Fanny was a little annoyed. Why couldn’t he see, why couldn’t he take a hint?
“If she’s as acute and experienced as she tells us, she ought to have seen the possibility long ago. No doubt, if she’s said nothing about it to you, the reason is that she just doesn’t want to discuss it. If she accepts, that’s enough.”
“But she always believes that two people should be perfectly open and frank with each other about their other affairs.”
“Does she? Well, I advise you to say nothing until she asks you.”
“All right, darling, if you think so.”
George duly met Elizabeth at Euston. She was delighted to be back in London, away from the stuffiness of family and the solemn boredom of middle-class existence. She leaned out the window of the taxi and sniffed the air.
“How lovely to smell dirty old London mud again! It means I’m free, free, free again!”
“Was it very awful?”
“Oh, awful, interminable.”
“I’m so glad you’re back.”
“It’s wonderful. And lovely to be with you again. How well you look, George, quite handsome and Italian!”
“That’s because you haven’t seen me for a fortnight.”
“How’s Fanny?”
“Oh, very well. Sent her love to you.”
“Dear old beastly ugly Tottenham Court Road!” said Elizabeth with her nose out the window again.
“By the way, it was awfully frowsty in Soho while you were away. Don’t you think we might move to somewhere more modern?”
“What, to a suburb? Why, George! You know you hate suburbs, and always said you liked to live in the middle of London.”
“Yes, I know. But we might find something at Chelsea.”
“But we couldn’t possibly afford two places at Chelsea rents.”
“Well, why not share a fairly large one?”
“What, and live in the same flat? George!”
“Oh, all right, if you don’t want to, but Fanny thinks Soho is unhealthy for you.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
Whether, as the Swedish old-maid hinted in her book, it was the stimulus of another affair or whether George was anxious to display the artistries of Fanny or whether it was merely remorse, Elizabeth found George peculiarly charming and ardent.
She attributed this to the happy effect of a brief absence.
[ VII ]
In a few weeks they duly moved to Chelsea. Fanny found them an excellent apartment, with two large rooms, a kitchen and a modern bathroom, for less than the combined rental of their two ramshackle rooms in Soho. Elizabeth developed an unexpected talent for “home-making,” and fussed a good deal over the installation in spite of George’s light satire. But they were both only too happy to get away from the frowstiness of Soho to a clean modern flat.
This was in June, 1914. They did not go away when the hot weather arrived, intending to stay the summer in London, and go to Paris for September and October. Elizabeth spent a good deal of her spare time with Reggie Burnside, and George was absorbed in his painting. He wanted to get enough good canvasses for a small show in Paris in the autumn.
One day towards the end of July he left his painting early, to meet Reggie and Elizabeth for lunch somewhere near Piccadilly. It was a benign day, with fine white fleecy clouds suspended in a blue sky, and a light wind ruffling the darkened foliage of summer trees. Even the King’s Road looked pleasant. George noticed, and afterwards remembered vividly, because these were the last really tranquil moments of his life, how the policeman’s gloves made a clear blotch of white against a plane-tree as he regulated the traffic. A little band of sparrows were squabbling and twittering noisily in the lilacs of one of the gardens. The heat was reflected, not unpleasantly, from the warm white flagstones of the sidewalk.
As he waited for the number 19 bus, George did what he very rarely did—bought a newspaper. He always said it was a waste of life to read newspapers—if something really important happened people would tell you about it soon enough. He didn’t know why he bought a paper that morning. He had been working hard for two or three weeks without seeing any one but Elizabeth, and perhaps thought he would see what was going on in the world. Perhaps it was only to see if there was any new film.
