One day towards the end of the month Richard was visited in his office by his younger brother, Hilary, who wore the uniform of a captain of the Royal Naval Reserve. Captain Hilary Maddison, R.N.R., had returned from the Far East, in a convoy through the Red Sea and Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, where his ship, the Phasiana, carrying troops, had been torpedoed. Hilary, a fine swimmer and well-covered, had remained twenty-four hours in the sea before being picked up. He was far from well, but made nothing of his heaviness of spirit. He was staying a few days in London to attend a Board of Trade enquiry, and other affairs at the Ministry of Shipping.
His old chief, the Earl of Capewroth, had arranged for Hilary Maddison to be placed in the Ministry, in order to watch over his interests in the MacKarness line; so Hilary had two jobs at the same time, an official position under the Admiralty, and an unofficial one for the rugged ex-Glaswegian who had started his career at twelve years of age as an office boy in a house of East Indiamen which later was amalgamated with others to fly the MacKarness house flag.
Hilary had his own side-line, as well. German submarines were sending tonnage to the bottom at an increasing rate; and in sympathy, as the term went, freight rates were rising fast. Speculators in all the great ports—clerks in shipping offices and agencies, with a sprinkling of ship’s-chandlers and petty lawyers—were beginning to form into groups to charter rusty old tubs, obsolescent piston-engined tramps, most of them held together by paint, for the Atlantic run, carrying munitions. Hilary had some of his money in two Maritime Investment Companies that bought up such sea-coffins (as the crews called them); one registered at Bristol, the other at Cardiff. The Treasury indemnified the owners against loss. Hilary’s investments were immensely profitable.
The freight rate of grain from Argentina, for example, had been 12s. 6d. per ton in July 1914, to the Port of London; now it was 183s. 6d. Excess profit taxation at sixty per cent, imposed by the Government, had stimulated the rise; even so, the profit was more than seven-fold. Coal from Cardiff and Swansea to Genoa in Italy had been carried for 7s. 6d. a ton; now it was 100s.
At the moment Hilary felt that his life was a failure. On arrival at his club, he had found a letter awaiting him, from his wife in Hampshire. It told him that she could not live with him any longer; that she wanted her freedom. She asked if he would be a gentleman, and let her divorce him. Just that; no other details; written on one side of a piece of writing paper. She had waited, she added in a postscript on the other side, until the children were grown up.
Hilary at once went to see his solicitor, who called in a private enquiry agent. He knew his wife Beatrice did not know when he would be home again, now he was part of what was called the Silent Service.
The upshot was that he secured immediate evidence of his wife’s misconduct. Now, at fifty, he would have to rearrange his life. There was his sister Victoria; she was a lonely woman; he might buy a smaller house somewhere, and start again. With this in mind, he went to see his brother Richard in Thread-needle Street one morning, walking up from MacKarness House in Cockspur Street.
Hilary reckoned that since the war his capital had increased to six figures. His regret that he had no children of his own was increased proportionately. There was, of course, his step-son from the previous marriage of his wife Beatrice, and a step-daughter, but he did not care much for either. He had done his duty, provided the means for their education; but neither had shown any real interest in the home he had given them. The boy had left Winchester and was now at Sandhurst; the girl at a finishing school in the Isle of Wight.
“I don’t know what it is, it must be the stock,” said Hilary. “Bee, as you know, is a Lemon, and you don’t need me to tell you what happened to George, our late lamented brother-in-law. Well, now she’s gone and kicked over the traces with some young whippersnapper half her age, in the Navy. She turned the house into a convalescent home for officers, you know.”
“Well, I can only say that I am extremely sorry, Hilary, that it should have happened, particularly so in war-time, to add to your other worries.”
“I shall divorce her, Dick. Look at this!” He showed his brother an envelope, containing a single sheet of writing paper with one word written on it, Forgive.
“It arrived at my club this morning. She knows I have got evidence that she’s been carrying on behind my back for a long time, while I was away at sea. She’s turned of forty, and won’t find it easy to begin a new life. But she should have thought of that before. Well, how are things with you, Dick?”
