Back Aa

Non-Combatants and Others

<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> <h3>ALIX, NICHOLAS, AND WEST</h3> <h4>1</h4> Nicholas, coming in ten minutes later, found Alix lying in his cane chair, limp and white and sick. 'My dear,' he said after a glance, 'you seem very ill. You prescribe, and I'll see if West has any in his medicine cupboard.' 'Sal-volatile, perhaps,' Alix murmured, and he went to find some. When he came back, she was sitting up, with a more pulled-together air. She sipped the sal-volatile, and gave him a dim, crooked smile. 'It's my feelings really, you know, not my body. It's only that I'm ... shocked to death.' Nicholas stood, short and square, with his back to the fire, looking down on her with his small, keen, observant eyes. 'What's shocked you?' 'Me myself,' said Alix, forcing an unconcerned grin. 'Alone I did it.' 'What on earth's the matter, Alix?' asked Nicholas after a pause. 'Or don't you want to talk about it?' It wasn't his experience of his sister, who he had always known of a certain exterior and cynical hardness where the emotions were concerned, that she ever wanted to 'talk about it.' But this evening she seemed queer, unlike herself, unstrung. 'Talking doesn't matter now,' said Alix, still swung between flippancy and tears. 'All the talking that matters is done already.... Basil has gone away, Nicky. He'll perhaps never come back.' 'Oh, he will. Basil does.' Nicholas looked away from her, down at the fire. 'Yes,' said Alix. 'I expect he's sure to.... I told him I cared for him,' she went on, in her clear, thin, indifferent voice, emptied of emotion. 'He doesn't care for me, you know. He pretended he hadn't understood. He pretended so hard that he broke your pipe. I was to tell you he was sorry about it—no, that he was glad, I think....' Her voice changed suddenly; anguish shook it. 'Can you make it any less bad, Nicky?' There was a pause, while Nicholas, resting his arm on the chimney-piece, stared down into the fire. He and Alix, like many brothers and sisters, had always had a shyness about them about intimate things. They were both naturally reserved; both fought shy of emotion as far as they could. They were, in some ways, very like. Despair had broken down Alix's reserve; Nicholas put his aside and considered her case in his detached way, as if it were a mathematical problem. 'Bad?' he repeated, weighing the word. 'Well, the fact is bad, of course—that you care and he doesn't. There's no altering that. It's his fault, of course, for caring himself once and leaving off. Well, anyhow, there it is. He's the poorer by it, not you.... But the other part—your telling him—isn't bad. It was merely the truth; and it's simpler and often more sensible to tell the truth about what one feels. I wouldn't mind that, if I were you. Don't bring absurdities of sex etiquette into it. They're mere conventions, after all; silly, petty, uncivilised conventions. Aren't they?' 'Perhaps,' said Alix dully. 'I don't know.' 'Well, I do. Telling the truth is all right. It oughtn't to make things worse.' 'No,' said Alix. 'It does, you know.' Nicholas, giving the subject the attention of his careful mind, knew it did. He couldn't theorise that away. 'Well,' he said at last, slowly, 'if it does, you might quite truly look at the whole thing as a mental case; a case of nervous breakdown. The war's playing the devil with your nerves—that's what it means. You do things and feel things and say things, I dare say, that you wouldn't have once, but that you can scarcely help now. You're only one of many, you know—one of thousands. The military hospitals are full of them; men who come through plucky and grinning but with their nerves shattered to bits. There are the people, like Terry and plenty more, who come through mentally undamaged, their balance not apparently upset, and the people like John (at least I rather guessed so when I saw him) and thousands more, who—well, who don't.... War's such an insane, devilish thing; its hoofs go stamping over the world, trampling and breaking.... O Lord! I've seen so much of it; it meets one all over the place. It makes one simply sick. This affair of yours is nothing to some things I've come upon lately.... West says the same, you know. Of course, as a parson, he sees much more of people, in that way, than I do. He says lots of the quite nice, decent women he visits have taken to getting drunk at the pubs; partly they're better off than they were, of course, but it's mostly just nerves. You don't drink at pubs, do you?' 'Not come to it yet,' said Alix. 'Well, you're lucky. I consider you're jolly lucky, considering the state you've been in for some time, to have done nothing worse yet than to have told a man you've every right to care for that you care for him.' Alix was crying now, quietly. 