Rose Macaulay

“ Alix thought, in bed, 'Fighting war. That's what Mr. West said we must all be doing. Fighting war. I suppose really it's the only thing non-combatants can do with war, to make it hurt them less ... as they can't go....' She wrenched her mind sharply away from that last familiar negation, that old familiar bitterness of frustration. 'I suppose,' she thought, 'it may make even that hurt less....'
On that thought, selfish by habit as usual, a thought not suggested by Daphne, who was not selfish, she fell asleep. ”

“ Alix believed that it stood for the same things that Daphne stood for. It too would say, build up a living peace. It too would say, let each man, woman, and child cast out first from their own souls the forces that make against peace—stupidity (that first) , then commercialism, rivalries, hatreds, grabbing, pride, ill-bred vaunting. It too was international, supernational. It too was out for a dream, a wild dream, of unity. It too bade people go and fight to the death to realise the dream. ”

“ I wonder if the Belgians and the Serbs would get on well together in the same houses. They say the poor Serbs are very wild people indeed, with such strange habits. Do you think we shall all be asked to take them as servants?'
'Sure to be,' said Basil, his eyes on Evie. Evie sat doing nothing at all, healthy, lovely, amused, splendidly alive. The vigorous young bodily life of her called to Basil's own, re-animating it. Alix sat by her, all alive too, but weak-bodied, lame, frail-nerved, with no balance. Kate knitted, and was different. ”

“ For so many thousands in the enemy countries are longing for peace; there must be no mistake about that. Of course, thought Alix, impatient again. How should there be any mistake about so obvious a thing? The only difficulty was that each country longed for peace on its own terms; peace, as they would say, with honour; and no country liked its enemies' terms. This continuous mediation business would perhaps draw them nearer together, make them see more nearly eye to eye. ”

“ God, who held us through all the drifting, unsteady paths, has led us now right out of them into a sure refuge.... How do you know? thought Alix. Beyond the steep dark road there may be chaos still, endless, worse chaos: or, surely more natural to suppose, there may be nothing. How did people think they knew? Or didn't they? Did they only guess, and say what they thought was attractive? Did Kate know? And Mrs. Frampton? How could they know, people like that? ”

“ War's beastly and abominable to the fighters: but not to be fighting is much more embittering and demoralising, I believe. Probably largely because one has more time to think. To have one's friends in danger, and not to be in danger oneself—it fills one with futile rage. Combatants are to be pitied; but non-combatants are of all men and women the most miserable. Older men, crocks, parsons, women—God help them.'
'Yes,' Alix agreed, on the edge of tears again. ”

“ Being out there plays the dickens with people's nerves, you know. Not every one's, of course; there are plenty of cheery souls who come through unmoved; but you'd be surprised at the jolly, self-possessed sportsmen who go to pieces more or less—all degrees of it, of course. Some don't know it themselves; you can often only see it by the way their eyes look at you while they're talking, or the way their hand twitches when they light their cigarette....' Alix remembered John Orme's eyes and hands. ”

“ Here she left her companion, who had rooms in Clifford's Inn, and walked up Chancery Lane to Holborn, and got the last Stamford Hill bus and rushed up Gray's Inn Road and then into the ugly, clamorous squalor of Theobald's Road, Clerkenwell and Old Street. The darkness hid the squalor and the dull sordidness of the long straight stretch of Kingsland Road. Through the night came only the flare of the street booths and the screaming of the very poor, who never seem too tired to scream.
At Stamford Hill Alix got off, and walked down Upper Clapton Road, which was quiet and dark, with lime-trees. ”

“ He preached on a question, 'Who will lead me into the strong city?' A very pertinent inquiry, Alix thought, and just what she wanted to know. Who would? Who could? Was there a strong city at all, or only chaos and drifting ways of terror and unrest? If so, where was it, and how to get there? The strong city, said the preacher, is the city of refuge for which we all crave, and more especially just now, in this day of tribulation. The kings of the earth are gathered and gone by together; but the hill of Sion is a fair place and the joy of the whole earth ”

