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they dressed for dinner that night because oswald came back tired and vexed from london and wanted a bath before dining. “they seemed to be sending everybody to east africa on the principle that any one who’s been there 453before ought not to go again,” he grumbled. “i can’t see any other principle in it.” he talked at first of the coming east african campaign because he hesitated to ask peter what he intended to do. then he went on to the war news. the germans had got liége. that was certain now. they had smashed the forts to pieces with enormous cannon. there had been a massacre of civilians at dinant. joan did not talk very much, but sat and watched peter closely with an air of complete indifference.
there was a change in him, and she could not say exactly what this change was. the sunshine and snow glare and wind of the high mountains had tanned his face to a hard bronze and he was perceptibly leaner; that made him look older perhaps; but the difference was more than that. she knew her peter so well that she could divine a new thought in him.
“and what are you going to do, peter?” said oswald, coming to it abruptly.
“i’m going to enlist.”
“in the ranks, you mean?” oswald had expected that.
“yes.”
“you ought not to do that.”
“why not?”
“you have your cadet corps work behind you. you ought to take a commission. we shan’t have too many officers.”
peter considered that.
“i want to begin in the ranks.... i want discipline.”
(had some moral miracle happened to peter? this was quite a new note from our supercilious foster brother.)
“you’ll get discipline enough in the cadet corps.”
“i want to begin right down at the bottom of the ladder.”
“well, if you get a rotten drill sergeant, i’m told, it’s disagreeable.”
“all the better.”
“they’ll find you out and push you into a commission,” said oswald. “if not, it’s sheer waste.”
“well, i want to feel what discipline is like—before i give orders,” said peter. “i want to be told to do things and asked why the devil i haven’t done ’em smartly. i’ve been going too easy. the ranks will brace me up.”
(yes, this was a new note. had that delay of four or five 454days anything to do with this?... joan, with a start, discovered that she was holding up the dinner, and touched the electric bell at her side for the course to be changed.)
“i suppose we shall all have to brace up,” said oswald. “it still seems a little unreal. the french have lost mulhausen again, they say, but they are going strong for metz. there’s not a word about our army. it’s just crossed over and vanished....”
(queer to sit here, dining in the soft candlelight, and to think of the crowded roads and deploying troops, the thudding guns and bursting shells away there behind that veil of secrecy—millions of men in france and belgium fighting for the world. and peter would go off tomorrow. presently he would be in uniform; presently he would be part of a marching column. he would go over—into the turmoil. beyond that her imagination would not pass.)
“i wish i could enlist,” said joan.
“they’re getting thousands of men more than they can handle as it is,” said oswald. “they don’t want you.”
“you’d have thought they’d have had things planned and ready for this,” said peter.
“nothing is ready,” said oswald. “nothing is planned. this war has caught our war office fast asleep. it isn’t half awake even now.”
“there ought to be something for women to do,” said joan.
“there ought to be something for every one to do,” said oswald bitterly, “but there isn’t. this country isn’t a state; it’s a crowd adrift. did you notice, peter, as you came through london, the endless multitudes of people just standing about? i’ve never seen london like that before. people not walking about their business, but just standing.”...
peter told of things he had seen on his way home. “the french are in a scowling state. all france scowls at you, and havre is packed with bargains in touring cars—just left about—by rich people coming home....”
so the talk drifted. and all the time joan watched peter as acutely and as unsuspectedly as a mother might watch a grown-up son. tomorrow morning he would go off and join 455up. but it wasn’t that which made him grave. new experiences always elated peter. and he wouldn’t be afraid; not he.... she had been let into the views of three other young men who had gone to war already; troop had written, correctly and consciously heroic, “some of the chaps seem to be getting a lot of emotion into it,” said troop. “it’s nothing out of the way that i can see. one just falls into the line of one’s uncles and cousins.”
wilmington had said: “i just wanted to see you, joan. i’m told i’ll be most useful as a gunner because of my mathematics. when it comes to going over, you won’t forget to think of me, joan?”
joan answered truthfully. “i’ll think of you a lot, billy.”
