WX;CEQRGf 
 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
WRITINGS OF W. L. GEORGE 
 
 IRovete 
 
 A BED OF ROSES 
 THE CITY OF LIGHT 
 UNTIL THE DAY BREAK 
 
 (English title, Israel Kalisch) 
 THE LITTLE BELOVED 
 
 (English title, The Making of an Englishman) 
 THE SECOND BLOOMING 
 THE STRANGERS' WEDDING 
 OLGA NAZIMOV, (SHORT STORIES) 
 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 ANATOLE FRANCE 
 DRAMATIC ACTUALITIES 
 LITERARY CHAPTERS 
 
 (English title, A Novelist on Novels) 
 
 ENGINES OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 FRANCE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 
 LABOUR AND HOUSING AT PORT SUNLIGHT 
 WOMAN AND TO-MORROW 
 THE INTELLIGENCE OF WOMAN 
 EDDIES OF THE DAY 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
 BEING THE PICTURE OF A VERT GALLANT GENTLE- 
 MAN; THE ADVENTURES OF HIS SPIRIT IN WAR 
 AND PEACE ; THE TALE OF HIS DAUGHTERS, HIS SON, 
 THEIR FRIENDS; OF THEIR LOVES AND MISERIES; 
 OF THE WAT OF THE WORLD THROUGH THE GREAT 
 
 WAR INTO THE UNEXPLORED REGIONS OF PEACE 
 
 BY 
 
 W. L. GEORGE 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1919 
 
Copyright, 1919, 
 BY W. L. GEORGE. 
 
 Copyright in Great Britain, Ireland, and British Colonies 
 and in all countries under the Convention by W. L. George. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 Norinooto tyrtss 
 Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
' 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 TO RUSSET 
 
 AND 
 KALLIKRATES 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK ONE 
 
 In England . 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 
 Among the Yahoos 173 
 
 BOOK T] 
 
 The Lone Grey Company 335 
 
BOOK ONE 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
Weep, willow, weep o'er the stream that wanders, 
 Yet never retraces its course; 
 Weep, willow, weep for the twilight of lovers 
 And all that are racked in a world run astray . , 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
 BOOK ONE 
 IN ENGLAND 
 
 ON soft, felted pads, Kallikrates came out of the 
 library. For a moment, framed in the oak doorway, he 
 stood, his orange coat raised by apprehension. The nar- 
 row black lunes of his yellow eyes expanded as, laden 
 with suspicion, he surveyed the noonday emptiness of the 
 hall, the flickering shadows thrown by the log fire; he 
 listened to the ticking of the clock, to the regular snore 
 of Toss, the old collie, who lay before the hearth. His 
 long, sinewy body was banded as an arc, animate with 
 lust and fear; he waited for that something to happen 
 which, instinct and experience told him, must ever be 
 guarded against in the homes of men. But the silence 
 was profound; the intensity receded from the watered 
 agate of his eyes. Kallikrates understood that the con- 
 ventions still prevailed, that men were eating. Content, 
 he squatted, gave a few casual licks to the thick, silky 
 fur of his left thigh. 
 
 Then a new thought entered his mind ; he paused, thigh 
 upraised, pink tongue edging as the petal of a peony the 
 pale bluntness of his nose. Immensely watchful, con- 
 scious of encircling perils, Kallikrates crept along the 
 wall of the corridor, found the study door open, leapt 
 
ALLEY 
 
 and fell, light as a mustard seed, upon his master's desk. 
 At once he felt removed from a world of strife ; peace and 
 security held him in fee; soon his lids obscured all save 
 a gleaming stripe of eyeball. A sunbeam fell on his 
 broad flank, burnished the copper markings on the pale 
 gold hair. He furled his tail about him; his squat head 
 sank to the great paws which, one after the other, he 
 folded. Slowly, as a singer humming to himself, he 
 began to purr. 
 
 II 
 
 As Sir Hugh, a little after his womankind, sat down to 
 lunch, Lady Oakley cried out: 
 
 " Hugh ! Cradoc says he won't go." 
 
 " Oh," said Sir Hugh. " No soup, Sutton, please." 
 
 " Oh, do have some hot soup," said Louise Douglas. 
 " You've been out in the wet all the morning." 
 
 "Perfectly scandalous!" said Lady Oakley. "That 
 man's had every chance to join up. In '14 you said you'd 
 let him off his rent. When the Derby scheme was on I 
 went to see him myself. But he didn't attest, and now 
 compulsion's come he says he won't go. Hugh, we can't 
 let it go on. We don't want what do they call it, 
 a conscientious objector in the village. You must make 
 him enlist." 
 
 " After the soup, dear," said Sir Hugh negligently. 
 
 Louise and Monica began to giggle, and Sir Hugh, 
 looking up, caught a gleam of merriment in the eyes of 
 Lee, who stood by the tortured marble-topped Louis XV 
 table, preparing to carve the joint. He looked away hur- 
 riedly, but a warmth of friendliness rose between him 
 and the old butler, who had played with him when he was 
 a small boy; the room was filled with a hint of amiable 
 
IN ENGLAND 5 
 
 mockery directed against Lady Oakley. She did not 
 seem to mind. She was a very handsome woman of 
 about forty-five, with thick, dark red hair and a good 
 skin where rose, white and yellow had blended in a pleas- 
 ant, uniform colour. She was growing rather stout, but 
 hers was a jovial stoutness; the suspicion of mockery did 
 not dull the sherry-bright vivacity of her brown eyes, or 
 stale the good curves of her rather thick lips. Still, she 
 felt impelled to decisive assertions. 
 
 " It's all very well your making jokes about it, Hugh. 
 This isn't a joking matter. When the country's come to 
 such a pass, when it needs the services of every able- 
 bodied man and woman, we can't afford to allow ex- 
 amples like the one Cradoc is giving all those young men 
 who've nothing better to do than sit in the King's Arms." 
 
 " I thought Cradoc was a teetotaler," said Monica. 
 
 " That makes it worse," said Lady Oakley, with much 
 severity and little relevance. " This is not the time for 
 cranks." 
 
 " Like the King," said Monica, slewing her grey eyes 
 towards her father. " You know he took the pledge in 
 March, while poor Cradoc ..." 
 
 " Now, Monica," said Lady Oakley, " don't be irritat- 
 ing. Even if the King and Mr. Cradoc do do the same 
 thing, it's different. The beef's overdone. Burnt to a 
 cinder. And I don't know what Mrs. Marsden's doing; 
 we never seem to get any fish here." 
 
 "One doesn't at the seaside," said Louise; "at least 
 nobody catches anything except the Londoners. We've 
 got a poor little blind Cockney at the hospital ; he spends 
 most of his day by the harbour, and he catches as many 
 fish as the Pied Piper caught rats. Poor chap! he was 
 at Gallipoli." 
 
 " Ah, yes, Gallipoli," said Sir Hugh gloomily. 
 
6 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 There was a long silence, for on that morning, the 
 ninth of January, 1916, England knew that the last inch 
 of that blood-stained peninsula had been abandoned. 
 Sir Hugh felt the remoteness of this gritty, dusty, arid 
 rock on which, beyond his sight, almost beyond his 
 knowledge, so many young Australians, R. N. V. R's, so 
 many of his own Sussex Coast Regiment had fallen. 
 Through the windows, flowered with frost, he saw the 
 English sun fall like silver on the sodden downs which 
 rolled away from Udimore to Rye marsh in its midday 
 veil of opaline haze, to the tree-tufted knoll of Winchel- 
 sea, to little red and yellow Rye, to the still, wintry sea, 
 grey as the wing of a cygnet. He sighed, and repeated: 
 
 "Ah, yes, Gallipoli!" 
 
 " They say we paid the Turks five millions to let us 
 off," said Lady Oakley. She pondered for a moment, 
 and as there was in the Cawston stock from which she 
 sprang a lurking coarseness, added: "They'd have come 
 in on our side for half that if we'd played our cards 
 properly. However, I suppose we must make the best 
 of it. Now we've got compulsion at last, we shall be all 
 right." 
 
 " I suppose so," said Sir Hugh. " Still it seems a pity. 
 I thought the Derby scheme would pull us through with- 
 out our having to come to this. I'd have liked to think 
 but what's the good? War's not cricket. At least, 
 not the way it's played nowadays." 
 
 " Of course it's not cricket," cried Lady Oakley. 
 " We've got to win. And though we've got all sorts of 
 people trying to set class against class, people like that 
 man Simon, who resigns because he's against compulsion 
 instead of sticking to his guns like a decent man 
 Monica, I won't be interrupted." 
 
 " But, Mother, I didn't say anything." 
 
IN ENGLAND 7 
 
 " You were going to say something," said Lady Oakley, 
 presumably conscious that her daughter, in the irritating 
 way which recalled her father's worst moments, had 
 detected some gap in her logic. Swiftly she carried the 
 attack into her daughter's lines. " Instead of sitting 
 there making fun of me, and I'm sure I don't know 
 about what, you'd do much better to be doing something. 
 In days like these, when every able-bodied man and 
 woman ..." 
 
 " I know, I know, Mother," said Monica. " It's not 
 my fault if I'm not as strong as a dray horse like Louise, 
 and can't scrub stairs and mend roofs, which, I believe, 
 is the chief occupation of hospital nurses. Whenever I 
 want to do something you don't like it." 
 
 " Well, then, you should want to do something else." 
 
 " But you don't like that, Mother. You wouldn't let 
 me go out with the Motor Ambulance people." 
 
 " Sylvia went, and you know it wasn't a success. A 
 little more currant roll, Sutton." 
 
 " And when I had that chance at the Foreign Office 
 
 j> 
 
 " How can you be a clerk in the Foreign Office with 
 two uncles and a grandfather in it? " 
 
 " Please don't quarrel, Lena," said Sir Hugh. A 
 pucker of irritation formed between his level, black 
 brows. He was a thin man, of medium size, with square, 
 greyish hair. He looked about fifty, but his dark grey 
 eyes, Monica's eyes, were still young. The hand that 
 stroked the clipped, black and grey moustache was large 
 but well-modelled; it arrested attention less than the 
 high, bony, beak-like nose, which had been set as a 
 brand upon the face of nearly every male Oakley for 
 the last two centuries. Sir Hugh looked accurate and 
 wide-minded; there was about him flexibility as well as 
 
8 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 hardness, as if he were a rapier-man rather than a 
 bludgeon-man. 
 
 So, by degrees, the Sunday dinner came to its end, 
 combative and rich in irritations, as if that morning's 
 tragedy in the ^Egean Sea had stirred little passions into 
 great ones, marred the peaceful loveliness of that old 
 house by the Channel. Lady Oakley moved away to 
 the drawing-room to resume her perusal of the last vol- 
 ume of Mr. Ian Hay, an author whom she ranged second 
 only to Mr. Kipling. The two girls reappeared for a 
 moment in the lime avenue, thick-booted, loud- 
 tweeded, felt-hatted, and disappeared, while Sir Hugh, 
 without a smile, received from the butler a saucer on 
 which lay some shavings of the overdone beef. With this 
 he walked away towards the study. 
 
 Ill 
 
 THE dining room at Knapenden Place was closely in- 
 dicative of its owner. The house itself was neither very 
 old nor beautiful. Built in the seventeenth century by 
 an early Oakley, it bore the heavy brick brand of the 
 Queen Anne taste that fell, respectable as a policeman's 
 white-gloved hand, on the airy rascalities of Stuart 
 architects. It lay on the top of Udimore ridge, looking 
 towards the sea, solemn rather than defiant. Behind the 
 broad hall ran the library, a dusty store of fungus- 
 threatened country histories, collected sermons, remains 
 of the Pusey and the Paley controversies, three-volume 
 novels in the last stage of obscurity, diaries of silly tours 
 written by silly noblemen, the usual lumber room of the 
 country house, where small boys play cricket on wet 
 days and are ultimately swished. A few family por- 
 traits, an Oakley in a slashed doublet by an unknown 
 
IN ENGLAND 9 
 
 painter, an Oakley in a braided uniform, a pretty girl 
 painted by Hoppner prettily ; Romney 's exquisite " Be- 
 linda", and the overflow of Sir Hugh's collection of 
 George Morlands. 
 
 The right wing held the drawing-room, very white and 
 gilt, crackling with chintz, much cumbered with Barto- 
 lozzis and Lowestoft china. It extended itself into the 
 ballroom that, in those days of war, was pitifully cold, 
 with its dust-sheeted chairs and swathed chandelier. 
 The left wing was almost entirely occupied by the big 
 dining room, harmonious and lovely, with its white walls 
 and scarlet brocade curtains; Sir Hugh's precious Mor- 
 lands, twenty-three in number, hung there, sober and 
 mellow, along the line. Sir Hugh loved that long room, 
 the prospect over the South Terrace to the lime avenue, 
 Knapenden village and the sea, but he found a greater 
 intimacy in the small rooms that ran along the back, 
 a little morning room abutting on the now parrotless 
 aviary, a gun room with the brown, balanced barrels 
 quietly shining in their glass case. He liked close places, 
 where friendly objects jostle their possessor, so he loved 
 his study best of all; it was his keep, almost as secret 
 as the keep of his heart. 
 
 The study was a smallish room on the right side of the 
 hall. Its walls were of carved oak, entirely hidden by a 
 close covering of shelves where books were crowded and 
 tumbled without much order. They were a strange and 
 large selection, books suggesting a certain diversity of 
 interests, " The Wealth of Nations ", " Progress and Pov- 
 erty ", many modern novels, quite close to " The Prin- 
 ciples of Banking"; evidently the owner was a politician 
 and a man of affairs, for he had collected Morley's " On 
 Compromise ", Cromer's " Modern Egypt ", and many 
 such like; much of the space was occupied by the Trans- 
 
10 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 actions of the Institute of Bankers, and by crowding 
 blue books, some in the last stage of decay and dirt. 
 Indeed, the study was worthy of love, for it was much 
 dirtier than the whole house put together, the sort of 
 study that has a quality of the intangible because people 
 seldom dust it. It had other sides, too, rather stranger, 
 exemplified by a number of French novels, nearly all 
 Anatole France, some Zola, a good many Balzacs, some 
 French translations of Dostoievsky, and unexpectedly 
 Villiers de 1'Isle Adam and Barbey d'Aurevilly. Sprawl- 
 ing in the middle of the desk lay " La Chartreuse de 
 Parme ", a ninepenny-halfpenny edition, obviously picked 
 up on a bookstall. A large desk, eight feet long, a hard 
 wood armchair, fit for a saint turned bookkeeper, and a 
 couple of large club armchairs, fit for a saint in moments 
 of temptation. No pictures, but many pipes. Along the 
 edge of the desk a row of photographs of vivid-looking 
 young people, and on the right-hand corner, humped and 
 purring, Kallikrates in a state of wary somnolence. 
 
 Sir Hugh came in quite quietly, carrying the saucer. 
 He trod gently, for he wanted to surprise Kallikrates, 
 an old ambition so far ungratified. Seeing that a stripe 
 of watchful amber appeared' under the cat's eyelids, Sir 
 Hugh sat down, placing the saucer beside him, and 
 vaguely busied himself with " La Chartreuse de Parme." 
 This bespoke another ambition: to induce Kallikrates to 
 display desire; this, too, was seldom gratified. After a 
 moment he looked sideways at the cat and in despair 
 said to him: " I've no time for you. I've got a heavy 
 job on. We're going to hold up some roads, most of the 
 roads; we've no men to make them, do you hear? " As 
 Kallikrates showed no signs of hearing, Sir Hugh took 
 up the East Sussex Council Scheme, proposing to main- 
 tain trunk roads, to abandon certain arteries in rural 
 
IN ENGLAND 11 
 
 districts, and for a moment absorbed himself in this work. 
 
 For Sir Hugh Oakley was what is called a practical 
 man; son of a diplomat, he found in his line mostly 
 country gentlemen, here and there a soldier and, most 
 notably, his grandfather, killed at Trafalgar. He him- 
 self had been intended for the diplomatic service, but 
 that shrewd, hard streak in him which was suggested by 
 his bony nose had brought him to desire some practical 
 association with life. He had thought of politics, of the 
 amiable spaciousness of Liberal Unionism, but at bottom 
 he preferred realities. So he had drifted into an old, 
 private bank, allied to the Oakleys, of which they had 
 always been a little ashamed. Sir Hugh found no prej- 
 udice in himself; he had enjoyed those twenty years in 
 the bank, and would leave the Oakleys a little richer than 
 he had found them, which was not done in his family. 
 Now he had retired, and his activities were mainly local, 
 concerned with the county council, with the harbour 
 board, with all things that needed the unusual combina- 
 tion of good breeding and good brains. Sir Hugh liked 
 business; a balance sheet gave him the sensual satisfac- 
 tion that the mathematician finds in a perfect solution: 
 for a balance sheet balances. That is so harmonious. 
 
 But that day the disturbance of the morning was still 
 on him, and after a moment he laid down the road plan, 
 turned to Kallikrates and put forward a finger until it 
 was but half an inch from the cat's nose. Slowly Kalli- 
 krates opened his eyes and looked at him with a gaze in 
 which was no emotion, not even surprise. Sir Hugh 
 despised himself as he pushed his finger still closer to 
 touch the firm, cool nose and at last, as an honour, to 
 receive the condescending caress of the long, white whis- 
 kers. It was not much, but still Sir Hugh supposed it 
 was love, so he pushed forward the saucer, at which 
 
12 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Kallikrates gazed with an air of armed neutrality. Irri- 
 tated, Sir Hugh pushed it still further until the meat lay 
 under the cat's nose. But Kallikrates sniffed and turned 
 away his head as if his master had made him some 
 unseemly proposal. 
 
 Sir Hugh bent forward, smiling, and said: "Bloated 
 Pharisee, corpulent capitalist. There you sit, swathed in 
 your furry fat, olympian and repulsive as a Jove satiated 
 with nectar and ambrosia. You're like all cats, a vile 
 freeman, escaped from the trammels of life. Like all 
 your breed you know the art of survival, how to obtain 
 food without labour, house room without confinement, 
 love without its penalties. You are irresponsible and 
 vile, empyrean and adorable." 
 
 Then Kallikrates slowly turned away from the offence 
 of the gratuitous offering, about his haunches furled the 
 sunset of his tail, sank into sleep. 
 
 And Sir Hugh, looking out for a moment over the 
 gravelled court, to the humid marshes, wrapped in grey 
 gauze like Rhine maidens, fell to thinking of those people 
 before him in their silver photograph frames, of his 
 daughter Sylvia, so large in her heavy furs, so dominat- 
 ing that even in the photograph her hair looked matted 
 with natural oils, her thick mouth, like her mother's, 
 imperious. He reflected that he did not love his daugh- 
 ter as much as a father should. Somehow Sylvia was 
 excessive. She had married poor Langrick so suddenly, 
 when the war broke out, just as so many thousands of 
 girls had married then, because the war was a stimulus, 
 or a warning that life is short, or perhaps because they 
 were jealous of the great adventure granted to men, and 
 determined to affront the only adventure that is woman's, 
 the adventure of love. And Langrick had been shot. 
 And she had nearly married other people, at least so it 
 
IN ENGLAND 13 
 
 had seemed. And now she had just married Jervaulx. 
 Ah! she was not like Monica. 
 
 Sir Hugh took up the other photograph and looked for 
 some time at the curious, half-beautiful face of his other 
 daughter. Too tall, of course, too thin, not the beauty 
 of the family. But the serious eyes that looked at him 
 touched something intimate, not by any copy-book virtue 
 of young-girlish sincerity, but by some questfulness in 
 their cool depth. Something humorous, too, clung about 
 the corners of the broad mouth. Yes, his daughter more 
 than Sylvia; his eyes; the only one who had his eyes. 
 Not even Stephen, who stood there, a knobbly hobble- 
 dehoy, with big bones sticking out at unexpected places 
 through the khaki, Stephen who carried the great" Oakley 
 nose with the thin-skinned bridge, no, not even Stephen 
 was his son as much as Monica was his daughter. For 
 there hung in Stephen's ironic eyes something that always 
 disquieted his father: even at school he had been so self- 
 assured, so clearly a skeptic; he had never respected 
 anything ; he had never even condescended to break a law. 
 Stephen was not the young generation knocking at the 
 door: he had been born on the other side. ' 
 
 "What is to become of all of them? Of all of us? " 
 thought Sir Hugh, as for a moment he rested his chin 
 upon the large hand. " All of us thrown head-first into 
 convulsion, all of us who were born in peace. Here we 
 are with eighteen months of it behind us. Of course it 
 won't last. There's the offensive coming this summer. 
 Might finish by Christmas with a little luck. But still 
 there's Sylvia, twice married before she's twenty -three 
 and Monica twenty-six and not married at all. Mar- 
 ried! and what of it in war time? Sylvia's lost one 
 man Jervaulx's in an infantry regiment, who knows? 
 And young Hum. He seemed fond of Monica per- 
 
14 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 haps a sniper's got him while we were having lunch. 
 And Stephen too. We sent a battalion of Sussex Coast 
 to Gallipoli. Where is it? Perhaps ..." 
 
 But here Sir Hugh stopped suddenly as he thought of 
 his long, bony son. Now, beyond the very faintest 
 doubt, under fire, as he thought of him. No, he must 
 not think of it. Or all the time he'd think of it. And 
 Stephen writing him hideous, cheerful letters with mes- 
 sages to his. mother, saying he'd taken to woodbines 
 since she'd written him about national economy. A 
 flicker of rage passed through Sir Hugh, and he said 
 aloud: "Damn Bairnsfather." 
 
 With an effort he cast aside the sorrow of the world; 
 he blotted out the picture of change. Change has risen 
 about him as water that ripples along the side of a break- 
 water, engulfing one by one the riches gained by civilisa- 
 tion, easy feeding, easy clothing, uncensored opinions, 
 and laughter, and dancing, and pictures worth looking 
 at; it had given him instead the scarlet and gold of such 
 a war, with all the splendid, canting merriment of youth- 
 ful self-sacrifice. It must be, it was necessary, it was 
 right. And it must go on a music-hall snatch ran 
 through his mind, " Until we've wound up the watch on 
 the Rhine." 
 
 With a conscious effort Sir Hugh broke away from 
 this thing like a black, hairy monster, like a drawing by 
 Edmund Sullivan, took up " La Chartreuse de Parme " 
 to hide in the comic-opera passion of Fabrice those shapes 
 that had arisen from the mist. Then he grew conscious 
 of a contact: very softly, like a voluptuous sultana that 
 stretched her lithe body, Kallikrates had turned and laid 
 upon the back of his hand the caress, light as a butterfly's 
 wing, of a cool, velvet-edged pad. 
 
IN ENGLAND 15 
 
 IV 
 
 LADY OAKLEY was always busy on Monday mornings. 
 She felt better on Monday morning, which shows that at 
 heart she must have been a religious woman. Also, 
 because she felt better, she realised that the household 
 was not run in the way it should be. She was not 
 responsible for the household; this duty belonged to Mrs. 
 Marsden, and Lady Oakley did not like quarrelling with 
 Mrs. Marsden, for the housekeeper said " Yes, my lady ", 
 and in the end did something quite different. So, this 
 morning, as she noticed Lee doing nothing in particular 
 at the dining-room door (which he was quite justified in 
 doing, being the butler) she went up to him and said: 
 " By the way, Lee, I suppose you realise that under the 
 new act Sutton will be called up." 
 
 " No, my lady. He was rejected when he attested." 
 
 " Oh, there won't be anybody rejected now. He'll have 
 to go, and Peele'll have to go too. And let me see, I 
 expect Temple will pass. We'll have to get women in." 
 
 " Wimmin! " cried Lee. (Rather than a cry it was a 
 squeak of horror.) "Wimmin! Did your ladyship say 
 wimmin? " 
 
 " Yes," said Lady Oakley ferociously. " I hope that 
 within six months every man in this village and who can 
 walk will be gone." 
 
 " Very well, my lady," said Lee, and went away. He 
 was a large, stout man, with the watery eyes that arey 
 often met among butlers and deans. His nose gave him 
 a false air of authority; indeed, it was as like Sir Hugh's 
 nose as was proper in a servant. 
 
 Lady Oakley looked for a moment after his vast re- 
 treating rotundities. Then, feeling better, she walked 
 along the lime avenue towards the village. 
 
16 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 It was not far to the village; indeed, the whole of old 
 Knapenden lay within the boundary of the fifteen-hun- 
 dred-acre estate. From Knapenden Place, straight past 
 the south terrace and round the lawn, the road ran 
 through the lime avenue, down the vale, and rose sud- 
 denly as it joined the main road. Here was the village 
 green, a triangular patch near a muddy pond, surrounded 
 by the microcosm of English rural life: cobbler, working- 
 men's club, grocer, inn, ironmonger (with cycle and 
 perhaps motor-car ambitions). In an offshoot of the 
 main road vegetated a draper and luxuriated a butcher, 
 while a chemist of considerable superiority enhanced his 
 aloofness with the dignities of the Civil Service, repre- 
 sented by the post-office. On the south side of the green 
 stood the altogether atrocious 1860 church. It was built 
 on the site of some older and more modest fane, but now, 
 with pitch-pine pews and the smell thereof, and steam- 
 fathered stained glass, it might have been called St. 
 Samuel Smiles. By its side was built the vicarage, all 
 brick, suggesting a wealthy glebe, founded upon a faith 
 that sought not support in another region. Three more 
 little streets of labourers' cottages; that was all. 
 
 Beyond the eastern boundary, a New Knapenden was 
 rising, a Knapenden known as Villa-Land, where every 
 cottage looked as if it were built for the peasant, but 
 housed the week-ender or the pensioner; where the ample 
 land had parsimoniously been split up by the builder who 
 had bought up Udimore Down and re- christened it "A 
 Desirable Lot"; where the preliminaries of drains and 
 of gas lamps had carved into the turf, and where, right 
 and left, without plan, ran Greville Road and Chats- 
 worth Place. Already Balmoral Avenue was indicated 
 by a boundary of palings beyond which had accumulated, 
 no one knew how, many tins, dead cats and old hats. 
 
IN ENGLAND 17 
 
 The Oakleys instinctively disliked Villa-Land and never 
 turned to the east. They were not age- crusted people, 
 but they liked the new to arise from the old, not to be 
 grafted. 
 
 So Lady Oakley, following tradition, went down into 
 the village. >he stopped for a moment at the cross- 
 roads. On that bright, frosty morning there still hung 
 a white speck on every blade of grass. She could see the 
 land roll away, past the road lined with naked oaks and 
 ash, towards Winchelsea marsh that was all hers, and 
 out of which rose Ballagher's Farm. All that was Oak- 
 ley land, to the south and to the west, below the ridge 
 to Stoat's Farm, and above it, where it fell away to the 
 Rother, and again where it rose to the high row of firs. 
 All Oakley land except, south of the green, the four hun- 
 dred acres of Ascalon Farm. Ascalon Farm was an 
 unrealised ambition of the Oakley family. One did not 
 quite know how, but apparently Sir Hugh's great-grand- 
 father, after three days' indulgence in casino at Brighton, 
 when he had the honour to lose five monkeys to the 
 Regent himself, persuaded the hero of Trafalgar to agree 
 to the breaking of the entail. An ancestor of Hart, the 
 present tenant, bought the freehold of Ascalon Farm: 
 tempt him, and threaten him, and cajole him as he might, 
 Sir Hugh's father had never been able to buy it back. 
 
 But Lady Oakley was not by nature meditative. She 
 turned past the inn and into the post-office where, at the 
 moment, stood the Knapenden version of a crowd, one 
 old lady drawing her old-age pension, and two little girls 
 sucking jujubes. Mr. Balcombe bent forward, affable 
 and dignified, conscious of being together a Civil Servant 
 and a member of the Pharmaceutical Society, with an 
 air of " What can I do for you? A penny stamp or a 
 blue pill? " 
 
18 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Good morning," said Lady Oakley. She responded 
 briefly to kind enquiries as to the health of the several 
 members of her family. Profoundly interesting, no 
 doubt. Then, having bought some postal orders required 
 by benefactions, she added: 
 
 " And I want some War Savings stampa." 
 
 Mr. Balcombe looked dismayed and incredulous. 
 
 "What!" said Lady Oakley, "you haven't got any 
 War Savings stamps! Like these," and she took from 
 her large, countrified, pigskin hand-bag two little labels. 
 The more notable of the two showed hands pouring out 
 shillings which by some mysterious process turned, at 
 the bottom of the stamp, into pink War Savings booka 
 and bank notes. " Turn your shillings into pounds," it 
 urged in imperial scarlet. 
 
 " Everybody ought to use them," said Lady Oakley. 
 " We want them on every letter, on every newspaper. 
 People who are not fighting ought not to think of any- 
 thing else." 
 
 " I'm sure I'm very sorry. Your ladyship may be 
 sure I will enquire ..." 
 
 But Lady Oakley's preoccupations took a different 
 turn. 
 
 " And, oh, Mr. Balcombe, you haven't sent up the 
 sanatogen. Sir Hugh's missed it for three days now, and 
 that's not good for him." 
 
 " I'm very sorry, my lady," said the chemist, more 
 dismayed than ever. " This war, you see ... " 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes. I know. The war. But surely you 
 can get some sanatogen from London." 
 
 Mr. Balcombe leant over the counter and looked about 
 as if the Defence of the Realm Act lurked in the back 
 shop. " The fact is I didn't like to tell your ladyship, 
 but sanatogen's German." 
 
IN ENGLAND 19 
 
 Lady Oakley perceptibly recoiled. "German! Do 
 you mean to say that . . . " 
 
 She didn't finish her sentence. Horrible pictures of 
 poisoned fish and sweets invaded her mind as she re- 
 flected that for eighteen months of war Sir Hugh's nerves 
 had been sustained from a German source. 
 
 " Yes, my lady. So I didn't think it would do." 
 
 " Quite right, quite right." 
 
 "I hear there's a substitute, quite English, that one 
 j> 
 
 " M'yes," said Lady Oakley, with a shade of doubtful- 
 ness. " A substitute. Oh, well, we'll see. After all, I'm 
 not so sure it was doing Sir Hugh as much good as all 
 that. So much advertised, you know. Those Germans 
 get in everywhere." 
 
 " Oh, yes, my lady, especially in drugs. There's odol, 
 for instance." 
 
 Lady Oakley flung Mr. Balcombe a look in which was 
 some slight malevolence. She herself enjoyed odol. One 
 had to be patriotic, but really it was very annoying. So 
 she felt relieved when Mr. Denny came into the shop, for 
 she might have discovered that bread and beef were 
 German too, and she belonged to a generation which has 
 no affection for knowledge combined with inconvenience. 
 " Oh, Mr. Denny," she said to the little, sandy-haired 
 vicar, " I want to talk to you." 
 
 " Delighted, I'm sure," said the vicar. A little per- 
 turbed by the feeling that he might be indictable for 
 something, he hastened to buy postcards, and refrained 
 from purchasing drugs which he considered unmention- 
 able. So, together, Lady Oakley and the vicar walked 
 towards the green. He was a quiet, hesitating man, but 
 behind his hesitation resided a lively sense of his own 
 rights and privileges; Mr. Denny had never dropped his 
 
20 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 bread save butter-side up. Amiable and broad, he con- 
 ducted the usual services on Sunday, and at other times 
 kept the dust out of the church by locking the door. If 
 people did not communicate often enough, it was because 
 the flesh is weak; if they communicated after breakfast 
 it was better than not communicating at all. For the 
 rest, he maintained the social interests that befitted his 
 position, and was a passionate stamp collector. Sir Hugh 
 had once described him as every inch a philatelist. 
 
 " What I wanted to ask," said Lady Oakley, " is what 
 the Council is going to do about Brunswick Cottages. I 
 say 'Paris Cottages.' " 
 
 " Well, we discussed it the other night, and of course 
 the Council agrees. They were thinking of Marne Cot- 
 tages and that is the difficulty, Lady Oakley, because 
 there's a party forming who wants to call them Joffre 
 Cottages. And we feel a thing like that ought not to be 
 done by a majority. I mean," and Mr. Denny, with a 
 broad wave of his hand, expressed a sense of enfolding 
 brotherliness, " in times like these we feel we must be 
 united." 
 
 " Nonsense," said Lady Oakley, with a gleam in her 
 brown eye. " What does it matter if we are united or 
 not united if we get what we want? I say 'Paris Cot- 
 tages' because the postman will remember it more easily. 
 So long as they're not called 'Brunswick Cottages' I don't 
 care." 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Denny. "But the fact is I 
 hardly like to tell you, but the real trouble is that one 
 of the members of the Council says it's very awkward 
 always to be changing the names of cottages because, as 
 he puts it, you never know." 
 
 " You never know what? " asked Lady Oakley, stop- 
 ping. 
 
IN ENGLAND 21 
 
 " Oh, I'm only repeating what he says. He says that 
 well, in 1898, supposing they had been called Paris 
 Cottages and Fashoda had led to war, we couldn't have 
 called them by a French name, could we? " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " Well, he says that if we turn ' Brunswick Cottages ' 
 into ' Paris Cottages', if one of these days we have trouble 
 with the French we may have to call them ' New York 
 Cottages/ And he's asking if we're prepared to come 
 down to ' Pekin Row.' " Mr. Denny smiled. He did not 
 think it necessary to press the point. 
 
 " Who is this person who has so much imagination? " 
 
 " Mr. Cradoc." 
 
 " Oh," said Lady Oakley, with peculiar, slow intensity. 
 " I ought to have known it was Mr. Cradoc. Of course 
 Mr. Cradoc would have ideas." Lady Oakley under- 
 lined " ideas ", indicating them as a minor form of obscen- 
 ity. " Well, Mr. Denny," she went on quietly, " when 
 you see Mr. Cradoc again, you might ask him whether 
 he thinks it worth while pressing the point, as he is not 
 very likely to be re-elected." 
 
 " No, I suppose not," said Mr. Denny. " I know his 
 views. Most unfortunate. Most unfortunate! " 
 
 " It's not unfortunate at all. It's disgraceful. Here's 
 the new grocer, an impostor, who's as good as ruined 
 poor Evenwood, a man whom no one knows anything 
 about, a shopman from Hastings, who comes here and 
 preaches disloyalty to people who have never thought 
 of it, a man who sits here making war profits, sheltering 
 behind the country's laws and refusing to do his bit in 
 upholding them. Such a man, who makes his conscience 
 his protection ..." 
 
 Mr. Denny nodded sagely for a moment, while remin- 
 iscences of several leading articles incorporated them- 
 
M BLIND ALLEY 
 
 selves in Lady Oakley's speech. Then she fell into the 
 vernacular. 
 
 " It can't go on, Mr. Denny. We can't have it. You 
 must speak to him." 
 
 " Oh, how can I? You see he doesn't attend the 
 church." 
 
 " Then the Church must go to him." 
 
 Mr. Denny thought this apostolic, but rather tactless, 
 and said so, putting it differently. 
 
 " You must speak to him," said Lady Oakley, passing 
 over his hesitations as calmly as a steam-roller over a 
 slug. " In days like these, it's the duty of the Church to 
 assert itself and to send forth a Message. Those who 
 won't hear it must suffer for it. Anyhow, I am with- 
 drawing my account. But I'm not thinking of that; we 
 want this stain removed from the village. We want 
 everybody to realise that we have a magnificent cause, 
 and that a man should be glad to be alive to . . . " 
 
 " Die for it," suggested Mr. Denny. 
 
 Lady Oakley looked at him with some haughtiness. 
 She disliked epigrams. 
 
 "People are too much afraid of dying," she said. 
 "Everybody dies. They may as well die decently. 
 They should be glad to die for a cause like ours. Ah, 
 I wish I were a man! " 
 
 " All right," said Mr. Denny. " I'll have a word with 
 him." 
 
 Lady Oakley was not listening. She said again, with 
 slow intensity: 
 
 "Ah, I wish I were a man," and in her eyes, that 
 seemed to have grown larger and harder, shone a light 
 Amazonian. In that moment she was transfigured, in- 
 flamed with thoughts of valorous carnage, of intrepidity 
 converting the forlorn into the victorious; the harmonies 
 
IN ENGLAND 23 
 
 of battle rang in her ears; God was with her as He is 
 mit uns. Then she was an Englishwoman rather than a 
 woman. She was Wagnerian. 
 
 SLOWLY the train wandered towards the northeast. 
 Upon the right, Romney marsh made a pattern of brown- 
 ish-green tussocks and spears of shining water. Sir Hugh 
 took from his attache case, which bulged with papers taken 
 home from the office of the Southern Board of Control, 
 a letter from Stephen. It was characteristic that Stephen 
 should write mainly to his father. It was the usual sort 
 of letter from the front, with plenty of " cheer up, we'll 
 soon be dead " about it; the young man did not suggest 
 that he risked his life for any reason other than sport or 
 class automatism. The parts that concerned the family, 
 the references to Sylvia, to whom Stephen sent his con- 
 gratulations on her chucking the Fannies (by which, he 
 confided to his father, he meant his condolences; the 
 Nursing Yeomanry having chucked her), his gibe at 
 Monica who, he said, would doubtless soon marry some 
 unfortunate young man who knew no better, and set up 
 with him in a house furnished exclusively with angular 
 cosy corners and high ideals, all this was just the pleasant, 
 cheery Stephen. And Sir Hugh did not even mind his 
 message to Lady Oakley, who had written to him saying 
 we wanted a Man: " Tell mother that she won't get her 
 Man. She asks too much of a Man (' Morning Post ' 
 type) . What she wants is (1) a thing that never thinks; 
 (2) a thing who, however, always acts. The activity of a 
 gadfly. The adhesive quality of a limpet. And a face fit 
 to kill a camera. Briefly, what they call a Personality." 
 
 Queer young man. How old they grew at the Var- 
 
24 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 sity. Sir Hugh looked out at Appledore station where, 
 for a long time, they persuaded reluctant horses into a 
 van which they looked upon as a trap. He wondered 
 what would become of Stephen, nipped by the war in the 
 middle of his second year. He could not go back to 
 school, which, after all, was what Oxford amounted to, 
 after three years, perhaps more, of this sort of thing. 
 Then he returned to the letter. Strange chap! Here he 
 was telling how, the other day, the Boche was shelling 
 heavily on the left, whizzbangs mostly, and how, at a 
 certain moment, with a funny wet sound, there fell into 
 the trench, quite close to him, the leg of a Highlander. 
 Was it merely side that made Stephen punctuate this 
 event with the remark: "And a damned smart, well- 
 turned-out leg and legging it was, too! " and pass on to 
 his difficulty with the other officers as to the regimental 
 mascot : " Ever since the Seaf orths next door played 
 themselves into their billets behind a goat, poor old Sus- 
 sex Coast felt it must have a mascot of its own. Adjutant 
 in the chair, blind as usual, and a perfect chairman. 
 Didn't make myself popular that night; one of our 
 latest T. G's., cockney of course, said that being a coast 
 regiment we wanted an animal with something naval 
 about it. I suggested a tin of sardines. If we'd been 
 regulars ^t would have been all right, but the poor old 
 3rd/5th is so frightfully cocky about being in the army 
 that it didn't go down a bit. I'm afraid I haven't got the 
 right feeling about this war." 
 
 No! Sir Hugh smiled, but he hardly thought that 
 Stephen had the right feeling about this war. He was 
 always ragging it. Could that mean that inside he 
 thought it unspeakable? And would that be better than 
 thinking it glorious? And it was, Sir Hugh reflected, a 
 glorious and necessary war, the war of light against dark, 
 
IN ENGLAND 25 
 
 the cross unsought, but infinitely rewarding to the 
 shoulders chosen by fate to bear it. No, there was no 
 Galahad in this young man, and Sir Hugh supposed that 
 this was the new type we were breeding, as brave and as 
 generous as ever, but determined to be airy about it, as 
 if the race were getting tired and ashamed of emotion. 
 Sir Hugh did not despise emotion; he was a Victorian 
 and he knew it; thrift, the doctrines of Herbert Spencer, 
 and ill-rolled umbrellas did not offend him; once upon a 
 time he had worn elastic-sided boots, and he still read 
 the Spectator. 
 
 So it was cruel, in a way, that a little later, when he 
 reached his office at Ashford, he should find himself in 
 compulsory contact with the new type of civil servant, 
 namely, the business man. Sir Hugh knew that his 
 fellow members on the Board were far more useful than 
 the civil servant of the old school, that they had qualities 
 such as ruthlessness (frightfulness?), a fine disregard for 
 manners, a contempt for precedent, a desire to overcome 
 each other which often enabled their departments to excel 
 each other and yet sometimes he regretted the civil 
 servant he had met in a long life, that man of oil, steel, 
 and silk, capable of every delay and grace, suggestive of 
 every sympathy and capable of none, invariably accom- 
 modating and inevitably elusive, incapable of a lie, 
 always capable of an evasion, determined in public utility, 
 yet not blind to private advancement, singularly addicted 
 to justice, yet unable to suffer mercy, not a man, but t a 
 theorem, a diagram, a syllogism. No good! Scrap the 
 old machine which once went so gently backwards 
 and out with the new machine, puffing and pounding and 
 tearing up the old rails, swiftly moving forward to 
 well, perhaps to the dogs. 
 
 Often that day the thought of Stephen, so much the 
 
26 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 tail end of a race, the last of the gentlemen, too disdain- 
 ful to use the intellect that had pitched on him as unex- 
 pectedly as the egg of a cuckoo appears in the nest of a 
 wren. He compared him with those others, with Calvert, 
 whose name was a household word in cement circles, with 
 Holmes, who had created a vast fortune on an advertise- 
 ment advising mankind to " Japan your Pan." What 
 was going to become of them? Where were they going 
 to stand after the war, in the political body of this dear, 
 dusty old England? It was all right during the war, 
 when the old lady was excited, indulging in a sort of 
 colossal rummage sale. Just now the row suited the old 
 lady. But after? When she wanted to settle down 
 again on her customary settee? She'd engaged a new 
 kind of manager, a cross between an American commer- 
 cial traveller and a Syrian carpet merchant. She 
 couldn't turn him out and call back the first division of 
 the civil service to let her alone. Poor old lady! Her 
 business men in power were going to stay in power, be- 
 cause power is what they seek. After the war they 
 would control her, regulate her and order her about in 
 council. Sir Hugh sighed as he thought of the business 
 man making old England hop. Or, as Holmes put it, 'op. 
 As, later in the evening, he took the train home, he 
 noticed the newspaper of one of England's leading busi- 
 ness men. It had just produced a placard of which it 
 obviously was proud: 
 
 "YOU 
 POTSDAM 
 SCOUNDREL." 
 
 An excellent sentiment, thought Sir Hugh, but in what 
 elegant terms our messages we couch! 
 
IN ENGLAND 27 
 
 VI 
 
 MR. DENNY was a good man. That is, he never did 
 any harm to anybody, and he always acted for the best 
 according to his rushlights. He realised that, though he 
 was pastor of his flock, and depended not at all upon the 
 squire, still, if he agreed with Lady Oakley, there was 
 no harm in doing what Lady Oakley wished. He be- 
 longed to the Church of England, and found it easy to 
 think in compromises. So he disliked speaking to 
 Cradoc, having to take up an attitude of definite con- 
 demnation. He would have preferred disapprovingly to 
 condone. Still, there it was, and his deeds formulated 
 his disposition, for in the end he did not seek out the 
 conscientious objector: as he went along the village street 
 he found his attention attracted by the smell of burning 
 coffee. Ah," said Mr. Denny to himself, " that's Mr. 
 Cradoc roasting coffee. That reminds me that Lady 
 Oakley said I must talk to him." And, quite honestly 
 thinking that this little fact had reminded him of the 
 duty which had actually been oppressing him for several 
 hours, Mr. Denny went into the shop. Cradoc looked at 
 him with a certain surprise. He was a small, thinnish 
 man, with black hair, a ragged moustache, and the air 
 of taut determination which often sits upon people who 
 have nourished their spirit and neglected their body. 
 
 " What can I do for you? " asked Cradoc, with a lift 
 in his voice that meant: " I suppose you don't want a 
 driver's Jelly; it must be my soul you're after." 
 
 " Oh," said Mr. Denny, " I was just passing ..." 
 
 Cradoc looked at him thoughtfully. He was not 
 accustomed to visits from the clergy, though he had often 
 exchanged a word with Mr. Denny. He was embar- 
 rassed because he found it difficult to understand that a 
 
28 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 man could believe in an all-powerful creative God; so 
 the only way in which he could talk to a clergyman was 
 to humour him, as one does the inoffensive insane. 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Cradoc. Then, feeling discussions 
 imminent, he called to his sister to mind the shop and 
 asked Mr. Denny to step into the parlour. 
 
 Mr. Denny automatically took the central position on 
 the hearthrug and stared at this parlour. A disquieting 
 place rather, with its whitewashed walls, its two or three 
 autotypes framed in oak, a rather upsetting picture of 
 Bernard Shaw by Joseph Simpson, red tie and all, a large 
 labour poster after Steinlen, a rack filled with books 
 which were probably not the " hundred best ", surmounted 
 by a very regrettable nude. 
 
 " The fact is," said Mr. Denny, " I wanted to have a 
 few words with you, Mr. Cradoc, if you don't think it an 
 impertinence." 
 
 The grocer made conciliatory sounds. 
 
 " It was er I mean er this military service 
 business. Compulsion, you know." 
 
 " Yes," said Cradoc. 
 
 " I mean, it has well, changed everything." 
 
 " Yes," said Cradoc. 
 
 Mr. Denny found it desirable to become breezy: " I've 
 been hearing about your views and er it's not for 
 me to criticise them; every man for his conscience, every 
 man for his conscience, even though it does make cow- 
 ards of us all." He stopped, for Cradoc had grinned at 
 this. " Ahem," reflected Mr. Denny, " I didn't mean to 
 put it like that." So, hurriedly, he went on: " I've been 
 told that you have a conscientious objection to war. 
 Well, so have I, so have I. I mean, any Christian would 
 conscientiously object to war; only there are circum- 
 stances which alter the most profound convictions." 
 
IN ENGLAND 29 
 
 " Can they be so profound if they alter? " asked 
 Cradoc. 
 
 " Well, let us not say convictions, let us say predilec- 
 tions. I quite understand that a right-thinking mind 
 objects to killing. I know," added Mr. Denny in a tone 
 of extensive tolerance for that book, " that in the Bible 
 you will find a commandment that you should not kill 
 but er one might be too literal in the interpretation 
 of what is revealed." 
 
 " In other words, one should interpret it as suits one." 
 
 " I said no such thing. Only there are necessary ex- 
 ceptions to the most golden rules." 
 
 " I'm afraid not." 
 
 For a moment the two men looked at each other, trying 
 to find a meeting ground, the conscientious objector so 
 entirely confined within the rigidities of his own views 
 that his conception of personal liberty placed him in 
 handcuffs, the cleric so determined to scrape what good- 
 ness he could from a rebellious world that he found him- 
 self lost in it, like a fly in gelatine. Then Mr. Denny 
 returned to the charge. 
 
 " I quite understand that your spiritual principles 
 oh, you need not shake your head we all have spiritual 
 principles, even if, like you, some people are a little 
 undenominational . ' ' 
 
 "I am an atheist," said Cradoc. "But go on, Mr. 
 Denny." 
 
 " A very big word, but we're not talking of religion. 
 What I wanted to suggest is that compulsion has altered 
 things, because now it is no longer a question of who will 
 enlist and who will not. Everybody has to go." 
 
 " Except me," said Cradoc. 
 
 " My dear sir ! You can't do that, you really can't do 
 that." 
 
30 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 "A better man than I had conscientious objections to 
 a certain religious system nineteen centuries ago, Mr. 
 Denny." 
 
 " Please don't be blasphemous." 
 
 " I'm being historical ; those may be synonymous 
 terms." 
 
 " I've already said we are not talking about religion, 
 but I should like to point out that in the Thirty-Nine 
 Articles which are in your prayer book you will find that 
 the Church allows the faithful to engage in wars." 
 
 " In the name of universal love? " 
 
 " Love should not be taken literally. Love must be 
 interpreted as it is by the father who is compelled to chas- 
 tise his child. I quite agree, Mr. Cradoc, that you should 
 love your enemies ..." 
 
 "But hate a Frenchman like poison, as Lord Nelson 
 said. I'm afraid, Mr. Denny, that this remark of his 
 lordship was rather unfortunate in the light of present 
 alliances." 
 
 " Oh, circumstances change with time. That was a 
 very regrettable period." 
 
 " Still, we cannot ignore it. To me our dependence on 
 Blucher sterilises our present dependence upon Joffre. 
 Changing enemies and changing friends deprive one of 
 belief in either." 
 
 " Are these matters not a little deep? " said Mr. Denny. 
 " Is not our case much simpler, I might say much purer, 
 than anything such musty, historical arguments can sug- 
 gest? Here we are, entirely unprepared for war ..." 
 
 " With our fleet fully mobilized." 
 
 " For defence only. Compelled by a solemn engage- 
 ment to protect Belgium against aggression ..." 
 
 " An obligation which we ignored in the case of Den- 
 mark." 
 
IN ENGLAND 31 
 
 " Faced by a brutal autocracy determined to enforce 
 the lowest forms of materialism upon the world ..." 
 
 " A world at present dignified by the highest forms of 
 spirituality as exhibited in our machine shops, our daily 
 press and our streetwalkers." 
 
 Mr. Denny paused. " I do think it's a pity we should 
 wrangle like this. Let me put it to you more simply. 
 When you see the other men forsake their wives, their 
 children, their sweethearts, their little businesses, throw- 
 ing all up at the behest of a generous impulse, going out 
 to do their bit, can you bear to be left behind? " 
 
 Mr. Denny made a gesture of appeal, and was entirely 
 honest in his emotion; he longed to lead Cradoc to the 
 recruiting station quite as much as he would have liked 
 to bring him to salvation. But Cradoc shook his head. 
 
 " No, I'm afraid not. Don't worry about me, Mr. 
 Denny ; it would be no use being an Israelite unless there 
 were a few Ishmaelites. I've got to be one of those. 
 Crucify me. I shall not mind it as much as you think, it 
 will please my vanity ; it would be as much fun as being a 
 Christian martyr." 
 
 "I don't understand you at all. There's no idea of 
 ill-treating you. I am merely suggesting that if you 
 maintain this attitude you will find yourself a social out- 
 cast; you will stand beyond the pale as the man who re- 
 fused to take up arms in a just cause while sheltering be- 
 hind the bayonets of those who went Lady Oakley says 
 she will stop dealing with you and go back to Mr. Even- 
 wood, even though his son is, I'm afraid, rather wild." 
 
 Cradoc shook his head. " No, it's no good, Mr. Denny. 
 I'm not going. I'm not going to do anything. I'm not 
 going to make munitions for other men to blow one an- 
 other to pieces with and pretend I've nothing to do with 
 the war. I'm not going to the ambulances to patch them 
 
32 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 together so that they may go on killing one another. I'm 
 not going to do anything except register my protest. You 
 may say that's no good. That's because I'm in the 
 minority. When I am in the majority I shall be right. 
 It is sometimes expedient that a man should die for the 
 people." 
 
 " Don't be rhetorical," said Mr. Denny. And he went 
 away, his kindly heart rather heavy because this difficult, 
 rebellious man, who thought wrong and felt wrong, must 
 suffer, and because Mr. Denny hated anybody to suffer. 
 He preached a religion of mortification and pain, but he 
 practised a life where he sought to shed upon all men so 
 much comfort and good cheer as he could muster. 
 
 VII 
 
 " FATHER," said Monica, as she gently closed the study 
 door, " may I speak to you? " 
 
 He looked up, and as he said vaguely : " Yes, what is 
 it, dear? " found himself thinking of her in an abstract 
 way. His daughter, but what a stranger somehow, this 
 young woman of twenty-six, so warmly pale, with grey 
 eyes that might be soft or ironic, and the broad mouth, 
 made to smile for love or droop for tears. She looked 
 very tall that night; her white arms seemed thin; the 
 frock that hung, precariously it seemed, from her deli- 
 cately thin shoulders by two straps of silver and sapphire, 
 fell in straight, soft folds, unbroken by a belt, to the 
 silken blue insteps in the silver shoes. As upon his desk 
 the snake reading-lamp was turned down to keep the 
 light from his eyes, Monica in the shadow was as a ghost 
 imprisoned in a moonbeam, in that long frock of silvery 
 crepe chiffon, through which here and there gleamed a 
 bright panel of blue charmeuse. 
 
IN ENGLAND 33 
 
 Monica came a little closer and, for a moment, as if 
 shy, tickled behind a furry ear Kallikrates, who sat upon 
 the desk. The cat swelled voluptuously under the caress, 
 hunching up the mossy gold of his shoulder against that 
 thin hand, like a spray of fern, with the finger nails of 
 sepia pink. " Father," said Monica at last, " I want to 
 go into munitions." 
 
 "You oh, what put that into your head? " 
 
 " Well, I want to do something." 
 
 "Yes, I quite see." Sir Hugh was embarrassed; he 
 realised that Monica should do something, but now that 
 she wanted to, an old instinct dictated that no Oakley 
 girl ever did anything, cried out against the rape of war. 
 So he temporised. 
 
 " I quite agree with you; everybody who can do any- 
 thing ought to. Still it's very hard work, you know, 
 and er there are other things." 
 
 " What sort of things? " 
 
 " Well, the girls are rather rough." 
 
 " Do you think they would be nasty to me? " 
 
 " No, of course not. Quite good sorts, I'm sure, but 
 not exactly your sort." 
 
 " It takes all sorts to make a war," said Monica, 
 smiling. 
 
 Sir Hugh sighed. Yes, indeed. But still the instinct 
 bade him struggle. " Couldn't you do something else? " 
 
 " What else could I do, Father? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. There are such lots of things a 
 girl can do now, canteens or er, Red Cross depots want 
 people. Perhaps you might even get into a government 
 office. There might be room in the Board at Ashford." 
 Monica bent forward suddenly and kissed him on the 
 forehead. 
 
 " Dear old Daddy ! " she murmured. " What a schemer 
 
34 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 you are. Here you are trying to tie me up in Ashford 
 because it's only half an hour away, and you don't know 
 you're doing it. You want me to do something real, but 
 you'd like me to do it at Knapenden, wouldn't you? " 
 
 " Yes, I would," said Sir Hugh with sudden courage. 
 " I'm a silly old man, Monica, and like all silly old men, 
 I'm making a fool of myself over a young girl. But, 
 seriously, do you really want to do this? You've done 
 other things." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I know. Last year I worked at the relief 
 centre. But all the Belgians have had all their babies; 
 at least, I hope so. Anyhow, they've mostly gone north 
 to become profiteers." 
 
 " Well, you help me quite a lot." 
 
 Monica smiled and counted on her fingers: "(1)> to 
 have answered seventeen letters saying that the matter 
 will have urgent consideration (which it hasn't) ; (2) , to 
 have driven father every morning into Rye (and twice 
 into a ditch) ; (3) , to have taken part in the economy 
 campaign at Rye (and felt so exhausted that I had to 
 ask another economiser to lunch at the l Mermaid ' and 
 spent eleven-and-three) ." 
 
 Sir Hugh laughed. " No, you don't sound lucky but 
 I insist on being serious. Do you really want to work 
 eight hours a day? And get your fingers stained with 
 T. N. T.? And wear a mob cap and trousers? " 
 
 " Trousers ! " said Monica raptly. " Father, you've 
 lost your case. It was only when women began to wear 
 trousers that men said women were splendid. How very 
 vain of them! Father, you've done it. And now that 
 you are down I will leap upon you and finish you. Your 
 Board of Control is in touch with all sorts of munition 
 works. You know Mr. Irvine, the manager, very well. 
 You've been seen lunching with important personages 
 
IN ENGLAND 35 
 
 at the ' Bull.' I have reason to think that lots of them 
 will be pleased to oblige you by engaging a new hand 
 called Oakley." 
 
 " Oh, dear, oh, dear," murmured Sir Hugh. " How very 
 different you are from the girls I used to know! In my 
 time the young generation never grew old." 
 
 " That's what happened to you, Daddy. But now for 
 it! Take a nice, clean sheet of paper and write a letter 
 to somebody, and give it to me to post because you're 
 quite young enough to be a deceiver, and, if you please, 
 I'll post it myself." 
 
 " Monica," said Sir Hugh peevishly, " I won't be 
 hustled." 
 
 " Don't be selfish ; you've been having an awfully good 
 time during this war." 
 
 "What! " cried Sir Hugh indignantly. 
 
 " Yes, you have. When the war broke out you had 
 retired from the bank; you had nothing to do; yes, I 
 know you attended sessions, and looked after the County 
 Council's money, say twopence a year, and you wrote 
 papers for the Institute of Bankers, so called because no 
 bankers attend its meetings but now! You've been 
 all over the country recruiting hard, and there wouldn't 
 have been a Derby scheme in Sussex but for you, and 
 you've organised dozens of committees for the Belgians, 
 and the Serbians, and the sailors, and the washerwomen 
 who have seen better days; you've founded three kitch- 
 ens, two hospitals and you ..." 
 
 " Spare me ! " cried Sir Hugh. " Go away, or I'll set 
 the cat at you." 
 
 " Please, Father, a clean sheet of paper." 
 
 "No, no, no, not to-night. Leave the room, Miss," 
 and as Monica sat down on his desk Sir Hugh jumped up, 
 seized her by her silken waist and proceeded to drag 
 
36 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 her out of the room. There was a fierce struggle during 
 which cushions were thrown, a pile of blue books overset. 
 At last, laughing and panting, Sir Hugh closed the door 
 upon a creature that banged and kicked the panels, 
 loudly shouting: "Votes for women! " 
 
 When the noise subsided Sir Hugh came back and 
 induced Kallikrates to show the blunt end of his nose 
 from under the bookcase, whence he at last came out, 
 dragged by neck and tail, in a filthy condition, and look- 
 ing as if he thought the war would last seven years. Sir 
 Hugh for a long time remained seated at his desk. He 
 was very undecided. He tried to return to his work, took 
 up a letter from Stephen, a queer, horrible letter where 
 the boy described with a sort of gusto how a German 
 attack had been broken by machine-gun fire: 
 
 " You should have seen them come up. They had to 
 cross a little rise, and then every line w^s like a grey 
 wave coming right out of the ground. And all the 
 machine guns were trained on that rise. Just for a 
 moment you saw a wave, and as the guns swept from 
 left to right the wave crumbled away from left to right, 
 like ninepins knocking each other down, and as one wave 
 fell you could see another one form behind it and fall 
 away while a third one arose. It was a ripping morning 
 except that my batman couldn't find the tin-opener." 
 
 Also they had caught a spy, and Stephen had had a 
 long talk with him before they shot him. Queer sort of 
 spy evidently, a London clerk who had taken up spying 
 for the Germans because he liked making himself up 
 with whiskers, and slinking round corners, and overhear- 
 ing footsteps, as he called it. Adventure! 
 
 " Funny sort of chap. He said to me: ' You're a gen- 
 tleman, you don't understand. You don't know what 
 it's like, nine till six every damned day of your life. And 
 
IN ENGLAND 37 
 
 saying " Sir." And being rowed if you take more than 
 an hour for lunch. And knowing you're just a bit of 
 dirt. And then some one comes along and says to you: 
 " Look here, my fine fellow, wouldn't you like to be a 
 sporting cuss? The sort you see on the movies, or in 
 those books on the bookstalls by William le Queux." 
 Saving your country or doing it down, it's much the same ; 
 whenever you save one country you do down another. 
 And being patted on the back by generals, and having 
 dreams about getting out of palaces through the drains. 
 That's life! 7 " 
 
 Then Stephen had broken off, saying: " I don't know 
 why I tell you all this. I'm making up half of it, I sup- 
 pose. I must have been reading R. L. Stevenson, or that 
 sort of romantic tripe.' 7 
 
 But all through Sir Hugh was haunted by that vision 
 of his long, slim daughter in an overall, with her finger 
 nails worn close, her soft cheeks touched with dermatitis, 
 and the infinitely sweet thing that fluttered within her 
 coarsened. A rebellious rage rose in him. Must war 
 then take them all? Young men and young girls? To 
 slay them or scar them? Must indeed war breathe upon 
 their star and detach their wings? He slept ill, rose a 
 little after dawn and walked along the ridge to Udimore 
 copse where all was grey and lonely. On this soft morn- 
 ing of late February the birches were still bare, but some 
 patches of silver bark shone like soiled mirrors. Over 
 the marsh the sun was breaking in the dun mist; he saw 
 it rise weary and pale from the eastern downs, lazily, as 
 from a lover's bed. Already, something of spring was 
 in the air; the primroses that in another month would 
 cluster so eagerly that here he would not dare tread, were 
 shooting out little green leaves still moist with birth. A 
 sweet, wet smell rose from the thawing earth. He was 
 
38 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 in the midst of life, that rebelliously rises even from 
 graveyards. It comforted him to feel this. He thought: 
 " Yes, I suppose she must go. She will come back, come 
 back as surely as next year, happen what may in that 
 insignificant thing they call the great world, just as will 
 the daughters of the primroses which now lie concealed 
 under my feet." 
 
 For a moment he gave way to a favourite amusement, 
 for Sir Hugh was a true male and still very much an old 
 half blue and an old volunteer officer: in his mind he 
 landed troops on the east side of the Rother, threw his 
 sappers and their bridges across the dykes, stormed 
 Winchsea Hill and crowned it with machine guns and 
 he manoeuvred his forces, cavalry dismounting, infantry 
 digging themselves in beside the hedges. He smiled as 
 he thought of his heavy howitzers safely concealed in 
 the valley, well beyond Brede. 
 
 And, swinging his stick, in the morning that shone and 
 the sun that beat into his eyes from the yellow ridge 
 road, too conscious of warm light and moist life to feel 
 the misery that lives between four walls, he walked away 
 towards Knapenden whistling: " The British Grena- 
 diers." 
 
 VIII 
 
 MONICA leant out of her sitting-room window. A little 
 exultation was upon her. Her sitting-room window, hers, 
 her own, her first. She occupied the first floor of a large 
 house in Castle Hill, Rochester. Before her stood the 
 grey, ruined castle, clad with ivy about its middle, like 
 some old, weary gladiator in a leopard skin. But she 
 thought little of the old steeple, or of the brown Medway 
 which lay before her, riven by little wharfs, of crowding 
 Strood, across the bridge, or the swelling downs that 
 
IN ENGLAND 39 
 
 rolled away towards the west. In that moment her 
 youth was all egotism. She had flung off the mood of the 
 morning, when she had felt for Sir Hugh who had in- 
 sisted on taking her to Rochester himself, but didn't 
 like to tell her how unhappy he was. Instead of that 
 he had brutally abused the pacifism of President Wilson, 
 used words such as coward and hypocrite which were 
 unusual in his mouth. He had declaimed against the 
 Admiralty because the Arethusa was sunk, conjured up 
 awful perils: "Here's Austria streaming through Mon- 
 tenegro ; it'll be Albania next, and then Greece ; we can't 
 stop them. And there's Verdun. Douaumont came 
 down yesterday. 
 
 " The French are cracking up. They'll rat. I feel it in 
 my bones, they'll rat. And we don't move. We talk of 
 our offensive and we don't move." 
 
 For one moment Monica thought of him, and then he 
 was expelled by the infinitely more vivid first day at 
 the Cottenham Works, by the exciting experience of eight 
 hours in a real munitions works, among real explosives. 
 It had all been so lovely and dangerous, and exciting, 
 being searched for keys and knives, and the funny felt 
 shoes in which her feet waggled, and all those posters 
 about cleaning your teeth, and not eating your food with 
 soiled hands. " Poison ! " she whispered to herself, and 
 with an exquisite childish pride she held up to the fading 
 light fingers upon which already rested a thin film of 
 yellow stain. 
 
 IX 
 
 OUTSIDE the King's Arms, on this moonless March 
 night, darkness was complete. Along the drawn blinds 
 showed only narrow strips of light. So Mr. Barry felt 
 his way in and for a moment stood dazed as he entered 
 
40 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the misty brightness of the hot tap room. Half a dozen 
 men sat on the rough benches before tall tankards of ale. 
 There were little pools of beer on the sanded floor. And 
 much smoke rising from the short pipes. A little hoarse 
 laughter and not much talk. "Hullo, here's Tom!" 
 said a voice, " What's yours, old cock? " 
 
 Mr. Barry went to the bar to give his order to Mr. 
 Cashel, who stood in his customary attitude, polishing a 
 glass with a piece of chamois leather, an unexpectedly 
 neat and respectable little man. Not far off stood one 
 of the seven Misses Cashel. Mr. Cashel's daughters had 
 been planned by Providence to supply a barmaid every 
 day of the week, though signs of the times suggested that 
 very soon the seventh day might require no Hebe. (There 
 was little danger that male enterprise would upset the 
 Providential scheme. One. had only to consider the 
 Misses Cashel to understand that temptation does not 
 lurk everywhere; few were the chances that any of them 
 would forsake the bar for the altar rail.) 
 
 Mr. Barry joined the men at the table, Mr. Hart, of 
 Ascalon Farm, and Mr. Abbey, the draper, who, though 
 a leading tradesman, could afford to frequent the King's 
 Arms because he was a bachelor and a dog. With them 
 sat Port, who farmed Ballagher's, while at the very end 
 of the room, at another table, sat three old labourers, 
 furrowed with age and crusted with earth, who sucked 
 their clay pipes, nodding a little over their tankards, 
 their ears respectfully open to the conversation of their 
 superiors. It was not much, this conversation, for all 
 knew that in a village everything one says is to-morrow 
 known to everybody, and so when Port asked Mr. Barry 
 how the cycle shop was going, he expected nothing more 
 than the defensive reply: 
 
 " Sold a penn'orth of tintacks to-day." 
 
IN ENGLAND 41 
 
 If Mr. Barry had replied otherwise he would have 
 feared that somebody would raise his rent. 
 
 And still Mr. Cashel polished that tumbler with 
 chamois leather. After a moment the guarded conver- 
 sation was resumed. 
 
 "I'm glad I ain't got a son," said Hart. "A girl's 
 trouble enough, but in these days if you've got a son and 
 want to stick to him it's as if you'd burgled a church. 
 Though when I come to think of it, girls ..." He 
 was a very large, red man, with cheeks that hung a little 
 on his soiled linen collar. He did not look like the pros- 
 perous farmer he was, but more like a bankrupt book- 
 maker who has taken to backing horses. 
 
 " Well," said Port, " let 'em say, that's what I say; let 
 'em say. My boys ain't going." 
 
 "Will you march too or wait till March 2? " asked 
 Mr. Abbey, with an air of infinite doggishness. Mr. Port 
 brought his fist down upon the table ; his fine eyes shone, 
 and his short grey beard seemed to stick out with inten- 
 sity. 
 
 " They ain't going to march. Dammun! I say, they 
 ain't going. Farm wants 'em and farm'll 'ave 'em, that's 
 what I say." 
 
 " It's all very well, Mr. Port," said Barry, " but you've 
 got to think of the country." 
 
 " I am thinking of the country," said Mr. Port. 
 " Ain't this the country? The country wants men. Well, 
 we've got the men and we'll damn well keep 'em. I'm 
 going to appeal, that's what I'm going to do, and they 
 can say what they like. Let 'em say, that's what I say." 
 
 For a moment debate seemed imminent, and the three 
 old labourers, holding their pipes high, stared at their 
 masters seriously, as if they were being educated in the 
 problems of the day. 
 
42 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Then Mr. Cashel was appealed to. "Well, gentle- 
 men," he said (polish, polish) , " of course we've got to 
 get the men. Nobody says we can do without the men. 
 We've got to win this war. But, of course, the land's 
 got to be looked after. We've got to get the men for the 
 land too. I'm glad to think that some have gone already. 
 But, of course, some have got to stay." 
 
 " 'Ear, 'ear/' said a small, sandy man who was sitting 
 alone. And after a moment's hesitation a chorus of 
 " 'ear, 'ear " arose. It was felt that Mr. Cashel had 
 ideally expressed the intermediate position, and that 
 nobody need hesitate to enter his public house on account 
 of his views. But Mr. Keele, a rather bitter-looking man 
 with grey side whiskers and the air of a methodist so 
 common in this corner of Kentish Sussex, spoke: 
 
 " It's all very well your talking, all of you. Your boys 
 like the land. Not like my fine la-di-da gentleman. He 
 don't want to stay. Gadding and gallivanting in Hast- 
 ings, that's more like it. Just like the others. The last 
 and the worst." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Mr. Hart, with a grin, " 'e wants to 
 drive a moty car, don't 'e? 'E's to be an engineer, ain't 
 'e? 'E'll be a gemmun yet, you take my word." 
 
 " Surelye ; " said Mr. Keele bitterly, his emotion such 
 that from the prevailing cockney speech he dropped for 
 a second into Sussex. He seemed to find it difficult to 
 speak; he could not express how much it outraged him 
 that he, the fifth Keele to control Stoat's Farm, should 
 see his children flee to the cities. His three daughters 
 had married and left him; the elder son was a shopman 
 in Boxhill; now the younger was going the way of his 
 flesh. He could not restrain it. " I'm ashamed when 
 I thinks of it," he said. 
 
 " Cheer up ! " said Hart suddenly, enormously slap- 
 
IN ENGLAND 43 
 
 ping him on the shoulder with a fat red hand. " Cheer 
 up, you'll get sugar in heaven if you don't get it here. 
 And they'll sell it you without your buying a gallon of 
 paraffin." 
 
 There was laughter, in the midst of which the little 
 sandy man, the village cobbler, whose name was Farcet, 
 was heard to ask whether there was any news. 
 
 " News be damned," said Port, expressing the county 
 feeling towards the war. " What I want to know is this. 
 They're setting up a tribunal, and they say Squire's 
 chairman. Well, is 'e going to stand up for the land? 
 That's what I want to know." 
 
 " Of course 'e'll stand up for the land," said Hart; 
 " 'e's a good un." 
 
 " Sir Hugh's an excellent landlord," said Mr. Cashel 
 judicially. 
 
 Mr. Hart gulped down his beer and turned on Cashel 
 with a certain savagery of admiration. "A good un! 
 A damn good un. Known 'im forty years, I 'ave: they 
 don't breed that sort nowadays. Why, I remember, I 
 was a nipper then, in 77 it was. I remember it as if it 
 was yesterday. The old Squire, Sir James, he was alive 
 then. This young feller, he was coming along the lane 
 to the farm. I remember 'e was fourteen then, same as 
 me, out for a holiday from his fine school, Eton-and- 
 Oxford they called it, I think. Well, I was just rushing 
 out of the gate, and I caught 'im as 'e was turning the 
 corner plump in the belly. J E picks 'imself up an' 
 looks at me, not red as you might think, but greeny 
 white, J e was that angry. ' Beg pardon/ I sez. ' Beg 
 pardon what? ' sez the young feller. ' Beg pardon/ I 
 sez. ' Beg pardon Sir' sez 'e. ' Go to 'ell,' sez I. 'E 
 sez nothing, and fetches me a clip on the ear, I can feel 
 it now. Gord! we 'ad a warm five minutes. I shoved 
 
44 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 'im into the ditch and I called 'im everything I knew, 
 and Vd 'ave done the same, but 'e 'adn't learned the 
 words at 'is fine school. 'E broke a tooth for me, 'e did." 
 
 " And who won? " asked Farcet, suddenly. The fat 
 man laughed. 
 
 " Well, I suppose 'e won, if me being chucked into the 
 manure means anything. But 'e picked me up, and 'e 
 wiped most of the muck off and shook 'ands. 'E's a 
 genamun, dammun! " 
 
 " Aye, he's a gemmun." 
 
 " Ah," said Hart, " wish I'd 'ad a boy like 'im instead 
 o' Molly. Oh, she ain't a bad un, but you gets kind o' 
 sick o' ribbons and scented soap, and young fellers send- 
 ing valentines from the railway yard at Ashford." 
 
 " Don't you worry," said Hart, " you won't be both- 
 ered with 'er long." 
 . " What do you mean? " said Hart. 
 
 The table laughed with an air of secretive sensuality. 
 Then Farcet said: " It don't do to talk, but they say 
 there'll be wedding bells soon at Ascalon." 
 
 Mr. Hart laid upon the table two enormous fists and 
 said: "If it's that Cradoc you're talking of if you 
 think that she's going ter 'ave 'im jgrrr I'll rive the 
 guts out of 'im." 
 
 "Won't be difficult," said Keele. "Wot's it 'e calls 
 'imself? Conscientious objector, ain't it? You'll tan 'im 
 as easy as Squire tanned you." 
 
 " I'll tan 'im as easily as I'd tan you, Keele," replied 
 Hart, " but there, that sort don't need tanning; tarring 
 and feathering, that's more like it." 
 
 " 'Ear, 'ear," said Port. " It's not as if 'e was on the 
 land. 'Oo wants grocers? My boys ain't conscientious 
 objectors, but somebody's got to look after the farm." 
 
 Mr. Farcet held to the subject as if it fascinated him. 
 
IN ENGLAND 45 
 
 " What's going to happen to 'im, do you think? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " He'll go up before the Tribunal," said Barry, " and 
 tell 'em 'e wouldn't kill a slug 'cos it's all God's beautiful 
 life." 
 
 " And wot '11 the Tribunal say? " asked Farcet. 
 
 " Oh, I dunno. Smack 'im on the cheek and see if 'e 
 turns the other. Squire's chairman, and I'll be sorry for 
 Cradoc when Squire's done with 'im." 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Cashel, " you know a man may be a 
 conscientious objector; it's the law." 
 
 " The law's the law," said Mr. Keele, " and a con- 
 scientious objector, 'e's 'e's a louse." There was a 
 little silence, and Barry said: 
 
 " Well, after all, why should he go? I'd go if I could, 
 but who's to run the ironmongery? " 
 
 " Same here," said Abbey. " You don't want to 'ave 
 to go into Rye to buy a pair of socks." 
 
 " No, to be sure," said one of the old labourers, though 
 what this applied to was not clear. For a moment 
 nobody said anything; the pipes smoked slowly. The 
 countryside was meditating over this problem: Why 
 should Cradoc go? Why should anybody go? Go to a 
 place nobody's ever heard of. Ah ! if the Germans came 
 to Sussex it might be different. "If 'e comes near my 
 girl," Hart summed up, " I'll rive 'is guts out." But 
 there was no echo. It was as if the profound thoughts 
 of the countrymen, that range no further than the sky 
 line, and embrace every detail within its curve, were 
 fastened upon the sense of community within that little 
 space, which forbade Cradoc to join the army, just as it 
 forbade young Keele to make for the garages of Hast- 
 ings. For a moment the talk wandered away from these 
 dim connections with the war. They talked of the funny 
 
46 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 gardening in Villa-Land, of the absurd townsmen who 
 already were sowing beans and broccoli, so that the spring 
 rains might duly rot their seeds. 
 
 " That sort," said Keele, " they dunno what top- 
 dressing is. They puts in onions in soft clay just as they 
 might put roses. Dig! That sort can't dig. See 'em 
 run their drills by each other; you couldn't lay your hand 
 between two rows." 
 
 Thicker and thicker hung the smoke. Oaths and 
 threats rose up as the probable maximum prices of meat 
 were discussed. Mr. Cashel still polished and listened; 
 sometimes one of the old labourers gravely nodded his 
 head with an air of intellectual enlightenment. 
 
 MARCH was passing. As waves successively breaking 
 on the shore, but ever rising, the Germans drew closer 
 to Verdun. One day a fort still flew a battered tricolour, 
 for a moment maintained tradition against experience, 
 revived in isolated gallantry the prejudice of glacis, scarp 
 and counterscarp, then fell, was a dot, a name, a shadow 
 merged within the greater shadow of the field greys. 
 They came on, the field greys, under shrapnel, decimated 
 by machine-gun fire, mined a division at a time in woods, 
 like a tide creeping into rocky channels, rising about 
 unconquered bluffs. The black line on the newspaper 
 maps twisted as a tortured serpent closer about tiny vil- 
 lages, tiny as Troy and as epic, until their names, Vaux, 
 Cumieres, shone red as beacons in the straining strife. 
 Through a smoke cloud they were glimpsed, pawns of 
 fate, toys of a press that enthroned them, frail barriers 
 against the guns which already poured flame into the 
 streets of Verdun, a press full of hint, apology, explana- 
 
IN ENGLAND 47 
 
 tion, galvanised to cry only " Hold out! " to reassure by 
 promise . . . 
 
 God ! that offensive of ours, will it never start? 
 
 And ringed about by a foul Eastern river, stinking with 
 mud and corpses, cut off as Gordon in Khartoum, Town- 
 shend in Kut, penned in as a wild boar at bay that can 
 only foam and bristle, preparing the daily miracle of the 
 sun, by raising among men that shambled with fever- 
 leaded feet, filthy with sores, crawling with vermin, the 
 standard of the forgotten St. George . . . 
 
 XI 
 
 SIR HUGH fled rather than went to town. He had 
 nothing to do there ; indeed he ought on that Wednesday 
 to have attended a sitting of the Board of Control, but 
 the feeling which in October of the previous year had 
 led him to shut up Connaught Square and lock himself 
 up at Knapenden, far from placards, shouting newsboys, 
 urgent telephones, tape machines, had a way of reversing 
 itself and of driving him up to town. It was as if the 
 old war fever lay dormant in his blood, and now and then 
 broke out. He was feverish that day, for the agony of 
 Verdun followed him close, its shadow hanging over the 
 train, as if some flying roc cast over him the black aura 
 of its wings. So he was glad to find Charing Cross so 
 busy, like an ant hill stirred; the Strand was extraor- 
 dinarily full of young men in khaki, excited girls, middle- 
 aged and elderly people who seemed to have rediscovered 
 something to do. It was still winter in London on this 
 March morning; he missed the rising scent of spring, so 
 strong already in Udimore Copse, but in a way spring 
 was expressing itself in the women's faces, little rosy 
 
48 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 animals nestling in furs. As he walked up Pall Mall 
 he felt that so vivid a generation could not die. 
 
 In another way this was borne out a little later when 
 he entered the Mausoleum Club where he was to lunch 
 with Angus Cawston. There was something so solid and 
 certain about his brother-in-law; like Lady Oakley he 
 was full of thick life, which contrasted with Sir Hugh's 
 fine nervousness; because Cawston was large, square, 
 heavy, he had for Sir Hugh something of the physical 
 attraction which had flung him, a little fearful but enrap- 
 tured, into Lady Oakley's strong arms. 
 
 Cawston took charge of him in a businesslike way; in 
 a sense he hung up his visitor's hat. Things went with 
 a swish. Sir Hugh was shepherded up the vast staircase 
 into the dining room with the colonnaded front: if the 
 Mausoleum had been Sir Hugh's own club, even so Caw- 
 ston would have ordered the lunch. He talked a great 
 deal during lunch. 
 
 "We aren't getting on with this war. Oh! I don't 
 mean only out there; we can't do anything about that, 
 we civilians. It's here I mean. We're just slacking 
 along, half-doing things, or pretending we are. War 
 isn't a tea-party, as Bernhardi says. Look at the Ger- 
 man banks." 
 
 " They're winding them up," said Sir Hugh, " aren't 
 they? " 
 
 "Winding them up!" said Cawston bitterly, "we're 
 giving the key one turn a week. That's how we wind up 
 the German banks. I went into the Deutsche Bank yes- 
 terday full of Huns, great, fat, prosperous Huns. 
 They're not worrying about their jobs. They know their 
 bank won't be wound up by the time we've wound up 
 the watch on the Rhine. Hugh, it makes me sick. 
 Everything makes me sick. Look at the blockade! The 
 
IN ENGLAND 49 
 
 other day we let through eighteen hundred tons of rubber 
 because they were going to Sweden. But, good God! 
 Sweden hasn't used eighteen hundred tons of rubber since 
 she was born." 
 
 " I quite agree with you," said Sir Hugh, "but Sweden's 
 neutral. Even if she is trading with Germany, we can't 
 help it." 
 
 " Stop the goods." 
 
 " Yes, stop 'em, if you can show they are going to Ger- 
 many. But you can't stop goods to a neutral." 
 
 " Don't have beef, try the cold saddle; the Mausoleum 
 prides itself on its saddle. What were you saying? Oh ! 
 about neutrals. Well, we can't be bothered with neu- 
 trals. We've got to ration 'em, and if we don't let 'em 
 have quite enough they won't be able to sell anything to 
 Germany. Oh! I know," he went on, suppressing Sir 
 Hugh, " I know your ideas about fair play, and they're 
 all very well in the ordinary way, but this is war, man! 
 war! We can't be quixotic about it. Neutrals must 
 suffer; serve them damn well right for being neutrals." 
 
 Sir Hugh smiled. " You mean serve them damn well 
 right for being little neutrals. You wouldn't try it on 
 the U. S. A., would you? " 
 
 Cawston made a broad gesture, and for a moment Sir 
 Hugh wondered why he liked him so, this heavy club- 
 man with the fleshy cheeks, tight collar, cross-barred 
 cravat, eyeglass grafted under the heavy eyelid, hogged 
 reddish moustache, all complete. So like Lena, with his 
 dark red hair; that must be it. While Sir Hugh was 
 thinking, Cawston escaped the awkward question. 
 
 " They'll be all right by and by. This war is touch- 
 ing up their moral feelings no end; and when a moral 
 man is properly touched up, he makes a first-class mur- 
 derer. They may be too proud to fight, but they'll get 
 
50 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 shoved into it sooner or later. Look at this fodder busi- 
 ness. David has it from the Controller himself: four 
 thousand bales of hay from the States were lying at 
 Southampton. If we'd been able to unload them it'd 
 never have come out, but we didn't, and after a while the 
 hay got heated and we had to put the fire out. And 
 what did they find when they went down to see the 
 damage? Thousands and thousands of little steel hooks, 
 scattered all through that hay. Kill every horse that ate 
 it. And after that you tell me we've got to talk of fair 
 play! " 
 
 Sir Hugh was silent: he was a country gentleman, and 
 somehow it shocked him more to think of horses with 
 their entrails stabbed by steel hooks than if this had 
 been done to men. 
 
 He did not say much more during the meal, for a little 
 grey man, whose name Sir Hugh never surprised, joined 
 them. He found himself listening to the conversation 
 around him. 
 
 " We've got to give it 'em hot and strong," said the 
 grey man, " reprisals all the time, that's the only way. 
 Look at that seaplane raid on Walmer. What's Walmer? 
 Saturday afternoon excursion. Well, we've got to give it 
 'em back. Drop a few bombs on Cologne, town for 
 town, and ton for ton." 
 
 " Tit for tat," whispered some irreverent spirit in Sir 
 Hugh's mind. " He is quite right, though ..." 
 
 " They talk of frightfulness," said Cawston. " Well, 
 they know their business. We can give 'em a bit of 
 frightfulness. Pity we didn't start it." 
 
 " Yes," said the grey man. " We're getting out a new 
 bomb, you know. Said to be prussic acid mostly. 
 Funny stuff: it makes you jump into the air and tie your- 
 self into knots." 
 
IN ENGLAND 51 
 
 Unreasonably Sir Hugh smiled. It was a comic way 
 of killing. 
 
 " The way you describe it," he said, " makes me think 
 of the old riddle: What is the difference between the 
 manner of death of a hairdresser and a sculptor? You 
 know, the hairdresser curls up and dyes, while the sculp- 
 tor makes faces and busts." 
 
 They laughed all three. Cawston brought the conver- 
 sation back to reality by asking whether the Southern 
 Board of Control was at last supplying the nets for sub- 
 marine fishing. And for a time the conversation became 
 fantastic : submarines were being fished for, like shrimps ; 
 Cawston and the grey man both knew somebody whose 
 friends had seen them lying in dozens in Portsmouth 
 graving-dock. The talk wandered, as they went to the 
 smoking room, to the difficulty of enlisting submarine 
 crews. 
 
 " It won't matter now," said Cawston, " now that we've 
 got compulsion. Get all the men we want. At least we 
 shall soon. ' Single men first ' won't last." 
 
 At this stage Sir Hugh noticed that the grey man looked 
 meditative. Over coffee and liqueurs the discussion was 
 confined to the coming general compulsion. 
 
 " We've got to have it," said Cawston. " Before we've 
 done with this job every man will have to go. Every 
 man up to forty." 
 
 Sir Hugh found himself putting in a plea for the land. 
 
 " Oh ! the land must look after itself," said Cawston. 
 With a sense of ignoble detail, he added: "We must 
 paddle along as best we can. It's no good favouring 
 the land, or we'll have no land left to favour." 
 
 A vein of sentiment appeared in him: 
 
 "When I think of Belgium and France all torn and 
 burnt, and of all that country round Knapenden with 
 
52 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the villagers sitting down to their pots of beer in the 
 oast-houses ..." 
 
 " They don't sit in the oast-houses," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 "Well, anyhow, it's all very picturesque, and all the 
 little English villages nestling in the dells, it makes me 
 think oh, well you know. Ah! if I had a son I'd 
 be proud to give him to his country." 
 
 " Yes," said Sir Hugh, slowly, " I've got a son. I 
 know." 
 
 Then the little grey man bent forward confidentially 
 and said: 
 
 " I was thinking while you were telling us about the 
 Board of Control. I agree with you that compulsion all 
 round is a matter of months. Now my son is managing 
 a motor business. He's doing very well, but he couldn't 
 very well attest. It wasn't much good. You see the 
 business couldn't spare him. He's starred. Only if 
 we're going to have compulsion all round, it strikes me," 
 and his voice filled with patriotic solemnities, " that he 
 ought to do something. I wonder whether the Board of 
 Control could find something for him. First-class busi- 
 ness man, knows all about cars. Of course, it's very 
 awkward for the business, but still in these days, I'm 
 sure you agree with me, he ought to do something." 
 
 Sir Hugh vaguely promised to see what he could do. 
 He had not yet attained a condition of irony, and so 
 saw no opposition between the grey man's paternal am- 
 bitions and the rumbling talk of reprisals and spreading 
 destructions which issued from his lips. He left the Club 
 a little later. 
 
 " Good-bye, Angus. How's Genevieve? " 
 
 " Doing fine ; she is in the Women's Emergency Corps, 
 drill, canteen work at Woolwich half the night; it's mak- 
 ing another girl of her. Jolly good for girls, all this; 
 
IN ENGLAND 53 
 
 it's hauling 'em out of all that shopping and fashions. 
 Bringing them up against things, you know. We'll get 
 a better type of girl all round. I shouldn't wonder if 
 after the war we got a nobler and purer kind of domestic 
 life." 
 
 " I wonder," thought Sir Hugh as he went along Pall 
 Mall. The countryman's eyes were open to differences. 
 There were many girls in uniform, W. E. C's, V. A. D's, 
 nurses, girls dressed up to look like Serbian vivandieres, 
 or something equally incredible, Government office girls 
 with bobbed hair, a touch of lip salve, and a following 
 airman. Excited, busy-looking crowd. Not much hate 
 there. What a lark the war was! Then Sir Hugh began 
 to reproach himself: "After all, how am I taking the 
 war? " He thought himself inadequate in hate. Never 
 would he attain the sacred fervour of Cawston, the little 
 grey man, his own wife, anybody. War was a beastly 
 job you had to do. Could not one do it decently? Had 
 we like the Homeric heroes to stand in front of each 
 other and call one another filthy names before fighting? 
 Fight and win, or fight and lose, and shake hands and be 
 damned to it. They were not taking it like that, any of 
 them. All this talk about annexing Mesopotamia, and 
 bagging Egypt, and handing over Trieste to the Italians, 
 and boycotts, and snatching ships it was all quite 
 sound, quite fair, but how was it being done? Not by 
 cool judges, but by a nasty little crowd of plaintiffs 
 clawing for damages. No tournament this, but an inter- 
 national bargain sale. 
 
