And what a language it would be. With what fancy would the common articulation of the everyday world be passed into an æsthetic mould. How arbitrary would be the rules of taste, what a harmonious blending of sibilants and liquids. How George Moore would glory in our creation.
And then I supposed we should begin to tire of our toy; the novelty would wear off; the lyric impulse would be lost. It would degenerate into hackwork. And then we should try to get rid of it; with a sort of false sentimentality we should muse over the pleasant hours we had spent with it, and wonder if the affection had been returned, almost as the hero of a French novel sighs over a discarded mistress.
Then, of course, there would be Colonel Westcott. We should not wish to disillusion him, to show ourselves as we really were. We should wish to maintain the deception to its end. His opinion of us would be very high.
We should present ourselves to him apologetically, as men for whom the burden of reforming mankind had grown too heavy. We should give the Colonel the impression that he and we were pioneers in advance of our age, stationed at the outposts of progress; that where we stood to-day, the world would stand to-morrow. But in the meantime....
“You see, Sir,” I should say, “there are only four fellows learning Finnish, and none of them, if I may say so, seem to me the sort of fellows we really want. They’re more of the class of chap who learns a language merely to be able to say he knows it, and really, Sir, I don’t know if it’s worth our while to spend so much time on them. You were talking the other day about conservation of energy, Sir.”
The Colonel would bend confidingly. So far this catchword had not suggested itself to him. But it was surely only a matter of time.
“And,” I should continue, “we thought we’d be really doing better if we were to learn a language ourselves. Stone thought the same, Sir, but he said, ‘We must ask Colonel Westcott first.’”
“Ah, quite right, quite right, it’s no use wasting our forces. If fellows won’t back you up, well, it’s their fault, not yours. You’ve done your best.”
And doubtless in that moment the Colonel’s thoughts would be flying forward tentatively to the grey days of demobilisation, to the sundering of the one river into its many streams. And he could see himself standing there at the parting of the ways, his averted eyes turned back to the pleasant pastures, to the unity and harmony of war. He could see himself as the last relic of a more golden era, of a cleaner if not more clever world.
“And you really think, Sir, that we have done our best?”