H G Wells Omnibus, page 268
“ ‘I took two prisoners,’ I said, and everybody I spoke to I told that. I was fearfully proud of it.
“I thought that if I could take two prisoners in my first charge I was going to be some soldier.
“I had stood it all admirably. I didn’t feel a bit shaken. I was as tough as anything. I’d seen death and killing, and it was all just hockey.
“And then that confounded Ortheris must needs go and get killed.
“The shell knocked me over, and didn’t hurt me a bit. I was a little stunned, and some dirt was thrown over me, and when I got up on my knees I saw Jewell lying about six yards off—and his legs were all smashed about. Ugh! Pulped!
“He looked amazed. ‘Bloody,’ he said, ‘bloody.’ He fixed his eyes on me, and suddenly grinned. You know we’d once had two fights about his saying ‘bloody,’ I think I told you at the time, a fight and a return match, he couldn’t box for nuts, but he stood up like a Briton, and it appealed now to his sense of humour that I should be standing there too dazed to protest at the old offence. ‘I thought you was done in,’ he said. ‘I’m in a mess—a bloody mess, ain’t I? Like a stuck pig. Bloody—right enough. Bloody! I didn’t know I ’ad it in me.’
“He looked at me and grinned with a sort of pale satisfaction in keeping up to the last—dying good Ortheris to the finish. I just stood up helpless in front of him, still rather dazed.
“He said something about having a thundering thirst on him.
“I really don’t believe he felt any pain. He would have done if he had lived.
“And then while I was fumbling with my water-bottle, he collapsed. He forgot all about Ortheris. Suddenly he said something that cut me all to ribbons. His face puckered up just like the face of a fretful child which refuses to go to bed. ‘I didn’t want to be aut of it,’ he said petulantly. ‘And I’m done!’ And then—then he just looked discontented and miserable and died—right off. Turned his head a little way over. As if he was impatient at everything. Fainted—and fluttered out.
“For a time I kept trying to get him to drink. …
“I couldn’t believe he was dead. …
“And suddenly it was all different. I began to cry. Like a baby. I kept on with the water-bottle at his teeth long after I was convinced he was dead. I didn’t want him to be aut of it! God knows how I didn’t. I wanted my dear little Cockney cad back. Oh! most frightfully I wanted him back.
“I shook him. I was like a scared child. I blubbered and howled things. … It’s all different since he died.
“My dear, dear Father, I am grieving and grieving—and it’s altogether nonsense. And it’s all mixed up in my mind with the mess I trod on. And it gets worse and worse. So that I don’t seem to feel anything really, even for Teddy.
“It’s been just the last straw of all this hellish foolery. …
“If ever there was a bigger lie, my dear Daddy, than any other, it is that man is a reasonable creature. …
“War is just foolery—lunatic foolery—hell’s foolery. …
“But, anyhow, your son is sound and well—if sorrowful and angry. We were relieved that night. And there are rumours that very soon we are to have a holiday and a refit. We lost rather heavily. We have been praised. But all along, Essex has done well. I can’t reckon to get back yet, but there are such things as leave for eight-and-forty hours or so in England. …
“I shall be glad of that sort of turning round. …
“I’m tired. Oh! I’m tired. …
“I wanted to write all about Jewell to his mother or his sweetheart or some one; I wanted to wallow in his praises, to say all the things I really find now that I thought about him, but I haven’t even had that satisfaction. He was a Poor Law child; he was raised in one of those awful places between Sutton and Banstead in Surrey. I’ve told you of all the sweet-hearting he had. ‘Soldiers Three’ was his Bible; he was always singing ‘Tipperary,’ and he never got the tune right nor learned more than three lines of it. He laced all his talk with ‘b——y’; it was his jewel, his ruby. But he had the pluck of a robin or a squirrel; I never knew him scared or anything but cheerful. Misfortunes, humiliations, only made him chatty. And he’d starve to have something to give away.
