'Halli, hallo, halli, hallo!Bei uns geht's immer so!'
'Halli, hallo, halli, hallo!Bei uns geht's immer so!'
shrilled number eight.
Doye moved impatiently. 'He ought to be taken away, poor beggar.... I loathe hospitals. People who are ill oughtn't to be with other people in the same miserable condition; it's too depressing. One wants the undamaged, as an antidote. That's why visitors are so jolly.' His restless eyes glanced at Nonie's dark, glowing brilliance in her yellow frock, and at Alix, pale and cool and thin in green.
'Above all,' he added, 'one wants sanity and normalness and cheeriness, not people with their nerves in rags, like that poor chap.'
Eight broke out again, half singing, half humming some students' chorus—
'Tra la la, in die Nacht Quartier!'
'Tra la la, in die Nacht Quartier!'
The auburn-haired nurse came and stood by him for a moment, quieting him.
'Come now, come now, you must be quiet, you know.'
'Rather a pleasant person, that nurse,' said Doye when she had gone. 'Jolly hair, hasn't she?... Alix,' he added, 'do you know, you don't look up to much. Is it overwork, or merely the air of London in June?'
'It's the air of hospitals, I expect,' Nonie answered for her. 'She turned white directly we got into the ward.'
'Beastly places,' Basil agreed.
Alix began to talk, rather fast. She told stories of the other people at the art school; Nonie joined in, and they made Basil laugh. He talked too, also fast. His unhurt hand drummed on the arm of his chair; his forehead grew damper, his eyes shifted about under his black brows. He talked nonsense, absurdly; they all did. They all laughed, but Basil laughed most; he laughed too much. He said it was a horrible bore out there; funny, of course, in parts, but for the most part irredeemably tedious. And no reason to think it would ever end, except by both sides just getting too tired of it to go on.... Idiotic business, chucking bombs over into trenches full of chaps you had no grudge against and who wished you no ill ... and they chucking bombs at you, much more idiotic still. The whole thing hopelessly silly....
'Heil'ge Nacht, Heil'ge Nacht,' trilled Eight, with a nightmare of Christmas on him.
'Oh, damn,' muttered Basil, and got scarlet and then white.
The staff-nurse came to them. She was not auburn-haired, but efficient and good-looking and dark, with a clear, sharp voice.
'I think your visitors had better go now, Mr. Doye.'
She made signs to them that he was in pain, which they knew before. They went; he joked as he said good-bye, and they joked back. As they left the ward, Eight's wild voice rose, in a sad air they knew:
'Mein Bi-er und Wei-ein ist fri-isch und klar;Mein Töchterlein liegt auf der To-otenbahr....'
'Mein Bi-er und Wei-ein ist fri-isch und klar;Mein Töchterlein liegt auf der To-otenbahr....'
'Come now, come now,' admonished Staff.
On the stairs they met a tall woman with a long pale face and black hair, and eyes full of green light. She stopped and said to Alix, 'How do you do? Basil told me you were going to see him to-day, so I left you a little time. He mustn't have too many at once. He has a lot of pain, for so slight a thing.... I shall be glad when I can get him away for a change.'
Her eyes, looking at Alix's pale face, were kind and friendly. She liked Alix, who was Basil's friend and had stayed with them last summer in the country. She thought her clever and attractive, if selfish. She hurried on through the glass door into Albert Edward.
'Mrs. Doye, isn't it?' said Nonie. 'Must have been just like him twenty years ago.... I say, how sickening, isn't it, people getting smashed up like that. Poor old Basil. All on edge, I thought, didn't you? What rot he talked.... Isay, if he loses those fingers it will be all U. P. with his career.... I don't expect he will.' She shot a glance at Alix, whom she suspected of feeling faint. 'Let's come and find Peggy. I haven't an earthly where her ward is. It's called after some man of science.' But there are so many of these, and all so much alike.
'If it was painters,' said Nonie presently, 'I might have remembered. Whoarethe men of science?'
'Darwin,' suggested Alix intelligently. 'Galileo. Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Oliver Lodge. Lots more.'
'Well, let's try this passage.'
They tried it. It led them on and on. It looked wrong, but might be right, in such a strange world as a hospital, where anything may be right or wrong and you never know till you try.
They saw at last ahead of them a closed door—not a glass door but a baize one. From behind it screaming came, wild, shrill, desperate, as if some one was being hurt to death.
'O Lord!' said Nonie, 'it's the theatre. Look, it's written on the door. Come away quick. There must be an operation on.'
Beyond the door there was a shuffling and scuffling; it was pushed open, and two figures muffled in white, like the stretcher-women, dragged out a Red Cross girl in a faint.
'Fetch her some water,' said one. 'Idiot, why didn't she come out before she went off? These Red Cross girls—All right, she 's coming round.... Isay, you know, you mustn't do that again. People are supposed to come out of the theatrebeforethey faint, not after. It's an awful crime.... Is it your first operation? Well, it was silly of them to send you down to such a bad one. I expect the screaming upset you. She didn'tfeelanything, you know.... Here, drink this. You're all right now, aren't you? I must get back. You'd better go up to your ward and ask your Sister if you can lie down for a bit.'
Alix and Nonie had retreated down the passage.
'What a place,' Alix was muttering savagely. 'Oh,whata place.'
They came out on a different staircase; fleeing down it they were in a corridor, long and unhappy and full of hurrying housesurgeons and nurses and patients' friends (for it was visiting-hour).
'Huxley,' said Nonie suddenly. 'That's the creature's name.... I say,' she accosted a fat little nurse with strings, 'where's Huxley, please?'
Huxley was far away. They reached it through many labyrinthine and sad ways. Through the glass door they saw a keen-faced doctor going from bed to bed with an attendant group of satellites—medical students, who laughed at intervals because he was witty, either about the case in hand or about some other amusing cases this one recalled to his memory, or at the foolish answers elicited from some student in response to questions. They were a cheery set, and this doctor was a wit. Every few minutes he washed his hands. The wardsister companioned him round, and by the window stood four nurses at attention—the staff-nurse, the probationer, and two V.A.D.'s with red crosses on their aprons. It was a men's surgical ward. It was long and light, and had twenty-one beds, and Cot. Cot was in the middle of the ward. He was three, and had peritonitis of the stomach, and he sat up on his pillow and wept, and wailed at intervals, 'Want to do 'ome. Want to do 'ome.'
'You're not the only one, sonny,' number three told him bitterly. 'We all want that.'
Twenty-one sad faces apathetically testified to his truthfulness. Twenty-one weary sick men, whose rest had been broken at dawn because the night-nurses had to wash them all before they went off duty, and that meant beginning at 3.30 or 4, stared with sad, hollow eyes, and wanted to go 'ome.
The doctor washed his hands for the last time and went, his satellites after him. The probationer respectfully opened the door for them. Nonie and Alix stood back out of the way as they passed, then Nonie's Peggy, who had seen them long since, came and fetched them in.
'Iamglad to see you,' she said.
