H G Wells Omnibus, page 265
“Unconscionable!” said Mr. Britling. “Of course—he will grow out of that sort of thing.”
“And he’ll write some day, sure enough. He’ll write.”
He went on reading the letter.
“We read, of course. But there never could be a library here big enough to keep us going. We can do with all sorts of books, but I don’t think the ordinary sensational novel is quite the catch it was for a lot of them in peace-time. Some break towards serious reading in the oddest fashion. Old Park, for example, says he wants books you can chew; he is reading a cheap edition of ‘The Origin of Species.’ He used to regard Florence Warden and William le Queux as the supreme delights of print. I wish you could send him Metchnikoff’s ‘Nature of Man’ or Pearson’s ‘Ethic of Free-thought.’ I feel I am building up his tender mind. Not for me though, Daddy. Nothing of that sort for me. These things take people differently. What I want here is literary opium. I want something about fauns and nymphs in broad low glades. I would like to read Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queen.’ I don’t think I have read it, and yet I have a very distinct impression of knights and dragons and sorcerers and wicked magic ladies moving through a sort of Pre-Raphaelite tapestry scenery—only with a light on them. I could do with some Hewlett of the ‘Forest Lovers’ kind. Or with Joseph Conrad in his Kew Palm-house mood. And there is a book, I once looked into at a man’s rooms in London; I don’t know the title, but it was by Richard Garnett, and it was all about gods who were in reduced circumstances but amidst sunny picturesque scenery. Scenery without steel or poles or wire. A thing after the manner of Heine’s ‘Florentine Nights.’ Any book about Greek gods would be welcome, anything about temples of ivory-coloured stone and purple seas, red caps, chests of jewels, and lizards in the sun. I wish there was another ‘Thais.’ The men here are getting a kind of newspaper sheet of literature scraps called The Times Broadsheets. Snippets, but mostly from good stuff. They’re small enough to stir the appetite, but not to satisfy it. Rather an irritant—and one wants no irritant. … I used to imagine reading was meant to be a stimulant. Out here it has to be an anodyne. …
“Have you heard of a book called ‘Tom Cringle’s Log’?
“War is an exciting game—that I never wanted to play. It excites once in a couple of months. And the rest of it is dirt and muddle and boredom, and smashed houses and spoiled roads and muddy scenery and boredom, and the lumbering along of supplies and the lumbering back of the wounded and weary— and boredom, and continual vague guessing of how it will end and boredom and boredom and boredom, and thinking of the work you were going to do and the travel you were going to have, and the waste of life and the waste of days and boredom, and splintered poplars and stink, everywhere stink and dirt and boredom. … And all because these accursed Prussians were too stupid to understand what a boredom they were getting ready when they pranced and stuck their chests out and earned the praises of Mr. Thomas Carlyle. … Gott strafe Deutschland. … So send me some books, books of dreams, books about China and the willow-pattern plate and the golden age and fairyland. And send them soon and address them very carefully. …”
§ 12
Teddy’s misadventure happened while figs were still ripening on Mr. Britling’s big tree. It was Cissie brought the news to Mr. Britling. She came up to the Dower House with a white, scared face.
“I’ve come up for the letters,” she said. “There’s bad news of Teddy, and Letty’s rather in a state.”
“He’s not——?” Mr. Britling left the word unsaid.
“He’s wounded and missing,” said Cissie.
“A prisoner!” said Mr. Britling.
“And wounded. How, we don’t know.”
She added: “Letty has gone to telegraph.”
“Telegraph to whom?”
“To the War Office, to know what sort of wound he has. They tell nothing. It’s disgraceful.”
“It doesn’t say severely?”
“It says just nothing. Wounded and missing! Surely they ought to give us particulars.”
