If Winter Comes

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

CHAPTER VI

I

This frightful war! On his brain like a weight. On his heart like a pressing hand.

Came Christmas by which, at the outset, everybody knew it would be over, and it was not over. Came June, 1915, concerning which, at the outset, he had joined with Mr. Fortune, Twyning and Harold in laughter at his own grotesque idea of the war lasting to the dramatic effect of a culminating battle on the centenary of Waterloo, and the war had lasted, and was still lasting.

"This frightful war!" The words were constantly upon his lips, ejaculated to himself in reception of new manifestations of its eruptions; forever in his mind, like a live thing gnawing there. Other people seemed to suffer the war in spasms, isolated amidst the round of their customary routines, of dejection or of optimistic reassurance. The splendid sentiment of "Business as usual" was in many valiant mouths. The land, in so far as provisions and prices were concerned, continued to flow in milk and honey as the British Isles had always flowed in milk and honey. In July a rival multiple grocer's shop opened premises opposite the multiple grocer's shop already established in the shopping centre of the Garden Home and Mabel told Sabre how very exciting it was. The rivals piled their windows, one against the other, with stupendous stacks of margarine and cheese at sevenpence the pound each; and then one day, "Whatever do you think?" the new man interspersed his mountains of margarine and cheese with wooden bowls running over with bright new pennies, and flamed his windows with announcements that this was "The Money-back Shop." You bought a pound of margarine for sevenpence and were handed a penny with your purchase! And the next day, "Only fancy!" the other man also had bright new pennies (in bursting bags from the bank) and also bellowed that he too was a Money-back Shop.

"The fact is the war really hasn't mattered a bit," Mabel said. "I think it's wonderful. And when you remember at the beginning how people rushed to buy up food and what awful ideas of starvation went about; you were one of the worst."

And Sabre agreed that it really was wonderful: and agreed too with Mabel's further opinion that he really ought not to get so fearfully depressed.

But he remained fearfully depressed. The abundance of food, and such manifestations of plenty as the bowls and bags of bright new pennies meant nothing to him. He knew nothing about war. Very possibly the prophecies of shortage and restrictions and starvation were, in the proof, to be refuted as a thousand other prophecies of the early days, optimistic and pessimistic, were being refuted. What had that to do with it? Remained the frightful facts that were going on out there in Belgium and in Gallipoli and in Russia. Remained the increasing revelation of Germany's enormous might in war and the revelation of what war was as she conducted it. Remained the sinister revelation that we were not winning as in the past we had "always won." Remained his envisagement of England—England!—standing four-square to her enemies, but standing as some huge and splendid animal something bewildered by the fury of the onset upon it. Shaking her head whereon had fallen stunning and unexpected blows, as it might be a lion enormously smashed across the face; roaring her defiance; baring her fangs; tearing up the ground before her; dreadful and undaunted and tremendous; but stricken; in sore agony; in heavy amazement; her pride thrust through with swords; her glory answered by another's glory; her dominion challenged; shaken, bleeding.

England.... This frightful war!

II

Remained also, blowing about the streets, in the newspapers and at meetings, in the mouths of many, and in the eyes of most, the new popular question, "Why aren't you in khaki?" The subject of age, always shrouded in a seemly and decorous modesty in England, and especially since, a few years previously, an eminent professor of medicine had unloosed the alarming theory of "Too old at forty", was suddenly ripped out of its prudish coverings. One generation of men began to talk with thoroughly engaging frankness and largeness about their age. They would even announce it in a loud voice in crowded public conveyances. It was nothing, in those days, to hear a man suddenly declare in an omnibus or tramway car, "Well, I'm thirty-eight and I only wish to heaven I was a few years younger." Other men would heartfully chime in, "Ah, same thing with me. It's hard." And all these men, thus cruelly burdened with a few more years than the age limit, would look with great intensity at other men, apparently not thus burdened, who for their part would assume attitudes of physical unfitness or gaze very sternly out of the window.

Several of the younger employees of Fortune, East and Sabre's joined up (as the current phrase had it) in the first weeks of the war. In the third month Mr. Fortune assembled the hands and from across the whale-like front indicated the path of duty and announced that the places of all those who followed it would be kept open for them. "Hear, hear!" said Twyning. "Hear, hear!" and as the men were filing out he took Sabre affectionately by the arm and explained to him that young Harold was dying to go. "But I feel a certain duty is due to the firm, old man. What I mean is, that the boy's only just come here and I feel that in my position as a partner it wouldn't look well for me practically with my own hand to be paying out unearned salary to a chap who'd not been four months in the place. Don't you agree, old man?"

Sabre said, "But we wouldn't be paying him, would we? Fortune said salaries of married men."

