It all seemed so hopelessly futile to Vane. He began to feel that only over the water lay Reality; that here, at home, he had discovered a Land of Wild Imaginings. . . .
Though he refused to admit it to himself, there was another, even more potent, factor to account for his restlessness. Like most Englishmen, however black the outlook, however delirious the Imagining, he had, deep down in his mind, the ingrained conviction that the country would muddle through somehow. But the other factor—the personal factor—Joan, was very different. Try as he would he could not dismiss her from his mind entirely. Again and again the thought of her came back to torment him, and he began to chafe more and more at his forced inaction. Where large numbers of officers are continually passing through a depot, doing light duty while recovering from wounds, there can be nothing much for the majority to do. Twice he had begun a letter to Margaret, to tell her that after all she had been right—that it had been nervous tension—that it wasn't her after all. And twice he had torn it up after the first few lines. It wasn't fair, he pacified his conscience, to worry her when she was so busy. He could break it far more easily by degrees—when he saw her. And so the restlessness grew, and the disinclination to do anything but sit in the mess and read the papers. His arm was still too stiff for tennis, and the majority of the local people bored him to extinction. Occasionally he managed to get ten minutes' work to do that was of some use to somebody; after that his time was his own.
One day he tried his hand at an essay, but he found that the old easy style which had been his principal asset had deserted him. It was stiff and pedantic, and what was worse—bitter; and he tore it up savagely after he had read it through. He tried desperately to recover some of his old time optimism—and he failed. He told himself again and again that it was up to him to see big, to believe in the future, and he cursed himself savagely for not being able to.
There was a woman whom he had met at lunch on one of his periodical visits to London. She was a war widow, and a phrase she had used to him rang in his brain for many days after. It seemed to him to express so wonderfully the right feeling, the feeling which in another form he was groping after.
"It wouldn't do," she had said very simply, "for the Germans to get a 'double casualty.'" It was the sort of remark, he thought, that he would have expected Margaret to make. With all the horror of genteel pauperism staring her in the face, that woman was thinking big, and was keeping her head up. With all the bitterness of loss behind her, she had, that very day, so she told him, been helping another more fortunate one to choose frocks for her husband's next leave. . . .
Try as he might, he could not rid himself of the mocking question "Cui bono?" What was the use of this individual heroism to the country at large? As far as the woman herself was concerned it kept her human, but to the big community . . .? Would even the soldiers when they came back be strong enough, and collected enough, to do any good? And how many of them really thought . . .?
Surely there must be some big, and yet very simple, message which the war could teach. Big because the result had been so wonderful; simple because the most stupid had learned it. And if they had learned it over the water, surely they could remember it afterwards. . . . pass it on to others. It might even be taught in the schools for future generations to profit by.
It was not discipline or so-called militarism; they were merely the necessary adjuncts to a life where unhesitating obedience is the only thing which prevents a catastrophe. It was not even tradition and playing the game, though it seemed to him he was getting nearer the answer. But these were not fundamental things; they were to a certain extent acquired. He wanted something simpler than that—something which came right at the beginning, a message from the bedrock of the world; something which was present in France—something which seemed to be conspicuous by its absence in England.
"We've caught these fellows," he said one evening after dinner to a regular Major whose life had taken him all over the world, "and we've altered 'em. Their brothers are here at home; they themselves were here a short while ago—will be back in the future. They are the same breed; they come from the same stock. What is this thing that has done it? What gospel has been preached to 'em to turn them into the salt of the earth, while at home here the others are unchanged, except for the worse?"
The Major shifted his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other. "The gospel that was preached two thousand odd years ago," he answered shortly. Vane looked at him curiously. "I admit I hardly expected that answer, Major," he said.