Up and Down

So we put the tin box with the thermometer and the two cigarettes to be smoked on the rock one day in the middle of September, back in its curtained cave, and swam to land, lingering and lying on the sea and loath to go. Then we dressed and walked through the dappled shade of the olive trees on the cobbled paths between the vineyards to where on the dusty road our carriage waited for us, and so up to the Villa.

I had but little to do in the way of packing, for with this house permanently ours and the certainty (in spite of qualms) of coming back in a couple of months' time, I was making deposit of clothes here, and a few hours later I stood on the deck of the crowded steamer and saw the pier, with Francis standing white and tall on the end of it, diminish and diminish. The width of water between me and the enchanted island increased, and the foam of our wash grew longer, like a white riband endlessly laid out on a table of sapphire blue. All round me were crowds of German tourists, gutturally exclaiming on the beauty of the island and the excellence of the beer. And soon the haze of hot summer weather began to weave its veil between us and Alatri: it grew dim and unsubstantial; the solidity of its capes and cliffs melted and lost its clarity of outline till it lay dream-like and vague, a harp-shaped shell of grey floating on the horizon to the west. Already, before we got to Naples, it seemed years ago that I sat on its beaches and swam in its seas with a friend called Francis.

AUGUST, 1914

Out of the serene stillness, and with the swiftness of the hurricane, the storm came up. It was in June that there appeared the little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, when the heir to the Austrian throne was murdered at Serajevo. There it hung on the horizon, and none heeded, though in the womb of it lurked the seed of the most terrific tempest of blood and fire that the world has ever known. Suddenly in the last week of July that seed fructified, shooting out monstrous tendrils to East and West. A Note was sent from Vienna to Servia making demands, and insisting on terms that no State could possibly entertain, if it was henceforth to consider itself a free country. Servia appealed to Russia for protection, and Russia remonstrated with those who had framed or (more accurately) those who had sent that Note. The remonstrance fell on ears that had determined not to hear, and the throttling pressure of the inflexible hands was not abated. London and Paris appealed for a conference, for arbitration that might find a peaceful solution, for already all Europe saw that here was a firebrand that might set the world aflame. And then we began to see who it was that had caused it to be lit and flung, and who it was that stood over it now, forbidding any to quench it.

Out of the gathering darkness there arose, like some overtopping genius, the figure of Germany, with face inexorable and flint-like, ready at last for Der Tag, for the dawning of which during the last forty years she had been making ready, with patient, unremitting toil, and hell in her heart. She was clad in the shining armour well known in the flamboyant utterances of her megalomaniac Nero, and her hand grasped the sword that she had already half-drawn from its scabbard. She but waited, as a watcher through the night waits for the morn that is imminent, for the event that her schemes had already made inevitable, and on the first sign of the mobilization of the Russian armies, demanded that that mobilization should cease. Long years she had waited, weaving her dream of world-wide conquest; now she was ready, and her edict went forth for the dawning of The Day, and, like Satan creating the world afresh, she thundered out: "Let there be night." Then she shut down her visor and unsheathed her sword.

She had chosen her moment well, and, ready for the hazard that should make her mistress of the world, or cause her to cease from among the nations, she paid no heed to Russia's invitation to a friendly conference. She wished to confer with none, and she would be friendly with none whom she had not first battered into submission, and ground into serfdom with her iron heel. On both her frontiers she was prepared; on the East her mobilization would be complete long before the Russian troops could be brought up, and gathering certain of her legions on that front, she pulled France into the conflict. For on the Western front she was ready, too; on the word she could discharge her troops in one bull-like rush through Belgium, and, holding the shattered and dispersed armies of France in check, turn to Russia again. Given that she had but those two foes to deal with, it seemed to her that in a few weeks she must be mistress of Europe, and prepared at high noon of Der Tag to attack the only country that really stood between her and world-wide dominion. She was not seeking a quarrel with England just yet, and she had strong hopes that, distracted by the imminence of civil war in Ireland, we should be unable to come to the help of our Allies until our Allies were past all help. Here she was staking on an uncertainty, for though she had copious information from her army of spies, who in embassy and consulate and city office had eaten the bread of England, and grasped every day the hands of English citizens, it could not be regarded as an absolute certainty that England would stand aside. But she had strong reasons to hope that she would.

It was on the first day of this month that Germany shut her visor down and declared war on Russia. Automatically, this would spread the flame of war over France, and next day it was known that Germany had asked leave to march her armies through Belgium, making it quite clear that whatever answer was given her, she would not hesitate to do it. Belgium refused permission, and appealed to England. On Monday, August 3rd, Germany was at war with France, and began to move her armies up to and across the Belgian frontier, violating the territory she had sworn to respect, and strewing the fragments of her torn-up honour behind her. Necessity, she averred, knew no law, and since it was vital for the success of her dream of world-conquest that her battalions should pass through Belgium, every other consideration ceased to exist for her. National honour, the claim, the certificate of a country's right to be reckoned among the civilizing powers of the world, must be sacrificed. She burned in the flame of the war she had kindled the patent of her rights to rank among civilized states.

