doctor Ashe seemed to have said "fine sleeper," and Jack, as Dodo opened her eyes, remarked rather ironically, so she thought, "Good afternoon, darling."
This annoyed her.
"Why afternoon?" she asked. "Don't be silly."
Then looking at the patch of sunlight again, which seemed the only real link with the normal world, she saw it had got narrow, and was on the other side of her bed.
"Very well then, it's afternoon," she said. "Why shouldn't it be? I never said it wasn't."
"Of course you didn't," said Jack in an absurdly soothing manner. "And now you'll have a talk with Dr. Ashe."
Dr. Ashe was not in need of great explanations, for being the hospital doctor, he was already in possession of the main facts of the case. For the last month Dodo had been increasingly irritable, and increasingly forgetful. He had urged her many times to go away and have a complete rest; he had warned her of the possible consequences of neglecting this advice, but she had scouted the idea of being in need of anything except strenuous employment. Then, only yesterday afternoon, she had suddenly fainted, and recovering from that had simply collapsed. She now accounted to Dr. Ashe for these unusual proceedings with great lucidity.
"I forgot about dinner," she said, "and that came on the top of my being rather tired. I only wanted a good night's rest, like everybody else, and I've had that. I'm quite well again. Who is attending to the stores?"
Dr. Ashe slid his hand on to her wrist.
"Oh, the stores are all right," he said guilefully. "You've had Sister Alice under you for a couple of months, and you've made her wonderfully competent. But for your own peace of mind I want you to answer me one question."
"Go ahead," said Dodo, "I hope it's not crashingly difficult."
"Not a bit. Supposing I told you to get up at once and go back to your work, do you feel that you would be able to get through a couple of hours of it? On oath."
Dodo thought over this, trying to imagine herself active. It was difficult to imagine anything, for she seemed incapable of picturing herself otherwise than lying in bed. Even then everything was dream-like; Dr. Ashe did not seem like a real person, and Jack, dream-like also, had merely melted away. She was only conscious, with a sense of reality, of an enormous lassitude and languor unlike anything she had previously experienced. Even the burden of answering a perfectly simple question was heavy. Every limb seemed weighted with lead, but the bulk of the lead had been reserved for her brain. She had to make an effort in order to answer at all.
"I'm not sure," she said, "because I feel so odd. But I think that if you told me to stand up I should fall down. I can't be certain; that's only what I think. What's the matter with me?"
A dream-like voice answered her.
"You've got what you asked for," it said. "You wouldn't take a holiday when you could, and now you've got to. You're just broken down."
This sounded so alarming that Dodo had to make a joke.
"I'm not going to break up, am I?" she asked.
"Of course you're not. Not a chance of it."
"What's to happen to me then?" she asked.
"You're to spend two or three days in bed," said he. "After that we'll consider. Limit yourself to that for the present."
Something inside Dodo approved strongly of that.
"That sounds quite nice," she said. "I shall sleep, and then I shall sleep, and then I shall sleep."
That anticipation proved to be quite correct. Dodo was roused for her meals, resented her toilet, and for the next forty-eight hours was either fast asleep or at the least dozing in a vacancy of brain that she found extremely pleasurable. At the end of that time she entered with zest into future plans with the doctor and Jack.
"You may leave out a rest-cure," she said, "because if you want me to stop in bed for a month I won't. I should hate it so much that I would take care that it shouldn't do me any good."
"It would be the best thing for you," said the doctor.
"Then you must choose the second best. It would make me ill to stop in bed for a month, and so I should have to recover all over again afterwards. Oh Jack, you owl, for God's sake tell me what I do want, because I don't know. I know lots of things I don't want. I don't want you, darling, because you would look anxious, and don't want David, because I couldn't amuse him, and I certainly don't want a nurse to blow my nose and brush my teeth and wash me."
Dodo sat up in bed.
"I'm getting brilliant," she said. "I am beginning to know what I want. I want to go somewherewhere there isn't anybody or anything. Isn't there some place where there is just the sea——"
"A voyage?" asked Jack.