 The impression hung heavily upon him all that day. 
 Piccadilly upset him; there was a Flag Day going on. 
 And a girl ogled him as she pinned on his flag. He asked 
 her what the proceeds were for, and she didn't quite 
 know. At his own club, the Gadarene, lost in the 
 
54 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 augustnesses of St. James's Street, he listened for a while 
 to the conversation in the billiard room. He did not 
 know the men ; apparently they had started with a debate 
 on: "Was it pronounced ' VERDAIN ' or ' VERDOON '? " 
 Instances of other French words were given. Logic was 
 invoked. Wipers was derided. Etymology waxed hos- 
 tile. The balls clicked, somebody swore. Gloomily fell 
 the afternoon light. " Hard lines," said somebody. Now 
 etymology passed into reminiscences of a phantom, Old 
 Chips, a one-time classical master of Marlborough. It 
 wandered from Old Chips to memories of fagging, to 
 scrapes when out of bounds. An Etonian vowed that 
 Neuve Chapelle had been messed on the historic playing 
 fields. 
 
 Sir Hugh listened sympathetically, but disturbed. He 
 understood all this. Those were his memories too, but 
 for many years he had been thinking of other things, 
 politics, finance, land and roads, all that sort of thing. 
 His school days seemed further back than those of his 
 contemporaries. Strange creatures, these men of fifty, 
 that find in port the satisfaction they used to find in 
 tuck; that love golf as once they loved footer; that have 
 given up Henty and Ballantyne in favour of Blackwood 
 and " The Winning Post " ; that keep horses instead of 
 pet white mice, that are all having, getting, contesting, 
 that are as pleased when they attain a K. C. B. as they 
 liked being made a prefect. Schoolboys ! Eternal school- 
 boys! but schoolboys in office, soldiers, civil servants, 
 lawyers, minds that are as they were, but in charge of 
 things that can crush, and hurt, and wilt, men not grown 
 up, yet sticking by sheer weight to the surface of a world 
 that whirls them where it lists. Up against a war like 
 this, men like this. Men capable only of seeing to-day, 
 bound to be surprised by to-morrow, concerned with 
 
IN ENGLAND 55 
 
 atrocities more than with the impulses which underlie 
 atrocities, with revenge rather than with adjustment. 
 And Sir Hugh tried to formulate the thoughts that in- 
 spired him in the pursuit of similar ends, so that his 
 effort might have afflatus, something that one might call 
 the war creed of a gentleman. Something like this: 
 
 " I believe in God the Father, in His Representative, 
 Jesus Christ, and in His Metaphor, the Holy Ghost. His 
 relative, the Virgin, I have decided to omit. His Saints 
 I tolerate; their chairman, St. George, I respect because 
 he is royally appointed to Me. 
 
 " I believe in the gentlemen of England. 
 
 " I believe in times of peace that my dominance is 
 founded on the Latin grammar and the Greek alphabet, 
 on cricket and football; on beef, on port and sherry, on 
 the House of Lords, on the pre-Bathurst Morning Post, 
 and the pre-Northcliffe Times, on my father; on his 
 father. 
 
 " I believe that in times of war my code of peace must 
 be maintained. I believe that war must be waged in 
 accordance with the rules of the game, that no weapon 
 may be used that has not been used before; thus I may 
 not use gas, liquid fire, aeroplane darts, nor may I bom- 
 bard open towns, or torpedo merchant ships; but I may 
 use swords, bayonets, rifles, guns (light, heavy and 
 machine), pikes, battering-rams, bows and arrows, flint 
 axes. 
 
 " I believe that though my enemy uses unlawful 
 weapons, I may not imitate him. If he so do and prevail, 
 then according to the rules of the game, though victorious, 
 he shall be deemed to have lost it. 
 
 " I believe that spying and the opening of letters may 
 not be practised by me, for these are against the rules 
 of the game. 
 
56 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " I believe that I may not interfere with the enemy's 
 commercial and industrial activities, for this is outside 
 the game. Moreover, I am not fully aware that such 
 activities exist. 
 
 " I believe that I may not seduce the enemy's subject 
 peoples, or foment discontent among his labouring class, 
 for it is beneath me to treat with vassals; also I am not 
 fully aware that the labouring class exists. 
 
 " I believe that no harm may be done to the enemy's 
 wounded, his women, children, aged, or sick. If the 
 enemy act otherwise, then he has broken a rule of the 
 game, and though victorious shall be deemed to have 
 lost it. 
 
 " I believe that I owe all this to my own vanity, and 
 that I am entitled to claim from myself everything except 
 victory." 
 
 But such nebulous formulations, however exalting, did 
 not reconcile him with London. London in wartime did 
 not look as if it were practising a war creed of any kind. 
 It was just shoving into omnibuses, and buying up choco- 
 lates in case they ran short. He had moments; one does 
 not escape moments in London, for she is so large that 
 in broad spaces like Whitehall her futilities take upon 
 themselves an air of importance. Little men in White- 
 hall scurrying, very busy, all of them kings, even though 
 only of Lilliput. One of those moments was the march 
 past of a battalion of Scots Guards, great creatures 
 spangled with barbarous tokens, big fellows with lovely 
 knees carved out of brown marble. And their savage 
 music made something rise and swell in Sir Hugh's throat. 
 The bagpipes shocked him, as they do all Southerners; 
 their wild melody, full of blood lust, full of mourning, 
 struck him as indecent and violating, but in a sensual 
 way he enjoyed this public violation of his emotions. 
 
IN ENGLAND 57 
 
 Still he was glad to go home. He felt the need to get 
 away from the war, and it was this perhaps that led him 
 to lunch with his uncle, Charles Oakley, who had retired 
 into a small house surrounded by broad fields at the top 
 of the hill east of Rye. Charles Oakley was very old, 
 seventy-five, and in those days less interesting than he 
 had been. All through his life he had provided Sir Hugh 
 with perpetual interest, for the old man had once upon 
 a time flaunted a wild and insolent youth at Cremorne, 
 Vauxhall, Tortoni's, on every race course, wherever bac- 
 carat was played; he had known Napoleon III and been 
 in love with Eugenie, worn very tight trousers with 
 straps under his boots, and once upon a time, in Willis's, 
 hidden under a lady's crinoline to escape the bailiffs. 
 All through his youth and early manhood Sir Hugh had 
 turned the pages of his uncle's scandalous chronicle, but 
 now his memory was growing dim; he held on as well as 
 he could to faded stories about Plon-Plon, and something 
 vague about' Randolph Churchill, which began with some- 
 body called Guzzling Jimmy being thrown out of Mivart's 
 and the rest of the story disappeared. 
 
 Still there was Charles Oakley, permanent, eternal. 
 In his retirement he produced his incredible house. For 
 the old man had developed a mania for inlaying. One 
 might be sure almost at any time of hearing from the hall 
 the caressing whirr of his fretsaw. From the library 
 interminably issued mahogany tables amazingly faked 
 into Sheraton, inlaid trays, and difficult, incredible ob- 
 jects, such as towel horses inlaid in marqueterie. It was 
 a bewildering house. It was so persistently inlaid that 
 it twinkled. Sometimes Charles Oakley would medita- 
 tively look at the panelled walls and remark: 
 
 " One can't inlay oak, tk, no, one can't inlay oak." 
 
 It was a pity. 
 
58 w BLIND ALLEY 
 
 As Sir Hugh entered the house it was just time for 
 lunch, and he thought with satisfaction of going after- 
 wards into the library and congratulating the old man on 
 some difficult performance, such as a Sheratonised boot- 
 jack, or something equally strange. But when the time 
 came, and he followed his uncle to the big room, he saw 
 that times had changed. No longer were the great Dutch 
 tables obtrusive: they were covered with vast war maps, 
 dotted about with little flags. Without a word the old 
 man sat down before the eastern France section, his red, 
 stiff finger tracing, as if he loved it, the course of the 
 Meuse. Sometimes he adjusted a little flag, or pulled 
 it out and stuck it in again into the same hole. He had 
 no reminiscence to-day, he lived only in the present; he 
 smiled up into his nephew's face, delighted with this new 
 toy the War! 
 
 So, in greater loneliness, Sir Hugh walked all the way 
 along the ridge, feeling that he must go home to greet his 
 sister, Mrs. Marchmont. He tried to express to his wife 
 a little of this sense of suspension, so strong in him that 
 day. Lady Oakley, after kissing him and telling him 
 he looked tired, seemed unable to understand the vague 
 suggestion that his mind, not his body was tired. 
 
 " Dear old man," she said. " I wish I could get you 
 sanatogen. But they've stopped it, you know; it's Ger- 
 man." She looked at him anxiously. She still loved 
 her old husband very dearly, and she understood him 
 not a bit more than when they came together twenty- 
 seven years before. Perhaps that was why she still loved 
 him. But her incapacity to grasp in him the things he 
 could not grasp himself filled Sir Hugh with a certain 
 discontent. He still liked the feel under his arm of her 
 broad, firm shoulder; he liked the heavy wealth of her 
 red-brown hair. How extraordinarily good-looking she 
 
IN ENGLAND 59 
 
 still was at forty-five. " Dear old Lena," he murmured, 
 then sighed, realising that emotion is not quite as good as 
 understanding. He shook it off. 
 
 " Hetty's come, I suppose." 
 
 " Yes ; she's in the drawing-room, simply champing for 
 tea." 
 
 Sir Hugh laughed. He knew his sister's regular habits. 
 To Mrs. Marchmont five o'clock tea meant five o'clock, 
 and not five past five tea. 
 
 As soon as he sat down, Mrs. Marchmont, evidently 
 stirred by the war, began a frontal attack upon the period 
 she generally described as "The Times In Which We 
 Live." Apparently she had nearly been knocked down 
 by a motor car, this invention of the devil and the 
 twentieth century. 
 
 " They ought to be put down. Put down! " 
 
 " Steady on," said Sir Hugh, " what about horses? 
 Remember how you broke your collarbone in '81? " 
 
 Mrs. Marchmont took not the slightest notice. She 
 was a little, spare woman, with beautiful hard hands, and 
 an air of having been cut out by machinery and carefully 
 French polished. Substantially, as tea was more and 
 more delayed, she felt it necessary to state her point of 
 view. Namely, she disliked radicals, labour men and 
 socialists; Jews were abominable and Dissenters were 
 worse, for anyhow the Jews had produced Mr. Disraeli; 
 vegetarians were detestable ; everybody ought to be vac- 
 cinated by force; anti-vivisectionists should be handed 
 over to the doctors, so that the latter might demonstrate 
 their humanity. She disliked the cinema. Poets should 
 have their hair cut. And anyhow, poetry was not poetry 
 until it was bound in morocco. 
 
 Sir Hugh enjoyed Hetty. Such a Protest! The whole 
 of tea was occupied by stimulating objections from Sir 
 
60 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Hugh, who was exasperated into defending Cobden. 
 Mrs. Marchmont ate abundantly, and drank so much 
 tea that it evidently got into her head; she got to the 
 point of clamouring for a Man to save England, a very 
 advanced condition. Also she became angry because her 
 brother seemed to think her funny, and she could not 
 perceive what he thought funny, but just as Mrs. March- 
 mont declared that advertisement ought to be made a 
 punishable offence and Sir Hugh lay back in his arm- 
 chair giggling, the door opened to let in Lee, bearing a 
 salver, his face with the considerable nose suggestive of 
 disturbance. 
 
 As he closed the door, one after the other of the 
 three looked at him. Lady Oakley's sentence suddenly 
 stumbled and faded away : Sir Hugh convulsively grasped 
 the two sides of the armchair, while Mrs. Marchmont 
 became set and immovable. Upon the salver lay a tele- 
 gram. The three sat staring at Lee as he came closer. 
 In those days nobody sent telegrams. It wasn't fair to 
 send telegrams. Everybody knew what they meant. 
 Was Lee coming from miles away? He seemed so long. 
 Together Lady Oakley and Sir Hugh felt: " Stephen is 
 killed." Mrs. Marchmont thought: "Bob's gone!" 
 
 And still Lee, from that interminable distance, came 
 striding towards them. All three were taut; each one 
 knew that the blow must be his. 
 
 Then at last Lee handed the telegram to Mrs. March- 
 mont. The old lady did not tear it open. She sat up in 
 her chair, rigid, looking at the others with defiance. 
 " Well? " she seemed to be saying, " What of it? " Then, 
 at last, very quietly, she opened the envelope, unfolded 
 the paper and said aloud: " Missing, that's what it says, 
 but Bob's gone!" 
 
 With a swift movement Lady Oakley went to the arm- 
 
IN ENGLAND 61 
 
 c'hair, and put her arms about her sister-in-law. Mrs. 
 Marchmont gently pushed her aside. 
 
 "I think I will go upstairs, Lena," and without a 
 tremor on her face, neither quickly nor slowly, she went 
 out. 
 
 "By God!" murmured Sir Hugh, "she's game!" 
 And suddenly a blush of self-hate and self-contempt rose 
 in his cheeks; he realised himself as vile because he was 
 so happy: it was not Stephen. Then he went across to 
 his wife and softly stroked her hair. Lady Oakley's 
 cheeks were trembling and she was pretending not to 
 cry, dabbing angrily at her eyes, as if she hated her tears. 
 
 " It was forwarded from London," she said, foolishly. 
 
 " Don't cry," said Sir Hugh, " perhaps he's a prisoner." 
 
 " Oh, no! " said Lady Oakley. " Hetty's right, Bob's 
 gone." 
 
 Suddenly she clasped her hands together, and once 
 more the Wagnerian look came into her eyes. 
 
 " It's dreadful, but it's got to be ... ' Who dies 
 if England lives?' " 
 
 XII 
 
 THAT particular week-end was overhung by the uncer- 
 tainty of Robert Marchmont's fate. One didn't speak 
 of it, and Mrs. Marchmont painfully insisted on playing 
 bridge on the Saturday night and coming down to tea 
 on Sunday afternoon to entertain the Jesmonds, but one 
 thought of nothing else. The house was full of youth, 
 for Monica had come up from Rochester, looking older 
 and more self-possessed, proud of her hands, yellow with 
 T. N. T. up to the wrists. She adopted the spirit of 
 fortitude that was about, made the table laugh falsely 
 by describing the Club night at Cottenham Works. 
 
62 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " It isn't such a rag as you might think. We're too 
 proper and genteel, and all the young men wore linen 
 collars. We enjoyed ourselves under the protection of 
 Miss Livingstone, who looks like a saint turned sanitary 
 inspector. It's all so toney, as they say, programmes 
 printed by the factory, pink silk cards, refreshments 
 strictly non-intoxicating, lancers, but not kitchen, no 
 depraved sitting-out ..." 
 
 But she had to stop. She realised that what she was 
 saying was forced, jaunty, jerky. It was impossible to 
 talk of these things with fear behind them. Poor old 
 Bob! What a fight she had had with him, when she 
 was six and he was ten, because he had unfairly shared 
 a peach. She could still remember with delight smash- 
 ing the unfair half upon his right eye. She almost cried 
 as she thought of it. 
 
 The Jervaulx couple was there too, Sylvia, beautiful 
 and agitated, talking continually of committees that she 
 must attend, munitions she must make, motors she must 
 drive, and producing wherever she went a sensation of 
 flurry. Sir Hugh watched her with surprise: her bril- 
 liant brown eyes, her thick red mane, the splendour of 
 the broad body, made him think of Kallikrates, red cats 
 both of them. But Sylvia was not as restful as Kalli- 
 krates. She bounded where he glided. And she went 
 for her father: 
 
 "You ought to come up to town. There are lots of 
 things you could do in town. Oh ! I know, it's all very 
 well " (she waved away the Board of Control) , " I know 
 you've got a job at Ashford, but you're not in the Middle 
 of Things." 
 
 Sir Hugh was understood to say that when things were 
 going round, the middle was the very place which moved 
 least. 
 
IN ENGLAND 63 
 
 But Sylvia was not mathematical. She became 
 rhapsodic. . . . 
 
 " In London there's always something doing. They're 
 always setting up boards, calling up people, getting 
 people to do things. Societies break up and amalgamate. 
 It's exciting! " 
 
 Sir Hugh smiled. 
 
 " I'm too old to get excited, Sylvia. I do my little bit 
 in the corner, just as you do your big bit in the middle." 
 
 Sylvia suspected that her father was laughing at her, 
 so much so that she consulted her husband. She did 
 not as a rule consult Andrew Jervaulx. She had married 
 him rather hurriedly, after he told her that unless he got 
 married, he didn't see when he was going to get any 
 more leave, and couldn't she help him out? She had 
 married him on that. She liked that brutal way of 
 putting things, and she found a rather voluptuous pleas- 
 ure in the coarseness of the young engineer with the stiff 
 black hair and the chin like a shovel. 
 
 " Doing things? " said Jervaulx, " I dunno. I suppose 
 you've got to mess about and keep yourself amused while 
 I'm out there. Save the country as much as you like, 
 old thing, so long as you let it alone when I'm on short 
 leave." 
 
 " Andy, you're no patriot." 
 
 "Of course I'm no patriot; nobody's a patriot in this 
 country, unless they're forty-one and haven't got to go. 
 But for God's sake don't talk about patriotism; one gets 
 out of the way of thinking of all that tommyrot out there: 
 trying to find whisky, and inspecting the men's feet, 
 that's the sort of thing that really matters." 
 
 " But the Empire," said Sylvia feebly. 
 
 " Damn the Empire. Come here, old girl." The 
 young man took Sylvia between thumb and forefinger by 
 
64 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the back of her thick white neck, and bending down her 
 head with an air of cold resolution kissed her where the 
 red curls clustered close. " You're a damn fine girl," he 
 muttered thickly. 
 
 " What a brute you are, Andy," said Sylvia, with a 
 soft laugh of surrender, as if her agitations were set at 
 rest by the strong urgency of the man's singler mind. 
 
 And Lady Oakley tried to interest Mrs. Marchmont 
 in the discussion which threatened to break up the Com- 
 mittee of the New Hospital at Rye. One party wanted 
 a dashing staff nurse to cheer up the patients, the other 
 felt that soldiers generally lived evil lives and should be 
 brought into contact with some one who would prepare 
 them for a better land. Lady Oakley aspired to some- 
 thing less mystical. What she really wanted was to 
 appoint Louise Douglas, so as to please Sir Hugh. Mrs. 
 Marchmont said nothing. She did not like Louise much, 
 and it annoyed her that Lady Oakley should not under- 
 stand why her husband loved Louise. But of course poor 
 Lena was so blind; also she had not known Mrs. Douglas 
 well. Mrs. Marchmont found her old dislike of Mrs. 
 Douglas very helpful during that awful time: hatred is 
 a fine antidote to grief. 
 
 Meanwhile Sir Hugh, on the Sunday afternoon, went 
 with Louise along the Ridge towards Udimore. More 
 than Monica, Louise gave him a sense of complete rest- 
 fulness; she had her mother's white skin and almost 
 black hair; she did not talk much; she had not Monica's 
 gaiety, but when he tried to express himself to himself, 
 to make somebody understand the hideousness of the 
 world, she was just what he needed. 
 
 " You see, Louise," he said, his eyes fixed on the moist 
 brown road, " we're hanging between victory and defeat, 
 and nobody knows what defeat might mean. All this 
 
IN ENGLAND 65 
 
 sort of thing," he pointed at the marshes rolling away 
 towards Winchelsea, " it's not that it's in the balance 
 exactly. It's not the German flag I'm afraid of; some- 
 how it's the new British flag. Do you understand? " 
 
 " No," said Louise. " Go on." 
 
 Sir Hugh tried to, but he could not explain very well. 
 For a moment he wondered whether he could have ex- 
 plained to Louise's mother, the dead woman who had 
 always seemed to understand, yet had refused herself to 
 him. She had understood everything except how much 
 he wanted her. 
 
 " I've just been to London," he said. " Six million 
 screaming rowdies. Winning the war as if they were 
 winning a sweepstakes. Oh! we're in a corner, we've 
 got to fight, but, my God! why have we got to fight like 
 rats? Don't you see, Louise, we're not trying to make 
 anything out of this war I mean a new order when 
 there won't be any more war. It's revenge all the time, 
 not justice." 
 
 " Vengeance is Mine ! " said Louise gently. " Don't 
 you think He meant justice? " 
 
 " I don't know what He meant," sighed Sir Hugh. 
 " Perhaps it is all too long ago for anything He meant 
 to mean anything now. Oh! never mind," he added 
 desperately, " come down into the meadow and see the 
 lambs." 
 
 Louise followed him without comment; she had the 
 gifts of silence and acquiescence. They went among the 
 lambs that leapt on their straight, woolly, wooden legs, 
 like toys, and stared from afar with inquisitive eyes, and 
 leapt away on springs, more than ever like mechanical 
 toys, bleating, to the side of their large mothers. But 
 all through the meadow one lamb followed them close, 
 pitifully crying, for its mother was dead, and it was 
 
66 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 being bottle-fed. It was willing to be stroked, and it 
 stirred in Sir Hugh's throat that large thing which had 
 risen when he heard the bagpipes, for between its cries 
 the tiny beast tried to seize his finger and to suck it. 
 In the midst of swooping death, the lamb was struggling 
 to maintain its life. 
 
 XIII 
 
 SIR HUGH did not like these sittings of the Military 
 Tribunal. So far he had attended two. It was vaguely 
 disagreeable to sit at this green table, surrounded by 
 half a dozen men who shared with him was it the 
 responsibility or the privilege to tell these young men: 
 " You must go out there. Whether you like it or not. 
 Leaving behind your women, your businesses, your pleas- 
 ures. Go out there, and be shot or mangled. We send 
 you there. We stay here. We are forty-one. We are 
 all right." 
 
 It seemed indecent, this dominance of age. Oh! yes, 
 he knew; these young men came up to appeal; they were 
 not a very attractive crowd or they would have gone 
 long ago of their own free will. Shirkers mostly but 
 still, who could tell whether, if this war had broken out 
 twenty years before, some of the members of the Tri- 
 bunal might not themselves have stood before a similar 
 tribunal, trying to get off? Perhaps only recruits should 
 sit on these tribunals. Perhaps even no old men and no 
 women ought to vote for peace and war. 
 
 And so, when that morning Sir Hugh hurried through 
 the waiting room, he tried not to see the little crowd. 
 There were only seven or eight of them, and three women. 
 It was a horrible idea that these women would wait in 
 that room, while their men went inside to be sentenced. 
 
IN ENGLAND 67 
 
 He did not feel like the chairman of the Tribunal. A 
 queer fancy for a short story passed through his mind; 
 he thought of a magistrate, who, on Judgment Day, auto- 
 matically made for the bench. And the Recording Angel 
 kicked him into the dock. 
 
 There were no scruples inside. It was not a bad tri- 
 bunal. In addition to Sir Hugh it comprised Colonel 
 Macduff, long retired to Winchelsea and now happily 
 dug-out, a steam baker, a big builder whose activities 
 radiated from Rye to Hastings, and two country gentle- 
 men. Not bad people any of them; the sort of people 
 you find on a special jury, who do their best, and are 
 not intolerably sure that their best is very much. As 
 Sir Hugh looked down the list he saw the names of two 
 Knapenden men. One was Port, claiming for two sons 
 on occupational grounds, and Cradoc, conscientious 
 objector. 
 
 The Tribunal was obviously excited about Cradoc, 
 though it tried to be calm, in the English way. Colonel 
 Macduff said: " Hum." The Military Representative 
 remarked vaguely: "We'll soon put him through it," 
 but the builder more crisply stated the excitement by 
 remarking: "Well, Sir Hugh, I suppose we can make a 
 start? " 
 
 It was not an interesting start. The first two claims 
 were a Rye claim for one-man businesses, sound enough 
 so far as those claims went, that is to say so far as a 
 one-man business can be looked upon as anything save 
 a ridiculous survival. 
 
 " Three months. With leave to apply again." 
 
 The men went out with a contented, clucking air, like 
 a hen that has at last laid its egg. 
 
 There was more difficulty with the second case, that 
 of a young man of twenty-two, a very pale, underfed, 
 
68 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 ugly, pimply young man, who outlined in a shrill and 
 rapid monotone those conditions of the poor which are 
 incredible to the rich: 
 
 "... My brother having joined up there's only me 
 to look after my old mother; she's sixty-seven, so she 
 can't get the old-age pension, and you can't leave her 
 because she has epileptic fits, and she might fall in the 
 fire, and my two sisters, they aren't married and not 
 likely to be, because they're getting on, both of 'em, and 
 one of them has varicose veins and fainting fits, and the 
 other's been in trouble and I've got to keep her little boy 
 too, delicate he was from the beginning, and his bowels 
 never was right, and we have the doctor to him every 
 week. We might manage with the panel, except I was 
 out of work last winter, and I haven't quite worked off 
 what I got in debt for, and ..." 
 
 The Tribunal had to listen to the end which came only 
 when the young man took breath. It was horrible, all 
 this. 
 
 " When you think of lives like these," murmured Sir 
 Hugh to Colonel Macduff, " one wonders whether it's 
 worth while giving them exemption; it seems they might 
 as well be dead. Still, everything wants to live, I don't 
 know why." 
 
 " Humph," said the Colonel, " by the look of him he 
 won't make much of a soldier. Let's give him three 
 months and see him again." 
 
 Sir Hugh nodded. After all, in three months the 
 mother might have her final fit and simplify the prob- 
 lem ; more likely, though, the sister would get into trouble 
 again, piling giant responsibilities on rotten shoulders, 
 bred rottenly, in a rotten system. 
 
 Port did not occupy them long. The handsome old 
 farmer had obviously made up his mind to stand no 
 
IN ENGLAND 69 
 
 nonsense from the Tribunal. Vaguely he knew his power 
 and meant to use it. 
 
 " It's like this," he said, sticking out his beard, " if 
 you take my boy Jim, I've got to kill my cows. If you 
 take Tom, I've got nobody to plough. If you take 'em 
 both, I'll look after myself by running the market gar- 
 den. It's as you think right, gentlemen. No boys no 
 milk, no barley, no roots. That's all I've got to say." 
 
 The Tribunal became thoughtful, for already the food 
 scare had been made urgent by the ever more successful 
 U-boat. The Military Representative thought it right 
 to argue: 
 
 " It's all very well, Mr. Port. If everybody talked 
 like you we shouldn't have an army at all." 
 
 " Very likely, sir," said the farmer. " Very sorry, sir, 
 but if you want an army you've got to feed it. If you 
 take my sons you get no food." 
 
 " Oh, nonsense, you can get other men, older men." 
 
 "Yes, sir, very likely, sir. Takes a strong man to 
 drive a plough. I'm too old for it myself, sir. Take it 
 you've done a bit of ploughing in your time." 
 
 The Military Representative, ex-Captain of the Vol- 
 unteers and wholesale druggist, made a deprecating move- 
 ment and murmured that a short exemption would not 
 be opposed and that he would try to arrange substitution 
 later. The Tribunal was greatly relieved when Port 
 stumped out in his hobnailed boots, which seemed to 
 trample on all these torn-fool demands of men who 
 couldn't tell oats from nasturtiums. But the Tribunal 
 was quietly quivering with excitement, for the next name 
 was Cradoc. Their first conscientious objector, and they 
 did not know how to deal with him. They had read 
 reports in the newspapers showing the sort of questions 
 one asked, but at bottom they were nervous. 
 
70 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Those fellows," growled the Colonel, " argue the 
 hind leg of a horse off." 
 
 And the steam baker murmured : " Now ! " with an air 
 of taking the high dive. 
 
 When, a moment later, Cradoc stood before them, his 
 small thin figure rather defiantly erect, and a cool look 
 in his eyes, the Tribunal was much more embarrassed 
 than the appellant. There was a moment of hesitation. 
 The Tribunal was not hostile, but it was so nervous that 
 Colonel Macduff began by a crude remark, as is the way 
 with very shy people: 
 
 '' You're appealing on conscientious grounds, aren't 
 you? It doesn't bother your conscience that other men 
 should go and fight for you." 
 
 Cradoc did not reply, and the Tribunal stirred un- 
 easily. After a moment of silence Sir Hugh thought it 
 well to intervene. 
 
 "Mr. Cradoc," he said, "the grounds for your objec- 
 tion are of course not fully stated in your claim. Per- 
 haps you will tell us exactly why you conscientiously 
 object to entering an army." 
 
 " It isn't a very long story," said Cradoc. He pulled 
 at his ragged black moustache. " I hold that all war is 
 wrong and mistaken; that there is no such thing as a 
 righteous war; that murder is murder, whether legal or 
 not; that it is wrong to settle an international dispute 
 by arms, just as it is wrong to settle a private quarrel by 
 fists. The latter, gentlemen, is recognized by the British 
 laws, which forbid two men to settle their dispute and 
 compels them to come into court; my conscience, there- 
 fore, being a logical conscience, tells me that it is wrong 
 for two nations to settle their private quarrel by force, 
 and that they too must be prepared to come into court. 
 If, therefore, I think it morally wrong that two nations 
 
IN ENGLAND 71 
 
 should fight, then I think it morally wrong that I should 
 assist one of them to fight. Therefore, I conscientiously 
 object to being enlisted in an army which is going to do 
 something which I think wrong. That is my case, 
 gentlemen." 
 
 The Tribunal hesitated for a moment. They were 
 anxious to be fair, and they saw what Cradoc meant; 
 what troubled them was that though they were inclined 
 to agree with him, they thought he was wrong. There 
 must be a trap somewhere. After a moment one of the 
 country gentlemen said: 
 
 " Yes, I see your point. It's all very well in theory, 
 that idea of not fighting, but it doesn't work out in 
 practice." 
 
 " May I suggest that if a thing is right in theory it is 
 right in practice? If a thing does not work out in prac- 
 tice it means that the theory is bad." 
 
 " We are not here to argue about practice and theory. 
 The fact remains that your country is engaged in a life 
 and death struggle with an unscrupulous and powerful 
 enemy, and you ask us to believe that your conscience 
 allows you to let other men go out and fight that enemy 
 while you stay here in shelter. That is your position, 
 is it not? " 
 
 " Yes, that is my position." 
 
 " That's a funny thing for your conscience to tell you, 
 Mr. Cradoc." 
 
 " No. On Saturday afternoon hundreds of men from 
 the country round here find themselves impelled to go 
 to Hastings and get drunk. My conscience does not 
 impel me to do anything but stay at home. I am what I 
 am, an individual. Why should I do what the rest of 
 the world does? " 
 
 " I don't think," said Sir Hugh, " that you can quite 
 
72 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 detach yourself from your country like that. You are a 
 British citizen, you must obey the laws." 
 
 " Yes, unless I am willing to pay the price of dis- 
 obedience. If my conscience tells me that the law is a 
 bad law, I am doing wrong if I obey." 
 
 " Oh, nonsense," said the builder suddenly. " We all 
 obey laws we don't like." 
 
 " Not all of us. Sir Edward Carson and the Ulster- 
 men didn't like Home Rule, even though an Act of Par- 
 liament was passed to enforce it. So they took arms to 
 smash the law. General Gough and his officers at the 
 Curragh said they would not enforce the law. The Suf- 
 fragettes broke the law. The Trade-Unions broke the 
 law. All these people were ready to suffer for it. They 
 did what they thought right: why should I not do what 
 I think right? " 
 
 " Now don't let's wander from the point," said the 
 other country gentleman. " Let's look at things as they 
 are. If we didn't raise an army we should be invaded 
 by Germany and I suppose annexed. The British Em- 
 pire would become a German colony." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Is that all you have to say to such an idea? Have 
 you no use for English liberty? for your home? your 
 flag? your King? " 
 
 " No. I am what I am, a man. I happened to be 
 born in Hastings; I might have been born in Pekin. I 
 should still be what I am, whatever the colour of the bit 
 of rag they call a flag which floated over my head," 
 asserted Cradoc. 
 
 " Answer the question." 
 
 " I am answering, as well as I can. If the British 
 Empire were annexed, I think that ploughmen would still 
 plough your land, that I would still sell tea and sugar, 
 
IN ENGLAND 73 
 
 that the carpenter whose plane I can hear next door 
 would still plane wood. The sunshine would still be sun- 
 shine whatever the flag." 
 
 The steam baker was impelled to come down to 
 realities: 
 
 " You seem to think it would all be nice and easy being 
 conquered. What about Belgium? What about towns 
 being burnt down? What about scores of respectable 
 shop-keepers like you being lined up against a wall and 
 shot by the Huns? What about babies being pitched in 
 the air and spitted on bayonets? " 
 
 " If people did not fight those things would not 
 happen." 
 
 "But damn it all, man! " cried the Military Repre- 
 sentative, "they do happen! " 
 
 " Then we must suffer them. I shall not give back 
 life to a Belgian baby by killing a German father. We 
 must do the best we can, and if we do not kill we take 
 out of other men the impulse to kill. You think that by 
 killing other men you will teach them not to kill you. 
 It is wrong. All they do is to pull themselves together, 
 get into a corner and plot, and take their revenge when 
 they can. Revenge in turns, that has been the history of 
 the world so far." 
 
 The Tribunal stared at this sickly, passionate man. 
 It felt very discontented. 
 
 " Mr. Cradoc," said the steam baker, " try and think 
 of these things happening to yourself. What would you 
 do if a German soldier were to try and outrage your 
 mother? " 
 
 " I should restrain him." 
 
 " By force? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 There was a stir of excitement round the table. 
 
74 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " By force, eh? I thought there would come a moment 
 when your conscience would go pop." 
 
 The grocer looked at them with weary eyes. Could 
 he make them understand? 
 
 " Gentlemen," he said, " I do want you to see what I 
 mean. I would use force as a policeman uses force to 
 preserve order. But I should not kill. Even to save 
 my mother I may not kill, but I myself can be killed. 
 Letting that alone, I say the enemy is only threatening 
 my life as a soldier because he is afraid that I am threat- 
 ening his, because his nation and my nation have started 
 murdering each other, so that it all comes down to the 
 first murderer being the one who gets off. If we don't 
 threaten him, they won't threaten us." 
 
 " But! " shouted Colonel Macduff suddenly and rather 
 angrily, " if everybody talked like you, there'd be no 
 war." 
 
 Cradoc caught a faint smile on Sir Hugh's face. The 
 Colonel had got hold of it pretty clearly, so clearly that 
 Cradoc became ironic and replied: 
 
 " No, and that would never do." 
 
 Cradoc 's position was not settled without some debate. 
 While he was out of the room, the Tribunal, without 
 being in any way converted, showed considerable diverg- 
 ence of opinion. 
 
 "The man's a shirker," said the Colonel. "It's all 
 very well his talking! They all talk, that sort. Bernard 
 Shaw, modern novels, all that sort of rot." 
 
 The Military Representative grew pressing on prac- 
 tical grounds. 
 
 " May I suggest, gentlemen, that you can't let every- 
 body off." 
 
 The builder countered: " That's not the question. We 
 let everybody off if we like," and bristled at the Military 
 
IN ENGLAND 75 
 
 Representative with an air of showing him that the civil 
 power was still top dog. 
 
 As for the country gentlemen, they were silent, as they 
 followed the argument with difficulty, but did not care to 
 say so. 
 
 " It seems to me," said Sir Hugh, "that it all comes 
 down to this: is the man's objection genuine, or not? We 
 know his views, and for my part I think them ridiculous. 
 I think with all of you that in an emergency like this a 
 man must sink his individuality in the common task, 
 that he must be ready to give up the privilege of indi- 
 vidual conscience, and hand himself over to his country 
 to whom he owes a duty of sacrifice greater than the 
 privilege of freedom which he owes to himself." 
 
 " 'Ear, 'ear," said the builder. 
 
 " Well," Sir Hugh went on, " we know from the papers 
 before us that this man's objection is probably not made 
 up to enable him to dodge military service. It seems 
 that he has been a member of the Independent Labour 
 Party for ten years; we know that the Socialist party 
 has always taken this sort of line against war. There- 
 fore the objection seems genuine." 
 
 "Socialist!" cried Colonel Macduff. "I didn't know 
 the fellow was a Socialist." 
 
 " He was a member of the I. L. P." 
 
 " What's the LL. P.?" 
 
 " Oh, never mind that," said the steam baker. "You 
 know their motto : ' you share what you have with me 
 and I don't share what I have with you. ' " 
 
 Colonel Macduff took no further part in the debate 
 beyond occasional detonations sounding something like: 
 "Socialists! string 'em up." 
 
 The steam baker and the Military Representative wan- 
 dered off into a loud argument which began with the 
 
76 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 nationalisation of bakeries and degenerated into the com- 
 mercial difficulty of managing multiple shops. The coun- 
 try gentlemen were conducting a private conversation, 
 wherein occurred the name of a horse called Tagalie, 
 who seemed once to have fluked a win at the Derby. 
 
 " Of course they didn't put her up for the Oaks." 
 
 The builder, who had good business reasons for pleas- 
 ing landowners, suggested to Sir Hugh the ideal English 
 solution: adjourn the case until next meeting. Sir Hugh 
 was profoundly disturbed. How he hated this business! 
 Obviously the fellow was honest, and obviously he was 
 wrong. Fight or die, that was the rule of the world. 
 The law said that if a man conscientiously objected he 
 must be let off: well, then? He decided to pull the meet- 
 ing together and rapped the table. 
 
 " Gentlemen, what are we going to do? " 
 
 " Appeal refused," said the steam baker promptly. 
 
 " I don't think we can do that," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Well, give him three months' exemption with leave 
 to apply again," said the builder. 
 
 " Really," cried the Military Representative, " gentle- 
 men, you can't give everybody three months with leave 
 to apply again. The Kaiser's not giving the British 
 Army three months." 
 
 " No," said Sir Hugh, " it is either exempt or not 
 exempt." 
 
 " I say no exemption," remarked one of the country 
 gentlemen. 
 
 " Look here," said Sir Hugh, " do you believe the man 
 is telling the truth? " 
 
 " Ye-s, I suppose he is. Lunatic, of course." 
 
 " Well, if you think that, we must let him off." 
 
 " I protest," cried the Military Representative, " you 
 can't let men off like that. He must do something." 
 
IN ENGLAND 77 
 
 "Ah!" said the builder, seizing another diplomatic 
 opportunity, " let's give him non-combatant service." 
 
 The Tribunal flung itself with delight upon this solu- 
 tion, which enabled them to decide without saying yes 
 or no. Only Sir Hugh felt awkward. Really this would 
 not do. To serve or not to serve, that was the way he 
 saw it. Conscience was a radical sort of thing. He was 
 confirmed in his view when Cradoc came in again and 
 the decision was communicated: 
 
 " Thank you, gentlemen; you've treated me very fairly, 
 but I'd like to say I can't accept it." 
 
 " Can't accept it? " cried Colonel Macduff. " Let me 
 tell you, sir, you're very lucky to get off so cheaply. You 
 can go into the R. A. M. C. or something." 
 
 Cradoc shook his head. 
 
 " Thank you, gentlemen. I repeat you have treated 
 me very fairly, but I can't do it. I can't go into a 
 munition factory and make shells for other men to blow 
 themselves to bits with, though I won't fire them myself; 
 and I won't pick up men on the battlefield and patch 
 them up so that they may go and fight again. What- 
 ever I did to help this war would, I think, be wrong." 
 
 " Well, do as you like," said one of the country gentle- 
 men. " You know what the consequences are. If you 
 prefer a good safe gaol it's your business." 
 
 Cradoc did not reply, but asked for leave to appeal, 
 which was granted, and went out. 
 
 When, a little later, the sitting ended, Sir Hugh crossed 
 the road from the Court Hall towards the Mermaid, 
 where he would lunch. He wondered why he should 
 think of Pontius Pilate. The fellow was wrong, funda- 
 mentally wrong. Men could not detach themselves from 
 the nation like that. How hateful it all was, this busi- 
 ness of war, this concentration on killing, this withdrawal 
 
78 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 from the arts, from learning, from laughter, love, games, 
 all the things that make life lovely. And yet it had to 
 be. Germany had to be beaten if those beautiful things 
 were to be maintained. 
 
 Standing in front of the Court Hall, behind piled arms, 
 was a detachment of the Sussex Coast, healthy, jolly- 
 looking boys, not heavy countrymen, probably a small 
 contingent from the Hastings shops, some delicately bred 
 and now pleasantly sunburnt. Every man smiling. And 
 all together singing: 
 
 "Another little drink, another little drink, 
 Another little drink won't do us any harm." 
 
 Heavens! what a prelude to patriotism! 
 
 XIV 
 
 As Cradoc stood on the steps of the Court Hall in the 
 sweet softness of the April morning, he was impersonal, 
 labouring under conflicting impressions. Yes; they had 
 been fair enough. Generous, if anything. But it seemed 
 queer that half a dozen old men should have the right 
 to send young men to die for a cause they might believe 
 in, and in most cases for a cause they knew nothing 
 about. Old men! The silly old men who rule the world, 
 the old men who make treaties and break them, and 
 dodge found them, with a dirty sort of finesse old men, 
 who seemed to have stopped thinking about the to- 
 morrow of the world, perhaps because their to-morrow 
 is death, old men blind to the future, ignorant of the 
 past. Experience ! What bunkum experience was ! Once 
 upon a time, when there were no books, of course experi- 
 ence was the only thing ; it was right then that the elders 
 
IN ENGLAND 79 
 
 should rule, but now, when all the knowledge a man 
 needed could be bought for about a sovereign, there they 
 sat with their rules of thumb, their precedents, their tra- 
 ditions, their habits, all the dead things. And look what 
 they had done with their vaunted experience, people like 
 old Bethmann-Hollweg, old Asquith, that theatrical old 
 fool the Kaiser, and Carson, that frenzied mad bull. 
 Funny creature, man. When a steam boiler got enough 
 experience you sent it to the scrap heap; when a man 
 got enough experience you sent him to the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 As he walked away, through the Elizabethan loveliness 
 of Rye, which perfectly outlines the past that stifles the 
 young future, Cradoc's meditations grew more personal. 
 " I wonder," he thought, " how I could have got on if 
 instead of those six survivals I had appeared before six 
 young men in khaki." He smiled. " There's a revolu- 
 tionary idea for you. Caesar just for once saluting the 
 morituri." Then he thought: "Well, never mind, things 
 must take their course." His mind was empty almost 
 as he passed the Land Gate and crossed the railway ; his 
 body hinted that fresh air and a long walk would clarify 
 his ideas. Under sentence as he was, he found himself 
 cut off from the ordinary world. The future was so cer- 
 tain that the past came up in higher colours ; fragments of 
 it filled his mind. He thought of his childhood, in his 
 mother's indescribably filthy little general shop, in a 
 lane off High Street. He remembered the smell; stale 
 tobacco, vinegar, dead flies, and a whiff of tar from out- 
 side. Then, errand boy, memories of a furtive grocer, 
 of evening mysteries consecrated to the adulteration of 
 honey by means of treacle. What a life I Seventy-four 
 hours a week in the shop, and Sunday to make you feel 
 mean and ratlike with your white cheeks, when you went 
 
80 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 out into the country for a walk and saw a great thick 
 labourer with a face like a copper can, chewing his pipe 
 against a stile. 
 
 And yet they had not been fruitless years. He had 
 seen the retail trade close, its smirking subservience to 
 patronage, its arrogance to the poor, the respectable and 
 solemn lie of the mangy speculators who had cornered 
 dirty, inconvenient little shops, to block the way of sup- 
 plies between the big modern store and the consumer. 
 He had been to London, too, in the late 'nineties. All 
 through the South African war he had roasted coffee. 
 But those were not bad years. In those days one could 
 get hold of the Clarion and Blatchford's " Merrie Eng- 
 land." He went to Fabian meetings and was vastly 
 stimulated by the cocky speeches of an inspired stork 
 called Bernard Shaw, who said things about aristocrats 
 and capitalists that made you roar with laughter and 
 grind your teeth. 
 
 He was in the fields now ; the fresh grass crissed under 
 his feet. Still egocentric, Cradoc thought: 
 
 " I wish I'd stayed. London is like a dunghill quiver- 
 ing with its own corruption, but it's alive. Hastings! 
 What a rat hole! " He had come back to Hastings to 
 bury his mother, who had died suddenly, presumably 
 overpowered by the fumes of the general shop. He had 
 come back without love, to take this old body from its 
 dirt-caked sheets, this old body which had reared him, 
 first by arm-dragging, later by unbroken yelping and 
 scolding which the poor, fretted nerves had made into a 
 habit. He had brought five pounds with him to bury 
 her. Afterwards, he had inventoried the furniture, for 
 a little of it was worth saving from the municipal de- 
 structor, worth selling to some other black, bug-ridden 
 home. Here a surprise awaited him: the top drawer of 
 
IN ENGLAND 81 
 
 the sideboard opened so slowly that on wrenching it fell 
 out and emptied its contents. From under a dish clout 
 fell a small, heavy packet, which he untied. This took 
 a long time, for it was wrapped up in five different paper 
 coverings, all hard-tied with string. The innermost core 
 consisted in four sovereigns, eleven shillings, and four- 
 pence. As he sorted out the rest of the contents he dis- 
 covered a broken handbell: to the clapper was tied 
 another little parcel containing nine and tenpence. Then 
 Cradoc grew excited, and decided to search the house. 
 It took him three days ; Mrs. Cradoc, presumably fearing 
 thieves, though she lived a life of abject poverty, had 
 concealed hoards in incredible places. Her son found 
 small sums under the rotting linoleum, in the toes of old 
 boots, at the bottom of dusty ornaments; the miser had 
 larded her house with money; there were hoards in the 
 coals, and an unpleasant adventure up the chimney 
 yielded nearly seven pounds. When at last he had done, 
 though uncomfortably conscious that Mrs. Cradoc must 
 have found places he could not think of, he had collected 
 nearly three hundred pounds. 
 
 Then for a time he had been entirely happy. Accident 
 led him to Knapenden, where he learned that old Even- 
 wood, the grocer, was going to bits, what with drink and 
 a bad son, and that the new settlement of Villa-Land 
 offered a commercial opportunity. That was six years 
 ago, when he was twenty-eight. The young man set up 
 as the new grocer, calling his sister from service at Bex- 
 hill. He had made a living, attained membership of the 
 Hastings I. L. P., fallen in love with Molly Hart and 
 then This had come. 
 
 He stopped with rather haggard eyes to look at the 
 endless bleak marshes, so monotonous, broken only by 
 little curtains of willow trees, dotted with slow sheep 
 
82 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 and brooding, long-horned cattle. " This war," he 
 thought, " comes upon the world like a storm on the sea. 
 Worse, for nothing can stop a storm, while men could 
 have stopped the war." As he walked on towards the 
 ridge, strangely enough his thoughts were almost the 
 same as those of Sir Hugh: broken infantry retiring along 
 the road, with artillery racing behind the rise, cavalry 
 sweeping round to head off the columns. He remembered 
 that Voltaire suggested the world was the dream of a 
 giant asleep in a planet. " What a nightmare the fel- 
 low's having," he thought. 
 
 And as he went on the excessive individualism of the 
 man, his purely theoretic appreciation of humanity, that 
 removed him from their passions, their prejudices, made 
 of him a sham man, a mechanical toy. He was a man 
 so blinded by logic to the impulses of others that he 
 would not have understood if told that despite the King's 
 Regulations, stretcher bearers would pick up their own 
 men first. As he went, stumbling over tussocks, he 
 dreamt an incredible new order, a world where no man 
 desired wealth, where all were willing to work together, 
 who had no impulse towards rivalry, where all men loved 
 learning, where the words ambition, passion, jealousy, 
 suspicion, meant nothing. He was happy, and he did 
 not realise the infinite uselessness of these rapid, imag- 
 inative leaps. His dream obliterated obstacles, kings, 
 banks, small traders, peasant landowners, priestly monop- 
 olists of revelation, men proud of race. He floated in 
 an ethereal world; he had about as much idea of the 
 steps to bring about this new world as might have an 
 archangel taking up social reform. 
 
 His interview with his sister pulled him down to earth. 
 She was a hard little dark woman, who had known 
 romance in Bexhill, with a Pierrot. Then the Pierrot 
 
IN ENGLAND 83 
 
 moved away; the five shillings a week were not paid; the 
 baby died, and Miss Cradoc shut her mouth like a rat 
 trap. So shut it remained. Now she kept house for her 
 brother, clean as a modern workhouse and as cheerful. 
 
 " How did you get on? " she asked. 
 
 " Non-combatant service." 
 
 " Ah. What's that? Hospital work? 
 
 " No, I shan't take it." 
 
 " What'll happen if you don't? " 
 
 " Prison, I suppose." 
 
 "Oh! please yourself. I'll mind the shop." 
 
 Cradoc smiled. If he had told his sister that he was 
 to be shot at dawn, no doubt she would have minded the 
 shop. Still, shops had to be minded, and in a way old 
 Ethel had got hold of an elementary thing. 
 
 Other people, it seemed, had also got hold of elemen- 
 tary things. After closing the shop and having his tea, 
 he crossed the Green to go to Ascalon Farm. He was to 
 meet Molly that night, and he felt they must have it out. 
 He was not excited as he went down the lane, past the 
 blackthorn bushes bursting into bloom, and the lean ash 
 trees whose buds were already black. So he was not 
 surprised at being received on the threshold by Hart, 
 who had seen him coming. The stout farmer seemed to 
 have expanded, guarded his doorway as a hen covers her 
 chicks. All the squat, red figure said was: 
 
 " Git out." 
 
 " What do you mean? " asked Cradoc. 
 
 " What I say," replied Hart, with an air of completely 
 clearing up the question. " Git out. That's all." 
 
 " Now look here, Mr. Hart, this is all very well, but 
 before I get out there are one or two little things we've 
 got to settle. One thing, rather, and that's Molly. She 
 was to meet me up the lane." 
 
84 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " She won't," said Hart. " I'll rive the guts out of her 
 if she does." 
 
 A despair fell over Cradoc. If a man argued with him 
 it had an effect on him. But Hart obviously was not so 
 affected. How could he get at him? A punch in the 
 jaw? That might not help matters much, and Hart 
 would get the best of it. Then, in self-contempt, Cradoc 
 discovered the way to Hart's understanding: 
 
 " There's another thing too: you owe me thirty shil- 
 lings for groceries." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Hart, his sensitive fibre touched, " now 
 you're talking, Mr. Conscientious Objector. Come inside 
 and have your dirty money. Suppose you have got to 
 come inside. One has to take a receipt from the likes 
 of you." 
 
 In the kitchen Hart took out with much ceremony a 
 large, dirty purse. To the right and left of the hearth 
 sat two women. One was Mrs. Hart, her eyes averted, 
 steadily knitting a gray stocking. Not once did she raise 
 the bent head on which the tight-drawn black hair lay 
 as if polished. On the other side sat Molly, short, broad, 
 milk-white, under her loose crown of tangled chestnut 
 hair. She was reading a novelette, and from time to 
 time the blue eyes looked curiously from under the raised 
 brows. She stirred Cradoc. How could he tell what 
 was her attitude? When the receipt was signed, Cradoc 
 said: 
 
 " Now, Molly, I'll be waiting for you in the lane. 
 You've got to come; you promised, you know." 
 
 As he went he heard the farmer address his daughter: 
 
 " If you go, I'll break every bone in your body." 
 
 But still he waited in the cool twilight. He knew she 
 would come. After all the caresses which had passed 
 between them, she must come. And, indeed, in a moment 
 
IN ENGLAND 85 
 
 he saw the short figure, like a shadow through the elm 
 trees. Then she was quite near him, and he put out 
 both hands. Cradoc, in that moment, had an aching 
 need of her. Not only because she was his love, not 
 only because the broad healthiness, the whiteness, the 
 plumpness of her made a searching appeal to the nervous 
 delicacy of the city dweller, but because in the bleakness 
 of the world which to-day had racked him he hoped to 
 find a moment of forgetfulness on her broad breast. 
 Then she stopped, two yards away, and put out a hand 
 palm outwards. He chose to misunderstand her, as a 
 sick man refuses to accept the doctor's sentence: 
 
 " It was kind of you to come," he said, " with your 
 father threatening you." 
 
 " He ain't threatening me. It's all right." 
 
 " But he said he'd ..." 
 
 " Said he'd rive my guts out. But I said I was coming 
 out because I was going to give you the chuck, and you 
 can have it." She made as if to turn. " Good-bye-ee! " 
 
 " Molly ! " cried Cradoc. How funnily his voice 
 squawked, he thought. 
 
 "Oh, I don't want to hear any more. You talk too 
 much, that's what you do. Talking comes natural to 
 you like fighting does to others." 
 
 " Don't you love me any more, Molly? " 
 
 She evaded him. " Do you think I'm going to have 
 everybody see me going out with a shirker? Don't you 
 believe it, Mr. Cradoc. Something in khaki is more my 
 style. Like the other girls." She stopped, and as if 
 the softness of the evening overcame her for a moment, 
 her voice grew gentler: "Course I don't say if you 
 was to change your mind, perhaps I might change mine 
 too. See what I mean? Khaki or blue, that's the 
 ticket." She turned and disappeared up the cart track. 
 
86 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 For a long time the ironic little song that died away with 
 her footsteps rang in Cradoc's ears: 
 
 " Good-bye, little girl, good-bye, 
 Bye and bye, little girl, bye and bye, 
 In my uniform of blue 
 I'll come marching back to you: 
 Good-bye, little girl, good-bye." 
 
 XV 
 
 THAT night Sutton was admitted to dine with the upper 
 servants, and Westcott, in her new blouse of Irish lace, 
 wearing the famous Westcott turquoise and sham pearl 
 necklace, sat by his side. It was an old and difficult 
 question, this dinner of the upper servants at Knapenden 
 Place. Mr. Lee and Mrs. Marsden had had many anxious 
 debates. 
 
 " We can't have Mr. Sutton," said Mrs. Marsden, " he 
 is a footman." 
 
 " Groom of the chamber, ma'am," said Lee, " not foot- 
 man." 
 
 Mrs. Marsden waved away this distinction. 
 
 " When I say footman I mean footman. Wouldn't 
 alter it, Mr. Lee, if you called him Emperor of China." 
 Mrs. Marsden supported her arguments with instances 
 taken from the household of the Duke of Shropshire; 
 Lee protested that at Mr. Mosenberg's, at Battle, " who, 
 if you will pardon me, ma'am, could buy up three dukes, 
 the groom of the chamber did dine." It had extended 
 over months, this quarrel. But this evening, since Mr. 
 Sutton was in khaki, and would join the Sussex Coast 
 Regiment next day, as also he had, in the words of Sir 
 James Barrie, cast a favourable eye on Westcott (" Bag- 
 
IN ENGLAND 87 
 
 gage," added Mrs. Marsden), the housekeeper had de- 
 cided to relax. She put it to Mr. Lee: " This being 
 war time I have resolved to overlook." 
 
 And so it was a cheerful dinner party enough. It 
 began at 9.30, and if it had not been for the ribaldry 
 of Mr. Temple, the chauffeur, and his new young wife, 
 it would have extended over several hours, with the 
 assistance of port and cigars. (Lee was entirely honest, 
 but this evening he also had resolved to overlook.) 
 
 Westcott, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, with a prehensile 
 way of slewing her eyes sideways at the men, was queen 
 of the party. She did not say very much; most of the 
 conversation was confined to Mrs. Marsden and Lee, 
 who had many memories to exchange as to the ways of 
 gentlemen, and gentlemen's gentlemen. Mr. Temple con- 
 tributed regrettable memories of what happened in motor 
 cars. He was sternly repressed by Mrs. Marsden: " Be- 
 fore a young gal, Mr. Temple, please don't forget your- 
 self." And tactfully directed the conversation to the 
 grapes that were grown on the Shropshire estate. 
 
 As for Mr. Sutton, he felt self-conscious, elated, and 
 sure that in khaki his rather insufficient chest looked 
 several sizes larger. The party degenerated a little when 
 Sir Hugh's valet, Ratby, joined them, for there were 
 cleavages in the Knapenden loyalty. Temperaments 
 were discussed. 
 
 " Her Ladyship," said Westcott, " there's only one 
 thing can be said about 'er; her temper's 'ot." 
 
 Anecdotes testified to the incandescence of Lady Oak- 
 ley's temper. It was not like Sir Hugh. 
 
 " That man's an angel," said Mrs. Marsden, " so deter- 
 mined, and so nice to cats, and all dumb animals," she 
 added feelingly. " I've seen him carrying Ginger about 
 in his arms like a baby. It nearly makes one weep." 
 
88 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Mrs. Marsden illustrated this slightly, while Ratby, ex- 
 cavalryman, engaged in a fierce dispute with the chauf- 
 feur as to the stinking tin cans he passed his days with. 
 Meanwhile the butler looked benevolently round, slowly 
 blinking his left eye, the eyelashes of which, as he pro- 
 ceeded with the port, seemed to have got strangely stuck 
 together. It was then Lee decided to break into song. 
 Westcott got up quietly, and with a glance at Sutton 
 went out. The ex-groom of the chamber hesitated, but 
 as now all had taken up the chorus: 
 
 " On Monday I go out with a soldier, 
 On Tuesday I go out with a tar," 
 
 he softly closed the door behind him, with a delicious 
 sense of Romeo and Juliet, and the fast life. He fol- 
 lowed the white shadow of Westcott down the corridors, 
 through the lonely pantry, out into the plantation. It 
 was exquisite. A full moon hung in the pale blue sky 
 like a pan of burnished metal, and Westcott, who seemed 
 to be eluding him on purpose, danced laughing from tree 
 to tree, like a blooming fairy in a book. He was rather 
 unsteady, and as he chased her through the plantation, 
 led by her laughter, he swore as he tripped over stumps: 
 
 " 'Ere," he whispered at length, " give over, Maud." 
 
 " You can't catch me! you can't catch me! " came the 
 voice. 
 
 He lurched forward violently. She eluded him, but 
 as he stopped in disgust, as if about to return to the 
 house, Westcott instinctively knew it, felt that the nymph 
 should now allow herself to be caught. She was by his 
 side, blinding him with both hands. The satyr in khaki 
 turned with a growl and seized her. 
 
 At last she freed herself, rubbing her cheeks as if to 
 
IN ENGLAND 89 
 
 efface his kisses, calling him a great brute, and telling 
 him that if he didn't behave she would go in. Yet she 
 clung to the khakied arm. He said, with sudden sus- 
 picion: 
 
 " I say, Maudie, there's no kid in this. Is there? " 
 
 " What do you mean? " said Westcott, with the wide 
 eyes of innocence. 
 
 " What about Keele? " 
 
 " Well, what about him? " 
 
 " Weren't you walking out with him? " 
 
 " Go on, you great silly," said Westcott as she jabbed 
 the man in the ribs with her elbow. " What's he? A 
 common farmer's boy." 
 
 " There's others too," said Sutton, with an excess of 
 ferocity. " Temple's married now. In the nick of time 
 I should say. They used to talk about you and him. 
 Tell you what, I'm going out to a place where they stick 
 men with bayonets. When I come back, if I hear of 
 you monkeying round with anybody, I'll ..." 
 
 " What will you do? " cried the girl, clinging to him. 
 Her gaze was wild and frightened, her mouth deliciously 
 open in expectation. 
 
 " Do you in," said Sutton. He seized her by both 
 arms. 
 
 " No, you won't," she whispered. " You'll be my 
 lonely soldier-boy." 
 
 " Do you in," he repeated, shaking her a little, as if 
 he had not heard her, and drawing her closer into his 
 arms. " Do you in," he repeated again, more hoarsely, 
 as he pressed his mouth upon her open lips, and felt her 
 crunch up in his arms, soft, frightened, reluctant, and 
 drawn closer to him in her desire by those repulsions and 
 those fears. 
 
90 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 XVI 
 
 FRANK COTTENHAM slowed up the car as he turned 
 into the approach of the works; then, as the crowd grew 
 denser, he stopped to let it go past. The girls were 
 coming out in bunches, in running single units, in inter- 
 twined, affectionate couples. Nearly all wore their over- 
 alls, ugly figures, skinned of hair by their close caps, and 
 yet unmasculine in their bunchy trousers. Here and 
 there bobbed the red cap of a girl from the Woolwich 
 inspection, while the white mass was flecked also by the 
 red armlets of the junior charge hands, and those of their 
 seniors, red with the black S. Cottenham sat back, 
 smiling, in the middle of this friendly crowd, every one 
 of whom looked covertly, or insolently, or just with the 
 curiosity of youth, at the boss. He liked this swarming 
 femininity, and let his eyes rest with satisfaction on the 
 young faces, the white skins, that somehow resisted the 
 T. N. T. colour, the dark sullen faces that were animal 
 and pleasant; he liked too, the older women, who shoved 
 their way through the crowd, conscious of the urgency of 
 their business. As the crowd cleared a little Irvine said: 
 
 " I think we can go on now." 
 
 " One moment," said Cottenham to his Manager, 
 " we'll only run up against " C " Division. This is the 
 " B " crowd." What he did not say was that the neigh- 
 bourhood of these hundreds of young women created in 
 him a pleasant, if faint, stir. He watched them, search- 
 ing as an epicure for something agreeable, a stray golden 
 curl, long fingers, an eye shining through a curtain of 
 eyelashes like the moon through foliage. For Cotten- 
 ham loved women, all women; he adopted the French- 
 man's saying that he had never seen an ugly woman. 
 Working girls these, a coarse, bawling crowd at times, 
 
IN ENGLAND 91 
 
 capable of much ugly laughter, ugly attitudes, jostlings, 
 shovings, breaking out now and then into language he 
 did not use. But still women, and young, and so 
 adorable. 
 
 Cottenham did not, as a matter of principle, take 
 much notice of his thirteen hundred hands. He knew 
 it did not do. Besides, as he told himself now and then, 
 he was a happy man. As he sat in the car, his pasha 
 glance lying light over these women, he thought with a 
 faint sense of remorse of his own beautiful dark wife in 
 his house up the Medway, the creature with the slumbrous 
 dark eyes, that were so alluring and dominant. It 
 seemed unfair that he should think of her now, walking 
 in the big garden, holding up one of his three small chil- 
 dren to pull at the blossoms of the hawthorn; that she 
 should have those long, lovely, dark hands, with finger- 
 nails like coral, while these girls rushed and hustled 
 towards the rough meats of the canteen. Still, he thought, 
 " It won't last. What I see before me is the seed of the 
 future. It'll grow up into thick, strong weed. It will 
 choke my hawthorns, before it has done." 
 
 As " C " Division suddenly burst like a puff of white 
 smoke from the long shop strangely camouflaged in 
 purple and green, he thought of the coming social order 
 that was going to play the devil with the Cottenham 
 works and with other damned capitalists. He did not 
 mind very much, but he could not help fearing that with 
 the damned capitalists would go many of the things he 
 loved, good manners, the odes of Horace, and the Bach 
 fugues which, serene and pitiless as Euclid, measured his 
 daily life. He sighed: " Well, it'll last a while and after 
 me the flood." 
 
 Then his eyes, which, for a moment had fixed on 
 emptiness, encountered in the crowd two eyes. He had 
 
92 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 a sense of shock. He repressed an impulse to turn 
 round and look after the girl: it would have been fatal, 
 with the whole factory watching him. But though he 
 had seen her only as for a moment one may compass a 
 swallow's flight, she lived before him with incredible 
 obstinacy. 
 
 Large grey eyes, sorrowful eyes. Well, no. Not sor- 
 rowful eyes. They must have been laughing at him, 
 really, under their long, up-curling lashes. How pale 
 she was ! That made her broad mouth look so red. The 
 pointed chin too. He had an impression of strands of 
 red-brown hair escaping from under the cap; an impres- 
 sion of a rather tall girl, who looked thin in the heavy 
 overalls. 
 
 As if to rid himself of the over-strong impression, he 
 pretended to himself that the crowd was thinning, started 
 the car, which whirred slowly into the works. Soon he 
 was in his office, all clear, devoid of matches, tobacco, 
 pipe, knife, his feet clumsy in the heavy felt shoes. A 
 ma^ss of correspondence, unopened brown envelopes " On 
 his Majesty's Service ", specimens of cartridge bags, little 
 boxes marked " Detonators Dangerous " all this cum- 
 bered his desk, suggested urgency. But for a moment 
 Frank Cottenham sat back in his armchair and allowed 
 himself to dream. Then, angrily, he thrust the dream 
 away. " Don't be a fool," he told himself roughly, and 
 began to read his letters. 
 
 But all that morning he was haunted. It was not a 
 picture hung before his eyes; rather it was an intangible 
 presence brooded over him. He fought it. He called 
 in Irvine unnecessarily; he dictated unusually prolix let- 
 ters, as if he were trying to detain about him a human 
 presence, as if afraid to remain alone with that sensa- 
 tion. In the afternoon, after lunch, and a complex deal 
 
IN ENGLAND 93 
 
 with the owners of the disused wharfs on the Stroud 
 bank, he determined to face it: 
 
 " Queer, those girls of the people. There is such a 
 finesse about some of them. Something delicate, and 
 suggestive of breed. We talk of the aristocratic type! 
 Lord! One only has to look at the aristocratic type in its 
 lumpy tweeds and its big boots, its big hands, its ugly 
 teeth and its complexion like a young brick. There is 
 more aristocracy in many a London shopgirl. A sort 
 of natural aristocracy. What is aristocracy, after all? 
 Difference? " He remembered that most of his experi- 
 ence had lain with the girls of the people. Often he had 
 told himself that he had coarse tastes. " Nonsense," he 
 remarked aloud, " they've got a natural grace, some of 
 them. And after all," he smiled, " we call them the girls 
 of the people, but it's a wise girl who knows her own 
 father if her mother was pretty." 
 
 Behind these generalities hung still the memory of the 
 face he had seen. " Really, old chap," he told himself, 
 " this won't do. It won't do at all. If she weren't in 
 your own factory, I don't say: you might be making a 
 silly ass of yourself, but there are limits to silliness, even 
 in asses. Oh, yes," he answered the debater in his heart, 
 " you say there's nothing in it. Well, let me tell you, 
 as a man who has had more to do with women than 
 theoretical intellectuals like you, this sort of thing looks 
 like nothing. But when you've gone on a bit you find it 
 has grown. Let us look at it squarely. Here am I, 
 Frank Cottenham, thirty-nine, shall we say fairly pre- 
 sentable." He looked up to the mirror over the washing 
 basin and saw a young-looking man, with close cut, 
 rather curly brown hair, bright blue eyes, a clipped 
 moustache, and an expression half-stern, half-roguish. 
 " Yes, fairly presentable. Thirty-nine. Not too old to 
 
94 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 make a fool of himself. Third proprietor of the Cotten- 
 ham works; good old explosive works, nearly as old as 
 Nobel's. Therefore known to most of Rochester, part 
 of Chatham, and every one of his thirteen hundred girls. 
 And every one of his thirteen hundred girls' best friends, 
 and their young men, and their mothers, and the shop- 
 keepers, and the shopkeepers' mothers. Do you really 
 think, Frank, my boy, that you can shed a friendly 
 glance in this abominable little town without it getting 
 into the paper? No, it can't be done. You aren't moral, 
 but you're prudent, as is the way with your class. Chuck 
 it, I say, chuck it." 
 
 All through that day Cottenham chucked it. He in- 
 sisted on being present at an interview with the account- 
 ants of the Ministry of Munitions, and interfering with 
 the elaborately mendacious plans of his head store- 
 keeper; he carpeted Miss Livingstone, and stung her 
 stern soul by telling her that she coddled the girls and 
 that the Cottenham Welfare would be called the Cotton- 
 wool affair before she'd done. 
 
 From time to time he turned upon himself: 
 
 " But, damn it all, man, you can't follow the girl and 
 track her down. And what if you do? At your age and 
 in your position it's impossible." 
 
 Then he told himself that he did not attend to his work 
 properly and that he ought to be seen now and then in 
 the clean area. So he toured the various shops, deter- 
 mined to find fault: " I suppose I'll run across her," he 
 thought, " but it can't be helped, I ought to be seen in 
 the shops now and then." 
 
 Then, having visited " A " and " B " divisions, he 
 changed his mind and decided that he must telephone 
 London. The girls at the branch exchange liked and 
 admired their employer; there was a considerable dis- 
 
IN ENGLAND 95 
 
 cussion later on at tea: what could have happened to 
 make Mr. Cottenham damn the telephone exchange? and 
 damn the telephone? and damn everything? 
 
 XVII 
 
 " POOR old Bob," said David Marchmont, as he puffed 
 at his cigar. 
 
 " I suppose it's sure now," said Lady Oakley. 
 
 " Quite sure. Two of his men managed to escape after 
 being kept in a dug-out for two days. They tried to 
 bring his body in. That's how they got caught." 
 
 " Hetty's splendid," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Yes, poor old mater. Game as they make 'em." 
 
 " It's lucky she's got you," said Lady Oakley, but there 
 was something a little hostile in her eyes as she said 
 this. David, in his blue lounge suit, made to resemble a 
 naval uniform, but devoid of gold lace, exquisitely pol- 
 ished and hair-clipped, eye-glassed, clean-shaven, like 
 his mother in a way, squirmed in his chair. 
 
 "Ah, well," he said vaguely. What he meant was 
 that he was heavily engaged at the Admiralty, and that 
 it was impossible for him to go to sea. 
 
 The three were sitting after lunch in the Berkeley. 
 Sir Hugh meditatively sucked his cigar, watching the 
 crowd, the laughing, talkative, well-dressed crowd, among 
 which passed and repassed slim girls, in coats and skirts 
 and the fashionable fur tippets of the day. One of them 
 came up to him. He smiled. 
 
 " I've bought three flags, so far," he said, opening his 
 coat to show them pinned inside the lapel. " Still 
 He fumbled in his pocket. The girl, a tall dark girl, the 
 sort that drives cars beyond the speed limit and its 
 owner to wonder what things are coming to, vigorously 
 
96 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 seized his lapel, stuck in still another flag, and with a 
 businesslike smile acknowledged the heavy drop of half- 
 a- crown into her money box. 
 
 " It makes one feel all the worse," said Lady Oakley, 
 " with things going on as they are." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said Marchmont, " Kut Nasty jar, that. 
 We did all we could, you know, but the Tigris is so low 
 this time of year we couldn't get a gunboat up." 
 
 " Oh, I don't mean only Kut," said Lady Oakley 
 petulantly. "Of course it's awful, but we'll get back on 
 the Turk before we've done. It's the whole thing. Those 
 Irish." 
 
 " Well, we've settled the rebels," said Marchmont. 
 
 "I should think we did," said Lady Oakley. "We 
 needn't bother about a handful of German agents in 
 Dublin. Of course we settled them. And I hope this 
 Government will be a little less mealy-mouthed than it 
 generally is. They ought to be shot, every one of 'em." 
 
 " It seems a great pity," said Sir Hugh. " What a 
 mess Ireland is in." 
 
 " There'd be no mess, Hugh, if there was no disloyalty. 
 The Canadians are all right ; the Australians are all right, 
 even the Boers are all right. I'd like to know what the 
 Irish have got to complain about. One might think we 
 illtreated them. Rights! What rights? Can't the Irish 
 go into the Army? the Navy? or the Church? Haven't 
 we got Irish barristers? There are Irishmen in the 
 Admiralty. Aren't there, David? We treat them like 
 our own. What do they want? " 
 
 " It's an old story, Lena," said Sir Hugh, as he brooded 
 over his Liberal Unionist past. " A complicated story. 
 I'm beginning to think we have made rather a mess of 
 things in Ireland. Sometimes we bully them, and some- 
 times we pet 'em. It doesn't seem to answer either way." 
 
IN ENGLAND 97 
 
 " Of course it doesn't answer. One can't get on with 
 the Irish. They're impossible people. Besides, they've 
 all got loose mouths and bad teeth." 
 
 The two men laughed at this characteristically Lena-ish 
 argument. 
 
 " Well," said Sir Hugh, " I don't pretend to be a Home 
 Ruler, but still," he added, for the moment typically 
 English and vague, " I suppose we shall have to do 
 something after the war." 
 
 " Yes, after the war. But meanwhile we've got to get 
 on with it. We haven't got time for the Irish. It's all 
 our own fault," added Lady Oakley. " No propaganda 
 in Ireland, I don't believe they know what the war's 
 about. The things we could tell them! Only last week 
 they deported twenty- five thousand women from Lille. 
 Deported to what fate? I hope we'll have a chance of 
 deporting twenty-five thousand German women. That'll 
 give them a taste of it. An eye for an eye, that's the 
 only way with the Hun." 
 
 Sir Hugh said nothing. Why did Cradoc's remark: 
 " Revenge in turns, that is the history of the world," 
 suddenly occur to him. 
 
 Lady Oakley was now fairly launched. Diverging 
 from the iniquity of having exempted Irishmen from 
 general compulsion, which had been passed two days 
 before, she was now heaping scorn and hatred upon Mr. 
 Asquith. 
 
 " The audacity of the man! " she said. " It's so like 
 him trying to shuffle and squirm out of necessity by 
 trying to get hold of boys of seventeen. ..." 
 
 " Eighteen," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Well, children, anyhow and time-expired men, men 
 who've done their bit, rather than annoy the shirkers 
 and the pro-Germans. Why! do you know that there 
 
98 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 are thousands of young men in this country who got 
 married in February to dodge conscription? " 
 
 " Awful idea, Aunt Lena," said David. " Think of the 
 poor young man in February, standing in front of his 
 looking-glass one night, and saying: ' The trenches or 
 Mabel. Which? 7 " 
 
 " And a lot of them chose the trenches," said Sir Hugh, 
 laughing. 
 
 " It's all very well laughing," said Lady Oakley. " It's 
 serious, very serious. Everything is in an awful state. 
 We aren't getting on with the war; I suppose we're wait- 
 ing for Verdun to fall ; then we'll begin. Spying and 
 plotting everywhere. And the Government doing noth- 
 ing. Nothing! A blockade about as useful as a sieve. 
 Ships being sunk by the dozen every day. Nobody can 
 say we aren't trying to lose the war. Oh, yes, we are," 
 said Lady Oakley overriding possible objections. " The 
 whole country is going mad. Look at the condition of 
 the streets. Have you read General Smith-Dorrien's 
 article? Have you heard of all these night clubs, which 
 are trapping our young officers and making them tell all 
 they know after the poor boys have had too much cham- 
 pagne? Female harpies and German agents every one 
 of them. Thank God ! though, there is some public opin- 
 ion left. I hear they're closing the promenades in the 
 music halls; that'll help a little, but why they don't close 
 Parliament and stop this talk-talk I don't know." 
 
 Then Sylvia, more than ever handsome, in a light 
 musquash coat, drew near to the table and insisted on 
 selling them all the everlasting flags. 
 
 " I've got to get rid of these within a quarter of an 
 hour. I can't return them, and I can't stay." 
 
 " You seem very busy, Sylvia," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Busy ! Father, you don't know what work is at 
 
IN ENGLAND 99 
 
 Knapenden. IVe been run off my legs this morning, 
 trying to catch the people between the Piccadilly en- 
 trance and the Berkeley Street entrance. Somebody 
 didn't turn up, and I had to try for both." 
 
 "Seems to me that they ought to have got hold of 
 puss-in-boots for a job like that," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " It isn't as funny as it sounds, father. And this after- 
 noon IVe got a Committee; and I ought to look in at my 
 stall. There's the tableaux, too." 
 
 " What tableaux? " asked Lady Oakley. 
 
 " Oh ! I forgot to ask you, mother. Can you send 
 me up your Persian shawl? I'm appearing as India, or 
 Italy, it isn't settled which. Oh ! " and she made a con- 
 vulsive dash towards the entrance to stop a sly and 
 unflagged brigadier. 
 
 " Marvellous girl," said Sir Hugh. " Such energy." 
 
 " Makes one feel one's getting on with the war," said 
 David. 
 
 " Anyhow, she is doing something," said Lady Oakley, 
 defending her young. 
 
 When Sylvia returned she was excited. 
 
 " He gave me a sovereign, a real sovereign in gold, the 
 first I've seen for two years. And he said he was keep- 
 ing it as a memento of the times before the war but 
 he'd have a smile from me instead, as they didn't make 
 those smiles nowadays." 
 
 All three laughed. 
 
 " Nice man," said Sylvia thoughtfully. Then energy 
 expelled meditation. " In five minutes I must go. I 
 simply don't know what to do. You've no idea what a 
 worry tableaux are. Everybody wants to be France, or 
 Belgium, and when we look for somebody to be Mon- 
 tenegro people want to know what it is. Lady Derwen 
 thought it was a hair wash. I wish I hadn't told her 
 
100 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the war had come to teach people geography. She 
 thought I was alluding to the Battersea Board School 
 where she was educated. Oh, dear, I must go. And 
 I've got a pal of Andy's to look after, too, a Guardee 
 boy, one of the dinkiest little wounded you ever knew." 
 
 "Sylvia," said Sir Hugh brutally, "whenever you're 
 looking after a pal of Andy's, it's always a wounded one. 
 I believe you like them better when they're wounded." 
 
 " Of course she does," said Lady Oakley, with a fond 
 glance at her handsome daughter. " What woman 
 wouldn't? " 
 
 Sir Hugh looked at them thoughtfully. " Do you 
 know? " he said, " I think you women rather enjoy this 
 war. Oh, don't protest, I say you're enjoying this war, 
 and that's why you like the wounded. You're savage 
 creatures. The idea of blood excites you." 
 
 " Hugh! how can you be so horrid." 
 
 " I may be horrid, but it's true. War to you is like a 
 rattling good railway novel, a serial story with a fright- 
 ful instalment in every morning's paper. War gives you 
 all the heroism, and excitement, and colour, and horror 
 that you miss in your ordinary lives. To women war is 
 the grand international cinema." 
 
 " Don't be absurd," said Lady Oakley. 
 
 David Marchmont looked at Sylvia thoughtfully. 
 Fine girl. A sensual looking type. Wonder how she 
 got on with that black-browed brute, Jervaulx. His little 
 hand stroked his cheek thoughtfully, as he rested upon 
 her a rather cloudy blue eye. He was a well-read man, 
 and had been to a German university. Queer idea, that 
 of Sir Hugh's; there was something like that in Havelock 
 Ellis, or was it Kraft Ebbing? He wondered whether 
 that was why the women rushed to be nurses. Was it 
 pity? Or was it a sort of sensual exhilaration? Did it 
 
IN ENGLAND .;.': ;-,;101 
 
 caress in them something secret? this contact with agon- 
 ised nerves and gaping wounds. A sort of sadism? 
 
 " Father," said Sylvia, " you make me sick. As a 
 punishment you must buy all the flags I've got left. Two 
 pounds, please." 
 
 " Oh, I say, Sylvia," murmured Sir Hugh as he searched 
 for his pocketbook. 
 
 " It's your own fault, father. Here you are, take them 
 home. You can go round Knapenden selling them. 
 It'll give you something to do." 
 
 XVIII 
 
 " BUT do you think we ought to? " said Lady Oakley. 
 "What about the example." 
 
 " Lena, I'm sick of being a good example. Stephen 
 hasn't had leave for six and a half months. Now is our 
 chance. Ask all the boys and all the girls; order a leg 
 of mutton or rather a leg of beef; let the innocence of 
 milk and the avaricious flow of whisky be familiar in 
 this house. Send to London for a fatted calf, tie ribbons 
 round the gramophone." 
 
 " Don't be silly, Hugh," said Lady Oakley, smiling at 
 her own disapproval. " He won't expect it in war time." 
 
 " Oh, yes, he will. Our young soldier will be a thor- 
 ough Nietzschean when he comes home. He'll have 
 learnt at the front that man is made for war and woman 
 for the recreation of the warrior." 
 
 And so it was. When Stephen, extraordinarily neat, 
 as subalterns somehow are an hour after leaving the 
 trenches, landed on Snailham platform, prepared to be 
 ironic, to comment on: " The old folks at home, waiting 
 with a beating heart in the shadow of the little church 
 nestling in the dell, while the old coachman, his play- 
 
102 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 fellow of yore etc.," he was received by a miniature 
 mob. 
 
 " Good Lord! " he said, as he jumped on the platform, 
 and was confronted with his father, his mother, Sylvia, 
 Jimmy Quin, Mary, the long-forgotten Miss Jesmond, a 
 multiplying Station Master, a combined porter- shunter- 
 signalman. "Good Lord!" he repeated, " where's the 
 illuminated address? My good people, I haven't won 
 the V. C." 
 
 The week went on as it had begun, but more so. Sir 
 Hugh, in 1 pursuit of some coherent ideal, kept things 
 going with a swish. He became the organiser of com- 
 pulsory games. Petrol was somehow discovered, in those 
 uncontrolled days when already scarcity prevailed. 
 Temple daily threatened to strike, because the gentlemen 
 knocked out their pipes on the paint of the car, while 
 the young ladies outraged his pride by screaming when- 
 ever he took a corner, and outraged it still more by 
 making insulting remarks when the overladen car tried 
 to crawl up hills. The weather entered into the con- 
 spiracy. A very soft southeaster blew, cloudless. Black- 
 thorn, hawthorn, almond tree bent under fragrant bur- 
 dens. Horses cast by the army reappeared. There were 
 races. A donkey steeplechase through the kitchen gar- 
 den created a dreadful scene with Peele. And one day 
 there was a tug-of-war, men v. women, where the men 
 pulled with one hand only, on grounds of chivalry, they 
 said, but really because Quin was winged in the left arm. 
 The girls won to the accompaniment of a new battle 
 cry: "A Pankhurst! a Pankhurst! " And every night 
 the beribboned gramophone (Sir Hugh had insisted on 
 decorating it) and an irrepressible pianola forced the 
 dancing. At the week-end, when disorder was extended 
 by the arrival of young Moss, convalescent owing to a 
 
IN ENGLAND 103 
 
 slight wound in the head, which, he said, entitled him to 
 describe himself as the Mad Musician of the Marshes, 
 there was a gala night devoted to the performance of a 
 musical comedy entitled " The Merry Wives of Coburg", 
 words by James Quin, music by Moses Moss (for the 
 young man chose to carry off his persuasion by exagger- 
 ating it) and incidental lyrics by Anybody. 
 
 Sir Hugh, in the midst of the pleasant turmoil, felt 
 youthful and at ease. He loved this atmosphere of dis- 
 turbance; it delighted him to encounter, in this big solid 
 house, somebody who was twenty -two or twenty; as he 
 sat in his study with the door open, occasionally tickling 
 Kallikrates behind the ear, to soothe him (for Kalli- 
 krates spent this week in a state of terror and exaspera- 
 tion), he collected precious specimens: screams, shrill 
 laughter, and the occasional crash of an ornament. The 
 only blemish was provided by Quin and Miss Moss, on 
 whom Sir Hugh kept a special watch, for youth's gentle 
 pander hoped to catch them kissing. They seized Kalli- 
 krates by his sumptuous tail, hauled him out from under 
 a bookcase, and then turned him loose after ignobly 
 forcing his head into a foolscap envelope. 
 
 In a sense, as Stephen put it, that was the best turn of 
 the week, and the only one " Father hadn't planned." 
 The terrified cat fled, hurtled against the brocade curtains 
 of the drawing-room, climbed them to the very top, and 
 then stood on the cornice pole, waving from left to right 
 his head still encased in the envelope, like some strange 
 antediluvian animal. The party congregated in the 
 drawing-room to get him down, but nothing would per- 
 suade him. 
 
 Cries of " Milk! " failed to entice him. Miss Jesmond 
 suggested a walking stick and cat's meat, but still Kalli- 
 krates, unsteadily poised on the cornice pole, gave vent 
 
104 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 only to melancholy howls. At last, after a quarter of 
 an hour, ladders were brought by Ratby and Peele, and 
 as it was obvious that Kallikrates would cling and 
 scratch, Stephen and Quin insisted on going up provided 
 with trench gloves and gas masks. Old Toss shambled 
 in and sat down, contemplating the strangeness of man. 
 
 As they went up young Moss played on the piano a 
 gloomy rendering of Excelsior. . . . 
 
 Lovely young people. Lovely, unslayable youth, ever- 
 lastingly sprouting from the bleeding tree of life as green 
 leaves on a stump. Sir Hugh wondered whether' they 
 were so merry only because they knew the future to be 
 so uncertain. He thought that: " Let us drink and be 
 merry, for to-morrow ..." must have been said in 
 the midst of war. 
 
 As if determined to increase the confusion, Sir Hugh 
 was not content with these for Sunday lunch. A more 
 solid, if less noisy reinforcement arrived in the shape 
 of Mrs. Moss, Sir John and Lady Jesmond. A leaf was 
 put into the dining-room table, and indeed it looked as 
 if Sir Hugh's jocular leg of beef would be wanted. He 
 sat at the head of his table: in these dreary two years 
 he had come to forget that there were such things as 
 lunch parties of fourteen. He did not say very much. 
 In the contagious noise he was conscious only of snatches 
 of conversation. He heard Quin raise a roar of laughter 
 by describing the death of the mess cook. " Fell head 
 first into his pot; spoiled the stew, though." 
 
 The Observer had brought increasingly nervous news 
 of the Austrian offensive in Italy, and there still was 
 sporadic but formidable fighting round Verdun. A latent 
 excitement hung about our expected offensive that never 
 came. 
 
 " One begins to think," said Sir John, " that it'll never 
 
IN ENGLAND 105 
 
 come at all. It's on a par with everything we do. We 
 never handle a situation until it's beyond handling. 
 Look at that fellow Tino! we ought to string him up." 
 
 " We do what we can, Sir," said Quin naughtily. 
 " We've called our mess cat ' Tino' ; his morals are 
 awful." 
 
 Sir John blew and glowered. He did not like young 
 men. He responded more cheerfully to Lady Oakley, 
 who imparted the pleasant news that the local con- 
 scientious objector, Cradoc, had appealed in vain and 
 had been handed over at Rye. 
 
 " I don't suppose they'll make a soldier of him, 
 though," she added. " That sort of man prefers to be 
 kept in gaol at the expense of his country." 
 
 The word expense moved Mr. and Mrs. Moss. Sir 
 Hugh caught a note of anxiety in their reference to the 
 income tax, which had just been raised as high as four 
 and six, to say nothing of supertax. Young Moss was 
 apologising to Louise Douglas. 
 
 " Make allowance for my antiquities, do. They were 
 brought up to worship the golden calf, but I was brought 
 up to roast it." 
 
 Louise said nothing, but rested on him the uncompre- 
 hending gaze of her soft eyes. He felt that she did not 
 understand him, but sympathised with him all the same. 
 
 There was Quin being flippant again ! " Adorable 
 gypsy boy! " thought Sir Hugh. " What was that? . . ." 
 
 "... We found out that every Sunday morning the 
 Huns used to meet in a communication trench and hold 
 a service. Rattling good hymns they were too. Came 
 in handy: as soon as we spotted them the R. F. A. put 
 down a few shells on that corner to encourage their 
 aspirations to a better world." 
 
 Everybody laughed, but somehow this struck Sir Hugh 
 
106 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 as unpleasant. Then he reproached himself. " What an 
 old stuck pig of a Victorian I am ! " he thought. " Is 
 not a shell the best offering moderns can think of to the 
 God of Battles? " 
 
 Indeed, a certain bitterness was creeping into the con- 
 versation; only one young couple was silent, Sylvia and 
 Mr. March, a tall, thin, young gunner, who seemed 
 frightened of Mrs. Jervaulx, of her dominating beauty. 
 The young man was so shy that he made a sensation. 
 Just as Lady Oakley was declaring that the girl drivers, 
 girl lift attendants, and so forth, were creating a revolu- 
 tion in female independence, March burst forth in a 
 harsh, toneless voice that secured silence. 
 
 " Men are brutes. I remember a month ago. I lost 
 my field glasses and my purse. I'd been laid out by the 
 wind of a shell, just for a moment. No damage, but 
 they thought I was done in. I wasn't really, but the 
 R. A. M. C. cleared me out nicely. Went over my 
 pockets like a swell mob. Only thing they forgot was 
 my clothes, which was pretty decent of them considering 
 we call 'em Rob Any Man's Corpse." 
 
 Lady Oakley flung herself into the gap which this 
 anecdote created, and initiated a vigorous discussion on 
 war books. " Ordeal by Battle", was her favourite, but 
 Mrs. Moss held for "Between the Lines." 
 
 " So graphic," she said, and at intervals, " so graphic." 
 
 Lady Jesmond spoke up for " Gallipoli." " It makes 
 one realise the poetry of the war." 
 
 " Ah," said Mrs. Moss, " Boyd Cable is so graphic." 
 