George clambered to the top of the bus, with the paper under his arm, and paid his fare. He then glanced casually at the headlines and read: Serious Situation in the Balkans, Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Servia, Servian Appeal to Russia, Position of Germany and France. George looked up vaguely at the other people on the bus. There were four men and two women; each of the men was intently reading the same special early edition of the evening paper. He read the despatches eagerly and carefully, and grasped the seriousness of the situation at once. The Austrian Empire was on the verge of war with Serbia (Servia, it was then called, until the country became one of our plucky little allies); Russia threatened to support Serbia; the Triple Alliance would bring in Germany and Italy on the side of Austria; France would be bound to support Russia under the Treaty of Alliance, and the Entente Cordiale might involve England. There was a chance of a European war, the biggest conflict since the defeat of Napoleon. The event he had always declared to be impossible—a war between the “civilized” nations was threatened, was at hand. He refused to believe it. Germany didn’t want war, France would be mad to want it, England couldn’t want it. The “Powers” would intervene. What was Sir Edward Grey doing? Oh, suggesting a conference.... The man on the seat opposite George leaned towards him, tapping the newspaper with his hand:
“What do you say to that, Sir?”
“I think it looks confoundedly serious.”
“Chance of a war, eh?”
“I sincerely hope not. The newspapers always exaggerate, you know. It would be an appalling catastrophe.”
“Oh, liven things up a bit. We’re getting stale, too much peace. Need a bit of blood-letting.”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that. I...”
“It’s got to come sooner or later. Them Germans, you know. They’d never be able to face our Navy.”
“Well, let’s hope it won’t be necessary.”
“Ah, I dunno. Shouldn’t mind ’avin’ a go at the Germans myself, and I reckon you wouldn’t either.”
“Oh, I’m a neutral,” said George, laughing; “don’t count on me.”
“Umph!” said the man, as he got up to leave the bus, casting a suspicious look at this foreign-looking and unpatriotic person. Yes, that’s it, a foreigner, a bloody foreigner; umph, what’s he doing in England I’d like to know? Umph!
George was back in the newspaper, unaware of the turmoil he had excited in that elderly but patriotic bosom.
“I say,” exclaimed George, as soon as he met Elizabeth and Reggie, “have you two seen the newspaper to-day?”
“Why?” said Elizabeth, “what’s in it? Something about you?”
“No, there’s a war threatened in the Balkans, and it may apparently involve every one else.”
Reggie sneered.
“Oh, piffle! How absurd you are, George, to believe a newspaper sensation. Why, we were talking about it last night in the Common Room, and every one agreed that the conflict would have to be localized and that Grey would probably make a statement in a day or two. It’ll all blow over.”
Elizabeth had grabbed the newspaper, and was trying to find her way through the unfamiliar mazes of sensational rhetoric.
“So you don’t think it’ll come to anything?” said George, hanging up his hat, and sitting down at the restaurant table.
“Of course not!” said Reggie contemptuously.
“What do you think, Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking up bewildered from the paper, “I can’t understand this curious language. Are all newspapers written like that?”
“Mostly,” said George, “but I’m glad you think it’s only a scare, Reggie. I admit I was startled when I read those headlines. That’s what comes of living absorbed in one’s own life, and neglecting the fountain-heads of truth.”
All the same, he was not quite reassured, and on the way home left an order with a local news agent for the delivery of a daily paper until further notice. He hoped the next morning’s news would be better. It wasn’t. Neither was the next day’s. Then came the news that Russia was mobilizing, and that the Grand Fleet had sailed from Spithead “on manœuvres,” but under sealed orders. George remembered the coastguard officer who got drunk, and let slip that he had sealed orders in case of war. Perhaps the man would be opening those orders in a few days, perhaps he had already opened them. He tried to paint, and couldn’t; picked up a book, and found himself thinking: Austria, Russia, Germany, France, England, perhaps—good God, it’s impossible, impossible. He fidgeted about, and then went into Elizabeth’s room. She was delicately painting a large blue bowl of variegated summer flowers. The room was very quiet. One of the windows was opened on to a large communal garden surrounded by the backs of houses. A wasp came in through the striped orange and black curtain and buzzed towards a bunch of grapes on a large Spanish plate.
“What is it, George?”
The room was so peaceful, so secure, Elizabeth so unperturbed and as usual, that George felt half-surprised at his own agitation.
“I’m worried about this war situation.”
“Really, George! What is the good of getting into such a fuss? You know Reggie told you there was nothing in it, and he hears all the latest news at Cambridge.”
