Volume I Part 41 (2/2)
”Oh, rather,” said Michael and Alan.
”I've just one or two things I wanted to say to you, dear,” said Captain Ross, turning to his wife. They left the dining-room together. Michael and Alan sat silently at the table, crumbling bread and making patterns in the salt-cellar. They could hear the gaunt clock ticking away on the stained wall above them. From time to time far-off bugles sounded above the tossing wind. So they sat for twenty solemn minutes. Then the husband and wife came back. The bill was paid; the door of the hotel swung back; the porter said 'Good luck, sir,' very solemnly, and in a minute they were walking down the street towards the railway-station through the wind and rain.
”I'll see you on the dock in a moment,” said Captain Ross. ”You'd better take a cab down and wait under cover.”
Thence onwards for an hour or more all was noise, excitement and bustle in contrast to the brooding, ominous calm of the dingy hotel. Regiments were marching down to the docks; bands were playing; there were drums and bugles, shouts of command, clatter of horses, the occasional rumble of a gun-carriage, enquiries, the sobbing of children and women, oaths, the hooting of sirens, a steam-engine's whistle, and at last, above everything else, was heard the wail of approaching pipes.
Nearer and nearer swirled the maddening, gladdening, heart-rending tune they played; the Kintail Highlanders were coming; they swung into view; they halted, company after company of them; there were shouts of command very close; suddenly Michael found his hand clenched and saw Captain Ross's grey eyes smiling good-bye; Alan's sleeve seemed to have a loose thread that wanted biting off; the sirens of the great transport trumpeted angrily and, resounding through the sinking hearts of those who were not going, robbed them of whatever pluck was left. Everywhere in view sister, mother, and wife were held for a moment by those they loved. The last man was aboard; the gangway was hauled up; the screw pounded the water; the s.h.i.+p began to glide away from the dock with slow, sickening inevitableness. Upon the air danced handkerchiefs, feeble fluttering envoys of the pa.s.sionate farewells they flung to the wind.
Spellbound, intolerably powerless, the watchers on sh.o.r.e waved and waved; smaller grew the faces leaning over the rail; smaller and smaller, until at last they were unrecognizable to those left behind; and now the handkerchiefs were waved in a new fever of energy as if with the fading of the faces there had fallen upon the a.s.sembly a fresh communal grief, a grief that, no longer regarding personal heartbreaks, frantically pursued the great graceful s.h.i.+p herself whose prow was straining for the open sea. Still, though now scarcely even were human forms discernible upon the decks, the handkerchiefs jigged on for horribly mechanic gestures, as if those who waved them were become automatons through sorrow.
Glad of the musty peace of a railway-carriage after the tears and confusion of the docks, Michael and Alan and Mrs. Ross spoke very little on the journey back to London.
”Aren't you going to stay the night with us at Richmond?” Alan asked.
”No, I must get down to Cobble Place. My large son has already gone there with his nurse.”
”Your son?” exclaimed Michael. ”Oh, of course, I forgot.”
So Alan and he put Mrs. Ross into her train and rode back together on an omnibus, proud citizens of an Empire whose inspiration they had lately beheld in action.
Next morning the Olympians on their frieze were considerably impressed by Michael's account of the stirring scene at Southampton.
”Oh, the war will be over almost at once. We're not taking any risks.
We're sending out enough men to conquer more than the Transvaal,” said the heroes wisely.
But soon there came the news of fresh defeats, and when in the middle of January school rea.s.sembled there were actually figures missing from the familiar composition itself. Actually contemporary heroes had left, had enlisted in the Volunteers and Yeomanry, were even now waiting for orders and meantime self-consciously wandering round the school-grounds in militant khaki. Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates pa.s.sed with incredible ease; boys were coming to school in mourning; Old Jacobeans died bravely, and their deaths were recorded in the school magazine; one Old Jacobean gained the Victoria Cross, and everyone walked from prayers very proudly upon that day.
Michael was still conventionally patriotic, but sometimes with the progress of the war a doubt would creep into his mind whether this increasing blazonry of a country's emotion were so fine as once he had thought it, whether England were losing some of her self-control under reverses, and, worst of all, whether in her victories she were becoming blatant. He remembered how he had been sickened by the accounts of American hysteria during the war with Spain, whose weaker cause, true to his earliest inclinations, he had been compelled to champion. And now when the tide was turning in England's favour, when every other boy came to school wearing a khaki tie quartered with blue or red and some of them even came tricked out with Union Jack waistcoats, when the wearing of a British general's head on a b.u.t.ton and the hissing of Kruger's name at a pantomime were signs of high emotion, when many wastrels of his acquaintance had uniforms, and when the patriotism of their friends consisted of making these undignified supernumeraries drunk, Michael began to wonder whether war conducted by a democracy had ever been much more than a circus for the populace.
And when one bleak morning in early spring he read in a fatal column that Captain Kenneth Ross had been killed in action, his smouldering resentment blazed out, and as he hurried to school with sickened heart and eyes in a mist of welling tears, he could have cursed everyone of the rosetted patriots for whose vainglory such a death paid the price.
Alan, as he expected, was not at school, and Michael spent a restless, miserable morning. He hated the idea of discussing the news with his friends of the hot-water pipes, and when one by one the unimaginative, flaccid comments flowed easily forth upon an event that was too great for them even to hear, much less to speak of, Michael's rage burst forth:
”For G.o.d's sake, you a.s.ses, don't talk so much. I'm sick of this war.
I'm sick of reading that a lot of decent chaps have died for nothing, because it is for nothing, if this country is never again going to be able to stand defeat or victory. War isn't anything to admire in itself.
All the good of war is what it makes of the people who fight, and what it makes of the people who stay at home.”
The Olympians roared with laughter, and congratulated Michael on his humorous oration.
”Can't you see that I'm serious? that it is important to be gentlemen?”
Michael shouted.
”Who says we aren't gentlemen?” demanded a very vapid, but slightly bellicose hero.
”n.o.body says _you_ aren't a gentleman, you a.s.s; at least n.o.body says you eat peas with a knife, but, my G.o.d, if you think it's decent to wear that d.a.m.ned awful b.u.t.ton in your coat when fellows are being killed every day for you, for your pleasure, for your profit, for your existence, all I can say is I don't.”
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