Mr. Britling thought. His first thought was that now news might come at any time that Hugh was wounded and missing. Then he set himself to persuade Cissie that the absence of “seriously” meant that Teddy was only quite bearably wounded, and that if he was also “missing” it might be difficult for the War Office to ascertain at once just exactly what she wanted to know. But Cissie said merely that “Letty was in an awful state,” and after Mr. Britling had given her a few instructions for his typing, he went down to the cottage to repeat these mitigatory considerations to Letty. He found her much whiter than her sister, and in a state of cold indignation with the War Office. It was clear she thought that organisation ought to have taken better care of Teddy. She had a curious effect of feeling that something was being kept back from her. It was manifest too that she was disposed to regard Mr. Britling as biased in favour of the authorities.
“At any rate.” she said, “they could have answered my telegram promptly. I sent it at eight. Two hours of scornful silence.”
This fierce, strained, unjust Letty was a new aspect to Mr. Britling. Her treatment of his proffered consolations made him feel slightly henpecked.
“And just fancy!” she said. “They have no means of knowing if he has arrived safely on the German side. How can they know he is a prisoner without knowing that?”
“But the word is ‘missing.’ ”
“That means a prisoner,” said Letty uncivilly. …
§ 13
Mr. Britling returned to the Dower House perplexed and profoundly disturbed. He had a distressful sense that things were far more serious with Teddy than he had tried to persuade Letty they were; that “wounded and missing” meant indeed a man abandoned to very sinister probabilities. He was distressed for Teddy, and still more acutely distressed for Mrs. Teddy, whose every note and gesture betrayed suppositions even more sinister than his own. And that preposterous sense of liability, because he had helped Teddy to get his commission, was more distressful than it had ever been. He was surprised that Letty had not assailed him with railing accusations.
And this event had wiped off at one sweep all the protective scab of habituation that had gathered over the wound of Hugh’s departure. He was back face to face with the one evil chance in five. …
In the hall there was lying a letter from Hugh that had come by the second post. It was a relief even to see it. …
Hugh had had his first spell in the trenches.
Before his departure he had promised his half-brothers a long and circumstantial account of what the trenches were really like. Here he redeemed his promise. He had evidently written with the idea that the letter would be handed over to them.
“Tell the bruddykinses I’m glad they’re going to Brinsmead school. Later on, I suppose, they will go on to Statesminster. I suppose that you don’t care to send them so far in these troubled times. …
“And now about those trenches—as I promised. The great thing to grasp is that they are narrow. They are a sort of negative wall. They are more like giant cracks in the ground than anything else. … But perhaps I had better begin by telling how we got there. We started about one in the morning ladened up with everything you can possibly imagine on a soldier, and in addition I had a kettle—filled with water—most of the chaps had bundles of firewood, and some had extra bread. We marched out of our quarters along the road for a mile or more, and then we took the fields, and presently came to a crest and dropped into a sort of maze of zigzag trenches going up to the front trench. These trenches, you know, are much deeper than one’s height; you don’t see anything. It’s like walking along a mud-walled passage. You just trudge along them in single file. Every now and then some one stumbles into a soak-away for rain-water or swears at a soft place, or somebody blunders into the man in front of him. This seems to go on for hours and hours. It certainly went on for an hour; so I suppose we did two or three miles of it. At one place we crossed a dip in the ground and a ditch, and the trench was built up with sand-bags up to the ditch and there was a plank. Overhead there were stars, and now and then a sort of blaze thing they send up lit up the edge of the trench and gave one a glimpse of a treetop or a factory roof far away. Then for a time it was more difficult to go on because you were blinded. Suddenly just when you were believing that this sort of trudge was going on for ever, we were in the support trenches behind the firing-line, and found the men we were relieving ready to come back.
