"CO
I *
NON-COMBATANTS AND OTHERS
NON-COMBATANTS
AND OTHERS
BY
ROSE MACAULAY
AUTHOR OF ' THE LEE SHORE '
THK MAKING OF A BIGOT,' ETC.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
Printed in 1916
602.5"
TO
MY BROTHER
AND OTHER COMBATANTS
' Let the foul scene proceed :
There's laughter in the wings :
'Tis sawdust that they bleed,
But a box Death brings.
Gigantic dins uprise !
Even the gods must feel
A smarting of the eyes
As these fumes upsweal.
Strange, such a Piece is free,
While we Spectators sit
Aghast at its agony,
Yet absorbed in it.
Dark is the outer air,
Cold the night draughts blow,
Mutely we stare, and stare
At the frenzied show.
Yet heaven has its quiet shroud
Of deep and starry blue
We cry " An end ! " we are bowed
By the dread '"Tis true ! "
While the Shape who hoofs applause
Behind our deafened ear
Hoots angel-wise " the Cause ! "
And affrights even fear.'
WALTER DE LA MARE, The Marionettes.
' War is just the killing ot things and the smashing of things.
And when it is all over, then literature and civilisation will have
to begin all over again. They will have to begin lower down and
against a heavier load. . . . The Wild Asses of the Devil are
loose, and there is no restraining them. What is the good,
Wilkins, of pretending that the Wild Asses are the instruments of
Providence, kicking better than we know ? It is all evil.'
REGINALD BLISS, Boon.
'There is work for all who find themselves outside the battle.'
ROMAIN ROLLAND, Above the Battle.
CONTENTS
PART I
WOOD END
CHAPTER I
PAGE
JOHN COMES HOME ...... 3
CHAPTER II
JOHN TALKS ....... 16
CHAPTER III
ALIX GOES ....... 31
PART II
VIOLETTE
CHAPTER IV
SATURDAY MORNING AT VIOLETTE . . . .41
CHAPTER V
AFTERNOON OUT ...... 57
x Non-Combatants and Others
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
EVENING AT VIOLETTE . 8 1
CHAPTER VII
HOSPITAL ....... 9 6
/
CHAPTER VIII
BASIL AT VIOLETTE . . . . . .112
CHAPTER IX
SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY . . . . .137
CHAPTER X
EVENING IN CHURCH ... .164
CHAPTER XI
ALIX AND EVIE . ... 187
CHAPTER XII
ALIX AND BASIL . . . .205
CHAPTER XIII
ALIX, NICHOLAS, AND WEST .
2l6
Contents xi
PART III
DAPHNE
CHAPTER XIV
PACE
DAPHNE AT VIOLETTE . , . . .231
CHAPTER XV
ALIX AT A MEETING ...... 254
CHAPTER XVI
ON PEACE ....... 273
CHAPTER XVII
NEW YEAR'S EVE .... . 294
PART I
WOOD END
CHAPTER I
JOHN COMES HOME
IN a green late April evening, among the
dusky pine shadows, Alix drew Percival Briggs.
Percival stood with his small cleft chin lifted
truculently, small blue eyes deep under fair,
frowning brows, one scratched brown leg bare
to the knee, dirty hands thrust into torn
pockets. He was the worst little boy in the
wood, and had been till six months ago the
worst little boy in the Sunday-school class of
Alix's cousin Dorothy. He had not been con-
verted six months ago, but Dorothy, like so
many, had renounced Sunday-school to work
in a V.A.D. hospital.
Alix, who was drawing Percival, worked
neither in a Sunday-school nor in a hospital.
She only drew. She drew till the green light
became green gloom, lit by a golden star that
peered down between the pines. She had a
pale, narrow, delicate, irregular sort of face,
broad-browed, with a queer, cynical, ironic
4 Non-Combatants and Others
touch to it, and purple-blue eyes that sometimes
opened very wide and sometimes narrowed into
slits. When they narrowed she looked as from
behind a visor, critical, defensive, or amused ;
when they opened wide she looked singularly
unguarded, as if the bars were up and she,
unprotected, might receive the enemy's point
straight and clean. Behind her, on the wood
path, was a small donkey between the shafts
of a small cart. A rough yellow dog scratched
and sniffed and explored among the roots of
the trees.
Alix said to Percival, ' That will do, thank
you. Here you are/ and fished out sixpence
in coppers from her pocket, and he clutched
and gripped them in a small retentive fist.
Alix, who was rather lame, put her stool and
easel and charcoal into the cart, got in herself,
beat the donkey, and ambled off along the
path, followed by the yellow dog.
The evening was dim and green, and smelt
of pines. The donkey trotted past cottage
gardens, and they were sweet with wallflowers.
More stars came out and peered down through
the tree-tops. Alix whistled softly, a queer
little Polish tune, indeterminate, sad and
John Comes Home
Two miles up the path a side-track led off
from it, and this the donkey-cart took, till it
fetched up in a little yard. Alix climbed out,
unharnessed the donkey, put him to bed in a
shed, collected her belongings, and limped out
of the yard, leaning a little on the ivory-
topped stick she carried. She had had a
diseased hip-joint as a child, which had left
her right leg slightly contracted.
She came round into a garden. It smelt of
wallflowers and the other things which flower
at the end of April ; and, underneath all these,
of pines. The pine-woods came close up to
the garden's edge, crowding and humming like
bees. Pine-needles strewed the lawn. The
tennis-lawn, it was most summers ; but this
summer one didn't play tennis, one was too
busy. So the lawn was set with croquet hoops,
a wretched game, but one which wounded
soldiers can play. Dorothy used to bring them
over from the hospital to spend the afternoon.
An oblong of light lay across the lawn. It
came from the drawing-room window, which
ought, of course, to have been blinded against
hostile aircraft. Alix, standing in the garden,
saw inside. She saw Dorothy, just in from the
hospital, still in her V.A.D. dress. The light
6 Non-Combatants and Others
shone on her fair wavy hair and fair pretty
face. Not even a stiff linen collar could make
Dorothy plain. Margot was there too, in the
khaki uniform of the Women's Volunteer Re-
serve ; she had just come in from drilling.
She usually worked at the Woolwich canteen
in the evenings, but had this evening off,
because of John. She was making sand-bags.
Their mother, Alix's aunt Eleanor, was pinning
tickets on clothes for Belgians. She was tall
and handsome, and like Alix's mother, only
so different, and she was secretary of the local
Belgian Committee (as of many other com-
mittees, local and otherwise). She often wore
a little worried frown, and was growing rather
thin, on account of the habits of this unfortu-
nate and scattered people. One of them had
been their guest since November ; she was in
the drawing-room now, a plump, dark-eyed
girl, knitting placidly and with the immense
rapidity noticeable on the Continent, and not
to be emulated by islanders without exhaustion.
Alix's uncle Gerald (a special constable, which
was why he need not bother about his blinds
much) stood by the small fire (they were whole-
some people, and not frowsty) with an evening
paper, but he was not reading it, he was talking
to John.
For among them, the centre of the family,
John Comes Home
was John ; John wounded and just out of
hospital and home on a month's sick-leave ;
John with a red scar from his square jaw to
his square forehead, stammering as he talked
because the nerves of his tongue had been
damaged. Alix, watching from the garden,
saw the queer way his throat worked, struggling
with some word.
They were asking John questions, of course.
Sensible questions, too ; they were sensible
people. They knew that the conduct of this
campaign was not in John's hands, and that
he did not know so much more about it than
they did.
The room, with its group of busy, attractive,
efficient people, seemed to the watcher in the
dark piny garden full of intelligence and war
and softly shaded electric light. Alix narrowed
her eyes against it and thought it would be
pain table.
3
The dark round eyes of the Belgian girl, look-
ing out through the window, met hers. She
laughed and waved her knitting. She took
Alix always as a huge joke. Alix had from
the first taken care that she should, since the
moment when Mademoiselle Verstigel had
arrived, fluent with tales from Antwerp. It is
8 Non-Combatants and Others
a safe axiom that those who play the clown do
not get confidences.
The others looked out at her too when
Mademoiselle Verstigel waved. They called
out ' Hullo, Alix ! How late you are. John 's
been here two hours. Come along.'
Alix limped up the steps and in at the
French window, where she stood and blinked,
the light on her pale, pointed face and narrowed
eyes. John rose to meet her, and she gave
him her hand and her crooked smile.
* You 're all right now, aren't you ? ' she said,
and John, an accurate person, said, ' Very
nearly,' while his mother returned, * I 'm afraid
he 's a long way from all right yet.'
' Isn't it funny, it makes him stammer/ said
Dorothy, who was professionally interested in
wounds. ' But he 's getting quite nice and fat
again.'
1 N-not so fat as I was when I got hit/
said John. ' The trenches are the best flesh-
producing ground known ; high living and
plain thinking and no exercise. The only
people who are getting thin out there are the
stretcher-bearers, who have to carry burdens,
the Commander-in-chief, who has to think, the
newspaper men, who have to write when there 's
nothing to say, and the chaplains, who have
to chaplain. I met old Lennard of Cats, walk-
John Comes Home
ing about Armentieres in February, and I
thought he was the Bishop of Zanzibar, he 'd
gone so lean. When last I 'd seen him he was
rolling down King's Parade arm-in-arm with
Chesterton, and I couldn't get by. It was an
awfully sad change. . . . By the way, you all
look thinner.'
' Well, we 're not in the trenches,' said
Margot. ' We 're leading busy and useful lives,
full of war activities. Besides, our food costs
us more. But Dorothy and I are fairly hefty
still. It 's mother who 's dwining ; and Alix,
though she 's such a lazy little beggar. Alix
is hopeless ; she does nothing but draw and
paint. She could earn something on the stage
as the Special Star Turn, the Girl who isn't
doing her bit. She doesn't so much as knit a
body-belt or draw the window-curtains against
Zepps.'
Alix looked round from the window to stick
out the tip of her tongue at Margot.
' Mais elle est boiteuse, la pauvre petite,' put
in the Belgian girl, with the literalness that
makes this people a little difficile in home life.
' What can she do ? '
Alix giggled in her corner. Margot said, ' All
right, Mademoiselle, we were only ragging.
There 's the post.' She went out to fetch it.
Margot was a good girl, but, like so many others,
io Non-Combatants and Others
tired of Belgians, though this Belgian was a
nice one, as strangers in a foreign land go.
Alix hated and feared her whole nation ; they
had been through altogether too much.
Margot came back with the letters.
' Betty and Terry/ she said, with satisfaction.
' Betty's is for me and Terry's for you, mother/
(Terry was in France, Betty driving an ambul-
ance car in Flanders.) ' Two for you, Alix/
Alix took hers, which were both marked ' On
Active Service/ and put them in her pocket.
Simultaneously her aunt Eleanor began to read
Terry's aloud (it was about flies, and bread
and jam, and birds, and some music he had
made and was sending home to be kept safe)
and Margot began to read extracts from
Betty's (about nails, and bad roads, and dif-
ferent kinds of shells, and people) and Uncle
Gerald read bits out of the paper (about Hill 60,
and Hartmannsweilerkopf, and Sedd el Bahr,
and the Leon Gambetta, and liquor, and Mr.
Lloyd George).
4
Alix slipped out at the window and limped
round to the side door and into the house and
upstairs to the schoolroom, which she was
allowed to use as a studio. It was littered
with things of hers : easels, chalks, paints, piles
John Comes Home n
of finished and unfinished drawings and paint-
ings. Some hung on the walls : some of hers
and some by the writer of the letter she took
out to read. He painted better than she did,
but drew worse or had, in the long-ago days
when persons of his age and sex were drawing
and painting at all.
Alix read the letter. It was headed obscurely
with an R, some little figures of men, and
two weeping eyes, which was where the writer
was for the moment stationed. Every now and
then a phrase or sentence was erased. The
writer, apparently a man of honour, had cen-
sored it himself. His honour had not carried
him so quixotically far as to erase the hiero-
glyphics at the head of the paper.
It said :
' DEAR ALIX, Since I last wrote we Ve been
moved some miles ; I mustn't, of course, indi-
cate where to. It is nice country less flat
than the other place, and jolly distant ridges,
transparent blue and lavender coloured. I 11
do a sketch when we get into billets at the
end of the week. My company is in the
trenches now ; commodious trenches they are,
the best in the line, but rather too near the
people opposite for comfort they 're such noisy
lunatics. It 's eight o'clock now, and they Ve
12 Non-Combatants and Others
begun their evening hate ; they do a bit every
evening. The only creature they Ve strafed
to-night yet is a brown rat, whom we none of
us grudge them. It 's interesting the different
noises the shells make coming ; you can nearly
always tell what kind they are. If I was
musical I 'd make a symphony out of them.
I should think your cousin Terry Orme could.
Some of them scream, thin and peevishly, like
a baby fretting ; some howl like a hyena, some
mew like a kitten. Then there 's Lloyd George's
Special, which says " Lloyd-Lloyd-Lloyd-
Lloyd," and then all the men shout " George."
(A page of further discursion on shells, too
technical for reproduction here. Then, re-
sumed next morning,) ' I 'm fairly sleepy this
morning ; we had to stand to ' from two to
six A.M., expecting an attack which never came
off. I wish it had, it would have been a way
to get warm. We Ve had poor luck to-night ;
the Tommy who was sent over the top to look
at the wire was made into a French landlord,
and our sergeant-major stopped one with his
head, silly ass, he was simply asking for it.
It 's my belief he was trying to get back to
Blighty, but I hope they won't send him
further than the base. You would like to see
the dawn coming over this queer country, grey
and cold and misty. I watched it through my
John Comes Home 13
peri for an hour. The Bodies lay perdu in
their trenches mostly, but sometimes you 'd see
one looming over his parapet through the mist.
I want some tea now more than most things.
You might write soon. You never answered
my last, so it 's generous of me to be writing
again. How 's every one at the School, and
how 's life and work ? Your enemies the Ruski
seem to be in a tight place, don't they ? Yours,
'BASIL DOYE.'
Alix read this letter rather quickly. It bored
her. It concerned the things she least pre-
ferred to hear about. That was, of course, the
worst of letters from the front. Life at Wood
End, as at other homes, was full of letters
from the front. They seemed to Alix like
bullets and bits of shrapnel crashing into her
world, with their various tunes. She might,
from her nervous frown, have been afraid of
' stopping one/ She twisted up the letter into
a hard ball with her thin, double-jointed fingers,
as she stared, frowning, at a painting on the
wall. The painting was of a grey-green pond,
floored with a thin, weedy scum. A hole-
riddled, battered old tin rode in the middle of
it ; reeds stood very quietly round ; a broken
boot was half sunk in the mud among them.
Over it all brooded and slept a heavy June
14 Non-Combatants and Others
noon. It was well painted ; Alix thought it
the best thing Basil Doye had ever done. They
had spent an afternoon by the pond in June
1914 ; Alix remembered it vividly the sleepy,
brooding silence, the heavy fragrance of the
hawthorn, the scum-green pond, the tin and
the boot, the suggestion of haunting that they
had talked of at the time and that Basil had
got rather successfully into his picture after-
wards. Those were curious days, those old
days before August 1914 ; or rather it was the
days ever since that were curious and like a
nightmare. Before that life was of a reality,
a sanity, an enduringness, a beauty. It still
was, only it was choked and confused by the
unspeakable things that every one thought
mattered so much, but which were really evil
dreams, to be thrown off impatiently. Under-
neath them all the time the real things, the
enduring things green ponds, music, moon-
light, loveliness ran like a choked stream. . . .
Alix read her other letter, which was from
her young brother Paul, and also written in a
trench. The chief thing she thought about this
was that Paul's handwriting was even worse
than usual. He wrote in pencil on a very
small piece of paper, and scrawled up and down
wildly. He might have been twelve instead of
eighteen and a half. Paul was rather a brilliant
John Comes Home 15
boy. When the war broke out he had been a
distinguished head of his school, and had just
obtained a particularly satisfactory Oxford
scholarship. His letters, since he went to the
front in March, had been increasingly poor in
quality and quantity. It made Alix angry that
he should be out there. She thought it no
place for children, and, as Paul's elder by
nearly seven years, she knew all about his
nerves.
CHAPTER II
JOHN TALKS
' ALIX, you '11 be late for dinner/ Dorothy's
voice called across the landing. Alix went to
the big bedroom she shared with Dorothy and
Margot. Margot was hooking up her frock ;
Dorothy was washing with vigour and as much
completeness as her basin would allow, and
complaining that John was occupying the bath-
room.
' I hate not having a bath after hospital.
But one can't grudge it to the dear lamb. How
do you think he looks, Alix ? Rather nervy,
he is still. That 's the worst of a head wound.
You know Mahoney, Margot, that Munster
Fusiliers man with a bit of shrapnel in his fore-
head ? The other men in ward 5 say he still
keeps jumping out of bed in his sleep and
standing to. The only way they can get him
back is to say ' Jack Johnson overhead,' and
then he scuttles into bed and puts his head
under the pillow ; only sometimes he scuttles
16
John Talks 17
under the bed instead, and then the only way
they can get him out is to say ' Minnie 's coming/
and he nips out quick for fear of being buried
alive. I believe he frightened one of the young
ladies he walks out with into fits one day by
thinking he saw snipers in the trees. Of course
one never knows how much of it he 's putting
on for a joke, he 's so silly, but he is badly
wrecked too/
Margot said, ' Isn't Mahoney having massage
now ? Nan Goddard said she thought she was
going to have him to do. She has four every
morning now. She likes Mahoney ; she thinks
he looks such an innocent little dear/
Dorothy said, ' Innocent, did she ? Mahoney !
Oh well, she '11 get to know him better if she
has him for massage. Did you hear Mahoney
and Macpherson's latest exploit ? ' This need
not be here retailed. It is well known that a
convalescent hospital containing forty soldiers
is not without its episodes, and provides many
fruitful topics of conversation.
They dressed meanwhile. Dorothy, in white
muslin, was fair-skinned and fresh, with shining
light brown hair and honest grey eyes. Margot,
in yellow tussore, had hair a shade darker and
curlier, and her eyes were hazel. They were
both very nice to look at, and had pleasant,
clear, loud voices, with which they talked about
1 8 Non-Combatants and Others
soldiers. Alix put on an old green shantung
frock and a string of amber beads ; she looked
thin, childish, elf-like ; her eyes were rather
narrowed under brooding brows.
They were at dinner. Alix sat opposite John,
who wore a dinner jacket again, as if there
were no war. He looked brown and square
and cheerful. Between the daffodils Alix saw
his eyes, nervous and watchful, with the look
in them that was in so many young men's eyes
in these days. Next him was Mademoiselle
Verstigel, stolid, placid, eating largely, saying
little.
Mr. Orme spoke of the big advance that they
all believed was coming directly.
' Not yet/ said John. ' N-not enough shells/
' Wish I could go and help make some/ said
Margot.
They all discussed the munitions question.
John had strong views on it, differing in some
particulars from his father's. John related the
inner history of several recent episodes of war,
to support his view. He was very interesting.
John was not naturally an anecdotal person,
but his mind had been of late stored and fed
with experiences. Some officers are reduced by
John Talks 19
trench life to an extreme reticence ; the con-
versational faculty of others is stimulated.
Nervous strain works in both of these ways,
often in the same person. Anyhow John had
to talk about the war to-night, because at
Wood End they all did. He answered his
father's questions about barbed wire, his
mother's about dug-outs, his sisters' about
things to eat. They asked him all the things
they hadn't liked to ask him while he was in
hospital for fear of setting his brain working
and retarding his recovery. Dorothy wanted
to know if it was true what the men said, that
their bully beef often climbed out of its tin
and walked down the trench. John said it
was not, and that it was one of the erroneous
statements he had most frequently to censor
in the men's letters. Margot wanted to know
what sort of meals he had in the trenches.
John said mess in the dug-out usually consisted
of six courses (preceded by vermuth), three
drinks, and coffee. He proceeded to describe
the courses in detail.
His mother wanted to know about the nights,
whether he got any sleep. John said yes, quite
a lot, when it didn't happen to be his watch.
What about the noise ? his mother asked. Had
he got at all used to it yet ? John said it
wasn't nearly so noisy as the Royal Free Hos-
2O Non-Combatants and Others
pital, where he had spent the last month. His
father asked what he thought of the German
soldiers as clean fighters. John said they
seemed much like anybody else, as far as he 'd
noticed. Mademoiselle Verstigel, understand-
ing this, shook her head in protest. His mother
asked, did he think it was true that our
Tommies were learning to pray, or was the
contrary statement truer, that they were losing
such faith as they had ? John said he had
not himself noticed either of these phenomena
in his platoon, but he might, of course, ask
them. His father, who was interested, both
as a person of intelligence and as a man of
business, in the Balkans, got there, and they
discussed the exhausting and exhaustive topic
of those wild and erratic states, the relations
of each to other, to the Central Powers, to the
Allies, and to the war, at some length. It was
the period when people were saying that Greece
would come in for us, that Rumania might,
and that it was essential to collar Bulgaria.
So they said these things duly.
In a pause John said to Alix across the
table, ' What 's Aunt Daphne doing now ? '
There was a slight sense of jar. Margot,
John Talks 21
who was sympathetic, was ashamed for Alix,
because of what her mother, Daphne Sandomir,
was doing. For this always unusual lady, in-
stead of being engaged in working for the Red
Cross, Belgian refugees, or soldiers' and sailors'
families, was attending a peace conference in
New York. She had gone there from France,
which she had been helping the Friends to re-
construct. She was not a Friend herself, not
holding with institutional religion, but she
admired their ready obedience to the con-
structive impulse. She was called by some a
Pacificist, by more a Pacifist, by others a
Pro-German, by most a member of the Union
of Democratic Control, which she was not, for
reasons which she was ready to explain, but
which need not be here detailed.
Alix told John, in her clear, indifferent, rather
melancholy little voice, about the peace con-
ference. In common with many children of
two intensely enthusiastic parents (her father
had been a Polish liberationist, who had died
in a Russian prison) she had a certain half-
cynical detachment from and indifference to
ardours and causes. Her mother was always
up to some stirring enterprise, always pursuing
some vividly seen star. She had been at
Newnham in the days when girls went to college
ardently, full of aims and ideals and self-realisa-
22 Non-Combatants and Others
tions and great purposes (instead of as now,
because it seems the natural thing to do after
school for those with any leanings towards
learning) and she had lived her life at the
same high pitch ever since. Alix found her
admirable, but discomposing. She found Alix
engaging, even intriguing, but narrow-hearted,
selfish and indolent ; she accused her of shrink-
ing from the world's griefs in a way unworthy
of her revolutionary father, whom she closely
resembled in face and brain.
John was rather interested in the peace
conference. He had read something about it
the other day in one of the periodicals which
flourished in the University to which he be-
longed, and which wholly approved of the
enterprise. Not that John, for his part, wholly
approved of the periodical ; he found it a trifle
unbalanced, heady, partisan. John was a very
fair-minded and level-headed young man, of
conservative traditions. But independent, too.
When the temporary second lieutenant with
both legs blown off, who had occupied the
next bed to his in the Royal Free, had said,
perusing the comments on the peace conference
in the periodical in question (under the head-
ing ' A Triumph of Pacifism '), ' What sickening
piffle, isn't it ? ' John had said, after a little
cogitation, ' Well, I don't know. They mean
John Talks 23
well/ The legless lieutenant (Trinity Hall) had
snorted, 'They mean well to the Boche. . . .
After all our trouble ... all the legs we 've
lost ... to cave in now. , . . Besides, what
do they think they can do ? A lot of people
gassing. ... I wonder who they are ? '
John had said he believed one of his aunts
was keen on it.
' Sort of thing aunts would be keen on/ the
other youth had vaguely, and, indeed, quite
inaccurately commented.
On the whole John didn't much hold by
such movements, but he took a more lenient
view of them than the rest of his family did.
His father said, ' A little premature, dis-
cussing peace terms before we know we 're
going to be in a position to dictate them.'
His mother murmured, ' Peace, peace, where
there is no peace,' and smiled kindly at Alix
to comfort her for her mother.
Dorothy said, answering her father, ' Well,
of course we know we are. But I don't see
any use in discussing things beforehand, any-
how : we shall be able to think when the time
comes.'
Mademoiselle looked with her round black
eyes from one to another, like a robin. She
might have been reflecting in her mind that
Dorothy was very English, Mr. Orme very de-
24 Non-Combatants and Others
pressing, Mrs. Orme very kind, John very im-
partial, and Alix very indifferent. What she
said, turning to John, was (and she would seem
to have been preparing the remark for some
time : she was very keen on improving her
English), 'The war is trulee'devileesh, yes?
The Boches are not as humans, no ? More,
is it not, Monsieur, as the devils from below ? '
John grinned. Dorothy said, ' True for you,
Mademoiselle/ Margot said, ' You 're really
coming on. Only you must say " like," not
"as." " As " only comes in books ; it 's too
elegant. And devilish isn't elegant enough.'
' El-ee-gant,' Mademoiselle repeated the word
softly. She was perhaps wondering whether it
was necessary to be elegant at all in one's refer-
ences to the Boches.
After dinner they got out a map of the
western front and spread it on a table and
made John say, so far as he knew, in which
parts of the line the various battalions at the
moment were, and Dorothy wrote their names,
very small, all down the line. Alix slipped
away while they were doing this, to smell the
garden. Soon they began to sing in the draw-
ing-room. Margot sang, ' When we wind up
John Talks 25
the watch on the Rhine/ a song popular among
soldiers just then. She was no doubt prac-
tising for canteen concerts. John joined in the
chorus, in a baritone voice somewhat marred by
trench life.
Alix went indoors and up to bed. She was
shivering, as if she was cold, or very tired, or
frightened. . . .
She undressed hastily, whistling shrilly, and
got into bed and pulled the bedclothes up round
her neck and read Mr. Give Bell's last book,
with much of which she differed violently, so
violently that she made marginal and un-
sympathetic notes on it in pencil as she
lay.
' I '11 send it to Basil and see what he thinks/
she thought.
Then Dorothy and Margot came up, merry
and talking.
' You are a lazy little unsociable slacker/
Margot told her. ' John was telling us such
ripping stories, too. Make him tell you to-
morrow about the sergeant-major and the
pheasant and the barbed wire. It was awfully
funny/
Dorothy yawned. ' Oh, I 'm sleepy. Thank
goodness it 's Sunday to-morrow, so we can lie
in. Margot, you Ve pinched my slippers. . . .
Oh no, all right/
26 Non-Combatants and Others
Alix lay and read. Her cousins undressed
and said their prayers and got into bed.
' Ready, Alix ? ' asked Margot, her finger on
the switch.
' Right/ said Alix, putting Mr. Give Bell
under her pillow, where, deeply as she differed
from him, he seemed to lie as a protection
against something.
The switch clicked, and the room was in
darkness.
Margot and Dorothy murmured on drowsily,
dropping remarks about the hospital, the
canteen, things John had said. . . . The re-
marks trailed away into sleep.
Alix lay awake. Her forehead was hot and
her feet were cold. She was tense, and on the
brink of shivering. Staring into the dark she
saw things happening across the seas : dreadful
things, ugly, jarring, horrifying things. War
war war. It pressed round her ; there was
no escape from it. Every one talked it,
breathed it, lived in it. Aunt Eleanor, with
her committees, and her terrible refugees ;
Mademoiselle Verstigel, with her round robin's
eyes that had looked horror in the face so near ;
Uncle Gerald, with his paper and his intelli-
John Talks 27
gent city rumours ; Dorothy and Margot with
their soldiers, who kept coming to tea, cheerful,
charming, and maimed ; John, damaged and
stammering, with his nervous eyes and his
quiet, humorous trench talk ; Basil, writing
from his dug-out of Boche and shells . . . little
Paul out there in the dark . . . they were all
up against the monster, being strangled . . .
it was like that beastly Laocoon. . . .
There was a balcony running along outside
the bedrooms at the front of the house. The
moonlight lay palely on it ; Alix watched it
through the long open window. Through the
window came a sound of quiet crying ; gasping,
choked sobbing, as if a child were in despair.
Alix sat up in bed and listened. Margot and
Dorothy breathed softly, each a peace-drugged
column of bedclothes.
Alix, pale and frowning, scrambled out of
bed, shuddered, and pattered on thin, naked
feet to the window and out on to the moon-
bathed stone balcony floor.
Outside his own window, John, barefooted,
in pink pyjamas, stood, gripping with both
hands on to the iron balustrade, his face turned
up to the moon, crying, sobbing, moaning, like
a little child, like a man on the rack. He was
saying things from time to time . . . mutter-
ing them . . . Alix heard. Things quite differ-
28 Non-Combatants and Others
ent from the things he had said at dinner.
Only his eyes, as Alix had met them between
the daffodils, had spoken at all like this ; and
even that had not been like this. His eyes
were now wide and wet, and full of a horror
beyond speech. They turned towards Alix and
looked through her, beyond her, unseeing.
John was fast asleep.
Alix, to hear no more, put her hands over
her ears and turned and ran into the bedroom.
She flung herself upon Dorothy and shook her
by the shoulders, shook her till she sat up
startled and awake.
Alix stammered, 'John John. He's walk-
ing in his sleep . . . out there. . . . He 's
crying he 's talking ... go and stop him.'
Dorothy, efficient and professional in a
moment, sprang out of bed into her two wait-
ing slippers, and ran into the balcony. Alix
heard her, gentle, quiet, firm, soothing John,
leading him back to bed.
Alix was most suddenly and violently
sick.
When Dorothy came back, twenty minutes
later, she was huddled under the bedclothes,
exhausted, shuddering and cold.
' He 's quiet now,' said Dorothy, taking off
her slippers. ' Poor old boy. They often do
it, you know. It's the nervous shock. I
John Talks 29
must listen at nights. ... I say, don't tell
him, Alix ; he wouldn't like it. Specially to
know he was crying. Poor old Johnny. Just
the thing he 'd never do, awake, however far
gone he was. Nor talking like that ; he was
saying awful things. . . . Did you hear ? '
' Yes,' said Alix, in a small, faint voice.
Dorothy looked at her curiously, and saw her
grey pallor and shut eyes.
* Why, you 're ill too : I believe Johnny 's
upset you.' She spoke with a kindly pity and
contempt. ' Is that it, kiddie ? '
' Don't know,' said Alix. ' No. Should think
it was too many walnuts at dinner. Let 's go
to sleep now/
Dorothy, before she did this, turned her head
on the pillow towards Alix's corner and said
kindly, ' You '11 never be any use if you don't
forget yourself, Alix. You couldn't possibly
nurse if you were always giving in to your own
nerves. After all, what they can bear to go
through, we ought to be able to bear to hear
about. But of course you 're not used to it, I
know. You should come to the hospital some-
times. Good-night. If you feel rotten in the
morning, don't get up.'
Dorothy went to sleep.
Alix lay and watched the shadows shifting
slowly round on the balcony, and listened for
30 Non-Combatants and Others
sobbing, but heard only the quiet murmur of
the pines.
' What they can bear to go through. . . .
But they can't, they can't, they can't ... we
can bear to hear about . . . but we can't, we
can't, we can't. . . .'
It was like the intolerable ticking of a clock,
and beat itself away at last into a sick dream.
On the other side of the wall, John started
and sat bolt upright in bed, with wide staring
eyes. . . . John, like many thousand others,
would perhaps never sleep quietly through a
night again. Yet John had been a composed
sleeper once.
CHAPTER III
ALIX GOES
IT was Sunday next day. Dorothy and Margot
conducted a party of wounded soldiers to
matins. Mrs. Orme, who thought it time Made-
moiselle Verstigel went to Mass again, sent her
over to Wonford, where there was a church of
her persuasion. She herself had to go up to
town to the Sunday club where soldiers' and
sailors' families were kept out of the streets
and given coffee, news, friendship, music, and
the chance to read good books, a chance of
which Mrs. Orme, a sanguine person, hoped
undiscouraged that they would one day avail
themselves. (Hope, faith, and love were in
her family. Her sister, Daphne Sandomir,
when in England, held study circles of work-
ing women to instruct them in the principles
which make for permanent peace, and hoped
with the same fervour that they would read
the books and pamphlets she gave them.)
Mr. Orme and John walked over to the links
32 Non-Combatants and Others
to play golf. Alix, not having either the
church, club, or golf habit, and being unfitted
for much walking, sat in the wood, tried to
paint, and failed. She felt peevish, tired, cross
and selfish, and her head ached, as one's head
nearly always does after being sick in the
night. The pines were no good : stupid trees,
the wrong shape. What sort of pictures would
one be painting out there ? Mud-coloured
levels, mud-coloured men, splashes of green
here and there . . . and red. . . . And blue
sky, or mud-coloured, with shells winging
through it like birds, singing, ' Lloyd-Lloyd-
Lloyd-Lloyd.' . . . The sort of picture Basil
would be painting and the way he would be
painting it she knew exactly. Only probably
he wasn't painting at all to-day. It was
Sunday -hate day. Whizz-bangs, pom-poms,
trench-mortars spinning along and bouncing
off the wire trench roof. . . . Minnie coming
along to blow the whole trench inside out . . .
legs and arms and bits of men flying in the
air ... the rest of them buried deep in choking
earth . . . perhaps to be dug out alive, per-
haps dead. . . . What was it John had said
on the balcony something about a leg . . .
the leg of a friend . . . pulling it out of the
chaos of earth and mud and stones which had
been a trench . . . thinking it led on to the
Alix Goes 33
entire friend, finding it didn't, was a detached
bit. . . . Had John cried at the time ? Been
sick? Probably not; John was a self-contained
young man. He had waited till afterwards,
when he was asleep.
Alix, seeing her friends in scattered bits,
seeing worse than that, seeing what John had
seen and mentioned with tears, turned the
greenish pallor of pale, ageing cheese, and
dropped her head in her hands. Painting was
off for that morning. Painting and war don't
go together.
Mrs. Orme came home in the afternoon, tired
but still energetic. Mr. Orme and John came
in to tea too, with Sunday papers and having
seen telegrams about the German offensive being
stopped at Ypres. Callers dropped in to tea.
They worried John by their questions. They
kindly drew out Mademoiselle Verstigel, in
French worse than her English.
Directly after tea Margot had to hurry away
up to town to the canteen. The callers dropped
out again, one by one. John and his father
went out to smoke in the garden, and to look
at young trees. Dorothy went to make a cake
for the hospital.
34 Non-Combatants and Others
Mrs. Orme sorted, filed, and pigeon-holed
case-papers about Belgians.
Alix, sitting in the window seat, said, ' Aunt
Eleanor, I think I 'm too far away from the
School. I think I 'd better go and stay in
London, to be nearer.'
Mrs. Orme abstracted part of her attention
from the Belgians, paused, paper in hand, and
looked at her niece with her fine dark kind
eyes, that were like her sister's, only different.
' Very well, child. You may be right. I 'm
sorry, though. . . .' She jabbed a paper on the
file, and gave more of her attention still. ' Go
and stay in London. . . . But with whom,
dear ? And what does your mother think ? '
' Oh, mother,' said Alix, and gave her small,
crooked smile. ' Mother won't mind. She
never does. I '11 write to her about it, any
time. . . . Well, I might be in rooms alone
or with some one else.'
' Not alone,' Mrs. Orme said promptly.
' You 're not old enough. Twenty-five, is it ?
You look less. Oh yes, I know girls do it,
but I don't like it. I wouldn't let Dorothy
or Margot. Who could you share them with ?
You Ve not thought of any one especial ? It
would have to be some one sensible, who 'd look
after you, or you 'd get ill. . . . Nicholas lives
with another man, doesn't he ? ... Wait : I Ve
Alix Goes 35
just thought of something. . . .' She began
rummaging in her desk. ' I Ve a letter some-
where ; I kept it, I know.' She looked for it.
Alix thought how like she was, as she searched,
to her sister Daphne ; both were so often look-
ing for papers which they knew they had kept ;
and both had the same short-sighted frown and
graceful bend of the neck.
' Here/ said Mrs. Orme, and held up an
envelope addressed in a flowing hand the
sort of hand once used by most ladies, but
now chiefly by elderly and middle-aged persons
of an unliterary habit.
' Emily Frampton,' said Mrs. Orme. ' No,
you wouldn't know her, but she 's a cousin.
That is, not a cousin, but married to one. She 's
the widow of your cousin Laurence, who died
fifteen years ago. None of us could think
why . . . well.' She checked herself. ' She 's
very nice and kind, Emily Frampton.' But so
different, she meant, from their cousin Laurence.
This was so. Laurence Frampton had been
scholarly, humorous, keen-witted, dry-tongued,
and a professor of Greek. Emily Frampton
was not ; which is sufficient description of her
for the moment.
' She and her two girls (her own, you know ;
she was a widow even before she married
Laurence) live at Clapton. Violette, Spring
36 Non-Combatants and Others
Hill, Upper Clapton, N. They 're poor ; they
want some nice person to board with them.
She 's very kind ; you 'd be taken care of.'
Mrs. Orme puckered her wide, white forehead
and looked at Alix as if she were a Belgian
with a case-paper. ' Really, till your mother
comes back and takes the responsibility, I can't
let you go just anywhere.'
' Well ' Alix drawled a little, uncertainly.
* I don't like being taken care of, Aunt Eleanor.
And they sound dull.'
' Well, dear, you must settle. I own I
couldn't personally live at what's the name
of the house Geranium Pansy no, Violet
Violette, I mean. Those sort of people are so
dreadfully out of the currents ; probably know
nothing about the war, except that there is
one, and . . .'
' Well,' said Alix, more quickly, ' perhaps
I '11 go there, Aunt Eleanor. I think I will.'
' You '11 be doing them a kindness,' said Mrs.
Orme. ' And of course it will be much more
convenient for you than going up to town from
here every day. If you like I '11 write to Mrs.
Frampton to-day. We shall miss you, dear.'
She screwed up her eyes affectionately at Alix,
and added, ' You don't look well, child. I wish
your mother would come home. You miss her.'
' It 's fun when mother 's home,' said Alix.
Alix Goes 37
' But it 's quieter when she isn't. Mother 's so
so stimulating.'
' Oh, very/ said Mrs. Orme, who thought of
Mrs. Sandomir as a spoilt, clever, fascinating
but wrong-headed younger sister. She couldn't
tell Alix how wrong-headed she found her
mother, but she added kindly, ' You know, my
dear, that I think she is mistaken in her present
enterprise, and would be much better at home/
* Most enterprises are mistaken. All, very
likely,' said Alix, and her aunt was shocked,
thinking she should not be cynical so young.
* The child 's a funny outcome of Paul
Sandomir and Daphne,' she reflected, and re-
turned to her case-papers.
John came in. Alix noticed how cheerful and
placid he looked, and how his hand, holding
his pipe, shook. He sat down and began to
talk about the advantages of not digging up
one of the lawns for potatoes, which Margot
wanted to do. His memories lay behind his
watchful eyes, safely guarded. But Alix knew.
' I must write to mother,' she said, and left
the room.
As she went upstairs she met Mademoiselle
Verstigel coming down. Her Sunday dress was
38 Non-Combatants and Others
bright scarlet, with canary-coloured ribbons.
She had saved it out of the wreck at home,
when all seemed lost, and fled in it, like so
many Belgians. She looked at Alix with her
round eyes, and they too held memories. Alix
stumbled at a stair. Mademoiselle caught her
thin arm in her own plump one and saved
her from falling. Alix hated the touch ; she
said, ' Oh, merci/ and gripped her stick tight
and hurried on upstairs with her uneven, limp-
ing steps. She got into the schoolroom and
shut the door.
