Mr. Britling Sees It Through (15 page)

What was he doing now?

Lying in bed!

His son was drifting to ruin, his country was going to the devil, the house was a hospital of people wounded by his carelessness, the country roads choked with his smashed (and uninsured) automobiles, the cows were probably lined up along the borders and munching Edith's carnations at this very moment, his pocketbook and bureau were stuffed with venomous insults about her—and he was just lying in bed!

Suddenly Mr. Britling threw back his bedclothes and felt for the matches on his bedside table.

Indeed this was by no means the first time that his brain had become a whirring torment in his skull. Previous experiences had led to the most careful provision for exactly such states. Over the end of the bed hung a light, warm pyjama suit of llama-wool, and at the feet of it were two tall
boots of the same material that buckled to the middle of his calf. So protected, Mr. Britling proceeded to make himself tea. A Primus stove stood ready inside the fender of his fireplace, and on it was a brightly polished brass kettle filled with water; a little table carried a tea-caddy, a teapot, a lemon and a glass. Mr. Britling lit the stove and then strolled to his desk. He was going to write certain “Plain Words about Ireland.” He lit his study lamp and meditated beside it until a sound of water boiling called him to his tea-making.

He returned to his desk stirring the lemon in his glass of tea. He would write the plain common sense of this Irish situation. He would put things so plainly that this squabbling folly would
have
to cease. It should be done austerely, with a sort of ironical directness. There should be no abuse, no bitterness, only a deep passion of sanity.

What is the good of grieving over a smashed automobile?

He sipped his tea and made a few notes on his writing-pad. His face in the light of his shaded reading-lamp had lost its distraught expression, his hand fingered his familiar fountain pen. …

§ 8

The next morning Mr. Britling came into Mr. Direck's room. He was pink from his morning bath, he was wearing a cheerful green-and-blue silk dressing-gown, he had shaved already, he showed no trace of his nocturnal vigil. In the bathroom he had whistled like a bird. “Had a good night?” he said. “That's famous. So did I. And the wrist and arm even didn't ache enough to keep you awake?”

“I thought I heard you talking and walking about,” said Mr. Direck.

“I got up for a little bit and worked. I often do that. I hope I didn't disturb you. Just for an hour or so. It's so delightfully quiet in the night. …”

He went to the window and blinked at the garden outside. His two younger sons appeared on their bicycles returning from some early expedition. He waved a hand of greeting. It was one of those summer mornings when attenuated mist seems to fill the very air with sunshine dust.

“This is the sunniest morning bedroom in the house,” he said. “It's south-east.”

The sunlight slashed into the masses of the blue cedar outside with a score of golden spears.

“The Dayspring from on High,” he said. … “I thought of rather a useful pamphlet in the night.

“I've been thinking about your luggage at that hotel,” he went on, turning to his guest again. “You'll have to write and get it packed up and sent down here——

“No,” he said, “we won't let you go until you can hit out with that arm and fell a man. Listen!”

Mr. Direck could not distinguish any definite sound.

“The smell of frying rashers, I mean,” said Mr. Britling. “It's the clarion of the morn in every proper English home. …

“You'd like a rasher, coffee?

“It's good to work in the night, and it's good to wake in the morning,” said Mr. Britling, rubbing his hands together. “I suppose I wrote nearly two thousand words. So quiet one is, so concentrated. And as soon as I have had my breakfast I shall go on with it again.”

§ 1

It was quite characteristic of the state of mind of England in the summer of 1914 that Mr. Britling should be mightily concerned about the conflict in Ireland, and almost deliberately negligent of the possibility of a war with Germany.

The armament of Germany, the hostility of Germany, the consistent assertion of Germany, the world-wide clash of British and German interests, had been facts in the consciousness of Englishmen for more than a quarter of a century. A whole generation had been born and brought up in the threat of this German war. A threat that goes on for too long ceases to have the effect of a threat, and this overhanging possibility had become a fixed and scarcely disturbing feature of the British situation. It kept the navy sedulous and Colonel Rendezvous uneasy; it stimulated a small and not very influential section of the press to a series of reminders that bored Mr. Britling acutely, it was the excuse for an agitation that made national service ridiculous, and quite subconsciously it affected his attitude to a hundred things. For example, it was a factor in his very keen indignation at the Tory levity in Ireland, in his disgust with many things that irritated or estranged Indian feeling. It bored him; there it was, a danger, and there was no denying it, and yet he believed firmly that it was a mine that would never be fired, an avalanche that would never fall. It was a nuisance, a stupidity, that kept Europe drilling and wasted enormous sums on unavoidable
preparations; it hung up everything like a noisy argument in a drawing-room, but that human weakness and folly would ever let the mine actually explode he did not believe. He had been in France in 1911, he had seen how close things had come then to a conflict, and the fact that they had not come to a conflict had enormously strengthened his natural disposition to believe that at bottom Germany was sane and her militarism a bluff.

But the Irish difficulty was a different thing. There, he felt, was need for the liveliest exertions. A few obstinate people in influential positions were manifestly pushing things to an outrageous point. …

He wrote through the morning—and as the morning progressed the judicial calm of his opening intentions warmed to a certain regrettable vigour of phrasing about our politicians, about our political ladies, and our hand-to-mouth press. …

He came down to lunch in a frayed, exhausted condition, and was much afflicted by a series of questions from Herr Heinrich. For it was an incurable characteristic of Herr Heinrich that he asked questions; the greater part of his conversation took the form of question and answer, and his thirst for information was as marked as his belief that German should not simply be spoken but spoken “out loud.” He invariably prefaced his inquiries with the word “Please,” and he insisted upon ascribing an omniscience to his employer which was extremely irksome to justify after a strenuous morning of enthusiastic literary effort. He now took the opportunity of a lull in the solicitudes and congratulations that had followed Mr. Direck's appearance—and Mr. Direck was so little shattered by his misadventure that with the assistance of the kindly Teddy he had got up and dressed and come down to lunch—to put the matter that had been occupying his mind all the morning, even to the detriment of the lessons of the Masters Britling.

“Please!” he said, going a deeper shade of pink and partly turning to Mr. Britling.

A look of resignation came into Mr. Britling's eyes. “Yes?” he said.

“I do not think it will be wise to take my ticket for the Esperanto Conference at Boulogne. Because I think it is probable to be war between Austria and Serbia, and that Russia may make war on Austria.”

“That may happen. But I think it improbable.”

“If Russia makes war on Austria, Germany will make war on Russia, will she not?”

“Not if she is wise,” said Mr. Britling, “because that would bring in France.”

“That is why I ask. If Germany goes to war with France I should have to go to Germany to do my service. It will be a great inconvenience to me.”

“I don't imagine Germany will do anything so frantic as to attack Russia. That would not only bring in France but ourselves.”

“England?”

“Of course. We can't afford to see France go under. The thing is as plain as daylight. So plain that it cannot possibly happen. … Cannot. … Unless Germany wants a universal war.”

“Thank you,” said Herr Heinrich, looking obedient rather than reassured.

“I suppose now,” said Mr. Direck after a pause, “that there isn't any strong party in Germany that wants a war. That young Crown Prince, for example.”

“They keep him in order,” said Mr. Britling a little irritably. “They keep him in order. …

“I used to be an alarmist about Germany,” said Mr. Britling, “but I have come to feel more and more confidence in the sound
common sense of the mass of the German population, and in the Emperor too if it comes to that. He is—if Herr Heinrich will permit me to agree with his own German comic papers—sometimes a little theatrical, sometimes a little egotistical, but in his operatic, boldly coloured way he means peace. I am convinced he means peace. …”

§ 2

After lunch Mr. Britling had a brilliant idea for the ease and comfort of Mr. Direck.

It seemed as though Mr. Direck would be unable to write any letters until his wrist had mended. Teddy tried him with a typewriter, but Mr. Direck was very awkward with his left hand, and then Mr. Britling suddenly remembered a little peculiarity he had which it was possible that Mr. Direck might share unconsciously, and that was his gift of looking-glass writing with his left hand. Mr. Britling had found out quite by chance in his schoolboy days that while his right hand had been laboriously learning to write, his left hand, all unsuspected, had been picking up the same lesson, and that by taking a pencil in his left hand and writing from right to left, without watching what he was writing, and then examining the scrawl in a mirror, he could reproduce his own handwriting in exact reverse. About three people out of five have this often quite unsuspected ability. He demonstrated his gift, and then Miss Cecily Corner, who had dropped in in a casual sort of way to ask about Mr. Direck, tried it, and then Mr. Direck tried it. And they could all do it. And then Teddy brought a sheet of copying carbon, and so Mr. Direck, by using the carbon reversed under his paper, was restored to the world of correspondence again.

They sat round a little table under the cedar-trees amusing themselves with these experiments, and after that Cecily and Mr. Britling and the two small boys entertained themselves by drawing pigs with their eyes shut, and then Mr. Britling and Teddy played hard at Badminton until it was time for tea. And Cecily sat by Mr. Direck and took an interest in his accident, and he told her about summer holidays in the Adirondacks and how he loved to travel. She said she would love to travel. He said that so soon as he was better he would go on to Paris and then into Germany. He was extraordinarily curious about this Germany and its tremendous militarism. He'd far rather see it than Italy, which was, he thought, just all art and ancient history. His turn was for modern problems. Though of course he didn't intend to leave out Italy while he was at it. And then their talk was scattered, and there was great excitement because Herr Heinrich had lost his squirrel.

He appeared coming out of the house into the sunshine, and so distraught that he had forgotten the protection of his hat. He was very pink and deeply moved.

“But what shall I do without him?” he cried. “He has gone!”

The squirrel, Mr. Direck gathered, had been bought by Mrs. Britling for the boys some month or so ago; it had been christened “Bill” and adored and then neglected until Herr Heinrich took it over. It had filled a place in his ample heart that the none too demonstrative affection of the Britling household had left empty. He abandoned his pursuit of philology almost entirely for the cherishing and adoration of this busy, nimble little creature. He carried it off to his own room, where it ran loose and took the greatest liberties with him and his apartment. It was an extraordinarily bold and savage little beast even for a squirrel, but Herr Heinrich had set his heart and his very large
and patient will upon the establishment of sentimental relations. He believed that ultimately Bill would let himself be stroked, that he would make Bill love him and understand him, and that his would be the only hand that Bill would ever suffer to touch him. In the meanwhile even the untamed Bill was wonderful to watch. One could watch him for ever. His front paws were like hands, like a musician's hands, very long and narrow. “He would be a musician if he could only make his fingers go apart, because when I play my violin he listens. He is attentive.”

