Book: The Red Planet

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"Our country isn't our only son," said the other dully.

"No. She's our mother," said Sir Anthony.

"Isn't that a kind of abstraction?"

"Abstraction!" cried Sir Anthony, indignantly. "You must be
imbibing the notions of that poisonous beast Gedge."

Gedge was a smug, socialistic, pacifist builder who did not hold
with war--and with this one least of all, which he maintained was
being waged for the exclusive benefit of the capitalist classes.
In the eyes of the stalwarts of Wellingsford, he was a horrible
fellow, capable of any stratagem or treason.

Perkins flushed. "I've always voted conservative, like my father
before me, Sir Anthony, and like yourself I've given my boy to my
country. I've no dealings with unpatriotic people like Gedge, as
you know very well."

"Of course I do," cried Sir Anthony. "And that's why I ask you
what the devil you mean by calling England an abstraction. For us,
she's the only thing in the world. We're elderly chaps, you and I,
Perkins, and the only thing we can do to help her is to keep our
heads high. If people like you and me crumple up, the British
Empire will crumple up."

"That's quite true," said Perkins.

Sir Anthony bent down and held out his hand.

"It's damned hard lines for us, and for the women. But we must
keep our end up. It's doing our bit."

Perkins wrung his hand. "I wish to God," said he, "I was young
enough--"

"By God! so do I!" said Sir Anthony.

This little conversation (which I afterwards verified) was
reported to me by my arch-gossip, Sergeant Marigold.

"And I tell you what, sir," said he after the conclusion, "I'm of
the same way of thinking and feeling."

"So am I."

"Besides, I'm not so old, sir. I'm only forty-two."

"The prime of life," said I.

"Then why won't they take me, sir?"

If there had been no age limit and no medical examination Marigold
would have re-enlisted as John Smith, on the outbreak of war,
without a moment's consideration of the position of his wife and
myself. And Mrs. Marigold, a soldier's wife of twenty years'
standing, would have taken it, just like myself, as a matter of
course. But as he could not re-enlist, he pestered the War Office
(just as I did) and I pestered for him to give him military
employment. And all in vain.

"Why don't they take me, sir? When I see these fellows with three
stripes on their arms, and looking at them and wondering at them
as if they were struck three stripes by lightning, and calling
themselves Sergeants and swanking about and letting their men
waddle up to their gun like cows--and when I see them, as I've
done with your eyes--watch one of their men pass by an officer in
the street without saluting, and don't kick the blighter to--to--
to barracks--it fairly makes me sick. And I ask myself, sir, what
I've done that I should be loafing here instead of serving my
country."

"You've somehow mislaid an eye and a hand and gone and got a tin
head. That's what you've done," said I. "And the War Office has a
mark against you as a damned careless fellow."

"Tin head or no tin head," he grumbled, "I could teach those
mother's darlings up there the difference between a battery of
artillery and a skittle-ally."

"I believe you've mentioned the matter to them already," I
observed softly.

Marigold met my eye for a second and then looked rather sheepish.
I had heard of a certain wordy battle between him and a
Territorial Sergeant whom he had set out to teach. Marigold
encountered a cannonade of blasphemous profanity, new, up-to-date,
scientific, against which the time-worn expletives in use during
his service days were ineffectual. He was routed with heavy loss.

"This is a war of the young," I continued. "New men, new guns, new
notions. Even a new language," I insinuated.

"I wish 'em joy of their language," said Marigold. Then seeing
that I was mildly amusing myself at his expense, he asked me
stiffly if there was anything more that he could do for me, and on
my saying no, he replied "Thank you, sir," most correctly and left
the room.

On the 3d of March Betty Fairfax came to tea.

Of all the young women of Wellingsford she was my particular
favourite. She was so tall and straight, with a certain Rosalind
boyishness about her that made for charm. I am not yet, thank
goodness, one of the fossils who hold up horror-stricken hands at
the independent ways of the modern young woman. If it were not for
those same independent ways the mighty work that English women are
doing in this war would be left undone. Betty Fairfax was breezily
independent. She had a little money of her own and lived, when it
suited her, with a well-to-do and comfortable aunt. She was two
and twenty. I shall try to tell you more about her, as I go on.

