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Tree of Heaven

<h2>XIX</h2> They did not go down to Morfe the first week in August for the shooting. Neither did Lawrence Stephen go to Ireland on Monday, the third. At the moment when he should have been receiving the congratulations of the Dublin Nationalists after his impassioned appeal for militant consolidation, Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson were shaking hands dramatically in the House of Commons. Stephen's sublime opportunity, the civil war, had been snatched from him by the unforeseen. And there was no chance of Nicky and Veronica going to Belgium and France and Germany for their honeymoon. For within nine days of Frances's Day Germany had declared war on France and Russia, and was marching over the Belgian frontier on her way to Paris. Frances, aroused at last to realization of the affairs of nations, asked, like several million women, "What does it mean?" And Anthony, like several million men, answered, "It means Armageddon." Like several million people, they both thought he was saying something as original as it was impressive, something clear and final and descriptive. "Armageddon!" Stolid, unimaginative people went about saying it to each other. The sound of the word thrilled them, intoxicated them, gave them an awful feeling that was at the same time, in some odd way, agreeable; it stirred them with a solemn and sombre passion. They said "Armageddon. It means Armageddon." Yet nobody knew and nobody asked or thought of asking what Armageddon meant. "Shall We come into it?" said Frances. She was thinking of the Royal Navy turning out to the last destroyer to save England from invasion; of the British Army most superfluously prepared to defend England from the invader, who, after all, could not invade; of Indian troops pouring into England if the worst came to the worst. She had the healthy British mind that refuses and always has refused to acknowledge the possibility of disaster. Yet she asked continually, "Would England be drawn in?" She was thankful that none of her sons had gone into the Army or the Navy. Whoever else was in, they would be out of it. At first Anthony said, "No. Of course England wouldn't be drawn in." Then, on the morning of England's ultimatum, the closing of the Stock Exchange and the Banks made him thoughtful, and he admitted that it looked as if England might be drawn in after all. The long day, without any business for him and Nicholas, disturbed him. There was a nasty, hovering smell of ruin in the air. But there was no panic. The closing of the Banks was only a wise precaution against panic. And by evening, as the tremendous significance of the ultimatum sank into him, he said definitively that England would not be drawn in. Then Drayton, whom they had not seen for months (since he had had his promotion) telephoned to Dorothy to come and dine with him at his club in Dover Street. Anthony missed altogether the significance of that. He had actually made for himself an after-dinner peace in which coffee could be drunk and cigarettes smoked as if nothing were happening to Europe. "England," he said, "will not be drawn in, because her ultimatum will stop the War. There won't be any Armageddon." "Oh, won't there!" said Michael. "And I can tell you there won't be much left of us after it's over." He had been in Germany and he knew. He carried himself with a sort of stern haughtiness, as one who knew better than any of them. And yet his words conveyed no picture to his brain, no definite image of anything at all. But in Nicholas's brain images gathered fast, one after another; they thickened; clear, vivid images with hard outlines. They came slowly but with order and precision. While the others talked he had been silent and very grave. "Some of us'll be left," he said. "But it'll take us all our time." Anthony looked thoughtfully at Nicholas. A sudden wave of realization beat up against his consciousness and receded. "Well," he said, "we shall know at midnight." <hr style="width: 25%;"> An immense restlessness came over them. At a quarter-past eight Dorothy telephoned from her club in Grafton street. Frank had had to leave her suddenly. Somebody had sent for him. And if they wanted to see the sight of their lives they were to come into town at once. St. James's was packed with people from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace. It was like nothing on earth, and they mustn't miss it. She'd wait for them in Grafton Street till a quarter to nine, but not a minute later. Nicky got out his big four-seater Morss car. They packed themselves into it, all six of them somehow, and he drove them into London. They had a sense of doing something strange and memorable and historic. Dorothy, picked up at her club, showed nothing but a pleasurable excitement. She gave no further information about Frank. He had had to go off and see somebody. What did he