Adèle said: “Jean is certain to get promotion, he says so, he will not long remain a Poilu. When he comes back he may be a captain—that will be fine, I shall marry a captain! War, he says, is better than piano-tuning, though I tell him he has a fine ear for music. But Mademoiselle should just see him now in his uniform! We all think he looks splendid.”
Puddle said: “Of course England was bound to come in, and thank God we didn’t take too long about it!”
Stephen said: “All the young men from Morton will go—every decent man in the country will go.” Then she put away her unfinished novel and sat staring dumbly at Puddle.
II
England, the land of bountiful pastures, of peace, of mothering hills, of home. England was fighting for her right to existence. Face to face with dreadful reality at last, England was pouring her men into battle, her army was even now marching across France. Tramp, tramp; tramp, tramp; the tread of England whose men would defend her right to existence.
Anna wrote from Morton. She wrote to Puddle, but now Stephen took those letters and read them. The agent had enlisted and so had the bailiff. Old Mr. Percival, agent in Sir Philip’s lifetime, had come back to help with Morton. Jim the groom, who had stayed on under the coachman after Raftery’s death, was now talking of going; he wanted to get into the cavalry, of course, and Anna was using her influence for him. Six of the gardeners had joined up already, but Hopkins was past the prescribed age limit; he must do his small bit by looking after his grape vines—the grapes would be sent to the wounded in London. There were now no menservants left in the house, and the home farm was short of a couple of hands. Anna wrote that she was proud of her people, and intended to pay those who had enlisted half wages. They would fight for England, but she could not help feeling that in a way they would be fighting for Morton. She had offered Morton to the Red Cross at once, and they had promised to send her convalescent cases. It was rather isolated for a hospital, it seemed, but would be just the place for convalescents. The Vicar was going as an army chaplain; Violet’s husband, Alec, had joined the Flying Corps; Roger Antrim was somewhere in France already; Colonel Antrim had a job at the barracks in Worcester.
Came an angry scrawl from Jonathan Brockett, who had rushed back to England post-haste from the States: “Did you ever know anything quite so stupid as this war? It’s upset my applecart completely—can’t write jingo plays about St. George and the dragon, and I’m sick to death of ‘Business as usual!’ Ain’t going to be no business, my dear, except killing, and blood always makes me feel faint.” Then the postscript: “I’ve just been and gone and done it! Please send me tuck-boxes when I’m sitting in a trench; I like caramel creams and of course mixed biscuits.” Yes, even Jonathan Brockett would go—it was fine in a way that he should have enlisted.
Morton was pouring out its young men, who in their turn might pour out their lifeblood for Morton. The agent, the bailiff, in training already. Jim the groom, inarticulate, rather stupid, but wanting to join the cavalry—Jim who had been at Morton since boyhood. The gardeners, kindly men smelling of soil, men of peace with a peaceful occupation; six of these gardeners had gone already, together with a couple of lads from the home farm. There were no men servants left in the house. It seemed that the old traditions still held, the traditions of England, the traditions of Morton.
The Vicar would soon play a sterner game than cricket, while Alec must put away his law books and take unto himself a pair of wings—funny to associate wings with Alec. Colonel Antrim had hastily got into khaki and was cursing and swearing, no doubt, at the barracks. And Roger—Roger was somewhere in France already, justifying his manhood. Roger Antrim, who had been so intolerably proud of that manhood—well, now he would get a chance to prove it!
But Jonathan Brockett, with the soft white hands, and the foolish gestures, and the high little laugh—even he could justify his existence, for they had not refused him when he went to enlist. Stephen had never thought to feel envious of a man like Jonathan Brockett.
She sat smoking, with his letter spread out before her on the desk, his absurd yet courageous letter, and somehow it humbled her pride to the dust, for she could not so justify her existence. Every instinct handed down by the men of her race, every decent instinct of courage, now rose to mock her so that all that was male in her makeup seemed to grow more aggressive, aggressive perhaps as never before, because of this new frustration. She felt appalled at the realization of her own grotesqueness; she was nothing but a freak abandoned on a kind of no-man’s-land at this moment of splendid national endeavour. England was calling her men into battle, her women to the bedsides of the wounded and dying, and between these two chivalrous, surging forces she, Stephen, might well be crushed out of existence—of less use to her country, she was, than Brockett. She stared at her bony masculine hands, they had never been skilful when it came to illness; strong they might be, but rather inept; not hands wherewith to succour the wounded. No, assuredly her job, if job she could find, would not lie at the bedsides of the
