“What does Letty think?” said Mr. Britling after a pause. This was right, of course—the only right thing—and yet he was surprised.
“She says if you’d let her try to do my work for a time. …”
“She wants you to go?”
“Of course she does,” said Teddy. “She wouldn’t like me to be a shirker. … But I can’t unless you help.”
“I’m quite ready to do that,” said Mr. Britling. “But somehow I didn’t think it of you. I hadn’t somehow thought of you—”
“What did you think of me?” asked Teddy.
“It’s bringing the war home to us. … Of course you ought to go—if you want to go.”
He reflected. It was odd to find Teddy in this mood, strung up and serious and businesslike. He felt that in the past he had done Teddy injustice; this young man wasn’t as trivial as he had thought him. …
They fell to discussing ways and means; there might have to be a loan for Teddy’s outfit, if he did presently secure a commission. And there were one or two other little matters. … Mr. Britling dismissed a ridiculous fancy that he was paying to send Teddy away to something that neither that young man nor Letty understood properly. …
The next day Teddy vanished Londonward on his bicycle. He was going to lodge in London in order to be near his training. He was zealous. Never before had Teddy been zealous. Mrs. Teddy came to the Dower House for the correspondence, trying not to look self-conscious and important.
Two Mondays later a very bright-eyed, excited little boy came running to Mr. Britling, who was smoking after lunch in the rose garden. “Daddy!” squealed the small boy. “Teddy! In khaki!”
The other junior Britling danced in front of the hero, who was walking beside Mrs. Britling and trying not to be too aggressively a soldierly figure. He looked a very man in khaki and more of a boy than ever. Mrs. Teddy came behind, quietly elated.
Mr. Britling had a recurrence of that same disagreeable fancy that these young people didn’t know exactly what they were going into. He wished he was in khaki himself; then he fancied this compunction wouldn’t trouble him quite so much.
The afternoon with them deepened his conviction that they really didn’t in the slightest degree understand. Life had been so good to them hitherto, that even the idea of Teddy’s going off to the war seemed a sort of fun to them. It was just a thing he was doing, a serious, seriously amusing, and very creditable thing. It involved his dressing up in these unusual clothes, and receiving salutes in the street. … They discussed every possible aspect of his military outlook with the zest of children, who recount the merits of a new game. They were putting Teddy through his stages at a tremendous pace. In quite a little time he thought he would be given the chance of a commission.
“They want subalterns badly. Already they’ve taken nearly a third of our people,” he said, and added with the wistfulness of one who glances at inaccessible delights: “one or two may get out to the front quite soon.”
He spoke as a young actor might speak of a star part. And with a touch of the quality of one who longs to travel in strange lands. … One must be patient. Things come at last. …
“If I’m killed she gets eighty pounds a year,” Teddy explained among many other particulars.
He smiled—the smile of a confident immortal at this amusing idea.
“He’s my little annuity,” said Letty, also smiling, “dead or alive.”
“We’ll miss Teddy in all sorts of ways,” said Mr. Britling.
“It’s only for the duration of the war,” said Teddy. “And Letty’s very intelligent. I’ve done my best to chasten the evil in her.”
“If you think you’re going to get back your job after the war,” said Letty, “you’re very much mistaken. I’m going to raise the standard.”
“You!” said Teddy, regarding her coldly, and proceeded ostentatiously to talk of other things.
§ 6
“Hugh’s going to be in khaki too,” the elder junior told Teddy. “He’s too young to go out in Kitchener’s army, but he’s joined the Territorials. He went off on Thursday. … I wish Gilbert and me was older. …”
Mr. Britling had known his son’s purpose since the evening of Teddy’s announcement.
Hugh had come to his father’s study as he was sitting musing at his writing-desk over the important question whether he should continue his “Examination of War” uninterruptedly, or whether he should not put that on one side for a time and set himself to state as clearly as possible the not too generally recognised misfit between the will and strength of Britain on the one hand and her administrative and military organisation on the other. He felt that an enormous amount of human enthusiasm and energy was being refused and wasted; that if things went on as they were going there would continue to be a quite disastrous shortage of gear, and that some broadening change was needed immediately if the swift exemplary victory over Germany that his soul demanded was to be ensured. Suppose he were to write some noisy articles at once, an article, for instance, to be called “The War of the Mechanics” or “The War of Gear,” and another on “Without Civil Strength There Is No Victory.” If he wrote such things would they be noted or would they just vanish indistinguishably into the general mental tumult? Would they be audible and helpful shouts, or just waste of shouting? … That at least was what he supposed himself to be thinking; it was, at any rate,