Nonie said, 'You look dead, my child,' and she returned, 'Oh, it's only the standing. We're all in the same box. She,' she indicated the probationer, 'fainted this morning. And the staff-nurse has the most awful varicose veins. I believe most nurses get them sooner or later. Theyoughtto be let to sit down when they get a chance, for sewing and things, but hospital rules are made of wood and iron. The other Red Crosser and I do sometimes sit, when Sister's out of the ward, but it's rather bad form really, when the regulars mayn't. Funny places, hospitals.... I've been getting into rows this morning for not polishing the brights bright enough. Staff told me they had quite upset Sister. Sister's very easily upset, unfortunately. Staff's a jolly good sort, though.... But look here, you must go. It's time for tea-trays; I shall have to be busy. I'll come round to-night after I'm off, Nonie—if I can get so far. You've got to go now; Staff's looking at us.'
They went. Staff called wearily to Peggy, 'Go and help Nurse Baker with trays, will you, dear. And you might take Daddy Thirteen's basin away. He's done being sick for now, I dare say, and he's going to drop it on to the floor in a moment.'
Peggy hurried, but was too late. These things will happen sometimes....
'Hate hospitals, don't you?' said Nonie, as she had said when they entered. They were going out at the gates now. 'I suppose they have to be, though.'
'Suppose so,' Alix agreed listlessly.
Then with an effort she threw the hospital off.
'That's over, anyhow. I shan't go again. Let's come and do something awfully different now.'
They did.
When Alix got back to Violette, she was met in the little linoleumed hall by distress and pity, and Mrs. Frampton preparing to break something to her, with a kind, timid arm round her shoulders.
'Dearie, there was a telegram.... You were out, so we opened it.... Now you must be ever so brave.'
'No,' said Alix, rigid and leaning on her stick and whitely staring from narrowed eyes. 'No....'
'Oh, darling child, it's sad news.... I don't know how to tell you.... Dear, youmustbe brave....'
'Oh, do get on,' muttered Alix, rude and sick.
'Dearie,' Mrs. Frampton was crying into her handkerchief. 'Poor Paul ... your dear little brother ... dreadfully, badly wounded....'
'Dead,' Alix stated flatly, pulling away and leaning against the wall.
Violette was hot and smelt of food. Florence stumbled up the kitchen stairs with supper. From a long way off Mrs. Frampton sobbed, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.... It's the Almighty's will.... The poor dear boy has died doing his duty and serving his country ... a noble end, dearie ... not a wasted life....'
'Not a wasted....' Alix said it after her mechanically, as if it was a foreign language.
'He died a noble death,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'serving his country in her need.'
Alix was staring at her with blue eyes suddenly dark and distended. The horror rose and loomed over her, like a great wave towering, just going to break.
'But—but—but—' she stammered, and put out her hands, keeping it off—'But he hadn't lived yet....'
Then the wave broke, like a storm crashing on a ship at sea.
'It's a lie,' she screamed. 'Give me the telegram.... It's made up; it's a damnable lie. The War Office always tells them: every one knows it does....'
They gave it her, pitifully. She read it three times, and it always said the same thing. She looked up for some way of escape from it, but found none, only Violette, hot and smelling of supper, and Mrs. Frampton crying, and Kate with working face, and Evie sympathetic and moved in the background, and Florence compassionate with the supper tray, and a stuffed squirrel in a glass case on the hall table.
Alix shivered and shook as she stood, with passion and sickness and loss.
'But—but—' she began to stammer again, helplessly, like a bewildered child—'But he hadn't lived yet....'
Kate said gently, 'He has begun to live now, dear, for ever and ever.'
'World without end, amen,' added Mrs. Frampton, mopping her eyes.
Alix looked past them, at the stuffed squirrel.
'It's just some silly lie of course,' she said, indifferent and quiet, but still shaking. 'It will be taken back to-morrow.... I shall go to bed now.'
When Kate brought her up some supper on a tray, she found her lying on the floor, having abandoned the lie theory, having abandoned all theories and all words, except only, again and again, 'Paul ... Paul ... Paul....'
June went by, and the war went on, and the Russians were driven back in Galicia, and the Germans took Lemberg, and trenches were lost and won in France, and there was fighting round Ypres, and Basil Doye had the middle finger of his right hand cut off, and there was some glorious weather, and Zeppelin raids in the eastern counties, and it was warm and stuffy in London, and Mrs. Sandomir wrote to Alix from the United States that more than ever now, since their darling Paul was added to the toll of wasted lives, war must not occur again.
July went by, and the war went on, and trenches were lost and won, and there was fighting round Ypres, and a German success at Hooge, and the Russians were driven back in Galicia, and Basil Doye left hospital and went with his mother to Devonshire, and there were Zeppelin raids in the eastern counties, and the summer term at the art school ended, and Alix went away from Clapton to Wood End, and her mother wrote that American women were splendid to work with, and that it was supremely important that the States should remain neutral, and that there were many hitches in the way of arbitration, but some hope.
August went by, and the war went on, and Warsaw was taken, and the National Register, and trenches were lost and won, and there was fighting round Ypres, and a British success at Hooge and in Gallipoli, and Zeppelin raids on the eastern counties, and Nicholas and Alix went away together for a holiday to a village in Munster where the only newspaper which appeared with regularity was theBallydehob Weekly Despatch, and Violette was shut up, and Mrs. Frampton stayed with Aunt Nellie and Kate and Evie with friends, and Mrs. Sandomir wrote from Sweden that the Swedes were promising but apathetic, and their government shy.
September went by, and the war went on, and the Russians rallied and retreated and rallied in Galicia, and a great allied advance in France began and ended, and the hospitals filled up, and there were Zeppelin raids on the eastern counties, and Mrs. Frampton and Kate and Evie came back to Violette, and the art school opened, and Alix came back to Violette, and the Doyes came back to town, and Mrs. Sandomir wrote from Sermaize-le-Bains, where she was staying a little while again with the Friends and helping to reconstruct, that it was striking how amenable to reason neutral and even belligerent governments were, if one talked to them reasonably. Even Ferdinand, though he had his faults....
October began, and the war went on, and Bulgaria massed on the Serbian frontier, and Russia sent her an ultimatum, and the Germans retook the Hohenzollern Redoubt, and the hospitals got fuller, and the curious affair of Salonika began, and Terry Orme came home on leave, and Basil Doye interviewed the Medical board, was told he could not rejoin yet, visited Cox's, and, coming out of it, met Alix going up to the Strand.
Alix saw him first; he looked listless and pale and bored and rather cross, as he had done last time she saw him, a week ago. Basil was finding life something of a bore just now, and small things jarred. It was a nuisance, since he was on this ridiculous fighting business, not to be allowed to go and fight. There might be something doing any moment out there, and he not in it. His hand was really nearly all right now. And anyhow, it wasn't much fun in town, as he couldn't paint, and nearly every one was away.
His eyes followed a girl who passed with her officer brother. He would have liked a healthy, pretty, jolly sort of girl like that to go about with ... some girl with poise, and tone, and sanity, and no nerves, who never bothered about the war or anything. A placid, indifferent, healthy sort of girl, with all her fingers on and nothing the matter anywhere. He was sick of hurt and damaged bodies and minds; his artistic instinct and his natural vitality craved, in reaction, for the beautiful and the whole and the healthy....
Looking up, he saw Alix standing at the corner of the Strand, leaning on her ivory-topped stick and looking at him. She looked pale and thin and frail and pretty in her blue coat and skirt and white collar. (The Sandomirs never wore mourning.) He went up to her, a smile lifting his brows.
'Good. I was just feeling bored. Let's come and have tea.'