"Certainly not; because of submarines and being unwell. I should like the sea to be there, but there mustn't be any bathing-machines, and I should like a great flat place without any hills. The sea and a marsh, and nobody and nothing. Isn't there an empty place anywhere?"
Dr. Ashe listened to this, watching her, with a diagnostic mind.
"Let's hear more about it," he said. "You don't want to be bothered with anybody or anything. Is that it?"
Dodo's right arm lying outside the bedclothes suddenly twitched.
"Who did that?" she said. "Why doesn't it keep still? I've got the jumps, and I want to be quiet. Can't either of you understand?"
"And you want to go somewhere empty and quiet?" asked Jack.
"Yes, I've said so several times. And I don't want to talk any more."
They left her alone again after this, and presently when they returned, it appeared that Jack had once spent a couple of weeks one November at a small Norfolk village near the sea. The object of the expedition had been duck-shooting, but as far as duck went, it had been disappointing, for they usually got up a mile or two away, and flewout to sea in a straight line with the speed of an express train and never came back any more. But apart from duck, the village of Truscombe had promising features as regarded their present requirements, for Jack was not able to recollect any feature of the slightest interest about it. It squatted on the edge of marshes, there was the sea within a mile of it; he supposed there were some inhabitants, for there was a small but extremely comfortable inn. Now in July there would not even be any intending duck-shooters there; it promised to be an apotheosis of nothing at all.
Dodo roused herself to take an interest in this, as the colourless account of it proceeded, and even under cross-examination Jack could not recollect anything that marred the tranquillity of the picture. Yes, there was a post-office where you could get a daily paper if you wanted one, but on the other hand if you did not want one, he hastened to add, you needn't; there was also a windmill, the sails of which were always stationary. There were no duck, there was no pier, there as no band, the nearest station was four miles away; really, in fact, there wasn't anything.
The lust for nothingness gleamed in Dodo's eyes.
"It sounds delicious," she said. "When may I go to Truscombe, Dr. Ashe?"
"Have a couple more days in bed," said he, "and then you can go as soon as you like, if youwill promise not to make any exertion for which you don't feel inclined——"
"But that's why I'm going," she interrupted. "Telegraph to the inn, Jack, and engage me a couple of rooms—oh, my dear, I feel in my bones that Truscombe is just what I want. They will meet me at the station with a very slow old cab, or better still with a dog-cart. It sounds just precisely right. Shall I call myself Mrs. Dodo of London? It's all too blessed and lovely."
Three evenings later accordingly, Dodo arrived at Holt. She found a dog-cart waiting for her, exactly as she had anticipated, and a whisper of north wind off the sea. Her driver, a serene and smiling octogenarian began by talking to her for a little, and his conversation reminded her of bubbles coming up through tranquil water, as he asked her how the war was getting on. They didn't hear much about the war down at Truscombe, but the crops were doing well, though the less said about apples the better. After this information he sank into a calm sleep, and so did the pony which walked in its sleep.
As the vanished sun began to set the north-west sky on fire, this deliberate equipage emerged from the wooded inlands into flat and ample spaces that smouldered beneath an enormous sky. Across the open the sea gleamed like an indigo wire laid down as in some coloured map along the edge of the land, and a spiced and vivid savour which set the pony sneezing, awoke him, and with a toss of hishead he began of his own accord to trot. In time that unusual motion aroused his driver, and they jogged along at a livelier pace. The air seemed charged with the very elixir of life; it was like some noble atmospheric vintage that enlightened the eye and set the pulses beating full and steady. Presently they came to the village with the brick-facings of the flint-built houses glowing in the last of the sunset and the night-stocks redolent in their gardens. To the left stretched vast water-meadows intersected with dykes where loose-strife and willow-herb smouldered among the tall grasses, and tasselled reeds gave harbourage to moor-hens. Out of all the inhabitants of Truscombe but one representative seemed to be in the street, and he slowly trundled a barrow in front of him and let it be known that he had fresh mackerel for sale. Short spells of walking alternated with longer sittings on the handle of his barrow, but whether he sat or whether he walked no one bought his mackerel.