'And I have done worse things, too.... I tried to get him back from Evie. I told her he didn't really care for her—that he had been just the same with me. Oh, I know he did care for me a little, of course, but—' she choked on a laugh, 'he didn't behave as he does with Evie, a bit....' 'Probably not,' Nicholas admitted. 'Well, there you are; I behaved like a cad about it. That's worse than drinking at pubs—much worse. It's even worse than telling him I cared.... What can I do about it, Nicky? Is that part of the war disease too?' 'Certainly,' said Nicholas promptly. 'Precisely the same thing, and bears out all I was saying. And, as you remark, much worse than drinking at pubs.... Sorry, but it does prove my case, you know. You don't do that sort of thing in peace time, at least, do you?' he added with impartial curiosity. 'I've forgotten about peace time.... No, I don't think I used to.... Suppose I shall have to tell Evie,' Alix added morosely. 'Though she doesn't care for him, a bit.... What a bore.... All right, Nicky; I'll try to look at myself as a mental case.... And what's left is that Basil has gone.... I love him, you know, extraordinarily. I—Oh, Nicky, I love him, I love him, I love him.' She passionately sobbed for a time. Nicholas stood silent, thinking, till she lay back exhausted and quiet. 'I'm sorry,' she said huskily. 'I won't cry any more. That's all.' Nicholas was looking at her consideringly. 'I wonder,' he murmured, 'what the best remedy for you is. Something that takes your whole thoughts, I fancy, you want. Of course there's the School. But it doesn't seem altogether to work. Some strong counter-interest to the war, you want.' 'To take me outside myself,' Alix amplified for him. 'Perhaps you'd like me to collect bus tickets or lost cats or something, to distract my mind, Nicky dear.' 'I think not. Your mind, I should say, is distracted enough already. You need to collect that, rather than bus tickets or cats.... To me it seems a pity you should live at Violette. I think you should stop that.' Alix said apathetically, 'I don't think it much matters where I live. I can't live at Wood End. It's all war and war-work there, and I should go mad—even madder than now. I might drink at pubs.... I thought Violette would be a rest, because they none of them care about the war really, a bit; but it isn't a rest any more. Ever since Paul ... I've known one can't really put the war away out of one's mind: it can't be done. It's hurting too many people too badly; it's no use trying to pretend it isn't there and go on as usual. I can't. I can't even paint decently; my work's simply gone to pot.' 'Sure to,' Nicholas agreed. 'I believe,' said Alix, 'it's jealousy that's demoralising me most. Jealousy of the people who can be in the beastly thing.... Oh, I do so want to go and fight.... How can you not try to go, Nicky? I can't understand that. Though of course you wouldn't get passed. 'It's quite easy,' returned Nicholas. 'I don't approve of joining in such things.' 'But I want to go and help to end it.... Oh, it's rotten not being able to; simply rotten.... Why shouldn't girls? I can't bear the sight of khaki; and I don't know whether it's most because the war's so beastly or because I want to be in it.... It's both.... Oh bother, why were we born at a time like this, as Kate calls it?' 'We weren't. The late 'eighties and early 'nineties were very different. They probably unfitted us for the Sturm und Drang of the twentieth century. Though, if you come to that, there was plenty of Sturm und Drang in our own country at that period, as usual.... I suppose Poles have no right to look for peace.... O Lord, how good it would be to see Germany and Russia exterminate each other altogether! I believe I'd cheat my way into the army and fight, if I thought I could help in that.' 'I dare say we shall see it, if this war goes on much longer.... I've been wondering lately,' went on Alix, 'if there isn't a third way in war time. Not throwing oneself into it and doing jobs for it, in the way that suits lots of people; I simply can't do that. And not going on as usual and pretending it's not there, because that doesn't work. Something against war, I want to be doing, I think. Something to fight it, and prevent it coming again.... I suppose mother thinks she's doing that.' 'She does,' said Nicholas. 'Undoubtedly. I'm not sure I agree with her, but that's a detail. She thinks she's doing it.... Well, I gather she'll be home very soon now.' 'And I suppose Mr. West thinks he's doing it, doesn't he—fighting war, I mean, with his Church and things.' 'Yes, West thinks so too. Again, I don't particularly agree with his methods, but that's his aim.' 'You don't particularly agree with any methods, do you?' 