Non-combatants and Others Part 12

'I suppose it would.'

'Now a person like that, who looks like some sort of wood G.o.ddess--(I'd awfully like to paint her as a dryad)--and looks as if she'd never had a day's illness or a bad night in her life, is so--so _restful_. So alive and yet so calm. No nerves anywhere, I should think.... Being out there plays the d.i.c.kens with people's nerves, you know. Not every one's, of course; there are plenty of cheery souls who come through unmoved; but you'd be surprised at the jolly, self-possessed sportsmen who go to pieces more or less--all degrees of it, of course. Some don't know it themselves; you can often only see it by the way their eyes look at you while they're talking, or the way their hand twitches when they light their cigarette....' Alix remembered John Orme's eyes and hands. 'They dream a bit, too,' Basil went on, and his own eyes were fixed and queer as he talked, and his brows twitched a little. 'Talk in their sleep, you know, or walk.... It's funny.... I've censored letters which end "Hope this finds you the same as it leaves me, _i.e._ in the pink," from chaps who have to be watched lest they put a bullet into themselves from sheer nerves. You'll see a man shouting and laughing at a sing-song, then sitting and crying by himself afterwards.... Oh, those are extreme cases, of course, but lots are touched one way or another.... I'm sorry for the next generation; they'll stand a chance of being a precious neurotic lot, the children of the fighting men.... It's up to every one at home to keep as sane and unnervy as they can manage, I fancy, or the whole world may become a lunatic asylum.... I say, what are you going to do now?'

'Buy some chalks. Then go home.'

'Violette? I'll see you home, may I?'

4

They went to the chalk shop, then to the Clapton bus. The evening wind was like cool hands stroking their faces. It was half-past six. The streets were barbarically dark.

'One would think,' said Basil, peering through the darkness at the ugliness, 'that in Kingsland Road Zepps might be allowed to do their worst.'

'On Spring Hill too, perhaps,' Alix said. Slums and the screaming of the disreputable poor: villas and the precise speech and incomparably muddled thinking of the respectable genteel: which could best be spared?

But Basil said, 'Oh, Spring Hill. Spring Hill is full of joy and dryads.'

'Kate is afraid a very common type of person is coming to live there.

We're getting nervous about it at Violette. We're very particular, you know.'

Alix, with the instinct of a cad, was laughing at Violette, wanting him to laugh with her.

'Sure to be,' he returned; and Alix realised blankly that he might laugh at Violette to her heart's content and his att.i.tude towards dryads and Evie Tucker's face-lines would remain unaltered by his mockery.

With a revulsion towards breeding, she said, 'They're most awfully kind.... Here's where I get off.'

He got off too, and they walked down Upper Clapton Road.

5

Some one came behind them, walking quickly, came up with them, slowed, and looked.

'Here we are again,' said Evie, in her clear gay voice. 'You're coming in to see us, Mr. Doye, I hope?'

Basil glanced from Alix to Evie. They were pa.s.sing under a dim lamp, which for a moment threw Evie's startling prettiness in lit relief against the night. Extreme prettiness is not such a common thing that one can afford to miss chances of beholding it.

Basil said, 'Well, may I?'

Evie returned, 'Rather. Stop to supper.'

'I can't do that, thanks very much. But I'll come in for a moment, if I may.'

As they entered Violette's tiny hall, the clock struck seven. They went into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Frampton and Kate sat knitting. It was stiff and prim and tidy, and rather stuffy, and watched from the wall by the monstrous Eye.

'Here's Mr. Doye, mother,' said Evie. 'He saw Alix home.'

Mr. Doye was introduced to Kate. Mrs. Frampton said how kind it was of him to see Alix home.

'Particularly with the streets black like they are now. Have we a _right_ to expect to be preserved if we go against all common-sense like that?'

'I never do,' said Basil, meaning he never expected to be preserved, but Mrs. Frampton took it that he never went against common-sense.

'Well, I'm sure I go out after dark as little as I can; but the girls have to, coming back from work, and it makes me worry for them.... Now you sit in that easy-chair, Mr. Doye, and make yourself comfortable, and rest your hand. It's going on well, I hope? You'll stop and have some supper, of course? We have it at half-past seven, so it won't keep you long.'