As I have said, and as my diary tells me, she came to tea on the
3d of March. She was looking particularly attractive that
afternoon. Shaded lamps and the firelight of a cosy room, with all
their soft shadows, give a touch of mysterious charm to a pretty
girl. Her jacket had a high sort of Medici collar edged with fur,
which set off her shapely throat. The hair below her hat was soft
and brown. Her brows were wide, her eyes brown and steady, nose
and lips sensitive. She had a way of throwing back her head and
pointing her chin fearlessly, as though in perpetual declaration
that she cared not a hang either for black-beetles or Germans. And
she was straight as a dart, with the figure of a young Diana--
Diana before she began to worry her head about beauty
competitions. A kind of dark hat stuck at a considerable angle on
her head gave her the prettiest little swaggering air in the
world. ... Well, there was I, a small, brown, withered, grizzled,
elderly, mustachioed monkey, chained to my wheel-chair; there were
the brave logs blazing up the wide chimney; there was the tea
table on my right with its array of silver and old china; and
there, on the other side of it, attending to my wants, sat as
brave and sweet a type of young English womanhood as you could
find throughout the length and breadth of the land. Had I not been
happy, I should have been an ungrateful dog.

We talked of the war, of local news, of the wounded at the
hospital.

And here I must say that we are very proud of our Wellingsford
Hospital. It is the largest and the wealthiest in the county. We
owe it to the uneasy conscience of a Wellingsford man, a railway
speculator in the forties, who, having robbed widows and orphans
and, after trial at the Old Bailey, having escaped penal servitude
by the skin of his teeth, died in the odour of sanctity, and the
possessor of a colossal fortune in the year eighteen sixty-three.
This worthy gentleman built the hospital and endowed it so
generously that a wing of it has been turned into a military
hospital with forty beds. I have the honour to serve on the
Committee. Betty Fairfax entered as a Probationer early in
September, and has worked there night and day ever since. That is
why we chatted about the wounded. Having a day off, she had
indulged in the luxury of pretty clothes. Of these I had duly
expressed my admiration.

Tea over, she lit a cigarette for me and one for herself and drew
her chair a trifle nearer the fire. After a little knitting of the
brow, she said:--

"You haven't asked me why I invited myself to tea."

"I thought," said I, "it was for my beaux yeux."

"Not this time. I rather wanted you to be the first to receive a
certain piece of information."

I glanced at her sharply. "You don't mean to say you're going to
be married at last?"

In some astonishment she retorted:--

"How did you guess?"

"Holy simplicity!" said I. "You told me so yourself."

She laughed. Suddenly, on reflection, her face changed.

"Why did you say 'at last'?"

"Well--" said I, with a significant gesture.

She made a defiant announcement:--

"I am going to marry Willie Connor."

"It was my turn to be astonished. "Captain Connor?" I echoed.

"Yes. What have you to say against him?"

"Nothing, my dear, nothing."

And I hadn't. He was an exemplary young fellow, a Captain in a
Territorial regiment that had been in hard training in the
neighbourhood since August. He was of decent family and
upbringing, a barrister by profession, and a comely pink-faced boy
with a fair moustache. He brought a letter or two of introduction,
was billeted on Mrs. Fairfax, together with one of his subs, and
was made welcome at various houses. Living under the same roof as
Betty, it was natural that he should fall in love with her. But it
was not at all natural that she should fall in love with him. She
was not one of the kind that suffer fools gladly. ... No; I had
nothing against Willie Connor. He was merely a common-place,
negative young man; patriotic, keen in his work, an excellent
soldier, and, as far as I knew, of blameless life; but having met
him two or three times in general company, I had found him a dull
dog, a terribly dull dog,--the last man in the world for Betty
Fairfax.

And then there was Leonard Boyce. I naturally had him in my head,
when I used the words "at last."

"You don't seem very enthusiastic," said Betty.

"You've taken me by surprise," said I. "I'm not young enough to be
familiar with these sudden jerks."

"You thought it was Major Boyce."

"I did, Betty. True, you've said nothing about it to me for ever
so long, and when I have asked you for news of him your answers
have shewed me that all was not well. But you've never told me, or
anyone, that the engagement was broken off."

Her young face was set sternly as she looked into the fire.

"It's not broken off--in the formal sense. Leonard thought fit to
let it dwindle, and it has dwindled until it has perished of
inanition." She flashed round. "I'm not the sort to ask any man
for explanations."

"Boyce went out with the first lot in August," I said. "He has had
seven awful months. Mons and all the rest of it. You must excuse a
man in the circumstances for not being aux petits soins des dames.
And he seems to be doing magnificently--twice mentioned in
dispatches."

"I know all that," she said. "I'm not a fool. But the war has
nothing to do with it. It started a month before the war broke
out. Don't let us talk of it."

She threw the end of her cigarette into the fire and lit a fresh
one. I accepted the action as symbolical. I dismissed Boyce, and
said:--

"And so you're engaged to Captain Connor?"

"More than that," she laughed. "I'm going to marry him. He's going
out next week. It's idiotic to have an engagement. So I'm going to
marry him the day after to-morrow."

Now here was a piece of news, all flung at my head in a couple of
minutes. The day after to-morrow! I asked for the reason of this
disconcerting suddenness.

"He's going out next week."

"My dear," said I, "I have known you for a very long time--and I
suppose it's because I'm such a very old friend that you've come
to tell me all about it. So I can talk to you frankly. Have you
considered the terrible chances of this war? Heaven knows what may
happen. He may be killed."

"That's why I'm marrying him," she said.

There was a little pause. For the moment I had nothing to say, as
I was busily searching for her point of view. Then, with pauses
between each sentence, she went on:--

"He asked me two months ago, and again a month ago. I told him to
put such ideas out of his head. Yesterday he told me they were off
to the front and said what a wonderful help it would be to him if
he could carry away some hope of my love. So I gave it to him."--
She threw back her head and looked at me, with flushed cheeks.
"The love, not the hope."

"I don't think it was right of him to press for an immediate
marriage," said I, in a grandfatherly way--though God knows if I
had been mad for a girl I should have done the same myself when I
was young.

"He didn't" said Betty, coolly. "It was all my doing. I fixed it
up there and then. Looked up Whitaker's Almanack for the necessary
information, and sent him off to get a special license."

I nodded a non-committal head. It all seemed rather mad. Betty
rose and from her graceful height gazed down on me.

"If you don't look more cheerful, Major, I shall cry. I've never
done so yet, but I'm sure I've got it in me."

I stretched out my hand. She took it, and, still holding it,
seated herself on a footstool close to my chair.

"There are such a lot of things that occur to me," I said. "Things
that your poor mother, if she were alive, would be more fitted to
touch on than myself."

"Such as--"

She knelt by me and gave me both her hands. It was a pretty way
she had. She had begun it soon after her head overtopped mine in
my eternal wheelbarrow. There was a little mockery in her eyes.

"Well--" said I. "You know what marriage means. There is the
question of children."

She broke into frank laughter.

"My darling Majy--" That is the penalty one pays for admitting
irresponsible modern young people into one's intimacy. They
miscall one abominably. I thought she had outgrown this childish,
though affectionate appellation of disrespect. "My darling Majy!"
she said. "Children! How many do you think I'm going to have?"

I was taken aback. There was this pure, proud, laughing young face
a foot away from me. I said in desperation:--

"You know very well what I mean, young woman. I want to put things
clearly before you--" It is the most difficult thing in the world
for a man--even without legs--to talk straight about the facts of
life to a young girl. He has no idea how much she knows about them
and how much she doesn't. To tear away veils and reveal
frightening starkness is an act from which he shrinks with all the
modesty of a (perhaps) deluded sex. I took courage. "I want," I
repeated, "to put things clearly before you. You are marrying this
young man. You will have a week's married life. He goes away like
a gallant fellow to fight for his country. He may be killed in the
course of the next few weeks. Like a brave girl you've got to face
it. In the course of time a child may be born--without a father
to look after him. It's a terrific responsibility."

She knelt upright and put both her hands on my shoulders, almost
embracing me, and the laughter died away from her eyes, giving
place to something which awakened memories of what I had seen once
or twice in the eyes of the dearest of all women. She put her face
very close to mine and whispered:

"Don't you see, dear, it's in some sort of way because of that?
Don't you think it would be awful for a strong, clean, brave
English life like his to go out without leaving behind him someone
to--well, you know what I mean--to carry on the same traditions--
to be the same clean brave Englishman in the future?"

I smiled and nodded. Quite a different kind of nod from the
previous one.

"Thousands of girls are doing it, you dear old Early Victorian,
and aren't ashamed to say so to those who really love and can
understand them. And you do love and understand, don't you?"

She set me off at arm's length, and held me with her bright
unflinching eyes.

"I do, my dear," said I. "But there's only one thing that troubles
me. Marriage is a lifelong business. Captain Connor may win
through to a green old age. I hope to God the gallant fellow will.
Your present motives are beautiful and heroic. But do you care for
him sufficiently to pass a lifetime with him--after the war--an
ordinary, commonplace lifetime?"

With the same clear gaze full on me she said:--

"Didn't I tell you that I had given him my love?"

"You did."

"Then," she retorted with a smile, "my dear Major Didymus, what
more do you want?"

"Nothing, my dear Betty."

I kissed her. She threw her arms round my neck and kissed me
again. Sergeant Marigold entered on the sentimental scene and
preserved a face of wood. Betty rose to her feet slowly and
serenely and smiled at Marigold.

"Miss Fairfax's car," he announced.

"Marigold," said I, "Miss Fairfax is going to be married the day
after to-morrow to Captain Connor of the--"

"I know, sir," interrupted my one-eyed ramrod. "I'm very glad, if
I may be permitted to say so, Miss. I've made it my duty to
inspect all the troops that have been quartered hereabouts during
the last eight months. And Captain Connor is one of the few that
really know their business. I shouldn't at all mind to serve under
him. I can't say more, Miss. I wish you happiness."

She flushed and laughed and looked adorable, and held out her
hand, which he enclosed in his great left fist.

"And you'll come to my wedding, Sergeant?"

"I will, Miss," said he. "With considerable pleasure."





CHAPTER III


When I want to shew how independent I am of everybody, I drive
abroad in my donkey carriage. I am rather proud of my donkey, a
lithe-limbed pathetically eager little beast, deep bay with white
tips to his ears. Marigold bought him for me last spring, from
some gipsies, when his predecessor, Dan, who had served me
faithfully for some years, struck work and insisted on an old-age
pension. He is called Hosea, a name bestowed on him, by way of
clerical joke, and I am sure with a profane reminiscence of
Jorrocks, by the Vicar, because he "came after Daniel." At first I
thought it rather silly; but when I tried to pull him up I found
that "Whoa-Ho-sea!" came in rather pat; so Hosea he has remained.
He has quite a fast, stylish little trot, and I can square my
elbows and cock my head on one side as I did in the days of my
youth when the brief ownership of a tandem and a couple of
thoroughbreds would have landed me in the bankruptcy court, had it
not mercifully first landed me in the hospital.

The afternoon after Betty's visit, I took Hosea to Wellings Park.
The Fenimores shewed me a letter they had received from Oswald's
Colonel, full of praise of the gallant boy, and after discussing
it, which they did with brave eyes and voices, Sir Anthony said:--

"I want your advice, Duncan, on a matter that has been worrying us
both. Briefly it is this. When Oswald came of age I promised to
allow him a thousand a year till I should be wiped out and he
should come in. Now I'm only fifty-five and as strong as a horse.
I can reasonably expect to live, say, another twenty years. If
Oswald were alive I should owe him, in prospectu, twenty thousand
pounds. He has given his life for his country. His country,
therefore, is his heir, comes in for his assets, his twenty years'
allowance--"

"And the whole of your estate at your death?" I interposed.

"No. Not at all," said he. "At my death, it would have been his to
dispose of as he pleased. Up to my death, he would have had no
more claim to deal with it than you have. Look at things from my
point of view, and don't be idiotic. I am considering my debt to
Oswald, and therefore, logically, my debt to the country. It is
twenty thousand pounds. I'm going to pay it. The only question is
--and the question has kept Edith and myself awake the last two
nights--is what's the best thing to do with it? Of course I could
give it to some fund,--or several funds,--but it's a lot of money
and I should like it to be used to the best advantage. Now what do
you say?"

"I say," said I, "that you Croesuses make a half-pay Major of
Artillery's head reel. If I were like you, I should go into a shop
and buy a super-dreadnought, and stick a card on it with a
drawing pin, and send it to the Admiralty with my compliments."

"Duncan," said Lady Fenimore, severely, "don't be flippant."

Heaven knows I was in no flippant mood; but it was worth a foolish
jest to bring a smile to Sir Anthony's face. Also this grave,
conscientious proposition had its humorous side. It was so
British. It reminded me of the story of Swift, who, when Gay and
Pope visited him and refused to sup, totted up the cost of the
meal and insisted on their accepting half-a-crown apiece. It
reminded me too of the rugged old Lancashire commercial blood that
was in him--blood that only shewed itself on the rarest and
greatest of occasions--the blood of his grandfather, the
Manchester cotton-spinner, who founded the fortunes of his house.
Sir Anthony knew less about cotton than he did about ballistics
and had never sat at a desk in a business office for an hour in
his life; but now and again the inherited instinct to put high
impulses on a scrupulously honest commercial basis asserted itself
in the quaintest of fashions.

"There's some sense in what he says, Edith," remarked Sir Anthony.
"It's only vanity that prompted us to ear-mark this sum for
something special."

"Vanity!" cried Lady Fenimore. "You weren't by any chance thinking
of advertising our gift or contribution or whatever you like to
call it in the Daily Mail?"

"Heaven forbid, my dear," Sir Anthony replied warmly; and he
stood, his hands under his coat-tails and his gaitered legs
apart, regarding her with the air of a cock-sparrow accused of
murdering his young, or a sensitive jockey repudiating a
suggestion of crooked riding. "Heaven forbid!" he repeated. "Such
an idea never entered my head."

"Then where does the vanity come in?" asked Lady Fenimore.

They had their little argument. I lit a cigarette and let them
argue. In such cases, every married couple has its own queer and
private and particular and idiosyncratic way of coming to an
agreement. The third party who tries to foist on it his own
suggestion of a way is an imbecile. The dispute on the point of
vanity, charmingly conducted, ended by Sir Anthony saying
triumphantly:--

"Well, my dear, don't you see I'm right?" and by his wife replying
with a smile:--

"No, darling, I don't see at all. But since you feel like that,
there's nothing more to be said."

I was mildly enjoying myself. Perhaps I'm a bit of a cynic. I
broke in.

"I don't think it's vanity to see that you get your money's worth.
There's lots of legitimate fun in spending twenty thousand pounds
properly. It's too big to let other people manage or mis-manage.
Suppose you decided on motor-ambulances or hospital trains, for
instance, it would be your duty to see that you got the best and
most up-to-date ambulances or trains, with the least possible
profits, to contractors and middle-men."

"As far as that goes, I think I know my way about," said Sir
Anthony.

"Of course. And as for publicity--or the reverse, hiding your
light under a bushel--any fool can remain anonymous."

Sir Anthony nodded at me, rubbed his hands, and turned to his
wife.

"That's just what I was saying, Edith."

"My dear, that is just what I was trying to make you understand."

Neither of the two dear things had said, or given the other to
understand, anything of the kind. But you see they had come in
their own quaint married way to an agreement and were now
receptive of commonsense.

"The motor ambulance is a sound idea," said Sir Anthony, rubbing
his chin between thumb and forefinger.

"So is the hospital train," said Lady Fenimore.

What an idiot I was to suggest these alternatives! I looked at my
watch. It was getting late. Hosea, like a silly child, is afraid
of the dark. He just stands still and shivers at the night, and
the more he is belaboured the more he shivers, standing stock-
still with ears thrown back and front legs thrown forward. As I
can't get out and pull, I'm at the mercy of Hosea. And he knows
it. Since the mount of Balaam, there was never such an intelligent
idiot of an ass.

"What do you say?" asked Sir Anthony. "Ambulance or train?"

"Donkey carriage," said I. "This very moment minute."

I left them and trotted away homewards.

Just as I had turned a bend of the chestnut avenue near the Park
gates, I came upon a couple of familiar figures--familiar, that is
to say, individually, but startlingly unfamiliar in conjunction.
They were a young man and girl, Randall Holmes and Phyllis Gedge.
Randall had concluded a distinguished undergraduate career at
Oxford last summer. He was a man of birth, position, and, to a
certain extent, of fortune. Phyllis Gedge was the daughter, the
pretty and attractive daughter, of Daniel Gedge, the socialistic
builder who did not hold with war. What did young Randall mean by
walking in the dark with his arm round Phyllis's waist? Of course
as soon as he heard the click-clack of Hosea's hoofs he whipped
his arm away; but I had already caught him. They tried to look
mighty unconcerned as I pulled up. I took off my hat politely to
the lady and held out my hand to the young man.

"Good evening, Randall," said I. "I haven't seen you for ages."

He was a tall, clean-limbed, clear-featured boy, with black hair,
which though not long, yet lacked the military trimness befitting
the heads of young men at the present moment. He murmured
something about being busy.

"It will do you good to take a night off," I said; "drop in after
dinner and smoke a pipe with an old friend."

I smiled, bowed again politely, whipped up Hosea and trotted off.
I wondered whether he would come. He had said: "Delighted, I'm
sure," but he had not looked delighted. Very possibly he regarded
me as a meddlesome, gossiping old tom-cat. Perhaps for that reason
he would deem it wise to adopt a propitiatory attitude. Perhaps
also he retained a certain affectionate respect for me, seeing
that I had known him as a tiny boy in a sailor suit, and had fed
him at Harrow (as I did poor Oswald Fenimore at Wellington) with
Mrs. Marigold's famous potted shrimp and other comestibles, and
had put him up, during here and there holidays and later a
vacation, when his mother and aunts, with whom he lived, had gone
abroad to take inefficacious cures for the tedium of a futile
life. Oxford, however, had set him a bit off my plane.

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