 Then came Stephen's outburst. Fortunately none save 
 Louise, who sat by his side, heard the first words: 
 
 " So graphic ! so Daily Graphic ! " His voice grew 
 louder: "All that sort of thing," he said, "it's tosh. 
 Fleet Street slush. There's only one kind of war book; 
 
IN ENGLAND 107 
 
 Haig sends you a chapter of that every day. I can tell 
 you that out there war books make us tired. Fellows out 
 there don't want war books. They write 'em, in Flanders 
 ink, one quarter blood and three quarters mud." 
 
 The party stared at the young man, and for the first 
 time Sir Hugh discerned in him a change. He looked 
 pale under the sunburn, more hawk-like than ever about 
 the nose, as if savagery had crept into the flippant boy. 
 Stephen stared at his plate and went on: 
 
 " There's things they don't put into the war books, 
 because they aren't nice and cleaned up, and they'd. inter- 
 fere with the circulation. Fellows out there don't sit for 
 Bairnsfather, stick on dummy whiskers, and juggle with 
 grenades; they don't wash night and morning and put on 
 a clean shirt and a noble Sunday-school expression as 
 patented by Mr. Eric Kennington. They aren't fighting 
 for the right; fighting for their grub's more in their line. 
 They don't talk about clean peace; they bail their 
 boots out and try to keep the rats off their faces while 
 they sleep." 
 
 " Stephen, old chap," said Sir Hugh. But the youth 
 went on, entranced: 
 
 " Over here you think war's a revue. Millions of 
 people sitting in the stalls, in London, looking on. And 
 people like Ian Hay keeping up the idea that war's a 
 manly sport; if only you keep your soul white, and play 
 the game like Christian gentlemen, you'll come out with 
 your self-respect and half a dozen medals. Fight the 
 Germans according to the precepts of Doctor Arnold, 
 fair and square, a good blow between the eyes, and shake 
 hands after, no malice. War books make me sick. 
 Those people would be poetic about Charles Peace. 
 Fighting like gentlemen! The English Tommy as na- 
 ture's gentleman! Idealistic bank clerks! Temporary 
 
108 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 gentlemen out there, temporary fools here. Don't let's 
 pretend! Don't let's be literary till it's over, till they've 
 done fighting. They don't fight like knights in a beastly 
 tournament, but like rats in a common drain; that's more 
 like it, bayoneting men in the back instead of the front, 
 because it's safer; that's more like it hitting below 
 the belt when you get a chance, because it's softer." 
 
 XIX 
 
 THE May day surrounded the young people with a 
 droughty fire. The sun fell in shafts of brass from the 
 polished vault of the sky. They went in a straggling 
 file along the lanes north of Udimore Ridge; in the 
 ardent afternoon the party lagged; it tended to break up 
 into twos and threes, until they were but specks upon 
 the grass paths, male grey or blue flannel, feminine skirts 
 of white serge, and bright sweaters. Ahead, paced by 
 Miss Jesmond's long stride, went Stephen and Louise, he 
 moody and sunken in some private reverie, she solicitous, 
 white and cool as a water lily. 
 
 " The worst of this part of the country," said Miss 
 Jesmond, " is the huntin' 's so poor. Too much plough, 
 to begin with; those small farms have cut up the coun- 
 try, so you never seem to get away. And the wire! 
 now they're even puttin' up wire! " 
 
 " You haven't been long at Northiam? " asked Louise. 
 
 " No. Only a year. But father is talkin' of goin' back 
 to Leicestershire. Wish he would. Remember our last 
 day, in February, just before the frost started; the fox 
 went away from Grinton's Wood, you know, the other 
 side of Brede; down the slope he went, hounds on the 
 top of him; didn't seem to be a trier; they looked like 
 choppin' him before he'd got away more than a couple 
 
IN ENGLAND 109 
 
 of fields and then there we were in the middle of the 
 dykes ! At the first dyke the take-off was beastly greasy, 
 and my old Dolly put in straight in it. Oh! what a 
 day!" 
 
 " Did you get him in the end? " asked Louise absently. 
 She did not hunt. 
 
 " Rather not. He went to ground somewhere below 
 the windmill." 
 
 " Is the Auctioneer still a Radical? " asked Stephen, 
 alluding to internal troubles on the Rural District 
 Council. 
 
 They talked village politics, listless in the heat. But 
 Stephen did not care much; he was amused only when 
 Sir John himself foamed and raved at the upstart mem- 
 ber. The talk fell to the two girls. 
 
 " I hear skirts are to be skimpy this autumn," said 
 Miss Jesmond. 
 
 "Oh! I'm rather glad. Don't you think they'd got 
 too full? " Louise replied. 
 
 " Perhaps. Anyhow, it'll be a change. Only, there's 
 this: will drapery go in for evening frocks? " 
 
 Stephen had lagged behind, swinging his stick, lan- 
 guidly decapitating the tall thistles about to flower. 
 Over his shoulder he could see Monica, head bent, listen- 
 ing to Moss, who gesticulated a little. 
 
 The young Jew talked well and knew it. Just then, 
 as often, music was in his mind. 
 
 " It's hard on a man," he said, " to be a musician. 
 People don't take him seriously. If a fellow's literary, 
 it's not so bad; it comes the way of his job to take an 
 interest in politics and all that; people think he's potty, 
 but they do listen a bit." 
 
 " But everybody likes music," replied Monica insin- 
 cerely, as she cared for it not at all. 
 
110 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Likes ! yes, likes. As they like chocolate and revues. 
 No, Miss Oakley, people care for music as little as for 
 musicians. They despise us, even more than the paint- 
 ers; somehow the organ-grinder's lower down than 
 the pavement artist. Oh, it's because they don't know." 
 His voice grew soft and fervent. " It makes me un- 
 happy to find them deaf to the language of life. To 
 think that people can listen to the adagio in Beethoven's 
 Sonata in F and they don't cry! They don't dance 
 with the ' Pastorale ! ' They hear the second movement 
 of the ' Moonlight ', and they don't crow and clap their 
 hands. Oh, they've sung in vain Brahms, Bach, 
 Mozart, all of them Do you think there'd be a David 
 to sing and dance before the Tabernacle if they carried 
 it to the Albert Hall? " 
 
 Monica laughed. She liked this dark, solemn young 
 man, and it pleased her to feel the caress of his brown 
 eyes. So she led him to talk on; she was soothed by 
 the full, throaty voice that rose and fell in metric 
 cadences. 
 
 Behind them walked Miss Moss, with Quin, stopping 
 often by the wayside, for the girl was teaching the Lon- 
 doner the names of the wild flowers. 
 
 " What's that? " she asked. 
 
 " A baby thistle," plunged Quin. 
 
 " Not at all. It's Knapweed." 
 
 " Knapweed. Good. Knapweed. I'll remember." 
 
 " You'd better," said Miss Moss, soft and severe. " I 
 shan't tell you more than three times." She was very 
 lovely, white-skinned, black-haired, with immense eyes 
 brown as a pool in shadow. She stirred the young man. 
 " And that," said Miss Moss, bending to pluck a tiny 
 purple flower, " I couldn't expect you to know that. It's 
 ground ivy." 
 
IN ENGLAND 111 
 
 " Ground ivy," he repeated vaguely, enraptured by her 
 warm softness. 
 
 " Yes. And look as if you were attending." 
 
 " I can't," he muttered. " You're the only flower the 
 name of which I shall remember forever." 
 
 " Don't be absurd." But she smiled, and for some 
 time they went in silence, through thickets of hazel. 
 
 " What's that? " he asked, determined to make her 
 speak, if only to watch the movement of her vivid lips. 
 
 " Flowering nettle, ignoramus." She bent to pluck the 
 little yellow pagoda, as did he. Their hands touched. 
 Flushing, she turned away. 
 
 " We must go on, and catch up the others." 
 
 He seized her hand. His speech was thick with emo- 
 tion. He drew her towards him. 
 
 " No! " she whispered, " no," suddenly taut. She was 
 strong and removed. Quin did not understand the in- 
 tense reserve of the women of her race ; so tried again to 
 clasp her. But she snatched her hand away. " No," 
 she murmured, soft and hoarse. " No, Mr. Quin. There, 
 don't look angry. Learn your lessons. That little purple 
 thing, like a neglected sweet pea, that's vetch." 
 
 " I'm not angry," he murmured, and for a moment 
 looked so forlorn that, with a sudden gesture of affection, 
 of pity, the girl whispered: 
 
 "Wild thyme. Smell how sweet it is," and brushed 
 her hand across his lips. 
 
 Far behind them, almost silent, full of mutual aware- 
 ness, came Sylvia and March, who watched every move- 
 ment of the deep shoulders in the green sweater, drew 
 close and receded in distracted terror and delight. He 
 recognised the thrall that settled over him: " Like a 
 moth," he thought uneasily. " Like a moth." But he 
 enjoyed the thrall, and Sylvia, conscious and secure, 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
 flung side glances at the handsome face, that was narrow 
 and thin. She was of those women who are stirred only 
 by one whom they stir. Yet his silence disquieted her; 
 the exquisite intensity of his abasement awoke in her 
 an uncomfortable responsibility. She asked him ques- 
 tions, indiscreet questions ; she was like a man who tears 
 away a woman's veil in his haste to kiss her lips. 
 
 " I'm twenty -three," he replied. 
 
 " So'm I," murmured Sylvia, and felt their intimacy 
 grow. " But somehow you don't seem it." 
 
 " Oh, well," he said, after a long time. " I haven't 
 done with the 'Varsity yet. I'm not grown up, I sup- 
 pose." He felt very humble. "You can't understand, 
 Mrs. Jervaulx; my people they're old-fashioned, 
 rather." 
 
 " Tell me about them," said Sylvia. She was not with- 
 out design; she knew that men talk willingly of them- 
 selves, yet she was honest in that moment: she wanted 
 to know all he would tell, that nervous boy. Like a 
 lovely, shying horse. 
 
 " There's nothing to tell," said March, defending his 
 modesty. 
 
 But Sylvia fixecj on him eyes that smouldered with 
 cupidity. Phrase by phrase she drew from him a pic- 
 ture of the old couple in the North, rich, idle, sunken 
 in local charity, isolated by Puritanic disapproval of 
 their neighbours, and loving Oliver March with Mosaic 
 pride and cruelty. 
 
 "They mean well," said the youth. "But father 
 wanted me to be good. When I was a kid he used to 
 lick me quite three times a week." 
 
 "What a shame!" 
 
 " No that is oh, it's so good of you," he cried, and 
 she thought she saw a tear on the lashes that shadowed 
 
IN ENGLAND 113 
 
 the flushed cheek. " Nobody but you ever wanted to 
 know about me." 
 
 Sylvia felt her heart grow large in her breast. They 
 were passing a curtain of willows. Nobody could see 
 them. But no; she was not afraid of that. She was 
 afraid of giving way to her impulse. She was glad, as if 
 escaped, when they reached the open field. She walked 
 quickly, to rejoin the others. 
 
 Already the party was noisily unpacking the hampers 
 which Temple had brought in the car; Miss Jesmond at 
 once organised with great violence. Seeking the pic- 
 turesque she had prohibited thermos flasks; she was full 
 of orders: 
 
 " Mr. Oakley, please find a couple of big stones. And 
 dead wood. We shall want more dead wood. Go and 
 fine some wood, Mr. Moss." 
 
 " What ! burn the home of a hamadryad 1 " Mr. Moss 
 was shocked. 
 
 " You mean the home of a woodlouse. Now hurry up. 
 Louise, where are the matches? Monica, you might set 
 out the plates ; and Mr. Quin, try and look busy even if 
 you aren't." 
 
 The party was immensely noisy as it gathered in a 
 clearing round the big stones upon which the kettle 
 boiled over a pile of twigs. The foliage was still young 
 and threw slight shadows; the birch leaves alone moved 
 softly. The company laughed at everything, ate enor- 
 mously of jam sandwiches, fruit salad, brown bread 
 crumbling under caviare, great spoonfuls of clotted cream, 
 and strawberries, cherries ; the kettle bubbled and hissed ; 
 they filled tumblers of cider cup that rattled with ground 
 ice. 
 
 "Ah!" cried Quin, "three cheers for Epicurus, for 
 Apollo! No! for Dionysus, whom the barbarians term 
 
114 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Bacchus. Hail, son of Semele! press for us the grape 
 of Naxos, scent the honey of Hymettus. ..." 
 
 " Shut up ! " roared in concert the other undergrad- 
 uates, ". . . let thy staff with pine-cone crowned and 
 entwined in ivy . . . " 
 
 Then almost everybody flung wood, bread and sugar 
 at the revellers. March, who sat silent and enchained 
 by Sylvia's side, flung himself upon Quin, thus escaping 
 his exquisite bonds. But as Quin still bellowed rhetoric 
 they smacked him with napkins, thrust a spoon down his 
 back and filled his hair with burrs. At last he released 
 himself and gravely remarked: 
 
 " There was a young fellow of Udimore ..." 
 
 " Limericks ! " cried Sylvia, forgetting March. She 
 adored limericks, especially limericks for two. For some 
 time the limerick club argued ferociously. 
 
 " Who'd plumbed this old world to the core," suggested 
 Stephen. 
 
 " Rot! " cried March, still a free man. 
 
 " He said: To succeed, You must bathe in the Brede " 
 . . . volunteered Miss Moss. 
 
 " You just stick to woman's sphere," said her brother 
 rudely. " Here, I've got it: But a pair of grey eyes, 
 That were deep as the skies ..." 
 
 A yell of derision interrupted him, but Monica blushed. 
 She was happy ; a heat mist hung in the trees ; she could 
 hear Louise and Miss Jesmond talking clothes. 
 
 " No," said Miss Jesmond firmly. " A theatrical dress- 
 maker will always overdo it when it comes to an after- 
 noon dress. But there's nobody like them for evening 
 frocks." 
 
 Monica's eyes met Stephen's. He smiled. How lov- 
 able he was. For a moment she watched Quin, a little 
 jealously; Miss Moss had hung a cherry from a twig and 
 
IN ENGLAND 115 
 
 was angling over the young man's face. He snapped at 
 the fruit as a trout at a fly; the girl flung back her 
 swelling neck as she laughed. She did not see March 
 flush as he handed Sylvia a tumbler of cider cup and 
 for a second touched her finger tips. 
 
 Soon the party straggled through the wood into the 
 fields. The loveliness of the afternoon repressed the 
 crudity of their youth; they marvelled at the delicacy 
 of the grasshoppers and picked shy columbine. A corner 
 of the field was thick with pink campion; the men 
 plucked great bunches of it and wreathed in the blossoms 
 the heads of the girls, who laughed and protested. Then 
 all stopped before a wild-rose bush, laden with vermilion 
 puffballs of blight. Quin plucked a long branch, wove 
 it into a thorny crown, which he hung as a votive offer- 
 ing upon the lowest bough of an oak. 
 
 " How beautiful it is," he said, as he fingered the 
 soft, scarlet home of the insect, " and yet it's just blight! 
 How Elizabethan! Moss! let us sing to it " 
 
 Slowly he composed the lines, while Moss sung a lilt- 
 ing melody: 
 
 " Blight upon the roses, blight in May, 
 
 (Merrily, merrily) 
 Mother and daughter of my own decay, 
 
 (Drearily, drearily) 
 Rosy is my quarry, rosy is her lip, 
 
 (Rosily, rosily) 
 Dewy is her fragrance, dew from her I sip, 
 
 (Dewily, dewily) ." 
 
 They went slowly through the fields. The sun was 
 sinking beyond the ridge, picking out in black the squat 
 tower of Brede church. Sylvia and March had out- 
 stripped the others; they were followed only by the dis- 
 
116 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 tant voices and the young laughter upon the cooling 
 wind. Silently they passed into the curtain of willows 
 beyond which ran a brook, walking fast, as if escaping, 
 as if determined to defeat themselves by flight. But, 
 just as they were about to pass beyond the willows, 
 they stopped as in accord, for a moment paused as if 
 asking of each other an impossible respite. Then, with 
 a little shiver, Sylvia seized the fair, shrinking head, 
 drew it down, and with a little cry, half joyful, half 
 despairing, pressed her lips to his. The youth cried out 
 as she clasped him, his conquest and his conqueror. 
 
 XX 
 
 WITH a deft, half-automatic movement Monica seized 
 the long wooden mould in which were sunk the twenty 
 little cambric bags which had just been placed at her 
 side. Her right hand, that rested on the wooden lever 
 of the press, brought down the wooden plunger just as 
 the mould, sliding between its wooden guides, placed 
 itself so that the first recess received the stroke of the 
 plunger. It had fascinated her, this work, in the begin- 
 ning, so apparently easy, so exacting in accuracy. In 
 the early days, nearly two months before, when hers had 
 been the mean tasks, the endless weighing of the small 
 T. N. T. charges, later the equally monotonous loading 
 of the cambric bags with their exquisitely correct charges, 
 she had sometimes looked at the press girls with the 
 respect that overcomes a G. P. when a Harley Street 
 specialist speaks. For pressing demanded the develop- 
 ment of multifarious instincts. When she brought in 
 the loaded moulds she sometimes wasted a minute, until 
 the charge hand fussed and began to stare at her. It 
 was fascinating to watch the presser slide the mould 
 
IN ENGLAND 117 
 
 under the plunger, so exactly that the plunger would not 
 catch the edges of the wooden die, and bring down the 
 lever as if she were thinking of something else. There 
 was not a sixteenth of an inch to spare, and this acrobat 
 never failed. She did not catch the edges; her stroke 
 never failed; there was hardly any noise save the swift, 
 consecutive thuds as the plunger came down, pressing 
 to its exact length and density the little charge it was 
 like a conjuring trick. Monica had almost a sense of 
 emptiness when the twenty were done. The sudden 
 interruption of the rapid, harmonious movement, essence 
 of perfect industrial work, left her suspended. 
 
 " It's a long time ago," she thought, as her hands, 
 undirected by her brain, pulled at the lever and pushed 
 forward the mould. " It's easy," she thought. " I'm a 
 machine now, I suppose." 
 
 She did not dislike being a machine. The continuous, 
 regular work that left her mind unencumbered, satisfied 
 in her the need for occupation. Without knowing it, 
 she had been rather unhappy and very bored at Knap- 
 enden during those two years, when she had played with 
 the war at relief centres. Now, every day, from eight 
 to six, with an hour off for dinner, she felt in it, and 
 somehow the war oppressed her less. By gaining contact 
 with it, she was half escaping it. Miss Livingstone was 
 right the other day when she said: " The war! we've got 
 nothing to do with the war. All we care about is 
 munitions." 
 
 Indeed Monica found munitions strangely impersonal. 
 She could not connect these little bags with fire and 
 death. She filled them with T. N. T., just as she might 
 have filled tins with tomatoes. They had become just 
 things. And she liked her little charges; they had 
 idiosyncracies, troubles of their own; the fine powder 
 
118 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 was wayward as a poet. Indeed, at that moment, she 
 struck one of the strange moods of the explosive. Her 
 newly sensitive right hand told her as the plunger came 
 down that the stroke was short. She stopped and turned 
 to Miss Hayes, who, at the end of the shop, was gauging 
 test samples. Answering her look, Miss Hayes came to 
 the bench. 
 
 " What is it? " she said. 
 
 Monica pointed to the plunger sunken into the mould. 
 There was a gap of one eighth of an inch between the 
 edge of the mould and the course stroke of the plunger. 
 
 " Oh," said Miss Hayes, " grade's varying again. It's 
 really too bad of them to expect us to put this coarse 
 stuff through. Let me have a try." Shifting the mould 
 forward, Miss Hayes pressed the next bag. Again the 
 plunger failed to travel its course. " Oh, well/' she said, 
 " put it aside. What is the lot number? " 
 
 " F.16," said Monica, turning up the mould to see the 
 label. 
 
 Miss Hayes flushed with annoyance. She had soft 
 dark eyes and beautiful curly brown hair, which no cap 
 could restrain, but the length and flatness of her chin 
 revealed a secret hot temper. 
 
 " It's too bad, it's really too bad, I've told shop twice 
 this morning to stop the F.16. I'll go to unit about it," 
 she cried, as she violently pulled at the wooden swing 
 door. 
 
 " Cheero," said Monica's neighbour, as she pushed 
 away her mould, " mine's F.16, too. Girls, girls, *it's a 
 blooming bank holiday." One after another they pushed 
 aside the moulds loaded with the unworkable explosive, 
 
 " Let's have a sing-song, girls," bellowed Monica's 
 neighbour. She was good-looking, but rather stout; 
 Monica found the pink and white cheeks and brilliant 
 
IN ENGLAND 119 
 
 yellow hair irresistible, and she adored the mischievous 
 little amber eyes. 
 
 " Miss Badger," said a girl on the other side, "I'm 
 surprised at you." 
 
 But Miss Badger (for this was the fair-haired girl), 
 was taking no notice, slid back her bench, and without 
 regard for factory regulations dumped to the right and 
 left of her mould two enormous, felt-shod feet, tilted, 
 and clasping her hands behind her head, luxuriously 
 expanded her vast bust, and in a sepulchral bellow 
 began: 
 
 " I want to go back, 
 I want to go back, 
 I want to go to Tennessee." 
 
 " Shut up! Hold yer row! " came from various parts 
 of the shop. "You wait, if Maisie-Aisie catches you! " 
 " This is my day out," remarked Miss Badger. 
 
 " I want to go back, 
 I want to go back, 
 I want to go to Tennessee." 
 
 " Ain't she a cure? " said Miss Penn, who owned the 
 ugliest nose, the worst teeth, and the greatest speed and 
 conscientiousness of the whole shop. 
 
 Then Pollie Westfield leapt up from her bench, rushed 
 across to the singer, and tempted by her attitude brought 
 down a violent hand upon her stomach. 
 
 "Gaw! " roared Ivy Badger, leaping up with a great 
 pretence of fury, " girls, let me get at her, only let me 
 get at her. You watch me make her so as her mother 
 wouldn't know her." 
 
 Miss Penn and a big dark girl on the other side hurled 
 themselves on Miss Badger, who stamped and roared, 
 
120 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 mouthing comic furious faces, and breathing threats of 
 the most anatomical kind, the least of which was the 
 scattering of Pollie Westfield's liver to the four winds. 
 
 A sudden scurry, a line of patient white backs before 
 the moulds. Miss Hayes came in, rather rigid and 
 discontented, close followed by Tinker, a small girl who 
 called them to the outside gangway for the ten o'clock 
 milk. 
 
 "Hooray!" roared Miss Badger (for this particular 
 meal was recognized as an occasion for license) , " here 
 we are again. Pledge me girls in the famous Cottenham 
 milk, straight from the pump." 
 
 Even Miss Hayes smiled. The girls crowded round 
 Tinker and drank hurriedly. This was not a recognized 
 meal, to be taken only outside the clean area, but still 
 they were not supposed to waste time, and did not drink 
 while at work, for fear that T. N. T. dust should fall into 
 the beverage. While Miss Badger drank up, making as 
 much noise as she could, in imitation as she put it of the 
 elephant when about to baa, Monica reflected that her 
 fellow workers were really a jolly crowd. In this big, 
 clean factory she felt happy, useful; so far as work can 
 help a woman she felt complete. And while she waited 
 for the new lot of T. N. T. she went off into meditations so 
 vague that she could not say what she was thinking 
 about. 
 
 Suddenly a noise entered her consciousness. It was 
 not the regular noise from the proof yard, where rapid 
 cracks signalized that caps were being tested, nor the 
 frequent dull rumble from the Woolwich sheds miles 
 away. It was a sudden, heavy, muffled noise, close by, a 
 noise she had never heard before. It terrified her by its 
 unfamiliarity, and the silence that followed was more 
 terrifying. She found herself staring at the other girls, 
 
IN ENGLAND 121 
 
 whose eyes too had widened ; Miss Hayes seemed to be lis- 
 tening like a dog in the wind. Not a word was said, and 
 the tension grew abominable. Monica found herself 
 holding on to the edge of the table with cold, twisted 
 fingers. 
 
 So, some seconds later, it was almost a relief to hear a 
 bell begin to ring, then another, and yet another, until the 
 air was filled with the ringing of bells. 
 
 "The fire bell," said Miss Hayes quietly. "Go to 
 your benches and wait for orders." 
 
 As the girls obediently sat down, Miss Hayes went to 
 the door, opened it, and taking out the wedge, as directed 
 in Article 1 of Fire Regulations, maintained it open and 
 stood in the doorway so as not to obstruct movement on 
 the gangway. 
 
 Monica, seated and waiting, tried to see through the 
 window what was happening. It was horrible that noth- 
 ing should be happening. The tram girls had left their 
 trolleys on the gangways. There was nothing to be seen, 
 except at the door of each shop the charge hand at atten- 
 tion. It seemed to last minutes. And still all the bells 
 were ringing. It struck Monica that there was no emo- 
 tion in bells. 
 
 Suddenly, as if in receipt of a signal, all the charge 
 nands turned to their shops. Monica ceased to be a spec- 
 tator, for Miss Hayes was marshalling her girls and 
 marching them through the inspection room towards the 
 shift house. 
 
 Marvellously she came in the rear: "Left! right! " 
 she cried, a pleasant military automaton. Monica was 
 not afraid yet. It was very like fire drill. But, as she 
 entered the inspection room in time to see the last Wool- 
 wich girl passing out, her heart gave a leap, her knees 
 felt weak. For, one after the other, she heard three sep- 
 
122 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 arate explosions, and for a moment the windows on the 
 right were lit up by a red glare. 
 
 " Steady," said Miss Hayes, with a lovely steadiness 
 in her own voice. 
 
 But in the change house there was a moment of con- 
 fusion, for their group collided with the tail of the inspec- 
 tion column, as the latter stopped to make way for the 
 girls from the press shop. In that moment of stoppage 
 Monica, for the first time in her life, knew the feeling of 
 blind terror. It was rather dark. There were no win- 
 dows along the sides. She was penned in with these 
 eighty girls and in a horrible silence. " No panic," she 
 murmured to herself, and was conscious that there were 
 a great many of them in the room and that the door 
 looked terribly small. 
 
 Then they were outside, marching towards the gate, 
 along the gangway that seemed so narrow and so long. 
 For a moment she felt an impulse to break away, leap 
 the barrier into the dirty area, and run across the swampy 
 ground, but she dug her nails into her palms. Monica 
 was not romantic: nothing within her took up the old 
 battle cry of her fathers, but a training made up of class 
 implications compelled her to keep down her impulse 
 just because it was an impulse. 
 
 Then she felt her nails go deeper into her skin, for not 
 a hundred yards away a sheet of flame rose on the other 
 side of " B " Division, and to the accompaniment of 
 a roaring noise that terrified her she saw things in 
 the air, things that flamed and smoked, that fell on 
 the roofs of " B " Division, and, worst of all, large dark 
 things which, she dully realised, seemed to be writhing 
 in the air ... 
 
 And still they were marching along those endless gang- 
 ways . . . She saw smoke rise in grey streams from the 
 
IN ENGLAND 123 
 
 roofs of " B " . . . Hot ashes and little burning frag- 
 ments of wood fell over the procession . . . She was 
 conscious of Ivy Badger behind her laughing . . . 
 
 Just as they passed the " B " gangway the whole shop 
 went up. It seemed to happen progressively: the walls 
 caved outwards, making strange, broken shapes with their 
 purple and green camouflage lit up by flames. She saw 
 the gangway crumble and fall smoking into the swamp, 
 and with a sudden sickness had a vision of a string of 
 girls, passing out of " B ", at first lit up, then falling 
 singly, or crumpled in smoking groups with the caving 
 walls. She heard screams, and as the roofs fell in, a more 
 shocking silence. 
 
 It was then she saw the men behind " B " Division, the 
 fire engines already at work she was conscious of two 
 toy engines racing towards the factory along the Borstal 
 Road. The unit foreman, followed by two other men, 
 running with incredible rapidity along the " A " gang- 
 way, which was still safe. But a panic seemed to have 
 gained her neighbours; somebody was shoving her; she 
 struck out savagely, and it delighted her to feel her elbow 
 enter the softness of a body ! A cry rose up, " Let's get 
 out." She had a glimpse of the girls, breaking away, 
 leaping into the swamp, running. She too was running, 
 towards " A " Division, she did not know why, one of 
 hundreds of little figures now beyond the hold of dis- 
 cipline. Some men were on " A " gangway still, signing 
 to the girls to turn back. But Monica found her brain 
 without ideas ; she did not know where she was running to, 
 but she could not stop. And the repeated explosions that 
 came now one after the other deprived her of all power 
 to think. She heard a loud hiss from the river as the fire 
 barge came up and began to spout water at " A " Division 
 in the hope of protecting it against falling embers. But 
 
124 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 as for a moment she stood alone, she saw a long trail of 
 red-hot ashes fall on the last shed. She did not think, 
 gave herself no commands. She found herself leaping the 
 barrier, rushing into the deserted shed, tugging at the 
 extinguisher that was too heavy for her. She dragged, 
 and she strained. As she hauled it to the door she was 
 single of purpose. All she thought was: " If I can get it 
 out, we may just do it." Then somebody seized her by 
 the waist. 
 
 " Get out, get out at once," said a voice, " give it to 
 me, don't be a fool." And strong hands dragged her out 
 of the shed with a certain brutality. She felt herself 
 thrown out by a violent thrust between the shoulder 
 blades, but she was more conscious of the thump-thump 
 of the extinguisher as the man dragged it across the floor. 
 Hardly conscious, she was outside, held up by a man who 
 had his arm round her waist. 
 
 " The extinguisher," she murmured feebly. 
 
 " It's all right," said a voice roughly, but it was a kind 
 voice. 
 
 She listened to the extinguisher hissing. She found 
 herself crying a little. She was too weak to shrink when, 
 with a dominating roar, the cordite magazine went up. 
 She was thankful for the anonymous arm which still held 
 her up. . . . 
 
 Towards the afternoon Frank Cottenham stood medi- 
 tatively in the swamp. Half the factory still smoked 
 gently; the firemen were negligently playing on the blue 
 volutes of smoke that rose straight in the warm air. 
 Superficially, he was most unhappy. Two hundred yards 
 away the St. John's Ambulance people were still passing 
 with stretchers on which lay horribly blackened, shape- 
 less things. 
 
 " My God! " he said, " are there any more? " 
 
IN ENGLAND 125 
 
 With staring eyes he watched the procession. 
 
 " Eighty-three, eighty-four, eighty-five. That's the lot, 
 I suppose. No, good Lord! here are some more! " He 
 turned away so as not to see what it was the labourers 
 were dragging out from the fallen gangway of " B " 
 Division, but suddenly his agony was overwhelmed by a 
 feeling of preoccupation and delight, a feeling which had 
 been calling to him through those three hours of terrible 
 activity. He could still feel her suppleness in the hollow 
 of his arm. He wished that her tears still lay wet upon 
 his hand. Dishonestly, he said to himself: 
 
 " She's a brick. I really ought to go and see how she's 
 doing." 
 
 He hurried towards " F " building, converted into a 
 temporary hospital, turning away from the endless row 
 of objects upon the stretchers; many moved uneasily, 
 some were moaning. Cottenham would not have minded 
 so much on a battle-field, but these were girls, and this 
 outraged his deepest affection. Still, he had to look if he 
 was to find her, and it did not strike him that this was 
 poetic justice, that his search for the woman he desired 
 compelled him to look into the tortured faces of all those 
 other women. 
 
 He found her at last, unhurt, sitting limply in an arm- 
 chair in the sick room. How white she looked ! and how 
 exquisite ! She had taken off her cap, and so for the first 
 time he saw the red-brown hair. She looked at him as 
 if she did not know him, and this surprised him. It 
 seemed incredible that he should not be as familiar to 
 her thoughts as she had been to his. So he felt embar- 
 rassed, a feeling unusual in him when in the presence of 
 a woman. He faltered: 
 
 " I say I just wanted to know how you are." 
 
 " I'm all right, thanks," said Monica. 
 
126 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 He paused. Somehow he had not expected her voice to 
 be pitched like that. 
 
 " I mean well, you did a very brave thing, a silly 
 thing, but then I suppose all those things are either brave 
 or silly. They're silly if they don't come off." 
 
 Monica looked at him without replying. She knew 
 him by sight, and was interested by his good looks, his 
 well-groomed alertness. 
 
 "Oh, well," she said, " it isn't worth making a fuss 
 about. To tell you the truth I don't know what I did." 
 
 Cottenham looked at her with growing surprise. 
 
 (" Hang it all! the girl talked like a lady. Well, time 
 would show. And her hands ! extremely dirty, but not a 
 working-girl's hands.") 
 
 " Do you mind telling me your name? " he said, and as 
 if to prevent misunderstanding: " I have to know your 
 name, you see, because we have to report every detail." 
 
 " Monica Oakley." 
 
 " Oh! Miss Monica Oakley." He made a note of it. 
 "Well, Miss Oakley, I think you'll hear a little more 
 about this. I don't think I ought to say any more, as no 
 doubt you're very shaken and would like to go home, but 
 I think I may say that the factory will feel that it 
 ought to recognise your, may I say, your intelligence and 
 courage." 
 
 Monica made a gesture of deprecation. It struck him 
 as full of grace. 
 
 " I think we shall probably ask you to take charge of 
 a shop, when we start again on what is left of our poor 
 old factory, but I won't worry you now. Of course, it 
 will be a few days before work begins again. Well, " 
 he felt awkward, " well, good morning, Miss Oakley." 
 
 Monica, very tired, watched him walk away. She was 
 not now unhappy or terrified; she was not conscious of 
 
IN ENGLAND 127 
 
 the all-surrounding pain and death. She found her idle 
 mind occupied by a new interest. He had a pleasant 
 voice, she thought, and somehow he was both shy and 
 brave. His blue eyes sometimes had stared hers down, 
 and sometimes eluded her. It made her wonder whether 
 he was usually shy, and bold with her, or usually bold, 
 but shy with her. It was an irritating speculation. She 
 felt too worn to get up and go away. She wanted to sleep 
 as she sat, but this new idea would not let her alone. She 
 tried to drive it away as she grew sleepier, but still the 
 problem of Cottenham imposed itself. " It's like trying 
 to go to sleep when you've got indigestion," she thought. 
 But, little by little, as the needs of her body asserted 
 themselves, she went to sleep, her waking brain shep- 
 herded to the last by this idea, which, as she grew drowsy, 
 became less insistent, became vague as a distant song. 
 
 XXI 
 
 THE feeling of distracting companionship which had 
 been his for the last few days grew less insistent as Cot- 
 tenham, leaving the car at the garage, walked round his 
 house towards the front door. In the warm May even- 
 ing, framed in a sky pale as running water, his house 
 filled him with a sense of harmony that made him love 
 it so. It was not a very large house : it stood on a slight 
 rise, three miles up the Medway from the Cottenham 
 works, low, square, one of those solemn Georgian houses 
 with the flat, friendly facade of red brick, the white- 
 framed windows, the flat roof. Not very old, built about 
 1770 by some local gentleman, it had come into the hands 
 of the Cottenhams in the early 'sixties when the works 
 were formecj. But though it was only his grandfather's 
 house, Frank Cottenham felt naturalised to it, to the 
 
128 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 thick hedges of clipped box and golden privet, the flagged 
 paths grown with rock plants, the old gnarled vine, and 
 the still older lavender bush that sprang from stems 
 thick as a man's wrist. 
 
 As he closed the door behind him, he was received by 
 those sounds which to him meant home. On his right, 
 in the drawing-room, Julia was playing. He knew the 
 piece well, the Toccata of Paradies. He loved the Toc- 
 cata, its gay disregard of life's responsibility. He lis- 
 tened for a long time, hat in hand : 
 
 " Some men married, married for gold 
 And some for their heart's desire. 
 Some left their hearts to wither and wilt, 
 And many had nothing to give ..." 
 
 cried the Toccata. " Ah ! Toccata of my dreams," 
 thought Cottenham, " how you understand life ! " Fas- 
 cinated, he waited for the recurrent motif which sums up 
 the immortal little melody : 
 
 " But I didn't care, I didn't care, 
 For languid and light was I ! 
 And I didn't care, and I didn't care ..." 
 
 He sighed. Oh ! sunny Toccata ! Was it really like that 
 in seventeenth- century Italy? 
 
 Julia stopped, but almost at once began to play another 
 familiar tune, a Pavane of Locatelli. Forcing himself a 
 little, for he wanted to see his children, Cottenham went 
 upstairs, followed all the way by the mock solemnity of 
 the Pavane that prisons the gossamer, cabins the cloud. 
 For a moment he stopped in the night-nursery, where 
 Rupert, his mouth wide open, lay asleep. He was a large, 
 fine baby, dark like his mother, but it pleased Cottenham 
 to think that under the veined eyelids lay eyes blue as his 
 
IN ENGLAND 129 
 
 own. Then Rupert stirred in his sleep, and with appar- 
 ently enormous effort disengaged an arm and a fat brown 
 fist which he waved with beautiful helplessness. Cotten- 
 ham bent down to kiss the soft warm cheek that was vel- 
 vety and sweet-scented. Adorable, fat Rupert. 
 
 Then, treading carefully, he went into the day-nursery, 
 where Nurse, tight-featured and businesslike, and in- 
 clined to bully the under-nurse, was preparing Diana and 
 Lucretia for bed. Their father came in just in time to 
 still a disturbance, for on this brilliant evening both little 
 girls looked upon bed as an outrage; Lucretia, aged five, 
 was lying on her back, kicking, bellowing that she would 
 never get up again, while Diana's features were resolving 
 themselves into a system of corkscrews which promised 
 tears. But, at the sight of Cottenham, the two children 
 gave a shrill cry of delight, ran, seized him. Diana, who 
 was heavy for her six years, nearly pulled him over by 
 suddenly clutching the slack of his coat and declaring 
 that he was a swing. 
 
 "Now, Miss Diana," said Nurse ferociously, " no 
 swings to-night. Come here at once." 
 
 " Let me have them for a moment, Nurse," said Cot- 
 tenham humbly. 
 
 " Very well, Sir," said the expert, obviously indignant. 
 " I think ten minutes will be quite enough, Sir." And 
 motioning her subordinate away, she left the room, while 
 Cottenham sat down and his two little daughters jumped 
 one on to each knee, trying to come down on him as heav- 
 ily as they could, for that was part of the game. In that 
 moment he knew complete delight. The two little bodies 
 clasped in his arms were so active. Their hearts, he 
 thought, beat quicker than other people's. 
 
 " Well, darlings," he murmured between the two dark 
 heads, " what shall we do? " 
 
130 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " A story," said Diana breathlessly. 
 
 " The story about the night when the china cat walked," 
 said Lucretia. 
 
 " No," said Diana, " I know that story. I want the 
 story about the fairy that says ping-pang in the tele- 
 phone." 
 
 " The story about the china cat," said Lucretia indig- 
 nantly. 
 
 " Hush," said Cottenham, " or Nurse'll come back. 
 I'll tell you a new story. A story you have never heard 
 before." 
 
 The two little girls opened enormous, dark, fascinated 
 eyes. A new story! 
 
 " Once upon a time there was a man who had a brain 
 of gold. When he was a little boy he had a very large 
 head, because there was such a lot of gold in it. It was 
 a nuisance, rather, because his head was heavy, and 
 sometimes when he ran he used to fall down and hurt 
 himself." 
 
 " Did he fall when he went downstairs? " asked Lu- 
 cretia. 
 
 " Very likely." 
 
 " Did he fall on his nose? " asked Diana. 
 
 " Yes, he was always falling about, but don't interrupt. 
 Now, one day, when he had fallen down, as he picked 
 himself up, he saw that he had cut his head a little. 
 Oh, -he hadn't hurt himself much," cried Cottenham as 
 he saw a tremor of sympathy pass over Diana's face, 
 " only a very, very little. And when he got up he saw 
 that there had fallen from his head two or three little 
 scraps of gold. So he picked them up and took them 
 to his master. And his master said to him: 'Algernon, 
 I am very pleased with you for giving me these. I am 
 so pleased that you shan't do any sums to-day. . . . ' " 
 
IN ENGLAND 131 
 
 The two little girls clung and stared, as Cottenham 
 went to the end of the old French story. They did not 
 quite understand the end, when the man with the golden 
 brain has spent nearly all of it on friendship and love, 
 and holds out in a blood-stained hand the last scraps of' 
 that golden brain to the woman who was faithless to 
 him. But they were quiet when Nurse came back, and 
 kissed their father with soft little cool lips. He went 
 away thinking, without connecting the thought with any- 
 thing else: 
 
 " This is the best thing in the world. It is not a thing 
 to risk." Then he added: "You damned sentimental- 
 ist," and went to his dressing room. 
 
 The impression that this was the best thing in the 
 world clung to him throughout the evening. How lovely 
 Julia was! and how strange that after seven years of 
 marriage he should still discern her loveliness. She was 
 tall, almost too slim : something of the Italian greyhound 
 about her narrow arms, delicate ankles and wrists. That 
 night she was wearing a new frock, always a sure pass- 
 port to his approval. And a beautiful frock. Over her 
 shoulders, though widely cut away round the neck, hung 
 a masculine, but armless coat of black velvet, edged all 
 round with an embroidered pattern of golden bees. The 
 thin body was clad in a corselet of heavy brocade, striped 
 black and gold, and caught up towards the breast. The 
 skirt also of striped brocade broke on her narrow knees. 
 Upon her breast lay a cabochon ruby. Yes, she was 
 very lovely. He felt it right to congratulate her ; admira- 
 tion is a duty. 
 
 " Do you really like it? " asked Julia, a little anxiously, 
 for she respected her husband's taste, which was excel- 
 lent. 
 
 " Yes, you don't always bring it off, but this is It." 
 
132 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " I hesitated about that brocade. Don't you think it's 
 rather heavy? " 
 
 "No. What did you think of? Crepe georgette?" 
 
 " Some sort of crepe." 
 
 " It's quite as well you let it alone. Crepe 's so flimsy," 
 said Cottenham. " Besides, when you go in for those 
 light stuffs, chiffon, say, as nowadays you've got to use 
 the same material all the way down, you get the line 
 too long. You want a broader effect." 
 
 They discussed the frock for some time, then passed 
 on to a projected coat and skirt. They even had a 
 difference of opinion, for Mrs. Cottenham had determined 
 on gabardine, while her husband wanted to experiment 
 with something rough like hopsack. They were united, 
 those two, by many interests, of which clothes and music 
 were perhaps the strongest. After dinner Julia played 
 again, but the old unsteadiness recaptured her husband, 
 and after a while he went into his study. For a long 
 time he remained with his chin in his hand. Then his 
 thought found expression: 
 
 " How beautiful she is ! What a savage, in a way. 
 How lucky for her that she's dark. If she'd been pink 
 and white she'd have tried to express that wild soul of 
 hers, and colours would have made her absurd." He 
 brooded for a moment over the temperament of his wife, 
 still foreign, because it was so fitful, so jealous, so pas- 
 sionate, in every way animal, and so strangely attractive 
 to him, who was rather fadedly gay, cynical in presence 
 of his own emotions, kindly, negligent, sentimental, and 
 sensual in the mind rather than the body. His thoughts 
 took another turn: 
 
 " I'd better let that girl alone. Yes, but can I let her 
 alone? I think I'll get her sacked. It's about the only 
 way." Then his subtle familiar murmured: " Nonsense! 
 
IN ENGLAND 133 
 
 Why sack her? It isn't fair. The girl's done you no 
 harm. Besides, it'll be all right. In the ordinary way 
 you never go near the shops. The chances are you'll 
 never see her again; so don't worry." 
 
 But the next day, and this filled him with a sort of 
 shame, he found himself, as if by chance, in the car 
 pulled up near the canteen, improvised in the Admiralty 
 building. He wanted to see her, and he knew it. But 
 as the girls came out he started the car. He was afraid 
 to see her. All that day he tried to anaesthetise himself 
 with work, of which there was abundance, for three out 
 of the seven divisions of the factory were burnt down 
 to the piles, and there was enough struggling with con- 
 tractors, barge and railway companies, let alone an 
 impending lawsuit against the insurance company, to 
 drive out of his mind the thought of any woman. But, 
 all through, that thought clung to him. " It's like a 
 fishhook," he said to himself. " Damn her." 
 
 At six o'clock came news. Something had happened 
 near Jutland; judging from the Admiralty statement the 
 fleet had got rather the worst of it. For a moment the 
 idea that the British fleet had been beaten drove every- 
 thing else from his mind. It was only a few minutes 
 later that he realised with horror that even such an event 
 could not entirely annul the other preoccupation. 
 
 Much later that evening, at half-past ten, he told 
 Irvine that he could work no more. As he walked 
 through the silent building he passed through the staff 
 office. On a shelf stood two heavy registers marked 
 " Staff." He hesitated for a moment, then, looking back 
 to see if Irvine had followed him, he hurriedly took down 
 the volume marked " N-Z." Hurriedly he opened it. 
 Ah! here it was. Only one Oakley, luckily. Then he 
 stared 182, Castle Hill. Castle Hill? Rochester? 
 
134 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 This was incredible. He knew the street well, the street 
 of fine houses that ran down alongside the Castle towards 
 the bridge. No, really, munition girls earning thirty- 
 four bob a week didn't live in Castle Hill. " After all," 
 he said to himself savagely, " what the devil do I care 
 where she lives? " 
 
 But he did not turn the car towards the south. In a 
 few minutes he passed Fort Clarence and turned into 
 the broad street. He left the car and walked up. In 
 the black darkness of the military area he could not be 
 quite sure of Number 182, but it must be one of those two 
 substantial houses. Of course no lights could be seen. 
 Yet one of those was her window. 
 
 Cottenham stood for a long time. His hands clasped 
 behind him, he thought: 
 
 " Sentimental fool. Cub. You're thirty-nine, and you 
 go and stare at a girl's window just as you used to go 
 round in the evening and stare at the light on the top 
 floor of the pastry-cook's in the Corn. But it can't be 
 helped. Frank, old boy, you're going to get into trouble. 
 She won't have anything to do with you, and if she does 
 it'll be still worse. She's not just one of the hands. 
 She won't take it easy. She's pukka. If she listens to 
 you at all she'll take it hard. The real thing, you know, 
 a clean bolt. And you won't be able to meet her, and 
 if you do meet her you'll get caught. And Julia will 
 suspect. And there'll be a devil of a row. And you'll 
 get sick of her just about the time when she gets fond of 
 you. And you'll jolly well wish you'd let her alone 
 but, my poor old Frank, I'm afraid you won't." 
 
IN ENGLAND 135 
 
 XXII 
 
 " IRVINE," said Cottenham, " this afternoon at three 
 o'clock I want to see the charge hands." 
 
 " Oh," said the Manager, " what's wrong? " 
 
 " Nothing. But the way things are going we shall 
 never get properly started again unless we can get more 
 labour. The Labour Exchange is not sending anybody, 
 is it? " 
 
 " Well, we had five girls in this morning. Of course 
 they're a bit scared, but they'll settle down." 
 
 " That's all very well," said Cottenham, " but how long 
 are they going to take to settle down? You're no psy- 
 chologist, Irvine ; when a factory's had seventy-two killed 
 and two hundred and ten wounded a fortnight before, 
 well! girls don't mob the place for a job when they can 
 go across the river and make uniforms and lead a quiet 
 life. Since we went up the girls have been shy every- 
 where. It's the same story at Curtis's and Harvey's, and 
 at Woolwich too. Otherwise we're all right. I see that 
 Humphreys are running up the shanties in double quick 
 time, and we seem to have got the right priority. We 
 shall have a unit up in a week, do you think? " 
 
 " Yes. I should think about a week. We ought to be 
 more or less 0. K. in about five weeks." 
 
 " Except as to labour. That's why I'm going to have 
 the charge hands in, and I'm going to orate. Tickle up 
 their patriotism, you know. Show 'em how stuck-up 
 they ought to be because they haven't been killed. All 
 the usual talk about the fellows out there risking every 
 day what they ought to be proud to risk. I want to turn 
 them into recruiting sergeants. If every charge hand 
 brings us three girls, we shall start up that unit next 
 week, and then things will move." 
 
136 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 The meeting took place at three o'clock, in the Club, 
 a large building near the Chalk Pit. The forty girls 
 came in, rather self-conscious and solemn, pleased be- 
 cause this was a sort of reception, and of course they 
 were wearing their outdoor clothes. There was a good 
 deal of quiet giggling, and Cottenham felt very much 
 looked at. A shrill whisper reached him: "I think he's 
 just sweet." How adorable women were! But as they 
 settled down he felt uneasy and discontented until at 
 last he met two deep grey eyes. He needed all his 
 experienced wisdom not to give her a little smile 
 of recognition. It was a brief address. Cottenham 
 sketched out the history of the Works, pointing out that 
 most of them were new hands, but still they had entered 
 an organisation which had always maintained model rela- 
 tions with its employees, that the management were 
 associated with the workers in half a dozen ways, sick 
 clubs, holiday clubs, sports and games, and doubtless as 
 time went on the association might become still more 
 democratic. Briefly, it was a question of holding to- 
 gether. A calamity had occurred; such things were 
 inevitable in explosive works. Everything was done to 
 avoid them, and no doubt his audience knew that acci- 
 dents were very rare. Still, it had happened, and the 
 only thing to do was for everybody to do their best to 
 pull the business together. 
 
 " And that," he said, " we cannot do without more 
 labour. Just now we are four hundred and ten girls 
 short. A number, as you know, perished in the explo- 
 sion, but the great majority of the missing are girls who 
 are frightened and haven't come back. Oh, I quite 
 understand it; it's enough to frighten anybody. But 
 still I think we must remember that we in England are 
 in a comparatively happy state. The enemy is kept 
 
IN ENGLAND 137 
 
 from you by millions of men who are every day, and 
 all day, risking death from those explosives which you 
 make. They take their risk. Can we not take a much 
 smaller risk? " 
 
 He met Monica's eyes, and took a more lyrical turn: 
 " The essence of human life, the thing that makes it 
 adventurous and lovely, is just that triumph of our spirit 
 over our natural craven nature. We are afraid of pain 
 and privation; we develop only when with open eyes we 
 decide to face that pain and that privation. Life cannot 
 crown a human being until that being risks his throne." 
 He felt that he was soaring too high. " So what I want 
 is your help. I know you agree with me, or you would 
 not be here, you would not have come back ; I want every 
 one of you to speak to-night to her friend, to her friend's 
 friend, to bring them back to the work that is necessary 
 if the country is to supply the armies that will make its 
 cause prevail. I want you to bring in labour. To feel 
 that you are all of you true soldiers and to do a bigger 
 bit than ever now you have to win the battle of England." 
 
 There was a little cheering, and Cottenham searched 
 his mind for a phrase with which to finish his speech. 
 He found Monica's eyes serious and intent upon him. 
 It was as if they drove him into a metaphysical region, 
 for he said in a low, reflective voice: " When I say that 
 I want labour to come into this factory, and cooperate 
 with me to make it once more into an instrument of 
 victory, I really mean cooperate. We live in times where 
 the social order is changing, where labour is demanding 
 its rightful share, not only of the goods of this world but 
 of the control of industry. I am not one of those em- 
 ployers who will stand up against that; in the first place 
 I am not going to stand in the way of the natural evolu- 
 tion of things, which is producing an educated worker, 
 
138 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 and is therefore making for a time when the educated 
 worker will share the control of the works. Indeed, dur- 
 ing our lifetime, we may see a social order where, in a 
 sense, there will be no employers and no employees, 
 where the control of all industry will be in the hands of 
 those who work at it, where they will form a community 
 working in each other's interest, because the interest of 
 each one is the interest of all, where also each industry 
 will be working for the State which assists it, because the 
 interest of each industry is the same as the interest of 
 the State. How the change will come I do not know. 
 Syndicalists, Guild Socialists, tell you that it will come 
 by violence, and that may be ; I think rather that it will 
 come from a clearer realisation that the chief right of 
 every man and woman is the right to their share in the 
 common responsibility." He stopped. Then, looking 
 only into Monica's eyes he said: "Dreams perhaps. It 
 may be that what I see there is only dreams, but I can- 
 not help thinking that dreams are the stuff that worlds 
 are made of." 
 
 As that evening Monica sat sewing, she cast a balance 
 sheet of her present life. She sewed badly, but she liked 
 the half-automatic exercise of thread and needle; she 
 made blouses mainly, but never wore them, for they were 
 always a failure, and so from time to time Lady Oakley 
 distributed them to the genteel poor of Rye. It was 
 characteristic of Monica that she did few things well 
 with her hands. Early attempts at polite education had 
 failed to teach her to draw, and she never ventured to 
 play the piano in public, perhaps owing to that lack of 
 manual dexterity, perhaps because there was no music 
 in a temperament intellectual and humorous rather than 
 emotional. At least it was not emotional yet. Monica 
 was a garden enclosed, and perhaps because that night 
 
IN ENGLAND 139 
 
 something in her of which she had been conscious strug- 
 gled for expression, she considered more closely her cir- 
 cumstances and herself. She was not unhappy, she 
 reflected, in this house. The long hours at the factory, 
 the new consciousness of identity with the common effort, 
 which to her was warming like companionship, left her 
 every night rather tired. She was not weak in constitu- 
 tion, though her pallor led many to think so, but when 
 eight o'clock came, when she had washed, changed, 
 quietly dined in her sitting room, reading a book all the 
 while, she was willing enough to go to bed. Books, the 
 introspective exercise of sewing, occasional visits to the 
 Saltaires, her only friends at Rochester, hurried week- 
 ends at Knapenden, complicated by a change at Maid- 
 stone and another at Ashford, filled her small leisure well 
 enough. 
 
 She looked about her. These were not unpleasant 
 rooms. They were large, for this was a Victorian house 
 converted into lodgings. It belonged to a wharfinger's 
 manager at Chatham, who had enlisted when the war 
 broke out, the firm promising to pay his salary to his 
 wife. As the wharfingers then promptly went bankrupt, 
 she found that she could not pay her rent, and giving 
 up gentility, settled down in the basement. The ground 
 floor was inhabited by two elderly spinsters, one of them 
 lame, who went out but little and pursued unknown occu- 
 pations, the most audible of which was the recurrent 
 sound of a singing kettle and clattering china; above 
 their heads lived Monica, respected owner of the draw- 
 ing-room floor; above, where the rooms were smaller, 
 lived the head clerk of a factory at Stroud, with his wife 
 and little girl. It was a quiet house. Monica's rooms 
 were fairly newly papered, not overloaded with orna- 
 ments; in these two months they had been made more 
 
140 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 her own by the erection of book shelves, and the loan of 
 a Morland, to remind her of Knapenden, said Sir Hugh. 
 
 And so she sat sewing, sedate and serious, her clean 
 white profile sharply outlined in the lamplight. 
 
 " It's queer," she thought, " the war goes on. Nothing 
 much seems to happen. It might be going on for ever, 
 and it's making a sort of ditch between what there used 
 to be and what there will be." She found with surprise 
 that she did not clearly remember things which hap- 
 pened in 1914, visits to town, picture shows, dances; it 
 was all rather dim, much dimmer than were in 1914 
 things that had happened in 1912. " It's the war, I sup- 
 pose," she thought. " Being so much bigger it has made 
 other things smaller." She smiled at the thought. " I 
 suppose that by the side of war it is difficult to remember 
 even one's coming-out ball. The competition's too 
 great." 
 
 Yet a few persons still lived in her consciousness, like 
 hills rising out of the ground mist. She thought of men 
 she had known, quite a lot of them. Men liked Monica, 
 and many had seemed to harbour for her something more 
 than liking, without ever coming to finality, as if at the 
 last moment she frightened them; her good looks were 
 perhaps too purely good ; they made men uneasy, because 
 her attraction was that of beauty rather than of pretti- 
 ness, and so men drew back as often they do from beauty, 
 because they tend to hate that which they do not com- 
 prehend. " The war," thought Monica, " seems to have 
 taken everybody." She thought of Guy Langrick, that 
 rowdy subaltern, who had so hurriedly married Sylvia, 
 then fallen; of Jervaulx, Sylvia's second husband, in an 
 infantry regiment, a P. B. I., as he put it (whatever that 
 might mean). Would he survive? would anybody sur- 
 vive? There was Arthur Horton, for instance, so care- 
 
IN ENGLAND 141 
 
 less as to seem hard. Monica liked Lord Arthur; he was 
 such a finished product, the tail end of a line of men 
 who had never done any work, and devoted all their 
 time to keeping themselves fit. Hunting, polo, shooting, 
 golf, to say nothing of swimming, dumb-bells, and the 
 punching ball, had kept Lord Arthur fit. She smiled, 
 for there was something lovable in Horton. Once, when 
 he had confessed this ambition to keep fit, she had asked 
 him: "Fit for what?" "Oh, nothing," said Horton 
 gaily. "Just fit." Abstract fitness was like abstract 
 sanctity. Both were unsocial. 
 
 Well, he was badly wounded, and now he was engaged. 
 He had told her this in a letter, adding that troubles 
 never came singly. And Hurn? It seemed a long time 
 since Hurn had written to her. What a long time ago, too, 
 since she and Hurn had sat for a long time on the terrace 
 of Knapenden, reading Pascal's " Pensees." What a 
 serious young man Hurn was ! but his seriousness pleased 
 and almost moved her. He had the narrow face of a 
 fanatic. In some moods Hurn seemed to want to seize 
 the world by the throat to make it confess what life 
 meant. " That fellow," Sir Hugh said, " would cheer- 
 fully go to the stake for Locke's ' Essay on the Human 
 Understanding.' " 
 
 Monica supposed that she had had what might be 
 called passages with Hurn, if the word passages expressed 
 the dour intensity of his interest in her. She presumed 
 that he had proposed to her on his last leave, when he 
 harshly told her that she was the only woman who 
 seemed real, and that unless he could have her by his 
 side all the rest of his life he would feel incomplete. 
 She had not replied. Well, it was not exactly a ques- 
 tion. Also she would have found it difficult to say yes 
 or no. It would have been interesting to marry Hum; 
 
142 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 one would never know whether he would not detonate. 
 (In these days Monica thought in terms of explosives.) 
 
 He had not written for a long time. Three weeks. 
 She missed his letters. They were not love letters; they 
 were mainly war letters, like everybody else's, but every 
 one was a revelation of James Hum, of a man tortured 
 by the desire to do the right, and much more so by his 
 inability to discern it. In one letter he had revealed his 
 preoccupation: 
 
 . . . " I wish the show would start. Perhaps I'd get 
 a chance to do something. Somehow I think it would be 
 better to be a dead V. C. than a living metaphysical jig- 
 saw." 
 
 She did not want Hum to become a dead V. C. She 
 did not want any of the men she liked to get the V. C., 
 the process was too dangerous. Let Hum, and Stephen, 
 and the others do their bit like everybody, yes, but they 
 needn't overdo their bit. After all, the people who cared 
 for them had rights as well as the country. Monica 
 thought of the women who prevented their men from 
 going, who hid them in cellars and haystacks. Of course 
 she would not do things like that, but still Monica was a 
 woman, not a diagram, and she knew that if she really 
 cared, she would want her man to come back without his 
 shield rather than on it. She wanted no more dead. 
 Bobbie Marchmont was enough. Poor old Bob! How 
 angry he was when she slung that half peach into his eye. 
 
 Her thoughts wandered to other men, to that new 
 phantom of her mind, with the short, curly, brown hair, 
 the pleasant alertness, the bright intelligent blue eyes. 
 Interesting. In that phrase of his. How did it run? 
 Yes: " dreams are the stuff that worlds are made of! " 
 It seemed true. What a strange man to manage an ex- 
 plosive factory. Still, it had been in his family many 
 
IN ENGLAND 143 
 
 years. She supposed that he controlled it just as he 
 would control any other business belonging to his family. 
 That phrase of his was poetry ; but then, when calling on 
 the charge hands' esprit de corps, he had likened them to 
 the prefects in a public school, spoken of his boyhood at 
 Winchester. She supposed that the public schools were 
 a better preparation for the manufacture of cordite than 
 for the production of lyric poetry. 
 
 Still she sewed, and though her thoughts were vague 
 they naturally centred round this man, as if for the first 
 time her imagination had been stirred. She remembered 
 the intensity of his eyes. Were they always intent like 
 that? or had he indeed stared at her all the time? As 
 soon as this question occurred to her, Cottenham suddenly 
 developed a personal association with her. Yes, he had 
 seemed to look only at her. Accident, of course. He did 
 not know her. He had spoken to her only once after the 
 fire. But romantic imagination would not so easily be 
 set aside. Supposing he was aware of her as a woman? 
 Well, it would not matter. She was not very likely to 
 come across him again. A pity, in a way ; he was attrac- 
 tive to her, and she wished that the Cottenhams and the 
 Oakleys could know one another. She built a day- 
 dream: she and Cottenham walking along Udimore Ridge 
 towards the copse. He would be wearing smelly brown 
 tweeds, and smoking a pipe, and she would be wearing her 
 white linen coat and skirt. No, on second thoughts, it 
 would be too cool in the late evenings. Her green coat 
 and skirt would be better. Reville had made rather a 
 success of that. And the sun would sink low beyond the 
 green hump of Fairlight; he would say subtle, abrupt 
 things . . . 
 
 Her dream was too purposeless for his marriage to 
 trouble her, though she had seen Mrs. Cottenham once in 
 
144 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the car, waiting outside the works. How beautiful she 
 was! 
 
 It would not matter, she thought, inconsequently. 
 Doubly entrenched behind her unawakened purity and 
 the standards of her class, it did not occur to her to ques- 
 tion her own safety. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 SIR HUGH found his uncle in his garden, slowly smoking 
 a large pipe. More than ever Charles Oakley looked 
 eternal; he was tightly wedged in the armchair that had 
 become rather too small for him. His dark face with 
 the Oakley nose, the fine bridge of which had lost its 
 sharpness as the fat of age collected about it, looked as 
 if he were meditating, or as if he thought of nothing; it 
 was impossible to tell which. He sat against the white 
 wall, with the tall sunflowers growing behind, like sol- 
 diers with golden helmets, embowered amongst screaming 
 dahlias, gladiolas insolently erect, shepherded upon the 
 right by languid, tall hollyhocks, on the left by straight 
 and sensual tiger lilies. He was as the leader of a battal- 
 ion of flowers. He sat and brooded, and in the hot, still 
 air rings rose and lingered above his pipe bowl. He 
 moved not at all. He smoked, as it were, the pipe of 
 eternity. 
 
 The old man was pleased to see his nephew, and for 
 a time they talked of the rich garden, of the troubles in- 
 herent in it, of slugs that took cover craftily, of green-fly 
 that swarmed, careless, in the public eye, of grafting 
 new life on the old apple tree. Sir Hugh thought that in 
 his bower the fat old man, slowly enjoying his tobacco, 
 finding strength in the sunshine and the scents, soothed to 
 
IN ENGLAND 145 
 
 drowsiness by the humming of bees, was a modern Pan 
 grown old, Pan with a touch of Silenus. But the charm 
 could not endure. Looking out over Camber Castle 
 towards the sea, they could see a little destroyer, swan- 
 grey upon the ash-grey of the still water. She was far 
 away, neither rose nor fell, but slowly steamed from the 
 unknown of the west into the unknown of the east. Burly 
 little ship with the tortured shape, bristling with append- 
 ages, guns, turrets, slim wireless, she was like a bulldog 
 upon the water. She was purposeful, quiet, but capable, 
 one felt, of the most businesslike murderousness. She 
 was the war. So very soon they talked about the war. 
 
 They were not pessimistic; the Germans were still 
 pressing Verdun, but Verdun did not fall ; always Petain 
 seemed to retire, and still the city stood; it had stood so 
 long that it must stand forever. The Germans had failed 
 at Ypres, too. 
 
 " It's queer," said Sir Hugh, " those two towns are 
 hardly towns, I suppose. Just smoking dust by now. 
 Names, immortal names. And yet, if the Germans were 
 to take them both, after a few weeks we should believe 
 with the newspapers that these immortal names had in 
 the hands of the Germans become mortal and were dead. 
 What hypocrites we are! " 
 
 Charles Oakley nodded approval, but he was thinking 
 of something else. He was very optimistic: 
 
 " Ah, my boy," he said, " you're always thinking about 
 France. You forget Russia. There's Brusiloff advanc- 
 ing all along the line, taking scores of thousands of 
 prisoners and ten towns a day for every muddy little 
 village we might capture in Flanders. He's in Austria 
 now, he has taken Czernowitz ; his cavalry will be across 
 the Carpathians in a day or two." 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Sir Hugh meditatively. He thrust 
 
146 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 one finger after the other into the nodding bells of a fox- 
 glove. " Yes, great things may happen in the East." 
 
 " They will happen/' said the old man. " When Tino 
 has been got out of the way. Though, my boy, it may be 
 more difficult to get Tino out of the way than the young 
 gentlemen in Downing Street think. He's promised to 
 demobilise and to hold a new election. Perhaps he will, 
 and perhaps he won't. With a Greek you can never be 
 sure that he'll do a thing until he's done it, and by that 
 time he's done you" 
 
 " I suppose that like the others," said Sir Hugh, " you 
 want to string up Tino. Poor Tino ! do you know, uncle, 
 I believe I'm the only Tino-ite in England. He doesn't 
 want to land his people into a war; his Prime Minister 
 did ask us in, but now he's got a new Prime Minister, and 
 the new Prime Minister doesn't want the people to fight. 
 Tino doesn't want to be massacred by the Germans, or 
 massacred by us. He doesn't believe we're running the 
 show properly, and yet he can't quarrel with us. If you 
 remember that he's a soldier by trade and hates the Bui- 
 gar by heredity, he'll strike you as a public-spirited citi- 
 zen." 
 
 " Politics! " snorted the old man. " Anyhow we can do 
 without Tino. Come inside and see the map, and you'll 
 see what that Salonica business can lead to." 
 
 They went into the library, and for a long time studied 
 the confusion of rivers and ridges which make up South- 
 ern Serbia. The old man knew his subject; all his ener- 
 gies seemed to have been absorbed by this study. With 
 a trembling red finger he pushed the Italians up Albania, 
 enveloped Monastir with Serbs, and drove a triumphant 
 Franco-British Army up the Vardar, stodgy infantry, 
 slogging along, cavalry prancing, field artillery firing 
 madly in all directions, and finally stuck a triumphant 
 
IN ENGLAND 147 
 
 flag into Nish, thus cutting the Constantinople railway. 
 He was childish and charming; smiling a broad, toothless 
 smile, he looked as if about to crow. 
 
 " Well," said Lady Oakley, " how did you find him 
 to-day? " 
 
 " Oh," said Sir Hugh, " he's like the others. The only 
 thing he thinks of is the war." 
 
 " There's nothing else to think of." 
 
 " No, I suppose not. Still, Lena, there have been wars 
 before. Uncle Charles seems to remember wars more 
 than anything else. To-day he again told me the story 
 of my father's voyage from Azof to Scutari. What a hell 
 a hospital ship must have been in '54 ! Funny, we're still 
 very close to the Crimea, but it's queer to hear a man 
 talking about it as something that once upon a time was 
 news." 
 
 " Rather stale news, Hugh," said Lady Oakley. 
 
 " Not to him. Father was in the Crimea, Uncle 
 Charles was in the Mutiny, and he did something at 
 Plevna too, in 78. To him war is always the latest. He's 
 war mad in a way." 
 
 " I shouldn't call him war mad," said Lady Oakley. 
 " Of course war is bound to affect men. Women too," she 
 added reflectively. " Look at the way girls run after the 
 soldiers." 
 
 " Do they? I mean do they run after soldiers mor6 
 than they usually run after men? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," said Lady Oakley; she was no 
 sociologist. " Perhaps one just notices it more. Look 
 at Westcott, for instance ; she never cared for Sutton until 
 he joined up." 
 
 "Poor Sutton!" said Sir Hugh, "such a nice, well- 
 spoken young man. He didn't have a chance to do much. 
 It seems hard that a man should be shot half an hour 
 
148 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 after reaching the front ; it's as if he hadn't had his whack. 
 Is Westcott much upset? " 
 
 " Westcott! " said Lady Oakley, with a touch of sar- 
 casm. " Of course she's upset. If you knew Westcott 
 as well as I do you'd know she wouldn't miss a chance of 
 being theatrical. But then that's Westcott all over. 
 She's been with me four years, and she's had a tragedy 
 every autumn, this being probably the result of impru- 
 dence in the spring. When Temple got married she used 
 to cry down the back of my neck as she did my hair ; now 
 she's crying about Sutton, and at the same time she tells 
 me she has had a letter from young Keele, and don't I 
 think an engineer nearer a gentleman than a farmer." 
 
 Sir Hugh smiled. " Well, Lena, she's young. She may 
 be a bit soldier-mad, as you say. Still she's not as badly 
 off as poor Molly Hart. Cradoc's been given three 
 months' detention, you know, for refusing to put on his 
 uniform." 
 
 " He ought to be flogged! " 
 
 Sir Hugh frowned. " I wish you wouldn't talk like 
 that, Lena. I don't defend conscientious objectors, but 
 we don't flog people." 
 
 " If we did, we might keep down the sedition and dis- 
 loyalty with which this country is honeycombed." 
 
 " I don't think so. We used to hang men for stealing 
 five shillings, and they went on stealing. In Italy they 
 stopped capital punishment, and the murder rate didn't 
 go up. Punishment doesn't alter things; it only makes 
 the executioner vile." 
 
 " Surely you don't mean that punishment should be 
 done away with? If there was nothing to deter people, 
 everybody would commit crimes." 
 
 Sir Hugh did not reply. He half agreed with her, but 
 still felt uneasy; he had not arrived at lucidity. He was 
 
IN ENGLAND 149 
 
 not able to formulate his own feeling. He asked himself 
 why he didn't want to commit crimes, and concluded that 
 if the rich were not tempted to crime, it must be because 
 they enjoyed the proceeds of the crimes of their ancestors. 
 So he hurried into generalities. 
 
 " What I mean about brutal punishments, like flogging, 
 is that it doesn't influence the man you flog. One could see 
 that in the army in the old days, when men were flogged 
 time after time. Punishment influences the men who do 
 the flogging ; it brutalizes them ; they learn to inflict pain 
 without compunction. The cat-o'-nine-tails does not 
 make as deep scars on the back of the victim as on the 
 soul of the one who uses it." 
 
 " Barry's called up," said Lady Oakley, " and Abbey 
 will have to join up in July. I suppose old Mrs. Abbey 
 can carry on the shop." She was not listening. And she 
 disliked generalities. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 "YES," said Irvine, " there's something in it." His 
 finger traced the details of the machine. " Yes, I see. 
 It might save labour. I'm afraid it wouldn't run cheap ; 
 there's an awful lot of maintenance in those automatics." 
 
 " Well, you know our trouble's labour. It isn't so 
 much a question of costs. We can get those back in the 
 price." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose we can. Though it's awkward. Three 
 years ago, nobody could have done this work beyond our- 
 selves, and Bickford-Smith, and two or three more. Now 
 little explosive shops are springing up all over the coun- 
 try. They'll cut our prices for us. And they don't care 
 about T. N. T. poisoning; one girl dead, another comes 
 on. 
 
150 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " That's being stopped," said Cottenham, " you know 
 quite well the bother we're having every other day with 
 medical inspectors and Home Office people. Now, with 
 a machine like this, with a pneumatic exhaust, you simply 
 can't get any fumes; the down draught will keep the 
 charging plate clear of dust. Don't you see, Irvine, this 
 machine is the end of T. N. T. sickness. Before three 
 months are out all the little shops will have to toe the 
 line, so let's be first. Anyhow, I'm going to try it. We've 
 ordered the machine, and I want to turn a shop over to 
 it." 
 
 " We can't turn the whole of ' C ' over. We'd want 
 four machines to meet their output. I don't think it'd do 
 to have some girls working on the old presses and some on 
 this thing; we couldn't keep their earnings level, and 
 that'd make discontent." 
 
 " It will have to be experimental," said Cottenham, 
 " I want four average girls, and a first-class charge hand." 
 
 Irvine crossed the office to look at the plant of the fac- 
 tory. " Well, there's the little shop in ' D.' There are 
 six girls there, pressing blocks; their charge hand, a Miss 
 Nevin, is very smart." 
 
 " What sort of girl is the Nevin girl? " asked Cotten- 
 ham negligently. " I mean what class of girl? " 
 
 " Oh, the ordinary class. Rather rough, but plenty of 
 brains. The sort of girl who could run a teashop." 
 
 " Oh, that's not it at all," said Cottenham. " Experi- 
 mental work wants quite another kind of intelligence, 
 Irvine, imagination, all that sort of thing. Here, let me 
 look. What's that little shop in ' E '? " 
 
 "Oh, you can't have that; they're casting containers. 
 We're pressed for those; you can't have that one." 
 
 " Well, what about ' C ' ? " said Cottenham. 
 
 " 'C? ' Well, there's Miss Hayes. No, she's away ill." 
 
IN ENGLAND 151 
 
 Cottenham seemed thoughtful. " What's the name of 
 the girl in * C ' whom we've just made a charge hand? 
 Ockley, isn't it? Would she do? " 
 
 " Miss Oakley? Oh, yes," said Irvine; " not very ex- 
 perienced, you know." 
 
 " You're sure you can't spare the container girls? " 
 said Cottenham. 
 
 " Absolutely impossible." 
 
 " Oh, well, we must make the best of it. You might 
 send Miss Oakley to me in the morning, or after lunch. 
 Any time will do." 
 
 Monica received the summons with a certain anxiety. 
 An interview with the proprietor, Ivy Badger informed 
 her, meant either promotion or the push, and as she had 
 just been promoted it must mean the push. She felt 
 innocent of misconduct, also excited. But soon her ex- 
 citement lapsed, for Cottenham seemed strictly business- 
 like. 
 
 " I've asked you to come round," he said, after ex- 
 plaining in detail the working of the mechanism, "because 
 I want you to know exactly what you're doing. This is 
 a most important experiment. If it's a success we're 
 likely to buy at least fifty of these machines, and they'll 
 cost 6000. So we're relying on you to get true results." 
 
 Monica felt shy. " Of course I'm very glad you thought 
 of me," she murmured, " but supposing I make a mess of 
 it?" 
 
 " Oh, you won't make a mess of it. If you don't mind 
 my saying so, it's because I know how cool you were dur- 
 ing the fire that I want you to take this on. Now this is 
 what we want." 
 
 He explained at length how the output of the machine 
 was to be tested at frequent intervals; he would need a 
 chart kept, showing time lost by breakdowns and by ad- 
 
152 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 justments; and she must pay particular attention to the, 
 behaviour of the T. N. T. under hygrometric conditions 
 which would be made variable. 
 
 " I want to be sure," he said, " that these machines act 
 equally well in heat and cold, in dry weather and in wet. 
 And also there is the question of poisoning. I shall want 
 you to swab the charging plate yourself, and to see to it 
 that the rag goes to the laboratory without being shaken, 
 so that we may see whether fumes are sublimating on it." 
 
 " Well," said Monica, " it all sounds very difficult, but 
 I'll do my best." 
 
 " I'm so glad," said Cottenham. Then, as Monica 
 turned to go. " Miss Oakley, do you mind my asking if 
 you have had any previous experience in this sort of 
 work? " 
 
 " No, but it isn't very difficult, most of it." 
 
 " No, I don't say it is. But industrial work is much 
 alike, whether it's on explosives or on making linoleum. 
 Where were you working before you came here? " 
 
 " This is the first time I've done any work," said Mon- 
 ica, smiling. " Real work, I mean." 
 
 He smiled back at her. " Oh, I see, just dusting the 
 drawing-room." 
 
 " No, not exactly that," said Monica. She was a little 
 distraite. Cottenham had pleasant, regular teeth. "No, 
 I'm afraid I can't claim even that, Mr. Cottenham. You 
 see, I live in the country with my people, not very far 
 from here." 
 
 "Oh?" said Cottenham. "Whereabouts? I motor 
 about Kent a good deal. I expect I know your native 
 village." 
 
 " It's just over the border, in Sussex, at a place called 
 Knapenden. I don't suppose you know it." 
 
 " No, I'm afraid I've never heard of Knapenden." 
 
IN ENGLAND 153 
 
 " Oh, it's a lovely place," said Monica, as if to her- 
 self. " Our house is on top of the ridge, a few miles from 
 the sea. There's just the marshes in between, grey 
 marshes with flocks of sheep that look quite small, far 
 away, as if somebody had upset a Noah's Ark. And it's 
 so still in the afternoon. All you hear is the cawing of 
 the crows as they rise. And sometimes the starlings fly 
 out all together from a copse. Their wings make a sound 
 like a sail filling with wind." 
 
 " It sounds lovely," said Cottenham truthfully, but he 
 was less conscious of the mellow charm of the place she 
 conjured up than of the soft glow in her grey eyes and 
 the faint flush that rose in her pale cheeks. How ador- 
 able she looked, light as a goblin; no, she was too tall and 
 slim for a goblin ; a wood nymph rather. A wood nymph 
 that would run on long, fleet legs through the thickets of 
 birch, and sometimes between the trunks, one would see, 
 passing swift as a gull, her white flank." 
 
 " How gracefully you put it ! " said Cottenham. " You 
 paint with words as others express with sound. You're 
 like Locatelli's Pavane." , 
 
 Monica looked at him seriously. She did not know 
 w T hat he meant, but the rhythm of the word Locatelli 
 pleased her. 
 
 " I move in more prosaic surroundings," said Cotten- 
 ham. " My house, three miles from here, is fair and 
 square, thoroughly Georgian, thoroughly English, with 
 clipped bushes of box. My romance is in the muddy 
 foreshores of the Medway, which in the setting sun are 
 as purple and rose as a mosaic in Byzantium. It's not 
 unpleasant. It is reality. It's so very much England. 
 But still, what does it matter? The place one's in does 
 not matter so much as what one is. Happiness does not 
 rise from the meadows like a will-o'-the-wisp: happiness 
 
154 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 is rather a will-o'-the-wisp that flits in one's own heart. 
 A heart is a small thing, but there's plenty of room in it 
 for a will-o'-the-wisp to elude one." 
 
 Monica was moved. There was a hint of sadness in 
 his voice, and something in her responded. Suddenly 
 she felt self-conscious. This was her employer. It was 
 all very well his being a good-looking man under forty 
 who said pleasant things. But she had not come here to 
 exchange poetic impressions. She grew clumsy. 
 
 " I must go," she said. 
 
 He smiled. " Yes, I'm afraid you must. You'll be 
 losing time if you don't, or shall I tell the unit that you 
 are to be paid time and a half for having had to talk to a 
 middle-aged and decrepit employer? " 
 
 Monica threw him a sidelong smile, and flushing a 
 little went out. 
 
 As soon as the door closed Cottenham pressed a bell. 
 " Miss Kingston," he said to his secretary, " please give 
 me the Kent and Sussex Directory." He turned to 
 Knapenden. A very small place evidently. Oh, there 
 was only one Oakley in Knapenden. Then he stared as 
 he realised, as he put it, what he was in for. 
 
 XXV 
 
 JUNE was passing. Under the speckless, purple sky, 
 humanity crawled in the steamy air that rose from the 
 Medway and the docks. During the long day-shift the 
 girls were listless and lazy; often they quarrelled. Ivy 
 Badger was suspended for two days for fighting Muriel 
 Penn. She took it well, remarking " that she didn't mind 
 being suspended for 'er; it'd be worth while being 'ung to 
 make her face ugly, except that she didn't think it could 
 
IN ENGLAND 155 
 
 get much worse." The output went down, and the unit 
 foreman was pestered with unusual demands to be put on 
 night-shift. 
 
 The weight of the heavy summer lay on Monica as on 
 the others. It affected her work, the charge of the new 
 machines and the responsibility to her employer now 
 gave her less intellectual stimulus. It was exacting work, 
 for the new machine, as is the way with new machines, 
 worked very badly and continually demanded readjust- 
 ment. It was a splendid packer, but it choked badly. 
 And Cottenham's hygrometric variations were perfectly 
 awful ; the artificial draughts, too, demanding a continual 
 watch over the dry and wet bulb temperatures, seemed to 
 cause unnecessarily obscure disturbances in the T.N.T. 
 powder. So, in the evening, Monica found herself tired, 
 not so much in body as in mind, and this weariness took 
 the form of an increasing homesickness. She found her- 
 self staring w r ith a sort of hatred at the mud flats of Tem- 
 ple Marlh, at the dry, baked fields round Fort Pitt; she 
 was brought near to tears as she remembered Sussex, 
 green, rich and rolling. So now she had not the energy to 
 visit the Saltaire girls and to become the confidant of 
 their adventures. The Saltaires loved horses and horse- 
 men. That was all right, but they loved too many horse- 
 men, or rather in these days airmen, jollies, gunners, sap- 
 pers, perhaps even snotties. One of them came down to 
 an A. 0. D. but said nothing about it. 
 
 " I can't sing arms and the man," thought Monica, nor 
 could she sew or read. An intangible disturbance ran 
 through her. She wanted silence and open spaces, places 
 where she could think. Yet she did not think clearly in 
 those open spaces; she could feel, in a lost way, but could 
 find no reassurance against a sense of impending and in- 
 evitable peril. A not entirely disagreeable peril, yet a 
 
156 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 peril. She was flying, as a nymph pursued, from a satyr 
 that dwelt in her own heart. 
 
 In spite of the heat, as if moved by an instinct to ex- 
 haust her body so as to dull her mind, she now took long 
 walks after dinner. They helped her, for the fresh night 
 revived in her some energy, and when at last she came 
 back, dusty, sweaty, when she had washed, she went to 
 sleep at once ; yet all the time she was conscious of a need 
 which she called loneliness. She knew without recognis- 
 ing it that a precise need was forming in her which she 
 had not known before. It made her afraid and unhappy, 
 this aching space in her heart. Like a fresh-dug grave 
 waiting for its corpse. It was absurd, she felt ; she ought 
 to have been glad. But Monica was resolutely a mate- 
 rialist, and so she realised that the future could reserve 
 her no good. If this desire developed in her, she could 
 hardly attain it, except at a price which, her traditions 
 told her, she could not pay. And if she refused to pay 
 this price she would always regret her niggardliness. 
 
 One night, when she had wandered far out of the town, 
 up the Medway, she examined her conscience. The re- 
 sult lacked clarity. " After all," she thought, " what 
 reason have you to worry? He has given you no special 
 sign of interest. You yourself are not so interested as all 
 that. You have known such interests before, and they 
 faded. And time passed." She had faith in the day that 
 rises like the tide, and like the falling tide bears away 
 light objects from the shore. And of course this was a 
 light object. 
 
 For three days after the discovery of Monica's parent- 
 age Cottenham lived in hesitations. Really, it was a bit 
 too thick. He had in regard to women the crude intelli- 
 gence of the man who has been familiar with many. He 
 had known the realities of passion before he was fifteen, 
 
IN ENGLAND 157 
 
 and for twenty-four years had found in them his chief 
 pleasures, not necessarily crude pleasures, but the means 
 of stimulating his emotions, and of maintaining his ro- 
 mantic youth. Generally he had drifted into contact 
 with women of the poorer classes ; in this he resembled his 
 fellows, but there was a difference: Cottenham preferred 
 the girls of the people. Not only did his fastidious ele- 
 gance find an excitement in the coarser grain, but he val- 
 ued in the girls of the people an affectionateness not over- 
 laid by gentility, a capacity for whole-hearted giving, 
 buoyancy, beautiful shamelessness ; his own finesse de- 
 lighted in the primitive. But he also confessed to him- 
 self that he was not above certain satisfactions of vanity, 
 that he enjoyed the easy royalty that his good clothes, 
 his well- cut hair, his well-kept hands, his air of wealth 
 and luxury, gave him among the girls who did not find 
 this type of man among their own friends. 
 
 A faintly cynical materialism told him also that such 
 affairs did not engage him too deeply, that these con- 
 tests were gloved, that marriage was not thought of, 
 scandal unlikely, silence purchasable; he knew that no 
 artificial value was put on their surrender by girls who 
 could depend on their own labour and need not maintain 
 an unspotted reputation to sell in the marriage market, 
 because they had something to sell in the industrial 
 market. 
 
 His adventures among his own kind had not been very 
 many, but had been enough to convince him that they 
 were horribly complicated: there was such a lot of hiding. 
 And women of a gentler culture seemed to think that they 
 were doing something so dramatic and condescending in 
 listening to him. It was irritating, rather, and when now 
 and then it proved inevitable, which did happen because 
 Cottenham only resisted his desires until it looked as if 
 
158 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 his resistance would prove effective, he always told him- 
 self it was not worth while. 
 
 " The gently bred woman," he said once, " is either so 
 light that she doesn't know what you mean when you tell 
 her that you love her, or so excessive that she insists upon 
 running away with you." 
 
 So his experience, his common sense, told him to think 
 no more of Monica. He knew that he was not prepared 
 for her sake to give up his children, which would hap- 
 pen if there were trouble. Nor was he prepared to give 
 up Julia. Cottenham saw no reason why he should give 
 up either Julia or Monica. Nor indeed why he should 
 not retain his interest in both, if yet a third charm gained 
 possession of his mind. " I ought to have been a Turk," 
 he reflected. " But every man is at heart a Turk." 
 
 In some moods he told himself not to be so extreme. 
 After all, Monica Oakley had shown no sign of interest 
 in him. He thought her good-looking. Well ! there were 
 lots of good-looking girls, and he was none the worse for 
 knowing it. He was on speaking terms with a number of 
 pretty women, and that did him no harm. Supposing he 
 did come to know her better? Well, it would be delight- 
 ful, and he did not see that this would cause complica- 
 tions. Being assured that closer acquaintance with 
 Monica could cause no trouble, he decided never to see 
 her again. Having decided never to see her again, he 
 bought a plan of Rochester, telling himself that a lonely 
 girl must take walks, and that just for curiosity's sake he 
 would like to know where she might be going. 
 
 There were not many directions that could tempt a 
 wanderer from Castle Hill. Nobody would think of 
 crossing the bridge into the little black slums of Stroud, 
 nor, after a long day in a factory, would a girl with 
 thoughtful grey eyes wander up the High Street towards 
 
IN ENGLAND 159 
 
 Chatham. Unless she went to the Cinema. But he felt 
 that Monica would not often go to the Cinema. No, she 
 might go up to Fort Pitt, where the ground was high and 
 clear. But it seemed more likely that she should take 
 the natural road along the Medway. Or, perhaps not, 
 for that led past the factory: a worker would avoid the 
 road followed every morning and evening. She would 
 not go along the Medway, nor up the Borstal Road. That 
 left only one avenue, the Maidstone Road that wanders 
 through villas into the open air. 
 
 " It's a nice straight road, the Maidstone Road," he 
 thought. " I'm rather tired of it, having to motor up and 
 down daily. Still, on these hot nights, one's glad to get 
 into the open, anywhere." 
 
 One cool, clear night, when a crisp crescent of moon 
 hung low, Monica, slowly walking north along the Maid- 
 stone Road, saw a car come towards her. As it drew 
 nearer it began to miss violently, to slow up; then it 
 stopped, and a man, jumping out, raised the bonnet, began 
 to prod the machinery. As she drew near, he turned to 
 her and cried: 
 
 " Do you happen to have a match? " 
 
 " No," said Monica, coming closer. 
 
 " Hullo ! " said Cottenham, for it was he, " Miss Oak- 
 ley! What are you doing here? " 
 
 " I'm taking a walk," said Monica, and asked herself 
 why she felt so embarrassed. 
 
 " Oh, it's beautifully cool, isn't it? I congratulate you 
 on having decided to walk; I wish I'd done so too, for by 
 the look of it this car has broken down for the night ! " 
 
 " What a pity," said Monica sympathetically. " What 
 are you going to do? " 
 
 " Well, I don't know. Something's gone, and I can't 
 see what it is. The poor thing will have to sleep in the 
 
160 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 ditch, I'm afraid. The trouble is," he went on medita- 
 tively, " that I want to run her into Maidstone to-morrow 
 morning, and I can't take the train, as the first is too 
 early and the second's too late. Look here, Miss Oakley, 
 I wonder whether you could, on your way back, call at 
 the first garage you see in Rochester, and ask them to 
 send a mechanic. No, of course not; ridiculous, I couldn't 
 trouble you." 
 
 " Oh, I'd be very glad." 
 
 " No, on second thoughts I don't see the fun of sitting 
 here for an hour waiting for the man. It's very kind of 
 you, but I think I'll walk into Rochester and bring him 
 back." 
 