Basil said he wouldn't, because he was dining somewhere at eight.

They talked of the news. Mrs. Frampton said it seemed to get worse each day. She had been reading in the paper that Bulgaria was just coming in.

Was that really so? Mrs. Frampton was of those who inquire of their male acquaintances and relatives on these and kindred subjects, and believe the answers, more particularly when the males are soldiers. Basil Doye, used to his mother, who told him things and never believed a word he said, because, as she remarked, he was so much younger, found this gratifying, and said it was really so. Mrs. Frampton said dear me, it seemed as if all the world would have to come in in time, and what about poor Serbia, could she be saved? Basil, wanting to leave the state of Europe and ask Evie if she had seen any plays lately, said casually that Serbia certainly seemed to stand a pretty good chance of being done in.

'And then, I suppose,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'we shall have the poor Serbian refugees fleeing to us for safety, like the Belgians. I'm sure we shall all welcome them, the poor mothers with their little children.

But it will be awkward to know where to put them or what to do with them. They've got those two houses at the corner of the Common full of Belgians now. I wonder if the Belgians and the Serbs would get on well together in the same houses. They say the poor Serbs are very wild people indeed, with such strange habits. Do you think we shall all be asked to take them as servants?'

'Sure to be,' said Basil, his eyes on Evie. Evie sat doing nothing at all, healthy, lovely, amused, splendidly alive. The vigorous young bodily life of her called to Basil's own, re-animating it. Alix sat by her, all alive too, but weak-bodied, lame, frail-nerved, with no balance. Kate knitted, and was different.

'It will be quite a problem, won't it?' said Mrs. Frampton. 'My maid tells me girls can't get enough places now, people all take Belgians instead.'

'They say the Belgian girls make very rough servants. We know those who have them,' said Kate, who had the Violette knack of switching off from the general to the personal. To Violette there were no labour problems, only good servants and bad, no Belgian or Balkan problem, only individual Belgians and Serbs (poor things, with their little children and strange habits). They had the personal touch, which makes England what it is.

Mrs. Frampton wanted to know next, 'And I suppose we shall be having conscription very soon now, Mr. Doye, shall we?'

'Lord Northcliffe says so, doesn't he?' Basil returned absently.

Mrs. Frampton accepted that.

'Well! I suppose it has to be. It seems hard on the poor mothers of only sons, and on the poor wives too. But if it will help us to win the war, we mustn't grudge them, must we? I suppose it _will_ help us to victory, won't it?'

'Lord Northcliffe says that too, I understand.... What do _you_ think, Miss Tucker?' He turned to Evie, to hear her speak.

She said, 'Oh, don't ask me. _I_ don't know. Don't suppose it will make much difference. Things don't, do they?'

Basil chuckled. 'Precious little, as a rule.... So that settles that.'

He caught sight of the clock and got up.

'I say, I'm afraid I've got to go at once. I shall be awfully late and rude. I often am, since I joined the army. I was a punctual person once.

The war is very bad for manners and morals, have you discovered, Mrs.

Frampton?'

'Oh well,' Mrs. Frampton spoke condoningly, 'I'm sure we must all hope it won't last much longer. How long will it be, Mr. Doye, can you tell us that?'

'Seven years,' said Mr. Doye. 'Till October 1922, you know. Yes, awful, isn't it? I'm frightfully sorry I had to tell you. Good-bye, Mrs.

Frampton.' He shook hands with them all; his eyes lingered, bright and smiling, on Evie, as if they found her a pleasant sight. In Alix that look seemed to stab and twist, like a turning sword. Perhaps that was what men felt when a bayonet got them.... The odd thing in the psychology of it was that she had never known before that she was a jealous person; she had always, like so many others, a.s.sumed she wasn't.

Certainly Evie's beauty had been to her till now pure joy.

As she went to the door with Basil, he said, 'I say, I wish you and your cousin would come into the country one Sunday. We might make up a small party. Your cousin looks as if she would rather like walking.'

'She's rather past it, I'm afraid,' said Alix, and added, in answer to his stare, 'Cousin Emily, you mean, don't you? The Tuckers aren't my cousins, you know. And she's only a dead cousin's wife. The Tuckers aren't even that.'