“And the firing-line itself? Just the same sort of ditch with a parapet of sand-bags, but with dugouts, queer big holes helped out with sleepers from a nearby railway track, opening into it from behind. Dugouts vary a good deal. Many are rather like the cubby-house we made at the end of the orchard last summer; only the walls are thick enough to stand a high-explosive shell. The best dugout in our company’s bit of front was quite a dressy affair with some woodwork and a door got from the ruins of a house twenty or thirty yards behind us. It had a stove in it too, and a chimbley, and pans to keep water in. It was the best dugout for miles. This house had a well, and there was a special trench ran back to that, and all day long there was a coming and going for water. There had once been a pump over the well, but a shell had smashed that. …
“And now you expect me to tell of Germans and the fight and shelling and all sorts of things. I haven’t seen a live German; I haven’t been within two hundred yards of a shell burst, there has been no attack and I haven’t got the V.C. I have made myself muddy beyond describing; I’ve been working all the time, but I’ve not fired a shot or fought a ha’porth. We were busy all the time—just at work, repairing the parapet, which had to be done gingerly because of snipers, bringing our food in from the rear in big carriers, getting water, pushing our trench out from an angle slanting-ways forward. Getting meals, clearing up and so on takes a lot of time. We make tea in big kettles in the big dugout, which two whole companies use for their cooking, and carry them with a pole through the handles to our platoons. We wash up and wash and shave. Dinner preparation (and consumption) takes two or three hours. Tea too uses up time. It’s like camping out and picnicking in the park. This first time (and next too) we have been mixed with some Sussex men who have been here longer and know the business. … It works out that we do most of the fatigue. Afterwards we shall go up alone to a pitch of our own. …
“But all the time you want to know about the Germans. They are a quarter of a mile away at this part, or nearly a quarter of a mile. When you snatch a peep at them it is like a low parti-coloured stone wall—only the stones are sand-bags. The Germans have them black and white, so that you cannot tell which are loopholes and which are black bags. Our people haven’t been so clever—and the War Office love of uniformity has given us only white bags. No doubt it looks neater. But it makes our loopholes plain. For a time black sand-bags were refused. The Germans sniped at us, but not very much. Only one of out lot was hit, by a chance shot that came through the sandbag at the top of the parapet. He just had a cut in the neck which didn’t prevent his walking back. They shelled the trenches half a mile to the left of us though, and it looked pretty hot. The sandbags flew about. But the men lie low, and it looks worse than it is. The weather was fine and pleasant, as General French always says. And after three days and nights of cramped existence and petty chores, one in the foremost trench and two a little way back, and then two days in support, we came back—and here we are again waiting for our second Go.
“The night-time is perhaps a little more nervy than the day. You get your head up and look about, and see the flat dim country with its ruined houses and its lumps of stuff that are dead bodies and its long vague lines of sand-bags, and the search-lights going like white windmill arms and an occasional flare or star shell. And you have a nasty feeling of people creeping and creeping all night between the trenches. …
“Some of us went out to strengthen a place in the parapet that was only one sand-bag thick, where a man had been hit during the day. We made it four bags thick right up to the top. All the while you were doing it, you dreaded to find yourself in the white glare of a search-light, and you had a feeling that something would hit you suddenly from behind. I had to make up my mind not to look round, or I should have kept on looking round. … Also our chaps kept shooting over us, within a foot of one’s head. Just to persuade the Germans that we were not out of the trench. …
“Nothing happened to us. We got back all right. It was silly to have left that parapet only one bag thick. There’s the truth, and all of my first time in the trenches.
“And the Germans?
“I tell you there was no actual fighting at all. I never saw the head of one.
“But now see what a good bruddykins I am. I have seen a fight, a real exciting fight, and I have kept it to the last to tell you about. … It was a fight in the air. And the British won. It began with a German machine appearing, very minute and high, sailing towards our lines a long way to the left. We could tell it was a German because of the black cross; they decorate every aeroplane with a black Iron Cross on its wings and tail; that our officer could see with his glasses. (He let me look.) Suddenly whack, whack, whack came a line of little puffs of smoke behind it, and then one in front of it, which meant that our anti-aircraft guns were having a go at it. Then, as suddenly, Archibald stopped, and we could see the British machine buzzing across the path of the German. It was just like two birds circling in the air. Or wasps. They buzzed like wasps. There was a little crackling—like brushing you hair in frosty weather. They were shooting at each other. Then our lieutenant called out, ‘Hit, by Jove!’ and handed the glasses to Park and instantly wanted them back. He says he saw bits of the machine flying off.