Richard told Hilary about Phillip, adding, “I have not seen him yet, he has not asked for me.”
“But why don’t you go and see him, Dick.”
“Oh no, I know when I am not wanted, Hilary.”
That evening Hilary went to Wakenham, to sup with his brother and Hetty, and have a talk about the future. He was going to sell the Hampshire place, he said, and would have a fair amount of money, which he wanted to regard as eventual capital for the family.
“I’m going down to see John next week, and sound him about an idea I have, of buying back some of the Rookhurst land sold off by our father, Dick. You know, I’ve an idea that things will never be the same again after the war. Land won’t sink back as it did in the ’eighties and ’nineties. Now that both Willie and Phillip have shown what they’re made of, on the Somme——”
News had come to Richard that his nephew had been wounded in the attack on July 14; and Willie was now in St. George’s Hospital, Lancaster Gate.
“I must go and see them both, Dick.”
Hilary wrote down the address in his pocket book. “Where’s Phillip lying?”
“At the Royal Free Hospital, Hilary. As I told you, I have not visited him yet, but his mother has, with Dora. I thought I would go along when he is more recovered. Poor chap, he has had a rough time, so I gather, though he has said very little of what he has been through, to his mother. These soldiers won’t talk about their experiences, you know. They are all the same. From what I can hear, Phillip received two bullet wounds, apparently in the one leg. No bones broken, fortunately, but he has some way to go to mend.” Richard laughed. “You remember Nipper, our terrier, when we were boys at Rookhurst? How he had to be bitten on the nose before he would tackle the rats we let loose in the brew-house? Well, I can’t help wondering if his recent experiences will help to cure Phillip of his illusions about the Prussian militarists.”
He went on to tell his brother about “the boy’s curious beliefs”, and Hilary said he would soon clear that up with Phillip when he saw him.
“Taken on the whole, it appears that our mother’s people are a highly hysterical lot. As you know, the Bavarians hate the Prussians, and yet admire them for their strength. This hysteria explains the contradiction in their make-up. Take an instance from the German White Book, published last year. A Major Bauer testified that after the massacre of seven hundred civilians at Dinant, coffee was given to the survivors, ‘with every kindness’, he said, and also ‘chocolate was given to the small children found alive under the bodies’. That is the German record, mark you, so it cannot be dismissed even by pro-Germans as propaganda.”
“Exactly!” said Richard.
“Well, this Major Bauer apparently made his testimony in order to show how humane his people are. All in one breath—the massacre for military frightfulness followed by extreme sentimentality, and chocolate! And that is their vaunted Kultur, and inability to see themselves as others see them, Dick!”
“We have our sentimentalists here, Hilary. In Lord Bryce’s Report, the statements are never definite; every incident is ‘alleged’. I blame Asquith for that. It’s time he went.”
“These armchair humanitarians and pacifists should serve at sea, Dick! Their eyes would be opened, and their playing-for-safety soon changed if they’d seen crews of merchantmen picked up after weeks in an open boat, half mad and croaking, unable to speak from thirst! The submarine commanders treated them with punctilio when they set them adrift, giving them cigars and brandy, but at the same time they took away all charts and compasses!”
They spoke of their sister Theodora.
“We saw her last Sunday, before she and Hetty went to see the boy. Dora is well, and is still carrying on her work among soldiers’ dependents in the East End.”
“Well, that’s better than agitating for votes for women! You look to be in good shape, Dick. Have you had any holiday this year?”
“Oh, one can’t have holidays in war-time, old man! We gave up Whit Monday Bank Holiday, you know, and now we shall all have to work throughout the August Bank Holiday. After all, the soldiers and sailors cannot rest in their duties, and the least we civilians can do is to hold the Home Front. However, I manage to get an evening or two on my allotment; that tones one up wonderfully, you know.”
“How are the crops coming along?”
“Fairly well, Hilary. I fancy the deep trenching, and breaking the hard pan underneath, with the pick, has made all the difference. I don’t suppose that you will have time to walk round to look at my work?”
“I would very much like to, but I have to get back to town, Dick. Another time, perhaps. Well, I must say goodbye to Hetty. It has been ever so nice to see you again, old fellow!” Looking almost happy, Hilary tore up the letter, with the single word Forgive, from his wife.
*
Now that the Somme casualties were appearing in the Roll of Honour, Phillip was able to learn something of what had happened to the faces he thought about. Letters, too, had been sent back from France, and others to his bankers, for forwarding. One was from “Spectre” West, written from the Duke’s hospital in Gaultshire. He had been wounded in front of Caterpillar Wood, beyond the third and final objective of the White trench near Pommiers Redoubt (“the Hun’s Jamin Werk, and pretty jammy it was too, the men said, when we finally got into it”). He had gone with a patrol as far as the Willow Stream which rose in Caterpillar Wood, he said, and if they had had the reserves which were thrown away up north at Gommecourt, Beaumont Hamel, and Ovillers, they could have got through the Hun’s second line to the Bazentins and High Wood, past the Purple Line and on to the Hun’s third and last positions along the Pys-Sars-Eaucourt l’Abbaye-Flers line, and to open country for the cavalry beyond Bapaume, not only turning the flanks of the German Northern Army Group, but rolling them up to the North Sea. It could have been done; our lines from Arras to the coast were strongly held, and the Germans would not have been in a position to launch a counter-offensive, after their losses and disorganisation at Verdun.
Phillip thought this a wonderful letter. He studied maps in The Times, The Daily Trident, The Illustrated London News and other papers, until he was confused.
Westy was all right, that was the main thing, he told his mother when she came on the following Sunday, once again with Aunt Dora and his sister Doris.
When they rose to go, Hetty stayed behind to say, “Both Father and Mavis would like to see you, dear; perhaps now that you are a little stronger——?” She stopped, seeing his face. “Of course, they would not both come at the same time—— What is it, dear, won’t you tell me?”
“Well you know I can’t get on with either, don’t you?”
“But they are both so very proud of you now, Phillip—— So is your Uncle Hilary. Well, anyway, there’s no immediate hurry. Goodbye, and don’t forget your prayers, will you? I am sure the dear little crucifix from Thildonck has brought you safely through. You will never never lose it, will you?”
“I’ll try not to, Mother. Don’t turn round, someone is coming—— O, why must you?” for Hetty had turned her head. Down the ward, dignified and smiling, came Mrs. Neville, accompanied by a thin woman with a patient sweet face, who turned out to be Mrs. Hudson, the friend she had often spoken about, from Highgate. Phillip’s heart felt lighter; though he sighed when his mother said, after talking to them for a brief time, that she must go. He felt he had turned her away. Mrs. Neville saw this, and did not stay more than five minutes: a quiet, pleasant time for Phillip. He liked Mrs. Hudson at once, she was so sympathetic and understanding, in manner rather than words, for she said very little. Mrs. Neville, too, was quite different from the rather boisterous person he had known hitherto. She seemed to feel the ward was a sad place, with all the frames and “boxes” keeping broken bones and legs away from the bed-clothes, for he felt a tear fall on his cheek when she bent over to kiss his forehead, before leaving.
When Uncle Hilary came he began by saying that although they both had German blood in their veins, it was not anything that one could be proud of, particularly at the present time. Then he went on to say something about cigars and cognac to torpedoed sailors, and coffee and chocolate to survivors and children of the massacre at Dinant.
“Well, Uncle Hilary, I do know that they gave some of our chaps cognac after our attack on Hulluch and Hill 70 had failed at Loos, last year, and——”
“That’s just the point, Phillip! They shoot you down first, then treat you like that!”
“But it was sporting of them, all the same, Uncle! If they had attacked us, we wouldn’t have gone out to help them afterwards. Look what happened last Christmas Eve in France!”
“What did happen?”
“According to Willie, who was there, they thought it was going to be a truce as in 1914, and were singing carols and lighting Christmas trees when our artillery opened up and blew them all to hell. I don’t call that sporting.”
“Well, there’s another side to that, Phillip. They’re deeply engaged in Russia, and it pays them to keep their army fighting to a minimum in the west. But wait until Russia collapses—then you see if they’ll be wanting truces and Christmas trees in the trenches!”
“But who is ‘they’? You’re talking of the German High Command. I’m talking of the ordinary regimental soldiers.”
“I’m talking of the two sides of the German character, or nature, Phillip,” said Hilary, leaning over the bed in persuasive earnestness. “The side that ruthlessly massacres innocent civilians en masse, and then immediately afterwards hands coffee to the survivors—stolen from the estaminets, no doubt—and chocolate to the unhappy little children. Chocolate, in compensation for the death of their parents! Think of it, Phillip! They stop firing, and then play the host.”
“Well, they also stopped firing when our stretcher bearers came out to help bring in the wounded before La Boisselle, Uncle. I was there, I saw them!” said Phillip, in a tremulous voice. He felt he could not breathe.
“I am glad for your sake, Phillip,” said Hilary, trying to speak amiably. “Still, one isolated example does not alter the fact that they are a brutal people by nature, despite superficial kindness. One swallow does not make a summer, you know.”
Swallows usually come in April, in the spring, thought Phillip, faintly. He felt himself to be feeble as frayed blotting-paper.
“Well, I told your Father I’d have a word with you in the matter. He is bothered by your attitude to the Germans, but I told him that it was nothing to worry about, especially as you’d done your duty so splendidly against them. It’s our life as a nation or theirs, you must never forget!”
Phillip lay back limply, fighting remotely against the wire in himself becoming a thin, thin scream.
“Now, before we leave the subject, just let me tell you one more thing, nothing to do with bloodshed this time, Phillip. It concerns the way they have treated, and still are treating, Belgium, which is a small country, and can hardly be regarded as having been a threat to Germany in any way—of course the Germans want the mouth of the Scheldt, which is also the mouth of the Rhine, and all it entails, with the port of Antwerp, and other facilities. Well, the economic stifling process was put into operation as soon as war broke out, when the Federation of German Manufacturers, die Grossindustrielle, urged that they should pay no taxes for the continuance of the war, but that the Belgians and French of the occupied areas should pay instead, by fines imposed by the Military Governor. This was pure extortion, Phillip. It was continued until March this year, when the idea of ‘speedy victory’ was modified, by the non-success of their land and sea strategy, and they had to float war-loans. You know what they are, I expect?”
The head on the pillow nodded.
“I won’t go on, but I must say this, Phillip. The war is by no means only the fighting, you know. Well, about money, which is the sinews of war. These loans the Germans have floated in Berlin, carry interest to be paid out of reparations to be imposed when they have won the war! If that isn’t a swindle, what is? The bonds will be worthless in a defeated country, of course. Meanwhile another kind of swindle is taking place. Big firms are now clearing off their debentures, using the inflation of the mark. Krupps have done this, and have made a profit often million pounds, in our currency, by the manoeuvre.”
Phillip saw Gran’pa Turney in his mind, and felt reassurance coming into him.
“But aren’t debentures usually held by the family that owns the firm, Uncle? Grandpa’s debentures are, anyway; that’s why he wants them to remain in the family. And isn’t Krupps a family concern?”
“Well, if they held all the debentures, they wouldn’t want to sell them, would they, Phillip? No, take it from me, it’s a swindle, and shows up the entire character of the financial-military combine, the pan-Germans, who want to rule the world, to aggrandise the Prussians!”
Phillip felt like the small boy Uncle Hilary had trapped between his legs, chuckling as he had tried desperately to escape.
“Well, there you are! That’s what we are up against, and what you fellows are helping to destroy, in a war to end war, to destroy militarism for ever. Well, Phillip, my advice is, don’t bother your head further about sympathy for Germans. You do your job and let others take care of the rights and wrongs of how the war is being run. You’ve done well, you’re a credit to the family, and just to show my appreciation, I propose to buy in your name one hundred pounds of war loan, to be left in trust for you until you are twenty-five.”
When he was alone again Phillip lay back with closed eyes, wondering why Uncle Hilary always made him feel as though he were nothing.
“You’ve been talking too much,” said sister, coming to stand by his bed. “Now try and get some sleep.” She put her hand on his forehead. “As I thought, you’ve got a bit of a temperature, naughty boy! That comes of talking too much!” Flicking a thermometer, she put the bulb under his tongue. “There, it’s up to a hundred and one! Any pain?”
“No, sister, thank you.”
Reading again, later that evening, a letter from cousin Willie, who had been in the attack when La Boisselle and Ovillers had been taken at dawn from the southern flank at Contalmaison, and the high ground before the outskirts of Pozières had been reached by the end of the day—the final objective of July the First—he felt a wild regret that he had not been there. He saw the battlefield as in a dream, something that could never be properly realized, which made his breast ache with all longing when he tried to enter in upon it, silent and without physical movement, the red-hanging brick dust over the villages, the sun shining down on the still, still bodies of the dead: the same sun, but O so different, whose light was reflecting from the polished wooden floor of the ward and making a haze about its flowers, coming in under the blinds half-drawn against the August sun staring down upon the hot baked brick wall and white-painted sill of the open window beside his bed, with the murmur of traffic in the London street below. In his mind he was a spirit, feeling the radiant heat of the chalk of the trenches; cooling himself in the flicker-rippling Ancre. O, to be able to see it all again, a ghost world of gun-flashes at night. O to see it all, to grasp all of it, without violence, without pain; to share the marching and the singing of the living that were part of the great dream of life and death.
*
It was a strange feeling to be out of bed, his foot still itching inside its plaster cast, with a pair of crutches, and sister beside him, to explore a new world. The figures in bed, the beds, tables, doors —all looked so different. It was quite a surprise to realize that there was a passage outside the door, leading in two directions, instead of it being a sudden-appearance place of doctors, nurses, wheeled stretchers, and food trolleys. It was sad that the world seen from the safety of bed had already vanished.
He visited other officers still prone, and sat beside them, and they talked about anything but the war. It was fun to play draughts with them, and have little championships. They were not the dangerous or bad cases, which were in another ward.
The morning came when his foot was taken, pallid and warped, out of its plaster cast. Exercises began in another room between parallel bars, the crutches put away—a perilous feeling, to be all alone in a polished, swaying room. Then the crutches were exchanged for a walking-stick with a rubber ferrule, although his leg still felt to be hooked to him, rather than part of his body. Further exercises brought the aching flaccid muscles back into tension.
The London Gazette had his promotion in its close-printed columns one morning. He was a senior subaltern! He cut two cloth stars off his spare tunic and asked for a needle and khaki thread. The sister asked him what for, and when he told her, took away stars and tunic, and returned it with the new rank upon the cuffs, leaving the mark of the old star unfaded in the middle of the twin stars. It was a wonderful sight, at which he glanced again and again during the day.
Sooner than he imagined he was one of a party of officers taken to the theatre. They saw Chu Chin Chow; two days later, they went to see Romance. They were taken to a tennis party in Regent’s Park, where he met delightful people, who sent their motors to fetch parties of officers from the hospital, and take them back again.
“I think we can let you out for an hour or so this afternoon,” said the doctor one morning. “Only no drinking of spirits, mind!”
Joyfully he took a taxicab to Charing Cross Station and in the train smelt, by the open window, the familiar smells of fish-glue, vinegar, sulphur, hops, tan-yards, and a new one of iodoform. Then the junction, and the line parallel to the brook running polluted and dead behind tattered drab fences of flowerless back-gardens, and so to the old dark station with its old dark dog-chasing cat, the walk through the village and up Charlotte Road, under the same old peaceful chestnuts, past summer-dulled privet hedges, rain-worn oaken gate-posts, up the asphalt of Hillside Road with its cracks where, thank God, pink convolvulus flowers were growing; and at last to the so-narrow gateway and the porch beyond.
Mrs. Bigge, Mrs. Feeney, Gran’pa and Aunt Marian, Mrs. Pye fatter than ever, and—a dared visit to Turret House. Mrs. Rolls said how thin he was, and so much more grown up. Helena arrived from the hospital, and he was asked to stay and take pot luck. He sat on his hands when he was not eating, trying to say acceptable things, feeling strained into a state half-dream, half-shyness, feeling he was talking jerkily, flippantly, about his fellow patients, doctors, nurses—and at ten to two when she had gone down the road again—rather a relief that she was gone—he felt he had said and done everything to put himself in the worst light.