“Yes, darling, but it isn’t a matter of Cambridge now, but of Europe. The Tsar and the Kaiser won’t consult the Dons before launching a war.”
Elizabeth, rather annoyed, went on painting.
“Well,” she said through the brush between her teeth, “I can’t help it. Anyway it won’t concern us.”
It won’t concern us! George stood irresolute a moment.
“I think I’ll go out and see what’s the latest news.”
“Yes, do. I’m dining with Reggie to-night.”
“All right.”
George spent the first few days of August wandering about London, taking busses, and buying innumerable editions of newspapers. London seemed perfectly calm and as usual, and yet there was something feverish about it. Perhaps it was George’s own feverishness exteriorized, perhaps it was the unwonted number of special editions with shouting newsboys in unusual places, handing out copies as fast as they could to little groups of impatient people. His memories of those days were confused and he couldn’t remember the chronological order of events. Two or three scenes stood out vividly in his mind—all the rest became a blur, the outlines obliterated by more dreadful scenes.
He remembered dining with Elizabeth and some other friends in a private suite of the Berkeley as the guests of a wealthy American. The talk kept running on the possibility of war, and the positions of England and America. George still clung to the great illusion that wars between the highly industrialized countries were impossible. He elaborated this view to the American man, who agreed, and said that Wall Street and Threadneedle Street between them could stop the universe.
“If there is a war,” said George, “it will be a sort of impersonal, natural calamity, like a plague or an earthquake. But I should think that in their own interests all the governments will combine to avert it, or at least limit it to Austria and Servia.”
“But don’t you think the Germans are spoiling for a war?” said another Englishman.
“I don’t know, I simply don’t know. What does any of us know? The governments don’t tell us what they’re doing or planning. We’re completely in the dark. We can make surmises, but we don’t know.”
“It’s probably got to come sooner or later. The world’s too small to hold an expanding Germany and a non-contracting British Empire.”
“The irresistible force and the immovable mass.... But it’s not a question of England and Germany, but of Austria and Servia.”
“Oh, the murder of the Archduke’s just a pretext—probably arranged beforehand.”
“But by which side? I can’t see the situation as a stage scene, with villains on one side, and noble-minded fellows on the other. If the Archduke’s murder was the result of an intrigue, as you suggest, it was a damned despicable one. Now, either the various governments are all despicable intriguers ready to stoop to any crime and duplicity to attain their ends—in which case we shall certainly have a war, if they want it—or they’re more or less decent and human men like ourselves, in which case they’ll do anything to avert it. We can do nothing. We’re impotent. They’ve got the power and the information. We haven’t....”
The white-gloved, immaculate Austrian waiters were silently handing and removing plates. George noticed one of them, a young man with close-cropped golden hair and a sensitive face. Probably a student from Vienna or Prague, a poor man who had chosen waiting as a means of earning his living while studying English. They both were about the same age and height. George suddenly realized that he and the waiter were potential enemies! How absurd, how utterly absurd....
After dinner they sat about and smoked. George took his chair over to the open window and looked down on the lights and movement of Piccadilly. The noise of the traffic was lulled by the height to a long continuous rumble. The placards of the evening papers along the railings beside the Ritz were sensational and bellicose. The party dropped the subject of a possible great war, after deciding that there wouldn’t be one, there couldn’t. George, who had great faith in Mr. Bobbe’s political acumen, glanced through his last article, and took great comfort from the fact that Bobbe said there wasn’t going to be a war. It was all a scare, a stock-market ramp.... At that moment, three or four people came in, more or less together, though they were in separate parties. One of them was a youngish man in immaculate evening dress. As he shook hands with his host, George heard him say rather excitedly:
“I’ve just been dining with Tommy Parkinson of the Foreign Office. He had to leave early and go back to Downing Street. It seems there are Cabinet meetings all the time. Tommy was frightfully depressed and pessimistic about the situation.”
“What did he say?” asked three or four eager voices.
“He wouldn’t commit himself at all. He was simply very gloomy and distrait, and wouldn’t say anything definite.”
“Why didn’t you ask him whether Germany is mobilizing?”
“I did, but he wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Oh, well, perhaps he only has a liver.”
