Roll-Call — Part 2, Chapter 3, part 1
I
Colonel Rannion was brother of the wife of the man for whom George had built the house at Hampstead.
George had met him several times at the dinners and other reunions to which a sympathetic architect is often invited in the dwelling that he has created.
Colonel Rannion had greatly liked his sister's house, had accordingly shown much esteem for George, and had even spoken of ordering a house for himself.
Just as breakfast was being served, George had the idea of ringing up the Hampstead people for the Colonel's address, which he obtained at once.
The Colonel was staying at the Berkeley Hotel.
The next moment he got the Berkeley, and the Colonel in person.
The Colonel remembered him instantly.
George said he wanted to see him.
What about?
Well, a commission.
The Colonel said he had to leave the hotel in twenty-five minutes.
"I can be with you in less than a quarter of an hour," said George--or rather, not George, but some subconscious instinct within him, acting independently of him.
The children, with nurse, were in the dining-room, waiting to breakfast with father.
They were washed, they were dressed; the dining-room had been cleaned; the pleasant smell of breakfast-cooking wandered through the rooms; since the early talk between George and Lois in the silent, sleeping house the house had gradually come to life; it was now in full being--even to the girl scrubbing the front steps--except that Lois was asleep.
Exhausted after the strange and crucial scene, she had dozed off, and had never moved throughout George's dressing.
Now he rushed into the dining-room--"I have to go, nurse.
Fardy can't have his breakfast with you!"
--and rushed out.
A minute previously he had felt a serious need of food after the long, sleepless morning.
The need vanished.
He scurried up Elm Park Gardens like a boy in the warm, fresh air, and stopped a taxi.
He was extremely excited.
None but Lois knew the great secret.
He had kept it to himself.
He might have burst into the kitchen--for he was very apt to be informal--and said: "Well, cook, I'm going into the Army!"
What a household sensation the news would cause, and what an office sensation!
His action would affect the lives of all manner of people.
And the house, at present alive and organic, would soon be dead.
He was afraid.
What he was doing was tremendous.
Was it madness?
He had a feeling of unreality.
At the entrance to the Berkeley Hotel lay a large automobile, with a spurred and highly polished military chauffeur.
At the door of Colonel Rannion's room was stationed a spurred and highly polished, erect orderly--formidable contrast to the flaccid waiters who slouched palely in the corridors.
The orderly went into the room and saluted with a click.
George followed, as into a dentist's surgery.
It was a small, elegant, private sitting-room resembling a boudoir.
In the midst of delicately tinted cushions and flower-vases stood Colonel Rannion, grey-haired, blue-eyed, very straight, very tall, very slim--the slimness accentuated by a close-fitted uniform which began with red tabs and ended in light leggings and gleaming spurs.
He conformed absolutely to the traditional physical type of soldier, and the sight of him gave pleasure.
"Good morning.
Cannon.
Glad to see you."
He seemed to put a secret meaning into the last words.
He shook hands as he spoke, firmly, decisively, efficiently.
"I hope I'm not troubling you too much," George began.
"Troubling me!
Sit down.
You want a commission.
The Army wants to give commissions to men like you.
I think you would make a good officer."
"Of course I'm absolutely ignorant of the Army.
Absolutely."
"Yes.
What a pity that is!
If you'd only been a pre-war Territorial you might have done three weeks' urgent work for your country by this time."
The remark was a polite reproof.
"I might," admitted George, to whom the notion of working for his country had never before occurred.
"Do you think you'd like the Artillery?"
Colonel Rannion questioned sharply.
His tone was increasing in sharpness.
With an equal sharpness George answered unhesitatingly: "Yes, I should."
"Can you ride?"
"I can _ride_.
In holidays and so on I get on my mother's horses."
"Have you hunted?"
"Never."
"H'm!...
Well, I know my friend Colonel Hullocher, who commands the Second Brigade of--er--my Division, is short of an officer.
Would you care for that?"
"Certainly."
Without saying anything else Colonel Rannion took up the telephone.
In less than half a minute George heard him saying: "Colonel Hullocher....
Ask him to be good enough to come to the telephone at once....
That you, Hullocher?"
George actually trembled.
He no longer felt that heavy weight on his stomach, but he felt 'all gone.'
He saw himself lying wounded near a huge gun on a battlefield.
Colonel Rannion was continuing into the telephone: "I can recommend a friend of mine to you for a commission.
George Cannon--C-a-n-n-o-n--the architect.