“When he said that you could fancy you saw it too, up there in the blue.
“Anyhow the little machine cocked itself up on end. Rather slowly. … Then down it came like dropping a knife. …
“It made you say ‘Ooooo!’ to see that dive. It came down, seemed to get a little bit under control, and then dive down again. You could hear the engine roar louder and louder as it came down. I never saw anything fall so fast. We saw it hit the ground among a lot of smashed-up buildings on the crest behind us. It went right over and flew to pieces, all to smithereens. …
“It hurt your nose to see it hit the ground. …
“Somehow—I was sort of overcome by the thought of the men in that dive. I was trying to imagine how they felt it. From the moment when they realised they were going.
“What on earth must it have seemed like at last?
“They fell seven thousand feet, the men say; some say nine thousand feet. A mile and a half!
“But all the chaps were cheering. … And there was our machine hanging in the sky. You wanted to reach up and pat it on the back. It went up higher and away towards the German lines, as though it was looking for another German. It seemed to go now quite slowly. It was an English machine, though for a time we weren’t sure; our machines are done in tri-colour just as though they were French. But everybody says it was English. It was one of our crack fighting-machines, and from first to last it has put down seven Germans. … And that’s really all the fighting there was. There has been fighting here; a month ago. There are perhaps a dozen dead Germans lying out still in front of the lines. Little twisted figures, like overthrown scarecrows, about a hundred yards away. But that is all.
“No, the trenches have disappointed me. They are a scene of tiresome domesticity. They aren’t a patch on our quarters in the rear. There isn’t the traffic. I’ve not found a single excuse for firing my rifle. I don’t believe I shall ever fire my rifle at an enemy—ever. …
“You’ve seen Rendezvous’ fresh promotion, I suppose? He’s one of the men the young officers talk about. Everybody believes in him. Do you remember how Manning used to hide from him? …”
§ 14
Mr. Britling read this through, and then his thoughts went back to Teddy’s disappearance and then returned to Hugh. The youngster was right in the front now, and one had to steel oneself to the possibilities of the case. Somehow Mr. Britling had not expected to find Hugh so speedily in the firing-line, though he would have been puzzled to find a reason why this should not have happened. But he found he had to begin the lesson of stoicism all over again.
He read the letter twice, and then he searched for some indication of its date. He suspected that letters were sometimes held back. …
Four days later this suspicion was confirmed by the arrival of another letter from Hugh in which he told of his second spell in the trenches. This time things had been much more lively. They had been heavily shelled and there had been a German attack. And this time he was writing to his father, and wrote more freely. He had scribbled in pencil.
“Things are much livelier here than they were. Our guns are getting to work. They are firing in spells of an hour or so, three or four times a day, and just when they seem to be leaving off they begin again. The Germans suddenly got the range of our trenches the day before yesterday, and began to pound us with high explosive. … Well, it’s trying. You never seem quite to know when the next bang is coming, and that keeps your nerves hung up; it seems to tighten your muscles and tire you. We’ve done nothing but lie low all day, and I feel as weary as if I had marched twenty miles. Then ‘whop,’ one’s near you, and there is a flash and everything flies. It’s a mad sort of smash-about. One came much too close to be pleasant; as near as the old oil-jars are from the barn court door. It bowled me clean over and sent a lot of gravel over me. When I got up there was twenty yards of trench smashed into a mere hole, and men lying about, and some of them groaning and one three-quarters buried. We had to turn to and get them out as well as we could. …
“I felt stunned and insensitive; it was well to have something to do. …
