I
On the 25th May a Coalition Government replaced the old Liberal Ministry under which I had served four years. A few people welcomed the change in hope that the direction of the war would be more vigorous and farsighted. Most of the men I met condemned the new departure, and the detached critics at the Club showed endless fertility in the inferences they drew and the tendencies they traced.
O'Rane had gone to Melton at the end of April, and my uncle and I, dropping back into our former mode of life, saw more of each other than when we had had a guest to entertain. The outbreak of war had infused a strong spirit of party loyalty into Bertrand, and, as the clouds of destructive criticism gathered round the doomed head of the Government, there was hardly a theory or rumour too extravagant for him to embrace. I remember his fiery indignation when the Coalition idea was first canvassed. At one moment the Opposition had broken the party truce and was being silenced by having its mouth filled with plunder: at another malcontent Liberal Ministers were clearing a way to the throne with the aid of assassins suborned from the enemy. The conspiracy—and as public nerves wore thin, conspiracies multiplied—in either case was worked out in minute and convincing detail with chapter and verse to support every count in the indictment. I find it unprofitable even to discuss his theory, because a generation must elapse before the essential diaries and memoirs are made public; and there will be enough guesswork and enough errors of recollection to correct even then. Also, I feel there will be a colourable pretext for revolution when the troops come home, if a hundredth part of the charges be proved to be based on truth.
Apart from the rank and file Liberals who felt the ground had been cut from under their feet, the commonest view was that the Coalition was a London journalistic triumph, desired of no man but foisted on the country by large headlines and hard leader-writing. Erckmann took me on one side in the smoking-room at the Club and laid his heart bare for my inspection. (His intricate and far-reaching business interests had somehow stopped short of newspaper proprietorship; and the 'Sentinel,' bantering him on his change of name, had harped with needless insistence on the wisdom of interning naturalized aliens.) In Erckmann's eyes, the Coalition was the latest thrill of a sensation-mongering Press. "These journalists aren't a Mudual Admiration Zociety, hein? They live by addág. Liberal Government no use: zed ub a Goalition. Goalition no good; zed ub a digdador, hein? Digdador no good, zed ub a Liberal Government. Always addág, addág. We're doo long-suffering, we English. If you pud one or doo edidors againsd a wall, pour encourager les audres, hein?"
My own explanation of the change is founded in part on a study of collective psychology, in part on a certain familiarity with the House of Commons. Democracies are volatile and over-susceptible to panic, disappointment and desire for punishment. Erckmann's estimate of the English was so far wrong that the Government's chief difficulty—from the declaration of war, through the strikes and drink problems to the cry for all-round compulsion—lay in its unillumined ignorance how far it could go without arousing uncontrollable opposition.
The Coalition came because Democracy was vaguely restless and desirous of change. The long winter agony of the trenches was borne in the hopes that spring would see a general advance, Germany thrust back to the Rhine, the beginning of the end. Neuve Chapelle showed that, thanks to apathetic organization, the war might be expected to continue at least another year. Democracy showed itself disappointed and angry. What was the good of a soldier at the War Office if this kind of thing happened?
"Something is wanted, there needeth a change." The whisper made itself heard in Whitehall, and, be it through policy, fear or intrigue, the Coalition—desired and loved of none—was brought to birth. "I suppose," said my uncle some months later when his bitterness had abated, "it was the only alternative to shutting down the House of Commons. We've all been brought up on party lines, and it takes more than a war to deafen you to the pleadings of a Whip. More than a Coalition, for that matter," he added gloomily.
So the portfolios were shuffled, salaries pooled and everything went on as before. Erckmann's "sensation-mongers," after attacking everyone else, turned to rend the few remaining figures they had set on pedestals the previous August. The Foreign Office was attacked for failing to counteract the effects of the Press campaign in Europe: the creator of the modern British Army was driven from office for not quintupling the size of that army (I sat in the House through those dreary years when we lisped in terms of small holdings and cheered every penny saved on the Estimates): and that soldier whom the Press had violated constitutional practice to place in charge of the War Office, was given press-notice to go because the war was still unfinished and the stock of victims was running low.