Alix wasn't really altogether what he wanted. She was too nervy. Some nerve in him which had been badly jarred by the long ugliness of those months in France winced from contact with nervous people. Besides, he suspected her of feeling the same shrinking from him: she so hated the war and all its products. However, they had always amused each other; she was clever, and nice to look at; he remembered vaguely that he had been a little in love with her once, before the war. If the war hadn't come just then, he might have become a great deal in love with her. Before the war one had wanted a rather different sort of person, of course, from now; more of a companion, to discuss things with; more of a stimulant, perhaps, and less of a rest. He remembered that they had discussed painting a great deal; he didn't want to discuss painting now, since he had lost his finger. He didn't particularly want cleverness either, since trench life, with its battery on the brain of sounds and sights, had made him stupid....
However, he said, 'Let's come and have tea,' and she answered, 'Very well, let's,' and they turned into something in the Strand called the Petrograd Tea Rooms.
'I suppose one mustn't take milk in it here,' said Alix vaguely. She looked him over critically as they sat down, and said, 'You don'tlookmuch use yet.'
'So I am told. They say I shall probably have at least a month's more leave.... Well, I don't much care.... There's a rumour my battalion may be sent to Serbia soon. I met a man on leave to-day, and he says that's the latest canard. I rather hope it's true. It will be a change, anyhow, and there'll be something doing out there. Besides, we may as well see the world thoroughly on this show, while we are about it. We shall never have such a chance again, I suppose. It's like a Cook's tour gratis. France, Flanders, Egypt, Gallipoli, Serbia, Greece.... I may see them all yet. This war has its humours, I'll say that for it. A bizarre war indeed, as some titled lunatic woman driving a motor ambulance round Ypres kept remarking to us all. 'Dear me, what a very bizarre war!' It sounded as if she had experienced so many, and as if they were mostly so normal and conventional and flat.'
'Bizarre.' Alix turned the word over. 'Yes, I suppose that is really what it is.... It's the wrong shape; it fits in with nothing; it's mad.... My cousin Emily says it's a righteous war, though of course war is very wicked. Righteous of us and wicked of the Germans, I suppose she means. And Kate says it was sent us, for getting drunk and not going to church enough. I don't know how she knows. Do you meet people who talk like that?'
'I chiefly meet people who ask me why I'm not taking part in it. There was one to-day, in Trafalgar Square. She told me I ought to be in khaki. I said I supposed I ought, properly speaking, but that I was waiting to be fetched. She said it was young fellows like me who disgraced Britain before the eyes of Europe, and that I wouldn't like being fetched, because then I should have to wear C for Coward on my tunic. I said I should rather enjoy that, and we parted pleasantly.'
'The wide ones are two and eleven three, and the narrow ones one and nine. I like B. & H.'s better than Evans', myself.'
The voice was Evie's; she was entering the Petrograd Tea Rooms with young Mrs. Vinney. She saw Alix, nodded, and said 'Hullo.' It was Basil who made room for them at the table with him and Alix (the tea shop was crowded). He had met Evie once before.
'Oh, thanks muchly. Don't you mind?' Evie was apologetic, thinking two was company. Mrs. Vinney was introduced to Basil, settled herself in her dainty fluffiness, emphasised by her feather boa, and ordered crumpets for herself and Evie.
'Quite a nice little place, don't you think so, Miss Sandomir? Morerecherchéthan an A.B.C. or one of those. I often come here....What'sthat boy shouting? The Germans take something or other redoubt.... Fancy! How it does go on, doesn't it?'
Alix said it did.
'Quite makes one feel,' said Mrs. Vinney, 'that oneoughtn'tto be sitting snug and comfortable having crumpets, doesn't it? You know what I mean; it's just a feeling one has, no sense in it. One oughtn't to give in to it,Idon't think; Vin says so too. What's the use, he says, of brooding, when it helps nobody, and what we've got to do is to keep cheery at home and keep things going. I must say I quite agree with him.'
'Rather, so do I,' said Basil.
'But of course it all makes one think, doesn't it?' she resumed. 'Makes life seem moresolemn—do you know what I mean? And all the poor young fellows who never come home again. I'm thankful none of my people or close friends are gone. Mother simply wouldn't let my brother go; she says we've always been a peace-loving family and she's not going to renounce her principles now. Percy doesn't really want to; it was only a passing fancy because some friends of his went. Vin says, leave war to those that want war; he doesn't, and he's not going to mix up in it, and I must say I think he's right.'
'Quite,' agreed Basil.
'All this waste of life and money just because the Germans want a war! Why should wepanderto them, that's what he says.Letthem want. He's no Prussian Junker, shouting out for blood. There's too many of them in this country, he says, and that's what makes war possible. He's all for disarmament, you know, and I must say I think he's right. If no one had any guns or ships, no one could fight, could they?'
Evie agreed that they couldn't, forgetting knives and fists and printed words and naked savages and all the gunless hosts of the ancient world. Violette thought always gaped with these large omissions; it was like a loose piece of knitting, stretched to cover spaces too large for it and yawning into holes.
'Mr. Doye's been fighting, you know,' Evie explained, since Mrs. Vinney was obviously taking him for one who left war to those that wanted war. 'He's wounded.'
'Oh, is that so?' Mrs. Vinney regarded Mr. Doye with new interest. 'Well, I must say one can't helpadmiringthe men that go and fight for their country, though one should allow liberty to all.... I hope you're going on favourably, Mr. Doye.'
'Very, thanks very much.'
'Well, we must be trotting, Evie, if we're going to Oxford Street before we go home.... Check, if you please.... They're always so slow, aren't they, at these places. Good-bye, Miss Sandomir; good-bye, Mr. Doye, and I'm sure I hope you'll get quite all right soon.'
Basil stood aside to let them out, and looked after them for a moment as they went.
He sat down with a grin.
'Makes life moresolemn—do you know what I mean?... What a cheery little specimen.... I say, I'd like to draw Miss Tucker; such good face-lines. That clear chin, and the nice wide space between the eyes.' He drew it on the tablecloth with his left hand and the handle of his teaspoon.
'She's ripping to draw,' Alix agreed. 'I often do her. And the colour's gorgeous, too—that pink on brown. I've never got it right yet.'
'I should think she's fun to live with,' suggested Basil. 'She looks as if she enjoyed things so much.'
'Yes, she has a pretty good time as a rule.'
'You know,' said Basil, thinking it out, 'being out there, and seeing people smashed to bits all about the place, and getting smashed oneself, makes one long for people like that, sane and healthy and with nothing the matter with their bodies or minds. It gets to seem about the only thing that matters, after a time.'
'I suppose it would.'
'Now a person like that, who looks like some sort of wood goddess—(I'd awfully like to paint her as a dryad)—and looks as if she'd never had a day's illness or a bad night in her life, is so—sorestful. So alive and yet so calm. No nerves anywhere, I should think.... Being out there plays the dickens with people's nerves, you know. Not every one's, of course; there are plenty of cheery souls who come through unmoved; but you'd be surprised at the jolly, self-possessed sportsmen who go to pieces more or less—all degrees of it, of course. Some don't know it themselves; you can often only see it by the way their eyes look at you while they're talking, or the way their hand twitches when they light their cigarette....' Alix remembered John Orme's eyes and hands. 'They dream a bit, too,' Basil went on, and his own eyes were fixed and queer as he talked, and his brows twitched a little. 'Talk in their sleep, you know, or walk.... It's funny.... I've censored letters which end "Hope this finds you the same as it leaves me,i.e.in the pink," from chaps who have to be watched lest they put a bullet into themselves from sheer nerves. You'll see a man shouting and laughing at a sing-song, then sitting and crying by himself afterwards.... Oh, those are extreme cases, of course, but lots are touched one way or another.... I'm sorry for the next generation; they'll stand a chance of being a precious neurotic lot, the children of the fighting men.... It's up to every one at home to keep as sane and unnervy as they can manage, I fancy, or the whole world may become a lunatic asylum.... I say, what are you going to do now?'
