The Human Boy and the War

by Eden Phillpotts

We argued a good deal about him, and Travers major said it was natural pride, because, being of the family of Fortescue, he knew there was a gulf fixed between him and us. And Travers did not blame him, and more did I, or Briggs. But Rice, who is Irish, and who had got sent up on the report of Fortescue for saying, as he thought, something disrespectful about the British Army, hated Fortescue with a deadly hatred. Which was natural, because Fortescue had misunderstood, and Rice had really said nothing against the Army, but against Protestants, which, being a Roman Catholic himself, was merely his point of view and no business of Fortescue's.

And when Fortescue wouldn't become a soldier, Rice left no stone unturned, as they say, to worry him about it. At that time Milly Dunston, the Doctor's youngest daughter, had just come back from a school where she had been finished, and Rice's sister was at the same school, so she took notice of Rice. And it soon turned out that Milly Dunston also hated Fortescue. I believe he had snubbed her in some way over English literature, at which Fortescue was said to be a flyer, but Milly Dunston was not. She had, in fact, praised a novel to him, and he had laughed and told her it was quite worthless, and advised her to read some novels by people she had never heard of. And then he had slighted the school where she had finished, and so, when Rice explained that Fortescue was a coward and preferred the comparative comfort of Merivale to the manly business of going to Salisbury Plain and living in mud and becoming useful to the Empire, Milly Dunston quite agreed with Rice, and said something ought to be done about it.

We helped because we thought the same. In fact, everybody seemed to be of one opinion, and little by little Fortescue began to see signs of great unpopularity growing up against him.

At first he ignored these signs, being evidently unprepared to take what you might call a delicate sort of hint. For instance, he smoked a pipe and kept a Japanese vase on the mantelpiece of his study full of black crows' feathers, which he was in the habit of picking up on Merivale Heath, where he often went for lonely walks. With these feathers he cleaned out the stem of his pipe.

Well, Milly Dunston bought a white fowl for the Doctor's dinner, and told the man at the shop to send it without plucking the feathers off. Which he did do, and she got them and gave them to Rice, who dexterously took away Fortescue's black feathers and substituted the white ones. But Fortescue went on just as though he hadn't noticed it, and when Saunders was with Fortescue, having his special coaching lesson for a Civil Service exam., he said that Fortescue took a white feather and cleaned his pipe with it as though quite indifferent to the colour.

Then Milly Dunston got a ball of knitting wool and four knitting needles, for all of which she paid herself, and Rice once more did the necessary strategy and arranged them on Fortescue's desk, where his eyes would fall upon them on returning to his study. But they merely disappeared, and Fortescue gave no sign.

Then Travers major started a very interesting theory on the subject, and he said there must be some reason far deeper than mere cowardice behind the mystery of Fortescue. He said that it was impossible for a Fortescue to be a coward in the common or garden sense of funking danger, but he admitted that he might be a coward in some other way, such as not liking discipline, or living in a tent, or wearing uncomfortable clothes, or getting up early to the sound of a bugle. And Briggs said that he thought perhaps Fortescue was keeping a widowed mother and sisters, or an old aunt, or some such person by his exertions at Merivale, in which case, of course, he couldn't go. But Rice didn't see why not, even if it was so; and more did I, because the Government gives full compensation for women relations in general; but Briggs said I had got it all wrong, and that if Fortescue had an aunt, she wouldn't gain a penny by his going to the war, however old and poor she was. In fact, he believed that only a wife who was going to have a baby got anything at all, owing to the great need for keeping up the race.

Then Rice said that it didn't make any difference to his deadly feeling against Fortescue, and he also said that he was going on rubbing it into Fortescue, and leaving no stone unturned to make his life a burden to him until he enlisted; and Travers major said that Rice was feeling the instinct of pure revenge, and Rice said he might be, but that was what he intended to do. Anyway, he was sure the War Office and Admiralty didn't care a button about aunts.

Then we divided into two factions on the subject of Fortescue, and one faction decided to leave him to his conscience and mind its own business, which wasn't driving Fortescue to war; while the other side took the opposite course, and decided to work at Fortescue with the utmost ingenuity until in sheer despair he was driven to do his duty. And Briggs and Travers major and Travers minor and Saunders and Hopwood abandoned the pursuit, so to say; while I and Rice and a chap called Mitchell, all ably assisted by Milly Dunston, continued in our great attempt to wake Fortescue to the call of his country and storm his lines, as Rice said.

As for Mitchell, he came into it rather curiously, and it shows how an utter accident will sometimes reveal anybody in their true colours, and surprise other people, who thought they knew them and yet didn't. Mitchell was a mere rabbit in character and nothing in learning. And, in fact, he only had one feature besides his nose, and that was his love for money. Money, you might say, was his god, and his financial operations in the matter of loans to the kids were a study in themselves. But over Fortescue he came out in a most unexpected manner, and much to our surprise, made up a bit of poetry about him! Which shows nothing happens but the unexpected, and nobody was more astonished in a sort of way than Mitchell himself, because he never knew he could do it.