Changing Winds Part 91

The sloppier journalists made a cult of blasphemy and foul speech. The drill-sergeant was regarded as the most entertaining of humourists, and decent men who had never done more than the normal and healthy amount of swearing, began to believe that it was impossible to be manly unless one bloodied every time one spoke: and swearing, which is a good and wholesome and manly and picturesque thing, suddenly became like the gibbering of an idiot.... One was led to believe that the drill-sergeant spent his time in ordering men to "b.l.o.o.d.y well form b.l.o.o.d.y fours!" It was immaterial to the sloppier journalists that the drill-sergeant did not do anything of the sort ... and so the legend grew, of a great Army going into battle, not with the old English war-cries on their lips or with new cries as n.o.ble, but with "b.l.o.o.d.y!" for their watch-word, and "Who were you With Last Night!" for their war-song....

6

"I often wonder what things will be like when the war is over," Mrs.

Graham said. "Men can't live like that without some permanent effect.

Their habits will be rougher, more elementary, I suppose, and they'll value life less highly. I don't see how they can help it. You can't see men killed in that careless way ... and feel any sanct.i.ty about life. I think life will be harsher for women after the war than it was before...."

She remembered that Ninian's father had always declared that the Franco-German War had brutalised Germany.

"He'd lived in Germany for a long while," she said, "and people admitted that Germany had changed after the War ... grown coa.r.s.er and leas kindly!..."

They talked on in this strain until the clock chimed twelve. The storm still blew over the house, but the rain had ceased, and when they looked out of the window, they could see a rift in the clouds, through which the moon tore her way.

"Good-night, Henry," she said, bending towards him, and he kissed her cheek and then opened the door for her.

"Good-night!" he said.

7

Ninian came home on the next day, and when they had told him the news of Henry's engagement to Mary, he was full of cheers. "Good!" he said. "Now I shall be able to keep you in order, young fellow. I shall be a Relation!..."

"Oh, I've a note for you," he exclaimed, as they drove home. "It's from Gilbert. I met him in town. He'll be on his way out before I get back.

He'd like to have come down here, but he couldn't manage it. He sent his love to you, Mary, and you, mother! He looks jolly fit ... never seen him look fitter!"

He handed Gilbert's note to Henry who put it in his pocket. He would read it, he told himself, when he was alone.

"We're hopping off to France next week," Ninian said. "I suppose," he added, turning again to Henry, "you saw that Jimphy Jayne was killed.

Rough luck, wasn't it? I met a fellow who was in his regiment ... home on sick-leave ... and he says Jimphy fought like fifty. Gilbert says Cecily's bearing up wonderfully!"

"He's seen her then?" Henry asked.

"Yes. She met him in the street ... and as he says, she's bearing up wonderfully. He didn't say a great deal, but I imagine he didn't admire the att.i.tude much. Rum woman, Cecily!" He had grown together more since he had been to South America, and his figure, that was always loose-looking and a little hulking, had been tightened up by his training.

"I don't like your moustache, Ninian," his mother said, looking with disfavour at the "tooth-brush" on his upper lip.

"Nor do I," he replied, "but you have to wear something on your face ...

they don't think you can fight if you don't ... and this sort of thing is the least a chap can do for his king and country. When are you two going to get married?"

His conversation jumped about like a squib.

"Oh, not yet," Mrs. Graham hurriedly exclaimed. "There's plenty of time...."

"I should like to get married at once," said Henry.

"No, not yet," Mrs. Graham insisted. "I won't be left alone yet awhile...."

There was a learned discourse from Ninian on lengthy engagements which filled the time until the carriage drove up to Boveyhayne House, where it was dropped as suddenly as it was begun.

Indoors, Henry read Gilbert's letter.

"_My dear Quinny_," he wrote, "_I'm writing this in Soho with a pen that was made in h.e.l.l._" Then there was a splutter of ink. "_There_," the letter went on, "_that's the sort of thing it does. I believe this pen was brought to Soho by the first Frenchman to open a cafe here, and it's been handed down from proprietor to proprietor ever since. Ninian and I have been dining together, and as he's going down to Boveyhayne to-morrow, I thought I might as well write to you because I shan't see you again for a while. I'm off to Gallipoli in a day or two. I dined with Roger and Rachel last night, and they told me that you looked rather pipped before you went to Devonshire. I hope you'll soon be all right again. I wish we could have met, but it can't be helped. We must just meet when we can. It seems a very long while, doesn't it, since we were at Tre'Arrdur together? It'll be jolly to be there again when the war's over. You've no idea how interested I've become in this job, far more interested than I ever imagined I should be. And I've changed very largely in my att.i.tude towards the War. I 'joined up' chiefly because I felt an uncontrollable love for England that made me want to do things that were repugnant to me, and also because I thought that the Germans had behaved very scurvily to the Belgians; but I don't feel those emotions now particularly. I do, of course, feel proud of England, and the sight of a hedgerow makes me want to get up on my hindlegs and cheer, but I've got something else now that had never entered into my calculations at all ... and that is an extraordinary pride in my regiment and a strong desire to be worthy of it. I've just been reading a book about it, a history of the regiment, and it's left me with a sense of inheritance ... as I should feel if I were the heir of an old estate. This thing has a history and a tradition which gives me a feeling of pride and, perhaps more than that, a sense of responsibility.