. ' I must get away/ she said, breathing hard.
' I will go to Violette.'
PART II
VIOLETTE
CHAPTER IV
SATURDAY MORNING AT VIOLETTE
ALIX rode from South Kensington to Clapton
in the warm mid-June night on the last bus.
She had been at a birthday party in Margaretta
Terrace, S.W. Bus 2 took her to the Strand
end of Chancery Lane. Here she left her
companion, who had rooms in Clifford's Inn,
and walked up Chancery Lane to Holborn,
and got the last Stamford Hill bus and rushed
up Gray's Inn Road and then into the ugly,
clamorous squalor of Theobald's Road, Clerken-
well and Old Street. The darkness hid the
squalor and the dull sordidness of the long
straight stretch of Kingsland Road. Through
the night came only the flare of the street
booths and the screaming of the very poor, who
never seem too tired to scream.
At Stamford Hill Alix got off, and walked
down Upper Clapton Road, which was quiet
and dark, with lime-trees. Alix softly whistled
a tune that some one had played on a violin
41
42 Non-Combatants and Others
to-night at Audrey Hillier's party. The party,
and the music, and the students' talk of art-
school shop, and the childish, absurd jokes,
and the chocolates and cigarettes (she had
eaten eighteen and smoked five) were like a
stimulating, soothing drug.
A policeman at the corner of Spring Hill
flashed his light over her and lit her up for a
moment, hatless, cloaked, whistling softly, limp-
ing on a stick, with her queer, narrow eyes and
white face.
She turned down Spring Hill, which is an
inclined road running along the northern end
of Springfield Park down to the river Lea. It
is a civilised and polite road, though its dwell-
ings have not the dignified opulence of the
houses round the common.
Alix stopped at Violette, and let herself
softly in with her latchkey. Violette was
silent and warm ; the gas in the tiny hall
was turned low. The door ajar on the right
showed a room also dimly lit, with a saucepan
of milk ready to heat on the gas-ring, and a
plate of Albert biscuits and a sense of recent
occupation. It is very clear in an empty room
by night what sort of people have sat and
talked and occupied themselves in it by day.
Their thoughts and words lie about, with their
books and sewing.
Saturday Morning at Violette 43
There were also in this room crochet doylies
on the chairs and tables, a large photograph
of a stout and heavily-moustached gentleman
above the piano (Mr. Tucker), a small photo-
graph of a thin and shaven and scholarly
gentleman over the writing-table (Professor
Frampton), some Marcus Stones, Landseers,
and other reproductions round the walls, two
bright blue vases on the chimneypiece, con-
taining some yellow flowers of the kind that
age cannot wither, dry, rustling, and immortal,
' Thou seest me ' illuminated in pink and gold
letters, circling the picture of a monstrous eye
(an indubitably true remark, for no inhabitant
of the room could fail to see it), and the Evening
Thrill and The Lovers' Heritage (Mrs. Blankley's
latest novel) lying on the table.
Alix sat on the table and smoked another
cigarette. She always smoked far too many.
She was pale, with heavy, sleep-shadowed eyes.
She had talked and smoked and been funny all
the evening.
One o'clock struck. Alix turned out the gas
and went up to bed, quietly, lest she should
disturb the family. She crept into the bed-
room she shared with Evie, and undressed by
the light that came in through the half-cur-
tained window from the darkened lamps in the
street.
44 Non-Combatants and Others
The faint light showed Evie, asleep in her
lovely grace, the grace as of some lithe young
wild animal. Alix never tired of absorbing
the various aspects of this lovely grace.
She got into bed and curled herself up.
Between the half-drawn window curtains she
could see the tops of the Park trees, waving
and fluttering their boughs in a dark sky,
where clouds drove across the waning moon.
Footsteps beat in the road outside, came near,
passed, and died. The policeman trod and
retrod his allotted sphere, guarding Violette
while it drifted drowsily into the summer dawn,
which broke through light, whispering rain.
Alix dreamed. . . .
In Flanders, the rain sloped down on to men
standing to in slippery trenches, yawning,
shivering, listening. . . .
Evie pulled back the curtain, and the
yellow day broke into Alix's dreams and
opened her sleepy eyes. She yawned, her thin
arms, like a child's arms, stretched above her
head.
' Oh, Evie,' said Alix. ' Can't be morning,
is it ? '
' Not half,' said Evie, collecting her sponges
Saturday Morning at Violette 45
and towels for her bath. ' It 's last night
still. . . . Whatever time did you get back,
child ? ' (Evie was a year younger than Alix,
but more experienced. In her pink kimono
dressing-gown, with her long brown plait down
her back, and her face softly flushed from the
pillow, she looked like the blossom a hazel-nut
might have had, had it been so arranged.)
' Twelve one two don't know,' Alix
yawned, and pulled the bedclothes tight
under her chin. ' Think I was too tipsy to
notice/
Evie, coming back from the bathroom, woke
her again. She lay and watched, between
sleepy lids, Evie dressing. Drowsily she
thought how awfully, awfully pretty Evie was.
Evie was lithe and long-limbed, with sudden,
swift grace of movement like a kitten's or a
young panther's. She had a face pink and
brown, fine in contour, and prettily squared
at the jaw, eyes wide and dark and set far
apart under level brows, and dimples. Of the
Violette household, Evie alone had charm.
Except on Saturdays and Sundays she trimmed
hats at a very superior and artistic establish-
ment in Bond Street. There was a certain
adequacy about Evie ; she did but little here
below, but did that little well.
Alix sat up in bed, one dark plait hanging
46 Non-Combatants and Others
on either side of her small pale face, her sharp
chin resting on her knees.
' I must do it sometime, mustn't I ? ' she
said, and did it forthwith, tumbling out of
bed and staggering across to the washstand
for her sponge and towel. She dropped and
drowned her dreams in her cold bath, and
came back cool and indifferent. Through the
open window the summer morning blew upon
her merrily ; it was windy, careless, friendly,
full of light and laughter.
In the dining-room, when Alix came down,
were Mrs. Frampton, who was small, trim,
fifty-three, and reading a four-page letter ;
Kate, who was inconspicuous, neat, twenty-
nine, and making tea ; and Evie, who has
already been described and was perusing two
apparently amusing letters.
Mrs. Frampton looked up from her letter to
say, ' Good-morning, dear. You came home
with the milk this morning, I can see by those
dark saucers. You ought to have stayed in
bed and had some breakfast there.'
Mrs. Frampton was very kind. She also was
very early in going to bed : anything after
midnight was to her with the milk.
Saturday Morning at Violette 47
Kate said, having made the tea and turned
out the gas-ring, ' We 're all late this morning.
If we don't commence breakfast quick I shall
never get through my day.'
They stood round the table ; Mrs. Frampton
said, ' For what we are about to receive,' and
Kate said, ' Some bacon, mother ? '
' A small helping only, love. . . . Such a
nice long letter from Aunt Nellie. Fred and
Maudie have been staying with her for the week-
end, and the baby's tooth begins to get through.
Aunt Nellie's rheumatism is no better, though,
and she thinks of Harrogate next month. Do
you hear that, Kate ? '
Kate was critically examining a plate.
' Egg left on it again. If I Ve spoken to
Florence once I 've done so fifty times, about
egg on plates. I 'd better ring for her and
speak at once, hadn't I, mother ? She '11 never
learn otherwise.'
' Do, love.'
Kate rang. Florence came and Kate said,
' Florence, there 's egg on this plate again.
Take it away and bring another, and recollect
what I told you about soda.'
' Oh dear me, dear me,' said Mrs. Frampton,
who had opened the paper. ' Just listen to
this. One of those Zeppelins came again last
night and dropped bombs on the East Coast,
48 Non-Combatants and Others
killing sixteen and injuring forty. Now, isn't
that wicked ! Babies in the cradle formed a
large proportion of the fatalities, as usual.
Poor little loves. You 'd think those men
would be ashamed, with all the civilised world
calling them baby-killers last time/
' They 're just inhuman murderers/ said
Kate absently. ' I expect they 're dead to
shame by now. . . . This bacon is some-
what less streakv than the last. We must
V
speak to Edwards about it again. I shall
tell him we shall really have to deal with
Perkins if he can't do better for us. Another
slice, Evie ? '
' Some more toast, love/ Mrs. Frampton sug-
gested to Alix. ' And a little preserve. You
don't eat properly, Alix. You '11 never grow
strong and big and rosy. . . . Kate, this tea
isn't so nice as the last. A touch raspier, it
seems. What do you think ? '
' I prefer it, mother. It has somewhat more
taste. But if you think it 's too strong . . /
' No, love, I expect you 're right. Is it the
one-and-ninepenny ? '
' One-and-eight/
Evie giggled over her correspondence.
' And who have you heard from, Evie ? '
asked her mother, looking indulgently at her
pretty younger daughter.
Saturday Morning at Violette 49
' Floss Vinney, for one. She 's got some
more blouse patterns, and wants me to go
round again and help her choose. There 's one
a perfect treat she was thinking of last week ;
she thinks it '11 make up to suit her, but it
won't a bit; it's fussy, and she's too fussy
already, with that frizzy hair. It would suit
me nicely, or you, Alix, but it '11 smother
Floss. I told her so, but she wouldn't believe
me. She thinks Vin will like her in it, but I
bet he doesn't. Though, of course, you never
can say what a man will like, they 're so funny.
Oh dear, they are comic ! ' Evie gurgled over
some private experiences of her own : she did
not lack them.
1 Floss usually looks very nice in her clothes,'
said Kate with deliberate heroism, because,
for reasons, she disliked to think so. Alix,
hearing her, passed her the jam (preserve,
Violette called it) impulsively, without being
asked ; and as a matter of fact, Kate, eating
bacon, did not want it. Mrs. Frampton, moved
doubtless by some sequence of thought known
to herself, said, ' They say those Belgians in
the corner house eat ten pounds of cheese each
week. Edwards' boy told Florence. Just fancy
that. Not that one grudges them anything,
poor things.'
Kate said, ' Mr. Alison ' (the vicar of the
D
50 Non-Combatants and Others
church she attended) ' says those corner
Belgians have been very troublesome indeed
lately. They Ve all quarrelled among them-
selves, and all but the wounded young man
and his mother think the wounded young man
is well enough to go to the front now, and he
will slam the doors so, and two new ones have
come, so they 're packed as tight as herrings
(but they say Belgians always will overcrowd),
and the one that lost her baby on the journey
has found it again, and the others aren't
pleased because it cries at nights, and they all
say they don't get enough to eat. The vicar 's
had no end of bother with them. And now
two of them say they won't stay 'here, they '11
go off to Hull, where Belgians aren't allowed.
The vicar reasoned with them ever so long,
but they will go. They say they have uncles
there. I 'm sure it 's very wrong if they have.
It does seem sad, doesn't it ? ' The lack of dis-
cipline among this unhappy people, she meant,
rather than the uncles at Hull.
Mrs. Frampton said, ' To think of them
behaving like that, after all they Ve been
through ! ' She scanned the paper again,
having finished her small breakfast.
' Here 's a German in Tottenham Court
Road strangled himself with his window cord.
Ashamed of his country. Well, who can blame
Saturday Morning at Violette 51
him ? We must leave that to his Maker. Now
listen to this : Lord Harewood says Harrogate
is a nest of spies. Quite full of German wives,
it is. Fancy, and Aunt Nellie going to take
the baths there next month. Lowestoft too,
and Clacton-on-Sea. I 'm sure I shall never
want to visit any of those East Coast places
again ; you 'd never know whom to trust ; not
to mention all these airships coming, and being
put into gaol if you forget to pull the blinds,
and having your dog confiscated if he runs out
by night. . . . Girl robbed her grandmother ;
she spent it all on dress, too. Fancy, with all
the distress there is just now. Home Hints:
Don't throw away a favourite hat because you
think its day is over. Wash it in a solution
of water and gum and lay it flat on the kitchen
dresser. Stuff the crown with soft paper and
stand four flat-irons on the brim. But clean
the irons well first with brick-dust and ammonia.
The hat will then be a very nice new shape. . . .
Here 's a recipe for apple shortcake, Kate : I
shall cut that out for Florence. . . . Dear me,
how late it gets ! We must all get to our day's
work. . . . Have you heard news from your
mother, Alix dear ? '
' Yes.' Alix had two letters before her.
' Mother writes from Athens. She 's been inter-
viewing Tino (don't know how she managed
52 Non-Combatants and Others
it) ; trying to get him to sit on a council for
Continuous Mediation without Armistice. I
gather Tino thinks it a jolly sound plan in
theory, bat isn't having any in practice. That 's
the position of most of the neutral governments,
apparently.'
As none of the family knew what Continuous
Mediation without Armistice meant, the only
comment forthcoming was, from Mrs. Framp-
ton, ' Your mother is a very wonderful person.
I only hope she isn't getting over-tired, going
about as much as she does. . . . You Ve
had some news from the front too, haven't
you? '
' Yes/ said Alix. ' A friend of mine has
just got wounded. He 's being sent home.'
' Oh, my dear, how unfortunate ! Not seri-
ously, I trust ? '
' No, I shouldn't think so. A nice blighty
one in the hand, he says. He seems quite
cheery about it. He tried to return a bomb
to the senders, and it went off just before its
proper time. It happens often, he says. It
must be difficult to calculate about these time-
bombs.'
' A dreadful risk to take, indeed ! It 's his
left, I suppose, as he writes ? '
' He dictated it. No, not his left.'
' The right ? Dear me, now, how sad that is.
Saturday Morning at Violette 53
It so hampers a man. What used he to work
at, love ? '
' He paints/
' Well now, isn't that a pity ! He must
learn to paint left-handed when the war 's
over, mustn't he ? But I hope his hand will be
quite well again long before then. It 's given
you quite a shock, dearie, I can see. You Ve
gone quite pale. Would you like a little sal-
volatile ? '
' No thank you, Cousin Emily. It 's not
given me a shock a bit. ... Do you want me
to do the lamps, Kate ? '
1 Well I don't know why you should. Evie 's
nothing to do this morning. . . .' Kate looked
doubtfully at her sister, who said promptly,
' Oh, hasn't she ? That 's all you know. I 'm
for a cutting-out morning. Thanks muchly,
Alix ; I '11 do the dusting if you '11 do the
lamps.'
4
'itate retired to domestic duties in the back
regions.
Evie, before doing the dusting, took up the
Daily Message and glanced through the feuille-
ton. It had been the same feuilleton for many
weeks. It was always headed by a synopsis
and a list of characters : ' John Hargreave, a
54 Non-Combatants and Others
strong, quiet man of deep feeling, to whom
anything underhand is abhorrent. Valerie
Lascelles, a beautiful girl of nineteen, who loves
John. Sylvia, her sister, exactly like Valerie
in face, but not in character, for she is shallow
and hard and lives abroad, the widow of a
foreign count. Cyril Arbuthnot, a smart man
about town, unscrupulous in his methods, who
sticks at nothing.' No wonder Evie found it
interesting.
Then she flicked competently round the
drawing-room with a duster, calling to Florence
to clear away quick, because she wanted the
table for cutting out.
Alix did the lamps in the pantry.
Mrs. Frampton did accounts and wrote to
Aunt Nellie, in the dining-room.
Florence cleared away, also in the dining-
room.
Kate looked in in her hat and coat, with the
little red books that come from shops on a
Saturday morning.
' I 'd better get in a new tongue, I suppose,
mother. The one we have will scarcely be
sufficient for Sunday/
' Yes, dear. Get one of the large ones/
Kate went bill-paying.
Evie extracted incomprehensively - shaped
pieces of brown paper from the pages of Home
Saturday Morning at Violette 55
Chat, a weekly periodical which she took in,
and began her cutting-out morning.
Alix returned from the lamps and said, ' I 'm
going out for the day with some people. I may
go on to Nicholas in the evening, very likely/
(It may or may not have been before mentioned
that Alix had a brother of that name.)
' Very well, dear. Bring your brother or
some of your friends back with you afterwards,
if you like. I 'm sure it would be very nice
if they stopped to supper. Our supper 's
simple, but there 's always plenty for all. And
the Vinneys are coming round afterwards, so
we shall be a nice party. I asked them be-
cause they 've got that cousin, Miss Simon,
staying with them, and I thought they 'd be
glad of an evening's change for her/
' That fatty in a sailor blouse,' Evie, who
observed clothes, commented. ' I should think
the} 7 'd be glad of a change from her. She 's a
suffragette, and talks the weirdest stuff ; she 's
as good as a play to listen to. ... I shouldn't
think your brother 'd get on with the Vinneys
a bit, Alix/
' Probably not,' said Alix. ' He doesn't with
most people/
Evie looked as if she shouldn't think he
did.
' What 's the name of that new floor-polish,
56 Non-Combatants and Others
to tell Aunt Nellie ? ' said Mrs. Frampton,
pausing in her letter.
But, as Kate was out, and as it was neither
Ronuk nor Cherry Blossom (suggestions of un-
equal levels of intelligence from Evie and Alix),
she had to leave a space for it.
CHAPTER V
AFTERNOON OUT
ALIX sat on the bus and rushed through the
shining summer morning down Upper Clapton
Road, Lower Clapton Road, Mare Street,
Hackney Road, Shoreditch, Bishopsgate, and
so into the city. The noon war news leaped
from placards, in black and red and green. A
mile of trenches taken near Festubert a mile
of trenches lost again. Alix did not care and
would not look. Anyhow it wasn't Paul's part
of the line. London was damp and shining
under a windy blue sky. They had cleared
away the bodies of those struck down last night
by motor buses in the dark. What a sacrifice
of life ! Was it worth while ?
The traffic was held up every now and then
by companies of recruits swinging along, in
khaki and mufti, jolly, absorbed, resolute, self-
conscious, or amused. There went down
Threadneedle Street the Artists' Rifles. Some
looked like studio artists, pale, intelligent, some-
67
58 Non-Combatants and Others
times spectacled, others more like pavement
artists, others again suggested sign-painters.
But this last was probably an illusion, as sign-
painters since last August had been mostly too
busy painting out and repainting names on
signs to have time for soldiering. Many classes
have lost heavily by this war, such as publicans,
milliners, writers, Belgians, domestic servants,
university lecturers, publishers, artists, actors,
and newspapers. But some have gained ; among
these are sheep-growers, house-agents, sugar-
merchants, munition - makers, colliers, coal-
owners, and sign-painters. An unequal world.
The bus waited, held up opposite a recruiting
station. Alix, looking down, met the hypnotic
stare of the Great Man pictured on the walls,
and turned away, checking a startled giggle.
Anyhow she was lame, and not the sex which
goes either, worse luck. (On that desperate
root of bitterness she never dwelt : that way
madness lay.) Her swerving eyes fell next on
one of the pictures of domestic life designed
and executed (so common report had it) by
the same Great Man ; the picture in which an
innocent and reproachful infant inquires of a
desperately embarrassed but apparently not
irate parent, ' Daddy, what did you do to help
when Britain fought for freedom in 1915 ? '
Alix giggled again, and looked up at the white
Afternoon Out 59
clouds racing across the summer sky, where
was no war nor rumours of war.
At Bond Street she left the bus and went to
Grafton Street, where there was a small exhibi-
tion of pictures by two young artists known
to Alix. Here she met by appointment three
friends, her fellow-students at the art school.
Their names were Nonie Maclure, Oliver
Banister, and Thomas Ashe. Miss Maclure and
Mr. Banister were there before her. They
greeted her with ' What cheer, Joanna ? '-
Joanna, because in a play composed and pro-
duced recently by their combined talent, Alix
had taken this part. Alix went to speak to
the exhibitors, who were standing about and
failing to look detached, and began to look
round, murmuring to her friends, ' What 's the
show like ? . . . Oh, she 's got that yellow
thing in . . .' and so forth. Presently Mr.
Thomas Ashe joined them. (It may here be
mentioned, lest readers should be unfairly
prejudiced against Mr. Ashe and Mr. Banister,
that one of them had a frozen lung and the
other a distended aorta. They were quite
good young men really, and would have pre-
ferred to go.)
60 Non-Combatants and Others
They criticised and appreciated the pictures
for an hour, with the interested criticism and
over-appreciation usually poured forth by young
persons on the works of their fellow-students
and contemporaries, often at the expense of
the older and staler and less in the only move-
ment that really matters.
' That 's like some of Doye's things/ said one
of the young men, and the other said, ' Doye 's
wounded, isn't he ? I saw it in the paper
to-day. I hope it 's not much/
Alix said it wasn't.
' He 's on his way home. I hope they send
him to a hospital in town, so we can all go and
see him/
Nonie Maclure shot her a curious glance.
She had never known quite how deep the
intimacy between these two had gone. She
sometimes wondered. She had thought just
before the war that it went very deep indeed.
But in these present days Alix seemed pre-
pared to play round at large with so many
young men, and to flirt, when that was the
game, with a light-handed recklessness only
exceeded by Nonie herself ; and Nonie, of
course, was notorious.
Afternoon Out 61
They went out to lunch. The world is
divided into those who have lunch in their own
homes, those who have lunch in some one
else's, those who have lunch in hotel restau-
rants, those who have lunch in nice eating-shops,
those who have lunch in less nice eating-shops,
such as A.B.C.'s, those who have lunch in
eating-shops very far from nice, those who
have lunch in handkerchiefs, and those who
do not have lunch at all. The classes are, of
course, not rigid ; many people alternate from
day to day between one and another of -them.
Alix and her friends were, most days, either in
class four or class five. To-day they were in
class four, being out for a happy day, and they
had lunch in a little place in Soho, full of
orange-trees in green tubs, and sunshine, and
maccaroni. They found one another interest-
ing, entertaining, and attractive. Nonie Maclure
was dark and good-looking, a fitfully brilliant
worker, and a consistently lively companion.
Oliver Banister was gentle and fair and delicate,
and indifferent to most things, only not to art
or to Nonie Maclure. He had tried to get
passed for the army, but, as he was rejected, he
settled down tranquilly and without the bitter-
ness that eats the souls of so many of the
62 Non-Combatants and Others
medically and sexually unfit. He recognised
the compensations of his lot. Tommy Ashe,
on the other hand, was bitter and angry like
Alix ; like her he would have hated the war
anyhow, even if he had been fighting, being a
sensitive and intelligent youth, but as it was
he loathed it so much that he would never
mention it unless he had to, and then only
with a sneer. It was partly this that drew
him to Alix and her to him. They were in the
same case. So they found they could trust one
another not to talk of the indecent monster.
Also he admired her unusual, delicate, ironic
type. Anyhow it was the fashion to have some
special friend among the girls at the school,
and it helped one to forget. So he and Alix
plunged into a flirtation not normally natural
to either.
The four of them flirted and ragged and j oked
and were funny all the afternoon, which they
spent in Richmond Park. Alix and Tommy
Ashe went off together and lost the other two,
and lay on the grass, and became rather more
intimate than they had ever been before. When
soldiers strolled by they looked the other way
and pretended not to see, and talked very fast
about anything that came into their heads.
Sometimes the soldiers were wounded ; once a
party of them, in hospital blues, sat down quite
Afternoon Out 63
near them, with two girls in V.A.D. uniform,
who called the soldiers by their surnames and
chaffed them. They were all being merry and
funny and having a good time. One was a
boy of eighteen, pink-cheeked and hilarious,
with his right leg cut short just below the
thigh.
' Look here, it 's time we found those two
people/ said Alix, sitting up. ' We must really
set about it in earnest/
So they went away, but presently they felt
more like tea than finding the others, so they
had some. When finally the party joined itself
together, it went to Earl's Court and had a
hilarious hour flip-flapping, wiggle-woggling,
and joy- wheeling. It desisted at half -past
six, dishevelled, battered and bruised, and
separated to fulfil its respective evening
engagements.
4
Alix went to see her brother Nicholas.
Nicholas was a journalist, on the staff of a
weekly paper which cost sixpence and with
whose politics he was not in agreement. As
there was no paper, weekly, sixpenny or other-
wise, with whose politics he was in agreement,
this was not strange. It may further be pre-
mised of Nicholas that he was twenty-seven
64 Non-Combatants and Others
years old, of good abilities, thought war too
ridiculous a business for him to take part or
lot in, was probably medically unfit to do so
but would not for the world have had it proved,
was completely lacking in any sense of venera-
tion for anything, negligently put aside as absurd
all forms of supernatural religion, shared rooms
with a curate friend in Clifford's Inn, and had
from an infant reacted so violently against
the hereditary enthusiasm which nevertheless
looked irrepressibly out of his eyes that he
had landed himself in an unintelligent degree
of cynicism in all matters.
Hither Alix went, when the evening sunshine
lay mellow on Chancery Lane. Alix had a
curious and quite unaccountable feeling for
Chancery Lane. It seemed to her romantic
beyond all reason. Just now it was as some
wild lane on the battle front, or like a trench
which has been shelled, for the most recent
airship raid had ploughed it up. A week ago
it had been the scene of that wild terror and
shrieking confusion which is characterised by a
euphemistic press as ' no panic/
Alix limped past the chaos quickly. An old
man tried to sell her a paper. ' Star, lady ?
Globe, Pall Mall, Evening News? British fail
to hold conquered trenches. . . .' Alix hurried
by; the newsvendor turned his attention to
Afternoon Out 65
some one else. Evening papers, of course, are
interesting, and should not really be missed ;
they often contain so much news that is ephe-
meral and fades away before the morning into
the light of common day ; they are as perish-
able and never-to-be-repeated as some frail and
lovely flower.
But Alix, ignoring them, reached Clifford's
Inn, and climbed the narrow oak stairway to
the rooms inscribed :
MR. N. I. SANDOMIR,
REV. C. M. V. WEST.
Both these gentlemen were in their sitting-
room. The Rev. C. M. V. West reposed on a
wicker couch, reading alternately two weekly
church papers and the Cambridge Magazine.
One of these papers was High Church, another
Broad Church, the third did not hold with
churches. The Rev. C. M. V. West was a
refined-looking young man, very neatly cas-
socked, with a nice face and a sense of humour.
In justice to him we must say that he worked
very hard as a rule, but had been enjoying a
deserved rest before evensong. To Alix he
stood for a queer force that was at work in the
world and which she had been brought up to
consider retrograde.
Nicholas Sandomir lay in an easy-chair, sur-
66 Non-Combatants and Others
rounded by review copies of books. He was
too broad-shouldered for his height ; he was
pale and prominent-jawed, with something of
the Slav cast of feature ; his mouth, like Alix's,
was the mouth of a cynic ; his eyes, small,
overhung, and deep blue, were the eyes of an
idealist. This paradox of his face was only one
among many paradoxes in him ; he was un-
reliable ; he disbelieved in all churches, and
lived, unaccountably, with a High Church
curate (this, probably, was because he liked
him personally and also liked to have an intel-
ligent person constantly at hand to disagree
with ; also he came, on his father's side, of a
race of devout and mystic Catholics). He
despised war, and looked with contempt on
peace societies (this was perhaps because, so
far as he worshipped anything, he worshipped
efficiency, and found both peace societies and
war singularly lacking in this quality). He
detested Germany as a power, and loathed
Russia who was combating her (this, doubt-
less, was because he was half a Pole).
Anyhow, this evening, when Alix came in,
he was sulkily, even viciously, turning the
pages of a little book he had to review, called
(it was one of a series) The Effects of the War
on Literature. He waved his disengaged hand
at Alix, and left it to West, who had much
Afternoon Out 67
better manners, to get up and put a chair for
her and pass and light her a cigarette.
' Did you meet Belgians on the stairs ? ' in-
quired West. ' They Ve put some in the rooms
above us the rooms that used to be Hans
Bauer's. Five of them, isn't it, Sandomir ? '
' Five to rise,' Nicholas replied. ' A baby
due next week, I 'm told.' (Unarrived babies
were among the things not alluded to at
Violette in mixed company : no wonder Vio-
lette found Nicholas peculiar.)
' It 's awkward/ West added, lowering his
voice and glancing at one of the shut bed-
room doors, ' because we keep a German, and
they can't meet/
' What do you do that for ? ' asked Alix un-
sympathetically .
'Awkward, isn't it?' said West. 'Because
they keep coming to see us the Belgians, I
mean (they like us rather), and he ' he nodded
at the bedroom ' has to scoot in there till
they 're gone. It 's like dogs and cats ; they
simply can't be let to meet.'
' Well, I don't know what you want with a
German, anyhow/
' He 's a friend of ours/ explained Nicholas.
' He was living in the Golders Green Garden
City, and it became so disagreeable for him
(they 're all so exposed there, you know
68 Non-Combatants and Others
nothing hid) that we asked him here instead.
If they find him he 's afraid they may put him
in a concentration camp, and of course if the
Belgians sighted him they 'd complain. He
means no harm, but unfortunately he had a
concrete lawn in his garden, about ten feet
square, where he used to bounce a ball for
exercise. Also he had made a level place on
his roof, among Mr. Raymond Unwin's sloping
tiles, where he used to sit and admire the
distant view through a spyglass. It 's all very
black against him, but he 's a studious and
innocent little person really, and he 'd hate to
be concentrated/ (' It would make one feel
so like essence of beef, wouldn't it ? ' West mur-
mured absently.) ' He 's not a true patriot,'
went on Nicholas. ' He wants the Hohen-
zollerns to be guillotined and a disruptive
country of small warring states to be re-estab-
lished. He writes articles on German internal
reform for the monthly reviews. He calls them
" Kill or Cure," or, " A short way with Im-
perialism," or some such bloody title. I don't
care for his English literary style, but his in-
tentions are excellent. . . . Well, and how 's
life ? ' Nicholas turned his small keen blue
eyes on his sister. ' You look as if you 'd been
out for a joy-day. You want some more hair-
pins, but we don't keep any here.'
Afternoon Out 69
' I 've been wiggle- woggling,' Alix admitted,
and added frankly, ' I feel jolly sick after it.'
' Our family constitution,' said her brother,
' is quite unfit for the strains we habitually
subject it to. Mine is. I feel jolly sick too.
But my indisposition is incurred in the path of
duty. I 've got to review the things, so I have
to read them a little here and there, anyhow.
And then, just as one feels one has reached
one 's limit, one gets a handbook of wisdom
like this, to finish one off.'
He read a page at random from The Effects
of the War on Literature. ' The war is putting
an end to sordidness and littleness, in literature
as in other spheres of human life. The second-
rate, the unheroic, the earthy, the petty, the
trivial how does it look now, seen in the light
of the guns that blaze over Flanders ? The
guns, shattering so much, have at least shat-
tered falsity in art. We were degenerate, a
little, in our literature and in our lives : we
have been made great. We are come, surely,
to the heroic, the epic pitch of living ; if we
cannot express it with a voice worthy of it,
then indeed it has failed in its deepest lesson
to us. We may expect a renascence of beauty
worthy to rank with the Romantic Revival
born of the French wars. . . .'
' Who is the liar ? ' asked Alix.
7o Non-Combatants and Others
Nicholas named him. ' I am thinking/ he
added, ' of starting an Effects of the War
series of my own. I shall call it Some Further
Effects. It will be designed to damp the spirits
of the sanguine. I shall do the one on Litera-
ture myself. I shall take revenge in it for all
the mush I Ve had to review lately. It 's
extraordinary, the stream of of the heroic and
the epic, isn't that it that pours forth daily.
The war seems to have given an unhealthy
stimulus to hundreds of minds and thousands
of pens. One knew it would, of course. No
doubt it was the same during the siege of
Troy, and all the great wars. Though, thank
heaven, we shall never know, as that sort of
froth is blown away pretty quick and lost to
posterity. It 's only the unhappy contempo-
raries who get it splashed all over them. And
this war is beastlier than any other, so the
rubbish is less counteracted by the decent
writers. The first-rate people, both the com-
batants and non-combatants, are too much
disgusted, too upset, to do first-rate work.
The war 's going on, and means to go on, too
long. Wells or some one said months ago that
people don't so much think about it as get
mentally scarred. It 's quite true. Lots of
people have got to the stage when they can
only feel, not think. And the best people hate
Afternoon Out 71
the whole business much too much to get
any ' renascence of beauty ' out of it. Who
was it who said the other day that the writers
to whom war is glamorous aren't as a rule
the ones who produce anything fit to call
literature. War 's an insanity ; and insane
things, purely destructive, wasteful, hideous,
brutal, ridiculous things, aren't what makes
art. The war 's produced a little fine poetry,
among a sea of tosh a thing here and there ;
but mostly oh, good Lord ! The flood of
cheap heroics and commonplace patriotic clap-
trap it 's swept slobbering all over us ; there
seems no stemming it. Literary revival be
hanged. All we had before and precious little
it was of decent work, clear and alive and
sane and close to reality, is being trampled to
bits by this this imbecile brute. And when
the time comes to collect the bits and try to
begin again, we shan't be able to ; there '11 be
no more spirit in us ; we shall be too battered
and beaten-. . . .' Nicholas, wound up to ex-
citement, was talking too long at a stretch.
He often did, being an egoist, and having in his
veins the blood of many eloquent and excited
revolutionary Poles, who had stood in market-
places and talked and talked, gesticulating,
pouring forth blood and fire. Nicholas, reacting
against this fervour, repudiating gesticulation,
72 Non-Combatants and Others
blood and fire, still talked. . . . But on
' battered and beaten ' he paused, in dis-
gusted emphasis, and West came in, half
absently, still turning the pages of the Challenge,
talking in his high, clear voice, monotonous
and fast (Nicholas was guttural and harsh).
' You underrate the power of human recovery.
You always do. It 's immense, as a matter
of fact. Give us fifty years twenty ten. . . .
Besides, look at the compensations. If the
good are battered and beaten, the bad are too.
It 's a well-known fact that many of the futurist
poets, in all the nations, have gone mad,
through trying to get too many battle noises
into their heads at once. So they, at least,
are silenced. I suppose they still write, in
their asylums in fact I Ve heard they do
(my uncle is an asylum doctor) but it gets no
further. . . .' He subsided into the Cambridge
Magazine.
1 Well, I 'd rather have the futurists than
the slops poured out by the people who un-
fortunately haven't brain enough even to go
mad/ Nicholas grumbled. (' And anyhow, I
don't believe in any of your uncles you Ve
too many.) The futurists at least were trying
to keep close to facts, even if they couldn't
digest them but brought them up with strident
noises. But these imbeciles the war seems
Afternoon Out 73
to be a sort of tonic to their syrupy little souls ;
it 's filled them up with vim and banal joy.
Not that the rot that has always been rot
particularly matters ; it merely means that the
people who used to express themselves in one
inane way now choose another, no worse ; but
it 's the silencing or the unmanning of the
good people that matters. Here 's Cathcart's
new book. I Ve just read it. It 's the work
of a shaken, broken man. It 's weak, irrational,
drifting, with no constructive purpose, no
coherence. You can almost hear the guns
crashing into it as he tried to write, and the
atrocity reports shrieking in his ears, and the
poison gas stifling him, and the militarists and
pacificists raving round him. His whole world 's
run off its rails and upset and broken to bits,
and he can't put it right side up again ; he's
lost his faith in it. He can only fumble and
stammer at it helplessly, weak and maundering
and incoherent. He ought to be helping to
build it up again, but he 's lost his construc-
tive power. Hundreds of people have. Con-
structive force will be the one thing needed
when the war is over ; any one with a pro-
gramme, and the brain and will to carry it
out ; but where 's it to come from ? Those
who aren't killed or cut to bits will be too
adrift and demoralised and dazed to do any-
74 Non-Combatants and Others
thing intelligent. We 're fast losing even such
mental coherence and concentration as we had.
Look, for instance, at you tw^o, while I 'm
talking (quite interestingly, too) ; are you
listening ? Certainly not. West is reading a
Church newspaper, and Alix drawing cats on
the margins of my proofs. . . . I 'm not
blaming you ; you can't help it ; you are
mentally, and probably morally, shattered. I
am too. People are more than ever like
segregated imbeciles, each absorbed in his or
her own ploy. Effects of the War on Human
Intelligence : that shall be one of my series.
I've spent an idiotic day. So have both of
you, I should guess. Yet we all three have
natural glimmerings of intelligence.'
' I Ve not spent an idiotic day/ said West
placidly.
Nicholas looked at him sardonically. ' Well,
let 's hear about it.'
' By all means/ West drew a long breath
and began, even faster than usual. ' I '11 skip
my before-breakfast proceedings, which you
wouldn't understand. But they weren't in
the least idiotic. After breakfast I spent an
hour talking to a friend of mine on leave from
France. The conversation was very interest-
ing and instructive ; for me, anyhow. We
talked about how rotten the grub in the
Afternoon Out 75
trenches is, how shameless the A.S.C. are, how
unreliable time-fuse bombs, and so on. Then,
since I am a parson, he kindly talked my
shop for a change, and naturally very soon
Jonah pushed his head in, and Noah, and a
few more of the gentlemen who seem to keep
the church doors shut against the British
working-man. I kicked them outside the
Church on to the dust-heap and left them
there, I hope to his satisfaction, and came
home and wrote a sermon advocating the dis-
use of the custom of perusing early Hebrew
history or reading it in churches. It 's quite
a good sermon, as my sermons go. (By the
way, that may, I 'm hoping, be one of the
Effects of the War on the Church. We Ve all
of us become so anxious to bring the working-
man into it and it 's very certain he won't
come in with the Old Testament legends bar-
ring the way. I '11 write that one of your
series for you, if I may.) Well, then I had
lunch with a lady who 's interested in factory-
girls' trade unions, and we discussed the
ways and means of them. That was jolly
useful.'
' He 's one of the clergymen, you know,'
Nicholas explained aside to Alix, ' who have
been said by an eminent Dean to be tumbling
over one another in their anxiety to become
76 Non-Combatants and Others
court chaplains to King Demos. He 's hope-
lessly behind the times, of course, because
Demos is in fetters now. West 's an Edwardian
churchman, though he fancies he is Neo-Post-
Georgian.'
' Oh, I 'm as early as you like,' West said
amiably. ' Pre-Edwardian Victorian or even
Pauline ; / don't mind. . . . Well, then I
attended a meeting of my parish branch of the
U.D.C. The meeting was broken up by rioters.
So I addressed them from a window on freedom
of speech. My vicar came along as I was doing
so, and came in and lectured me on taking
part in political movements. So I stopped,
and did some parish visiting instead, and had
a good deal of interesting conversation, and
incidentally was given very strong tea at three
different houses. Then I came home and read
the Church Times, the Challenge, and the
Cambridge Magazine. All interesting in their
way, and quite different. No, I know you
don't like any of them. People write to the
Challenge every week asking ' Are Christianity
and War compatible ? ' and come to the con-
clusion that they are not, but that Christians
may often have to fight. People write to the
Church Times saying that they have found a
clergyman who won't wear a chasuble, and
what shall they do to him ? People write to
Afternoon Out 77
the Cambridge Magazine saying that every one
over forty should be disenfranchised and in-
terned, if not shot. Jolly good papers, all the
same. How can they help being written to ?
None of us can. I get written to myself. . . .
Well, next I 'm going to church to read even-
song, and for an hour after evensong but you
wouldn't understand about that. Anyhow,
eventually I have supper with the vicar.' He
ran down with a jerk, and turned to Alix, who
had been following him with some interest.
' That 's not an idiotic day ; not from my
point of view,' he informed her.
' Sounds all right,' she said. ' But it 's not
the sort of day Nicholas and I were brought
up to understand, you know. We know no-
thing about the Church. From not going, I
suppose.'
