The Kingdom Round the Corner: A Novel

by Coningsby Dawson

Now that he was aware of it, he rebelled against the sacrifice. He refused to be robbed. He would not allow himself to become middle-aged. Why, he hadn't begun to live yet. He'd only been experimenting up to the point when the war had started. He'd been thirty-one then, a man full of promise, and now he was dubbed middle-aged. He remembered with indignation the theory that men of forty ought to be chloroformed to make room for the younger generation. "But, hang it, one's years have nothing to do with it," he protested; "in my spirit I belong to the younger generation." So, to the rumbling accompaniment of the train, he argued his claims passionately. Had he formed them into a petition he would have prayed, "God, make me young

again." It would have been because of Terry that he would have prayed.

And yet he was happy—vaguely happy, as any man must be to whom the right to live has been restored. For the past half decade his horizon, and that of all the men with whom he had intimately associated, had been dwarfed by the thought of dying. Throughout that period he had dared to hope for nothing personal; he had belonged body and soul to unseen forces which had hurried him without explanation from one hell to another. He had had to subdue his pride to their authority and to train his courage to contemplate the shock of annihilation. Now, at the end of almost five years, the will and the body which had been so ruthlessly snatched from him, had been as ruthlessly flung back into his own keeping. All of a sudden, after having been enslaved in every detail, his will and body were set free and no one cared what became of them. They could be his playthings; he was allowed to do with them what he liked. But what did he like? It was a problem. He could so easily spoil them. When he reminded himself of how easily he could spoil them the fear of death, which would never again trouble him, was replaced by the fear of failure. He was furious to find that he was still capable of fearing. He had so confidently believed that, whatever the past five years had stolen from him, they had at least brought him the reward of never again knowing fear of any sort.

That morning by the earliest train he had shaken off the dust of camps and started in civilian dress

as his own master on the new journey. It was characteristic of him to start early and to slip out of his latest phase with so little fuss. For the first two years of his service, while men of his class were gaining high promotions, he had served in the ranks. He had done it as a uselessly proud protest. In the ranks one did the real work, faced most of the danger and won the fewest decorations. He had loved the ranks for their quiet self-effacement and had preferred to be reckoned in their number.

It had been dawn when he had started. From the top of the hill above the camp he had gazed back at the huddled, sleeping rows of hutments. How lacking in individuality they were! How wilfully ugly! You could see their like in the rear of all armies. The military mind seemed incapable of appreciating differences and beauty. How stereotyped the past five years had been; yes, and, while the danger had threatened, how ennobled with duty! So ennobled that there had been times when it had almost seemed that he was on the point of finding his kingdom.

What he hadn't expected was that he would be alive to-day. With that thought gratitude had bubbled up and he had limped away, whistling, through dim lanes and budding hedgerows to the little wayside country station.

But once on board the train to London, he began to feel more like a fugitive escaping than a hero returning. This wasn't the end of soldiering that imagination had painted. There had been strident bands and hysteric shouting to start him on his way

to the conflict. There had been pictorial challenges to his courage pasted on every hoarding. There had been extravagant promises of the welcome which would await him if he survived. Who remembered them to-day? He hummed over the words of the latest promise, "If you come back, and you will come back, the whole world's waiting for you." Was it? He doubted. There was something unpleasantly furtive about the way in which men were being stripped of their outward signs of valor and dribbled back into civilian life. It almost seemed that statesmen had discovered something to be ashamed of in the unforeseen heroism by which the world had been rescued.

What did it matter? The world had been saved, and he had helped to save it. No one could deprive him of that knowledge. His joy leapt up. What did it matter if other people considered him nearly middle-aged? He and Terry must prove to them the contrary. He was free; that was what counted. Free to reckon his life by more than stretches of twenty-four hours. Free to rise or go to bed when he liked. Free to travel to the ends of the earth. Free to speak his mind without the dread of a court-martial. Never again would he be compelled to issue orders which he knew to be unwise; never again would he be compelled to obey them. He was free. And there was Terry——