 In a moment, marvellously it seemed, the two were 
 walking side by side on the high road. 
 
 Monica was stirred and a little afraid. She did not 
 know what she felt afraid of, until, still silent, he filled 
 and lit his pipe. Then she realised why she was afraid: 
 he was wearing a brown suit, as in that day-dream of hers, 
 and as in the dream he smoked a pipe as he went by her 
 side. Actual life, repeating a half-formed desire, terrified 
 her; she was afraid he would ask her some question, for 
 she did not know if she would find enough self-possession 
 to reply. Fortunately it did not prove necessary, for 
 soon Cottenham began to talk. 
 
 " I wonder," he said, " whether you've ever motored at 
 night. It's much more beautiful than in the daytime. 
 When it's dark you are lost between a black earth and a 
 secret sky. The features of the earth are fluid, for you 
 won't know that you are upon a hill, at least until you 
 reach its crest, which lies before you anonymous, and be- 
 yond which is the void. The void, don't you think, is 
 necessarily romantic, for you don't know what may be 
 there." 
 
IN ENGLAND 161 
 
 Monica nodded. 
 
 " Yes," he went on, " somehow every crest beyond 
 which droops the land, every turn of the road beyond 
 which it hides, contains romance. One is a seeker, and 
 one may find Oh, anything. A sedan chair drawn up 
 by the side of the road, a gentleman in ruffles and a lady 
 in a garment of flowered silk, with a Watteau pleat down 
 her back, both of them dancing while a wandering fiddler 
 plays, shall we say ' Lady Greensleeves.' Do you know 
 ' Lady Greensleeves ' ? " 
 
 " No," said Monica; then with an effort: " What is it? " 
 
 " An old Elizabethan melody. I wish I could sing it to 
 you. It runs something like this: 
 
 " Greensleeves was all my joy, 
 Greensleeves was my delight, 
 Greensleeves was my heart of gold, 
 And oh! for Lady Greensleeves." 
 
 They looked at each other for a moment and in their 
 eyes were mute questions. Monica found herself more 
 than ever afraid. She was passionately unawakened, 
 but still she was twenty-six, and she could not misunder- 
 stand what lay behind the gracefulness of speech and the 
 softness of the blue eyes that shone a little in the night. 
 She was afraid of that softness and that grace ; she wished 
 that Cottenham were more like the men in the proof 
 yard, who called after her gross things she did not under- 
 stand. Or like the Australians who sometimes barred her 
 way in the High Street, or like the warehouse clerks who 
 followed her with leering invitations. She remembered 
 one of them, and her sense of humour asserting itself, she 
 began uncontrollably to laugh. 
 
 " What is it? " asked Cottenham. He looked vaguely 
 offended. " What have I said? " 
 
162 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Oh, I beg your pardon/' said Monica, " it wasn't 
 anything you said. I liked what you were saying, but I 
 was thinking of a man who spoke to me the other day in 
 the High Street." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 "What he said was: ' Oh, I say, Miss, do come and 
 'ave a dry ginger.' " 
 
 Both laughed together, and in this laughter some of the 
 fear evanesced. Still, both were conscious that by laugh- 
 ing together at a confidence in which lay a certain inti- 
 macy of confession, they had drawn closer together. As 
 they entered Rochester, Monica could not shake off that 
 new impression. Nor he; he knew pretty well what she 
 was thinking. He had made it his business to know what 
 women were thinking, and he was wise enough not to 
 press his advantage. He knew that the pursuit of women 
 is an art rather akin to jujitsu, that a slight push will 
 cause them to fall in virtue of their own weight, while a 
 harder push will often cause them to cling, and thus to 
 save a fall. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Monica thought: Rochester is an interesting old town, 
 I ought to know more about it. So far, being at work 
 from eight to six, and craving fresh air as a blackbird in 
 a cage craves the free heaven, she had taken no pains to 
 know better the Dickensian town. Now some protective 
 instinct suggested Rochester as an alternative to unknown 
 satisfactions. So, for two or three nights, when the moon 
 was high and brilliant, she wandered about the little town 
 that seems so large because it has embraced the strag- 
 gling sordidities of Chatham. And though she was not 
 the enraptured sightseer that she would have herself be, 
 
IN ENGLAND 163 
 
 she did find charm in the High Street, its pot-bellied 
 shops, its wooden-faced houses with the overhanging 
 roofs. The sumptuous clock-house of Sir Cloudesley 
 Shovel, College Gate, and still more, perhaps, the old tile 
 roof and the plain stone of St. Nicholas and St. Clement's, 
 which stands modestly by the ugliest of cathedrals, bred 
 in her a feeling almost of homesickness: it was so like 
 Rye, but too alive. 
 
 Those long walks soothed her because they tired her; 
 only they ended so easily in the shadow that the castle 
 flung upon the moonlit pavement. She found herself 
 looking through the railings of the Park, thinking with a 
 vagueness that frightened her, as if she were not alone. 
 Sometimes she reviewed her life, a life that would have 
 been incredible two years before, a nine-hour shift, coarse 
 meals at the factory canteen, eightpence halfpenny an 
 hour, plus bonus it seemed queer. To be inspected 
 medically every week; to feel all right and be told by the 
 doctor to drop T. N. T. and turn over to tape-glueing 
 to be a unit among other units uniformed in life to have 
 the welfare people opening your mouth and telling you 
 your gums looked white. She felt like a fatted bullock in 
 the pens at Rye being poked in the rump by a buyer. 
 She laughed aloud as she thought of the searcher who 
 passed her hands over her and sometimes discovered a 
 forbidden hairpin, a searcher with fingers that saw, that 
 would strip you of ring, of jewelry, of buckle, that would 
 discover the point of an exposed pin, detect a safety-pin 
 in the very depths of your apparel. 
 
 " I wonder why I do it," she thought. " I suppose that 
 if I didn't do that I'd do something else." She remem- 
 bered the pessimistic remark of old Peels trying to sum 
 up life: " You see, Miss, if it isn't toads it's bugs." 
 
 But was it always bugs or toads? Monica was of a 
 
164 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 kind that looks upon self-realisation as a form of inde- 
 cent exposure, so would not acknowledge that her con- 
 ception of life was not so elementary as the gardener's. 
 She decided to think no more of those secret, attractive 
 dreams. Then she deliberately conjured them up. 
 
 Without cause, she abandoned the Maidstone Road. 
 Rather, she turned east, up Star Hill towards the Fort 
 Pitt fields. There she stopped, in the moonlit wilder- 
 ness. She felt entirely alone, for no sound arose about 
 her, except the murmurs of lovers, and these heard noth- 
 ing but their own murmurs. 
 
 " I suppose/' she said aloud, " people would say I was 
 immoral! " Then her inner self defended itself: " Non- 
 sense! what have you done? Nothing. He put you in 
 charge. of his machines; was it your fault? He came to 
 see how the experiments were getting on; of course he 
 did. His car broke down on the Maidstone Road ; could 
 you help it? " Monica acquitted herself with a strong 
 recommendation for censure. " Don't be a hypocrite," 
 she told herself suddenly. " It isn't what you've done ; 
 it's what you've thought. You wouldn't dare to tell 
 Father Lublin, would you? " Then Monica was over- 
 whelmed by a feeling of sweetest sin. She was glad to 
 know that she would not dare to tell the old Monsignor 
 how delightful had been this chapter of accidents. Evi- 
 dently nature was no moralist, and if she, Monica, were a 
 moralist, she would go back to Knapenden next day. 
 " Look here," she said to herself again, " my dear girl, do 
 try and realise he's married, to a woman who's much bet- 
 ter-looking than you, and certainly better dressed. He 
 adores his children. That settles marriage, quite apart 
 from the fact that he hasn't suggested it. And any- 
 howit's unthinkable. But then? Why don't you go 
 home? " 
 
IN ENGLAND 165 
 
 And all Monica could answer was that she wouldn't go 
 home. She did not know it, but she was representative of 
 her class, in that she was not moral; she had codes, eti- 
 quettes, reservations; she had capacities for idiotic sac- 
 rifice, unreasonable prides and shameless indulgences. 
 She did things because they were done, and not because 
 they were enjoined upon her. Now she was facing some- 
 thing which was not done, but between which and her- 
 self stood only a traditional code without precise moral 
 penalties. And so the girl, arisen in a world where re- 
 ligion was formal, society as negligent in detection as it 
 was severe in chastisement, could find only in herself the 
 means to resist her own desires. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 " I SHAN'T be back to dinner. I shall dine at the 
 Works." 
 
 " Oh," said Julia, looking up from the Toiler. She 
 looked lovely, dark and long, among the frothing laces of 
 her bedwrap. " Must you, Frank? " 
 
 " Yes, of course I must. Do you think I enjoy the 
 sort of dinner we get at the Works? Let alone not see- 
 ing you this evening, my Tea Rose." He bent down to 
 kiss her. 
 
 She looked at him discontentedly. " It's all very well, 
 Frank," she said, " but I do think you might give the 
 Works a rest. Surely Mr. Irvine could help you more 
 than he does. What do you want to stay at the Works 
 for again? You stayed late last night." 
 
 He felt uneasy as the dark eyes fixed on him. 
 
 " Oh, well," he said lightly, " it's war time, and you're 
 jolly lucky to have me at all." 
 
166 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 She smiled. " Jolly lucky ! Jolly lucky ! I like your 
 conceit. What about your luck? " 
 
 " I always know my luck," he said gently as he kissed 
 her again. 
 
 " What are you going to do between six and dinner 
 time? " she asked. " You can't start your beastly ex- 
 periments until the night-shift comes on, and that's not 
 till eight. Why can't you come home to dinner? It's 
 only twenty minutes' run in the car." 
 
 " Oh, I can't stop to explain," he said impatiently. 
 " There, I've got an awful lot to do and I can't stop. 
 Good-bye." But as he went he heard Julia add: "But 
 if you leave at six you can get here by half-past." 
 
 As Cottenham drove off and tried to absorb the con- 
 tents of the Times, he heard a subconscious self murmur: 
 " This is damned awkward. Suspicious ; damned suspi- 
 cious. She always was. That's what comes of being 
 adored." He felt very aggrieved. " I do wish they 
 wouldn't adore me. Women are a nuisance. Why can't 
 they just love one and keep quiet until one's ready for 
 them? " 
 
 Then he reflected that things were likely to get much 
 more complicated^ He acknowledged to himself that he 
 wanted Monica to love him, and it struck him that if she 
 did, and by degrees developed the characteristics of Julia, 
 life would become altogether too intense. " Damn! 
 damn! damn! " he muttered, " and there's no stopping it. 
 Anybody would think it was my fault! " 
 
 All that day the sense of injury hung over him. He saw 
 the future clearly: Julia would get irritated because she 
 was neglected; she was not used to it, and he did not want 
 her to get used to it; he had no intention of neglecting 
 her. Only if Julia was going to work out the time he 
 spent on his dinner he supposed he would have to bring 
 
IN ENGLAND 167 
 
 sworn statements from Miss Livingstone to show that he 
 had dined where he said he had. And this war, too! 
 Nothing but work, and no dodging it. Having to be at 
 those beastly works all day long or have the most aw- 
 ful messes, rows with the Unions, misunderstandings with 
 the Ministry of Munitions, or floods, or or something. 
 No, intrigues in war time were no good. By the time 
 evening came he saw clearly that he could not have 
 proper access to Monica. He might squeeze in about 
 three-quarters of an hour two or three times a week. 
 Until Julia found out about those three-quarters of an 
 hour. No, really, it wouldn't do. But all the same Cot- 
 tenham dined at the works, left the car in the garage and 
 went to Castle Hill. He understood Monica well enough 
 to realise that she would not go to the Maidstone Road, 
 because she might think that he would hope to meet her 
 on the Maidstone Road, and though, perhaps, she would 
 have been glad to meet him, she certainly would not like 
 him to think that she threw herself in his way. But if she 
 was interested in him she would probably go somewhere 
 else on the chance of meeting him there accidentally. 
 Only where? He was so afraid of missing her that he 
 dared to establish himself at the corner of the Park gate 
 where the shadow fell thick. Twice he crossed the road 
 as a woman's figure came out of a house opposite. In the 
 dark street it was difficult to say from which door the 
 figure came. 
 
 Then at last he saw her. She turned to the right, hes- 
 itated for a moment as if to cross the bridge, then turned 
 and went up the High Street. She could not be going to 
 the river side. Therefore she must be going up Star Hill. 
 He followed her for a moment, carefully, then ran through 
 the lanes on the right, outstripping her, and after a while, 
 doubling back, reached the spot where the fields began. 
 
168 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 His heart was beating. He was afraid. This seemed so 
 deliberate. And yet, what else could he do? 
 
 As Monica drew near and suddenly saw him in the 
 shrouded light of a gas lamp, he realised that he had 
 acted wisely, for a hot flush rose in her cheeks and he saw 
 that her eyes were full of fear. He knew this look of 
 fear in women's eyes ; they are so seldom afraid of any- 
 thing but themselves. 
 
 They walked side by side for a few yards; then, without 
 agreement, turned together into Fort Pitt fields. The 
 earth was sun-baked, and rasped under their feet. Still, 
 they said nothing, but walked quickly. Then Cottenham 
 thought: " I must say something. I wonder what I ought 
 to say." There was nothing to guide him in his experi- 
 ence, for holding that no two women are alike, he was of 
 those lovers who never say the same thing to two women. 
 But he did know that he must not apologise, express re- 
 gret or tremor, because this would awake regret or tremor, 
 and therefore resentment against himself who brought 
 them about. So, suddenly, he said: "You are tall and 
 slim like an ear of wheat in the moonlight." 
 
 A wise man talks of indifferent things, so that an unwise 
 woman may greatly desire that he should talk of things 
 not indifferent. " It's queer," he said, " somehow, that 
 there should still be a moon. The world changes such a 
 lot, and the moon doesn't. It's one of the things we don't 
 improve upon. After all, there are various things we 
 don't improve upon; we do invent telephones, but we don't 
 invent new ways of making love. I suppose the old way's 
 always new. But still, it's queer. Here's the world in 
 chaos, having a terrific war about autocracy and democ- 
 racy, and the freedom of the seas, and all that sort of 
 thing that wasn't thought about when mankind was pale- 
 olithic and when mankind was doing important things, 
 
IN ENGLAND 169 
 
 eating, drinking, making love. The only thing we've 
 found out since then is art. Art, love, and breakfast, 
 that's all mankind needs." 
 
 Monica looked at him with a sidelong smile. Art, love, 
 and breakfast. How comprehensive! But she was not 
 yet ready to answer him, and he knew it. So, as they 
 walked up the hilly field, he enlarged on the incongruity 
 of modern industrialism. He was not a puzzled man, 
 but a man viewing incomprehensibles, the growth of cap- 
 ital, the almost equally swift rise of labour, the shock of 
 their contact. 
 
 " I'm an employer," he said, " and I can't help being an 
 employer, any more than I could help being a nigger if 
 I was born a nigger. If I sell my business I'm a capitalist, 
 an employer once removed. And it's no good my giving 
 it away. I can't become a working man; the working 
 men wouldn't have me. I'd be like a canary pecked by 
 sparrows. Well, what does that mean? That means 
 conflict, because, Cervantes put it very well, there are 
 only two families in the world, the Haves and the Have 
 Nots. I'm a paternal employer; I pay good wages, I 
 build cottages, I form clubs, I even have teeth filled 
 and all I do is to strengthen the proletariat so that they 
 may fight me." 
 
 Monica was interested. For a moment she forgot his 
 pleasant masculinity. " I don't see that," she said. 
 " You're a master, and there must always be masters and 
 servants." 
 
 He shook his head. " Oh, no. That's the old dispen- 
 sation. Other times are coming. Those below are de- 
 veloping more than strength, and that is ambition. It's 
 no more a question of money, it's a question of pride. 
 It's the natural rebellion against equality and it ex- 
 presses itself by a demand for equality. In the old days, 
 
170 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the men who couldn't bear to be equals became noble- 
 men; to-day they become republicans. And every one of 
 them intends to be his neighbour's president." 
 
 He talked for a little time, Monica listening and now 
 and then nodding her head. She did not understand him 
 quite, but already she liked him well enough to enjoy her 
 incapacity to understand him. And he, delighting in the 
 lucidity which arose in him through her mental surrender, 
 was delighting in self-expression. He did not think of 
 lovers' speeches. He wanted to make her understand his 
 vision of a world like shifting sand, filled with rearing 
 industries, vested interests like ancient oysters that have 
 grown beards, obtrusive parvenus that side with the duke, 
 and then stab him, withered institutions like Cambridge, 
 proclaiming their rebirth and wrapping themselves up in 
 a bed quilt, labour, labour determined to dominate, and 
 disdaining the study of domination, impelled to cooper- 
 ate, and falling asunder in the very act of union. " That's 
 how we maintain ourselves, we masters," he said to her. 
 " Because we are the solid that remains in the heaving 
 crust. Individuals. And it can't last. The individual 
 will have to be engulfed by the community before indi- 
 viduality is realised. As for us, the rich men, the cul- 
 tured men, the dominant men, we are born, we marry, 
 we die, most of us in perfect security, unaware of what is 
 happening round us. And it's tragic to understand as I 
 do that we are only the fugitive masters of a pregnant 
 world." 
 
 They had reached the deserted hilltop. For a long 
 time they stood there silent, and the woman in Monica 
 cried out for some sign of personal interest, which she 
 might resent, but must demand. As she stood, black 
 against the moonlight, he seemed to remember. He tried 
 to be light: " I say, I must have been boring you." 
 
IN ENGLAND 171 
 
 " No," said Monica, faintly offended. 
 
 " Do you know, those were not the sort of things I 
 wanted to talk about." 
 
 " It's very late," said Monica, suddenly shrinking. 
 
 For a second he wondered whether it was better to hold 
 her against her will, or to indulge her against her instinct. 
 Then he decided to let her go, leaving everything unsaid. 
 Its implications would be more powerful. At the bottom 
 he stopped, and for a moment they looked into each 
 other's eyes that shone. She looked radiant and un- 
 happy. He thought: "Oh, why can't I let her alone!" 
 and at the same time took her hand that trembled, turned 
 it palm upwards and pressed a kiss into its hollow. 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 MONICA had been allowed to go home on Friday night. 
 On Saturday morning, at about eleven o'clock, Westcott 
 called her to the telephone. The voice was far away 
 and very faint her fingers clenched over the receiver. 
 Then she steadied her voice: "Yes, er I can't hear." 
 
 Then at last Cottenham's voice grew clear: " I thought 
 you'd like to know: the British offensive began at six 
 o'clock this morning." 
 
 The offensive ! A frightful excitement arose in Monica. 
 She felt ashamed because filled with so much joy. At 
 last this thing had come which had hung over them so 
 long. It was like the delight of death, deferred by pain, 
 of one whom one loves. 
 
 " It's on the Somme," said Cottenham. 
 
 "Oh," said Monica, "the Somme. Where's the 
 Somme? " 
 
 " Rather difficult to explain over the telephone. You 
 might say the middle is round about Albert." 
 
172 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Cottenham did not understand at first. He heard 
 Monica cry out "Stephen!" and then, with a note of 
 injury, almost of anger: " He said there was nothing do- 
 ing there. Oh, I can't bear it! " 
 
 The faint voice said: " Oh, yes, you can, you can, my 
 angel, my darling. We'll bear it together." 
 
BOOK TWO 
 AMONG THE YAHOOS 
 
Ah! mon colon! 
 
 Ah! c'que c^est long! 
 
 Ce sacre chemin, 
 
 On n'en voit pas la fin. 
 
 Le General, 
 
 Y va-t-a cheval, 
 
 Et le troupier 
 
 Y va toujours a pied. 
 
 . (French marching song.) 
 
BOOK TWO 
 
 AMONG THE YAHOOS 
 I 
 
 A CERTAIN discontent had invaded Sir Hugh in these 
 two months. Things were going well enough, but not 
 as well as he had come to hope. Steadily, every five or 
 six days, there was a push at some point on the Somme; 
 little places like Fricourt, like Trones Wood, were sud- 
 denly crowned with importance by the newspapers, and 
 a wobbly, black line showed progress on the large-scale 
 maps. Unfortunately, Sir Hugh was one of those people 
 who like the truth better than exultation; so he also 
 looked at the small scale maps, and he could not deny 
 that on those the wobbly line hardly went forward at 
 all. Yes, he knew; Belloc, Colonel Maude, and their 
 tribe were continually educating him in the difficulties of 
 breaking through, persuading him that every yard now 
 was worth ten yards once upon a time, and resolutely 
 cheering him up when we did not advance by telling him 
 it was all right if only we killed Germans. It annoyed 
 him rather that the newspapers should also assume that 
 in so doing we were killing no Englishmen; it also an- 
 noyed him to be told that when the Germans attacked 
 and succeeded, they were wiped out, while when we 
 attacked and succeeded, somehow or other hardly any- 
 body was killed. This seemed to clash with the Roll 
 of Honour. 
 
 It was not that he lacked faith in the ultimate issue, 
 
176 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 for in that month of July, 1916, his attention was drawn 
 to strange corners of Europe, to other wobbly lines on 
 the Isonzo, in Poland, where the Russians were breaking 
 through at Lutsk, pounding Austria, capturing hundreds 
 of thousands of prisoners, while the Italians were magi- 
 cally scaling giant hills, and even entering Gorizia, a 
 town. Only it all seemed so slow and so far. Russia, 
 no doubt, was the steam-roller, but a steam-roller was 
 not a swift method of locomotion. 
 
 Other irritants conspired to disturb him, the sinking 
 of the Nottingham and the Falmouth by U-boats, which 
 he vaguely felt was not sportsmanlike. And he was con- 
 scious of predominant cant, such as the hubbub that was 
 raised when Captain Fryatt was shot for trying to ram 
 U-33. The disturbance seemed to Sir Hugh as sentimen- 
 tal and unsustained by evidence as the clamour over the 
 execution of Nurse Cavell. As he saw it Nurse Cavell 
 and Captain Fryatt were civilians who had done their 
 best for their country, in the one case by favouring the 
 escape of Allied soldiers, in the other by trying to ram 
 an enemy torpedo boat. They had been quite right; 
 they had been heroic, but from the German point of view 
 they were nuisances and dangers, and it was worth while 
 to strike terror into possible imitators. At bottom Sir 
 Hugh was not prepared to examine evidence ; the doctrine 
 of frightf ulness seemed to him sensible ; it did not matter 
 very much whether one killed soldiers or civilians, or 
 for what reason one did it: war consisted in killing as 
 many enemies as possible, and in these days when every- 
 body was doing some service to the nation, everybody, 
 whether male or female, old or young, had a place in the 
 firing line. The rules of war, when he freed himself, as 
 he often did now, from the codes of an English gentle- 
 man, struck him as nonsense. One might as well have 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 177 
 
 had rules for murderers, or rules for burglars. The pre- 
 tence that war was a tragic form of cricket struck him 
 as puerile. 
 
 He tried to express this once at his club by putting 
 forward that the ideal was to hang every German 
 man, woman, and child. This was greeted with loud 
 approval, but the members recognised only difference 
 between this proposal and the execution of Belgian 
 civilians. 
 
 " I suppose," he thought, " that I expect too much. 
 If people reasoned things out and thought logically there 
 might be no war. Perhaps there is war only because 
 they think so passionately. In war time two and two 
 are five. We might breed no heroes if we bred no idiots." 
 
 Yet he passionately desired victory. He had a mo- 
 ment of the purest joy at the end of August when Rou- 
 mania came in, when Charles Oakley at last used the 
 little flags which he had been keeping for so many 
 months, taking them out longingly every time Mr. 
 Jonescu flung the hat of the nation at the feet of the 
 Hohenzollern. He liked to picture the swarms of Rou- 
 manian cavalry streaming through the Transylvanian 
 passes into the Hungarian Plain. 
 
 But it all seemed very long. It was all right, of course. 
 In those days there were only two kinds of people, those 
 who said it was slow but sure, and those who said it was 
 sure but slow. He wondered whether it would be over 
 by Christmas. About the end of July, for the first time, 
 Knapenden faintly heard the guns. 
 
 II 
 
 ALL through the week-end Monica found herself the 
 painful battlefield of two warring preoccupations. One 
 
178 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 she thrust aside as best she could; she tried to think only 
 of Stephen, to make mental pictures of her brother out 
 there, in that place which the map did not evoke, lost 
 in a region which words such as the Somme, Albert, 
 Bapaume, did not make eloquent. She painted little pic- 
 tures of him, dreadful little pictures of long, thin, boyish 
 Stephen, flattened against the muddy side of a trench, 
 crouching on the fire step, peering cautiously with large, 
 strained eyes into a periscope and the line of Sussex 
 Coast men, men of Brede and Udimore, brown and slow, 
 fishermen from Rye, shopboys from Hastings, white boys 
 with sharp noses and frightened eyes a crowded, 
 shrinking line from which protruded a tragic motif, like 
 the lances in Velasquez's " Surrender of Breda ", black 
 rifles, each one tipped with lightning by its bayonet. 
 
 It haunted her, this picture of stormy rest, and men, 
 earth-men, earth-brown, so many inevitably doomed, 
 ashes to ashes, earth to earth. . . . 
 
 And her imagination burgeoned into apocalyptic 
 dreams, smoke, black smoke, fire stained as with blood, 
 and craters yawning open and retching red clay. . . . 
 
 Then Cottenham's message materialised in her brain, 
 that retracted like a freezing spider: she no longer saw 
 the brown line cluster in safety. The British offensive 
 had begun she knotted her hands on her breast as she 
 saw it begin, as she heard the whistles when " zero " 
 came, when through the nightmare grimness of the dawn 
 she saw the brown line leap out into that blood-clotted 
 smoke, float in it like shades, then vanish like shades in 
 a Stygian dream, save a few who became suddenly solid, 
 as on the edge of the trench for a moment they swayed 
 and then crumpled heavily. . . . 
 
 It was madness. She was not used to it yet. Death 
 was not commonplace. It was not yet ordinary to stand 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 179 
 
 as she did for an hour on the hill to the east of Rye from 
 which all the time she could hear, softly, the muffled 
 guns, sounds that fell, gentle and regular, like the foot- 
 falls of a giant upon sand. . . . 
 
 All the time she was thinking of Cottenham, thinking 
 of him with abominable self -contempt, thrust from her 
 the vile idea that even now, when Stephen might die, she 
 could still think of Cottenham, collect those few words 
 of love and hold them close as a scapular, make of them 
 a recipe for peace in a world that was all war. " A man 
 loves me," she thought, " and it matters so much. Oh, 
 I'm beastly! " She thought that she should ache like a 
 large wound, because of all those who, that minute, were 
 dying, whom she could see die, and yet gladness cried 
 out in her. She feared to be alone. Through the Sun- 
 day she was not alone; she had Louise. But Louise 
 irritated her: while the world dissolved in blood Louise 
 went on knitting. When attacked, she said: " Well, Ste- 
 phen wants socks. Somebody must knit them." 
 
 The tragic part of it was that Louise was right: if 
 ever the world, on the eve of judgment day, comes to 
 Armageddon, men will still want socks. So Louise went 
 on knitting, sweet and serene. She finished her pair of 
 socks and began a muffler. 
 
 From Lady Oakley Monica fled. Lady Oakley had 
 become completely Valkyrian; she was riding the storm, 
 but unfortunately she rode it in every room. Monica 
 carried away to Rochester an unforgettable vision of her 
 mother rushing into the study, where Sir Hugh was walk- 
 ing up and down, nursing a large and crumpled Kalli- 
 krates, and rubbing his face on the cat's soft shoulder. 
 Lady Oakley was waving the Observer: " Hugh ! Hugh I 
 we've broken through. We've taken their first lines to 
 a depth of three-quarters of a mile on a five-mile front! 
 
180 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Oh! isn't it splendid to be alive in these days! If only 
 one could do something oneself. Why didn't they come 
 and drop bombs on us, at least. Oh, for heaven's sake 
 put that cat down! Let me see the map. Hugh, don't 
 you hear, I want the map." 
 
 Yes, Lady Oakley was very tiring. Nor did her father 
 help her much. Neither said a word about it, but they 
 thought a great deal of Stephen. In the end Sir Hugh 
 did refer to him inf erentially : 
 
 " Hang it all! Everybody doesn't get killed! " 
 
 Monica knew what this irritable remark conveyed, put 
 her arm round his neck, rested her cheek upon his shoul- 
 der, and so they stayed for a long time, her father staring 
 into the air which he peopled with shades. But as she 
 sat with the father whom she adored, a pleasant picture, 
 the three of them, he, thin and fine, the girl red-crowned, 
 and on his lap the great cat, his sumptuous belly of golden 
 fur voluptuously upturned to caressing hands, she found 
 herself invaded by another meditation: "What is going 
 to happen now? What shall I do to-morrow when I 
 meet him? Will he say face to face the things he said 
 over the telephone? And then, what shall I say? I 
 ought not to go back." She was horribly afraid to go 
 back, and yet knew she must. His peril made it as 
 necessary that she should go back, as the war had 
 made it necessary for Stephen to go out there. The 
 public version was that Stephen had gone out to defend 
 his country's cause, and no doubt that had something to 
 do with it, but Stephen would have refused to do that; 
 what he could not refuse as an Oakley was to affront 
 danger. Now she too was in danger, and it was neces- 
 sary that she should face it. 
 
 The calmer air of the Cottenham Works restored her 
 for a moment. In the train it had struck her that Cot- 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 181 
 
 tenham might be on the platform when she arrived. 
 That was frightening. But she did not see him, and 
 this vaguely annoyed her; she felt that she had been 
 frightened on false pretences. All the morning she ex- 
 pected him to come in suddenly, as he often did, alert 
 and bright-eyed, creating among the girls the pleasant 
 agitation of healthy masculinity. Of course he would 
 take her behind the shield to look at the chart. What 
 would he do then? She shrank from the idea of words 
 of love, probably caresses. But he did not come ; it was 
 a relief that he did not come, and a humiliation. She 
 did not tell herself that Cottenham might know that she 
 expected him, and wilfully disappoint her. The day was 
 full of irritations. It began almost at once by a misun- 
 derstanding with Ivy Badger. Monica pointed out that 
 as the machine was still a bad choker she should not 
 overload it with T. N. T. powder, but fill the hopper 
 progressively in moderate quantities. To this Ivy 
 Badger replied: " Impossossible." 
 
 " Of course it's possible," said Monica. " Put in about 
 half-a-pound at a time." 
 
 " Impossossible," said Ivy contentedly. 
 
 Monica made an effort to seem lofty; she remembered 
 when she was the charge hand. 
 
 " Miss Badger," she said, " couldn't you say some- 
 thing else? " 
 
 " Impossossible," replied Ivy, and put the scoop in her 
 pocket. Monica clenched her fists. She began to under- 
 stand why Muriel Penn had, not long ago, hit Ivy Badger 
 in the eye. She informed Ivy that she would be reported 
 to unit and presumably suspended, then retired, nearly 
 screaming with rage because Ivy calmly remarked that 
 this also was " Impossossible." Late in the afternoon, 
 when Monica had begun to hope that Cottenham would 
 
182 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 come neither that day nor ever again, Miss Livingstone 
 called her to the door with an air of mystery. Miss Liv- 
 ingstone was looking more saintly and emaciated than 
 ever. 
 
 " Oh, Miss Oakley," she said, " I just wanted to see you 
 for a moment. Of course it's a very difficult subject to 
 talk about." 
 
 " Yes? " 
 
 " Well, I wanted to speak to you about Rose Har- 
 losh." (Oh, this was very awkward.) 
 
 " What has she done? " Monica's nerves were so raw 
 that she could not help being blunt. 
 
 " Oh done. She hasn't done anything. But still 
 one has to be careful in a factory where there are so 
 many girls and so many men. That's the whole idea of 
 welfare work." 
 
 " But what has Miss Harlosh done? " asked Monica 
 rather sharply. Miss Livingstone revealed by degrees, 
 all of them full of maidenly delicacy, that one of the 
 military guard (such a nice man, grey-haired and a 
 married man) had been noticed by her patrolling exclu- 
 sively the strip of wire that ran along this shop. Miss 
 Livingstone had thought it right to do likewise. In a 
 factory where so many men and so- many girls were 
 employed surely Miss Oakley would understand. Yes, 
 Miss Harlosh's bench was near the window. Oh, of 
 course, young girls smiled and giggled at nothing, but 
 still, Miss Oakley would understand. . . . 
 
 It went on for a long time, and what enraged Monica 
 so was that the Welfare Inspector made no charge 
 against Rose Harlosh, nor against the military guard, 
 but by the time she had done with them, it was quite 
 clear that they had somehow done something to which 
 nothing could give a name. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 183 
 
 " I hate her, I hate her," thought Monica. Monica was 
 not genteel. These accumulated irritants rested heavily 
 upon her that evening as she sat by the lamp and cut 
 out a blouse likely to be even more ill-fitting than her 
 average. She realised simultaneously that one arm 
 would turn out longer than the other, and that her prob- 
 able entanglement with Cottenham was likely to make 
 trouble for her. " What's going to happen? " she thought. 
 Then: "What shall I do?" She found no answer to 
 either question. Did she love him? No, of course not. 
 But if she told herself: " I do not love him," she knew 
 that would be untrue. She did not understand her con- 
 dition, one of neither passion nor coldness, but a state 
 where love can ignite at another flame, or fade if that 
 flame is withdrawn. She realised that all this was full 
 of risks, likely to lead to exposure, to difficulty, to vain 
 hungers, to horrid satiations; to secrecies and shames, 
 and if resisted, to incredible emptiness. But then, should 
 she go home? or should she frankly draw him closer? 
 She found that she could do neither. " I suppose I must 
 drift," she thought, and in so saying did not realise that 
 she was taking a woman's only course, for that course 
 fills woman with the belief that the good things which 
 happen to her are providential, while the evil things are 
 merely unfortunate. Like most women, she was pre- 
 paring to drift up-stream. 
 
 Ill 
 
 CRADOC raised his eyes from the book which lay upon 
 his knees and looked up to the little square of brilliant 
 sky framed between the bars of his cell. It was a lovely 
 little square of sky, and once, for a long time, a hawk 
 had hovered in it, a black dot, rapt with its own move- 
 
184 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 ment as it hung over the canals and dykes of Roberts- 
 bridge. It was strange, he thought, that he should not 
 be unhappy in prison. He had now been three months 
 in Robertsbridge gaol, having refused to put on his uni- 
 form when summoned, and sentenced to six months' 
 detention; he had been transferred to the civil prison, 
 he did not know why. Here he was removed from the 
 turmoil of the life surrounding, that had seemed every 
 day to grow shriller and more vulgar as hatred developed 
 among men. He had a sustained sense of sacrifice; he 
 was suffering for a principle, and he never told himself 
 that in so doing he joyously gratified his vanity. " I 
 am in prison," he thought, and even after three months 
 this idea filled him with a sense of mystic and theatrical 
 performance. He wondered what would happen next. 
 In three months he would be handed over, he supposed, 
 once more to be posted to some depot where the old non- 
 coms would be rather rude, the old soldiers rather envious 
 because he was getting out of the beastly job, and the 
 young soldiers on the whole rather wishing they had the 
 guts to do it too. Then he would appear before a decent 
 crowd of officers, attempting to try him justly by means 
 of an unjust law. And he would state his case again. 
 And they would listen to him again as they had listened 
 before, politely, and would try to find extenuating cir- 
 cumstances, and would fail, and would sentence him 
 again. And he would come back again. And after 
 another six months or a year it would all begin over 
 again. It enraged him suddenly: once upon a time con- 
 scientious objectors were stoned; stone walls were a 
 slower process. Then, realising there were still three 
 months to come, he returned to his book, one of the best 
 books in the world, he thought, the Bible. Cradoc had 
 made an excellent impression on the chaplain by con- 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 185 
 
 tinually reading the Bible; following his usual policy, 
 which was to avoid talking to the clergy, because it was 
 not fair to expect them to understand anything, he had 
 not told the chaplain that the Bible was a literary monu- 
 ment. That certainly would have offended the chap- 
 lain. 
 
 Footsteps sounded in the corridor, and a flicker of in- 
 terest arose in Cradoc. In gaol footsteps are interesting, 
 and there is variety in the smoke the wind carries beyond 
 the bars, in the spider that spins its web. The footsteps 
 stopped before his door, and as it clanked open to let in 
 the doctor, Cradoc grew feverish with excitement. The 
 doctor was a little man with a sharp, scrubby beard and 
 a nose pinched in the middle, spreading to the tip. A 
 bluff, sharp little man, who handled men's insides with 
 the skill of an engineer handling the parts of a dynamo. 
 
 " Well," he said, " let's have a look at you." He went 
 over the prisoner rapidly, without making him strip. 
 " You're all right." Then, without need, he added: "We'll 
 post you back to the work-room to-morrow; I suppose 
 you won't be sorry." 
 
 " No," said Cradoc, " I'll be an expert shoemaker by 
 the time I've served my term. I'll be fit to lecture on 
 shoemaking before this war's done." 
 
 The doctor smiled. " Oh, so you expect to come back, 
 do you? " 
 
 " Yes," said Cradoc rather wearily, for the picture of 
 soft, fair-haired Molly Hart had passed through his 
 mind. " I'll be coming back." 
 
 The doctor looked at him for a moment, as if hesitating. 
 He felt that he had no further business with the prisoner. 
 The man had been in the infirmary, was now fit to resume 
 labour; that was the end of it. But he was interested in 
 this quiet, self-engrossed prisoner. Also, the doctor being 
 
186 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Scotch, had been educated and found intellectual interest 
 in the South rather scanty. So he stayed. 
 
 " Won't you ever get sick of it? " he asked. " Don't 
 you think you'll be changing your mind before you're up 
 for another court martial? " 
 
 " You mean join up? " said Cradoc. 
 
 " Yes. This isn't half a life for a young man." 
 
 " It can't be helped," said Cradoc. " It's not my fault 
 if I think as I do." 
 
 " Oh, nonsense," said the doctor. " You aren't going to 
 invoke determinism, are you? " 
 
 " I am not," said Cradoc, " for one thing I don't know 
 what it means, but if you mean that I think I must act 
 according to what I think right, and that I must give the 
 example by suffering for what I think right, then I do 
 invoke it. What I have done I must do again." 
 
 " And what will happen if the war goes on for five 
 years? " 
 
 " I shall be imprisoned for five years. I shall not be 
 the first who has. And many men must suffer as I do 
 before this society, presided over by the aristocrat, ex- 
 ploited by the capitalist, and gulled by the priest, is 
 blown sky high by a proletariat which will not always 
 be imbecile." 
 
 " Do you know," said the doctor, " you socialists, and 
 conscientious objectors, and all that, you're drunkards in 
 a way. I come across a good many drunkards in my 
 work, all sorts ; not only men who can't keep off the drink, 
 but people who go in for drugs, women who are dotty on 
 clothes; monomaniacs of all sorts. Well, you people, you 
 seem to me to get drunk on ideas; you get sodden with 
 them at last." 
 
 Cradoc smiled. " Well," he said, " the bourgeoisie has 
 not always been abstemious, but I realise, Doctor, that 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 187 
 
 this is a form of debauchery they don't go in for." 
 
 The little Scotchman twinkled. He loved a spar, and 
 in the South he missed those long evenings with brother 
 Scotch students when, after a great deal of whisky, the 
 characteristics of women and the rival claims of the 
 Wee Kirk and the Free Kirk were so violently dis- 
 cussed. 
 
 " Well, well," he said, " perhaps they don't, and it's 
 quite as well. Maybe an idea is only a morbid secre- 
 tion of the intellect." 
 
 " Such as patriotism," suggested Cradoc. 
 
 " Patriotism isn't an idea. It's an instinct." 
 
 " Oh, hate thy neighbor as thyself, and with equally 
 good reason." 
 
 " You're too clever for me," said the doctor. " I look 
 at these things simply. Here we are at war; you and I 
 had little to do with the making of it, and we've every- 
 thing to do with the bearing of it. We couldn't help it, 
 but our country's gone to war. Isn't it the natural thing 
 the instinctive thing to fight for it? " 
 
 " It may be the instinctive thing," said Cradoc, " but if 
 so it's a bad instinct. The word l country ' means noth- 
 ing. Once upon a time, in this island, Wessex was fight- 
 ing Mercia, each one for their own country. Then one of 
 them gobbled the other up and made England. Thon 
 England fought Scotland, each one patriotic for their own 
 country. Then one gobbled the other up and made Brit- 
 ain. Then Britain, and India, and the Transvaal, and 
 Egypt fought each other, each one patriotic for its own 
 country; then England gobbled up the lot and made the 
 British Empire. Would you like to carry it the other 
 way, Doctor? If Sussex were really patriotic it would 
 fight Kent. If Winchelsea were really patriotic it would 
 fight Rye until we got street fighting street, and house 
 
188 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 fighting house. For, mind you, it always comes to fight- 
 ing; without fighting there is no patriotism." 
 
 " Well," said the doctor, " and what does this histori- 
 cal lecture amount to? " 
 
 " It amounts to this, that the words ' my country ' 
 mean nothing, that when you have converted another 
 country to adopt your culture by the simple process of 
 killing most of its inhabitants you have merely extended 
 the area of patriotism. You shove your frontiers to and 
 fro, but you don't alter the colour of a leaf on a tree. 
 And if, then, the word ' country ' is so elastic that to-day 
 you include among our patriotic brothers the Boers, who, 
 you can look it up in the papers, were in 1901 a race of 
 coarse degenerates, you are asking me to fight for some- 
 thing false." / 
 
 "But, good heavens! man!" cried the doctor impa- 
 tiently, " don't talk to me as if I didn't know these things. 
 Your country isn't just an area between frontiers; I know 
 as well as you that frontiers shift about; when one says 
 1 your country ' one means a certain kind of culture, a 
 certain kind of education, of impulse." 
 
 " Aren't those things superficial? " 
 
 " No, I don't think so." 
 
 " Then, how is it that we are so sympathetic to-day to 
 the culture of the French who, at the time of Fashoda 
 were, according to our newspapers, to be rolled in mud 
 and blood? Why are we so hostile to the German cul- 
 ture which, via the royal family and its court, dominated 
 English social life from 1815 to the seventies? " 
 
 The little doctor wriggled. " Oh, well, there are po- 
 litical necessities." 
 
 " And are there no human necessities? " 
 
 " You know," said the doctor, " you people look at 
 things in such a queer way. You socialists are so damned 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 189 
 
 individualistic, so unsociable. You seem to have no feel- 
 ing of community. There's more real socialism in a 
 platoon of the Sussex Coast all dying together." 
 
 "They find it easier than living together, don't they? 
 I suppose that the instinct of man is to slay. But what 
 are we for, I ask you, doctor, except to repress instincts? 
 What is civilisation for except to keep down instincts? 
 To get rid of that filthy old muddler whom they call Na- 
 ture! The thing that can't make a swamp without 
 malaria, the author of the bug and the caterpillar, the 
 creature that protects the pregnant mother against dis- 
 ease, and lets her sicken and die when her child is growing 
 up. Yes, it's natural to thieve, and to rape, and to kill, 
 and it's natural to lie and to flatter but it's our job to 
 keep Nature down. So, instead of indulging Nature, the 
 beastly thing that likes to use our blood to manure soil 
 where she can grow weeds, it's our job to knock Nature 
 out. Nature doesn't know how to get a child born with- 
 out pain, and she's had to invent a thousand cruel dis- 
 eases to muddle us out of the world after muddling us in. 
 So don't tell me that because Nature has implanted in us 
 an abominable vanity, told us to believe that it's better 
 to be an Englishman than a German, an Englishman than 
 a Scotchman, a Sussex man than a man of Kent, don't 
 tell me we've got to abet her, and keep it up by killing as 
 many of the other lot as we can, until they're ready to 
 take their revenge on us." 
 
 " Well, well," said the doctor amiably, " these are hard 
 words. Let me tell you as a medical man that Nature is 
 not such an old fool as all that. Christians will tell you 
 that the troubles of the world are crosses which must be 
 borne. I tell you that they are a way of sorting out the 
 strong and breeding a finer race. Disease knocks out 
 the weak." 
 
190 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " They breed before they're knocked out." 
 
 " Yes, but many die at birth." 
 
 " I'm afraid they don't. Lunatics, consumptives, the 
 feeble-minded, all those people are increasing." 
 
 " Oh, no. Not as fast as the population. You see, 
 science has improved conditions." 
 
 " Ah," said Cradoc, " then we're not leaving it to Na- 
 ture! " 
 
 " One can't leave everything to Nature. But that's a 
 side issue. What I was suggesting is that civilisations 
 that grow side by side are bound to be rivals. If one 
 expands the other's got to make room. It's like two 
 plants in one pot; one of them's got to kill the other." 
 
 " Why not take them out of the pot? " said Cradoc. 
 
 " What do you mean? " 
 
 " Well, if two plants can't live in a pot, don't put them 
 in a pot. If two nations can't live inside their frontiers, 
 don't put them inside frontiers." 
 
 " The United States of the World! Utopia! " 
 
 " Everything that exists has been a Utopia. Germany 
 to-day is a united country ; before Napoleon came it com- 
 prised three hundred and eighteen States. Well, the three 
 hundred and eighteen States were taken out of their pots, 
 and there you are." 
 
 " Yes, and they were taken out by force. Force is the 
 only rule. You can take it that war is a biological ne- 
 cessity." 
 
 " I think it was a German said that." 
 
 " Well, even a German can speak the truth." 
 
 " You'd better not say that in public," said the pris- 
 oner, smiling. The doctor looked irritated. He ought 
 not to have committed himself with this man, interesting 
 though he was. Still he was anxious to make his point. 
 " Look here," he said, " you've got to recognize that only 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 191 
 
 the fighting races have been fine races, learned, noble 
 races. The Chinese aren't fighters, and there they lie, 
 stupefied in tradition and opium; the Italians rotted for 
 four centuries, and it needed the war against Austria to 
 make them a nation." 
 
 " True enough," said Cradoc, " and I won't ask you to 
 show that the modernised Chinaman has produced Ming 
 pottery or a new Confucius; and I won't press the point 
 that this entirely rotten, pacific Italy produced more great 
 pictures than all the rest of the world; I'll just ask you to 
 say whether you think that ideal fighting race, the Rus- 
 sian Tartar, has proved an example of nobility, cleanli- 
 ness and justice; and perhaps you'll tell me what you 
 think of the Turk, who has fought everything he ever saw 
 for the last thousand years, without ever producing a pic- 
 ture, a book, a judge you could not buy, and who has 
 domesticated through the east only one animal: the 
 louse." 
 
 " You're incorrigible," said the Doctor. " By the way, 
 I suppose I ought not to tell you, but the British offensive 
 has started on the Somme." 
 
 Cradoc was silent for a moment. " Oh. Then let's 
 hope we shall be beaten. Only if we are beaten shall we 
 turn against the tyrants." 
 
 IV 
 
 IT happened as Monica had expected. As she stood 
 behind the shield, posting upon the chart the output of 
 the last hour, she grew conscious of a presence behind 
 her and turned with an unreasonable start, as if she had 
 not known that in the danger buildings every one must 
 come soft-footed. For a moment they looked at each 
 
192 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 other in silence, and Monica was filled with a glad shy- 
 ness, for his good looks, the brilliance of his blue eyes 
 and the close-cropped, curly brown hair exhaled mas- 
 culinity and taste for good living. He was so real, after 
 having been incredible during the week-end. Meanwhile, 
 he looked at her, and thought: " I haven't seen you for 
 four days, and IVe managed to miss you." It struck him 
 as fatal that he should miss her. She ought not to have 
 mattered to him. Was she not, after all, meant to be a 
 toy he would break to see what there was inside? In- 
 stead of that she was assuming importance, and he hated 
 to think that anything should be important, except him- 
 self. 
 
 " Good morning, Miss Oakley," he said, and felt shy. 
 " How are things? " 
 
 " Oh, pretty well. Picric is giving rather more trouble 
 than T. N. T." 
 
 " Oh, of course. The crystals are coarser." 
 
 They talked for a little time in jerks, conscious that 
 this incoherent conversation about densities and piston- 
 courses was accompanied by a secret song. He thought: 
 " I adore you," and said, " It's clear 65 degrees makes the 
 best bag." 
 
 He went into the outer shop for a moment to see the 
 machine at work and to disarm suspicion. Then he came 
 back, and Monica found herself tense as if an instinct 
 told her that decisive action was now inevitable. 
 
 At first he had had real questions to ask her; now he 
 could ask her only a question that she could not answer. 
 But he surprised her, as he always did, so much swifter is 
 the male than the quiescent woman. She shrank away 
 as with a hurried movement he seized her by the wrist and 
 closed her hand upon a small parcel. She realised that 
 she had been given a letter and something else. In the 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 193 
 
 whirl of her emotions she could not understand why he 
 should assume a hard voice: 
 
 " So far, so good, Miss Oakley. This chart should now 
 be kept on the basis of temperature variation only. Please 
 see to it." 
 
 He went out, followed by the eyes of the girls as he 
 passed the shield. 
 
 " Oh, ain't 'e 7 orty," said Ivy Badger. 
 
 " I think he's lovely," said Miss Penn. 
 
 Monica felt hurt, though she now understood that he 
 was keeping up the part of the cold employer. Perhaps 
 at heart he was a cold employer. Then she discovered 
 with surprise that she rather liked that idea: those harsh 
 tones, that implication of male dominance, pleased while 
 it outraged her. But she was not in the mood for psy- 
 chology, and when at last, during the dinner hour, she was 
 able to get away, she tore open the envelope with hands 
 that excitement made dry. In the envelope was a large 
 key, and with it a note: 
 
 " Most exquisite, most adorable, copper- crowned lily, 
 eyes soft as water and hard as steel, mouth that Cupid 
 might steal with which to make a bow, most exquisite, 
 most adorable . . . 
 
 " This is the key of a place they call Bull's Field. It 
 lies along the Medway, eight hundred yards from here as 
 you walk away from Rochester. This key will let you in 
 at the door in the palisade, wisely set by the Providence 
 of Lovers in the lane off the main road. At seven to-night 
 you will turn this key. It will let you into Bull's Field 
 as they call it, into the Garden of Eden if you like . . . 
 
 " Most exquisite, most adorable, I place in each of your 
 palms a kiss so heavy that you shall carry the stigmata 
 of Eros." 
 
 She looked at the key for a long time. So it had come. 
 
194 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 She was frightened and unhappy because she knew that 
 resist him as she might she must resist herself less faith- 
 fully. 
 
 Later, as the wooden door slammed behind her, her 
 heart would not be still, though Bull's Field was reassur- 
 ingly empty. It was a large building plot where one day 
 the Cottenham Works might extend. Now, behind its 
 fences it lay a patch of rank grass where the nettles had 
 grown tall. A few field flowers, shy blue speedwell and 
 stitchwort, spattered the grass with little blue or white 
 eyes, grew where they would; here and there brown and 
 yellow kidney vetch asserted itself. She was all alone, 
 and she thought: "I have come. I could go away, it's 
 still time." But she knew that it was too late. For a 
 moment she played with a vision of herself, the 
 Monica she ought to be, with her hair close plaited, 
 hard collars and cuffs, an interest in historical mon- 
 uments and Sunday schools. But she realised that 
 she was not that sort of Monica, and told herself, with a 
 dry, humorous smile: "I suppose one's the best sort of 
 Monica one can be." Then she started, for she had not 
 noticed against the opposite fence a small shanty on 
 wheels, on the wall of which was painted: FOREMAN'S 
 OFFICE. She did not have time to wonder why it was 
 there, for there was somebody inside. The window 
 opened, and Cottenham looked out at her. He did not 
 smile, nor sign to her to come, but so remained, fixed and 
 silent, rather sad, as if he too shared her fears and hesi- 
 tations and was being the best Cottenham he could. 
 Monica faintly shrugged her shoulders and slowly walked 
 towards the shanty. When the door closed behind her 
 she set her back against it as if she had come so far and 
 only now acquired the strength to turn back. She was 
 very frightened. She thought he would seize her and 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 195 
 
 crush her with caresses that would delight and terrify her. 
 She half hoped that he would. If only he would terrify 
 her, disgust her, she could save herself yet. How she 
 would hate it if he did, and how she would bless him! 
 But Cottenham took two steps forward, his eyes large as 
 if he doubted his own delight, reluctant steps, as if he 
 were assured of defeat within his own victory. Then he 
 took both her hands, that stiffened and withdrew while 
 yet they clasped his own, and silently he knelt at her 
 feet, pressed his forehead against the hands that almost at 
 once, reassured and pitying, gently stroked upwards the' 
 short rebelliousness of the brown hair. 
 
 It seemed so natural and easy, the course of that hour. 
 He kissed her hands, but he had done so before: it seemed 
 too simple. Then, holding her by the arms, gently as a 
 man may hold a butterfly which he fears to crush, she 
 was quite close to him yet still felt free. Then his arms 
 were round her, not urgent, it seemed, not arms con- 
 quering and cruel, but arms supporting, in that moment 
 of her weakness. So tender, so gentle was it that she felt 
 he feared his own desire. It was not the man sought his 
 victory, but the woman taking pity on his incredulous 
 delight. It was she, consoling rather than abandoned, 
 laid her cheek upon his. And when at last he held her 
 close and sought lips which she averted yet did not re- 
 fuse, there was in the caress a character of the inevitable. 
 For long minutes, silently, they sat upon the bench that 
 was, with the rough wooden table, the only furniture of 
 the shanty. Monica had no thoughts. She was con- 
 scious only of emotions, not only the pleasure of his con- 
 tact, but the joy of feeling that she had now gone too far 
 to draw back: she was liberated from decision. 
 
 She grew conscious of an unrest in him. He kissed her 
 more urgently. A certain roughness came into his em- 
 
196 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 brace. She did not understand then what she understood 
 later, that his fervour was passing, that he was begin- 
 ning to think of time. Exquisite as was Monica in his 
 arms he could not feel free! The high attractiveness of 
 the scene frightened him. How long had it been going on 
 for ten minutes or half an hour? How was he to tell? 
 And he cursed the minute for being so sweet that he could 
 not measure its flight. He thought of Julia. And still 
 Monica did not move, but lay in his arms, languid with 
 content. It was horrible. Would the girl so remain. 
 Might it be his fate to stay thus for endless lives holding 
 in his arms a girl who owed him her ecstasy? 
 
 " Oh," he thought, " I wish I'd let her alone." Then he 
 saw the shadow the lashes made upon her flushed cheek 
 and felt glad of his own folly. 
 
 As last, as if by agreement, they shook free. He said: 
 " I must go." 
 
 Monica looked up at him: " Yes, of course you must go. 
 Good night," she murmured softly. He held her to him 
 in an embrace in which was delight, impatience, hatred, 
 gratitude, and was gone. She followed him soon after, 
 felt so light and removed from the thick world that she 
 wondered if, like Ophelia's ghost, she could have trodden 
 the cream and cold corollas of the dog-daisies without 
 causing them to stoop. 
 
 "WELL, you might have telephoned," said Julia. 
 " I couldn't get through ; they said you were engaged." 
 " We haven't had a call all the afternoon." 
 " Well, the exchange always says engaged when they're 
 slack." 
 " You know perfectly well how angry cook is if the 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 197 
 
 dinner's spoilt. And it's not easy to get a cook. Be- 
 sides, why are you so late? You're always late now- 
 adays." 
 
 Cottenham felt very angry. Julia was that night in- 
 deed ebony and amber. Her frock of yellow brocade, 
 with the long close sleeves, and the necklet of green jade 
 made her immensely tall and disdainful. So, as he was 
 very angry, he courted her with a little gleam of passion 
 and desire in his blue eyes. " It's all very well," she 
 grumbled, as he kissed her behind the ear, a caress he 
 knew she never long resisted. " It's all very well," she 
 repeated in a muffled voice. It was like a purr. 
 
 And as he kissed her he thought: " Twenty minutes 
 here and there. My duty to this woman and, damn it, 
 my desire too. And this damned war, plotting out your 
 day from morning to evening, tying you by the leg, mak- 
 ing all movement impossible; if you aren't a slave in 
 an explosives works, you're a slave in the army because 
 you've committed the crime of not being over forty-one. 
 And, you idiot, you're trying to do all that, to make love 
 to a wife whom you adore, and to a girl whom you're 
 going to adore, with every chance of meeting a third girl 
 whom you will also adore. Oh, why was I born? " 
 
 VI 
 
 A CHARACTER of intimacy formed about Bull's Field. 
 Once upon a time it had been a building plot, and now the 
 dead cats, old hats, broken bottles and pots were covered 
 with merciful nettles, bramble, flowering blackberry; 
 every seed the weary wind let fall had come to rest and 
 now to blooming. Along one side of the high palings 
 grew thick dog-daisies ; patches of lucerne and clover were 
 fragrant with the promise of hay. The exquisiteness of 
 
198 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Bull's Field depended upon the palings, erected before 
 the war, therefore high, over eight feet, and well joined, 
 so that once the door closed it became an oasis. As yet 
 it had no trees, though here and there tiny oaks were be- 
 ginning to sprout. As it could not be overlooked, often 
 the hurried lovers, between the closing of the factory and 
 the imminent claims of the man's home, could walk in 
 Eden, arms entwined about waists, and cheeks upon 
 shoulders laid. 
 
 Almost every night now they came to Bull's Field. 
 Monica loved it. 
 
 " It's queer," she said once. " I who come from the 
 real country, where in spring primroses and bluebells grow 
 so thick that walking seems a sin, it's queer that I should 
 find in all these ragged little flowers something that I 
 can't find in Udimore Copse." 
 
 " You find me," said Cottenham. 
 
 She smiled. " How conceited you are, Frank." 
 
 " Yes. And you like me conceited. Is it wonderful? 
 Isn't it enough to make a man conceited to think you care 
 for him? " 
 
 " Flatterer, as well as conceited." 
 
 " Agreed. A wealth of vices. And it takes many vices 
 to make one virtue palatable. There's something very 
 insipid about virtue. There used to be something very 
 insipid about you. The first time I held your hand it was 
 well, a capital imitation of ice cream." 
 
 " And may I ask what I am like now? " said Monica. 
 
 " Oh, custard." 
 
 " The grace of your metaphors, Frank, entirely carries 
 me away." 
 
 He took her face between his hands and suddenly 
 looked serious. " You like my beastly metaphors ; you 
 like me coarse, and you like me cruel; you like anything 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 199 
 
 that makes you feel I have stripped off my body and 
 stand before you clad in nothing but my soul." He 
 crushed her face a little, twisting her ears to hurt her. 
 " You like me beastly because you know that all men are 
 beastly inside, and because it's such a damned big com- 
 pliment to show you without artifice just how beastly I 
 am." 
 
 She closed her eyes and murmured : " Don't, Frank ! " 
 
 " Don't what? " 
 
 " Don't make me see myself as I am." 
 
 His laugh had a cruel ring as he bent to kiss her. " Be- 
 fore I've done with you," he said, " you shall see me as I 
 am, and yet you shall love me ; and you shall see yourself 
 as you are, and you won't know whether you wished you 
 still were blind or whether you should pray for tenfold 
 sight." Again he kissed her, drawing her to him and 
 crushing her, as if destroying in her some barrier. " Be- 
 fore I've done with you, in Eden, you will have eaten the 
 fruit that tells you what is right and what is wrong, and 
 I'm damned if youll know one from the other." 
 
 She struggled a little. "Don't, Frank." 
 
 But as he did not release her she used the feminine 
 weapon. " You're hurting me," she murmured. And he 
 said: " I like hurting you." Then she realised that this 
 man knew how to turn the woman's weapon against her; 
 she feared him and rejoiced in her fear. 
 
 She was not always surrendered. Sometimes Cotten- 
 ham did not seek to make her feel his mastery. He would 
 bring her the thought which had preoccupied him during 
 the day. Often he talked about the war. Just then the 
 gallant Roumanian Horse was scuttling back to Rou- 
 mania, the Germans at its heels, and Mackensen was 
 pressing in over every frontier. 
 
 " It's perfectly lovely," said Cottenham, " to watch 
 
200 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Mackensen work. It's so perfectly done. First he 
 shoves in the passes, gets troops to concentrate against 
 him there, then crosses the Danube in their rear, catches 
 half, disperses the rest towards the south, where they meet 
 another body that's crossed the Danube; right, left, then 
 left again to finish; it's measured like a sonata." 
 
 " It's all very well," said Monica, " but it's our ally." 
 
 " Don't be such a materialist. Can't you feel delight 
 in seeing a man do a job perfectly?" 
 
 " We've got to win the war," said Monica. 
 
 " Oh, leave that to the Daily Mail Let's look at the 
 artistic side of it." 
 
 They often used to quarrel about the war because Cot- 
 tenham was so impersonal about it. At bottom the war 
 did not interest him much. 
 
 " The war, after all," he said, " awakes such exag- 
 gerated interest. When in England they talk about the 
 war one might think there never had been a war before." 
 
 " Not a war of this size," said Monica. 
 
 " Much larger wars. Germany has been rolled over by 
 the tide of war from end to end, and for thirty years on 
 end, and rolled over by Napoleon as he went to Russia, 
 and rolled over as he came back. And the Arab got half- 
 way across France. And the Turk got to Vienna. And 
 Charles the Twelfth, the Swede, got to Prague. We 
 haven't been touched by the war, and we won't be. Mod- 
 ern armies are too big to move. They sit in the mud and 
 heave, and by the look of it they'll heave till doomsday." 
 
 " Do you mean to say we shan't win the war? " asked 
 Monica, this being to her a new idea. 
 
 " Nobody can win the war. The losers, as we call 
 them, are crushed and ground by defeat; the winners are 
 inflated by their successful militarism into submission to 
 an autocracy more cruel than the one they overthrew. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 201 
 
 There's no winning wars. If we're beaten we'll lose our 
 self-respect, and we'll bleed in taxes. If we win, we shall 
 live in fear of Germany's revenge, so we shall saddle our- 
 selves with an army and a navy fit to meet that revenge ; 
 living in fear of militarism we shall institute militarism; 
 feeling the need for unity, and having won by force, we 
 shall put our faith in force. If we win we shall liberalise 
 Germany until she becomes a sham England, and we shall 
 militarise England until she becomes a sham Germany. 
 If we knock down the Kaiser and Hindenburg, it will 
 only be to set up Mr. Hughes and Mr. Bottomley. War's 
 a game of musical chairs with Death at the piano." 
 
 She did not answer. She hardly understood him, but 
 his vehemence upset her. It was a rare vehemence, for 
 Cottenham did not feel things strongly. He was capable 
 only of rage. As a rule he turned to irony: 
 
 " It's the things round the war that matter," he said ; 
 "war's only a symptom; it means that the capitalist 
 holds unsold stocks, and that the democracy has grown 
 bored with chocolates and cinemas, just as it got sick 
 of bread and circuses. What's the struggle between cap- 
 ital and labour but a desire for change? At bottom the 
 capitalist is sick of making money, just as the operative 
 is sick of making tin tacks. So they make war, war 
 among themselves, war against each other; it makes 
 variety in the newspapers. After all, there's never been 
 a serial to beat this war." 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't talk like that," said Monica. 
 " One might think you didn't feel anything." 
 
 " Perhaps I don't. I've started thinking. One can't 
 do both. And there aren't many people thinking. It 
 isn't thinking sets up the shop stewards against the trade 
 union leaders; it's impatience, it's obstinacy, it's raw 
 hatred. Feelings, that's what it is. When two men start 
 
202 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 thinking they burgle a neighbour's house. When they 
 start feeling they fight each other for the swag." 
 
 " What do you think's going to happen? " asked 
 Monica. 
 
 " Change, the thing that one side calls progress and 
 the other decadence. All sorts of things. Parliaments 
 are going, kings are going. In England kings and par- 
 liaments won't exactly go; they'll sort of get overlooked. 
 Parliament will continue to meet and will pass Acts, and 
 Acts, and nobody will care. The only Acts that matter 
 will be those about which Parliament telephones the 
 Chairman of the Trade Union Congress in England or 
 Gompers in America and asks if that will be all right. 
 It'll go on for hundreds of years. In a couple of cen- 
 turies some sort of Asquith will make speeches about the 
 historical mother of parliaments, or the mother of his- 
 torical parliaments, it doesn't matter, and be saluted by 
 the sentries because he wears a cocked hat. It will mat- 
 ter as much as the Master of the Buckhounds, and the 
 Board of Green Cloth. You see, that's the way we do it 
 in England; we never bury the dead past, we wrap it up 
 in the present." 
 
 " But," said Monica, " that sort of thing's what they 
 call revolutionary, isn't it? " 
 
 " Well, we need revolution. Nothing but a revolution 
 in the government will prevent a revolution among the 
 people." 
 
 Suddenly his mood changed. He ran his fingers 
 through her hair, bending back her head. " What rot I 
 talk," he murmured hoarsely. She tried to shake her 
 head. No, it wasn't rot. It was not coherent, but it 
 stimulated her, and she did not know whether her body 
 responded more to the rough sweetness of his touch or 
 the waywardness of his speech. For a time she was con- 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 203 
 
 scious of a resentful emptiness because at half-past seven, 
 indeed, not later than twenty to eight, he had to leave 
 her. Half hours in Eden, he said once laughingly, but 
 there was a bitterness in the laughter, and at the door 
 he ran back to seize her once more in his arms and to 
 bend her to caresses that grew more audacious. As she 
 lay in the patch of clover she was minded to weep. She 
 felt so much more lonely now that he had filled some 
 portion of her life and made vacuum in the rest. Slowly 
 she moved across the patch to the broken grass where his 
 body had lain, and there buried her eyes upon her arm 
 and wept because under her lips she felt only the cold 
 fragrance of the flowers. 
 
 One night, towards the end of August, they attempted 
 a more audacious escapade. 
 
 " It isn't enough," said Cottenham, " these half hours." 
 
 " No," she whispered. 
 
 Both were bearing the penalty of their sensations: 
 every time they needed a little more. 
 
 "Si tu veux faisons un reve, montons sur mon pale- 
 jroi" murmured Cottenham. " Alas, I have no palfrey 
 to carry you, but this is what we'll do." 
 
 And the next night, according to this plan, at about 
 half-past eleven, Cottenham, with an exquisite sense of 
 breaking bounds, escaped from his silent house and met 
 her on the Maidstone Road. It was a hot night, and 
 soft rain was falling. In the mist they met, said Cotten- 
 ham, like the damned shades over the chaldrons. They 
 did not speak much then. At last they felt free because 
 they were lost in the night: none could see them, so noth- 
 ing was. They went, careless of direction, in the rain 
 that fell as a merciful shroud, stopping only now and 
 then, in a sudden access of emotion, to clasp and for a 
 moment to hold. It was only later that Cottenham grew 
 
204 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 light: " You know," he said, " we've no luck. It's rain- 
 ing. It never struck us it might rain when we were 
 together. Hard lines, too. Two people ought never to 
 go out together if there's no chance to sit down." 
 
 She smiled, and he ran wet fingers down her coat col- 
 lar. She shivered and found herself giggling, but he 
 did not remove his hand, and in a moment she marvelled 
 at herself, for pleasure lingered in the incongruous caress. 
 Indeed she found herself leaning against him with 
 greater abandonment. She could hardly understand 
 what spell was falling upon her. Three months before, 
 how incredible it would have seemed that without much 
 argument as to seemliness or morals she should do such 
 things. She had slid, and slid. She told Cottenham 
 this. He laughed. "Love," he said, " is a butter-slide 
 and at the end you fall into life." 
 
 She did not laugh. She was afraid of life as of love. 
 Such things were not within the Knapenden programme. 
 Or at any rate life had always seemed impossible until 
 it was licensed by the vicar. All this was exquisitely 
 fraudulent. Monica occasionally thought herself crim- 
 inal, and as remorse did not arise, concluded that the 
 roses and raptures of vice claimed more colour than the 
 lilies and languors of virtue. 
 
 She tried to explain once. " Of course," said Cotten- 
 ham. " You're waking up. You've been asleep. Sleep- 
 ing beauty! And I assure you that in the old fairy tale 
 Prince Charming was not even introduced. What's con- 
 verting you, my Monica, who are moral by habit if not 
 by practice, is that you know you're doing your duty." 
 
 " My duty ! " said Monica, rather sharply. She did 
 not like to be told that she was moral by habit but not 
 by practice. She was woman enough to want to be told 
 that she was moral by habit and immoral by exception. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 205 
 
 " Yes, your duty. It's the duty of every girl to become 
 a woman." He was surprised at her response, for she 
 seized him by the arm and buried her face upon his 
 breast. Only after a moment did he understand her, did 
 he feel how terrified she stood before her desire to attain 
 womanhood. That night, their perceptions were sharp, 
 and they spoke more freely. Held in each other's arms, 
 leaning against a gate, he said a queer, eruptive thing 
 that shook her. 
 
 " Julia'd never divorce me, and I'd lose Rupert." 
 
 She held him close. Mixed in her pity, as she under- 
 stood what had passed through his mind, this sudden 
 desire to come to her, to her only, there ran her first thrill 
 of hatred for Julia. And he had never before pronounced 
 his wife's name. He had too much tact. 
 
 " No, no," she murmured, and for the first time dragged 
 his head down to her lips, as if to assure him that she 
 made no bargain. It thrilled and horrified him, this sur- 
 render, for it made him responsible. She was going to 
 love him, then. And love was so tragic. What a mania 
 women had for love ! Why couldn't they be content with 
 gestures? And so she did not understand why, so 
 sharply, he drew back from her. But he paid the penalty 
 of understanding her too well: seeing her shaken and 
 surprised, he embraced her with a sort of despair. If 
 she had known him as he knew women, she would then 
 have realised that he could not love her. But she thought 
 that he had seized her again because he loved her uncon- 
 trollably. And as he realised this his agony of respon- 
 sibility grew. " What shall I do? " he thought, as slowly 
 they went in the soft night; " if I let her alone she loves 
 my coldness, if I pursue her she loves my ardour. No, 
 there's no stopping on the butter-slide. Poetic meta- 
 phor! " 
 
206 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 He escaped better than she the penalties of their attrac- 
 tion. He had the masculine privilege of interests and 
 occupations which combat emotion by absorbing intel- 
 lect. At the works his day was a continual agitation, 
 points of accountancy to settle, tactful conferences with 
 Woolwich inspectors; or some decision must be taken 
 as to the scrapping of defective material, the venture- 
 some purchase of new plant; or some difference of opin- 
 ion arose with the Ministry of Munitions, when he had 
 received four different orders from three different depart- 
 ments, all of them different, two contradictory, and those 
 two from the same department; or Royalty appeared, 
 and selected shops were violated with soap; or people in 
 strange clothes, deputed by one of our Allies and accom- 
 panied by an interpreter who could make himself under- 
 stood neither in English nor in Vlacho-Bosniac, came to 
 see a special process, and also to ogle the girls. It helped 
 him, all this, and yet it enraged him, this absorption of 
 a fleeting life by sterile occupations. " After all," he 
 thought, " there's only one sport in the world that's 
 worth while." 
 
 Monica did not put it like that. While Cottenham 
 thought that passion was the only sport in the world, 
 Monica never thought of any other sport. Born to love 
 she could turn to nothing else. Often she told herself, 
 with a sort of terror, that she was forgetting her old 
 pleasures. It was as if she had cared for nothing until 
 she cared for him. She felt that her life was evolving, 
 and she shrank away from the thought that it must evolve 
 entirely. It was as if she were compelled to offer her- 
 self up to her own instincts. Once only, as she sat alone 
 one night at Castle Hill, did she put it clearly to herself: 
 " Men are being killed all round. Lots of girls won't 
 get men. Can one do without a man? I used to think 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 207 
 
 so. I suppose one can. Lots of girls do. There's work 
 of course. Yes. Miss Livingstone's lost her complexion. 
 One gets so skinny. I wonder whether work agrees with 
 women." 
 
 Monica did not yet understand herself. She was not 
 clear that the duty of a girl is to become a woman. She 
 was merely unable to discern other duties. 
 
 VII 
 
 THERE were times in Sir Hugh's life, as in that of most 
 men who are rather young or rather old, when he re- 
 viewed his life and compared it with the present. He 
 felt rather old that morning as he turned back after 
 passing Policeman's House. September was nearly done ; 
 pale mist lay imprisoned between the hedges that broke 
 into little fields the reclaimed marsh. Ahead he could 
 see the elms whose leaves were growing scanty and flut- 
 tered dryly in the cold wind. The ploughed fields, run- 
 ning away towards Stoat's Farm, looked blackish and 
 damp, as if they could grow only tares. As he walked 
 slowly on he thought of the old days, of jolly rags at 
 Eton, of old Mother Emily Mary, and how he overdid it 
 on jam puffs the day they licked Harrow. He sighed. 
 He had not been happy at Eton; as a boy he had been 
 meditative, and the masters discerned in this an ironic 
 spirit which they thought bad for the school. So he was 
 swished, his youth being a period which did not spare 
 the child. But he did not know that; forty years of dis- 
 tance gave his school days forty years of charm. And 
 later, Oxford, being your own master, reckless " brek- 
 kers ", green " art" jars (daring innovations of a dying 
 century), and then life. Money in one's purse and 
 desires on which to spend it. Scraps of memories rose 
 
208 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 in him; a boisterous party the night the Grand Hotel 
 opened, and later an extraordinary afternoon at the house 
 of some woman whose name he had forgotten, an after- 
 noon overshadowed by a rather pasty, ungainly man with 
 a beautiful coarsened face and eyes sweet and melan- 
 choly, called Oscar Wilde, who made epigrams the like 
 of which were no longer made. And Mrs. Douglas, so 
 like Louise, with her straight brows and her soft black 
 hair, her long, graceful body, as a reed giving to the 
 wind. She was dead, yes. And other things. And Lena. 
 How mad he'd been for Lena! He thought of the first 
 time that he stroked her rather coarse red-brown hair, 
 and said: "You're like a lioness at the Zoo." She 
 laughed, and dug her ten fingers into his shoulders like 
 talons. 
 
 " Those were the days," thought Sir Hugh. Then he 
 told himself not to be sentimental; doubtless, ten years 
 hence, when he sat or stood somewhere else, he would 
 think of himself walking past the farm where everlast- 
 ingly hung the sign " New Laid Eggs", and would tell 
 himself: " Old fellow, what a pleasant, melancholy mood 
 you were in that morning. Those were the days." Yet 
 he thought it merciful that yesterday should always be 
 the day. 
 
 He concluded that the whole art of life must consist in 
 the accumulation of memories. As if one were a dor- 
 mouse, storing up nuts, and waking up now and then 
 from that profound sleep which we call life to nibble for 
 a moment the nut of the past and then go to sleep again. 
 As he looked out towards Stoat's Farm, across the damp 
 hollow where the streamers of mist rolled and unrolled 
 like veils, he wondered what sort of nut he was putting 
 away in his store. " Not much of a nut," he said, aloud. 
 " It's all up with Roumania. The Germans are just 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 209 
 
 pouring in. And I wonder whether we're doing any good 
 on the Somme. The papers say it's all right, but they 
 always say that. Sometimes we achieve a masterly 
 advance, and frequently a masterly retreat; anyhow, it's 
 always the same map. We take places we've never 
 heard of, and we forget their names when we lose them. 
 We just dye the soil a little redder." 
 
 He was rather disturbed by Stephen's letter of the 
 morning. It had not been the ordinary, jaunty letter, 
 but a staccato document that recalled rather the Stephen 
 who burst out at lunch than the old, slack Stephen. One 
 part of it had rather upset Sir Hugh, so he took it out 
 again and read it: 
 
 "... saw the thing quite well from the ridge. That 
 German brigade was out of luck that morning; I rather 
 think they'd calculated on getting across by a ford a little 
 higher up, but somehow our lot got to the ford first, and 
 there they were, what was left of the brigade, pinned up 
 against the river inside something over a square mile. 
 Their pioneers, as they call them, had just got a sort of 
 bridge across as I got to the ridge, and for a moment I 
 thought they'd get across all right. Somehow we weren't 
 firing much, but just as the head of the column was 
 almost over, our shells began to drop, and they drew 
 back for a moment. Then for a moment I couldn't 
 see anything, for their pals were putting up a screen of 
 smoke bombs. You could see them fall, pit-pat, one 
 after the other, and a brown cloud came up. Then they 
 started to move through the cloud, and as they did it 
 just rained shrapnel. The water came up in spouts. I 
 guess they were trying to get an ammunition lorry across, 
 the idiots, for something got it, and it went up. I hap- 
 pened to catch sight of something in the air, sort of 
 twirling. Looked like a man with his uniform on fire. 
 
210 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Then they tried their bridge again, and as their pals 
 didn't dare put anything more across, the cloud cleared. 
 I saw three shells fall one after the other on the bridge 
 and men chucked to the right and left like an ant heap 
 that's been kicked. And then, when there were hundreds 
 in the water, their heads bobbing like corks, a couple of 
 our planes came swooping up-stream, and from where I 
 was I could hear the rattle of the machine guns as they 
 potted those chaps as they swam. A couple of incen- 
 diary shells fell on the first bridge ; it burned at once, and 
 I could see men and horses plunging into the river, and 
 the planes turning to come back, going up and down like 
 a mowing machine upon a lawn. ..." 
 
 How coldly the boy told it all! Killing as a trade. 
 Sir Hugh wondered what sort of Stephen peace would 
 give him back. He chid himself. Hang it all! There 
 had been wars before, and anyhow these things were 
 eternal. He turned into Stoat's Farm to talk to Keele. 
 The old man was very bitter, for young Keele had joined 
 up instead of sticking to the farm. 
 
 " If he's killed he won't be a shover after all," said 
 the old farmer bitterly. Sir Hugh wondered whether he 
 would rather see his son dead than a traitor to the land. 
 Then they talked of potato blight. Keele had had no 
 luck; half his crop was lost, and with masochist enjoy- 
 ment he took Sir Hugh into the blackened kitchen to 
 show him some leaves he had kept, all purplish and 
 eaten away by fungus. 
 
 " Did you spray? " said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Spray! " snarled the old man. " What's the good of 
 spraying? You didn't have to spray when I was a 
 nipper, and anyhow you can't get the sulphate, as they 
 call it, let alone if a bee goes near a flower that's been 
 sprayed it dies." 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 211 
 
 " Oh, nonsense," said Sir Hugh. " You know quite 
 well you ought to have sprayed." 
 
 Keele did not reply. He knew better. When one was 
 a nipper one didn't have to spray. Those were the days. 
 
 VIII 
 
 WITH a suddenness that would have surprised Monica 
 if she had been a social student, the strike broke out. 
 She had noticed a little group round a notice inside the 
 factory gate, and passed it. The machines had started 
 up. She felt rather depressed. Then she heard a voice, 
 Ivy Badger's. " Tell you it's true." 
 
 " No, it ain't." 
 
 "Yes, 'tis." 
 
 " Well, what about it? " said Muriel Penn. 
 
 " What about what? " asked Rose. 
 
 Then Monica thought of something else. Idiots these 
 girls were. Clank, clank, machine number three choking 
 again. Oh, how she hated number three. Then Ivy 
 Badger became more noticeable. 
 
 " Cheek, I call it. Why shouldn't we work overtime 
 if we like? " 
 
 " Motherly care for our little constitutions," said 
 Muriel Penn. 
 
 " I don't think," said Ivy. " But I shouldn't mind if 
 they'd treated the men same as us. Their Lordships 
 can work overtime if they want." 
 
 " It's a shame." 
 
 " Shame ! " repeated the shop. 
 
 Monica intervened. " Let's have a little less talking, 
 please," she said. 
 
 This was an unfortunate remark. The shop imme- 
 diately grew infuriated, and Ivy Badger, getting off her 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
 bench, stuck both her hands on her hips and cried: 
 " There'll be a lot more talking before this is done. 
 We're going on strike." 
 
 " Yes, we're going on strike! " shouted the shop, enthu- 
 siastically adopting the idea which had so far not 
 occurred to them. Monica found herself speechless, for 
 every girl flung down her scoop or kicked over her bench, 
 and all grouped themselves round the corpulent form of 
 Ivy Badger, who had climbed upon a table. 
 
 " Girls! " she shouted, " we've had enough of it. WeVe 
 had enough of their old buck. If you haven't seen that 
 notice I'll tell you what's in it: The men can work over- 
 time, and the girls have got to knock off at six. Is it 
 fair? " 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " Will you stand it? " 
 
 "No!" accompanied by stamping feet. 
 
 " Do you want Cottie to tell you when it's time to 
 go home to Ma? Or will you please yourselves? I tell 
 you I ain't come here to be prayed on and tucked up in 
 bed, and I don't want none of their protection. I know 
 the game. They're afraid we'll earn too much." 
 
 All the girls clapped their hands. 
 
 " Gives me the fair sick," said Ivy, with bitter irony, 
 " and before ten minutes are over we'll give Cottie the 
 fair sick. Come on ! let's get the others out." 
 
 Monica put out a hand as Ivy was about to jump to 
 the ground. 
 
 " Suppose you're against us," said Ivy, looking down 
 at her, ferociously. 
 
 Then, to her amazement, Monica found herself say- 
 ing: " No I don't think so." And still swayed by the 
 feeling that the girls had been unfairly treated, she was 
 surprised to find herself surrounded by a cheering crowd, 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 213 
 
 who hustled her along the gangway into the next shop. 
 It was a bewildering morning. Other centres of irrita- 
 tion existed, and by twelve o'clock almost every girl had 
 come out except half a dozen blacklegs who, as Ivy put 
 it, " might as well have come out with the others, for 
 they'd likely be in hospital next day." 
 
 Monica thought this affair lacked ferocity, for she had 
 a journalistic idea of strikes: meetings, sombre young 
 leaders with burning eyes, red flags. In fact the strike 
 was orderly. It culminated in an enormous meeting in 
 the canteen, which was at first addressed by a few junior 
 charge hands, but little by little resolved itself into one 
 enormous meeting that was being addressed by every- 
 body. Then the disturbance exhausted itself, and two 
 resolutions were passed more or less unanimously, the 
 opposition being disposed of by Muriel Penn, who 
 dragged her out by one ear. They amounted to two 
 demands, one for optional overtime, the other for the 
 recognition of a committee of shop stewards. Feverishly 
 Monica found herself elected steward for her shop. She 
 felt curiously proud, rather frightened, for she did not 
 know what this might involve. Also she was disturbed 
 by the sounds which the opposition was making in the 
 lavatory, where Muriel Penn and two others were con- 
 verting her under the cold-water tap. Then nothing hap- 
 pened. One o'clock, two o'clock came, and still nothing 
 happened. At last, at half-past two, Ivy came back, 
 looking like a dove who had lost her olive branch, with 
 a message that Mr. Cottenham, when asked to receive 
 the shop stewards, had said he would see them damned 
 first. Monica grew alarmed and inclined to resign her 
 position. She disliked the idea of belonging to a group 
 that Cottenham would see damned first. Then her pride 
 rose up, revealed to her that in this strike, which seemed 
 
214 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 foolish, mingled something splendid a loyalty, an hon- 
 est desire for freedom. Calling her colleagues together, 
 she informed them that she was going to see the men. 
 A few minutes later, filled with an exquisite sense of 
 treachery, she visited the boiler house. She expected to 
 find the men ribald and was surprised when a good many 
 decided to join the girls. They were nice men, she re- 
 flected, not larky young fellows, but good, solid men, 
 well over forty. She could not understand why the young 
 men were so cool about striking. 
 
 Then Ivy returned to Cottenham, and having been 
 refused admittance, had the audacity to cling to the 
 outer frame of his window and inform him that the men 
 were coming out. And the confusion increased. By 
 four o'clock the whole factory was at a standstill, and 
 the military guard began to patrol with an air of threat- 
 ening people in general and meditating spectacular at- 
 tacks. But it was only at tea time that, from Monica's 
 point of view, the situation grew interesting. The com- 
 mittee sat in the canteen, wondering what to do next, 
 when an angry hand opened the door and Cottenham 
 strode into the room. 
 
 There was a pause of expectancy, for Cottenham was 
 obviously angry. His was not bluster, but a cold anger, 
 and Monica wondered how she would feel if those blue 
 eyes, which she had always seen so soft, were ever to 
 look at her like that. She felt frightened and small, yet, 
 for the first time, she experienced the fulness of his 
 attraction. 
 
 "Look here," said Cottenham, "what do you think 
 you're up to, all of you? For one thing, do you know 
 what this strike's about? I'll bet there's not one knows. 
 Though, in these days I know it doesn't matter what a 
 strike's about. One just strikes. Girls who work seem 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 215 
 
 to need a change of manager, just as girls who don't work 
 need a change of hats. That's the story of the modern 
 strike. But I've come to tell you that it's no use your 
 sending me another deputation. I don't mean to receive 
 it. If you've got a grievance, put it up through the 
 proper channel, namely, by personal application to the 
 manager. If you belong to a union, let your union come 
 to me. That's all. You may as well go home; you've 
 wasted your day." 
 
 Then, to her own surprise, Monica found herself on her 
 feet. " I don't see it at all," she said quietly. " We're 
 your employees; we've elected our shop stewards to rep- 
 resent us. We're here to put forward a grievance and," 
 she faltered, then with an effort added, " and you're here 
 to listen to us." 
 
 " I have nothing to add, Miss Oakley. If you and your 
 fellow stewards, as you choose to call yourselves, can't 
 understand what I've told you, I can't supply you with 
 the necessary intellectual machine which will enable you 
 to grasp my meaning. Again, good afternoon." 
 
 As soon as he had left the shop the committee ex- 
 changed stares, and broke up into two sections which 
 quarrelled vigorously, one side proposing that the sug- 
 gestion should be adopted, the other that everybody 
 should starve first. There was also a third section which 
 quarrelled with both of them for reasons which never 
 became clear. In the end complete confusion prevailed, 
 demonstrating that this was a properly constituted com- 
 mittee. But Monica carried away a wayward heart. 
 It was still a beating heart, and she wondered what 
 external force had compelled her to face and attack him. 
 She had found delight in this assault; it was as if she 
 had avenged her passing enthralment, vindicated herself 
 to herself. As she walked home she thought: " After all, 
 
216 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 he hasn't got me." She was revelling in the hypocrisy 
 of woman, setting up as a trophy the freedom of her 
 mind, against the inevitable surrender of her instinct, 
 while refusing to acknowledge that no such trophy could 
 actually balance the surrender. But all that evening she 
 was proud, as if Merlin had sought to charm her and 
 she had snatched away his wand. 
 
 Later only, when she tried to sleep and could not, did 
 a new mood descend upon her as a cloud that blots out 
 the moon. She understood better this sudden little strike 
 which had seemed so burlesque. Of course it was a 
 petulant affair, but in their incoherent way the girls 
 were standing together against injustice. They were sick 
 of being protected against their own bodily weakness; 
 they claimed to work as long as they liked and take the 
 consequences; they claimed that no restriction should 
 be put upon women that was not also put upon men. 
 Violently Monica felt that this was right, and suddenly 
 she understood the militant suffragettes of two years 
 before, whom she had thought absurd. They had not 
 been absurd; they had been heroic, because they had 
 suffered, even died, for an idea. She parodied a quota- 
 tion as she remembered the woman who was killed stop- 
 ping a horse at the Derby : " It is sometimes expedient 
 that a woman should die before the people." 
 
 Then she thought of Cottenham; she knew he must 
 be very angry with her. She supposed that he would not 
 care for her any more. How cruel it all was! And yet 
 she could not stop. She knew that next day she must 
 go with her fellow stewards and face him again, until his 
 will or their will was broken. It was agony to think 
 that this industrial struggle must resemble their own 
 impulses; for the first time she saw that the time must 
 come when his desire must be repulsed or her own resist- 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 217 
 
 ance bent bent by her own weakness. She wept a little, 
 and when at last she felt sleepy, she had to turn her pillow 
 over because one side was wet with tears. 
 
 The three days that followed were all confusion. The 
 stewards, gaining purposefulness from their own activity, 
 insisted on attending the factory, where they knitted and 
 ate in the dirty area, and struggled against a new, dan- 
 gerous current, namely boredom. This was their first 
 strike, and if only they had been ridden down by cavalry 
 they would have felt that it was all right, but the man- 
 agement took no notice of them. 
 