*
The day came when he could walk almost normally except for a tight feeling when he sat down. He thought to go and see his father and sister at Head Office in Haybundle Street, but when he saw the building, and the smiling moon in silver hanging over the door, he felt he could not face Martin the messenger there, after all Mavis had said about everyone at H.O. knowing what had happened on Messines Hill; so he crossed over and walked through the streets and Leadenhall Market, meaning to call in at The Grapes, and see Westy’s parents. It was after closing time, so he went on into Fenchurch Street and to Wine Vaults Lane, where Mr. Howlett said,
“You could not have come at a more opportune moment, Maddison! Downham’s up in town. He and Hollis and I are going to have tea at four o’clock at the Crutched Friars’ Mecca café. It’s my birthday. We always meet there once a year, you remember? You’ll come? Splendid! How’s the leg, better? Oh, good. Be here about ten to four, will you? You must tell me all that’s happened.”
Phillip went on to see Eugene in his warehouse in Houndsditch, where he learned that he was on holiday; and so he sat in the churchyard in Gracechurch Street where often in the past he had eaten his sandwiches, among others who had always seemed to be poor, in that dark place splashed by pigeons.
He found Mr. Howlett and the others at the bottom of coffee-smelling stairs, in a large room with tables topped by brown glazed tiles, some scattered with dominoes. Downham was in field boots and spurs; and noticing Phillip’s limp, he made a joke about his wound.
“Shot in the arse, were you? What were you doing, running away again?”
“Come, come,” said Mr. Hollis, sharply. “That’s not fair! Anyway, you’ve damned well taken care not to present your precious carcase anywhere near the Germans!”
“Well, how do you get on with your father now?” asked Mr. Howlett.
“I haven’t seen him yet, Mr. Howlett.”
The next day the doctor said, “You’re better. I’m sending you for a Medical Board at Caxton Hall tomorrow.”
He was given six weeks leave, to be spent in a convalescent home.
“Go and see Georgiana Lady Dudley,” said Matron, on his return. “She’ll fix you up at a place in the country. Tell her where you want to go. She’s got lots of places on her list. Don’t be put off by her painted face, she’s a dear old thing.”
*
Almost from the beginning of the war private fortunes had been expended to equip hospitals, in both England and France, by many of the great and famous hostesses of Society for the sons and brothers and cousins of their own and their friends’ families, whose names were beginning to fill the casualty lists … until now all were spilled away, and the names in the Roll of Honour were of strangers.
But England had need of them, and soon after the Battle of the Somme began there were few country houses which had not answered the appeal of Georgiana Lady Dudley and her friends, to open their doors to men of the New Armies recovering from wounds and sickness. By the month of August over a hundred officers a day were being sent to houses great and small, from Sutherlandshire and Caithness in North Britain, to Kent and Sussex and Hampshire in the South, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Essex in the East, to Devon and Cornwall in the West Country.
At first, it had been possible to discriminate: to send only men of one’s own class—those who had been at the only three possible schools, and who therefore knew good form—to one’s friends’ places as guests; while the other kind, the vast majority of half-and-half people, could be disposed of to the smaller places—dower houses, manor houses, and even Highland lodges—where they would be able to amuse themselves in their own ways. For the deluge had arrived.
With a pile of papers, telegraph forms, and card indices before her on the desk, Georgiana Lady Dudley disposed of one temporary officer after another, as he came with respectful affability, as though assured in his new status, before her. For Georgiana Lady Dudley induced no feelings of awe as she sat, her luxuriant white hair crowned by a circular floral hat, and her complexion all cream and roses, on a hard wooden office chair giving forth, but not radiating, an impersonal, all-enveloping geniality: this hostess of Edwardian luncheon and dinner parties of from a mere dozen or score of faces to hundreds of guests, many of them enveloped with the spirit of the cream and roses of the earth, upon whom had fallen the bloom of gold of hundreds of thousands of sovereigns every year from carbonised vegetation lying in seams below their estates and properties.