'Buy some chalks. Then go home.'
'Violette? I'll see you home, may I?'
They went to the chalk shop, then to the Clapton bus. The evening wind was like cool hands stroking their faces. It was half-past six. The streets were barbarically dark.
'One would think,' said Basil, peering through the darkness at the ugliness, 'that in Kingsland Road Zepps might be allowed to do their worst.'
'On Spring Hill too, perhaps,' Alix said. Slums and the screaming of the disreputable poor: villas and the precise speech and incomparably muddled thinking of the respectable genteel: which could best be spared?
But Basil said, 'Oh, Spring Hill. Spring Hill is full of joy and dryads.'
'Kate is afraid a very common type of person is coming to live there. We're getting nervous about it at Violette. We're very particular, you know.'
Alix, with the instinct of a cad, was laughing at Violette, wanting him to laugh with her.
'Sure to be,' he returned; and Alix realised blankly that he might laugh at Violette to her heart's content and his attitude towards dryads and Evie Tucker's face-lines would remain unaltered by his mockery.
With a revulsion towards breeding, she said, 'They're most awfully kind.... Here's where I get off.'
He got off too, and they walked down Upper Clapton Road.
Some one came behind them, walking quickly, came up with them, slowed, and looked.
'Here we are again,' said Evie, in her clear gay voice. 'You're coming in to see us, Mr. Doye, I hope?'
Basil glanced from Alix to Evie. They were passing under a dim lamp, which for a moment threw Evie's startling prettiness in lit relief against the night. Extreme prettiness is not such a common thing that one can afford to miss chances of beholding it.
Basil said, 'Well, may I?'
Evie returned, 'Rather. Stop to supper.'
'I can't do that, thanks very much. But I'll come in for a moment, if I may.'
As they entered Violette's tiny hall, the clock struck seven. They went into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Frampton and Kate sat knitting. It was stiff and prim and tidy, and rather stuffy, and watched from the wall by the monstrous Eye.
'Here's Mr. Doye, mother,' said Evie. 'He saw Alix home.'
Mr. Doye was introduced to Kate. Mrs. Frampton said how kind it was of him to see Alix home.
'Particularly with the streets black like they are now. Have we arightto expect to be preserved if we go against all common-sense like that?'
'I never do,' said Basil, meaning he never expected to be preserved, but Mrs. Frampton took it that he never went against common-sense.
'Well, I'm sure I go out after dark as little as I can; but the girls have to, coming back from work, and it makes me worry for them.... Now you sit in that easy-chair, Mr. Doye, and make yourself comfortable, and rest your hand. It's going on well, I hope? You'll stop and have some supper, of course? We have it at half-past seven, so it won't keep you long.'
Basil said he wouldn't, because he was dining somewhere at eight.
They talked of the news. Mrs. Frampton said it seemed to get worse each day. She had been reading in the paper that Bulgaria was just coming in. Was that really so? Mrs. Frampton was of those who inquire of their male acquaintances and relatives on these and kindred subjects, and believe the answers, more particularly when the males are soldiers. Basil Doye, used to his mother, who told him things and never believed a word he said, because, as she remarked, he was so much younger, found this gratifying, and said it was really so. Mrs. Frampton said dear me, it seemed as if all the world would have to come in in time, and what about poor Serbia, could she be saved? Basil, wanting to leave the state of Europe and ask Evie if she had seen any plays lately, said casually that Serbia certainly seemed to stand a pretty good chance of being done in.
'And then, I suppose,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'we shall have the poor Serbian refugees fleeing to us for safety, like the Belgians. I'm sure we shall all welcome them, the poor mothers with their little children. But it will be awkward to know where to put them or what to do with them. They've got those two houses at the corner of the Common full of Belgians now. I wonder if the Belgians and the Serbs would get on well together in the same houses. They say the poor Serbs are very wild people indeed, with such strange habits. Do you think we shall all be asked to take them as servants?'
'Sure to be,' said Basil, his eyes on Evie. Evie sat doing nothing at all, healthy, lovely, amused, splendidly alive. The vigorous young bodily life of her called to Basil's own, re-animating it. Alix sat by her, all alive too, but weak-bodied, lame, frail-nerved, with no balance. Kate knitted, and was different.
'It will be quite a problem, won't it?' said Mrs. Frampton. 'My maid tells me girls can't get enough places now, people all take Belgians instead.'
'They say the Belgian girls make very rough servants. We know those who have them,' said Kate, who had the Violette knack of switching off from the general to the personal. To Violette there were no labour problems, only good servants and bad, no Belgian or Balkan problem, only individual Belgians and Serbs (poor things, with their little children and strange habits). They had the personal touch, which makes England what it is.
Mrs. Frampton wanted to know next, 'And I suppose we shall be having conscription very soon now, Mr. Doye, shall we?'
'Lord Northcliffe says so, doesn't he?' Basil returned absently.
Mrs. Frampton accepted that.
'Well! I suppose it has to be. It seems hard on the poor mothers of only sons, and on the poor wives too. But if it will help us to win the war, we mustn't grudge them, must we? I suppose itwillhelp us to victory, won't it?'
'Lord Northcliffe says that too, I understand.... What doyouthink, Miss Tucker?' He turned to Evie, to hear her speak.
She said, 'Oh, don't ask me.Idon't know. Don't suppose it will make much difference. Things don't, do they?'
Basil chuckled. 'Precious little, as a rule.... So that settles that.' He caught sight of the clock and got up.
'I say, I'm afraid I've got to go at once. I shall be awfully late and rude. I often am, since I joined the army. I was a punctual person once. The war is very bad for manners and morals, have you discovered, Mrs. Frampton?'
'Oh well,' Mrs. Frampton spoke condoningly, 'I'm sure we must all hope it won't last much longer. How long will it be, Mr. Doye, can you tell us that?'
'Seven years,' said Mr. Doye. 'Till October 1922, you know. Yes, awful, isn't it? I'm frightfully sorry I had to tell you. Good-bye, Mrs. Frampton.' He shook hands with them all; his eyes lingered, bright and smiling, on Evie, as if they found her a pleasant sight. In Alix that look seemed to stab and twist, like a turning sword. Perhaps that was what men felt when a bayonet got them.... The odd thing in the psychology of it was that she had never known before that she was a jealous person; she had always, like so many others, assumed she wasn't. Certainly Evie's beauty had been to her till now pure joy.
As she went to the door with Basil, he said, 'I say, I wish you and your cousin would come into the country one Sunday. We might make up a small party. Your cousin looks as if she would rather like walking.'
'She's rather past it, I'm afraid,' said Alix, and added, in answer to his stare, 'Cousin Emily, you mean, don't you? The Tuckers aren't my cousins, you know. And she's only a dead cousin's wife. The Tuckers aren't even that.'