 Irvine had many interviews with Cottenham. 
 
 " We can't exactly give in," said the Manager. 
 
 " No, of course not," said Cottenham. " If they don't 
 all go back on Monday morning, we'll close the factory 
 until we can get a new lot of labour. We'll import a 
 thousand Irish girls and their priests to tell them they'll 
 go to hell if they don't put up the output." 
 
 Irvine shook his head. " No, it wouldn't do. The 
 Ministry wouldn't let us: you'd have the Workers' Union 
 calling out the girls all over the country." 
 
 " Well, I won't see the stewards," said Cottenham. 
 
 " Oh, of course not," said Irvine. " Still, one might 
 compromise." 
 
 And a compromise came suddenly. It was a, typically 
 Irvinian compromise. The manager sent a message to 
 the effect that he couldn't see the shop stewards' com- 
 mittee, but he could see individual stewards. As the 
 composition of the committee was vague, it found itself 
 in conference to elect representatives who were not recog- 
 nised. They met a new Cottenham, less aggressive be- 
 cause he thought he was getting his own way. After he 
 had made a rather vague statement to explain once more 
 why he could not meet the shop stewards, Monica sud- 
 
218 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 denly remembered his syndicalist speeches. She was 
 about to cry out: " But you believe in this sort of thing! " 
 then suddenly grew older as she understood that few 
 men believe in anything except for others. And she told 
 herself: "Can I use the knowledge I acquired in a way 
 I could not reveal? Would it be fair? " To a girl of 
 her kind the idea of fairness was so paralysing that she 
 took no part in the conference: she belonged to a class 
 for whom fairness consists in abstaining from doing things 
 rather than in doing them. So, a little later, she was 
 surprised to find that the conference had compromised, 
 again in an Irvinian way: 
 
 " Well," said Irvine, rubbing his hands vigorously, 
 " all's well. You agree that there shall be no optional 
 overtime, but we lengthen the shift to ten hours and give 
 you the option of working less." 
 
 There was a great deal of cheering, and Ivy Badger, 
 forgetting her august position, leapt on the table and 
 bellowed: " Three cheers for old Cottie! " and would all 
 the ladies join 'er in the well-known hymn: " For Cott's 
 a jolly good fellow." 
 
 At half-past six Monica flung herself on her bed. She 
 had defied the man whom perhaps she loved, and this 
 uncertainty made the results of her defiance complex: 
 if they quarrelled she would not feel justified in her 
 unhappiness. She wondered even whether she was un- 
 happy because all through the strike he had not been 
 near Castle Hill. Every night, as she went in, she had 
 stopped for a moment on the steps, fearing and hoping 
 that he would emerge from the shadow of the Park. 
 But he did not come. Did he never mean to come again? 
 It would be better if he did not. But he must come. 
 For some minutes she lay without thoughts, then sprang 
 up. No, she could bear it no more. If she must suffer, 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 219 
 
 then let it not be between walls. In that moment, like 
 the sick king, she ached for the sea, and thought she 
 might be healed if, for a moment, she could feel the soft 
 marsh winds, hear the starlings rise from Winchelsea 
 Copse, making the sound of a sail that fills in the breeze. 
 She ran downstairs, hatless ; she would go to the Medway ; 
 at least that was water. But as the door closed behind 
 her and she stared at the high, tarnished moon, like a 
 pan of copper in a peacock-blue sky, she found that the 
 old expectancy had come upon her. She stood upon the 
 steps and gazed at the black Park, the pavement gilt by 
 the blood-red moon. For a long time she waited, waited 
 with an increasing security and a dumb acquiescence. 
 She was not at all surprised when the figure of a man 
 detached itself from the blackness and ran towards her. 
 
 " Open the door, quick," he said, as he seized her by 
 the wrist. " Quick, we'll be seen." 
 
 With trembling fingers she opened the door. As he 
 followed up the stairs she ached with fear. Perhaps 
 some one had heard. What would they think? 
 
 Then they were face to face in her sitting room where 
 the lamp still burned. They stared at each other with 
 unblinking eyes, as if still testing their strength, and she 
 nerved herself to bear his reproaches. He would call 
 her disloyal; he could convince her of her own folly; he 
 would throw her class up at her and make a weapon of 
 her recreancy. But Cottenham did nothing of the kind. 
 He stepped forward, seized her by the shoulders and 
 crushed her to him with a reckless brutality that was 
 terrible and exquisite. Her mind was ready, bent as a 
 steel spring, but she had forgotten her sensations; sur- 
 prised by the embrace, her marshalled arguments were 
 stifled in fumous pall of her physical emotion. And Cot- 
 tenham, with that deep intuition that is powerful in ter- 
 
220 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 rorism and narcotic in charm, loaded her with caresses 
 that bewildered and distracted her, that awoke responses 
 she thought herself incapable of, that sickened her by 
 oversweetness, stimulated her to rivalry. At last, with 
 a. long, shuddering sigh, she flung her arms about his 
 neck, and her face was wet with tears ; her fate hung over 
 her as the wings of a condor darkening the valley; she 
 stood, she felt, stark and disarmed among the ruins of 
 her will. 
 
 But as her being surrendered she felt the man stiffen 
 and withdraw ; under her drooping lids she saw a change 
 come over that face where a second before the swollen, 
 passionate veins had stood out. It grew mask^like, then 
 uncertain, as if he shrank from his own victory, feared 
 to take its spoils. She did not understand, and yet she 
 felt this sudden fear in him; confusedly she guessed that 
 she was offering him all that he wanted, more than he 
 dared take. So, suddenly, she broke away, and flinging 
 herself upon the couch uncontrollably wept. After a 
 while he awkwardly came and stood beside her, caressed 
 her hair as if he were asking her to forgive him for not 
 having dared. At last she looked at him with wet eyes, 
 so distraught that she did not even wonder whether her 
 eyes were red or if her nose was swollen, without caring 
 whether she were ugly. 
 
 " Go away," she murmured. " No, Frank, I'm not 
 angry. But do go now." 
 
 He went, and there was apology even in his walk. As 
 he went down the stairs he thought: " And I did not 
 even leave my coat in her grasp." 
 
 Monica did not sleep that night. She was growing 
 old with a lucid swiftness that appalled her. She un- 
 derstood the drifting doom that was laid on them, 
 the incapacity to part, the incapacity to dare perils 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 
 
 which neither* could face because neither cared enough, 
 the endless shock of ungratified desires which must 
 always lie between them, not only because he could not 
 be her husband, but because the war which had seized 
 them both, their energy, their time, which locked 
 them in a given place, deprived them of material 
 time to give nobility to any satisfaction they might 
 steal. 
 
 " There's no way out," thought Monica. " It can't go 
 on. And it can't alter. We can't even take in freedom 
 a day of each other. It can't go on." 
 
 Next morning, as the factory gates opened, Monica 
 entered the unit foreman's office and obtained her imme- 
 diate release on the plea that her mother was very ill. 
 Half an hour later she was in the train. 
 
 She could hardly understand herself. In that railway 
 carriage, all alone, she was so unhappy when she thought 
 of happiness foregone, and yet immensely relieved. She 
 had escaped herself. With a pang she remembered that 
 Cottenham had said: "Nothing's as good as falling in 
 love except falling out." Yes, she had fallen out of love. 
 Her literal mind made her think: " It leaves a gap, some- 
 how, like a tooth." But, feeling tears near, she sought 
 for something with which to fill that gap: she would 
 devote herself to her father. She never ought to have 
 left him. He loved her and needed her, and her mother 
 could not be to him quite what she was. Nor Louise 
 either. An exquisite sense of sacrifice invaded her; she 
 almost believed that she was giving up love because her 
 old father needed her companionship. It was volup- 
 tuous. 
 
 A few nights later, as she stood before the cheval glass, 
 a tall, thin figure with pale mauve auras round her grey 
 eyes, in her gown that fell in soft folds of oyster-grey 
 
222 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 chiffon, she played for a moment with her chatelaine of 
 silver and turquoise. 
 
 " Strange old Monica," she thought, " strange new 
 Monica." Or rather, was she not something between 
 new and old? Her skin had lost its old dead pallor, and 
 yet the T. N. T. stain was beginning to fade from deep 
 yellow into a creaminess that insensibly blended with 
 the whiteness of her breast. 
 
 The fading of that colour symbolised the fading of that 
 memory which, with daily fainter hands, still gripped 
 at her heart. 
 
 IX 
 
 " So," Sylvia reflected, " peace didn't come this Christ- 
 mas after all! " For a moment her mind dwelt on the 
 entertainment Knapenden Place had just given to the 
 wounded. Mother had been very much in it, trying to 
 buck up the poor chaps ; one of them had told her that he 
 was willing to go back but wasn't in a hurry. Sylvia 
 smiled: mother was so dead keen. Not like father; it 
 seemed to upset him. Silly ! of course men had to fight. 
 " It had been rather fun," she thought, and for a moment 
 remembered the boxing film which had delighted the men ; 
 what a lamb Bombardier Wells was! She had taken to 
 one of the wounded, too, a man with no legs. Such a 
 sport! She wondered what the stumps looked like, a hor- 
 ribly interesting idea. Yes, the war wasn't so bad. 
 
 Christmas, 1916! Over two years! She wondered 
 whether next year would see the end. Then she read over 
 again a letter from March, one of his queer, frightened, 
 desirous letters. Strange boy ! She thought of other men 
 who were amusing her in town, an airman, and a fearfully 
 dashing Italian officer. Good fun, both of them. But 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 223 
 
 the shrinking of March attracted her more. He had not 
 yet told her that he loved her, but in every letter he spoke 
 of her husband, enviously, with a hint of fear, as if telling 
 her that Jervaulx stood between him and his object. She 
 bared her little sharp teeth. It was good to be loved in 
 that racked way. A few nights ago the Italian officer 
 had kissed her in a taxi as he drove her home. What a 
 fight that had been! She did not dislike him for it. 
 But still her thoughts turned to the slim, shy boy, and she 
 remembered that week-end in May when she dragged 
 down to her lips the handsome head, as one pulls down the 
 branch of a magnolia to bury one's face in the soft, 
 scented flesh of its bloom. 
 
 X 
 
 SIR HUGH walked along Pall Mall. A hard, frosty, 
 January day; the sharp wind that swept the grit on the 
 dry, zinc-like pavements made him retract within him- 
 self, and the smooth grey sky that hung low over his head 
 depressed him. London was losing its colour, for now 
 the afternoon papers were no longer allowed to show 
 placards. And he was pleasantly conscious of his self- 
 consciousness. He thought : " Anatole France is right ; 
 meditation is a peaceful orgy. It's natural enough. 
 Wasn't it Descartes said: ' I think, therefore I am? ' But 
 after all I am only a chimpanzee brought up-to-date by 
 time. Anatole is right; I am merely a meditative chim- 
 panzee." 
 
 These hard grey streets of London formed an incredible 
 contrast to the warm coloured scene he had just left, 
 Mrs. Van Oedelem's reception on the occasion of her 
 daughter's marriage with David Marchmont. Such a 
 noisy affair, such a crowd, London deprived of its ordi- 
 
224 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 nary pleasures, and making sport of a wedding; most of 
 the Belgian Legation, some Foreign Office men, lots of 
 uniforms, smart girls got up as Red Cross nurses (so 
 much more becomingly clad than the V. A. D.'s) , one or 
 two as land girls, very earnest all of them, but obviously 
 acting in private theatricals. " The theatre of war, of 
 course," thought Sir Hugh with tender irony. It all felt 
 so artificial. Even the grim darkness of Mr. Vander- 
 velde failed to solidify a scene where Mr. Balfour, benev- 
 olent, negligent, amiable, short-sighted, circled the groups, 
 throwing out an aura of infantine satisfaction, and of 
 wondering what it was all about. 
 
 At the corner of Waterloo Place Sir Hugh paused as 
 cars, one after the other, veered out of Pall Mall towards 
 the north ; his eyes registered a picture that almost at once 
 vanished. He had a vision of Sylvia in her A. S. C. 
 uniform. She was driving a car with large plate-glass 
 windows, in which sat a young officer. Odd! He was 
 sure it was Sylvia, with the artistic hat dragged over the 
 red hair, the new Sylvia, Private Jervaulx, A. S. C., M. T., 
 in a fancy stock, and an expensive non-regulation coat 
 and skirt cut in officer's khaki. On duty of course. Some 
 War Office man, Sir Hugh supposed, but the sight dis- 
 contented him. When Sylvia joined up he had associ- 
 ated her with big W. D. lorries, with purposeful cars 
 careering through slummy roads, laden with shell or 
 explosives. To see her drive a little man in a large car 
 such a polished car, such a polished driver private the- 
 atricals again. Also this familiarity between his daugh- 
 ter and an unknown man offended his puritanism. Joy 
 riding! 
 
 Then he chid himself: " Don't be Victorian, old fellow. 
 That's an 1860 idea. Times have changed." Then Sir 
 Hugh began to regret that times should change. He was 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 225 
 
 getting old; to see his period evanesce was a little like 
 seeing the grey spread through the hair of a loved woman. 
 He thought: "When one cares for a woman, one always 
 thinks of her at the age when one first met her: it takes 
 years to make one realise that she has grown older. I 
 suppose it's like that with one's period. It feels like 1895, 
 and yet it isn't 1895." Vaguely he realised that his world 
 was disappearing, that the new woman was getting still 
 newer, curt, capable, independent. What would she be 
 up to after the war when she had found out that she 
 was fit for any trade able to resist men? " A grand 
 rumpus, that's what they were in for." That day he did 
 not like the idea of a rumpus, which meant that he was 
 growing old. 
 
 Everything told him that he was growing old. Not 
 only was he afraid of the change in woman, but his steady 
 old banker's mind pondered the coming War Loan, for 
 which Mr. Bonar Law wanted a thousand millions. A 
 thousand millions! Though the daily expenditure had 
 already reached five millions, the figures shocked Sir 
 Hugh. This piling up of debt bewildered him: he still 
 visualised wealth as land ; he had no proper conception of 
 the capacities of industry, of the possibilities of trade. 
 He did not know the North Country well, and so there 
 arose in him no hope that Britain would catch up these 
 enormous liabilities. He saw her sinking deeper and 
 deeper into debt, and his pessimism extended to Germany, 
 for the latter's industrial powers were also half foreign 
 to him. " If we win," he thought, " it's all very well 
 saying she'll pay. Can she pay? " 
 
 But behind these uncertainties lay something that dis- 
 turbed him still more: other people thought it was all 
 right, young men in the Treasury, hustling business men 
 on the Board of Control. They couldn't be wrong, all of 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
 them. They made money; they must have brains. He 
 felt left behind in another period. 
 
 Stephen's last letter had upset him, too : Quin had been 
 killed at Beaumont Hamel, and this seemed to have 
 hardened Stephen. " Quin's gone West," he wrote. " They 
 got him as he was coming back from the 0. Pip. Old 
 Quin's gone. Doesn't matter if it's to heaven or hell, it'll 
 be an improvement. Damn the world! I hope to have a 
 hand in blowing it up when this job's done." 
 
 Later, at his club, he found no greater assurance as he 
 joined the little group which by the fireplace awaits din- 
 ner time. They were talking about Wilson. 
 
 " He's a true Christian," said a fat man whom Sir Hugh 
 did not know. " Always ready to turn the other ship to 
 the U-boat." 
 
 The others laughed, and Sir Hugh gladly shook hands 
 with Billy Bridge, his cousin, who had just come in, quiet 
 and grey. The men were still talking. 
 
 " You've heard his latest stunt," said another. " Peace 
 without victory. That'd be a pretty ending to a war like 
 this. Peace without victory! " he repeated scornfully. 
 " I wonder when Wilson will be tired of seeing women 
 and children drowned: if a Zepp were to drop a bomb on 
 him we'd hear less about peace without victory." 
 
 " Do you think it's as personal as all that? " asked Sir 
 Hugh. They all stared at him. " I mean, don't you think 
 Wilson is working in a different field of ideas, that 
 what he wants is a result so indecisive that when we make 
 peace everybody will realise that war doesn't profit a 
 nation? " 
 
 " Well, if that's his idea," said the fat man, " it isn't 
 ours. We haven't gone into this war for high-falutin' 
 reasons. We've gone into it to lick Germany." 
 
 " And when you've licked Germany? " 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 
 
 " How do you mean? " 
 
 " Well, what next? " said Sir Hugh. " What shall we 
 do then? Make ready for another war? Go on arming, 
 and struggling, and scheming, world without end? " 
 
 " Certainly not," said the other man. " By the time 
 we've won this war Germany will have had such a sick- 
 ener of it that she'll never go to war again. She's got to 
 suffer and she's got to pay, before she changes her mind. 
 That's why we want a proper blockade, not Asquith's 
 penny toy blockade, but the real thing. They talk of 
 women and children! It's a lot they care about ours. 
 We've got to get them to the point where there's hardly 
 a German under forty who's not either dead, blind or 
 crippled, when the civilians are going about dressed in 
 potato sacks, and rags tied round their feet instead of 
 boots. I'm no harder-hearted than anybody, but if we 
 can get Germany down so that a million babies cry for 
 milk and can't get it, and when so many of them die of 
 cold that they have to shovel them in lumps into the same 
 grave, then Germany'll have learnt her lesson." 
 
 There was silence. Everybody agreed, but everybody 
 disliked having this said. An immense repulsion rose in 
 Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Ye s, I see," he said coldly. " But I suppose it's 
 quite clear that nobody else ever made a war except Ger- 
 many? that there are no jingoes in France and in 
 Japan? I suppose Mr. Leo Maxse, and the Navy Lea- 
 guers, and Mr. Hughes are all sucking doves? I suppose 
 we keep a fleet as a little girl keeps a doll's house, and 
 that the British Empire came together by itself, drawn 
 by our good government? Funny! I suppose we used 
 our fighting forces to take India and Canada from the 
 French? I suppose we didn't really want Thibet and 
 half Persia when we struck a bargain with the amiable 
 
228 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Tsar ten years ago, and handed the other half of Persia 
 to his gentle rule? " 
 
 Then Billy Bridge gave his little harsh laugh. Sir 
 Hugh followed him into a corner, while the men drew 
 closer round the fireplace. He caught the word " paci- 
 fist." 
 
 For a moment Bridge looked at him with a humorous 
 glint in his hard eyes. Sir Hugh's cousin was a very 
 good-looking, clean-shaven man of about fifty, tall, 
 aloofly elegant. He was a barrister, and could be taken 
 for nothing else. 
 
 " I say, old chap," he remarked, " you're going strong, 
 you know. Those fellows think you're a pacifist." 
 
 " They make me sick," said Sir Hugh gloomily. 
 
 " Of course they make you sick. All humanity makes 
 one sick. In war time especially, one feels like Byron: 
 one hates most people and dislikes the others. But really 
 you mustn't talk like this. In war time one sets up a sort 
 of fiction that everything one does is right, and that 
 everything one's allies do is right, and one's blameless, 
 and injured, and all that sort of tosh, and the enemies are 
 just vile." 
 
 " It's not true," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 Bridge smiled. " My dear fellow, if both sides knew 
 each other's point of view they wouldn't hate each other, 
 and then they wouldn't fight." 
 
 " Billy, do you want them to fight? " 
 
 The barrister smiled. " Want them to fight? I don't 
 care. It's their nature. Like Irish terriers. I don't say 
 my country's right or wrong; I don't think any country 
 can be right or wrong. But if my country's going into a 
 dog-fight, I may as well see to it that my dog wins." 
 
 Sir Hugh sighed. " I don't know what's the matter 
 with me. I didn't know I had things like that in my mind, 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 
 
 but all this hating and all this lying about the other side, 
 and all this bragging about our beastly selves it seems 
 to stir up. It's rather rotten of me, I suppose, with 
 Roumania cracking up, and we're doing no good on the 
 Somme either. But I can't help it." 
 
 His cousin did not reply directly. Then, irrelevantly, 
 he said: " Do you know that Angus Cawston has joined 
 the Drug Control Office? " 
 " Oh! what is he doing?" 
 
 " He's a director of something. Antiseptics, I think." 
 
 " What ever does old Angus know about antiseptics? " 
 
 " Quite enough for a Government department. Dear 
 
 old Angus! He is enjoying it. I told him he'd been 
 
 scenting his handkerchief with lysol the other day, and, 
 
 would you believe it, I think he does." 
 
 They laughed, and Sir Hugh did not that day recover 
 his passionate moment. Indeed, in the train next morn- 
 ing, he was depressed rather than indignant. Everybody 
 seemed depressed. A farmer, who talked to him at Ash- 
 ford while they waited by the Hastings train, growled and 
 snarled at the Government which had just fixed the price 
 of wheat and potatoes. He, too, was hating. Then ten 
 men, headed by a corporal, marched on to the platform in 
 full kit. They wore steel helmets. Their lines, so neat 
 and close, their air of compression and perfect fitness for 
 their work, seemed to Sir Hugh beautiful. Quick and 
 sharp they clanked by him, grim under their brown tin 
 hats. Figures of romance! But marionettes upon a 
 string twitched by an excess profiteer. 
 
 XI 
 
 SHE was gone. Cottenham wondered why he felt re- 
 lief. It hurt him that Monica should have gone like this, 
 without saying good-bye. Yet it was a tribute to his 
 
230 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 attraction for her. No doubt she had not trusted herself 
 to say good-bye to him. Gone! He sneered at himself: 
 " I suppose I ought to feel that she's taken a bit of my 
 heart away with her. But though I wish she hadn't gone, 
 I suppose I'm glad she has. If she'd stayed ..." He 
 did not know what would have happened if she had 
 stayed. Passionate visions formed in his mind, and then 
 his sense of loss grew more precise. He remembered little 
 things, how the red-brown hair curled away behind her 
 ears, the slow droop of her eyelids, and the laxness of her 
 when he caressed her. He clenched his hands in an 
 ecstacy of imaginative possession. How exquisite she 
 would have been, all surrendered, so languid, and fearful, 
 and white! He bit his lips as he realised his baulked 
 desire. He played some Debussy, but " Masques " was 
 too light, and he found Bach fail him. How he hated 
 fugues that night. Beastly old mathematician! Bach 
 ought to have been a Cambridge don. It was by chance 
 he found the music he needed, a short piece which he 
 played over and over again until at last Julia knocked at 
 the door. 
 
 "Frank! " she cried, " could you possibly play some- 
 thing else? You've been playing that over and over 
 again for half an hour. It gives me the creeps. What is 
 it?" 
 
 His fingers still lingered on the slow notes that are un- 
 earthly, blue notes and green ones. He said: " It's ' Gal- 
 lows.' Raval, you know." He went on playing. 
 
 " Don't for heaven's sake, don't! " cried Julia. " What's 
 the matter with you? " 
 
 Without answering he played again the short piece 
 where a cold little wind sports through the dead man's 
 hair, slowly raising one by one each dry lock on the head 
 with staring eyes that the crows have half picked out, 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 231 
 
 while the wise, detached spider weaves a silken stock 
 about the corpse's drawn neck. 
 
 Then, suddenly, he jumped up and with a gesture of 
 appeal flung himself into Julia's long arms. He wanted 
 to pillow his head upon that dark breast, upon any 
 breast. Without understanding anything except that he 
 was unhappy, Julia drew him close and stroked the hair 
 where it grew hard and springy upon his neck. 
 
 " Come along," he said suddenly, " let's go and have a 
 look at Rupert." 
 
 Rupert helped him a great deal in those months. The 
 fat baby held for him an appeal that Lucretia and Diana 
 had not. It was his son. It was himself. It was his 
 vanity of survival. So an easier home life formed about 
 him. He sat with Julia before dinner now, criticising her 
 frocks, and invariably brought back the Evening Stand- 
 ard, so that she should not miss her daily dose of Cori- 
 sande. Everything conspired to help him: his work 
 became more exacting as the orders increased, as labour 
 grew more restless and needed to be soothed; Julia, better 
 assured that he loved her, loved him more; Rupert re- 
 turned his passion and slept in his arms in soft, scented 
 abandonment. Yet, all through, ran an aching sense of 
 need. It was as if he had lost adventure, being precipi- 
 tated from Romantic Crag into Everyday Valley. He 
 lay in the grasp of everlasting hope. 
 
 Unable to suffer any more this sense of emptiness, he 
 went up to London to see his friend Lawford, whom he 
 hated and loved, because Lawford had always done every- 
 thing better than he had, let him feel it, yet compelled 
 him to admire him. He told him the whole story, to 
 which Lawford merely replied: 
 
 "Drop it. You'll drop it when you've done it; why 
 not drop it before? A girl of that kind, unless she were 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
 married, of course, will only get you into an awful mess. 
 If you want some fun why don't you run a jolly little girl 
 in town? But as for this drop it." 
 
 Cottenham truthfully replied: " Drop it, that's all very 
 well, but somehow it's not dropping me" 
 
 XII 
 
 IT was indeed Sylvia whom Sir Hugh had glimpsed, 
 driving an unknown officer up Waterloo Place. The big 
 car found its way through the traffic rather too fast, as 
 if guided by an impatient hand. Contemptuous of all 
 speed limits it honked and whizzed round Regent's Park, 
 along the Finchley Road, pulling up with a jerk near 
 Wembley Park. Sylvia turned towards the open window 
 and said: 
 
 " You can come and sit next to me now, if you like." 
 With a response in which lay a little anxiety, Oliver 
 March walked along the footboard and got into the 
 vacant seat. As he sat down, the car leapt forward, 
 faster than ever. Sylvia's eyes were intent upon the 
 road, as if she were careless of her passenger. For a 
 moment the young soldier absorbed himself in the con- 
 templation of her profile, the steady brown eye, the short, 
 well-moulded, rather fleshy nose, and the red-salved lips 
 that pouted above the blunt chin. She was all desirable 
 and yet apart, too big, too strong; her heavy gauntleted 
 hands held the steering wheel with an air of certitude, as 
 she might hold the steering wheel of her own life. As 
 she craned forward, looking ahead upon the frozen white 
 road, he thought of a Roman charioteer driving to 
 he did not like to think where, though his heart beat as 
 he realised that some bourne they must attain, some 
 Circean isle where men might be muted into beasts, or a 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 233 
 
 coast more glamorous still where a Dido would sue to an 
 Aeneas without wisdom. This frightened him so that he 
 insisted upon talking. Did she like the A. S. C.? Were 
 her hours very long? What sort of jobs did she come in 
 for? Oh? Driving old generals mostly? Cushy! Ever 
 thought of flying? Exciting rather. Hadn't been up? 
 What it felt like? Oh, well, at the start, as if you were 
 leaving your boots behind. He began to describe his 
 flight, to which Sylvia answered only: " Very interesting, 
 but not for me ; it's too risky." 
 
 " Too risky ! " said the young man incredulously. 
 " Why, I'd have thought you'd have been just the girl to 
 take a risk." 
 
 " No," said Sylvia with a smile that uncovered her lit- 
 tle sharp teeth. " Perhaps I'll fly when I'm forty, but 
 life's too interesting now to risk it for a short sensation." 
 
 He did not reply. He understood her. After a mo- 
 ment he began to talk of his last billet, of a humorous 
 private who insisted on consulting him as to what he 
 should do, the man having unfortunately engaged him- 
 self to two girls; he even tried to talk about what was 
 on at the theatres. 
 
 At last, as they reached Chesham, Sylvia said: " Seems 
 to me you're making conversation." 
 
 He looked at her with wide blue eyes in which swam 
 all the miseries of his childhood ; with loving malignancy 
 she increased his confusion by gripping his wrist suddenly 
 in her gauntleted hand. 
 
 They had passed the day together. Contemptuous of 
 rules, Sylvia had insisted upon snatching him up for a 
 run in the Government car. March had vaguely thought 
 of a matinee, and, who knows? of a kiss in the cab as he 
 drove her back somewhere, a kiss that should linger on 
 his lips during his leave, which he must devote to his 
 
234 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 people. At bottom he was afraid of missing the evening 
 express to the North. But Sylvia had proved irresistible. 
 
 " I'll see you get to your people, baby," she answered 
 to his timid objections. " If we miss that train I'll drive 
 you to Northampton to-night. Unless, of course, there's 
 another girl you want to see." 
 
 " Sylvia! How can you! " 
 
 Sylvia laughed. He had said, " How can you ! " like a 
 girl. He was adorable, she thought, so tall, so sinewy, 
 yet so unspoilt. They mustn't spoil him, she thought, 
 with a tenderness in which mingled her own desire to 
 bruise this creature too gentle. 
 
 They were alone in the coffee-room of the "Crown." 
 Round them the little town lay entirely silent, as if 
 hardened by the frost. Sylvia stood against the fire- 
 place, hands in pockets, feet apart, like a man, and 
 looked down seriously at the long figure in the armchair. 
 They spoke very little at tea, ate and drank quickly. 
 They tried to laugh at the public-house parlour, the 
 colossal sideboard, the vast cruet, an ash tray presented 
 by Cerebos, at the pictures of race horses chosen by 
 Dewar, but an oppression, as of necessary action, hung 
 over both. March seemed to feel it, for suddenly bend- 
 ing, he seized Sylvia's hand. " Sylvia," he murmured, 
 "Sylvia ..." 
 
 " Well? " she said. " Is that all you've got to say? " 
 
 "I often say it," he replied, " over and over again, like 
 a song." 
 
 " And what's the end of your song? " asked Sylvia. 
 
 " Oh, don't you know? Just Sylvia." 
 
 "Oh, don't you think one might say with Cyrano: 
 1 That's rather short, young man? ' One might have said 
 well, many things." 
 
 He stared at her, not quite understanding: then, being 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 235 
 
 very young, and thinking as all young men that one can 
 with a caress cut the Gordian knot of a woman's per- 
 plexity, he stood up and seizing her by both shoulders 
 sought her lips. He was amazed to find himself repulsed, 
 and while she smiled up at him, the back of her hand 
 firm against his chin, he tried to understand: " Didn't 
 she want him to kiss her? Why had she kissed him in 
 May? Of course, everybody knew women were queer." 
 But he was not secure enough, had learnt too little from 
 a couple of shame-faced experiences of the easy venality 
 open to undergraduates and second lieutenants, either to 
 mollify her by abasement, or to dominate her by brutal- 
 ity. So he let her go and sat down. 
 
 He did not realise that the most experienced lovelace 
 could have done nothing more subtle to attract this strong, 
 half-masculine woman. She clasped both hands between 
 her knees in an effort to resist her desire. She did not 
 love him. She had never loved anybody, but she had 
 made of conquest something like a sport; she was like 
 a man who likes eating grouse, but likes shooting them 
 still better. For a moment she was introspective. She 
 thought of her husband. She wondered where Andy was. 
 Up to his knees in water in some trench, very likely. 
 Seemed rather shabby carrying on like this with Andy 
 out there. She pushed the thought away. After all, it 
 wasn't her fault he was out there, and if he'd been in 
 England, no doubt she'd be doing the same thing. Well 
 then? It didn't do Andy any more harm, if it did him 
 any harm at all. It didn't matter where he was. What 
 sentiment some people talked! Then she thought only 
 of March. Yes, he invincibly attracted her, and the nov- 
 elty of sudden attraction held great power over her; for 
 Sylvia, though much courted ever since she was fifteen, 
 had taken very little notice of men until the war. The 
 
236 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 war had poured into her some intoxicating philter. She 
 had experienced and experienced again, hastily, con- 
 fusedly ; married Langrick in a month, known other com- 
 panionships, had mourned her first husband, found an- 
 other, and more companionships, some too full, some 
 superficial; made of her life a surging revue of men 
 seeking her favour, a crisscross of meetings and engage- 
 ments, promises, caresses, screaming laughter and swiftly 
 dried tears, as if the war had pulled out some safety pin, 
 and her emotions had begun to race beyond her govern- 
 ment. Suddenly, she stood up. 
 
 " We must go," she said abruptly. " I'll drive you 
 back." 
 
 Without a word March sat down by her side. The 
 night had already fallen, and as the car swiftly whirled 
 homewards he shrank from the solitude ; there was no life 
 in the flat, hard fields; and in the black-blue sky hung 
 low already a white strip of moon. " Was this all? " he 
 wondered. " Yes, of course it was all." Yet, the sen- 
 sitiveness of him that was like a raw wound told him this 
 could not be. As the white road curled and uncurled 
 towards the horizon, he knew, in an exquisiteness of fear, 
 the necessity to which he must submit. So he was not 
 surprised when at the edge of a narrow wood Sylvia pulled 
 up the car and got out. 
 
 "We've some time to spare," she said, and went 
 into the wood. After a moment he followed. It was a 
 wood of bare birch trees, whose thin trunks glistened in 
 the moonlight. As he followed Sylvia he was more con- 
 scious of the dead leaves that crackled under his feet 
 than of anything. In the middle of the wood she stopped, 
 turned; she was adorable to him, with her moonlit white 
 face, in which her eyes shone black as a sorcerer's magic 
 mirror. Then, suddenly, she put out both hands. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 237 
 
 " Oliver," she whispered thickly. 
 
 In delicious abandonment he took her in his arms, and 
 it was with a sense of surrender rather than of exultation 
 that he felt her hands close about him. 
 
 Strange thoughts fled through his brain as he lay in her 
 arms on the carpet of leaves, amazed joy, incredulity, the 
 face of the comic private, his old people in the north if 
 they knew ; the scent of that thick brown hair so near his 
 lips, and in the hard, still air, the loud crackle of those 
 dead silver leaves. 
 
 XIII 
 
 GOTTEN HAM stared at the little panoply over the 
 mantelpiece of his office, a grouping of rifle and machine- 
 gun ammunition, of little anti-aircraft rounds, all spring- 
 ing from a tank shell stuck into its brass cartridge 
 case. The day-shift was nearly done; he could hear the 
 girls talk louder. Soon there was a hubbub and a scraping 
 of feet in the change-house. Always the same thing. 
 How much longer would it go on? Here they were in 
 March, '17, and no forrader. 
 
 " I can't stick it any more," he thought. " We're get- 
 ting on for three years of this war, and there's no end to 
 it. Wonder if I'd feel better if I joined up? Yes, per- 
 haps. But I'm forty. No use blinking at it. It's no 
 catch being a second lute at forty. And there are other 
 things. You don't mind dying, Frank, old boy, but you 
 hate getting your feet wet. Bully beef wouldn't agree 
 with you. And you'd hate having to do without bath 
 salts, and packing your underclothes with Keatings. No, 
 it won't do. You may as well stay here and do a bigger 
 bit in the factory than you'd do out there messing about 
 at the base." 
 
238 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Then he brought his fist down upon the table: " I 
 can't bear it. Damn her. I thought I'd got rid of her." 
 He seized a sheet of paper, began to write, then flung his 
 pen down, and putting the unfinished letter in his pocket 
 left the factory. 
 
 XIV 
 
 MONICA sat in Sir Hugh's study. Before her lay a 
 number of letters on which her father had pencilled in- 
 structions for reply. Her chin upon her hand, she 
 looked at the letter before her. She had just read it for 
 the second time. Certain phrases, paragraphs, filled her 
 mind: 
 
 " . . . One thinks one can get away, escape from life. 
 One can, perhaps; one can shut oneself up in a monastery; 
 one can go and shoot big game in East Africa., like the 
 romantic heroes of shall we say Miss Braddon? One 
 can take on so much work that there's no time left except 
 to sleep. Yes, one can escape from life, but one can't 
 escape from oneself." 
 
 " Yes, he was right." Monica knew that she had not 
 escaped: she'd only got out on ticket of leave. 
 
 " I've thought of you, and thought of you, and blessed 
 you for going away, because I've thought it was better for 
 you, and better for me, and, think what you will, I've 
 done nothing, and said nothing, and wanted nothing that 
 wasn't for your happiness. Other people might not say 
 so, moral people, but moral people don't understand 
 morality any better than Christians understand religion. 
 And I've cursed you for leaving me. And I've wept for 
 you, and screamed for you. I've written to you and I've 
 torn up the letters. I've come in the car at night to your 
 own lodge gate. And to forget you I've done more than I 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 239 
 
 dare tell you. And I can't forget you. Ah! if it had 
 only been, perhaps I might forget you, but a man can't 
 forget the future. 
 
 " I write you this letter from Bull's Field in the fore- 
 man's shanty. Do you remember? This is March, and 
 from the moist earth thousands of little green spears are 
 shooting. There are five primroses and nine bluebells on 
 the bank nearest the Medway. And the little oaks have 
 grown. Do you remember? " 
 
 Monica clasped both hands on her breast. This re- 
 current " do you remember " raised in her an intolerable 
 emotion. But she must go on. For a moment she exam- 
 ined her present life: secretary to her father. How she 
 loved him ! Never had Sir Hugh shown such sweetness 
 as in these, the days of his melancholy. She was doing 
 something; she was a secretary, and busy enough. Her 
 mother, too, put forward claims, and Monica found many 
 hours a day filled by Lady Oakley's economy campaign. 
 But she had that day walked to Udimore copse where 
 also the primroses and bluebells were shooting, where the 
 humid scent of spring rose from the crowding moss, from 
 the trees quickening into life. The ewes were leading 
 across the fields lambs so young that they tottered ; there 
 were faint bleatings in the air, and the birds already were 
 filling it with lovers' calls. She bent down to the letter 
 eyes that were misty: 
 
 "... Come back. You must come back, not because 
 I need you, not because you need me but because we have 
 already come together, long ago, and have given birth to 
 a being made of cloud, crowned with the myrtle of my de- 
 sire, with the roses of your lips. Now that being is dis- 
 embodied, half with you, half with me. Come back, 
 Monica, and at one look of your eyes that are grey and 
 alive like running water, it shall live again, and it shall 
 
240 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 dance for us, so light that under it not a blade of grass 
 will bend, in its garment of golden cloud, under its crown 
 of myrtle and roses . . . ." 
 
 XV 
 
 MAUDWESTCOTT had not long maintained her senti- 
 mental widowhood. After a few weeks of drama, during 
 which Lady Oakley was exasperated by enlarged blue 
 eyes which gazed at her mournfully, while the maid did 
 her hair, Westcott had completely forgotten Sutton. She 
 had wept the dead footman, written to his commanding 
 officer for a lock of his hair, received in reply a pipe in an 
 advanced stage of decrepitude; then she lost the pipe and 
 all memory of Sutton. Soon Mrs. Marsden was holding 
 conferences with Lee in the housekeeper's room as to the 
 behaviour of that hussy: " The poor young fellow hardly 
 cold in his grave, and she gets off with Mr. Temple, a 
 married man too." 
 
 This was exaggerating. Westcott had not gone off with 
 Temple, not so much because the chauffeur adored his 
 young wife as because intrigue at Knapenden Place car- 
 ried so much publicity that it was almost impossible. So 
 nothing precise could be fixed on the couple, except that 
 Westcott had developed an incomprehensible interest in 
 motors. She talked about learning to drive a car, and 
 joining the A. S. C., but the other servants hardly thought 
 it necessary that she should seek theoretical information 
 by shutting herself up in the garage with Temple, and 
 always wanting to put her head down to the bonnet at the 
 same time as did he. 
 
 There was Keele, too, who in December had earned for 
 Knapenden its first military medal. Now his old father, 
 still resentful and ashamed, had to own with a sort of rage 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 241 
 
 that the boy was justifying himself, for he had obtained 
 the Distinguished Service Cross, and been made a ser- 
 geant. The young soldier did not forget the flaxen-haired 
 jade. Almost every week, in answer to her occasional 
 misspelt, blotchy communications, there came to her a 
 letter from the front, carefully written, as if in an office, a 
 quiet, cheerful letter from which the young man excluded 
 horrors; he courted her without rhetoric, as if determined 
 to win her by quiet persistence and a humble conscious- 
 ness of worth. Westcott would have liked something 
 more stormy. The diagrams of the internal parts of 
 machine-guns, which Keele sent her, being thoroughly 
 male and entirely blind to feminine interests, did not 
 worry her much; she threw them away, as women will 
 always treat those sides of men which seem to them 
 puerile. But she missed fervour in his wooing; what she 
 really wanted was a letter with " I love you " once in 
 every line, this interspersed with music-hall catches. Thus 
 love would have been comic and passionate, and would 
 have satisfied the deeper need of her kind. This Dobbin- 
 like affection, while certainly an assurance against the 
 future, wearied her, drove her towards Temple. The fact 
 that the chauffeur was married added to the excitement 
 of the affair, which was already dangerous because he was 
 a chauffeur: the chauffeur was still a buccaneer of love in 
 a countryside that knew little of the airman. 
 
 Still Westcott suffered from the war. Too many men 
 had been called up, and Westcott could not have been 
 happy in Eden, though there she might have been faith- 
 ful. Also there was no fun, no cricket to raise excitement; 
 Hastings afforded little variety on Sunday afternoon. 
 She felt that this war had lasted long enough; she re- 
 sented having nothing to do on her afternoons off except 
 to walk alone along soggy roads. But she could not 
 
242 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 stay .in the house. Always she wandered out past the 
 " King's Arms", stared for a moment at the wire blinds, 
 at the body of the big bumble-bee, which last summer 
 had fallen between the blind and the glass and there died. 
 She would look around, at the ironmonger's shop outside 
 which a dog slept, exchange a nod with Mr. Balcombe, or 
 go in and buy a stamp for the sake of something to do, 
 listen to the regular hammering of Farcet cobbling a boot, 
 and then with a sigh wander along the lane towards the 
 marsh. 
 
 On one of those days, just after she had passed Police- 
 man's House, intending to go to Rye and eat chocolates, 
 she saw in the distance, leaning against a stile, a soldier. 
 In the faint haze that rose from the marsh on that grey 
 spring afternoon, she could see that he was a rather small 
 man. He rested both elbows on the stile, and stared in- 
 tensely at the old toll-gate further on. His immobility 
 bewildered her, for he was not smoking, and Westcott 
 could not believe that a man was doing nothing, just 
 thinking. So, as she passed, she slewed her eyes to the 
 left. Hearing her footsteps he turned and looked at her. 
 
 The face shook and thrilled her. It was very young, 
 meagre, almost wizened; bitterness hung about the thin 
 lips. It was a desperate and unhappy face, so she walked 
 away quicker, for despair was as unpleasant to Westcott 
 as might have been an abscess. The soldier stared for a 
 moment at the hurrying figure, then called out " Hello." 
 She did not slacken, but her heart beat; this was not the 
 first time a man spoke to her upon the road, and she did 
 not snub them as a rule, but she felt inclined to run as 
 she heard him behind her. Still, when he reached her 
 side, she was so grateful to him for having caused some- 
 thing to happen that she responded gladly. 
 
 " Where are you going to? " said the soldier. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 243 
 
 " Oh ! Just about as far as turn back." 
 " Ah ! Suppose I go along with you for a bit? " 
 " Please yourself. Shan't miss you if you don't." 
 The soldier accepted this as an invitation, and, slipping 
 his hand through her arm, seized her wrist. 
 
 " I say ! " murmured Westcott, making a movement as 
 if to free herself, yet managing not to do so. " You're 
 getting on, ain't you? " But as for the first time she took 
 in the details of him, she noticed the white band on his 
 cap. A cadet! Almost an officer! This thrilled her, 
 so she made no resistance as the man purposefully gath- 
 ered her fingers into his hand. 
 
 " What were you doing all on your lonesome? " she 
 asked. Then, more archly: " What 11 your wife say if 
 she catches us? " 
 
 " I've got no wife. I don't want one." 
 " Nice thing to tell a lady the first two minutes." 
 " What's the good of my having a wife? She'd only be 
 a widow before the year's out." 
 
 Westcott made as if to draw away. She hated those 
 serious remarks. So she tried to be light: " Cheer up," 
 she said. " Every cloud has a silver lining." 
 
 The man did not reply. Putting his arm about her 
 shoulders as they walked, he bent and kissed her upon 
 the neck. 
 
 " Let me go," she whispered. 
 
 " Oh! no," said the soldier, " I shan't let you go. These 
 days one must take what one can." He spoke about him- 
 self: He had been a jockey, joined up in '14, wounded, 
 now a cadet in the Flying Corps. 
 
 " In the Flying Corps! " repeated Westcott, staring at 
 him with entranced eyes. " Not reely ! " 
 
 The man laughed. " Yes, in the Flying Corps. We 
 don't last long at that game. I've got my certificate; I 
 
244 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 expect I'll get a commission in a week or two. And it's 
 back to dear old Flanders for good." 
 
 They were together all that afternoon, and when it was 
 done Westcott wondered whether she hated him. His 
 caresses, which before darkness grew more purposeful and 
 savage than any she had known, shook her and pleased 
 her, but the man was so very sure that he would die. It 
 made it ghastly, like kissing in a graveyard. Still she 
 did not refuse to meet him again, and when she came once 
 more, a week later, it was with a little thrill of horrible 
 attraction that she heard the commission was granted. 
 He would sail next day. 
 
 " Shan't see you again? " she murmured, " in your Sam 
 Browne? " They sat upon a log in the copse half way to 
 Rye. 
 
 " No," said the soldier. " You won't see me again ever. 
 At least I don't suppose." 
 
 Westcott did not reply for a moment. Then suddenly 
 burst into tears. Gently the man stroked her neck, as if 
 he did not know what to say. " Don't take on," he mur- 
 mured. " I shan't be missed. I've buried better men 
 than me, lots of them, Englishmen and Huns all mixed." 
 
 " Don't," she murmured weakly. 
 
 " But what's the odds? " he said, with forced lightness. 
 "I'm not dead yet." He drew her closer. " After all, 
 I've met you before my time's up. Might have been 
 worse." He kissed her so that she shrank. Then she 
 grew rigid in his grasp as he whispered in her ear. 
 
 " No," she murmured. " No, please don't." 
 
 His voice came to her as through a curtain. 
 
 " I shan't last. Life won't give me much more. You 
 can't say ' no ; to that." 
 
 "Please, please ..." 
 
 But she shuddered in his arms, and was too weak to 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 245 
 
 resist. A preposterous cry rose up in her: the scent of 
 impending death, the need for universal sacrifice, the 
 need to bear witness in the only way possible to her 
 futility seemed to gather her up and make her powerless 
 for anything but the need to express the first nobility 
 which had ever grown in her sluttishness. So she flung 
 her arms about his neck as if expressing in her clasp: 
 "Hail, Love! those who are about to die salute thee." 
 
 XVI 
 
 MONICA had returned to Rochester the prey of so many 
 anticipations, emotions, plans, that they neutralised each 
 other in her mind, reduced her to a blankness which 
 amounted to an abdication of will. She had gone back 
 less because she wanted to than because she found herself 
 unable to want anything else. And it had been easy, as 
 if the old bottle had been waiting for the new wine. When 
 she asked to be taken on again at the staff office, nobody 
 seemed to remember her or care about her. The same 
 day she found herself in the pressing sheds, at work which 
 did not greatly differ from the old. She nearly regained 
 her rooms ; her old drawing-room floor was occupied now 
 by new people ; at the top still lived the head clerk of the 
 Stroud factory, with his little girl and a new baby, but 
 the elderly spinsters having just gone, Monica took the 
 ground floor : as this had been furnished by the same hand 
 as her old rooms it had a brotherhood with them. She 
 slipped back into the old life. And it went on, naturally, 
 as if indeed this were an act of fate. She telephoned 
 Cottenham from a call office, and on the second night met 
 him in Bull's Field. 
 
 That indeed was an exquisite moment, for she was first 
 at the tryst. He was right ; it was lovely. The primroses 
 
246 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 and bluebells were dead, but wild anemones were 
 blooming on the bank, and the little oaks were green. As 
 the door closed behind him, and he ran across the turf, she 
 clasped both hands across her breast and closed her 
 eyes; it gave her an emotion too poignant to see him run, 
 alert, his blue eyes so bright. Yet that first evening left 
 her half satisfied. She had made a vague plan; they 
 would talk; they would recognise their need for each 
 other; they would arrive at decisions, and then harmo- 
 niously live the lives laid down for them by destiny. It 
 did not happen like that: with indrawn breaths they fell 
 into each other's arms, and there stayed, caressing each 
 other, capable only of greedy caresses and swooning sur- 
 renders, speaking not at all, able only to communicate 
 by the soft murmurs of lovers. It had gone so fast, and 
 as ever he had been aware of flying time, had loosed the 
 long hands from his neck and with a cry, half of pain, 
 half of rage, had left her lying, eyes buried on her arms. 
 
 She brought it up that night as she sewed. Her mind 
 was clear now, for they had met again; the first urgency 
 being past, they had talked. She understood herself bet- 
 ter now. She stood resigned before a growing inevitable. 
 The centre of her thoughts was occupied by his phrase: 
 " After the war." Yes, she did not know what must be, 
 but it must be after the war, when the times would be 
 new and liberties regained. Monica was no longer sub- 
 jecting herself to moral analysis. All she could think 
 was: " I'm in for it," and she was inclined to let herself 
 peacefully drown. She was not happy: she was only 
 sentenced to pleasure. But a sentence beyond appeal. 
 
 He, too, shared her sense of doom. Somehow they had 
 come to a clear conclusion, and he had to talk of it. Now 
 they met every evening in Bull's Field, which was 
 shrouded by mists soft as the ghosts of pearls. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 247 
 
 " I don't know how we'll do it," he said, " but we must. 
 Just now we're so tied. Three-quarters of an hour here 
 and there." She pressed closer to him. " I wish I could 
 do without you." 
 
 " Frank," she asked, " are you sorry I came back? " 
 
 He grasped her in a sort of despair, and with the bold- 
 ness which made him adorable to women said: " Yes, I'm 
 sorry you came back. I wish you were dead. But I'm 
 glad to my very marrow you've come back. I want you 
 as I've never wanted a woman. It's a sort of fever, and 
 it's got to burn itself through, or I'll never get it out of 
 my system." He laughed. " A nice way to court a girl, 
 isn't it? The truth has its appeal to women: they hear 
 so little of it. And you're just the same. You don't 
 know it as I do; you're innocent, and I've twenty-five 
 years of debauchery behind me, I'm glad to say, and I 
 wish I had more. But you're just the same. You can't 
 do without me. Is that true? " 
 
 She looked up at him with humble eyes. " I suppose 
 so," she said. 
 
 He understood women's surrenders too well to ask for 
 more clarity. If she surrendered her will, was she not 
 giving more than her body? She was giving him a call 
 on her life. " After the war," he repeated. " Oh ! I know 
 it sounds all wrong. We can't marry. We know it. 
 And we can't let each other go. Well, we must resign 
 ourselves to it. When we're free, when we've time, when 
 we're not hunted and persecuted by publicity, supervision, 
 compulsion to be at certain places at certain times ..." 
 
 " I wonder if we'll be happy," said Monica. 
 
 " No. Nobody's happy. One has moments, that's all. 
 And we shall have more than most." 
 
 She bowed her head ; her vision of the future was vague, 
 since she must accept the clandestine. She couldn't help 
 
248 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 it. Then there would be none of these jars; she would 
 have him to herself at any time ; he would lie upon a sofa, 
 smoke a pipe, read a newspaper, take no notice of her 
 until he was royally minded to call her to his side. And 
 then she would sit down upon the floor, and humbly taking 
 his hand place it upon her cheek, asking no more until 
 he saw fit to confer it. 
 
 S they met almost every day. They were living in the 
 future rather than in the past, and though sometimes the 
 madness of spring filled them, inflamed them with an 
 ardour which frightened him and left her weak, the prom- 
 ise of that harmonious future preserved them from final- 
 ities. It was agony to him. Cottenham thought: " It 
 can't go on. It will be too much for me, and then we shall 
 both be in a trap, irretrievably committed to each other, 
 inaccessible to each other. After the war, oh, mercy, 
 after the war." 
 
 But Monica was happier than he, for she had surren- 
 dered her will, thus her responsibility. He was right. 
 They must refuse each other the gladness of full giving 
 until they were free, and meanwhile maintain their link. 
 But she knew also that she agreed with him, and that if 
 reflection or accident changed his mind or forced his 
 action, she would still agree with him. She had abdi- 
 cated. Now and then she escaped this thrall. Once or 
 twice she thought of flight. But in the end she always 
 told herself: " What's the good? He's right. One can't 
 escape from oneself." Yet her innocence strove to sur- 
 vive the wreck of her will. She was writing more often 
 to Hurn, as if begging him to defend her. But Hurn did 
 not understand her vague appeals or unconsciously subtle 
 phrases. He still wrote her passionate, egoistic letters 
 in which his religious temperament found expression in 
 the form of virulent titanism: 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 249 
 
 " This war makes one hate God. I don't know whether 
 He is the God of battles and enjoys the whole thing as He 
 enjoyed the smoking holocaust of oxen four thousand 
 years ago there are smoking holocausts enough to 
 please him in no man's land but anyway He's let it 
 happen. Omnipotent! and He's let it happen. Omnis- 
 cient! He knew it in advance and He's let it happen. I 
 hate Him ..." 
 
 Hum frightened Monica. Could she love anti-Christ? 
 And was he anti-Christ? She vaguely felt that the man 
 who hates God confesses him. Besides Hum could not 
 reach her emotions because he had come half-near to 
 them. If he had been a stranger he could have influenced 
 her; if he had been her lover he could have influenced 
 her ; but he chose to stand between the two and was pow- 
 erless. 
 
 So, day by day, as spring raced into summer, she let 
 herself peacefully sink. What else could she do? Some- 
 times she asked herself whether she loved Cottenham. In 
 a way she knew that she did not, and she was sure that he 
 did not love her. He had never even said so. In the 
 rarest moments of exaltation he had said: "I adore you," 
 or " I want you," but he had never said simply: " I love 
 you." She knew instinctively that he shrank from such 
 a lie. Did she need him to love her? Yes, at first she 
 had needed it; often he had hardened and shrunk away 
 from her when she murmured: " Do you like me? " forc- 
 ing him to reply or to evade, knowing very well what she 
 wanted him to reply. No, they did not love each other, 
 but in a way it was worse; they did not love each other 
 and yet they did not know how to part. So she allowed 
 the thrall to grow heavier upon her, a thrall less of the 
 senses than of the mind, to a woman the most fatal. It 
 was in his intellectual moods he held her most power- 
 
250 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 fully, when he did not look at her, and talked half to 
 himself. 
 
 " Do you know," he said abruptly, one day, " it strikes 
 me I'm a parasite. I'm just getting richer and richer." 
 
 " Isn't that what every business man does? " asked 
 Monica. 
 
 " Yes, that's the devil of it. Richer and richer. And 
 what next? What am I to do with my money? Leave 
 it to Rupert who'll blow it. I don't mind his blowing 
 it, but what an end ! Seems to me one ought to do more 
 with money. But nobody does. Look at our million- 
 aires, building model villages for a thousand people, 
 while their factories wreck the bodies of a hundred thou- 
 sand; creating libraries, and endowing universities where 
 they teach young men chemistry, woodwork, the history 
 of kings and battles, and all that sort of tosh, and how to 
 run a machine so that a million toothpicks may bloom 
 where only one bloomed before. A pretty orgy of mil- 
 lionairism! The millionaire is the most venomous of 
 human benefactors. By degrees he is driving all the 
 clever young workingmen into education shops driv- 
 ing them into a pen where they shall browse the rank 
 grasses of practical knowledge and drink from the pois- 
 oned wells of capitalist teaching. The working classes 
 will have to blow it all up, educate themselves, instead of 
 letting us spoil them. Our class, we're just warpers, cu- 
 riosity blunters, murderers of wonder and of change." 
 
 She listened to him, shaken and delighted. " How 
 you've conquered me!" she thought. "Whatever you 
 think, I seem to think. Do I think? " 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 251 
 
 XVII 
 
 AT the end of April, following on a telegram, Monica 
 went up to the New Hospital at Rye. Family influence 
 had been hurriedly marshalled to get Stephen evacuated 
 from the base hospital. Now she sat by his bedside, half 
 stunned by the suddenness of it all. When she heard 
 that he was severely wounded it had seemed unreal; it 
 was incredible that her brother should be lying there, 
 looking so ordinary, and yet silent, with an air of ab- 
 sence. He was badly hit in one leg, and seemed to be 
 suffering from shell-shock. He was conscious, addressed 
 everybody by their name, but had nothing to say ; he lay 
 absorbed in private thoughts. To enquiries he answered 
 only " Yes " or " No." The hour which Monica spent by 
 him with Lady Oakley, who was so determined to smile 
 and look cheerful that she made grimaces, was entirely 
 ghastly. As Stephen hardly answered them, by degrees 
 they ceased to have anything to say, and sat on, smiling, 
 executing a duty, feeling hatred mingle with their sorrow. 
 Monica was full of shame as she realised that she was glad 
 when the matron turned them out. She was glad, as one 
 is when at last the beloved is dead after long disease, 
 when the body is cleared away and one is free. And she 
 had to be optimistic, to cheer her mother who unre- 
 strainedly wept in the High Street. 
 
 " He'll be all right, mother. Everybody says so ; the 
 doctor says so, so does Sister. And Louise is going to 
 look after him herself." But Lady Oakley could hardly 
 be consoled. She knew that he was not going to die, but 
 it injured her maternal pride that her only son should 
 take so little notice of her. Badly wounded, yes, but she 
 was his mother. She was so unhappy that Monica felt 
 remorseful and ashamed. When, late in the afternoon, 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
 she took the train back to Ashford, she told herself that 
 she ought not to go. She had left them so unhappy, Lady 
 Oakley crying quietly, and Sir Hugh pretending to read 
 "Contes Gruels", putting down his book, nervously pacing 
 his study, or playing with the fluffy red gold of Kalli- 
 krates's ears. "Ah! Kallikrates didn't care. He went 
 on purring, and drinking milk, and begging for toast. 
 And when he wanted you he put an enormous paw, lined 
 with orange velvet, upon your knee. And when he didn't 
 want you he just walked away, leaving behind him a trail 
 of contempt. Oh! fortunate cat, aloof from all passions 
 and all responsibilities, centre of his visible world, on 
 whom no emotions are enjoined and that dwells on an 
 Olympus below the crest of which loves and duties hang 
 pale as clouds. Like a god, looking down without emo- 
 tion or curiosity on little servant men." 
 
 But she knew she could not stay. She had not the will 
 to stay unless Cottenham told her to. As the train puffed 
 out of Rye this suddenly struck her as terrible, and for a 
 moment she revolted. As the train ground its brakes and 
 stopped, she leapt on the platform. She wouldn't go. 
 No, it was too much ! Go back to a man who didn't love 
 her, and whom she didn't love, when her brother lay 
 there, dying perhaps, and her people beginning to mourn 
 him. But a few moments later, as she reached the Gun 
 Garden, her courage ran out. What was she to do now? 
 Cottenham would want her. "Oh ! " she thought, " if only 
 I could believe it was a sin it would help me." She prayed 
 for faith, but she could think only of the Church of Eng- 
 land. Suddenly she remembered that a few yards away 
 lived Monsignor Lublin. She had not seen him for a long 
 time, as he seldom left the monastery. Somebody must 
 help Her; perhaps he could. 
 
 The old priest almost at once ceased to enquire as to 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 253 
 
 the health of her family and her doings. The fine in- 
 stinct which had made him master of so many souls told 
 him she had a purpose. So he waited, his thin, beautiful 
 hands joined; a faint smile lay upon his lips, while the 
 deep eyes under the black brows held no inquiry. Mon- 
 ica found her thoughts stray: "How beautiful he was! 
 That exquisite, disdainful nose! " Then she forced her- 
 self. 
 
 " Father, I want you to receive my confession." 
 
 " It is impossible, my child, until you are received into 
 the Catholic Church." 
 
 " I can't do that, I don't believe. At least, I mean, I 
 suppose I believe in the way I've been taught. That's 
 not the real way, is it, the Vicar's way? " 
 
 " It is not for me," said Monsignor Lublin, " to criti- 
 cise your faith. Your fate rests entirely in your own 
 hands." 
 
 " Don't," cried Monica, holding out her hands, " don't 
 push me away like that." 
 
 " I'm not pushing you away, my child," said the old 
 man gently. " If you want to come to us you will find 
 our arms open if you have faith." 
 
 " What is faith? " 
 
 The' priest hesitated. " Faith," he said, " well, it's a 
 thirst. Some of us find the Brook." 
 
 " I don't understand," said Monica. 
 
 " You don't need to understand. You cannot under- 
 stand. All you have to do is to believe." 
 
 " Believe? You mean in sin and hell? " 
 
 He smiled. " What barbarians you people are ! Such 
 little things!" 
 
 " Little things! Hell's not a little thing." 
 
 " No, of course not. But don't be afraid. Hell is not 
 a lake of flaming pitch. It is the ultimate metaphor 
 
254 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 of human misery. And as for sin, dear child, don't 
 think of sin; think of God and then there will be no 
 sin." 
 
 " I am sinning," said the girl obstinately. " It's killing 
 me. I beg you, let me confess to you." 
 
 " It cannot be," said the old priest. " But if you like to 
 talk to me as to an old man whose watch you smashed 
 when you were a tiny baby, do so." 
 
 After a long pause Monica tried to speak, but tears 
 choked her. Monsignor Lublin made no effort to still 
 her, but gently stroked her hand. At last she smiled at 
 him, and with sudden resolution told him the little which 
 had happened, and all that the future held. He listened, 
 showing neither disapproval nor sympathy. Then he 
 said: " My child, why do you come to me with a ques- 
 tion in your mouth when you know the answer? " 
 
 " I don't know the answer, father." 
 
 " You do. You know that you must not see him 
 again." 
 
 " I must." 
 
 " You spoke of sin. This is sin." 
 
 " I know. I can't help it. Oh ! father, forbid me to 
 sin." 
 
 " I cannot forbid you to sin, Monica. I am not your 
 director. I'm only your friend. If you were received 
 into the Church it would be different." 
 
 " Then receive me." 
 
 " But you told me you have no faith." 
 
 " I don't know. I must have faith. I need faith." 
 
 The priest shook his head. " No, my child, we cannot 
 take you on those terms. You must be with us or against 
 us." 
 
 Monica clasped his hand so violently that he drew back 
 as he felt her finger nails. " Don't push me away. Don't 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 255 
 
 tell me I mustn't see him again. Let me go back to him 
 and tell him it must end." 
 
 " You must do as you yourself decide. He is an occa- 
 sion for sin." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Monica with exultation. " You do for- 
 bid me to go back." 
 
 He smiled at her craft. " No, my child. If you go 
 back, you go at your peril, protected only by the tradi- 
 tion of your class and the moralities of your education. 
 No guardian angel can walk by your side. I can advise 
 you as a man; I cannot govern you as a priest." 
 
 " But, oh ! " cried Monica, in a tone of despair, " father, 
 you don't understand. We've done no harm. Let me 
 tell you more." 
 
 Monsignor Lublin rose and held out his hand, palm 
 outwards. 
 
 " No, my child, you shall not add to your sensual in- 
 dulgences the voluptuousness of confession." 
 
 Then Monica jumped up. " I see you won't help me. 
 It's all talk; you're like the rest. Father, I thought bet- 
 ter of you. I hate you! " 
 
 Monsignor Lublin bent his head. " It grieves me to 
 hear you speak like this, Monica, but blessed be grief, 
 for it sanctifies. Good-bye. Take no command from 
 me, but my dear, dear child, don't you know quite well 
 that you mustn't go. Listen, if you do not go it will per- 
 haps mean that faith has begun to work in you, and that 
 if you are victorious it shall shoot forth the lilies of Para- 
 dise." 
 
 " Good-bye," said Monica thickly, as she shook his 
 hand, and went out very fast with bent head. No, not 
 even the anointed could help. He was only a full stop in 
 the phrase of life. 
 
256 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 XVIII 
 
 KALLIKRATES sat on the corner of his master's desk, 
 profoundly asleep, profoundly aware of his surroundings. 
 Paws folded, tail furled, blunt head deep sunken into his 
 heavy ruff, shoulders hunched, he slept, dreaming a world 
 full of fleshly lusts, and devoid of peril. As Sir Hugh 
 came in he raised his eyelids to show the narrow lunes 
 of his eyes, and opening a rosy mouth gave a little cry, 
 half a welcome, half a protest. Sir Hugh smiled: He 
 liked to be noticed by Kallikrates. For a moment he 
 tickled the cat behind one ear, invaded by a little sensual 
 thrill as the hard head raised itself to his hand, and the 
 smooth chin extended more and more in an attitude of 
 abandonment. Then he laughed: 
 
 " Sultan ! Debauchee ! Don Juan ! Casanova ! Pe- 
 tronius ! Demetrios ! , Marguerite of Navarre and Maria 
 Monk! Thou dost contain all their sensuous souls, oh, 
 Kallikrates, lascivious and epicene! Is this not for thee 
 a world of velvet and down, padded against all shocks, 
 running with the milk of Canaan and the honey of 
 Hymettus? When the last constellations faint and fall, 
 as thine own Sussex poet says, thou shalt neither faint 
 nor fall." He poked the cat suddenly in the ribs: " Get 
 up! you fat yellow pig. Don't you know there's a rev- 
 olution going on in Russia? Don't sit there, and purr, 
 and be superior to such things. I'll have no Plato in this 
 house urging me to moderation and aloofness. What do 
 you think I keep you for? Charity brat! Not to sit 
 there, like a sham Socrates, pleading by your inaction 
 that life and death are the same thing." 
 
 Kallikrates very slowly rose, yawned enormously, 
 stretched and lay down again on his side, his rosy nose 
 hidden between his hind paws. Alone, a watchful strip 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 257 
 
 of yellow eye showed that he was ready to bite and claw 
 if the sacred fur of his belly was touched. For a mo- 
 ment Sir Hugh thought only of his cat's beauty. Then 
 he came to regret that in the present times beauty should 
 be so little cared for, so easily abandoned, when little 
 mortals took to political agitation. " Yet," he thought, 
 " I'm no better than the others. If I'd any sense I'd sit 
 down and read ' L 'Education Sentimentale.' Instead of 
 which, here am I wondering whether I should exult be- 
 cause Ahasuerus has fallen, that Tsar whom the blood of 
 my Whig forefathers abhors. Instead of Flaubert, I'm 
 going to assimilate a large number of newspapers, to be 
 told that the Tsar was plotting a separate peace, and try 
 to believe that the Nihilists who have overthrown him, 
 Tolstoyans, people mixed up with every Pacifist move- 
 ment for the last thirty years, have broken him because 
 they want to go on with the war. I am going to horrify 
 myself with stories about Rasputin, which have suddenly 
 become scandalous now that they are advertised. Woe 
 to me in my chaos! I suppose I believe in royalty and 
 in authority and yet I am bidden rejoice because a 
 Tsar falls, to ask for the head of the Kaiser and of Fran- 
 cis Josef, the Lord's anointed, all three, whose fathers 
 were our allies against Napoleon, another Lord's 
 anointed, whom we shut up at St. Helena. There must 
 be something wrong with the respect we bear monarchy, 
 for we seem to respect it only when it's on our side. Like 
 the heathen, who gives his idol a licking if it doesn't get 
 what he wants." 
 
 Still he caressed the harsh fur of the cat's back. "Kalli- 
 krates," he said, " though you never speak you bear wit- 
 ness to truth, to the importance of material things, taste, 
 smell. You know that government, culture, flags, all 
 those things, pass above the common emotions of man- 
 
258 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 kind; that a German tax-gatherer is much the same as 
 an English one; that people are much alike, as unedu- 
 cated, as vain, as intolerant, and you tell me that what- 
 ever flag floats over your head, the sun is as golden, 
 kisses are as sweet, and verse not different in its melody. 
 Kallikrates," he murmured, " if you were a man I don't 
 think you would have joined up." 
 
 Then Sir Hugh brought out his lighter, for matches 
 were scarce at Knapenden. As he struck the spark the 
 cat looked at him, as if outraged, wrinkled his nose, for 
 he hated the smell of tobacco. Then, as the long strip of 
 tinder dragged by him, he seized it with his teeth and 
 front paws, rolling on his back to kick it. Sir Hugh 
 smiled : " Even the accidents of war serve thy pleasure, 
 oh, cat! " But soon his mood grew less meditative, and 
 he forgot to think, so absorbed was he by the beast who 
 expended such ferocity on chasing round the carpet the 
 toy of the day. 
 
 XIX 
 
 " I SUPPOSE your ladyship knows that Cradoc has come 
 back," says Mrs. Marsden. 
 
 " Come back? " said Lady Oakley. " How d'you mean, 
 come back? So far as I know, he's in prison, right place 
 for him; and the last I heard of him he was hunger- 
 striking. " 
 
 " Yes, your ladyship. He was, but they've let him 
 out." 
 
 " Whatever have they done that for? " 
 
 " Well, your ladyship, they're saying in the village that 
 he wouldn't eat, and they had to feed him by force. They 
 put a tube up his nose and pumped food into him that 
 way. I think that's a nasty thing to do: don't you think 
 so, my lady? " 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 259 
 
 " I could think of nastier things to do to conscientious 
 objectors. I don't see why they bother to feed them at 
 all. There was the food in his cell, and if he chose to 
 starve himself, surely that was his business." 
 
 " Yes, my lady, but they say in the village that they're 
 afraid of letting them do that, because it gets into the 
 papers, and it makes a lot of talk in Parliament, they 
 say." 
 
 " Talk," said Lady Oakley savagely. " Yes, you're 
 right. Talk, talk, there's nothing but talk. We want a 
 Man. The sort of man who'll close down Parliament 
 and make an end of all this talk. Carping and criti- 
 cising! Fussy little Radicals, and people who call them- 
 selves Labour, who'll vote for anybody if you'll give 
 them enough beer. But never mind that; d'you mean to 
 tell me that he's running his shop? " 
 
 " Yes, my lady. And I wanted to talk to* your lady- 
 ship about that, because Evenwood's is going to close." 
 
 " Yes, I know. I suppose now that Evenwood's dead 
 and that young Evenwood's in the army somebody else 
 will have the shop. But I thought Evenwood's sister was 
 running it." 
 
 " Yes, my lady, she is. Mrs. Martin's her name, but 
 she can't stay; her husband's a carrier at Rye and he 
 wants her back. So I expect they'll close the shop, and 
 where shall I order the groceries, my lady? " 
 
 "Oh!" said Lady Oakley. " I see. Mrs. Marsden, 
 I suppose you're not suggesting that we should deal with 
 Cradoc? " 
 
 " Oh! no, my lady. But what am I to do? It takes 
 such a long time getting things from the Stores." 
 
 Lady Oakley became thoughtful. " I'll let you know 
 to-night; I am going to the village, and I'll see. Mean- 
 while don't do anything. If you need anything you can 
 
260 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 tell Temple to go and fetch it in the car at Hastings. If 
 necessary you can send him to Scotland, but please un- 
 derstand that you're not to buy as much as a bluebag 
 from Cradoc." 
 
 Mrs. Marsden's account of the affair was roughly cor- 
 rect. When the visiting justices went over Robertsbridge 
 gaol they found Cradoc in the infirmary, and one of the 
 justices tried to make him " realise his duty as an Eng- 
 lishman in the national emergency." Cradoc did not say 
 much; he was feeling very weak, for he had been forcibly 
 fed by nasal tube for nine days in succession. All he 
 remarked was: " I've made my case. You can see what 
 proof I'm giving that I meant what I said." 
 
 " Yes, I know," said the justice, and discussed at length 
 the desirability of Cradoc's accepting alternative employ- 
 ment under the Pelham Committee. 
 
 " I can't 4o it," said Cradoc. " I'm sorry, but I can't 
 accept any work which the Government looks upon as 
 equivalent to war work. I'd be releasing another man 
 to fight, and that would be the same thing as fighting my- 
 self. No, I'd rather stay here and die here." 
 
 "Oh! nonsense," said the justice. "Nobody wants to 
 hurt you. We only want you to be reasonable." Then 
 he grew meditative. It was all very well; his own po- 
 sition was quite clear,; everything was being done under 
 the supervision of the prison doctor. Still, if this obsti- 
 nate fellow died, and he looked as if he might the 
 Daily News and the Labour papers made such a fuss 
 about this sort of thing, and the sentimentalists in the 
 country got excited about it, and there were questions in 
 the House, and statements, and all that. In the end a 
 paper printed an open letter to a brutal somebody, very 
 like a brutal visiting justice. Very annoying! 
 
 Cradoc grew sympathetic. " I'm sorry to be a nui- 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 261 
 
 sance. You'd much better let me go. All I want is to 
 mind my grocer's shop and do no harm to anybody. The 
 other grocer in my village has just died, I hear, so mine's 
 the only shop." 
 
 The justice gave a perceptible start. " Oh! is it? " he 
 said. " You say the other man's just died? " 
 " Yes. My sister wrote to me about it yesterday." 
 " Oh! " said the justice, " well, we'll see." 
 The Pelham Committee was delighted. It did not 
 trouble to interview Cradoc, or to obtain from him guar- 
 antees of good conduct. They thought it a great oppor- 
 tunity to declare that the unique grocer of Knapenden 
 was of national importance, and at the same time to 
 avoid the possible scandal of a conscientious objector 
 being allowed to starve himself to death. So the prison 
 gates fell open, and Cradoc was barred out into freedom. 
 It was a sad and rather sick man who entered the shop 
 that spring afternoon. Miss Cradoc took no notice of 
 him, measured out the quarter of tea that her customer 
 wanted, and then only turned to him: 
 "Oh! So it's you." 
 " Yes. How's the shop? " 
 
 " So-so. Didn't do well after you were took. Still, 
 I'm carrying on." 
 
 The man sat down on a case of sugar. His legs were 
 giving way. 
 
 " Feeling queer? " asked his sister. 
 " A bit. Forcible feeding's bad for one's digestion." 
 " Ah! well, when you're better you'll be better." 
 Yes, old Ethel was not sentimental. In a few days 
 Cradoc recovered some of his strength, but he had ac- 
 quired in prison a brooding habit, so he did not approach 
 his old acquaintances. This was fortunate, as it pre- 
 vented him from finding out that nobody wanted to talk 
 
262 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 to him. He passed so much of his time in the fields round 
 Ascalon Farm, always hoping to see Molly Hart, that he 
 did not realise the atmosphere of boycott. It was his 
 sister told him in the end. It seemed that Lady Oakley 
 had interviewed Mrs. Martin, failed to persuade her to 
 keep open Evenwood's shop, and had in the end arranged 
 with her husband, the Rye carrier, to bring free of charge, 
 for the duration of the war, any groceries that Knapenden 
 might choose to order. She had personally gone round 
 to the principal residents of Villa-Land, and gained a 
 good deal of support for her views. The fact that gro- 
 ceries were a little cheaper in Rye had perhaps also some- 
 thing to do with the local decision not to deal with Cradoc. 
 
 " There's some ain't in it," said Miss Cradoc. " Those 
 who want pen'orths; there's just that bit of trade left. 
 And there's some have got to run out and get something 
 they've forgotten after the carrier's called. Suppose we 
 shall make ends meet. And if we don't we won't. Time 
 will show." 
 
 Cradoc said nothing. The boycott did not surprise 
 him: subjected to universal obloquy, jailed, jilted, he was 
 not much interested in his livelihood. He was growing 
 blunted; the Herald, the Workers' Dreadnought, which he 
 received every week, together with occasional pamphlets 
 from the Hastings Independent Labour Party, and the 
 No-Conscription Fellowship, came to him as from a 
 strange world, a place where men still hoped to make 
 their views prevail and to create a universe where there 
 should be no war because all men had understanding. 
 The labour and pacifist movements took place for him on 
 a distant stage, and he could not believe that he played 
 a part in the play. Once he thought: " I'm like an old 
 actor, broken down, who can't take up his part again 
 when they revive the old play." And because he was 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 263 
 
 human he thought less and less of ideas. He was con- 
 tent now to enjoy so much as he could the spring bursting 
 on every hedgerow, to eat his insufficient meals, for the 
 earnings of the shop were barely enough to keep him and 
 his sister. And he thought a great deal of Molly Hart. 
 Short, square, milk-white Molly, lovely, strong Molly; 
 she too, he supposed, could never again play her part 
 when they revived the old play. 
 
 XX 
 
 STEPHEN lay back in the invalid carriage. The hot 
 July morning made him rather restless ; and when he was 
 restless he perspired, because he was rather weak; his leg 
 ached too; it took long to heal. Louise, who sat by his 
 side, quiet and cool in her semi-hospital costume of white 
 drill, put down her sewing; as if instinct told her what he 
 needed she took the pillow from his back, lifted his coat 
 by the collar to give him air, and turned the pillow so 
 that he might set his head against a cool surface. He 
 sank back contentedly. And Louise took 'up her sewing 
 without a word. Then Stephen reflected that he was 
 feeling better; he liked the silent comfort of Louise's 
 companionship. She spoke little, but she was always 
 reassuringly there. Also he could not resist the sweet- 
 ness of the morning. From his chair on the south ter- 
 race he could see the marshes gleam green and melt far 
 away into the darker sea. Below his feet lay the ragged 
 lawns, uncut that year, for Peele alone was left of the 
 gardeners; the flower beds screamed with luxuriant life, 
 with fat red and yellow begonias, with verbena, spreading 
 little hands bright as amethyst; there were tall helio- 
 tropes, and, at each corner, broad bushes of hydrangea 
 
264 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 laden with pale hemispheres tinted as a maiden's dream 
 of passion. Irrelevantly, he said: 
 
 " It's a pity you couldn't come to the meeting. You 
 missed mother. She's priceless." 
 
 " I'd have come if I could," said Louise, " only I was 
 on duty. I'm told it was a pretty big meeting." 
 
 " Well, most of the village came with their mouths 
 open, and went out the same. The stockbroker from 
 Villa-Land talked a lot about being a Britisher. Being 
 a naturalised Dutchman, he would. But mother was top- 
 ping." 
 
 Louise looked t up and smiled. It was good to hear 
 Stephen talk lightly again. When he came back in April 
 he had hardly spoken for a month. Then there had been 
 outbursts of bitterness that nobody could understand. 
 She did not know whether it was worse to hear him talk 
 in unnatural excitement, or to watch him brood with 
 knotted brows that came down low over the high nose. 
 Now he Was actually smiling, and she did not understand, 
 until he nodded towards Sir Hugh who sat at the corner 
 of the terrace where the elm threw shade: 
 
 " Can you see father? He's reading the Spectator. He 
 hates every word of it, but he doesn't know that." 
 
 " He's a perfect dear," said Louise. 
 
 " He is. Somehow the Spectator is suitable for perfect 
 dears. So like a hot-water bottle. No, a tepid water 
 bottle. Whiggery and water. But there you are, that's 
 the Oakleys all over. Subscribed to the Spectator in 1830 
 and they can't stop. Ah ! he's put it down. What's that 
 he's reading now ; can you see? " 
 
 " I think it's the Nation." 
 
 Stephen laughed. " Oh ! that's much worse. He agrees 
 with every word of it, and he hates it. Poor old father! 
 It's an awful fate to think you're born to a thing when 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 265 
 
 you really worship the reverse. His tradition is always 
 struggling with his intellect. Not like mother. Mother's 
 a solid." 
 
 " What d'you mean by a solid? " asked Louise. Yes, 
 he was pretty normal that day. 
 
 " Oh ! a cube, a thing with angles. No mistake about 
 it. Mother knows what she thinks, except that she 
 doesn't." 
 
 " Stephen," said Louise, " you mustn't talk like that 
 about your mother." 
 
 " Why not? It's not a merit to be a mother; in most 
 cases it's an accident. Now I've shocked you. No, I 
 suppose I haven't. You're not the shockable sort. Things 
 don't amuse you or displease you; you just go paddling 
 downstream, keeping in the middle." 
 
 " That sounds very dull," said Louise, smiling. 
 
 "Oh! no, it's so jolly human, so balanced. You're 
 rather like Kallikrates, you know, slithering through life. 
 And you're a good-looking couple." For a moment 
 Stephen felt inclined to add a phrase more tender. Yes, 
 Louise was very good-looking, with that piled dark hair, 
 that white skin, and that immense, secure repose. But 
 Lady Oakley still filled his mind. 
 
 " By jove, mother let them have it hot and strong. Told 
 them they were thriftless, improvident, unpatriotic, hinted 
 they were disloyal, gave a side kick to drunkenness, dis- 
 sent, and other form of immorality, and took all their 
 names, landing a punch to the right and a punch to the left, 
 and leaving a war savings certificate stuck to every face 
 within her reach. Mother's topping. Such vim! makes 
 me feel quite old." He joined his finger tips and spoke as 
 if to himself: " Mother's got all the luck: she believes 
 in things. Good for her! She wants to flog the con- 
 scientious objectors, to shoot the pacifists, to hang the 
 
266 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 profiteers, and as for the fellows who trade with the 
 enemy there's nothing she wouldn't do! Yes, mother's 
 got it bad. This war's upset her applecart. We've had 
 three solid sittings since I came back, all about atrocities 
 and torpedoing, and flame throwers, and gas. Oh! the 
 amount of gas that has got into this house would clear 
 Flanders. It's her literature gets into her head." 
 
 " What literature? " asked Louise. 
 
 " Those continual doses of Morning Post and Globe, 
 with a touch of Daily Mail, to make them bubble. 
 Nothing like printers' ink to produce gas. Let alone her 
 war books! I asked her to send up something for me 
 to read; I wanted something mild and amiable like the 
 * Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi ', or ' The Rosary ', 
 or something, and would you believe it: Westcott came 
 along with four Kiplings, a Boyd Cable, ' Ordeal by 
 Battle ', ' Degenerate Germany ', ' The Beast of Berlin ', 
 the complete works of Ian Hay, the confessions of nine 
 spies, eighteen Kaiser governesses, five imperial dentists, 
 and one royal vet." 
 
 " Don't be silly," said Louise, laughing. " You know 
 quite well your mother's a darling." 
 
 " She's a very agitated darling. She talked to me yes- 
 terday for an hour to demonstrate that this country was 
 ruined by talk: shut up Parliament, shut up the Cabinet, 
 shut up the papers, shut up everything except Colney 
 Hatch and the Tower, both being of National Impor- 
 tance. Mother's ideal is a war run by a cabinet of 
 Kitcheners who say ' yes ', or ' no ', or, on great provoca- 
 tion ' go to hell.' Sort of military penny-in-the-slot 
 machines. You just push in a vote of credit, give 'em 
 ten million men that you haven't got, pull the lever and 
 out comes victory. Oh! mother's topping. Have you 
 heard her on the League of Nations? " 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 267 
 
 " No," said Louise, " does she believe in it? " 
 
 " Of course she believes in it. Everybody believes in 
 the League of Nations, though they've all sworn not to 
 have it. Mother's League of Nations is a beautiful 
 thing: conscription all round, more ships, tariffs on 
 everything, and no truck with Germany for a hundred 
 years. No German in the League of Nations. Every- 
 body to be nice and friendly and keep their powder dry. 
 Germany to be completely wiped out, after which she's 
 to pay the total cost of the war. She may keep the rest 
 of the profits, unless she has to hand those over to main- 
 tain a friendly international league that she's not to be 
 let into. You see, mother's got no idea of an evolving 
 world. Thinks motors immoral. She doesn't imagine 
 that anything's ever going to alter, and doesn't want it to. 
 Republics could pop up all round her, like mushrooms. 
 She wouldn't see it made any difference. All round her 
 trade unions are forming, but she doesn't see it. Gov- 
 ernments take over railways and mines, probably for 
 good; she doesn't see it. As it was in the beginning, 
 forever shall be. You'd surprise mother if you told her 
 there isn't a Board of Trade, but she'd fight tooth and 
 nail to prevent your abolishing it." 
 
 " I think you're very disrespectful, Stephen," said 
 Louise. " Still, we mustn't be hard on you. You're a 
 spoilt child. I suppose we must make allowances for 
 you." 
 
 "You needn't. I got knocked over, but I'm tough. 
 They started toughening me the first day. It's a tan- 
 ning process, the army. No sensitiveness allowed there. 
 I remember my first bayonet instructor. He was an ex- 
 pug, that is boxer. That chap was the one to develop 
 the innate gallantry and chivalry of youth. He used to 
 lecture us on the spirit of the bayonet. ' I've only two 
 
268 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 watchwords/ he used to say, ' one is that fighting is the 
 profession of the soldier, and the other one is: no prison- 
 ers. You've got to make it a rule not to leave behind 
 you a man unkilled. If you're any good at your job 
 you'll kill so many that you won't be able to count them 
 in your memory.' " 
 
 " Don't," said Louise. 
 
 " Yes, that's just like you civilians. You sit there and 
 cheer when we go out, and hang out the bunting, so that 
 we may be in fine fettle when we go out to scatter the 
 Hun's guts, but you'd rather not hear about it, thank 
 you. We've just taken Vimy Ridge, and the French are 
 pouring over Chemin des Dames. D'you think that was 
 done by the kid-gloved Dandy Fifth? You people who 
 let war happen, I'd like you to know that when the job's 
 done, the field is like the devil's nursery, where some- 
 body's been breaking open men like toys, to see what's 
 inside." 
 
 At that moment Lady Oakley came down the steps, 
 very big and very handsome in her blue linen coat and 
 skirt and atrocious country hat. She caught his last 
 words. 
 
 " Stephen, you mustn't get excited. You shouldn't talk 
 about the war; you know quite well it's bad for you. 
 Though heaven knows there's nothing else to talk about 
 in these days, and the way things are going there might 
 never be anything else to talk about. If only somebody 
 would handle the thing properly! There isn't a man in 
 the Cabinet who isn't tender to the Hun. There isn't 
 one of them doesn't soak his handkerchief when one asks 
 why they don't start bombing Hun towns." 
 
 " I expect we'd bomb 'em if we could," said Stephen. 
 " I assure you there's no tenderness in the Flying Corps." 
 
 " I'm not saying anything against the Flying Corps. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 269 
 
 The darlings! " Lady Oakley grew thoughtful for a 
 moment; she adored second lieutenants for their downy 
 youth; their baby mannishness aroused in her an emo- 
 tion half maternal, half sensuous. " No, they're all 
 right; it's the people at the top, the people who let that 
 fellow Henderson go to Petrograd to hobnob with a gang 
 of anarchists in German pay. I wonder why Labour 
 can't mind its own business and get on with the war. 
 That's all we ask of them. We don't ask them to fight, 
 all those millions of cowards in munition factories. We 
 only ask 'em to get on with their work and take their 
 fifteen pounds a week while the other men are dying 
 for 'em at a shilling a day. All we ask is that they 
 should keep their mouths shut. It isn't much." 
 
 Sir Hugh looked up, for Lady Oakley spoke loudly. 
 He joined the group. 
 
 " It's all very well, Lena," he said, feeling rather 
 grated, " but Labour isn't a sort of machine worked by 
 a button. Working men have got their own ideas like 
 you and I." 
 
 " We don't want any of their ideas. We only want 'em 
 to do their work. When working men get ideas they 
 strike. Fancy striking in the middle of a war like this! 
 But it's always the same thing; if we were to shoot one 
 out of every ten there 'd be no strikes." 
 
 " Except among those who had to do the shooting," 
 said Stephen suddenly. 
 
 " Nonsense," said Lady Oakley. " There are some 
 good men among the Labour Party itself. Look at the 
 seamen, for instance ; they've got good leaders in Captain 
 Tupper and Havelock Wilson; they won't stand any 
 pacifist nonsense; they won't carry that traitor Hender- 
 son to Stockholm. That's the spirit which made England 
 what she is." 
 
270 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " It's not much to claim," said Sir Hugh, with a bitter 
 little smile. " I shouldn't wonder if you were right, Lena. 
 It's just that spirit of blunt antagonism, the wrong-head- 
 edness of people like the seamen, who can't unite with 
 their fellows, who like to belong to the Labour Party 
 and flout the verdict of the majority because it didn't 
 suit them; it's just that anarchistic spirit has made Eng- 
 land what she is a dog kennel with half the dogs snarl- 
 ing and the other half asleep." 
 
 " Father," said Stephen, " I think you're a pacifist. 
 Be careful. It'll grow on you. In a few months you'll 
 be like an Evening News cartoon, wear a white tie, elas- 
 tic-sided boots, spectacles, and on the top the mad hatter's 
 feather." 
 
