Chapter IV

“Hallo, Dennis, still at large? That’s one’s habitual form of greeting nowadays, isn’t it?” Benny Joseph joined Dennis and Antoinette at their table in the tea-shop.

“Still at large, thanks for kind enquiries. I think they must have forgotten all about me. It’s nearly two months now ... what about you?”

“I’ve just had my appeal dismissed by the local tribunal,” replied Benny with an affectation of indifference.

“We all share the same fate, apparently. What happened, Benny?”

“I started off, of course, by telling them that I was a Jew, but that I wasn’t claiming exemption on religious, but on socialistic grounds. I really didn’t get much further than that. The Chairman said he didn’t think my case worthy of a moment’s consideration as I had admitted myself to be an atheist, and could therefore scarcely lay claim to have a conscience!”

“Well, if that isn’t the limit!” cried Dennis, and Antoinette asked: “Are you going to appeal again?”

“Oh, yes. Same old programme of delights for all of us. Local tribunal—Central Court of Appeal—arrival of police—prison! By the way, they refused to renew Harry Hope’s exemption when he appealed the second time.”

“What—has his widowed mother died in the meantime?”

“No, I don’t think so, but the Board seemed to think that he had supported her long enough, and that it was time he devoted his efforts to work of greater importance than keeping a harmless old lady in Chiswick from starvation. He’ll look simply fantastic in uniform, like poor Everard, do you remember?”

The impersonator of many cardinals had been killed during his first month at the Front. Antoinette could not but help wondering in what manner he had died. She was haunted by memory of a languid voice, saying: “This is all—so—stupid....” Haunted by memory of other voices, too; Alan’s vigorous speech; the youthful bombast with which Oswald used to mask his terror; the heavy lilt of Pegeen’s and Conn’s tones. And Conn had been shot down in the streets of Dublin during Easter week, proclaiming with his last breath, that Ireland would never bend the knee “to England’s bloody red”.... And of Pegeen, no one had heard; perhaps she had shared her man’s fate—but no one knew for certain.

“Our ranks are getting sadly depleted,” said Benny, “I see your friend Crispin has deserted us.”

Dennis laughed and Antoinette exclaimed: “Has Crispin ratted, then? I didn’t know.” She saw Dennis so rarely now, that it was small wonder that she was not quite _au courant_.

“Crispin, yes, he ratted some time ago. Of course, not a word of his appeal at the local tribunal was audible, only a wild gurgling and spluttering. But they thought it quite safe to dismiss the appeal though they hadn’t heard it; and he didn’t like the idea of going through it all again, so he just drifted into the army, and now guards railway-bridges or stands drearily at the end of a pier, reciting long Beethoven symphonies to himself.”

Benny murmured: “‘_Lieb Vaterland, kannst ruhig sein_’—while Crispin guards our coasts.”

“You’re right. All the Zeppelins and submarines in the world wouldn’t disturb him when he’s listening to classical music played inside his own head.”

“Poor Crispin,” said Antoinette, “I suppose he never gets anywhere near a piano now.” She had a quite absurd sentimental regard for Crispin: Crispin had played the Waldstein Sonata during her first talk with Dennis at Amberhurst; Crispin had figured throughout those letters from Devonshire....

Dennis replied: “Oh, don’t make any mistake, he’s amply provided for in that respect. He spends all his time getting himself adopted by old ladies possessing pianos—grand pianos only, of course, he won’t touch an upright.... And each of the old ladies thinks that this marvellously gifted Tommy is her own special discovery, and cherishes him accordingly. Crispin lets them cherish. It gives them pleasure, and doesn’t hurt him. He merely walks into the room, sits down at the piano, and plays for the full extent of his leave, with intervals for meals.”

Antoinette glanced surreptitiously at Dennis. Whence arose this rather hectic animation on his part? There was about his whole manner to-day an air of suppressed excitement for which she was at a loss to account. A few minutes later, it was explained to her.

Benny said: “Mansfield’s doing hard labour; he shared the common lot at his tribunal. I really don’t know why they go through the farce of offering a man Non-Com., they might just as well arrest him straight away.... What about Rutherford, Dennis: have you heard anything of him?”