'No, hardly that, I suppose. Well, ask Miss Tucker if she'd care to come, will you? I should think she'd be rather a good country person. We might go next Sunday, if it's fine.'
Alix did not remark that Kate was not a particularly good country person. She merely said, 'All right.... Mind the step at the gate.... Good-night,' and shut the door.
She stood for a moment listening to the tread of his feet along the asphalt pavement, then sat down on the umbrella stand thoughtfully.
For a moment it came to her that among the many things the war had taken from her (Paul, Basil, sleep at nights) were two that mattered just now particularly—good breeding, and self-control. She knew she might feel and behave like a cad, and also that she might cry. It was the second of these that she least wanted to do. She had to be very gay and bright.... For a moment her fingers were pressed against her eyelids. When she took them away she saw balls of fire dancing all over the hall and up the stairs.
'I shall ask Kate,' she said.
Florence came up the kitchen stairs with food. Kate came out of the sitting-room to help her set the table. Alix said, 'Let me help, Kate,' and began to bustle about the dining-room.
'You're giving mother Evie's serviette,' said Kate, who probably thought this outburst of helpfulness more surprising than useful.
'By the way, Kate,' said Alix suddenly, giving Mrs. Frampton Kate's serviette instead, 'I suppose you wouldn't care to come for a long walk in the country on Sunday? I'm going with Basil Doye and some other people, and he asked me to ask you.'
Kate looked repressive.
'Considering my class, and church, and that I never take train on Sunday, it's so likely, isn't it?... And I rather wonder you like to go these Sunday outings, Alix. Don't you think it's nice to keep one day quiet, not to speak of higher things, with all the rushing about you do during the week?'
Kate felt it her duty to say these things sometimes to Alix, who had not been well brought up.
'It might be nice,' returned Alix, absently juggling with napkins. 'But it's difficult, rather.... I say, I believe I've got these wrong still.... I must go and change now.'
She found Evie changing already, cool, clear-skinned, cheerful, humming a tune.
It was difficult to speak to Evie, but Alix did it. She even hooked her up behind. She saw Evie's reflection in the glass, pretty and brown. She tried not to think that Evie was gayer than usual, and knew she was. She changed her own dress, and talked fast. She saw her face in the glass; it was flushed and feverish.
They went down to supper. There was cold brawn, and custard, and stewed apple, and cheese, and what Violette called preserve. An excellent meal, but one in which Alix found no joy. She wanted something warming.
'It was a pity Mr. Doye wasn't able to stay,' said Mrs. Frampton. 'He's quite full of fun, isn't he?'
'Talks a lot of nonsense,Ithink,' said Evie.
'The brawn would hardly have been sufficient,' said Kate, meaning if Mr. Doye had been able to stay.
'A little custard, love?' Mrs. Frampton said to Alix. 'Why, you don't look well, Alix. You look as if you had quite a temperature. I hope you've not a chill beginning. These east winds are so searching and your necks are so low. You'd better go to bed early, dear, and Florence shall make you some hot currant tea.'
'Florence says,' said Kate, reminded of that, 'that those people at Primmerose have lost their third girl this month. The girls simply won't stay, and Florence says she doesn't blame them. They're dreadfully common people, I'm afraid, those Primmerose people. There are some funny stories going round about them, only of course one can't encourage Florence to talk. I believe the amount of wine and spirits they take in is something dreadful. In wartime, too. It does seem sad, doesn't it? You'd think people might restrain themselves just now, but some seem never to think of that. Mr. Alison says all this luxury and intemperance is quite shameful. He preached on it on Sunday night. His idea is that the war was sent us as a judgment, for all our wicked luxury and vice, and it will never cease till we are converted, Lord Derby or no Lord Derby, conscription or no conscription. He says all that is just a question of detail and method, but the only way to stop the war is a change of life. He was very forcible, I thought.'
'Perhaps,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'that's what Mr. Doye meant when he said, didn't he, how all these measures, conscription and so on, don't make so much difference after all. No, it was Evie said it, wasn't it? and Mr. Doye agreed and seemed quite pleased with her, I thought. Perhaps he meant the same as Mr. Alison, about a change of life. I expect he's very good himself, isn't he, Alix?'
Evie, to whom goodness meant dullness, said, 'I bet he isn't. Is he, Al?'
'Idon't know,' said Alix. 'You'd better ask him.'
She added after a moment, 'I'll ask him for you on Sunday, if you like. We're going out somewhere, if it's fine.'
'It was very kind of him to ask me too,' said Kate. 'You must explain to him how it is I can't, with its being Sunday.'
Across the table Alix's eyes met Evie's, suddenly widened in guileless, surprised mirth, with a touch of chagrin.
Evie said, 'Why, whatever did he ask Kate for? He might have known she wouldn't.... Men are ...'
'You're not coming, you're not coming, you'renotcoming,' said Alix within herself, breathing fast and clenching her napkin tight in her two hands and staring across the table defensively out of narrowed eyes.
So they left it at that.
But in the night Evie won. One may begin these things, if sufficiently unhinged and demoralised by private emotions and public events, but one cannot always keep them up.
The policeman paced up and down, up and down Spring Hill, the rain dripped, the gutters gurgled, Evie breathed softly, asleep, the dark night peered through waving curtains, Alix turned her pillow over and over and cursed.
'I suppose,' she said at last, at 2a.m., 'she's got to come....'
At 2.30 she said, 'It will be a beastly day,' and sighed crossly and began to go to sleep.
At half-past seven, while Evie did her hair, Alix said, on a weary yawn, 'I say, you'd better come out with us on Sunday, as Kate won't.'
Evie, with hairpins in her mouth, said, 'Me? Oh, all right, I don't mind. Will it amuse me? What's the game?'
'Oh, nothing especial. Just a day in the country. No, I shouldn't think it would amuse you much, especially as you won't know hardly any of the people. But come if you like.'
'You're awfully encouraging.' Evie considered it, and pinned her hair up. 'Oh, I expect I may as well come. It will be cheerier than stopping at home. And I rather like meeting new people.... All right, I'm on. Gracious, there's the bell. You'll be late, child. If they're half as particular at your shop as they are at mine, you must get into a lot of rows.'
So that was settled.
Sunday morning was quiet and misty, and Clapton was full of bells. At Violette on Sundays each person led a different life. Kate, who attended St. Austin's church, went to early Mass at eight, sung Mass for children at 9.45, Sunday-school at 10.30, matins (said hastily) at 11, High Mass (sung slowly) at 11.30, children's catechising at 3, and evensong at 7.
Mrs. Frampton went to a quite different church, to 11 o'clock matins, and once a month (the first Sunday) did what was called in that church 'staying on.' She often went again in the evening.
Evie often accompanied her mother, and found, as many have, that after church is a good time and place for the gathering together of friends.
Alix did not attend church, not having been brought up to do so. She often went off somewhere on Sunday with friends, as to-day.
Mrs. Frampton said at breakfast, 'Take warm coats, dears; it's quite a fog, and your cough sounds nasty, Alix love. And don't leave your umbrellas; it might very well turn to rain.'
'It's quite cold enough for furs,Ithink,' said Evie, pleased, because her furs became her.