' You should go/ he assured her. * You 'd
find it interesting. ... Of course it 's been
largely a failure so far, and dull in lots of
ways, because we 've not yet fulfilled its
original intention ; it hasn't so far succeeded
in preventing (though it 's fought them and
largely lessened them) any of the things it 's
out to prevent commercialism and cant and
cruelty and classes and lies and hate and
war. It 's got to break the world to bits and
put it together again, and before it can do
78 Non-Combatants and Others
that it 's got to break itself to bits and put
itself together. It 's got to become like dyna-
mite, and blow up the rubbish its own rubbish
first, then the world's. . . .' He consulted his
wrist-watch, said, ' I must go/ shook hands
with Alix, and went quickly, trim and alert
and neat, to blow up the world.
' He talks too much/ said Nicholas, in his
hearing. ' Who doesn't, in these days ? I do
myself. It 's better than to talk too little. If
we say a great deal, we may say a word of
sense sometimes. If we say very little, the
odds are that all we do say is rubbish, from
lack of practice/ He yawned. ' You 'd better
stay to dinner. I Ve got Andreiovitch Romevsky
coming, to meet Adolf Kopfer, our German
friend, so talk on the European situation will
be hampered arid constrained/
' Funny things he stands for/ Alix com-
mented, still thinking of Mr. West. ' The
Church. ... I suppose it really is out to stop
war.'
' Presumably. But, as its representatives
say, its endeavours so far have been a frost.
It 's been as unsuccessful as the peace confer-
ences mother attends. But apparently the
members of both are obliged, by their faith, to
be incurable optimists. West 's always full of
life and hope ; nothing daunts him/
Afternoon Out 79
' Funny/ MX mused still. The thought
glanced through her, ' Clergymen can't fight
either, they 're like me. Perhaps religion
helps them to forget ; takes their minds off.
Like painting. Like Richmond Park and
Tommy Ashe. Like wiggle - woggling. I
wonder/
On that wonder she left the Church, and
said, ' Cousin Emily asked me to bring you
back to supper with me. You 'd meet the
Vinneys, from the Nutshell, who are coming
in afterwards, so we should be a nice party,
she says. But Evie says you and the Vinneys
wouldn't get on. I don't think Evie thinks
you 're fit for respectable society at all. So
you 'd better not come/
' Shouldn't dream of it/ Nicholas grunted.
' Even if I hadn't got Russians and Germans
coming here. You and your Violettes and
your Nutshells ! It beats me what you think
you 're up to there/
Alix gave her faint, enigmatic smile. ' It 's
nice and peaceful/ she said. ' Like cotton-
wool. . . . Well, good-night, Nicky. No, I
won't stay to dinner, thanks. You can tackle
your own awkward social situations for your-
self. I 'm for Violette/
8o Non-Combatants and Others
5
She limped down the wooden stairs, and the
court was golden in the evening light, a haven
beyond which the wild river of Fleet Street
surged.
' Special. War Extra. British driven
back. . . .' The cries, the placards, were
like lost ships tossed lightly on the top of
wild waters. They would soon sink, if one did
not' listen or look.
CHAPTER VI
EVENING AT VIOLETTE
AFTER supper Kate got out the good coffee
cups, and they waited for the Vinneys. Kate
was rather pink, and wore a severe blouse, in
which she looked plain ; it was a mortification
she thought she ought to practise when the
Vinneys came. Evie was skilfully altering a
hat. Alix made a pen-and-ink sketch of her
as she bent over it.
Mrs. Frampton knitted a sock. The Evening
Thrill came in, and Kate opened it, for Mrs.
Frampton liked to hear tit-bits of news while
she worked.
' Stories impossible to doubt/ read Kate, in
her prim, precise voice, ' reach us continually
of atrocities practised by the enemy. . . .'
She read several, unsuitable for these pages.
Mrs. Frampton clicked horror with her tongue,
The papers she took in were rich in such stories.
As it was impossible to doubt them, she did
F
82 Non-Combatants and Others
not try. Possibly they gave life a certain
dreadful savour.
' To think of the march of civilisation, and
this still going on/ Mrs. Frampton commented.
' I 'm sure any one would think they 'd be
ashamed.'
Kate said, with playful acidity (Kate had
reached what with many is a playful age),
' Thank you, Alix. Thank you ever so much,
Alix, for getting between me and the lamp/
Alix moved, her attempt foiled.
Kate read next the letter of a private soldier
at the front. ' The Boches are all cowards.
They can't stand against our boys. They fly
like rabbits when we charge with the bayonet.
You should hear them squeal, like so many
pigs. There 's not a German private hi the
army that wants to fight. The officers have
to keep flogging them on the whole time.'
' Poor things, I 'm sure one can't but be
sorry for them,' said Mrs. Frampton. ' Knit
two and make one, purl two, slip one, pass the
slipped one over, drop four and knit six.' (Or
anyhow, something of that sort, for she had got
to the heel, as one unfortunately at last must.)
' It 's wonderful how long the war goes on,
since all the Germans are like that,' said Kate,
without conscious irony, as she took up her
own knitting. Hers was a body-belt. 'I be-
Evening at Violette 83
lieve this new wool is different from the last.
Somewhat stringier, it seems. Brown will have
to take it back, if it is.'
' I say, just fancy/ said Evie, ' those sequin
tunics at B. & H.'s have come down to seven
and eleven three. I think I could rise to that,
even in war time.'
The war mainly affected Evie by reducing
the demand for hats, and consequently lowering
the salary she received at the exclusive and
ladylike milliner's where she worked.
As she spoke she caught sight of her three-
quarter likeness as etched by Alix.
' Goodness gracious,' she commented.
' You Ve made me look anything on earth !
I mayn't be much, but I hope I 'm not that
sort of freak/
' It 's very good/ said Alix complacently.
' Rather particularly good. I shall take it to
the School on Monday and show it to Mr.
Ben dish/
' It may be good/ said Evie, ' since you say
so. All I say is, it isn't me. It 's more like
some wild woman out of a caravan. Don't
you go telling people it J s me, or they 11 be
coming to shut me up. There 's the bell ;
that 's them/
The Vinney party arrived. It consisted of
Mr. Vincent Vinney, a bright young solicitor
84 Non-Combatants and Others
of twenty-eight ; his lately acquired wife, a
pretty girl who laughed when he was witty,
which was often ; his young brother Sidney, a
stout, merry youth of nineteen, a bank clerk ;
and their cousin Miss Simon, the fat girl in
the sailor blouse, which was, it seemed, her
evening toilette also. (In case some should
blame the Vinney brothers for not taking an
active part in the war, it may be remarked that
the elder supported a wife and the younger a
mother, that they represented a class which,
for several good reasons, produces fewer soldiers
than any other, and that they both belonged
to the Clerks' Drill Corps, and wore several
flags on their bicycles. And young Mrs.
Vinney belonged to a Voluntary Aid Detach-
ment, not at present in working.)
They came in with the latest news. The
British had been driven back out of a thousand
yards of trench they had taken. They hadn't
enough ammunition.
' Well,' said Mrs. Frampton, knitting, and
really more interested in her heel than in the
fortunes of war, ' it 's all very dreadful to
think of. But I suppose we must leave it in
the hands of the Almighty, who always moves
in a mysterious way.'
(Mrs. Frampton had been brought up evan-
gelically, and so mentioned the Almighty more
Evening at Violette 85
casually than Kate, who was High, thought
at.)
' Well, what I say is/ said young Mrs. Vinney,
who was of a cheerful habit, ' it 's not a bit
of use being depressed by the news, because
no one can ever tell if it 's true or not. It 's
all from that Bureau, and we all know what
they are. Why, they said there weren't any
Russians in England, when every one knew
there were crowds, and they always say the
Zepp. raids don't do any damage to factories
and arsenals, and every one knows they do.
They don't seem to mind what they say.'
' Well, for my part,' Evie said, ' I don't see
why we shouldn't all be as chirpy as we can.
We can't help by being glum, can we ? '
' That 's just it,' said Mrs. Vinney. ' Now,
there 's the theatre. Of course, you know,
Vin and I wouldn't go to anything really
festive just now, like the Girl on the Garden
Wall, but I 'm not ashamed to say we did go
to the Man Who Stayed Behind.'
' Why wouldn't you go to anything really
festive ? ' Alix asked, curious as to the psycho-
logy of this position.
Mrs. Vinney looked round for sympathy.
' Why, what a question ! It 's not the
moment, of course. One wouldn't like to.
You wouldn't, would you ? '
86 Non-Combatants and Others
' Oh, me. I 'd go to anything I thought
would amuse me/
' Well/ Mrs. Vinney decided, ' I suppose you
and I aren't a bit alike. I just couldn't, and
there it is. I dare say it 's all my silliness.
But with the men out there in such danger,
and laying down their lives the way they 're
doing . . . well, I couldn't sit and look at the
Girl on the Garden Wall, not if I had a stall
free. The way I see it is, the men are fight-
ing for us women, and where should we be
but for them, and the least we can do is not
to forget all about them, seeing gay musical
plays. The way I 'm made, I suppose, and I
don't pretend to judge for others/
' It 's all a question of taste and feeling/
Kate pronounced absently, more interested in
a new stitch she was introducing into her body-
belt.
The fat dark girl, Miss Simon, came in on
the mention of women. It was her subject.
' Women's work in war time is every bit as
important as men's, that 's what I say ; only
they don't get the glory/
Mrs. Vinney giggled and looked at the others.
' Now Rachel 's off again. She 's a caution
when she gets on the woman question. She
spent most of her time in Holloway in the old
days, didn't you, dear ? '
Evening at Violette 87
' She thinks she ought to have the vote/ Sid
Vinney explained to Alix in a whisper. Alix,
who had hitherto moved in circles where every
one thought, as a matter of course, that they
ought to have the vote, disappointed him by
her lack of spontaneous mirth.
Miss Simon was inquiring, undeterred by
these comments, ' Who keeps the country at
home going while the men are at the war ?
Who brings up the families ? Who nurses the
soldiers ? What do women get out of a war,
ever ? '
' The salvation of their country, Miss Simon,'
said Mrs. Frampton, ' won for them by brave
men.'
' After all,' said Sid, ' the women can't
fight, you know. They can't fight for their
country.'
Miss Simon regarded him with scorn.
' How much are you fighting for your country,
I 'd like to know ? '
' One for you, Sid,' said Evie cheerily,
ignoring Sid's aggrieved, ' Well, you know I
can't leave mother.'
' And fighting isn't everything,' Miss Simon
went on, 'and war time isn't everything.
There's women's work in peace time. What
about Octavia Wills that did so much for
housing ? Wasn't she helping her country ?
88 Non-Combatants and Others
And, for war work, what price Florence Night-
ingale ? What would the country have done
without her, and what did she get out of all
she did ? '
Mrs. Frampton, who had not read the life
of that strong-minded person, but cherished a
mid- Victorian vision of a lady with a lamp,
sounder in the heart than in the head, said,
' She kept her place as a woman, Miss Simon.'
Evie, who was not listening much, finding
the subject tedious, put in vaguely, ' After all,
when it comes to fighting, we are left in the
lurch, aren't we ? '
Sid said, ' Oh dear no, Miss Evie. What
price Christabel and Co. ? They ought to have
had the iron cross all round, the militants
ought. They did more to earn it than the
Huns ever did.'
* Cheap sarcasm/ said Miss Simon, ' is no
argument. And I don't blame any woman for
using what means she 's got. There are times
when a woman 's got to forget herself.'
Kate said, ' I don't think a woman 's ever
got to forget herself,' and there was a murmur
of applause. Alix giggled. She wondered if
social evenings at Violette were often like
this.
'You don't understand,' said the round-
faced girl helplessly. ' You may be all right,
Evening at Violette 89
in your station of life, but you Ve got to look
at other women's the poor. We Ve got to
do something about the poor. The vote would
help us/
' There have always/ said Mrs. Frampton,
' been the poor, and there always will be/
' That 's just why/ suggested Alix, momen-
tarily joining in, ' it might be worth while to
do something about them/ Miss Simon looked
at her in sudden gratitude ; she had a mis-
placed and soon-quenched hope that this seem-
ingly indifferent and amused girl might prove
an ally.
Kate said, placidly, ' Well, they say that if
you were to take a lot of men and women and
give them all the same money, they 'd all be
quite different again to-morrow. . . /
Mrs. Frampton added that she went by the
Bible. ' The poor ye shall have always with
you/
' Mrs. Frampton, it doesn't say that. And
even if it did well, it 's as Miss Sandomir
says, it 's all the more reason for thinking
about them. Anyhow, you can't take the Bible
that way ; it 's nothing to do with it/
' It 's the plain word of God, and that 's
sufficient for me/ said Mrs. Frampton re-
pressively.
Vincent Vinney, tired of the poor, who are
90 Non-Combatants and Others
indeed exhausting, regarded in the mass as
a subject for contemplation, brought the dis-
cussion back to women.
' What I 'd like to know is, where is a woman
to get her knowledge from, if she 's to help
in public affairs ? A man can pick up things
at his work and his club, but a woman working
in the house all day has no time even to read
the papers. And if she did, her husband
wouldn't like her to start having opinions,
perhaps different to his. There are far too
many divorces and separations already because
husbands and wives go different ways, and it
would be worse than ever. Eh, Flossie ? '
Mrs. Frampton said, ' We heard of a woman
only last month who went out to a public
meeting something about foreign politics, I
think it was and her baby fell on to the fire
and was burnt to a cinder, poor little love/
' Well, she might just as likely have been
going out shopping/
' But she wasn't,' said Kate conclusively.
' I don't think/ said Mrs. Frampton, ' that
a woman desires any more than her home and
her husband and children, if she 's a proper
woman/
Evie's contribution was, ' Well, I must say
I do prefer men to girls, and I don't mind
saying so/
Evening at Violette 91
Sid's was, ' I heard of a man whose wife
took to talking about politics, and he hung
his coat to one peg in her wardrobe and his
trousers to another, and he said, ' Now, Eliza,
which will you wear ? '
It was apparently the combination of this
anecdote and Evie's remark before it that
broke Miss Simon down. She suddenly col-
lapsed into indignant tears. Every one was
uncomfortable. Mrs. Frampton said kindly,
* Come, come, my dear, it 's only talk. It
isn't worth crying about, I 'm sure, with so
many real troubles in the world just now.'
' You won't see' sobbed Miss Simon, who
looked particularly plain when crying. ' You
none of you see. Except her ' she indicated
Alix ' and she won't talk ; she only smiles to
herself at all of us. You tell silly tales, and
you say silly things, and you think you 've
scored but you haven't. It isn't argument,
that you like men more than women or women
more than men. And that man married to
Eliza was an idiot, and not a bit funny or
clever, and you all think he scored over
her.'
' Well, really,' said Sid, and grinned sheep-
ishly at the others.
Kate had fetched a glass of water. ' Drink
some,' she said kindly. ' It '11 make you feel
92 Non-Combatants and Others
better.' But Miss Simon pushed it aside and
mopped her eyes and blew her nose and pulled
herself together.
' Fancy crying before every one/ thought
Evie. ' And just from being in a passion about
getting the worst of it in talk. She is a speci-
men/
' The boys shouldn't draw Rachel on to make
such a silly of herself/ thought young Mrs.
Vinney.
' Poor girl, she must have been working too
hard, she 's quite hysterical/ thought Mrs.
Frampton.
' Having her staying with them must draw
Vin and Floss very close together/ thought
Kate, who had loved Vin long before Floss
met him.
' We shan't have any more fun out of this
evening ; we '11 go home/ thought Vincent,
and glanced at his wife.
' What a difference between one girl and
another/ thought Sid, and gazed at Evie.
' I wonder if many people are like these/
thought Alix, speculating. Were discussions at
Violette, discussions in all the thousands of
Violettes, always like this ? Not argument,
not ideas, not facts. Merely statements, quota-
Evening at Violette 93
tions rather, of hackneyed and outworn senti-
ments, prejudices second-hand, yet indomitable,
unassailable, undying, and the relation of
stories, without relevance or force, and (but
this much more rarely, surely) a burst of
bitterness and emotion to wind it all up.
Curious. Rachel Simon, like the rest, was
stupid and ignorant, her brain a chaos of half-
assimilated, inaccurate facts (she said Wills
when she meant Hill) and crude sentiments.
She seemed to belong, oddly, to an outworn
age (the late eighties, was it ? Alix wasn't
old enough to know). But Alix was sorry for
her, remembering the look in her face when
they had each in turn dealt her a finishing
blow. Alix rather wished Evie hadn't made
that idiotic remark about men and girls ;
wished Mrs. Frampton hadn't talked of proper
women ; wished Kate hadn't said ' But she
wasn't ' ; even wished she herself had joined
in a little. Only it was all too inane. . . .
3
To change the subject Vincent Vinney said
they had collared another German baker spy
down in Camberwell.
' These bakers/ said Mrs. Frampton, ' do
seem to be dreadful people. We Ve left off
94 Non-Combatants and Others
taking our Hovis loaf, since they found that
wireless in Camberwell the other day/
' You can't be too careful, can you ? ' said
Mrs. Vinney. ' For my part I 'd like to see
every German in England shut up in gaol for
a life-sentence. But we must be trotting, Mrs.
Frampton, or we shall miss our beauty-sleep.
Good-night ; we Ve enjoyed the evening
awfully. Oh, Evie, I Ve got those blouse
patterns from Harrod's ; can you come round
to-morrow afternoon and help me choose ?
Come early and stay to tea. You too, Kate,
won't you ? You are a girl ; you never come
when I ask you.'
Kate looked uncomfortable, and helped Miss
Simon (now composed, but looking plainer than
ever with her red eyes and nose) into her coat.
To see the Vinneys together by their own fire-
side was rather more than Kate could bear,
though she had a good deal of stolid outward
endurance. Her hands shook as she handled
the ugly green coat. She wanted to avoid
shaking hands with the Vinneys, but she could
not. The familiar physical thrill ran through
her at Vincent's hearty clasp, and left her
limp.
' I 'm afraid it 's commencing to rain/ said
Kate.
1 Good-night ah 1 / said Mrs. Frampton.
Evening at Violette 95
' We Ve had quite a little discussion, haven't
we ? I 'm sure one ought to talk things out
sometimes, it improves the mind. Now I do
hope you won't all get wet. You must take
our umbrellas.'
CHAPTER VII
HOSPITAL
ABOUT a week later, Alix and Nonie Maclure
went to see Basil Doye in hospital.
' Hate hospitals, don't you ? ' Nonie remarked,
as they entered its precincts. ' I Ve a sister
V.A.D.ing here Peggy, you know her, she 's
having a three-months' course but I Ve not
been to see her yet. I can't remember her
ward ; it 's a men's surgical, I think. We 11
go and find her afterwards. I don't think
she '11 be able to stick her three months, because
of her feet. They swell up so ; they make
the nurses stand all the time, you know, even
when they 're doing needlework and things.
She says half the nurses in the hospital have
foot and leg diseases. Silly, isn't it? The
V.A.D.'s could sit down sometimes, but they
don't like to when the regulars mayn't. They 're
unpopular enough as it is. Peggy asked the
staff-nurse in her ward why all the nurses
didn't combine and ask to have the standing-
Hospital 97
rule altered, but she only said you can't get
hospital rules altered, they are like that.
Nurses must be idiots . . .'
They crossed the court that led to the wing
with the officers' wards. It was dotted with
medical students.
' Rabbits,' Nonie considered them. ' All that
are left of them, I suppose. Peggy says they 're
mostly rather rotters. They have a great time
with the nurses. One of them tried to have
a great time with Peggy the other day, but
she wasn't having any. . . . The Royal Family
wing we want, don't we ? Darwin, Lister . . .
No, that must be men of science. I suppose
that 's ours, up those stairs/
It was one of those hospitals in which the
wards are named after persons socially or intel-
lectually eminent. In the wing Nonie and
Alix wanted the wards were entitled Victoria,
Albert Edward, Alexandra, Princess Mary,
George, and so forth. One, named doubtless
in happier international times, was even called
Wilhelm. Out of Wilhelm, as they passed its
glass door, came four figures, white-clad from
head to foot, wheeling a stretcher on which
lay a round-faced little girl of sixteen, trying
to smile.
' Going down to the theatre,' Nonie whispered.
' Rather shuddery, isn't it ? '
G
98 Non-Combatants and Others
They entered Albert Edward, which was a
small ward of twelve beds, used just now for
officers. It smelt of iodoform. Several of the
beds had visitors round them. Some of the
patients were in wheeled chairs, smoking. One,
in bed, was singing, unintelligibly, in a high,
shrill voice. At the table by the centre
window two nurses stood, a probationer and
a V.A.D., making swabs and talking. They
looked tired, and were very young. The other
two nurses, the staff -nurse and the super, were
talking to two of the patients. They had
learnt not to look so tired. Also perhaps the
pleasant excitement of being in Albert Edward
bore them up.
The staff -nurse said, ' Mr. Doye ? That 's
his bed over there nine. He 's up in a chair
this afternoon. He 's in pretty bad pain most
of the time. They may have to amputate, but
the doctor hopes to manage without/
Alix and Nonie went across the ward to nine,
where Mr. Doye, in a brown dressing-gown, sat
in a wheeled chair, smoking a cigarette and
talking to the super, who was rather nice-
looking and had auburn hair. In the next bed
lay the singer, with fixed blue eyes and flushed
cheeks and a capeline bandage round his head,
Hospital 99
carolling German songs in a high, monotonous
voice.
' Quite delirious, poor thing/ the super ex-
plained to the visitors. ' His nerves are ah 1 to
bits. He was a prisoner, till he got exchanged.
And would you believe it, they 'd never taken
the shrapnel out of his head ; he went under
operation for it here last week.' She moved
away, whispering first to Nonie behind the
patient's back, ' He has to be kept pretty
quiet, please ; the pain gets bad on and
off.'
' Hullo/ said Basil Doye, smiling at them.
' This is great.'
He had a soft, rather quick way of speaking ;
to-day he was huskier than usual, perhaps
because he was ill. He was long and slim ;
he had used, in pre-war days, to lounge and
slouch, but possibly did that no more. Any-
how to-day he merely lay limply in a chair,
so they could not judge. His long pale face
and flexible mouth and dark eyebrows were
always moving and changing ; so were his
rather bright eyes, that kept shading and
glinting from green to hazel. His forehead
and rumpled hair were damp just now, either
from the heat or from some other cause. His
bandaged right hand was raised in a sling.
' You do look an old wreck/ said Nonie
ioo Non-Combatants and Others
frankly. ' What did you go and do it for ?
A silly way of getting wounded, I call it, play-
ing ball with bombs.'
' Rotten, wasn't it ? But it would have
played ball with me if I hadn't. It was bound
to go off in a moment, you see, and I naturally
tried to house it with the foe first ; one often
can. My mistake, I know. These little things
will happen. . . . Isay, you 're the first people
I Ve seen from the shop. How 's it going ?
Who are the good people this year ? '
They began to tell him. He listened, fidget-
ing, with restless eyes.
' Have a smoke ? ' he broke in. ' No, I sup-
pose you mustn't here. Sorry ; didn't mean
to interrupt. . . .'
They were talking about the exhibition in
Graf ton Street.
' I must get round there,' he said, ' when
I 'm not so tied by the leg.'
' How long will they keep you here, d' you
imagine ? '
' Haven't an earthly. They may be de-
priving me of a finger or two in a few days.
Or not. They don't seem to know their own
minds about it.'
' Good Lord ! ' murmured Nonie, taken aback.
' I say, don't let them. You you 'd miss
them so.'
Hospital 1 01
' Halli, hallo, halli, hallo 1
Bei uns geht's immer so 1 '
shrilled number eight.
Doye moved impatiently. ' He ought to be
taken away, poor beggar. ... I loathe hos-
pitals. People who are ill oughtn't to be with
other people in the same miserable condition ;
it 's too depressing. One wants the undamaged,
as an antidote. That 's why visitors are so
jolly.' His restless eyes glanced at Nonie's
dark, glowing brilliance in her yellow frock,
and at Alix, pale and cool and thin in green.
' Above all,' he added, ' one wants sanity
and normalness and cheeriness, not people with
their nerves in rags, like that poor chap.'
Eight broke out again, half singing, half
humming some students' chorus
' Tra la la, in die Nacht Quartier ! '
The auburn-haired nurse came and stood by
him for a moment, quieting him.
' Come now, come now, you must be quiet,
you know.'
1 Rather a pleasant person, that nurse,' said
Doye when she had gone. ' Jolly hair, hasn't
she? . . . Alix,' he added, 'do you know, you
don't look up to much. Is it overwork, or
merely the air of London in June ? '
' It 's the air of hospitals, I expect,' Nonie
IO2 Non-Combatants and Others
answered for her. ' She turned white directly
we got into the ward/
' Beastly places,' Basil agreed.
Alix began to talk, rather fast. She told
stories of the other people at the art school ;
Nonie joined in, and they made Basil laugh.
He talked too, also fast. His unhurt hand
drummed on the arm of his chair ; his fore-
head grew damper, his eyes shifted about under
his black brows. He talked nonsense, ab-
surdly ; they all did. They all laughed, but
Basil laughed most ; he laughed too much.
He said it was a horrible bore out there ; funny,
of course, in parts, but for the most part irre-
deemably tedious. And no reason to think it
would ever end, except by both sides just
getting too tired of it to go on. ... Idiotic
business, chucking bombs over into trenches
full of chaps you had no grudge against and
who wished you no ill ... and they chucking
bombs at you, much more idiotic still. The
whole thing hopelessly silly. . . .'
1 Heil 'ge Nacht, Heil 'ge Nacht/ trilled Eight,
with a nightmare of Christmas on him.
' Oh, damn/ muttered Basil, and got scarlet
and then white.
The staff-nurse came to them. She was not
auburn-haired, but efficient and good-looking
and dark, with a clear, sharp voice.
Hospital 103
' I think your visitors had better go now,
Mr. Doye.'
She made signs to them that he was in pain,
which they knew before. They went ; he joked
as he said good-bye, and they joked back. As
they left the ward, Eight's wild voice rose, in
a sad air they knew :
' Mein Bi-er und Wei-ein 1st fri-isch und klar ;
Mein Tochterlein liegt auf der To-otenbahr. . . .'
' Come now, come now,' admonished Staff.
On the stairs they met a tall woman with a
long pale face and black hair, and eyes full
of green light. She stopped and said to Alix,
' How do you do ? Basil told me you were
going to see him to-day, so I left you a little
time. He mustn't have too many at once.
He has a lot of pain, for so slight a thing. . . .
I shall be glad when I can get him away for a
change.'
Her eyes, looking at Alix's pale face, were
kind and friendly. She liked Alix, who was
Basil's friend and had stayed with them last
summer in the country. She thought her
clever and attractive, if selfish. She hurried on
through the glass door into Albert Edward.
* Mrs. Doye, isn't it ? ' said Nonie. ' Must
IO4 Non-Combatants and Others
have been just like him twenty years ago. . . .
I say, how sickening, isn't it, people getting
smashed up like that. Poor old Basil. All on
edge, I thought, didn't you? What rot he
talked. ... I say, if he loses those fingers it
will be all U. P. with his career. ... I don't
expect he will.' She shot a glance at Alix,
whom she suspected of feeling faint. ' Let 's
come and find Peggy. I haven't an earthly
where her ward is. It 's called after some man
of science.' But there are so many of these,
and all so much alike.
' If it was painters,' said Nonie presently,
' I might have remembered. Who are the men
of science ? '
' Darwin/ suggested Alix intelligently.
' Galileo. Sir Isaac Newton. Sir Oliver Lodge.
Lots more/
' Well, let 's try this passage/
They tried it. It led them on and on. It
looked wrong, but might be right, in such a
strange world as a hospital, where anything
may be right or wrong and you never know
till you try.
They saw at last ahead of them a closed
door not a glass door but a baize one. From
behind it screaming came, wild, shrill, desper-
ate, as if some one was being hurt to death.
' O Lord ! ' said Nonie, ' it 's the theatre.
Hospital 105
Look, it 's written on the door. Come away
quick. There must be an operation on/
Beyond the door there was a shuffling and
scuffling ; it was pushed open, and two figures
muffled in white, like the stretcher- women,
dragged out a Red Cross girl in a faint.
' Fetch her some water,' said one. ' Idiot,
why didn't she come out before she went off ?
These Red Cross girls All right, she 's coming
round. ... I say, you know, you mustn't do
that again. People are supposed to come out
of the theatre before they faint, not after. It 's
an awful crime. ... Is it your first opera-
tion ? Well, it was silly of them to send you
down to such a bad one. I expect the scream-
ing upset you. She didn't feel anything, you
know. . . . Here, drink this. You 're all right
now, aren't you ? I must get back. You 'd
better go up to your ward and ask your Sister
if you can lie down for a bit.'
Alix and Nonie had retreated down the
passage.
1 What a place,' Alix was muttering savagely.
' Oh, what a place.'
They came out on a different staircase ;
fleeing down it they were in a corridor, long
and unhappy and full of hurrying house-
surgeons and nurses and patients' friends (for
it was visiting-hour).
io6 Non-Combatants and Others
' Huxley/ said Nonie suddenly. ' That 's
the creature's name. ... I say/ she accosted
a fat little nurse with strings, ' where 's Huxley,
please ? '
Huxley was far away. They reached it
through many labyrinthine and sad ways.
Through the glass door they saw a keen-faced
doctor going from bed to bed with an attend-
ant group of satellites medical students, who
laughed at intervals because he was witty, either
about the case in hand or about some other
amusing cases this one recalled to his memory,
or at the foolish answers elicited from some
student in response to questions. They were
a cheery set, and this doctor was a wit. Every
few minutes he washed his hands. The ward-
sister companioned him round, and by the
window stood four nurses at attention the
staff-nurse, the probationer, and two V.A.D.'s
with red crosses on their aprons. It was a
men's surgical ward. It was long and light,
and had twenty-one beds, and Cot. Cot was
in the middle of the ward. He was three,
and had peritonitis of the stomach, and he
sat up on his pillow and wept, and wailed at
intervals, ' Want to do 'ome. Want to do
'ome.'
Hospital 107
' You 're not the only one, sonny/ number
three told him bitterly. ' We all want
that/
Twenty-one sad faces apathetically testified
to his truthfulness. Twenty-one weary sick
men, whose rest had been broken at dawn be-
cause the night-nurses had to wash them all
before they went off duty, and that meant
beginning at 3.30 or 4, stared with sad, hollow
eyes, and wanted to go 'ome.
The doctor washed his hands for the last
time and went, his satellites after him. The
probationer respectfully opened the door for
them. Nonie and Alix stood back out of the
way as they passed, then Nonie's Peggy, who
had seen them long since, came and fetched
them in.
' I am glad to see you/ she said.
Nonie said, ' You look dead, my child/ and
she returned, ' Oh, it 's only the standing.
We 're all in the same box. She/ she indi-
cated the probationer, ' fainted this morning.
And the staff-nurse has the most awful varicose
veins. I believe most nurses get them sooner
or later. They ought to be let to sit down
when they get a chance, for sewing and things,
but hospital rules are made of wood and iron.
The other Red Grosser and I do sometimes sit,
when Sister 's out of the ward, but it 's rather
io8 Non-Combatants and Others
bad form really, when the regulars mayn't.
Funny places, hospitals. ... I Ve been get-
ting into rows this morning for not polishing the
brights bright enough. Staff told me they had
quite upset Sister. Sister 's very easily upset,
unfortunately. Staff 's a jolly good sort,
though. . . . But look here, you must go.
It 's time for tea-trays ; I shall have to be
busy. I '11 come round to-night after I 'm off,
Nonie if I can get so far. You Ve got to go
now ; Staff 's looking at us.'
They went. Staff called wearily to Peggy,
' Go and help Nurse Baker with trays, will you,
dear. And you might take Daddy Thirteen's
basin away. He 's done being sick for now, I
dare say, and he 's going to drop it on to the
floor in a moment.'
Peggy hurried, but was too late. These things
will happen sometimes. . . .
5
' Hate hospitals, don't you ? ' said Nonie, as
she had said when they entered. They were
going out at the gates now. ' I suppose they
have to be, though.'
' Suppose so,' Alix agreed listlessly.
Then with an effort she threw the hospital
off.
Hospital 109
' That 's over, anyhow. I shan't go again.
Let 's come and do something awfully different
now.'
They did.
6
When Alix got back to Violette, she was met
in the little linoleumed hall by distress and
pity, and Mrs. Frampton preparing to break
something to her, with a kind, timid arm round
her shoulders.
' Dearie, there was a telegram. . . . You
were out, so we opened it. ... Now you must
be ever so brave.'
' No,' said Alix, rigid and leaning on her
stick and whitely staring from narrowed eyes.
' No . . .'
' Oh, darling child, it 's sad news. ... I don't
know how to tell you. . . . Dear, you must be
brave. . . .'
' Oh, do get on,' muttered Alix, rude and
sick.
' Dearie/ Mrs. Frampton was crying into her
handkerchief. ' Poor Paul . . . your dear little
brother . . . dreadfully, badly wounded. . . .'
' Dead,' Alix stated flatly, pulling away and
leaning against the wall.
Violette was hot and smelt of food. Florence
stumbled up the kitchen stairs with supper.
no Non-Combatants and Others
From a long way off Mrs. Frampton sobbed,
'The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken
away. ... It 's the Almighty's will. . . . The
poor dear boy has died doing his duty and
serving his country ... a noble end, dearie
. . . not a wasted life. . . /
' Not a wasted . . .' Alix said it after her
mechanically, as if it was a foreign language.
' He died a noble death/ said Mrs. Frampton,
'serving his country in her need/
Alix was staring at her with blue eyes sud-
denly dark and distended. The horror rose
and loomed over her, like a great wave tower-
ing, just going to break.
' But but but ' she stammered, and put
out her hands, keeping it off ' But he haoln't
lived yet. . . /
Then the wave broke, like a storm crashing
on a ship at sea.
' It 's a lie/ she screamed. ' Give me the
telegram. ... It 's made up ; it 's a damnable
lie. The War Office always tells them : every
one knows it does. . . /
They gave it her, pitifully. She read it three
times, and it always said the same thing. She
looked up for some way of escape from it, but
found none, only Violette, hot and smelling of
supper, and Mrs. Frampton crying, and Kate
with working face, and Evie sympathetic and
Hospital in
moved in the background, and Florence com-
passionate with the supper tray, and a stuffed
squirrel in a glass case on the hall table.
Alix shivered and shook as she stood, with
passion and sickness and loss.
' But but ' she began to stammer again,
helplessly, like a bewildered child ' But he
hadn't lived yet. . . .'
Kate said gently, ' He has begun to live
now, dear, for ever and ever.'
' World without end, amen,' added Mrs.
Frampton, mopping her eyes.
Alix looked past them, at the stuffed squirrel.
' It 's just some silly lie of course/ she said,
indifferent and quiet, but still shaking. ' It
will be taken back to-morrow. ... I shall go
to bed now.'
When Kate brought her up some supper on
a tray, she found her lying on the floor, having
abandoned the lie theory, having abandoned all
theories and all words, except only, again and
again, ' Paul . . . Paul . . . Paul . . .'
CHAPTER VIII
BASIL AT VIOLETTE
JUNE went by, and the war went on, and the
Russians were driven back in Galicia, and the
Germans took Lemberg, and trenches were lost
and won in France, and there was fighting
round Ypres, and Basil Doye had the middle
finger of his right hand cut off, and there was
some glorious weather, and Zeppelin raids in
the eastern counties, and it was warm and
stuffy in London, and Mrs. Sandomir wrote to
Alix from the United States that more than ever
now, since their darling Paul was added to the
toll of wasted lives, war must not occur again.
July went by, and the war went on, and
trenches were lost and won, and there was
fighting round Ypres, and a German success at
Hooge, and the Russians were driven back in
Galicia, and Basil Doye left hospital and went
with his mother to Devonshire, and there were
Zeppelin raids in the eastern counties, and the
summer term at the art school ended, and Alix
us
Basil at Violette 113
went away from Clapton to Wood End, and
her mother wrote that American women were
splendid to work with, and that it was supremely
important that the States should remain neutral,
and that there were many hitches in the way
of arbitration, but some hope.
August went by, and the war went on, and
Warsaw was taken, and the National Register,
and trenches were lost and won, and there was
fighting round Ypres, and a British success at
Hooge and in Gallipoli, and Zeppelin raids on
the eastern counties, and Nicholas and Alix
went away together for a holiday to a village
in Munster where the only newspaper which
appeared with regularity was the Ballydehob
Weekly Despatch, and Violette was shut up, and
Mrs. Frampton stayed with Aunt Nellie and
Kate and Evie with friends, and Mrs. Sandomir
wrote from Sweden that the Swedes were
promising but apathetic, and their government
shy.
September went by, and the war went on,
and the Russians rallied and retreated and
rallied in Galicia, and a great allied advance
in France began and ended, and the hospitals
filled up, and there were Zeppelin raids on the
eastern counties, and Mrs. Frampton and Kate
and Evie came back to Violette, and the art
school opened, and Alix came back to Violette,
H
114 Non-Combatants and Others
and the Doyes came back to town, and Mrs.
Sandomir wrote from Sermaize-le-Bains, where
she was staying a little while again with the
Friends and helping to reconstruct, that it was
striking how amenable to reason neutral and
even belligerent governments were, if one talked
to them reasonably. Even Ferdinand, though
he had his faults . . .
October began, and the war went on, and
Bulgaria massed on the Serbian frontier, and
Russia sent her an ultimatum, and the Germans
retook the Hohenzollern Redoubt, and the
hospitals got fuller, and the curious affair of
Salonika began, and Terry Orme came home
on leave, and Basil Doye interviewed the
Medical board, was told he could not rejoin
yet, visited Cox's, and, coming out of it, met
Alix going up to the Strand.
Alix saw him first ; he looked listless and pale
and bored and rather cross, as he had done
last time she saw him, a week ago. Basil was
finding life something of a bore just now, and
small things jarred. It was a nuisance, since
he was on this ridiculous fighting business, not
to be allowed to go and fight. There might be
something doing any moment out there, and
Basil at Violette 115
he not in it. His hand was really nearly all
right now. And anyhow, it wasn't much fun
in town, as he couldn't paint, and nearly every
one was away.
His eyes followed a girl who passed with her
officer brother. He would have liked a healthy,
pretty, jolly sort of girl like that to go about
with . . . some girl with poise, and tone, and
sanity, and no nerves, who never bothered
about the war or anything. A placid, indiffer-
ent, healthy sort of girl, with all her fingers on
and nothing the matter anywhere. He was sick
of hurt and damaged bodies and minds ; his
artistic instinct and his natural vitality craved,
in reaction, for the beautiful and the whole and
the healthy. . . .
Looking up, he saw Alix standing at the
corner of the Strand, leaning on her ivory-
topped stick and looking at him. She looked
pale and thin and frail and pretty in her blue
coat and skirt and white collar. (The Sando-
mirs never wore mourning.) He went up to
her, a smile lifting his brows.
' Good. I was just feeling bored. Let 's
come and have tea/
Alix wasn't really altogether what he wanted.
