If Winter Comes Part 34

Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords, This earth shall have a feeling....

Stooping and touching the soil of England as one might bend and touch a beloved face. That was what England for years had meant to him. And now.... It was upon these emotions, vaguely, "in case", that he had gone to Doctor Anderson on the morning of the frightful news. Anderson had told him he couldn't possibly be pa.s.sed for the Army, but at the moment the idea of ever wanting to go into the Army had only been an almost ridiculously remote contingency, and what did Anderson know about the Army standard, anyway?

VI

He said nothing to Mabel of his intention. It was just precisely the sort of thing he could not possibly discuss with Mabel. Mabel would say, "Whyever should you?" and of all imaginable ordeals the idea of exposing before Mabel his feeling about England ... he would tell her when it was done, if it came off. He could say then, in what he knew to be the clumsy way in which he had learnt to hide his ideas from her, he could say, "Well, I _had_ to."

And his thought was, when a few hours later he was walking slowly away from his interview with Major Earnshaw, the doctor at the barracks, "Thank G.o.d, I never said anything to Mabel about it."

The very few officers left behind at the depot were at breakfast when he arrived to keep Colonel Rattray to his word. Major Earnshaw had very pleasantly got up from the table to "put him out of his misery" there and then without formality and had "had a go at this heart of yours" in the billiard room. Withdrawn his stethoscope and shaken his head. It was "no go; absolutely none, Sabre."

"Well, but that's for a commission. I'll go into the ranks. Isn't that any different?"

No different. "You can't possibly go in as you are--now. In time, if this thing goes on, the standards will probably be reduced. But they'll have to be reduced a goodish long way before you'll get in, I don't mind telling you."

Sabre wheeled his bicycle slowly away across the barrack square. "Thank goodness, I never said anything to Mabel about it." A cl.u.s.ter of young men of various degrees of life were waiting outside the door of the recruiting office. The rush of the first few days was thinning down but recruits were still pouring in. They were all laughing and talking noisily. He had the wish that he could take the thing in that spirit.

Why couldn't he? After all, what did it really matter that he was not able to get "in it"? Even if he had been accepted it would only have been pretending. He never would have got really "in it"; none of those chaps would; every one knew the war couldn't last long; it would be over long before any of these recruits could be trained.

VII

This "common sense" argument carried him through following days; then came another of the frightful undoings of his emotions; and just as the war definitely began for him with the glimpse of the beginnings of that "jamborino" in the Mess, so from this new occasion began, unceasingly and increasingly, and with shocking effect upon his sensitiveness, a dreadful oppression by the war and, adding to its darkness, a gnawing and unreasonable self-accusation that he was not "in it."

The occasion was that of his meeting with Harkness outside the _County Times_ office. Harkness was a captain of the battalion that had gone out who had been left behind owing to some illness. The British Expeditionary Force had been in action. There had been sc.r.a.ps of news of some heavy fighting. Harkness said dully, "Hullo, Sabre. I've just been in to see that chap Pike to see if he'd got anything. We've had some news, you know." He stopped. His face was twitching.

Sabre said, "News? Anything about the Pinks?"

Harkness nodded. He seemed to be swallowing. Then he said, "Yes, the regiment. Pretty bad."

Sabre said, "Any one--?" and also stopped.

Harkness looked, not at Sabre, but straight across the top of his head and began an appalling, and as it seemed to Sabre, an endless recitative. "The Colonel's killed. Bruce is killed. Otway's killed--"

"Otway...."

"Cottar's killed. Bullen's killed--"

Endless! The names struck Sabre like successive blows. Were they never going to end?

"Carmichael's killed. My young brother's--" his voice cracked--"killed.

Sikes is killed."

"Sikes killed.... And your brother...."

Harkness said in a very thin, squeaking voice, "Yes, the regiment's pretty well--The regiment's--" He looked full at Sabre and said in a very loud, defiant voice, "I bet they were magnificent. By G.o.d, I bet you they were magnificent. Oh, my G.o.d, why the h.e.l.l wasn't I there?" He turned abruptly and went away, walking rather funnily.

This was the moment at which there descended upon Sabre, never to leave him while he remained not "in it", the appalling sense of oppression that the war exercised upon him. On his brain like a weight; on his heart like a pressing hand. He thought of Otway's intense, gleaming face. "My G.o.d, Sabre, you ought to have seen the battalion on parade this morning." He saw Otway's face cold and stricken. He thought of Sikes, on the table. "Well, I'm going to take nothing but socks. I'm going to stuff my pack absolutely bung full of socks." He saw Sikes flung like a disused thing in some field....

VIII

And still events; still, and always, now, disturbing things.

While he stood there he was suddenly aware of Young Rod, Pole or Perch, rather breathlessly come up.

"I say, Sabre, have you heard this frightful news about the Pinks?--I say, Sabre, I want your help most frightfully. I want you to talk to my mother. She likes you. She'll listen to you. I'm going to enlist. I've been putting it off day after day, trying to fix up things for my mother and trying to persuade her; but I haven't done much and I absolutely can't wait any longer."

Sabre said, "Good Lord, are you, Perch? Must you? Your mother, why, what on earth will she do without you? She'll--"

Young Perch winced painfully. "I know. I know. It pretty well kills me to think of it and I'm having the most frightful scenes with her. But I've thought it all out, Sabre, and I know I'm doing the right thing.

I've looked after my mother all my life, and a month ago the idea of leaving her even for a couple of nights would have been unthinkable. But this is different. This is--" He flushed awkwardly--"you can't talk that sort of patriotic stuff, you know, but this is, well this is a chap's country, and I've figured it out it's got to come before my mother. It's got to. She says it will kill her if I go. I believe it will, Sabre. And my G.o.d, if it does--but I can't help it. I know what's the right thing.