Through a pale blurred morning Alix and Evie travelled by bus and metropolitan to Victoria. Evie, lithe and fawn-like in dark brown, with her wide, far-set, haunting eyes and sudden dimples, was a vivid note in the blurred world; any one must be glad of her. Evie needed not to say words of salt or savour; her natural high spirits and young buoyancy were lifted from the commonplace to the charming by her face and smile. Alix by Evie's side was pale and elusive and dim; her only note of colour was the dark, shadowed blue of her black-lashed eyes. She coughed, and her throat was sore. She talked, and made Evie laugh.
They entered Victoria Station at 10.29. Waiting in the booking-hall were their friends: Basil Doye, a married young man and young woman of prepossessing exterior, two or three others of both sexes, and Terry Orme with a friend, both on a week's leave. Terry was spending the week-end in town, with another subaltern, and was joining in the expedition at Alix's suggestion. Alix was fond of Terry, who was John's younger brother, and a fair, serene, sweet-tempered, mathematical, very musical person of nineteen. He seemed one of those who, as Basil Doye had put it, come through the war unmoved. His smile was sweet and infectious, and he was restful and full of joy, and could consume more chocolates at a sitting than any one else (of over fifteen) that he knew.
His friend was a cheery, sunburnt youth called Ingram, who had got the D.C.M.
Terry said, 'Hullo, Alix, how are you?' and had the gift of showing, without demonstration, that he knew things were rotten for her, because of Paul. He was a sympathetic boy, and tender-hearted, and thought Alix looked in poor case; quite different from his own vigorous and cheerful and busy sisters at Wood End. But then of course he and John hadn't been killed, and Paul had. It was frightfully rough luck on Alix. Terry was inclined to think that people out there had much the best of it, on the whole, beastly as it often was, and interrupting to the things that really mattered, such as music, and Cambridge.
Evie was introduced to every one, and they all had a friendly and pleased look at so much grace and vividness.
In the train they filled a compartment. Alix sat between Terry and the married young man, who was something in a government office. Opposite were Evie and Basil and the married young woman, who had lovely furs and a spoilt, charming face, and was selfish about the foot-warmer.
In the train they read a newspaper. Evie got the impression from their manner of reading it that they all knew beforehand what the news was, and a good deal more than was in the paper too; perhaps this impression was produced merely by nobody's saying 'Fancy,' as they did at Violette. From their style of comment Evie was inclined to gather that some of them had helped to write the paper and that others were acquainted with the unwritten facts behind and so different from the printed words; perhaps it was merely that they had studied last night's late editions, or perhaps some were journalists, others makers of history, others gifted with invention. Anyhow they seemed to think they knew as much as, or a good deal more than, the paper did. Even the married young woman stopped for a moment being sleepy and sulky about the cold to contribute something she had heard from a Foreign Office man at dinner.
'He was pulling your leg,' her husband said. 'Linsey always does; he thinks it's funny.'
Evie thought him and his high sweet voice conceited.
Alix, looking at Evie opposite, speculated amusedly for a moment where Evie came in: Evie, who knew and cared for no news and had heard nothing from people behind the scenes, and hadn't even had her leg pulled by Foreign Office men. Well, Evie, of course, came in on her face. It was jolly to have a face like that, to cover all vacancies within. Evie sat there, understanding little, yet people spoke to her merely to discover what, with that face, she would say. And what she said pleased and amused merely by reason of its grace of setting.
Evie shivered, and Basil asked if she would like the window up.
'Well, itiscold,' said Evie, and he leaned across and pulled it up, asking no one else.
'Thanks so much,' said Evie, taking it prettily to herself. Her face and eyes were brilliant above her furs. Basil, with an artist's pleasure, took in her beauty; Alix felt him doing it. Yes, Evie came in all right.
They got out at some station. The air was like damp blankets, thick and pale and chill. There was no joy in it; dead wet leaves floated earthwards, unhappy like tears. They started walking somewhere. Alix leaned on her stick. She could walk all right, but she limped. She might soon tire, but she wasn't going to say so. They walked uphill, on a forlorn, muddy road. They walked in groups of two or three, changing and mixing and dividing as they went. They talked....
Basil for a minute was beside Alix. He said, 'I say, will this be too much for you? Do say if you get tired, and we'll stop and rest.'
Alix hated him because she was lame and he hated lameness and loved wholeness and strength.
She said, 'No thanks, I'm all right,' and had no more to say at the moment. His eyes were on Evie's back, where she walked ahead with Maynard, the married man. He thought she walked like Diana, straight and free, with a swing.
Alix turned to speak to Terry, who was just behind with his friend Ingram. He came abreast of her, answering. Basil caught up the two in front.
'You look pretty fit, Terry,' said Alix.
'Oh, I'm in the pink.' His fair, unbrowned face was serene and smiling. His far-set blue eyes were not nervous, only watchful, and seemed to see a long way. He hadn't got Basil's or John's quick, jerky, restless movements of the hands. He looked as if the war had more let him alone, left him detached, unconsumed. Perhaps it was because he was a musician; perhaps because he was naturally of a serene spirit; perhaps because he was so young.
'Have a choc,' said Terry, and produced a box of them from the pocket of his Burberry.
Alix had one.
'How are they all at Wood End?' she asked.
'They too appear to be in the pink. They haven't much time to spare for me, though, they're so marvellously busy. Mother always was, of course; but Margot and Dorothy are at it all day too now. I wonder what they'll do with it when the war's over, all this energy. Mother says the war has been good for them; made them more industrious, I suppose. It's a funny thought, that the war can have beengoodfor any one; I can't quite swallow it. I don't think a thing bad in itself can be good for people, do you? It's very bad for me; it's spoiling my ear; the noise, you know; guns and shells and gramophones and so on.... By the way, I wish you'd come and hear Lovinski with me on Monday night, it's a jolly programme.'
'All right,' said Alix, who found Terry restful.
She talked to Terry, and saw Evie and Basil walking in front, side by side, laughing, Evie's joyous, young smile answering that other quick, amused, friendly smile that she knew.
'Youareall funny,' said Evie to Basil.
'No?'
'Oh, you are. You do talk so.... About such mad things.'
'Do we? What doyoutalk about at home?'
Evie tried to consider.
'Don't know, I'm sure. Oh, just things that happen, I suppose; and mother and Kate talk about servants and household things, and we all talk about the people we know, and what they've done and said. But you ... you all talk about....'
'About the people we don't know, and what they've done and said. Is that it?'
'Perhaps. And public things, out of the papers, and what's going to happen, and why, and pictures, and ... nonsense.... Oh, I don't know.... And you find such queer things funny.... Anyhow, you alltalk, even if it's only nonsense most of the time.... And the girls and the men talk just the same way. That's funny. Alix is the same. She's the queerest kid; makes me scream with laughter often. She's a pet, though.'
'She is,' said Basil. 'But what people say—the way they talk—makes extraordinarily little difference, you know. It's what they are.... The funny thing is, I didn't know that, not so clearly, at least, till I'd been out at the war. A thing like a war seems to settle values, somehow—shows one what matters and what doesn't; shovels away the cant and leaves one with the essentials....' ('Oh dear me,' said Evie.) 'Sorry; I'm talking rot. What I mean is, isn't it a jolly day and jolly country, and don't you love walking and getting warm?... I suppose you chose your hat to match your face, didn't you?—pink on brown. Don't apologise: I like it. Yes, the hat too, of course, but I didn't mean that.'
'Well, really!' said Evie.