 Everybody smiled. All were glad that Stephen took 
 things lightly, but as Lady Oakley led Sir Hugh apart 
 he went rather resentfully. All this talk of reprisals, 
 revenges, forcible prevention of free conferences, these 
 cries for the coercion of individuals, disturbed and of- 
 fended him. So he was glad when he found that Lady 
 Oakley wanted to talk of a domestic matter. 
 
 " Hugh," she said, " do you think we'd better have 
 Mr. March down again next month? " 
 
 " Why not? He's rather a nice boy." 
 
 " Oh ! I've nothing against him. Only you remem- 
 ber that Sylvia got us to ask him down on his last leave, 
 and I don't say there's anything in it, but this village 
 talks, like all villages. They were about together a good 
 deal, and there's some sort of story." 
 
 "What sort of story?" 
 
 " Nothing much. Only Westcott tells me that Mrs. 
 Farcet tells her, and so on, that he kissed her in the 
 copse. Somebody saw them." 
 
 " Oh! nonsense," said Sir Hugh. " Sylvia wouldn't do 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 271 
 
 a thing like that. Why! Andy was down only a month 
 ago. Besides, women don't do that sort of thing when 
 their husbands are in France. It's not done." 
 
 " I'm not so sure," said Lady Oakley. " Sylvia's a 
 funny girl, and the times are exciting." 
 
 Sir Hugh grew acid. " Well, if you really feel that 
 we've got to give in to malignant gossip, let's give in. 
 Don't have him down. I suppose you'll tell Sylvia the 
 reason? " 
 
 " Certainly not," said Lady Oakley. " I shall tell her 
 we don't like him, that's all." 
 
 "Perfectly absurd," said Sir Hugh. But after his 
 wife had left him he suddenly remembered that frosty 
 January day, the vision of Sylvia driving a young officer 
 in a car. Now he came to think of it, it was a very 
 young man, and he rather thought a fair-haired man. 
 And she had been with him a good deal on his last leave. 
 He supposed it would be all right. Tradition told him 
 that it was natural things should be all right. Then his 
 mind took a leap: supposing it wasn't all right? suppos- 
 ing Jervaulx found out? supposing he shot the pair of 
 them? They did that sort of thing nowadays, and juries 
 let people off. It was the new law: if a man's wife was 
 unfaithful while he served abroad, he wouldn't be con- 
 victed for shooting her or her lover as if a new spirit 
 had got into Englishmen, as if they were growing so used 
 to blood and death that human life was becoming less 
 sacred; as if it was understood that with the spread of 
 barbarism over the world every man should carry his 
 life in his hands. Would this war smash all reserves 
 break down all sympathies blunt every shade of feel- 
 ing? If it went on long enough would it resolve man 
 into his component parts, the tiger and the fox? 
 
BLIND ALLEY 
 
 XXI 
 
 WHEN Sir Hugh arrived at half-past six, Lee met him 
 in the hall, and with an air of sacred gravity told him 
 that Lady Oakley wanted to see him as soon as he came 
 in. He found his wife in her bedroom looking worried, 
 and surrounded by garments which she had obviously 
 pulled out at random. Surprisingly she came up to him 
 and put her arms round him with an air of dependence. 
 
 " Oh! Hugh, I'm so glad you've come back. I'd have 
 wired for you if I'd known where you were." 
 
 " I've been at the Board all the afternoon. But what's 
 the matter? " 
 
 " Westcott's going to have a child." 
 
 " Good heavens ! " said Sir Hugh as he sat down heav- 
 ily on the bed. The information amazed him. He liked 
 Westcott, her prettiness and the smile which she always 
 had for him ; it was alluring, and Sir Hugh was too inno- 
 cent to understand that Westcott was not stingy of 
 smiles. Also he looked upon women as remote from 
 passion. It was not the sort of thing he thought about, 
 and so it seemed incredible, this news. " How did it hap- 
 pen? " he asked. 
 
 " How am I to tell how it happened? " said Lady Oak- 
 ley. " Anyhow, it has happened." 
 
 " Are you quite sure? " asked Sir Hugh, still clinging 
 to his theory of feminine innocence. 
 
 " Well, she's owned up, if that's any good. It all came 
 out this afternoon, just after lunch. As I was going out 
 into the plantation I heard a lot of noise in the kitchen. 
 I wouldn't have said anything, but I heard screams. So 
 I went back to the drawing-room and rang the bell, and 
 Marsden came in. She's a silly old thing. She was 
 behaving like a bit of blancmange that isn't feeling well. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 273 
 
 All she could say was: ' The hussy ', ' The brazen hussy/ 
 So at last I went into the kitchen, and there was Westcott 
 lying on her back, screaming and kicking." 
 
 " Hysterical, I suppose," said Sir Hugh. " Poor girl." 
 
 " Yes, she was hysterical. Still I managed to quiet 
 her down after a while, and she owned up. I don't think 
 it would have come out just now if it hadn't been for the 
 inquest. It seems to have upset her. She's been crying 
 all the afternoon, and twice she's had another fit of hys- 
 terics, during which she screams: ' He's got black marks 
 on his neck where the fingers went in.' I expect it's 
 preyed on her imagination." 
 
 " I'm not surprised," said Sir Hugh ; " it's a horrid busi- 
 ness. I suppose you haven't seen the details? I bought 
 the Examiner at Ashford. As the inquest was yesterday, 
 I expect they'll have the story in full." 
 
 Together they read the report of the inquest. The 
 details were few, but painful. It had been held over the 
 body of a Flying Corps officer found in the copse a little 
 way south of Policeman's House. Very little was known 
 of him, except that he was on short leave and had for- 
 merly been a jockey. The medical evidence showed that 
 the man had been strangled. There was no clue of any 
 kind. Verdict, murder against a person or some persons 
 unknown. 
 
 "Yes," said Sir Hugh, "I suppose it's upset her; but 
 for that we might not have known for a month or two. 
 I wonder who the man was. If we could find him perhaps 
 he'd marry her." 
 
 Lady Oakley smiled. "Well, Hugh, it seems unkind 
 to joke about it, but if Westcott were to marry every 
 man we might suspect, she'd have to start a harem." 
 
 " Not really! " said Sir Hugh. He was most surprised. 
 He could just imagine that a woman might fall through 
 
274 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 love, but the idea of promiscuity was incredible to him. 
 One heard of that sort of thing, but it didn't really 
 happen. 
 
 " Yes, really. IVe suspected lots of people, Temple, 
 and even Ratby, and oh ! any of the boys in the village." 
 
 " Have you asked her? " 
 
 " Yes. She won't tell. When I ask her she only 
 screams." 
 
 " Poor girl," said Sir Hugh. " We must see what we 
 can do for her. Let me see, now I come to think about 
 it, wasn't young Keele fond of her? " 
 
 " I think so, but surely you can't expect Keele to 
 marry her after the way she's behaved while he's been 
 out in France? " 
 
 " No," said Sir Hugh meditatively. He would have 
 liked to think it possible that Keele should come back, 
 forgive his sweetheart and ennoble their marriage by his 
 forgiveness. It would have been so romantic. " No, I 
 suppose not. Poor Keele! I suppose he knows. I didn't 
 realise. I met him only a quarter of an hour ago as I 
 drove up from the station and stopped to say a few words 
 to him. He seems to be in a queer state. You'd have 
 thought he'd have been full of buck, now he's been men- 
 tioned in despatches and has just got a commission." 
 
 " Has he? " cried Lady Oakley. 
 
 " Yes, didn't you know? It isn't only reckless gallan- 
 try, and all that sort of thing, but the fellow's got brains. 
 You should see the villagers round him ; they don't know 
 whether to call him ' Alf ' or ' Sir.' But he doesn't seem 
 to be enjoying it; he hardly said anything when I asked 
 him how he was getting on, and how he liked it out there. 
 He seemed stunned. I put it down to what he'd been 
 through, but obviously he must have heard about West- 
 cott. That's why he's so upset." 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 275 
 
 " When did Keele come back? " asked Lady Oakley 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " I don't know. He must have been back a few days." 
 
 " I suppose he's staying at Stoat's Farm with his 
 father? " 
 
 "Yes. That's only half a mile from Policeman's 
 House. Think of it, Lena ! Before he went out I expect 
 he used to meet Westcott in the evening in the very 
 copse where that man was murdered. Poor young 
 fellow!" 
 
 Lady Oakley said nothing for a long time. Her mind, 
 sharper than her husband's, worked on the mystery. 
 Then at last she contented herself with only guessing. 
 Was it not better not to know? When these terminations 
 satisfied her sense of justice, and her sense of romance? 
 She was not afraid of Sir Hugh's sagacity. He didn't 
 think about those things. No, indeed, for he said: 
 
 " What are we going to do about Westcott? I'm afraid 
 we can't keep her. It would make so much trouble in 
 the village." 
 
 " No, we can't keep her," said Lady Oakley. " The 
 poor thing! we must do something. I think I'll go up 
 to town to-morrow and see if we can get her into a home 
 where she'll be properly treated. And then, perhaps, 
 when the baby's been put out to nurse with some decent 
 people, I can find her a situation. I don't think I can 
 have her back, but we must see she's all right." 
 
 " Yes," said Sir Hugh. " That's the best thing. We 
 must do all we can." 
 
 " I'll just go and see if she's asleep," said Lady Oakley. 
 " I'll tell her that we'll give her the baby linen. That'll 
 cheer her up." 
 
 Soon Lady Oakley sat in Westcott 's bedroom, while 
 the girl wept and kissed her hand. The older woman 
 
276 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 felt moved and sorry for such distress ; and from time to 
 time she smoothed the girl's hair, assuring her that every- 
 thing would be all right. 
 
 XXII 
 
 " I'M losing my will," thought Monica. She was sit- 
 ting upon a heap of rugs in the foreman's shanty, knees 
 hunched up, chin in hands. Cottenham had just left her. 
 She wondered what would happen. Her fate, she knew, 
 was not within her government. Perhaps it was not even 
 within the power of his self-control. Perhaps their two 
 destinies had come under the sway of an eternal force. 
 Far away she heard the clang of the palisade door. 
 Gone! After such a little time. Perhaps it was the 
 shortness of the time that made everything between them 
 so urgent and maybe more exquisite. She closed her 
 eyes, recreating the last half hour, and gave herself over 
 to a day dream where fugitive memories struggled to 
 overcome harsh sensations. She remembered things t he 
 had said: 
 
 " It doesn't look as if the war would last much longer 
 now. You see, now the Reichstag has accepted ' no 
 annexations and indemnities ', we ought to move towards 
 peace. Poor Mr. Hughes! He will miss his war." 
 
 She smiled in her dreams. When he said that, with the 
 nice ironic smile she liked, he had played with her fingers, 
 one by one. Then later: 
 
 " Then you and I well, just you and I. We'll be 
 free." 
 
 Free, yes, free to do what? The sensuous feeling left 
 her for a moment as she remembered their conversation, 
 not a very pleasant one. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 277 
 
 " I'll be able to get about then," he said. " Monica, 
 what are you going to do after the war? " 
 
 " I don't know. Go back to Knapenden, I suppose." 
 
 " You can't do that. We'd lose each other." 
 
 She did not reply. If they were not to lose each other, 
 it must be because he prevented it. What could she do? 
 He seemed to feel this. 
 
 " We must make a life, you and I. Can't you get 
 free? Wouldn't your people let you come up to town 
 to stay? " 
 
 " I don't think so. Father thinks he loves town, but 
 he always goes back to Knapenden after ten days." 
 
 " But what shall we do? " said Cottenham. " I want 
 oh ! Monica, don't you see we've got to make a life for 
 each other, you and I, to see each other every day y freely, 
 for a long time, and " She closed her eyes at the 
 thought. " And give so much to each other that there is 
 nothing more to give." 
 
 For a moment she lay sunken in a reverie. She aban- 
 doned herself to this dream of the future, though she 
 suspected that it was impossible. He couldn't leave 
 Rochester: she couldn't leave Knapenden. He couldn't 
 marry her. Were they going on like this? And after- 
 wards? Were they going to have stolen meetings in 
 motor cars and woods? No! she knew how racking were 
 those short interviews. Ah! if both lived in London, 
 there would be time and opportunity, and she smiled at 
 the thought of the clandestine which begins in delight and 
 ends in disappointment. But she did not know that. 
 All she knew was that this was a dream. She found it 
 easier to dream than to think. That day her weakness 
 had almost been overcome by his ardour, and indeed it 
 was her weakness rather than her strength that defeated 
 him. She tried to remember the scene, but was conscious 
 
278 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 only of the touch of his hands, of the brilliant eyes whose 
 look she could not meet. She remembered a moment. 
 
 " How delicate your hands are," he had said, and began 
 twisting her wrist. " One could snap your hand off," he 
 said. " I'd like to do it. I like hurting you. I like 
 pulling your hair and twisting your ears. I like to see 
 you wince as I hurt you, and then feel you soften and 
 expand under a kiss. I'd like to do grotesque things to 
 you, swing you round and round by one ankle and throw 
 you down in a tumbled heap. I'd like to throw you into 
 a pond and haul you out with your hair full of mud and 
 green slime and cover you then with more ardent 
 caresses because you'd be more mine in the grotesqueness 
 I had created. You're a lovely thing to destroy and 
 spoil." 
 
 " Don't," she murmured. 
 
 " Don't what? " he asked, taking a sensual mental 
 pleasure in the idea of forcing her to plead. 
 
 " Don't frighten me," she whispered. 
 
 " What are you frightened of ? " he asked. 
 
 She did not reply, and he liked to think as he held her 
 with a greater security and a coarser enjoyment that she 
 was afraid of herself. She shrank again as she dreamed. 
 She realised that it was almost impossible they should 
 make a life together. All that he had aroused he had 
 aroused in vain. She had not the liberty to become his 
 slave. But again she found that she could not think of 
 the future. She could not think at all; she simply sur- 
 rendered to her memories of sensations, the feeling of 
 his crisp hair against her cheek, the scent of Egyptian 
 tobacco in his kisses, the weight and hardness of his 
 embrace. 
 
 Cottenham, too, carried with him a sense of doom. 
 As the car whirred along the Maidstone Road, his mind 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 279 
 
 worked more easily than hers. Manlike, as soon as he 
 escaped from physical sensations he was rid of them, and 
 could think coolly of the condition of his intrigue, or of 
 a business problem, or politics. Things, he knew, were 
 invincibly coming to some solution. Not to a clear solu- 
 tion. Being reluctant to give up anything he wanted, he 
 would not tell himself that conditions were such as to 
 part them. They could not live in the same place ; they 
 could not make a common life. Accident might create 
 between them a complete link, and he knew that would 
 be hideous, for they would be tied together by a chain so 
 long that it would part as well as unite them. " Oh ! " 
 he thought, "what a mess we're in! If only she were 
 another sort of girl! But she's not a working girl. I 
 can't take her away from her people, and set her up in a 
 cottage outside Chatham. She wouldn't, she couldn't. 
 But then? I say after the war but what after the 
 war? " He knew that the war was their bond, that 
 nothing could come after the war. It had brought them 
 together; it had not given them to each other, and it 
 could not, unless they were ready to pay the heavy price 
 of Tantalus, of always desiring and fulfilling in occa- 
 sional half-hours, in precarious security, in places where 
 there was neither comfort nor ease. Complications! 
 Yes, that's what she was bringing him, complications. 
 He thought of Julia. Why couldn't he be content with 
 Julia? He loved Julia, and somehow he knew that he 
 did not love Monica. But yet, he loved Monica because 
 she was difficult, and he did not love Julia, for she was 
 inevitable. Yet, he did not love Monica, for the difficulty 
 of her irritated him, and he loved Julia because she pre- 
 sented no difficulty, put up no dam to the current of his 
 passions. Yet, he loved Monica because the impossi- 
 bility of owning her made it easy to desire her, and he 
 
280 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 did not love Julia, because the certainty of owning her 
 prevented him from desiring. 
 
 " I'm sick of it," he said. " I think I'll cut clear of ' 
 both of them, and go to America." Then he sneered at 
 himself: "And what '11 you do in America, you ass? 
 You'll fall in love with somebody, and then with some- 
 body else. Frank, old fellow, you've pitched on a rotten 
 hobby. Why didn't you go in for gardening? " 
 
 The sense of doom accentuated itself a fortnight later, 
 when he passed three days in the New Forest, where 
 Julia and the children were spending the summer. Julia 
 was so beautiful, in her linen gowns, nearly always in 
 green, and running through the trees like a wood nymph. 
 She had been delightful, too, because they were alone in 
 a house in the woods. She liked having him alone. She 
 liked to wake up with him, to walk with him in the 
 morning, to see him there at meals, and to watch him 
 playing with the children; in the evening she liked to 
 brood over him, to feel that in another two hours he would 
 be still more alone with her, more hers, that she could 
 look down upon his head on the pillow, and if she liked 
 bend down and caress him as a tigress nuzzles her cub. 
 Cottenham enjoyed this enthralment, for there was in 
 him something feminine that surrendered. As he watched 
 her one afternoon, while she read, he found beauty in the 
 scene; his lovely, assured wife; Lucretia and Diana pur- 
 suing each other and screaming, Rupert on his rug mak- 
 ing desperate efforts to rise to his feet, and roaring with 
 laughter every time he collapsed on his fat stomach. 
 
 " There is the truth of life," he thought. " To enjoy 
 all that is easily graceful. The sight of lovely women, 
 yet not the stress of loving them ; pictures and books, yet 
 not the agony of trying to achieve art; little children 
 that come up as flowers. To get older, to get fat, to get 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 281 
 
 bald, and still to know how to smile." But through his 
 aesthetic quietism pierced the eternal cry of adventurous 
 desire that will not die. "I want Dead Sea fruit/' he 
 thought, " and what shall I do if I don't get it? " 
 
 XXIII 
 
 " BRAUNSTEIN and Zederblum have bolted," s^aid Lady 
 Oakley, looking up from The Times. 
 
 11 Who are they? " said Sir Hugh. 
 
 "They like to call themselves Trotsky and Lenine," 
 said Lady Oakley. " Of course they're only German 
 agents paid to stir up trouble for Kerensky. This paper 
 says that it's been proved they took German money. 
 Now they've been found out, and they've bolted. They 
 call it Bolshevism. I call it German gold." 
 
 Sir Hugh reflected for a moment. " Well," he said, 
 " I don't see why they shouldn't take German gold. So 
 far as I understand it, they want to upset the Russian 
 government; they want money. Does it matter where 
 they get it from? Besides, I'm not as clear as all that 
 that it's German money." 
 
 " Anyhow, it's tainted money," said Lady Oakley. 
 " You don't seem to remember that Kerensky upset the 
 Tsar because the Tsar wanted to make a separate peace. 
 So do these Bolshevists. And it's not the moment when 
 Korniloff and Brusiloff have just been trying to advance, 
 when the papers are full of the letters between the Tsar 
 and the Kaiser, showing that the Tsar has been trying 
 to sell the country all along. Of course, all Russia's sold 
 to the Germans. They've only bought half England as 
 it is, but I suppose they'll get the rest before they've 
 done." 
 
282 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Lena, I do wish you didn't think everybody was a 
 traitor, and that everybody was bought." 
 
 " Well, so they are." 
 
 " You say these things without any evidence. I be- 
 lieve Lenine and the other man have been agitating against 
 the Tsar for twenty years. I don't like their politics any 
 more than you do; that's not the same thing as saying 
 they're German agents." 
 
 " Everybody who wants to stop the war is a German 
 agent." 
 
 "But, good heavens! " cried Sir Hugh, rather angrily, 
 " even the Germans want to stop the war now." 
 
 " Of course they do," said Lady Oakley, " now they 
 know they're not going to win it." 
 
 Sir Hugh paused for a moment. Yes, there was some- 
 thing in that. This was August, 1917, and for the first 
 two years the German papers had talked of nothing but 
 annexing half Europe. Now the Reichstag had passed a 
 resolution asking for peace without annexations or indem- 
 nities. Looked like the devil was sick. 
 
 "Yes, I quite agree, but still a fact is a fact. The 
 Germans aren't trying to annex anything now." 
 
 " Give them a chance," said Lady Oakley. " It's a 
 trap; that's all; it's a peace trap. You can't believe a 
 word they say. There's only one thing to do: beat 'em. 
 Then we'll talk about no annexations and indemnities." 
 
 Sir Hugh did not reply. She was so absolutely right, 
 and yet, she ought to be absolutely wrong. So he went 
 out, and walked across the marsh. Things looked queer 
 just then, and so many illusions were falling. The Meso- 
 potamia Report had come out, and he was still filled 
 with a sense of shocked horror, for his class was shown 
 incompetent, lacking in foresight, lacking in humanity. 
 This picture of high Indian officials and regular officers 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 283 
 
 neglecting their duty, sheltering behind each other, sick- 
 ened him. He wondered whether his class was being 
 sentenced. But were other classes better? What was one 
 to believe? Were the business men any better with 
 their lies to make twopence, and the beastly snobbery 
 that caused them to tumble over one another, pay the 
 expenses of a party, and buy peerages? A depression 
 fell over him. He had been thinking a great deal of the 
 Reichstag resolution; by need or by conversion those 
 people were accepting the principles of the Russian^ revo- 
 lution. All this was new, this idea of self-determination ; 
 it was a fresh idea to him, old Liberal Unionist, who 
 believed in order and authority. Never before had it 
 struck him that a people should have the right to decide 
 their own form of government. They were born with 
 their government, it had seemed to him, as a man is 
 born with a certain kind of nose. But the idea of liberty 
 was invading him, inflaming him, as it always does Eng- 
 lishmen when it does not interfere with their interests. 
 He brooded for some time over self-determination. 
 Hanging over a stile, he realised that it might lead people 
 to unexpected conclusions. Alsace-Lorraine, for instance. 
 Supposing they voted? They'd vote German. Ten to 
 one they would vote German. They had been German 
 for forty-seven years; the papers said that the whole 
 thing had been gerrymandered, that the French had left 
 the country, that Germans had been settled instead. Very 
 likely! the Germans thought no trick too low; but still 
 there was the fact; the people who lived there would 
 probably vote German. One couldn't give votes to 
 people who left the country forty-seven years before, to 
 people who were dead. He smiled. How angry this 
 would make a French politician ! Sir Hugh supposed that 
 the French idea was self-determination for everybody 
 
284 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 except Alsace-Lorraine, this being a historical wrong; 
 and our view self-determination for everybody except 
 Ireland, India, and Egypt, these being historical rights. 
 And the Italians believed in self-determination for Po- 
 land, but not for the Adriatic coast; and the Germans 
 believed in self-determination, provided everybody voted 
 for them. Contempt surged up in him as suddenly he 
 realised mankind, incapable of desiring justice that is 
 cold, anxious only to seize, and conquer, and crush. 
 
 Coming across the marsh he saw a man whom he 
 thought he knew. He wondered what he thought of self- 
 determination. No doubt he, too, wanted to bag half 
 the world. The man drew nearer, came towards him. 
 Then Sir Hugh felt awkward. It was Cradoc. The 
 grocer, too, hesitated, but the footpath inevitably took 
 him to the stile, and there were dykes on the right and 
 left. He did not want to speak to Sir Hugh. He did 
 not want to speak to anybody, for he felt outcast. His 
 shop was still half boycotted, and he would have done no 
 trade at all if Lady Oakley had been able to obtain from 
 Mrs. Martin a more regular service from Rye. But, as 
 he drew nearer, Sir Hugh smiled at him. After all, 
 Cradoc lived on the estate, and he remembered the quiet, 
 earnest little figure who had stood before him at the 
 Tribunal; he respected him, somehow. 
 
 " Well," he said, " how are things? " 
 
 " Oh ! all right," said Cradoc. He respected Sir Hugh. 
 He remembered him as the fairest member of the Tri- 
 bunal. Only he had nothing to say to him. He felt a 
 class bar. 
 
 There was silence for a moment. The real difficulty 
 was not mental but physical: if Cradoc wanted to go on 
 he would have to climb the stile, causing Sir Hugh to get 
 out of his way ; he did not want to suggest that the Squire 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 285 
 
 should get out of his way. Sir Hugh, on the other hand, 
 felt that if he stood back he would be giving a hint to 
 Cradoc that he wanted to get rid of him, and he did not 
 want to do that. So they stood awkwardly where they 
 were, wondering what to do. This compelled conversa- 
 tion, and Sir Hugh was so anxious to say something tact- 
 ful, that he blurted into the personal: 
 
 " I suppose you've had rather a rough time? " 
 
 " Oh, no," said Cradoc. " Just the ordinary time one 
 has in prison. Everybody was kind in their way; the 
 chaplain brought me books, any books I liked. The doc- 
 tor used to talk to me, and when I had to see the gov- 
 ernor once, he behaved like a father. That's the horrible 
 part of it. They all mean well, only they've got to do 
 their duty to the system. Everybody meaning well- 
 and they've got to feed you through the nose with a tube. 
 It's like the war: everybody means well, and does evil." 
 
 " Oh, I say," replied Sir Hugh, " surely you don't think 
 the Germans mean well? " 
 
 " In their way, yes. Just as we do. They're much the 
 same sort of person, led by much the same sort of person. 
 Poor brutes, most of them, workmen, peasants, hauled out 
 to be shot like our workmen and our peasants, led by 
 the junker Crown Prince and the junker Reventlow, just 
 as our poor boys are led by junker Carson, junker Lloyd 
 George, and junker Archbishop of Canterbury." 
 
 Sir Hugh thought for a moment. He saw the point. 
 But he thought some men were junker and others more 
 junker. " Well," he said, " I see what you mean, only 
 aren't some of the junkers in the right, and some in the 
 wrong? I don't like war any more than you do, but 
 some wars have to be, and so the people who lead them, 
 in fact the people who provoke them, are doing what 
 they must, not what they like." 
 
286 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Cradoc smiled. " That's what they all say. There 
 never was a war where everybody didn't fight on the 
 defensive. We say that we declared war because Ger- 
 many declared war on Belgium, France and Russia ; Ger- 
 many says she declared war because they were going to 
 do it to her; Germany says that she had to defend herself 
 against encirclement, which had been going on for years ; 
 and we say that we made the Entente Cordiale and the 
 Russian Agreement to prevent Germany from attacking 
 us. We're all pacifists, and we throw declarations of 
 war about like confetti; we all want to get on with our 
 business, and we stop to indulge in war work; we all 
 respect human life, and we prove it by killing twenty 
 million people." 
 
 Sir Hugh remained thoughtful for some time. His 
 intellect told him that the man was right. His emotions 
 tried to tell him that Cradoc was wrong. He grew irri- 
 table. " But, hang it all ! you wouldn't have had us 
 stand out when Belgium was invaded? When we were 
 pledged by treaty to defend that gallant little country? " 
 
 " Supposing we had? " 
 
 " Then it would have been our turn next." 
 
 " Oh! Then that was the reason? It wasn't to protect 
 little Belgium? " 
 
 " It's no good chopping logic. The things go together." 
 
 " Well, supposing we had been invaded? " said Cradoc. 
 
 " You'd have been the first to dislike it, Mr. Cradoc, 
 when the Germans came into Sussex, burning and killing 
 and . . .' ; 
 
 " Would all that have happened if we did not resist? " 
 
 " Not resist? But really this is preposterous. If 
 we didn't resist we should have been annexed." 
 
 " Excellent," said Cradoc. " Why not be annexed? 
 Don't you think it would be a good thing if Serbia could 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 287 
 
 annex the rest of the Balkans and make an end of these 
 little wars? " 
 
 " It might," said Sir Hugh, and realised too late that 
 he had walked into a trap. 
 
 " Then," said Cradoc, " if Germany were allowed to 
 annex the British Empire that would make an end of one 
 set of wars." 
 
 . Sir Hugh grew rather angry. He did not like being 
 put into a corner. He remembered that he was arguing 
 with a grocer, and in his petulance this seemed material. 
 Fortunately, he was too well bred to use the fact. In- 
 stead, he made snappy reference to our culture and the 
 bestiality of German life and methods. 
 
 "Well, let's put it differently," said Cradoc. "Sup- 
 posing we could annex Germany? We'd give her good 
 government, that is, according to most people." 
 
 " Oh," said Sir Hugh, " it's all very well talking, but 
 we're not willing to be annexed and German's not willing ; 
 so it's Utopia." 
 
 " It's temporary Utopia. When I say annex I'm just 
 exaggerating my point. I mean federate rather than 
 annex." 
 
 " We can't federate with Germany." 
 
 " We used to say that we couldn't federate with Scot- 
 land and Wales, and we did. I think all the world could 
 federate, and will federate, by degrees, as we get rid of 
 the people who want to stop federation, because they have 
 power in their own States, and would have less in the 
 world State; people like kings, diplomatists, generals, 
 noblemen, politicians, financiers. The real people of the 
 world, the working masses, they could federate all right. 
 There's no hostility between a German coal miner and 
 an English tinsmith. The trade unions of the world all 
 want members, of any race or creed, so that they may 
 
288 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 work for the good of the world instead of the good of the 
 nation. There's no hostility between men who work, 
 because they work together; there is only hostility be- 
 tween men who prey, because they prey on each other. I 
 say ' Down with the kings ! down with the capitalists ! 
 down with the landlords ! ' and then there'll be no obsta- 
 cles to peace." 
 
 They did not speak for some time. Sir Hugh felt that 
 Cradoc was setting forth an idealistic case and doing it 
 badly, but the earnestness of the pale face interested 
 him. Yes, obviously the war was largely a clash of ambi- 
 tions. Had he not said it himself at the club the other 
 day? Had he not realised England, like Germany, grab- 
 bing at colonies, talking of tariffs to bar out people from 
 her markets, shouting that the foreigner must be kept 
 out, and crowing in its press that its own was the finest 
 dunghill. He understood the idea, and suddenly agreed 
 with it, but he was a practical man. " It's all very well. 
 I don't say you're wrong. But how's it going to be 
 done? " 
 
 " The people must resume power in all the big coun- 
 tries. They must first get on an even political basis, that 
 is to say, establish republics. They will be bourgeois 
 republics at first. Then the labour parties of the world 
 will more and more control the parliaments. As this 
 happens the capitalist will lose power. As he loses power 
 the cry for new markets will become less, for the labour of 
 the world does not want new markets ; it wants to produce 
 goods for its own use, and not goods on which to accumu- 
 late profits. When there is no demand for new markets 
 there will be no need for colonial wars to open these new 
 markets. Then nation will want to trade with nation, 
 because some nations make one thing better than another, 
 make it at the price of less effort. You'll find English- 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 289 
 
 men working iron, while France grows crops, and Ger- 
 many makes chemicals. Thus, by degrees, each nation 
 will stick to its national business and keep its nose out of 
 other nations' business. Those commercial links will 
 make it necessary for the parliaments to make agree- 
 ments. The agreements will be complicated, and so there 
 will be occasional parliamentary missions from one coun- 
 try to another, to establish necessary things like common 
 railway systems, common telegraphs, air service; later, 
 common rationing, until they come to common production. 
 As national business grows larger the parliaments will 
 find it necessary to hold occasional joint sittings. Then 
 they will come always to sit jointly, and you'll have the 
 parliament of man." 
 
 Sir Hugh stared at him. It amazed him that the little 
 tradesman should have thought all this out. It seemed 
 so moderate, too, so possible if only we cleared away the 
 people who lived by crowns, contracts, diplomatic min- 
 utes, cocked hats, flags, epaulets, orders, aiguillettes, all 
 the kickshaws and gimcracks for which men die. 
 
 " But," he cried, " it's revolution! " 
 
 Cradoc shrugged his shoulders. " I don't know. Evo- 
 lution if we can. Revolution if we must." 
 
 " Mr. Cradoc," said Sir Hugh, at last, " I've never 
 thought of things in this way, and perhaps I'll come to 
 agree with you. Only you're putting all the guilt on the 
 kings, and generals, and the capitalists. What about the 
 people themselves? Are you quite sure that they, too, 
 are not drunk with this desire to carry their flag to the 
 end of the earth? That these workpeople are not as full 
 of hate and ambition as their masters? That they, too, 
 don't want money and power? " 
 
 " Some do. Many have been soiled by the old tradi- 
 tion of the rivalry of princes and the loyalty due to them, 
 
290 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 and they are run by a press which every day incites them 
 to hate and to grab, and makes them believe that they are 
 better off when they have grabbed, in fact when all they 
 have got is more taxes. But most people are not like 
 that." 
 
 " Events contradict you. What about the seamen who 
 have just stopped Mr. Henderson going to Stockholm? 
 They don't seem keen on the international." 
 
 " No. They have suffered loss of many comrades sunk 
 by Germans in ships and they do not yet understand 
 that murder only makes murder; their animal pugnacity 
 is still at the disposal of the people who can profit by it. 
 But they will learn that only love and justice can breed 
 love and justice. There is no stud where the dogs of war 
 give birth to the dove of peace." 
 
 " Learn," said Sir Hugh. " In other words we must 
 teach them." 
 
 Then, suddenly, he stood back and Cradoc climbed the 
 stile. Sir Hugh had been frightened by this " we " which 
 had sprung from his lips. After Cradoc had vanished 
 round the green, Sir Hugh remained for a long time at 
 the stile. His mind was in ferment. He did not know 
 what he believed yet, but one phrase clung: " Evolution 
 if we can, revolution if we must." 
 
 XXIV 
 
 MONICA was waiting in her sitting room at Castle 
 Hill. Feeling that action would maintain her coolness 
 she was sewing, and as her fingers moved, tried to give 
 shape to her situation. But other things intruded. 
 Though Cottenham was to come to her that night for the 
 first time, she found herself generalising ; the evening post 
 had brought her a letter from Miss Moss, in which the 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 291 
 
 girl asked for a job in the Cottenham Works. Quite 
 simply Miss Moss told her why : " Since Jimmy Quin was 
 killed I've felt that I couldn't stay here any more, only 
 thinking. I must do something. I know you'll laugh at 
 me, for I only met him one week-end, but there it is, I 
 can't help it if you laugh at me." 
 
 Monica did not laugh. She sighed as she remembered 
 the dark flushed loveliness of the girl, and Quin's mis- 
 chief. Killed! One couldn't understand anything so 
 alive being dead. She remembered the thorny crown 
 which they hung upon an oak; a scrap of Quin's Eliza- 
 bethan lyric came back to her: 
 
 Blight upon the roses, blight in May. 
 
 (Merrily, merrily) , 
 Mother and daughter of my own decay, 
 
 (Drearily, drearily) . . . 
 
 Monica found her eyes full of tears. Must the war spoil 
 them all? Sylvia, and Miss Moss, and young Quin? 
 Sylvia who had lost one husband and seemed unhappy 
 with the second? She, herself, loving and not loving, 
 loved and not loved. As she sat sewing she thought 
 more and more of herself and of the fortnight just elapsed. 
 There had been in those days exquisite moments, for he 
 had been with her for more than three-quarters of an 
 hour; they had passed whole evenings in the shanty in 
 Bull's Field, talking, making love, making plans; they 
 had walked in the country in the clear moonlight and 
 through light showers. There had been many times of 
 doubt, almost of bitterness ; she was tired of never hearing 
 him say: " I love you "; he was ashamed of wanting her 
 so much, loving her so little. This tinged their relation 
 with cruelty. But what hurt her most was that such de- 
 lights as she attained were due to Julia's absence. She 
 
292 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 thought: " It was only because his wife was away. If 
 she'd been there he would have been in attendance on her. 
 He'd have to be, of course." But she thought, savagely: 
 " Perhaps he'd want to be." For the first time she 
 acknowledged to herself that she hated Julia, because she 
 possessed the man she wanted, not only legally but by 
 the right of conquering charm. " He's been with me these 
 nights, not because I'd broken into their marriage, but 
 because she couldn't watch him. He was not escaping 
 from her to me, he was escaping from nothing to noth- 
 ing." 
 
 It was such thoughts had induced her to receive him at 
 Castle Hill. It was dangerous, not only because he might 
 be seen, but because they might find themselves irre- 
 trievably linked without being entirely joined. But she 
 felt the need for complete explanations, for an acid test. 
 Through the last weeks he had demanded too much of 
 her, too much emotional abjection, too many surrenders. 
 Yet she knew that she was entirely his, and so she did not 
 resent this: What she did resent was that never had he 
 taken all she would give, that he had tortured her into 
 acquiescence, yet always held back, held himself in con- 
 trol, as if he were afraid of becoming responsible for her. 
 He had said so once: " I daren't become the centre of 
 your life. I'm afraid of not making you as happy as I 
 want you to be. Yes, I know, the thing we love wants to 
 be killed, but its predestined murderer may shrink from 
 the necessary crime." 
 
 She started. Outside she could hear the signal, for he 
 did not want to ring and be seen by the landlady. She 
 listened while he whistled two bars of Alceste. " Now," 
 thought Monica, " now's my chance. Let him whistle, 
 and don't go." But she knew that she would go, and still 
 telling herself to keep her door shut she opened it. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 293 
 
 Cottenham came in, half elated, half nervous. He was 
 sensitive enough to feel finality in this interview. " To- 
 night," he thought, " it's all or nothing, and whichever it 
 is I'll regret it." So, as much to cheat himself as to put 
 off the irreparable, he seized her in his arms and for a 
 moment caressed her so that he did not realise she re- 
 sisted him. Only after a moment did Monica put him 
 away: 
 
 " No, Frank, don't come near me for a moment. Sit 
 down. Let us talk." 
 
 He sat down. His mind wandered to the ugliness of 
 the room. " What a hideous sideboard ! and what a 
 cruet!" 
 
 " Frank," said Monica, " what d'you want to do? " 
 
 " How do you mean? What do I want to do? " 
 
 " Well, yes; here we are, we two. Can we go on like 
 this? " 
 
 He feinted: " What have I done? What have you got 
 against me? " 
 
 " I've got nothing against you that I haven't got against 
 myself. It's not that. But how are things going to 
 end? " 
 
 He did not reply. He did not know how things were 
 going to end. Or rather he felt they could not end at all, 
 and he dared not tell her so. 
 
 " Tell me," said the girl, " are you sick of me? " 
 
 Cottenham gave a little cry of protest, seized her, cov- 
 ered with kisses lips that did not resist, but trembled. For 
 a long time he held her so, and all the old allure rose up 
 and overwhelmed him; she was glad of his embrace, re- 
 sponsive to his contact. She could not think; she could 
 only feel the delight of drawing him closer, of holding 
 him, of finding an assurance which did not feel false. But 
 still, after a moment the question in her mind set itself 
 
294 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 once more. She must know, she must know. Her head 
 upon his shoulder, she said: 
 
 " You don't love me." 
 
 He did not reply* There was enough nobility in him 
 to stop a lie. Indeed he instinctively made for sincerity, 
 though he wrapped it up in phrases. 
 
 " Love," he said, " what is love? Who shall say 
 whether we are so different from the beasts? Whether 
 love is not merely the cry of the life force? Why should 
 we assume that love means everlasting attraction? That 
 it means marriage, children, bills? Must one love be- 
 cause of the curve of a lip? Must one love because one 
 has made a fetish of an invisible soul? Oh! Monica, it 
 would be so much easier to lie to you." 
 
 " It wouldn't; you're not that sort of man." 
 
 " No. I suppose not. Yet I'm not a nice man. I may 
 be an attractive man, but I'm not a nice man. Not loyal, 
 faithful, truthful, decent, kind. I'm nothing of the sort. 
 I'm not a satisfaction; I'm a pleasure." 
 
 " You don't love me," said Monica again. 
 
 " Well, I've never pretended to. I want you. You 
 play a part in my life that I couldn't cut out. Oh! I 
 suppose I could, just as you could. It would hurt, that's 
 all. But I've never pretended. I've always wanted to 
 make you happy, as much as I could. And I've done you 
 no harm really ; I've done you good. When you first met 
 me you weren't alive, you weren't awake, you weren't 
 capable of loving; now your eyes are open, you can let 
 your emotions go. I've made the world vivid to you." 
 
 " And what is the good of all that to me? " said Mon- 
 ica. 
 
 " I don't know, but I do know it's some good, instead of 
 doddering along to old maidenhood or to dull mar- 
 riage. I've taught you to feel. All through your life 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 295 
 
 you'll understand emotion; you'll have sympathy; you 
 won't get old. Getting old is getting hard, and you'll 
 never get hard." 
 
 Monica did not reply for a time. Then she said: 
 " Frank, do you understand that you're saying ' good- 
 bye ' to me? " 
 
 He remained staring at the floor, then said: 
 
 " I don't want to ; you don't want to. Yet I suppose 
 we're saying good-bye. Things were against us." He 
 turned to go, averting his eyes, and as he turned there 
 rose up in Monica a desolation. She realised herself as 
 marooned upon an island. She cried out: 
 
 "Frank! Frank! don't go. I can't let you go." He 
 paused, irresolute upon the threshold; Monica ran up to 
 him, clutching him by the arm: 
 
 " Don't go ! don't leave me. I can't let you go. I 
 thought I could and I can't. You mean too much to me. 
 You've cut out everything except yourself. You can't 
 leave me like this. I'm ashamed of it, and you're all 
 I've got oh! don't, oh! don't." She threw both arms 
 round him. " I don't ask for anything. I don't ask you 
 to be responsible for anything. You needn't be decent 
 to me if you don't want to." Her voice thickened with 
 tears. " Only don't send me away. You've conquered 
 me and you can't give me up." 
 
 Then her tears grew so heavy that she could speak no 
 more. It was only a minute or two later that she realised 
 the stiffness of the shape she held. He did not free him- 
 self, he did not hold her to him. He was passive in her 
 arms, submissive, and she vaguely realised that as she 
 inverted the attitude of woman, as she pleaded instead 
 of eluding, she wearied him, she humiliated him, dis- 
 gusted him. So horrible was this feeling that she did not 
 resist when he loosened her hands, made her sit down and 
 
296 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 dried her tears. He stood a little away from her, and 
 while he spoke she hardly understood him. She stared 
 at him with swollen eyes. 
 
 " It's no good, Monica," he said, roughly. " You're 
 right. It can't go on and it can't end. So it must end. 
 It's better for both of us. It would have been too beauti- 
 ful." 
 
 He was gone. Monica sat silent and motionless, her 
 eyes fixed upon the closed door. It had closed upon the 
 past and upon life. She thought of him without anger 
 and without misery. She understood him better. He 
 had wanted her lightly, to be content with a little, and so 
 they had walked into a blind alley. She was prepared to 
 give too much. He had aroused more than he wanted. 
 Was it fair to thrust that upon him? Then she could 
 think no more. She was conscious only of her loneliness, 
 her misery. It could not be. Later only in the night 
 did the tears come again, tears on the stream of which 
 flowed away energy and resentment. For two nights she 
 could not sleep. Her food sickened her. When she went 
 to unit office to give in her notice on the score of ill-health, 
 the foreman said: 
 
 " I'm not surprised. You look pretty wonky." 
 
 XXV 
 
 SIR HUGH walked up and down the big drawing-room. 
 Hands in pockets, head sunken upon shirt front, he was 
 thinking of his interview with the grocer. It still struck 
 him as queer that he should have talked to the grocer. 
 His tradition made it normal for him to discuss local af- 
 fairs with the farmers, and to pass the time of day with 
 the labourers. If he had talked to Hart or to Port it 
 would have been all right, but somehow the Oakleys didn't 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 297 
 
 talk to tradesmen. " Times are changing," he thought 
 with a smile, " if the Oakleys are changing." His mind 
 turned to the stormy happenings of the day, the formi- 
 dable fighting around Arras, in Italy, the rout of the Rus- 
 sians, the fall of Riga, the epic of Kerensky, trying to 
 rally forces sick of war, streaming homewards along the 
 roads, across country, shedding their equipments, their 
 arms, even their supplies, panic-stricken, mutinous, stop- 
 ping to hold excited meetings which broke into flight as 
 the German batteries advanced and sprayed them with 
 shrapnel. Epic, yes, this attempt of a little sick man to 
 hold together the great Russian ice floe that was melting 
 and cracking under the hot blast of new ideas. " Ideas! " 
 reflected Sir Hugh. " Pobiedonostzeff was right; an idea 
 is more powerful than dynamite. It has power even over 
 me, as if a man could govern anything except his own 
 thoughts. Power over me, a landlord and a capitalist." 
 He smiled. " Am I as bad as all that? " he wondered. 
 " Yes, I suppose there's no denying it ; I don't do any 
 real work; I've inherited land, and I sit upon it while 
 other people till it, and I take most of the proceeds. My 
 labourers do their own washing, eat coarse food, bring up 
 half a dozen children on a pound a week, live in houses 
 with stone floors, under roofs which are none too good, 
 drink water from a well that's none too clean, and go on 
 until they're crippled with rheumatism and find their last 
 home in the workhouse, unless I'm good enough to give 
 them a pension of ten shillings a week, while Lena goes 
 round graciously handing out tea to the old women, and 
 bed socks to the old men. Meanwhile I stay in this large 
 house with plenty of clean linen, hot water when I want 
 it, large meals if I'm hungry, delicate ones if I'm sick, and 
 the right to do what I like, not to touch my cap and say 
 ' sir ' to any man. And when I'm old they'll take me to 
 
298 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 a foreign spa to put me right, so that I may go on eating 
 the meals I like, and giving orders to the people who 
 haven't got land, the people whom I'm blackmailing into 
 giving me most of their earnings, by holding on to the land 
 which they work and on which I prey, blackmailing by 
 telling them to work on my land or go and starve." 
 
 For a moment Sir Hugh hated himself. Then he had 
 a revulsion. "After all, it's the survival of the fittest. 
 I hold this land because they're too weak or too stupid 
 to take it from me. If they're like that, what right have 
 they to it? But no, that won't do; no wonder they're 
 weak and stupid when for generations my class has hung 
 on to all the things which give men power: education, 
 decent houses, and, above all, security and leisure which 
 give men a chance to think and plan. I've stolen their 
 souls as well as stolen their land. No, not stolen; I 
 haven't the pluck for that. Some old Oakley had the 
 spirit of a brigand, so he took it. He was a worthy man, 
 but I, his heir, haven't his backbone. I live upon the pro- 
 ceeds of those thefts. I am a receiver of stolen goods." 
 " Hugh," said Lady Oakley, " for heaven's sake don't 
 walk up and down; you get on my nerves." 
 " Sorry, old girl, I'm feeling rather restless." 
 " I'm not surprised with things in the state they are. 
 Still, sit down and do something." 
 Sir Hugh did not reply for a moment, then said: 
 " I met Cradoc to-day. He's got odd ideas." 
 " Odd ideas? " said Lady Oakley. " Do you mean to 
 say you spoke to him? " 
 
 " I had to, in a way. We both reached a stile at the 
 same time. Still I don't see why I shouldn't speak to 
 him." 
 
 " Nonsense. You know perfectly well that one can't 
 have anything to do with a man like that." 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 299 
 
 " Oh! he's not infectious." But as he spoke Sir Hugh 
 wondered whether Cradoc was not. 
 
 " Don't be silly. You know quite well that if we seem 
 to condone his conduct, everybody will. We've got to 
 give the example in the village. That man must not be 
 allowed to forget that he refused to serve his country be- 
 cause he's a coward and shelters himself behind a law 
 made by the weak-kneed for the weak-kneed. He ought 
 to be shot. I'd like to know how many conscientious ob- 
 jectors there'd be if they were shot instead of tucked 
 up in a comfortable jail while other people fight for 
 them." 
 
 " Lena, I think you're exaggerating." 
 
 "Ami? How?" 
 
 " You seem to think there's no such thing as conscience. 
 Oh! yes, yes, I know," he went on impatiently, as Lady 
 Oakley opened her mouth to reply, " you'll say that no 
 man's conscience could bid him keep out of the war, but I 
 tell you that a man's conscience may bid him anything. 
 You mayn't like it, but there it is, and if he's honest ..." 
 
 "Honest!" 
 
 " Yes, honest ; if he's honest we must either respect his 
 conscience or we must adopt the brutal disregard of fine 
 feeling which people say we're fighting against when we 
 fight the Germans. I'm not so sure that these conscien- 
 tious objectors are as black as they are painted. It's 
 not so nice as all that going to prison when one might 
 squirm out of it by making munitions or going on the 
 land. Do you know that over three hundred people, men 
 and women, have just handed in a petition to be allowed 
 to take the place of conscientious objectors in gaol like 
 the hundred and sixty- four Quakers who offered them- 
 selves in 1659 as substitutes for political prisoners. I 
 think it's beautiful." 
 
300 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Hugh ! " cried Lady Oakley, " one might think you 
 agreed with them." 
 
 " I don't and I do. I'm not so sure as I was that this 
 war is a struggle between democracy in England and 
 autocracy in Germany. I'm not so sure that the real 
 struggle is not between the German junker and capitalist 
 on one side, and the empire builder on this side. It may 
 be that there wouldn't have been a war if we hadn't 
 grabbed half the world and claimed the other half. I'm 
 no friend of German imperialism, but I'm not so sure as 
 I was of British imperialism. This desire to expand, to 
 get new markets, to build fantastic railways, and to hold 
 on to everything, and blackmail everybody else by means 
 of tariffs it looks uncommonly like the origin of all 
 war." 
 
 "Berlin-Baghdad," said Lady Oakley. 
 
 "Yes, Berlin-Baghdad; there's a ridiculous idea for 
 which to go and kill people. Are we any better? I seem 
 to have heard of a thing called Cape to Cairo. Tell me, 
 please, what the difference is? Does it amount to say- 
 ing that a scheme is clean if we run it, and unclean if 
 others run it? " 
 
 " How can you talk such nonsense? Everybody knows 
 that the German in his colonies behaves like a wild beast, 
 that the natives hate him, that it's our duty to bring good 
 government ..." 
 
 " Lena, that's cant. Natives hate all white men. 
 They stand some sorts better than others. All white men 
 sweat black men. Of course, the Germans in the col- 
 onies have murdered, and outraged, and burned, but 
 didn't the Belgians flog and torture in the Congo? Didn't 
 we wipe out the Matabeles in South Africa? Didn't the 
 French wipe the natives out in Dahomey? Haven't we 
 killed the Pacific native with gin? Didn't we fight the 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 301 
 
 Chinese to force them to buy opium? This talk of duty 
 makes me sick. This hypocrisy. Let us talk of profits 
 for our traders and soft jobs for our sons in the Colonial 
 Civil Service, that's straight; but don't let's talk of the 
 white man's burden, let's talk of the white man's booty. 
 They hate us; all India and half Egypt only stick us 
 because we've got the machine guns. Us! Who are we? 
 The ruling class, of course. What does all this power, 
 this empire, mean to the working class? " 
 
 " It's got nothing to do with them," said Lady Oakley. 
 " They've got no education; it's for us to lead them and 
 to see they do their part in the empire. The working 
 class is getting beyond itself. Think that in a war like 
 this the engineers should be striking! If we were to shoot 
 one out of every ten ..." 
 
 "Shoot! that seems to be the only argument our class 
 has got. Force, and more force, never reasoning, never 
 listening to the other side. Besides, it's all very well this 
 talk of shooting working men, and it may be justified, but 
 if we start doing that sort of thing we'll have to apply the 
 method to everybody." 
 
 " So one should in war time." 
 
 "Oh! should one? I don't think you'd agree, Lena, 
 when it came to it. You sit there talking of shooting the 
 strikers, and you're ready to breed suspicion and hate by 
 treating the employers in quite a different way. I see 
 something of that on the Board. When we offer a con- 
 tractor work and he says that the Government price is 
 too low, and he won't do it, do we shoot him? When we 
 examine his costs and find that the poor fellpw can only 
 make seven per cent, and still he won't do the work, do 
 we shoot him? When he's doing some work for us, and 
 gives us notice because he isn't making enough, in other 
 words, strikes yes, strikes strikes because he says 
 
302 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the profit doesn't enable him to live decently, just as 
 the workman strikes because he says the wages don't al- 
 low him to live decently, do we shoot the employer? No, 
 we stop his mouth with a peerage." 
 
 " Well, I didn't back him up," said Lady Oakley. " I 
 didn't say men should make fortunes out of the war." 
 
 " They are making fortunes. The country's rotten with 
 profiteering, and we can't stop it. We fix wages, and most 
 of the time the workman's got to accept the rate or 
 starve; but if we fix prices and the profiteer withholds 
 the goods, which is just the same thing as a workman 
 withholding his labour, we talk of calling up the workman 
 and making him hand over his labour under the bayonet ; 
 we aren't so ready to make the profiteer hand over the 
 goods which he is blackmailing the community into buy- 
 ing at a higher rate. And if he does hand over his goods, 
 we let him take the higher price for all the old stock he 
 bought at low prices, for all the stuff he bought before the 
 war. Profits are sacred, men are not." 
 
 Lady Oakley did not reply for some time. Then she 
 said, more gently: 
 
 " I don't know what's come over you. I wish you 
 weren't so excited." She went up to him and put her 
 hand on his arm. " Don't let's quarrel over things that 
 don't matter I mean to us, that's to say, between us." 
 
 Sir Hugh looked at his wife tenderly, sorrowfully. Yes, 
 indeed, he did not know what had come over him. Why 
 should this handsome, imperious woman, who had once 
 held such sway over him, become every day more strange? 
 Was it because she could not leave her class, while every 
 day it seemed to be leaving him? 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 303 
 
 XXVI 
 
 SIR HUGH and Louise settled Stephen into the compart- 
 ment. Though his son had almost recovered from shell- 
 shock, excepting his sombre humour, he had only just 
 begun to walk again, and would always be lame. It hurt 
 the father to have to assist this vigorous young man up 
 the steps of the carriage. But it pleased him to see Louise 
 tend him, place a pillow under his elbow, and skilfully 
 raise the injured limb so as to make a sort of bolster 
 under the knee. 
 
 " There," she said. " Now you'll be quite comfortable. 
 It was worth driving into Hastings. You won't have to 
 move till London, instead of having to change at Ash- 
 ford." 
 
 " Thanks, old thing. And, I say, you might let out old 
 Toss when you get back. I'm afraid I locked him up in 
 the gun room. He went to sleep and I forgot him. And 
 since you're in Hastings, perhaps you wouldn't mind drop- 
 ping at the bookseller's at the back of the Queen's, and 
 asking him whether he's waiting for the war to stop be- 
 fore he sends me that book on foreign exchanges. And 
 if anybody tries to sell you any matches, buy 'em." 
 
 " Righto," said Louise, smiling as she closed the door. 
 All were pleased in their way with this dependence. As 
 the train pulled out, Stephen seemed to be thinking of it. 
 " Dear old Louise," he murmured, " I'd have had a thin 
 time of it these six months if it hadn't been for her." 
 
 " She's a dear girl," said Sir Hugh, and for a moment 
 sank into a dream of the dead Mrs. Douglas, who had not 
 known how to love him. He wished Douglas would die. 
 He didn't like him. Then he could practically adopt 
 Louise. But he remembered that Stephen must not be 
 allowed to brood, and talked of the journey to London, 
 
304 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 of the marriage of Genevieve, of the fun it would be for 
 Stephen to lunch once more out of his own house. The 
 object of the trip was not to meet the Cawstons, but to 
 give Stephen a change, and Sir Hugh innocently thought 
 that Stephen did not know it. So the father went on 
 chattering until, short of small talk, he suddenly asked 
 the young man: " You're pulling round, Stephen, old 
 chap. Have you thought at all of what you'll do next? " 
 
 " You mean what they call a career, don't you? " 
 
 " Yes. It's rather awkward your not having taken 
 your degree. Any idea of going back to the 'Varsity to 
 finish? They're making it easy for wounded officers, 
 you know, giving them pass degrees if they go up for say 
 six or twelve months. Hard lines, in a way ; considering 
 you might have taken a first." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Stephen, " doesn't matter. Unless you're 
 dead keen on it, father, I'd as soon not go back. It's 
 too late. I'd feel out of it at school ; that's all the 'Var- 
 sity is. At least that's what it would feel like now after 
 being out there and seeing ..." 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Sir Hugh hurriedly, " we don't 
 want to talk about that. Only if you don't go back you'll 
 find it rather hard to do any good in the diplomatic." 
 
 " I'm not so struck with the diplomatic. Seems to me 
 a rather dirty game. We used to be told that a diplomat 
 is a fellow who lies abroad for the good of his country. 
 Seems to me he hasn't been doing so much good as all that. 
 Don't know that I want to join the people who have made 
 a corner in snaky finesse. The status is changing, too ; the 
 popular idea seems to be that a diplomat is either a damn 
 fool or a damn blackguard. They'll be getting it in the 
 neck from the Labour Party soon, and judging from the 
 mess they've made, it mightn't be a bad idea to recruit 
 our diplomats from the boiler makers and waitresses. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 305 
 
 Sir Hugh smiled. "Well, you may be right. Only 
 it's going to make a mess of your career, this attitude of 
 yours. It's true this war's upset everybody's career." 
 
 " Yes, it's made a mess of some and pushed up others. 
 Same old total in a hundred years. Fellows have gone 
 out, leaving their jobs, and the unfit, and the Cuthberts, 
 and the men of forty-one have bagged them. I suppose 
 it's all right ; in a way one wants some to do the fighting, 
 and some to collar the swag and be patriotic. One can 
 be the hell of a patriot when one's over forty-one. Age 
 makes patriotism safe." 
 
 " Don't be rude to your poor old father," said Sir Hugh, 
 laughing. " It's not his fault he was born before you 
 were." 
 
 " I don't mean you," said Stephen. " I mean those 
 swine in office, like Uncle Angus. Still, what's the good of 
 talking? Since you're not shoving me, I rather think I'd 
 like to go into the Bank. You could squeeze me on to 
 a high stool? " 
 
 11 Yes," said Sir Hugh, " if you think you'd like it." 
 
 Then they talked of finance nearly all the way to town, 
 and Sir Hugh was surprised at the maturity of his son. 
 As if the war were a forcing house. He had read up for- 
 eign exchange, and had ideas about the funding of the 
 debt that staggered the old financier. He supposed that 
 an expenditure now risen to over six millions a day needed 
 new finance. Still, they had a warm difference of opin- 
 ion on automatic conversion of short loans, and Stephen 
 was lifted on to the platform at Victoria volubly protest- 
 ing that the Government ought to bear consols so as to 
 bring the price down and buy back its own stock dirt 
 cheap. 
 
 It was altogether a bright day. Stephen was whirled, 
 " to take his mind off it ", to the tailor, whirled to the 
 
306 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Army and Navy Stores to buy tobacco, whirled to Hatch- 
 ard's, to Holland's. So he was prepared to be pleased at 
 lunch, at Angus Cawston's flat in Ashley Gardens. In- 
 deed he flirted a good deal with Genevieve, obviously at- 
 tracted by her straw blondness. Meanwhile, Cawston 
 talked. He talked more than ever, and more securely, 
 for now he was no longer a director in the Drug Control 
 Office, but following on obscure revolutions, brought 
 about by backbiting other directors, scheming to steal 
 their work, enlarging his own staff regardless of any 
 need, he had been recognised as a man full of push and 
 go. That is, he had pushed, and the others had gone. 
 So he was Controller. 
 
 " Yes," he said, " things are going pretty well. We're 
 extending the controls. Got to, you know. When you 
 start controlling a drug, the trade puts up a substitute. 
 Then you've got to control the substitute. Then some- 
 body, probably a Hun who calls himself a Swiss, thinks 
 of a sub-substitute. You control that. And so on. 
 There's such a rush on drugs that by the time the war's 
 done I guess you won't be able to buy a liver pill without 
 my ticket." 
 
 " Excuse daddy," said Genevieve. " He's got so coarse 
 since he started controlling." 
 
 " My dear girl, there's a war on. Put that in your 
 maidenly pipe and smoke it. Besides, it's no good your 
 talking; you'll soon be married, and when Drayton comes 
 home the conversation at the conjugal hearth will centre 
 round ipecacuanha and atropine, with the mysteries of 
 cocaine dens thrown in to liven things up." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Sir Hugh, " I forgot to congratulate 
 you." 
 
 Cawston explained: "Yes, Drayton's a good chap. 
 Junior partner in Drayton and Boho, biggest wholesale 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 307 
 
 chemists in the country. They've done well out of this 
 war, those people. Still, I suppose they're making 
 amends." 
 
 Everybody laughed. 
 
 " There's a romance for you, Genevieve," said Stephen. 
 " The profiteer, like a conquering prince, marries the 
 daughter of the conquered prince, otherwise known as 
 the Controller. I can see the poetic caption in the Daily 
 Mirror with your names under incredible photographs: 
 Magnesia King Weds Magnesia Control, or: Controller's 
 Daughter to Operate on the Home Front." 
 
 " Don't be silly," said the girl sharply, her rather fool- 
 ish little mouth tightening. She was sensitive about 
 Drayton and Boho. After all, in a way, they were in 
 trade, and though she liked Drayton she might not have 
 married him if the firm had not managed to build three 
 factories out of excess profits, and convinced the Inland 
 Revenue that there were no excess profits to tax. So 
 Cawston dropped the subject, while Sir Hugh reflected 
 that indeed times were changing; not long ago no Oakley, 
 and hardly a Cawston, could have marrried a Drayton 
 and Boho, because they would not have met one. This 
 harmonised with Cawston's conversation; he was talking 
 of men made by the war. 
 
 " Regular turn-over," he said. " There's no talk of 
 class now, and a jolly good thing too. We had to get 
 business men in to win the war." 
 
 " We aren't winning it very fast," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Give 'em time ; they aren't a bad crowd, really. Look 
 at Geddes; the papers say he was a railway porter once. 
 Now he's controller of the navy. There's lots of others, 
 too, less high up; one of my directors was a clerk in a 
 gas-stove firm; they're all over the Civil Service, pro- 
 vision dealers, pawnbrokers, all sorts of men who are 
 
308 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 saving the country millions a week. Seems a pity the 
 old families should have to go. Still, there you are." He 
 heaved a fat, philosophic sigh. " It's the wheel of for- 
 tune, as Tennyson says, lowering the proud." 
 
 There was silence for a moment. Everybody was 
 thinking of the dead ruling class, agreeing that it had 
 shown itself unworthy to rule, and yet, except perhaps 
 Cawston, rather afraid of the new ruling class. The old 
 class wanted power, the new class wanted power and 
 money. The old class had played the game and lost it; 
 the new class had made it pay. So Sir Hugh asked how 
 Hubert was doing. 
 
 " He's all right," said Cawston. " We've had a letter 
 from him at last. It seems the Huns are being quite 
 decent to him. They are, you know, in the Flying Corps. 
 He writes that three other English flying men and himself 
 dined at the German mess the other night; he says they 
 did themselves very well. One thing they're not short 
 of is fizz. So he's merry as a cricket; he's sent me a 
 cheque to buy Jinney a wedding present because he's 
 afraid he won't get to Berlin in time to buy it before the 
 wedding." 
 
 From Hubert the talk wandered to the war; the older 
 men discussed the newspaper maps, the collapse of Rou- 
 mania and the Cambrai disappointment. 
 
 " Nasty mess," said Cawston. " Some general will get 
 rapped over the knuckles for it. Seems to me he's thrown 
 away our chance with the tanks by trotting 'em out be- 
 fore we had enough of 'em. We ought to have waited 
 till we had thousands; then we'd have rushed the whole 
 line. If I'd been the general at Cambrai, I'd feel like 
 shooting myself." 
 
 " Oh ! no, you wouldn't," said Stephen. " Englishmen 
 don't do those things. If you were a Russian general you 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 309 
 
 might. The Russian general who's beaten always com- 
 mits suicide. A British general goes to live in Earl's 
 Court." 
 
 The talk wandered off to the part the Americans would 
 play, and Cawston displayed vast knowledge as to the 
 numbers landed in France. Then Genevieve took Stephen 
 aside to show him photographs of herself in many atti- 
 tudes and military costumes. So Cawston lowered his 
 voice and said to Sir Hugh: " By the way, I ran across 
 Sylvia the other day. At the Petticoat Lane Fair at 
 Albert Hall. She was going strong." 
 
 Sir Hugh did not reply for a moment. He did not like 
 this way of putting it. He felt it implied something. So, 
 with some hesitation and assumed negligence, he said: 
 " Oh! was she with a party? " 
 
 " No. She had a nice looking young soldier with her. 
 A fellow called March." 
 
 Sir Hugh's mouth grew rigid: " Angus," he said, " d'you 
 mind my asking you whether well, is there any talk 
 going round? " 
 
 Cawston made a broad gesture. " My dear fellow ! 
 there's always talk about a pretty woman." 
 
 " I want to know." 
 
 " Oh ! well, if you insist, I should say she's been seen 
 rather too often with him. He seems to get leave easily. 
 Of course it doesn't matter in war time." 
 
 " No," said Sir Hugh, " it doesn't matter if it doesn't 
 matter." 
 
 XXVII 
 
 " MOLLY/' said Hart, as the girl put on her cloak, 
 " where are you going to? " 
 
 " Just going for a run around. It's a fine night." 
 " Going alone? " 
 
310 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Oh! well, you never know." 
 
 " Look here," said the big farmer, standing up. " Are 
 you going to meet that conscientious swine, or ain't you? 
 Out with it." 
 
 Molly raised her chestnut head very high. " I shall 
 please myself," she said. 
 
 " Oh! " said Hart, " will you? Thinking of becoming 
 Mrs. White Feather? " 
 
 " What if I do? " said the girl aggressively. " Happen 
 to have a husband handy for me? " 
 
 "Oh!" said Hart. He had no answer ready. "So 
 that's it. Putting up with what you can get." 
 
 " I'm not putting up with anybody," snarled Molly. 
 " If I'm single, it's because I like it, and now perhaps 
 I'm tired of it. Cheero, good evening." 
 
 The farmer sat down, and as he filled his pipe reflected 
 that there was something in Molly's point of view. Of 
 course, she wanted to get married. He thought of con- 
 sulting his wife, but Mrs. Hart went on mending his 
 breeches with an air of complete aloofness. "I'll rive 
 the guts out of her," he remarked, but without conviction. 
 
 As Molly went along the lane she realised that her 
 father's attitude forced her decision. She had been hesi- 
 tating for two or three weeks. Once she had seen Cradoc 
 in the distance, and turned back when he came towards 
 her. Then she had spoken to him twice, about the 
 weather. As the man was polite and cold, her pride had 
 fired, and vaguely there had formed in her mind a desire 
 to bring him to her feet. She didn't mean anything, of 
 course, but she did not like to think that he took it so 
 easily. As he attempted no further approach, she had 
 that morning told him casually that if it was a fine 
 moonlit night she'd be taking a walk past Policeman's 
 House. Now she sped along the road, a new thrill of 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 311 
 
 excitement in her breast. It did not strike her that he 
 would not be there, so the sight of his figure, dark against 
 the white road, seemed natural. For a moment they 
 walked side by side. When at last he spoke she was 
 surprised. She expected a loverlike speech, and actually 
 Cradoc had been thinking of something else. He said: 
 " It's a funny world. Have you seen the posters outside 
 the King's Arms? " 
 
 "No. What about them?" 
 
 " They're asking us to pray for victory. And they're 
 backing it up with a message from General Robertson 
 saying that it is only when the whole empire unites in 
 prayer as well as in work that we can look forward to a 
 successful conclusion and all that. Admiral Beatty, 
 too. He says that when Englishmen can look out on 
 the future with humbler eyes and a prayer on our lips, 
 then we can begin to count the days to the end. Lovely 
 idea ! I wonder whether Beatty really thinks a prayer 
 works better than a fifteen-inch shell." 
 
 " I don't know," said Molly. " Let's stop. I've kicked 
 a stone and hurt my toe." 
 
 They stopped on the road, face to face, and awkward. 
 Cradoc stared at her, half cold. Her good looks still 
 affected him, her broad squareness, her milk-white skin, 
 and the tangled brown hair. But she had failed him 
 once. And a vague hatred mingled with his desire. 
 
 " Isn't there anywhere where we can sit down? " asked 
 Molly. " Let's go in these and see if we can find a log." 
 
 Silently they went into Dead Man's Copse, as it was 
 called since the strangled airman had been found there. 
 They were young enough not to care. For a long time 
 they sat together on a heap of hurdles, the girl instinc- 
 tively silent and alluring. She sat relaxed, very white 
 under the blazing moon, and Cradoc wanted to touch her, 
 
312 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 realised that he might, yet wondered whether he should 
 give way to a purely physical desire, which intellectual 
 asceticism made contemptible. Then she turned towards 
 him. She was rather angry because he did not advance. 
 
 " Well? " she said, " lost your tongue? " 
 
 " I don't know what to say, Molly. It's good to be 
 with you again." 
 
 " Doesn't seem to be much fun for you." He did not 
 reply, and she went on. "Why are you sulking? Be- 
 cause of what I said? " 
 
 " Oh ! no. It was natural enough. You couldn't go 
 on loving a man who wouldn't do as others did." 
 
 After a long pause Molly said: " I dunno. Seems to 
 me all that's too deep for a girl. Still it's just as you 
 like." 
 
 Cradoc realised that she was offering herself, but his 
 pride was so sore that he wanted to humiliate her. So, 
 harshly, he replied: 
 
 " Yes. Have you nothing else to say? " 
 
 She flung him a glance of hatred and half admiration. 
 " Want me to eat dirt, do you? I will if you like. I'm 
 not particular. So you can have it straight: if you want 
 to let bygones be bygones, and go on as we were, I don't 
 mind." 
 
 Cradoc hesitated for a moment, then put his arm 
 about the broad shoulders and drew the girl to him. The 
 old intoxication rose in him as he clasped her, but now 
 he held her with a sort of royalty. In a way he had 
 not suffered in vain, for he was her master, not her slave. 
 He raised her square white chin, kissed her lips, full of 
 exquisite condescension. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 313 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 SAVAGERY seemed once more to have crept into Ste- 
 phen. The dull silence which had often turned into light 
 ironic humour had half returned, and now he brooded 
 again, breaking off his secret meditations only to indulge 
 in fits of anger. It did not occur to anybody that he 
 was different since Louise had given up nursing him, and 
 returned to the New Hospital, nor was it noticed that he 
 grew lighter when she came to Knapenden. This was not 
 infrequent, for she had given up nursing, and was now 
 assistant secretary at the hospital; thus she could come 
 over two or three afternoons a week to assist in Stephen's 
 convalescence by amusing him. His eyesight had not 
 suffered from shell-shock, yet reading tired him, and so 
 Louise took to reading aloud to him. She expressed her- 
 self ideally, for she began by bringing her own literature, 
 novels by Mr. E. F. Benson, essays by Mr. E. V. Lucas, 
 and when Stephen preferred other books she said : ' Just 
 as you like/ and patiently sitting by his side, endlessly 
 read him Hartley Withers on finance, and without any 
 apparent repulsion sundry works of Mr. E. D. Morel. 
 
 Stephen took a double pleasure in this. The stuff inter- 
 ested him, was, he felt, building him, and at the same 
 time he liked the soothing low voice, the fine-cut profile, 
 the shadow of the black lashes, and the tender mouth. 
 Sometimes, at the end of a chapter, she looked up 
 and smiled, a soft, veiled smile, and life felt easy. He 
 dilated, as a parched flower under gentle rain. Once he 
 said: 
 
 " Louise, you make hatred incredible. You sit there 
 like a great fat water lily, whitely basking in a shady 
 pool, and you make the water greener." 
 
 " I'm not fat," said Louise, pouting. 
 
314 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 "Sorry. Let us say capacious, spacious; a spacious 
 soul, that's you, with room in it for all the love in the 
 world. And as all the love of the world crowds it there's 
 no room in it for hate." 
 
 She smiled, and taking up the book again, began to 
 read. 
 
 Sometimes they played billiards. Stephen had got over 
 the annoyance of the long journey round the table which 
 his short leg imposed on him, and he no longer struggled 
 to set the balls in place, or to get them out of their 
 pockets. He liked to be waited upon by Louise, for it 
 was not like being waited upon: it was more like being 
 with somebody in the company of whom everything 
 turned out all right. She was much better than he, and 
 could give him easily twenty points in the hundred. 
 This hurt his vanity, and now and then they quarrelled 
 amicably, he charging her with foul play, she with a 
 baby's petulance. It was familiar, full of comradeship, 
 and here, too, he was unconsciously pleased by the lines 
 of her rather full figure as she stooped over the table. 
 She contented him. He grew aware of it once, suddenly. 
 They had interrupted their game to talk, that is, for 
 Louise to listen as usual while Stephen expressed his 
 vigorous contempt for squire, manufacturer and labour 
 man: 
 
 " They say that the Italians broke at Caporetto be- 
 cause of socialist propaganda. Lies and lies. It makes 
 one sick. Why can't people say simply that men run 
 because they're frightened? What's the hope for the 
 future? In capitalists who want to grab all the money 
 in the world? In labour men who want to grab the cap- 
 italists' money? In landowners who want to hold on to 
 everything they've got? My God! Henry James is right: 
 Cats and monkeys, monkeys and cats, the whole of life 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 315 
 
 is there. And they talk of humanity! Humanity's the 
 only thing that doesn't deserve it. One understands St. 
 Paul praying for Judgment Day so that this race might 
 be cleaned off the world, and leaving it to the tiger and 
 the wolf whose blood-thirst is only hunger, while man's 
 blood-thirst is a hobby. So much the better, perhaps: 
 in the next war he may learn to kill more and to kill 'em 
 quicker." 
 
 Louise raised soft eyes to him: " What dreadful things 
 you say, Stephen. Still, I somehow understand why you 
 feel them." 
 
 He looked at her for a moment, then, putting his hand 
 on her shoulder, said: "Dear old Louise," and bending, 
 kissed her on the cheek, gently at first as a brother, but 
 long, as a lover. She did not withdraw, and hoarsely he 
 murmured: "Sweet Louise." 
 
 Also he had again taken to riding with his father on 
 the upper downs. A need for activity had invaded him, 
 and he was with difficulty prevented from turning up at 
 the meet of the East Sussex hunt. 
 
 " Why shouldn't I hunt? Sir Richard Calmady hunted, 
 and he had still less legs than I." 
 
 But the idea of a possible toss was terrifying, and so 
 Sir Hugh snatched all the time he could from the Board 
 of Control to take his son across the smoother downs. 
 Stephen talked more to Sir Hugh than to other people; 
 he found him sympathetic to his anti-militarism, which 
 was a reaction rather than a theory. When they walked 
 their horses, Stephen liked to make long catalogues, the 
 international gallows he called them, on which he was 
 prepared to hang Mr. Leo Maxse, Baron Sonnino, Tirpitz, 
 Colonel Will Thome, General Korniloff. By degrees he 
 extended his gallows to a capacity of a couple of hundred 
 necklaces. " I say hang 'em," he said. " Don't shoot 
 
316 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 'em: we've got to get out of the habit of making ammu- 
 nition. Father, do you know, the very sight of khaki 
 makes me ill." 
 
 Sir Hugh laughed, and tried to quiet him, but so much 
 vibrated in him in sympathy that he seldom stopped his 
 son. Also Stephen was difficult to stop. He was growing 
 sure that the military mind is an inferior mind. 
 
 " Everybody talks about the genius of Haig and Mack- 
 ensen, and makes out that Hindenburg is the hell of an 
 intellectual bug and what's it amount to? Working 
 out transport calculations which a railway clerk on the 
 London and Brighton could do in his head, except that 
 he'd lose less luggage; and seeing that the men get their 
 rations with an unpunctuality which would make Joseph 
 Lyons ashamed; and pounding a place to bits and telling 
 men to go and sit in it, and shouting: ' Come on, you 
 fellows! ' like a butcher shouts ' Buy my pretty meat.' 
 You should see 'em at work, our brass hats. I remember 
 once, and I could tell you ten stories like it, we could see 
 a German battery from the 0. Pip that was shelling us 
 on the left. So I rang up and asked if we could put 
 down a few rounds. ' Can't be done,' said a voice. I 
 asked why. ' Because it's not in your sector; it's a job 
 for Group Q.' ' But,' I said, ' Group Q can't see the bat- 
 tery as we can; there's rising ground between them.' 
 ' Can't be helped,' said the voice. Then I realised that 
 the creature at the other end must either be senile or a 
 major-general, and I started ' sirring ' him for all I was 
 worth. But it was no good. We didn't put down a 
 single shell, and when the Hun battery had done its 
 damndest, it moved off somewhere else. Then, ah! then 
 Group Q had got its chits through, and started shelling 
 the place where the Hun had been sitting, oh ! like billy- 
 oh." 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 317 
 
 " Did you ever meet your friend? " asked Sir Hugh, 
 smiling. 
 
 " Yes. I went up to Divisional H. Q. a few days later, 
 and I met him. It was a dear old thing entirely plas- 
 tered with ribbons which he'd won at the front, including 
 a few which he'd won at the back. We had a few words 
 in a respectful ' beg your pardon ' sort of way. But he 
 held the honest views of the simple soldier, who never 
 asked the reason why and had neither done nor died. 
 'No poachin', young fellow; when youVe lived as long 
 as I have you'll know it won't do to pinch another man's 
 bird. No poachin'. It's the same for Huns as for pheas- 
 ants.' Then he let out his Sam Browne. And that's the 
 stuff, father, that's England's gory glory. The day those 
 people are up against civilians, they won't crumble, oh! 
 no, but the row will be over before they've found out 
 what it's about, and they'll be sitting in a cell at Worm- 
 wood Scrubbs wondering why the batman doesn't come 
 when they ring the bell." 
 
 Sometimes they talked generally. Sir Hugh's sense of 
 consistency was shocked when, early in November, the 
 Bolsheviks suddenly declared the German pretensions 
 inordinate and prepared to fight: the press at once 
 dropped the German agent stunt, forgot all about Braun- 
 stein and Zederblum, and grew quite enthusiastic over 
 Mr. Lenine and Mr. Trotsky. Thus, when at the end of 
 the month the Lansdowne letter came out, Sir Hugh felt 
 that somebody had at last expressed him. ... He 
 couldn't swallow Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, any more than 
 he could swallow the patriotism of Miss Christabel Pank- 
 hurst. They were too rowdy for him, but Lord Lans- 
 downe, so guarded in his proposals to negotiate, so ani- 
 mated by moderation, formulated what Sir Hugh had 
 only glimpsed: that his class, which he still loved, must 
 
318 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 fall before anarchy if peace was not soon made. He 
 was so enraged when the newspapers described Lord 
 Lansdowne as an old man in decay that he wrote a furious 
 letter to the Times, which did not print it, pointing out 
 that Mr. Clemenceau was still older, and in his view 
 much more decayed. He also wrote a letter to Lord 
 Lansdowne himself, expressing his approval and put him- 
 self down as a member of any organisation embodying 
 his views. 
 
 Stephen gave him no sympathy: "They're all the 
 same," he said. " Tories and Radicals. They all hate 
 the other side instead of loving their own. I suppose 
 I'm going into politics; they give an opportunity to ran- 
 cour, and I suppose I'll go on the democratic side because 
 I'm fed up with the old side, but I'll never pull it off 
 with people who wear white ties or india-rubber collars. 
 It'll be the same as it was out there. We were all T. G's, 
 and we tried to carry on with the N. E. T's, but it was 
 no good." 
 
 " T. G., temporary gentleman, I know that," said Sir 
 Hugh, " but what's an N. E. T.? " 
 
 "Oh, Not Even That. How those fellows hated us! 
 They couldn't get the hang of the talk ; they used to call 
 us old dear when they meant 'old bean, and that sort of 
 thing. Looked upon us as a lot of Eton and Oxford 
 snobs, and clustered among themselves, and wished they 
 could get their pips off. Talk of mixing the classes! 
 You can do it, but it's like mixing port and ginger ale; 
 makes a rotten drink." 
 
 Lady Oakley found Stephen very trying. She knew 
 she must not encourage him to think about the war, but 
 she could not find anything else to talk about, and she 
 did not like his attitude. He might be ill, but his con- 
 versation sounded seditious. One morning they had a 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 319 
 
 real quarrel. Lady Oakley was looking at the war map, 
 and asked Stephen where Paschendaele was. 
 
 "Oh," said Stephen, "that's not a place; it's a novel 
 by Elinor Glyn." 
 
 Lady Oakley flushed. " I wish you wouldn't treat me 
 as though I were a fool. You seem to think this war's 
 funny." 
 
 "Well, it has its humour," said Stephen, who felt 
 rather ashamed of his joke. 
 
 " You've a queer sense of humour. Apparently you 
 can read the newspapers, which are fuller and fuller of 
 atrocities, and think that humorous." 
 
 " Atrocities," said Stephen. " Yes, I've noticed ever 
 since Lansdowne wrote that letter the papers have been 
 pumping up atrocities for all they're worth. Keep up 
 the hate. God save us from peace." 
 
 " There must be no peace," said Lady Oakley, " until 
 we've won. We shall never sheathe the sword . . ." 
 She stopped, remembering that these were the words of 
 Mr. Asquith, whose name she did not care to mention. 
 " Anyhow it is our duty to make an end of German 
 militarism. We must see to it that they are made pow- 
 erless to intrigue and organise against us again. Never 
 more must they have a colony from which to raise black 
 armies, or to start submarine bases. I suppose Lord 
 Lansdowne wants to give them back. Well, they shan't 
 be given back. Our own colonies wouldn't allow it, for 
 one thing." 
 
 Stephen laughed. " Oh, mother, it's a pity women 
 can't stand for Parliament; you'd be a terrific success 
 under the National Party label." 
 
 "Yes, I've joined the National Party, and why not? 
 They're the only people who are going to do anything, 
 close our markets to dumped German goods, make 'em 
 
320 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 pay, and keep the Hun out. What have you got against 
 the National Party, I'd like to know? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing, every play needs its sanguinary part, 
 only father and I are pals of Lansdowne." 
 
 "What d'you mean?" 
 
 " Yes," said Sir Hugh suddenly. " I agree with Lans- 
 downe, and I've written to tell him so." 
 
 The hot angry flush rose again in Lady Oakley's 
 cheeks. 
 
 " Oh," she said. " Then, Hugh, I wish you luck with 
 your associates." 
 
 She left the room and they did not speak again that 
 day. Even at meals Lady Oakley would not open her 
 mouth. 
 
 " Been a bit of a rumpus," said Lee to Mrs. Marsden. 
 "Politics, I gather. That's what it'll be like if the 
 women get the vote." 
 
 " I quite agree with you," said Mrs. Marsden. " Nasty, 
 unsexed creatures." 
 
 XXIX 
 
 DINNER that night was a silent meal. Sir Hugh had 
 returned from Ashford only just in time to dress. Lady 
 Oakley looked rigid, while Sir Hugh ate what was put 
 before him and seemed surprised when it disappeared 
 from his plate. Monica was not present, and nobody 
 enquired about her, for Stephen, responding to his parents' 
 mood, said hardly anything. At last, when Lady Oakley 
 rose, she said: 
 
 " Don't be too long over your port, Hugh," and went 
 out. 
 
 After a moment Stephen put down his glass and said: 
 
 " The mater's rather hipped. Too much temperament. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 321 
 
 Goes up and down like a dear old barometer in April. 
 Suppose it's my fault; she came and sat down with me 
 this afternoon prepared to shed an atmosphere of love 
 and peace, but by the time she'd told me how many 
 girls she'd collared for the land and for the W. A. A. C.'s 
 I was getting ready to bristle. She tried to get me to 
 join the National Party, the latest stunt: thumbs up for 
 the British, thumbs down for the Hun." 
 
 " Yes," said Sir Hugh, thinking of something else. 
 
 " Well, I'm no pal of the Hun, but somehow I feel like 
 poor old Ball, who was sorry when he potted them. I've 
 just been reading his book. Of course, he was one of 
 the best, but I do wish they'd give Captain Ball, V. C., 
 a rest. He did his bit, and he did it damn well, and 
 that's all there is to it. Makes one sick, this hero-wor- 
 ship ; when people talk to me about my blessed leg I feel 
 they're pulling it. If I hadn't been laid out I shouldn't 
 be a hero, and Ball wouldn't be a hero if he hadn't 
 crashed. In peace time one can't be a hero just because 
 there's no chance of stopping one, but in war time people 
 like me and others, who do their bit because it's the 
 thing, get gushed over something sickening. Mother 
 tried to make me- play a little game: make a list of the 
 ten greatest men living. Started with Lloyd George, 
 rolled over my timid suggestion that it wasn't fair to 
 leave out George R. Sims, and stuck in poor old Ball. 
 Some people would call that single-mindedness. I call 
 it monomania." 
 
 There was a silence. Then Stephen bent towards his 
 father and said gently: "I say, I know it's jolly hard 
 lines, but it'll pan out all right. Trust Sylvia always to 
 come down butter-side up." 
 
 "Sylvia? "said Sir Hugh. " What d'you mean? What 
 about Sylvia?" 
 
322 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 The young man started. " Oh ! sorry. I saw you 
 were down in the mouth. I thought you knew." 
 
 " Knew what? " said Sir Hugh, now excited. 
 
 " Oh, well, it's not for me to talk about it. The 
 mater'll do that. Been a bit of a row with Andy, I 
 think. Shouldn't have said anything about it," he added, 
 with unusual tenderness in his voice, " only you seem to 
 have the pip." 
 
 " Where's Monica? " asked Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Upstairs with Sylvia." 
 
 " Oh," said Sir Hugh. " H'm, I think I'll have a word 
 with your mother." He went into the drawing-room, 
 where Lady Oakley was reading a novel, turning over 
 the pages very fast. 
 
 " What's this I hear about Sylvia? " 
 
 " She's come back. Andy's found out." 
 
 " Found out what? " 
 
 Lady Oakley jumped to her feet. " Oh, Hugh, how 
 can you be so dense? I gave you a hint nearly six 
 months ago. Don't you remember I told you we'd better 
 not ask Mr. March down? But you never remember 
 anything." 
 
 " March, March! But then ..." Sir Hugh shrank 
 from sudden understanding; incidents connected them- 
 selves: that conversation with his wife, what Angus 
 Cawston had told him, the glimpse of Sylvia in the car 
 last January. This was horrible. No, it couldn't be 
 true. But it must be true. Here were details. 
 
 " She's in an awful state," said Lady Oakley. " She 
 ran down this afternoon and it was all I could do to 
 prevent her from blurting it out before the servants. 
 Monica and I have been watching to keep her in her 
 bedroom." 
 
 " Are you sure there's no mistake? " 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 323 
 
 " Of course there's no mistake. It's no use pretend- 
 ing between ourselves. It's been going on for months, 
 and I expect half London's talking about them. Really, 
 Sylvia's too big a fool. She didn't even travel by a 
 separate train, and of course somebody saw them, and 
 of course somebody talked. Andy knows all about it. 
 He doesn't seem to have wasted any time: she was served 
 with the divorce papers this morning." 
 
 "My daughter! " said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Yes, your daughter. But for heaven's sake don't 
 let's be dramatic. I expect the thing will have to go 
 through, and they can get married next year." 
 
 " You mean she's to marry young March." 
 
 " But what else is she to do? " 
 
 " He's a rotter," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Oh, all men are rotters one way or another, but that's 
 not the question. She hasn't the choice. She'll simply 
 have to go back to town and keep quiet till it's all blown 
 over." 
 
 Though Sir Hugh did not care for Sylvia as for Monica, 
 and for neither of them as for Louise, his fatherhood 
 rebelled. " Look here, she's not to be put away like 
 that. I'm not excusing her, but she's not going to be 
 shut up in London. She can stay here. And as for 
 marrying March, we'll see." 
 
 Lady Oakley paced up and down. For some time she 
 raved at him. He was a sentimental fool; he had the 
 practical sense of a minor poet. Didn't he realise the 
 talk it would make in the county? Didn't he under- 
 stand that it might almost be kept out of the papers? 
 That the two could marry, go abroad for a bit after 
 peace, and then get back? She had no patience with 
 him. Sir Hugh remained obstinate until Lady Oakley 
 fluked an argument: 
 
324 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Besides, it's impossible for her to stay here. All 
 that talk world damage Monica." 
 
 Sir Hugh suddenly bent, and buried his face in his 
 hands. It moved Lady Oakley to see her old husband 
 so broken, so she went across, and put her arms about 
 his shoulders. " It'll be all right," she whispered, and 
 kissed him again and again on his high forehead, on his 
 beautiful big hands. After a moment he said: 
 
 " Things seem to come all together. Now Sylvia, and 
 yesterday that treaty." 
 