Among the other guests was a tall, very erect, rather sun-burned man of about forty, who had taken no part in the conversation. He was sitting on a couch in silence beside a woman younger than himself—his wife—who was also silent. George heard him introduced to another man as Colonel Thomas. After a few minutes George went over and spoke to him.
“My name’s Winterbourne. You’re Colonel Thomas, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of the situation we’ve all been discussing so intelligently?”
“I don’t think anything. A soldier mustn’t have political ‘views,’ you know.”
“Well, but do you think the Germans are mobilizing?”
“I don’t know. I believe they are. But that doesn’t mean war necessarily. They may be mobilizing for manœuvres. We’re mobilized for manœuvres on Salisbury Plain.”
“Mobilized! The British Army mobilized!”
“Only for manœuvres, you know.”
“Are you mobilized too?”
“Yes, I leave to-morrow morning.”
“Good God!”
“Oh, it’s only manœuvres. They always happen at this time of the year.”
Another day—it must have been the Sunday before the 4th of August—George went down to Trafalgar Square to attend a Socialist Peace Meeting. The space round the Nelson Column was so crowded that he could not get near enough to hear the speakers, who were standing on the plinth above the heads of the crowd. An eager-faced man with white hair and an aristocratic voice made a speech, directed at mob prejudices. He apparently took the view that the threatened war was the work of Imperial Russia. George caught repeatedly the words “knout,” “Cossacks,” and the phrase “the eagles of war are spreadin’ their wings.” Some of the listeners at a rival war meeting started an attack on the peace party. There was a scuffle, which was very soon dispersed by Mounted Police. The crowd surged away from Trafalgar Square. George found himself carried towards the Admiralty Arch and up the Mall. He thought he might as well go back that way, and try to get a bus at Victoria. But opposite Buckingham Palace the road was blocked by a huge crowd, which was continually reinforced from all three roads. The Palace Gates were shut, with a cordon of police in front of them. The red-coated Guardsmen in their furry busbies stood at ease in front of the sentry-boxes.
“We want King George! We want King George!” chanted the mob.
“We want King George.”
After several minutes, a window was opened on to the centre balcony, and the King appeared. He was greeted by an immense ragged cheer, and acknowledged it by raising his hand to his forehead. The crowd began another chant.
“We want War! We want War! We want WAR!”
More cheering. The King made no gesture of approval or disapproval.
“Speech!” shouted the mob, “speech! WE WANT WAR!”
The King saluted again, and disappeared. A roar of mingled cheering and disappointment came from the crowd. There were several of the inevitable humorous optimists to cry:
“Are we downhearted?”
“NO-OOOO!”
“Is Germany?”
“YUSS!”
“Do we care for the Germans?”
“NO-OOOO!”
There could be no doubt about the feelings of that small section of the English population....
Even then George still clung to hopes of peace, bought only the more pacific Radical papers, and believed that Sir Edward Grey would “do something.” Touching faith of the English in the omnipotence of their rulers! After all, Sir Edward was not God Almighty, but merely a harassed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in a difficult position, with a divided Cabinet behind him. What on earth could the man have done? Possibly a frank statement in July that if France or Belgium were attacked, England would “come in”? People say so now, but then it might have looked like a gesture of provocation.... Who are we to pass judgments? And the nations cannot altogether pose as the victims of their rulers. It is certain that the mobs in the capitals were howling for war. It is certain that the largest demonstrations in favour of peace occurred in Germany....
When the news came that France had mobilized, and that the Germans had crossed the Belgian frontier, George abandoned all hope immediately. He knew that one of the cardinal points of British policy is never to allow Antwerp to rest in the possession of a great power. The principle is as old as the reign of Queen Elizabeth or older. Who was it said: “Antwerp is a pistol pointed at England’s head”? All Europe was in arms, and England would join. The impossible had happened. They were in for three months of carnage and horrors. Yes, three months. It couldn’t last longer. Probably less. Oh, much less. There would be an immense financial collapse, and the governments would have to cease fighting. Why, Bank Rate was ten per cent already. He jumped on a bus at Hyde Park Corner and sat just inside the entrance.