“He’s coming out for a few days next week,” said Dennis, “I shall see him then....”

* * * * *

Four weeks had elapsed for Antoinette without sign or sound from Dennis. She scarcely thought that he had been arrested, as he had promised to let her know when he received his call; but she dared not attempt to make sure by writing or telephoning, lest he should think her importunate. On the rare occasions when she was with him, he seemed to keep her both mentally and physically at a distance. She chafed at the waste of the days drifting by.

If he had cared for her the least bit in the world; if he had shared with her his terrors, how good those days might have been, even while they knew that each day might be his last. But he would not share with her, terrors that were for another as much as for himself. Dennis had kept staunch faith with Alan, as far as Antoinette was concerned.

But though she might have Dennis perpetually before an imaginary tribunal of her own; though she might hurl the bitterest accusations at him—“You’ve ruined my life ... you’ve made it impossible for me to care about ordinary people ... you’ve forced me to live in a crazy inverted world that I didn’t know existed, till you led me into it—” neither these accusations, nor his confessed love for Alan, nor his aloof treatment of her, could call forth the least flicker of hatred or condemnation. His defence was always ready to hand: how could she hate or condemn the only man for whom, with her peculiar temperament, she was capable of feeling love? Love without any of its usual corollaries; without faith, without glamour, without illusion; without the slenderest hope of fulfilment; just love alone, all the stronger, perhaps, for being stripped to its barest essentials.

* * * * *

She was surprised one day by a telephone-call from Doreen Blackwood—Doreen agitated and incoherent. Clive was at Denmark Hill Hospital, seriously wounded, and had Antoinette any idea where Dennis was?

“Mummy and I came up yesterday to be with Clive, and we wired Dennis that we were staying at the Grosvenor Hotel, and he never turned up there, so Mummy went to his lodgings this morning, and the landlady said he hadn’t been there for nearly three weeks. We thought perhaps you might know something about him.”

“I don’t, Doreen, I’ve not seen him for ages.”

“Oh, you don’t think he’s been put in prison, do you? Surely he’d have had time to let us know. He hasn’t written home for ever so long, but then he often does that. Antoinette, what _can_ have happened to him...? As if it wasn’t bad enough, having Clive like this....”

They arranged finally that whichever of them first succeeded in discovering Dennis’s whereabouts, should inform the other. When she had rung off, it struck Antoinette that Barnaby might know; she therefore dashed off to Fleet Street, glad that she had at last a valid excuse for trying to ascertain what had become of Dennis. But on arriving at the office of “The Dove,” she was told that Mr. Barnaby had gone to Manchester to attend a socialist meeting, and would not be back for a few days. Antoinette determined to try Miss Mowbray’s next; perhaps Miss Mowbray herself, or one of the _habitués_ could shed some light upon the mystery. It was three o’clock, the hour at which the tea-shop was usually empty. If Miss Mowbray could tell her nothing, she would have to wait till the others began to straggle in.

As she had anticipated, the tea-room was deserted save for one man who sat at a table with his back to the door, head buried in his hands.

“Dennis!”

At her cry, he slowly raised his head, looked at her with a dazed stupefied expression.

Involuntarily she drew back from him. “Dennis—what’s the matter?”

Still he sat looking at her.

“Is it—have you had your call?” But even while she asked, she knew that it was not that—not that alone.

“I’ve seen him,” Dennis said at last, “in the prison hospital. They moved him there from the cells because he had a bad attack of fever. And when he’s better, he’s got to go back again—back to that hell....”

He went on, as if unable to stop, now that he had begun: “He’s been in solitary confinement—think what that means to an active brain like his! The gnawing everlasting boredom and terror, the helpless exasperation at it all.... He tries to draw on the walls of his cell with his finger-nails—or counts the flies crawling up the bars of the windows—invents foolish games just to keep his mind from giving way—talks aloud to himself for fear of losing the use of his voice. Then there are senseless cruel punishments—sleep made impossible by having his bed removed; nothing but bread and water to eat; hours in a dark underground cell infested by rats—this in a country that calls itself civilised! Sometimes they ask him if he’ll join the army if he’s let out—rather like using thumb-screws to force a man into confession. He kicked one of the men who asked him, and was given twenty-four hours in the strait-jacket. The militarist papers declare that the strait-jacket doesn’t injure the man, and is merely good discipline. Good discipline, Oh, God.... Do you know what it’s like, Antoinette? It’s a narrow strip of canvas as long as a man’s body, but not as wide, and it’s laced tightly round him with cords, usually with one of the warders digging a knee into his back, so as to prevent him from holding his breath and so gaining an extra inch of space. Then he’s left, trussed up like that, alone on the floor of his cell, gasping for breath, the cords cutting into his flesh, all the organs of his body being squeezed and tortured——”

“Dennis, Dennis, don’t—I can’t bear it....”