“ The poor old world needs help so very badly just now, with all the fools there are who hinder and block the way. You and I have both got to help, Alix.... There is so much to get done.'
Daphne, holding her close, lightly kissed the thin fingers she held. Alix thought, 'Mother is splendid, of course. But she's bigger than I am, and stronger, and she hardly ever feels ill, and she doesn't know how Paul died, and she's not in love with Basil and didn't tell him so. And I believe she's so keen and busy that she doesn't have time to think about the war, except about how to stop it.... ”

“ Alix shook her head. Indeed, she didn't know. She felt helpless to give the world any sort of jog out of its mud, by any means whatsoever.
Daphne caught the blank look of her eyes, and suddenly put her strong arm round the thin, small body.
'My poor baby, you must get strong, you know, and happy. No one needs to be ailing or depressed if they'll just say to themselves, 'I am going to be well and strong and to stand up to the world. ”

“ Dorothy, efficient and professional in a moment, sprang out of bed into her two waiting slippers, and ran into the balcony. Alix heard her, gentle, quiet, firm, soothing John, leading him back to bed.
Alix was most suddenly and violently sick.
When Dorothy came back, twenty minutes later, she was huddled under the bedclothes, exhausted, shuddering and cold.
'He's quiet now,' said Dorothy, taking off her slippers. 'Poor old boy. They often do it, you know. It's the nervous shock. I must listen at nights.... I say, don't tell him, Alix; he wouldn't like it. ”

“ Funny things, nerves....'
Alix suddenly perceived that he knew more about them than appeared in his jolly, sunburnt face; he was talking on rapidly, as if he had to, with inward-looking eyes.
'Of course there are some men out there who never ought to be there at all; not strong enough in body or mind. There was a man in my company; he was quite young; he'd got his commission straight from school; and he simply went to pieces when he'd been in and out of trenches for a few weeks. ”

“ In Cambridge is intelligence, culture, traditionalism, civilisation, some intellectualism, even some imagination, much scholarship, ability, and good sense, above all a high idealism, a limitless fund of generous chivalry, that would be at war with the world's ills, the true crusading spirit, that can never fit in with the commercial. ”

“ Who nurses the soldiers? What do women get out of a war, ever?'
'The salvation of their country, Miss Simon,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'won for them by brave men.'
'After all,' said Sid, 'the women can't fight, you know. They can't fight for their country.'
Miss Simon regarded him with scorn.
'How much are you fighting for your country, I'd like to know?'
'One for you, Sid,' said Evie cheerily, ignoring Sid's aggrieved, 'Well, you know I can't leave mother.'
'And fighting isn't everything,' Miss Simon went on, 'and war time isn't everything. There's women's work in peace time. ”

“ We shut our eyes to things—poverty, and injustice, and vice, and cruelty, and sweating, and slums, and the tendencies which make war, and we feed ourselves on batter, and so go on from day to day getting a little fatter—and so the evils too go on from day to day getting fatter, till they get so corpulent and heavy that when we do open our eyes at last, because we have to, they can scarcely be moved at all. It's sheer criminal selfishness and laziness and stupidity. Mr. West was talking about it the other day. I like that young man; he believes in all the right things. ”

“ Alix, who was rather lame, put her stool and easel and charcoal into the cart, got in herself, beat the donkey, and ambled on along the path, followed by the yellow dog.
The evening was dim and green, and smelt of pines. The donkey trotted past cottage gardens, and they were sweet with wallflowers. More stars came out and peered down through the tree-tops. Alix whistled softly, a queer little Polish tune, indeterminate, sad and gay. ”