The Laighton Arms stood on a curve of the sole street through the village, and Dodo entered as into a land full of promise. An old setter, lying in the passage thumped her a welcome with his tail, as if she was already a familiar and friendly denizen, just returning from some outing. She dined alone at a plain good hospitable board, and presently strolled out again through the front door that stood permanently open into an empty street. It was night now, and the sky was setwith drowsy stars that glowed rather than sparkled, and up the street there flowed, not in puffs and gusts, but with the current of a slow moving tide the salt sweetness of the marshes and the sea. Very soon her strolling steps had carried her past the last houses, and in the deep dusk she stood looking out over the empty levels. A big grass-grown bank built to keep out high tides from the meadows zig-zagged obscurely towards the sea, and there was nothing there but the emptiness of the land and the star-studded sky. She waited just to see the moon come up over the eastern horizon and its light confirmed the friendliness of the huge solitude. Then returning, she found a candle set ready for her, which was a clear invitation to go to bed, and looking out below her blind she saw in front a stretch of low land with pools of water reflecting the stars. Six geese, one behind the other, like a frieze, were crossing it very slowly in the direction of the salt-water creek that wound seawards.
For the next week Dodo pursued complete and intentional idleness with the same zeal which all her life had inspired her activities. She got up very late after long hours of smooth deep sleep, and taking a book and a packet of sandwiches in her satchel strolled out along the bank to the ridge of loose shingle that ran east and west along the edge of the sea. At high tide the waves broke against this, and since walking along it was an exercise of treadmill laboriousness she was contentto encamp there in some sunny hollow and laze the morning away. Sometimes, for form's sake, she opened her book, read a paragraph or two, wondered what it was about, and then transferred her gaze to the sea. An hour or so passed swiftly in stupefied content, and then shifting her position she probably lay down on her back. Bye and bye hunger dictated the consumption of her sandwiches, and refreshed and revived she would begin a pencilled note to Jack. But after a few words she usually found that she had nothing to say, and watched the sea-gulls (she supposed they were sea-gulls) that patrolled the edge of the breaking waves for food, and dived like cast plummets into the water. Then on the retreat of the tide, the ebb disclosed stretches of hard sand tattooed with pebbles, where walking was easy, and she would wander away towards the point of tumbled sand-dunes that lay westward. A coast-guard station stood there, brought into touch with the world by means of the row of telegraph-posts that ran, mile after mile, straight as an arrow, along this shingle-bank, which defended from the sea the miles of marshes and sand flats which lay on the landward side of it. Through the middle of them broadening into a glittering estuary when the tide was high ran the river that debouched into the sea beyond the point; at low tide it was but a runnel of water threading its way through the enormous flatness of shoal and mud-bank where flocks of sea-birds hovered.
This great stretch of solitude attracted Dodo more even than the familiar emptiness of the sea. Once across the bank of shingle the sea was out of sight, and it lay spread out, this strange untrodden wildness, wearing an aspect of hospitable loneliness, and sun-steeped quiet. Narrow channels and meandering dykes, full at high tide and empty at the ebb, zig-zagged about the marsh which was clad in unfamiliar vegetation. There were tracts waist-high in some stiff heather-like growth, and between them lawns of sea-lavender now breaking out into full flower, and above high-water mark clumps of thrift and sea-campion and horned poppy. Overhead the gulls slid and chided balancing themselves on stiff pinions against the wind, or, relaxing that tense bow of flight were swept away out of sight across the flats. For miles there was but one house set on a spit of stony land, and even that seemed an outrage against the spell of solitariness till Dodo discovered that it was undwelled in, and therefore innocuous.
