“Have a drink?” said George: “No? Some tea, then; you can have my sugar.”
His japing, heavy-lidded eyes took Soames in from top to toe.
“You’re thin as a lathe,” he said: “What are you doing—breeding for the country?”
Soames drew up the corner of his lip.
“That’s not funny,” he said tartly. “What are you doing?”
“Getting chaps killed. You’d better take to it, too. The blighters want driving, now.”
“Thank you,” said Soames; “not in my line.”
George grinned.
“Too squeamish?”
“If you like.”
“What’s your general game, then?”
“Minding my own business,” said Soames.
“Making the wills, eh?”
Soames put his cup down, and took his hat up. He had never disliked George more than at that moment.
“Don’t get your shirt out,” said George; “somebody must make the wills. You might make mine, by the way—equal shares to Roger, Eustace and Francie. Executors yourself and Eustace. Come and do an air-raid with me one night. Did you see St. John Hayman’s boy was killed? They say the Huns are preparing a big push for the spring.”
Soames shrugged.
“Good-bye,” he said; “I’ll send you a draft of your will.”
“Pitch it short,” said George, “and have me roasted. No bones by request.”
Soames nodded, and went out.
A big push! Would they never tire of making mincemeat of the world? He had often been tempted towards the Lansdowne attitude; but some essential bulldog within him had always stirred and growled. An end that was no end—after all this, it wouldn’t do! Hold on—until! For never, even at the worst moments, had he believed that England could be beaten.
In March 1918 he had been laid up at Mapledurham with a chill and was only just out again, when the big German “push” began. It came with a suddenness that shook him to the marrow, and induced the usual longing to get away somewhere by himself. He went up rather slowly on to a bit of commonland, and sat down on his overcoat among gorse bushes. It was peaceful and smelled of spring; a lark was singing. And out there the Germans were breaking through! A sort of prayer went up from him while he sat in the utter peace of the mild day. He had heard so many times that we were ready for it; and now we weren’t, it seemed. Always the way! Too cocksure! He sat listening, as if—as if one could hear the guns all that way off. The man down at the lock was reported to have heard them once. All me eye! You couldn’t! Couldn’t you? Wasn’t that—? Nonsense! He lay back and put his ear to the ground, but only the whisper of a very gentle wind came to him, and the hum of a wild bee wending to some blossom of the gorse. A better sound than that of guns. And then the first chime of the village church bell tingled his ears. There they would soon be sitting and kneeling and thinking about the break-through, and the parson would offer up a special prayer for the destruction of Germans—he shouldn’t wonder. Well, it was destroy or be destroyed—it all came back to that. Funny thing, life—living on life, or rather on death! According to the latest information, all matter was alive, and every shape lived on some other shape, or at least on the elements of shape. The earth was nothing but disintegrated shape, out of which came more shapes and you ate them, and then you disintegrated and gave rise to shapes, and somebody ate them, and so it went on. In spite of the break-through, he could not help being glad to be alive after a fortnight cooped up in the house. His sense of smell, too, so long confined to eau-de-Cologne, was very keen this morning; he could smell the gorse—a scent more delicate than most, ‘the scent of gorse far-blown from distant hill,’ he’d read somewhere. And to think that out there his countrymen were struggling and dying and being blown to smithereens—young fellows, from his office, from his garden, from every English office and garden to save England—to save the world, they said—but that was flim-flam! And, perhaps, after all these horrible four years they wouldn’t save England! Drawing his thin legs under him, he sat staring down towards the river where his home lay. Yes, they would save her, if it meant putting another ten years on to the conscription age, or taking the age limit off altogether. England under a foreigner? Not for Joe! He scrabbled with his hand, brought up a fistful of earth, and mechanically put it to his nose. It smelled exactly as it should smell—of earth, and gave him ever so queer and special a sensation. English earth! H’m! Earth was earth, whether in England or in Timbuctoo! Funny to give your life for what smelled exactly like his mushroom house. You put a name to a thing and you died for it! There was a lark singing—very English bird, cheery and absent-minded, singing away without knowing a thing about anything and caring less, he supposed. The bell had ceased to toll for service. If people thought God was particularly interested in England, they were mistaken. He wouldn’t do a thing about it! People had to do things for themselves, and if they didn’t, that was the end. Take those submarines. Leave them to God and see what happened—one would be eating one’s fantails before one could say Jack Robinson!
The mild air and a slant of March sunlight gently warmed his cheek pale from too much contact with a pillow. And—out there! If ever this thing ended, he would come up here again and see what it was like without an ache under his fifth rib. A nice spot—open and high. And now he would have to get back to the house and they would give him chicken broth, and he would have to listen to Annette saying that the English never saw an inch before their noses—which as a matter of fact they didn’t—and tell her that they did. A weary business when you felt as he felt about this news. He rose. Twelve o’clock! They’d have finished praying now and got to the sermon. He pitied that parson—preaching about the Philistines, he shouldn’t wonder! There were the jawbones of asses about, plenty, but not a Samson among the lot of them. The gorse—it was early—looked pretty blooming round him—when the gorse was out of bloom, kissing was out of fashion. He wondered idly what had to go out of bloom before killing was out of fashion. There was a hawk! He stood and watched it hover and swoop sideways, and the red glint of it, till again it rested hovering on the air; then slowly in the pale sunlight he wended his way down towards the river.
July came. The break-through had long been checked, the fronts repaired, the Americans had come over in great numbers, Foch was in supreme command. Soames didn’t know—perhaps it was necessary, but Annette’s undisguised relief was unpleasant to him, and so far as he could see, things were going on as interminably as before. It was to Winifred that he spoke the words which definitely changed the fortunes of the world.
“We shall never win,” he said, “I despair of it. The men are all right, but leaders! There isn’t one among the lot—I despair of it.” No one had ever heard him talk like that before, or use such a final word. The morning papers on the following day were buoyant with the news that the German offensive against the French had been stopped and that the French and Americans had broken through. From that day on the Allies, as Soames still called them, never looked back.
Those interested in such questions will pause, perhaps to consider whether Soames—like so many other people—really won the war, or whether it was that in him some hidden sensibility received in advance of the newspapers the impact of events and put up the instantaneous contradiction natural from one so individualistic. Whichever is true, the relief he felt at having his dictum contradicted was extraordinary. For the first time in three years he spent the following Sunday afternoon in his picture gallery. The French were advancing, the English were waiting to advance; the Americans were doing well; the air-raids had ceased; the submarines were beaten. And it all seemed to have happened in two days. While he stood looking at his Goya and turning over photographs of pictures in the Prado, a notion came to him. In that painting of Goya’s called “La Vendimia,” the girl with the basket on her head reminded him of Fleur. There was really quite a resemblance. If the war ever stopped, he would commission an artist to make him a copy of that Goya girl—the colouring, if he remembered rightly, was very agreeable. It would remind him of pleasant things—his daughter and his visit to the Prado before he bought Lord Burlingford’s ‘Goya’ in 1910. A notion so utterly unconnected with the war had not occurred to him for years—it was almost like a blessing, with its suggestion of life apart from battle and murder, and once more connected with Dumetrius. And ringing the bell, he ordered a jug of claret cup. He drank very little of it, but it gave him a feeling that was almost Victorian. What had that fellow Jolyon, and Irene, done with themselves all these war years? Had they sweated in their shoes and lost weight as he had done—he hoped so! Their boy, if he remembered, would be of military age next year; for the thousandth time he was glad that Fleur had disappointed him and been a girl. That day was, on the whole, the happiest he had spent since he bought his James Maris in July 1914…