'No; I think they're mostly pretty rotten. And in this case I believe, personally, we're up against a hopeless proposition. West calls it the devil, and is bound by his profession to believe it will be eventually overcome. I'm not bound to believe that any evil or lunacy will be overcome; it seems to me at least an open question. Some have been, of course; others have scarcely lessened in the course of these several million years. However, as West remarks, the world, no doubt, is still young. One should give it time. Anyhow, one has to; no other course is open to us, however poor a use we may think it puts the gift to.... That's West, I think. Hullo, West; we've been talking about you. We were discussing your incurable optimism.' <h4>2</h4> West looked tired. He shook hands with Alix and sat down by the window. Alix did not feel it mattered that he should see she had been crying, because clergymen, who visit the unfortunate, the ill-bred, the unrestrained, must every day see so many people who have been crying that they would scarcely notice. 'Incurable,' West repeated, and the crisp edge of his voice was flattened and dulled by fatigue. 'Well, I hope it is. There are moments when one sees a possible cure looming in the distance.' 'I was saying,' said Nicholas, 'that you're bound, by your profession, to believe in the final vanquishing of the devil.' 'I believe I am,' West assented, without joy. 'I believe so.' He cogitated over it for a moment, and added, 'But the devil's almost too stupid to be vanquished. He's an animal; a great brainless beast, stalking through chaos. He's got a hide like a rhinoceros, and a mind like an escaped idiot: you don't know where to have him. He drags people into his den and sits on them ... it's too beastly.... He wallows in his native mud, full of appetites and idiot dreams, and his idiot dreams become fact, and people make wars ... and get drunk. There are men and women and babies tight all about the streets this evening. Saturday night, you know.... Sorry to be depressing,' he added, more in his usual alert manner; 'it's a rotten thing to be in these days.... The fog's bad outside.' Alix rose to go, and West stood up too. For a moment the three stood looking at each other in the fog-blurred, firelit room, dubious, questioning, grave, like three travellers who have lost their way in a strange country and are groping after paths in the dark.... Nicholas spoke first. 'That's your bell, isn't it, West? You two could walk together as far as Gray's Inn Road.' Nicholas lit the gas and settled down to write. Alix and West went down the stairs and out into Fleet Street, and the city in the fog was as black as a wood at night. <h4>3</h4> Alix thought, 'Christians must mind. Clergymen must mind awfully. It's their business that's being spoilt. It's their job to make the world better: they must mind a lot, and they can't fight either,' and saw West's face, tired and preoccupied, in the darkness at her side. 'War Extra. 'Fishul. Bulgarian Advance. Fall of Kragujevatz,' cried a newsboy, as best he could. 'It'll be all up with Serbia presently,' said West. 'Going under fast. A wipe out, like Belgium, I suppose.... And we look at it from here and can't do anything to stop it. Pretty rotten, isn't it?' His voice was bitter. 'If we could go out there and try,' said Alix, 'we shouldn't feel so bad, should we?' He shook his head. 'No: not so bad. War's beastly and abominable to the fighters: but not to be fighting is much more embittering and demoralising, I believe. Probably largely because one has more time to think. To have one's friends in danger, and not to be in danger oneself—it fills one with futile rage. Combatants are to be pitied; but non-combatants are of all men and women the most miserable. Older men, crocks, parsons, women—God help them.' 'Yes,' Alix agreed, on the edge of tears again. Then West seemed to pull himself up from his despondency. 'But really, of course, they've a unique opportunity. They can't be fighting war abroad; but they can be fighting it at home. That's what it's up to us all to do now, I'm firmly convinced, by whatever means we each have at our command. We've all of us some. We've got to use them. The fighting men out there can't; they're tied. Some of them never can again.... It's up to us.... Good-bye, Miss Sandomir: my way is along there.' They parted at the corner of Gray's Inn Road. Alix saw him swallowed up in black fog, called by his bell, going to his church to fight war by the means he had at his command. She got into her bus and went towards Violette, where no one fought anything at all, but where supper waited, and Mrs. Frampton was anxious lest she should have got lost in the fog. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <h2>PART III</h2> <h3>DAPHNE</h3> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.