The entire household became interested in Herr Heinrich's attacks upon Bill's affection. They watched his fingers with particular interest because it was upon those that Bill vented his failures to respond to the stroking advances.

“Today I have stroked him once and he has bitten me three times,” Herr Heinrich reported. “Soon I will stroke him three times and he shall not bite me at all. … Also yesterday he climbed up me and sat on my shoulder, and suddenly bit my ear. It was not hard he bit, but sudden.

“He does not mean to bite,” said Herr Heinrich. “Because when he has bit me he is sorry. He is ashamed.

“You can see he is ashamed.”

Assisted by the two small boys, Herr Heinrich presently got a huge bough of oak and brought it into his room, converting the entire apartment into the likeness of an aviary. “For this,” said Herr Heinrich, looking grave and diplomatic through his glasses, “Billy will be very grateful. And it will give him confidence with me. It will make him feel we are in the forest together.”

Mrs. Britling came to consult her husband in the matter.

“It is not right that the bedroom should be filled with trees. All sorts of dust and litter came in with it.”

“If it amuses him,” said Mr. Britling.

“But it makes work for the servants.”

“Do they complain?”

“No.”

“Things will adjust themselves. And it is amusing that he should do such a thing. …”

And now Billy had disappeared, and Herr Heinrich was on the verge of tears. It was so ungrateful of Billy. Without a word.

“They leave my window open.” he complained to Mr. Direck. “Often I have askit them not to. And of course he did not understand. He has out climbit by the ivy. Anything may have happened to him. Anything. He is not used to going out alone. He is too young.

“Perhaps if I call——”

And suddenly he had gone off round the house crying: “Beelee! Beelee! Here is an almond for you! An almond, Beelee!”

“Makes me want to get up and help,” said Mr. Direck. “It's a tragedy.”

Everybody else was helping. Even the gardener and his boy knocked off work and explored the upper recesses of various possible trees.

“He is too young,” said Herr Heinrich, drifting back. … And then presently: “If he heard my voice I am sure he would show himself. But he does not show himself.”

It was clear he feared the worst. …

At supper Billy was the sole topic of conversation, and condolence was in the air. The impression that on the whole he had displayed rather a brutal character was combated by Herr Heinrich, who held that a certain brusqueness was Billy's only fault, and told anecdotes, almost sacred anecdotes, of the little creature's tenderer, nobler side. “When I feed him always
he says, ‘Thank you,' ” said Herr Heinrich. “He never fails.” He betrayed darker thoughts. “When I went round by the barn there was a cat that sat and looked at me out of a laurel bush,” he said. “I do not like cats.”

Mr. Lawrence Carmine, who had dropped in, was suddenly reminded of that lugubrious old ballad, “The Mistletoe Bough,” and recited large worn fragments of it impressively. It tells how a beautiful girl hid away in a chest during a Christmas game of hide-and-seek, and how she was found, a dried vestige, years afterwards. It took a very powerful hold upon Herr Heinrich's imagination. “Let us now,” he said, “make an examination of every box and cupboard and drawer. Marking each as we go. …”

When Mr. Britling went to bed that night, after a long gossip with Carmine about the Brahma Samaj and modern developments of Indian thought generally, the squirrel was still undiscovered.

The worthy modern thinker undressed slowly, blew out his candle and got into bed. Still meditating deeply upon the God of the Tagores, he thrust his right hand under his pillow according to his usual practice, and encountered something soft and warm and active. He shot out of bed convulsively, lit his candle, and lifted his pillow discreetly.

He discovered the missing Billy looking crumpled and annoyed.

For some moments there was a lively struggle before Billy was gripped. He chattered furiously and bit Mr. Britling twice. Then Mr. Britling was out in the passage with the wriggling lump of warm fur in his hand, and paddling along in the darkness to the door of Herr Heinrich. He opened it softly.

A startled white figure sat up in bed sharply.

“Billy,” said Mr. Britling by way of explanation, dropped his capture on the carpet, and shut the door on the touching reunion.

§ 3

A day was to come when Mr. Britling was to go over the history of that sunny July with incredulous minuteness, trying to trace the real succession of events that led from the startling crime at Sarajevo to Europe's last swift rush into war. In a sense it was untraceable; in a sense it was so obvious that he was amazed the whole world had not watched the coming of disaster. The plain fact of the case was that there was no direct connection; the Sarajevo murders were dropped for two whole weeks out of the general consciousness, they went out of the papers, they ceaased to be discussed; then they were picked up again and used as an excuse for war. Germany, armed so as to be a threat to all the world, weary at last of her mighty vigil, watching the course of events, decided that her moment had come, and snatched the dead archduke out of his grave again to serve her tremendous ambition.