... 'You mustn't let it down' I keep telling myself, and I feel about all the men who served in the regiment from the time it was formed, that they are my forefathers, so to speak. I feel their ghosts about me, not the alarming sort of spook, but friendly, sympathetic ghosts, and I imagine them saying to me, 'Sergeant Farlow, you've got to live up to us!' I've not told any one else about this, because I'm afraid of being called a sloppy a.s.s ... and perhaps it is sloppy ... but you'll understand what I feel, so I don't mind telling you. I shall write to you as often as I can, and you must write to me and tell me what you're doing. I wish we could have gone out together. Sometimes I get a creepy-crawly sort of feeling that nearly turns me inside out ... a feeling that this is good-bye for good, but I suppose most fellows get that just before they go out. I began another play about a month ago, and I think it will be good, much better than anything else I've done. I wish I had time to finish it before leaving home. This is rather a mess of a letter, and I must chuck it now, for Ninian is getting tied up in an effort to cultivate a cordial understanding with the waiter, and I shall have to rescue them both or there'll be a rupture between the Allies. Give my love to Mary and Mrs. Graham. I'd have gone to Boveyhayne to see them if I possibly could, tell them. So long, old chap!_

"_Yours Ever_,

"_Gilbert Farlow_."

He showed the letter to Mary, and as he gave it to her, he felt a new pleasure in his love for her, the pleasure of sharing things, of having confidences together.

"Gilbert's a dear," she said, when she had finished reading the letter.

"It would be awfully hard not to be fond of him!"

He took the letter and put it in his pocket, and then he put his arm in Mary's and led her to the garden where the spring flowers were blowing.

"I've had great luck," he said. "I have Gilbert for my friend and I have you, Mary, to be my wife, and I don't know that I deserve either!"

"Silly Quinny!" she said affectionately.

8

They spent the days of Ninian's leave in visiting all the familiar places about Boveyhayne. It seemed almost that Ninian could not see enough of them. He would rise early, rousing them with insistent shouts, and urge them to make haste and prepare for a long walk; and all day they tramped along the roads, up the combes and down the combes, over commons, through woods, lingering in the lanes to pluck the wildflowers that grew profusely in the hedgerows, or listening to the mating birds that flew continually about them. They walked along the Roman Road to Lyme Regis in the east, and along the Roman Road again to Sidmouth in the west, returning in the dark, tired and hungry; and sometimes they went into the roadside public-houses because of the warm, comfortable smell they had, and because they liked to listen to the slow, burring voices of the labourers as they drank their beer and cider and talked of the day's doings. There was a corner of the Common, near the edge of the cliff, where they could lie when the sun was warm, and look out over the Channel to where the Brixham trawlers lay in a line along the horizon.

Westwards, the red clay cliffs ran up and down in steeply undulating lines as far as they could see, and near at hand, in a wide valley beyond the gloomy combe that leads to Salcombe Regis, they could very plainly see the front of Sidmouth. In the east, they could look up the wooded valley of the Axe, and, beyond the vari-coloured Haven Cliff, see the Dorset Hills that huddled Charmouth and Bridport, and further out, like an island in mist, the high reach of Portland Bill....

In this corner of the Common, they spent the last day of Ninian's leave.

Behind them was a great stretch of gorse in bloom, and brown bracken, mingled with new green fronds, from which larks sprang up, singing and soaring. They had eaten sandwiches on the Common, and in the afternoon, had climbed down the steep side of the combe to a farm to tea, and, then they had climbed up the combe again, and had sat in their corner, watching the Boveyhayne trawlers blowing home; and as they sat there, they became very quiet. In this solitude and peace, the outrage of war seemed to have no meaning....

Ninian stirred slightly. He raised himself on his elbow and looked about him....

"Let's go home," he said quickly, getting up as he spoke. He went to his mother and helped her to rise, and when she was standing up, he took her arm and drew it through his, and led her towards the village; and when they had gone up the gra.s.sy path through the bracken, and were well on the way home, Mary and Henry followed after them.

"Ninian feels things more than he admits," Henry whispered to her.

9

They made poor attempts at gaiety that night, and Ninian tried to make oratory about Engineers. He divided his discourse into two parts: one insisting that the war would be won by engineering feats; the other insisting that it might be lost because of the contempt of most of the military men for Engineers, which, Ninian said, was another word for Brains. "They don't think we're gentlemen," he said. "I met a 'dug-out'

last week, and he was snorting about the Engineers ... hadn't a happorth of brains in his skull, the a.s.s ... and I asked him why it was that he thought so little of them. Do you know what he said? 'Oh,' says he, 'they're always readin' books an' ... an' inventin' things!' That's the kind of chap we've got to endure! Isn't he priceless? I very nearly told him he ought to be embalmed ... only I thought to myself he'd think that was the sort of remark an engineer would make. Plucky old devil, of course, but nothing in his head. If you shook it, it wouldn't rattle!...

He seemed to think he'd only got to say, 'Now, then, boys, give 'em h.e.l.l!' and the Germans 'ud just melt away. As I said afterwards, it's all very well, to say 'Give 'em h.e.l.l,' but you can't give it to 'em, if you don't know what it's like!..."

But the oratory failed, and the gaiety fizzled out, and after a while Mrs. Graham, finding the silence and her thoughts insupportable, left them and went to bed.

"Come and say 'Good-night' to me," she said to Ninian as she left the room.