For half a dozen days it was enough for her to sit on the edge of the shingle or stroll through the sea-lavender of the marshes, hardly recording the sounds and the sights that made up the spell, but merely lying open to the dew of their silent enchantments. Then, as her vigour began to ooze into her like these tides that imperceptibly filled the channels in the marshes, she extended her radius and came at last to the sand-dunes thatwere clumped together like a hammer-head on the shaft of the shingle-ridge. There the telegraph-posts took a right-angled turn towards the mouth of the estuary, where there were signs of inhabited places, shanties nestling in hollows, stranded ships made fast with chains, with the washing a-flutter on their decks. Votaries of solitude, botanists and ornithologists she was told, spent summer weeks here, but she never saw petticoat or trouser. Probably they too avoided the presence of others and sought refuge in the sand-dunes when her fell form appeared, just as she herself would undoubtedly have done at a glimpse of a human creature. Here then, while physically she inhaled the vitality that tingled in marsh and sea-beach and lonely places, she spent long solitary hours, dozing among the dunes, following the arrow flight of terns, wondering at the plants that seemed to draw nourishment from the barrenness of sand, and yet all the time pushing her roots, like them, into some underlying fertility.
She was almost sorry when her mind, stained deep with these indelible days of unrelieved hard work in her hospital, began to show signs of its own colour again. Mental fatigue, too, had stricken her with a far severer stroke than had been laid on her body, and it was with something of a shock that she began to be interested in her surroundings instead of merely observing them. What started this first striving occurred during a walk she took along the upper ridges of thebeach outside the sand-dunes. There had been shrill scoldings and screamings in the air above her from certain sharp-winged birds which clearly resented her intrusion, and, at this moment, she had suddenly to check her foot and step sideways in order to avoid treading on a clutch of four eggs with brown mottled markings that lay on the protective colouring of the shingle. A couple of yards further on was another potential nursery, and soon she found that the whole of this ridge was a populous nesting-place. It was natural to connect these aerial screamings from the hundreds of birds that hovered above her with the treasures at her feet, and her interest as opposed to her contemplation awoke. Someone had told her that a very high tide in June had washed away the eggs of hundreds of sea-birds, and here they were again industriously raising a second brood.... Had there been, instead of birds, hundreds of human mothers and fathers yelling at her to take care not to tread on their babies, she would have fled from adults and infants alike. But, though still shunning her own kind, she adored these shy wild things that gabbled at her, and wondered what they were.
On her way home she noticed a crop of transparent erect stalks growing thickly from a mud-bank. It looked like some emerald-green minute asparagus. Then what was the shrubby stiff-stemmed thing that seemed to imitate a Mediterranean heath? And a pink-streaked convolvulusthat, behaving as no known convolvulus had ever behaved, flowered out of the sand? Really if you wanted to avoid human beings, it might be as well to make acquaintance with these silent companions of solitude. So thinking to start with a known specimen, she picked a sprig of sea-lavender, and stepped into a remarkably deep bog-hole. Thereupon her leg, as far as her knee, wore a shining stocking of rich black mud, and it was necessary to cross the bank of shingle, wash it in the sea, and leave the shoe to dry. For the sake of symmetry she pulled off the other shoe and stocking, and paddled about, rinsing out the mud in the tepid water.
Dodo spread the mired stocking out to dry on the pebbles, just out of reach of the crisply-breaking ripples. Then she saw a most marvellous, translucent pebble, orange-red in colour, just being sucked into the backwash of a wave. Then a small crab, truculent and menacing, sidled towards her, and the next wave rolled it over with gaping pincers, and returned the cornelian to her feet. An interesting piece of drift-wood demanded investigation, and a little further on she found a starfish which she threw back into the sea. Then she remembered her stocking and turned back. There was no sign of that stocking, but the other one and her two shoes were just recoverable from the edge of the incoming tide. With them in her hand she paddled homewards along the "liquid rims" of the sea.
That evening Dodo sent an immense telegram to her housekeeper in London for a standard book on British birds and another on British plants. These were to be despatched to her immediately, with some field-glass highly recommended for the observation of small distant objects. That done she spent a studious evening in planning out a scheme of study. She would take out with her in the morning the books on birds and flowers, and make acachefor them in the shrubby thing of which she would soon know the name. Then for two hours she would collect plants in the marsh, and, returning with her spoils, identify them in her book. After lunch she would take the book on birds to some commanding spot and bowl out the gulls with her field-glass and her authorities. There must be a note-book and a quantity of well-sharpened pencils. Two note-books, in fact, one for birds and one for botany.
