Changing Winds Part 93

THE EIGHTH CHAPTER

1

A month after Gilbert and Ninian had left England, Henry went to London for a couple of days on business connected with his books. Mrs. Graham had asked him to return to Boveyhayne instead of going to Ireland, until he was fully well again, and he had gladly accepted her invitation. He had written a few pages of a new book that pleased him, and he was anxious to complete the story before he entered the Army. Writing irked him, but he could not abstain from writing ... some demon drove him to it, forcing him to his desk when all his desire was to be out in the lanes with Mary or sailing about the bay with Tom Yeo and Jim Rattenbury. There were times when he loathed this labour of writing which came between him and the pleasure of living, so that he sometimes saw foxgloves and bluebells and primroses and violets and wild daffodils, not as the careless beauty of a Devonshire lane, but as picturesque material for a description in one of his chapters. And his beastly creatures would not lie still in his study until he returned to attend to them, but insisted on following him wherever he went, thrusting themselves upon his notice continually, whether the time was opportune or not. He would walk with Mary, perhaps to Hangman's Stone, and suddenly he would hear her saying, "What are you thinking of, Quinny?" and he would come out of his silence with a start, and say, "Oh, my book, Mary!" and find that he had been walking by her side, unaware of her, unaware of anything but these abominable paper people who deluged his mind with their being ... and when they got to Hangman's Stone, he thought always, "What a good t.i.tle for a story!"

"But I can't leave it alone," he would say to himself, and then he would compare himself to a drunkard, eager to be quit of his drink, but unable to conquer his craving. And he had pride in it, too. That was what distinguished him from the drunkard and the drug-taker. They had no pride in their drunkenness or their drugged senses, but he had pride in his books, and constantly in his mind was the desire that before he joined the Army, he should leave another book behind him, that his life should be expressed substantially in a number of novels, so that if he should die in battle, he would have left something by which men might remember him.

He had talked to Mary about his position, but she had insisted that this was a decision he must make for himself. Her view, and the view of her mother, was that a woman ought not to take the responsibility of urging a man to endure the horror and danger of such a war as this. "Women can't go into the trenches themselves," Mrs. Graham said, "and they've no right to ask any one else to go!" That was what his father had said.

"But somebody must go, and there are people who have to be told about things," he objected.

"I think," Mrs. Graham answered, "I'd rather be killed than be defended by a man who was white-feathered into doing it, and I know I should never be happy again if I'd nagged at a man until he joined the Army, and he was killed.... I think that some women will have haunted minds after this War!"

"It's the Government's job to say who shall go and who shall stay," Mary added. "That's what they're there for, and it's mean of them to shuffle out of their responsibility and let a lot of flappers and old maids do their work for them!"

Then their talk had taken a new turn, and in the end it was settled that Mary and he were to be married when the new book was finished, and then he would join the Army. There had been a difficulty with Mrs. Graham, but Mary over-ruled her.

"I won't let him go until he marries me," she said, shutting her lips firmly and looking very resolutely at her mother.

"Roger and I might go in together," Henry suggested. "I had a letter from him saying he thought he would join soon. Rachel's going to live in the country...."

"She can come here if she likes," Mrs. Graham interjected. "You'd better tell her that when you go to town. She can stay with us until the war's over...."

"There's the baby, of course!" Henry reminded her.

"I know," she answered. "I'd like to hear a baby in this house again...."

2

London was strangely sensitive, easily exalted, easily depressed, listening avidly to rumours, even when they were clearly absurd. It was the least English of the cities, far, far less English than the villages and country towns. London's nerves were often jangled, but the nerves of Boveyhayne were never jangled. London jumped up and down like a Jack-in-the-box, but Boveyhayne moved steadily on. There were times when London was so un-English as to believe that England might be beaten ...

but Boveyhayne never imagined that for a moment. Boveyhayne did not think of the defeat of England, because it had never occurred to Boveyhayne that England could be beaten. Old Widger would sometimes say, "They Germans be cunning!" or "Us'll 'ave to 'it a bit 'arder avore us knocks 'un out!" but Old Widger never imagined for a moment that "'un,"

as he always called the Kaiser, would not sooner or later get knocked out, and so he went on with his work, pausing now and then to say, "'Er's a reg'lar cunnin' old varmint, 'er be!" almost with as much admiration as if he were talking of a fox or an otter that had eluded the hounds many times. But the cunningest fox falls to the hounds in the end of some chase, and Widger did not doubt that "Keyser" would fall, too. Boveyhayne, was very English in its reserves and its dignity.

London might squeal for reprisals, but Boveyhayne never squealed. When the Germans torpedoed a merchant ship, Old Widger said, "It hain't very manly, be it, sir?" and that was all. Old Widger was not indifferent or without imagination ... but he had self-respect, and he could not squeal like a frantic rabbit even when he was in pain. He could hit, and he could hit hard, but he did not care to claw and scratch and bite!...

Henry disliked London then, but he comforted himself with the thought that it resembled all capital cities, that its population was not a native population, but one that shifted and changed and had no tradition. Old Widger had lived in the same cottage all his life: his father had lived there too; and his family, for several generations before his father, had lived and worked in Boveyhayne. They had habits and customs so old that no one knew the meaning of them. When Widger's wife died, Widger and his family had gone to church on the Sunday after her burial, as all the Boveyhayne bereaved do, and had sat through the service, taking no part in it, neither kneeling to pray nor rising to sing nor responding to the invocations. But Old Widger did not know why he had behaved in that fashion, nor did any one in Boveyhayne. "Don't seem no sense in it," he said, but nevertheless he did it, and nothing on earth would have prevented him from doing it. It was the custom....