“What’s the news?” said the conductor.
“Very serious; the French have mobilized.”
“What abaht us?”
“We’ve done nothing yet. But it looks inevitable.”
“Wy, we ain’t declared war, ’ave we?”
“No, not yet.”
“Well, there’s still ’opes then. I reckon we’d best mind ah own business, and keep aht of it.”
Mind our own business! How quickly that unselfish sentiment was crystallized in the national slogan: Business As Usual!
The long unendurable nightmare had begun. And the reign of Cant, Delusion and Delirium. I have shown, with a certain amount of excusable ferocity, how devilishly and perniciously the old régime of Cant affected people’s sexual lives, and hence the whole of their lives and characters, and those of their children. The subsequent reaction was, at least in its origin, healthy and right. There simply had to be a better attitude, the facts had to be faced. And nobody with any courage will allow himself to be frightened out of saying so, either by the hush-hush partisans of the old régime or doing-what-grandpa-did-and-let’s-pretend-it’s-all-lovely, or by the fact that numerous congenital idiots have prattled and babbled and slobbered about “Sex” until the very word is an exacerbation. But the sexual life is important. It is in so many cases the dominant or the next to dominant factor in peoples’ lives. We can’t write about their lives without bringing it in; so for God’s sake let’s do so honestly and openly, in accordance with what we believe to be the facts, or else give up pretending that we are writing about life. No more Cant. And I mean free love Cant just as much as orange-blossoms and pealing church bells Cant....
If you’re going to argue that Cant is necessary (the old political excuse) then for Heaven’s sake let’s chuck up the game and hand in our checks. But it isn’t necessary. It can only be necessary when deceit is necessary, when people have to be influenced to act against their right instincts and true interests. If you want to judge a man, a cause, a nation, ask: Do they Cant? If the War had been an honest affair for any participant, it would not have needed this preposterous bolstering up of Cant. The only honest people—if they existed—were those who said: “This is foul brutality, but we respect and admire brutality, and admit we are brutes; in fact, we are proud of being brutes.” All right, then we know. “War is hell.” It is, General Sherman, it is, a bloody brutal hell. Thanks for your honesty. You, at least, were an honourable murderer.
It was the régime of Cant before the War which made the Cant during the War so damnably possible and easy. On our coming of age the Victorians generously handed us a charming little cheque for fifty guineas—fifty-one months of hell, and the results. Charming people, weren’t they? Virtuous and far-sighted. But it wasn’t their fault? They didn’t make the War? It was Prussia, and Prussian militarism? Right you are, right ho! Who made Prussia a great power and subsidized Frederick the Second to do it, thereby snatching an empire from France? England. Who backed up Prussia against Austria, and Bismarck against Napoleon III? England. And whose Cant governed England in the nineteenth century? But never mind this domestic squabble of mine—put it that I mean the “Victorians” of all nations.
One human brain cannot hold, one memory retain, one pen portray the limitless Cant, Delusion and Delirium let loose on the world during those four years. It surpasses the most fantastic imagination. It was incredible—and I suppose that was why it was believed. It was the supreme and tragic climax of Victorian Cant, for after all the Victorians were still in full blast in 1914, and had pretty much the control of everything. Did they appeal to us honestly, and say: “We have made a colossal and tragic error, we have involved you and all of us in a huge War; it’s too late to stop it; you must come and help us, and we promise to take the first opportunity of making peace and making it thoroughly?” They did not. They said they didn’t want to lose us but they thought WE ought to go; they said our King and Country needed us; they said they’d kiss us when we came home (merci! effect of the Entente Cordiale?); they said one of the most civilized races in the world were “Huns”; they invented Cadaver factories; they asserted that a race of men notorious during generations for their kindliness were habitual baby-butchers, rapers of women, crucifiers of prisoners; they said the “Huns” were sneaks and cowards and skedadellers, but failed to explain why it took fifty-one months to beat their hopelessly outnumbered armies; they said they were fighting for the Liberty of the World, and everywhere there is less liberty; they said they would Never sheathe the Sword until et cetera, and this sort of criminal rant was called Pisgah-Heights of Patriotism.... They said... But why continue? Why go on? It is desolating, desolating. And then they dare wonder why the young are cynical and despairing and angry and chaotic! And they still have adherents, who still dare to go on preaching to us! Quick! A shrine to the goddesses Cant and Impudence....
