The Kingdom Round the Corner Part 8

In his astonishment, Sir Tobias nearly gagged himself with the soup that he was on the point of swallowing. He blinked mildly at this confident young man, his breast ablaze with decorations, whom he had not invited.

"Then, in your opinion, what has war ever created," he asked with dangerous courtesy; "this war, for instance, that's just ended?"

"This war that's just ended is the only war of which I have had any experience." Braithwaite glanced across at Terry for encouragement. "I know what it created in me and in thousands like me. It created in us the most valuable of all a.s.sets--character. In the bitter test of pain and dirt and despair we _found_ ourselves--found ourselves capable of more n.o.bility than we had ever dreamt possible. We sorted out afresh, in hours that we thought would be our last, all our inherited superst.i.tions and servilities; in so doing we discovered that G.o.d and life itself are much kinder than we had been informed. Because of that discovery men who had been timid learnt how to face death gladly, shirkers how to shoulder responsibility, selfish people how to become decent through the fine humanity of sharing. Time-servers learnt how to get up off their bellies and confront misfortune with a laugh. I don't know whether I make myself clear; perhaps one had to be a part of the great game to understand its lessons. That we do understand them is the reward of those who have survived. We've come back to you as uncomfortable fellows; we shall be much more uncomfortable before we're satisfied. We intend to fight for the same equalities in peace that you sent us out to fight for in war.

You asked me what this particular war has created; it has created a complete new set of social and spiritual values. It's done away with the uncharity of caste."

During his last words he had been gazing across the table at Tabs with a fearless challenge, as much as to say, "That's who I am. Now expose me."

But Tabs was remembering the coster's reason for not having dragged him into the police-courts, "Served in the ranks, did yer? Then you and me was pals out there!" Braithwaite, whether he knew it or not, had been doing a piece of special pleading for himself. He and Braithwaite, whatever they might be now, had been pals out there. Silently Tabs had been thinking while he had been listening, "You're right and I'm with you. I'd be with you still more if you'd only live up to your standards by sticking to Ann."

It was Sir Tobias who took the offensive. The soup-plates had been removed and the fish-course had not yet been served. He had the leisure to talk. "You men who have been in the Army," he said testily, "especially those of you who have gained your promotion rapidly, always speak as if the rest of us had been receivers of stolen goods until you put on uniforms. Armies are composed of youth; for most of you it was the first time you had tasted authority. It's gone to your heads; you want to brush experience aside and dragoon the older world into new formations. You, who were civilians yourselves, have come back despising us civilians; your contempt is three-parts fear lest you'll fail, as you failed before, in the old civilian compet.i.tive struggle. You talk about the virtues war has taught; let's grant them and grant them gratefully--they saved us from destruction. But what about the frantic recklessness it encouraged, the cheap views of bodily chast.i.ty, the desperate insistence on momentary happiness?" At the mention of bodily chast.i.ty, Lady Beddow from the other end of the table had stuttered a "tut, tut!" Her husband dodged it, as a boy might dodge a wheelbarrow upset in his path. Without shifting his glance he ran on. "A complete new set of social and spiritual values! Rubbish! War places an excessive premium on merely brutal qualities--muscle, bone, sinew, all the paraphernalia of physical endurance. What use has it got for old fellows of intellectual attainments like myself? It takes the greatest poet, singer, painter, violinist; all it can do with him is to thrust a rifle into his hands. All brains look alike, Michael Angelo's or a rag-picker's, when they're spattered in the mud of a trench. Take Lord Taborley here, for instance--all that military stupidity could do with him was to keep him in the ranks for two years. You can't make me believe in your complete new set of social and spiritual values. A complete unrest and insubordination to time-honored moralities is the legacy of war."

Having delivered himself, he tucked his napkin tighter into his waistcoat and attacked the fish-course, as though by this display of gastronomic energy he could somehow strengthen his argument.

It was clear to Tabs that behind all that Sir Tobias had been saying lay his misery over Maisie and Adair. He saw the world always in the personal equation.

"I agree with most of your statements," the General blundered on. "And yet you're wrong. You miss something. I think it's the vision of the stupendous heroism. You never saw it; you don't want to see it. That you never saw it we can understand; but that you shouldn't want to see it, makes us see red. It was something that we did for you, and you take it all for granted. You cheered us and jeered us into going because you were frightened. You handed us white feathers if we hesitated. You dragged us from our jobs and very often we were poor men, who had no such financial security as was yours. You promised that if we would share our lives with you, you'd go fifty-fifty with us on your financial security. There wasn't time to have deeds of agreement drawn up; we took you at your word. And what a lie it was! Why, I pa.s.sed a blinded officer in Regent Street to-day peddling shoe-laces. The day before a jobless soldier threw himself beneath a train and his last words were, 'Over the top and the best of luck.' There's a Colonel I see by to-night's paper who's gone back to being a policeman. If you see a man in uniform to-day, your unspoken thought is, 'For G.o.d's sake take it off.' I tell you it's all wrong. It's that kind of ingrat.i.tude that leads to revolution. You talk about the brutality of war; it's not a patch on the brutality of peace. You treated men's lives as yours while the danger lasted, but you insist that your possessions are your own now that it's been averted."