I don't know whether you know of him....
Oh!
About thirty....
No, but I think he'd suit you....
Who recommends him?
_I_ do....
Like to see him, I suppose, first?...
No, no necessity to see him.
I'll tell him....
Yes, I shall see you in the course of the day."
The conversation then apparently deviated to other subjects, and drew to a close....
"Good-bye.
Thanks....
Oh!
I say.
Shall he get his kit?...
Cannon....
Yes, he'd better.
Yes, that's understood of course.
Good-bye."
"That will be quite all right," said Colonel Rannion to George.
"Colonel Hullocher thinks you may as well see to your kit at once, provided of course you pass the doctor and you are ready to work for nothing until your commission comes along."
"Oh!
Naturally!"
George agreed, in a dream.
He was saying to himself, frightened, astounded, staggered, and yet uplifted: "_Get my kit!
Get my kit!
_ But it's scarcely a minute since I decided to go into the Army."
"I may get your commission ante-dated.
I haven't all the papers here, but give me an address where I can find you at once, and you shall have them this afternoon.
I'll get the Colonel to send them to the Territorial Association to-morrow, and probably in about a month you'll be in the _Gazette_.
I don't know when Colonel Hullocher will want you to report for duty, but I shall see him to-day.
You'll get a telegram when you're needed.
Now I must go.
Which way are you going?"
"I'm going home for my breakfast," said George, writing down his two addresses.
Colonel Rannion said: "I'm off to Wimbledon.
I can drop you in Fulham Road if you like."
In the automobile George received a few useful hints, but owing to the speed of the vehicle the time was far too short for any extensive instruction.
The car drew up.
For an instant Colonel Rannion became freely cordial.
"He must rather have cottoned to me, or he wouldn't have done what he has," thought George, proud to be seen in converse with a staff-officer, waving a hand in adieu.
And he thought: "Perhaps next time I see him I shall be saluting him!"
The children and nurse were still at breakfast.
Nothing had changed in the house during his absence.
But the whole house was changed.
It was a house unconvincing, incredible, which might vanish at any moment.
He himself was incredible.
What had happened was incredible.
The screeching voices of the children were not real voices, and the children were apparitions.
The newspaper was illegible.
Its messages for the most part had no meaning, and such as bore a meaning seemed to be utterly unimportant.
The first reality, for George was food.
He discovered that he could not eat the food--could not swallow; the nausea was acute.
He drank a little coffee, and then went upstairs to see his wife.
Outside the bedroom door he stood hesitant.
A desolating sadness of disappointment suddenly surged over him.
He had destroyed his ambitions, he had transformed all his life, by a single unreflecting and irretrievable impulse.
What he had done was terrific, and yet he had done it as though it were naught ...
The mood passed as suddenly as it had come, and left him matter-of-fact, grim, as it were swimming strongly on and with the mighty current which had caught him.
He went into the bedroom on the current.
Lois was awake.
"I've seen Colonel Rannion."
"You haven't, George!"
"Yes, I have.
I've just come back."
"Well?"
He replied with his damnable affected casualness: "I'm in the Army.
Royal Field Artillery.
And so that's that."
"But where's your uniform?"
"I knew you'd say that.
I'm in mufti, you see."
II
He promptly received his papers and returned them.
His medical examination was quite satisfactory.
Then there was no further sign from the Army.
The Army might have completely forgotten him; his enrolment in the Army might have been an illusion.
Every day and every hour he expected a telegram of command.
It was in anticipation of the telegram, curt and inexorable, that he kept harrying his tradesmen.
To be caught unprepared by the telegram would be a disaster.
But the tradesmen had lessons to teach him, and by the time the kit was approximately completed he had learnt the lessons.
Whether the transaction concerned his tunic, breeches, spurs, leggings, cane, sword, socks, shirts, cap, camp field-kit, or any of the numerous other articles without which an officer might not respectably enter the British Army, the chief lesson was the same, namely, that the tradesmen were bearing the brunt of the war.
Those who had enrolled and made spectacular sacrifices of homes and careers and limbs and lives were enjoying a glorious game amid the laudations of an ecstatic populace, but the real work was being done in the shops and in the workrooms.
The mere aspect of tradesmen was enough to restore the lost modesty of officers.
Useless to argue with the tradesmen, to expostulate, to vituperate.
The facts were in their favour; the sublime law of supply and demand was in their favour.
If the suddenly unloosed military ardour had not been kept down it might have submerged the Island.