“Well, well, this is the way of war, Daddy. This is what war is. Damn the Kaiser! Damn all fools. … Give my love to the Mother and the bruddykins and every one. …”
§ 19
It was just a day or so over three weeks after this last letter from Hugh that Mr. Direck reappeared at Matching’s Easy. He had had a trip to Holland—a trip that was as much a flight from Cissie’s reproaches as a mission of inquiry. He had intended to go on into Belgium, where he had already been doing useful relief work under Mr. Hoover, but the confusion of his own feelings had checked him and brought him back.
Mr. Direck’s mind was in a perplexity only too common during the stresses of that tragic year. He was entangled in a paradox; like a large majority of Americans at that time his feelings were quite definite pro-Ally, and like so many in that majority he had a very clear conviction that it would be wrong and impossible for the United States to take part in the war. His sympathies were intensely with the Dower House and its dependent cottage; he would have wept with generous emotion to see the Stars and Stripes interwoven with the three other great banners of red, white and blue that led the world against German imperialism and militarism, but for all that his mind would not march to that tune. Against all these impulses fought something very fundamental in Mr. Direck’s composition, a preconception of America that had grown almost insensibly in his mind, the idea of America as a polity aloof from the Old World system, as a fresh start for humanity, as something altogether too fine and precious to be dragged into even the noblest of European conflicts. America was to be the beginning of the fusion of mankind, neither German nor British nor French nor in any way national. She was to be the great experiment in peace and reasonableness. She had to hold civilisation and social order out of this fray, to be a refuge for all those finer things that die under stress and turmoil; it was her task to maintain the standards of life and the claims of humanitarianism in the conquered province and the prisoners’ compound, she had to be the healer and arbitrator, the remonstrance and not the smiting hand. Surely there were enough smiting hands.
But this idea of an America judicial, remonstrating, and aloof, led him to a conclusion that scandalised him. If America will not, and should not use force in the ends of justice, he argued, then America has no right to make and export munitions of war. She must not trade in what she disavows. He had a quite exaggerated idea of the amount of munitions that America was sending to the Allies, he was inclined to believe that they were entirely dependent upon their transatlantic supplies, and so he found himself persuaded that the victory of the Allies and the honour of America were incompatible things. And—in spite of his ethical aloofness— he loved the Allies. He wanted them to win, and he wanted America to abandon a course that he believed was vitally necessary to their victory. It was an intellectual dilemma. He hid this self-contradiction from Matching’s Easy with much the same feelings that a curate might hide a poisoned dagger at a tea-party. …
It was entirely against his habits of mind to hide anything—more particularly an entanglement with a difficult proposition—but he perceived quite clearly that neither Cecily nor Mr. Britling was really to be trusted to listen calmly to what, under happier circumstances, might be a profoundly interesting moral complication. Yet it was not in his nature to conceal; it was in his nature to state.
And Cecily made things much more difficult. She was pitiless with him. She kept him aloof. “How can I let you make love to me,” she said, “when our Englishmen are all going to the war, when Teddy is a prisoner and Hugh is in the trenches. If I were a man——!”
She couldn’t be induced to see any case for America. England was fighting for freedom, and America ought to be beside her. “All the world ought to unite against this German wickedness,” she said.
“I’m doing all I can to help in Belgium,” he protested. “Aren’t I working? We’ve fed four million people.”
He had backbone, and he would not let her, he was resolved, bully him into a falsehood about his country. America was aloof. She was right to be aloof. … At the same time, Cecily’s reproaches were unendurable. And he could feel he was drifting apart from her. …
He couldn’t make America go to war.
In the quiet of his London hotel he thought it all out. He sat at a writing-table making notes of a perfectly lucid statement of the reasonable, balanced liberal American opinion. An instinct of caution determined him to test it first on Mr. Britling.
But Mr. Britling realised his worst expectations. He was beyond listening.
