Is it that I want to feel friends with the thing one calls one’s soul? Is it vanity? Has Murchison made me feel like a small boy whose tricks are not worth notice?
No, I don’t think it is that. They tell us that all motives are mixed, but there must be some particularly potent constituent in mine.
XII
Roger is home on leave, and Mary and I drive up to Firecross Hill to tea. Roger had chosen the site of his house so wisely, and in all ways I have found him wise.
Roger has changed. He looks bigger, fiercer, rougher, as though the surface of him had been rubbed over with a harsh leather. There is a little knot of wrinkles between his eyebrows, and his eyes look strained. He is wearing on his sleeve a blue emblem in wool in the shape of a grenade, and on the back of his tunic below the collar a blue and white tab.
Roger greets me with affection.
“Hallo, old man.”
His eyes do not reproach me for being out of khaki, but I know he must envy me. There is no escape for Roger, and his face is the face of a man who is confronting the inevitable starkness of what may be. We have tea in the loggia, and the children come down and play on the lawn. Roger watches them with fierce, sad eyes. Norah is bright and brave, and tries to talk about the garden, and how Tom, the eldest boy, is becoming useful with his toy wheelbarrow.
After tea Mary and Norah and the children go round the garden. Roger and I are left alone to smoke.
We have had the Jutland business, and it has depressed us all, and Roger tells me that it is a shock to the men in the trenches.
“We did think the Navy could give Fritz a knock. We can’t at present. He is a damned thorough and tough old fighter is Fritz.”
“You respect him?”
“I should say so. Whatever we try to do, Stephen, he does it a bit better. I know we’re a lot of amateurs, and he is teaching us. The men are keen enough, but they are not as wise as the Boche. I don’t see any end yet to this damned war.”
“Attrition?”
“Yes, my dear man, but some of us have a horrible feeling that our lot haven’t the brains. No imagination. They’ll just chuck us away against barbed wire and machine-guns. Butting like goats at stone walls. Come on, let’s go round the garden. One wants to try and forget.”
* * *
Roger has gone back.
* * *
It is perfect weather, what the people who write in the papers call “Flaming June.” Serene, still mornings, the distances hazed with heat, hills softly blue, the whole world smelling of hay and of roses. Mary keeps the vases full of flowers.
I remember her saying to me after tea at Firecross, “I have a dreadful feeling, Stephen, that Roger will never come back.”
“Do you think Norah feels like that?”
“Norah is amazingly brave.”
* * *
It is rather horrible on these still and perfect days to hear and feel those vibrations in the air. Faint thuddings and rumblings. We all know what they are, our guns on the Somme. The noise seems incessant. It disturbs me, seems to stir something deep in my vitals. What a horror it must be over there. Earth and human flesh and blood stirred up into a sort of ghastly porridge.
I stop my car one morning in the middle of the Burntshaw beeches. The peace of these magnificent and stately trees seems so profound. It is like a cathedral with the grey pillars supporting arcades and vaults of green through which the sunlight transfuses itself. Not a leaf is stirring. Yet as I stand here, even this almost sacred place is not proof against those distant rumblings. They seem to grow louder and more disturbing in this silent wood like echoes of the sea in a deep cave.
* * *
I meet Guthrie by the church. He is looking jaunty, with his hat cocked, and his ragged moustache brushed up. He accosts me.
“Heard the news, Brent?”
I see that he is full of private information, and peculiarly proud of it. Flatus!
“We have taken their first line on a front of twenty miles.”
He seems to blow out his moustache at me.
“Don’t you wish you were there? By God, if I was twenty years younger!”
But his words seem to pass over me. I am thinking of Roger, and those others.
“Cheer up, Brent. Isn’t this a moral tonic?”
I look at his foolish face.
“I’m thinking of what we must have lost.”
“Damn it, man, you’re a regular Jonah!”
* * *
Mary tells me that all hospitals have been warned to prepare for a rush of casualties. All minor cases and convalescents are to be passed on to lesser hospitals. Murchison is the man of the moment. They will have to try and mend the many whom our war has smashed.
Mary and I both seem to be feeling restless, and yet we cannot confess to each other the things that are hurting us. It is a strangely dumb phase. I ask her if she would like a drive. I have to go out beyond Burntshaw in the afternoon, and I suggest that we look up Norah on the way home.
“Yes, Stephen. I feel I want to get away, for a little, from everything. Poor Norah!”
I know what is in her mind.
Mary packs a tea basket, and we drive out along the Old Pike road which gives one a view over the weald with the downs in the distance. They are like silver smoke. We pass through Burntshaw Park, and after I have visited my case, we go on to High Ling. The view is marvellous from here, but landscape painting in words has always seemed to me a rather futile business and an occasion for literary struttings and posings. We settle down in the ling in the shade of a Scotch fir that had shaped itself like a great candlestick with many branches. One can smell the tree, and its cones lie scattered on the ground. Mary has brought a spirit-lamp, and we boil our own hot water.
“It’s good being children again.”
