Sandiland produced gin and vermouth. Talk grew general.
Peter did not take long to recognize the peculiar social atmosphere. It was merely glorified Eton. Everybody trying their best to assume that facts didn’t exist; that emotions didn’t exist; that they knew little and cared less about the job they had at heart. It was over twelve years since Peter had lived in that particular atmosphere: but he sniffed it gratefully. His voice changed to it. He said, “Oh, really. Well, of course, I don’t know much about Gunnery,” knowing perfectly well that he knew considerably more about it than Sandiland—and, “It’s been very quiet round the batteries”—feeling that nobody had ever been quite so heavily shelled as the Fourth Southdown Brigade.
The Weasel, who happened to have been at Winchester before going on to Woolwich, felt suddenly and immensely superior to everybody on earth. For, on that point, all old English “public-school” men feel alike: which is what makes them at times so insufferable to outsiders. If a foreigner had asked any of the men in that cellar why he was fighting, the foreigner would have met with an incredulous lift of the eyebrow: that particular lift of the eyebrow which no foreigner understands; but which conveys—to one who can interpret—“My dear fellow, I was at Eton” (or Winchester, or Haileybury, or Harrow, or Radley or a hundred other foundations of that classical tradition which literary pacifists despise) “and one does, don’t you know, one just does.”
Luckily, there is no “education” at English “public-schools.” They merely train boys to be men.
§ 4
The Infantry Brigadier, arriving about mid-day, declared to his Brigade-Major:
“My dear fellow, the whole countryside looks like Hampstead Heath. Have some one go out and clean it up, please. I really can’t have men wandering about all over the skyline.”
The Brigade Major, strolling across the room, said: “I say, Bunny, I wish you’d take a peep round and see what we’re to do about these fellows wandering about on the skyline.”
Bunny disappeared and did not return till after lunch.
Nobody in all that farm seemed in the least degree excited about anything. Work was not done—it proceeded. Stark and Peter, returning to the outer air, watched the procedure. By now, their own communication orderlies, servants and telephonists had arrived. It began to rain, vaguely, unpleasantly. . . .