think? He thought what he had always thought; only he wouldn't talk about it. Dorothy was not inclined to talk about it either. The Morss was caught in a line blocked at the bottom of Albemarle Street by two streams of cars, mixed with two streams of foot passengers, that poured steadily from Piccadilly into St. James's Street. Michael and Dorothy got out and walked. Nicholas gave up his place to Anthony and followed with Veronica. Their restlessness had been a part of the immense restlessness of the crowd. They were drawn, as the crowd was drawn; they went as the crowd went, up and down, restlessly, from Trafalgar Square and Whitehall to Buckingham Palace; from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall and Trafalgar Square. They drifted down Parliament Street to Westminster and back again. An hour ago the drifting, nebulous crowd had split, torn asunder between two attractions; its two masses had wheeled away, one to the east and the other to the west; they had gathered themselves together, one at each pole of the space it now traversed. The great meeting in Trafalgar Square balanced the multitude that had gravitated towards Buckingham Palace, to see the King and Queen come out on their balcony and show themselves to their people. And as the edges of the two masses gave way, each broke and scattered, and was mixed again with the other. Like a flood, confined and shaken, it surged and was driven back and surged again from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace, from Buckingham Palace to Whitehall. It looked for an outlet in the narrow channels of the side-streets, or spread itself over the flats of the Green Park, only to return restlessly upon itself, sucked back by the main current in the Mall. It was as if half London had met there for Bank Holiday. Part of this crowd was drunk; it was orgiastic; it made strange, fierce noises, like the noises of one enormous, mystically excited beast; here and there, men and women, with inflamed and drunken faces, reeled in each other's arms; they wore pink paper feathers in their hats. Some, only half intoxicated, flicked at each other with long streamers of pink and white paper, carried like scourges on small sticks. These were the inspired. But the great body of the crowd was sober. It went decorously in a long procession, young men with their sweethearts, friends, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers with their children; none, or very few, went alone that night. It was an endless procession of faces; grave and thoughtful faces; uninterested, respectable faces; faces of unmoved integrity; excited faces; dreaming, wondering, bewildered faces; faces merely curious, or curiously exalted, slightly ecstatic, open-mouthed, fascinated by each other and by the movements and the lights; laughing, frivolous faces, and faces utterly vacant and unseeing. On every other breast there was a small Union Jack pinned; every other hand held and waggled a Union Jack. The Union Jack flew from the engine of every other automobile. In twelve hours, out of nowhere, thousands and thousands of flags sprang magically into being; as if for years London had been preparing for this day. And in and out of this crowd the train of automobiles with their flags dashed up and down the Mall for hours, appearing and disappearing. Intoxicated youths with inflamed faces, in full evening dress, squatted on the roofs of taxi-cabs or rode astride on the engines of their cars, waving flags. All this movement, drunken, orgiastic, somnambulistic, mysteriously restless, streamed up and down between two solemn and processional lines of lights, two solemn and processional lines of trees, lines that stretched straight from Whitehall to Buckingham Palace in a recurrent pattern of trees and lamps, dark trees, twilit trees, a lamp and a tree shining with a metallic unnatural green; and, at the end of the avenue, gilded gates and a golden-white façade. The crowd was drifting now towards the Palace. Michael and Dorothea, Nicholas and Veronica, went with it. In this eternal perambulation they met people that they knew; Stephen and Vera; Mitchell, Monier-Owen; Uncle Morrie and his sisters. Anthony, looking rather solemn, drove past them in his car. It was like impossible, grotesque encounters in a dream. Outside the Palace the crowd moved up and down without rest; it drifted and returned; it circled round and round the fountain. In the open spaces the intoxicated motor-cars and taxi-cabs darted and tore with the folly of moths and the fury of destroyers. They stung the air with their hooting. Flags, intoxicated flags, still hung from their engines. They came flying drunkenly out of the dark, like a trumpeting swarm of enormous insects, irresistibly, incessantly drawn to the lights of the Palace, hypnotized by the golden-white façade. Suddenly, Michael's soul revolted. "If this demented herd of swine is a great people going into a great war, God help us! Beasts--it's not as if their bloated skins were likely to be punctured." He called back over his shoulders to the others. "Let's get out of this. If we don't I shall be sick." He took Dorothy by her arm and shouldered his way out. The water had ceased playing in the fountain. Nicholas and Veronica stood by the fountain. The water in the basin was green like foul sea-water. The jetsam of the crowd floated there. A small child leaned over the edge of the basin and fished for Union Jacks in the filthy pool. Its young mother held it safe by the tilted edge of its petticoats. She looked up at them and smiled. They smiled back again and turned away. It was quiet on the south side by the Barracks. Small, sober groups of twos and threes strolled there, or stood with their faces pressed close against the railings, peering into the barrack yard. Motionless, earnest and attentive, they stared at the men in khaki moving about on the other side of the railings. They were silent, fascinated by the men in khaki. Standing safe behind the railing, they stared at them with an awful, sombre curiosity. And the men in khaki stared back, proud, self-conscious, as men who know that the hour is great and that it is their hour. "Nicky," Veronica said, "I wish Michael wouldn't say things like that." "He's dead right, Ronny. That isn't the way to take it, getting drunk and excited, and rushing about making silly asses of themselves. They are rather swine, you know." "Yes; but they're pathetic. Can't you see how pathetic they are? Nicky, I believe I love the swine--even the poor drunken ones with the pink paper feathers--just because they're English; because awful things are going to happen to them, and they don't know it. They're English." "You think God's made us all like that? He hasn't." They found Anthony in the Mall, driving up and down, looking for them. He had picked up Dorothy and Aunt Emmeline and Uncle Morrie. "We're going down to the Mansion House," he said, "to hear the Proclamation. Will you come?" But Veronica and Nicholas were tired of crowds, even of historic crowds. Anthony drove off with his car-load, and they went home. "I never saw Daddy so excited," Nicky said. But Anthony was not excited. He had never felt calmer or cooler in his life. He returned some time after midnight. By that time it had sunk into him. Germany had defied the ultimatum and England had declared war on Germany. He said it was only what was to be foreseen. He had known all the time that it would happen--really. The tension of the day of the ultimatum had this peculiar psychological effect that all over England people who had declared up to the last minute that there would be no War were saying the same thing as Anthony and believing it. Michael was disgusted with the event that had put an end to the Irish Revolution. It was in this form that he conceived his first grudge against the War. This emotion of his was like some empty space of horror opened up between him and Nicholas; Nicky being the only one of his family who was as yet aware of its existence. For the next three days, Nicholas, very serious and earnest, shut himself up in his workshop at the bottom of the orchard and laboured there, putting the last touches to the final, perfect, authoritative form of the Moving Fortress, the joint creation of his brain and Drayton's, the only experiment that had survived the repeated onslaughts of the Major's criticism. The new model was three times the size of the lost original; it was less like a battleship and more like a racing-car and a destroyer. It was his and Drayton's last word on the subject of armaments. It was going to the War Office, this time, addressed to the right person, and accompanied by all sorts of protective introductions, and Drayton blasting its way before it with his new explosive. In those three days Nick found an immense distraction in his Moving Fortress. It also served to blind his family to his real intentions. He knew that his real intentions could not be kept from them very long. Meanwhile the idea that he was working on something made them happy. When Frances saw him in his overalls she smiled and said: "Nicky's got his job, anyhow." John came and looked at him through the window of the workshop and laughed. "Good old Nicky," he said. "Doing his bit!" In those three days John went about with an air of agreeable excitement. Or you came upon him sitting in solitary places like the dining-room, lost in happy thought. Michael said of him that he was unctuous. He exuded a secret joy and satisfaction. John had acquired a sudden remarkable maturity. He shone on each member of his family with benevolence and affection, as if he were its protector and consoler, and about to confer on it some tremendous benefit. "Look at Don-Don," Michael said. "The bloodthirsty little brute. He's positively enjoying the War." "You might leave me alone," said Don-Don. "I shan't have it to enjoy for long." He was one of those who believed that the War would be over in four months. Michael, pledged to secrecy, came and looked at the Moving Fortress. He was interested and intelligent; he admired that efficiency of Nicky's that was so unlike his own. Yet, he wondered, after all, was it so unlike? He, too, was aiming at an art as clean and hard and powerful as Nicky's, as naked of all blazonry and decoration, an art which would attain its objective by the simplest, most perfect adjustment of means to ends. And Anthony was proud of that hidden wonder locked behind the door of the workshop in the orchard. He realized that his son Nicholas had taken part in a great and important thing. He was prouder of Nicholas than he had been of Michael. And Michael knew it. Nicky's brains could be used for the service of his country. But Michael's? Anthony said to himself that there wasn't any sense--any sense that he could endure to contemplate--in which Michael's brains could be of any use to his country. When Anthony thought of the mobilization of his family for national service, Michael and Michael's brains were a problem that he put behind him for the present and refused to contemplate. There would be time enough for Michael later. Anthony was perfectly well aware of his own one talent, the talent which had made "Harrison and Harrison" the biggest timber-importing firm in England. If there was one thing he understood it was organization. If there was one thing he could not tolerate it was waste of good material, the folly of forcing men and women into places they were not fit for. He had let his eldest son slip out of the business without a pang, or with hardly any pang. He had only taken Nicholas into it as an experiment. It was on John that he relied to inherit it and carry it farther. As a man of business he approved of the advertised formula: "Business as Usual." He understood it to mean that the duty which England expected every man to do was to stay in the place he was most fitted for and to go where he was most wanted. Nothing but muddle and disaster could follow any departure from this rule. It was fitting that Frances and Veronica should do Red Cross work. It was fitting that Dorothy should help to organize the relief of the Belgium refugees. It was fitting that John should stay at home and carry on the business, and that he, Anthony, should enlist when he had settled John into his place. It was, above all, fitting that Nicky should devote himself to the invention and manufacture of armaments. He could not conceive anything more wantonly and scandalously wasteful than a system that could make any other use of Nicky's brains. He thanked goodness that, with a European War upon us, such a system, if it existed, would not be allowed to live a day. As for Michael, it might be fitting later--very much later--perhaps. If Michael wanted to volunteer for the Army then, and if it were necessary, he would have no right to stop him. But it would not be necessary. England was going to win this War on the sea and not on land. Michael was practically safe. And behind Frances's smile, and John's laughter, and Michael's admiration, and Anthony's pride there was the thought: "Whatever happens, Nicky will he safe." And the model of the Moving Fortress was packed up--Veronica and Nicky packed it--and it was sent under high protection to the War Office. And Nicky unlocked the door of his workshop and rested restlessly from his labour. And there was a call for recruits, and for still more recruits. Westminster Bridge became a highway for regiments marching to battle. The streets were parade-grounds for squad after squad of volunteers in civilian clothes, self-conscious and abashed under the eyes of the men in khaki. And Michael said: "This is the end of all the arts. Artists will not be allowed to exist except as agents for the recruiting sergeant. We're dished." That was the second grudge he had against the War. It killed the arts in the very hour of their renaissance. "Eccentricities" by Morton Ellis, with illustrations by Austin Mitchell, and the "New Poems" of Michael Harrison, with illustrations by Austin Mitchell, were to have come out in September. But it was not conceivable that they should come out. At the first rumour of the ultimatum Michael and Ellis had given themselves up for lost. Liége fell and Namur was falling. And the call went on for recruits, and for still more recruits. And Nicky in five seconds had destroyed his mother's illusions and the whole fabric of his father's plans. It was one evening when they were in the drawing-room, sitting up after Veronica had gone to bed. "I hope you won't mind, Father," he said; "but I'm going to enlist to-morrow." He did not look at his father's face. He looked at his mother's. She was sitting opposite him on the couch beside Dorothy. John balanced himself on the head of the couch with his arm round his mother's shoulder. Every now and then he stooped down and rubbed his cheek thoughtfully against her hair. A slight tremor shook her sensitive, betraying upper lip; then she looked back at Nicholas and smiled. Dorothy set her mouth hard, unsmiling. Anthony had said nothing. He stared before him at Michael's foot, thrust out and tilted by the crossing of his knees. Michael's foot, with its long, arched instep, fascinated Anthony. He seemed to be thinking: "If I look at it long enough I may forget what Nicky has said." "I hope you won't mind, Father; but I'm enlisting too." John's voice was a light, high echo of Nicky's. With a great effort Anthony roused himself from his contemplation of Michael's foot. "I--can't--see--that my minding--or not minding--has anything--to do--with it." He brought his words out slowly and with separate efforts, as if they weighed heavily on his tongue. "We've got to consider what's best for the country all round, and I doubt if either of you is called upon to go." "Some of us have got to go," said Nicky. "Quite so. But I don't think it ought to be you, Nicky; or John, either." "I suppose," said Michael, "you mean it ought to be me." "I don't mean anything of the sort. One out of four's enough." "One out of four? Well then--" "That only leaves me to fight," said Dorothy. "I wasn't thinking of you, Michael. Or of Dorothy." They all looked at him where he sat, upright and noble, in his chair, and most absurdly young. Dorothy said under her breath: "Oh, you darling Daddy." "You won't be allowed to go, anyhow," said John to his father. "You needn't think it." "Why not?" "Well--." He hadn't the heart to say: "Because you're too old." "Nicky's brains will be more use to the country than my old carcass." Nicky thought: "You're the very last of us that can be spared." But he couldn't say it. The thing was so obvious. All he said was: "It's out of the question, your going." "Old Nicky's out of the question, if you like," said John. "He's going to be married. He ought to be thinking of his wife and children." "Of course he ought," said Anthony. "Whoever goes first, it isn't Nicky." "You ought to think of Mummy, Daddy ducky; and you ought to think of us," said Dorothy. "I," said John, "haven't got anybody to think of. I'm not going to be married, and I haven't any children." "I haven't got a wife and children yet," said Nicky. "You've got Veronica. You ought to think of her." "I am thinking of her. You don't suppose Veronica'd stop me if I wanted to go? Why, she wouldn't look at me if I didn't want to go." Suddenly he remembered Michael. "I mean," he said, "after my saying that I was going." Their eyes met. Michael's flickered. He knew that Nicky was thinking of him. "Then Ronny knows?" said Frances. "Of course she knows. You aren't going to try to stop me, Mother?" "No," she said. "I'm not going to try to stop you--this time." She thought: "If I hadn't stopped him seven years ago, he would be safe now, with the Army in India." One by one they got up and said "Good night" to each other. But Nicholas came to Michael in his room. He said to him: "I say, Mick, don't you worry about not enlisting. At any rate, not yet. Don't worry about Don and Daddy. They won't take Don because he's got a mitral murmur in his heart that he doesn't know about. He's going to be jolly well sold, poor chap. And they won't take the guv'nor because he's too old; though the dear old thing thinks he can bluff them into it because he doesn't look it. "And look here--don't worry about me. As far as I'm concerned, the War's a blessing in disguise. I always wanted to go into the Army. You know how I loathed it when they went and stopped me. Now I'm going in and nobody--not even mother--really wants to keep me out. Soon they'll all be as pleased as Punch about it. "And I sort of know how you feel about the War. You don't want to stick bayonets into German tummies, just because they're so large and oodgy. You'd think of that first and all the time and afterwards. And I shan't think of it at all. "Besides, you disapprove of the War for all sorts of reasons that I can't get hold of. But it's like this--you couldn't respect yourself if you went into it; and I couldn't respect myself if I stayed out." "I wonder," Michael said, "if you really see it." "Of course I see it. That's the worst of you clever writing chaps. You seem to think nobody can ever see anything except yourselves." When he had left him Michael thought: "I wonder if he really does see? Or if he made it all up?" They had not said to each other all that they had really meant. Of Nicky's many words there were only two that he remembered vividly, "Not yet." Again he felt the horror of the great empty space opened up between him and Nicky, deep and still and soundless, but for the two words: "Not yet." <hr style="width: 35%;"> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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