The tradesmen kept it down, and the Island was saved by them from militarization.
Majors and colonels and even generals had to flatter and cajole tradesmen.
As for lieutenants, they cringed.
And all officers were obliged to be grateful for the opportunity to acquire goods at prices fifty per cent higher than would have been charged to civilians.
Within a few days George, who had need of every obtainable sovereign for family purposes, had disbursed some forty pounds out of his own pocket in order to exercise the privilege of defending, at the risk of ruin and death, the ideals of his country.
At the end of the week what, as a civilian, he would have described as his first 'suit' had not been delivered, and he spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday in most uncomfortable apprehension of the telegraph-boy and in studying an artillery manual now known to hundreds of thousands as 'F. A.
T.'
On the Monday morning he collected such portions of his kit as had to be worn with the 'suit' (leggings, boots, spurs, cap, shirt, collar, etc. ), and took them in a taxi to the tailor's, intending to change there and emerge a soldier.
The clothes were not ready, but the tailor, intimidated by real violence, promised them for three o'clock.
At three o'clock they were still not ready, for buttons had to be altered on the breeches; another hour was needed.
George went to call at Lucas & Enwright's. That office seemed to function as usual, for Everard Lucas alone had left it for the profession of arms.
The factotum in the cubicle was a young man of the finest military age, and there were two other good ones in the clerks' room, including a clerk just transferred from George's own office.
And George thought of his own office, already shut up, and his glance was sardonic.
Mr. Enwright sat alone in the principals' room, John Orgreave being abroad in London in pursuit of George's two landlords--the landlord of his house and the landlord of his office--neither of whom had yet been brought to see that George's caprice for a military career entitled him in the slightest degree to slip out of contracts remunerative to the sacred caste of landlords.
Lucas & Enwright had behaved handsomely to George, having taken everything over, assumed all responsibilities, and allotted to George more than a fair share of percentages.
And John Orgreave, who in his rough provincial way was an admirable negotiator, had voluntarily busied himself with the affair of the resilition of George's leases.
"Not gone, then?"
Mr. Enwright greeted him.
"Well, you'd better be going, or I shan't get my chance of being Vice-President."
"What do you mean?"
"Orgreave was at a committee at the Institute this morning.
It seems you might have been the next Vice, in spite of your tender years, if you'd stayed.
You're becoming the rage, you know."
"Am I?"
said George, startled.
He hungered for further details of this great and highly disturbing matter, but Enwright, jealous by nature and excusably jealous by reason of the fact that despite his immense artistic reputation he had never succeeded in being even Vice-President of the Institute, would say no more.
Indeed he took a malicious pleasure in saying no more.
The ageing man, more hypochondriacal, thinner, and more wrinkled than ever, was full to the brim of one subject--India.
Somebody at the India Office had flattered him by showing a knowledge of his work.
The India Office had very graciously agreed to the transfer of the barracks enterprise to Lucas & Enwright, and now Mr. Enwright was for going to India himself.
He had never been there.
Indian scenery, Indian manners, Indian architecture boiled in his brain.
The menace of German raiders would not prevent him from going to India.
He had already revisited the photographs of Indian buildings at South Kensington Museum.
Moreover, he had persuaded himself that the erection of the barracks formed an urgent and vital part of British war activity.
At the same time he was convinced that the war would soon end, and in favour of Germany.
He assumed, as being beyond doubt, that a German army would occupy Paris, and when George, with a wave of the hand, pushed the enemy back and magically rendered Paris impregnable, he nearly lost his temper.
This embittered Englishman would not hear a word against the miraculous efficiency of the Germans, whom he admired as much as he hated them.
The German military reputation could not have been safer in Potsdam than it was in Russell Square.
George, impatient of his master and inspirer, rose to depart, whereupon Mr. Enwright began to talk at large about the terrible derangement of his daily life caused by the sudden disappearance of his favourite barber, deemed now to have been a spy.
"But the only barber who ever really understood my chin," said Mr. Enwright.
George went, shaking hands perfunctorily.
Mr. Enwright was too preoccupied to wish him luck.
The clothes were ready at the tailor's, and they passed the tests.
George stood up disguised as a second-lieutenant in the R. F.
A.
, booted, spurred, gloved, nicely managing a cane.
He examined himself in the great mirror and was well pleased with his military appearance.
In particular, his dark moustache fitted the role excellently.
"Now you'll send the overcoat and all my civilian things down this afternoon, without fail," he said.
"I'll let you have an address for the other suit."
And he walked manfully out of the shop.
Before he could find himself, a superb serjeant-major strode up, saluted in the highest and strictest perfection, and passed.
The encounter was unfortunate.
George, taken aback, muddled his share of the rite.
Further, the self-consciousness of the potential Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects was so extreme in uniform that it could scarcely have been more extreme had he been thrust by destiny into Oxford Street naked.
He returned to the shop and said: "I think I'll take everything home myself, to make sure.
You might get me a taxi."
He crept into his own house furtively with his parcels, like a criminal, though he well knew that the servants would be ready to worship him as a new god.
The children were evidently out.
Lois was not in the drawing-room.
He ran to the bedroom.
She lay on the sofa.
"Here I am!"
he announced, posing bravely for her inspection.
She did not move for a few seconds.
Her eyes were hard-set.
Then she gave a tremendous shattering sob, and burst into wild tears.
George stooped to pick up a telegram which was lying on the floor.
It read: "You are to report to Adjutant Headquarters Second First West Midland R.
F.
A.
Wimbledon to-morrow Tuesday before noon."
The Army had not forgotten him.
Throughout the week his name upon various forms had been under the eye of authority, and at last the order had gone forth.
III
The next morning, after a disturbed night, Lois was taken ill.
George telephoned for the doctor, and as soon as he had seen the patient the doctor telephoned for the nurse, and as soon as the doctor had telephoned for the nurse George telephoned for Laurencine.
What with George's uniform and approaching departure, and the premature seizure of Lois, the household had, in an exceedingly short time, reached a state of intense excitement and inefficiency.
Nurse was with Lois; the children were with cook in the kitchen; the other two servants were noisily and vaguely active on the stairs and the landings.
The breakfast had been very badly cooked; the newspapers, with a detailed description of the retreat from Mons, were not glanced at.
George was expecting a letter from his mother concerning the arrangements for the visit of Lois and the children to Ladderedge, already decided upon, and no letter had come.
At half-past ten he sent the parlourmaid to get a taxi.
Having inspected his luggage in the hall, he went to the telephone again and ascertained that Laurencine had actually started from home.
Almost at the same moment a taxi stopped in front of the house.
"She's been jolly quick," thought George, meaning the parlourmaid; but going to the window he saw that his stepfather and his mother were in the taxi.
He did not rush out to them.
He did not move.
The comfortable sense of the perfect reliability and benevolence of his 'people' filled and warmed him.
They had not written again; they had just come themselves.
He affectionately and critically watched them as they got out of the taxi.
Alderman Edwin Clayhanger, undeniably stout, with grey hair and beard, was passing from middle-age into the shadow of the sixties.
He dressed well, but the flat crown of his felt hat, and the artificial, exaggerated squareness of the broad shoulders, gave him a provincial appearance.
His gesture as he paid the driver was absolutely characteristic--a mixture of the dignified and the boyish, the impressive and the timid.
He had descended from the vehicle with precautions, but Mrs. Clayhanger jumped down lightly, though she was about as old and as grey as her husband.
Her costume was not successful;
she did not understand and never had understood how to dress herself.
But she had kept her figure; she was as slim as a girl, and as restless.
George ran to the door, which the feverish parlourmaid had neglected to shut.
His mother, mounting the steps, was struck full in the face by the apparition of her son in uniform.
The Alderman, behind her, cried mockingly to cover his emotion: "Hal_lo_!
Hal_lo_!"
"When did you come up?"
asked George quietly, taking his mother's hand and kissing her.
She slid past him into the house.
Her eyes were moist.
"Last night," the Alderman answered.
"Last train.
Your mother's idea.
All of a sudden.
Thought you might be leaving."
"Well, I am," said George.
"I have to report at Headquarters at Wimbledon by twelve o'clock.
It's rather a good thing you've come.
Lois is ill.
Oh!
Here's _my_ taxi."
The parlourmaid had driven up.
"Ill!"
exclaimed Mrs. Clayhanger.
"Yes.
I've sent for the doctor, and he's sent for the nurse.
I'm expecting the nurse every minute."
"You don't mean to say--" Mrs. Clayhanger began.
George nodded.
"She _must_ have had a shock.
I knew what it would be for her.
It's all very well, but--" Mrs. Clayhanger again left a sentence unfinished.
"I've sent for Laurencine too," said George.
"She also may be here any minute."
"Oh!"
said the old lady tartly.