I'll tell you something else." His face, which had been red and cloudy as with tears, became dark and pa.s.sionate. "I'll tell you something else. People are saying things about me and to me because I'm young and unmarried and haven't got a wife to support. Curse them, Sabre--what do they know about it? Aren't their wives young, strong, able to take care of themselves? My mother can't come downstairs without me and can't let any one else--"

He rubbed a hand across his eyes and broke off. "Never mind about that; I know what I've got to do. Look here, Sabre, I tell you where I want your help, like anything. You know lots of people. I don't. Well, I want to get hold of some nice girl to live with my mother and take care of her in my place while I'm away. A sort of companion, aren't they called?

Like that Bypa.s.s person up at old Boom Bagshaw's, only much nicer and younger and friendlier than she is. You see, I know my mother. If it was any one of any age, she wouldn't have her in the house at any price, and she'd send her flying out of the window in about two days if she did have her. She swears no power on earth will induce her to have any one at all as it is. But I'm going to manage it if I can get the right person. I want some one who my mother will indignantly call a chit of a child"--he gave rather a broken little laugh--"can't I hear her saying it! But she'll instantly begin to mother her because she is a chit of a child, and to fuss over her and tell her what she ought to eat and what she ought to wear, and does she wear a flannel binder, and all that, just as she does to me. And in about a week she'll be as right as rain and writing me letters all day and arguing with the girl how to spell 'being' and 'been'--you know what my mother is. I say, Sabre, do for G.o.d's sake help me, if you can. _Do_ you know any one?"

Sabre, during this greatly troubled outpouring, had the feeling that this was all of a part with the calamitous news he had just had from Harkness,--a direct continuation of it. This frightful war! Was it going to attack even that pathetic little old woman at Puncher's Farm with her fumbling hands and her frail existence centred solely in her son? He said, "I'm awfully sorry, Perch. Frightfully sorry for your mother and for you. You know best what you ought to do. I won't say anything either way. I think a man's only judge in this ghastly business is himself. Of course, I'll help you. I'll help you all I can. It's a funny coincidence but I believe I do know just the very girl that would be what you want--"

Young Perch grasped his hand in delighted relief. "Oh, Sabre, if you do!

I felt you would help. You've always been a chap to turn to!"

"I've turned to you, Perch, you and your mother, a good deal more than you might imagine. I'm glad to help if I can. The chance I'm thinking about I was hearing of only a few days ago. The works' foreman in my office, an old chap called Bright. He's got a daughter about eighteen or thereabouts, and I was hearing he wanted to get her into some kind of post like yours. I've spoken to her once or twice when she's been about the place for her father and I took a tremendous fancy to her. She's as pretty as a picture. Effie, she's called. I believe your mother would take to her no end. And she'd just love your mother."

Young Perch said rather thickly, "Any one would who takes her the right way."

Sabre touched him encouragingly on the shoulder. "This girl Effie will if only we can get her. She's that sort, I know. I'll see about it at once. Buck up, old man."

"Thanks most frightfully, Sabre. Thanks most awfully."

IX

It was from Twyning that Sabre had heard that a post of some sort was being considered for Effie Bright. Her father, as he had told young Perch, was works' foreman at Fortune, East and Sabre's. "Mr. Bright." A ma.s.sive old man with a ma.s.sive, rather striking face hewn beneath a bald dome and thickly grown all about and down the throat with stiff white hair. He had been in the firm as long as Mr. Fortune himself and appeared to Sabre, who had little to do with him, to take orders from n.o.body. He was intensely religious and he had the deep-set and extraordinarily penetrating eyes that frequently denote the religious zealot. He was not liked by the hands. They called him Moses, disliked his intense religiosity and feared the cold and heavy manner that he had. He trod heavily about the workshops, looking into the eyes of the young men as if far more concerned to search their souls than their benches; and Sabre, when speaking to him, always had the feeling that Mr. Bright was penetrating him with the same intention.

Extraordinary that such a stern and hard old man should have for daughter such a fresh and lovable slip of a young thing as his Effie!

Bright Effie, Sabre always called her, inverting her names. Mr. Bright had a little cupboard called his office at the foot of the main stairway and Bright Effie came often to see her father there. Sabre had spoken to her in the little cupboard or just outside it. He had delight in watching the most extraordinary shining that she had in her eyes. It was like reading an entertaining book, he used to think, and he had the idea that humor of that rarest kind which is unbounded love mingled with unbounded sense of the oddities of life was packed to bursting within her. All that she saw or heard seemed to be taken into that exhaustless fount, metamorphosed into the most delicious sensations, and shone forth in extraordinarily humorous delight through her eyes. Somewhere in the dullest day light is found and thrown back by a bright surface. It was just so, Sabre used to think, with Effie. All things were fresh to her and she found freshness in all things.

Some such apprehension of her Sabre had expressed to Twyning on the occasion that came to his mind during young Perch's entreaty for some one to live with his mother. Sabre had been standing with Twyning at Mr.

Fortune's window, Mr. Bright and Effie leaving the office and crossing the street together beneath them. Twyning, who was on intimate terms with Mr. Bright, had given a short laugh and said, "Hullo, you seem to have been thinking a lot about the fair Effie!"

The kind of laugh and the kind of remark that Sabre hated and he gave a slight gesture which Twyning well knew meant that he hated it. This was what Twyning called "stuck-uppishness" and equally hated, and he chose words expressive of his resentment,--the cla.s.s insistence.

"Well, she's got to earn her living, however jolly she is. She's not one of your fine ladies, you know."

Sabre recognised the implication but ignored it. "What's old Bright going to do with her?"

"He doesn't quite know. He was talking to my missus about it the other day. He's as good as we are, you know. He's an idea of getting her out as a sort of lady's companion somewhere."