They stopped at an inn for lunch. They crowded round a fire and got warm. They had hot things to eat and drink. They laughed and talked. Outside the wet leaves blew about. Alix's leg ached. Maynard, who talked too much and about the wrong things, persisted in talking about the psychological and social effects of the war. An uncertain subject, and sad, too; but probably he was writing an article about it somewhere; it was the sort of thing Maynard did, in his spare time.
'It's an interesting intellectual phenomenon,' he was saying. 'So many of the intelligent people in all the nations reduced largely to emotional pulp—sunk in blithering jingoism, like a school treat or a mothers' meeting.'
His wife, who had been a bored vicar's daughter before her marriage, and knew, said sleepily, 'Mothers' meetings aren't a bit like that. You don't know anything about them. They mostly don't think anything about jingoism or the war, except that they hope their boys won't go, and that the Keyser must be an 'ard-'earted man. That's not blithering jingoism, it's common sense.'
Ingram, the cheerful young subaltern, said boldly, 'I think jingoism is an under-rated virtue. There's a lot to be said for it. It makes recruits, anyhow. As long as people don'ttalkjingo, I think it's a jolly useful thing.'
'It's turning some of our best professional cynics into primitive sentimentalists, anyhow,' said Maynard, thinking out his article. 'It's making Europe simple, sensuous and passionate. As evidenced by the war-poetry that was poured forth in 1914. (That flood seems a little spent now; I suppose we're all getting too tired of the war even to write verse about it.) ... As evidenced also by the Hymn of Hate and the Deptford riots and other exhibitions of primitive emotion. The question is, is all this emotion going to last, and to be poured out on other things after the war, or shall we be too tired to feel anything at all, or will there be a reaction to dryness and cynicism? People, for instance, have learnt more or less to give their money away: will they go on giving it, or shall we afterwards be closer-fisted than before?'
'O Lord!' said Basil, 'we shall have nothing left to give. Not even munition-makers will, if it's true that the income-tax is going to be quadrupled next year. It's about five bob now, isn't it? Give, indeed!'
'People,' continued Maynard, still on his own train of thought, 'may be divided, as regards the ultimate effects on them of any movement, into two sections—those who respond to the movement and join in all its works and are propelled along in a certain direction by it and continue to be so; and those who, either early or late, react against it, and are propelled in the opposite direction. Every movement has got its reaction tucked away inside it; and the more violent the movement, the more violent the possible reaction. The reactionary forces that come into play during and after war are quite incalculable. Goodness only knows where they'll land us ... whether they'll prevail over the responding forces or not. For instance, shall we be left a socialistic, centralised, autocratically governed, pre-Magna-Carta state, bound hand and foot by the Defence of the Realm Act, with all businesses state-controlled and all persons subject to imprisonment and sudden death without trial by jury, or will there be a tremendous reaction towards liberal individualism andlaissez-faire? Who knows? None of us.... What do you think about it all, Miss Tucker?' He addressed Evie, to tease her, and make her say something in that fresh, buoyant voice of hers.
She did. She said, 'I'm sure I don't know anything about it. I can't see that the war makes such a lot of difference, to ordinary people. One seems to go on much the same from day to day, doesn't one?'
'I'm not at all sure,' said Basil, suddenly interested, 'that Miss Tucker hasn't got hold of the crux of the whole matter. There aren't two sections of people, Maynard—there are three; the respondents, the reactors, and the indifferents—ordinary people, that's to say. What differencedoesthe war make, after all—to ordinary people? I believe the fact that it, so to speak, doesn't, is going to settle the destiny of this country. People like you talk of effects and tendencies; you're caught by influences and reactions and carried about; but then, perish the thought that you're an ordinary person. You're only an ordinary person of a certain order, the fairly civilised, not quite unthinking order, that sees and discusses and talks a lot too much. A thing like a war, when it comes along, upsets the whole outlook of your lot; it dissolves the fabric of your world, and you have to build it up again—and whether you like it or not, it will be something new for you. But does it upset and dissolve, or even disturb very much, the world of all the people (the non-combatants, I mean, of course, not the fighters) who don't think, or only think from hand to mouth? There'll be no reaction for them, or any such foolishness, because there's been no force. Here's to Ordinary People!' He emptied his glass of beer, and if he seemed to do it to Evie Tucker, that might be taken merely as acknowledgment of her discerning remark.
'Oh, mercy,' said Evie, on a laugh and a yawn. 'You do all go on, don't you.'
Alix, black-browed and sulky, thought so too. Why talk about rotten things like these? Why not talk about the weather, or the countryside, or birds and leaves, or servants, as at Violette, instead of these futile speculations on the effects of a war that should not be thought about, should not be mentioned, and would probably anyhow never never end? It was Maynard's fault; he was conceited, and a gasbag, and talked about the wrong things. Terry Orme agreed with her.
But young Ingram said, practically, 'Surely that's all rot, isn't it? I mean, there can be no indifferents, in your sense of the word. Every one must be affected, even if they haven't people of their own in the show, by the general kick-up. I don't believe in your indifferents; they wouldn't be human beings. They'd be like the calm crowds in the papers, don't you know, who aren't flustered by Zepps. I simply don't believe they exist.'
'The fundamentally untouched,' Maynard explained. 'Superficially, of course, they are, as you put it, flustered. They read the papers, of course, for the incidents; but the fundamental issues beneath don't touch them. They're impervious; they're of an immobility; they're sublimely stable. The war, for them, really isn't. The new world, however it shapes, simply won't be. What's the war doing to them? All the beastliness, and bravery, and ugliness, and brutality, and cold, and blood, and mud, and gaiety, and misery, and idiotic muddle, and splendour, and squalor, and general lunacy ... you'd think it must overturn even the most stable ... do something with them—harden them, or soften them, or send them mad, or teach them geography or foreign politics or knitting or self-denial or thrift or extravagance or international hatred or brotherhood. But has it? Does it? I believe often not. They haven't learnt geography, because they don't like using maps. They've not learnt to fight, because it's non-combatants I'm talking of. They've not even learnt to write to the papers—thank goodness. Nor even to knit, because I believe they mostly knew how already. Nor to preserve their lives in unlit streets, for they are nightly done in in their hundreds. Nor, I was told by a clergyman of my acquaintance the other day, to pray (but that is still hoped for them, I believe). The war, like everything else, will come and go and leave them where it found them—the solid backbone of the world. The rest of the world may go on its head with ideas, or progress, or despair, or war, or joy, or madness, or sanctity, or revolution—but they remain unstirred. I don't suppose a foreign invasion would affect them fundamentally. They couldn't take in invasion, only the invaders. They remain themselves, through every vicissitude. That's why the world after the war will be essentially the same as the world before it; it takes more than a war to move most of us.... We all hope our own pet organisation or tendency is going to step in after the war and because of the war and take possession and transform society. Social workers hope for a new burst of philanthropic brotherhood; Christians hope for Christianity; artists and writers for a new art and literature; pacificists for a general disarmament; militarists for permanent conscription; democrats say there will be a levelling of class barriers; and I heard a subaltern the other day remark that the war would 'put a stopper on all this beastly democracy.' We all seem to think the world will emerge out of the melting-pot into some strange new shape; optimists hope and believe it will be the shape they prefer, pessimists are almost sure it will be the one they can least approve. Optimists say the world will have been brought to a state of mind in which wars can never be again; pessimists say, on the contrary, we are in for a long succession of them, because we have revived a habit, and habit forms character, and character forms conduct. But really I believe the world will be left very much where it was before, because of that great immobile section which weighs it down.'