She was too nervy. Some nerve in him which
had been badly jarred by the long ugliness of
those months in France winced from contact
n6 Non-Combatants and Others
with nervous people. Besides, he suspected her
of feeling the same shrinking from him : she
so hated the war and all its products. How-
ever, they had always amused each other ; she
was clever, and nice to look at ; he remembered
vaguely that he had been a little in love with
her once, before the war. If the war hadn't
come just then, he might have become a great
deal in love with her. Before the war one had
wanted a rather different sort of person, of
course, from now ; more of a companion, to
discuss things with ; more of a stimulant, per-
haps, and less of a rest. He remembered that
they had discussed painting a great deal ; he
didn't want to discuss painting now, since he
had lost his finger. He didn't particularly want
cleverness either, since trench life, with its
battery on the brain of sounds and sights, had
made him stupid. . . .
However, he said, ' Let 's come and have
tea,' and she answered, ' Very well, let 's,' and
they turned into something in the Strand called
the Petrograd Tea Rooms.
' I suppose one mustn't take milk in it here,'
said Alix vaguely. She looked him over criti-
cally as they sat down, and said, ' You don't
look much use yet.'
' So I am told. They say I shall probably
have at least a month's more leave. . . . Well,
Basil at Violette 117
I don't much care. . . . There 's a rumour my
battalion may be sent to Serbia soon. I met
a man on leave to-day, and he says that 's the
latest canard. I rather hope it 's true. It will
be a change, anyhow, arid there '11 be some-
thing doing out there. Besides, we may as
well see the world thoroughly on this show,
while we are about it. We shall never have
such a chance again, I suppose. It 's like a
Cook's tour gratis. France, Flanders, Egypt,
Gallipoli, Serbia, Greece. ... I may see them
all yet. This war has its humours, I '11 say
that for it. A bizarre war indeed, as some
titled lunatic woman driving a motor ambulance
round Ypres kept remarking to us all. ' Dear
me, what a very bizarre war ! ' It sounded as
if she had experienced so many, and as if they
were mostly so normal and conventional and
flat.'
' Bizarre/ Alix turned the word over. ' Yes,
I suppose that is really what it is. ... It 's
the wrong shape ; it fits in with nothing ; it 's
mad. . . . My cousin Emily says it 's a righteous
war, though of course war is very wicked.
Righteous of us and wicked of the Germans, I
suppose she means. And Kate says it was sent
us, for getting drunk and not going to church
enough. I don't know how she knows. Do
you meet people who talk like that ? '
n8 Non-Combatants and Others
* I chiefly meet people who ask me why I 'm
not taking part in it. There was one to-day,
in Trafalgar Square. She told me I ought to
be in khaki. I said I supposed I ought, pro-
perly speaking, but that I was waiting to be
fetched. She said it was young fellows like me
who disgraced Britain before the eyes of Europe,
and that I wouldn't like being fetched, because
then I should have to wear C for Coward on
my tunic. I said I should rather enjoy that,
and we parted pleasantly.'
1 The wide ones are two and eleven three, and
the narrow ones one and nine. I like B. & H.'s
better than Evans', myself.'
The voice was Evie's ; she was entering the
Petrograd Tea Rooms with young Mrs. Vinney.
She saw Alix, nodded, and said ' Hullo.' It
was Basil who made room for them at the table
with him and Alix (the tea shop was crowded).
He had met Evie once before.
' Oh, thanks muchly. Don't you mind ? '
Evie was apologetic, thinking two was com-
pany. Mrs. Vinney was introduced to Basil,
settled herself in her dainty flumness, empha-
sised by her feather boa, and ordered crumpets
for herself and Evie.
' Quite a nice little place, don't you think so,
Miss Sandomir ? More recherche than an A.B.C.
or one of those. I often come here.
Basil at Violette 119
What 's that boy shouting ? The Germans
take something or other redoubt. . . . Fancy !
How it does go on, doesn't it ? '
Alix said it did.
' Quite makes one feel/ said Mrs. Vinney,
' that one oughtn't to be sitting snug and com-
fortable having crumpets, doesn't it ? You
know what I mean ; it 's just a feeling one has,
no sense in it. One oughtn't to give in to it,
/ don't think ; Vin says so too. What 's the
use, he says, of brooding, when it helps nobody,
and what we 've got to do is to keep cheery at
home and keep things going. I must say I
quite agree with him.'
' Rather, so do I,' said Basil.
' But of course it all makes one think,
doesn't it ? ' she resumed. ' Makes life seem
more solemn do you know what I mean ? And
all the poor young fellows who never come
home again. I 'm thankful none of my people
or close friends are gone. Mother simply
wouldn't let my brother go ; she says we Ve
always been a peace-loving family and she 's
not going to renounce her principles now.
Percy doesn't really want to; it was only a
passing fancy because some friends of his went.
Vin says, leave war to those that want war ; he
doesn't, and he 's not going to mix up in it,
and I must say I think he 's right.'
I2O Non-Combatants and Others
' Quite/ agreed Basil.
' All this waste of life and money just because
the Germans want a war ! Why should we
pander to them, that 's what he says. Let them
want. He 's no Prussian Junker, shouting out
for blood. There 's too many of them in this
country, he says, and that 's what makes war
possible. He 's all for disarmament, you know,
and I must say I think he 's right. If no one
had any guns or ships, no one could fight,
could they ? '
Evie agreed that they couldn't, forgetting
knives and fists and printed words and naked
savages and all the gunless hosts of the ancient
world. Violette thought always gaped with
these large omissions ; it was like a loose piece
of knitting, stretched to cover spaces too large
for it and yawning into holes.
' Mr. Doye 's been fighting, you know,' Evie
explained, since Mrs. Vinney was obviously
taking him for one who left war to those that
wanted war. ' He 's wounded.'
' Oh, is that so ? ' Mrs. Vinney regarded Mr.
Doye with new interest. ' Well, I must say
one can't help admiring the men that go and
fight for their country, though one should allow
liberty to all. ... I hope you 're going on
favourably, Mr. Doye.'
' Very, thanks very much/
Basil at Violette 121
' Well, we must be trotting, Evie, if we 're
going to Oxford Street before we go home. . . .
Check, if you please. . . . They 're always so
slow, aren't they, at these places. Good-bye,
Miss Sandomir ; good-bye, Mr. Doye, and I 'm
sure I hope you '11 get quite all right soon.'
Basil stood aside to let them out, and looked
after them for a moment as they went.
He sat down with a grin.
' Makes life more solemn do you know what
I mean ? . . . What a cheery little specimen.
... I say, I 'd like to draw Miss Tucker ; such
good face-lines. That clear chin, and the nice
wide space between the eyes.' He drew it on
the tablecloth with his left hand and the handle
of his teaspoon.
' She 's ripping to draw/ Alix agreed. ' I
often do her. And the colour 's gorgeous, too
that pink on brown. I 've never got it right
yet.'
' I should think she 's fun to live with,' sug-
gested Basil. ' She looks as if she enjoyed
things so much.'
1 Yes, she has a pretty good time as a rule.'
' You know,' said Basil, thinking it out,
' being'out there, and seeing people smashed to
122 Non-Combatants and Others
bits all about the place, and getting smashed
oneself, makes one long for people like that,
sane and healthy and with nothing the matter
with their bodies or minds. It gets to seem
about the only thing that matters, after a
time/
' I suppose it would/
' Now a person like that, who looks like some
sort of wood goddess (I 'd awfully like to paint
her as a dryad) and looks as if she 'd never
had a day's illness or a bad night in her life,
is so so restful. So alive and yet so calm.
No nerves anywhere, I should think. . . . Being
out there plays the dickens with people's nerves,
you know. Not every one's, of course ; there
are plenty of cheery souls who come through
unmoved ; but you 'd be surprised at the jolly,
self-possessed sportsmen who go to pieces more
or less all degrees of it, of course. Some don't
know it themselves ; you can often only see
it by the way their eyes look at you while
they 're talking, or the way their hand twitches
when they light their cigarette. . . / Alix re-
membered John Orme's eyes and hands. ' They
dream a bit, too,' Basil went on, and his own
eyes were fixed and queer as he talked, and
his brows twitched a little. ' Talk in their
sleep, you know, or walk. ... It 's funny. . . .
I 've censored letters which end " Hope this
Basil at Violette 123
finds you the same as it leaves me, i.e. in the
pink," from chaps who have to be watched lest
they put a bullet into themselves from sheer
nerves. You '11 see a man shouting and laugh-
ing at a sing-song, then sitting and crying by
himself afterwards. . . . Oh, those are ex-
treme cases, of course, but lots are touched
one way or another. . . . I 'm sorry for the
next generation ; they '11 stand a chance of
being a precious neurotic lot, the children of
the fighting men. ... It 's up to every one at
home to keep as sane and unnervy as they
can manage, I fancy, or the whole world may
become a lunatic asylum. ... I say, what are
you going to do now ? '
' Buy some chalks. Then go home/
' Violette ? I '11 see you home, may I ? '
4
They went to the chalk shop, then to the
Clapton bus. The evening wind was like cool
hands stroking their faces. It was half-past
six. The streets were barbarically dark.
' One would think/ said Basil, peering through
the darkness at the ugliness, ' that in Kingsland
Road Zepps might be allowed to do their worst/
' On Spring Hill too, perhaps/ Alix said.
Slums and the screaming of the disreputable
124 Non-Combatants and Others
poor : villas and the precise speech and incom-
parably muddled thinking of the respectable
genteel : which could best be spared ?
But Basil said, ' Oh, Spring Hill. Spring
Hill is full of joy and dryads/
' Kate is afraid a very common type of
person is coming to live there. We 're getting
nervous about it at Violette. We 're very par-
ticular, you know/
Alix, with the instinct of a cad, was laughing
at Violette, wanting him to laugh with her.
' Sure to be,' he returned ; and Alix realised
blankly that he might laugh at Violette to her
heart's content and his attitude towards dryads
and Evie Tucker's face-lines would remain un-
altered by his mockery.
With a revulsion towards breeding, she said,
' They 're most awfully kind. . . . Here 's where
I get off/
He got off too, and they walked down Upper
Clapton Road.
5
Some one came behind them, walking quickly,
came up with them, slowed, and looked.
' Here we are again,' said Evie, in her clear
gay voice. ' You 're coming in to see us, Mr.
Doye, I hope ? '
Basil glanced from Alix to Evie. They were
Basil at Violette 125
passing under a dim lamp, which for a moment
threw Evie's startling prettiness in lit relief
against the night. Extreme prettiness is not
such a common thing that one can afford to
miss chances of beholding it.
Basil said, ' Well, may I ? '
Evie returned, ' Rather. Stop to supper.'
' I can't do that, thanks very much. But
I '11 come in for a moment, if I may.'
As they entered Violette's tiny hall, the clock
struck seven. They went into the drawing-
room, where Mrs. Frampton and Kate sat knit-
ting. It was stiff and prim and tidy, and
rather stuffy, and watched from the wall by the
monstrous Eye.
' Here 's Mr. Doye, mother,' said Evie. ' He
saw Alix home.'
Mr. Doye was introduced to Kate. Mrs.
Frampton said how kind it was of him to see
Alix home.
' Particularly with the streets black like they
are now. Have we a right to expect to be
preserved if we go against all common-sense
like that ? '
' I never do,' said Basil, meaning he never
expected to be preserved, but Mrs. Frampton
took it that he never went against common-
sense.
* Well, I 'm sure I go out after dark as little
126 Non-Combatants and Others
as I can ; but the girls have to, coming back
from work, and it makes me worry for them.
. . . Now you sit in that easy-chair, Mr. Doye,
and make yourself comfortable, and rest your
hand. It 's going on well, I hope ? You '11
stop and have some supper, of course ? We
have it at half-past seven, so it won't keep you
long/
Basil said he wouldn't, because he was dining
somewhere at eight.
They talked of the news. Mrs. Frampton
said it seemed to get worse each day. She had
been reading in the paper that Bulgaria was
just coming in. Was that really so ? Mrs.
Frampton was of those who inquire of their
male acquaintances and relatives on these and
kindred subjects, and believe the answers,
more particularly when the males are soldiers.
Basil Doye, used to his mother, who told him
things and never believed a word he said, be-
cause, as she remarked, he was so much younger,
found this gratifying, and said it was really so.
Mrs. Frampton said dear me, it seemed as if
all the world would have to come in in time,
and what about poor Serbia, could she be
saved ? Basil, wanting to leave the state of
Europe and ask Evie if she had seen any plays
lately, said casually that Serbia certainly seemed
to stand a pretty good chance of being done in.
Basil at Violette 127
' And then, I suppose/ said Mrs. Frampton,
' we shall have the poor Serbian refugees fleeing
to us for safety, like the Belgians. I 'm sure
we shall all welcome them, the poor mothers
with their little children. But it will be
awkward to know where to put them or what
to do with them. They Ve got those two
houses at the corner of the Common full of
Belgians now. I wonder if the Belgians and
the Serbs would get on well together in ;the
same houses. They say the poor Serbs are
very wild people indeed, with such strange
habits. Do you think we shall all be asked
to take them as servants ? '
' Sure to be/ said Basil, his eyes on Evie.
Evie sat doing nothing at all, healthy, lovely,
amused, splendidly alive. The vigorous young
bodily life of her called to Basil's own, re-
animating it. Alix sat by her, all alive too,
but weak-bodied, lame, frail-nerved, with no
balance. Kate knitted, and was different.
' It will be quite a problem, won't it ? ' said
Mrs. Frampton. ' My maid tells me girls can't
get enough places now, people all take Belgians
instead/
' They say the Belgian girls make very rough
servants. We know those who have them/
said Kate, who had the Violette knack of
switching off from the general to the personal.
128 Non-Combatants and Others
To Violette there were no labour problems,
only good servants and bad, no Belgian or
Balkan problem, only individual Belgians and
Serbs (poor things, with their little children
and strange habits). .They had the personal
touch, which makes England what it is.
Mrs. Frampton wanted to know next, ' And
I suppose we shall be having conscription very
soon now, Mr. Doye, shall we ? '
' Lord Northcliffe says so, doesn't he ? ' Basil
returned absently.
Mrs. Frampton accepted that.
' Well ! I suppose it has to be. It seems
hard on the poor mothers of only sons, and
on the poor wives too. But if it will help us
to win the war, we mustn't grudge them, must
we? I suppose it will help us to victory,
won't it ? '
' Lord Northcliffe says that too, I under-
stand. . . . What do you think, Miss Tucker ? '
He turned to Evie, to hear her speak.
She said, ' Oh, don't ask me. / don't know.
Don't suppose it will make much difference.
Things don't, do they ? '
Basil chuckled. ' Precious little, as a rule.
... So that settles that.' He caught sight of
the clock and got up.
' I say, I 'm afraid I Ve got to go at once.
I shall be awfully late and rude. I often am,
Basil at Violette 129
since I joined the army. I was a punctual
person once. The war is very bad for manners
and morals, have you discovered, Mrs. Framp-
ton ?'
' Oh well,' Mrs. Frampton spoke condoningly,
' I 'm sure we must all hope it won't last much
longer. How long will it be, Mr. Doye, can you
tell us that ? '
' Seven years,' said Mr. Doye. ' Till October
1922, you know. Yes, awful, isn't it ? I 'm
frightfully sorry I had to tell you. Good-bye,
Mrs. Frampton.' He shook hands with them
all ; his eyes lingered, bright and smiling, on
Evie, as if they found her a pleasant sight. In
Alix that look seemed to stab and twist, like
a turning sword. Perhaps that was what men
felt when a bayonet got them. . . . The odd
thing in the psychology of it was that she had
never known before that she was a jealous
person ; she had always, like so many others,
assumed she wasn't. Certainly Evie's beauty
had been to her till now pure joy.
As she went to the door with Basil, he said,
' I say, I wish you and your cousin would come
into the country one Sunday. We might make
up a small party. Your cousin looks as if she
would rather like walking.'
1 She 's rather past it, I 'm afraid,' said Alix,
and added, in answer to his stare, ' Cousin
130 Non-Combatants and Others
Emily, you mean, don't you ? The Tuckers
aren't my cousins, you know. And she 's only
a dead cousin's wife. The Tuckers aren't even
that/
' No, hardly that, I suppose. Well, ask Miss
Tucker if she 'd care to come, will you ? I
should think she 'd be rather a good country
person. We might go next Sunday, if it 's
fine/
Alix did not remark that Kate was not a
particularly good country person. She merely
said, ' All right. . . . Mind the step at the
gate. . . . Good-night/ and shut the door.
She stood for a moment listening to the tread
of his feet along the asphalt pavement, then
sat down on the umbrella stand thoughtfully.
For a moment it came to her that among the
many things the war had taken from her (Paul,
Basil, sleep at nights) were two that mattered
just now particularly good breeding, and self-
control. She knew she might feel and behave
like a cad, and also that she might cry. It
was the second of these that she least wanted
to do. She had to be very gay and bright. . . .
For a moment her fingers were pressed against
her eyelids. When she took them away she
Basil at Violette 131
saw balls of fire dancing all over the hall and
up the stairs.
' I shall ask Kate,' she said.
Florence came up the kitchen stairs with
food. Kate came out of the sitting-room to
help her set the table. Alix said, ' Let me
help, Kate/ and began to bustle about the
dining-room.
' You J re giving mother Evie's serviette,' said
Kate, who probably thought this outburst of
helpfulness more surprising than useful.
' By the way, Kate/ said Alix suddenly,
giving Mrs. Frampton Kate's serviette instead,
' I suppose you wouldn't care to come for a
long walk in the country on Sunday ? I 'm
going with Basil Doye and some other people,
and he asked me to ask you/
Kate looked repressive.
' Considering my class, and church, and that
I never take train on Sunday, it 's so likely,
isn't it ? . . . And I rather wonder you like to
go these Sunday outings, Alix. Don't you
think it 's nice to keep one day quiet, not to
speak of higher things, with all the rushing
about you do during the week ? '
Kate felt it her duty to say these things
sometimes to Alix, who had not been well
brought up.
' It might be nice/ returned Alix, absently
132 Non-Combatants and Others
juggling with napkins. ' But it 's difficult,
rather. ... I say, I believe I Ve got these
wrong still. ... I must go and change
now/
She found Evie changing already, cool, clear-
skinned, cheerful, humming a tune.
It was difficult to speak to Evie, but Alix did it.
She even hooked her up behind. She saw Evie's
reflection in the glass, pretty and brown. She
tried not to think that Evie was gayer than
usual, and knew she was. She changed her
own dress, and talked fast. She saw her face
in the glass ; it was flushed and feverish.
They went down to supper. There was cold
brawn, and custard, and stewed apple, and
cheese, and what Violette called preserve. An
excellent meal, but one in which Alix found no
joy. She wanted something warming.
' It was a pity Mr. Doye wasn't able to stay/
said Mrs. Frampton. ' He 's quite full of fun,
isn't he ? '
' Talks a lot of nonsense, / think/ said
Evie.
' The brawn would hardly have been suffi-
cient,' said Kate, meaning if Mr. Doye had been
able to stay.
Basil at Violette 133
' A little custard, love ? ' Mrs. Frampton said
to Alix. ' Why, you don't look well, Alix.
You look as if you had quite a temperature. I
hope you Ve not a chill beginning. These east
winds are so searching and your necks are so
low. You 'd better go to bed early, dear, and
Florence shall make you some hot currant
tea.'
' Florence says/ said Kate, reminded of that,
' that those people at Primmerose have lost
their third girl this month. The girls simply
won't stay, and Florence says she doesn't blame
them. They 're dreadfully common people, I 'm
afraid, those Primmerose people. There are
some funny stories going round about them,
only of course one can't encourage Florence to
talk. I believe the amount of wine and spirits
they take in is something dreadful. In war-
time, too. It does seem sad, doesn't it ? You 'd
think people might restrain themselves just
now, but some seem never to think of that.
Mr. Alison says all this luxury and intemper-
ance is quite shameful. He preached on it on
Sunday night. His idea is that the war was
sent us as a judgment, for all our wicked luxury
and vice, and it will never cease till we are
converted, Lord Derby or no Lord Derby, con-
scription or no conscription. He says all that
is just a question of detail and method, but
134 Non-Combatants and Others
the only way to stop the war is a change of
life. He was very forcible, I thought/
' Perhaps/ said Mrs. Frampton, ' that 's what
Mr. Doye meant when he said, didn't he, how
all these measures, conscription and so on,
don't make so much difference after all. No,
it was Evie said it, wasn't it ? and Mr. Doye
agreed and seeme'd quite pleased with her, I
thought. Perhaps he meant the same as Mr.
Alison, about a change of life. I expect he 's
very good himself, isn't he, Alix ? '
Evie, to whom goodness meant dullness, said,
1 1 bet he isn't. Is he, Al ? '
' / don't know/ said Alix. ' You 'd better
ask him/
She added after a moment, ' I '11 ask him
for you on Sunday, if you like. We 're going
out somewhere, if it 's fine/
' It was very kind of him to ask me too/
said Kate. ' You must explain to him how it
is I can't, with its being Sunday/
Across the table Alix's eyes met Evie's,
suddenly widened in guileless, surprised mirth,'
with a touch of chagrin.
Evie said, ' Why, whatever did he ask Kate
for ? He might have known she wouldn't. . . .
Men are . . /
' You 're not coming, you 're not coming,
you 're not coming/ said Alix within herself,
Basil at Violette 135
breathing fast and clenching her napkin tight
in her two hands and staring across the table
defensively out of narrowed eyes.
So they left it at that.
8
But in the night Evie won. One may begin
these things, if sufficiently unhinged and de-
moralised by private emotions and public events,
but one cannot always keep them up.
The policeman paced up and down, up and
down Spring Hill, the rain dripped, the gutters
gurgled, Evie breathed softly, asleep, the
dark night peered through waving curtains,
Alix turned her pillow over and over and
cursed.
1 1 suppose,' she said at last, at 2 A.M., ' she 's
got to come . . .'
At 2.30 she said, ' It will be a beastly day/
and sighed crossly and began to go to sleep.
9
At half-past seven, while Evie did her hair,
Alix said, on a weary yawn, ' I say, you 'd
better come out with us on Sunday, as Kate
won't.'
Evie, with hairpins in her mouth, said, ' Me ?
136 Non-Combatants and Others
Oh, all right, I don't mind. Will it amuse me ?
What 's the game ? '
' Oh, nothing especial. Just a day in the
country. No, I shouldn't think it would amuse
you much, especially as you won't know hardly
any of the people. But come if you like.'
' You 're awfully encouraging.' Evie con-
sidered it, and pinned her hair up. ' Oh, I
expect I may as well come. It will be cheerier
than stopping at home. And I rather like
meeting new people. ... All right, I 'm on.
Gracious, there 's the bell. You '11 be late,
child. If they 're half as particular at your
shop as they are at mine, you must get into a
lot of rows/
So that was settled.
CHAPTER IX
SUNDAY IN THE COUNTRY
SUNDAY morning was quiet and misty, and
Clapton was full of bells. At Violette on
Sundays each person led a different life. Kate,
who attended St. Austin's church, went to
early Mass at eight, sung Mass for children at
9.45, Sunday-school at 10.30, matins (said
hastily) at n, High Mass (sung slowly) at 11.30,
children's catechising at 3, and evensong at 7.
Mrs. Frampton went to a quite different
church, to ii o'clock matins, and once a month
(the first Sunday) did what was called in that
church ' staying on/ She often went again in
the evening.
Evie often accompanied her mother, and
found, as many have, that after church is a
good time and place for the gathering together
of friends.
Alix did not attend church, not having been
brought up to do so. She often went off some-
where on Sunday with friends, as to-day.
117
138 Non-Combatants and Others
Mrs. Frampton said at breakfast, ' Take warm
coats, dears ; it 's quite a fog, and your cough
sounds nasty, Alix love. And don't leave your
umbrellas ; it might very well turn to rain/
' It 's quite cold enough for furs, I think/
said Evie, pleased, because her furs became her.
Through a pale blurred morning Alix and
Evie travelled by bus and metropolitan to
Victoria. Evie, lithe and fawn-like in dark
brown, with her wide, far-set, haunting eyes
and sudden dimples, was a vivid note in the
blurred world ; any one must be glad of her.
Evie needed not to say words of salt or savour ;
her natural high spirits and young buoyancy
were lifted from the commonplace to the
charming by her face and smile. Alix by Evie's
side was pale and elusive and dim ; her only
note of colour was the dark, shadowed blue of
her black-lashed eyes. She coughed, and her
throat was sore. She talked, and made Evie
laugh.
They entered Victoria Station at 10.29.
Waiting in the booking-hall were their friends :
Basil Doye, a married young man and young
woman of prepossessing exterior, two or three
others of both sexes, and Terry Orme with a
Sunday in the Country 139
friend, both on a week's leave. Terry was
spending the week-end in town, with another
subaltern, and was joining in the expedition
at Alix's suggestion. Alix was fond of Terry,
who was John's younger brother, and a fair,
serene, sweet-tempered, mathematical, very
musical person of nineteen. He seemed one of
those who, as Basil Doye had put it, come
through the war unmoved. His smile was
sweet and infectious, and he was restful and
full of joy, and could consume more chocolates
at a sitting than any one else (of over fifteen)
that he knew.
His friend was a cheery, sunburnt youth
called Ingram, who had got the D.C.M.
Terry said, ' Hullo, Alix, how are you ? ' and
had the gift of showing, without demonstration,
that he knew things were rotten for her, because
of Paul. He was a sympathetic boy, and
tender-hearted, and thought Alix looked in
poor case ; quite different from his own vigor-
ous and cheerful and busy sisters at Wood
End. But then of course he and John hadn't
been killed, and Paul had. It was frightfully
rough luck on Alix. Terry was inclined to think
that people out there had much the best of it,
on the whole, beastly as it often was, and
interrupting to the things that really mattered,
such as music, and Cambridge.
140 Non-Combatants and Others
Evie was introduced to every one, and they
all had a friendly and pleased look at so much
grace and vividness.
In the train they filled a compartment.
Alix sat between Terry and the married young
man, who was something in a government
office. Opposite were Evie and Basil and the
married young woman, who had lovely furs
and a spoilt, charming face, and was selfish
about the foot-warmer.
In the train they read a newspaper. Evie
got the impression from their manner of read-
ing it that they all knew beforehand what the
news was, and a good deal more than was in
the paper too ; perhaps this impression was
produced merely by nobody's saying ' Fancy,'
as they did at Violette. From their style of
comment Evie was inclined to gather that some
of them had helped to write the paper and
that others were acquainted with the unwritten
facts behind and so different from the printed
words ; perhaps it was merely that they had
studied last night's late editions, or perhaps
some were journalists, others makers of history,
others gifted with invention. Anyhow they
seemed to think they knew as much as, or a
good deal more than, the paper did. Even
the married young woman stopped for a
moment being sleepy and sulky about the cold
Sunday in the Country 141
to contribute something she had heard from a
Foreign Office man at dinner.
' He was pulling your leg/ her husband said.
1 Linsey always does ; he thinks it 's funny/
Evie thought him and his high sweet voice
conceited.
Alix, looking at Evie opposite, speculated
amusedly for a moment where Evie came in :
Evie, who knew and cared for no news and had
heard nothing from people behind the scenes,
and hadn't even had her leg pulled by Foreign
Office men. Well, Evie, of course, came in on
her face. It was jolly to have a face like that,
to cover all vacancies within. Evie sat there,
understanding little, yet people spoke to her
merely to discover what, with that face, she
would say. And what she said pleased and
amused merely by reason of its grace of
setting.
Evie shivered, and Basil asked if she would
like the window up.
' Well, it is cold/ said Evie, and he leaned
across and pulled it up, asking no one else.
' Thanks so much/ said Evie, taking it prettily
to herself. Her face and eyes were brilliant
above her furs. Basil, with an artist's pleasure,
took in her beauty ; Alix felt him doing it.
Yes, Evie came in all right.
They got out at some station. The air was
142 Non-Combatants and Others
like damp blankets, thick and pale and chill.
There was no joy in it ; dead wet leaves floated
earthwards, unhappy like tears. They started
walking somewhere. Alix leaned on her stick.
She could walk all right, but she limped. She
might soon tire, but she wasn't going to say
so. They walked uphill, on a forlorn, muddy
road. They walked in groups of two or three,
changing and mixing and dividing as they went.
They talked. . . .
Basil for a minute was beside Alix. He said,
' I say, will this be too much for you ? Do
say if you get tired, and we '11 stop and rest.'
Alix hated him because she was lame and
he hated lameness and loved wholeness and
strength.
She said, ' No thanks, I 'm all right/ and
had no more to say at the moment. His eyes
were on Evie's back, where she walked ahead
with Maynard, the married man. He thought
she walked like Diana, straight and free, with
a swing.
Alix turned to speak to Terry, who was just
behind with his friend Ingram. He came
abreast of her, answering. Basil caught up the
two in front.
Sunday in the Country 143
' You look pretty fit, Terry/ said Alix.
' Oh, I 'm in the pink/ His fair, unbrowned
face was serene and smiling. His far-set blue
eyes were not nervous, only watchful, and
seemed to see a long way. He hadn't got
Basil's or John's quick, jerky, restless move-
ments of the hands. He looked as if the war
had more let him alone, left him detached,
unconsumed. Perhaps it was because he was
a musician ; perhaps because he was naturally
of a serene spirit ; perhaps because he was so
young.
' Have a choc/ said Terry, and produced a
box of them from the pocket of his Burberry.
Alix had one.
' How are they all at Wood End ? ' she
asked.
' They too appear to be in the pink. They
haven't much time to spare for me, though,
they 're so marvellously busy. Mother always
was, of course ; but Margot and Dorothy are
at it all day too now. I wonder what they '11
do with it when the war 's over, all this energy.
Mother says the war has been good for them ;
made them more industrious, I suppose. It 's
a funny thought, that the war can have been
good for any one ; I can't quite swallow it. I
don't think a thing bad in itself can be good
for people, do you ? It 's very bad for me ;
144 Non-Combatants and Others
it 's spoiling my ear ; the noise, you know ;
guns and shells and gramophones and so
on. ... By the way, I wish you 'd come and
hear Lovinski with me on Monday night, it 's a
jolly programme.'
' All right,' said Alix, who found Terry
restful.
She talked to Terry, and saw Evie and Basil
walking in front, side by side, laughing, Evie's
joyous, young smile answering that other quick,
amused, friendly smile that she knew.
' You are all funny,' said Evie to Basil.
'No?'
' Oh, you are. You do talk so. ... About
such mad things.'
'Do we ? What do you talk about at
home ? '
Evie tried to consider.
1 Don't know, I 'm sure. Oh, just things
that happen, I suppose ; and mother and Kate
talk about servants and household things, and
we all talk about the people we know, and
what they Ve done and said. But you . . .
you all talk about . . .'
1 About the people we don't know, and what
they Ve done and said. Is that it ? '
Sunday in the Country 145
' Perhaps. And public things, out of the
papers, and what 's going to happen, and why,
and pictures, and . . . nonsense. . . . Oh, I
don't know. . . . And you find such queer
things funny. . . . Anyhow, you all talk, even
if it 's only nonsense most of the time. . . .
And the girls and the men talk just the same
way. That 's funny. Alix is the same. She 's
the queerest kid ; makes me scream with
laughter often. She 's a pet, though/
* She is,' said Basil. ' But what people say
the way they talk makes extraordinarily little
difference, you know. It 's what they are. . . .
The funny thing is, I didn't know that, not so
clearly, at least, till I 'd been out at the war.
A thing like a war seems to settle values, some-
how shows one what matters and what
doesn't ; shovels away the cant and leaves one
with the essentials . . .' (' Oh dear me,' said
Evie.) ' Sorry ; I 'm talking rot. What I mean
is, isn't it a jolly day and jolly country, and
don't you love walking and getting warm ? . . .
I suppose you chose your hat to match your
face, didn't you ? pink on brown. Don't apolo-
gise : I like it. Yes, the hat too, of course,
but I didn't mean that.'
' Well, really ! ' said Evie.
146 Non-Combatants and Others
They stopped at an inn for lunch. They
crowded round a fire and got warm. They
had hot things to eat and drink. They laughed
and talked. Outside the wet leaves blew about.
Alix's leg ached. Maynard, who talked too
much and about the wrong things, persisted in
talking about the psychological and social effects
of the war. An uncertain subject, and sad,
too ; but probably he was writing an article
about it somewhere ; it was the sort of thing
Maynard did, in his spare time.
' It 's an interesting intellectual phenomenon,'
he was saying. ' So many of the intelligent
people in all the nations reduced largely to
emotional pulp sunk in blithering jingoism,
like a school treat or a mothers' meeting.'
His wife, who had been a bored vicar's
daughter before her marriage, and knew, said
sleepily, ' Mothers' meetings aren't a bit like
that. You don't know anything about them.
They mostly don't think anything about jingo-
ism or the war, except that they hope their
boys won't go, and that the Keyser must be
an 'ard-'earted man. That 's not blithering
jingoism, it 's common sense/
Ingram, the cheerful young subaltern, said
boldly, ' I think jingoism is an under-rated
Sunday in the Country 147
virtue. There 's a lot to be said for it. It
makes recruits, anyhow. As long as people don't
talk jingo, I think it 's a jolly useful thing.'
' It 's turning some of our best professional
cynics into primitive sentimentalists, anyhow/
said Maynard, thinking out his article. ' It 's
making Europe simple, sensuous and passion-
ate. As evidenced by the war-poetry that was
poured forth in 1914. (That flood seems a
little spent now ; I suppose we 're all getting
too tired of the war even to write verse about
it.) . . . As evidenced also by the Hymn of
Hate and the Deptford riots and other exhi-
bitions of primitive emotion. The question is,
is all this emotion going to last, and to be
poured out on other things after the war, or
shall we be too tired to feel anything at all,
or will there be a reaction to dryness and
cynicism ? People, for instance, have learnt
more or less to give their money away : will
they go on giving it, or shall we afterwards be
closer-fisted than before ? '
' O Lord ! ' said Basil, ' we shall have nothing
left to give. Not even munition-makers will,
if it 's true that the income-tax is going to be
quadrupled next year. It 's about five bob
now, isn't it ? Give, indeed ! '
1 People,' continued Maynard, still on his
own train of thought, ' may be divided, as
148 Non-Combatants and Others
regards the ultimate effects on them of any
movement, into two sections those who re-
spond to the movement and join in all its
works and are propelled along in a certain
direction by it and continue to be so ; and
those who, either early or late, react against it,
and are propelled in the opposite direction.
Every movement has got its reaction tucked
away inside it ; and the more violent the
movement, the more violent the possible re-
action. The reactionary forces that come into
play during and after war are quite incalculable.
Goodness only knows where they '11 land us
. . . whether they 11 prevail over the respond-
ing forces or not. For instance, shall we be
left a socialistic, centralised, autocratically
governed, pre-Magna-Carta state, bound hand
and foot by the Defence of the Realm Act, with
all businesses state-controlled and all persons
subject to imprisonment and sudden death
without trial by jury, or will there be a
tremendous reaction towards liberal individual-
ism and laissez-faire ? Who knows ? None of
us. ... What do you think about it all, Miss
Tucker ? ' He addressed Evie, to tease her,
and make her say something in that fresh,
buoyant voice of hers.
She did. She said, ' I 'm sure I don't know
anything about it. I can't see that the war
Sunday in the Country 149
makes such a lot of difference, to ordinary-
people. One seems to go on much the same
from day to day, doesn't one ? '
' I 'm not at all sure/ said Basil, suddenly
interested, ' that Miss Tucker hasn't got hold
of the crux of the whole matter. There aren't
two sections of people, Maynard there are
three ; the respondents, the reactors, and the
indifferents ordinary people, that 's to say.
What difference does the war make, after all
to ordinary people ? I believe the fact that it,
so to speak, doesn't, is going to settle the
destiny of this country. People like you talk
of effects and tendencies ; you 're caught by
influences and reactions and carried about ; but
then, perish the thought that you 're an ordinary
person. You 're only an ordinary person of a
certain order, the fairly civilised, not quite un-
thinking order, that sees and discusses and
talks a lot too much. A thing like a war,
when it comes along, upsets the whole outlook
of your lot ; it dissolves the fabric of your
world, and you have to build it up again and
whether you like it or not, it will be something
new for you. But does it upset and dissolve,
or even disturb very much, the world of all
the people (the non-combatants, I mean, of
course, not the fighters) who don't think, or
only think from hand to mouth ? There '11 be
150 Non-Combatants and Others
no reaction for them, or any such foolishness,
because there 's been no force. Here 's to
Ordinary People ! ' He emptied his glass of
beer, and if he seemed to do it to Evie Tucker,
that might be taken merely as acknowledg-
ment of her discerning remark.
1 Oh, mercy/ said Evie, on a laugh and a
yawn. ' You do all go on, don't you/
Alix, black-browed and sulky, thought so
too. Why talk about rotten things like these ?
Why not talk about the weather, or the country-
side, or birds and leaves, or servants, as at
Violette, instead of these futile speculations on
the effects of a war that should not be thought
about, should not be mentioned, and would
probably anyhow never never end ? It was
Maynard's fault ; he was conceited, and a gas-
bag, and talked about the wrong things. Terry
Orme agreed with her.
But young Ingram said, practically, ' Surely
that 's all rot, isn't it ? I mean, there can be
no indiiferents, in your sense of the word.
Every one must be affected, even if they haven't
people of their own in the show, by the general
kick-up. I don't believe in your indifferents ;
they wouldn't be human beings. They 'd be
like the calm crowds in the papers, don't you
know, who aren't flustered by Zepps. I simply
don't believe they exist/
Sunday in the Country 151
* The fundamentally untouched/ Maynard ex-
plained. ' Superficially, of course, they are, as
you put it, flustered. They read the papers, of
course, for the incidents ; but the fundamental
issues beneath don't touch them. They 're
impervious ; they 're of an immobility ; they 're
sublimely stable. The war, for them, really
isn't. The new world, however it shapes,
simply won't be. What 's the war doing to
them ? All the beastliness, and bravery, and
ugliness, and brutality, and cold, and blood,
and mud, and gaiety, and misery, and idiotic
muddle, and splendour, and squalor, and
general lunacy . . . you 'd think it must over-
turn even the most stable ... do something
with them harden them, or soften them, or
send them mad, or teach them geography or
foreign politics or knitting or self-denial or
thrift or extravagance or international hatred
or brotherhood. But has it ? Does it ? I
believe often not. They haven't learnt geo-
graphy, because they don't like using maps.
They 've not learnt to fight, because it 's non-
combatants I 'm talking of. They Ve not even
learnt to write to the papers thank goodness.
Nor even to knit, because I believe they mostly
knew how already. Nor to preserve their lives
in unlit streets, for they are nightly done in
in their hundreds. Nor, I was told by a clergy-
152 Non-Combatants and Others
man of my acquaintance the other day, to
pray (but that is still hoped for them, I believe).
The war, like everything else, will come and go
and leave them where it found them the solid
backbone of the world. The rest of the world
may go off its head with ideas, or progress, or
despair, or war, or joy, or madness, or sanctity,
or revolution but they remain unstirred. I
don't suppose a foreign invasion would affect
them fundamentally. They couldn't take in
invasion, only the invaders. They remain
themselves, through every vicissitude. That 's
why the world after the war will be essentially
the same as the world before it ; it takes more
than a war to move most of us. ... We all
hope our own pet organisation or tendency is
going to step in after the war and because of
the war and take possession and transform
society. Social workers hope for a new burst
of philanthropic brotherhood; Christians hope
for Christianity ; artists and writers for a new
art and literature ; pacificists for a general
disarmament ; militarists for permanent con-
scription ; democrats say there will be a level-
ling of class barriers ; and I heard a subaltern
the other day remark that the war would ' put
a stopper on all this beastly democracy.' We
all seem to think the world will emerge out of
the melting-pot into some strange new shape ;
Sunday in the Country 153
optimists hope and believe it will be the shape
they prefer, pessimists are almost sure it will
be the one they can least approve. Optimists
say the world will have been brought to a
state of mind in which wars can never be
again ; pessimists say, on the contrary, we are
in for a long succession of them, because we
have revived a habit, and habit forms char- j
acter, and character forms conduct. But really ]
I believe the world will be left very much where ,
it was before, because of that great immobile j
section which weighs it down/
Mrs. Maynard, who had been making a very
good lunch, yawned at this point, and said,
' Roger, you 're boring every one to death.