He took a breath and glanced round.

Tabs was nodding unconscious approval. Terry's face reflected the fire of his own pa.s.sionate indignation and enthusiasm. The butler in the shadows had turned his back non-committally and was making a pretense of fiddling with the next course. Lady Beddow sat very upright and startled, grasping her knife and fork as though they helped to support her. The only person who was still doing justice to the meal was the worn-out version of Shakespeare, who was responsible for the storm.

The silence seemed to call for a final climax. The ex-valet cleared his throat. And it was to his ex-valet that Tabs listened; he had forgotten the General. It was as though the grimness of reality had interrupted a piece of play-acting. There was less heat in Braithwaite's voice now and more reproach. "You said nothing about caste in those days, when you hurried us to the shambles. You promised us---- What was it that you promised us?"

"A kingdom round the corner," Tabs suggested. The next minute he felt Terry's warm little hand clinging to his own beneath the tablecloth.

Braithwaite stared at Tabs to see whether he were jesting; then smiled in relieved friendship at this proof of comradeship from an unexpected quarter. "Yes, perhaps it was that--a future kindliness, where we should all be men together, neither free nor bond." Then again to his host, "You sent us out there where everything was censored. Scarcely a whisper of the truth reached you. The very war-correspondents were instructed to delete the horror and to write nothing that would disturb your calm.

We've come back, what are left of us; we think you ought to know what really happened. It isn't that we take much pleasure in telling you, but we think that if you knew, you might be persuaded to keep at least some of your promises. And what do you do? You rea.s.sert your privilege to despise us. You stuff your fingers in your ears and talk about caste, and forgetting the war, and getting back to work. Sir Tobias, I'm afraid I'm being far too personal, but you're a sample of millions who weren't there. You're living in a totally altered world of whose very existence you're content to be unaware. Your complacency drives men like myself to the point of madness. We hold that you have no right to be complacent until the bill you put your hand to has been settled. I don't know how Lord Taborley feels; he's not expressed----"

"Tabs feels exactly the way you do and so do I." It was Terry speaking, like the shrill courage of a bugle answering the slow ba.s.s of a trumpet-call. "We're the world that purchased victory--we three, while the rest of the world sat back. It was men like you two who got ga.s.sed, and wrenched, and tortured, and girls like myself who patched you up and flirted with you so that we might send you back to the Front cheery--girls like myself who hadn't known love, or children, or anything but a nursery sort of happiness. We three and people like us understand, because we paid the price together."

"Really, Terry, I must confess there are times when you shock me." As Lady Beddow rose from her seat, she was the picture of disapproval. From the door, which the butler held open for her, she glanced back. "I think this discussion has gone _very_ far."

As she swept out, she called across her shoulder, as one might call to a pet dog, "Come, Terry."

VII

But Terry did not come; she sat on tightly, just as if she were a man among men. Until coffee had been served and the room was free from servants, there was a pretense at small-talk in which Sir Tobias did not join. He crouched moodily in his chair, an unlighted cigar between his fingers, looking very old and somehow deserted. With the instinctive tenderness which she always showed when she knew that she had hurt, Terry got up and went to him. She linked her arms about his neck and stooped to kiss the bald-spot on his head. "Cheer up, Daddy dear; it isn't half as bad as it sounded. Don't you want me to light your cigar for you?"

Tabs, to distract attention from the reconciliation, addressed the General. It was odd that he should feel so much sympathy for a man whom his letters, already beyond recall, would stir into panic in the morning. "Do you intend to stay in the Army, sir?"

"No. But why do you ask? They're getting rid of all of us who aren't Regulars, no matter how brilliant our service. They're making the Army again a social club. I shall soon be out of uniform."

"And then?" Tabs persisted.

"Oh, then I shall find something else." He spoke airily, but the shadow which crossed his handsome face added plainly as words, "If I can find anything."

"If it isn't impertinence," Tabs sank his voice, "may I ask what you intend to turn to?"

The General eyed him suspiciously, wondering whether he was again about to lay claim to the previous embarra.s.sing acquaintance. "I have several things in view," he said sketchily, "from which a man in my position ought to be able to choose."

"Ought! But that hasn't been the story up-to-date. What of the Colonel you were just telling us about?" Tabs saw that another storm was brewing. He leant across the table and hurried on. "If the worst comes to the worst, I expect your old job's waiting for you. The qualities which have made you what you are to-day, must have been recognized and valued----" Terry had completed her reconciliation with her father and was resting her gaze upon them. Tabs altered his tone. "You put what you said at dinner rather strongly, sir. But I understand what you were driving at--it was the democracy of the front-line where courage, which at its best is unselfishness, was our only standard of aristocracy."

Before the General could make reply, Sir Tobias had raised his bewildered head. "It's a thing that I for one don't want to understand.

I don't want to go on living, if what you've said is true."