I remember looking back on the first six months of the war with its upheaval of ideals and standards and habits of life: I recalled my feeling in August that nothing would ever be the same again. And in May I was to find that politics and journalism had so eaten their way into our being that even the scalpel of war failed to dislodge them. Unborn To-morrow must curb its Press or educate itself into independence of it.
While the Coalition was still a conjecture and occasion for blaspheming, my uncle announced his intention of retiring from politics and making over to me the reversion of his seat. As I had done no work for the party since my defeat in 1910 it is more than doubtful whether his nomination would have been endorsed in the Whip's Office, but in any case I had neither time nor strength to sit in the Admiralty by day and the House by night. Such leisure as I could find was already double mortgaged. I spent my Sundays at Bertrand's hospital, and my evenings in entertaining officers on leave or trying to keep in touch with friends who seemed to have been caught up into another and busier world since the outbreak of war.
It was half way through May when my cousin Violet crossed from Ireland with her mother and took up her residence in Loring House. Her confinement was expected to take place early in July, and by moving to London she hoped to see more of her husband when his three times deferred leave was granted. Old Lady Loring and Amy come down from Scotland to get the house ready and keep her company, and, as soon as I could find a free evening, I called round to see them and give Violet the message contained in her brother's letter from Melton.
Loring was writing regularly and in good spirits at this time: the life suited him, he was in perfect health, and his company was the finest of any army in the world. He had been given his fair share of fighting, promoted to the rank of captain, and had taken part in the advance to Neuve Chapelle—a circumstance which he never ceased to deplore, as it involved the exchange of a trench "with all the comforts of home" for one for which he looked in vain for a good word to say.
When I got up to go that night, Violet came with me to the head of the stairs and confided to me that she had a favour to ask.
"I want you to go to the War Office," she said. "If Jim's wounded, or ... or anything, they'll send a telegram to me. I want you to arrange to have it sent to you. For the next six weeks I'm simply going to vegetate. I shall write to Jim, of course, and if he writes to me I shall read his letters. If he doesn't, I shall try not to worry." She slipped her arm through mine. "You see, George, it's everything in the world to me now. And to poor dear old Jim. I'm doing it for his sake, too. It's all I can do. So if anything does happen ..."
"Isn't the Dowager the right person to take this on?" I suggested. "She is his mother."
Violet shook her head.
"She'd tell me. Not in so many words, but I should see it. And the same way with Amy. Say you will, George."
"I will, by all means."
"Good boy! You'd better not come again for the present. If you walked in one evening with a long face.... Amy'll ring you up as soon as there's anything to report."
"Whatever you think best, my dear."
I kissed her good-night and started to walk down the stairs. She stopped me with a whisper.
"George, I'm ... I'm not a bit afraid!"
"Best of luck!" I said. "Good night!"
Thereafter for some weeks Loring's letters continued to come with fair regularity, but there were times when he had no opportunity of writing, and I had no difficulty in understanding Violet's self-denying ordinance. We had two or three scares in the course of May and June—unexplained periods of time when no word came. Then a hurried scrawl would tell us that Loring had just come out of the trenches and was resting in billets behind the lines—"no time to write the last day or two, and no news even if the censor let it through. You know much more about the war than we do." And then we could all breathe more freely.
One such interval of suspense came to an end on June the 25th. I remember the date, if for no other reason, because it was my uncle's birthday. He had ordered his will to be sent round from the solicitor's and spent several hours, pencil in hand, drafting alterations and working out elaborate calculations in the margin. After dinner he returned to his task, and I was settling down to letter-writing when he suddenly said:
"Will you feel aggrieved, George, if I leave you out of this thing?"
"Not in the least," I said. "As I never expected——"
"Oh, nonsense! We've lived together for years, and I never could find anyone to do that before. They're all afraid of me, think I'm going to bite their heads off. I had put you down for everything and, if you think you're being shabbily treated, I won't alter the thing."
"I've really got as much as I need," I answered.
He nodded without looking up.
"Then the books and oddments will come to you, and the money will go to David."
"He'll refuse it, Bertrand," I said.
My uncle shrugged his shoulders. "He must please himself—as I am pleasing myself. Other things apart, I couldn't die and leave his father's son.... George, I'm not comfortable about the boy."
"Why not?"
"I always think that blindness is one of the few excuses for suicide," Bertrand answered.