“I’ve not heard from my boy for more than three weeks,” said Mr. Britling in the place of any salutation. “This morning makes three-and-twenty days without a letter.”
It seemed to Mr. Direck that Mr. Britling had suddenly grown ten years older. His face was more deeply lined; the colour and texture of his complexion had gone grey. He moved restlessly and badly; his nerves were manifestly unstrung.
“It’s intolerable that one should be subjected to this ghastly suspense. The boy isn’t three hundred miles away.”
Mr. Direck made obvious inquiries.
“Always before he’s written—generally once a fortnight.”
They talked of Hugh for a time, but Mr. Britling was fitful and irritable and quite prepared to hold Mr. Direck accountable for the laxity of the War Office, the treachery of Bulgaria, the ambiguity of Roumania or any other barb that chanced to be sticking into his sensibilities. They lunched precariously. Then they went into the study to smoke.
There Mr. Direck was unfortunate enough to notice a copy of that innocent American publication The New Republic, lying close to two or three numbers of The Fatherland, a pro-German periodical which at that time inflicted itself upon English writers with the utmost determination. Mr. Direck remarked that The New Republic was an interesting effort on the part of “la Jeunesse Américaine.” Mr. Britling regarded the interesting effort with a jaded, unloving eye.
“You Americans,” he said, “are the most extraordinary people in the world.”
“Our conditions are exceptional,” said Mr. Direck.
“You think they are,” said Mr. Britling, and paused, and then began to deliver his soul about America in a discourse of accumulating bitterness. At first he reasoned and explained, but as he went on he lost self-control; he became dogmatic, he became denunciatory, he became abusive. He identified Mr. Direck more and more with his subject; he thrust the uncivil “You” more and more directly at him. He let his cigar go out, and flung it impatiently into the fire. As though America was responsible for its going out. …
Like many Britons Mr. Britling had that touch of patriotic feeling towards America which takes the form of impatient criticism. No one in Britain ever calls an American a foreigner. To see faults in Germany or Spain is to tap boundless fountains of charity; but the faults of America rankle in an English mind almost as much as the faults of England. Mr. Britling could explain away the faults of England readily enough; our Hanoverian monarchy, our Established Church and its deadening effect on education, our imperial obligations and the strain they made upon our supplies of administrative talent were all very serviceable for that purpose. But there in America was the old race, without Crown or Church or international embarrassment, and it was still falling short of splendour. His speech to Mr. Direck had the rancour of a family quarrel. Let me only give a few sentences that were to stick in Mr. Direck’s memory.
“You think you are out of it for good and all. So did we think. We were as smug as you are when France went down in ’71. … Yours is only one further degree of insularity. You think this vacuous aloofness of yours is some sort of moral superiority. So did we, so did we. …
“It won’t last you ten years if we go down. …
“Do you think that our disaster will leave the Atlantic for you? Do you fancy there is any Freedom of the Seas possible beyond such freedom as we maintain, except the freedom to attack you? For forty years the British fleet has guarded all America from European attack. Your Monroe Doctrine skulks behind it now. …
“I’m sick of this high thin talk of yours about the war. … You are a nation of ungenerous onlookers—watching us throttle or be throttled. You gamble on our winning. And we shall win; we shall win. And you will profit. And when we have won a victory only one shade less terrible than defeat, then you think you will come in and tinker with our peace. Bleed us a little more to please your hyphenated patriots. …”
He came to his last shaft. “You talk of your New Ideals of Peace. You say that you are too proud to fight. But your business men in New York give the show away. There’s a little printed card now in half the offices in New York that tells of the real pacificism of America. They’re busy, you know. Trade’s real good. And so as not to interrupt it they stick up this card: ‘Nix on the war!’ Think of it!—‘Nix on the war!’ Here is the whole fate of mankind at stake, and America’s contribution is a little grumbling when the Germans sank the Lusitania, and no end of grumbling when we hold up a ship or two and some fool of a harbour-master makes an overcharge. Otherwise—‘Nix on the war!’ …
“Well, let it be Nix on the war! Don’t come here and talk to me! You who were searching registers a year ago to find your Essex kin. Let it be Nix! Explanations! What do I want with explanations? And”—he mocked his guest’s accent and his guest’s mode of thought—“dif’cult prap’sitions.”
