“And there is Billy! Who will now go on with the education of Billy?”
The hands of fate paused not for Herr Heinrich’s embarrassments and distresses. He fretted from his room downstairs and back to his room, he went out upon mysterious and futile errands towards the village inn, he prowled about the garden. His head and face grew pinker and pinker; his eyes were flushed and distressed. Everybody sought to say and do kind and reassuring things to him.
“Ach!” he said to Teddy; “you are a civilian. You live in a free country. It is not your war. You can be amused at it. …”
But then Teddy was amused at everything.
Something but very dimly apprehended at Matching’s Easy, something methodical and compelling away in London, seemed to be fumbling and feeling after Herr Heinrich, and Herr Heinrich it appeared was responding. Sunday’s post brought the decision.
“I have to go,” he said. “I must go right up to London today. To an address in Bloomsbury. Then they will tell me how to go to Germany. I must pack and I must get the taxicab from the junction and I must go. Why are there no trains on the branch line on Sundays for me to go by it?”
At lunch he talked politics. “I am entirely opposed to the war,” he said. “I am entirely opposed to any war.”
“Then why go?” asked Mr. Britling. “Stay here with us. We all like you. Stay here and do not answer your mobilisation summons.”
“But then I shall lose all my country. I shall lose my papers. I shall be outcast. I must go.”
“I suppose a man should go with his own country,” Mr. Britling reflected.
“If there was only one language in all the world, none of such things would happen,” Herr Heinrich declared. “There would be no English, no Germans, no Russians.”
“Just Esperantists,” said Teddy.
“Or Idoists,” said Herr Heinrich. “I am not convinced of which. In some ways Ido is much better.”
“Perhaps there would have to be a war between Ido and Esperanto to settle it,” said Teddy.
“Who shall we play skat with when you have gone?” asked Mrs. Britling.
“All this morning,” said Herr Heinrich, expanding in the warmth of sympathy, “I have been trying to pack and I have been unable to pack. My mind is too greatly disordered. I have been told not to bring much luggage. Mrs. Britling, please.”
Mrs. Britling became attentive.
“If I could leave much of my luggage, my clothes, some of them, and particularly my violin, it would be much more to my convenience. I do not care to be mobilised with my violin. There may be much crowding. Then I would but just take my rucksack. …”
“If you will leave your things packed up.”
“And afterwards they could be sent.”
But he did not leave them packed up. The taxicab, to order which he had gone to the junction in the morning on Teddy’s complaisant machine, came presently to carry him off, and the whole family and the first contingent of the usual hockey players gathered about it to see him off. The elder boy of the two juniors put a distended rucksack upon the seat. Herr Heinrich then shook hands with everyone.
“Write and tell us how you get on,” cried Mrs. Britling.
“But if England also makes war!”
“Write to Reynolds—let me give you his address; he is my agent in New York,” said Mr. Britling, and wrote it down.
“We’ll come to the village corner with you, Herr Heinrich,” cried the boys.
“No,” said Herr Heinrich, sitting down into the automobile, “I will part with you altogether. It is too much. …”
“Auf Wiedersehen!” cried Mr. Britling. “Remember, whatever happens there will be peace at last!”
“Then why not at the beginning?” Herr Heinrich demanded with a reasonable exasperation and repeated his maturer verdict on the whole European situation; “Verdammte Bummelei!”
“Go,” said Mr. Britling to the taxi driver.
“Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Heinrich!”
“Auf Wiedersehen!”
“Goodbye, Herr Heinrich!”
“Good luck, Herr Heinrich!”
The taxi started with a whir, and Herr Heinrich passed out of the gates and along the same hungry road that had so recently consumed Mr. Direck. “Give him a last send-off,” cried Teddy. “One, Two, Three! Auf Wiedersehen!”
The voices, gruff and shrill, sounded raggedly together. The dog-rose hedge cut off the sight of the little face. Then the pink head bobbed up again. He was standing up and waving the panama hat. Careless of sunstroke. …
Then Herr Heinrich had gone altogether. …
“Well,” said Mr. Britling, turning away.
“I do hope they won’t hurt him,” said a visitor.
“Oh, they won’t put a youngster like that in the fighting line,” said Mr. Britling. “He’s had no training yet. And he has to wear glasses. How can he shoot? They’ll make a clerk of him.”
“He hasn’t packed at all,” said Mrs. Britling to her husband. “Just come up for an instant and peep at his room. It’s—touching.”
It was touching.
It was more than touching; in its minute, absurd way it was symbolical and prophetic, it was the miniature of one small life uprooted.
The door stood wide open, as he had left it open, careless of all the little jealousies and privacies of occupation and ownership. Even the windows were wide open as though he had needed air; he who had always so sedulously shut his windows since first he came to England. Across the empty fireplace stretched the great bough of oak he had brought in for Billy, but now its twigs and leaves had wilted, and many had broken off and fallen on the floor. Billy’s cage stood empty upon a little table in the corner of the room. Instead of packing, the young man had evidently paced up and down in a state of emotional elaboration; the bed was disordered as though he had several times flung himself upon it, and his books had been