"I'll go down for the week-end and see him, if you like," I said.
Reaching for a telegraph form, I was beginning to write when a maid entered and handed me a buff envelope. I read the contents and passed them over to my uncle.
"There is no answer," I told the maid.
The Secretary of State for War "regretted to inform" me that Captain the Marquess Loring was reported as "missing."
"He's only missing, George," said Bertrand gently, laying his hand over mine on the table.
"Isn't that—rather worse?" I asked, but Bertrand had crept away to leave me undisturbed.
I got away from the Admiralty early on the Saturday afternoon and reached Melton at four. In the disturbance of the previous evening I had forgotten to complete my telegram, and it seemed prudent to leave my luggage at the station until I had found out whether O'Rane could take me in for the week-end. I had won clear of the town and was half-way to the school when I heard my name called and looked up to find Lady Dainton driving with a break-load of convalescent soldiers.
"Are you coming to see us?" she asked.
"Eventually," I said.
"If you can find room inside," said Sonia from the box-seat, "we can drive you home in time for tea."
I wanted a word with Sonia privately, so I suggested that she and I should walk the rest of the way.
"We shall be frightfully late," she said dubiously as she descended from the box. Her rest-cure was doing her little good, to judge from her hollow cheeks and the dark rings round her eyes.
"Never mind," I said. "Right away! I say, Sonia, I'm a bird of ill-omen."
"What's the matter?" she asked anxiously.
"A friend of mine is missing—a friend of Raney and of us all. I was on my way to the school when you overtook me."
Sonia had stopped in the middle of the road and was looking at me with her big, beseeching eyes.
"You don't mean—Jim?" she said.
I nodded.
She gave a half sob. "Oh, poor, poor Violet!" And then, with the calmness that everyone seemed to acquire in the terrible first months of the war, "When did you hear about it?"
"Last night. Violet's not to be told till after the child's born. I felt Raney ought to know—he was our greatest friend."
We walked the best part of a mile in silence. Then Sonia said, "You were coming to tell me too?"
"Certainly."
"Thank you." Her head was bowed and her eyes turned to the ground. "I don't suppose you understand, George.... A man can't.... Oh, there was so much I wanted to say!"
"I think he understood everything," I said, taking her hand. "From the time when you offered him your good wishes on his marriage."
She seemed startled. "He told you about that?"
We were walking through country that to me was steeped in Loring's personality—the School Cricket Ground where he and I fielded at the nets as fags—the big Brynash Pond where we skated in the long frost of '94, the pavilion in the Southampton Road that marked the southernmost limit of Junior Bounds and skirting the forest the ribbon of white road along which seniors were privileged to tramp on their winter walks.
"You haven't been to the school yet, have you?" asked Sonia.
"Not yet. But I was thinking of it when you spoke. I remember walking along here with Jim one afternoon in autumn. It was Raney's first term. We tramped through the forest and up the hill till we came in sight of the milestone round the next corner. I recollect there was a figure seated on it, swinging his legs; and as we got nearer, we saw it was Raney. We'd thrashed him that term as many times as school rules permitted, and here he was calmly defying two monitors of his own house by dawdling a good two miles out of bounds. Poor boy!—there were tears shining on his eyelashes. Yes, he knew it was out of bounds, but it was the only place hereabouts where you could smell the English Channel, and sometimes, if you were lucky, you'd see smoke from a passing ship, and that gladdened the heart of him. I remember him saying it, with a brogue that he'd heard in his cradle and hardly since. Then without warning he became a sardonic little spitfire, oozing insubordination at every pore and drawling in hideous hybrid American. 'Guess I'm up against another of your everlasting rules, Loring.'"
"What did you say?" asked Sonia.
"I left it to Jim. They seemed to understand each other, and Jim never lost his temper, though I must say Raney was the most consummate little fiend in his first term that I've ever met. All Jim ever said was, 'Lonely little devil!' He certainly looked it, sitting on the milestone."
We walked on, turning over old memories, until we were out of the sweet, heavy pine forest, and the road curved sharply and ran downhill to Crowley.
As we rounded the corner a giant St. Bernard turned his head lazily in our direction, gathered himself together as though for a spring and raced towards us.