Mrs. Maynard, who had been making a very good lunch, yawned at this point, and said, 'Roger, you're boring every one to death. You don't know anything more about the future than we do. None of us know anything at all. You're not Old Moore.'
'Old Moore,' Evie contributed (she had not been attending to Maynard's discourse, but was caught by this), 'says something important in foreign courts is going to happen in November, connected with a sick-bed. I expect that means the Kaiser's going to be ill. Perhaps he'll die.'
'Sure to,' agreed Basil. 'He's done it so many times already this year, it's becoming a habit.... I say, we ought to be getting on, don't you think?'
Mrs. Maynard shivered, and said it was quite an unfit day to be out in, and she wasn't enjoying herself in the least, and was anybody else?
Basil said he was, immensely, and found the day picturesque in colour effects.
Evie said she thought it was jolly so long as they kept moving.
Maynard said it was jollier talking and eating, but he supposed that couldn't last.
Terry said it could, if one had chocolates in one's pocket and didn't hurry too much.
Basil walked beside Evie. Evie's beauty was whipped to brilliancy by the damp wind. Evie was life. She might not have the thousand vivid awarenesses to life, the thousand responses to its multitudinous calls, that the others had, the keen-witted young persons who had been bred up to live by their heads; but, in some more fundamental way, she was life itself: life which, like love and hate, is primitive, uncivilised, intellectually unprogressive, but basic and inevitable.
Basil had once resented the type. In old days he would have called it names, such as Woman, and Violette. Now he liked Woman, found her satisfactory to some deep need in him; the eternal masculine, roused from slumber by war, cried to its counterpart, ignoring the adulterations that filled the gulf between. Possibly he even liked Violette, which produced Woman.
Ingram walked by Alix. The yellow leaves drifted suddenly on to the wet road. Alix's hands were as cold as fishes; her lame leg was tired. She talked and laughed. Ingram was talking about dogs—some foolish pug he knew.
Alix too talked of pugs, and chows, and goldfish, and guinea-pigs. Ingram said there had been a pug in his platoon; he told tales of its sagacity and intrepidity in the trenches.
'And then—it was a funny thing—he lost his nerve one day absolutely; simply went to pieces and whimpered in my dug-out, and stayed so till we got back into billets again. He wouldn't come in to the trench again next go; he'd had enough. Funny, rather, because it was so sudden, and nothing special to account for it. But it's the way with some men, just the same. I've known chaps as cheery as crickets, wriggling in frozen mud up to the waist, getting frost-bitten, watching shrapnel and whizz-bangs flying round them as calmly as if they were gnats, and seeing their friends slip up all round them ... and never turning a hair. And then one day, for no earthly reason, they'll go to pot—break up altogether. Funny things, nerves....'
Alix suddenly perceived that he knew more about them than appeared in his jolly, sunburnt face; he was talking on rapidly, as if he had to, with inward-looking eyes.
'Of course there are some men out there who never ought to be there at all; not strong enough in body or mind. There was a man in my company; he was quite young; he'd got his commission straight from school; and he simply went to pieces when he'd been in and out of trenches for a few weeks. He was a nervous, sensitive sort of chap, and delicate; he ought never to have come out, I should say. Anyhow he went all to bits and lost his pluck; he simply couldn't stand the noise and the horror and the wounds and the men getting smashed up round him: I believe he saw his best friend cut to pieces by a bit of shell before his eyes. He kept being sick after that; couldn't stop. And ... it was awfully sad ... he took to exposing himself, taking absurd risks, in order to get laid out; every one noticed it. But he couldn't get hit; people sometimes can't when they go on like that, you know—it's a funny thing—and one night he let off his revolver into his own shoulder. I imagine he thought he wasn't seen, but he was, by several men, poor chap. No one ever knew whether he meant to do for himself, or only to hurt himself and get invalided back; anyhow things went badly and he died of it.... I can tell you this, because you won't know who he was, of course....' (But really he was telling it because, like the Ancient Mariner, he had to talk and tell.) He went on quickly, looking vacantly ahead, 'I was there when he fired.... Some of us went up to him, and he knew we'd seen.... I shan't forget his face when we spoke to him.... I can see it now ... his eyes....' He looked back into the past at them, then met Alix's, and it was suddenly as if he was looking again at a boy's white, shamed face and great haunted blue eyes and crooked, sensitive mouth and brows.... He stopped abruptly and stood still, and said sharply beneath his breath, 'Oh, good Lord!' Horror started to his face; it mounted and grew as he stared; it leaped from his eyes to the shadowed blue ones he looked into. He guessed what he had done, and, because he guessed, Alix guessed too. Suddenly paler, and very cold and sick, she said, 'Oh ...' on a long shivering note; and that too was what the boy in the trenches had said, and how he had said it. Perspiration bedewed the young man's brow, though the air hung clammy and cold about them.
'I beg your pardon,' said Ingram, 'but I didn't hear your name. Do you mind....'
'Sandomir,' she whispered, with cold lips. 'It's the same, isn't it?'
He could not now pretend it wasn't.
'I—I'm sickeningly sorry,' he muttered. 'I'm an ass ... a brute ... telling you the whole story like that.... Oh, I do wish I hadn't. If only you'd stopped me.'
Alix pulled her dazed faculties together. She was occupied in trying not to be sick. It was unfortunate: strong emotion often took her like that; in that too she was like Paul.
'I d-didn't know,' she stammered. 'I never knew before how Paul died. They never said ... just said shot....'
He could have bitten his tongue out now.
'You mustn't believe it, please.... Sandomir wasn't the name ... it was my mistake.... Sandberg—that was it.'
'They never said,' Alix repeated. She felt remote from him and his remorse, emptied of pity and drained of all emotions, only very sick, and her hands were as cold as fishes.
A little way in front Evie and Basil were laughing together. A robin sang on a swaying bough. Alix thought how sad he was. She had a sore throat and a headache. The mist clung round, clammy and cold, like her hands....
'I don't know what to say,' Ingram was muttering. 'There's nothingtosay....'
Alix stopped walking. The sky went dark.
'Terry,' she said.
Terry was at her side.
'All right.... Aren't you well?'
She held on to his arm.
'Terry, I'm going home.'
He looked at her face.
'All right. I'll come too.... If you're going to faint, you'd better sit down first.'
'I shan't faint,' said Alix. 'But I think ... I think I may be going to be sick.'
'Well,' said Terry, 'just wait till the others have gone on, or they'll fuss round.... I say, good-bye, all of you; Alix is rather done, and we're going to the nearest station for the next train. No thanks, don't bother to come; we shall be all right.'
Alix heard far-away offers of help; heard Evie's 'Shall I come with you, Al?' and Basil's 'What bad luck,' and the others' sympathies and regrets, and Terry keeping them off.
Alix and Terry were alone together.
Then Alix was, as she had foretold, sick, crouching on damp heather by the roadside.
'Have you done?' inquired Terry presently.
'Yes. I hope so, at least. Let's go on to the station.'
'I wonder, is it something beginning? Do you feel like flu? Or is it biliousness, or a chill? Or have you walked too far? I was afraid you were.'