You don't know anything more about the
future than we do. None of us know anything
at all. You 're not Old Moore.'
' Old Moore,' Evie contributed (she had not
been attending to Maynard's discourse, but was
caught by this), ' says something important in
foreign courts is going to happen in November,
connected with a sick-bed. I expect that
means the Kaiser 's going to be ill. Perhaps
he '11 die.'
' Sure to,' agreed Basil. ' He 's done it so
many times already this year, it 's becoming a
habit. ... I say, we ought to be getting on,
don't you think ? '
154 Non-Combatants and Others
Mrs. Maynard shivered, and said it was
quite an unfit day to be out in, and she wasn't
enjoying herself in the least, and was anybody
else ?
Basil said he was, immensely, and found the
day picturesque in colour effects.
Evie said she thought it was jolly so long as
they kept moving.
Maynard said it was jollier talking and eating,
but he supposed that couldn't last.
Terry said it could, if one had chocolates in
one's pocket and didn't hurry too much.
Basil walked beside Evie. Evie's beauty
was whipped to brilliancy by the damp wind.
Evie was life. She might not have the thousand
vivid awarenesses to life, the thousand re-
sponses to its multitudinous calls, that the
others had, the keen-witted young persons who
had been bred up to live by their heads ; but,
in some more fundamental way, she was life
itself : life which, like love and hate, is primi-
tive, uncivilised, intellectually unprogressive,
but basic and inevitable.
Basil had once resented the type. In old
days he would have called it names, such as
Woman, and Violette. Now he liked Woman,
Sunday in the Country 155
found her satisfactory to some deep need in
him ; the eternal masculine, roused from
slumber by war, cried to its counterpart, ignor-
ing the adulterations that filled the gulf be-
tween. Possibly he even liked Violette, which
produced Woman.
Ingram walked by Alix. The yellow leaves
drifted suddenly on to the wet road. Alix's
hands were as cold as fishes ; her lame leg was
tired. She talked and laughed. Ingram was
talking about dogs some foolish pug he knew.
Alix too talked of pugs, and chows, and gold-
fish, and guinea-pigs. Ingram said there had
been a pug in his platoon ; he told tales of its
sagacity and intrepidity in the trenches.
' And then it was a funny thing he lost
his nerve one day absolutely ; simply went to
pieces and whimpered in my dug-out, and
stayed so till we got back into billets again.
He wouldn't come in to the trench again next
go ; he 'd had enough. Funny, rather, because
it was so sudden, and nothing special to account
for it. But it 's the way with some men, just
the same. I Ve known chaps as cheery as
crickets, wriggling in frozen mud up to the
waist, getting frost-bitten, watching shrapnel
and whizz-bangs flying round them as calmly
as if they were gnats, and seeing their friends
slip up all round them . . . and never turning
156 Non-Combatants and Others
a hair. And then one day, for no earthly
reason, they '11 go to pot break up altogether.
Funny things, nerves. ...-..'
Alix suddenly perceived that he knew more
about them than appeared in his jolly, sun-
burnt face ; he was talking on rapidly, as if
he had to, with inward-looking eyes.
' Of course there are some men out there who
never ought to be there at all ; not strong
enough in body or mind. There was a man
in my company ; he was quite young ; he 'd
got his commission straight from school ; and
he simply went to pieces when he 'd been in
and out of trenches for a few weeks. He was a
nervous, sensitive sort of chap, and delicate ;
he ought never to have come out, I should say.
Anyhow he went all to bits and lost his pluck ;
he simply couldn't stand the noise and the
horror and the wounds and the men getting
smashed up round him : I believe he saw his
best friend cut to pieces by a bit of shell before
his eyes. He kept being sick after that ;
couldn't stop. And ... it was awfully sad
... he took to exposing himself, taking absurd
risks, in order to get laid out ; every one noticed
it. But he couldn't get hit ; people sometimes
can't when they go on like that, you know-
it 's a funny thing and one night he let off
his revolver into his own shoulder. I imagine
Sunday in the Country 157
he thought he wasn't seen, but he was, by
several men, poor chap. No one ever knew
whether he meant to do for himself, or only to
hurt himself and get invalided back ; anyhow
things went badly and he died of it. ... I
can tell you this, because you won't know who
he was, of course. . . .' (But really he was
telling it because, like the Ancient Mariner, he
had to talk and tell.) He went on quickly,
looking vacantly ahead, ' I was there when he
fired. . . . Some of us went up to him, and
he knew we 'd seen. ... I shan't forget his
face when we spoke to him. ... I can see it
now ... his eyes. . . .' He looked back into
the past at them, then met Alix's, and it was
suddenly as if he was looking again at a boy's
white, shamed face and great haunted blue eyes
and crooked, sensitive mouth and brows. . . .
He stopped abruptly and stood still, and said
sharply beneath his breath, ' Oh, good Lord ! '
Horror started to his face ; it mounted and
grew as he stared ; it leaped from his eyes to
the shadowed blue ones he looked into. He
guessed what he had done, and, because he
guessed, Alix guessed too. Suddenly paler, and
very cold and sick, she said, ' Oh . . .' on a
long shivering note ; and that too was what
the boy in the trenches had said, and how he
had said it. Perspiration bedewed the young
158 Non-Combatants and Others
man's brow, though the air hung clammy and
cold about them.
' I beg your pardon/ said Ingram, ' but I
didn't hear your name. Do you mind . . /
' Sandomir,' she whispered, with cold lips.
' It 's the same, isn't it ? '
He could not now pretend it wasn't.
' I I 'm sickeningly sorry/ he muttered.
' I 'm an ass ... a brute . . . telling you the
whole story like that. . . . Oh, I do wish I
hadn't. If only you 'd stopped me/
Alix pulled her dazed faculties together. She
was occupied in trying not to be sick. It was
unfortunate : strong emotion often took her
like that ; in that too she was like Paul.
' I d-didn't know/ she stammered. ' I never
knew before how Paul died. They never said
. . . just said shot. . . /
He could have bitten his tongue out now.
' You mustn't believe it, please. . . . San-
domir wasn't the name ... it was my mis-
take. . . . Sandberg that was it.'
' They never said/ Alix repeated. She felt
remote from him and his remorse, emptied of
pity and drained of all emotions, only very
sick, and her hands were as cold as fishes.
A little way in front Evie and Basil were
laughing together. A robin sang on a swaying
bough. Alix thought how sad he was. She
Sunday in the Country 159
had a sore throat and a headache. The mist
clung round, clammy and cold, like her
hands. . . .
* I don't know what to say,' Ingram was
muttering. ' There 's nothing to say. . . /
Alix stopped walking. The sky went dark.
' Terry/ she said.
Terry was at her side.
' All right. . . . Aren't you well ? '
She held on to his arm.
' Terry, I 'm going home/
He looked at her face.
' All right. I '11 come too. ... If you 're
going to faint, you 'd better sit down first/
' I shan't faint/ said Alix. ' But I think . . .
I think I may be going to be sick/
' Well/ said Terry, ' just wait till the others
have gone on, or they 11 fuss round. ... I say,
good-bye, all of you ; Alix is rather done, and
we 're going to the nearest station for the next
train. No thanks, don't bother to com&; we
shall be all right/
Alix heard far-away offers of help ; heard
Evie's ' Shall I come with you, Al ? ' and
Basil's 'What bad luck/ and the others'
sympathies and regrets, and Terry keeping
them off.
160 Non-Combatants and Others
Alix and Terry were alone together.
Then Alix was, as she had foretold, sick,
crouching on damp heather by the roadside.
' Have you done ? ' inquired Terry presently.
' Yes. I hope so, at least. Let 's go on to
the station/
' I wonder, is it something beginning ? Do
you feel like flu ? Or is it biliousness, or a
chill ? Or have you walked too far ? I was
afraid you were/
' I 'm all right. Only that man Mr. Ingram
told me things, and suddenly I felt sick. . . .
He told me things about Paul. ... He didn't
know who I was, and then suddenly he knew,
and I saw him know, and I knew too. Do you
know, Terry ? '
' No/ said Terry, levelly. ' I know what
some men who were out there thought, but it
wasn't true/
Terry was a good liar, but now no use at all.
Alix twisted her cold hands together and whis-
pered hoarsely, ' You Ve known all the time,
then. ... Oh, Paul, Paul to have minded as
much as all that before you died ... to have
been hurt like that for weeks and weeks . . /
She was crying now, and could not stop.
' Don't/ said Terry gently. ' Don't think
Sunday in the Country 161
like that about it ; it 's not the way. Don't
think of Paul, except that he got out of it
quicker than most people, and is safe now from
any more of it. One 's got to keep on think-
ing of that, whenever any of them slip up. . . .
I hoped you 'd none of you ever know. . . .
That bungling ass. . . . Alix, don't : it was
such a short time he had of it. . . .'
Alix gasped, her hands pressed to her choked
throat, ' It seemed hundreds of years, to him.
Hundreds and hundreds of years, of being
hurt like that, hurt more than he could
bear, till he had to end it. ... He was such
a little boy, Terry ... he minded things so
much. . . .'
' The thing is/ Terry repeated, frowning, and
prodding the mud in the road with his stick,
' not to think. Not to imagine. Not to re-
member. ... It 's over, don't you see, for Paul.
He 's clean out of it. . . . It 's a score for him
really, as he was like that and did mind so
much.'
' It would be easier,' said Alix presently,
husky and strangled, ' if he hadn't liked things
so much too ; if he hadn't been so awfully
happy ; if he hadn't so loved being alive. . . .
It isn't a score for him to lose all the rest of
his life, that he might have had afterwards.'
' No,' Terry agreed, sadly. ' It isn't. It 's
1 62 Non-Combatants and Others
rotten luck, that is. Simply rotten. That 's
one of the most sickening things about this
whole show, the way people are doing that. . . .
But there 's one thing about Paul, Alix ; if he 'd
come through it he 'd have kept on remem-
bering all the things one tries to forget. More
than most people, I mean. He was that sort.
Lots of people don't mind so much, and can
get things out of their heads when they aren't
actually seeing them. I can, pretty well, you
know. I think about other things, and don't
worry, and eat and sleep like a prize-fighter.
A chap like Ingram 's all right, too ; lots of
men are. (Though what I suppose Ingram
would call his brain seems to have gone pretty
well to pot to-day. My word, I shall let him
hear about that this evening.) But Paul
Paul would have minded awfully always ; it
might have spoilt his life a bit, you know. . . .
And worse things might have happened to him,
too ; he might have been taken prisoner. . . .
Paul,' he added slowly 'Paul is better off
than lots of men.'
Alix was staring at him now with wide,
frightened eyes.
' I say, Terry,' she said hoarsely, ' what
what on earth are we to do about it all ? It
it 's going on now this moment. ... I 've
tried so hard not to let it come near . . and
Sunday in the Country 163
now . . . now. . . .' She was cold and shaking
with terror.
' Now you 'd better go on trying/ Terry sug-
gested, and looked at his watch. ' Thinking 's
no good, anyhow. . . . We ought to hit off the
3.15 with any luck. Are you going to be sick
any more, by the way ? '
' I can never tell, till just beforehand/ said
Alix gloomily. ' But I wouldn't be much
surprised.'
That was a sad thing about the Sandomirs :
when they began to be sick it often took them
quite a long time to leave off. It was most
unfortunate, and they got it from their father,
who had sometimes been taken that way on
public platforms.
' Well/ said Terry patiently.
8
The others walked, and had tea, and walked
again, and took a train back. Londoners like
this sort of day. They like to see hedges, and
grass, and pick berries, and hear birds. It
refreshes them for their next week's work, even
though they have been at the time cold, and
tired, and perhaps bored.
CHAPTER X
EVENING IN CHURCH
ALIX was huddled on her bed in a rug. She
had taken two aspirin tablets because her head
ached, and really one is enough. She felt cold
and low. She was occupied in not thinking
about Paul or the war ; it was rather a difficult
operation, and took her whole energies. Paul
was insistent ; she pressed her hands against
her eyes and saw him on the darkness, her
little brother, white-faced, with the nervous
smile she knew ; Paul in a trench, among the
wounded and killed, seeing things, hearing
things . . . taken suddenly sick . . . unable to
leave off ... putting his head above the
parapet, trying to get hit, called sharply to
order by superiors. . . . Paul desperate, at the
end of his tether, in the night full of flashes
and smashes and laughter and grumbling and
curses. . . . Paul laughing too, and talking, as
she and Paul always did when they were hiding
things. . . . Paul in his dug-out, alone . . .
104
Evening in Church 165
unseen, he supposed . . . with only one thought,
to get out of it somehow. . . . The shot, the
pain, like flame . . . the men approaching,
who knew . . . Paul's face, knowing they knew
. . . white, frightened, staring, pain swallowed
up in shame . . . the end . . . how soon ?
Ingram hadn't said that. Anyhow, the end ;
and Paul, out of it at last, slipping into the
dark, alone. ... A noble end, Mrs. Frampton
had said, not a wasted life. . . . Anyhow, all
over for Paul, as Terry had said.
And then what ? Ingram hadn't said that
either ; nor had Terry ; no one could say,
for no one knew. What, if anything, did come
then ? Darkness, nothingness, or something
new ?
1 He has begun to live now, dear, for ever
and ever,' Kate had said. ' World without
end, amen,' Mrs. Frampton had rounded it off.
World without end ! What a thought ! Poor
Paul, finding a desperate way out from the
world, slipping away into another which had
no way out at all. But Mrs. Frampton's and
Kate's world without end was a happy, jolly
one, presumably, and the more of it the better.
It would give Paul space for the life he hadn't
lived here. Oh, could that be so ? Was it
possible, or was it, as so many people thought,
only a dream ? Who could know ? No one,
1 66 Non-Combatants and Others
till they came to try. And then perhaps they
would know nothing at all either way, not being
there any more. . . .
Yet people thought they knew, even here
and now. Nicky's friend, Mr. West ; he, pre-
sumably, thought he knew ; anyhow, if not
going so far as that, he had taken a hypothesis
and was, so to speak, acting, thinking, and
talking on it. He was clever, too. Mrs.
Frampton and Kate thought they knew, too ;
but they weren't clever. They believed in
God : but Alix could have no use for the
Violette God. Mrs. Frampton's God was the
Almighty, an omnipotent Being who governed
all things in gross and in detail, including the
weather (though the connection here was mys-
teriously vague). A God of crops and sun and
rain, who spoke in the thunder ; a truly pagan
God (though Mrs. Frampton would not have
cared for the word), of chastisements and
arbitrary mercies, who was capable of wreck-
ing ships and causing wars, in order to punish
and improve people. The God of the ' act of
God ' in the shipping regulations. A God who
could, and would, unless for wise purposes he
chose otherwise, keep men and women physi-
cally safe, protect them from battle, murder,
and sudden death. An anthropomorphic God,
in the semblance, for some strange reason known
Evening in Church 167
only to the human race, of a man. A God who
somehow was responsible for the war. A God
who ordered men's estates so that there should
be a wholesome economic inequality among
them.
Such was Mrs. Frampton's God, in no material
way altered from the conception of the primi-
tive Jews or the modern South Sea Islanders,
who make God in their image. He had no
attractions for Alix, who could not feel that a
God of weather was in any way concerned with
the soul of the world.
Kate's God, on the other hand, was for Alix
enshrined in the little books of devotion that
Kate had lent her sometimes, and all of which
she found revolting, even on the hypothesis
that you believed that sort of thing. They
propounded ingenuous personal questions for
the reader to ask himself, such as ' Have I
eaten or drunk too much ? Have I used bad
words ? Have I read bad books ? ' (As if,
thought Alix, any one would read a bad book
on purpose, life being so much too short to get
through the good ones ; unless one had the
misfortune to be a reviewer, like Nicky, or to
have bad taste, like many others ; and then
wasn't it rather a misfortune than a fault ?)
' Have I been unkind to animals ? ' the inquiries
went on. ' Have I obeyed those set over me ?
1 68 Non-Combatants and Others
Have I kept a guard of my eyes ? ' (a mysteri-
ous phrase, unexplained by any footnote, and
leaving it an open question whether to have
done so or to have omitted to do so would have
been the sin. Alix inclined to the former view ;
it somehow sounded an unpleasant thing to do.)
These books adopted a tone too intimate and
ejaculatory for Alix's taste ; and they were, it
must be admitted, about all she knew of Kate's
God, and her distaste for Him merely meant
that she disliked some of Kate's methods of
approach.
Alix felt, vaguely, that West's God was
different. There was no softness about Him,
or about West's approach to Him ; no senti-
mental sweetness, no dull piety, but energy,
effort, adventure, revolt, life taken at a rush.
Dynamite, West had said, to blow up the world.
Poetry, too ; harsh and grim poetry, often, but
the real thing. Kate's religion might be sung
in hymns by Faber ; Mrs. Frampton's in hymns
by Dr. Watts ; West's had very little to do
with any hymns sung in churches. And it was
West's religion which thought it was going to
break up the world in pieces and build it anew.
Certainly neither Mrs. Frampton's nor Kate's
would be up to the task ; they would not even
want it. Mrs. Frampton worshipped a God of
Things as they Are, who has already done all
Evening in Church 169
things well, and Kate one who is little concerned
with the ordering of the world at all, but only
with individual souls.
One would like to know more about West's
God.
' You should go to church,' West had told
her. ' You 'd find it interesting.'
She might find it so, of course ; anyhow, she
could try. Paul was driving her to find things
out ; his desperation and pain, her own, all the
world's, must somehow break a way through,
out and beyond, fling open a gate on to new
worlds. . . . Anyhow, it might take one's mind
off, help one not to think. It occurred to Alix
that she would go to church this evening. It
seemed, at the moment, the simplest way of
watching these odd mystical forces, if there
were any such forces, at work. She would be
able thus to see them concentrated, working
through a few people gathered together for the
purpose. Alix's acquaintance with Sunday
evening services, it may be observed, was
rudimentary.
Meanwhile there was tea. Alix went down
to it. There were Mrs. Frampton, Kate, a
Mrs. Buller from Anzac next door, and a
toasted bun.
170 Non-Combatants and Others
Mrs. Frampton said to Alix, ' You do look
low, dear. I 'm sure it 's a good thing you
came home. Biliousness isn't a thing to play
with. Suppose you were to go to bed straight
away, and let Kate bring you up a nice hot
cup of tea there ? '
Kate said, playfully, ' This is what Sunday
outings lead to.'
They were both at a great distance, as if
Alix were at the bottom of the sea. So was
Mrs. Buller, who talked to Mrs. Frampton about
girls. Girls are, of course, an inexhaustible and
fruitful topic there are so many of them
coming and going, and nearly all so bad. Mrs.
Frampton and Mrs. Buller and Kate all found
them interesting, if a nuisance. Alix found them
a safe subject.
Mrs. Buller was saying, ' On one thing I
have made up my mind, Mrs. Frampton ; never
again will I have a G.F.S. girl in my house.
Besides ah 1 the meetings and things at all
hours, to have the girl's Associate coming into
my kitchen and talking about prayer (it was
prayer, for I overheard) and ending up with a
kiss you could hear upstairs it was more than
I could be expected to stand. And the girl
smashed three cups that same afternoon, and
answered me back in a downright impertinent
way. So I said, ' If that 's what your G.F.S.
Evening in Church 171
teaches you for manners, the sooner you and I
part company the better," and I gave her her
month.'
' I 'm sure you were right/ said Mrs. Framp-
ton. ' Though of course one mustn't put it
all on the G.F.S.' She said this because of
Kate, who was a church worker. But as it
happened Kate did not care for the G.F.S. ,
having fallen out with the local secretary, and
also having been told by her vicar that it was a
society which drew too rigid an ethical line and
no denominational line at all. Kate also drew
rigid ethical lines, when left to herself and her
own natural respectability ; the comic spirit
must be largely responsible for driving people
like Kate into the Christian church, a body
which, whatever opprobrium it may have at
various times incurred, has never yet been
justly accused of respectability. So Kate joined
in about Girls and the G.F.S.
Mrs. Buller said, ' However, we may be
thankful we aren't in the country, for my sister
at Stortford has had five soldiers billeted on
her, and how is her girl to keep her head among
them all ? She won't, of course. Girls and a
uniform it goes to their heads like drink.'
' It does seem an upset for your sister,' said
Mrs. Frampton.
' And Bertie 's started again wanting to en-
172 Non-Combatants and Others
list/ continued their visitor, who had many
troubles. ' If I 've told him once I Ve told
him fifty times, " Not while / live you don't,
Bertie." So I hope he '11 settle down again.
But he says he '11 only be fetched later if he
doesn't ; such rubbish. He actually wants to
go as a common soldier, not even a commis-
sion. Think of the class of company he 'd be
thrown into, not to speak of the risk. Fancy
his thinking his father and I could let him do
such a thing.'
Mrs. Frampton made sympathetic sounds.
They had tea. They went on talking, of
Belgians, Zeppelins, bulbs, and Girls. Belgians
as a curiosity (in the corner house), Zeppelins as
murder (' to call that war, you know '), bulbs
as a duty (to be put in quite soon), and Girls
as a nuisance (to be changed as speedily as
may be). Mrs. Buller stayed till nearly six.
' It 's always a treat to see Mrs. Buller,' said
Mrs. Frampton. ' But fancy, it 's nearly time
to get ready for church.'
Mrs. Frampton's church was at half-past six.
Kate's was at seven. It was to Kate's that
Alix wanted to go. She did not think that
Kate's church would be much use, but she was
sure that Mrs. Frampton's wouldn't. Mrs.
Frampton's was florid Gothic outside, with a
mellifluous peal of bells. Kate's was of plain
Evening in Church 173
brick, with a single tinny bell. Mrs. Framp-
ton's looked comfortable. Kate's did not. The
road into another world, if there was another
world, surely would not be a comfortable
one.
Kate was pleased when Alix said she was
coming. She thought the little books had
borne fruit.
' It '11 be something to do/ said Alix cauti-
ously.
' I hope Mr. Alison will preach,' Kate said.
' He 's so helpful always.'
Alix wondered if Mr. Alison knew about
another world, and if he would tell in his sermon.
If he did not, he would not be helpful to her.
Probably not even if he did.
They went diagonally across the little com-
mon, to the unpretentious brick church whose
bell tinkled austerely. It was an austere church
both within and without, and had a sacrificial
beauty of outline and of ritual that did not
belong to Mrs. Frampton's church, which was
full of cheery comfort and best hats and Hymns
A. and M. Kate's church had an oblative air
of giving up. It gave up succulent, completed
tunes for the restrained rhythms of plain-song,
which, never completed, suggest an infinite
174 Non-Combatants and Others
going on ; it gave up comfortable pews for
chairs which slid when you knelt against them ;
its priests and congregation gave up food before
Mass and meat on fast-days. The chief luxury
it seemed to allow itself was incense, of which
Alix disliked the smell. Certainly the air of
cheery, everyday respectability which char-
acterises some churches was conspicuously
absent : this church seemed to be perpetually
approaching a mystery, trying to penetrate it,
laying aside impedimenta in the quest. . . .
The quest for what ? That seemed to be the
question.
The candles on the far altar quivered and
shone like stars. They sang hymns out of little
green books. They began by singing, in pro-
cession, a long hymn about gardens and gallant
walks and pleasant flowers and spiders' webs
and dampish mists, and the flood of life flowing
through the streets with silver sound, and
many other pleasant things. Alix glanced at
Kate, curiously. Kate, prim and proper, so
essentially of Violette, seemed in herself to have
no point of contact with such strange, de-
lightful songs, such riot of attractive fancy.
For this was poetry, and Kate and poetry
were incongruous.
Poetry : having found the word, Alix felt
it pervade and explain the whole service the
Evening in Church 175
tuneless chants, the dim glooms and twinkling
lights, the austerity. Kate interpreted this
poetry for her own needs through the medium
of little books of devotion for which prose was
far too honourable a word ; jargon, rather ;
pious, mushy, abominable. . . .
It was odd. Kate seemed to be caught in the
toils of some strange, surprising force. Alix
hadn't learnt yet that it is a force nowhere
more surprising than in the unlikely people it
does catch. The further question may then
arise, how is it going to use them ? Can it use
them at all, or does the turning of its wheels
turn them out and get rid of them, or does it
retain them, unused ? It is certainly all very
odd. This essentially romantic and adventur-
ous and mystical force seems to have a special
hold on many timid, unromantic and un-
imaginative persons. This essentially corporate
and catholic body lays its grasp as often as not
on extreme individualists. Perhaps it is the
unconscious need in them of the very thing
they have not got, that makes the contact.
Perhaps it reveals poetry and adventure to
those who could find them in no other guise.
Perhaps it links together in a body those who
must otherwise creep through life unlinked,
gives awareness of the community to the other-
wise unaware. Perhaps, on the other hand, it
176 Non-Combatants and Others
doesn't. The powers in human beings of
evading influences and escaping obvious infer-
ences is unlimited.
The lights were suddenly dimmer. Some one
got into the pulpit and preached. He preached
on a question, ' Who will lead me into the
strong city ? ' A very pertinent inquiry, Alix
thought, and just what she wanted to know.
Who would ? Who could ? Was there a strong
city at all, or only chaos and drifting ways of
terror and unrest ? If so, where was it, and
how to get there ? The strong city, said the
preacher, is the city of refuge for which we all
crave, and more especially just now, in this day
of tribulation. The kings of the earth are
gathered and gone by together ; but the hill
of Sion is a fair place and the joy of the whole
earth ; upon the north side lieth the city of the
great King ; God is well known in her palaces as
a sure refuge. Above the noise of battle, above
the great water-floods, is the city of God that
lieth four-square, unshaken by the tempests.
Jolly, thought Alix, and just where one
would be : but how to get into it ? One had
tried, ever since the war began, to shut one-
self away, unshaken and undisturbed by the
tempests. One had come to Violette because
it seemed more unshaken than Wood End ; but
Violette wasn't really, somehow, a strong city.
Evening in Church 177
The tempests rocked one till one felt sick. . . .
Where was this strong city, any strong city ?
Well, all about ; everywhere, anywhere, said
the preacher ; one could hardly miss it.
' Tis only your estranged faces
That miss the many-splendoured thing . . .'
and he quoted quite a lot of that poem. Then
he went on to a special road of approach,
quoting instead, ' I went into the sanctuary of
God/ Church, Alix presumed. Well, here she
was. No : it transpired that it wasn't evening
service he meant ; he went on to talk of the
Mass. That, apparently, was the strong city.
Well, it might be, if one was of that way of
thinking. But if one wasn't ? Did Kate find
it so, and was that why she went out early
several mornings in the week ? And what sort
of strength had that city ? Was it merely a
refuge, well bulwarked, where one might hide
from fear ? Or had it strength to conquer the
chaos ? West would say it had ; that its work
was to launch forces over the world like shells,
to shatter the old materialism, the old comfort-
able selfishness, the old snobberies, cruelties,
rivalries, cant, blind stupidities, lies. The old
ways, thought Alix (which were the same ways
carried further, West would say), of destruction
and unhappiness and strife, that had led to the
M
178 Non-Combatants and Others
bitter hell where boys went out in anguish into
the dark.
The city wasn't yet strong enough, appar-
ently, to do that. Would it be one day ?
' I will not cease from mental fight/ cried
the preacher, who was fond, it seemed, of
quoting poetry, ' nor let my sword sleep in my
hand, till we have built Jerusalem in England's
green and pleasant land.'
The next moment he was talking of another
road of approach to the city on the hill, be-
sides going to church, besides building Jeru-
salem in England. A road steep and sharp
and black ; we take it unawares, forced along
it (many boys are taking it this moment, de-
voted and unafraid. Unafraid, thought Alix) ;
and suddenly we are at the city gates ; they
open and close behind us, and we are in the
strong city, the drifting chaos of our lives
behind us, to be redeemed by firm walking on
whatever new roads may be shown us. God,
who held us through all the drifting, unsteady
paths, has led us now right out of them into a
sure refuge. . . . How do you know ? thought
Alix. Beyond the steep dark road there may
be chaos still, endless, worse chaos : or, surely
more natural to suppose, there may be nothing.
How did people think they knew ? Or didn't
they ? Did they only guess, and say what they
Evening in Church 179
thought was attractive ? Did Kate know ?
And Mrs. Frampton ? How could they know,
people like that ? How could it be part of
their equipment of knowledge, anything so
extraordinary, so wild, so unlike their usual
range as that ? They knew about recipes, and
servants, and dusting, and things like that
but surely not about weird and wonderful things
that they couldn't see ? Alix could rather
better believe that this preacher knew, though
he did sometimes use words she didn't like,
such as tribulation and grace. (It would seem
that preachers sometimes must : it is impos-
sible, and not right, to judge them.)
When the sermon ended abruptly, and they
sang a hymn of Bunyan's about a pilgrim (402
in the green books), one was left with a queer
feeling that the Church had its hand on a door,
and at any moment might turn a handle and
lead the way through. . . . Alix caught for a
moment the forces at work ; perhaps West
was right about them, and they were adequate
for the job of blowing up the debris of the
world. If only the Church could collect them,
focus them, use them. . . . Kate, and church
people of Kate's calibre, were surely like un-
taught children playing, ignorantly and placidly,
with dynamite. They would be blown up if
they weren't careful. They kept summoning
180 Non-Combatants and Others
forces to their aid which must surely, if they
fully came, shatter and break to bits most of
the things they clung to as necessary comforts
and conveniences. But perhaps people knew
this, and therefore prayed cautiously, with
reservations ; so the powers came in the same
muffled, wrappered way, with reservations.
Such were Alix's speculations as the music
ended and the congregation filed down the
church and shook hands with the tired vicar
at the door and went out into the dark evening.
The fog came round them and choked the light
that streamed from the church, and made Alix
cough. They hurried home through the blurred,
gas-lit roads.
' Did you enjoy the service ? ' asked Kate.
' I think so/ said Alix, wondering whether
she had.
1 It 's queer/ she added, meaning the position
of the Christian church in this world.
But Kate said, ' Queer ! Whatever do you
mean ? It was just like the ordinary ; like it
always is. ... I wish Mr. Alison had preached,
though ; I never feel Mr. Daintree has the
same touch. He preaches about things and
people in general, and that 's never so inspiring ;
he doesn't seem to get home the same way to
each one. Now, Mr. Alison this morning was
beautiful. Mr. Daintree, I always think, has
Evening in Church 181
almost too many ideas, and they run away
with him a little. However.' Kate's principle
(one of them) was not to criticise the clergy,
so she stopped.
' I wonder if Florence is in yet/ she said
instead, ' and if she 's left the larder open, as
usual, and let that kitten get at the chicken ? I
shouldn't be a bit surprised. She is a girl/
Alix felt another incongruity. If Kate really
believed the extraordinary things she professed
to believe about the interfusion of two worlds
(at least two), how then did it matter so much
about chickens and kittens and Florence ?
Yet why not ? Why shouldn't it give ^ all
things an intenser, more vivid reality, a deeper
significance ? Perhaps it did, thought Alix,
renouncing the problem of the Catholic church
and its so complicated effects.
' You Ve got your cough worse,' said Kate,
fitting the key into Violette's latch. ' You 'd
better go to bed straight, I think, and have a
mustard leaf on after supper. You 're the colour
of a ghost, child. Evie 's back, I can hear.'
So could Alix.
' I shall go to bed,' she said. ' I don't want
supper.'
While she was undressing, Evie came in, to
wash her hands for supper. Evie was radiant
and merry.
1 82 Non-Combatants and Others
' Hard luck your having to go back, Al,'
said Evie, splashing her face and hands. ' I 'm
stiff all over ; I 'm for a hot bath afterwards.
We had a lovely time ; simply screaming, it
was. Mr. Doye is rather a sport. They 're all
a jolly set, though. Even that Mr. Ingram,
the one you were talking to, brightened up
later on, though when first you turned back he
looked as if he was at his father's funeral.
You must have made an impression. But he
got over it all right and was quite chirpy/
' Was he ? ' said Alix.
' I Ve promised Mr. Doye to go out again
with him, next Sat. He 's quite determined.
I don't know what Sid Vinney '11 say, because
I 'd half promised him. But I don't care.
Sid 's an old silly, anyhow.'
Evie smothered herself in the towel, scrubbing
her smooth skin that no scrubbing could hurt.
' Dommage, you being seedy,' said Evie, and
pulled off her walking shoes. ' You 'd have
enjoyed the day no end. Still feeling sick ?
Oh, poor kid, bad luck. . . . Well, there 's the
bell, I must run. I Ve heaps more to tell
you. But you 'd better go off straight to
sleep after supper ; I won't disturb you when
I come up.'
She ran downstairs. Alix heard her voice in
the dining-room below, through supper. Evie
Evening in Church 183
had had a good day. Evie was lovely, and
jolly, and kind, and a good sort, but Alix did
not want to see her, or to hear her talk.
It was Kate who came up after supper, with
a mustard leaf, which she put on Alix's chest.
' Shall I read to you till I take it off ? ' Kate
said ; and what she selected to read was the
current issue of the Sign, the parish magazine
she took in. (Mrs. Frampton took the Peep of
Day, which was the magazine of the church she
attended.)
The mustard leaf, an ancient and mild one,
which needed keeping on for some time, allowed
of reading the Sign almost straight through,
apart from the parish news on the outer pages,
which, though absorbing, is local and ephemeral,
and should not be treated as literature. Kate
began with an article on the Organs in our
Churches, worked on through a serial called
Account Rendered ; a poem on the Women of
the Empire ; a page on Waifs and Strays ; A
Few Words to Parents and Teachers on the
Christian Doctrine of the Trinity ; Thoughts to
Rest Upon ; Keeping Well, some Facts for our
Families ; The Pitman's Amen (a short story) ;
Wholesome Food for Baby ; and so at last to
184 Non-Combatants and Others
Our Query Corner, wherein the disturbed in
mind were answered when they had during the
month written to inquire, ' Why does my clergy-
man worship a cross ? Is not this against the
second commandment ? ' ' What amusements,
if any, may be allowed on Sunday ? ' ' If I
take the Communion, should I go to dancing-
classes ? ' ' How can I turn from Low Church
to High Church ? ' ' Should not churchwardens
be Christians ? ' and about many other per-
plexing problems. The answers were intelli-
gent and full, never a bald Yes, or No, or We
do not know ; they often included a recom-
mendation to the inquirer to try and look at
the matter from a wider, or higher, standpoint,
and (usually) to read the little book by an
eminent Canon that bore more particularly on
his case.
Alix got it all, from the Organs in our
Churches to the Christian Churchwardens, mixed
up with the mustard leaf, so that it seemed a
painful magazine, but, one hoped, profitable.
She looked at Kate's small, prim head in the
shadow under the gas, and thought how Kate
had been through love and loss and jealousy
and still survived. But Kate's love and loss
and jealousy could not be so bad ; it was like
some one else's toothache.
' We do not quite understand your question/
Evening in Church 185
read Kate. (This was on turning from Low to
High.) ' You should try to detach yourself
from these party names, which are often mis-
chievous. . . . We think you might be helped
by the following books. . . . Twenty-five
minutes : I should think that must be enough,
even for that old leaf. Does it smart much ? '
' Dreadfully/ said Alix, who was tired of it.
' Well, two minutes more,' said Kate, and
went on to the Churchwardens, who, it seemed,
should, be Christians, if possible.
' Now then/ said Kate, advancing with cotton
wool.
' Oo/ said Alix. * It 's been on too long,
Kate/
' You do make a fuss/ said Kate, padding her
chest with cotton wool and tucking the clothes
round her. ' Now you go off to Sleepy Town
quick/
Alix thought how kind Kate was. When one
had any physical ailment, Violette came out
strong. It was soft-hearted. Women are.
5
When Kate had gone, Alix lay with her eyes
tight shut and her head throbbing, and tried
to go to sleep, so that she need no longer make
her brain ache with keeping things out. But
1 86 Non-Combatants and Others
she could not go to sleep. And she could not,
in the silence and dark, keep things out ; not
Paul ; nor the war ; nor Basil ; nor Evie.
At last Evie came. Alix, feigning sleep, lay
with tight-shut eyes, face to the wall. Every
movement of Evie, undressing in her frightful
loveliness, was horribly clear. Alix was afraid
Evie, in passing her bed, would brush against
her, and that she would have to scream. If
only Evie would get to bed and to sleep.
Evie, after her undressing and washing, knelt
in prayer for thirty seconds (what was Evie's
God, who should say ? One cannot tell with
people like Evie, or see into their minds), then
took her loveliness to bed and fell sweetly
asleep.
Alix knew from her breathing that she slept ;
then she unclenched her hands and relaxed her
body and cried.
CHAPTER XI
ALIX AND EVIE
BASIL had Evie on the brain. He liked her
enormously. He was glad he had a month's
more leave. He took to meeting her after she
came out from her hat shop and seeing her
home. They spent Saturday afternoons to-
gether.
Alix saw them parting one Saturday evening,
as she came home. Spring Hill was dim and
quiet, and they stood by the door into the
Park, on the opposite side of the road to
Violette, chaffing and saying good-bye. Alix
saw Basil suddenly kiss Evie. It might be the
first time : in that case it would be an event
for them both, and thrilling. Or it might be
not the first time at all : in that case it would
be a habit, and jolly.
Anyhow Evie said, ' Oh, go along and don't
be a silly. . . . Are you coming in to-night ? '
He said ' No ' and laughed.
Then they saw Alix turning into Violette.
187
1 88 Non-Combatants and Others
' There now,' said Evie. ' She must have seen
you going on. Couldn't have missed it. . . .
Whatever will she think ? '
' She won't think anything/ said Basil Doye.
' Alix is a nice person, and minds her own
business/
' I believe it 's her you 're in love with really/
said Evie, teasing him.
He kissed her again, and said, ' Oh, do
you? '
After a little more of the like conversation,
which will easily be imagined, they parted.
Evie went into Violette. She ran upstairs and
into her dark bedroom and flung off her out-
door things. Turning, she saw Alix sitting on
the edge of her bed.
' Goodness, how you startled me/ said Evie.
' Sorry/ said Alix. ' Got a toothache/ She
was holding her face between her hands.
Evie said, ' Oh, bad luck. Try some aspirin.
Or suck a clove. ... I say, Al/
' What ? '
' Did you see me and Mr. Doye just now, in
the road ? You did, didn't you ? '
' No/ said Alix.
' Oh/ said Evie, dubious, glancing at Alix's
face, that was dimly wan in the faint light
from the street lamps, and twisted a little with
her toothache.
Alix and Evie 189
Pity seized Evie, who was kind.
' I say, kiddie, do go to bed. What 's the
use of coming down with a face-ache ? You 'd
be much better tucked up snug, with a clove
poultice.'
' No/ said Alix, uncertainly, and stood up.
' It 's better now. I Ve put on cocaine. . . .