“there’s nothing in life like you, joan,” said wilmington in his white expressionless way. “well, i suppose i’d better be going.”
but bunny had discoursed upon fear. “i’ve enlisted,” he wrote, “chiefly because i’m afraid of going pacifist right out—out of funk. but it’s hell, joan. i’m afraid in my bones. i hate bangs, and they say the row of modern artillery is terrific. i’ve never seen a dead body, a human dead body, i mean, ever. have you? i would go round a quarter of a mile out of my way any time to dodge a butcher’s shop. i was sick when i found peter dissecting a rabbit. you know, sick, à la manche. no metaphors. i shall run away, i know i shall run away. but we’ve got to stop these beastly germans anyhow. it isn’t killing the germans i shall mind—i’m fierce on germans, joan; but seeing the chaps on stretchers or lying about with all sorts of horrible injuries.”
sheets of that sort of thing, written in an unusually bad handwriting—apparently rather to comfort himself than to sustain joan.
well, it wasn’t peter’s way to think beforehand of being “on stretchers or lying about,” but bunny’s scribblings had got the stretchers into joan’s thoughts. and it made her wish somehow that peter, instead of being unusually grave and choosing to be a ranker, was taking this job with his 456usual easy confidence and going straight and gaily for a commission.
after dinner they all sat out in garden chairs, outside the library window, and had their coffee and smoked. joan got her chair and drew it close to peter’s. two hundred miles away and less was battle and slaughter, perhaps creeping nearer to them, the roaring of great guns, the rattle of rifle fire, the hoarse shouts of men attacking, and a gathering harvest of limp figures “on stretchers and lying about”; but that evening at pelham ford was a globe of golden serenity. not a leaf stirred, and only the little squeaks and rustlings of small creatures that ran and flitted in the dusk ruffled the quiet air.
oswald made peter talk of his climbing. “my only mountain is kilimanjaro,” he said. “no great thing so far as actual climbing goes.” peter had begun with the dolomites, had gone over to adelboden, and then worked round by the concordia hut to bel alp. “was it very beautiful?” asked joan softly under his elbow.
“you could have done it all. i wish you had come,” said peter.
there was a pause.
“and italy?” said joan, still more softly.
“where did you go in italy, peter?” said oswald, picking up her question.
peter gave a travel-book description of orta and the isle of san giulio.
joan sat as still and watchful as a little cat watching for a mouse. (something had put peter out in italy.)
“it’s off the main line,” said peter. “the london and paris papers don’t arrive, and one has to fall back on the corriere della sera.”
“very good paper too,” said oswald.
“news doesn’t seem so real in a language you don’t understand.”
he was excusing himself. so he was ashamed to that extent. that was what was bothering him. one might have known he wouldn’t care for—those other things....
late that night joan sat in her room thinking. presently she unlocked her writing-desk and took out and re-read a letter. 457it was from huntley in cornwall, and it was very tender and passionate. “the world has gone mad, dearest,” it ran; “but we need not go mad. the full moon is slipping by. i lay out on the sands last night praying for you to come, trying to will you to come. oh—when are you coming?”...
and much more to the same effect....
joan’s face hardened. “po’try,” she said. she took a sharpened pencil from the glass tray upon her writing-table and regarded it. the pencil was finely pointed—too finely pointed. she broke off the top with the utmost care and tested the blunt point on her blotting-paper to see if it was broad enough for her purpose. then she scrawled her reply across his letter—in five words: “you ought to enlist. joan,” and addressed an envelope obliquely in the same uncivil script.
after which she selected sundry other letters and a snap-shot giving a not unfavourable view of huntley from her desk, and having scrutinized the latter for an interval, tore them all carefully into little bits and dropped them into her wastepaper basket. she stood regarding these fragments for some time. “i might have gone to him,” she whispered at last, and turned away.
she blew out her candle, hesitated by her bedside, and walked to the open window to watch the moon rise.
she sat upon her window-sill like a joan of marble for a long time. then she produced one of those dark sayings with which she was wont to wrap rather than express her profounder thoughts.
“queer how suddenly one discovers at last what one has known all along.... queer....
“well, i know anyhow.”...
she stood up at last and yawned. “but i don’t like war,” said joan. “stretchers! or lying about! groaning. in the darkness. boys one has danced with. oh! beastly. beastly!”
she forgot her intention of undressing, put her foot on the sill, and rested chin on fist and elbow on knee, scowling out at the garden as though she saw things that she did not like there.
458
