This Is the End by Stella Benson (best novels of all time .TXT) 📕

impress Jay a lot, I think, because you don't say overmuch. And I want you to tell her something of what I feel about it too."

"I never realised before that from your point of view there was any advantage in being Older and Wiser," said Mr. Russell.

"You don't mind my saying all this?" said Kew. It was an assumption rather than a question.

"Not at all. But I don't understand exactly what you want me to do."

"To give up this idiotic motor tour," said Kew. "And go back to London, and talk Jay out of her 'bus-ism. I want her to leave it off, and let the Family discover her romantically enjoying some passable imitation of her Secret World. I want the Family never to know of all that lay between. I do want it all to come right. I'm going off to-day, and I may not see her again. And I know hardly any trustable person but you."

"Right," said Mr. Russell.

He thought: It's too funny to be true, but if it isn't true, I shall be surprised.

Kew enlarged to him on the details of his mission.

On the breakfast table, when they returned, they found a letter from Jay, evidently written for private circulation in the Family.

Dear Kew--I have just come in from a walk almost as exciting as it was beautiful. We walked through our village, which clings to both sides of a crack-like harbour that might just contain a carefully navigated walnut-shell. The village is grey and white, all its walls are whitewashed, all its roofs are slate with cushions of stone-crop clinging to them. Sea-thistles grow outside its doors, seagulls are its only birds. The slope on which it stands is so steep that the main road is on a level with the roofs on one side, and if you were absentminded, you might walk on to a roof and fall down a chimney before you became aware that you had strayed from the street. But we were not absent-minded. We sang Loud Songs all the way. We ran across the grass after the shadows of the round clouds that bowled across the sky. In single file we followed the dog Trelawney after the seagulls. Everything was so clear that we could see the little rare island that keeps itself to itself on our horizon. I don't know its name; they say it bears a town and a post-office and a parson, but I don't think this is true. I think that island is an intermittent dream of ours. When you get beyond the village, the cliff leaves off indulging in coves and harbours and such frivolities, and decides to look upon itself seriously as a giant wall against a giant sea. Only it occasionally defeats its own object, because it stands up so straight that the sea finds it easier to knock down. On a point of cliff there was a Lorelei seagull standing, with its eye on Trelawney. It had pale eyes, and a red drop on its beak. And Trelawney, being a man-dog, did what the seagull meant him to do. He ran for it, he ran too far, and fell over the edge. Well, this is not a tragic incident, only an exciting one. Trelawney fell on to a ledge about ten foot below the top of the cliff, and sat there in perfect safety, shrieking for help. My Friend said: "This is a case of 'Bite my teeth and Go.'" It is a saying in this family, dating from the Spartan childhood of my Friend, that everything is possible to one who bites his teeth and goes. The less you like it, the harder you bite your teeth, and it certainly helps. My Friend said: "If we never meet again, remember to catch and hang that seagull for wilful murder. It would look rather nice stuffed in the hall." The cliff overhangs rather just there, and when he got over the edge, not being a fly or used to walking upside down, he missed his footing. We heard a yelp from Trelawney. But the seagull's conscience is still free of murder, my Friend only fell on to Trelawney's ledge. So it was all right, and we ate our hard-boiled eggs on the scene of the incident.

"I remember--" said Mr. Russell.

"That letter," said Anonyma, "ought to help us a bit."

She was quite bright, because Kew had conveyed to her the hope that the plot for the rescue of the Family was doing well. Cousin Gustus also, with no traces of a headache except a faint smell of Eau-de-Cologne, had come down hopefully to breakfast.

"Obviously the North coast of Cornwall," said Mrs. Russell. "The village might be Boscastle, and the island is surely Lundy.... Such an intensely funny name, Lundy, isn't it? Ha-ha! For some reason it amuses me more and more every time I hear it. It reminds me of learning geography with the taste of ink and bitten pen in my mouth. I used to catch my sister's eye--just as I'm catching yours now--and laugh ever so much, over Lundy. I used to be a terror to my governesses."

"I'm very much afraid that I can't spare much more time for the motor tour," said Mr. Russell, and Anonyma was so anxious for the first signs of rescue that she actually let him speak. "Business in London. I dare say I could get you to Cornwall within the next few days, but some time this week I must get back to town."

"I'll come with you," said his wife. "You can't shake me off so easily, my dear. Ha-ha!"

"It's too rainy to start to-day," said Cousin Gustus. "I have known people drowned by swollen rivers and such while trying to travel in just such a deluge as this. We will start to-morrow."

"Wet or fine," added Anonyma.

"The fact remains," said Kew, "that I must leave you by the ten something. I must leave you to sniff without my help, like bloodhounds, along the trail of the elusive Jay. But I won't bid any one a fervent good-bye, because I daresay I shall be back again on leave for lack of anything else to do in three weeks' time, if we can't get across the Channel. In that case I'll meet you one day next month--say at Land's End or the Firth of Forth. Otherwise--say forty years hence in Heaven."

"It is very wrong to joke about Death," said Cousin Gustus. "I once knew a man who died with just such a joke on his lips."

"I hope it was a better joke than that," said Kew. "It can't be wrong to laugh at Death. Death is such a silly, cynical thing that a little wholesome leg-pulling by an impartial observer ought to do it good."

Mr. Russell was heard asking his Hound in a low voice for the truth about Death and Immortality.

So Kew went away, and left the Family gazing at the rain. Mrs. Russell was conducting a mysterious process known as writing up notes. It was hardly possible, by the way, that Anonyma could have loved the possessor of a rival notebook.

It rained very earnestly. There was no hole in the sky for hope to look through. The puddles in the village street jumped into the air with the force of the rain. You will, without difficulty, remember that it rained several times in the Spring of 1916. But this day was a most perfect example of its kind.

Cousin Gustus was both depressed and depressing. I am afraid I have not given you a very flattering portrait of Cousin Gustus. I ought to have told you that he was very well provided with human affections, and that he loved Kew better than any one else in the world. I might say that the departure of Kew let loose Cousin Gustus's intense grievance against the Germans, except that I could hardly describe a grievance as let loose that had never been pent up.

Cousin Gustus was always angry with the Germans whatever they did, but the thing that made him more angry than ever was to read in his paper some report admitting courageous or gracious behaviour in a German.

"The partings and the troubles that these Germans have caused ought to hang like mill-stones round their necks for ever," said Cousin Gustus. "Talk about Iron Crosses--Pish! I should like to have a German here for ten minutes. I should say to him: 'My Kew was a good boy, I would almost say a clever boy, doing well in his profession: no more thought than that dog has of being a soldier till War broke out. Does that look as if we were prepared for War?' I should say. 'Doesn't that show where the blame lies?' What could he answer?"

Mr. Russell and his Hound were apparently listening, but they could offer no suggestions.

"Kew's going has upset me so that my headache has returned, and I cannot get any Aspirin here," continued Cousin Gustus. "I know a man who was very much addicted to these neuralgic headaches, who committed suicide by throwing himself from the bathroom window, solely owing to neuralgia. And the rain does nothing towards improving matters. They say the German guns bring on the rain. I tell you there is no limit to their guilt. Look at this morning's paper: 'The enemy bombarded this section of our front with increasing intensity during the day....' I ask you, IS THAT WAR?"

"Yes," said Mr. Russell absently.

"Nonsense," said Cousin Gustus. "What we ought to do is to shoot every German we can catch. Shooting's too good for them. Hang them. That would teach them. Any Government but ours would have thought of it long ago. Iron Crosses, indeed, Pish!"

Cousin Gustus finds the Iron Cross very useful for the filling up of crannies in his edifice of wrath.

Anonyma said: "When I think of those old fairy-like German songs, I feel as if I had lost a bit of my heart and shall never find it again. That is what I regret most about this War. It is bad art."

"Art, indeed," said Cousin Gustus. "Why, every time they steal a picture they get an Iron Cross. I know a man who saw a German wearing a perfect rosary of Iron Crosses; the fellow was boasting of having bayoneted more babies than any other man in the regiment. Listen to this: 'The enemy attacked the outskirts of the village of What D'you Call'em, and engaged our troops in hand-to-hand fighting.' Think of it, and we used to say they were a civilised race. At the point of the bayonet, it says--isn't it atrocious? 'The enemy were finally repulsed at the point of the bay--' oh well, of course that may be different. I don't pretend to be a military expert...."

"I hate the Germans," said Anonyma, "because they have spoilt my own idea of them. I hate having a mistake brought home to me."

"I hate the Germans," began Mr. Russell, "because--"

"I'm going for a walk," said Anonyma. "I am sick of sitting here and hearing you two old fogies argue about the War. If War is bad art, it is vulgar to refer to it."

I know exactly what Mr. Russell was going to say. He had a vague culinary metaphor in his mind. I hate the Germans because they are underdone, they are red meat. Their vices and their virtues and their music, and their greed and their fairyism and their militarism, all seem to have been roasted in a hurry, and to contain, like red meat, the natural juices to