How Dear Is Life (14 page)

“Yes, sir.” As he got up, he said, “Mr. Howlett, do you think war will come to England?”

Mr. Howlett removed his pipe. He was the serious Mr. Howlett of the previous afternoon.

“Between ourselves, I think it will be a miracle if it does not. The
Telegraph
here”—he tapped his folded newspaper—“says that we cannot stand aside if Germany marches to attack France through Belgium. The present Government attitude, you know, is only to guarantee the Channel Ports. But if we stood by while France was beaten, it would only be a question of time before our turn came. That, at any rate, is the argument, and I must say I agree with it. Only a miracle, in my opinion, can now avert war. If the worst comes to the worst I suppose Hollis and I will have to carry on as best we can, without the help of Downham and yourself.”

Mr. Howlett said this so sincerely that Phillip wished he had worked harder. He lowered his eyes before the kind, owly gaze. The dark fear came over him. Why had he wished for war to come? Now it might be too late to un-wish it.

“Well, we must not meet trouble half-way, Maddison. If you and Downham are mobilised, I shall have to apply for someone from Head Office. It’s a good thing for you you took your holiday
when you did, for it looks as though none of us will be able to have ours. I cannot possibly leave for Cromer to join my wife and family this afternoon, as I had arranged.” Mr. Howlett put on his panama hat. “I shall remain at home until I know what is going to happen. By Tuesday, as I said, things will probably be decided one way or the other. By the way, did your cousin arrive yesterday without mishap?”

“Yes, thank you, sir.”

“I suppose he will be starting next Tuesday?”

“Yes, Mr. Howlett.”

“How old is he?”

“Willie’s seventeen, sir, a year younger than me—I mean I.”

“It would be rather curious, wouldn’t it, if you were mobilised, and he came here to take your place? Don’t look so alarmed! I am not suggesting for one moment that anything like that might happen! But if there is General Mobilisation, quite half Head Office staff, and the branches too, will have to go, you know. By the way, have you any news about your uncle, George Lemon? I was so sorry to hear of his trouble.”

“He arrived in Australia, sir, to help on my other uncle’s sheep and fruit farm.”

Phillip did not add that one of the first things Uncle George did upon his arrival was to set fire to the farmhouse, after which act—to secure attention to a grievance that his plans to irrigate the entire continent of Australia by pumps operating on perpetual motion from power to be supplied by the water which they were to pump had been ignored—he was removed to an asylum.

“Ah, there’s nothing like an open-air life to bring a man back to health,” said Mr. Howlett, genially, puffing his pipe. “Well, we’ll meet again on Tuesday.”

Palely in the narrow sky over Wine Vaults Lane floated the half moon, its grey human effigy in part obscured by the shadow of the earth.

*

Phillip could hardly believe that ‘Uncle Dick’ was the same person as ‘father’. He talked quite differently, like he did when in the old days he had come to visit them on Hayling Island during the summer holidays, and had played tennis with Captain Spalding at Dr. Robartes’ house. He had been proud of Father, then. Mavis and Doris looked different, too, while Mother seemed ever so happy.

In fact, Willie was a general favourite, and had almost taken the place of Zippy the cat, whose funny face during the years had been almost the only common denominator by which tenderness was released in the Maddison household.

“Well,” said Richard, after he poured a glass of sherry for his guest, a second for his son, a third for himself, “well, success to you, Willie!”

The two girls and Hetty, hurrying in from the kitchen, drank lemonade. After the toast, Richard faced the shoulder of lamb on the dish before him. Phillip watched him use the unfamiliar stag’s-horn-handled carving knife and fork, which had come out of the silver-plate box that afternoon. He felt rather proud that they were having dinner at night, instead of supper.

“You know,” Richard was saying, “
The
Trident
reported mysterious engine noises over the Essex marshes and the Thames estuary at night, a year or so ago; obviously Zeppelins come to spy out the land, and to test their instruments. I say this—and mark my words!—if England does not honour her guarantee to Belgium, it will be her turn next! Those Prussians are at the back of it all. They destroyed the old German states and principalities. They glorify war as the highest human activity. Peace, they say, rots the nation. Yet, Willie my boy,” as he handed round the plate, “you owe your very existence to Bismarck, for if he had not killed your great-grandfather and his sons, your grandmother would not have fled to England, and married your grandfather! And where would we all have been today, if it had not been for that fact?”