What magic, what splendour, what heights above the congested areas of surburban living did the presence of Georgiana Lady Dudley suggest to many of the temporary officers of the New Armies! The very name was a necklace of precious sparkling jewels to some who sat before her.
What did Georgiana Lady Dudley think of them? They were the half-and-half people, so very polite, poor dears, so formal, trying hard to appear above themselves; but all was forgiven them for being what they were. Had they not come out of their unknown places and answered the call, from their obscure streets and small houses, to replace, with their plain names in the casualty lists, those of the splendid young men who had fallen in 1914 and 1915?
This lady with the face of youth and the bright friendliness of age sat behind a desk, her floral hat nodding and moving but never jerking as she arranged the immediate future of captains of eighteen and subalterns of forty-five, in slacks and trews, kilts and breeches, pale cotton of Indian Army and double-breasted “maternity jacket” of Flying Corps; dear boys all—a tick against a long list, a name written down with a gold pencil set with diamonds, and one more was sped to Yorkshire or Cumberland, to Dorset or Flint, to a house by the sea or a lodge on the side of a strath, to have the time of his life.
From the watershed of the Somme, from charred wood and desolated valley, amidst the fragmentation of steel and flesh and the dust of detonated village hanging in the sun, was coming the thought that would bring not only the end of the old order, but the end of ideas that had endured a thousand years.
*
“Devon, or is it Devonshire, it’s so muddling,” said Georgiana Lady Dudley brightly, as she flipped a card index. “It’s Devonshire cream and cider, one supposes, and also the Devonshire Regiment, but no doubt you will know. Now let me see,” she went on briskly, as her eye ran down a list. “All the places in Devon appear to be filled. What have we here—Dorset? No? Derbyshire? No? Durham? No. I agree. Much too cold and smoky, and those everlasting east winds! Denbigh? Very rainy, and the south-west blows all the time. Flint? No? How about Gloucestershire?”
Discomposed by her bright, bird-like speed, Phillip tried to force himself to ask if he might be allowed to go to his aunt’s cottage at Lynmouth, and have treatment from a local doctor. Willie, whom he had visited in St. George’s, had suggested this for both of them. He felt more uncomfortable when the amazingly alert Georgiana Lady Dudley looked at a gold watch hanging on a diamond and platinum brooch inside her jacket pocket. It was almost one o’clock, and he was the last to be seen.
“I would rather go to Devon, ma’m, if it isn’t giving you too much trouble. Perhaps I could come again, later on, when it is not so inconvenient?”
“Miss Catesby, have we any places in Devon, in this morning’s post? We have? How splendid!” Papers were put before her. “Here is the very thing, perhaps. Sir George Newnes’ Hollerday House, Lynton. Two beds will be vacant in a week’s time. I’ll mark you down for one of them. We drove through Lynton once, when I was a gal, from Lee Abbey. I expect you know it, high above the cliffs, with Wales just across the water? The hills were terrifying, and we all had to get down from the coach and walk. The wheels caught fire! What was the name of the spot! Watersmeet, was it? Of course. Very well, your Matron will be notified.”
Georgiana Lady Dudley gave him a brilliantly enamelled smile of dismissal.
“Thank you very much, ma’m. I am afraid I am rather a nuisance, but I have a great friend, a cousin, due to be b-boarded at Caxton Hall any day now. I wonder if it would be possible for him to have the other bed? He asked me to put in a word, I m-mean, to enquire for him.”
“What a close family yours must be, Mr. Maddison. How nice that you all want to be together. Where is your cousin? At St. George’s Hospital, Lancaster Gate. Very well, if you will give my secretary particulars, she will arrange it. Good morning!”
Georgiana Lady Dudley, a new light upon her face, cleared as it were for action—she was having luncheon with some friends who were planning a counter-attack on Mr. George, “the Little Welsh lawyer”, who was preparing one more of his low-down tricks against dear Henry Asquith—left without further thought of the young man whose face she no longer saw. Nor did she realise that he had sprung up to open the door for her: accustomed to footmen all her life, she no more thought about doors than Phillip had about those in his ward until he had learned to walk again, on crutches.