Imperceptibly and instinctively after the start had been made Dodo began to run in the strenuous race again. She bought a bathing-dress and a morning paper at the post-office and some bull's-eyes, and there arrived for her an admirable field-glass of German manufacture, with a copy of Bleichroder's "Birds of Great Britain" in six volumes and Kuhlmann's "English Botany" in eight. She was rather shocked at this exhibition of Hun industry, but speedily got over it, and drove down to the sea with these treasures and the key of a bathing-hut which she proposed toconvert into a library. With the help of Bleichroder's "Birds," and Zeiss's field-glass she was almost certain that she saw a golden eagle and a hoopoe (those rare visitors to Norfolk), of which she made an entry with a query in the ornithological note-book. Then she bathed and then she had lunch, and then, after smoking four cigarettes, she went to sleep in the shadow of the library and had an uneasy dream about Berlin. After that she botanised: the heathery-looking shrub proved to be "shrubby sea-blite," and she duly noted its name in the botany note-book. Then there was orache and thrift, and sea-campion and stinking Archangel (this was thrilling) to be noted down, and then, returning to the birds, she put down tern, and great black-backed gull, and ringed plover and sparrow (probably Tree). Subsequently she crossed out the golden eagle and the hoopoe, for it was hardly possible that her first glance through her Zeiss should have revealed a couple of such distinguished visitors. Of course, it was possible that she had seen them, since the possible could be stretched to any degree of elasticity, but it was better to be cautious and wait for further appearances before astounding the entire world of ornithologists.
Dodo took a volume of Bleichroder's "Birds" back to her hotel that night, leaving the rest of the library in the bathing-hut. It contained admirable pictures, but what really struck her most about those pictures was the vivid resemblance betweenthe birds which they portrayed and human beings. The Shoveller, especially with the addition (lightly pencilled and then erased) of spectacles looked precisely like Dr. Ashe, while Richardson's Skua without any addition at all recalled Edith with extraordinary vividness. She wondered who Richardson was; if he had sent in his card just then, she would have been entranced to have a talk to him about his Skua. She wondered also how they were all getting on at Winston that evening; she wondered if Jack had got back from France, if David was asleep, if Edith was composing an unrivalled symphony, if Lord Ardingly was meditating on the duties of the upper classes towards the lower.... And then she became aware that the human race was beginning to interest her again. Up till now she had, at the most, been concerned with starfish and terns and shrubby sea-blite, things that touched her mind impersonally. Now she began to picture herself shewing these pleasant creatures to a person of some sort; she imagined herself directing David's field-glasses towards Richardson's Skua. When he had seen it, they would restore Bleichroder's monumental work to the shelf in the sea-library and go to bathe.
Suddenly the thought of the three weeks more which she had promised to spend here became intolerable, if she had to stay here alone. The hotel was quite empty, save for herself and her maid, and why should not her beloved David comestraight here for a week when his term was over? A telegram in the morning would settle that, and if Jack was home from France, he could easily run over for next Sunday. She would continue this rest-cure just as before; in fact, if somebody didn't come down she would get bored with it to-morrow or the next day, and undo all the good that it had brought her. Sea-blite and skuas had helped her enormously, but their efficacy would begin to wane if now she could not shew them to somebody. She had shewn a piece of sea-blite to her maid, and told her how very local it was, but Miss Henderson had replied in an acid voice, "It looks to me quite like a common weed, my lady...."
Somewhere down the street a gramophone was jigging out a lively tune, and Dodo stole forth, making a pretext to herself that she wanted to observe the stars of which there was a great number to-night, but she knew that she longed to be near human movement again. A rhythmical thump accompanied the gramophone's shrillness, and she wondered if there might happen to be a little dancing going on. She soon localised the sound; there was a room facing the street with curtains discreetly drawn, so as to conform with the lighting order, but the thump of feet went gaily on inside. She forgot about the stars; they belonged to that steadfast imperishable thing called Nature that could be appealed to when you were tired. A dance to the wheezings of a gramophone,with the handsome girls of the village and the boys back on leave from France had become far more enthralling than Bleichroder's "Birds" lying open on her table in the inn, or the wheeling heavens above her. There she lingered, rather like the Ancient Mariner without a wedding-guest to whom she might soliloquise.