But there was no custom in London. There were no habits, no traditions, nothing to hold on to in times of crisis or distress. There was no one in London who had been born and had spent all his life in one house, in a house, too, in which his father had been born and had lived and had died. People took a house for three years ... and then moved to another one. Locality had no meaning for them ... they hardly knew the names of their neighbours ... they were not surrounded by cousins ... the roads and streets had no meaning or memories for them ... they were just thoroughfares, pa.s.sages along which one walked or drove to a railway station or a shopping centre....

And while Old Widger, if the thought had been put into his mind, would stoutly have answered, "Us ain't never been beat!" a Londoner would have answered, "My G.o.d, supposing we are beaten?..." Victory might be long in being won. Widger would admit that. But "us ain't never been beat" he would maintain. The Londoner would admit that victory might never be won ... and in making the admission, de-nationalised himself. Widger, obstinate, immovable, imperturbable, kindly, unvengeful and resolute, was English to the marrow ... and when Henry thought of England as a conquering country, he thought of it as a nation of Widgers, not as a nation of c.o.c.kneys.

"And it _is_ a nation of Widgers," he said to himself. "The c.o.c.kneys shout more, print more, and they squeal a lot, but the Widgers are in the majority!"

It was not until night fell that Henry's love of London was restored.

When the sky-signs were put out, and the shop-lights were diminished, and the running flames announcing the merits of this one's whisky and that one's tea were quenched, London became again an ancient city that a man could love....

"It's worth fighting for?" Henry murmured to himself as he stood on the terrace of Trafalgar Square, before the National Gallery, and looked about him at the dusk-softened outlines and the rich highways of shadows. One would not fight for the England that squealed through the ha'penny papers ... one would gladly throttle that England ... one would not fight for the England of the Stock Broker and the Mill Owner ... but one would fight hard, fight until death, for the England of Old Widger and the England of this darkened, dignified and beautiful London.

3

He had attended to his business with his publishers, and was walking along the Strand towards Charing Cross, when he became aware of a thrill of emotion running through the crowd that stood on either side of the road.

"What is it?" he said to a bystander.

"The wounded!" was the answer.

He pressed forward, and stood on the edge of the pavement, and as he did so, the ambulances came put of the station. There was a moment of deep, hurting silence, and then came cheers and waving handkerchiefs and sobs.

... There was a parson standing at Henry's elbow, and he cheered as if he were intoning ... little sterilised hurrahs ... and there was a woman who murmured continually, "Oh, G.o.d bless them! G.o.d bless them all!"

while she cried openly, unrestrainedly. Unceasingly, the ambulances seemed to pa.s.s on to the hospitals, and the soldiers, pale from their wounds and tired after their journey by sea and train, lay back in queer disregard of the crowd that cheered them. Now and then, one moved his hand in greeting or smiled ... but most of them were irresponsive, dazed, perhaps hearing still the sound of the smashing artillery and the cries of the maimed and dying, unable to believe that they were back again in a place where there was no fighting, where men and women walked and talked and did their work and took their pleasure in disregard of death and a b.l.o.o.d.y and abrupt end.... There was a private motor-car in the middle of the procession of ambulances, and inside it was a wounded officer with his wife ... and she did not care who looked on nor what was said, she held him in her arms and kissed him and would not let him go....

"Oh, my G.o.d," Henry murmured to himself, as the cars went by, "I can't bear this!..."

He wanted to kill Germans ... it seemed to him then that nothing else mattered but to kill Germans ... that one must put aside the generous beliefs, the kindly intentions, one's work, one's faith, everything ...

and kill Germans; unceasingly, without relenting ... kill Germans; that for every wound these men bore, for every drop of blood they had lost, for every pang they had endured, for every tear that their women had shed ... one must kill Germans.

He withdrew from the crowd. Somewhere near at hand, there was a recruiting office. He remembered to have seen a large guiding sign outside St. Martin's Church. He would go there!...

He had to wait until the procession of motor-ambulances had pa.s.sed by, and then he crossed the street and went to find the recruiting office.

"I'm excited," he said to himself. "I'm full of emotion. That's what I am. I'm over-wrought. Those soldiers!..."

In his mind, he could see the woman in the motor-car, hugging her wounded husband ... and a soldier, lying on a stretcher in an ambulance, with his head swathed in bandages, near a little window ... feebly trying to wave his hand to the crowd....

"It's no good being sloppy," he told himself. "One can't win a war by ... spilling over. One's got to keep one's head!"

He turned the corner of the Church and saw the recruiting office, covered with posters, in a narrow lane. He walked towards it, slackening his pace as he did so ... and then he walked past it.

"I can't go in now," he thought. "I must see Roger first ... and there's the book to finish ... and Mary!..."

4

He had seen Roger and Rachel, and was now on his way back to Boveyhayne.... Roger had agreed that he would not join without Henry. "I can't go yet," he had said. "When I've saved a little more, I'll go in.

I want to leave Rachel and Eleanor as secure as I can!"

There was another boom in recruiting just then, following on another German outrage.

"It'll take them some time to shape the crowd they're getting now,"

Roger had said, "so that we won't be hindering them if we hang back for a while. I should have thought you'd want to go into an Irish regiment, Quinny!"

"It doesn't very much matter, does it, what the regiment is?" Henry had answered. "The labels are more or less meaningless now. And I'd like to be with some one I know!"

He had given Mrs. Graham's invitation to Rachel, and Rachel had sent her thanks to Mrs. Graham. She would be glad to go to Boveyhayne when everything was settled.