The Roll-Call by Arnold Bennett (read an ebook week TXT) 📕

half buried in the pillow, and the bedclothes pushed back from her shoulders, she was wideawake and gazed at him steadily.

"I'm just writing a letter," he answered gruffly.

"Now? What letter?"

"Here! You shall read it." He walked straight across the room in his gay pyjamas only partly hidden by the splendid dressing-gown, and handed her the letter. Moving nothing but her hand, she took the letter and held it in front of her eyes. He sat down between the beds, on the edge of his own bed, facing her.

"Whatever is it?"

"Read it. You've got it," he said, with impatience. He was trembling, aware that the crisis had suddenly leapt at him.

"Oh!"

She had read the opening phrase; she had received the first shock. But the tone of her exclamation gave no clue at all to her attitude. It might mean anything--anything. She shut her eyes; then glanced at him, terror-struck, appealing, wistful, implacable.

"Not at once?"

"Yes, at once."

"But surely you'll at least wait until after October."

He shook his head.

"But why can't you?"

"I can't."

"But there's no object--"

"I've got to do it."

"You're horribly cruel."

"Well, that's me!" He was sullen, and as hard as a diamond.

"George, I shall never be able to stand it. It's too much to expect. It'll kill me."

"Not it! What's the use of talking like that? If I'd been in the Territorials before the war, like lots of chaps, I should have been gone long ago, and you'd have stood it all right. Don't you understand we're at war? Do you imagine the war can wait for things like babies?"

She cried:

"It's no good your going on in that strain. You can't leave me alone with all this house on my shoulders, and so that's flat."

"Who wants to leave you all alone in the house? You can go and stay at Ladderedge, children and nurse and all." This scheme presented itself to him as he spoke.

"Of course I can't! We can't go and plant ourselves on people like that. Besides--"

"Can't you? You'll see!"

He caught her eye. Why was he being so brutal to her? What conceivable purpose was served by this harshness? He perceived that his nerves were overstrung. And in a swift rush of insight he saw the whole situation from her point of view. She was exhausted by gestation; she lived in a world distorted. Could she help her temperament? She was in the gravest need of his support; and he was an ass, a blundering fool. His severity melted within him, and secretly he became tender as only a man can be.

"You silly girl!" he said, slightly modifying his voice, taking care not to disclose all at once the change in his mood.

"You silly girl! Can't you see they'll be so proud to have you they won't be able to contain themselves? They'll turn the whole place upside-down for you. I know them. They'll pretend it's nothing, but mother won't sleep at night for thinking how to arrange things for the best, and as for my cuckoo of an uncle, if you notice something funny about your feet, it'll be the esteemed alderman licking your boots. You'll have the time of your life. In fact they'll ruin your character for you. There'll be no holding you afterwards."

She did not smile, but her eyes smiled. He had got the better of her. He had been cleverer than she was. She was beaten.

"But we shall have no money."

"Read the letter, child. I'm not a fool."

"I know you're not a fool. No one knows that better than me."

He went on:

"And what's uncle's money for, if it comes to that?"

"But we can't spunge on them like that!"

"Spunge be dashed! What's money for? It's no good till it's spent. If he can't spend it on us, who can he spend it on? He always makes out he's fiendishly hard, but he's the most generous idiot ever born."

"Yes, you're awfully like him."

"I'm not."

He was suddenly alive to the marvellous charm of the intimacy of the scene with his wife, in the early summer dawn, in the silent, enchanted house of sleepers, in the disorder of the heaped bedroom. They were alone together, shameless in front of one another, and nobody knew or saw, or could ever know or see. Their relations were unique, the resultant of long custom, of friction, of misunderstanding, of affection, of incomprehensible instincts, of destiny itself. He thought: "I have lived for this sensation, and it is worth living for."

Without the slightest movement, she invited him with her strange eyes, and as she did so she was as mysterious as ever she had been. He bent down responsively. She put her hot, clammy hands on his shoulders, and kept his head at a little distance and looked through his eyes into his soul. The letter had dropped to the floor.

"I knew you would!" she murmured, and then snatched him to her, and kissed him, and kept her mouth on his.

"You didn't," he said, as soon as she loosed him. "I didn't know myself."

But he privately admitted that perhaps she did know. She had every fault, but she was intelligent. Constantly he was faced with that fact. She did not understand the significance of the war; she lacked imagination; but her understanding was sometimes terrible. She was devious; but she had a religion. He was her religion. She would cast the god underfoot--and then in a passion of repentance restore it ardently to the sacred niche.

She said:

"I couldn't have borne it if Everard had gone and you hadn't. But of course you meant to go all the time."

That was how she saved his amour-propre.

"I always knew you were a genius--"

"Oh! Chuck it, kid!"