“ The question is, is all this emotion going to last, and to be poured out on other things after the war, or shall we be too tired to feel anything at all, or will there be a reaction to dryness and cynicism? People, for instance, have learnt more or less to give their money away: will they go on giving it, or shall we afterwards be closer-fisted than before?'
'O Lord!' said Basil, 'we shall have nothing left to give. Not even munition-makers will, if it's true that the income-tax is going to be quadrupled next year. ”

“ People are such dears, directly they stop misunderstanding what one is after. Understanding—clear thinking—it nearly all turns on that; everything does. Oh for more brains in this poor old muddle of a world! Educate the children's brains, give them right understanding, and then let evil do its worst against them, they'll have a sure base to fight it from.'
Alix thought of and mentioned the Intelligent Bad, who are surely numerous and prominent in history.
But Daphne said: 'Cleverness isn't right understanding. ”

“ Alix saw humanity as a great mass-meeting, men and women, 'clergymen, lawyers, lords and thieves,' hand in hand, lifting together one confused voice, crying for peace, peace, where there was no peace. ”

“ The war, for them, really isn't. The new world, however it shapes, simply won't be. What's the war doing to them? All the beastliness, and bravery, and ugliness, and brutality, and cold, and blood, and mud, and gaiety, and misery, and idiotic muddle, and splendour, and squalor, and general lunacy ... ”

“ West think?' Mr. West was even better than Nicholas as a source of knowledge, being not only a man but a clergyman.
'Mr. West,' said Alix, 'thinks Captain Gordon too rich. It's a fad of Mr. West's that people shouldn't be too rich. I think they should.'
'Well, we're told, aren't we, that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.... A little more ham, Alix?'
'It's all a question,' said Kate, 'of the use people make of their wealth. They say that some of the wealthiest families in the land make the best landlords and are the kindest to all. I can't say I hold with socialism. ”

“ One of the worst things about a war is that so many of the best thinkers are in the middle of it, and can't think, and may never be able to think again. I don't in the least agree with those complacent young men and women who believe that no one over forty either can or will think. 'The war has let the old men loose upon the world,' I believe is the phrase. Conceited rubbish, of course. They won't talk it when they and their friends are forty-eight, like me. Personally I know just about as many young fools and obscurantists and militarists as elderly ones. ”

“ Biliousness isn't a thing to play with. Suppose you were to go to bed straight away, and let Kate bring you up a nice hot cup of tea there?'
Kate said, playfully, 'This is what Sunday outings lead to.'
They were both at a great distance, as if Alix were at the bottom of the sea. So was Mrs. Buller, who talked to Mrs. Frampton about girls. Girls are, of course, an inexhaustible and fruitful topic—there are so many of them coming and going, and nearly all so bad. Mrs. Frampton and Mrs. Buller and Kate all found them interesting, if a nuisance. Alix found them a safe subject. ”

“ Sid said, 'Oh dear no, Miss Evie. What price Christabel and Co.? They ought to have had the iron cross all round, the militants ought. They did more to earn it than the Huns ever did.'
'Cheap sarcasm,' said Miss Simon, 'is no argument. And I don't blame any woman for using what means she's got. There are times when a woman's got to forget herself.'
Kate said, 'I don't think a woman's ever got to forget herself,' and there was a murmur of applause. Alix giggled. She wondered if social evenings at Violette were often like this. ”

“ There were in England no ladies more active through that desperate time than Daphne Sandomir and her sister Eleanor Orme; but their activities were for the most part different. Mrs. Orme was secretary of a Red Cross hospital, superintended canteens, patrolled camps, relieved and entertained Belgians and dealt them out clothes, was the soul of Women's Work Committees, made body-belts, respirators and sand-bags, locked up her cellar, bought war loan, and wrote sensible letters to the Times, which usually got printed. ”

“ Hauxton looked drowsily to the sunset and the dawn, to the past and future, to the old year and the new.
'The future is dubious,' Daphne had been saying in the schoolroom, before Alix came out. Well, of course futures always are, if you come to that. 'In this dim, dubious future, let us see that we build up one positive thing, which shall not fail us....' And by that, of course, she meant Peace.
Peace: yes, peace must be, of course, a positive thing. Here, in Hauxton, was peace; a bare, austere, quiet peace, smelling of straw. No one had had to make that peace ”

