Part 34 (1/2)

Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords, This earth shall have a feeling....

Stooping and touching the soil of England as one might bend and touch a beloved face. That was what England for years had meant to him. And now.... It was upon these emotions, vaguely, ”in case”, that he had gone to Doctor Anderson on the morning of the frightful news. Anderson had told him he couldn't possibly be pa.s.sed for the Army, but at the moment the idea of ever wanting to go into the Army had only been an almost ridiculously remote contingency, and what did Anderson know about the Army standard, anyway?

VI

He said nothing to Mabel of his intention. It was just precisely the sort of thing he could not possibly discuss with Mabel. Mabel would say, ”Whyever should you?” and of all imaginable ordeals the idea of exposing before Mabel his feeling about England ... he would tell her when it was done, if it came off. He could say then, in what he knew to be the clumsy way in which he had learnt to hide his ideas from her, he could say, ”Well, I _had_ to.”

And his thought was, when a few hours later he was walking slowly away from his interview with Major Earnshaw, the doctor at the barracks, ”Thank G.o.d, I never said anything to Mabel about it.”

The very few officers left behind at the depot were at breakfast when he arrived to keep Colonel Rattray to his word. Major Earnshaw had very pleasantly got up from the table to ”put him out of his misery” there and then without formality and had ”had a go at this heart of yours” in the billiard room. Withdrawn his stethoscope and shaken his head. It was ”no go; absolutely none, Sabre.”

”Well, but that's for a commission. I'll go into the ranks. Isn't that any different?”

No different. ”You can't possibly go in as you are--now. In time, if this thing goes on, the standards will probably be reduced. But they'll have to be reduced a goodish long way before you'll get in, I don't mind telling you.”

Sabre wheeled his bicycle slowly away across the barrack square. ”Thank goodness, I never said anything to Mabel about it.” A cl.u.s.ter of young men of various degrees of life were waiting outside the door of the recruiting office. The rush of the first few days was thinning down but recruits were still pouring in. They were all laughing and talking noisily. He had the wish that he could take the thing in that spirit.

Why couldn't he? After all, what did it really matter that he was not able to get ”in it”? Even if he had been accepted it would only have been pretending. He never would have got really ”in it”; none of those chaps would; every one knew the war couldn't last long; it would be over long before any of these recruits could be trained.

VII

This ”common sense” argument carried him through following days; then came another of the frightful undoings of his emotions; and just as the war definitely began for him with the glimpse of the beginnings of that ”jamborino” in the Mess, so from this new occasion began, unceasingly and increasingly, and with shocking effect upon his sensitiveness, a dreadful oppression by the war and, adding to its darkness, a gnawing and unreasonable self-accusation that he was not ”in it.”

The occasion was that of his meeting with Harkness outside the _County Times_ office. Harkness was a captain of the battalion that had gone out who had been left behind owing to some illness. The British Expeditionary Force had been in action. There had been sc.r.a.ps of news of some heavy fighting. Harkness said dully, ”Hullo, Sabre. I've just been in to see that chap Pike to see if he'd got anything. We've had some news, you know.” He stopped. His face was twitching.

Sabre said, ”News? Anything about the Pinks?”

Harkness nodded. He seemed to be swallowing. Then he said, ”Yes, the regiment. Pretty bad.”

Sabre said, ”Any one--?” and also stopped.

Harkness looked, not at Sabre, but straight across the top of his head and began an appalling, and as it seemed to Sabre, an endless recitative. ”The Colonel's killed. Bruce is killed. Otway's killed--”

”Otway....”

”Cottar's killed. Bullen's killed--”

Endless! The names struck Sabre like successive blows. Were they never going to end?

”Carmichael's killed. My young brother's--” his voice cracked--”killed.

Sikes is killed.”

”Sikes killed.... And your brother....”

Harkness said in a very thin, squeaking voice, ”Yes, the regiment's pretty well--The regiment's--” He looked full at Sabre and said in a very loud, defiant voice, ”I bet they were magnificent. By G.o.d, I bet you they were magnificent. Oh, my G.o.d, why the h.e.l.l wasn't I there?” He turned abruptly and went away, walking rather funnily.

This was the moment at which there descended upon Sabre, never to leave him while he remained not ”in it”, the appalling sense of oppression that the war exercised upon him. On his brain like a weight; on his heart like a pressing hand. He thought of Otway's intense, gleaming face. ”My G.o.d, Sabre, you ought to have seen the battalion on parade this morning.” He saw Otway's face cold and stricken. He thought of Sikes, on the table. ”Well, I'm going to take nothing but socks. I'm going to stuff my pack absolutely bung full of socks.” He saw Sikes flung like a disused thing in some field....

VIII

And still events; still, and always, now, disturbing things.