Where are my shoes ? ... Of course I saw you
and Basil in the road. . . . Did you have a
jolly afternoon ? '
Evie knew that way of Alix's, of going back
upon her lies ; that was where Alix as a liar
differed from herself ; you only had to wait.
' Yes, it was a lark/ said Evie carelessly.
' Mr. Doye 's priceless, isn't he ? Doesn't mind
what he says. Nor what he does, either. He
makes me shriek, he 's so comic. You should
have heard him go on at tea. We went to the
rink, you know, and had tea there. He 's so
silly.' Evie laughed her attractive, gurgling
laugh.
They went down to supper.
Sometimes Basil and Evie lunched together.
By habit they lunched in different shops and
had different things to eat. Evie liked pea-
soup, or a poached egg, bread and honey, a
190 Non-Combatants and Others
large cup of coffee with milk, and what she and
the tea-shop young ladies called fancies. Basil
didn't. When they lunched together they both
had the things Basil liked, except in coffee.
' Did you tell him two noirs ? ' Evie would
say. ' Rubbish, you know I always have lait.'
1 A corrupt taste. One cafe au lait, waiter.
You like the most ridiculous things, you know ;
you might be eight. You aren't grown-up
enough yet for black coffee, or smoking, or
liqueurs. You must meet my mother ; you 'd
learn a lot from her/
' Oh well, I 'm happy in my own way. . . .
As for smoking, I think it 's jolly bad for
people's nerves, if you ask me. Alix smokes
an awful lot, and her nerves are like fiddle-
strings. I don't go so far,' Evie said judicially,
' as to say I don't think it 's good form for
girls. That 's what mother thinks, only of
course she 's old-fashioned, very. So is Kate.
But after all, there is a difference between men
and girls, in the things they should do ; /
think there 's a difference, don't you ? '
' Oh, thank goodness, yes/ said Basil, fer-
vently, not having always thought so.
' And I don't know, but I sometimes think
if girls can't fight for their country, they
shouldn't smoke/
' Oh, I see. A reward for valour, you think
Alix and Evie 191
it should be. That would be rather hard, since
the red-tape rules of our army don't allow
them to fight. If they might, I Ve no doubt
plenty would.'
Evie laughed at him. ' A girl would hate it.
She 'd be hopeless/
' Plenty of men hate it and are hopeless, if
you come to that/
* Oh, it 's not the same/ asserted Evie. ' A
girl couldn't/ She added, after a moment,
sympathetically curious, ' Do you hate it
much ? '
' Oh, much/ Basil deprecated the adverb.
' It 's quite interesting in some ways, you know/
he added. * And at moments even exciting.
Though mostly a bit of a bore, of course, and
sometimes pretty vile. But, anyhow, seldom
without its humours, which is the main thing.
Oh, it 's frightfully funny in parts/
' Anyhow/ Evie explained for him, ' of course
you 're glad to be doing your bit/
He laughed at that. ' You Ve been reading
magazine stories. That 's what the gallant
young fellows say, isn't it ? ... Look here,
bother the war. I want to talk about better
things. Will you meet me after you get off
this evening ? I want a good long time with
you, and leisure. These scraps are idiotic/
Evie looked doubtful.
192 Non-Combatants and Others
' You and me by ourselves ? Or shall we
get any one else ? '
' Any one else ? What for ? Spoil every-
thing/
' Oh, I don't mind either way. Only mother 's
rather particular in some ways, you know, and
she . . . well, if you want to know, she thinks
I go out with you alone rather a lot. It 's all
rubbish, of course ; as if one mightn't go out
with who one likes . . . but, well, you know
what mother is. I told you, she 's old-fashioned,
a bit. And of course Kate 's shocked, but I
don't care a bit for Kate, she 's too prim for
anything.'
' We won't care a bit for any one/ suggested
Basil. ' I never do. I don't believe you do
really, either. If people are so particular, we
must just shock them and have done. Any-
how, you don't suppose I 'm going to give up
seeing you/
The quickening of his tone made her draw
back from the subject. Evie liked flirtation,
but did not understand passion ; it was not in
her cool head and heart. It was the thing in
Basil that made her at times, lately, shy of
him in their intercourse ; vaguely she realised
that he might become unmanageable. She
liked him to love her beauty, but she was occa-
sionally startled by the way he loved it. She
Alix and Evie 193
thought it was perhaps because he was an
artist, or a soldier, or both.
' Well, perhaps I '11 come/ she said, to soothe
him. ' Where shall we go ? Let 's go inside
something, I say, not walking in the dark like
last time. Oh, it was very jolly, of course, but
it 's not so snug and comfy. We might do a
play ? . . . I say, it 's nearly two. I must get
back. I got into a row yesterday for being
late that was your fault.'
They walked together to the side door of the
select hat shop.
' Not really a shop/ as Evie explained some-
times. ' More of a studio, it is. It 's awfully
artistic, our work/
While she went upstairs, she was thinking,
' Dommage, his getting so warm sometimes.
It spoils the fun. . . . He '11 be wanting to
tie me up if I 'm not careful, and I 'm not
ready for that yet. . . . There are plenty of
others. , I don't know/
3
As it happened, she met one of the others
when she left the shop at five, and he took her
out to tea at the most expensive tea place in
London, which was always his way with tea
and other things. He was on leave from France,
N
194 Non-Combatants and Others
and had met Evie for the first time three days
ago, when she was out with Doye, whom he
knew. His name was Hugh Montgomery
Gordon, and he was the son of Sir Victor
Gordon of Ellaby Hall in Kent, Prince's
Mansions in Park Lane, and Gordon's Jam
Factory in Hackney Wick. He was handsome
in person, graceful, clear-featured, an old lawn-
tennis blue, and a young man with great
possessions, who, having been told on good
authority that he would find it hard to enter
into the kingdom of heaven, had renounced any
idea of this enterprise he might otherwise have
had, and devoted himself whole-heartedly to
appreciating this world. He was in a cavalry
regiment, and had come through the war so
far cool, unruffled, unscathed, and mentioned
in despatches. He had a faculty for serenely
expecting and acquiring the best, in most de-
partments of life, though in some (such as art,
literature, and social ethics) he failed through
ignorance and indifference. Meeting Evie
Tucker in Bond Street, and perceiving, as he
had perceived before, that her beauty was in a
high class of merit, he was stirred by a desire
to acquire her as a companion for tea, and did
so. Evie liked him ; he was really more in
her line than Basil Doye (artists were queer,
there was no getting round that, even if they
Alix and Evie 195
had given it up for soldiering and had lost
interest in it and fingers), and she liked the
place where they had tea, and liked the tea
and the cakes and the music, and liked him to
drive to Clapton with her in a taxi afterwards.
* You don't seem economical, do you ? ' she
remarked, as they whirred swiftly eastward.
' I hope not,' said Hugh Montgomery Gordon,
in his slow, level tones. ' I can't stand econo-
mical people/
He left her at Violette and drove back to
his club, feeling satisfied with himself and her.
She was certainly a find, though it was a pity
one had to go so far out into the wilderness to
return her where she belonged. Her people
were, no doubt, what his sister Myrtle would
call quite imposs.
4
As Evie and Captain Gordon had taxied
down Holborn, they had passed, and been held
up for a minute near Alix, Nicholas, and West,
who stood talking at the corner of Chancery
Lane.
' Hugh Montgomery Gordon,' Nicholas mur-
mured. ' Bright and beautiful as usual. Know
him, Alix ? Surely he doesn't visit at Violette ?
I can't picture it, somehow.'
196 Non-Combatants and Others
' Oh, he might, for Evie's sake. Evie picks
them up, you know ; it 's remarkable how she
picks them up. They look very beautiful to-
gether, don't they ? Is he nice ? '
' Just as you saw. I scarcely know him
more than that. He was a Hall man ; my year.
I believe he had a good time there. He looks as
if he had a good time still. West's opinions
about him are more pronounced than mine.
Is he nice, West ? '
' He 's in the family jam/ West told Alix,
as sufficient answer. ' Gordon's jam, if that
means anything to you/
' Wooden pips and sweated girls/ Alix as-
sented, having picked up these things from her
mother. ' It must be exciting : so many im-
provements to be made/
' No doubt/ agreed West. ' But the Gordons
won't make them. They make jam and they
make money any amount of it but they
don't make improvements that won't pay. A
bad business. It will be more tolerable for
Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment,
at least I hope it will. They Ve been badgered
and bullied about it by social workers for years,
but they don't mind. . . . And at the same
time, of course, they Ve no more ideas about
what to do with their money than than
Solomon had. They put it into peacocks and
Alix and Evie 197
ivory apes. These rich people well, . I should
like to have the Gordons in a dungeon and pull
out their teeth one by one, as if they were
Jews, till they forked out their ill-gotten gains
for worthy objects. ... If you ever meet
Gordon, Miss Sandomir, you might tell him
what I think about him. Tell him we have a
meeting of the Anti-Sweating League in our
parish room every Monday, and should be glad
to see him there/
Nicholas wondered, though he didn't ask
Alix, whether Evie was still on with Basil
Doye, or whether a breach there had made a
gap by which Hugh Montgomery Gordon was
entering in. One thought of Evie's friend-
ships with men in these terms ; whereas Alix
might drive with a different man every day
without suggesting to the onlooker that one was
likely to oust another. The difference was less
between Evie and Alix (for Evie was of a fine
and wide companionableness) than in what men
required of them respectively.
' Evie and he,' Alix commented, considering
them. ' They might be good friends, I think.
They might fit. The jam wouldn't get be-
tween them nor the money. . . . / rather
like him too, I think. He 's so beautiful, and
looks as if he 'd never been ill. That 's so
jolly.' She was giving the same reasons which
198 Non-Combatants and Others
Basil had given for liking Evie. It occurred
to her to wonder whether, if she 'd been to the
war, these two things would take her further
in her mild inclination towards Hugh Mont-
gomery Gordon much further. Perhaps they
would. . . .
Alix went to her bus at the corner of Gray's
Inn Road. Nicholas went back to his rooms
to finish an article. West went to a Sweated
Bootmakers' protest meeting in his parish room.
West attended too many meetings : that was
certain. Meetings, a clumsy contrivance at
best, cannot be worth so much attendance.
But he went off to this one full of faith and
hope, as always.
Evie was using the telephone in the hall.
She was saying, in her clear, cheery tones,
' Hullo, is that you ? Awfully sorry, don't ex-
pect me to-morrow evening. I can't come. . . .
Awfully sorry. . . . Don't quite know. ... I '11
write.'
Alix went up to her room.
Presently Evie came in.
' Did you hear me 'phoning ? ' she inquired
superfluously. ' It was to Mr. Doye. Fact is,
I think he and I 'd both be better for a little
Alix and Evie 199
rest from each other. It '11 give him time to
cool down a bit. He 's got keener than I like,
lately. Fun 's all very well, but one doesn't
want to be hustled, does one ? I don't want
him asking me anything for a long time.'
Alix, sitting on her bed with one shoe off,
pulling at the other, said in a small voice, ' I
don't think he will.'
Evie turned round and looked at her, ques-
tioningly.
' You don't ? Why, whatever do you know
about it ? '
Alix was bent over her shoe ; her voice was
muffled.
' Basil is like that. He doesn't mean
things. . . .'
'Oh. . . .' Evie turned to the glass, and
drew four pins out of the roll of hair behind
her head, and it fell in a heavy nut-brown mass,
glinting in the yellow gaslight. She began to
comb it out and roll it up again.
' Doesn't mean anything, doesn't he ? ' she
said thoughtfully. ' You seem awfully sure
about that.'
' Yes,' agreed Alix. She had pulled off
both shoes now, and tucked her stockinged
feet under her as she sat curled up on the bed.
She drew a deep breath and spoke rather
quickly.
2OO Non-Combatants and Others
' He 's always the same, he was the same
with me once, he doesn't really mean it. . . .'
' The same with you ' Evie, without turn-
ing round, saw in the glass the blurred image
of the huddled figure and small pale face in
the shadows behind her.
She drove in two more hairpins, then turned
sharply and looked at Alix.
' You don't mean to say he used to be in
love with you/
' Oh ... in love. . . / Alix's voice was
faint, attenuated, remote.
' Well anything, then/ Evie was impatient.
' You needn't split hairs. . . . He went on
with you, I suppose. . . . And you . . /
She broke off, staring, uncomfortably, at a
situation really beyond her powers.
Her cogitations ended in, ' Well, I think you
might have told me at first. I thought you
and he were just good friends. / didn't want
him. I wouldn't have let him come near me
if I 'd known it was like that. I never do that
sort of thing. Now do I, Alix ? You Ve
never seen me mean to other girls like that,
have you ? I never have been and I never
will be. . . . I don't want him. You can have
him back/
Alix giggled suddenly, irrepressibly.
' What 's the matter now ? ' said Evie.
Alix and Evie 201
' Nothing. Only the way you talk of Basil-
handing him about as if he was a kitten. He 's
not, you know/
Evie smiled grudgingly. ' Well, anyhow /
don't want him. Particularly if he doesn't
mean anything, as you say. ... It isn't every
one I 'd believe if they told me that ; they
might be jealous or spiteful or something. But
I don't believe you 'd say it, Al, if you didn't
think it was true ' (Alix said, ' Oh,' on a soft,
indrawn breath) ' and you know him, so I
expect you 're right. And I 'm not going on
playing round with a man who makes love like
he does and doesn't mean anything. It isn't
respectable.'
'Oh respectable.' Alix laughed again,
shakily ; it was such a funny word in this
connection, and so like Violette.
' Well, I don't see it 's funny,' said Evie.
' It 's awfully important to be respectable, and
I always am. I '11 be good pals with any
number of men, but when they begin to get
like Basil Doye I won't have it unless they
mean something.'
Thus Evie enunciated her code, and washed
her hands and face and put on her dress and
went downstairs. At the door she paused for
a moment and looked back at Alix.
' I say, Al I 'm awfully sorry. I didn't
2O2 Non-Combatants and Others
mean to be a sneak, you know ; I wouldn't
have, if I 'd known.'
' Not a bit,' Alix absurdly and politely
murmured.
' Well, do get a move on and come down.
It 's too cold for anything up here. ... I say '
Evie paused awkwardly ' I say, kiddie, you
didn't really care, did you ? '
Alix shook her head. ' Oh no/ Still her
voice was small, polite, and attenuated.
' Well then,' said Evie cheerfully, ' no harm 's
done to any one. But still, it 's not the style
I like, a man that plays about first with one
girl, then another. . . . I 'm going down.'
She went.
The cold made Alix shiver. She stiffly un-
curled herself and got off the bed. She brushed
her hair before the glass. Her face looked back
at her, pointed and ghostly, in the gaslight and
shadows.
' Cad,' whispered Alix, without emotion, to
the pale image. ' Cad and liar.'
' It 's the war,' explained Alix presently,
with detached, half - cynical analysis. ' I
shouldn't have done that before the war. I
suppose I might do anything now. Probably
I shall. There seems no way out. . . .'
Alix and Evie 203
Alix had heard and read plenty of views on
the psychological effects of war ; some of them
were interesting, some were true ; many were
true for some people and false for others ; but
she did not remember that even the most
penetrating (or pessimistic) had laid enough
emphasis on the mental and moral collapse
that shook the foundations of life for some
people. For her, anyhow, and for Paul ; and
they surely could not be the only ones. Ob-
servers seemed more apt to take the cases of
those men and women who were improved ;
who were strengthened, steadied, made more
unselfish and purposeful (that was the favourite
word), with a finer sense of the issues and re-
sponsibilities of life ; or of those young sports-
men at the front who kept their jollity, their
sweetness, their equilibrium, through it all.
Well, no doubt there were plenty of these.
Look at Terry. Look at Dorothy and Margot
at Wood End, in their new strenuousness and
ardours. They weren't demoralised by horror,
or eaten by jealousy like a canker. They could
even minister to combatants without envying
them. . . .
There were such. There might be many.
But Alix looked at them far off, herself a
broken, nerve-wracked, frightened child, grab-
bing at other people's things to comfort herself,
ashamed but outrageous.
204 Non-Combatants and Others
' There seems no way out/ said Alix, and
looked, as she changed her frock, down vistas
of degradation.
Downstairs Florence rang the supper bell.
The smell of Welsh rarebit drifted through
Violette. That, anyhow, was something ; Alix
liked it.
CHAPTER XII
ALIX AND BASIL
EVIE had a good time for the rest of the week
of Captain Gordon's leave. Mrs. Frampton
began to wonder whether this enormously
wealthy and overwhelmingly well-dressed young
man really meant anything. If you could tell
anything by the size of the chocolate boxes he
sent, he certainly meant quite a lot. Kate
looked repressive when they arrived.
' How Evie does go on,' she said to Mrs.
Frampton at breakfast, before Evie came down,
referring to the immense box from Buszard's
by Evie's plate. That was the morning after
Hugh Montgomery Gordon had returned to his
duties in France. Apparently whatever else he
meant, he meant not to be forgotten.
' She J s a naughty girl,' Mrs. Frampton ad-
mitted indulgently. ' I shouldn't wonder if
that 's from this new friend of hers, Captain
Gordon. He looks such an extravagant man.
205
206 Non-Combatants and Others
But very handsome. . . . What does your
brother think of Captain Gordon, Alix ? Didn't
you say he knew him ? '
Mrs. Frampton was of those ladies who
believe that men, good judges in most matters,
are especially good judges of each other.
Alix said she didn't believe Nicholas had
thought about Captain Gordon at all. ' But
his friend Mr. West has, quite a lot/ she
added.
' Well, love, what does Mr. West think ? '
Mr. West was even better than Nicholas as a
source of knowledge, being not only a man but
a clergyman.
' Mr. West/ said Alix, ' thinks Captain
Gordon too rich. It 's a fad of Mr. West's
that people shouldn't be too rich. I think they
should/
' Well, we 're told, aren't we, that it is hard
for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of
heaven. ... A little more ham, Alix ? '
' It 's all a question/ said Kate, ' of the use
people make of their wealth. They say that
some of the wealthiest families in the land make
the best landlords and are the kindest to all.
I can't say I hold with socialism. It seems to
me most wrong-headed/
' Well/ Mrs. Frampton agreed, ' it certainly
does seem like flying in the face of what Provi-
Alix and Basil 207
dence has ordained, doesn't it ? Let me see
now, Alix, your brother doesn't hold with
socialism, does he ? '
Alix's brother, being clever and queer, might
hold with anything. Mrs. Frampton appeared
to feel a morbid interest in his opinions.
' Nicky ? He doesn't hold with anything,
Cousin Emily ; he 's a general disapprover. I
believe he hates socialism ; he thinks it makes
for dullness and stagnation and order and all
sorts of things he doesn't like.'
Mrs. Frampton said, ' Why, I should have
thought what socialists wanted was quite an
uprooting and an upset/ and then Evie's
entrance interrupted a discussion which might
have been fruitful.
Evie kissed her mother. She said, ' What-
ever in the world are you talking about ?
Socialism ? What a subject for breakfast.
Buttered egg for me, please. . . . Oh, chocs '
She opened them, smiling, and looked at the
card inside.
' He is extravagant,' she said. ' This is an
awfully special box. He must have ordered it
from Buszard's before he went.'
' I don't think you should permit it,' said
Kate primly.
'Oh, it's all right. He likes it. He's
simply rolling.'
208 Non-Combatants and Others
Evie was absorbed in the pencilled inscrip-
tion on the card.
Life was pleasant to Evie. Her mother
smiled indulgently on her. Evie certainly did
seem to have a lot of young men at once, but
then how pretty the child was, and how she
enjoyed it. And she had sense, too ; Evie
never lost her head.
Evie opened the letter by her plate. She read
it and laid it aside carelessly, and looked up.
' Yes, some ham, please. . . . Mr. Doye
writes he 's seen the Board again and he 's to
join in a week. I suppose he 's satisfied now/
Mrs. Frampton clicked deprecatingly with
her tongue. She regarded it always as a
matter for great regret that wounded young
men should have to return to the wars.
' Well, I 'm sorry for that. Any one would
think he 'd done enough, having lost a finger
for his country. I call it shameful, sending
him out again/
' Perhaps he '11 go to Serbia this time/ said
Evie. ' He said there was a chance of his
battalion getting sent there from France soon/
' Well, well/ That seemed, if anything, more
unreasonable still. ' I 'm sure one 's dreadfully
sorry for poor Serbia she does seem to be
having a bad time ; but I 'm not sure that
our men ought to be sent out to those parts.
Alix and Basil 209
They 're all so wild out there ; it seems as if,
in a way, they rather like fighting each other ;
anyhow they Ve always been at it since I can
remember, and I think they 'd much better be
left to fight it out among themselves, while we
defend poor France. But who are we to
judge ? I suppose Lord Kitchener knows
what 's right.'
' They say,' put in Kate, ' that Joffre had a
great to do before he could persuade Kitchener
to send forces out there at all. They say he
came to the War Office and broke his riding-
whip right across.'
' Fancy that ! He must be a very violent
man. But the French are always excitable.
Lord Kitchener 's one of the quiet ones, I Ve
heard. A regular Englishman. . . . Well, I 'm
sure I hope they 're taking the right course. . . .
Alix, you haven't had half a breakfast ; I 'm sure
you could manage another bit of toast. Evie
dear, you '11 have to hurry with your breakfast
or you '11 be late.'
Evie hurried.
She spent the week, with partial success, in
avoiding Basil Doye. Since she had done with
him, what was the use of scenes ? She certainly
wasn't going to let him go away with the im-
pression that he would find her waiting on his
next return from the war to beguile his leave-
o
2io Non-Combatants and Others
time. Her natural generosity forbade her to
take and keep Alix's young man ; her natural
prudence forbade her to philander too ardently
(having a good time is different, of course) with
a young man who probably didn't mean busi-
ness. Rightly Evie condemned these practices
as Not Respectable. So she went off at lunch
time with other friends, with a little pang,
indeed, but less acute than she would have felt
a week ago, before her rapid friendship with
Hugh Montgomery Gordon. Basil Doye was
being relegated quickly to the circle of Evie's
numerous have-beens, to be remembered with
pleasant indifference.
On the Saturday before he left London, Basil
obtained an interview with Evie, by means of
going, at immense sacrifice of time, to Violette.
It was a short interview, and not intimate, for
Mrs. Frampton and Kate were present at it.
After it Basil called at Clifford's Inn to say
good-bye to Nicholas and Alix, who, they told
him, was there.
He found Alix alone, waiting for Nicholas to
come in. She had been having tea, and was
reading Peacock Pie. She preferred this poetry
to any written since August 1914, which had
killed fairies.
Alix and Basil 211
Looking up from it, she saw Basil standing at
the door. He was flushed, and looked cross ;
she knew of old the sulky set of his brows and
mouth, that made him look like a petulant boy.
It hurt Alix so much that she couldn't muster
any sort of smile, only look away from him and
say, ' I 'm sorry ; Nicky 's not in yet/
He said ' No/ abstractedly, and sat down in
the chair on the other side of the fire. He sat in
the attitude she had seen him in a thousand
times (it seemed to her) before ; his elbow
resting on his knee, his hand supporting his chin,
the other hand, with its maimed third finger,
hanging at his side. She had seen him sitting
thus happy, intimately talking ; she had seen
him moody and brooding, as now. There had
been a time when she could always lighten these
moods, tickle his sullenness to laughter ; but
that time was past.
He said presently, ' I 'm off to-morrow, you
know/
' Yes/ said Alix, who did know.
In her another knowledge grew : the know-
ledge that if he did not speak of Evie she could
get through this interview without disgrace, but
that if he did speak of Evie she could not. She
did not want him to speak of Evie and break
down the wall between them ; yet she did
want it.
212 Non-Combatants and Others
He did speak of Evie. He said he had been
to Violette to say good-bye.
' I said it to the whole family together. Evie
wouldn't see me alone. ... I suppose she doesn't
really care a hang. In fact, she 's made that
very obvious for the last fortnight/
' Yes,' said Alix again, clinging to that one
small word as to a raft in a stormy sea, which
might yet float her through.
Basil pushed the tongs with his foot, so that
they made a clattering noise in the grate.
' She doesn't care a hang, ' he repeated. ' She 's
on with that jam fellow now. Well, every one
to his taste. Hugh Montgomery Gordon obvi-
ously appeals to hers/
Alix's hands were clasped tight over her knee.
Her knuckles were white. She kept her eyes on
the fire. She would not look at him.
' Yes/ she said.
Then silence fell between them, and though
she would not look she felt his nearness, knew how
he sat, angry and sullen, brooding over his hurt.
A coal fell from the fire. Alix, as if some one
was physically forcing her, raised her eyes from
it and looked at Basil, and knew then that she
was not going to get through this interview
without disgrace. For she saw him sit as she
had seen him sit (it seemed to her) a thousand
times before, inert, bent forward a little, with
Alix and Basil 213
the shadows leaping and flickering on his thin
olive face and vivid eyes, with one hand support-
ing his sharp-cut chin, the other hanging maimed
(and that alone was something new, belonging
to the cruel present not the kindly past) at his
side. It seemed that those lean, quick, brown
artist's fingers were dragging her soul from her.
The sharp sense of all those other times when she
and he had thus sat stabbed her like a turning-
knife. A thousand intimacies rose to shatter
her, and, so shattered, she spoke.
' She doesn't care a hang.' She repeated his
phrase, mechanically, sitting very still. ' But
I do.'
Then she leant towards him, putting out her
hands, and a sob caught in her throat.
' Oh, Basil I do.'
For a moment the silence was only broken by
the leaping, stirring fire.
Basil looked swiftly at Alix, and Alix saw
horror in his eyes before he veiled it. The next
moment it was veiled : veiled by his quick
friendly smile. He leant forward and took her
outstretched hands in his, and spoke lightly,
easily. He did it well ; few people could have
attained at once to such ease, such spontaneous
naturalness of affection.
' Why, of course I know. The way you and
I care for each other is one of the best things I Ve
214 Non-Combatants and Others
got in my life. It lasts, too, when the other
sorts of caring go phut. . . .'
' Yes/ said Alix faintly. The raft of that
small word drifted back to her, and she climbed
on to it out of the engulfing sea. She took her
hands from his and lay back in her chair, im-
passive and still.
Basil rose, and stood by the chimney-piece,
playing with the things on it. He talked,
naturally, easily, of what he was going to do,
the probabilities of his being sent out with a
draft to France almost at once, the possibility
of his battalion being sent to Serbia. He talked
too of their common friends, even of painting,
which he seldom mentioned now.
Alix heard his voice as from a great distance
off, and from time to time said ' Yes.'
There was a sharp crack, and Basil held the
stem of one of Nicholas's pipes in one hand, the
bowl in the other ; he had broken it in two. His
fluent tongue, his flexible face, were under his
control ; but it seemed that his hands were not ;
they had shown thus blatantly the uncontroll-
able strain he felt. Alix winced away from it.
She couldn't bear any more : he must go,
quickly, before either of them broke anything
else.
He went, slipping as it were unnoticeably
away, with ' Good-bye ' unemphasised, half
Alix and Basil 215
ashamed, sandwiched between fatuities about
the pipe and comments on the future.
* It was an ugly pipe, wasn't it ? Tell San-
domir I broke it for his sake, compelled by my
artistic conscience ; it '11 be for his good in the
end. . . . I 'm sorry I Ve not seen him ; but
you '11 say good-bye for me. . . . And to any
of them at the shop. . . . Good-bye. ... If
we do get out to the East, we shall have a funny
time in some ways, I fancy. I hear Salonika 's
a great place ; glorious riviera climate. But
less so inland ; too much snow on the hills.
Well, it can't be worse than France in winter,
anyhow. I believe the Bulgars are very good-
natured people to fight against ; they aren't
really a bit keen on this show. . . . Want to get
back to till their fields. . . .'
His voice came from beyond the door. Then
it shut, and muffled his steps running down
wooden stairs.
Alix let go her raft, and was submerged by the
cold, engulfing seas.
CHAPTER XIII
ALIX, NICHOLAS, AND WEST
NICHOLAS, coming in ten minutes later, found
Alix lying in his cane chair, limp and white and
sick.
' My dear,' he said after a glance, ' you seem
very ill. You prescribe, and I '11 see if West
has any in his medicine cupboard. '
' Sal- volatile, perhaps/ Alix murmured, and
he went to find some. When he came back, she
was sitting up, with a more pulled-together air.
She sipped the sal-volatile, and gave him a dim,
crooked smile.
' It 's my feelings really, you know, not my
body. It 's only that I 'm . . . shocked to
death/
Nicholas stood, short and square, with his
back to the fire, looking down on her with his
small, keen, observant eyes.
' What 's shocked you ? '
' Me myself/ said Alix, forcing an uncon-
cerned grin. ' Alone I did it/
216
Alix, Nicholas, and West 217
' What on earth 's the matter, Alix ? ' asked
Nicholas after a pause. ' Or don't you want
to talk about it ? '
It wasn't his experience of his sister, who he
had always known of a certain exterior and
cynical hardness where the emotions were con-
cerned, that she ever wanted to ' talk about it.'
But this evening she seemed queer, unlike her-
self, unstrung.
'Talking doesn't matter now,' said Alix, still
swung between flippancy and tears. ' All the
talking that matters is done already. . . . Basil
has gone away, Nicky. He '11 perhaps never
come back.'
' Oh, he will. Basil does.' Nicholas looked
away from her, down at the fire.
' Yes/ said Alix. ' I expect he 's sure to. ...
I told him I cared for him,' she went on, in her
clear, thin, indifferent voice, emptied of emotion.
' He doesn't care for me, you know. He pre-
tended he hadn't understood. He pretended
so hard that he broke your pipe. I was to tell
you he was sorry about it no, that he was glad,
I think. . . .' Her voice changed suddenly ;
anguish shook it. ' Can you make it any less
bad, Nicky ? ' There was a pause, while
Nicholas, resting his arm on the chimney-piece,
stared down into the fire. He and Alix, like
many brothers and sisters, had always had a
218 Non-Combatants and Others
shyness about them about intimate things.
They were both naturally reserved ; both fought
shy of emotion as far as they could. They
were, in some ways, very like. Despair had
broken down Alix's reserve ; Nicholas put his
aside and considered her case in his detached
way, as if it were a mathematical problem.
' Bad ? ' he repeated, weighing the word.
' Well, the fact is bad, of course that you care
and he doesn't. There 's no altering that. It 's
his fault, of course, for caring himself once and
leaving off. Well, anyhow, there it is. He 's
the poorer by it, not you. . . . But the other
part your telling him isn't bad. It was
merely the truth ; and it 's simpler and often
more sensible to tell the truth about what one
feels. I wouldn't mind that, if I were you.
Don't bring absurdities of sex etiquette into it.
They 're mere conventions, after all ; silly,
petty, uncivilised conventions. Aren't they ? '
' Perhaps/ said Alix dully. ' I don't know.'
' Well, I do. Telling the truth is all right.
It oughtn't to make things worse.'
' No,' said Alix. ' It does, you know/
Nicholas, giving the subject the attention of
his careful mind, knew it did. He couldn't
theorise that away.
' Well/ he said at last, slowly, ' if it does, you
might quite truly look at the whole thing as a
Alix, Nicholas, and West 219
mental case ; a case of nervous breakdown.
The war 's playing the devil with your nerves
that 's what it means. You do things and feel
things and say things, I dare say, that you
wouldn't have once, but that you can scarcely
help now. You 're only one of many, you
know one of thousands. The military hos-
pitals are full of them ; men who come through
plucky and grinning but with their nerves
shattered to bits. There are the people, like
Terry and plenty more, who come through
mentally undamaged, their balance not appar-
ently upset, and the people like John (at least I
rather guessed so when I saw him) and thousands
more, who well, who don't. . . . War 's such
an insane, devilish thing ; its hoofs go stamping
over the world, trampling and breaking. . . .
Lord ! I Ve seen so much of it ; it meets one
all over the place. It makes one simply sick.
This affair of yours is nothing to some things
1 've come upon lately. . . . West says the
same, you know. Of course, as a parson, he
sees much more of people, in that way, than I
do. He says lots of the quite nice, decent
women he visits have taken to getting drunk at
the pubs ; partly they 're better off than they
were, of course, but it 's mostly just nerves.
You don't drink at pubs, do you ? '
' Not come to it yet,' said Alix.
22O Non-Combatants and Others
' Well, you 're lucky. I consider you 're
jolly lucky, considering the state you 've been
in for some time, to have done nothing worse
yet than to have told a man you 've every right
to care for that you care for him.'
Alix was crying now, quietly.
' And I have done worse things, too. ... I
tried to get him back from Evie. I told her he
didn't really care for her that he had been just
the same with me. Oh, I know he did care for
me a little, of course, but ' she choked on a
laugh, ' he didn't behave as he does with Evie,
a bit. . . .'
' Probably not,' Nicholas admitted.
' Well, there you are ; I behaved like a cad
about it. That 's worse than drinking at pubs
much worse. It 's even worse than telling him I
cared. . . . What can I do about it, Nicky ?
Is that part of the war disease too ? '
' Certainly,' said Nicholas promptly. ' Pre-
cisely the same thing, and bears out all I was
saying. And, as you remark, much worse than
drinking at pubs. . . . Sorry, but it does prove
my case, you know. You don't do that sort
of thing in peace time, at least, do you ? ' he
added with impartial curiosity.
' I 've forgotten about peace time. . .
No, I don't think I used to. ... Suppose I
shall have to tell Evie,' Alix added morosely.
Alix, Nicholas, and West 221
' Though she doesn't care for him, a bit. . . .
What a bore. ... All right, Nicky ; I '11 try to
look at myself as a mental case. . . . And what 's
left is that Basil has gone. ... I love him, you
know, extraordinarily. I Oh, Nicky, I love
him, I love him, I love him/ She passionately
sobbed for a time.
Nicholas stood silent, thinking, till she lay
back exhausted and quiet.
' I 'm sorry/ she said huskily. ' I won't cry
any more. That 's all.' Nicholas was looking
at her consideringly.
' I wonder/ he murmured, ' what the best
remedy for you is. Something that takes your
whole thoughts, I fancy, you want. Of course
there 's the School. But it doesn't seem alto-
gether to work. Some strong counter-interest
to the war, you want.'
' To take me outside myself/ Alix amplified
for him. ' Perhaps you 'd like me to collect bus
tickets or lost cats or something, to distract my
mind, Nicky dear.'
' I think not. Your mind, I should say, is dis-
tracted enough already. You need to collect
that, rather than bus tickets or cats. ... To
me it seems a pity you should live at Violette.
I think you should stop that.'
Alix said apathetically, ' I don't think it
much matters where I live. I can't live at Wood
222 Non-Combatants and Others
End. It 's all war and war-work there, and I
should go mad even madder than now. I
might drink at pubs. ... I thought Violette
would be a rest, because they none of them care
about the war really, a bit ; but it isn't a rest
any more. Ever since Paul ... I Ve known
one can't really put the war away out of one's
mind : it can't be done. It 's hurting too
many people too badly ; it 's no use trying to
pretend it isn't there and go on as usual. I
can't. I can't even paint decently ; my work 's
simply gone to pot.'
' Sure to/ Nicholas agreed.
' I believe,' said Alix, ' it 's jealousy that 's
demoralising me most. Jealousy of the people
who can be in the beastly thing. . . . Oh, I do
so want to go and fight. . . . How can you not
try to go, Nicky ? I can't understand that.
Though of course you wouldn't get passed.
' It 's quite easy,' returned Nicholas. ' I
don't approve of joining in such things.'
' But I want to go and help to end it. ...
Oh, it 's rotten not being able to ; simply rotten.
. . . Why shouldn't girls ? I can't bear the
sight of khaki ; and I don't know whether it 's
most because the war 's so beastly or because
I want to be in it. ... It 's both. . . . Oh
bother, why were we born at a time like this, as
Kate calls it ? '
Alix, Nicholas, and West 223
' We weren't. The late 'eighties and early
'nineties were very different. They probably
unfitted us for the Sturm und Drang of the
twentieth century. Though, if you come to
that, there was plenty of Sturm und Drang in
our own country at that period, as usual. ... I
suppose Poles have no right to look for peace.
. . . O Lord, how good it would be to see
Germany and Russia exterminate each other
altogether ! I believe I 'd cheat my way into
the army and fight, if I thought I could help
in that.'
' I dare say we shall see it, if this war goes on
much longer. . . . I 've been wondering lately/
went on Alix, ' if there isn't a third way in war
time. Not throwing oneself into it and doing
jobs for it, in the way that suits lots of people ;
I simply can't do that. And not going on as
usual and pretending it 's not there, because that
doesn't work. Something against war, I want
to be doing, I think. Something to fight it,
and prevent it coming again. ... I suppose
mother thinks she 's doing that.'
' She does,' said Nicholas. ' Undoubtedly.
I 'm not sure I agree with her, but that 's
a detail. She thinks she 's doing it. ...
Well, I gather she '11 be home very soon
now.'
' And I suppose Mr. West thinks he 's doing it,
224 Non-Combatants and Others
doesn't he fighting war, I mean, with his
Church and things/
' Yes, West thinks so too. Again, I don't
particularly agree with his methods, but that 's
his aim.'
' You don't particularly agree with any
methods, do you ? '
' No ; I think they 're mostly pretty rotten.
And in this case I believe, personally, we 're up
against a hopeless proposition. West calls it the
devil, and is bound by his profession to believe
it will be eventually overcome. I 'm not bound
to believe that any evil or lunacy will be over-
come ; it seems to me at least an open question.
Some have been, of course ; others have
scarcely lessened in the course of these several
million years. However, as West remarks, the
world, no doubt, is still young. One should
give it time. Anyhow, one has to ; no other
course is open to us, however poor a use we may
think it puts the gift to. ... That 's West, I
think. Hullo, West ; we Ve been talking about
you. We were discussing your incurable
optimism/
West looked tired. He shook hands with
Alix and sat down by the window. Alix did
not feel it mattered that he should see she had
Alix, Nicholas, and West 225
been crying, because clergymen, who visit the
unfortunate, the ill-bred, the unrestrained, must
every day see so many people who have been
crying that they would scarcely notice.
' Incurable/ West repeated, and the crisp
edge of his voice was flattened and dulled by
fatigue. ' Well, I hope it is. There are mo-
ments when one sees a possible cure looming
in the distance.'
' I was saying/ said Nicholas, ' that you 're
bound, by your profession, to believe in the
final vanquishing of the devil.'
' I believe I am/ West assented, without joy.
' I believe so.'
He cogitated over it for a moment, and
added, ' But the devil 's almost too stupid to be
vanquished. He 's an animal ; a great brain-
less beast, stalking through chaos. He's got
a hide like a rhinoceros, and a mind like an
escaped idiot : you don't know where to have
him. He drags people into his den and sits on
them . . . it 's too beastly. . . . He wallows in
his native mud, full of appetites and idiot
dreams, and his idiot dreams become fact, and
people make wars . . . and get drunk. There
are men and women and babies tight all about
the streets this evening. Saturday night, you
know. . . . "Sorry to be depressing/ he added,
more in his usual alert manner ; ' it 's a rotten
p
226 Non-Combatants and Others
thing to be in these days. . . . The fog 's bad
outside.'
Alix rose to go, and West stood up too. For a
moment the three stood looking at each other in
the fog-blurred, firelit room, dubious, question-
ing, grave, like three travellers who have lost
their way in a strange country and are groping
after paths in the dark. . . . Nicholas spoke
first.
* That 's your bell, isn't it, West ? You two
could walk together as far as Gray's Inn Road.'