“ Alix supposed it must be. Meetings are so very mixed, speeches so unequal, people so various.
Lack of clear thinking—that, as Daphne had said, was probably what was wrong with nearly every one. Perhaps it is the commonest defect, and the most irritating. It makes people talk sentimental rubbish. It makes them lump other people together in masses and groups, setting one group against another, when really people are individual temperaments and brains and souls, and unclassifiable. ”

“ The guns, shattering so much, have at least shattered falsity in art. We were degenerate, a little, in our literature and in our lives: we have been made great. We are come, surely, to the heroic, the epic pitch of living; if we cannot express it with a voice worthy of it, then indeed it has failed in its deepest lesson to us. We may expect a renascence of beauty worthy to rank with the Romantic Revival born of the French wars....'
'Who is the liar?' asked Alix.
Nicholas named him. 'I am thinking,' he added, 'of starting an Effects of the War series of my own. ”

“ Free discussion of these things gets them into the air, so to speak; trains people's ways of thought; and thought, collective thought, is such a solid driving-power; it gets things done. Thoughts are alive,' said Daphne, waving her cigarette as she talked, 'frightfully, terrifyingly, amazingly alive. They fly about like good and bad germs; they cause health or disease. ”

“ I can't see that the war makes such a lot of difference, to ordinary people. One seems to go on much the same from day to day, doesn't one?'
'I'm not at all sure,' said Basil, suddenly interested, 'that Miss Tucker hasn't got hold of the crux of the whole matter. There aren't two sections of people, Maynard—there are three; the respondents, the reactors, and the indifferents—ordinary people, that's to say. What difference does the war make, after all—to ordinary people? ”

“ It isn't a score for him to lose all the rest of his life, that he might have had afterwards.'
'No,' Terry agreed, sadly. 'It isn't. It's rotten luck, that is. Simply rotten. That's one of the most sickening things about this whole show, the way people are doing that.... But there's one thing about Paul, Alix; if he'd come through it he'd have kept on remembering all the things one tries to forget. More than most people, I mean. He was that sort. Lots of people don't mind so much, and can get things out of their heads when they aren't actually seeing them. ”

“ It's a funny thought, that the war can have been good for any one; I can't quite swallow it. I don't think a thing bad in itself can be good for people, do you? It's very bad for me; it's spoiling my ear; the noise, you know; guns and shells and gramophones and so on.... By the way, I wish you'd come and hear Lovinski with me on Monday night, it's a jolly programme.'
'All right,' said Alix, who found Terry restful.
She talked to Terry, and saw Evie and Basil walking in front, side by side, laughing, Evie's joyous, young smile answering that other quick, amused, friendly smile that she knew. ”

“ Alix is the same. She's the queerest kid; makes me scream with laughter often. She's a pet, though.'
'She is,' said Basil. 'But what people say—the way they talk—makes extraordinarily little difference, you know. It's what they are.... The funny thing is, I didn't know that, not so clearly, at least, till I'd been out at the war. A thing like a war seems to settle values, somehow—shows one what matters and what doesn't; shovels away the cant and leaves one with the essentials....' ('Oh dear me,' said Evie.) ”

“ But does it upset and dissolve, or even disturb very much, the world of all the people (the non-combatants, I mean, of course, not the fighters) who don't think, or only think from hand to mouth? There'll be no reaction for them, or any such foolishness, because there's been no force. Here's to Ordinary People!' He emptied his glass of beer, and if he seemed to do it to Evie Tucker, that might be taken merely as acknowledgment of her discerning remark.
'Oh, mercy,' said Evie, on a laugh and a yawn. 'You do all go on, don't you.'
Alix, black-browed and sulky, thought so too. ”