 " What treaty? " said Lady Oakley, and wondered 
 whether he were delirious. 
 
 " The secret treaty between France and Russia. It 
 was in the Manchester Guardian. I brought the issue 
 down. Here it is." Lady Oakley took a crumpled cut- 
 ting, marked December 12, 1917. It did not interest her 
 in the least. 
 
 " Well? " she said, handing it back. 
 
 " This is hideous," said Sir Hugh, " hideous. Here's 
 Russia practically allowed to carve bits off Germany and 
 Austria, allowed to refuse freedom to Poland; and not 
 a word about what the population thinks, not a word 
 about self-determination. Is that the sort of thing Wil- 
 son brought America in for? To grab? To extend em- 
 pires? And in exchange the French are not going to 
 have only Alsace-Lorraine, without the people having a 
 chance to vote for or against, but they're to have the 
 coal mines of the Saar, German land! and to make a 
 buffer State on the left bank of the Rhine, detaching it 
 by force from Germany, in the name of universal free- 
 dom! Is that what Wilson came in for? Just to per- 
 petuate the old injustices by making new ones? Oh, it's 
 impossible. I've thanked God for Wilson before now, 
 the only clean man, the only just man that the Entente 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 325 
 
 has thrown up. The Americans have come into this 
 without asking for an acre or a dollar, the only clean 
 people of us all just as we went in, we thought, to 
 defend ourselves, to protect the little neutrals. We went 
 in clean, and we come out, crushing and grabbing, trying 
 to annex by force, trying to squeeze the other side for 
 money. A pretty beginning for a League of Nations! 
 To bequeath a legacy of hatred in every corner of 
 Europe, by leaving everywhere national sores to fester. 
 Will Wilson escape, I wonder? " 
 
 " Oh, never mind Wilson," said Lady Oakley. " It's 
 Sylvia we're talking about. Anyhow, you agree she 
 must go on living in town." 
 
 " All right," said Sir Hugh miserably. 
 
 " And don't let your mind dwell on it, and all these 
 politics. What does it matter what the Manchester 
 Guardian says? Everybody knows they're in German 
 pay. You'd better go to bed. Or read a book. Here, 
 have this book," and she thrust the " Tree of Heaven " 
 into his hand. Obediently he began to read. 
 
 XXX 
 
 SIR HUGH and Monica amused themselves by walking 
 up Edgware Road ; they were staying a few days in town 
 to cheer up Sylvia, who felt lonely and outcast in her 
 Baker Street flat. The house in Connaught Square was 
 only half open and felt bleak, but Edgware Road was 
 gay in spite of the grey sky and black dampness of the 
 pavement of this soft, moist December morning. 
 
 " It's funny," said Monica, " after Knapenden. I sup- 
 pose we'd get used to London if we lived here. It seems 
 queer to see a crowd." She pointed at a butter queue 
 outside a store. 
 
326 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " They seem rather short of things here," said Sir 
 Hugh ; " in spite of voluntary rations there doesn't seem 
 to be as much bread and meat as there is at home. Still, 
 they get sugar, which we don't. A case of gastronomic 
 justice." 
 
 They liked the broad, half well-to-do, half squalid 
 street. " A real London street," said Sir Hugh, " full of 
 mercantilism, pleasure, love, and detachment. They say 
 we don't feel the war in Sussex, and indeed we're sleepy 
 enough. We don't think of anything in particular, but 
 here they think of something else than war. I bet there's 
 not much hate in London." 
 
 " Well, there's no hate in Knapenden." 
 
 Sir Hugh did not reply. He was thinking of a recent 
 trouble. Apparently Cradoc had been taunted by Far- 
 cet, the cobbler, who had confessed to being a C. 0., but 
 as he'd heard that the Tribunal didn't want two cases 
 in the same village and would let him off if he would 
 appeal on domestic reasons, he'd got off easy. Cradoc 
 seemed to have been infuriated, called him the kind of 
 vile and crafty liar that brings ignominy on the noblest 
 causes. He had struck him, too, and Lady Oakley, on 
 hearing this, had apparently discerned an opportunity. 
 She had raved to Mr. Denny about cowards ready to 
 make benefits from their country and too cowardly to 
 fight for it, about liars who'd defend their property if 
 invaded, scum who ought to be flogged, starved, or exiled 
 to an island, some other island, wretched, weedy crea- 
 tures, not a single chest among the lot of them. In the 
 end she had reported Cradoc to the Pelham Committee 
 and he had been rearrested. 
 
 They went right up to Paddington Green. Sir Hugh 
 talked very little, except about the latest speeches of 
 Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour on the knock-out 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 327 
 
 blow. Yes, the knock-out was all right. He too wanted 
 the knock-out; but this endless, purposeless fighting, 
 this entire lack of desire for any end beyond victory, 
 this half-expressed contempt for the League of Nations, 
 this indifference to any idea of a new peaceful order, 
 this cynical belief that all men were greedy, must ever- 
 lastingly fight and grab, could never peacefully live 
 within their boundaries it hurt him dreadfully. His 
 mind swerved. 
 
 " Monica, you're not talking much. I've been think- 
 ing the last few months that you're not very happy." 
 
 " No, father, I'm afraid I'm not." 
 
 " What is it, darling? " 
 
 " Nothing. I mean life's so difficult." 
 
 " Yes, I know, in times like these." 
 
 " Oh, it's not only the times. Father were you very 
 much in love with mother? " 
 
 "My dear child!" He did not know what to say. 
 "Well, I suppose so." 
 
 " She must have been very pretty." 
 
 "Very pretty," repeated Sir Hugh, and wandered off 
 into the past. Then Monica took his arm and mur- 
 mured : 
 
 " Supposing she'd been married, father, and you'd loved 
 her all the same; do you think you'd have been very 
 wrong? " 
 
 " Why, of course, I ..." He stopped. He had still 
 loved Mrs. Douglas after her marriage. " Well," he said, 
 " one can't help loving." 
 
 Monica did not reply for a long time, and when he 
 looked at her again she was dabbing her red eyes through 
 her veil. He hardly dared understand her, and yet he 
 did ; in the sweetness of his tact he did not question her, 
 but pressed her hand against his side and said: 
 
328 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Monica, darling. One can't help loving, and one 
 should never try to. Loving is much finer than being 
 loved. It's more generous. I don't know what you mean, 
 but if indeed you love some one you can't marry, never 
 mind; be happy that you can love. Being in love is 
 being alive. Think of poor Sylvia whom we're going to 
 see in a moment. She didn't really love Andy ; he didn't 
 love her. I'm not so sure that she loves March. She's 
 not taking it well. She's not proud. She's not standing 
 up for her own dignity. She's only afraid that people 
 will be nasty to her. Oh, Monica, don't be afraid of 
 loving. It may be a sin to give way to love, but if one 
 doesn't love one sins against oneself. And that's mortal 
 sin. There, don't cry, I won't question you. But if ever 
 you want to talk, your old father will know how to listen 
 to you. He wishes he'd had somebody to listen to him 
 once upon a time." 
 
 XXXI 
 
 SIR HUGH was very happy. All those personal 
 troubles and frets, Sylvia's wretched affair, Stephen's 
 wound and strange humour, Monica's half -confessed pain, 
 the harshness of his wife, backwashes into his family of 
 the tide of war, he thought of them no more. Before 
 him lay a newspaper with the incredible news that Ger- 
 many had accepted the Bolshevik terms : no annexations, 
 no indemnities, self-determination for conquered peoples. 
 He reflected that the revolution of March in Russia must 
 have been the revolution of the world. Never before 
 had a conqueror accepted as a basis for a treaty any- 
 thing but by the arbitrament of his sword. Always had 
 the vanquished passed bent-browed under the patibulary 
 fork rand all that had been blown away by the wind 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 329 
 
 of freedom. He was confirmed in his feeling that the 
 war was an error, that the German Government had been 
 compelled to resist the encirclement which we had plotted 
 with France and Russia, to resist the monopoly of colonial 
 opportunity which we had established with our confed- 
 erates. Obviously Germany had been fighting for her 
 national liberation. She had achieved it, and, with 
 thrilling nobility, now she had Russia disrupted at her 
 feet, she was willing to surrender all she had gained if 
 the voice of the conquered people spoke against her. 
 The Reichstag had expressed the German people, mod- 
 erate and magnanimous, asking nothing save freedom and 
 honour. Now Kuhlmann and the German diplomats 
 formally gave her liberty to fallen Russia. It warmed 
 him. " Oh," he murmured, " to-day I wish I were a 
 German." 
 
 It struck him as marvellous that after all the German 
 Parliament had asserted its power. That famous resolu- 
 tion of July, foregoing annexations and indemnities, 
 backed by the German Government, denounced every- 
 where as a peace plot, a peace trap, a peace offensive 
 it was honest. Parliament did count after all, in Ger- 
 many. He remembered his Whiggish horror when, some 
 months before, he realised the impotency of the British 
 Parliament: it had not been consulted before Sir Edward 
 Grey sent out the ultimatum, but was only asked to vote 
 money for the war. This was a reassertion of Par- 
 liament. 
 
 This idea was delicious to him, for Sir Hugh believed 
 in Parliament, though he did not believe in the people. 
 A member of Parliament was still to him to a degree 
 anointed. Just then he forgot that Parliament was mainly 
 made up of men of his own class, and that lately he had 
 hated his own class. He had hated them for their 
 
330 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 revengef ulness, for their inability to desire a better order ; 
 he had hated their frivolity, the abuse which had met 
 the Russian Revolution because it deprived us of an 
 ally; the lack of any sympathy with the emancipation 
 of the Russian people from a sanguinary Tsar; he had 
 hated the schoolboy vapidness of the clubs where nobody 
 wanted to know whether the socialist State could be 
 worked in practice but where men could conduct long 
 and earnest discussions as to whether the right name was 
 Bolshevik or Bolshevist. He forgot all that; unable to 
 hate the Germans, he was now even unable to hate the 
 British. " All over," he thought. " Such an example of 
 renunciation will inflame history ; Wilson and the Ameri- 
 cans, people who want peace and justice, have at last 
 found their ally, Germany, against the Tariffists, 
 Revanchists, and company promoters of England and 
 France." 
 
 He smoked. He caressed Kallikrates, who all that 
 evening was in one of his soft moods, willing to be turned 
 upon his back and to be boneless, just warm flesh and 
 golden fur to crumple, velvety gloved paws to be held. 
 He read most of " The Old Huntsman." Mr. Sassoon's 
 verse, often angry, often sweet, came to him as from far 
 away. Yes, it was nearly over, the tragedy of the home- 
 coming soldier: 
 
 " Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald; 
 Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls; 
 A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stocked field, 
 With sound of -barking dogs and farmyard fowls. 
 And he'd come home again to find it more 
 Desirable than ever it was before. 
 How right it seemed that he should reach the span 
 Of comfortable years allowed to man! 
 Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife, 
 Safe with his wound, a citizen of life. 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 331 
 
 He hobbled blithely through the garden gate, 
 
 And thought: ' Thank God, they had to amputate.' " 
 
 Yes, no more of that. And no more ground for the 
 bitterness of " Base Details", which he had found in the 
 Cambridge Magazine: 
 
 11 If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, 
 
 I'd live with scarlet majors at the Base 
 And speed glum heroes up the line to death. 
 
 You'd see me with my puffy, petulant face, 
 Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, 
 
 Reading the Roll of Honour. " Poor young chap," 
 I'd say ( I used to know his father well ; 
 
 Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap/ 
 And when the war is done and youth stone dead, 
 
 I'd toddle safely home and die in bed." 
 
 It made him laugh to-night instead of grind his teeth. 
 And when again he read " Blighters ", in which Mr. Sas- 
 soon lashes himself into righteous fury at the idea of the 
 people at home in music-halls, as he read aloud: 
 
 " I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls, 
 
 Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ' Home, Sweet Home ', 
 And there 'd be no more jokes in music-halls, 
 To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume." 
 
 Sir Hugh thought: "Yes, he's right. It's very beau- 
 tiful. We shall want all that hate of war to make the 
 love of peace. But it's over. Lloyd George must state 
 his war aims now; he can't get out of it. And in the 
 presence of what the Germans have done at Brest-Litovsk 
 he won't be able to demand anything but equal justice. 
 The war's over." 
 
 He was still in that state when he went to bed. Just 
 as he began to feel drowsy there came a knock at his 
 door and Lady Oakley came in. As she switched on the 
 
332 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 light and sat down upon his bed he stared; never before 
 had his wife come into his bedroom; her tradition was 
 to wait in her own and never lock her door. She seemed 
 conscious of it. Handsome and big in her pink dressing- 
 gown, she looked smaller than usual. 
 
 " Hugh," she said hurriedly, " I'm sorry to disturb you 
 -but it's all so difficult." 
 
 " What's difficult? " asked Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Everything. It's all been so different between us 
 this last year." She looked so distressed that he took 
 a plump hand which nervously grasped his own. 
 
 " Surely not, Lena," he said. " Of course, one can't 
 always agree. But they're little things." 
 
 " No, no," said Lady Oakley, " they're not little things. 
 I hardly know what I mean, but we seem to think so 
 differently about things now." Sir Hugh was silent, and 
 she went on. " It's as if you thought me hard and cruel, 
 as if you didn't care for me any more. Oh, yes, it is," 
 she went on as he tried to reply. " You say things to 
 me. Things you wouldn't have said once. The other 
 day you told me to mind my own business and that no 
 woman at all and no man over forty had any right to 
 an opinion about the war, because their lives were not at 
 stake." 
 
 "Well ..." 
 
 " Yes, I know what you meant. It's true in a way, 
 though it's not: how do you think I feel about Stephen 
 being crocked up? It's not that . . . it's pushing me 
 out." 
 
 " Lena, dear," said Sir Hugh, drawing her down. But 
 though there was no hostility in him there was no warmth. 
 Yes, they had whirled asunder. He was surprised as she 
 answered his movement, flung herself down upon him, so 
 that he could feel her big breast heave. She clasped him 
 
AMONG THE YAHOOS 333 
 
 in her arms, showering hot kisses upon his cheeks and 
 lips. He did not repulse her, and he ached as through 
 her sobs she murmured: 
 
 " Don't stop loving me. You must always love me, 
 Ug." He was all pity. How long it was since she had 
 called him Ug! He kissed her gently, stroked the heavy 
 hair. He did not understand why suddenly she leapt 
 up and, with a hurried " good-night", left the room. He 
 was sweet and innocent, and so his happy slumber was 
 spared the picture of the woman in the next room, who 
 lay upon her bed, and wept, and screamed into her pil- 
 low, because she had drifted away from her man, because 
 the intellectual gulf that lies between lovers could no 
 longer be bridged by the kiss that inflames. Half 
 through the night she cried. She was too old. There 
 was nothing left her with which to get him back. 
 
BOOK THREE 
 THE LONE GREY COMPANY 
 
The war is the world 
 
 (Alan George) 
 
BOOK THREE 
 
 THE LONE GREY COMPANY 
 I 
 
 ONLY after a few days did Sir Hugh realise what had 
 happened. He was almost incredulous when precipitated 
 from his serenities ; he bought newspaper after newspaper, 
 trying to understand the drama of Brest-Litovsk. He 
 shrank from the screaming abuse of the newspaper lead- 
 ers, the pandemonium of accusation, against the Germans 
 of treachery, against the Bolsheviks of venality, against 
 the English pacifists of disloyalty. The world was a wilder- 
 ness of yahoos, and the horror of it was that it all seemed 
 true. Only three days after his gesture of apparent noble 
 abnegation the German had shown himself such as he was 
 painted in the blood press; he had shown himself desirous, 
 greedy, crafty, unfit for human intercourse. They were 
 right, then! Northcliffe was right! Lloyd-George was 
 right ! They had been right all along in preventing peace 
 before the German was done. Hard upon the noble dec- 
 laration of fair treatment for Russia, upon the gift of 
 freedom to the little Russian border States, something 
 had happened; the jackboot had trodden the attache 
 case unless, which seemed likely, the attache case had 
 been an accomplice. The Bolsheviks had found that if 
 the German accepted self-determination for Courland, 
 Poland, Lithuania, it was because he had already installed 
 into power creatures of his own, who had passed a sham 
 
338 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 vote in his favour. Trickery! Always trickery! No 
 fair play could come from the German. 
 
 Sir Hugh was haunted also by a terrible trifle which had 
 just occurred to him. Not only had he been wrong, but 
 those people whom he looked upon as blindly hostile, 
 stupid people, had been right. Beresford was right, 
 Maxse, Kipling, Curzon all the people whom he had 
 disliked for so long, the people who loved conscription, 
 and who wouldn't wait, all the gross people who seemed to 
 hate art and delicate feeling, who went in with the pred- 
 atory capitalist, the concessionaire descending upon a 
 colony as a vulture, they had been right. They had been 
 right to warn us that Germany was the enemy ; they had 
 rightly urged that we should grant her no mercy, had 
 been right on cotton, on the blockade, on reprisals. Sir 
 Hugh thought it tragic that such people should be right; 
 if their minds alone could read the mind of man, then 
 indeed the making of mankind was a divine error. 
 
 He stood for a long time in Udimore copse. The Jan- 
 uary air was fresh and misty. The birches in the mist 
 made monstrous shapes. " This," he felt, " is the end of 
 all things. What's the good of Lloyd-George having de- 
 clared his war aims the other day? They're sound enough, 
 fair enough. The desire of the imperialist for more land, 
 for yet more blood-soaked land, is not too manifest in 
 his speech ; there's nothing in it to show that we want to 
 boycott Germany forever and thus forever keep up her 
 hatred; we're not asking for monstrous indemnities, but 
 only for reparation of damage; he doesn't seem ready to 
 force upon people domination by the sword. I suppose 
 it means that even our empire-grubbers are affected by 
 new ideas. But what's the good? What's the good of 
 Wilson's speech, even though it has nobility? What does 
 it matter if it compares with Lloyd-George's as a Virgil- 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 339 
 
 ian eclogue compares with an auctioneer's patter? I 
 like Wilson's fourteen points; I really believe that he does 
 want to make an end of these eternal chariots and horses, 
 that he does want to disarm and create a League of Na- 
 tions. But can one just man save a doomed city? If we 
 can't trust the German, what can we do save slay him? 
 And at bottom we aren't much better. Oh, why can't 
 mankind commit hara-kiri and be done? " 
 
 He came back late in the afternoon, having walked a 
 long way and eaten a bad lunch at Pett. He found his 
 family at tea, Stephen silent, while Lady Oakley raved 
 against the food hoarders of Villa-Land, and promised 
 herself to compel Sir John Jesmond to have the houses 
 searched. It would be a proud day when she got them 
 all fined. She passed on to Donnington Hall and to the 
 scandal of giving German officers square meals. She was 
 very angry, having sent a letter about Donnington Hall 
 to a newspaper, which had returned it, stating that it 
 was libellous. Now she sat chewing buttered toast, and 
 plotting for the Hun rations of skilly. " Give them dog 
 biscuits; just the thing for curs." Sir Hugh's ears were 
 filled with the hysterical outcry, suspicions, fears of peace 
 traps, fears of Bolo, who lurked in every house, extracting 
 precious information from the boot-boy at the cost of 
 much German gold ; hates and revenges, aimless demands 
 for air reprisals, for the hanging of submarine crews, for 
 the stoppage of tobacco to German prisoners. She painted 
 a world of cruelty, and she did not justify it by a single 
 desire to make a new world where strife would be less, 
 war less frequent, justice more obvious. " Serve 'em 
 out," and " Get some of our own back," such was the 
 preface to the new times. " League of Nations," said 
 Lady Oakley, " stuff and nonsense." The worst of it was 
 Sir Hugh felt that she was right. Stuff and nonsense, 
 
340 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 blood and tears, that was the history of the world, past 
 and future. 
 
 After a while Stephen talked. He was depressed, for 
 the medical board had that morning invalided him out. 
 He did not want to go back to the army, but he disliked 
 being scrapped. So he talked rather bitterly of Lans- 
 downe and Lichnowsky, poor old idealists who did not 
 understand what thieves' kitchens they lived in. The 
 only thing that pleased his ironic sense was that the Brit- 
 ish papers called Lansdowne senile and that the German 
 papers applied the same adjective to Lichnowsky. Evi- 
 dently if one didn't like war, one was senile. The only 
 thing that bothered him was that every time he met some- 
 body who was manifestly senile, that person simply wal- 
 lowed in war. Everybody liked the war except the men 
 who did the fighting. " After all," he said, " what's the 
 good of talking? It's so small, all this. People kick up 
 no end of a dust about this war, as if there'd never been 
 a war before. Somebody wrote to me while I was out 
 there, just because I asked for a library list, one of those 
 solemn, lantern- jawed letters, asking me whether this 
 business of literature and art didn't seem petty by the side 
 of the great issues which, etc., etc., and didn't all that sort 
 of thing feel to me like Lilliput! I replied that art and 
 literature last forever and Lilliput's in Flanders." 
 
 Nobody spoke for some time. It was understood that 
 Stephen must not be irritated. After a while Stephen 
 threw himself back and, staring at the ceiling, began to 
 sing in a low voice: 
 
 " I want to go home, I want to go home, 
 I don't want to go to the trenches no more, 
 With pip-squeaks and whizz-bangs a-bursting galore. 
 I'd much sooner be 
 Where the Allemand can't get me. 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 341 
 
 Oh my! I don't want to die. 
 I want to go home." 
 
 The old people looked at their son fearfully. What a 
 state he was in ! But Louise, who was sitting by his side, 
 bent forward and with an air of smiling irony, sang back 
 to him: 
 
 " Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 
 Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home ! 
 A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, 
 Which, seek thro' the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere. 
 Home ! home ! sweet, sweet home ! 
 
 There's no place like home! There's no place like home!" 
 
 The young man stared, then slapped his unwounded 
 leg and laughed: 
 
 "Louise! you Victorian coughdrop! " 
 
 All laughed together, but Lady Oakley, who observed 
 the expression in their eyes, suddenly stopped laughing. 
 Why not? The girl would look after him. Three years 
 his senior; yes. But that wouldn't matter. A year after 
 his wedding a man didn't know what his wife looked like ; 
 he never looked at her. 
 
 Sir Hugh went into the study, picking up Kallikrates 
 as he went. He walked up and down, nursing the cat, who 
 grew rigid, for he resented having been disturbed, and 
 stuck hard paws into his master's breast. Wearied by 
 the repulse, Sir Hugh put him down. He tried to read 
 " Bel Ami", but that day the engaging scoundrel sick- 
 ened him. 
 
 II 
 
 " KEEPING well? " said Port. 
 
 " So-so," replied Keele. " I get a bit of a twisty pain 
 these wet mornings." 
 
342 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Ah! what are you doing about pigs? " 
 
 " I'm thinking of giving up Gloucesters. You tried 
 Middle White? " 
 
 " Yes, fine pig, Middle White, fine pig. Only there's 
 feeding. What d'you expect to get out of four pounds of 
 cake a day for a breeding sow? " 
 
 " Can't be done," said Keele. " I'm turning mine out; 
 I've got half a dozen young gilts out now. They pick up 
 a bit, grass and acorns. They're due to pig down in 
 March." 
 
 " Ah, well," said Port. " Bacon fetches good prices 
 now. Things might be worse." 
 
 Ill 
 
 " ANGUS/' said Sir Hugh, " I don't much like this new 
 idea of ministers writing articles in the papers. Here's 
 Sir Frederick Smith in the Evening Standard, and Clynes 
 in the Weekly Dispatch, and I seem to have seen an ar- 
 ticle by Hodge." 
 
 " New times, new times," said Sir Angus (who had just 
 been made a K B. E.), "you mustn't turn into an old 
 fogey. To-day everything's hustle. W T e want zip." 
 
 " Zip ! " said Sir Hugh. " The very word makes me 
 sick. Did Pijtt have zip? I suppose Disraeli had zip? 
 A cabinet minister ought to have dignity." 
 
 " Dignity be damned ! " said Sir Angus. " We don't 
 want any dignity, especially in business, whatever H. E. 
 Morgan may say. Your ideal cabinet minister, Hugh, is 
 a sort of waxwork at Madame Tussaud's." 
 
 " Well, your sort is a vote-in-the-slot machine." 
 
 " Anyhow, the new politician is right there with the 
 goods," said Sir Angus, who was cultivating American- 
 isms. " Your fungus-grown politician was all right in the 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 343 
 
 old days, but in this war it's up to him to get a move on. 
 Zip, my boy, zip." 
 
 " I suppose/' said Sir Hugh, " that Hertling has what 
 you call zip when he proposes to hold on to Belgium until 
 we get out of Malta and Gib. I suppose Italy is exhib- 
 iting zip. Have you read the Manchester Guardian? " 
 
 " No. You don't think I read pacifist papers? " 
 
 " If you read pacifist papers and gave up the drug 
 habit, as represented by the other papers, you'd know 
 that the Italian secret treaty was made in April, '15, just 
 before they refused to be bought off by Austria because 
 they'd been bought in by us. No bones about it; they 
 aren't only to have the Trentino and the other places 
 where their beloved brethren had been suffering for thirty 
 years at the hands of their own ally. They're to have 
 most of the Dalmatian coast, because it was Roman in the 
 year dot, and a share of the booty in Asia Minor; no 
 damned self-determination for the Greeks. Grab all you 
 can. No coast for Austria: bottle her up, and learn 
 nothing from the example of Serbia who's made three 
 wars so far because we bottled her up. Shove, grab, 
 don't have principles, they get in the way." 
 
 Sir Angus laughed at him. When at last they parted 
 Sir Angus summed up the philosophy of the day: " Say 
 what you like; we've got to win this war and damn the 
 consequences." Sir Hugh remembered Lord Milner's 
 phrase: the consequences had been most unpleasant. He 
 walked to Trafalgar Square, observing with a certain dis- 
 taste the appeals to an imperial people: "Come and 
 buy war bonds at the bank"; "A hundred and twenty- 
 four cartridges for 15s 6d." Against the front of the 
 National Gallery, above the tank and the crowds that 
 squeezed in between the captured German guns, was the 
 most displeasing of boards: a list of the purchasing per- 
 
344 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 formances of provincial towns, with Glasgow arrogant at 
 the top, and envious Birmingham yapping below. " Don't 
 come and save the country," thought Sir Hugh angrily. 
 " No, that wouldn't appeal to you, John Citizen. Come 
 and lick Glasgow; that's more like it. Don't work to- 
 gether; work against one another. Hate and rivalry are 
 the rule of the world; let's get Manchester to hate Cardiff, 
 and they'll put their money down to humiliate each other, 
 pay up for local hatred, but not for love of England." 
 And yet, all through his. protest ran the insistent feeling 
 that he had been wrong so far, that Lord Northcliffe and 
 Lord Beaverbrook alone had understood the need of the 
 day. He could not yet love them; but he could respect 
 them. 
 
 He found Sylvia alone, and rather depressed in her 
 flat. The decree nisi had been pronounced two days be- 
 fore. " How are you? " asked Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Pretty well, rather lonely. Of course I can't show 
 myself just now." 
 
 " Why don't you come down to Knapenden for a 
 while? " 
 
 " You know quite well mother doesn't want me. Be- 
 sides, Oliver may be coming back on leave." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Sir Hugh, embarrassed. He supposed 
 he must acknowledge March. Seemed strange that the 
 boy was in a way Sylvia's husband. He felt that he 
 must acknowledge him formally. 
 
 " Sylvia," he said, " now it's all over you're not sorry? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't know. It's all very dull." 
 
 She complained of social exclusion. March wrote 
 every day, but, of course, one wanted to go about and all 
 that. She looked beautiful, but discontented, and Sir 
 Hugh grew more assured that she did not love the young 
 man. Then her state would be worse than her former 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 345 
 
 one. He shrank from such exposures, and found a ma- 
 terial question to raise. 
 
 " Of course until you marry we'll have to make you an 
 allowance." 
 
 " Oh, you needn't. Andy's paying eight hundred a 
 year until the decree is made absolute." 
 
 " What? " cried Sir Hugh. He was furious. Not with 
 Jervaulx, who sinned only by generosity, but with Sylvia, 
 who accepted his money. She should not take it. He 
 forbade it. Not a penny should she take from Jervaulx. 
 Had she no pride? no dignity? 
 
 " Well," said Sylvia, exasperated, " he's got to make me 
 an allowance. The solicitor says it's the law." They 
 had a long, harsh wrangle. Sylvia wanted to keep the 
 allowance, because money from Andy carried no control, 
 while money from her father gave him rights of censure. 
 
 " I won't have it," he said, again and again. " I won't 
 have it. D'you understand? Where's his last cheque? 
 It must be returned at once." 
 
 " It can't be returned," said Sylvia, beginning to cry. 
 " It's paid direct into my bank every month." 
 
 " Write to your banker at once telling him to return it. 
 And tell him to inform me how much he's received in 
 these four months, so that I may pay it back. Give me 
 the letter, I'lJ post it." 
 
 After a long scene the letter was written. Then Sylvia 
 flung down the pen and stamped: " You're all against me. 
 You all want to kick me when I'm down. I hate you. I 
 hate you." 
 
 " So do I," shouted Sir Hugh, and slammed the door 
 behind him. 
 
 A few minutes later, in Baker Street, he felt remorseful. 
 So he sent by a messenger boy an enormous bunch of 
 Parma violets and a note: " Sylvia, dear, your father has 
 
346 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the pride of age and the temper of youth. He asks par- 
 don of his beautiful daughter, and hopes that when next 
 she comes to cheer his waning years, she will bring for- 
 giveness in her eyes of amber." 
 
 IV 
 
 > 
 
 IF Sir Hugh was simple for a human being, Lady Oak- 
 ley was still simpler for a woman. She had never finessed 
 a queen in her life. She loved her son, she was anxious 
 not to thrust irritating ideas upon him, and yet she always 
 irritated him. Sometimes she asked herself why the 
 Stephen of 1918 was so different from the Stephen of 1914, 
 and still more from the boisterous boy who used to write 
 her long letters from school and beg to be taken when she 
 went into Hastings to shop. " It's war," she reflected 
 gloomily. " His wound and all that." Yet she knew that 
 it was not only his wound ; it was something she could not 
 get hold of, a mental difference, rather similar to the. one 
 which had arisen between her , and her husband they 
 seemed so wrong-headed, both of them. It never struck 
 her that they should be let. alone; it did not occur to her 
 that they might differ from her politically. When there 
 was an argument, such as the night before, when Stephen 
 had referred to Carson's last speech as a steady bellow, 
 and declared that he was preparing a song called " The 
 Carson Ragtime", to which the chorus would be: " Stick 
 it out, stick it out", and when Sir Hugh added that now- 
 adays sticking it out was a virtue which was its own 
 reward, Lady Oakley thought they were being merely irri- 
 tating. 
 
 That day, thinking herself rather artful, as is the way 
 of the simple, she decided to influence Stephen towards a 
 marriage with Louise. She was clumsy enough to begin 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 347 
 
 by talking of the news of the day. (" I mustn't show my 
 hand," she thought.) She talked of the Versailles Confer- 
 ence, congratulated herself on the formation at last of a 
 strong allied body which would soon make an end of the 
 kid-gloved methods of this weak-kneed government. She 
 went on to rejoice over the dismissal of Sir William Rob- 
 ertson, Lord Jellicoe, and General Trenchard. She did 
 not realise that as she talked, and as Stephen smoked, his 
 inner self was grinning at her maliciously, and saying: 
 " Go on! sack 'em all, smash 'em all, tie 'em down. Let's 
 have more cabals in the newspapers, more self-advertise- 
 ments of Lloyd-George's. Go on. Get some new brooms 
 in. You'll soon wear 'em out; and then down with 'em, 
 out with 'em, serve 'em out in the name of fair dealing." 
 
 Lady Oakley took his silence for an evidence of con- 
 version. As an amusing tidbit of information she told 
 him that the day before, when she went into the chemist's 
 shop at Hastings, where she sometimes dealt, she had had 
 the privilege of ordering out an old naturalised German 
 watchmaker who used to wind their clocks. He slunk out, 
 she said, like a beaten cur. " I can't understand it," she 
 added. " The chemist said that he'd had the German as 
 a friend for twenty years. I told him he ought to be 
 ashamed of himself. He talked some nonsense about 
 the man having been ruined by the war. Ruined! He 
 ought to be cut into little pieces. Of course, I'll never 
 go into the shop again." 
 
 " Serve them out," said Stephen's inner self. " That's 
 the way to prepare the new times, the times of freedom 
 and universal good will. Go on! Grind their faces, jump 
 on the individual if you can't down the nation. That's 
 the way to make them friendly and establish the reign of 
 peace in the world." 
 
 Lady Oakley went on to talk of air raids, and the need 
 
348 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 for the establishment of German prisoner camps in the 
 raid areas. 
 
 " Tie 'em up, string 'em up," murmured Stephen's 
 double. " They're prisoners, you've got 'em in your 
 power. Show your capacity for mercy. Show your su- 
 periority over the Hun by irritating him. Go on! prove 
 your doctrine orthodox by apostolic blows and knocks." 
 
 Then she asked him what he had decided as to his 
 career. 
 
 " Oh, I dunno," said Stephen. " I've talked to father 
 about going into the Bank. It's either that or politics, 
 but I'm afraid you wouldn't like my politics." 
 
 " Oh," said Lady Oakley, ignoring the part which did 
 not interest her. " Yes, your father did say something 
 to me about your going into the Bank. Are you sure 
 you'd like that? " 
 
 " Haven't any option. I'm too old for a respectable 
 occupation, such as the Bar, or the diplomatic, or such- 
 like forms of public-spirited self-advancement." 
 
 " Nonsense," said Lady Oakley, " but still if you pre- 
 fer the Bank, I don't see why you shouldn't go into it. It 
 would be better in a way. You'd be in a position to 
 marry pretty soon, if you wanted to." Stephen did not 
 reply, and Lady Oakley, unable to hold a trump, added 
 as casually as she could: " I suppose you miss Louise 
 now." 
 
 " It might be rather fun making money," said Stephen, 
 as if he had not heard the allusion. 
 
 Lady Oakley was embarrassed. Her son puzzled her. 
 She realised vaguely that he had aged during the war, 
 and yet that he was very raw. She wondered how the 
 inexperienced old-young man would navigate the seas of 
 finance and of love. 
 
 Then Stephen said suddenly: " Louise is a good sort," 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 349 
 
 and stumped out. A few minutes later she saw him 
 walking his horse down the lime avenue. 
 
 Stephen's meditations did not at once fasten on Louise. 
 He still had to rid himself of maternally induced irrita- 
 tions. The events of the war were significant to him; 
 they were not just battles and dates, but a diagram of the 
 world mind. A chaotic diagram. Too many things hap- 
 pened; the political flavour of the period was nasty to his 
 palate. He had no love for people like Robertson and 
 Jellicoe, for he hated all brass hats, nor for financiers, 
 like Cowdray, only he did not like the way in which these 
 people were first of all deprived of their public credit by 
 campaigns in the newspapers, by untrue statements that 
 they had resigned, and then suddenly dismissed without 
 a hearing. To his hard mind, either we were convicted as 
 fools for having stood them for forty years or the whole 
 show was being run by a press ramp. All Oakleys rather 
 disliked the press. They did not understand the new 
 politics. Stephen was intelligent enough to see that the 
 new politics fitted the new public, that the Daily Mail 
 and the yellow press generally were educating millions of 
 people who but for them would read nothing at all. But 
 all Oakleys hated loud publicity. Thus Stephen was 
 shocked by Clemenceau's exposure of the Austrian Em- 
 peror's peace offer. It was a private offer, made under 
 strict conditions of secrecy, but we had broken our word, 
 shown the letter to odd people, and kept President Wil- 
 son in the dark perhaps because we were afraid he 
 might act on it. And now once more we were playing a 
 foul game: we were advertising this secret offer in the 
 newspapers. Not only were we not playing the game, 
 but this was part of the new, vulgar way of doing things, 
 the noisy, yapping way of the underbred, the " yah! take 
 that! " way. " Guttersnipes in office," thought Stephen, 
 
350 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 and as his horse trotted over the moist turf, he thought 
 still more bitterly that the guttersnipes were more effect- 
 ive in action than the men of a finer breed. " I suppose 
 we're effete. But God help New England." 
 
 He stopped for a moment at Ascalon Farm to talk to 
 Hart. The farmer was in a violent mood because the 
 local labourers had formed a trade-union branch. 
 
 " We'll have 'em striking next," he growled. " Same as 
 on the Clyde. Ought to shoot a few of 'em." 
 
 " What are they going to strike for? " asked Stephen. 
 
 " They don't know themselves. They're getting more 
 wages than ever they've had. They just strike for a bit 
 of a change, or because an agitator comes down and tells 
 'em the tale." 
 
 Stephen said nothing. The explanation seemed insuf- 
 ficient. Surely men wouldn't leave their work and live 
 on strike pay, or starve, without a grievance, just because 
 an agitator talked. One heard too much about agitators ; 
 agitators could not seduce, they could only give a voice 
 to a grievance. He smiled as he thought of agitators 
 fomenting a strike on the Stock Exchange, of the Bishop 
 of London bringing off a successful agitation among 
 Christians. As he did not want to discuss generalities, he 
 congratulated Molly on her approaching marriage. Hart 
 was a little shamefaced, for he assumed that Stephen's 
 attitude was the same as Lady Oakley's. 
 
 " I don't hold with conscientious objectors myself," he 
 said. " Still it's my gal's going to marry him, not me." 
 
 As Stephen went across the marsh, he thought less in 
 general and more of 'himself, as if milk-white Molly had 
 turned his mind to human beings. He felt rather lonely. 
 His father was very little in the house, and strangely de- 
 pressed; his mother adored him, but she was war-mad, 
 as if she were the victim of a religious revival, of a war 
 

 THE LONE GREY COMPANY 351 
 
 religion comprising the fine, manly faith of Mr. Bottom- 
 ley, the revengefulness of Mr. Raemakers, and the pure 
 stucco of Mr. Ian Hay clean living and no damned 
 thinking. Monica was no good either; since she had 
 come back from Rochester she moved in a mechanical 
 dream, doing silly jobs in pen and ink for her mother and 
 father, and making endless, ill-fitting garments for Brit- 
 ish prisoners who'd done her no harm. Louise was the 
 only good spot. After a row with one's mother, when 
 one's mother had been raving against Huns, and Russians, 
 and Poles, and everybody else, and asking the Home 
 Office to have them driven out of Brighton and Maiden- 
 head into the raid areas, so as to jolly well learn 'em to 
 be foreigners, one could always go to Louise. Louise was 
 the only creature he knew who lived above the battle. 
 White and eternal, always soft, always smiling, never 
 harsh, never noisy, demanding and giving little, just 
 beautifully being, as Henry James said. His mind took 
 a turn. " I'm fed up," he thought. " I'll go to a place 
 where they're neutral. No good; neutrals are bound to 
 be still more patriotic than we are; they don't risk any- 
 thing. No, what I need is an agnostic monastery." He 
 smiled, and soothed by the steady amble of his horse, he 
 thought again of Louise. " She's like candlelight," he 
 thought. " The only light that doesn't hurt the eyes." 
 
 "MONICA," said Sir Hugh, " don't you think it's dread- 
 ful that we should be out here again seeing the lambs? " 
 
 "Why?" asked the girl, surprised; "don't you think 
 they're sweet? " 
 
 " Yes they're like toys but we came out here last 
 year, you and I, and the year before, and all the years 
 
352 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 before, right down to the time when you were as tottery 
 on your legs as those woolly lambs. It goes on forever. 
 For nothing. Lambs turn into sheep, and sheep into mut- 
 ton, just as boys turn into men, and men into soldiers. 
 One ends as cannon fodder, and the other as shepherd's 
 pie." 
 
 " Don't," murmured Monica. " I think you're horrid. 
 Why will you always look at things like that? Why 
 can't you be glad that it's spring again, that everything 
 round you is getting green and smelling sweet? " 
 
 " In April even graveyards smell sweet." 
 
 " But, father, is there no joy of life for you? You didn't 
 always talk like this. You used to be glad when the 
 spring came. You used to say that whenever the world 
 came alive again, so did you." 
 
 Sir Hugh laughed. " Ah, yes, those were the days of 
 spring onions, these are the days of spring offensives. 
 What's the good of all this, coming up only to die? 
 What's the use of mother muddlepate, Nature, as they 
 call her, breeding and breeding, only to kill? " 
 
 Monica did not reply for a moment, then said in a 
 shaky voice: " You're horrid, father, horrid, like the rest. 
 Stephen's horrid, full of sneers. Yesterday he was laugh- 
 ing at a man in his battalion; he was an actor, and his 
 name was Hubert Diss. As he didn't think Diss a good 
 name he called himself Arundel. When he went into the 
 army he had to be Private Diss, and Stephen said he used 
 to brag about the fine restoration of his simplicity. 
 Well, he got hit and was discharged. During his con- 
 valescence he got an engagement and called himself Diss- 
 Arundel. Now he's got a part in London, and Stephen 
 says Diss is dead, while Arundel has risen. This, he 
 says, is the fine restoration of sophistication. That's all 
 the war has done for Diss, he says, that's all it's done for 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 353 
 
 everything. I think it's hateful; you take all the cour- 
 age out of us. How can one believe in the war if one 
 doesn't think it makes people finer? " 
 
 " Why believe in it? " said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " Don't," cried Monica, in a tone which puzzled him. 
 " Some one I was told that the war has brought the 
 world to a blind alley oh, don't take things away from 
 me. I must believe in it, unless you can give me some- 
 thing else to believe in." 
 
 " Monica, dear," said Sir Hugh, taking her arm, " don't 
 force yourself to believe in things you don't believe in. 
 The war's here, so is smallpox; we must get rid of both 
 of them. Yes, you're right. The world's in a blind alley. 
 And we shan't get it out, get rid of war, I mean, for ever, 
 unless we understand the war, unless we realise that it 
 was engineered in the interests of separate nationalities 
 and that so long as sharp national differences are kept 
 up, so long will war continue to break out. Oh, I know 
 you can make a case just as the Germans can; just as 
 the devil is sometimes a logician. But one can make a 
 better case out of lies, says Anatole France, than out 
 of the truth, because lies are made to fit the case. I 
 wonder how you can be taken in, Monica, by all this 
 jingo talk. I used to think you women had a brain, 
 perhaps not exactly a brain, but shall we say a sub- 
 stitute." 
 
 " Thank you, father," said Monica, smiling, " I like 
 your masculine arrogance; let me tell you that women 
 do quite as well with their mental margarine as you men 
 with your intellectual butter." 
 
 " Sorry, didn't mean to be rude. Only you women let 
 such passion into your politics. You believe anything, 
 even the newspapers. And you never get inside the 
 
354 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Well, I know all about the German offensive." 
 " Oh, never mind the German offensive. Whether they 
 get through or not, and whether or not we get licked, all 
 that won't change the only thing that matters : the results 
 of the offensive of ambition and greed against the crum- 
 bling front of human decency. Look at the world we're 
 living in. Here are the Germans, after advertising every- 
 where their offer of liberty to all the subject races, their 
 desire to take from their enemy only reparation for actual 
 damage, making last week with the Bolsheviks a treaty 
 which hands over to Germany a territory larger than this 
 country, where they will doubtless see to it that German 
 bayonets persuade the people to vote for German rule. 
 They don't want a penny, and they take three hundred 
 millions in gold from that unhappy country. They don't 
 want any unfair advantages, and they force Russia to 
 mortgage her timber, her metals, to keep her frontiers 
 open to German goods. And they give liberty to Ukraine 
 
 retaining the right to police it." 
 
 " That's just like the Germans," said Monica. 
 
 " Alas ! It is also like us. We had the right to police 
 Egypt, and before 1914 was over we bagged it. We all 
 do the same. Here are the Germans snatching, snatch- 
 ing all the Roumanian coast, and offering as compen- 
 sation Russian lands which don't belong to them. We're 
 just the same. The Foreign Office assures Miss Durham 
 this month that they have full sympathy with Albania 
 and doesn't say that three years ago, by our secret treaty 
 with Italy, we reserved the right to cut up Albania, and 
 share her out between our Allies. Three or four months 
 ago Wilson said that we did not want to break up Austria 
 
 we let him say that without telling him that we had 
 secret treaties giving Italy German land in the Tyrol, 
 Slav land on the coast; a secret treaty with Roumania 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 355 
 
 giving her thousands of miles of Magyar land. Lord 
 Robert Cecil said we wanted no conquests, Asquith said 
 we wanted nothing but freedom and we see the Rus- 
 sian foreign minister writing to the Russian ambassador 
 three years ago that we asked for their benevolent atti- 
 tude towards our political aspirations : following on which 
 we bagged the neutral zone in Persia. Grab and grab. 
 There isn't a nation in Europe which ought not to have 
 upon its coat-of-arms an open maw snappant." 
 
 After a moment he went on again. " I shouldn't mind 
 it so much if there weren't such a lot of cant, if we applied 
 the same rule to our enemies and ourselves. The Ger- 
 mans enter Ukraine ' to restore order ' and we yell ; on 
 the other hand all our papers demand a Japanese invasion 
 of Russia, ' to restore order ', and we cheer. Am I to 
 believe that Japan has no imperial ambitions, that her 
 war with China and its resultant conquests, her war with 
 Russia and its resultant conquests, were forced on her 
 reluctant government for self-defense? It's always ex- 
 asperated nationality claiming historic rights. And in 
 the matter of nationality, the most stupid invention of 
 mankind, lies and cynicism, are allowed. It's everywhere 
 the same. It's all right that Alsace-Lorraine should be 
 returned in virtue of a self-determination so implicit that 
 she isn't to be allowed to vote, but it's not all right that 
 Turkey should recover Kars and Batum which Russia 
 took from her in 1878. Oh ! I'd rather be a decent high- 
 wayman than an attache in a chancellery. And it all 
 goes on. The people can do nothing to stop it. They're 
 drugged with a continual hymn of hate. Hate is the 
 strong wine with which we drug them ; in this, the fourth 
 year of war, our newspapers fill their columns with old 
 stories of atrocities, and we publish ' Murder Most Foul ', 
 a pandemonium of horrors fit to make the people hate 
 
356 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 their enemy, and therefore to fight him. We're afraid 
 they'd stop fighting if they didn't hate. We're never 
 afraid of anything except of love." 
 
 It was evident that Monica's mind had fastened only 
 on the last word, for she said: " Love is quite as cruel 
 as hate, father. It may hurt one more." 
 
 Sir Hugh, after a moment, understood that she was 
 speaking personally. He knew something had happened 
 in the last year, but though he was a father he still prac- 
 tised tact. "Yes, I know, but the pains of love leave 
 nobility behind." 
 
 " I wonder what you would say, father, if I told you 
 that I had . . . Oh, I can't tell you. One ought not 
 to love people one can't marry." 
 
 " No," said Sir Hugh, very uncomfortable. 
 
 " Only it's so difficult. Mr. Hurn writes to me from 
 time to time." 
 
 " Do you like him? " asked Sir Hugh, rather confused, 
 for Hurn was a bachelor. 
 
 " Yes, only he's so queer now. The war seems to have 
 upset him; he's so grave and religious; so excited. It's 
 as if the war'd spoiled people." 
 
 "Yes, it spoils us all. I'm afraid it's spoiled some- 
 thing in you, my dear, smashed some dreams of yours." 
 
 " Dreams are the stuff that worlds are made of," 
 quoted Monica, and her voice shook as she remembered. 
 
 Sir Hugh did not reply for some time, for that phrase 
 pleased him. Then, irrelevantly, he said: "Won't you 
 tell me? " 
 
 " Father there was somebody, and I thought I cared 
 for him, and he for me we couldn't marry. He's mar- 
 ried. It's all right; time will put it right ..." With 
 a wry mouth she searched for her handkerchief ; her hands 
 trembled. Sir Hugh took her into his arms and there 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY j 357 
 
 let her stay for a long time, asking of her no more than 
 she would tell, and gently caressing the bent brown head. 
 
 VI 
 
 THE " King's Arms " was almost empty that April 
 evening, for it was a Thursday, and the young men, 
 rather short of money, preferred the diversions of the 
 spring and were loafing with the girls in the lanes. Also 
 there was a hint of late frost in the air, and the older 
 men were getting in the lambs. Mr. Cashel stood behind 
 the bar, as ever polishing a tumbler, talking in a low 
 voice to Farcet. At the long table sat only Hart and a 
 stranger face to face, watched from the other table by 
 Keele, who pretended to smoke, but listened. 
 
 " Make it eighty-eight pounds ten/' said Hart, " and 
 the stack's yours." 
 
 " Can't be done. Eighty-six pound's all it's worth to 
 me." 
 
 " Now, Mr. Brough, you know that timber'd fetch 
 ninety-five pound any day if I was to cart it over to 
 Hastings. They're just squalling for timber for fishing 
 smacks, what with the price of fish and what with U-boats 
 sinking 'em." 
 
 " No good to me," said Brough. He was a big farmer 
 from the other side of Rye. A stocky, broad-faced man, 
 he had sly eyes, and though his price was fair enough, 
 Hart had the cunning of the peasant, and was holding 
 out because he could not understand what Brough wanted 
 the timber for. This suggested infinite profits, an intol- 
 erable idea. " 'Ave another whiskey," said Hart des- 
 perately. 
 
 " Don't mind if I do," said Brough. He was sure of 
 himself, and not afraid of liquor. He knew why they 
 
358 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 were not drinking ale, but saw no reason why Hart should 
 not stand him spirits in this little public-house where the 
 law on treating was occasionally forgotten. 
 
 " Well now," said Hart, " I'll throw it away on yer. 
 Make it eighty-eight pounds." 
 
 " Oh, well," said Brough generously. " I don't want 
 you to feel I've come for nothing. Eighty-seven pounds." 
 
 Hart looked at him gloomily. " Nicely seasoned," he 
 said. " Just what you want for your new cowshed." 
 
 " It ain't for a cowshed," said Brough enigmatically. 
 " We said eighty-seven pounds, didn't we? " 
 
 " No, we didn't," said Hart, " we said eighty-eight." 
 
 " Ah, well," said Brough, " never mind. Say no more 
 about it. I owe you a drink. But I'll be running across 
 you at Tenterden next week. So it can keep. I must 
 be going now." 
 
 Hart protested. It wasn't closing time yet. So Far- 
 mer Brough, having swept aside the discussion, supplied 
 a little small talk: 
 
 " Hope we're going to have a better year than last 
 one. As I was putting in my spring sowings, I said to 
 myself: what's the good of farming in this country? You 
 can't make a living; it's all you can do to keep alive, 
 what with wages, and oil-cake going up every day. I'd 
 like to know what the government's up to with its twenty- 
 five bob a week! My men never asked for twenty-five 
 bob a week until the people in London got the idea. And 
 it won't stop there, Mr. Hart; there's one committee 
 given them thirty bob already. What for? When I was 
 a nipper a man'd do well on eleven bob a week, and bring 
 up ten children on it too." 
 
 Hart agreed abundantly. A rapid, if inaccurate, cal- 
 culation enabled him to prove that the fixed price of corn 
 for five years wouldn't allow of more than a pound a 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 359 
 
 week at the outside. One might throw in half a load 
 of logs, and perhaps a goose at Michaelmas, he added 
 generously. 
 
 They talked of the newly broken land, of the iniqui- 
 tous behaviour of the committee which forced farmers 
 to break pasture. 
 
 " They'll get a dirty crop out of that land," said 
 Farmer Brough. " Sarve 'em right. They've ploughed 
 up a bit of down by Jenkins'. You should see it! They 
 call it the ' Plague of Egypt ', 'cos last year they only got 
 seven ears of thin wheat out of the whole field. And this 
 year'll be as bad. Land's full of muck, rotten with cam- 
 pion from end to end. Whatever they do, sharps'll be 
 something dreadful." 
 
 " Come, Mr. Brough, make it eighty-eight pound. I 
 don't want to think you've come for nothing." 
 
 Brough did not reply, but asked Keele for news of his 
 son. 
 
 " He's doing well," said the old farmer, who by now 
 had gained pride in his son. " He's a full capting now, 
 and he's got the Military Cross." Then, with a vicious 
 wink, he said to Hart: " So Cradoc's come back again. 
 Poppin' in and out of jail, ain't he, like the old man in 
 the barometer." 
 
 " You hold your jaw," said Hart furiously. He wasn't 
 going to have his family affairs mixed up with a bargain. 
 He felt the need to explain to Brough: 
 
 " Cradoc ain't done anything, you know, only he's a 
 conscientious objector. Don't you listen to that old 
 sweep; he's only jealous 'cos Cradoc's got a good busi- 
 ness, and is going to marry my gal. You dirty old tyke, 
 you can't keep one of your boys and girls on the muck 
 heap you call a farm. I'd sooner Molly married a con- 
 scientious objector any day than one of your la-di-da 
 
360 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 officers. Your fine gentleman'll come back to touch his 
 hat to Squire, and be pleased to say * thank you ' for a 
 tanner tip. When the war's over there's lots of people'll 
 know the difference. ' It weren't such a bad time in a 
 way ' they'll say. They'll be sorry, some of them." 
 
 " So you'll be," said Keele, " with your gal married 
 to one of the Kaiser's pals." 
 
 " It's all very fine your talking," said Hart. " I ain't 
 a conscientious objector myself, but I dunno if I wouldn't 
 have been if I'd been of military age. Mightn't have 
 had the pluck, though. It ain't so nice sitting in prison 
 and hunger-striking, and having your stomach shoved 
 into your feet; that's what it feels like when they feed 
 you by force. I don't mind him. He's against the war 
 anyway, and one might do worse than stop the war. I 
 don't think it pays, and if it doesn't pay what's it for? 
 If a thing don't pay don't do it. That's what I said to 
 the vicar the other day when he asked me to promise not 
 to buy the new reaper I've got to get after the war from 
 the Germans. I said to him : ' I want a good reaper 
 and a cheap one. And if it's all that, I don't care if 
 it's of the devil's make.' He didn't seem to like it," 
 added the farmer with a chuckle. " I calls it ungrateful: 
 vicar makes his living out of the devil." 
 
 Keele laughed, reconciled by this mild blasphemy. 
 
 " Vicar talked about atrocities and all that. Told him 
 I didn't care: if a man sells me a cheap reaper he can 
 have his atrocities if he don't do 'em here. He went on 
 in a rare old way, asked me if I didn't value my liberty, 
 if I'd like to see policemen at political meetings and have 
 my letters opened, and to have everything controlled. 
 ' Well,' I says, ' everything is ; wouldn't make much dif- 
 ference if Kaiser Bill did it instead of Lloyd-George. 
 And I don't go to political meetings, and I don't get 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 361 
 
 letters once in a blue moon. What we want is less people 
 to flap their mouths and more people to let us be.' " 
 
 " You're right there," said Brough. " It'll be all right 
 after the war. They won't go on controlling; country 
 won't stand it. Labourers won't hear much more about 
 that twenty-five bob a week after the war. You'll always 
 get the old men cheap, they're good enough for a day's 
 work till they're seventy. And there's lots of men com- 
 ing back with only one leg. You'll get those cheap 
 because they'll have pensions. Stands to reason." 
 
 " Ah, well," said Hart, " eighty-seven pound ten." 
 
 Farmer Brough knitted his brows, with an air of sub- 
 lime concession said: " Oh, all right, have it your own 
 way. But mind you, you've got to cart it to my place." 
 
 Then the debate began all over again. 
 
 VII 
 
 THE maid announced Mr. and Mrs. March. Auto- 
 matically nervous, Sylvia, who was sprawling in an arm- 
 chair and showing too much leg, leapt to her feet, but 
 Captain Orton still lounged against the mantelpiece. 
 The old couple, as they came in, radiated disapproval. 
 They shook hands without a word, bowed stiffly when 
 Sylvia introduced Orton. Sylvia asked if they had had 
 a good journey. They said: " Yes." Then whether they 
 had recently heard from Oliver. Mrs. March said " No." 
 Mr. March was about sixty, dressed in a countrified 
 frock coat, and wore glace kid boots. His wife was much 
 younger, very thin, very tall, rather like Oliver, had been 
 pretty once upon a time. Now her tight-drawn fair hair 
 was streaked with grey, and insufficiently brushed. They 
 were dry, shy, meanly hostile, typical gentlefolk from a 
 little town. Almost at once Orton grew conscious of 
 
362 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 their disapproval. The old man stared at him as if he 
 wondered what the devil he was doing there, while Mrs. 
 March looked about the drawing-room overfilled with 
 little tables loaded with silver ornaments and china pigs, 
 at the couches that looked too soft. She was excited, 
 for she was a pure woman, and flats felt rather impure. 
 Sylvia, too, was impure. It was delicious. 
 
 Orton shook hands hurriedly, mumbled that he had a 
 pressing engagement, and went. As the door closed the 
 old people stared at Sylvia as if saying: " Now." Sylvia 
 was impelled to apologise: 
 
 " Captain Orton is such a nice man. He's a great pal 
 of Oliver's. He's on short leave and was giving me news 
 of him." 
 
 " Is he well? " said Mrs. March. 
 
 " Captain Orton cannot have realised who we were," 
 said Mr. March, " or he would have given us news of 
 Oliver." 
 
 " No," said Sylvia confusedly. " He was in a hurry, 
 you see." She was telling the truth. There was nothing 
 between her and Orton, but the old couple thrust guilt 
 upon her. 
 
 " I must say it is very strange," said Mr. March, " but 
 let that pass." 
 
 Nothing was said for a moment. " This is awful," 
 thought Sylvia. They were still scheduling her pel/Ses- 
 sions. Then Mrs. March said: 
 
 " I'm sorry we couldn't ask you down, but we're so 
 short of servants." They exchanged two or three griev- 
 ances against servants, and silence fell again. Sylvia 
 felt that Mrs. March was not telling the truth, that the 
 idea of having her down, " the woman who had ruined 
 their son ", and of exposing her to the gossip of their 
 friends, was horrible to them. They had come to inspect 
 

 THE LONE GREY COMPANY 363 
 
 her. "Well, let them," she thought defiantly; then she 
 reacted. After all Mr. March was a man, and instinct- 
 ively she wanted to charm him. 
 
 " I'm so glad to see you," she said, " I wanted to know 
 Oliver's people." 
 
 " It is indeed necessary," said Mr. March. " How long 
 did you know Oliver before before what happened?" 
 
 " For a year." 
 
 " It is not a very long time." 
 
 " Oh, in war time, you know, things move quickly." 
 
 " As you say, Mrs. Jervaulx. I suppose that you are 
 called Mrs. Jervaulx? " 
 
 " Yes, of course, until well, anyhow it doesn't 
 matter." 
 
 " No," said Mrs. March, " of course it doesn't." As 
 she perceived that heat was arising she obeyed her Vic- 
 torian tradition and changed the subject. " That's Oli- 
 ver's photograph you've got on the mantelpiece. I don't 
 seem to know it." 
 
 Mr. March got up to look. " It's a new one," he said. 
 " It seems to me strange that Oliver should not have 
 sent us one." 
 
 " I had it taken," said Sylvia hurriedly, " only six. 
 And I've kept them all so as to have one in each room. 
 I'm o fond of him," she added, speaking at random. 
 
 -.-.Irs. March looked at her more kindly, but her hus- 
 band still stood by the mantelpiece. " And who are 
 these other young men in khaki? " he asked. 
 
 " That's my brother Stephen. He's been wounded." 
 
 " Oh. And this one? " 
 
 "Oh, that that's just a friend. And that's Bobbie 
 Marchmont, my cousin. He was killed." 
 
 " And what about the others? " 
 
 " Oh, they're friends." 
 
364 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " You seem to have a great many friends." 
 A blush of anger rose in Sylvia's cheeks. Hadn't she 
 a right to friends? 
 
 " Yes, I have," she said. " And why not? " 
 " I should have thought that in your position you would 
 be careful in the selection of your friends." 
 " May I ask what you have against them? " 
 " Charles, please ..." 
 
 " No, Emily, please, let me get a word in. I should 
 have thought that at least until the scandal had blown 
 over you would not care to exhibit so many acquaint- 
 ances, young men, and so forth." 
 
 " Mr. March, surely you don't suggest that I'm not 
 to see anybody." 
 
 " Not in the least. I suppose you have a family." 
 " One doesn't live on the top of one's family." 
 " One would escape many perils if one did, many perils 
 and many scandals." 
 
 Sylvia jumped up, and despite a protesting gesture 
 from Mrs. March cried: "But, look here! What have I 
 done? Have you only come here to be nasty to me? " 
 
 " We've come here to form an idea of the lady whom 
 Oliver wishes to marry." 
 " I'm afraid it's not a very favourable idea." 
 " Oh, we don't say that," replied Mrs. March. 
 " Emily, don't interrupt. I don't say we've formed 
 an unfavourable idea, but let me say that we arrived 
 here punctually, by appointment, and we find you in the 
 company of a young man ..." 
 "But he'd only dropped in to tell me ..." 
 " That is as it may be," said Mr. March. " I make 
 no charge against you, but I think it's most unfortunate 
 in your position. In your position it seems to me that 
 one should be particularly careful not to give an oppor- 
 

 THE LONE GREY COMPANY 365 
 
 tunity to gossip. Apparently you do not realise your 
 position." 
 
 " My position! " cried Sylvia. " Oh, I'm not defend- 
 ing myself, but really I can't shut myself up in a flat 
 until Oliver can marry me, and that can't be for some 
 months." 
 
 " Certainly not. As you say, you need not shut your- 
 self up until we've considered whether our son shall many 
 you." 
 
 " Considered? " said Sylvia. " How do you mean, 
 considered? " 
 
 " Well, of course we've to consider the question." 
 
 " But I thought but really Oliver himself it's 
 not only that he wants to do the decent thing." 
 
 " We're not talking of the decent thing," said Mr. 
 March. " That term means nothing. Some deeds are 
 righteous and some unrighteous." 
 
 Sylvia stared. She felt numb. He went on: 
 
 " You must not be surprised that if we find you in 
 compromising circumstances, please, please allow me 
 to speak, in compromising circumstances, surrounded 
 by all the evidence of a frivolous way of life, you must 
 not be surprised that we should hesitate." 
 
 Then Sylvia lost her temper. " If you've only come 
 here to insult me," she said, " you've done it; you'd bet- 
 ter go before we quarrel." 
 
 Mrs. March rose as if to intervene, but the duel was 
 joined. 
 
 " We may not meet again," said Mr. March. " I do 
 not want to do anything rash, but I do not at present feel 
 inclined to allow my son to marry you." 
 
 " I'm not asking for your consent. I don't think I'll 
 marry him however much he wants me to." 
 
 " That might be very satisfactory." 
 
366 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " Do you think I'm going to be insulted and bullied? 
 Certainly I'm not going to marry him if he feels as you 
 do." 
 
 " Oh, of course, Oliver would want to atone for the 
 wrong he has done," said Mrs. March. 
 
 " Is that how he feels? " said Sylvia, in a low voice. 
 " Well, if it's like that, I'm going to write to him now, 
 and tell him I've done with him. I'm not going to be 
 treated like an outcast, a leper. I think you're horrid, 
 both of you. You're hard and you're sanctimonious." 
 
 " Emily, let us go." 
 
 " Hard and sanctimonious. You don't know what love 
 is, either of you. Or if you do you've been cunning 
 enough not to get found out." 
 
 " Good afternoon." 
 
 She was alone. Almost at once her exasperation 
 turned to fear. So that was the end of it. What was 
 she going to do? In another three months the decree 
 would be made absolute. She would no longer be Mrs. 
 Jervaulx, but Mrs. Sylvia Jervaulx. Skulk in a flat on 
 an allowance, and take tea in boarding-houses with the 
 wives of cinema managers and Serbian countesses. Or 
 go back to Knapenden. No, not that. Never. She 
 thought of going on the stage. Or she might start a lady 
 barbers' shop. Knapenden! No, never. " I'd rather go 
 on the streets," she thought. Then she cried for nearly 
 an hour, and a longing for her mother, who was like her, 
 who would understand her, overcame her. She would 
 run down next morning and ask her what to do. 
 
 VIII 
 
 " How much longer is it going on? " asked Ethel 
 Cradoc. 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 367 
 
 " What going on? " 
 
 " This going to jail, and coming out, and going back." 
 " I don't know." Cradoc said this as he might have 
 said: " I don't care." He felt too weak to argue. But 
 Ethel was obstinate. 
 
 " How long do you expect to be out this time? " 
 " I don't know. Perhaps they'll let me alone. Per- 
 haps the war will stop." 
 
 " It ain't good for the shop," said Ethel. She gave 
 brief news of trade. Evidently the business was going 
 to survive, for Lady Oakley's boycott had never been 
 completely effective, and during the first few months 
 Ethel had managed by using a portion of their savings. 
 Then, by degrees, the villagers, who preferred con- 
 scientious bacon which they could select to loyal bacon 
 chosen by the Rye butcher, had recovered their ration 
 books and begun to come in in the evening, when 
 nobody from the Place was likely to know; later they 
 sent their children during the day, reserving themselves 
 as a way of escape to say that they didn't know Mary 
 Ellen had gone to the shop. Villa-Land, being middle 
 class, went in more hotly for patriotic purchase, and for 
 a long time had supported Lady Oakley's enterprise, but 
 two of the Rye carriers having been called up, Mr. Mar- 
 tin got so much work that groceries arrived later and 
 later, sometimes not at all. So Villa-Land had to run 
 out for minor supplies, bought under protest, but still 
 bought. At last Mr. Martin made so much money that 
 he decided he was getting old, and that Knapenden was 
 off his beat, whereupon Villa-Land, filled with shame, 
 but cheered by economy, registered for sugar and bacon 
 at the conscientious shop. Only Knapenden Place and 
 a few of the rich residents of Villa-Land refused to deal, 
 and had weekly parcels down from London stores. 
 
368 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Cradoc listened without a smile. A year ago this 
 would have filled him with ironic amusement, but he 
 was too tired to care much whether the business did well 
 or not. He had been forcibly fed again; once more he 
 had known the prison infirmary, and had been discharged 
 with a half-expressed recommendation from the governor 
 to go to the devil, or commit suicide, or something. He 
 left the jail, his head bent under the weight of his hope- 
 lessness, for his agony must last through the war, and 
 there seemed no end to it. People had been kind to him 
 in the infirmary; every day the newspaper had been 
 smuggled in. He knew all about the German offensive, 
 knew that through the previous month, and through this 
 one, April, the Allies had been cracking under the German 
 onrush. He had wondered whether this would end the 
 war; he had ceased to hope for an equitable discussion, 
 had come to understand that only complete defeat of 
 one side could end it. " Well, let it be England and be 
 done." He hoped nothing of the future; the winners 
 would grow more arrogant, more militarist; the losers 
 would sulk and plot revenge. Even labour seemed false, 
 divided; some sections, such as the seamen, were even 
 ready to impede the Labour Party ; labour was in chaos ; 
 some leaders wanted the social revolution, and others 
 wore khaki ; some unions followed their officials, and some 
 struck against their own secretaries ; the men made bar- 
 gains, which he thought foolish, and broke them, which 
 he thought wrong; the masters made bargains, which he 
 thought crafty, and broke them, which he thought nat- 
 ural. Even he could no longer find his way in the sec- 
 tional welter of minor labour parties. 
 
 Was it to be hoped that these parties who fought each 
 other could cooperate to combat hatred? He was too 
 weak to argue. In the train from Robertsbridge he had 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 369 
 
 sat with a fat, angry corn broker who had once been 
 overcharged in a Cologne hotel. All the way the man 
 had raved, pointing a stubby hand with a diamond ring 
 on it; he had clamoured: " Intern them all, intern Ger- 
 mans, intern naturalised Germans, intern fathers of Ger- 
 mans who had enlisted, intern the women who had dis- 
 graced themselves by marrying Germans, intern the 
 English children of the accursed race. And no more 
 German prisoners should be driven to their work 
 in lorries; no more jam for the Huns; no more leave 
 to internees to go and attend to their businesses and 
 take the bread out of our mouths. Denaturalise the 
 swine. Make all the Schweinsteins resume their names. 
 Get them out of the Government offices. Shoot the 
 Swiss ..." 
 
 Cradoc had said hardly anything. He realised that if 
 one made war one must make it like this; he reflected 
 that if he were Home Secretary he would do all these 
 things, and that a pacifist turned warrior must be terrible 
 because logical. But it sickened him, because he under- 
 stood that this fermenting hate must stay within men, 
 raise the bitter bread of future wars, that out of the war 
 would arise a sham league of nations, sham because all 
 would retain their arms, because it would be an umbrella 
 for alliances. He was too weak to argue. He was too 
 weak to want anything but rest and silence. When, that 
 night, he went to Ascalon Farm, sometimes stopping to 
 rest, he was prepared to be insulted by Hart, to be 
 turned out. But he was not even surprised to find them 
 cordial. Molly kissed him before her parents ; Mrs. Hart 
 smiled up from her knitting. And Hart was almost 
 admiring. 
 
 " They can say what they like," he remarked, " you've 
 got some spirit. Not, mind you, that I think you're 
 
370 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 right. Still ..." His curiosity awoke. " How far 
 up your nose did they push those tubes? " 
 
 Cradoc realised that to them his career was rather 
 dramatic; he was not to them a respectable person, but, 
 like a cinema burglar, he was an attractive one. He 
 gave them only brief accounts of his prison experience. 
 At last Hart winked. " It's time we were getting to bed, 
 mother. You can lock up, Molly, by and by." 
 
 As soon as they were alone Molly Hart grew archly 
 absorbed in her sewing, and for some time Cradoc said 
 nothing. It was like a dream to see her sitting there, 
 with the light making a golden patch on her chestnut 
 head. Yes, she was rest. Once upon a time she had 
 been feverish excitement. Now she was all sweet calm, 
 and he needed it. He said: " Going to marry me soon, 
 Molly? " 
 
 " If you like." 
 
 " Then let's get married as soon as we can." 
 
 " All right. Shall I put up the banns if you aren't 
 friendly with Mr. Denny? " 
 
 Cradoc did not reply for a moment. A year before 
 he would have fought to the end against being married 
 in church, but now he felt past that. Let them mumble. 
 " Well," he said, " perhaps it's better you should see to 
 it, though Mr. Denny's the only one who gave me a nod 
 to-day. The others are still a bit frightened of the 
 Place; so's he, of course, but he's more frightened of 
 seeming frightened." Then he grasped the girl by the 
 arm, and throwing himself upon his knees rested his head 
 on the broad, soft breast. Molly's arms closed around 
 his thin shoulders. How weak and ill he looked! Never 
 before had she wholly loved him. 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 371 
 
 IX 
 
 WHEN Sylvia arrived in the afternoon, and in a single, 
 breathless sentence confided to her mother what had 
 happened, Lady Oakley did not say much. She was as 
 wise when people expressed their sentimental agonies as 
 she was rough and tactless when their preoccupations 
 grew intellectual. She merely said: "Not marry him? 
 Nonsense. We'll talk about it later. We'll see your 
 father after dinner to-night." For Lady Oakley believed 
 that her husband, who never cared what he ate, and 
 never took more than half a glass of port, was like the 
 man of fiction, replete and slightly drunk after dinner, 
 therefore amiable. "Lie down and have a rest," she 
 added. "You need it. YouVe got a red nose and 
 swollen eyes. And don't talk to Monica; she's always 
 mooning about." 
 
 So, Sylvia having rested, and Monica having tired her- 
 self out in a long, aimless walk, dinner passed off well. 
 Lady Oakley, who was still unable to understand her 
 husband's attitude toward the war, had learnt that the 
 war generally produced bad temper; she had learnt this 
 as a dog comes to understand that when a man puts on 
 his hat it means a walk. So she avoided the war, and 
 beyond an outburst brought about by botulism, the latest 
 fashionable disease, which, she declared, had been intro- 
 duced by Hun germs, all was amity and peace. As soon 
 as Sir Hugh went to his study she left the drawing-room, 
 followed by Sylvia, telling Monica not to come into her 
 father's study for a little while. 
 
 They found Sir Hugh at his desk with a pile of little 
 books and socialist newspapers which he had bought from 
 the Bomb Shop in Charing Cross Road. On the corner 
 of his desk sat as usual Kallikrates, golden, blinking,, 
 
372 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 superior. Lady Oakley ignored the objectionable crea- 
 ture, and at once attacked her subject. 
 
 " Hugh," she said, " Mr. and Mrs. March came to see 
 Sylvia yesterday. I'm afraid they didn't get on." 
 
 " Oh? It's the first time you've seen them, Sylvia? '' 
 
 " Yes, father, and I'm afraid it's the last. They didn't 
 like me. And I didn't like them. Oh, they're horrid, 
 horrid." 
 
 " Tell your father what happened," said Lady Oakley. 
 
 Sylvia gave an incoherent account of the interview, 
 summed up the old people: "They're narrow, they're 
 hard, they don't like me, they think I'm a fast woman." 
 
 " Don't talk like that, Sylvia," said Sir Hugh angrily. 
 It irritated him that Sylvia should use such words. And 
 in a way they were true. 
 
 " Well, that's what they think, father. Just because 
 Captain Orton was there, and because I'd Stephen's photo 
 on my mantelpiece. But that's not why. They weren't 
 going to like me. They hated me before they saw me. 
 And I'm not going to have people talking about my 
 position, and I won't have them considering my position. 
 I won't marry him. If they begged me to marry him, I 
 wouldn't do it." 
 
 " Nonsense," said Lady Oakley, " you've got to marry 
 him." 
 
 " I won't marry him," said Sylvia weakly. 
 
 " Don't be silly. Hugh, tell her not to be a fool. Of 
 course she's got to marry him." 
 
 " It seems to me," said Sir Hugh, " that it's for the boy 
 to say." 
 
 " He doesn't matter," said Lady Oakley. 
 , " Oh," said Sir Hugh. " Then why do you want her 
 to marry a feeble young man like that? " 
 
 " He's not feeble," said Sylvia, defending her property. 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 373 
 
 " Oh," cried Lady Oakley, " what does it matter what 
 he is? All we've got to think about is how to get you 
 out of this mess." 
 
 Then Sylvia stamped, and Kallikrates stood up, his 
 fur bristling with apprehension. " I won't be talked to 
 like that. I won't have everybody talking about my 
 position, and saying I'm in a mess. You're as bad as 
 his people. I won't have it. I'll go away. I'll go on 
 the stage." 
 
 " Sylvia, don't be a fool. You know quite well there's 
 only one way out and that's to marry him." 
 
 " I don't see it at all," said Sir Hugh, seizing Kalli- 
 krates who was preparing to leap off the desk. 
 
 " But whatever else is she to do? " cried Lady Oakley, 
 exasperated. 
 
 " She can now, Kalli, don't be cross," said Sir Hugh, 
 in whose arms the cat was struggling " she can come 
 back here." 
 
 " How can you talk such nonsense? How can she 
 come back here? She won't be able to go anywhere." 
 
 " Well, why should she throw herself away? There, 
 there, Kalli, there's a good cat. There, sit down nicely." 
 
 " Oh, do let that cat alone; this is serious. Do be prac- 
 tical for a moment. Sylvia can't shut herself up here. 
 It's no use; she's made a fool of herself. What we've got 
 to do is to cover it up. Are you prepared to have her 
 shut herself up here going nowhere having to be sent 
 upstairs when people call? Do you want people to re- 
 fuse invitations to tennis parties in case they might meet 
 Sylvia? " 
 
 " Don't, mother, don't." 
 
 " It's no use saying ' don't.' That's what's going to 
 happen. Your father's trying to make you into a scan- 
 dal, just because he lives in the clouds. But it shan't be, 
 
374 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 it shan't be. There's only one thing to be done: you 
 must marry him." 
 
 " I'm afraid they won't allow him anything," said Syl- 
 via, miserably. 
 
 " Well, then, we must. Hugh, you must allow them 
 five hundred a year and find him something to do when 
 the war's over." 
 
 " How am I to find anything for a young weakling like 
 that? " 
 
 " Never mind the weakling. What's the good of your 
 having influence if you don't use it? " 
 
 Sir Hugh stared at Kallikrates, who was growing ac- 
 customed to this passionate conversation, and now stared 
 at the humans with an air of mild surprise. " Sylvia," he 
 said at last, " what do you want to do? " 
 
 " Father," her voice was unsteady with tears, " I don't 
 know. I expect mother's right." 
 
 " Well, then," said Sir Hugh, " we must see what can 
 be done. Sylvia ! " he cried out, " darling, don't cry, 
 please don't cry." 
 
 " Oh, go to bed," snapped Lady Oakley, " and have 
 some Benger's." 
 
 Sylvia went out; she was sobbing loudly. 
 
 " Hugh," said Lady Oakley, " that settles that. Now 
 what about Stephen? " 
 
 " Has Stephen done anything? " said Sir Hugh appre- 
 hensively. 
 
 " Not that I know of, but he wants to marry Louise." 
 
 " What? When did he tell you that? " 
 
 Lady Oakley smiled. " He didn't tell me. He doesn't 
 know himself. Of course you're blind, like most men. 
 He's always with her. He's a different man when she's 
 here. When he began to brood at tea, the other day, and 
 to sing that awful song, you know: ' Oh, my, I don't 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 375 
 
 want to die 7 , it was she pulled him round. Well? Aren't 
 you glad? " 
 
 " I don't know," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 " How do you mean, you don't know? I suppose you 
 have no objection to Louise? " 
 
 " Louise ! " said Sir Hugh softly, " no, of course not. 
 Only Stephen's such a crock." 
 
 " All the more reason for him to marry some one who'll 
 look after him." 
 
 " Louise might do better than that," said Sir Hugh af- 
 ter a moment. " Looking after a man ..." 
 
 " Oh ! dear, oh ! dear ! " said Lady Oakley wearily. 
 " You're perfectly impossible. I simply don't know what 
 you mean." 
 
 " It's not very romantic for her," said Sir Hugh. While 
 Lady Oakley stared, his mind rapidly evoked his court- 
 ship of Mrs. Douglas. Must her child, his dream child, 
 be turned into a nurse. " I don't want her sacrificed," he 
 said. 
 
 " Sacrificed ! " gasped Lady Oakley. " How much 
 longer is this nonsense going on? You call it sacrifice 
 for her to marry my son. I'd like to know what you've 
 got against Stephen. He's getting better, he's clever, I 
 suppose oh, this is ridiculous. She'll do nicely." 
 
 Do nicely ! Louise do nicely ! 
 
 Lady Oakley was still talking: " I think she's a very 
 lucky girl. Perhaps you've forgotten she's twenty-seven, 
 and in these days a girl of that age hasn't much chance of 
 marriage. I wish I hadn't told you." 
 
 " I don't want her sacrificed to clean up the mess of 
 this war." 
 
 " We're not talking about the war." Lady Oakley 
 gazed at Kallikrates, who had now folded his paws, and 
 rested upon his master an entirely blank gaze. " I can't 
 
376 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 understand you. If Stephen had lost both arms and both 
 legs, and both eyes, if he were off his head well, even 
 then, somebody would have to look after him. You and 
 I can't live forever. Monica may marry. Somebody 
 must look after him. You may not care what happens to 
 your son, but I do." 
 
 " Oh, well," said Sir Hugh wearily, " we'll see. Now let 
 me alone, Lena. I want to think." 
 
 For a long time Sir Hugh rested his chin upon one hand, 
 holding out the other towards Kallikrates, who took no 
 notice at all. The cat was resentful; there had been too 
 much noise that night. Sir Hugh tried to find his way 
 through perplexities. How tangled up people were: 
 Stephen crocked, Sylvia about to be tied to a worthless 
 young man; Monica afflicted by some secret sorrow; and 
 now Louise, truest daughter of them all, to be thrown 
 away. The war, always the war, maiming some, killing 
 others, remoulding lives to suit its brutal aims, patching, 
 so as to make more young life, to have more young life 
 in twenty years to use and to mar. He saw himself an 
 unpractical idealist. What was the good of standing out 
 against Sylvia's marriage or Louise's marriage? What 
 was the good of sentencing these young people gone astray 
 to a solitude which would not be happy? He must give 
 in. One could not create ideal lives in an unideal world. 
 One must do what one could. He buried his face in his 
 hands. He was unhappy because he saw life clearly, and 
 yet could not command it. Still Kallikrates stared at 
 him, the black lunes of his eyes broad with enquiry, with- 
 out partisanship. He observed that the man looked de- 
 pressed. He registered this as a fact. As 'the man did 
 not move, Kallikrates lost even that intellectual interest. 
 A vast indifference flooded him. He felt lofty and de- 
 tached as a god upon his mountain. Languor invaded 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 377 
 
 him; his eyelids slowly drooped over the moist gold of his 
 eyes. His eyes closed. Kallikrates was no longer a cit- 
 izen of a warring world. He floated in the ether of his 
 abstraction. He was not asleep; he was dematerialised. 
 Little by little a purr of contentment rose from his body, 
 free from all passion and all responsibility. 
 
 MONICA idly examined her uncle's library. It was not 
 a large one, and it was very like him. Set in a large 
 Sheraton cabinet were a great number of novels, some by 
 Mrs. Humphry Ward, a good many by Mr. E. F. Ben- 
 son, and a wilderness of Elinor Glyns and Victoria 
 Crosses. She' found the memoirs of Mr. Justice Hawkins, 
 travels in somethingistan, Night Life in London, and a 
 great treatise on the tracking of the wily gazelle. The 
 lower shelf was occupied by a complete library edition of 
 George Meredith. Monica took out " The Egoist ", found 
 it dusty and uncut, and as she used the paper knife agreed 
 that her uncle's promise of a dull time was being real- 
 ised. Her short stay had not been enlivened by the usual 
 London pleasures; now restaurants came at half-past nine 
 under the hand of a law which forbade hot meals, while 
 theatres sent their patrons to bed at half-past ten. It 
 felt very funny to bring one's sugar to the Ritz to tea. 
 And Genevieve was no solace ; she was intolerably pleased 
 with being Mrs. Drayton, having a father who controlled 
 the drugs, and a husband who controlled the Controller; 
 she hinted that her own home control was still more lofty. 
 Monica thought of these things because she was nervous, 
 because she had to see Hum. What was she going to say 
 to him? What might she not have said if she had not 
 met Frank Cottenham? " I don't know," she thought, 
 
378 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 " I was so different then." Then the bell rang and she 
 grew defensive. 
 
 Hum had not changed much, except that his face was 
 thinner, his look more intense. He was handsome in a 
 tortured way. He, too, was nervous, for he dropped her 
 hand almost as soon as he grasped it. Then, hurriedly, 
 they began to talk. They spoke of the war, which in that 
 month of June was going worse and worse. 
 
 " I wish I hadn't taken leave," said Hurn, " even though 
 it was only four days. Every moment one feels we may 
 go pop. We just saved it at Amiens; we half saved it at 
 Ypres; now they're bursting in on the South Paris may 
 go. God knows what's going to happen." He paced the 
 room agitatedly. " I must get back to-night. I can't 
 believe we're going to be licked." 
 
 " But surely you don't think that? " 
 
 " I don't know, I don't understand ! It's incredible. If 
 it hadn't been for Byng at Arras we were done. And 
 yet, we go on cracking nearly. Are we going to crack 
 for good? Laugh at me if you like, but many a night I've 
 knelt in my dug-out and prayed." 
 
 Monica was shocked. In her class one prayed in 
 church, on Sundays. So she bravely cribbed from Mr. 
 Harold Begbie: 
 
 " They say the war has brought about a spiritual re- 
 vival." 
 
 " Yes," said the young man grudgingly, " sometimes I 
 think so. Yes, perhaps. You wouldn't believe it, the 
 most hardened sinners go down on their marrow bones 
 before going over the top. Some people call it fire in- 
 surance, but I'm not so sure. You know, when you're 
 out there, with the eternal stars over your head in a sky 
 black and deep as hell, all alone because you can't see 
 your fellows, and nobody by your side except death, you 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 379 
 
 can't help believing. It would be too hideous not to. A 
 world as horrible as this must be balanced by a better 
 one; without that it would topple over. And men who 
 that morning were playing chess with you are lying out 
 in No Man's Land, stiff in their blood. I can't believe 
 they're still there. It's only their shadow that's lying tied 
 in knots. One of our crowd started shouting out one 
 night across the wire: 'Bertie! I say, Bertie, old bean! 
 How are things up there? What? Not so bad. Heaven's 
 just topping? Yes, dear old thing, I hear. What's that? 
 You say you've booked a pew for me. Right, oh ! I shan't 
 be long.' They said he was mad." 
 
 Monica looked at him with dilated eyes. Mad! Was 
 Hurn mad too? He terrified her, so again she became 
 commonplace. " Oh," she said lightly. " Of course some 
 people think that one can talk to spirits. I suppose 
 you've read ' Raymond'? " 
 
 Hurn stared at her as if thinking of something else: 
 
 " ' Raymond/ " he said, vaguely. " Yes. I skimmed 
 through it the other day. It may be true." He drew his 
 hand across his forehead. " How can one tell? Who 
 cares whether this war is bringing us a purer and simpler 
 domestic life? Or barbarism? Or whether indeed Jo- 
 hannes is right and this is Armageddon, with Judgment 
 Day before recess? We're alive. Can't we take some- 
 thing while we're alive? " With a precipitancy that 
 shook her he added: " Monica, will you marry me? " 
 
 Still she stared at him. He frightened her, and yet, she 
 abominably pitied him. She wanted to say " yes", and 
 " no." " No " because of all the glamourous past; " yes " 
 because he was like a lost dog. So she temporised: "I 
 don't know." 
 
 The young man bent forward, clasping his knees. " You 
 don't know," he said. " No, I suppose you don't. And 
 
380 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 yet so much as I can love anything, I love you. I've al- 
 ways dreamed of you. You've always been with me out 
 there. I don't know if I believe in hell, but if I do I'd be 
 damned for your sake." 
 
 " Don't," said Monica. " You frighten me." 
 
 "Sorry. I can't help feeling like that. But won't 
 you answer me? " 
 
 " Don't make me. I'm so afraid of life." 
 
 He leapt to his feet. " Monica, I won't say any more. 
 I don't want to talk about these things. Let me go; I 
 don't think you'll forget me, and if I come back I'll ask 
 you again." 
 
 Monica detained his hand. " Don't think hardly of 
 me. I don't pretend that I didn't know you cared for me, 
 but nowadays things aren't easy. One gets frightened of 
 life. Write to me. I like your letters." Then as he 
 bent to kiss her hand, for a moment she caressed his harsh 
 black hair. How feverish were his lips! 
 
 She thought about him often that afternoon, as she 
 shopped with Genevieve. Hurn formed a strange back- 
 ground, so ravaged and uncertain, to the smug activities 
 of western London. She went with her cousin to buy 
 tortoise-shell fittings, sweets; a splendid non-coupon en- 
 tree was supplied by Gunter; they went to two milliners 
 and one dressmaker ; Monica herself spent an hour over 
 her new evening frock and afternoon dress which even 
 the war season made necessary. All through she was 
 conscious of artifice; by her side, as by Hum's, went 
 death, and all men seemed ghosts. 
 
 Her impression was strengthened that night at the lit- 
 tle dinner given in her honour. Just Sir Angus, Gene- 
 vieve, a rather sparkling Frenchman, called Cadoresse, 
 Lord Arthur Horton, convalescent now, and his young 
 wife, pretty, but like a hard-mouthed mare. Everybody 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 381 
 
 thought that General Maurice ought to be court-mar- 
 tialled for having attacked Lloyd-George. 
 
 " Who cares," said Sir Angus, " whether it was true or 
 not that Lloyd-George thinned the front? What's done 
 is done. And who cares whether those mixed divisions 
 in Palestine contained ninety-five per cent, white men or 
 only ten? In war time there's only one thing to be done, 
 to hold one's tongue and get a move on. He ought to be 
 court-martialled." 
 
 " Oh, well," said Cadoresse, " he's been made military 
 critic of the Daily News. You don't want to punish the 
 chap any more." 
 
 The party raved at the Daily News, including Sir 
 Angus, who said: 
 
 " I never read the rag, but I know it ought to be closed 
 down." 
 