"But you're more, somehow. This business--"

"You don't mean joining the Army?"

"Yes."

"What rot! There's nothing in it. Fellows are doing it everywhere."

She smiled superiorly, and then inquired:

"How do you join? What are you going to do? Shall you ask Everard?"

"Well--" he hesitated. He had no desire to consult Lucas.

"Why don't you see Colonel Rannion?" she Suggested.

"Jove! That's a scheme. Never thought of him!"

Her satisfaction at the answer was childlike, and he was filled with delight that it should be so. They launched themselves into an interminable discussion about every possible arrangement of everything. But in a pause of it he destroyed its tremendous importance by remarking casually:

"No hurry, of course. I bet you I shall be kept knocking about here for months."


CHAPTER III


IN THE MACHINE

I


Colonel Rannion was brother of the wife of the man for whom George had built the house at Hampstead. George had met him several times at the dinners and other reunions to which a sympathetic architect is often invited in the dwelling that he has created. Colonel Rannion had greatly liked his sister's house, had accordingly shown much esteem for George, and had even spoken of ordering a house for himself.

Just as breakfast was being served, George had the idea of ringing up the Hampstead people for the Colonel's address, which he obtained at once. The Colonel was staying at the Berkeley Hotel. The next moment he got the Berkeley, and the Colonel in person. The Colonel remembered him instantly. George said he wanted to see him. What about? Well, a commission. The Colonel said he had to leave the hotel in twenty-five minutes. "I can be with you in less than a quarter of an hour," said George--or rather, not George, but some subconscious instinct within him, acting independently of him. The children, with nurse, were in the dining-room, waiting to breakfast with father. They were washed, they were dressed; the dining-room had been cleaned; the pleasant smell of breakfast-cooking wandered through the rooms; since the early talk between George and Lois in the silent, sleeping house the house had gradually come to life; it was now in full being--even to the girl scrubbing the front steps--except that Lois was asleep. Exhausted after the strange and crucial scene, she had dozed off, and had never moved throughout George's dressing.

Now he rushed into the dining-room--"I have to go, nurse. Fardy can't have his breakfast with you!"--and rushed out. A minute previously he had felt a serious need of food after the long, sleepless morning. The need vanished. He scurried up Elm Park Gardens like a boy in the warm, fresh air, and stopped a taxi. He was extremely excited. None but Lois knew the great secret. He had kept it to himself. He might have burst into the kitchen--for he was very apt to be informal--and said: "Well, cook, I'm going into the Army!" What a household sensation the news would cause, and what an office sensation! His action would affect the lives of all manner of people. And the house, at present alive and organic, would soon be dead. He was afraid. What he was doing was tremendous. Was it madness? He had a feeling of unreality.

At the entrance to the Berkeley Hotel lay a large automobile, with a spurred and highly polished military chauffeur. At the door of Colonel Rannion's room was stationed a spurred and highly polished, erect orderly--formidable contrast to the flaccid waiters who slouched palely in the corridors. The orderly went into the room and saluted with a click. George followed, as into a dentist's surgery. It was a small, elegant, private sitting-room resembling a boudoir. In the midst of delicately tinted cushions and flower-vases stood Colonel Rannion, grey-haired, blue-eyed, very straight, very tall, very slim--the slimness accentuated by a close-fitted uniform which began with red tabs and ended in light leggings and gleaming spurs. He conformed absolutely to the traditional physical type of soldier, and the sight of him gave pleasure.

"Good morning. Cannon. Glad to see you." He seemed to put a secret meaning into the last words.

He shook hands as he spoke, firmly, decisively, efficiently.

"I hope I'm not troubling you too much," George began.

"Troubling me! Sit down. You want a commission. The Army wants to give commissions to men like you. I think you would make a good officer."

"Of course I'm absolutely ignorant of the Army. Absolutely."

"Yes. What a pity that is! If you'd only been a pre-war Territorial you might have done three weeks' urgent work for your country by this time." The remark was a polite reproof.

"I might," admitted George, to whom the notion of working for his country had never before occurred.

"Do you think you'd like the Artillery?" Colonel Rannion questioned sharply. His tone was increasing in sharpness.

With an equal sharpness George answered unhesitatingly: "Yes, I should."

"Can you ride?"

"I can _ride_. In holidays and so on I get on my mother's horses."

"Have you hunted?"

"Never."

"H'm!... Well, I know my friend Colonel Hullocher, who commands the Second Brigade of--er--my Division, is short of an officer. Would you care for that?"

"Certainly."

Without saying anything else Colonel Rannion took up the telephone. In less than half a minute George heard him saying: "Colonel Hullocher.... Ask him to be good enough to come to the telephone at once.... That you, Hullocher?"

George actually trembled. He no longer felt that heavy weight on his stomach, but he felt