Nicholas lit the gas and settled down to write.
Alix and West went down the stairs and out
into Fleet Street, and the city in the fog was as
black as a wood at night.
Alix thought, ' Christians must mind. Clergy-
men must mind awfully. It 's their business
that 's being spoilt. It 's their job to make
the world better : they must mind a lot, and
they can't fight either,' and saw West's face,
tired and preoccupied, in the darkness at her
side.
' War Extra. 'Fishul. Bulgarian Advance.
Fall of Kragujevatz,' cried a newsboy, as best
he could.
' It '11 be all up with Serbia presently,' said
Alix, Nicholas, and West 227
West. * Going under fast. A wipe out, like
Belgium, I suppose. . . . And we look at it
from here and can't do anything to stop it.
Pretty rotten, isn't it ? ' His voice was bitter.
' If we could go out there and try/ said Alix,
' we shouldn't feel so bad, should we ? '
He shook his head.
' No : not so bad. War 's beastly and
abominable to the fighters : but not to be
fighting is much more embittering and demoral-
ising, I believe. Probably largely because one
has more time to think. To have one's friends
in danger, and not to be in danger oneself
it fills one with futile rage. Combatants are
to be pitied ; but non-combatants are of all
men and women the most miserable. Older
men, crocks, parsons, women God help
them.'
' Yes,' Alix agreed, on the edge of tears
again.
Then West seemed to pull himself up from
his despondency.
' But really, of course, they 've a unique
opportunity. They can't be fighting war
abroad ; but they can be fighting it at home.
That 's what it 's up to us all to do now, I 'm
firmly convinced, by whatever means we each
have at our command. We 've all of us some.
We Ve got to use them. The fighting men out
228 Non-Combatants and Others
there can't ; they 're tied. Some of them
never can again. ... It 's up to us. ...
Good-bye, Miss Sandomir: my way is along
there.'
They parted at the corner of Gray's Inn
Road. Alix saw him swallowed up in black
fog, called by his bell, going to his church to
fight war by the means he had at his command.
She got into her bus and went towards
Violette, where no one fought anything at all,
but where supper waited, and Mrs. Frampton
was anxious lest she should have got lost in
the fog.
PART III
DAPHNE
CHAPTER XIV
DAPHNE AT VIOLETTE
DAPHNE SANDOMIR was in the train between
Cambridge and King's Cross. She was always
very busy in trains, as, indeed, everywhere else.
On this journey she was correcting the proofs
of the chapter (Chapter iv., Education of the
Children) which she was contributing to a
volume by seven authors, shortly to appear,
to be entitled alliteratively Is Permanent Peace
Possible? and to come to the conclusion that
it was.
Daphne Sandomir's interest in many things
had always been so keen that before the war
you could not have picked out one as absorbing
her more than a score of others. She had
been used to write pamphlets and address
meetings on most of them : eurhythmies, for
instance, and eugenics, and the economic
and constitutional position of women, and
sweated industries, and baby creches, and
suggestion healing, and health food, and clean
231
232 Non-Combatants and Others
milk, and twenty other of the causes good
people have at heart.
Then had come the war, an immense and
horribly surprising shock, to which her healthy
and vigorous mind, not shattered like some,
had reacted in new forms of energy.
There were in England no ladies more active
through that desperate time than Daphne
Sandomir and her sister Eleanor Orme ; but
their activities were for the most part different.
Mrs. Orme was secretary of a Red Cross hos-
pital, superintended canteens, patrolled camps,
relieved and entertained Belgians and dealt
them out clothes, was the soul of Women's
Work Committees, made body-belts, respir-
ators and sand-bags, locked up her cellar,
bought war loan, and wrote sensible letters
to the Times, which usually got printed.
Mrs. Sandomir also relieved Belgians, got up
Repatriation and Reconstruction societies for
them, spoke at meetings of the Union of Demo-
cratic Control (to which society, as has been
before mentioned, she did not belong) and of
other societies to which she did belong, held
study circles of working people to educate
them in the principles making for permanent
peace, went with a motor ambulance to pick
up wounded in France, tried, but failed, like
so many others, to attend the Women's
Daphne at Violette 233
International Congress at the Hague, travelled
round the world examining its disposition
towards peace, helped to form the S.P.P.P.
(Society for Promoting Permanent Peace), wrote
sensible letters to the Times, which sometimes
got printed and sometimes not, articles in
various periodicals, pamphlets on peace, educa-
tion and such things, and chapters in joint
books.
She had just returned now from her journey
round the world, where she had been inter-
viewing a surprising number of the members
of the governments of the belligerent and
neutral countries and making a study of such
of the habits and points of view of their sub-
jects as could be readily investigated by visitors.
Immediately, she came from Cambridge, where
her home was, and where she had been starting
a local branch of the S.P.P.P., and addressing
a meeting of the Heretics Society on the Atti-
tude of Neutral Governments towards Mediation
without Armistice.
She was a tall, graceful, vigorous person,
absurdly young and beautiful, vivid, dark-
eyed, clever, and tremendously in earnest
about life. She had lately (it seemed lately to
herself and ah 1 who knew her) gone down from
Newnham, where she had done brilliantly in
the Economics Tripos and got engaged to
234 Non-Combatants and Others
Paul Sandomir, an exiled Pole studying the
habits and history of the English constitution
at Fitzwilliam Hall. Their married career had
been stimulating and storm-tossed. Finally
Paul Sandomir had died in a Warsaw prison,
worn out with consumption, revolution, and
excitement. The extreme energy of the parents
had always reacted on the children curiously,
discounting enthusiasms, and flavouring their
activities with the touch of irony which one
often notes in the families of one or more very
zealous parents. They greatly esteemed and
loved their father and mother. To them
Daphne was one of the dearest and most beauti-
ful people in the world, if too stimulating.
They felt, on the whole, older than she was,
and worldly-wise in comparison.
King's Cross. Daphne, taken by surprise,
seized her scattered proofs and crammed
them into her despatch-box. Gathering her
possessions to her, she turned to see Alix at
the carriage door.
' Oh you dear child. ... A porter, Alix.
Do you see one ? Yes, will you take them to
a taxi, please.' Relieved of them, she turned
with her quick, graceful movement and took
Daphne at Violette 235
the smaller Alix in her arms. Physically,
mentally, morally, it was certainly Daphne
who had the advantage.
They got into the taxi. Daphne said to the
porter, ' I think you get eighteen-and-six now,
don't you ? Are you married ? '
' Yes, ma'am/
' How many children ? '
' Nine, ma'am.'
' Oh, I think not. You 're too young for
that, really you are, you know. Let 's say
four. Well, here 's eightpence. Tell him
Spring Hill, Clapton. Thank you so much.'
The taxi sprang up the incline to the street.
' Of course,' said Daphne, frowning over k,
' eighteen-and-six is shocking, with these high
prices. Goodness only knows when we 're
going to get it improved. But it 's immoral
to try and make it up by private subsidies. , . .
Is there anything the matter with our driver,
child ? You seem to be interested in him.'
1 1 was only trying to discern how many
children he 's old enough to have,' Alix ex-
plained. ' It seems nicer not to have to ask
him ; it 's so embarrassing not being able to
believe his answer. I think five is the outside
limit, don't you, darling ? '
Daphne put on her pince-nez and regarded
the driver's back.
236 Non-Combatants and Others
' Certainly not. Three, if that. In fact, I
doubt if he 's married at all. But never mind
now. I want to hear about you, child.
Nicholas gave me a rather poor account of you
when he wrote the other day. He seemed to
think this Clapton life had been getting a little
on your nerves.'
' Oh, I don't think so. I 'm all right.'
Daphne regarded her consideringly.
' Nerves. Yes. You oughtn't to have any
at your age, of course. No one need, at any
age. You should do eurhythmies. You 'd find
it changed the whole of life gave it balance,
coherence, rhythm. I find it wonderful. You
must certainly begin classes at once/
' I don't think I Ve time, mother. I 'm
going to the art school every day.'
' I think you should make time. I hadn't
much time while I was on my travels, if you
come to that. But I made some to practise
my eurhythmies. I knew how important it
was to keep fit and balanced and healthy, and
that I should never be much use in influencing
all those people I interviewed (so reasonable
and delightful they mostly were, Alix, and
simply longing for peace I must tell you all
about it) unless I kept my own poise. It 's
the same for you. You '11 never be any use
at painting or anything else while you 're
Daphne at Violette 237
mentally and physically incoherent and adrift.
That 's one thing settled eurhythmies. And
the other is, you must leave this Pansy, or Violet,
or whatever it is, at once, of course, and we '11
take a flat. What about these Frampton
Tucker people ? Of course I know they 're
hopelessly dull and ordinary I 've met Emily
Frampton very seldom, but quite often enough.
A kind little mediocrity, the widow of a rather
common man of business. Laurence Frampton
married her, for some incomprehensible reason
of his own ; people do sometimes. He took
her to Oxford with him, and only survived it
a year. They lived at Summertown. Her two
girls were quite little then. I believe she was
quite happy. I met her once when I was
staying at Oriel. . . . She never took in
Oxford, of course ; it was too many miles
outside her ken, and she very sensibly hardly
attempted to belong or mix. But she rather
liked Summertown society, I remember. They
lived in a house called Thule, and kept six cats.
I suppose she hasn't changed at all, probably.'
' Probably not. She 's very nice and kind.'
' Oh all that.' Daphne waved it aside.
' Of course. But too stupid to be tolerable,
even as a background to your day's work, no
doubt. I 'm sorry I Ve left you there so long,
child. I should have thought of it before,
238 Non-Combatants and Others
but it was all arranged without me, and I was
too busy to send you advice. I don't wonder
you look a wreck.'
* I don't,' said Alix. ' And Cousin Emily 's
not bad. She 's always giving me hot milk
gallons of it. And ovaltine, to make me fat,
she says. She 's awfully kind.'
1 Encouraging you to think about your con-
stitution. No wonder you 're nervy. What
about the girls ? '
'Oh ... they 're quite good sorts.'
' The younger one is good-looking, isn't
she?'
' Yes. Evie is beautiful. And jolly, and
popular. Kate goes to church and does parish
work, and reads the Daily Thrill aloud in the
evenings. Evie has young men. Her chief
one just now is at the front ; he 's a Gordon,
of Gordon's jams.'
' That sink of iniquity ! The girl can have
no principle. But jam is going to be nation-
alised very soon, I trust, like many better
things. I hope so. It richly deserves it. . . .
Another thing, Alix you must start health
food. I 'm going to help Linda Durell to start
a Health and Thrift Food Shop, you know.
Linda 's terribly unbusinesslike, of course. So
many people are, if you come to that. And
so many people don't eat the right things at
Daphne at Violette 239
the right moments. That man Nicky lives
with, now, who stayed with us he never
seems to have the faintest notion of healthy
feeding. Goes out every morning before break-
fast without an apple or a glass of milk. One
should always begin the day with an apple,
Alix remember that. But parsons are hope-
less, of course. Such insane ideas about this
world not mattering, as if it wasn't the only one
we Ve got. I Ve no patience with religious
people ; can't think why Nicky lives with one
of them. Though, mind, I like this Mr. West
in himself ; he 's quite sound on most points
of importance, and intelligent, too ; I Ve been
on Sweated Industries committees with him,
and I believe he 's doing good work for women's
trade unions. Perhaps he '11 change his mind
about this church business when he 's older.'
' I don't believe he will. It seems to mean
rather a lot to him, doesn't it? To him it's
the way of jogging the world on. As com-
mittees are to you.'
' My dear, I detest committees. Most of their
members are too stupid and tiresome for words
individually, and their collective incompetence
is quite unthinkable. But what other way is
there in this extraordinarily stick-in-the-mud
world ? '
Alix shook her head. Indeed, she didn't
240 Non-Combatants and Others
know. She felt helpless to give the world any
sort of jog out of its mud, by any means what-
soever.
Daphne caught the blank look of her eyes,
and suddenly put her strong arm round the
thin, small body.
' My poor baby, you must get strong, you
know, and happy. No one needs to be ailing
or depressed if they 11 just say to themselves,
' I am going to be well and strong and to stand
up to the world. I 'm not going to give in to
it. I am the master of my body and soul/ I
said that when our darling died ; I kept on
saying it, and I came through on it. There was
too much to do to give way. There is still.
We Ve got to be strong women, for our own
sakes and the world's especially we who have
the brains to be some use if we try. The poor
old world needs help so very badly just now,
with all the fools there are who hinder and
block the way. You and I have both got to
help, Alix. . . . There is so much to get
done/
Daphne, holding her close, lightly kissed the
thin fingers she held. Alix thought, ' Mother
is splendid, of course. But she 's bigger than
I am, and stronger, and she hardly ever feels
ill, and she doesn't know how Paul died, and
she 's not in love with Basil and didn't tell him
Daphne at Violette 241
so. And I believe she 's so keen and busy that
she doesn't have time to think about the war,
except about how to stop it. ... Perhaps
that 's the way to be thinking only how to
stop it and prevent another. ... 7s that the
way ? '
Alix became aware, from the clasp of Daphne's
hands on hers, their firm, light pressure, full of
purpose, that Daphne was willing her to health
and happiness, trying, in fact, suggestion.
Daphne believed in health suggestion, as well
as health food. She belonged to societies for
promoting both. She had often in the past
made health suggestions to Alix, but Alix had
not always taken them. At the present moment
Alix, overcome by the contrast between her
mother's undying hope and purpose for her
and her own inability to justify them, giggled
weakly, in the sudden way she had.
' I 'm sorry, darling,' she apologised. ' No,
I 'm not hysterical, only footling. I 'm sorry
I 'm such a rotter and no credit to you and no
use to the world. But I 'm all right really,
you know. I don't need healing a bit.'
Daphne held her from her, scrutinised her
critically, and said, ' You 're suffering from
hypersesthesia. How many cigarettes are you
smoking a day ? '
' Nine. No, I 'm too young for that, like the
Q
242 Non-Combatants and Others
porter let 's say three. Oh, I don't know
I don't count really. Quite few. Cousin Emily
doesn't really like it much. She and Kate
don't smoke at all, and Evie 's only just learn-
ing. We 're not a vicious household ; our chief
excesses are chocolates and hot milk.'
' Well, my outside rule is five, you know,
in peace time, and now it 's three. I should
advise only two for you. Linda Durell is for
starting and selling Health Cigarettes, but I
won't have it, I think they are too disgusting.
One must draw the line somewhere. ... Is
this Clapton ? Who lives in Clapton, by the
way ? I know the secretary of the Women's
Wage Increase Committee does but who else ?
Of course people used to, in the nineteenth
century. Your great-grandfather did. And
Cowper, I think or was it Dr. Watts ? Some
one who wrote hymns. Those look like good
people's houses there.'
' Yes. Oh, bishops live here, and retired
generals, and stockbrokers, and thousands of
babies. And the Vinneys. And lots of dread-
fully common people, Kate says. They all play
tennis in the Park. This is Spring Hill.'
' So I see. And there 's Primmerose. Tell
him to stop/
' No, darling, Primmerose is some one else's.
It 's Violette we want ; do remember, mother,
Daphne at Violette 243
because the Primmerose people are common,
and we don't like being confused. Here we
are/
They got out. Daphne, having decided with-
out discussion the probable size of the chauffeur's
family, judicially tipped him and told him to
return for her at half-past five. She then
entered Violette and met Mrs. Frampton in
the hall. Mrs. Frampton, like Alix and so
many others, was much smaller than she
was ; Daphne had to bend graciously to
shake hands. Mrs. Frampton was a little shy
of the tall, distinguished, clever, beautiful
cousin of her clever, distinguished, little-known
second husband. Daphne, was, in a manner,
a public personage ; most people knew her
name. She had for long been at once orna-
mental and useful, a fountain-head of a per-
petually vigorous stream of energies, some
generally approved, others regarded by many
as harmful, that watered England ; but Violette,
for good or ill, was outside their furthest spray-
ing. Mrs. Frampton looked from far off, as
she had looked at Professor Frampton, at the
brilliant, not-to-be-understood energies of a
worker in worlds by her not realised. This
makes one shy, even if one believes oneself to
244 Non-Combatants and Others
be a denizen of a superior world, and Mrs.
Frampton lacked this consolation. She was
a humble person, and knew that Daphne and
Professor Frampton had the best of it.
They sat in the drawing-room, where there
would soon be tea. Daphne looked round the
room with an inward gasp : - she really hadn't
expected it to be quite so bad as this. The
Summertown drawing-room, which she vaguely
remembered, had been a little the drawing-
room of her cousin Laurence. She took it all
in rapidly, and, as if hypnotised, came back to
rest on ' Thou seest me ' and the watching Eye.
' My poor child/ she thought. ' I must take
her away at once. It 's a wonder she 's not
actually had a crise de nerfs, with the wretched
nervous system she inherits from Paul, and
that Eye always watching her. . . .'
Mrs. Frampton meanwhile was amiably talk-
ing, nervous but pleased.
' It 's been so delightful having dear Alix
all these months. So nice for the girls, too.
We 've made quite a little party of young
people, haven't we, Alix ? And other young
people drop in quite frequently Alix's brother,
of course, which is always so very nice he 's
wonderfully clever, isn't he and that pleasant
Mr. Doye, who lost his finger ; I 'm sure we
quite miss him now he 's gone back to the
Daphne at Violette 245
army again ; and friends of my girls, and
friends of Alix's. Often we 're quite a party.
It keeps us all quite cheerful and merry, even
in these dreadful days, doesn't it, Alix ? '
' Yes,' said Alix.
' Only this child works so hard at her drawing
and painting all day, she doesn't get much time
for play. I 'm sure they work them too hard at
these art schools. She looks quite overdone and
poorly, don't you think so, Mrs. Sandomir ? '
' Oh, she '11 be all right directly,' said Daphne,
who didn't approve of discussing people's poor
health in their presence, thinking it made
them worse.
' It 's mostly nerves and fancy, I expect/
she added, giving a light pat to Alix's arm.
' Shouldn't be given way to. I expect you Ve
been spoiling her.'
' No, I haven't no, indeed.' Mrs. Frampton
was pleased. ' I have thought she looked thin
and below par often, and I 've made her take
lots of milk, and that nice ovaltine, and even
malt and cod-liver oil, but she wouldn't go on
with that. There 's a very nice stuff that 's
being advertised everywhere now Fattine
and I want her to try that/
' Oh, Alix was always thin. I don't believe
in worrying with medicines. We mustn't make
her sorry for herself by talking about her like
246 . Non-Combatants and Others
this. . . . That 's Evie, isn't it ? She doesn't
look as if she needed medicine, anyhow. I
should like to have her for an advertisement in
the windows of my Health Food shop.'
Evie was followed by Kate, Florence, and
tea. Daphne thought Kate and the tea-cups
both deplorable. Kate had been going round
her district with parish magazines. She hadn't
succeeded (district visitors never do) in collect-
ing all the pennies for them, and told her mother
which persons hadn't paid.
* And of course that Mrs. Fittle, in Paradise
Court, lay low and pretended to be out, as
usual. I expect she was ' Kate pursed her
lips, which meant drunk. Mrs. Frampton
nodded intelligently.
' The Clapton people are terribly difficult to
deal with/ Kate explained to Daphne. , ' Dread-
fully ungrateful, too, very often. The clergy
and workers may do anything for them, but
it 's all no more than what 's their due, and no
thanks, only grumbles. Do you find them like
that in Cambridge ? ' (which was the town in
which Daphne, if she had one anywhere, pre-
sumably had a district).
' Not a bit,' said Daphne briskly. ' The
idea of expecting me to find anything so com-
monplace/ was her inward comment. ' This
girl is the worst of the lot/
Daphne at Violette 247
' Kate does a great deal of parish work,'
Mrs. Frampton explained. ' She 's quite busy
always, with church things/
' Yes ? ' Daphne was vague, hiding how
much she disapproved of church things.
' Now I 'm afraid I 'm used to a rather
different sort of service from those Kate
attends/ Mrs. Frampton continued. ' I 'm
old-fashioned, I know. Kate's church goes
a touch too high for me/
Something in her visitor's face, a certain
blankness, suggested to her that probably
Daphne knew no difference between high and
low, but condemned both with impartial un-
fairness. She remembered that Alix hadn't
been brought up to go to any sort of church.
Alix, being of a later generation, had indeed a
fairly open mind on these matters ; but Daphne,
the product of a more pronounced and con-
demning age, rejected with emphasis. The
Christian religion, as taught in churches, was
to her pernicious, retrograde, the hampering
relic of a darker age. Some glimmering of this
attitude filtered through to Mrs. Frampton,
and flustered her. She added, ' But of course
we can't all think the same way about things,
can we? ... I hope you enjoyed your trip
round the world, Mrs. Sandomir/
' Very much, thank you/
248 Non-Combatants and Others
' You visited the Balkans, didn't you ?
That must have been very alarming and wild.
I 'm sure it was wonderfully brave of you to go
there, with all this upset, and all the natives
so unsettled. I 'm afraid I shouldn't have had
the courage.'
' The upset/ said Daphne, ' was less ad-
vanced than it is now, when I was there. I
had a most interesting time. . . .' But not
really, in the main, suitable to tell Mrs. Frampton
about, so she rapidly selected.
' The Bulgarian babies you never saw any-
thing so pleasant. You 'd love them, Mrs.
Frampton. You should go there some time.
And their teeth come through when they 're
about six weeks old, for some reason. It 's
just as well, because their ideas about milk
cleanliness are most behindhand. I talked to
a sort of mothers' meeting about it, but I
don't think they even began to understand.
I expect my Bulgarian wasn't idiomatic enough.
Oh dear, the dirt of those infants . . .'
' Fancy ! It does seem a wickedness not to
keep little babies clean, doesn't it ? There 's
one at a house in this road Primmerose
and I 'm sure it goes to one's heart to see the
way it 's kept.'
Kate said, fastidiously, ' Those Primmerose
people aren't nice in any way, I 'm afraid.
Daphne at Violette 249
There are some very regrettable people come
settling round here lately people one can't
dream of knowing. It 's a great pity.'
' People will settle, won't they,' Daphne said
vaguely. ' It 's better perhaps than being un-
settled, like the Balkan people.' Daphne never
punned except in absence of mind, rightly
believing the habit to rise from weakness of
intellect ; but she was thinking now not of
Clapton nor of the Balkan people, but of an
address she was giving that evening to a
meeting of the N.U.W.S.S. on her recent ex-
periences, and which she had only inadequately
prepared. She pulled herself together, how-
ever, and became charming, attentive, and
intelligent for the rest of tea.
' And what did you think of the United
States ? ' Mrs. Frampton inquired. ' Will they
come in, do you think, or won't the President
let them, whatever occurs ? You met the
President, didn't you ? How did he strike
you ? '
' Oh, delightful. Like most governments ;
they 're nearly all charming personally, I believe.
So much stronger, as a rule, in the heart than
in the head. They mean so much good and
do much harm, poor dears. A curse seems to
dog them. They 're the victims of an iniqui-
tous and insane system ; and they lack fore-
250 Non-Combatants and Others
sight and sound judgment so terribly, for all
their good intentions.'
' You would scarcely say the Kaiser had
good intentions/ Mrs. Frampton suggested
dubiously.
Daphne said, ' I don't know him, but I 'm
told he has all sorts, good and bad, like other
mischievous people/
' We all know, anyhow, where good inten-
tions paVe the way to/ said Kate, more epi-
grammatic than usual, so that Mrs. Frampton
said, ' Hush, dear/ and added, ' He '11 have to
face the consequences of his actions some
day, when he 's called to give account of his
life. Perhaps we oughtn't to forestall his
condemnation, poor man/
Daphne said, ' Indeed, I J m quite sure we
ought. Condemnation will be singularly little
use at the moment you refer to/ and then,
because that moment would be a fruitless,
and indeed most unsuitable, topic of conversa-
tion between her and Mrs. Frampton, she
left it, and talked about flats in town, a
subject which she and Violette regarded from
standpoints very nearly as far sundered as
those from which they contemplated the last
judgment.
After tea, Mrs. Frampton said she and
Kate and Evie would now go away and leave
Daphne at Violette 251
Daphne and Alix alone together, which they
did.
The door shut behind them, and Daphne
passed her long, capable hand over her fore-
head and shut her eyes for a moment.
' My dear child what you have been through !
It must end at once. So kind, and so un-
thinkably trying ! No wonder oh well, never
mind, you '11 soon be all right now. . . . Do
they know anything about anything that
matters ? No, quite obviously not/
' I 'd rather they didn't, mother. I don't
like the things that matter. I Ve been quite
comfortable.'
' Comfortable ! With that Eye ! Nonsense,
child. . . . The idea of our having such
relations, even by marriage. . . . Laurence
Frampton was really too queer. I Ve often
wondered whether his head wasn't a little going
when he did it ; he had been peculiar in several
ways. Quite suddenly voted conservative
which year was it, now ? I think myself life
had tired him ; people wanted to abolish
Greek in Responsions, and so on, and he had
some worries in his college, and private money
difficulties too, I believe ; Oxford people are
so extravagant sometimes ; so he fell back
on a little cushiony wife as one might on to
a pillow, and died quietly soon afterwards.
252 Non-Combatants and Others
Most tragic, really ; such a brilliant fellow he
was. . . . Now there 's my taxi back again.
I 'm going first to Nicky's, then to dine at the
Club with Francie Claverhouse, before address-
ing the N.U.W.S.S. By the way, I 'm fear-
fully out of temper with them have you
been following their policy lately ? They Ve
been criminally weak on Conscription. . . .
We shall have to have a split, as usual. . . .
Good-bye, darling. Run and fetch your cousin
Emily to say good-bye to me. No, only your
cousin Emily ; I can't speak to Kate, she 's
the epitome of all the ages of the drab and
narrow feminine. And Evie is immoral, and
carries on with Gordon's jam. It isn't right
that you should be here. None of them have
any principles/
While she talked, Daphne was collecting
her bags, papers and furs, with her quick,
graceful, decisive movements. Alix watched
her, feeling, as she sometimes did in her mother's
presence, as if she sucked up all the ozone in
the air and left none for her.
They found Mrs. Frampton in the hall, full
of shy and beaming kindness. Daphne took
her hand and looked down on her cordially.
' I must be flying. I '11 look in to-morrow,
if I may. . . . Good-bye, and thank you so
much for being good to the child.'
Daphne at Violette 253
The narrow Kate and the immoral Evie
appeared in the background, and Daphne had
to shake hands with them after all before
escaping into the taxi.
Violette watched her drive away up Spring
Hill.
Evie thought how handsome she was, and
how well she wore her clothes.
Kate was not quite certain she wasn't a
touch fast.
Alix thought, ' How jolly it must be to be
like mother, so certain and so strong/
Mrs. Frampton thought, ' She seems so nice
and clever, but a little alarming, perhaps/
and said to Alix, ' Your mother seems wonder-
fully well and busy. I expect she 's always
quite full of plans and occupations and interests,
isn't she ? '
' Yes,' said Alix.
CHAPTER XV
ALIX AT A MEETING
DAPHNE took Alix from Violette to stay with
her at her club. It was the end of November.
Daphne proposed that they should spend a
fortnight in town, till the end of the art
school term, then go down to their house at
Cambridge for the Christmas vacation. She
meant to spend this period holding meetings
about the county of Cambridgeshire with a view
to starting village branches of the Society
for Promoting Permanent Peace. Meetings-
branches study circles this was the machinery
behind the ideals. Daphne, at times irrele-
vant, inconsequent, prejudiced, whimsical, per-
verse, was an idealist and a business woman.
She made Alix come to meetings while they
were in town. She saw in Alix the raw material
of a member of the S.P.P.P. She said, ' You
mustn't be selfish, darling. You are a little
selfish, you know, and you 're old enough now
to leave it off. You try to hide from things,
254
Alix at a Meeting 255
like an ostrich. You try and pretend they
don't exist. In point of fact, they do, and
you know it. You know it all the time : you
can't forget it, so you waste your trouble trying.
You must leave that to the Violettes. They
can ignore. You can't. . . . Ignoring : that 's
always been the curse of this world. We shut
our eyes to things poverty, and injustice, and
vice, and cruelty, and sweating, and slums,
and the tendencies which make war, and we
feed ourselves on batter, and so go on from
day to day getting a little fatter and so the
evils too go on from day to day getting fatter,
till they get so corpulent and heavy that when
we do open our eyes at last, because we have
to, they can scarcely be moved at all. It 's
sheer criminal selfishness and laziness and
stupidity. Mr. West was talking about it the
other day. I like that young man ; he be-
lieves in all the right things. And in so many
of the wrong ones as well I can't imagine
why. I told him I couldn't imagine why ;
and he said he found the same difficulty about
me. So there we are. However, what was I
saying ? Oh yes laziness, selfishness and
stupidity. It 's those three we Ve got to
fight. We Ve got to replace them by hard
working, hard living, and hard thinking. And
the last must come first. We 've got to think,
256 Non-Combatants and Others
and make every one think. . . . One of the
worst things about a war is that so many of
the best thinkers are in the middle of it, and
can't think, and may never be able to think
again. I don't in the least agree with those
complacent young men and women who
believe that no one over forty either can or
will think. ' The war has let the old men
loose upon the world/ I believe is the phrase.
Conceited rubbish, of course. They won't talk
it when they and their friends are forty-eight,
like me. Personally I know just about as many
young fools and obscurantists and militarists
as elderly ones. Any number of both. It 's
not a question of age ; it 's temperament and
training. But still, grant that the young
men of fighting age form a very large propor-
tion in each nation of the clearest intellects
and the keenest idealists and the best workers
for truth, and that they are nearly all now in
action, or put out of action. Grant that many
of them will never come back, that many
others will come back weakened physically
and mentally and incapable of the work they
might have done before, and some perhaps
with their mental vision a little blinded and
perverted by what they Ve had to play a part
in for so long. That 's the worst tragedy of
all, of course, that possible perversion. Better
Alix at a Meeting 257
never come back at all/ Daphne's voice shook
momentarily, but she went on bravely : ' Paul
would have been a fine worker. He was going
to be very like his father. Well, Paul 's gone
under a sacrifice to the Brute. Thousands
of other finely-wrought instruments like Paul
have been smashed and lost to the world. . . .
It 's an irreparable tragedy, of course. . . .
But we who are left and who are free have got
to do their work as well as our own. And
we Ve got to begin at once. There 's no time
to be lost/
Daphne consulted her watch, and added,
' You 'd better come to a meeting of the S.P.P.P.
at Queen's Hall with me after dinner, dearest.
It would interest and instruct you. Several
people are going to speak, including me/
' It 's all right when you speak,' said Alix.
' But some of them are rather the limit, really,
mother/
' Oh, my dear, of course. The very outside
edge : over it. What does it matter ? It 's
causes that count, thank goodness, not the
people who work for them. When you 're my
age you '11 have learnt to swallow people,
without getting indigestion. Now we must
have dinner at once, and then you shall come
and begin to practise impersonal idealism.
It is so important/
R
258 Non-Combatants and Others
Alix supposed it must be. Meetings are so
very mixed, speeches so unequal, people so
various.
Lack of clear thinking that, as Daphne
had said, was probably what was wrong with
nearly every one. Perhaps it is the commonest
defect, and the most irritating. It makes
people talk sentimental rubbish. It makes
them lump other people together in masses
and groups, setting one group against another,
when really people are individual tempera-
ments and brains and souls, and unclassi-
fiable. It makes them say (Alix picked out all
these utterances in the Queen's Hall to-night,
among many other utterances truer and sounder
and more relevant indeed, indubitably sound,
relevant and true) that young men are good
and intelligent and pacificist (no, pacifist) and
admire Romain Rolland, and elderly men
bad, stupid and militarist, and admire Bern-
hardi. That women are the guardians of
life, and therefore mind war more than men
do. That democracies are inherently and con-
sistently peaceful enough (stated) and intelli-
gent enough (assumed) to prevent wars from
ever occurring if the reins of foreign policy
were in their hands, (' Rubbish/ muttered
Alix at a Meeting 259
Daphne. ' He 's missing the whole point,
which is to make democracies so, by a long
and difficult education. Every one knows
they Ve not much sense yet.') That the reason
why war is objectionable is that the human
body is sacred and should be inviolate. What
did that mean, precisely, Alix wondered ?
That women are the chief sufferers from war.
A debatable point, anyhow ; and what did
it matter, and why divide humanity into
sexes, further than nature has already done
so ? That among the newspaper owners and
members of the governments of each nation were
some so misguided and lacking in financial
foresight as to encourage wars because they had
some shares in armament industries, and hoped,
presumably, to recoup themselves therefrom
for the heavy financial losses which they, in
common with all other members of the com-
munity, must suffer in case of war. ' Fools
they must be/ Alix commented, and speculated
that these covetous individuals, even granting
that they had pinned their hopes entirely on
the financial issue, must be feeling pretty
badly sold. For their other and nicer shares
would be declining ; their income-tax was enor-
mous (and they probably had to pay super-
tax too, which was even worse) ; the papers
they owned were losing the advertisements
260 Non-Combatants and Others
they lived by ; and their food cost them more.
A bad look-out for these covetous ones.
From this the speaker got on to capitalism
in general. Well, Alix was entirely with him
there.
A new speaker (much better, quite good,
in fact) was speaking of secret ententes, as
speakers will at these meetings. The Moroccan
crisis . . . that was rather interesting. The
Balance of Power. A rotten theory, but surely,
as things were, necessary ? Yes, as th
were ; but not as they were going to be. Foi
there must, in time, be General Disarmament.
Disarmament. A fancy some lean to and
others hate, no doubt. But most hate it.
The question was, would they hate it more
after this war, or less ? Si vis bellum, para
bellum ; that was the true version of that
saying. True, for it had been proved so.
Look at the Germans, preparing for war for
years ; look at all the other nations, also
preparing for years. And now they had all
got it. That is what armies and fleets lead
to. So, instead of armies and fleets, let us
have International Councils for Arbitration. A
Concert of Europe.
A jolly sound notion, thought Alix, but wished
the speaker would meet rather more precisely
the obvious difficulties in the way of this
Alix at a Meeting 261
method of keeping the peace. It certainly was
a sound notion : one felt that it could, after
much shaping and experimenting and failure,
be workable, be made something of. There
was no earthly reason why not. And certainly
the more it was discussed and publicly aired
in all the nations, the better for its chances.
But people were apt, on this subject, not to be
quite practical enough ; they often laid stress
on the advantages of the principle, rather
than on its detailed methods of working. Of
course the advantages, if it could be worked,
were incontrovertible ; surely no one could be
found to question them.
And here Alix found a weakness she had
vaguely felt before in the standpoint taken by
many of these people. Many of them (not
nearly all, but many) seemed to imply, ' We,
a select few of us called Pacificists, hate war.
The rest of you rather like it. We will not
allow you to have it. WE will stop it.' As
if some of a race stricken with agonising plague
had risen up and said to the rest, ' You, most
of you, are content to be ill and in anguish and
perishing. But WE do not like it. WE insist
on stopping it and preventing its recurrence.'
An admirable resolution, but ill-worded. What
they meant, what they would mean if they
thought and spoke accurately, was surely,
262 Non-Combatants and Others
' We all loathe this horror how should any one
not loathe it ? We all want to stop it occurring
again, and WE have thought of a way which
we believe may work. This is it . . /
That was sense ; that was what was wanted,
that any one who thought they had found a way
should use it and expound it to the rest. But
oh, it wasn't sense, it was madness, to talk as
if people differed in aim and desire, not merely
in method. For there was one desire every one
had in these days, beneath, through and above
their thousand others. People wanted money,
wanted victory, wanted liberty, wanted eco-
nomic individualism, wanted socialism, wanted
each other, wanted love, wanted beauty, wanted
virtue, wanted a vote, wanted fame, wanted
genius, wanted God, wanted things to drink,
even to eat, wanted more wages, wanted
less taxes, less work, wanted children, wanted
adventure, wanted death, wanted democracy,
oligarchy, anarchy, any other archy, wanted
new clothes, wanted a new heaven or a new
earth or both, wanted the old back again,
wanted the moon. They wanted any or all
of these things and a thousand more ; but
through them, above them, beneath them, a
quenchless fire of longing, burning, searing and
consuming more passionately as the crazy
weeks of frustration swung by, they wanted
Alix at a Meeting 263
peace. . . . Even some who wanted nothing
else in this world or any other just had energy
to want peace. There were those so tired and
so forlorn and so battered and broken that
they could scarcely want at all ; they had
lost too much. They had almost too utterly
lost their health, or their courage, or their
limbs, or their hope, or their faith, or their
sons, husbands, brothers, lovers and friends,
or their minds, to want anything from life
except its end ; but still, with broken, drifting,
numbed desires, they wanted peace. . . .
All the heterogeneous crowd of humanity,
so at variance in almost everything else, was
just now surely one in the common bond of
that great desire. They swayed, that hetero-
geneous crowd, into Alix's giddy vision ; she
saw them thus strangely, perhaps unwelcomely,
linked, in incongruous fellowship, those who
had possibly never before believed themselves
to want the same things. The one desire
linked, in all the warring nations, socialists
and individualistic men of business, capitalists
and wage-earners, slum landlords and slum
dwellers, judges and criminals, soldiers and
conscientious objectors, catholics and quakers,
atheists and priests, prize-fighters and poets,
representatives of societies differing so widely
in some ways as the Fellowship of Reconcilia-
264 Non-Combatants and Others
tion, and the National Service League, the
W.S.P.U. and the Anti-Suffrage Society, the
Union of Democratic Control and the Anti-
German League, the German Social and Demo-
cratic Party and the Radicals ; the staffs of
journals as widely sundered by temperament
and habit as the Times and the Manchester
Guardian, the Morning Post and the Daily
News, the Spectator and the English Review,
the Vorwarts and the Kreuz Zeitung, the Church
Times, the Freethinker and the Record.
Alix saw humanity as a great mass-meeting,
men and women, ' clergymen, lawyers, lords
and thieves,' hand in hand, lifting together
one confused voice, crying for peace, peace,
where there was no peace. Where there could
not yet be, nor ever had been, peace, because
. . . because of what ? That really seemed
the question to be solved. Because, one sup-
posed, of some anti-peace elements in every
country, in every class, in every interest, nay,
in every human being, that somehow subverted
and hindered the great desire.
An odd world, certainly, and paradoxical,
and curiously tragic. But lit by glimmers of
hope. . . .
Alix at a Meeting 265
More and more through that evening Alix
came to believe that these so-called Pacificists
(idiotic name as if every one wasn't Pacificist)
really had found a way, really had, if not
exactly their hands on the ropes, anyhow their
feet on a road that might possibly lead some-
where. It was the same rather breathless
feeling of possible ways out, or in, that she
had about the Church sometimes. Only some-
times ; for at other times she happened on
people who belonged to the Church who made
her feel that there were no roads out, or in, or
anywhere, but only dull enclosures, leading
nowhere ; and she hadn't yet attained to the
impersonal idealism Daphne urged on her
(so necessary, so difficult a thing) which could
swallow people for the sake of the causes they
stood for. She attached too much importance
to people.
She was glad when a young, keen-faced,
humorous woman, with a charming voice, began
to speak about Continuous Mediation without
Armistice. A fascinating subject, competently
handled. A continuous conference of the
neutral nations, to convey the ever-changing
desires of the belligerents to one another, to
inquire into the principles of international
266 Non-Combatants and Others
justice and permanent peace underlying them,
to discuss, to air proposals, to suggest, to
promote understanding between belligerents.