I don’t know if George was aware of all this, because we never discussed it. There were numbers of things you prudently didn’t discuss in those days; you never knew who might be listening and “report.” I myself was twice arrested as a civilian, for wearing a cloak and looking foreign, and for laughing in the street; I was under acute suspicion for weeks in one battalion because I had a copy of Heine’s poems and admitted that I had been abroad; in another I was suspected of not being myself, God knows why. That was nothing compared with the persecution endured by D. H. Lawrence, probably the greatest living English novelist, and a man of whom—in spite of his failings—England should be proud.
I do know that George suffered profoundly from the first day of the war until his death at the end of it. He must have realized the awfulness of the Cant and degradation, for he occasionally talked about the yahoos of the world having got loose, and seized control, and by Jove, he was right. I shan’t attempt to describe the sinister degradation of English life in the last two years of the War; for one thing I was mostly out of England, and for another Lawrence has done it once and for all in the chapter called “The Nightmare” in his book “Kangaroo.”
In George’s case, the suffering which was common to all decent men and women was increased and complicated and rendered more torturing by his personal problems, which somehow became related to the War. You must remember that he did not believe in the alleged causes for which the War was fought. He looked upon the War as a ghastly calamity or a more ghastly crime. They might talk about their idealism but it wasn’t convincing. There wasn’t the élan, the conviction, the burning idealism which carried the ragged untrained armies of the First French Republic so dramatically to Victory over the hostile coalitions of the Kings. There was always the suspicion of dupery and humbug. Therefore, he could not take part in the War with any enthusiasm or conviction. On the other hand, he saw the intolerable egotism of setting up oneself as a notable exception or courting a facile martyrdom of rouspetance. Going meant one more little brand in the conflagration; staying out meant that some other, probably physically weaker brand, was substituted. His conscience was troubled before he was in the army, and equally troubled afterwards. The only consolation he felt was in the fact that you certainly had a worse and a more dangerous time in the line than out of it.
As a matter of fact, I never really “got” George’s position. He hated talking about the subject, and he had thought about it and worried about it so much that he was quite muddle-headed. It seemed to involve the whole universe, and his attempts to express his point of view would wander off into discussions about the Greek city-states or the principles of Machiavelli. He was frankly incoherent, which meant a considerable inner conflict. From the very beginning of the War he had got into the habit of worrying, and this developed with alarming rapidity. He worried about the War, about his own attitude to it, about his relations with Elizabeth and Fanny, about his military duties, about everything. Now “worry” is not “caused” by an event; it is a state which seizes upon any event to “worry” over. It is a form of neurasthenia, which may be induced in a perfectly healthy mind by shock and strain. And for months and months he just worried and drifted.
