The Red Planet Part 5

"Neither have you, sir," he said in a respectful tone, and went out.

Randall laughed, though I saw his dark cheek flush. "If Marigold had his way he would have us all in a barrack square."

"Preferably in those fluid trenches of the present," said I. "And he wouldn't be far wrong."

My eyes rested on him somewhat stonily. People have complained sometimes--defaulters, say, in the old days--that there can be a beastly, nasty look in them.

"What do you mean, Major?" he asked.

"Sergeant Marigold," said I, "is a brave, patriotic Englishman who has given his country all he can spare from the necessary physical equipment to carry on existence; and it's making him hang-dog miserable that he's not allowed to give the rest to-morrow. You must forgive his plain speaking," I continued, gathering warmth as I went on, "but he can't understand healthy young fellows like you not wanting to do the same. And, for the matter of that, my dear Randall, neither do I. Why aren't you serving your country?"

He started forward in his chair and threw out his arms, and his dark eyes flashed and a smile of conscious rect.i.tude overspread his clear-cut features.

"My dear Major--serving my country? Why, I'm working night and day for it. You don't understand."

"I've already told you I don't."

The boy was my guest. I had not intended to hold a pistol to his head in one hand and dangle a suit of khaki before his eyes in the other. I had been ill at ease concerning him for months, but I had proposed to regain his confidence in a tactful, fatherly way. Instead of which I found myself regarding him with my beastly defaulter glare. The blood sometimes flies to one's head.

He condescended to explain.

"There are millions of what the Germans call 'cannon fodder' about. But there are few intellects--few men, shall I say?--of genius, scarcely a poet. And men like myself who can express--that's the whole vital point--who can EXPRESS the higher philosophy of the Empire, and can point the way to its realisation are surely more valuable than the yokel or factory hand, who, as the sum-total of his capabilities, can be trained merely into a sort of shooting machine. Just look at it, my dear Major, from a commonsense point of view--" He forgot, the amazing young idiot, that he was talking not to a maiden aunt, but to a hard-bitten old soldier. "What good would it serve to stick the comparatively rare man--I say it in all modesty--the comparatively rare man like myself in the trenches? It would be foolish waste. I a.s.sure you I'm putting all my talents at the disposal of the country." Seeing, I suppose, in my eyes, the maintained stoniness of non-conviction, he went on, "But, pay dear sir, be reasonable." ... Reasonable! I nearly choked. If I could have stood once more on my useless legs, I should have swung my left arm round and clouted him on the side of the head.

Reasonable indeed! This well-fed, able-bodied, young Oxford prig to tell me, an honourable English officer and gentleman, to be reasonable, when the British Empire, in peril of its existence, was calling on all its manhood to defend it in arms! I glared at him. He continued:--

"Yes, be reasonable. Everyone has his place in this World conflict. We can't all be practical fighters. You wouldn't set Kitchener or Grey or Lord Crewe to bayonet Germans--"

"By G.o.d, sir," I cried, smiting one palm with the fist of the other hand. "By G.o.d, sir, I would, if they were three and twenty." I had completely lost my temper. "And if I saw them doing nothing, while the country was asking for MEN, but writing rotten doggerel and messing about with girls far beneath them in station, I should call them the d.a.m.nedest skunks unskinned!"

He had the decency to rise. "Major Meredyth," said he, "you're under a terrible misapprehension. You're a military man and must look at everything from a military point of view. It would be useless to discuss the philosophy of the situation with you. We're on different planes."

Just what I said.

"You," said I, "seem to be hovering near Tophet and the Abyss."

"No, no," he answered with an indulgent smile. "You are quoting Carlyle. You must give him up."

"d.a.m.ned pro-German, I should think I do," I cried. I had forgotten where my phrase came from.

"I'm glad to hear it. He's a back-number. I'm a modern. I represent equilibrium--" He made a little rocking gesture with his graceful hand.

"I am out for Eternal Truth, which I think I perceive."

"In poor little Phyllis Gedge, I suppose?"

"Why not? Look. I am the son, grandson, great-grandson, of English Tories. She is the daughter of socialism, syndicalism, pacifism, internationalism--everything that is most apart from my traditions. But she brings to me beauty, innocence, the feminine solution of all intellectual concepts. She, the woman, is the soul of conflicting England. She is torn both ways. But as she has to breed men, some day, she is instinctively on our side. She is invaluable to me. She inspires my poems. You may not believe it, but she is at the back of my political articles. You must really be a little more broad-minded, Major, and look at these things from the right point of view. From the point of view of my work, she is merely a symbol."

"And you?" said I, wrathfully. "What are you to her? Do you suppose she takes you for a symbol? I wish to Heaven she did. A round cipher of naught, the symbol of inanity. She takes you for an honourable gentleman. I've known the child since she was born. As good a little girl as you could wish to meet."

He drew himself up. "That's the opinion of her I am endeavouring to express."

"Quite so. You win a good decent girl's affection,--if you hadn't, she would never have let you walk about with her at nightfall, with your arm round her waist,--and you have the cynical audacity to say that she's only a symbol."

"When you asked me to come in this evening," said he, "I naturally concluded you would broach this subject. I came prepared to give you a complete explanation of what I am ready to admit was a compromising situation."

"There is only one explanation," said I angrily. "What are your intentions regarding the girl?"

He smiled. "Quite honourable."

"You mean marriage?"

"Oh, no," said he, emphatically.

"Then the other thing? That's not honourable."

"Of course not. Certainly not the other thing. I'm not a blackguard."

"Then what on earth are you playing at?"

He sighed. "I'm afraid you will never understand."

"I'm afraid I won't," said I. "By your own confession you are neither a l.u.s.ty blackguard nor an honourable gentleman. You're a sort of philanderer, somewhere in between. You neither mean to fight like a man nor love like a man. I'm sorry to say it, but I've no use for you. As I can't do it myself, will you kindly ring the bell?"

"Certainly," said he, white with anger, which I was glad to see, and pressed the electric b.u.t.ton beside the mantelpiece. He turned on me, his head high. There was still some breeding left in him.

"I'm sorry we're at such cross-purposes, Major. All my life long I've owed you kindnesses I can't ever repay. But at present we're hopelessly out of sympathy!"

"It seems so," said I. "I had hoped your father's son would be a better man!"

"My father," said he, "was a successful stockbroker, without any ideas in his head save the making of money. I don't see what he has got to do with my well-considered att.i.tude towards life."

"Your callow att.i.tude towards life, my poor boy," said I, "is a matter of profound indifference to me. But I shall give orders that you are no longer admitted to this house except in uniform."

"That's absurd," said he.

"Not at all," said I.

In obedience to the summons of the bell Sergeant Marigold appeared and stood in his ramrod fas.h.i.+on by the door.

Randall came forward to my wheel-chair, with hand outstretched.

"I'm desperately sorry, Major, for this disastrous misunderstanding."

I thrust my hands beneath the light shawl that covered my legs.

"Don't be such a self-sufficient fool, Randall," I said, "as to think I don't understand. In the present position there are no subtleties and no complications. Good-night."

Marigold, with a wooden face, opened wide the door, and Randall, with a shrug of the shoulders, went out.

I stayed awake the whole of that livelong night.