Jack arrived on Saturday night, and next morning Dodo seemed to feel that what she called a "picnic-service" on the beach would be rather a treat instead of going to church. Accordingly they took out a Bible and Prayer Book, and Dodo, whose bent was not strictly ecclesiastical, read a quantity of chapters out of Ecclesiastes for a first lesson and for a second lesson the chapter out of Corinthians which the Church had mistakenly appointed for Quinquagesima. Then she read the twenty-third Psalm, and rapidly turned over the next leaves.
"There's at least one more," she said, "and I can't find it. It's about the House of Defence and the satisfaction of a long life."
"Try the ninety-first," said Jack.
"Darling, how clever of you. I never had a head for numbers. After that we'll talk; I'm beginning to want to talk dreadfully."
Dodo read her psalms quite beautifully, and lay back on the warm shingle.
"Oh, Jack, I feel so clean and washed," she said. "These weeks which I've had quite alonehave been like a lovely cold bath on a hot day, or, if you like, a lovely hot bath after a cold day. I'm beginning to see what they have done for me, besides resting me. I think people and things are meant to cure each other."
"How?" asked Jack.
"Well, take my case. I was absolutely Fed Up with people, human beings, when I came here. You see, ill human beings are concentrated human beings. All the material side of them is exaggerated; you only think of them as bones to be mended and flesh to be healed. My soul got so sick of them, and when I came here I wanted never to see anybody again. Nor did I want to think any more; that I suppose was mere fatigue. The whole caboodle—living, I mean—wasn't worth the bother it gave one. Are you following, darling, or are you only thinking about those pebbles which you are piling so beautifully on the top of each other?"
"Not on the top ofeachother," remarked Jack. "Otherwise——"
"Oh, don't be grammatical. On the top ofeachother."
"I'm following," said Jack.
"Very well. So I took the lid off my brain, let the stuffy air escape, and let in the wind and the sea. Now don't say 'water on the brain,' because it isn't true. It just lay open, and then after a time the sea-gulls and—and I've forgotten the name of the blighted thing, and that reminds me that it'ssea-blite—the sea-gulls and the sea-blite got in; I think the gulls nested in the blite. So I got interested in them, but still I didn't want to see a single soul, not even you and David. But I sent for enormous books on birds and botany, and you'll find them in my bathing-hut with the bill: unpaid. Those jolly insolent things, going where they chose and growing where they chose healed me of people-sickness. They didn't care, bless them, if a convoy of wounded came in, or if nobody loved me. One of them squawked, and the other pricked my large ankles."
Dodo sat up.
"Yes, what made me want to see you and David again," she said, "was a course of sea-blite and Richardson's skuas. That's what I mean by people and things healing each other. I think I shall go back to Winston to-morrow."
"If I thought you meant that," said he, "I should tell you that you would do nothing of the sort."
Dodo looked wildly round.
"Oh, don't tell me that!" she said, "or out of pure self-willed vitality I should do it."
"Very well; you will go back to Winston to-morrow," said Jack.
"That's sweet of you; now I shan't. I think if Sister Ellen came and asked me if the seven-tailed bandages had arrived, I should gibber in her face. She hasn't got a face, by the way, she has only two profiles. How funnily people aremade! She's got two profiles and no face, and David has got a duck of a face and no profile: just the end of his nose comes out of a round, plump cheek. I wish I was eleven years old again. I wish I was a cat with nine lives, or is it tails? Seven lives, isn't it? Or is seven rather too many? How many lives do you want, Jack? Choose!"
Jack threw down his beautiful tower of stones.
"Oh, this one will do," he said. "This and the next. If I must choose, I choose whatever happens. I might spoil everything by choosing."
