Dodo Wonders Part 16

"Somebody, I don't know who," she said, "told me that there was an English navy. Probably it was all lies like the German atrocities."

Edith threw her hands wide.

"Do you think I like feeling as I do?" she asked. "Do you think I do it for fun?"

"No, dear, for my amus.e.m.e.nt," said Dodo briskly. "But unfortunately it only makes me sick. Hullo, here's David."

David entered making an awful noise on a drum.

"Shut up, David," said his mother, "and tell Edith what you are going to do when you're eighteen."

"Kill the Huns," chanted David. "Mayn't I play my drum any more, mummy?"

"Yes, go and play it all over the house. And sing Tipperary all the time."

David made a shrill departure.

"Of course you can teach any child that!" said Edith.

"I know. That's so lovely. If I had fifty children I should teach it to them all. I wish I had. I should love seeing them all go out to France, and I should squirm as each of them went. I should like to dig up the graves of Bach and Brahms and Beethoven and Wagner and Goethe, and stamp on their remains. They have nothing to do with it all but they're Huns.

I don't care whether it is logical or Christian or anything else, but that's the way to win the war. And you're largely responsible for that; I never saw red before you talked such nonsense about the war being over. If we haven't got an army we're going to have one, and I shall learn to drive a motor. If I could go to that window and be shot, provided one of those beastly Huns was shot too, I should give you one kiss, darling, to shew I forgave you, and go to the window dancing! I quite allow that if everybody was like you we should lose, but thank G.o.d we're not."

Dodo's face was crimson with pure patriotism.

"I'm not angry with you," she said, "I'm only telling you what you don't know, and what I do know, so don't resent it, because I haven't the slightest intention of quarrelling with you, and it takes two to make a quarrel. You know about trombones and C flat, and if you told me about C flat----"

Edith suddenly burst into a howl of laughter.

"Or C sharp," said Dodo, "or a harpsichord. Oh, don't laugh. What have I said?"

Edith recovered by degrees and wiped her eyes.

"In all my life I have never had so many offensive things said to me,"

she remarked, "I can't think why I don't mind."

"Oh, because you know I love you," said Dodo with conviction.

"I suppose so. But there's Berts going out to that h.e.l.l----"

"Oh, but you said the war was over already," said Dodo. "Besides what would you think of him if he didn't go?"

"I should think it extremely sensible of him," began Edith in a great hurry.

"And after you had thought that!" suggested Dodo.

Edith considered this.

"I don't know what I should think next," she said. "What I'm going to do next is to get back to my scoring."

Edith's remarks about the absurdity of people attempting to do things for which they had no apt.i.tude made a distinct impression on Dodo, and she totally abandoned the stocking of which she could not turn the heel, and made no further dislocation of work by trying to use a mop. But she found that if she really attended, she could count blankets and bed-jackets, and weigh out stores and superintend their distribution.

Again, driving a motor was a thing that seemed within the limits of her ability, and by the time that Winston was in full running order as a hospital she was fairly competent as a driver. Awful incidents had accompanied her apprentices.h.i.+p; she had twice stripped her gear, had run into a stone wall, luckily in a poor state of repair, and had three times b.u.t.ted at a gate-post. Her last accident, after a week really tedious from mere uneventfulness, had been when she had gone all alone, as a pleasant surprise, to the station to meet Jack, who was coming home for two days' leave. She had been both driving and talking at high speed, and so had not seen that she was close to a very sharp corner on the marshy common just outside the gates, and preferring the prudent course, as opposed to the sporting chance of getting round the corner without capsizing, had gone straight ahead, leaving the road altogether, until, remembering to apply her brakes, she stuck fast and oozily in the marsh.

"There!" she said with some pride. "If I had been reckless and imprudent I should have tried to get round that corner and had an upset. Didn't I show presence of mind, Jack?"

"Marvellous. And what are we to do now?"

Dodo looked round.

"We had better shout," she said. "And then somebody will come with a horse and pull us out backwards. It has happened before," she added candidly.

"But if n.o.body comes?" asked he.

"Somebody is sure to. It's unthinkable that we should remain here till we die of exposure and hunger, and the crows pick our whitening bones.

The only other thing to do is that you should jump out and fetch somebody. I wouldn't advise you to, as you would sink up to your knees in the mud. But it's a lovely afternoon; let's sit here and talk till something happens. Haven't I learned to drive quickly?"

"Very quickly," said Jack. "We've covered the last three miles in four minutes."

"I didn't mean that sort of quickly," said Dodo, "though daresay I said it. Isn't it lucky it's fine, and that we've got plenty of time? I wanted a talk with you and somebody would be sure to interrupt at home.

He would want sticking-plaster or chloroform or charades."

"Is all that your department?" asked Jack.

"Yes, they call me Harrods. You never thought I should become Harrods.

Oh, Jack, if you've got an ache in your mind, the cure is to work your body till that aches too. Then two aches make an affirmative."

"What?" said Jack.

"You see what I mean. And the odd thing is that though I'm entirely taken up with the war, I try not to think about the war at all, at least not in the way I used to before I became Harrods. One is too busy with the thing itself to think about it. In fact, I haven't looked at the papers for the last day or two. Has there been any news?"

"Not much. I've been busy too, and I really hardly know. But there's been nothing of importance."

"Jack, what's going to happen?" she asked.

"Oh, we're going to win, of course. G.o.d knows when. Perhaps after three years or so. But it's no good thinking about that."

Dodo gave a little groan.

"I know it isn't. If I realised that this was going on all that time, I think I should just get drunk every day. Let's talk about something else, and not realise it."

"When are you coming to see my camp?" asked he.

"I should think when the war is over and there isn't any camp. I don't see how I can get away before. How long has it been going now? Only three months, is it? And I can hardly remember what things were like before. How did one get through the day? We got up later, it is true, but then we went to bed later. Did we do nothing except amuse ourselves?

I couldn't amuse myself now. And what did we talk about? I seem to remember sitting and talking for hours together, and not finding it the least tedious."

"I shall insist on your having a holiday soon," said Jack.

"Oh no, darling, you won't. I've had fifty-five years' holiday in my life and three months' work. That doesn't give much of a daily average, if you work it out; somewhere about five minutes a day, isn't it? I must have something better than that to shew before I have another holiday.... Jack, did you say that we must look forward to three years or more of this? Good Lord, how senseless it all is! What do you _prove_ by setting millions of jolly boys to kill each other? Oh, I shouldn't have said that; I would have said, 'What do you prove by having our jolly boys killed by those d.a.m.ned Huns?' Yes, darling, I said d.a.m.ned, and I intended to. I told Edith that one day. The way to win a war is to be convinced that your enemy are fiends. 'Also,' as that fat Albert would say, 'we must therefore kill them.' But I wish I really meant it.