Tabs turned considerately to the older man. "I think you would if you knew. The difference that war made to all of us who were there was that it taught us to judge men by their good points rather than their defects. It upset all our preconceived notions about society, especially our notions about the extreme value of race and breeding. What we learnt was that there's a breeding of the heart which enables a man from the gutter to run true to the highest form."

Sir Tobias leveled his weary eyes in challenge. "Then what about Adair?"

The name was out at last--the name which he had been trying to get uttered all evening. It didn't matter that Adair hadn't been at the war and had no proper place in the argument. He had wanted to break through his reticence due to his sense of impending family disaster. At last he had done it.

"I think, Daddy," Terry said, "the General and I had better leave you and Tabs to talk alone."

The next thing that Tabs saw was Terry making her escape with this other man. He had it in his power to settle his suspense for all time by saying, "One minute, Terry. You're choosing between the General and myself. It may help you in making your decision to know that Braithwaite was once----" But the coster's definition of fair-play deterred him.

This man had been his pal in the trenches; because of that he allowed himself for the second time that day to be shut out from the company of youth. He hadn't discovered how much or how little she knew. By her withdrawal he was made to feel middle-aged--more nearly her father's contemporary than ever. Yet, as an underlying comfort to his distress, he had the remembered pressure of the little hand that had sought his own in secret friendliness.

He turned to Sir Tobias. "Yes, what about Adair? Terry said that you wanted to consult me. If there's anything that I can say or do----"

VIII

The door was reopening. Tabs glanced back across his shoulder through the shadows. She was hovering just inside the threshold, hastily clad in her evening-wrap; beyond her in the hall the General stood fidgeting with his cap. Sir Tobias was sitting with his head bowed; he had not heard the sound of her reentry. He spoke evidently believing that they two were alone. "I don't like that fellow. It's the last time he ever comes to my house. Whatever Terry can see in him---- And he's not good for Terry."

She tiptoed back into the hall, pulling the door softly behind her. A moment later the front door closed with a bang.

"What was that?" Sir Tobias looked up gnome-like and startled.

Tabs guessed what it was; but because, as she had said they three had paid the price together, he kept her secret. "General Braithwaite, probably. But you were speaking of Adair?"

Sir Tobias shivered, betraying his nervous tension. "A disturber," he said irritably, "even in his going. And yet, I suppose it's true; we shouldn't be sitting here comfortably to-night if it hadn't been for his sort."

Now that it had been broached, it was anything to avoid the main topic.

He drummed with his fingers on the table, ceased drumming and sighed heavily. "Yes, I was speaking of Adair. I don't understand him. I've grown out of touch; I don't seem to understand anybody. I'm left behind, somehow. People do things to-day that they never used to do. They shout about things from the house-tops which all my life I've mentioned only in whispers. Terry does; you heard what she said to-night about never having been loved and never having had children. The loss of delicacy----"

"I wouldn't call it a loss of delicacy." Tabs struck a match. "I would call it a loss of prudishness. We all know that girls are born to be married and that the best of them long to have children. Why shouldn't they own it? You owned it long ago when you bought her dolls. The lid is off false reticences. I hope it stays off; we shall be a much honester world."

"The lid's off! That's the phrase I was searching for." Sir Tobias leant forward confidentially. "You haven't been much in England during the past four years or you'd know how badly the lid is off. You men, when you were in the trenches, lived above yourselves; but, the moment you came home on leave, you taught the world that wasn't in khaki how to live below itself. I could tell you stories----"

"I know." Tabs didn't want to hear those stories. "It was pathetic. Men tried to steal in a handful of hours all the pa.s.sionate experiences that would have come to them beautifully and legitimately over forty years.

It was like s.n.a.t.c.hing from a bargain-counter things that you hadn't time to pay for. You were young and you were so soon to be snuffed out. The unthoughtful took desperately what they believed life owed them.

They----"

It was the turn of Sir Tobias to interrupt. "But so did the women--this Maisie woman, for instance. It was astounding--the women one would least have expected. All the desires we had caged through the centuries broke loose--caged with traditions, with public opinion and scriptural penalties." He was delighted with his image and went on to elaborate it.

"They broke loose like wild animals from a menagerie. We'd always known they existed. Sometimes we'd paid surrept.i.tious visits to them in books," the old eyes blinked cautiously, "the way one goes to the Zoo, to remind himself that there is a jungle somewhere. But we'd only regarded them as specimens; we'd never expected to meet them roaming about the streets loose or coming as domestic pets into our houses. Now the war's ended and the jungle's all about us; we can't get the animals back into their cages. Fellows like this General Braithwaite don't help matters by telling us that we oughtn't to want to get them back----"

"Perhaps he's one of the animals," Tabs interpolated. "You couldn't expect him to want to be put back."

"Perhaps he is. In fact that's what I've felt about him. That's what's helped me to make up my mind that he shall see no more of Terry." He reached out and tapped Tabs' hand, taking it for granted that he was his ally. "The sight's becoming far too normal--wild beasts everywhere, sunning themselves in impertinent freedom, as if they were house-cats.