“Alan’s had to bear it—more than once. The governor of the prison seems to have a special spite against him. There’s no escape unless he promises to give in. And he won’t do that. He’s an emaciated wreck, but he’s determined that they sha’n’t crush him, even though he’s going through things more devilish than any your imagination could have devised for him, Antoinette, when you hated him most!”

She was stung to reply: “I never hated him like that. You’re unjust and cruel to think that I should.”

“Yes, I daresay I am ... I’m sorry.... But I’m at the end, just at the end of everything, and I hardly know what I’m saying.”

And at the utter misery of him, she knew only one longing: to break down all the artificial barriers that had arisen between them, and to take his head between her hands.... “Say what you like, my dear, go on telling me, if it helps at all.”

“I’d heard some weeks ago that he’d got special permission to go and see his mother, who was ill, and I’d arranged to meet him and spend all his spare time with him. He never turned up, and I discovered that his permission had been withdrawn—for goodness knows what petty breach of the regulations—and that he was in the punishment-cells. The next thing I heard was that he and nine others were being removed to Princetown. Through miles and miles of red tape I tried to get permission to see him. I stayed down there waiting and waiting for it. Well, it came at last ...” his voice sank almost to a whisper; “I can’t sleep at night, for thinking of the look in his eyes, and knowing that when his brief respite is over, they’ll send him back to go through all their vile indignities and privations and cruelties again. It’s the idea of his going back, Antoinette——!”

“Oh, don’t—don’t ...” she was sobbing outright now, in an agony of pity for that vivid, brilliant boy, in an agony of fear for the man before her. Helplessly she cast about in her mind for something that might bring comfort to Dennis.

“Even if they make him endure all that, they’re not winning really—not succeeding in making him give himself to the army. So he’s winning in the end, Dennis, he’s beating them.”

He gave her a look of gratitude. “But what a price to pay for victory.... And he’ll have to go on paying as long as this cursed war lasts. We shall all have to go on paying. I’ve had my call, too, you know, for the day after to-morrow. I ought to see mother.”

She told him then the reason that had sent her to look for him here.

“Clive wounded? What’s happened, did they say?”

“Doreen wasn’t very explicit over the telephone. He’s got a poisoned arm, I think, and a wound in the face.”

“Poor mother—I’m sorry for her.... But Clive will have his family and his girl at his bedside, and every possible care and attention....” He fell into brooding silence, thinking of a bare prison hospital, and an unsympathetic prison doctor. “Well, as they’re in town I’ll spend to-morrow with them. And I’ll say good-bye to you now, Antoinette.”

“Yes....”

He looked at her with great unhappy eyes. “There’s nothing we can either of us say, is there?”

“Nothing....”

Of all that she longed to say to him—nothing, now that this moment of parting had been thrust upon her with such suddenness. Useless to make any attempt to say anything. But because it was the last time, she wondered, would he at least leave her memory of his lips on hers—just for the last time?

Already his thoughts had rushed many miles away from her. “It’s as if some particularly terrible fate were always reserved for the people I love most. There was Eric—he had his hell to go through. And now Alan....” Almost inaudibly he added: “And he’s such a kid....”

His voice held the pain and tenderness of a mother whose child has been stricken to death.

“Good-bye, Dennis....” She turned quickly away so that he might not see the tears that blinded her, and left him standing there, gazing fixedly at the walls that had once echoed with Alan’s rhetoric.

And at the top of the stairs she was met by an insolent smiling wraith.

“In case we never meet again ... don’t hate me too much....”

She acknowledged the completeness of her rival’s victory. Alan could triumph over her still.