"But if you could have your life over again, wouldn't you choose that many things should be different?" she asked.
"I don't think so. If things had been different, they wouldn't be as they are at this moment. You and me."
Dodo laid her hand on his.
"My dear, are you content?" she asked.
His eyes answered her.
It was within ten days of the completion of the fourth year of the war, and since the spring every morning had brought an extra turn of the screw, tightening a little more and again a little more the tension of the final and most desperate campaign of all. Late in March there had opened the last series of the furious German offensives, any one of which, it seemed, might have battered its way through to Paris or the Channel ports. Day by day territory captured by the enemy in their first irresistible invasion of French soil, and won back yard by yard in three and a half years of warfare, had been passing behind the German lines again. Once more the Germans advancing in that grim dance of death as in some appalling quadrille had taken Peronne, had taken Bailleul, had swarmed up over Kemmel Hill, had recaptured Soissons, had broken across the Marne. All that could be said was that neither materially nor psychically had the tension quite reached breaking-point. No irremediable breach in the lines had been made, and there was still enough spirit left in the nation to shout over the glorious adventure of Zeebrugge. Finally the counter-offensiveof the Allies had begun, and to-day Jack brought to Winston, where the hospital was crammed to overflowing, the news that the Germans had been forced to retreat over the Marne again.
Dodo had entirely refused to learn any sort of lesson from her break-down, and for the last two years had taken no further holiday beyond an occasional day off when David was at home from school, or a flying expedition to the hospital in London. But instead of being "served out" for her obstinacy, she had remained a glorious testimony of the health-giving properties of continuous over-work, and had shewn not the faintest signs of another collapse. Jack, the matron, the doctor, had all done their best to induce her to be more sensible without the slightest success, and to-day she was lucidly explaining to her husband how wrong they had all been and why.
"The only thing that really can tire one is thinking," she said, "and since I came back from Truscombe two years ago, I haven't thought for two minutes. My mind has been like a 'painted ship upon a painted ocean,' and very badly painted too. That's why I'm the life and soul of the party; I have become like one of the cheerful beasts that perish and I have thought as little about the war as about astronomy. It didn't occur to any of you that it wasn't the acting of silly charades or the ordering of aspirin or the giving out of bandages and books that made me collapse: it was letting my mind dwell on thereason for which I was doing it. But if you will only become a machine, as I have, and go on doing things without thinking why, they are as effortless as breathing. I shall never get out of the groove now, you know: I shall go on counting blankets and going to bed at eleven, and getting up at seven, till the end of my life. My dear, what did we all do before the war? The only effort I ever make is trying to remember that, and I never succeed. I think we talked, just talked. Precisely what I'm doing now, by the way. But I used to be an agreeable rattle, such clever chatter, God forgive me!"
Jack began to laugh.
"Go on; rattle!" he said.
"I couldn't. If you rattle you have to say anything that comes into your head, and try to think what it means afterwards. It was the old style of conversation which I invented when I was young. Nowadays I mean something first and say it afterwards. At least I do sometimes. When the war is over I shall become a Delphic oracle."
"Do! How will you set about it?" he asked.
"I shall advertise in the Personal Column of theTimes, for some retired oracle who will give me lessons. Besides, when once you get the reputation of being an oracle you have only got to say nothing at all, and everyone says how extraordinarily wise you are. Rich silences. Such nonsense!"
"I thought you were going to stop in yourgroove and give out blankets and aspirin," said Jack. "I was looking forward to a remarkable old age."
Dodo looked round her on the quiet familiar scene. She had strolled out across the park to meet her husband, and they had sent the motor on with his luggage and had sauntered home through the woods. At the edge of them, when they had come within sight of the house, stately and sunny below them, with the Red Cross flag drooping on its staff, they had sat down in the shade before facing the heat of the open ground now yellowed and parched by three months of strong heat. Even in the middle of summer the beeches were already tinged with gold; now and then a leaf dropped from its withered stem, and came spinning down through the windless air.
