William—An Englishman

by Cicely Hamilton

It was well past midnight when they slid into Folkestone Harbour where again there were long delays; so long that morning was red over France when the train drew away from the pier. It was during the two-hour journey to Charing Cross that William first spoke to his friend of his purpose of becoming a soldier; they were not by themselves in the carriage, but the other occupants nodded off to sleep soon after the train had left Folkestone, and for all practical purposes he and Edith Haynes were alone. She was surprised by the announcement, more surprised perhaps than she should have been—less on account of his previous record than because his appearance and manner were so utterly unmilitary. The British soldier of pre-war days was a type, a man of a class apart; it was a type and class to which William Tully was far from approximating, and she found it impossible to picture his essentially civilian countenance between a khaki collar and cap. Her surprise must have shown in her manner, for he began to explain in jerks.

"It seems the only thing to do," he said. "You can't sit down and let it go on; when you've seen what I've seen, you've got to do what you can. And they want men—they're asking for them. The papers say they want all the men they can get ... it's got to be stopped—that devilry—somehow or another ... and there doesn't seem any other way..."

His voice tailed off and he turned his eyes away—to the flying fields where the dew was still wet and the shadows still long upon the grass. When, a few minutes later, he told her suddenly, "It was just as pretty as this—where it happened," she knew that he was mentally transforming the peace and greenery of a Kentish landscape into the background of such an imitation of hell as he had lived through in the Forest of Arden.

It was not till they were well on the London side of Tonbridge that he turned again to his companion. Something that she had said in appreciation of his decision—a kindly meant phrase that commended his courage—had seemingly been held in his mind.

"I don't want you to think it's courage, and I don't want you to think I'm making any sacrifice—I'm not. I'm enlisting because I want to enlist—and there isn't anything else for me to do. Everything's gone now—I haven't anything to go back to. No duties or ... I don't see how you can call it a sacrifice."

He swallowed and halted again and she could only nod in silence. She knew enough of him by this time to know that what he said was truth, having learned in the course of their days of acquaintanceship that he had lost even more than his newly made wife, his hopes of a home and children. In very deed he had nothing to go back to, neither home nor daily occupation; in losing his cocksure, infallible creed he had lost the interests wherewith his days had been filled. His meetings, his busy committees, the whole paraphernalia of his agitator's life, were with yesterday's seven thousand years. Even if Griselda had not died he, knowing what he knew, would have had to begin life again.

Near Chislehurst, reminded of the nearness of London, he put an apologetic question.

"You'll think me very ignorant," he said, "but you see I've never had anything to do with soldiers. Have you any idea how you set about joining the Army?"

She explained that he had only to offer himself, and turned up an English newspaper bought the day before at Dieppe to point out a paragraph giving the situation of the various London recruiting stations. He studied it with interest and showed her that the nearest to Charing Cross was a station on the Horse Guards Parade. She had not understood that his intention was to enlist at the moment of arrival in London, and suggested a delay of a day or two for rest if not for reflection: the life before him was a hard one physically, and he had been passing through a week of exhaustion both physical and mental. To her arguments he shook his head, stubbornly impatient; he was so urgent to translate his new convictions into immediate action that it was with difficulty she prevailed on him to delay at Charing Cross for breakfast, and only manoeuvred him into the hotel by assuring him—whether rightly or wrongly she knew not—that it was as yet far too early in the day for any recruiting official to be at his post. On that assurance he yielded, and they took their last meal together.

She had contracted an odd species of affection for the little bereft and destitute man whom chance had thrown on her hands in his hour of need; it was difficult for her to rid herself of a sense of responsibility for him and his doings: and as they disposed of their eggs and bacon she found herself wondering, with tears in her throat, how he could come through the discipline and hardship for which his soft life had done so little to prepare him. It was pathetic and even ridiculous to think of him as a soldier, this wisp of a town-bred talker; to think of him marching and bearing arms in defence of such as herself—who topped him by a good two inches and had treated him almost as a child. She coaxed him to eat a good breakfast, dawdling over her own that he should sit and rest the longer; and when he suddenly remembered to ask her how much he owed her for the expenses of the last few days, she gave him, with the hastily invented amount, her address in Somerset and made him promise to write and keep her informed of his doings. He, on his part, shrinking instinctively from those who had shared his errors in the old life, clung to her as the one person who understood the new world into which he had so lately entered—understood it because she was part of it; thus neither was unmoved when they shook hands as friends and parted at the door of the hotel. She entered a taxi for Paddington and he turned his face to Whitehall and the tent on the Horse Guards Parade.