He got up and stood irresolute. He knew he was being preposterously unfair to America, and outrageously uncivil to a trusting guest; he knew he had no business now to end the talk in this violent fashion. But it was an enormous relief. And to mend matters——
No! He was glad he’ d said these things. …
He swung a shoulder to Mr. Direck, and walked out of the room. …
Mr. Direck heard him cross the hall and slam the door of the little parlour. …
Mr. Direck had been stirred deeply by the tragic indignation of this explosion, and the ring of torment in Mr. Britling’s voice. He had stood up also, but he did not follow his host.
“It’s his boy,” said Mr. Direck at last, confidentially to the writing-desk. “How can one argue with him? It’s just hell for him. …”
§ 20
Mr. Direck took his leave of Mrs. Britling, and went very slowly towards the little cottage. But he did not go to the cottage. He felt he would only find another soul in torment there.
“What’s the good of hanging round talking?” said Mr. Direck.
He stopped at the stile in the lane, and sat thinking deeply. “Only one thing will convince her,” he said.
He held out his fingers. “First this,” he whispered, “and then that. Yes.”
He went on as far as the bend from which one sees the cottage, and stood for a little time regarding it.
He returned still more sorrowfully to the junction, and with every step he took it seemed to him that he would rather see Cecily angry and insulting than not see her at all.
At the post-office he stopped and wrote a letter-card.
“Dear Cissie,” he wrote. “I came down today to see you—and thought better of it. I’m going right off to find out about Teddy. Somehow I’ll get that settled. I’ll fly around and do that somehow if I have to go up to the German front to do it. And when I’ve got that settled I’ve got something else in my mind—well, it will wipe out all this little trouble that’s got so big between us about neutrality. And I love you dearly, Cissie.”
That was all the card would hold.
§ 21
And then as if it were something that every one in the Dower House had been waiting for, came the message that Hugh had been killed.
The telegram was brought up by a girl in a pinafore instead of the boy of the old dispensation, for boys now were doing the work of youths, and youths the work of the men who had gone to the war.
Mr. Britling was standing at the front door; he had been surveying the late October foliage, touched by the warm light of the afternoon, when the messenger appeared. He opened the telegram, hoping as he had hoped when he opened any telegram since Hugh had gone to the front that it would not contain the exact words he read; that it would say wounded, that at the worst it would say “missing,” that perhaps it might even tell of some pleasant surprise, a brief return to home such as the last letter had foreshadowed. He read the final, unqualified statement, the terse regrets. He stood quite still for a moment or so, staring at the words. …
It was a mile and a quarter from the post-office to the Dower House, and it was always his custom to give telegraphmessengers who came to his house twopence, and he wanted very much to get rid of the telegraph girl, who stood expectantly before him holding her red bicycle. He felt now very sick and strained; he had a conviction that if he did not by an effort maintain his bearing cool and dry he would howl aloud. He felt in his pocket for money; there were some coppers and a shilling. He pulled it all out together and stared at it.
He had an absurd conviction that this ought to be a sixpenny telegram. The thing worried him. He wanted to give the brat sixpence, and he had only threepence and a shilling, and he didn’t know what to do and his brain couldn’t think. It would be a shocking thing to give her a shilling, and he couldn’t somehow give just coppers for so important a thing as Hugh’s death. Then all this problem vanished and he handed the child the shilling. She stared at him, inquiring, incredulous. “Is there a reply, sir, please?”
“No,” he said, “that’s for you. All of it. … This is a peculiar sort of telegram. … It’s news of importance. …”