When Elizabeth decided, somewhere towards the end of 1914, that the time had come when the principles of Freedom must be put into practice in the case of herself and Reggie, and duly informed George, he acquiesced at once. Perhaps he was so sick at heart that he was indifferent; perhaps he was only loyally carrying out the agreement. What surprised me was that he did not take that opportunity of telling her about Fanny. But he was apparently quite convinced that she knew. It was, therefore, an additional shock when he found out that she didn’t know, and a still greater shock to see how she behaved. He suffered an obnubilation of the intellect in dealing with women. He idealized them too much. When I told him with a certain amount of bitterness that Fanny was probably a trollop who talked “freedom” as an excuse and that Elizabeth was probably a conventional-minded woman who talked “freedom” as in the former generation she would have talked Ruskin and Morris politico-æstheticism, he simply got angry. He said I was a fool. He said the War had induced in me a peculiar resentment against women—which was probably true. He said I did not understand either Elizabeth or Fanny—how could I possibly understand two people I had never seen and have the cheek to try to explain them to him, who knew them so well? He said I was far too downright, over-simplified and tranchant in my judgments, and that I didn’t—probably couldn’t—understand the finer complexities of peoples’ psychology. He said a great deal more, which I have forgotten. But we came as near to a quarrel as two lonely men could, when they knew they had no other companion. This was in the Officers’ Training Camp in 1917, when George was already in a peculiar and exacerbated state of nerves. After that, I made no effort at any sort of ruthless directness, but just allowed him to go on talking. There was nothing else to do. He was living in a sort of double nightmare—the nightmare of the War and the nightmare of his own life. Each seemed inextricably interwoven. His personal life became intolerable because of the War, and the War became intolerable because of his own life. The strain imposed on him—or which he imposed on himself—must have been terrific. A sort of pride kept him silent. Once when it was my turn to act as commander of the other Cadets, I was taking them in Company Drill. George was right-hand man in the front rank of number one Platoon, and I glanced at him to see that he was keeping direction properly. I was startled by the expression on his face—so hard, so fixed, so despairing, so defiantly agonized. At mess we ate at tables in sixes—he hardly ever spoke except to utter some banality in an effort to be amiable or some veiled sarcasm which sped harmlessly over the heads of those for whom it was intended. He sneered a little too openly at the coarse obscene talk about tarts and square-pushing, and was too obviously revolted by water-closet wit. However, he wasn’t openly disliked. The others just thought him a rum bloke, and left him pretty much alone.
Probably what had distressed him most was the row between Elizabeth and Fanny. With the whole world collapsing about him, it seemed quite logical that the Triumphal Scheme for the Perfect Sex Relation should collapse too. He did not feel the peevish disgust of the reforming idealist who makes a failure. But in the general disintegration of all things he had clung very closely to those two women, too closely of course. They had acquired a sort of mythical and symbolical meaning for him. They resented and deplored the War, but they were admirably detached from it. For George they represented what hope of humanity he had left, in them alone civilization seemed to survive. All the rest was blood and brutality and persecution and humbug. In them alone the thread of life remained continuous. They were two small havens of civilized existence and alone gave him any hope for the future. They had escaped the vindictive destructiveness which so horribly possessed the spirits of all right-thinking people. Of course, they were persecuted, that was inevitable. But they remained detached, and alive. Unfortunately, they did not quite realize the strain under which he was living, and did not perceive the widening gulf which was separating the men of that generation from the women. How could they? The friends of a person with cancer haven’t got cancer. They sympathize, but they aren’t in the horrid category of the doomed. Even before the Elizabeth-Fanny row he was subtly drifting apart from them against his will, against his desperate efforts to remain at one with them. Over the men of that generation hung a doom which was admirably if somewhat ruthlessly expressed by a British Staff Officer in an address to subalterns in France: “You are the War generation. You were born to fight this War, and it’s got to be won—we’re determined you shall win it. So far as you are concerned as individuals, it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn whether you are killed or not. Most probably you will be killed, most of you. So make up your minds to it.”
That extension of the Kiplingesque or Kicked-backside-of-the-Empire principle was something for which George was not prepared. He resented it, resented it bitterly, but the doom was on him as on all the young men. When “we” had determined that they should be killed, it was impious to demur.
After the row, the gap widened, and when once George had entered the army it became complete. He still clung desperately to Elizabeth and Fanny, of course. He wrote long letters to them trying to explain himself, and they replied sympathetically. They were the only persons he wanted to see when on leave, and they met him sympathetically. But it was useless. They were gesticulating across an abyss. The women were still human beings; he was merely a unit, a murder-robot, a wisp of cannon-fodder. And he knew it. They didn’t. But they felt the difference, felt it as a degradation in him, a sort of failure. Elizabeth and Fanny occasionally met after the row, and made acid-sweet remarks to each other. But on one point they were in agreement—George had degenerated terribly since joining the army, and there was no knowing to what preposterous depths of Tommydom he might fall.
“It’s quite useless,” said Elizabeth, “he’s done for. He’ll never be able to recover. So we may as well accept it. What was rare and beautiful in him is as much dead now as if he were lying under the ground in France.”
And Fanny agreed....