“Lying fallow, sir.”

“What? Oh, I see!” Richard was surprised at his nephew’s remark; then, “Quite right, my boy! You have your mother’s wit, I perceive.”

So genial was the voice that Zippy leapt lightly on Richard’s chair, and opened its mouth to mew plaintively for a tit-bit.

“Ah, Zippy knows, don’t you, naughty ickkle Zippy——!”

Phillip did not want Willie to hear Father talking his soppy cat-talk, so he said quickly, “Oh, Father, we are planning a sort of tennis tournament on the Hill on Monday, and will you join us?”

“Tennis, Phillip? It is so long since I played, old man. I’d be awfully stiff, and out of practice.”

“You played jolly well on Hayling Island, when you beat Captain Spalding. Didn’t he, Mum?”

“Yes, you played splendidly, Dickie.”

“Oh, come now——”

Richard looked pleased to be invited. However, he would not answer directly. He was out of the habit of being invited.

“Let’s wait and see, shall we? Why, anything might happen between now and Monday.”

“We’d love you to come, sir,” said Willie.

“Yes, rather, do come, sir,” added Phillip, half-consciously imitating his cousin’s manner.

“Oh very well, since you so kindly invite me——”

Hetty felt she was going to cry. She went outside, ostensibly to see that she had turned out the gas in the oven. It was all so strange; it was almost sad; Dickie looked
happy
. She knew it was because Willie took after his mother. Poor, poor Dickie!

Unaware of her emotion, Richard went on with the carving. The mahogany table, lengthened by an added leaf brought up from under the floor, bore upon it some of the family silver, including the stag’s-horn-handled carving knife and fork. The rest of the plate stood upon the sideboard. Tea-pot, coffee-pot, jugs, and tray were massive affairs of nodulous silver, part of a set left to Richard, while still in his teens, by the will of a great-uncle. Only once before, in nearly twenty years of married life, had Hetty seen the stuff, which had been locked in the ironbound square oak box in Richard’s workroom until he had brought down some of the pieces to show her, for the second time, the previous afternoon. She and the girls—Mavis had come home early from Belgium—had cleaned them, brush and rags and saucer of Goddard’s plate powder on newspapers spread upon the kitchen table. They were heavy and ornate, more clotted and penduled than any house-martin’s nest ever was with mud and feathers: ugly and depressing as the earth’s surface around a coal-mine, with which this silver had a direct connexion, since it had been a gift to Augustus Maddison from his early Victorian partners and associates of a mining company upon the Durham family property; but in Phillip’s eyes, at least, the sight of it was pleasing. “My boy,” she had heard Richard say to him, “this will be yours after I am gone—provided the Germans don’t get it first.”

He had unlocked the oak box the afternoon before, on coming home from the City, impelled by thoughts of what he should do with the plate if the Germans invaded the East Coast, and got
so far as London. Had not Blücher remarked once,
What
a
city
to
sack!
(Blücher’s words after the Napoleonic War were,
Was
für
Plunder!
as he regarded the unplanned muddle of the place—a literal translation being
What
bloody
rubbish!
).
Richard had a vague idea, if the worst came to the worst, of burying the box under the house. The trouble was, the trap-door in the lavatory floor was not anything like big enough for the box.

Anyway, in Willie’s honour, the silver was in use for the week-end; then it would be locked up again. “After all,” Richard had said to Hetty, “the Royal Navy will have something to say to any attempted invasion!”

*

The next morning something happened which the master of the house declared to be “without precedent”. Through the letter-box came a special Sunday edition of
The
Daily
Trident
. Phillip took it down to the breakfast room. No one had ever dared to look at the paper before Father had seen it.

“Do you know, Willie, I have taken this paper since number one came out, and never missed a single copy! Let me see, it must have been a few months before you were born, old chap. It was in the spring of’ninety-six; you were born in the following winter, I remember.”

Richard looked at the face of his nephew, seeing upon it the lineaments of his adored Jenny, who had died when the little chap was born. He saw upon his nephew’s face the same glow, the same inner shining, as once upon the face of Jenny.

“Well, it looks as though our fates have been decided, Willie boy, since the
Trident
has come out on a Sunday! Let’s see what it says, shall we?”

“Yes please, Uncle Dick!”

Fear of war, yet longing for war to come, moved again in Phillip.

“On second thoughts, I think that perhaps we should wait for your aunt, don’t you?”

“Yes, Uncle Dick.”

Phillip got up from the table, and with long silent strides, one of them taking him up the three steps in the passage, entered the kitchen.

“Come on, Mum, hurry! You know what Father is—if you don’t come, he’ll prolong it for ever. I
must
know!!”

“I won’t be a minute, dear. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

“Hurry!”

She was waiting for the kettle to boil, in order to fill the hot-water jug, and the tea-pot.

“Why can’t he tell us at once?”

“Father is only being considerate, dear, he wants me to hear, too. Just coming, Dickie,” she sang out. Then to Phillip, so that his father might hear (she was taking no chances), “Don’t forget both taps, Phillip.”

“All right, I know the form!”

All were now seated at table; and then (it may not have been entirely due to the influence of the silver plate) Richard decided to say grace—an event that had not occurred in the house for many years. After that he waited while Hetty poured out the tea —while Phillip fumed and sighed. The cups having been passed round, Richard concerned himself with his guest—salt and pepper for his plate of haddock, and butter for his bread. Only when everyone had been served did he open the special edition of
The
Daily
Trident
.

Phillip’s third or fourth sigh was overlaid by a low whistle from his father.

“Listen to this, I say! GERMANY BEGINS WAR!—Precautionary Measures—Russia’s Partial Mobilisation—British Fleet Puts to Sea—(‘Thank goodness we shall not be caught napping!’)—Mr. Asquith on the Crisis—(‘“Wait and See,” I expect, is that Old Woman’s contribution, Hetty’)—Extreme Gravity—(‘Well, I’m glad anyway he realises our danger, Phillip’)—Financial Strain (‘They say in the City that a Moratorium will probably be declared, to stop a run on the Banks, Willie’)—Foreign Bourses Demoralised——”

At this point Zippy ran in through the open french windows, tail up, mewing at the smell of haddock. Seeing the cat, Richard began to speak to it in what Phillip called (out of his father’s presence) his soppy feline lingo.

“Zippy, my little Pippy, where have you been, you naughty, porty catty? I called you for your milky-pilky-wilky, but you did not come, did you, Zippy Pippy Wippy?”

“And so you missed the newsy pewsy, Zippy Pippy Wippy, about the Foreign Bourses being Demoralised,” said Phillip.

Hetty tried not to laugh. Richard was not pleased with what he considered to be his son’s unexpected lampoon of himself; but he maintained his new equilibrium.

“Where were we?” he said. “Oh yes—‘Foreign Bourses Demoralised’. INVASION OF LUXEMBURG—FRANCE’S  CLAIM ON BRITAIN—Germany the Aggressor—‘To be able to Claim British Support’—(‘They are frightened, you see, the French, and no wonder, after eighteen seventy! I was only a bit of a boy at the time, Willie, but I well remember my father saying that the French, who forced that war upon the newly federated German States, were decadent, living on illusions of Napoleonic glory, instead of keeping their powder dry—well, that seems to be about all, except——’) TODAY’S CABINET, Last Efforts to  Limit War, Great Britain’s Position—(ah, here’s something)—The Kaiser’s Order, ‘Mobilise Our Entire Force,’ he says, ‘and Safeguard the Empire’.”

Richard passed the paper to Willie.

“Well, I am going for a bicycle ride,” he announced, getting up from his chair. “It may be the last chance for some considerable time. But before I go, I propose to write a letter to Winston Churchill, at the Admiralty, to warn him of a danger that he may not have foreseen.”

These words had a quietening effect on his listeners. Doris was frightened; but she did not show it in her face when in the presence of her father. Then her face was invariably expressionless; her spirit remote, withdrawn. She had never recovered from the shock of being beaten by him, when, a small child, she had suddenly announced that she had a big knife to kill him with, if he made her Mummy cry.

Phillip wondered whatever Father was going to write to the Admiralty. He might be able to find out later from Ching, if he saw him, for Ching was in the Admiralty. Anyway, what could Father possibly know? Then he remembered reading a story in
Pearson’s
Magazine
, some time back, about a German battleship called the
Von
der
Tann
getting into the Atlantic through the Channel with masked lights, to sink scores of British ships until brought to book by British Dreadnoughts, and sunk, after a terrific fight. Father had been very impressed by that story, in fact he had given it to him to read, saying, “If ever there is war, this is what might happen to our merchant ships, Phillip.”