"Oh, don't let us be remarkable whatever we are," said she. "Let us go gently Darby-and-Joaning it down the hill, Jack, and watch David skipping about. He got swished the other day at Eton—oh, I promised not to tell you!"
"Go on, then," said Jack.
"Well, I've done it now. He made a book on the Derby, or whatever did duty for the Derby last month, and won thirty shillings, so he considered it well worth it. He bought me a delicious little mother-of-pearl box out of his winnings, which came to bits at once. Then, when he was caught, he had to return his winnings, so the poor darling was out of pocket!"
"So you sent him a tip," remarked Jack.
"Naturally; that's all by the way. But it really does worry me to wonder what we shall all do when the war is over. Personally I shall be extremely cross and bored; I know I shall, and yet it will be very odd of me. Considering that there is nothing that I have really wanted for the last four years, except the end of the war, it seems rather strange that I should miss it, the great brutal, bloody monster. I would give literally anything in the world except you and David and a few trifles of that sort, if it would stop this minute, and if it did I—I should yawn. And the thought of beginning other things again would make me feel lazy. But I daresay I shall be dead long before that. Gracious me, Jack, what was my life before the war? If you had to write my biography, you could only say that I rattled. I suppose that has been my profession, while yours has been to listen to me without ever really wanting to divorce me. But I never talked in my sleep; there's that to be said for me. You do: last time you were here you woke me by calling out, 'Sickle-hocked: take it away.'"
"The further the better," said Jack.
Dodo wrinkled up her eyes as she looked out over the hot, bright noon.
"All the same I had a very good mare once that was sickle-hocked," she said. "I called her 'Influenza,' so that I shouldn't get it and she had rather long eyes like Nadine. Oh, Jack, I quiteforgot to tell you. I had a joyous telegram from Nadine to say that Hughie had crashed out in France, and had broken his arm. She was pleased."
"But why?" asked he.
"Darling, you are dull. He's safely tucked up in hospital and with any luck he will be transferred to town. Isn't it lovely for her? He won't be ably to fly again for months."
Dodo gave an awful groan.
"Oh, I'm thinking about the war," she said. "What are we coming to? Here are Nadine and I simply delighted because Hughie's broken his arm. That's singular, you know, if you come to think of it. We hope it will take a long time to mend, so that he won't be able to fly again yet."
"Perhaps he won't be wanted to," said Jack.
"Why?"
Jack lit a cigarette, and with the flaring match burned a withered beech-leaf that had fallen on the turf without replying.
"I don't want to say too much," he began at length.
"Darling, you're not saying anything at all at present," said she.
"I know. Perhaps it's best not to. Besides, you don't want to hear about the war."
Dodo waved her hands wildly.
"But get on," she said. "You speak as if there's something good to be heard. What do you mean? As if I wouldn't give my—my shell-likeears to hear something good. My dear, the number of times I've chucked the paper away because the headlines only said, 'New German offensive. Slight loss of ground near Parlez-vous.' Go on, Jack, or I shall burst."
"Well, do you know anything about the position on the west front?" asked he.
"Nothing whatever. I only know it's a beastly front."
Jack took his stick and drew a long line with two bulges in it on the short turf.
"That lower bulge is the Marne," he said, "and the upper one is round about Amiens."
"Where one has coffee on the way to Paris," said Dodo breathlessly.
"Yes. They battered away at the Marne bulge, and have now had to go back. Then they battered alternately at the Amiens bulge, and it isn't bulging any worse. There was no earthly reason why the Huns shouldn't have walked straight through to Abbeville, which is there, last week. They meant to give us a knock-out in one place or the other. But—how shall I explain it?"
"Anyhow," said Dodo.
Jack clenched his fist and drew back his arm.
"Well, I'm the Hun," he said, "and it's a boxing match. Your chin there, darling, is quite defenceless, and I can knock you out, if I have enough weight behind me to give you a good punch. But I haven't; it looks as if I was exhausted. I can just advance my arm like that,but I can't hit. You're rather done, too, but you can just grin at me, and wait till you get stronger. But I shan't get stronger; I'm fought out."