It couldn't, anyhow, do much harm, and might
do much good. It would express the views of
impartial observers (are any observers im-
partial, Alix wondered ?) on these vexed ques-
tions ; it would express through intermediaries
the views of the peace-seekers in each warring
nation to the peace-makers in the others, now
that they were hindered from direct speech
together. For so many thousands in the enemy
countries are longing for peace ; there must be
no mistake about that. Of course, thought
Alix, impatient again. How should there be
any mistake about so obvious a thing ? The
only difficulty was that each country longed
for peace on its own terms ; peace, as they
would say, with honour ; and no country liked
its enemies' terms. This continuous mediation
business would perhaps draw them nearer
together, make them see more nearly eye to
eye. It certainly seemed sound.
4
' They 're talking sense all right/ said one
young officer to another, behind Alix.
Then Daphne spoke, on the attitude towards
Alix at a Meeting 267
war of the common people in the neutral and
belligerent nations, on principles of education,
and particularly on the training of children in
sound international ideals her special subject.
She told of how in Austria the Women's Com-
mittee for Permanent Peace had issued an
appeal to parents and teachers urging them
to counteract the influences exciting children
to race hatred, and train them in respect
for their enemies and constructive national
service.
A comprehensive subject, treated with
breadth, detail, and clarity. The young officers
again approved.
Alix thought how fine a person Daphne
looked and was : gracious, competent, vivid,
dominating, alive. Possessed of some poise,
some strength, some inner calm. . . . What
was it, exactly, and why ? One saw it in some
religious people. Perhaps in them and in
Daphne it was the same thing : they both had
a definite aim ; they both knew where they
were trying to go, and why. Perhaps that is
what makes for strength and calm, thought
Alix. Daphne wasn't running away from
things, or from life : she was facing them and
fighting them.
' She 's good, isn't she ? ' said one of the
officers. ' I like hearing Mrs. Sandomir. She
268 Non-Combatants and Others
never talks through her hat. So many of
these Pacifist and Militarist people do.'
Alix was glad Daphne had a sense of humour,
and didn't rant or sentimentalise. She could
talk of the part to be played by women in the
construction of permanent peace without calling
them the guardians of the race or the cus-
todians of life. She didn't draw distinctions,
beyond the necessary ones, between women
and men ; she took women as human beings,
not as life-producing organisms ; she took
men as human beings, not as destroying-
machines. She spoke about propaganda work
to be undertaken by the S.P.P.P. in the country
districts ; she suggested methods ; she became
very practical. Alix listened with interest, for
that was what Daphne was going to do in
Cambridgeshire in the Christmas vacation. It
sounded, as foreshadowed, sensible and useful,
though of course you never know, with meetings
in the country, till you try, and not always
then.
5
Enough, more than enough, no doubt, has
been said of a meeting so ordinary as to be
familiar in outline to most people. That it
was not familiar to Alix, who had hitherto
avoided both meetings and literature on all
Alix at a Meeting 269
subjects connected with the war, is why it is
here recorded in some detail. There was
some more of it, but it need not be here set
down.
When it was over, Daphne and Alix returned
to the club. They sat in the writing-room and
talked and smoked before going to bed.
' Rather sensible, on the whole, I thought/
said Alix, lighting Daphne's cigarette. She
had more colour than usual, and her eyes were
bright and sleepless. Daphne glanced at her
sidelong.
' Glad you approved/ she said. ' The
S.P.P.P. is rather sensible, on the whole :
just that. . . . What about joining it, on
those grounds ? It will only bind you to
approve of its general programme, and, when
you can, assist in it. And its programme is
really purely educational training people (be-
ginning with ourselves) in the kind of thinking
and principles which seem to make for inter-
national understanding and peace. You 'd
better join us. We 're fighting war, to the
best of our lights, and with the weapons at our
command. One can't do more than that in
these days, and one can scarcely do less. One
mayn't be very successful, and one may be
quite off the lines ; but one has to keep trying
in the best way one personally knows. One
270 Non-Combatants and Others
can't be indifferent and inert nowadays. . . .
Well?'
Alix leant forward and dropped her cigarette
end into the fire.
' Well/ she returned, and thought for a
moment, and added, ' I wonder. I 'm not
really good at joining things, you know.'
' You are not,' Daphne agreed, decisively.
' You sit on hedges, criticising the fields on
both sides and wondering what good either of
them is going to be to you. Such a paltry
attitude, my dear ! Unpractical, selfish, and
sentimental ; though I know you think you
hate sentimentality. It 's quite time you
learnt that there 's no fighting with whole
truths in this life, and all we can do is to seize
fragments of truth where we can find them,
and use them as best we can. Poor weapons,
perhaps, but all we Ve got. That 's how I
see it, anyhow. . . . Well, darling, at least it
can't do any harm to try and get children and
grown-up people taught to get some under-
standing of international politics and the ways
to keep the peace, or to look upon arbitration
as a possible, practical, and natural substitute
for war can it, now ? If it only in the end
results in improving ever so slightly the mental
attitude of a person here and there, adding ever
so little to the political information of a village
Alix at a Meeting 271
in each county, it will have done something,
won't it ? And you never know it may do
quite a lot more than that. You must remem-
ber we Ve got branches in all the belligerent
countries now. Free discussion of these things
gets them into the air, so to speak ; trains
people's ways of thought ; and thought, collec-
tive thought, is such a solid driving-power ;
it gets things done. Thoughts are alive,' said
Daphne, waving her cigarette as she talked,
' frightfully, terrifyingly, amazingly alive. They
fly about like good and bad germs ; they
cause health or disease. They can build
empires or slums ; they can assault and hurt
the soul ' (unconsciously in moments of en-
thusiasm, Daphne sometimes used a prayer-
book phrase stored in her memory cells from
childhood, for her father had been a bishop),
' or they can save it alive. They can make
peace and make war. They made this war :
they must make the new peace. Thought is
everything. We Ve got to make good, sane,
intelligent thought, how ever and where ever
we can, all of us. ... Come and work with
me in Cambridgeshire next week and help me
to make it, my dear/
' Well,' said Alix again. ' I might do that.
Come and watch you, I mean, and listen. I
think I will do that.'
272 Non-Combatants and Others
It was late. Every one in the club except
them had gone to bed. They went too.
Alix thought, in bed, * Fighting war. That J s
what Mr. West said we must all be doing.
Fighting war. I suppose really it 's the only
thing non-combatants can do with war, to
make it hurt them less ... as they can't
go. . . .' She wrenched her mind sharply away
from that last familiar negation, that old
familiar bitterness of frustration. ' I suppose/
she thought, ' it may make even that hurt
less. . . /
On that thought, selfish by habit as usual,
a thought not suggested by Daphne, who was
not selfish, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER XVI
ON PEACE
ON the tenth of December, Daphne, Alix, and
Nicholas went down to Cambridge. Liverpool
Street Alix found restful. Liverpool Street,
as the jumping-off place for East Anglia, has a
soothing power of its own. Stations often
have, probably because they indicate ways of
escape, never the closed door.
But Cambridge, which they reached all too
soon, was not restful. Cambridge city, even
out of term time, even during terms such as
these, which all the young thinkers are keeping
in trenches overseas, is too conscious of the
world's complexities and imminent problems
and questionable destinies, to be peaceful.
Cambridge is the brain of Cambridgeshire,
which, having all its more disturbing thinking
thus done for it, can itself remain quiet, like
a brainless animal.
Daphne's sphere of work did not include
s
274 Non-Combatants and Others
Cambridge, which already thought about these
things, and heard, gladly and otherwise, Mr.
Ponsonby on Democratic Control and Lord
Bryce on International Relations, and many
other people on many other subjects. All
she did in Cambridge was to foster and stimu-
late the life of the already existing branch of
the S.P.P.P., and to make it her centre for
propaganda in Cambridgeshire.
Nicholas and Alix, having been brought up in
Cambridge, did not know Cambridgeshire much.
Alix discovered Cambridgeshire, through this
quiet, pale December. There are moments in
some lives when it is the only shire that will
do. Many feel the same about Oxfordshire ;
more about Shropshire, Sussex, Worcester-
shire, Hampshire, or the north, or the south-
west. The present writer once knew some one
who felt it about Warwickshire, but these,
probably, are few. Most people may like War-
wickshire, to live in or walk in or bicycle in,
but will give it no peculiar place as healer or
restorer. It is, perhaps, essentially a shire for
the prosperous, the whole in body and mind ;
it has little to give, beyond what it receives.
But Cambridgeshire, ' of all England the shire
for men who understand/ in its quiet, restrained
way gives. It is not for the rich, and not
for sentimentalists, and not for Americans ; but
On Peace 275
it is for poets and dreamers. To those who
leave it and return it has a fresh and sad signifi-
cance, like the face of a once familiar and
understood but half-forgotten friend, whose
point of view has become strange. New
meanings, old meanings reasserted, rise to
challenge them ; the code of values inherent
in those chalky plains that are the setting
of a quiet city seem to emerge in large type.
Cambridge is of a quite different spirit. In
Cambridge is intelligence, culture, traditional-
ism, civilisation, some intellectualism, even
some imagination, much scholarship, ability,
and good sense, above all a high idealism,
a limitless fund of generous chivalry, that
would be at war with the world's ills, the
true crusading spirit, that can never fit in with
the commercial.
And round it, strangely, lies Cambridgeshire,
quiet, chalky, unknown, full of the equable
Anglian peoples and limitless romance ; the
country of waste fens and flat wet fields and
dreamy hints of quiet streams, and grey willows,
and level horizons melting into blue distance
beyond blue distance, and straight white roads
linking ancient village to ancient village, and
untold dreams ; and probably not one Cam-
bridge person in two hundred understands any-
thing at all about it ; they are too civilised,
276 Non-Combatants and Others
too urban, too far above the animal and the
peasant. Here and there some Cambridge poet,
or painter, or even archaeologist, has caught the
spirit of Cambridgeshire ; but mostly Cambridge
people are too busy, and too alive, to try.
You need to be of a certain vacancy. . . .
But, though they understand so little of it,
in times of need it sometimes raises quiet
hands of healing to them. Sometimes, again,
it doesn't.
Alix, wandering over it with Daphne, who held
meetings, found it grey, toneless, faintly-hued,
wintry, with larks carolling over the chalky
downs and brown ploughed fields. That country
south of Cambridge seemed to her the truest
Cambridgeshire, rather than the level plains of
Ely and the fenlands, and rather than the border
regions of the north-west, where Royston, among
its huddle of strange hills, broods with its hint
of a hostile wildness. Royston is rather terrify-
ing, unless you use it for golf, and Daphne had
a poor meeting there.
Meetings in Cambridgeshire are often poor,
that is the truth (excepting only in election
time, when apathy gives place to fierce ex-
citement). Whether they are about National
On Peace 277
Service, or Votes for Women, or Tariff Reform,
or Free Trade, or Welsh Disestablishment, or
Recruiting, or Peace you cannot really rely
on them. Cambridgeshire, rightly believing
that the day for toil was given, for rest the
night, does not lightly thwart this dispensation
of Providence. And the few borderland hours
of twilight or lamplight which providence has
set between these two spaces of time, are, there
seems little doubt, given us for the purposes
of tea, smoking, conversing, and courting. So
meetings do not really come in.
But Daphne held them, all the same, and
some people came. She usually held them in
the village schoolroom. Sometimes she got the
vicar's permission to address the children during
school hours, sometimes that of the vicar's wife
to speak to the Mothers' Meeting while it met.
But she preferred evening meetings, because of
her lantern slides, which showed the photo-
graphs she had taken on her travels of men,
women, and children in the other villages of
other countries, thinking, so she said, the
same thoughts as these men, women, and
children in Cambridgeshire, saying, in their
queer other tongues, the same things, playing,
very often, with the same toys. (This, of
course, was by way of Promoting International
Sympathy.)
278 Non-Combatants and Others
The women and children liked these meetings
and slides. The women, being open-hearted,
kindly, impressionable, pacific, saw what Daphne
meant, and said, ' To think of it ! I expect
those mothers, pore things, miss their boys
that are fighting, the same as we do ours.
Well, it isn't their fault, is it ? it 's all that
wicked Keyser.'
The children said merely, ' Oo-ah ! look at
that ! '
Then Daphne would go on from that
starting-point to expound that it wasn't all,
not quite all, that wicked Keyser. That it
was, in fact, in varying degrees, not only all
governments but all peoples, who had made
war possible and so landed themselves at last
in this.
This was less popular. The women didn't
mind it ; they were receptive and open to con-
viction, and didn't much mind either way, and
were prepared to say, ' Well, to be sure, we 're
none of us very good Christians yet, are we ? ' For
ideas didn't matter to them very much, nor the
wrongs and rights of the war, but the fact of
the war did. But some man behind, who had
made up his mind on this business and knew
that black was black and white was white,
would sometimes observe, with vigour and de-
cision, ' Pro-Hun.'
On Peace 279
' I am not a pro-anyone/ said Daphne,
' nor an anti-anyone. But I am, in a general
way, pro-peace and anti-war, as I am sure
we all are in this room/ Then those who
believed themselves to differ would shout
' Fight to a finish/ and ' Crush all Germans/
and ' Smash the Hun, then you may talk of
peace/ and ' Here J s some soldiers back here,
you hear what they 've got to say about it,'
and other things to the same purpose ; and
once or twice they sang patriotic songs so loud
that the meeting closed in disorder. But at
other times they gave Daphne a chance to
explain that she meant by peace, peace in
general and in future, not a premature end to
this particular war. That end, she remarked,
must now be left to be decided by others ; it
was the future they were all concerned with.
When once she got through to this point, the
room usually began to listen again, and heard,
with varying degrees of attention, interest
and tolerance, how they could help to make
a permanent peace, and even put up good-
humouredly with hearing how they had helped,
for some centuries, to make war, by encour-
aging commercialism, capitalism, selfishness,
ignorance, and bad habits of thought.
On the whole, and with exceptions, so far as
Cambridgeshire listened to Daphne at all, it
280 Non-Combatants and Others
was receptive and not unkind. The villages,
of course, varied, as villages will. In some
the squire and the vicar and the other chief
people would not allow the meeting at all,
rightly thinking it pacificist. In others they
allowed it and came, and sat in front, and
differed, asking Daphne if she had not heard
the recommendation, Si vis pacem, para
bellum, and remarking that while we are in
a war is not the time to talk of peace.
' You might as well say,' said Daphne ' that
while we are suffering from a plague is not
the time to talk of measures to prevent its
recurrence.'
Villages, as has been said, differ. Some, for
instance, are more intelligent than others.
Great Shelford is rather intelligent, and means
well ; many of its inhabitants are leisured,
and will readily, if advised, form study circles
and read recommended literature. In fact,
they did. Quite a promising little nucleus of
the S.P.P.P. was established there. Sawston,
two miles and a half away, is otherwise ; so is
Whittlesford. Of Linton, Pampisford, Land-
beach, Waterbeach, the Chesterfords, and
Duxford, it were better, in this connection, not
to speak. Frankly, they did not understand
or approve the S.P.P.P. They thought it
Pro-German.
On Peace 281
' That silly word/ said Daphne helplessly,
to Nicholas, after a rather exhausting evening
at Sawston. (Nicholas's own evening had been
restful, for he had spent it at home, reading
Russian fairy-stories.) ' What does it mean ?
Do they mean anything by it ? Do they
know what they mean ? '
' Oh, they know all right,' returned Nicholas,
grinning. ' They mean you have exaggerated
sympathies with the Hun.'
' Have I ? ' Daphne wondered. ' Well, I
suppose one tries to have some sympathies
with every one even with nations which pre-
pare for and start wars and brutally destroy
small adjacent nations in the process. But as
little, almost as little, with these as it is pos-
sible to have. . . . When will people under-
stand that what we 're out to do is not to
sympathise or to apportion blame, but simply
to learn together the science of reconstruction
no, of construction rather, for we 've got to
make what 's never yet been. People do so
leave things to chance mental and spiritual
things. When it 's a case of reconstructing
material things, as we shall have to do in
Belgium and France after the war, no one will
be allowed to help without proper training ;
people are training for it already, taking regular
courses in the various branches of constructive
282 Non-Combatants and Others
science. But we seem to think that the nations
can build themselves up spiritually without
any learning or preparing at all, just because
it 's not towns and villages and trades and
wealth and agriculture that will need building
up, but only intelligence and beauty and
sanity and mind and morals and manners.
The building up has got to be done in the same
industrious and practical spirit ; you can't
leave spiritual things to grow into the right
shape for themselves, any more than material
ones. You Ve got to have your constrac-
tionists, with their constructive programmes ;
you can't leave things to luck, sit down and
say ' Trust in Time, the great mender,' or
' Wait and see.' Time isn't a mender of
anything : time, unused, is like an aged idiot
plodding along a road without signposts into
nowhere. . . . We can't each go about our
individual businesses grabbing our share of
the world without troubling ourselves to get a
grasp of the whole and help to shove it along
the right track. It 's uneducated ; it 's like
the modern Cretan, so different from his early
ancestors, who saw life steadily and saw it
whole at least that 's what one gathers from
his remains.' (Daphne had, just before the
war, been in Crete, excavating.)
Nicholas said, ' You over-rate the early
On Peace 283
Cretan. I Ve noticed it before. You over-rate
him. He wasn't all you think ; and anyhow,
he had a smaller island to think out ; any
one could have got a grasp of Cretan affairs.
He was probably really as selfish as as Alix,
or me.'
' I can't imagine,' said Daphne, considering
him with disapproval, ' why you don't join the
S.P.P.P., Nicky, or some other good educative
society, and help me a little.'
1 I ? I never join anything. I never agree
with anybody. I don't want to educate any
one. Why should I ? I leave these things to
enthusiasts, with faith, like you and West.
I Ve no faith in my own ideas being any better
than other people's, so I let them go their
ways and I go mine.'
' You won't always do that,' Daphne told
him, encouraging him, because she had faith
in the spirit of his fathers, which looked despite
himself out of his eyes. ' When you 're my
age . . .'
' I shall then,' said Nicholas, ' doubtless be
suffering from what is, I believe, called by the
best people ' the more embittered temper and
narrower faith of age.' You need entertain
no further hopes for me then.'
284 Non-Combatants and Others
During the Hauxton meeting, which was in
the schoolroom on the afternoon of new year's
eve, Alix sat on the low churchyard wall in
faint sunshine and looked over brown fields
and heard the larks. Hauxton is quiet, and
smells of straw, and has a little grey church
with a Norman door. Its road runs east and
west, and there are geese on the little green.
On this last afternoon of the year it lay quietly
asleep in the pale winter sunshine. Whenever
the little east wind moved, wisps and handfuls
of straw drifted lightly down the road. The
larks carolled and twittered exuberantly over
bare fields. From time to time a flock of
chaffinches rose suddenly from the ricks and
flew, a chattering flutter of wings, down the
wind. Beyond the fields, cold, faintly-hued
horizons brooded. Hauxton looked drowsily
to the sunset and the dawn, to the past and
future, to the old year and the new.
' The future is dubious/ Daphne had been
saying in the schoolroom, before Alix came
out. Well, of course futures always are, if
you come to that. ' In this dim, dubious
future, let us see that we build up one positive
thing, which shall not fail us. . . .' And by
that, of course, she meant Peace.
On Peace 285
Peace : yes, peace must be, of course, a
positive thing. Here, in Hauxton, was peace ;
a bare, austere, quiet peace, smelling of straw.
No one had had to make that peace ; it just
was. But the world's peace must be made,
built up, stone on stone. No, stones were a
poor figure. Peace must be alive ; a vital,
intricate, intense, difficult thing. No negation :
not the absence of war. Not the quiet, natur-
ally attained peace of Samuel Miller and
Elizabeth his wife, who slept beneath a grey
headstone close to the churchyard wall, having
drifted into peace after ninety and ninety-five
years of living, and having for their engraven
comment, ' They shall come to the grave in the
fullness of years, like as a shock of corn cometh
in in his season.' Not that natural peace of
the old and weary at rest ; but a young peace,
passionate, ardent, intelligent, romantic, like
poetry, like art, like religion. Like Christmas,
with its peace on earth, goodwill towards men.
Like all the passionate, restless idealism that
the so quiet-seeming little Norman church
stood for. . . .
Alix believed that it stood for the same
things that Daphne stood for. It too would
say, build up a living peace. It too would say,
let each man, woman, and child cast out first
from their own souls the forces that make
286 Non-Combatants and Others
against peace stupidity (that first), then com-
mercialism, rivalries, hatreds, grabbing, pride,
ill-bred vaunting. It too was international,
supernational. It too was out for a dream,
a wild dream, of unity. It too bade people go
and fight to the death to realise the dream.
Only it said, ' In my name they shall cast out
devils and speak with new tongues/ and the
S.P.P.P. said, ' In the name of humanity/
There was, no doubt, a difference in method.
But at the moment Alix had more concern
with the likenesses, with the common aim of
the fighters rather than with their different
flags.
The pale sun dipped lower in the pale west,
and was drowned in haze. It was cold. The
little wind from the east whispered along the
bare hedges. The year would soon be running
down into silence, like an old clock.
4
Daphne and the meeting came out of the
school. Alix went to meet her. Daphne
looked satisfied, as if things had gone well.
The few women and many children coming out
of the meeting looked good-hearted, and still
full of Christmas cheer.
' Such dears/ said Daphne, as they got into
On Peace 287
the car. (Lest a damaging impression of
Daphne be given, it may be mentioned that she
always drove her own car herself, and only, in
war time, used it for meetings for the public
good and for taking out wounded soldiers.)
' So attentive and nice. I left pamphlets ;
and I 'm coming again after the Christmas
holiday to speak to the children in school. I
told them about German and Austrian babies.
. . . The mothers loved it. ... It 's fun
doing this. People are such dears, directly
they stop misunderstanding what one is after.
Understanding clear thinking it nearly all
turns on that ; everything does. Oh for more
brains in this poor old muddle of a world !
Educate the children's brains, give them right
understanding, and then let evil do its worst
against them, they '11 have a sure base to
fight it from.'
Alix thought of and mentioned the Intelli-
gent Bad, who are surely numerous and promi-
nent in history.
But Daphne said : ' Cleverness isn't right
understanding. I mean something different
from that. I mean the trained faculty of look-
ing at life and everything in it the right way
up. It 's difficult, of course/
Alix thought it was probably impossible, in
an odd, upside-down world.
288 Non-Combatants and Others
The sun set. The face of Cambridgeshire, the
face of the new year, the face of the incoherent
world, was dim and inscrutable, a dream lacking
interpretation. So many people can provide,
according to their several lights, both the dream
and the interpretation thereof, but with how
little accuracy !
5
The Sandomirs, in their house in Grange
Road, saw the new year in. They drank its
health, as they did every year. Daphne,
though she suddenly could think of nothing
but Paul, who would not see the new or any
other year, nevertheless drank unflinching to
the causes she believed in.
' Here 's to the new world we shall make
in spite of everything,' she said. ' Here 's to
construction, sanity, and clear thinking. Here 's
to goodwill and mutual understanding. Here 's
to the clearing away of the old messes and the
making of the new ones. Here 's to Freedom.
Here 's to Peace.'
' Heaven help you, mother/ Nicholas mur-
mured drowsily into his glass. ' You don't
know what you 're saying. All your toasts
are incompatible, and you don't see it. And
what in the name of anything do you mean
by Freedom ? The old messes I know, and the
On Peace 289
new ones I can guess at but what is Freedom ?
Something, anyhow, which we Ve never had
yet/
' Something we shall have,' said Daphne.
' You think so ? But how improbable !
After war, despotism and the strong hand.
You don't suppose the firm hand is going to
let go, having got us so nicely in its grasp.
Rather not. War is the tyrant's opportunity.
The Government 's beginning to learn what it
can do. After all this Defending of the Realm,
and cancelling of scraps of paper such as Magna
Carta and Habeas Corpus, and ordering the
press, and controlling industries and finance
and food and drink, and saying, ' Let there be
darkness ' (and there was darkness) you don't
suppose it 's going to slip back into laissez-
faire, or open the door to mob rule ? The
realm will go on being defended long after it 's
weathered this storm, depend on it. And quite
right too. Lots of people will prefer it ; they '11
be too tired to want to take things into their
own hands : they '11 only want peace and
safety and an ordered life. They '11 be too
damaged and sick and have lost too much to
be anything but apathetic. Peace, possibly
(though improbably) : but Freedom, no. Any-
how, it 's what neither we nor any one
else have ever had, so we shouldn't recognise
T
290 Non-Combatants and Others
it if we saw it. . . . There are too many
pips in this stuff/ he grumbled. ' Much too
many/
Daphne finished hers and stood up, as mid-
night struck, with varying voices and views
as to the time, from various church clocks in
Cambridge city. ' So/ she said, ' that 's the
end of that year. No doubt it is as well. . . .
And now I 'm going to bed. I Ve a great deal
to do to-morrow/
She went to bed. She had a great deal to
do on all the days of the coming year. But
the first thing she did (in common with many
others this year) was to cry on the stairs,
because it was a year which Paul would never
see, Paul having been tipped out by the last
year in its crazy career and left behind by
the wayside.
Nicholas and Alix lay languidly, in fraternal
silence, in their chairs. They never went to
bed or did anything else with Daphne's prompt
decision. At a quarter past twelve Alix said,
' I 'm thinking of joining this funny society
of mother's/
Nicholas opened his small blue eyes at her.
' You are ? I didn't know you joined
things.'
On Peace 291
' Nor did I,' said Alix. ' But I 'm beginning
to believe I do. ... I think I shall very
probably join the Church, too, before long.'
Nicholas opened his eyes much wider, and
sat up straight.
' The Church ? The Church of England,
do you mean ? '
' I suppose that would be my branch, as I
live in England. Just the Christian Church,
I mean. ... Do you think mother '11 mind
much ? '
Nicholas cogitated over this.
' Probably,' he concluded. ' She doesn't like
it, you know. She thinks it stands for dark-
ness.'
' That 's so funny,' said Alix, ' when really it
seems to me to stand for all the things she
stands for and some more, of course.'
' Exactly,' Nicholas agreed. ' It 's the
" more " she takes exception to.'
' Oh well,' Alix sighed a little. ' Mother 's
very large-minded, really. She '11 get used to
it.'
Nicholas was looking at her curiously, but
not unsympathetically.
* Why these new and sudden energies ? '
he inquired presently. ' If you don't mind my
asking ? '
' It 's what I told you once before/ Alix
292 Non-Combatants and Others
explained, and the memory of jthat anguished
evening attenuated her clear, indifferent voice,
making it smaller and fainter. ' As I can't
be fighting in the war, I Ve got to be fighting
against it. Otherwise it 's like a ghastly night-
mare, swallowing one up. This society of
mother's mayn't be doing much, but it 's
trying to fight war ; it 's working against it in
the best ways it can think of. So I shall join
it. ... Christianity, so far as I can under-
stand it, is working against war too ; must be,
obviously. So I shall join the Church. . . .
That 's all.'
' H'm.' Nicholas looked dubious. ' Not
quite all, I fancy. There are things to believe,
you know. You '11 have to believe them
some of them, anyhow.'
' I suppose so. I dare say it 's not so very
difficult, is it ? '
' Very, I believe. I Ve never tried person-
ally, but so I am told by those who have.'
' Oh well, I don't care. Lots of quite stupid
people seem to manage it, so I don't see why I
shouldn't. I shall try, anyhow. I think it 's
worth it,' said Alix with determination.
' Well,' said Nicholas, after a pause, ' I
dare say you 're right. Right to try things,
I mean. I suppose it 's more intelligent.'
For a moment the paradox in the faces of
On Peace 293
both brother and sister was resolved, and
idealism wholly dominated cynicism.
' Well,' said Nicholas again, ' here 's luck ! '
He finished his punch. It had, as he had
said, too many pips, so that he drank with
care and rejections rather than hope.
CHAPTER XVII
NEW YEARS EVE
I
ON this (surely) most unusual planet, nothing
is more noticeable than the widely differing
methods its inhabitants have of spending
the same day. One person's new year's eve,
for instance, will be quite different from
another.
Even within the Orme family, they were
different. Margot spent the evening at a
canteen concert. She took a prominent part
in the programme, having a charming, true
and well -trained contralto voice. She sang
charming songs with it, some of them a little
above the taste of the majority of soldiers,
but pleasing to the more musical, others not.
It was a long and miscellaneous programme,
varying from Schubert and Mendelssohn to
' Stammering Sam ' and ' Turn the lining
inside out till the boys come home,' so every
one was pleased.
204
I
New Year's Eve 295
Dorothy Orme was assisting at a dance at
the hospital. (You must do something with
soldiers on new year's eve ; it is particularly
urgent that they should be kept indoors, be-
cause of the Scotch.) It was a jolly dance,
and both the soldiers and nurses enjoyed it
extremely. When twelve struck they joined
hands and sang ' Auld Lang Syne/ and every one
hopefully wished every one else a Happy new
year. (Only two Jocks had got out and kept
their Hogmanay elsewhere and quite elsehow
a creditably small proportion out of forty
men.) Dorothy got home by two, said it had
been a topping evening and she was dead tired,
and went to bed.
3
At Wood End, Mr. and Mrs. Orme enter-
tained Belgians. Nine Belgian children, and
parents and guardians to correspond. They
played games, and danced a little, and fished
for presents with a rod and line in a fish-pond
in a corner of the dining-room, where Mr.
Orme lay curled up, secretive and helpful, so
that the right things got on to the right hooks.
It was a great success, and ended at ten.
Mrs. Orme's head ached, and Mr. Orme's back.
296 Non-Combatants and Others
They had had a great deal to do ; they had
had Mademoiselle Verstigel to help them, but
none of their children, who were all busy else-
where, and whom, therefore, they did not grudge.
They were generous with their children, as well
as with their time, energy and money.
4
Betty Orme, who has hitherto been only
remotely referred to in these pages, spent the
evening driving three nurses and a doctor
from Fruges to Lillers. She was a steady,
level-headed child, with a fair placid face
looking out from a woollen helmet, v and wide
blue eyes like Terry's. She acted chauffeur
to a field hospital, drove perfectly, repaired
her car with speed and efficiency, and was
extremely useful. Her nerves, health, and
temper were of the best brand ; horrors left
her unjarred and merely helpful.
The nurse at her side, a garrulous person,
said, ' Why, it 's new year's eve, isn't it ? How
funny. I Ve only just remembered that ! . . .
I wonder what they 're all doing at home,
don't you ? '
But Betty was only wondering whether her
petrol was going to last out till Lillers.
New Year's Eve 297
' I know I 'd a lot rather be out here, wouldn't
you ? ' said the talkative nurse.
' Rather/ said Betty abstractedly.
Even through their helmets and motor-
coats and thick gloves they felt the wind very
cold, and a few flakes of snow began to drift
down from a black sky.
' More snow,' said Betty. ' It really is the
limit. ... I wonder if it '11 be finer next
year.'
John Orme was in a trench, not far from
Ypres. It was bitterly cold there ; snow
drifted and lay on his platoon standing to,
their feet in freezing mud. They were standing
to at that hour of the night (11.30 P.M.) because
they had been warned of a possible enemy
attack. They had been badly bombarded
earlier in the evening, but that was over.
There had been four men hit. The stretcher-
bearers hadn't come for them yet ; they lay,
roughly first-aided, in the mud. John, vigi-
lantly strolling up and down, seeing that no
one slept (John was a very careful and efficient
young officer), passed a moaning boy with his
arm blown off and his tunic a red mess, and
said gently, ' Hang on a bit longer, Everitt.
They won't be long now.' Everitt merely
298 Non-Combatants and Others
returned, beneath his breath, ' My God, sir !
Oh, my God ! ' He could not hang on at all,
by any means whatever. And there were no
morphia tablets left in the platoon. . . . John
turned away.
Some one said, ' New year '11 be in directly,
Ginger. How 's this for a bright and glad
new year ? '
John remembered, for the first time, that it
was December the 3ist. It didn't mean any-
thing more to him than the 30th. After all,
it must be some day, even in this timeless and
condemned trench.
He didn't believe in this attack, anyhow.
It had been a ration party rumour, and ration
parties are full of unfulfilled forecastings. But
he wished he had a morphia tablet for that
poor chap. . . .
Terry Orme was in his dug-out, which was
called Funk Snuggery. It was a very noisy
night. The enemy seemed to be having a
special new year's eve hate. Whizz-bangs,
sugar-loaves, beans, all sorts and conditions
and shapes of explosive missiles filled the earth
and heavens with unlovely clamour. It was
disturbing to Terry, who was reading Mous-
sorgsky. (Terry belonged to that small but
New Year's Eve 299
characteristic class of persons who read them-
selves to sleep with music. John preferred
Mr. Jorrocks.) Terry dug his fingers into his
ears, and perused his score.
There was another man in Funk Snuggery.
The other man looked at his watch, waited
three minutes, and said ' Happy new year.'
Terry, stopping his ears, did not respond,
till he shouted it louder.
Terry looked up. ' What 's that ? ' he in-
quired. ' Oh, is it ? Fancy ! Thanks ; the
same to you. . . . But I shan't be happy this
year unless they let me hear myself think.
Beastly, isn't it ? ... They say after a time
it spoils one's ear. Wouldn't that be rotten.
Have a stick ? '
The stick was of chocolate, and they each
sucked one in drowsy silence. It was next
year, and still they would not let Terry hear
himself think. He put away Moussorgsky
with a sigh, and curled up to go to sleep.
7
Hugh Montgomery Gordon was in billets,
in a village in Artois. He and a friend went
out for a stroll in the evening ; they visited an
estaminet, where they found poor wine but a
charming girl. They told her it was new year's
3OO Non-Combatants and Others
eve ; she told them it was la veille du jour
de I' an. They .taught her to say ' Happy new
year ' and other things. She and they all
spent a very enjoyable evening.
' Absolutely it, isn't she ? ' said Hugh Mont-
gomery Gordon languidly to his friend as they
walked back to their billets. ' Don't know
when I Ve seen anything jollier/ He yawned
and went indoors, and spent the rest of the
year playing auction.
8
Basil Doye, in camp on the Greek mountains,
sat and smoked in a tent assaulted and battered
by a searching north-east wind from Bulgaria.
He and his platoon had been occupied all day
in digging trenches, and spreading wire en-
tanglements which caught and trapped unwary
Greek travellers on their own hills. Basil
Doye was tired and bored and cold, in body
and mind. A second lieutenant who shared
the tent was telling him a funny story of a
bomb the enemy had dropped on Divisional
H.Q. last night, and of the General and staff,
pyjama-clad, rushing about seeking shelter
and finding none. . . . But Basil was still
bored and cold.
' O Lord ! ' said the other subaltern presently,
New Year's Eve 301
' the year '11 soon be done in. It 's going out
without having given us a scrap with the
Bulgars ; how sickening ! . . . Why in any-
thing's name couldn't they have sent us out
here earlier, if at all ? '
' Our government/ said Basil, abstracted
and unoriginal, ' is slow and sure. Slow
to move and sure to be too late. That 's
why. So here we are, sitting on a cold hill
in a draught, with nothing doing, nor likely
to be/
To himself he was saying, ' She 'd fit on these
hills ; she 'd belong here, more than to Spring
Hill. She 's a Greek really . . . that space
between the eyes, and the way she steps . . .
like Diana. . . . Oh, strafe it all, what 's the
good of thinking ? ' Savagely he flung away
his cigarette.
A great gust of wind from Bulgaria flung
itself upon the tent and blew it down. Then
the sleet came, and the new year.
West was in church. The lights were dim,
because of Zeppelins. The vicar was preaching,
on the past and the future, from the texts
* They shall wax old, as doth a garment ; as a
vesture shalt thou lay them aside, and they
302 Non-Combatants and Others
shall be changed/ and ' Behold, I make all
things new.'
The year was going to be changed and made
new in nineteen minutes and a half. West
(and the vicar too, perhaps), though tired and
despondent (the week after Christmas is a des-
perate time for clergymen, because of treats),
were holding on to hope with both hands. A
desperate time : a desperate end to a desperate
year. But clergymen may not, by their rules,
become desperate men. They have to hope :
they have to believe that as a vesture they shall
be changed, and that the new will be better
than the old. If they did not succeed in
believing this, they would be of all men the
most miserable.
West sat in his stall, looking, so the choir-
boys opposite thought, at them, to see if any
among them whispered, or any slept. But he
did not see them. He was looking through
and beyond them, at the vesture, ragged and
soaked with blood, which so indubitably wanted
changing. Once his lips moved, and the words
they formed were : ' How long, O Lord, how
long ? ' Which might, of course, refer to a
number of things : the war, or the vicar's
sermon, or the present year, or, indeed, almost
anything.
The sermon ended, and there was silent prayer
New Year's Eve 303
till twelve o'clock struck. Then, as is the
habit on these occasions, they sang hymn 265
(A. and M.).
10
Violette had a new year's eve party. A
quiet party ; only the Vinneys to chat and
play quiet card games and see the new year in.
At half-past eleven they had done with cards,
and were conversing. Kate had gone to church
at eleven. Vincent and Sidney Vinney were
now in khaki ; they had, in view of the coming
compulsion scheme, joined the army (terri-
torials) and got commissions. Vincent, being
married, had applied for home service only.
Sidney, as he had just pointed out to Evie,
might get sent anywhere at any moment. But
Evie, receiving letters from Hugh Montgomery
Gordon at the battle front, and, indeed, from
many others, was not to be touched by Sid
Vinney.
Evie was talking to young Mrs. Vinney about
the fashions.
' Those new taffeta skirts at Robinson's are
ten yards wide, I should think. You wouldn't
believe it, the amount there is to them. And
quite a yard off the ground. We shall have
to think so much about OUT feet this next year.
Feet well, more than that, too ! '
304 Non-Combatants and Others
Mrs. Vinney said, ' Well, do you know, I
don't think it 's right, at a time like this. Not
ten yards. I say nothing against six ; because
we women must try and carry on, and look
smart and so on. It would never do for the
men to come home and find us skimpy and
dowdy and peculiar, like some of those suffra-
gettes. . . . What I say is, it '11 be lucky for
the girls with neat ankles this year. . . .'
They said a little more like this, till it was
time to mix the punch. Then they drank it,
and said ' Here 's how,' and v A very happy
new year to all and many o/them,' and v Here 's
to our next festive gathering,' and ' Here 's
to the ladies,' and ' Luck to our soldiers/ and
other things respectively suitable. Then the
Vinneys went home to bed, because Mrs. Vinney
did not approvej)f making nights of it at times
like these.
Soon after twelve Kate came back from
church.
Kate said, ' It 's turned so cold outside, I
shouldn't wonder if we get snow. . . . Those
Primmerose people are spending a terribly loud
evening ; I heard it all across the common.
You 'd think people would want to be some-
what quieter on new year's eve, and this year
in particular ' (with all these sorrows and
Zeppelins about, she meant). ' A quiet even-
New Year's Eve 305
ing with a few friends is one thing ; but it
doesn't seem quite fitting to have all that
shouting and banjos. And I could smell the
drink as I passed, for they had a window open,
and it was wafted right out at me.'
' Well now,' said Mrs. Frampton, ' just fancy
that ! '
ii
The year of grace 1915 slipped away into
darkness, like a broken ship drifting on bitter
tides on to a waste shore. The next year
began.
THE END
Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at .the F.ilinlmrgb University Press
Macaulay, (Dame) Rose
Non-combatants and others