"Ah, yes, old man, but between you and me he's going to do it for unmarried men as well, as the cases come up."

"Why didn't he tell them so?"

Twyning's genial expression hardened under these questions, but he said, still on his first note of confidential affection, "Ah, because he thinks they ought to do their duty without being bribed. Quite right, too. No, it's a difficult position for me. My idea is not to give way to the boy's wishes for a few months while he establishes his position here, and then, if men are still wanted, why of course he'll go. Sound, don't you think, old man?"

Sabre disengaged his arm and turned into his own room. "Well, I think this is a business in which you can't judge any one. I think every man is his own judge."

An astonishing rasp came into Twyning's voice. "How old are you?"

"Thirty-six. Why?"

Twyning laughed away the rasp. "Ah, I'm older. I daresay you'll have a chance later on, if the Times and the Morning Post and those class papers have their way. And you've got no family, have you, old man?"

III

That was in the third month of the war. But by June, 1915, the position on these little points had hardened. In June, "Why aren't you in khaki?" was blowing about the streets. Questions looked out of eyes. Certain men avoided one another. And in June young Harold joined up. Sabre greeted the news with very great warmth. Towards Harold he had none of the antipathy that was often aroused in him by Harold's father. He shook the good-looking young man very heartily by the hand. "By Jove, I'm glad. Well done, Harold. That's splendid. Jolly good luck to you."

Later in the morning Twyning came in. He entered abruptly. His air, and when he spoke, his manner, struck Sabre as being deliberately aggressive. "Well, Harold's gone," he said.

"Yes, I'm jolly glad for the boy's sake. I was just congratulating him. I think it's splendid of him."

Twyning breathed heavily through his nose. "Splendid? Hur! He wanted to go long ago. Well, he's gone now and I hope you're satisfied."

Sabre turned in his chair and questioned Twyning with puckered brows. "Satisfied? What on earth do you mean—satisfied?"

"You always thought he ought to go. You're one of those who've sent him off. My boy saw it."

"You're talking nonsense. I've never so much as mentioned the subject to Harold. I told you long ago that I think every man's his own judge, and sole judge, in this business."

Twyning always retracted when Sabre showed signs of becoming roused. "Ah, well, what does it matter? He's gone now. He'll be in this precious khaki to-night. No one can point at him now." He drew out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes slowly. He stared inimically at Sabre. "I'll tell you one thing, Sabre. You wait till you've got a son, then you'll think differently, perhaps. You don't know what my boy means to me. He's everything in the world to me. I got him in here so as to have him with me and now this cursed war's taken him. You don't know what he is, my boy Harold. He's a better man than his father, I'll tell you that. He's a good Christian boy. He's never had a bad thought or said a bad word."

He broke off. He rammed his handkerchief into his trouser pocket. As though the sight of Sabre sitting before him suddenly infuriated him he broke out, "It's all right for you sitting there. You're not going. Never mind. My boy Harold's gone. You're satisfied. All right."

Sabre got up. "Look here, Twyning, I'm sorry for you about Harold. I make allowances for you. But—"

When Twyning was angry his speech sometimes betrayed that on which he was most sensitive. "I don't want you to make no allowances for me. I don't—"

"You've repeated the stupid implication you made when you first came in."

Twyning changed to a hearty laugh. "Oh, I say, steady, old man. Don't let's have a row. Nothing to have a row about, old man. I made no implication. Whatever for should I? No, no, I simply said 'All right.' I say people have sent my boy Harold off, and I'm merely saying 'All right. He's gone. Now perhaps you're satisfied.' Not you, old man. Other people." He paused. His tone hardened. "All right. That's all, old man. All right."

IV

Not very long after this incident occurred another incident. In its obvious aspect it was also related to the "Why aren't you in khaki?" question; Sabre apprehended in it a different bearing.

One morning he stepped suddenly from his own room into Mr. Fortune's in quest of a reference. Twyning and Mr. Fortune were seated together in deep conversation. They were very often thus seated, Sabre had noticed. At his entry their conversation abruptly ceased; and this also was not new.

Sabre went across to the filing cabinet without speaking.

Mr. Fortune cleared his throat. "Ah, Sabre. Ah, Sabre, we were just saying, we were just saying—" His hesitation, and the pause before he had begun quite clearly informed Sabre that what he was now about to say was not going to be—precisely—what he had just been saying. "We were just saying what a very unfortunate thing, what a very deeply unfortunate thing it is that none of us principals are of an age to do the right thing by the Firm by joining the Army. I'm afraid we've got one or two shirkers downstairs, and we were just saying what a splendid, what an entirely splendid thing it would be if one of us were able to set them an example."