I say, “What a pity we can’t remain children. One can’t imagine organized murder in a nursery.”
I see her face wince.
“Oh, don’t let’s speak of the war.”
Perhaps she is realizing like I am how impossible it is to forget it.
After tea I get the rug and cushions out of the car and make a bed in the ling, and we lie there side by side and look at the sky through the branches of the fir. We have little to say, perhaps because on this serene day we feel strangely and intimately in touch with one another. I feel very tender towards this dear and sensitive comrade, and my thoughts seem to go back over the years we have spent together.
“All my good things seem to have come to me through you, Mary.”
She turns her head and smiles at me.
“Do you remember that garden party at Mrs. Brailton’s?”
“You had your hair down.”
“And your tie and your socks didn’t match, Stevie.”
“And we played croquet. And I cheated to let you and your partner win. That made up for the socks.”
“I didn’t mind the socks. I thought it rather sweet.”
“What, my loutishness?”
“No, the shy and sudden way you fell in love with me. It wasn’t loutish. It was rather beautiful.”
“Were you laughing at me?”
“I hope I was never that sort of little beast.”
She gives me her hand to hold.
“Well, it is one of those things a man thinks of just before he——”
I feel her fingers close on mine.
“Don’t say that, Stephen, don’t. It sounds as though—— Oh, let’s just look at the sky.”
* * *
It is after five when we pack up and drive back. I have the surgery to remember, and if we are to stop at Firecross we shall not have too much time.
The white gate of Firecross is open. I turn the car into the drive and we see Roger’s kids with their nurse playing in the rough grass of the little orchard. The nurse gets up and comes quickly across to us as I turn the car by the house.
“Is Mrs. Hyde in?”
The nurse’s face has a queer, set look.
“She’s not seeing anyone, madam. Haven’t you heard?”
“What?”
“About Mr. Roger. He’s killed.”
I am conscious of sitting there leaning over the steering wheel and feeling mute and shocked. The woman excuses herself and hurries back to the children. I hear a sound beside me. It is Mary weeping. She sits there crying without bothering about such a thing as a handkerchief, and her tears run down her cheeks and into her lap. She speaks to me in a choked voice.
“Oh, poor Norah! And his children playing there! And all these trees he planted!”
I can find nothing to say.
“It’s brutal, Stephen, and all so wicked and senseless. Why must men be such fatal fools?”
I am walking in my garden in the cool of the evening, and to me it has become a kind of Garden of Gethsemane.
I know now that I must go back. Roger’s death has made it inevitable, for when your friend has made the supreme sacrifice, no little mean self can continue to haggle and debate. If it is emotion and not reason that moves me to make my choice, well, let it be so. I have watched one or two men in the neighbourhood reason themselves into nice, secure niches. Roger was not like that. He was not at all clever, and it cost him much sweating to pass his law exams, but he had that which is so much more potent than cleverness, courage, a kind of wisdom.
I am conscious of a strange sense of relief, almost of serenity, as I walk up and down the grass. This time I shall not be surrendering to social pressure; it is something in myself that goes out to share in this human tragedy. We are all involved in this world madness, we and our enemies, and maybe we must suffer this mania before sanity and vision can return.
* * *
But to tell Mary! Does she suspect? Will it upset her terribly? But, after all, my danger will not be Roger’s danger. A doctor has his perils, but they are not so stark as those of the man with the rifle. I realize that I must tell Mary immediately, and as I turn towards the house I see her standing at the french window.
I am aware of a sensitive flickering of her lashes as I come near to her, but her eyes watch me steadfastly, whereas I am half afraid to look at her.
She says, “You didn’t drink your coffee.”
Damn it, how hard it is tell her! She steps back, and I follow her into the room. She sits down on the sofa.
“What is it, Stephen?”
“Roger’s death. It has made me realize that I must go back.”
“Must you, Stephen?”
“Dear, forgive me, but I must.”
Her face looks frail and small. She sits there looking at me with her hands clasped.
“I think I know. I won’t stand in your way. It’s very brave of you, dear.”
“No, not brave. I’m no hero.”
“Yes, it is, because I know how you loathe all that. But I think you are right. I don’t want to say that you are right, and yet, I must.”
I sit down beside her and draw her to me.
“This unhappy generation! Why should we have to bear it, yet bear it we must.”
“Yes, dear.”
“One can’t make a bargain with fate. Roger didn’t, and his danger was so much greater than mine will be.”
“I feel about Norah as you do about Roger.”
“Poor Norah. But she’ll face it.”
We sit in silence for a while as the dusk begins to fill the room. I have a feeling that Mary wants to tell me something, and I wait, but no confession comes from her. Her breathing is tranquil and steady, and the hand I hold is damp and warm.
“When shall you go, Stephen?”
“I’d rather go soon.”
“I understand.”
“I will try and get into some Territorial Field Ambulance. There are one or two divisions that have not yet gone out. It must rather help one to be in the same family from the beginning.”
“You feel more part of it.”
“Yes.”
I am thinking of my khaki put away in a cupboard, and how I had imagined that it would be food for the moths, but this time my putting it on will be different.
“I must look out your things, Stephen.”
“There is not so much haste as all that.”
“What will poor old Randall say?”
“I think he will understand.”
She puts her head on my shoulder and there is a long silence.
“I’m trying to give too, Stephen, even if—— Well, we’ve been very happy. I’m glad we had yesterday.”
“Oh, I shall come through all right, dear. We’ll just go through with it, and think of the days to come. This war can’t last for ever.”
* * *
Randall is more upset about my going out a second time than I had expected him to be. I am frank with him about it; I tell him that I was not satisfied with my first year’s service, that I resented the surrender of my freedom, and being at the mercy of other men, but that Roger’s death has made me feel quite differently about the war.
Randall is worried and put out. He surprises me by taking an unexpected view of Roger’s tragedy.
“But why pity poor Roger? What a splendid death, to fall leading your men, mad with excitement and exultation.”
I look at him helplessly. Does Randall really think that death comes to a man like Roger in that way?
“But what about Norah?”
“She has the children and a good memory to cherish. Besides, she has an income of her own, and her people are well off. And she may marry again.”
“I don’t think she’ll easily forget a man like Roger. Besides, my dear man, you are proving my own case for me, though things would be rather straitened for Mary if I got knocked out.”
“Does she want you to go?”
Really, Randall is being very myopic!
“She agrees with me about my feeling about going.”
Randall grunts, takes off his spectacles and polishes them.
“I suppose you haven’t considered?”
“Oh, yes, I have. I know that I am letting you in for a heavy time, but can’t we arrange with one of the St. Helen’s men to help you? After all, if this war goes on, that’s what it will come to. The profession will have to organize itself.”
He looks at me suddenly with whimsical affection.
“All right, Stephen. After all, I’m taking no risks. And if you are feeling like this about it, I suppose there is no more to be said. What are your plans?”
“I want to join a Territorial unit. I’m not going to be nobody’s child again, a sort of spare part to be labelled and put in the post. War’s a sorry enough game without other humiliations.”
“Humiliations?”
“Yes, my dear man. Some day perhaps I will put them on paper.”
Randall stands by the surgery desk and enters up some cases in the day-book.
“Well, why not try old Sir Miles Harker? His brother is commanding a division somewhere in England. I believe they are at Ebchester.”
“Which division?”
“I think it is the eighty something, but I’m beginning to lose count. He might put you in touch with someone.”
“I’ll try it.”
I take Randall’s advice, and write to Sir Miles Harker asking him if he can help me. I receive a charming letter in reply telling me to come and see him at Netherhurst. I go and explain my wishes and he is very kind. Sir Miles is a stately old person with a sense of humour like old wine. He has no illusions about the war, and also no illusions as to the inevitableness of service.
“No one has any right to feel too superior about helping to clear up this mess.”
He promises to write to his brother General Harker, and I leave Netherhurst feeling heartened and reassured. How much less like a butcher’s shop life seems when it is managed by a gentleman.
* * *
A few days later Sir Miles writes to me to say that the 202nd Field Ambulance of the 81st Division is in need of officers, but that its O.C. would like to s
ee me before having me posted to his unit. Sir Miles suggests that I should go down to Ebchester and meet Colonel Fairfax. This sounds to me an excellent proposition. I would rather deal with a man who appears to be proud of his unit and does not want to accept a pig in a poke.
I talk it over with Mary and decide to go.
* * *
The 81st is in barracks at Ebchester, and retained temporarily for home defence. I reach Ebchester in the afternoon, and taking a taxi to the Golden Crown Hotel leave my suitcase there. Ebchester is crowded with men of the 81st Division. I walk to the barracks, acres of ugly red brick and gravel and grass, and meeting an R.A.M.C. sergeant I ask him to direct me to the orderly room of the 202 F.A. Apparently he belongs to the unit, and puts me on my way. I enter a brick building which is exactly like all the others, completely hideous and utilitarian and depressing. I address myself in the orderly room to a fair, slim and remarkably good-looking young staff-sergeant. I tell him that I have come to see Colonel Fairfax.
“Is it Dr. Brent?”
“Yes.”
“Will you come upstairs, sir?”
I like his intelligence and his manners, and the introduction seems a good one. He takes me upstairs, knocks at a door, and opens it.
“Dr. Brent, sir.”
A large and pleasant voice says, “Come in.”
I don’t think my impression of any man has ever been so immediately happy and satisfying. Colonel Fairfax is sitting behind a desk. I see a big blond head and a fresh and handsome face in which the vivid blueness of the eyes is matched by their kindness. Fairfax rises from his chair, and puts out a hand. I realize how big he is, and how splendidly made. There is a charming shrewdness about him, a dignity that reassures me. I feel that there is no meanness in this man.
He tells me to sit down, and we talk. He asks me about my previous service and experience, and I realize that he is summing me up, but his blue-eyed scrutiny does not trouble me. I feel at ease with him. It is as though some instant sympathy had made us friends. I feel that I can work for this man.
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