§ 7
Hugh was to stop the night. He spent what seemed to him and every one a long, shy, inexpressive evening. Only the small boys were really natural and animated. They were much impressed and excited by his departure, and wanted to ask a hundred questions about the life in the trenches. Many of them Hugh had to promise to answer when he got there. Then he would see just exactly how things were. Mrs. Britling was motherly and intelligent about his outfit. "Will you want winter things?" she asked....
But when he was alone with his father after every one had gone to bed they found themselves able to talk.
"This sort of thing seems more to us than it would be to a French family," Hugh remarked, standing on the hearthrug.
"Yes," agreed Mr. Britling. "Their minds would be better prepared.... They'd have their appropriate things to say. They have been educated by the tradition of service—and '71."
Then he spoke—almost resentfully.
"The older men ought to go before you boys. Who is to carry on if a lot of you get killed?"
Hugh reflected. "In the stiffest battle that ever can be the odds are against getting killed," he said.
"I suppose they are."
"One in three or four in the very hottest corners."
Mr. Britling expressed no satisfaction.
"Every one is going through something of this sort."
"All the decent people, at any rate," said Mr. Britling....
"It will be an extraordinary experience. Somehow it seems out of proportion—"
"With what?"
"With life generally. As one has known it."
"It isn't in proportion," Mr. Britling admitted.
"Incommensurables," said Hugh.
He considered his phrasing. "It's not," he said, "as though one was going into another part of the same world, or turning up another side of the world one was used to. It is just as if one had been living in a room and one had been asked to step outside.... It makes me think of a queer little thing that happened when I was in London last winter. I got into Queer Company. I don't think I told you. I went to have supper with some students in Chelsea. I hadn't been to the place before, but they seemed all right—just people like me—and everybody. And after supper they took me on to some people they didn't know very well; people who had to do with some School of Dramatic Art. There were two or three young actresses there and a singer and people of that sort, sitting about smoking cigarettes, and we began talking plays and books and picture shows and all that stuff; and suddenly there was a knocking at the door and some one went out and found a policeman with a warrant on the landing. They took off our host's son.... It had to do with a murder...."
Hugh paused. "It was the Bedford Mansions mystery. I don't suppose you remember about it or read about it at the time. He'd killed a man.... It doesn't matter about the particulars anyhow, but what I mean is the effect. The effect of a comfortable well-lit orderly room and the sense of harmless people—and then the door opening and the policeman and the cold draught flowing in. Murder! A girl who seemed to know the people well explained to me in whispers what was happening. It was like the opening of a trap-door going down into some pit you have always known was there, but never really believed in."
"I know," said Mr. Britling. "I know."
"That's just how I feel about this war business. There's no real death over here. It's laid out and boxed up. And accidents are all padded about. If one got a toss from a horse here, you'd be in bed and comfortable in no time.... And there; it's like another planet. It's outside.... I'm going outside.... Instead of there being no death anywhere, it is death everywhere, outside there. We shall be using our utmost wits to kill each other. A kind of reverse to this world."
Mr. Britling nodded.
"I've never seen a dead body yet. In Dower-House land there aren't dead bodies."
"We've kept things from you—horrid things of that sort."
"I'm not complaining," said Hugh.... "But—Master Hugh—the Master Hugh you kept things from—will never come back."
He went on quickly as his father raised distressed eyes to him. "I mean that anyhow this Hugh will never come back. Another one may. But I shall have been outside, and it will all be different...."
He paused. Never had Mr. Britling been so little disposed to take up the discourse.
"Like a man," he said, seeking an image and doing no more than imitate his son's; "who goes out of a busy lighted room through a trap-door into a blizzard, to mend the roof...."
For some moments neither father nor son said anything more. They had a queer sense of insurmountable insufficiency. Neither was saying what he had wanted to say to the other, but it was not clear to them now what they had to say to one another....
"It's wonderful," said Mr. Britling.
Hugh could only manage: "The world has turned right over...."
"The job has to be done," said Mr. Britling.
"The job has to be done," said Hugh.
The pause lengthened.
"You'll be getting up early to-morrow," said Mr. Britling....