Sabre faced about from the cabinet towards them. Twyning in the big chair had his elbow on the arm and was biting his nails. Mr. Fortune, revolved to face the room, was exercising his watch chain on his whale-like front.

"Yes, it's a pity," Sabre said.

"I'm glad you agree. I knew you would. Indeed, yes, a pity; a very great pity. For myself, of course, I'm out of the question. Twyning here is getting on for forty and of course he's given his son to the war; moreover, there's the business to be thought of. I'm afraid I'm not quite able to do all I used to do. You—of course, you're married too, and there we are! It does, as you say, seem a great pity." The watch chain, having been generously exercised, was put to the duty of heavy tugs at its reluctant partner. Mr. Fortune gazed at his watch and remarked absently, "I hear young Phillips of Brown and Phillips has persuaded his wife to let him go. You were at the school with him, Sabre, weren't you? Isn't he about your age?"

Sabre spoke very slowly. Most furious anger had been rising within him. It was about to burst when there had suddenly come to its control the thought, "These two aren't getting at you for any love of England, for any patriotic reason. That's not it. Don't bother about that. Man alive, don't mix them up in what you feel about these things. Don't go cheapening what you think about England. Theirs is another reason." He said very slowly, "I never told you, perhaps I ought to have told you at the time, that I was refused for the Army some while ago."

Mr. Fortune's watch slipped through his fingers to the full length of his chain. Twyning got up and went over to a bookcase and stared at it.

Mr. Fortune heaved in the line with an agitated hand over hand motion. "I'd no idea! My dear fellow, I'd no idea! How very admirable of you! When was this? After that big meeting in the Corn exchange the other day?"

"Don't tell them when it was," said Sabre's mind. He said, "No, rather before that. I was rejected on medical grounds."

"Well, well!" said Mr. Fortune. "Well, well!" He gave the suggestion of being unable to array his thoughts against this surprising turn of the day. "Most creditable. Twyning, do you hear that?"

Twyning spun around from the bookcase and came forward. "Eh? Sorry, I'm afraid I wasn't listening."

"Our excellent Sabre has offered himself for enlistment and been rejected."

Twyning said, "Have you, by Jove! Jolly good. What bad luck being turned down. What was it?"

Sabre moved across to his room. "Heart."

"Was it, really? By Jove, and you look fit enough, too, old man. Fancy, heart! Fancy—Jolly sporting of you. Fancy—Oh, I say, old man, do let's have a look at your paper if you've got it on you. I want to see one of those things."

Sabre was at his door. "What paper?"

"Your rejection paper, old man. I've never seen one. Only if you've got it on you."

"I haven't got one."

"Not got one! You must have, old man."

"Well, I haven't. I was seen privately. I'm rather friendly with them up at the barracks."

"Oh, yes, of course. Wonder they didn't give you a paper, though."

"Well, they didn't."

"Quite so, old man. Quite so. Funny, that's all."

Sabre paused on the threshold. He perfectly well understood the villainous implication. Vile, intolerable! But of what service to take it up?—To hear Twyning's laugh and his "My dear old chap, as if I should think such a thing!" He passed into his room. The thought he had had which had arrested his anger at Mr. Fortune's hints, revealing this incident in another light, was, "They want to get rid of me."

V

In August, the anniversary month of the war, he again offered himself for enlistment and was again rejected, but this time after a longer scrutiny: the standard was not at its first height of perfection. Earnshaw, Colonel Rattray, all the remnant of his former friends, were gone to the front: Sabre submitted himself through the ordinary channels and this time received what Twyning had called his "paper." He did not show it to Twyning, nor mention either to him or to Mr. Fortune that he had tried again. "Again! most creditable of you, my dear Sabre." "Again, have you, though? By Jove, that's sporting of you. Did they give you a paper this time, old man?" No. Not much. Feeling as he felt about the war, acutely aware as he was of the partners' interest in the matter, that, he felt, could not be borne.

But on this occasion he told Mabel.

The war had not altered his relations with Mabel. He had had the feeling that it ought to bring them closer together, to make her more susceptible to his attempts to do the right thing by her. But it did not bring them closer together: the accumulating months, the imperceptibly increasing strangeness and tension and high pitch of the war atmosphere increased, rather, her susceptibility to those characteristics of his which were most impossible to her. He felt things with draught too deep and with burthen too capacious for the navigability of her mind; and here was an ever-present thing, this (in her phrase) most unsettling war, which must be taken (in her view) on a high, brisk note that was as impossible to him as was his own attitude towards the war to her. The effect of the war, in this result, was but to sunder them on a new dimension: whereas formerly he had learned not to join with her on subjects his feelings about which he had been taught to shrink from exposing before her, now the world contained but one subject; there was no choice and there was no upshot but clash of incompatibility. His feelings were daily forced to the ordeal; his ideas daily exasperated her. The path he had set himself was not to mind her abuse of his feelings, and he tried with some success not to mind; but (in his own expression, brooding in his mind's solitude) they riled her and he had nothing else to offer her; they riled her and he had set himself not to rile her. It was like desiring to ease a querulous invalid and having in the dispensary but a single—and a detested—palliative.

Things were not better; they were worse.—But he made his efforts. The matter of telling her (when he tried in August) that he thought he ought to join the Army was one, and it came nearest to establishing pleasant relations. That it revealed a profound difference of sensibility was nothing. He blamed himself for causing that side to appear.

Her comment when, on the eve of his attempt, he rather diffidently acquainted her with his intention, was, "Do you really think you ought to?" This was not enthusiastic; but he went ahead with it and made a joke, which amused her, about how funny it would be if she had to start making "comforts" for him at the War Knitting League which she was attending with great energy at the Garden Home. He found, as they talked, that it never occurred to her but that it was as an officer that he would be going, and something warned him not to correct her assumption. He found with pleased surprise quite a friendly chat afoot between them. She only began to fall away in interest when he, made forgetful by this new quality in their contact, allowed his deeper feelings to find voice. Once started, he was away before he had realised it, in how one couldn't help feeling about England and how utterly glorious would be his own sensations if he could actually get into uniform and feel that England had admitted him to be a part of her.

She looked at the clock.

His face was reddening in its customary signal of his enthusiasm. He noticed her glance, but was not altogether checked. He went on quickly, "Well, look here. I must tell you this. I'll tell you what I'll say to myself first thing if I really do get in. A thing out of the Psalms. By Jove, an absolutely terrific thing, Mabel. In the Forty-fifth. Has old Bag—has Boom Bagshaw told you people up at the church what absolutely magnificent reading the Psalms are just now, in this war?"

She shook her head. "We sing them every Sunday, of course. But I don't see how the Psalms—you mean the Bible Psalms, don't you?—can have anything to do with war."

"Oh, but they have. They're absolutely hung full of it. Half of them are the finest battle chants ever written. You ought to read them, Mabel; every one ought to be reading them these days. Well, this verse I'm telling you about. I say, do listen, I won't keep you a minute. It's in that one where there comes in a magnificent chant to some princess who was being brought to marriage to some foreign king—"

Mabel's dispersing attention took arms. "To a princess! However can it be? It's the Psalms. You do mean the Bible Psalms, don't you?"

He said quickly, "Oh, well, never mind that. Look here, this is it. I shall say it to myself directly I get in, and then often and often again. It ought to be printed on a card and given to every recruit. Just listen:

"Good luck have thou with thine honour; ride on, because of the word of truth, of meekness and of righteousness: and thy right hand shall show thee terrible things.

"Isn't that terrific? Isn't it tremendous? By Jove, it—"

For the first time in her married life she looked at him, in this humour, not distastefully but curiously. His flushed face and shining eyes! Whatever about? He was perfectly incomprehensible to her. She got up. She said, "Yes—but 'Ride on'—of course you're not going in the cavalry, are you?"

He said, "Oh, well. Sorry. It's just a thing, you know. Yes, it's your bedtime, I'm afraid. I've kept you up, gassing. Well, dream good luck for me to-morrow."

His thoughts, when she had gone from the room, went, "A better evening! That's the way! I can do it, you see, if I try. That other thing doesn't matter. I was a fool to drag that in. She doesn't understand. Yes, that's the way!"

He sat late, happily. If only he could get past the doctor to-morrow!

VI

That's the way! But on the following evening the way was not to be recaptured. The old way was restored. He was enormously cast down by his rejection. When he got back that night he went straight in to her. "I say, they've rejected me. They won't have me." His face was working. "It's that cursed heart."

She slightly puckered her brows. "Oh—d'you know, for the minute I couldn't think what on earth you were talking about. Were you rejected? Well, I must say I'm glad. Up at the Knitting League Mrs. Turner was saying her son saw you at the recruiting office after you were rejected and that it was into the ranks you were going. You never told me that. I must say I don't think you ought to have thought about the ranks without telling me. And I wouldn't have liked it. I wouldn't have liked it at all. I think you ought to be very thankful you were rejected. I'm sure I am."

He said flatly, "Why are you? Thankful—good lord—you don't know—what do you mean, I ought to be thankful?"

"Because you ought to be an officer, if you go at all. It's not the place for you in your position. And apart from anything else—" She gave her sudden burst of laughter.

He felt arise within him violent and horrible feelings about her. "What are you laughing at?"

"Well, do just imagine what you'd look like in private soldier's clothing!" She laughed very heartily again.

He turned away.