Two days later the English ultimatum was delivered in Berlin, and the war of the world, the thought of which made Aline Gurtner so depressed, had begun. The same evening Mr. Waters had occasion to write a note to Mr. Jackson, and did not forget to date it at the top, “The Greek Calends.”
CHAPTER IX
AS suddenly as the first wave from the wash of a great liner breaking on the shore of a tranquil sea, a billow of utter loneliness reared itself up and thundered over Helen Grote. It came without warning, for she had not been looking seawards.
Robin had just left her with a very troubled face, but with his determination absolutely unshaken. On the morning after the declaration of war he had come straight up to town from Cambridge, and had been given a commission in the Grenadier Guards. That had met with her entire approval, she loved to think that her son had been among the very first to answer to the call, even anticipating it. Then she had done her part, and had got a promise for him of a staff appointment, which implied useful and necessary work, would give scope to his excellent abilities, and, above all, would not plunge him after a few months of training into the fiery hell, which, having by now burned its way almost within gun-range of Paris, had at length been stayed, and the edges of it turned back upon itself. But there was other work to do in the service of the country, just as important, just as primarily essential as being plunged into that inferno of shot and shell, and this appointment, so entirely suitable to Robin’s capabilities, was his if he chose to take it: it would be offered him in answer to his grateful assent. Instead, he had given an ungrateful negative, and had left her in order to request that the offer might not be made him in any form that obliged him to accept it.
She had looked forward to this interview with the most delighted anticipations, for she knew what Robin’s feelings with regard to his duty were. He, personally, hated and loathed the idea of war, and all that military service implied. He was a peaceful, easy-going young gentleman, fond of friends, and cricket, and Cambridge and the sunshine of the secure and pleasant life into which he had been born. But the moment the call had come, he had responded to it, he had put everything else aside, habit, and inclination and security, and had been among the earliest to present himself, never contemplating it as possible to do anything else. Surely, then, he had done his part: he had said, “Here am I, take me,” and they had taken him. Now, as if in reward of that, had come this offer, which she had procured for him.... But at the back of her delighted anticipation of telling Robin about it, there had been a doubt lurking in the dark, which she trusted would never open its baleful mouth in discourse, but sit there dumb. Instead, the doubt had instantly leaped out into the light, and instead of being dumb, had expressed itself with great lucidity through Robin’s mouth.
“It’s awfully good of you,” he had said, “to take so much trouble, but don’t you see—I’m sure you do—that for me it would be mere shirking to take it? It’s a job which a fellow with four fingers on his hand could do. I’ve got five.”
Even while he spoke some instinct within her cordially agreed. But she did not intend to heed that instinct: she slammed the door on it. Mightn’t a mother avert a great peril from her only son?...
“Shirking, darling?” she said, still only faintly doubting his eventual acquiescence. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know much about war, any more than you do, but I’m sure it doesn’t merely consist in having men with guns and rifles. There have to be supplies, haven’t there, brought up? Armies have got to be fed; there must be lines of communication, there must be organization behind them, transport, intelligence.”
A little soft crease appeared between Robin’s eyebrows, which she knew. It appeared there when he was proposing to be obstinate about something, and familiarly it was known as the mule-face.
“Of course there must,” said he, just as if there wasn’t such a thing in the world as a mule.