 " What has the Daily News done? " asked Monica, for 
 Cottenham read it every day, so she felt affection for it. 
 
 The whole party answered together: It was a pro- 
 German, a pacifist paper, a lose-the-war paper. The ed- 
 itor was a pro-German. The editor had been a pro-Boer. 
 The editor had been a pro-Russian in '54. He'd backed up 
 Napoleon. The Daily News wasn't formed in the days 
 of Napoleon? Oh, well, he would have backed up Napo- 
 leon. Anyhow he was backing up the Sinn Feiners. 
 
 " Shoot 'em," said Lord Arthur amiably. " It's much 
 simpler than trying 'em. We don't try Huns." 
 
 Monica was heard to murmur that they ought not to 
 be interned without trial. 
 
 "You forget," said Cadoresse, "that if we tried 'em 
 we might have to let 'em go. It's just a case of benefit 
 of the doubt, and in war time one has to keep that for 
 oneself." Then he reflected that Monica was very pretty, 
 and coming closer began to talk of love. 
 
382 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 She liked him, his dark eyes, his trim moustache, his 
 way of being serious about trifles and light about serious 
 things. He reminded her of Cottenham, and he touched 
 her hand when he offered her the salted almonds. 
 
 Meanwhile the others were finishing their discussion of 
 the Man Power Bill. " Rope 'em all in," said Sir Angus. 
 " There are plenty of fit men up to fifty-one. They'll be 
 roping me in next. I'll have to see about getting a brass 
 hat. That is if they'll let me leave my job. Not very 
 likely, with things in the state they are." 
 
 They talked of labour unrest, and Sir Angus became 
 vastly confidential; he knew of strikes, of strikes nipped 
 in the bud in committee rooms by the production of call- 
 ing-up notices, strikes magnificently settled by Asquith 
 and Lloyd-George, settled on terms which the strikers 
 thought excellent until they came to understand them. It 
 did not oc'cur to him that strikers struck again only be- 
 cause their rulers deceived them. " Still," he said, more 
 seriously, " we shan't be able to fox 'em for ever. Too 
 much Bolshevism about. And the hidden hand's at work. 
 I don't know what our people are up to: John Bull has 
 just published a list of Germans naturalised since the 
 war. Simply awful. And even in '16 we naturalised 
 crowds of them. We's just asking for it. We let Prin- 
 cess Loewenstein Wertheimer register under a false name 
 and address and then renaturalise. We let her visit 
 Huns in internment camps, like Mrs. Leverton Harris 
 and nothing happens. We keep Speyer and Cassel on 
 the Privy Council we're swarming with Germans and 
 Bolsheviks. Then we're surprised when labour's restless. 
 It'll end in a grand bust up." 
 
 " Oh," said Lord Arthur, " aren't you laying it on a bit 
 thick? Of course a war like this is bound to get people's 
 rag out, but they'll settle down all right, and the jolly old 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 383 
 
 world '11 toddle along as usual. The real trouble is the 
 beer. Somebody the other day laid me an even fiver 
 that I wouldn't drink a pint. I did, but I wouldn't do it 
 again if you laid me ten to one in War Saving Certifi- 
 cates." 
 
 As Monica smiled Cadoresse whispered to her: " That 
 young man's a Bourbon; he has learnt nothing and for- 
 gotten everything. Your ear is like a rosy shell; one 
 would like to listen in it and hear the murmur -of your 
 soul." 
 
 The others were not listening. They had found a sub- 
 ject for hot debate. Was it a pity that the Air Force had 
 assumed the blue Hungarian uniform? Was the old 
 khaki better? Some thought the khaki burlesque, with 
 its military colour and its naval cut. Fancy uniforms for 
 the Air Force were designed: pink ruffles and birds of 
 paradise for the hat secured favour. Lord Arthur 
 summed up: "Anyhow, it's all very well raggin', but 
 the latest is just about as near a naval uniform as can be. 
 I call that a naval victory." 
 
 XI 
 
 IT seemed natural to see him standing there, outside 
 Prince's, his blue eyes looking out over the traffic of Pic- 
 cadilly into some realm of his own, where moved purely 
 intellectual ideas round facts which to others were pas- 
 sionate in significance. As Monica drew closer, the old 
 thrill lived again; his rather short, rather square shape 
 contented her, his neat elegance, and the dear crispneis 
 of his short brown hair on his neck. No, she couldn't 
 bear it, and looked distractedly at the slow-moving omni- 
 buses and motor cars. She couldn't cross the road. She 
 stopped for a second, then went on. She couldn't stop 
 
384 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 there in Piccadilly until he went away. So she went on: 
 it was characteristic of Monica that it did not occur to 
 her to turn back. She went no further in cowardice than 
 to hope he would not see her pass. But, and he did not 
 seem surprised, their eyes met as she drew abreast. She 
 stopped. He took off his hat. They shook hands. Mar- 
 vellously they were walking westward, side by side. After 
 a time he said: 
 
 " How are you? " 
 
 "I'm all right, thanks." Then: "Are you staying in 
 town long? " 
 
 " No, only to-day. I've got a conference at five and 
 must get back after dinner." 
 
 Monica smiled to herself. "After dinner! I wonder 
 whether Julia believes that." She felt humorous and 
 hard. 
 
 " I suppose," he said, " you're up for the season, what 
 there's left of it." 
 
 " No, I shan't be here long either. My father will be 
 up to-morrow or the day after, and we're going back to 
 Knapenden this week." 
 
 He was uneasy. He threw her a sideways glance. How 
 adorable was her thin gracefulness. Her open coat 
 showed a blouse pale cinnamon in colour. So tender and 
 so white. " Look out ! " cried the familiar in his heart. 
 "Be light. Talk of anything. Talk of her people. Frank, 
 old chap, talk, and at the next tube station dive." So 
 Cottenham said: 
 
 " I suppose you miss your father up here. You're very 
 fond of him, aren't you? He matters more to you than 
 your mother." 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so." Monica grew reflective, and it did 
 not surprise her to find herself easily confidential. One 
 was with him. " Mother," she said, " you see, mother 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 385 
 
 doesn't take the war off one. She's so imperial. The 
 other day I came across Kipling's dream, in a story called 
 ' His Private Honour.' His idea is a special territorial 
 army for India, enlisted for twelve years, allowed to 
 marry, so that their children may yield more white sol- 
 diers. And then a larger army to colonise India, to hire 
 warships from us to guard Aden and Singapore a 
 sort of vision of India paying interest on her loans, colo- 
 nising and manufacturing, making empire empire for 
 empire's sake. Mother's like that, weapons it's rather 
 hard to live with when one feels different." 
 
 He nodded. " Yes, I understand. It's a metallic 
 world we're making. I see the metal turned every day 
 into machines. The metal is getting into our system. 
 We're the slaves of metal, gold, and steel gold with 
 which to buy steel, steel with which to steal gold. And 
 it's spreading. Every bureaucrat tries to be a man of 
 steel; mostly he's a man of pig-iron. Still metal. Talk 
 about efficiency, and dress up political theft as the neces- 
 sity of the situation. The times that are coming will be 
 much the same, but more so. If we win this war we'll 
 want to maintain the qualities that won it: ruthlessness, 
 organization, business capacity; and if we lose we'll want 
 to acquire those qualities to get our revenge. New gods, 
 godgetit, godgrabit, goddoemdown. What a pantheon! 
 No room for Aphrodite and her inexpensive mirror of the 
 sea." 
 
 She listened. She did not love him, she had never loved 
 him. Not entirely, because he had not loved her. But 
 she liked his words. After a time they grew silent and 
 did not speak again until instinctively they turned into 
 St. James Park. Then, irrelevantly, he said: 
 
 " I taught you to feel." 
 
 " Yes," said Monica, " it's no good to me. I'm glad 
 
386 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 you did. I haven't hated you. But what's the good? 
 You said we'd come to a blind alley. And you talk as if 
 all the world had done so too." 
 
 " Perhaps it has. Perhaps this war, all this desire for 
 conquest, all this struggling for the right, is producing 
 only another world the same as the old one. Same hate, 
 same love, same material desires, same vain spiritual 
 aspirations. Pushing frontier posts about, and the same 
 rivers flowing unperturbed under new flags. Striving and 
 killing, just to push along a road without an end, a blind 
 alley right enough." They walked on silently. They 
 were not unhappy; round them London June burnt 
 radiant; couples lay embraced upon the grass. An ex- 
 quisite melancholy ran through both. Both wondered 
 whether things could become as they had been, and both 
 knew they never had been. That hurt, and Monica found 
 her eyes wet. He touched her arm, but she shook him 
 off. She blinked her eyes free of tears. Here was Hyde 
 Park Corner. One couldn't cry at Hyde Park Corner. 
 
 "Monica," said Cottenham, bravely holding out his 
 hand and for a moment pressing hers, " it's very hard. 
 We couldn't get enough out of life, you and I. Life is a 
 bad debtor. You mustn't expect her to pay in full. If 
 you're lucky she may compound with you and pay part 
 of her debt on the instalment plan. But it's no use press- 
 ing her; if you do she'll file her petition in bankruptcy. 
 She's a cynic." 
 
 A newsboy passed the Park gate. As he ran he shouted: 
 " Germans on the Marne! Germans on the Marne! " 
 
 " I expect Paris will fall," said Cottenham, as he took 
 off his hat. 
 
 He was gone. Monica tried in vain to understand 
 what made her so unhappy. 
 

 THE LONE GREY COMPANY 387 
 
 XII 
 
 THE news seemed to Sir Hugh less horrible than in- 
 credible. Ever since the end of March he had watched 
 the Allied line bend, believing and refusing to believe that 
 it would break. It had not broken, and every time hope 
 had risen again. Every time the Germans drove in the 
 Allies, and then stopped, he thought: " This is the last 
 time." Then, as always, we bent and bent. He ceased to 
 care : that was the course of the war ; we must bend. And 
 we could not react. He no longer thought of counter-offen- 
 sives; he had come, like a child that has been beaten, to 
 wait for the next blow. Now they were on the Marne, 
 they were over the Marne, and that river was to him 
 historic, so once again fear and anxiety overwhelmed his 
 growing indifference. He wondered whether this were 
 the end, whether those grey legions would at last swarm 
 westwards, take Paris, bring down the shining edifice of 
 British ambition. His mind was in a state of rout. It 
 served little that the Austrians were broken on the Piave; 
 he could see only what was close, hear the sound of no 
 guns other than those whose voices now and then rumbled 
 across Udimore Down. We were being beaten, and by 
 an enemy without mercy, without cleanness of object; 
 here was Hertling, not even pretending that Germany 
 would build a world richer in justice and freer of strife; 
 and Sir Hugh knew quite well that our own ruling class 
 despised and denied Wilson's ideal, that they hated the 
 League of Nations, that they would almost rather have 
 a peace of violence made at their expense than abandon 
 the chance of themselves making a peace of violence. All 
 those people, generals, financiers, politicians, they were 
 like his wife and knew no argument save force. The 
 Germans, of whom a year before he had hoped something, 
 
388 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 a stable settlement, had, the first hint of victory, thrown 
 away their resounding principles, knelt on prostrate Rus- 
 sia and picked her pockets. Now they were winning, and 
 the Germans had not the decency even to be hypocrites; 
 once again their newspapers were filled with the lustful 
 cries of pan-Germanism; once again they talked of an- 
 nexing (in the new, canting, purely commercial way) 
 Belgium and Northern France, colonies the world over, 
 of punitive indemnities destined to make of the Allies 
 vassals or beggared conquests. 
 
 His mind took a turn. And what of us? Were we 
 any better morally who were inferior intellectually? 
 Had we shown a sign of sympathy with liberty? Had we 
 not left the young Russia of Kerensky to struggle against 
 the Germans in her poverty and chaos? Had we not 
 refused to state our war aims? Had we not favoured 
 Korniloff, a reactionary general? Kaledin, a reactionary 
 general? Favoured anybody who was against the new 
 socialist democracy, deserted anybody whom our Tory 
 journals chose to libel? Had we not ground the face of 
 Russian labour as we tried to grind our own? Had we 
 not used to the fullest of our meanness our power to re- 
 fuse passports to the labour men just to prevent labour 
 men from discussing the business of the world and keep 
 them at the under-dog rank? And had we not sent mis- 
 sions into Ukraine to plot, to bribe, to war against those 
 Bolsheviks whose every speech and decree we garbled or 
 suppressed, whose purposes we travestied, to whom we 
 attributed burlesque marriage laws, whom we falsely 
 charged, charged without evidence, with causing blood- 
 shed, those men who after all had maintained some sort of 
 state already for ten months? We had never sent a rifle or 
 a penny to young Russia when she was fighting Germany ; 
 now we were ready to send division after division, chests 
 

 
 
 THE LONE GREY COMPANY 389 
 
 of gold, cargoes of lyddite to old Russia who was fighting 
 the new and nearly all our press was yapping and 
 snarling, clamouring for a Japanese invasion of wretched 
 Russia, not only to restore order, that is to restore 
 tyranny, but for the sake of revenge, because we wanted 
 the Bolsheviks to suffer, because men openly said: " Turn 
 the Japs on 'em, they'll show 'em." All that because they 
 had committed the crime of hating war ! We wanted re- 
 venge. 
 
 Sir Hugh saw England living through a terror of the 
 soul. She had thrown over her old chivalric ideas; in 
 the hour of her need she found decency didn't pay, and 
 grew determined to be decent only if it paid. To the 
 sound of her new war cry: A Bolo! a Bolo! " at the 
 behest of the Billings and Bottomleys who crowded her 
 music-halls, her railway carriages and especially her 
 Kensington drawing-rooms, she was asking for the re- 
 vision of naturalisation certificates, that was for the dis- 
 honouring of her notes of hand. The world was upside 
 down; blunt England had made secret treaties; Lloyd- 
 George, ex-Radical, was accepting Protection; the parti- 
 sans of free labour were establishing an embargo on the 
 right of skilled men to move from firm to firm they 
 were building a world armed and tariffed, a world which 
 delighted in hostility and hated Wilson, Wilson, the only 
 hope of civilisation, because he wanted to tear their 
 weapons from their bloody hands and unite them in a 
 league of peace that had no respect for the vested inter- 
 ests in slaughter. Yes, in America lay the only hope. 
 They, the youngest children of the world, were not bound 
 close by the bonds of hatred on which the old Empire had 
 been nurtured. No doubt they too had their covetous- 
 ness, their flaunting Roosevelts, their greedy Rockefellers 
 but they had moral dreams; they were not the slaves 
 
390 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 of cocked hats, orders, epaulets, flags, aiguillettes, the 
 things for which men die. Wilson expressed all that, 
 that desire to establish a stable world, where the indi- 
 vidual would be free from the quarrels of State. 
 
 As he walked along the Haymarket, the day was still 
 brilliant. The pale, bright sunset of London coloured her 
 in rose. The crowd round him was young ; how clean and 
 straight were these young men in khaki and blue! And 
 how the women's eyes shone! A sudden revelation in- 
 vaded Sir Hugh: people like that, bright young people, 
 they must be the victims of what was happening, they 
 could not be its authors; were there crowds like this in 
 Berlin? Very likely. Then he remembered his few 
 journeys to Germany. No, they were not like that; they 
 were thicker, coarser ; they had idealism, but not the quiet, 
 profound emotion of the English, their lovely, ironic 
 lightness, which does not strike deep and bitter as it does 
 in the French. Oh, this England, she was the gigantic 
 nursery of the world, and if all these babies went blunder- 
 ing about, smashing things, banging their heads against 
 corners, and unreasonably yelling about it; if at the sight 
 of any toy they shouted, " mine ! mine ", and if they 
 grabbed at the other children's toys, and hit them in the 
 eye when they wouldn't hand them over well, that was 
 the way of children who by and by would grow up into 
 fine men. Suddenly he loved them ; he realised that their 
 crimes were born of their innocence. " Oh," he thought, 
 " Billy Bridge was right when he said that in a dog fight 
 one may as well see to it that one's dog wins. Beautiful, 
 sinful England! No, not sinful; beautiful England gone 
 astray like a petulant, selfish maiden, whom Prince 
 Charming has not yet kissed into womanhood ; oh, beau- 
 tiful England who can be so foolish, so hard, so mean, 
 because you are so young, and strong in the desires of 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 391 
 
 youth, and in whose breast lies buried deep the love of 
 justice, the capacity for mercy, the instinct of comrade- 
 ship, you have not yet written your history. Beautiful 
 England, you will still break many eggs before you make 
 the omelette of the universe, but I must love you, and love 
 you, because only love, crude minx with a heart of gold, 
 can teach you to love; to make you mine I must first of 
 all become yours." 
 
 Sir Hugh did not at once go back to Ashley Gardens. 
 His mood was too elevated. He wanted to embrace the 
 city, to soak himself in her loveliness. He turned into 
 Leicester Square, pleased with the crowd, which in com- 
 radeship jostled him. He liked the warmth, the familiar 
 contacts. A young couple passed him, close-linked, eyes 
 in eyes; rough New Zealand soldiers, with the beautiful 
 profiles of copper coins, stood serious at a corner; a 
 woman spoke to him: 
 
 "Hello, darling all on your lonesome oh, sir! " 
 
 He looked up. It was Westcott. He did not start. 
 He understood, but all men were ghosts that night. The 
 girl flushed scarlet. She averted her pretty blue eyes. 
 She was delightfully dressed; Sir Hugh carried away a 
 vague picture of waved chestnut hair, a low-cut creamy 
 blouse, a soft white breast, pretty gloved hands that 
 dangled a gold bag. Westcott looked successful rather 
 than wild. He was hardly conscious of her tragedy; it 
 was vaguely he asked whether he could help her in any 
 way. 
 
 " Oh, no, sir. Thank you. It's too late. Besides, I'm 
 all right. Thank you." She half put out her hand, then 
 withdrew it as if ashamed. Through her despairing em- 
 barrassment, Westcott's professionalism found a way. 
 
 " Good-by-ee," she said jauntily, and was gone. 
 
 Sir Hugh had almost forgotten her when he reached 
 
392 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 the Bomb Shop in Charing Cross Road. An unaccount- 
 able affection had grown in him for this shop where a 
 gentle old bookseller, who looked like a moth which dur- 
 ing the chrysalis stage had sustained its life on an 
 exclusive diet of abstract thought, dispensed books and 
 newspapers, and all the most audacious ideas. He often 
 spent a long time at the counters, where crowded Shaw, 
 Carpenter, Tchekoff, all the plays and all the poems that 
 have inflamed man, the socialists, the anarchists, the dis- 
 contented and the hopeful, the sweet idealists, the bitter 
 rebels. To Sir Hugh, in these days, the Bomb Shop was 
 an island of love and hope; there he found the books that 
 are true optimism, for they did not aspire to make the 
 best of an evil world, but to turn it into a better one. 
 Sometimes he talked to the old bookseller, who did not 
 treat him like a customer but like a comrade. That 
 night the bookseller was tying up parcels, and Sir Hugh 
 wanted to talk to him about the destiny of man. The 
 old man listened, busy with paper and string. His lips 
 were young and smiling in his grey beard, his eyes soft. 
 He said: 
 
 "What a pity they've built across the way. If it 
 weren't for that we'd have the sunset in the shop every 
 night." He laughed: " Though I don't know if it wouldn't 
 be nicer if the shop faced the other way, because then 
 it's the sunrise would come in." 
 
 XIII 
 
 THE old pony trotted sulkily along the military road. 
 He hated that road; it hurt his hoofs. As he picked his 
 way, looking for soft places, from time to time tossing 
 his head in that way half bad-tempered, half sportive, 
 that is the charm of his kind, the pony began to form a 
 

 THE LONE GREY COMPANY 393 
 
 profound plan: he would not hurry. He realised that he 
 might not at once be allowed to walk, but having experi- 
 mented with a decreasingly slow trot, he gently swerved 
 towards the left, where grew nice, soft, smelly turf the 
 hands on the reins did not seem to mind, and so, more 
 and more slowly, he jogged along, conscious of immense 
 cunning. 
 
 Stephen was that morning meditative. By his side 
 sat Louise whom he was driving in from the New Hospi- 
 tal. She had begun with small talk, and, finding him 
 aloof, had responded to his mood. He was grateful, 
 though he did not know it. They were still silent as they 
 crossed the railway and turned up the rise towards the 
 ridge. His eyes roved over the fields that now were 
 stained with flowers, stray bladder-campion, ox-eye 
 daisies; along the ditches tiny red pimpernel, and speed- 
 well, blue and demure. Louise looked away from him, 
 showing no sign of awareness, as if she were basking in 
 the heat of the June day. But no awkwardness lay 
 between them ; they had achieved the ideal of companion- 
 ship, were together, yet not compelled to mutual enter- 
 tainment. 
 
 The pony went slower and slower, sometimes nuzzling 
 his knees with a black, aggrieved muzzle. Now and then 
 he gave a tug at his collar, that said: " Damn this hill." 
 He thought of stopping for a moment, as he caught sight 
 of a stray patch of clover, then decided to stop only at 
 the top. He did so, and without concealment planted his 
 fore feet on the edge of the ditch and began to browse the 
 hanging boughs of the hazels. 
 
 Stephen considered for a moment the pony's fat back, 
 then turned to Louise and said: 
 
 " Will you marry me? " 
 
 Louise did not reply for a moment. She sat as if un- 
 
394 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 stirred, her negligent hands closed over a handkerchief. 
 The long black lashes made shadows on the pale skin. 
 Stephen said: 
 
 " You don't reply. I'm not surprised. It's cheek of 
 me, I suppose, a crock like me. Oh, I don't mean my 
 leg. But lots of people think I'm a lunatic." 
 
 She smiled. 
 
 " Perhaps I am a lunatic, but I went out a patriot. You 
 don't mind, do you I know I say queer things. I've 
 stopped thinking what I used to think at Eton, if that was 
 thinking. No, I know you don't mind. That's just what 
 there is about you, Louise: you never mind. You're above 
 it, like Kallikrates. But you haven't answered me." 
 
 " I'm three years older than you are. I'm twenty- 
 seven." 
 
 " I'm fifty. Four years of hell, hell ..." 
 
 She laid her hand upon his arm. " Don't talk about it, 
 Stephen; you know it's not good for you." 
 
 " Four years of hell," he said again, " and no heaven 
 made out of it. Oh, I'm old enough, don't you worry. 
 Question is whether I'm too old, whether it's fair to ask 
 you to marry me. But then that's nonsense; you're not 
 young or old; you're like the water lilies, with long, old 
 roots and young flowers. You're eternal. And I need 
 you." 
 
 The girl hesitated, then put an arm about his shoulders 
 and drew his head down to her breast. Then, in a voice 
 so low that he could hardly hear it, but intense as if she 
 absorbed him into her being, she said : " Yes, Stephen 
 why, of course always, always, since we were children." 
 Bending over him, she kissed his cheek, and so stayed 
 until, with masculine restlessness, he turned to clasp her 
 and kiss her lips. 
 
 That night, as they sat upon the south terrace, Louise 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 395 
 
 at first was censorious. " You know, you shouldn't irri- 
 tate your mother like that. She takes the war hard oh, 
 not harder than you, but differently." 
 
 " What have I done? " 
 
 " Well, you shouldn't talk to her at all about the war, 
 to begin with. Think of what you said about the Czecho- 
 slovaks." 
 
 " Let me see, what did I say? One says such a lot of 
 things to mother, just for the fun of it. Oh, yes. Well, 
 what's the harm of my having said that the gallant 
 Czecho-Slovaks had shot more workmen and peasants in 
 Ukraine than the Bolsheviks had shot bourgeois." 
 
 " Yes. Why did you say that? " 
 
 " It's true." 
 
 "What does it matter if it's true if it irritates your 
 mother? " 
 
 Stephen laughed. " I say, when we're married, shan't 
 I be able to say true things to you if they irritate you? " 
 
 " Oh," said Louise loftily, " that sort of thing doesn't 
 irritate me." 
 
 " Upon my word," said Stephen, " I believe you're the 
 only one who's escaped the war. Do you read the war 
 news? " 
 
 " Well, one has to read the war news." 
 
 " But I mean really read. Do you know the difference 
 between Przemysl and chemise? " 
 
 " Chemises? " said Louise vaguely. " I wasn't talking 
 about chemises." 
 
 Stephen drew his arm tighter about her waist and said: 
 " You're simply ripping. You sit there while half the 
 world is slaughtering itself, and the other half hotting it 
 up to go on, and a few thousand people holding a few 
 thousand committees about it and they go on shearing 
 the sheep, and Farcet cobbles his boots, while the elder- 
 
396 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 tree turns flat, white blossoms to the sun, and you just 
 bloom on. Talk of a tonic ! Talk of a sedative ! In the 
 middle of a chaos like this, which is not spreading through 
 a mere war, but is affecting ordinary life, you're a sort of 
 chorus, not exactly of optimism but permanency ; a pretty 
 chorus to a weeping world. Here are all the ranks of 
 life jumbled up, and you don't get jumbled up. There 
 you are like the Albert Memorial. I wonder what you'll 
 be like in twenty years, when the new generation has been 
 educated in the new way. Education's going to be a 
 grand stunt after the war. We've discovered that though 
 we may have won Waterloo on the playing fields of Eton, 
 on those same fields we lost the battle of Loos. And 
 there's going to be a cry for ousting Latin and Greek, and 
 setting up instead wood- carving, bookkeeping and poker 
 work. They're going to popularise the universities by 
 making them popular with the people who preferred the 
 Polytechnic, and will do nothing to popularise the Poly- 
 technic among the people who preferred the 'Varsity. 
 We're going to establish continuation schools to finish an 
 education which was never begun. We had an education 
 which, at the price of a pound of effort, taught a man to 
 earn a shilling and to enjoy nineteen; we're going to cre- 
 ate one which will enable him to earn five shillings and 
 enjoy fifteen; we shall strive through the century on 
 that road of new idealism until every pound of effort 
 teaches him to earn a pound and to enjoy nothing at all. 
 For six hundred years we've made men without minds; 
 soon we shall be making minds without manhood. For 
 Latin and Greek we shall begin by substituting literature, 
 English, history, law; science and commerce will bolt the 
 rest. In another generation the cry against literature and 
 history will be the same as the one to-day against Latin 
 and Greek, and they, in their turn, will be displaced by 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 397 
 
 the soul-making art of the plumber and the master sweep. ' 
 And it'll pay in everything except terms of life, for Life 
 Ltd., oh, very limited, is the only joint-stock company in 
 which we all have shares, and the best balance sheet it 
 shows is when there is no dividend. In those days they 
 won't know that Life Ltd. can't pay dividends but only 
 increase its capital. And so the dear old thing'll go into 
 liquidation." 
 
 " I don't know what you're talking about," said Louise. 
 
 " It doesn't matter. Does it? " 
 
 " Not a bit, if only you don't get excited. It's not good 
 for you." 
 
 " I'm not excited. I wish you wouldn't fuss over me. 
 But hang it all, why aren't you optimistic? What's the 
 good of my saying all this if you aren't up against me? 
 I'd better go and talk to mother." 
 
 Louise laughed low into the darkness. 
 
 "No, I shall not talk to mother. She'd start on the 
 Czecho-Slovaks again and I'd rather start on the New 
 World. That's about the last thing she wants. No, I'm 
 unfair. Mother does want a new world. I found a bit 
 of her new world this morning in a little book I picked 
 up on a bookstall, called: ' The Great Thoughts of Hora- 
 tio Bottomley.' I remember a bit of mother's new world. 
 It runs something like this: '. . . a promised land of 
 humanity, when the streets shall be paved with gold and 
 which shall flow with milk and honey. In other words, a 
 land in which there shall be no Germans a clean land, 
 God's land! ' You know, Louise, that sort of thing must 
 make even the British Empire think. I wonder why we 
 don't adopt ' Gott mit unsf ' We've stuck to ' Ich dien.' 
 And yet, in spite of all that, all this flapdoodle about 
 making a new world, which originates exclusively among 
 the people who'd rather go to hell than live in a new 
 
398 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 world, we've got to make a new world, make a new world 
 without frontiers Idealism! I might as well talk of 
 making a new town without garden walls. The chief oc- 
 cupation of humanity seems to be to throw dead cats 
 over the garden wall and patriotic insults over the fron- 
 tiers. And still, in spite of that, in spite of all this ten- 
 dency to wrangle and to row, we've got to make a new 
 world where will be no rival kings, no rival ambassadors, 
 no rival capitalists, in other words, no big bugs. It's the 
 big bug made this war. The little bugs, poor things, they 
 came out of their holes when they were called. I hate 
 Labour, probably because I've done it down. Me and 
 my class. I've got their land, and I've got their money, 
 which is nothing, but I've got their education, and their 
 good breeding, and their leisure. Well, the new world 
 has got to disperse those clots, do away with old John 
 Jesmond, who sits upon the bench and blows because he's 
 overfed, do away with Uncle Angus who sits in his club 
 and blows because he's over-flattered. And I'm afraid it 
 must do away with mother, who sits upon father and 
 blows because she's got power. The new world will have 
 to keep a standing army of people who are neat with the 
 harpoon, and whenever they see a whale, push it in: that'll 
 learn it to blow. We've got to get rid of wealth, and 
 rank, and good manners, and decent clothes, and art, and 
 beauty, and religion make a clean sweep and get the 
 world down to a decent uniformity of a pound of bread 
 a day and one hat per head. We've got to start again 
 from the level of intellectual barbarism. Got to break 
 up this society that's gone bad; it's past mending. And, 
 by Lenine and by Trotsky! I swear that it had better 
 be ended and never begun again." 
 
 After a moment Louise said: "Yes, dear. You must 
 come in now. The mist is beginning to rise." 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 399 
 
 Obediently, his arm round her shoulder and playing 
 with her soft curls, he went into the house. 
 
 XIV 
 
 THE fall of Kuhlmann precipitated Sir Hugh deeper 
 into his reactions. The German Foreign Secretary had 
 been to him a temporary idol, for as he swung away from 
 his own ruling class, his tradition as a member of that 
 ruling class drew him towards another one. He was a 
 gentleman and it did not then occur to him to turn to the 
 people. But when the treaties of Brest-Litovsk and 
 Bucharest suddenly revealed to him the German autocrat 
 as insatiable in his ambition, limitless in his greed, when 
 they showed him Ballin and the German capitalists un- 
 restrainable in their avarice, when they showed him the 
 German Parliament fawning in sulky slavery at its mas- 
 ter's feet, he threw over the ruling class of the world. It 
 took him three months to realise this ; he was one of those 
 English, liberal-minded men who, to the end of their days, 
 voted for the conservatives; even now he might have 
 hesitated to support roadmender Smith against Lord X. 
 But, during those months, driven by a desire to find some- 
 thing positive on which to hang hope, he had saturated 
 himself with advanced literature. Books and pamphlets 
 from the Bomb Shop already made his study a vast, dusty 
 litter; thus he read, one after the other, Marx's "Capital", 
 some Kropotkin, the Cambridge Magazine, week by week, 
 The Plebs and The Masses, from America ; in his welter- 
 ing mind hurtled the mechanical millennium of the Fabian 
 Society, the dreams of Eugene Debs, books about war and 
 factories translated from the Russian, which seemed to 
 him written by epileptics and, to make his confusion 
 complete, patriotic defenses of the war by men like 
 
400 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Blatehford, Will Thorne, Hyndman, who once had made 
 war against war their version of peace, and virile effusions 
 by Gompers, who seemed to him to represent the solid 
 earth of trade-unionism, on which socialists, anarchists, 
 guildsmen, syndicalists, were together trying to build on 
 the same spot the castle of the future, every one of them 
 with a different kind of brick. 
 
 He was in chaos. He was like a small boy in the large 
 schoolroom of 1850 who tried to absorb Latin from his 
 master, while the teacher of mathematics was bellowing 
 at the boy on the next form. Unable to find in these as- 
 pirations an obviously common purpose, he found them 
 difficult to support: strive as he might Sir Hugh could 
 not help having been a banker for twenty years and being 
 a practical man. That is to say, he was not interested in 
 an object unless he could clearly see the road by which it 
 might be attained. The intellectuals did not satisfy him ; 
 they satisfied him even less than the ruling class, for the 
 ruling class just wanted to keep things as they were, and 
 more so. He could understand that. Any one can under- 
 stand conservatism, because no one need do so. Thus, in 
 that glowing month of June, when still the Allied front 
 was twisting and bending, Sir Hugh found himself in an 
 intellectual desert. He had lost faith in all men and all 
 systems, so far as the future of the world was concerned. 
 He thought: "The solar system is like a roulette gone 
 mad, and the earth is the ball. It's been rolling for 
 millions of years; what's going to happen if it stops? 
 What hole will the ball plump into? Thirty-six A 
 pocketful of money for everybody or zero? And the 
 eternal banker sweeps up the stakes? " Only Sir Hugh 
 could not stay in that state of mental suspension ; he was 
 too accustomed to hero-worship; he had worshipped 
 Gladstone; in 1886 he had worshipped Chamberlain; 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 401 
 
 later, Sir Edward Grey had been his ideal. Now no 
 leader could lead him, and he could not lead himself. So 
 he had to choose no longer between men but between 
 emotions. This explained his sudden, rhapsodic feeling, 
 when he realised in Leicester Square England's burning 
 youthfulness. He understood that behind scheming dip- 
 lomats, grasping ambassadors, ambitious princes, stood 
 arrayed vast multitudes, mute and inglorious, masses of 
 English people who had made a rough liberalism, masses 
 of Germans who had practised research, masses of Ameri- 
 cans who had developed beyond belief the intelligent way 
 of mechanical life. More and more he realised the Amer- 
 icans; he did not understand them well, because they 
 seemed so urgent, so restless, so individually desirous 
 and yet, perhaps because they were free from our rotten 
 class traditions, they were the only people in the world 
 who, so far, had created a moral ideal. 
 
 This realisation of the spirit of the people, which 
 transcends forms and crowns, brought him, for the first 
 time, to think of England as England and not as the 
 United Kingdom. Those three months had been a time of 
 swift growth. He had thought about the Englishman, 
 generalised about him. He saw him now in his slowness, 
 his moderation, his affected love of liberty, the roots of 
 which were set in indifference; he understood that the 
 gusts of passion which perpetually carry him away and 
 cause him to set up false gods meant that the Englishman 
 was a repressed creature who always sought for a vicar 
 to express him. But when he considered the Englishman's 
 achievement through the ages it was impossible to despise 
 him. He had not been continuously inspired by idealism; 
 though he had risen against an autocratic Stuart and an 
 unpopular faith, though he had put down slavery, though 
 he certainly had gone to war in '14 for the defense of an 
 
402 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 injured little country, he had never pursued a principle. 
 The Englishman had been like the others, ambitious for 
 his flag, greedy for his purse, and yet, in so doing, he had 
 brought liberty, and a rough version of civilised comfort 
 into every corner of the world. The Englishman in his- 
 tory had been the champion of moderation, and to extend 
 his moderate sway had been guilty of the worst excesses. 
 The Englishman was splendid, top dull to understand his 
 defeats, too heavy to be moved aside from his objects, too 
 careless to be a tyrant, too indifferent to thought to per- 
 secute it, and he had erected comparative liberty by not 
 caring a damn what anybody else did. Strange creature 
 that understands nothing and benefits by everything ! The 
 Englishman had treated the Americans of the eighteenth 
 century as rebels, and after his defeat had quietly gone 
 away and given all his other conquests the freedom he 
 had refused those Americans; the Englishman had hated 
 the French Revolution of 1789 and fifty years later 
 adopted its parliamentary system; all through the late 
 nineteenth century the Englishman had modelled his laws 
 on those of Germany and then fought Germany be- 
 cause he disliked its form of culture. He was incoherent, 
 incompetent in the extreme, hated the very word " ideal ", 
 and yet there ran through his heavy frame and his fine 
 nerves an impulse which had made England greater than 
 Rome, and more enduring, an impulse which had dammed 
 rivers, drained swamps and turned aside seas, which had 
 substituted law for the tomahawk, the Sunday-school 
 reader for the tribal legend, built tramways in Central 
 Africa and bathrooms in the Solomon Isles. The English- 
 man had rested upon the universe bored blue eyes, and 
 said: " Let's be comfortable and paddle our own canoe." 
 In pursuance of this intoxicating ideal he had cleared the 
 world of barbaric strife and planted the eternal monu- 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 403 
 
 ments of civilisation in fields where never had floated the 
 lilies of the French or the castles of the Portuguese. 
 
 Such thoughts as these led him often into the fields. 
 Generally, now, he walked across the marsh because he 
 liked its breadth and the prospect of the symbolic sea. 
 Often, as he passed Policeman's House, he thought of 
 Cradoc, and the arguments which long ago nearly had 
 captured him. He realised that eventually he would meet 
 him on this familiar marsh, and so one day was not sur- 
 prised to see him come across, it seemed from Camber. 
 He watched him. Cradoc was thinking. He paused for 
 a long time before some shorn sheep. As he came up to 
 Sir Hugh, he smiled: it did him good to meet somebody 
 who was not hostile. They talked for a moment on the 
 road. Cradoc had married Molly at last. In the end 
 they had gone to the registrar's because Molly found Mr. 
 Denny so tepid that she left the Church on the spot. 
 As she put it: "What's the good of going to church for 
 twenty years if the vicar's going to be rude to you? " 
 
 " So I suppose you're very happy," said Sir Hugh. 
 
 Cradoc shrugged his shoulders. " I'm afraid I've lost 
 the gift. Still, I don't want to commit suicide, so I sup- 
 pose I've got some reason to like life. This war makes 
 one realise how much life's worth." 
 
 " You mean how little." 
 
 " No," said Cradoc, " it's cheap enough, but those who 
 can stick to it realise what it holds when they tell them- 
 selves they might be lying stiff in a foreign field." 
 
 "Yes," said Sir Hugh. " Though Rupert Brooke 
 said something about a soldier . . . 
 
 If I should die think only this of me: 
 
 That there's some corner of a foreign field 
 
 That is for ever England." 
 
404 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Then Cradoc said, with a little sneer: " If Lord North- 
 cliffe is right in saying we've nine hundred thousand dead, 
 we've gone some way towards internationalising the 
 world. Rather drastic." 
 
 " Don't be so literal," said Sir Hugh, and tried to make 
 him understand this new feeling of his, the spirit of Eng- 
 land which predominates over English systems. The 
 conscientious objector, narrow-headed, acute, and incred- 
 ibly rigid, listened to the end and said: 
 
 " You've let me talk plainly to you before, so I suppose 
 I shan't offend you if I say that you're only a patriot, 
 after all." 
 
 " Yes," said Sir Hugh, feeling excitement rise, " yes, 
 I'm a patriot in spite of my fatherland. I believe there 
 is in the English people, in all the Anglo-Saxon peoples, 
 Englishmen, Americans, Anglo-Saxon colonies, a moral 
 ideal which will regenerate the world. And I'll tell you 
 something: if I hadn't been too old, I'd have enlisted 
 with the rest, and I've been thinking that perhaps I'm not 
 too old." 
 
 " So you too must die for error? " 
 
 " No. I don't wholly disagree with you. I'm not in 
 love with the capitalist system, but I'm coming to think 
 that whether the peace be glorious or ignoble, peace is 
 worth fighting for for its own sake." 
 
 " Nothing is worth fighting for," said Cradoc. " Except 
 perhaps freedom." 
 
 Then, to his own amazement, Sir Hugh had an out- 
 burst: "Freedom! freedom! you socialists have always 
 got your mouths full of freedom. For a hundred years 
 youVe specialised in freedom, and there's hardly one of 
 you has stuck to his doctrine. Look at your own leaders ! 
 at Hyndman addressing recruiting meetings, Will Thorne 
 turned into a colonel; think of Herve, who for ten years 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 405 
 
 before the war preached that the working, man had no 
 fatherland, advocated military strikes, and suggested that 
 the proper billet for the workman's bullet is the back of 
 his own officer. Herve supports this war with the same 
 fury of eloquence; and Anatole France writes thirty vol- 
 umes in every one of which a sneer or a cry of hate greets 
 every general who treads the boards: when this war 
 breaks out he tries to enlist. Kropotkin was for the war ; 
 Scheidemann was for the war; Gorky was for the war. 
 And your parties who got into power on opposition to 
 war, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, all of you who 
 for generations have killed war with your mouth, came 
 along with the bourgeoisie. You didn't tell the soldiers 
 to strike. You didn't tell the workmen to strike. You 
 didn't tell them to refuse taxes. No! all you socialists, 
 like the time-servers, the lickspittles you are, after all 
 your talk at meetings, voted war credits and supplied fod- 
 der to the guns. What's the good of you? Why! you 
 can't even hold together inside a nation, let alone in the 
 world. You quarrel, you wrangle, you burgeon off in 
 sectional rivalry. In this country one can't even find 
 one's way among your Labour Parties, Independent La- 
 bour Parties, Trade Unions, Fabian Societies, British 
 Socialist Parties, Social Democratic Parties, National 
 Socialist Parties, Trades' Councils, National Guilds, and 
 heaven knows what. For chaos you've only one rem- 
 edy, and that's another chaos. If you do establish any- 
 thing, it's either a Bolshevism where no man is safe and 
 no man is fed, or some State socialist machine run by 
 bureaucrats with brass buttons on their coats and electric 
 buttons on their desks. You lead to a State where every- 
 thing is regulated; where the London County Council 
 will be Controller of Paradise, where everything will be 
 against the law because everything will be law, and where 
 
406 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 there will be no liberty because no man can do anything 
 he wants without slightly interfering with the equal lib- 
 erties of others." 
 
 " Then you're against me," said Cradoc. " I'm sorry. 
 I thought you were coming to us." He did not trouble 
 to answer the arguments of his adversary. They had 
 made no impression on him because his mind was en- 
 tirely filled with his created ideal, petrified in a way; 
 though he was open to reason, he could not realise that 
 anything outside his ideal might be reasonable. He was 
 as decided that everything must be changed as a country 
 squire is decided that nothing may. In his fury of 
 reerection Cradoc was practically a Conservative. 
 " After all," he added, " it doesn't matter. When the 
 revolution comes what good could an aristocrat like you 
 do?" 
 
 Sir Hugh smiled. " I suppose there's only one law for 
 a man of my sort. This war comes, and probably I must 
 die. If the revolution comes I can commit hara-kiri." 
 
 XV 
 
 SLOWLY Sir Hugh pulled at his pipe. It was a black 
 September night, and already he was at ease in this com- 
 munication trench, his rifle between his knees, his head 
 bent under the helmet, waiting contentedly, thoughtlessly, 
 for orders that might come, or as contentedly to wait if no 
 orders came. Two months, and a soldier. Already his 
 thoughts were those of a soldier: his right boot hurt him; 
 the coffee essence that day had been worse than usual. 
 And a barrage had stopped the letters. For a moment 
 he absorbed himself in impressions of the night. There 
 was little doing on this strip of the Lorraine front where 
 the Legion occupied a short sector. Far away in the 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 407 
 
 northwest he heard a steady rumble from the American 
 guns on the other side of Verdun, and some ten miles 
 south, where also the Americans lay in front of the St. 
 Mihiel bend, something was going on. It amused him to 
 think that however quiet it might be here in the French 
 sector, both north and south the Americans were de- 
 termined that something should go on. And the smile 
 released his thoughts. 
 
 " They're taking their time," said Prokop by his side. 
 Douro grunted: he was a northern Spaniard, silent as 
 a Highlander, and Prokop, an always-ebullient Slovak, 
 irritated him. The Slovak went on talking. Sir Hugh 
 liked him, for sometimes in rest billets Prokop executed 
 extraordinary dances, and he had a way of playing 
 Deutschland ueber Alles on an incredible instrument made 
 of two cigar boxes, some waxed string and a nail, which 
 drove the snipers into absurd fury. The fourth man they 
 did not talk to. Though it was not etiquette in the 
 Legion to ask questions, it was felt that a man who was 
 tall, fat, fair, and dared to call himself Bdjsky and to say 
 he was a Jugoruthen, must be a Boche. Most of the 
 non-coms had tried to get him killed: as they never suc- 
 ceeded this was taken as a further sign that he must be 
 a Boche. 
 
 The men went on talking in whispers. Sir Hugh won- 
 dered how long it would be before the officer came back 
 to take them out on patrol. Carelessly he noted the 
 sound of stray bullets: zzz-pt, they came, and now and 
 then zzz-pf , as they struck a stone. " Funny thing to 
 have happened to him," he reflected. " How easy it had 
 been in a way. The slow march of his mind all through 
 that summer, the realisation that though no political sys- 
 tem was worth the bones of a Pomeranian Grenadier, 
 there was something that must not die, and that was 
 
408 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 England." Being logical, he had in July realised that he 
 must enlist. He smiled as he thought of Billy Bridge. 
 The barrister had sat back in his armchair at the Mauso- 
 leum Club and laughed: " My dear fellow," he had said, 
 " they simply wouldn't look at you. You get on with 
 your job at the Board of Control." Sir Hugh had not at- 
 tempted to make Billy understand his high romantic 
 feeling; that could not have been done without a trepan. 
 He had simply insisted, and when Billy at last had taken 
 him seriously, he explained that even if he bribed his way 
 into the army, which was feasible, the officer would turn 
 him back when he inspected the draft. He had suggested 
 a job on the staff if Hugh really wanted khaki and a 
 chance to get photographed. But Sir Hugh insisted that 
 he didn't want to go on the staff, but to do something for 
 his country. At last, provided with an introduction, he 
 had gone to Finsbury to interview the C. 0. of the Hon- 
 ourable Artillery Company. 
 
 His thoughts took another turn. That was the day of 
 the Finsbury election. His appointment being in the 
 evening, he had found himself outside the City Road 
 Tube, where Belcher was addressing a crowd. Sir Hugh 
 remembered the yells of " Intern them all ! " There had 
 been a row, too ; a naval officer shouted something about 
 another candidate, and Sir Hugh was carried in a rush 
 that knocked a man over, was for a moment the centre of 
 struggling arms and legs; an officer with a Mons ribbon 
 seemed to be fighting two or three people, and Sir Hugh 
 kicked something soft that said " gaw." The crowd had 
 carried him into Banner Street, led by Mr. Pemberton 
 Billing. Sir Hugh smiled as he remembered the flying 
 stones, the breaking of windows, and Mr. Billing's high 
 voice as he shouted : " I declare war on Tupper ! I chal- 
 lenge him to come out and fight! " 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 409 
 
 " Comic/' thought Sir Hugh. He had ceased to think 
 these things painful. 
 
 Something came over, and he ducked, being still a raw 
 soldier. Zzz-oo, murmured the thing; then: Boom! 
 Whizz bang, probably. As they laughed at him at the 
 H. A. C. he had decided to join the Foreign Legion. That 
 night Lady Oakley wept on his neck and quoted some 
 lines fit to hearten him: 
 
 " What have I done for you, 
 England, my England? 
 What is there I would not do, 
 England, my own? " 
 
 Poor old Lena, she'd got it bad. They'd taken him in 
 the Legion, asked no questions, and trained him in six 
 weeks. Damn that coffee. It was that gave him a pain. 
 Zzz-boom ! And Prokop trying to tell him in detail how 
 he lost his innocence. 
 
 Ah, here was the officer, a short, hard little French 
 ranker, with the manner of a slaver and the pluck of a 
 wild cat. No flies on the Legion officers. Well, they'd 
 be going over now. His first patrol! Sir Hugh's heart 
 beat faster. But the officer went on and into a dugout. 
 Sir Hugh found himself admiring the neat trench, with 
 its well-timbered wall and the graceful French pattern of 
 brattices. Yes, change had come upon him. As strange 
 a change as anybody's. Everything had changed, every- 
 thing was changing. The young men. had stopped in 
 their careers, might resume them, might make others; 
 who would go back to the 'Varsity after such sport as 
 this? Girls, too. They'd found new sports, strange 
 tasks, rapid loves, bereavements that would drive them 
 into looseness or waste them into dry age. Exalted and 
 hardened women, how were we going to absorb them. 
 
410 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 Would not the youngest be old? Perhaps, too, all youth 
 would be old. Poor Stephen was old, and yet crude. Sir 
 H(ugh wondered how youth would fare, so mature and 
 so inexperienced. Everything provided to intoxicate 
 and excite them, war, kudos, new pleasures, high wages 
 for the poor, a taste of luxury for the middle stratum; 
 how were they going to maintain all that? What was the 
 boy of sixteen going to do when his two pounds a week 
 failed him the second lieutenant when he had to brush 
 his own breeches? Everybody was in it. He wondered 
 whether the institutions would suffer as much as the in- 
 dividuals, whether the trade unions would break under 
 the internal stress of the rank and file revolting against 
 their officials, the guerilla between patriotic labour parties 
 and pacifists. Democracy was in chaos, no doubt. And 
 all we offered them were the fruits of chaos; the papers 
 were full of paragraphs about housing, about the main- 
 tenance of high wages, the partnership between Capital 
 and Labour, the opening up of land to the soldiers yes, 
 it was all very well, but Sir Hugh wondered whether this 
 was good will or whether it did not merely arise from a 
 panic in the ruling class. He smiled: the ruling class 
 would be all right; it would imitate the Russian noble- 
 man attacked by wolves, and would keep off Labour by 
 throwing out of the sled, from time to time, sections of 
 the middle class. " The ruling class," he thought, " well, 
 it won't be the same. Now for the rule of the vulgar. It 
 may be as well; the motto of my old class was: 'Defiance' 
 not ' Defense.' No wonder we've got licked by Albert 
 Stanley, and Geddes, and Weir, and the other tradesmen." 
 For a moment he mourned his old class. At bottom he 
 hated the business man; he found him adventurous, there- 
 fore almost an adventurer. He thought it right that the 
 tailor should become a colonel in " General Post", but 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 411 
 
 he had not liked it; he thought it right that Parliament 
 should crawl upon its belly and wag an ingratiating tail 
 when Lloyd-George raised his voice, but he did not like 
 it. What blind alley did all this lead to? No growth 
 here, nor reaction; just England shoved into abstinence 
 from privilege, suspensions of power, mechanical con- 
 trols, with no sign of shape in the future times; no planned 
 State with production exactly fitted to need, good wages 
 for all, limited profits, regular employment, but blind 
 alley. 
 
 Incoherent thoughts filled his mind as his view of Eng- 
 land grew cosmic. He realised from memories of news- 
 papers and plays how high and how swiftly had risen 
 the tide of stunt, vulgar sensationalism, sentimentality, 
 lip-patriotism. He found blind alley everywhere, blind 
 alley in the debt, so enormous that it could not be repaid ; 
 blind alleys in the chaos of the churches, whose ship was 
 pitching on " love your enemies", and rolling on " not 
 peace, but a sword." Poor old ark, beaten by the current 
 of non-resistance, heading to the maelstrom of a British 
 god no wonder they were sick on board and sought 
 desperately for some Zotos, whether spiritualism, the 
 Thirty-Nine Articles, or the Mons angels. Blind indeed 
 that alley, and blind the schools, where the old culture 
 was being pulled down, though nobody knew what to put 
 up instead. No Latin, no Greek. Simple enough, but 
 one could not educate boys through the things one did not 
 teach them. Double entry and Morris dances, he sup- 
 posed. But what then? What sort of men were we try- 
 ing to make deliberately? Nobody knew. It looked 
 like an open road and it was blind alley. Blind alley 
 everywhere. Blind alley in the law, which let off one 
 soldier for shooting his wife's lover, and gave another five 
 years for the same crime ; blind alley in the rising cry for 
 
412 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 a greater population, balanced by the obstinate refusal of 
 the State to give the illegitimate a status; blind alley in 
 liberty, now that letters were opened, that the press was 
 censored, that meetings were supervised, political pamph- 
 lets officially garbled; blind alley in the State, with its 
 daily-spreading bureaucrats, just stuck there, regulating, 
 controlling, determined to go on till doomsday ; blind alley 
 for those who came back, maimed, fit only for half work, 
 or for sweating . . . He felt passionately that this war 
 was not leading anywhere ; it was only keeping something 
 up. But horribly, it was not leaving things as they had 
 been; it was rooting things up, and it was not preparing a 
 new order; there was no purpose, except in Wilson, per- 
 haps, and some hard common sense told Sir Hugh that 
 the others would see to it that Wilson did not make an 
 ordered world. Chaos would coalesce against clarity, and 
 it would win, because there is in mankind more chaos 
 than clarity. They did not want to evolve anything bal- 
 anced; they liked the scrum, the gamble of trade, the 
 battle of master against man, sentiment, cruelty, error, 
 insecurity; they liked to barge in their millions, fierce 
 faces ground against each other, into the blind alley of 
 the future. 
 
 The officer came back. Prokop was still whispering. 
 
 " Toi ta gueule! " said the officer. " I'm going over," 
 thought Sir Hugh. Exciting. He wanted to go over. 
 He had been twice in small shows; he had killed his 
 Boche, too, apart from the unknown results of rifle fire. 
 The man had run at him from a dugout as the Legion 
 swarmed over the first line, fired, missed; as he lurched 
 forward, an active, dark little man, he slipped as he 
 lunged: without a tremor, in an automatic movement, Sir 
 Hugh had stuck him in the side It struck him as queer 
 that this memory should be so neutral: he had swung to 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 413 
 
 the left as he struck, quite regulation, so as to free his 
 bayonet. It hadn't come out readily as if the edge of 
 the wound were sucking at the knife like lips. 
 
 Now the four, spaced out, had crawled through the 
 wire. No Man's Land. Black and pitted with holes. 
 Something stank. There was a sniper in one of those 
 holes. Orders were to come upon him suddenly and make 
 an end of him. Sir Hugh fumbled in the darkness, walk- 
 ing light. The slightest noise would expose him. Now 
 and then stray bullets fell: zzz-pt, they said, and zzz-pf. 
 It seemed endless, and noisy, because one listened so 
 hard. He found few shell holes here. Then, with a 
 shiver, he saw something on the left, instinctively 
 crouched, his bayonet low. But the shape told him this 
 must be one of his own. Indeed, as the thing came closer, 
 he saw it was Prokop. 
 
 Then things happened all of a sudden. One of those 
 speculative bullets hit the Slovak, who gave a long, shrill 
 cry and, seeing Sir Hugh, clung to him, knocked off his 
 helmet. Sir Hugh put his hand over the man's mouth, 
 but not in time to stop the high chatter. Life arose in 
 the trench opposite. Verey lights went up, and from quite 
 close came the pac-pac-pac of a machine gun. Sir Hugh's 
 coolness left him. He dropped the body as if to run, but 
 at that moment was petrified, for a searchlight, unmasked, 
 struck him full in the face. It was like a shaft of silver 
 in his eyes ; it numbed him, crushed him ; with ineffectual 
 hands which had dropped the rifle he tried to shield his 
 eyes; he wanted to get out of the light and could not. 
 " Like a moth," he thought, " like a moth." Then some- 
 thing struck his head, gently, it seemed, and he turned to 
 go back, his hands against his forehead, walking steadily 
 in the beam of light, hypnotised by the narrow white blaze 
 that his feet followed. He thought: " My head's heavy," 
 
414 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 and irrelevantly, of rabbits who run at night upon the 
 roads, trapped by the beam from a motor-car lamp. Then 
 he tripped upon the French wire, and as he fell a complete 
 darkness rose in him. He thought with immense relief: 
 " How black everything is ! I must have got out of the 
 beam." 
 
 XVI 
 
 It was ten minutes to eleven. Sir Hugh paused in 
 Trafalgar Square. He was due at the Board of Control, 
 to close some old business, at a quarter past. He had 
 walked down from Connaught Square and now stood 
 aimless, a little depressed by the grey day and by the 
 excitements of the previous weeks. He had seen war, 
 lived for weeks under shell fire and heavy rain; he had 
 seen tragedy, too, in the hospital train which carried 
 him from Lorraine with eight hundred Americans, nearly 
 all bad cases, some of gas. But he was lucky. His head 
 wound was so slight that by the middle of October he 
 was discharged from hospital. The doctors had thought 
 him rather old; strings had been quietly pulled by Lady 
 Oakley, who had arrived in Paris the day he reached the 
 base hospital. He had been discharged. He smiled as 
 he remembered his arrival in Paris. He saw a picture 
 of himself in his blue horizon uniform, a narrow, precau- 
 tionary bandage round his head. As Lady Oakley led 
 him out of the Gare de L'Est to the waiting cab, a little 
 group of French soldiers in full kit, burnt a deeper brown 
 than was gained in the Lorraine trenches, were lined up 
 in the yard behind piled arms. He remembered a scrap 
 of their song: 
 
 " Depuis qu'j'suis v'nu dans c'te putain d'Afrique, 
 Ou c'que j'fais PJacques avec un sac su'l dos, 
 Un sac su'l dos, 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 415 
 
 Je suis dev'nu sec comme un coup d'trique, 
 
 J'ai bientot plus que la peau sur les os: 
 
 C'est nous les Joyeux, les petits Joyeux, 
 
 Les petits Joyeux qui n'ont pas froid aux chasses; 
 
 C'est nous les Joyeux, les petits Joyeux, 
 
 Les petits Joyeux qui n'ont pas froid aux yeux." 
 
 Wild looking men they were, a kind he had not seen 
 before. A friendly porter told him they were part of a 
 Bataillon d'Afrique, rogues, mutineers, all the scapegraces 
 and unmanageables, nearly all men with a past and with- 
 out a future, yet of all the most gallant. He understood 
 whence had sprung that desperate and cheerful song. He 
 sighed. Soldier brothers of his in a common, vague 
 cause, robber knights. Blackguards and saints together 
 had died, for fun, for habit, for love, or because they had 
 nothing else to 'do, because the world had grown the 
 prey of men so vile that all one could do was to give the 
 mastery to some, and then patiently as the insect builds 
 the coral-reef, create against the junkers, both vanquished 
 and victorious, a more harmonious edifice. Out! All 
 over, and the war too, it seemed. He had not reenlisted, 
 for obviously the job was done; the English policeman, 
 in his bored, good-humoured way, had moved on the dis- 
 turbers and now, it seemed, was content to take the same 
 old wages from the same old commissioner. He smiled 
 at his metaphor: he was wrong, for even the police had 
 struck. Still, it did not do to analyse metaphors. 
 
 Yes, it was all over. That doubtless was why the 
 Oakleys had reopened Connaught Square. As in the 
 first days of the war they had felt unable to stay locked 
 up in Knapenden; they needed to be in the middle of 
 the rumours, special editions and telephone calls; they 
 could not bear to let peace happen and not be there. 
 As he waited in the square he felt nervous as a lover on 
 
416 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 a silken ladder; the ladder would hold all right, and 
 everything felt safe, but his nerves were in rags. Too 
 much had happened in the last six weeks. It was almost 
 impossible to remember how De PEsperey had crashed 
 through the Bulgarian front and at a blow brought down 
 Ferdinand, while Allenby in Palestine swept up north, 
 swift as a weasel. Then, with an effect of shock, Ger- 
 many had accepted the Fourteen Points, and for one 
 long month Sir Hugh had lived in agonised uncertainty 
 while Wilson, almost inhuman in his absolute logic and 
 his entire clearness of purpose, demanded to know beyond 
 perad venture whether the German junker was indeed 
 dead. 
 
 Every one of Wilson's notes had filled him with the 
 delight that a skilled advocate experiences in the pres- 
 ence of a perfect case; inch by inch Wilson had forced 
 the junkers back, driven them into admissions, hunted 
 them into the publicity of their own newspapers, enlisted 
 on his side a German public opinion clamouring for free- 
 dom. But all through something Lansdownian clung to 
 Sir Hugh: supposing Wilson went too far? Drove the 
 junker to turn and, by military dictatorship, prolong this 
 horror another year? That had made rag of his nerves, 
 and also he who now had fought and bled sickened before 
 the stream of rumour according to which every day Tur- 
 key surrendered and the Kaiser abdicated. He had lived 
 a long life and was not yet used to the triumph of lies. 
 Nor had he learned intemperance of thought while high 
 explosive broke and fumed a few yards from the parapet 
 to which he clung. They had been a nightmare, those 
 weeks in London. He lived in a world where the non- 
 combatants strove and fought for the first time and 
 against peace. Still his ears were filled with the agon- 
 ised cries of the patriotic papers, of the Carsons, the Bot- 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 417 
 
 tomleys, the Beresfords, of Le Matin and Le Journal, 
 which he had learned to read. He thought of Senator 
 Lodge, struggling for blood and revenge, seeing every- 
 where peace trap and evasion, beside himself at -the idea 
 that Germany might be spared ravage, and gathering 
 to stand by him in the last ditch all who might help in 
 preventing Wilson from forcing peace on a joyful, blood- 
 thirsty world. Nightmare, ves, nightmare. Those people 
 of the Mausoleum Club were still crying out to refuse an 
 armistice, to invade, to devastate, to show the Germans 
 what burning churches, hanged U-boat crews, gibbeted 
 Kaisers, looked like and this as a mild inducement 
 to the German people to accept unconditional surrender. 
 Then, all through the month, territorial demands had 
 been whispered, demands that slunk and hid behind the 
 broad justice of Wilson's points, new demands for terri- 
 tory, for mining rights, for colonies, for the creation of 
 incoherent States intended to weaken Germany, not to 
 create stability, States like Poland and Bohemia, to which 
 we would hand over German populations who would fer- 
 ment and plot exactly as the enslaved Italians and Serbs 
 had plotted against Austria. We were going to fill 
 Europe with Ulsters. 
 
 Sir Hugh, in those weeks, had come across as much 
 fear and as much 'greed as in the worst moments of the 
 war. His friends were necessarily professional men, 
 men of leisure, merchants, engineers, and among them he 
 sought in vain for an idea, even a foolish one, of the 
 reconstruction of society. He found nothing. They 
 weren't thinking about making a new society; all they 
 were thinking about was the coming labour unrest, the 
 difficulties of demobilisation. All they wanted was to set 
 up the old system again, with high wages if they must, 
 and high profits if they could; with the employer at the 
 
418 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 top and the worker at the bottom; with the good old 
 houses and the good old bugs, subject to a housing pro- 
 gramme which would provide employment and stop Bol- 
 shevism. They wanted to increase production and to grab 
 it; to buy cheap shares, develop Russian copper and tin; 
 they expected unemployment to settle somehow ; when the 
 war debt was mentioned they raved against the capital 
 levy, which " would destroy credit by swallowing cap- 
 ital " and yet they had nothing to put up against the 
 alternative seven-and-sixpenny income tax. They had 
 no ideas ; they weren't looking for ideas. They were con- 
 tent that ten million men should have died for the sake 
 of business as usual. 
 
 And Mr. R. G. Knowles was promoting a universal road 
 to be built from the sea to Switzerland, along the old 
 trench lines, so that humanity might never forget its 
 hatred. He had seen man's passion for separate nation- 
 ality give rise to fever. Nobody wanted unity and home 
 rule within that unity. Nobody would let any one else's 
 faith or language alone; everybody wanted a given na- 
 tionality to prevail. People one had never heard of as 
 separate people, Slovaks, Syrians, Vlachs, Podolians, 
 wanted their own government and flag, to set up more 
 frontiers and armed guards. The United States of the 
 World were a dream. 
 
 He Had grown dull at last. Austria had crashed, and 
 this was described as camouflage. Sir Hugh wondered 
 whether the unconditional surrender of Germany would be 
 described as the culmination of German camouflage. It 
 was incredible. We were asking for the trial of those re- 
 sponsible for atrocities that is to say, for the trial of 
 those people who alone could make peace, for an armistice 
 without terms, presumably to inspire confidence, to refuse 
 to deal with the new German Government, presumably 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 419 
 
 to help on Bolshevism in Germany. " Let them Bolsh," 
 said the Globe. This struck Sir Hugh as terrible. He 
 wondered whether the Globe thought that Bolshevism 
 stopped at frontiers and would spare us. He wondered 
 whether the Globe would say " Let them typhe," if 
 typhoid were raging next door. 
 
 And yet, in spite of the little men struggling to keep 
 off Peace, she was coming, white and bland. The day 
 before, everybody was sure the armistice would be signed, 
 and, feeling peace coming, everybody was quarrelsome. 
 There had almost been a fight at the Gadarene Club on 
 Saturday, because the Kaiser had abdicated again at 
 half-past five, and the secret Lansdownites came out to 
 face the last-ditchers with the suggestion of easier terms. 
 The people were quieter. All through Sunday they had 
 formed little crowds in Downing Street. Then they grew 
 tired of waiting for Mr. Lloyd-George and went to St. 
 James's Park to see the German guns, which the little 
 boys were using as seesaws. 
 
 " I wonder," thought Sir Hugh, " whether this is really 
 going to end." He looked round the Square, bleak, silent 
 and grey. There were not thirty people in it. A few 
 yards away stood an Australian, puffing at his pipe with 
 an air of melancholy. Dent's clock said five to eleven. 
 Sir Hugh thought he had better be getting on to the 
 Board. He felt cold. Then, from nowhere, sprang a 
 man who climbed the plinth of the Nelson Column and 
 there stood a board. Interested, Sir Hugh drew closer. 
 Roughly chalked were the words: 
 
 ARMISTICE SIGNED 
 
 For a moment he did not move. He felt calm. So 
 it had come! Well, there you were. Evidently the Aus- 
 
420 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 tralian agreed, for he turned, read, and turned away 
 again, drawing from his pipe a puff of ethereal resig- 
 nation. But inside Sir Hugh felt excitement rise. Some- 
 thing was spreading over the city. One after the other 
 the windows of the Grand Hotel and of the other gov- 
 ernment offices down Northumberland Avenue grew 
 crowded with girls' heads. The thirty people in the 
 Square turned into a hundred, and Sir Hugh heard the 
 first ragged cheer as four improperly dressed soldiers 
 passed. But his true thrill came when, solemn and self- 
 contained, a policeman climbed the plinth and on a bugle 
 sounded the " all clear." It seemed as if all London 
 were emptying itself into the Square. Sir Hugh's ears 
 registered the hurried patter of feet, as girls and men ran 
 out of the government offices. Things happened round 
 him, more and more noisy, more and more overwhelm- 
 ing; crowds swarmed across the roads until they were 
 too thick to move ; submerged the base of the Column in 
 a black tide. People were blowing horns; a procession 
 led by a soldier beating a bucket was heading for Buck- 
 ingham Palace through the Mall. Bursting maroons 
 filled the populace with a joyful sense of inoffensive air 
 raid. He saw Australians dancing, cars, taxis, A. S. C. 
 lorries being stormed by a crowd determined to ride any- 
 where. For a whole hour he remained half stunned in 
 the middle of the roaring crowd. He heard the joy bells. 
 That day he passed in chaos. It took him two hours to 
 get back to Connaught Square, for the crowds would not 
 move, and already people in the tubes could neither get 
 in nor get out. The house was empty; his family and 
 all the servants were lost in the streets. 
 
 It was an incredible week. Day by day, and night by 
 night, he was the centre of a crowd full of youth, that 
 bellowed, and danced, and drank, where respectable old 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 421 
 
 gentlemen like himself felt ridiculous with flags in their 
 top-hats. On the Tuesday night he was kissed in a pro- 
 miscuous way to which he was not used. His pocket was 
 picked in the same moment, but Sir Hugh was too inno- 
 cent to connect such a fact with natural impulses . . . 
 Yes, it was over. Was he happy? He did not know. 
 It was enough that the war was over and that the new 
 times could not be so hideous as those four years. 
 
 XVII 
 
 JANUARY again, and the war was done. Sir Hugh stood 
 in Udimore copse, swishing with his stick at the dead 
 brambles. Once more the prophecy of spring in his nos- 
 trils, of obstinate life rising again. He thought: " It's a 
 long time since I came here. Since Monica and I came 
 to see the lambs. I wonder what Monica meant last 
 night by asking me if I thought one could be happy if 
 one married a man who loved one and whom one didn't 
 love. I said yes, because love is such a speculation and 
 there are so few people whom one can love for ever. So 
 why bother at the start. I don't think I ought to have 
 said that. It's an idea suitable for fifty-five, not for 
 twenty-eight. Though, after all, people who are twenty- 
 eight must become people of fifty-five ; they may as well 
 make a start. I wonder when the world will be fifty- 
 five." 
 
 So his thoughts went away to this world which he 
 now considered with a little irony, some indignation and 
 much pity. What a tragic world it had been since 
 Armistice Day! "It had always been," he supposed; 
 " the history of the world was a tragedy in a million 
 acts." He remembered Anatole France's universal history 
 of men: they were born, they suffered and they died. 
 
422 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 What surprised him was that they should suffer so will- 
 ingly and do so little to guard against future suffering. 
 The past election had filled him with disquiet and shame. 
 He had seen it rushed upon the nation, for no reason 
 except to snatch a swift mandate for a prime minister 
 who dared not wait until the people faced their cold fit; 
 he had seen elected instead of a parliament which had 
 ceased to represent the people, because it was old, a par- 
 liament which did not represent them at all, because 
 only half or so could vote. He did not mind that very 
 much, at bottom, for he was aristocrat enough to despise 
 the parliament in whose defense he would have died, but 
 he hated the preludes to its birth. He had tried to set 
 his sail to the windiness of Mr. Lloyd-George's speeches, 
 read every line of them to discover what precisely was 
 going to be done to provide houses, to open the land to 
 the soldiers, but not a single indication could he find of 
 how it was going to be done, who was going to pay for it. 
 He found that the new order was founded on three war 
 cries: " Hang the Kaiser ", " Make the Hun pay ", and 
 " Keep the Hun out." 
 
 " Rather negative," he thought, " for a new order." 
 He hated the spirit of it all. He hated the bagman strain 
 which, in every newspaper, totted up costs and made out 
 invoices for presentation to Germany. "By all means 
 let them pay for the actual damage," thought Sir Hugh, 
 " but don't let us bankrupt our souls to fill our purses." 
 Every day, in the newspapers, he read suggestions that 
 we should recover fifty thousand millions, by taking over 
 the German industries and presumably making the people 
 work under the lash. If we did this, what of the future? 
 Were we going to keep the Germans out of the League of 
 Nations as perpetual enemies? Make of the League of 
 Nations a league against Germany compelled forever to 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 423 
 
 arm and prepare war? He found that the League of 
 Nations had no friends, that those who tolerated it did 
 not mean to disarm. They wanted the peace of Jean 
 Coq, an armed, shining, terrible peace, a peace that would 
 burst like a shell and set the world in a blaze . . . All 
 of them, all of them. 
 
 In the Park he had heard a speaker of the Women's 
 Party educating an open-eyed people in the theory that 
 the League of Nations was a good thing provided Ger- 
 many was kept out and the others leagued against her! 
 Already Wilson was beaten on the freedom of the seas, 
 just as he was beaten on naval disarmament. It was 
 natural that soldiers should lay down their arms, but 
 sailors must keep their cutlasses. Only in those weeks 
 had he realised the superstitious worship which attaches 
 to the British fleet; it embodied our sense of romantic 
 war; that, he knew, was the danger more potent than 
 the greed of merchants and the pride of kings: the 
 poetry of war, the glamour that has made Shakespeare 
 small and Nelson great. He hated the people then ; they 
 deserved the rulers they got. 
 
 And what rulers! Diplomats were only super-card- 
 sharpers. And they didn't even do that properly. In- 
 capable of understanding the people, refusing to meet 
 them because they despised them, revolution always took 
 them by surprise: had not Lord Milner, a week before 
 the fall of the Czar, assured us that all was steady in 
 Russia! But they could always finesse themselves deeper 
 into their mess. Already, in those six weeks, we had 
 stretched our armistice terms, demanded the surrender 
 of more merchant ships, extended the neutral zone on 
 the Rhine . . . Germany was down, why not? We 
 had signed an armistice based on the Fourteen Points, 
 and every day we set up new points in our favour. The 
 
424 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 French papers were openly demanding a buffer State, 
 presumably under French protection, on the left bank of 
 the Rhine, without reference to the German inhabitants; 
 Italy was seizing from the Slav the Adriatic coast and 
 claiming her share of Asia Minor without reference to 
 the Greek population; we, too, wanted Palestine; the 
 French wanted Syria. " Was all that in the Fourteen 
 Points? " he wondered. 
 
 Perhaps not, but Germany was down, why not? Had 
 not the war created a vast civil service? One had to find 
 them colonial jobs. National feeling, which is the enemy 
 of peace, was the spirit of sabotage. Every one to have 
 his own dunghill. He realised that until all mankind 
 stood under one flag, enjoying only local home rule, war 
 would continue. The price of nationality was war. 
 Now, in the name of nationality, grab and revenge were 
 the preludes to the new order. It would be built on sus- 
 picion, on the theory that behind a frontier of bayonets 
 Germany would arm and try again. It was a pretty way 
 of inducing her to keep quiet, to prepare to inflict upon 
 her people crushing tribute, economic boycott, and the loss 
 of German speaking peoples. It hurt Sir Hugh to think 
 that, apart from Wilson, a few pacifists in Golder's Green, 
 and some conscientious objectors in gaol, nobody sympa- 
 thised with the German revolution any more than with the 
 Russian. Capital was supreme ; stricken already with 
 the madness which destroys all power, capital was trying 
 to make the German revolution worse by suppressing in 
 every paper but two the fact that Hoover, the American 
 Food Controller, wished to raise the blockade, so that the 
 German people might not by famine by driven into Bol- 
 shevism. 
 
 Yes, it had been a sickening election, more dishonest 
 than usual. He did not object to conscription, if proved 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 425 
 
 necessary, but it enraged him to read consecutive state- 
 ments by the Prime Minister which all disagreed: first, 
 conscription depended on the Peace Conference; then 
 there would not be any if other nations gave it up ; then 
 there might and then there mightn't; and anyhow we 
 must maintain our fleet, which was purely defensive as 
 it could not go to Berlin, though, in the course of defence, 
 it had won the war! Sir Hugh's ironic sense delighted 
 in Mr. Lloyd-George. It took a professional democrat 
 to realise the stupidity of the people. And he had been 
 right, he had won. He had stood for the old system of 
 balance of power as against a League of Nations, the old 
 system which had made rivalry, secret alliances, and 
 war. He had won, and now would fasten on England 
 conscription and censorships. The war had given free- 
 dom to beaten Germany and beaten Russia, and raped 
 freedom from victorious England, perhaps from victorious 
 America, who seemed about to provide for a big navy as 
 the profit of her victory. 
 
 The election was Wilson's defeat, though Wilson was 
 already beaten. Already Congress was turning against 
 him. Even the Americans were ensnared by dreams of 
 domination, and Roosevelt was having a success with his 
 Twelve Points, gaining cheers by proposing that Germany 
 should have no vote in the Peace Conference, no place 
 in the League of Nations, and be the victim of a com- 
 mercial boycott, while only the reactionaries of Russia 
 (camouflaged as the party of law and order) were to 
 attend the Peace Conference. It was dreadful. It was 
 like the program of our new One Flag League, that clam- 
 oured for the whole of the German commercial navy, 
 her entire gold reserve, and the management of all her 
 industries. 
 
 " They hope to weaken Germany so that she cannot 
 
426 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 prepare revenge," thought Sir Hugh, " and indeed they 
 may delay it but every one of those exactions is a seed 
 from which, in coming generations, hate and revenge will 
 sprout in a hundred million German hearts. The only 
 way to prevent revenge is to deprive it of cause, to refrain 
 from taking an acre unless the inhabitants wish it; to 
 forego all indemnities except for actual damage; to do 
 nothing to cripple Germany commercially, but to help 
 her new democracy to be happy. Happiness is the foe 
 of revenge. And as for our debt, we the rich must pay 
 it because we own England and are answerable for her 
 debts." 
 
 Still he swished at the brambles that crackled and 
 broke. He hoped for no new democratic order: even 
 the British democracy loved it not. It had voted against 
 Liberalism and Labour; so long as the Kaiser was hanged 
 and it was revenged, it didn't care how we handled Rus- 
 sia and protected England's future. The British elector 
 didn't care whether we had a secret policy, or any policy 
 in Russia. It saw our rulers refuse to discuss peace with 
 the Bolsheviks and inform the Germans that a German 
 Bolshevik Government would also be ignored. And yet 
 the voter believed that we accepted Wilson's theory and 
 didn't want to impose on any country a form of govern- 
 ment other than it chose. Indeed, the electors cheered 
 the statement that the Bolsheviks were a sham govern- 
 ment and cared nothing that the Russian people had 
 tolerated it for fourteen months. The elector was fed 
 on Bolshevik atrocities, and did not conclude that the 
 Bolsheviks were atrocious because the regime of the 
 Tsar had turned them into brutes. He read with horror 
 that the beggars and vagabonds who usually lived in the 
 cellars were turning princesses into the snow and did 
 not tell himself that the princesses were merely suffering 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 427 
 
 retribution for having during centuries kept these people 
 in cellars. The elector, like his ruler, had but one remedy 
 for social unrest: invade. Never an attempt to under- 
 stand and meet grievance, but force, and more force. 
 Invade and grind these new social democracies, so that 
 the French bondholders might get their interest and the 
 British company promoters their concessions. Gerry- 
 mandered? Sir Hugh would have liked to believe it. 
 
 It was true that two thirds of the soldiers were dis- 
 franchised, that opposition candidates had to go to the 
 Government for petrol and for paper, that the Press 
 Bureau censored their news, and that Sinn Fein leaflets 
 were blacked out but that didn't explain it wholly. 
 He did not know, but he felt with a security almost 
 divinely revealed that the people liked the coalition of 
 interests and hates. The women had been the worst, 
 stimulated like Sylvia and his wife by the excitement and 
 bloodshed, blackly afraid of all novelty. 
 
 He wondered what would happen. In May or June 
 military demobilisation would make complete the indus- 
 trial chaos. Nothing effective would be done, and so the 
 coalition might drive into Bolshevism those who would 
 ask for bread and be given promises. Even America 
 faltered ; Senator Knox and Senator Lodge were supreme, 
 haters of all change, upholders of the old cutthroat world 
 of labour slavery and capitalist profit. Grab and grab 
 ... It was driving him mad. Even Belgium wanted 
 to grab now, and was asking the Allies to back her 
 against Holland so as to get back Dutch Limburg and 
 the mouth of the Scheldt, to redress an historical injus- 
 tice of which nobody had said a word for eighty years. 
 Always it was nationality running mad, the fetish of 
 flags. Wales and England could live under a common 
 British King, the Anglo-Americans of the Eastern States 
 
428 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 and the Hispano-Americans of the southwest under a 
 common president, but all these new people wanted sep- 
 aration, hatred, armies. 
 
 Would Parliament stand in the way? He smiled. 
 Parliament was a tied house, not even a public one; it 
 was run by national bosses responsible for no govern- 
 ment department, therefore responsible for nothing; the 
 cabinet left out the great departments. Money was 
 voted without specific object, spent and accounted for 
 by a gesture. All cheques were blank. Acts of Parlia- 
 ment did not avail, for their working, by means of regu- 
 lations, lay in the hands of the bosses; they, too, were 
 blank cheques. Sir Hugh laughed aloud at the idea of 
 Parliament rising against tyranny: why should it rise? 
 With a hundred of its members in paid offices under the 
 Government, and half the rest placated with anything 
 between the Grand Cross of the Bath and the fifth class 
 of the 0. B. E., why should the Tory junkers rise? The 
 world was their orange. He saw what it led to, to an 
 increased public contempt for Parliament, for the with- 
 drawal of labour from an assembly of political domestics, 
 to an unconstitutional control by massed trade unions 
 outside, who, sic volo, sic jubeo, would obey or not as 
 they chose until the time came to upset the bourgeois 
 applecart and light with its spokes the first bonfire of 
 revolution. 
 
 The idea of revolution terrified him, and yet he found 
 himself driven towards extremism because he was a mod- 
 erate, and nobody would listen to him, because nobody 
 wanted to build a harmonious new world. As he clung 
 to the hope of future peace, sufficient food and freedom 
 for all men, the ruling class was beating on his hands. 
 " What else but revolution," he thought with a shiver, 
 " can get rid of leaders who won't lead anywhere of 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 429 
 
 the Angus Cawstons, K. B. E. of the Gadarene Club, 
 heaving in its fat of the Mausoleum Club, pickling in 
 its vinegar? " Those people were getting into power, 
 backed by the people's faculty for hatred; they were 
 getting in, the smugs, the slys, the barnacles. They were 
 going to make a limpet State, cling to their property, 
 prepare new wars by preparing new hatreds. Those men 
 who had shown themselves incapable of working the old 
 order were they going to make a new one? They 
 could make nothing, those men on the make. 
 
 For a moment he wondered what he meant by a new 
 order. He had little hope of Labour. Labour had voted 
 for hate. He did not trust socialism in any form; he saw 
 it as an alternative tyranny because it was worked by 
 alternative tyrants. His vision was feudal; he would 
 have liked a country run by trustee aristocrats, who 
 would live no more splendidly than their servants, but 
 would live for them, for the honour of leading them, for 
 the privilege of helping them, for the joy of seeing rise 
 factories rich in beauty and schools rich in culture. He 
 knew it could not be, that Platonic dream but all he 
 asked of these new rulers was some sort of dream, dif- 
 ferent from the old, dead world ; that they should not be 
 content with restoring exactly the old world of struggle 
 and domination, but dream dreams, as Monica said, the 
 stuff that worlds are made of ... 
 
 Again he thought of Monica. She stood away from 
 the world and the slogan of the new society: "Squeeze 
 the lemon." No room for her any more than for him. 
 He wondered what she meant by her question. Hum, 
 probably. He knew that she had seen him several times 
 while he was serving in France. He sighed: he mustn't 
 make himself responsible for his daughter ; she had better 
 mar her life than have it made by her father. Though, 
 
430 BLIND ALLEY 
 
 perhaps, he interfered too little. There was Sylvia, three 
 months married to Oliver March. He could not detach 
 himself from them, for the young man had broken with 
 his people and a career must be made for him. Sylvia 
 would have a child in the summer, too. How angry she 
 was about it; she had had to give up the idea of canteen 
 work with the troops in Germany. He smiled as he 
 remembered her disappointment, for, as she put it, " Ger- 
 many's the only place now; Flanders is so out of date." 
 
 Slowly he walked back, but the sun was out now, and 
 he did not want to shut himself up in his study, so he 
 walked on until he reached Charles Oakley's house. The 
 old man had been ill and now could hardly make himself 
 understood. He was nearly seventy-eight. As he went 
 in Sir Hugh wondered whether he would hear the familiar 
 sound of the fretsaw, and whether his uncle was prepar- 
 ing some intricate inlay, say, for presentation to Wilson. 
 As he went into the library he saw Charles Oakley in the 
 big armchair by the long table. The old man smiled at 
 him, knotting his brows to see him better. Indeed, now 
 he was more than Pan grown old, he was Pan grown 
 senile. He lowered his eyes, and as Sir Hugh saw what 
 was happening he shrank. Pinned all over the table still 
 lay the war maps, and with a baby smile the old man 
 was shifting flags upon the Western front. 
 
 " Uncle Charles! Uncle Charles! " cried Sir Hugh in 
 a voice filled with horror. " What are you doing? The 
 war's over." 
 
 The old man looked up, smiled again, and his soft 
 fingers of pink putty went on in idiotic satisfaction, 
 shifting the little flags of the past over the battlegrounds 
 of the future. 
 
THE LONE GREY COMPANY 431 
 
 XVIII 
 
 KALLIKRATES slowly pushed his head from under the 
 cabinet in the hall. He had slept there, in warm dark- 
 ness, all the afternoon. He watched to see whether old 
 Toss was asleep on the hearthrug, then remembered that 
 Toss was dead. Confident, he came out, shook the dust 
 from his golden coat, listened. Dinner time. The 
 humans were eating. All was well and secure in a desert 
 world. So, jaunty still, though his trot was a little laden 
 by his five years, he crossed the hall towards the study. 
 By the desk he hesitated, thoughtfully rubbed himself 
 against the staff which Stephen had used in his lameness. 
 A sensual thrill ran through him; the world felt good. 
 Then, no longer light, but strong-bodied, he leapt on the 
 corner of the desk. A long stare of his amber eyes 
 assured him that nothing dangerous lay there. So, slowly, 
 cautiously, he sank down, one after the other folded the 
 velvet gauntlets of his paws, composed his squat head 
 into the sumptuous silk of his ruff. His eyelids began 
 to droop, the watchful strip of gold below them grew less 
 and less. He breathed louder; by degrees there purred 
 forth from his throat the soft song that conceals neither 
 joy, nor pain, nor hope, but is all content, uncritical and 
 faith eternal in the permanence of aloof good things in 
 an unchanging world. 
 
The Racial Characteristics of French and English 
 
 THE LITTLE BELOVED 
 
 By W. L. GEORGE 
 
 12mo. Cloth. $1.60 net 
 
 Not since Thackeray, indeed, has any English novelist done a 
 more impressive study of the typical Englishman. It is not 
 only a good story; it is a notable study of national character. 
 Baltimore Sun. 
 
 Not merely a splendid opportunity for contrast between the 
 temperamental differences of French and English, but a narrative 
 of earnest merit. We are met by a full world of English char- 
 acters. New York Post. 
 
 First and last, interesting. It is crowded with impressions, 
 glimpses, and opinions. There are many characters and they 
 are all living. . . . Reading his book is a real adventure, by 
 no means to be missed. New York Times. 
 
 A vigorous novel based upon the process constructive and 
 destructive whereby a typical French youth, mercurial, pas- 
 sionate, spectacular, is transformed into a staid and stolid 
 English householder and husband. Chicago Herald. 
 
 Mr. George, one of the most promising of the younger English 
 writers, has shown the process of naturalization from a more 
 striking viewpoint, in this story of the changing of a Frenchman 
 into an English citizen. With this purpose and his nervous, 
 irritable nature trouble is sure to ensue, and he has adventures in 
 plenty. Boston Transcript. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON 
 
By the Author of "The Stranger's Wedding" 
 
 THE SECOND BLOOMING 
 
 By W. L. GEORGE 
 
 12 mo. 438 pages. $1.60 net 
 
 A strong and thoughtful story. New York World. 
 
 A story of amazing power and insight. Washington Evening 
 Star. 
 
 Mr. George is one of the Englishmen to be reckoned with. 
 One now says Wells, Galsworthy, Bennett and W. L. George. 
 
 New York Globe. 
 
 This writer has entered with more courage and intensity into 
 the inner sanctuaries of life than Mr. Howells and Mr. Bennett 
 have cared to do. Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Mr. George follows a vein of literary brilliancy that is all his 
 own, and his study of feminine maturity will find ample vindica- 
 tion the round world over. Philadelphia North American. 
 
 It is a book which is bound to appeal to women, for it is so 
 extraordinarily true to life ; so many women have passed and are 
 passing through remarkably similar experiences. London 
 Evening Standard. 
 
 It is perhaps the biggest piece of fiction that the present season 
 has known. The present reviewer may frankly say, without exag- 
 geration, that he has not had a treat of similar order since the still 
 memorable day when he first made the acquaintance of Mr. 
 Galsworthy's "Man of Property." Frederic T. Cooper in the 
 Bookman (N. F.). 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN CO., PUBLISHERS 
 
 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON 
 
LITERARY CHAPTERS 
 
 By W. L. GEORGE 
 
 241 pages. 12mo. Cloth. $1.50 net. 
 
 Mr. George's book is a highly useful and entertaining con- 
 tribution to modern criticism. It is refreshing to find a man 
 writing about his contemporaries with no apparent axes to 
 grind or favors to bestow. Philadelphia Press. 
 
 The most diverting book that has come this way in a month 
 of Sundays is W. L. George's "Literary Chapters." George 
 is a very presentable novelist and an excellent political com- 
 mentator, but as a critic of writing men and things literary 
 he shines. Chicago Daily News. 
 
 Even those readers who seek in novels an escape from 
 unlovely facts of life into a land of ideal sentiment will yet 
 smile over many a page, for Mr. George delights in a pungent 
 style. In spite of his diffuseness and numberless paragraphs, 
 irony and sarcasm sparkle, and caustic phrases reveal the 
 master of innuendo. The Nation, New York. 
 
 One may not always agree with Mr. George; but to read 
 his book is to be stirred and heartened as by some stiff yet 
 pleasant course of intellectual gymnastics. One closes the 
 covers with regret. Chicago Herald. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON