Death of a Hero (31 page)

“Oh, tell her if you like. But I shouldn't discuss it with her, if I were you. She must have long ago felt subconsciously the attraction between us, and you can see by her attitude that she accepts it. I don't see the need for all this talk and re-hashing of what's a private and personal matter between two people. We're so hypnotized by words, that we think nothing exists until we have talked about it. How can you interpret all these deep feelings and sensations in words? it's because words don't suffice that we need touch. Tell Elizabeth by loving her better.”

“Then you really think she knows?”

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, another affair, or whether George was anxious to display the artistries of Fanny, or whether Elizabeth found George peculiarly charming and ardent.

She attributed this to the happy effect of a brief absence.

7

I
N 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 canvases 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 flag-stones of the sidewalk.

As he waited for the No. 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 anyone 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 as 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 today?”

“Why?” said Elizabeth; “what's in it? Something about you?”

“No, there's a war threatened in the Balkans, and it may apparently involve everyone 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 everyone 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 newsagent 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 manoeuvres”, 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 tonight.”

“All right.”

George spent the first few days of August wandering about London, taking buses, 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 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: