Part 37 (1/2)

”Well, they didn't.”

”Quite so, old man. Quite so. Funny, that's all.”

Sabre paused on the threshold. He perfectly well understood the villainous implication. Vile, intolerable! But of what service to take it up?--To hear Twyning's laugh and his ”My dear old chap, as if I should think such a thing!” He pa.s.sed into his room. The thought he had had which had arrested his anger at Mr. Fortune's hints, revealing this incident in another light, was, ”They want to get rid of me.”

V

In August, the anniversary month of the war, he again offered himself for enlistment and was again rejected, but this time after a longer scrutiny: the standard was not at its first height of perfection.

Earnshaw, Colonel Rattray, all the remnant of his former friends, were gone to the front: Sabre submitted himself through the ordinary channels and this time received what Twyning had called his ”paper.” He did not show it to Twyning, nor mention either to him or to Mr. Fortune that he had tried again. ”Again! most creditable of you, my dear Sabre.” ”Again, have you, though? By Jove, that's sporting of you. Did they give you a paper this time, old man?” No. Not much. Feeling as he felt about the war, acutely aware as he was of the partners' interest in the matter, that, he felt, could not be borne.

But on this occasion he told Mabel.

The war had not altered his relations with Mabel. He had had the feeling that it ought to bring them closer together, to make her more susceptible to his attempts to do the right thing by her. But it did not bring them closer together: the acc.u.mulating months, the imperceptibly increasing strangeness and tension and high pitch of the war atmosphere increased, rather, her susceptibility to those characteristics of his which were most impossible to her. He felt things with draught too deep and with burthen too capacious for the navigability of her mind; and here was an ever-present thing, this (in her phrase) most unsettling war, which must be taken (in her view) on a high, brisk note that was as impossible to him as was his own att.i.tude towards the war to her. The effect of the war, in this result, was but to sunder them on a new dimension: whereas formerly he had learned not to join with her on subjects his feelings about which he had been taught to shrink from exposing before her, now the world contained but one subject; there was no choice and there was no upshot but clash of incompatibility. His feelings were daily forced to the ordeal; his ideas daily exasperated her. The path he had set himself was not to mind her abuse of his feelings, and he tried with some success not to mind; but (in his own expression, brooding in his mind's solitude) they riled her and he had nothing else to offer her; they riled her and he had set himself not to rile her. It was like desiring to ease a querulous invalid and having in the dispensary but a single--and a detested--palliative.

Things were not better; they were worse.--But he made his efforts. The matter of telling her (when he tried in August) that he thought he ought to join the Army was one, and it came nearest to establis.h.i.+ng pleasant relations. That it revealed a profound difference of sensibility was nothing. He blamed himself for causing that side to appear.

Her comment when, on the eve of his attempt, he rather diffidently acquainted her with his intention, was, ”Do you really think you ought to?” This was not enthusiastic; but he went ahead with it and made a joke, which amused her, about how funny it would be if she had to start making ”comforts” for him at the War Knitting League which she was attending with great energy at the Garden Home. He found, as they talked, that it never occurred to her but that it was as an officer that he would be going, and something warned him not to correct her a.s.sumption. He found with pleased surprise quite a friendly chat afoot between them. She only began to fall away in interest when he, made forgetful by this new quality in their contact, allowed his deeper feelings to find voice. Once started, he was away before he had realised it, in how one couldn't help feeling about England and how utterly glorious would be his own sensations if he could actually get into uniform and feel that England had admitted him to be a part of her.

She looked at the clock.

His face was reddening in its customary signal of his enthusiasm. He noticed her glance, but was not altogether checked. He went on quickly, ”Well, look here. I must tell you this. I'll tell you what I'll say to myself first thing if I really do get in. A thing out of the Psalms. By Jove, an absolutely terrific thing, Mabel. In the Forty-fifth. Has old Bag--has Boom Bagshaw told you people up at the church what absolutely magnificent reading the Psalms are just now, in this war?”

She shook her head. ”We sing them every Sunday, of course. But I don't see how the Psalms--you mean the Bible Psalms, don't you?--can have anything to do with war.”

”Oh, but they have. They're absolutely hung full of it. Half of them are the finest battle chants ever written. You ought to read them, Mabel; every one ought to be reading them these days. Well, this verse I'm telling you about. I say, do listen, I won't keep you a minute. It's in that one where there comes in a magnificent chant to some princess who was being brought to marriage to some foreign king--”

Mabel's dispersing attention took arms. ”To a princess! However can it be? It's the Psalms. You do mean the Bible Psalms, don't you?”

He said quickly, ”Oh, well, never mind that. Look here, this is it. I shall say it to myself directly I get in, and then often and often again. It ought to be printed on a card and given to every recruit. Just listen:

”Good luck have thou with thine honour; ride on, because of the word of truth, of meekness and of righteousness: and thy right hand shall show thee terrible things.

”Isn't that terrific? Isn't it tremendous? By Jove, it--”

For the first time in her married life she looked at him, in this humour, not distastefully but curiously. His flushed face and s.h.i.+ning eyes! Whatever about? He was perfectly incomprehensible to her. She got up. She said, ”Yes--but 'Ride on'--of course you're not going in the cavalry, are you?”

He said, ”Oh, well. Sorry. It's just a thing, you know. Yes, it's your bedtime, I'm afraid. I've kept you up, ga.s.sing. Well, dream good luck for me to-morrow.”

His thoughts, when she had gone from the room, went, ”A better evening!

That's the way! I can do it, you see, if I try. That other thing doesn't matter. I was a fool to drag that in. She doesn't understand. Yes, that's the way!”

He sat late, happily. If only he could get past the doctor to-morrow!

VI

That's the way! But on the following evening the way was not to be recaptured. The old way was restored. He was enormously cast down by his rejection. When he got back that night he went straight in to her. ”I say, they've rejected me. They won't have me.” His face was working.