It was exactly this, which meant nothing to her, that meant everything to us, and it upset the calculation on which Germany had based her action, namely, that England was too much distracted by internal conflict to interfere. There was a large party, represented in the Government, which held that the quarrel of Germany with France and Russia was none of our business, and that we were within our rights to stand aside. All that Monday the country waited to know what the decision of the Cabinet and of the House would be.

The suspense of those hours can never be pictured. It belongs to the nightmare side of life, where the very essence of the threatening horror lies in the fact that it is indefinite. But this I know, that to thousands of others, even as to myself, England, from being a vague idea in the background which we took for granted and did not trouble about, leaped into being as a mother, or a beloved personage, of whose flesh and bone we were, out of whose womb we had sprung. All my life, I am willing to confess I had not given her a thought, I had not even consciously conceived of her as a reality; she had been to me but like the heroine of some unreal sentimental tale, a thing to blush at if she was publicly spoken of. But on those days she, who had hitherto meant nothing to me, sprang to life, deep-bosomed, with patient hands and tender eyes, in which was no shadow of reproach for all those years of careless contempt. And by the curious irony of things, on the day that she was revealed to me, she stood in a place, from which, if she chose, she could withdraw herself into isolation, and from which, if she chose, she could step forth to meet the deadliest peril that had ever assailed her. But even in the moment of the first knowledge and love of her that had ever entered my soul, I prayed in a silent agony of anxiety that she should leave her sheltered isle for the unimaginable danger of the tempest that raged beyond the sea that was hers. For, indeed, if she did not, she was but a phantom of the pit; no mother of mine, but some unspeakable puppet, a thing to be hidden away in her shame and nakedness.

It was known that night that England would not tolerate the violation of Belgian soil, and had sent an ultimatum to Germany which would expire in twenty-four hours. And from the whole country there went up one intense sigh of relief that we were resolved to embark on what must be the most prodigious war that the world had ever seen. "Give War in our time, O Lord!" was the prayer of all who most truly knew that the only peace possible to us was a peace which would stamp the name of England with indelible infamy. And God heard their prayer, and on Wednesday we woke to a world where all was changed. The light-hearted, luxurious, unreflective days were gone, never probably in our time to return. Already the tempest of fire and blood was loosened in Europe; a line was drawn across the lives of everyone, and for the future there were but two periods in one's consciousness, the time before the war, and war-time.

It was during this week that I had a long letter from Francis written before the English ultimatum was known, but delayed in posts that were already scrutinized and censored. Though I had no friend in the world so intimate as he, his letter revealed him now as a person strangely remote, speaking an unintelligible language. So little a while ago I had spoken the same tongue as he; now all he said seemed to be gibberish, though his sentiments were just such as I might have expressed myself, if, since then, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday had not been among the days of my life.

"Things look black," he said, "and the papers, for once reflecting the mind of the people, are asking what Italy will do, if Germany and Austria go to war with France and Russia. I believe (and, remember, I speak entirely from the Italian point of view, for verily I have long ceased to be English) that it is frankly impossible that we should range ourselves side by side with Austria, our hereditary foe. It seems one of the things that can't happen; no ministry could remain in office that proposed that. And yet we are the ally of Austria and Germany, unless it is true, as the Corriere tells us, that the terms of our alliance only bind us to them in the event of aggression on the part of two nations of the Triple Entente. Be that as it may, I don't believe we can come in with Austria.

"I am extremely glad of it, for I am one of those queer creatures who do not believe that a quarrel between two countries can be justly settled by making a quantity of harmless young men on both sides shoot each other. I don't see that such a method of settling a dispute proves anything beyond showing which side has the better rifles, and has been better trained, unless you deliberately adopt the rule of life that 'Might is Right.' If you do let us be consistent, and I will waylay Caterina as she goes home with the money Seraphina has given her for the washing, rob, and, if necessary, murder her. If she proves to be stronger than me, she will scratch my face and bring her money safely home. And her father will try to shoot me next day, and I will try to shoot him. That's the logical outcome of Might is Right.

"I am glad, too, of this, that I myself am a denationalized individual, and if I have a motherland at all, it is this beloved stepmother-land, who for so long has treated me as one of her children. Damnable as I think war is, I think I could fight for her, if anyone slapped her beautiful face. And yet how could I fight against the country to whom we owe not only so much of the art and science, but of Thought itself? Germany taught mankind how to think.

"Let me know how things go in England. It looks as if you could keep out of this hurly-burly. So if Italy does too, I hope to see you here again in September. Seraphina suggests that Italy should make pretence of being friends with the 'bestia fedente,' by which she means the Austrians, and that when they are fighting the Russians, she should run swiftly from them and seize the Trentino again. There seems much good sense in this, for 'the Trentino is ours, and it is right and proper to take what belongs to us.'

"England must be peculiarly beastly with all these disturbances going on. Why don't you pack up your tooth-brush and your comb and come back again at once? The Palazzo a mare is better than Piccadilly, and the purple figs are ripe, and the cones are dropping from the stone-pine, and never were there such fat kernels for Seraphina to fry in oil. Perhaps if you come back the strega would continue walking; she seems to have had no exercise since you were here. Your room is empty, and the door makes sorrowful faces at me as I go along the passage. It frowns at me, and says it isn't I it wants. And I share the silent verdict of your door.

"I don't see what quarrel England can have with Germany, and it is unthinkable that Italy should go in with the Central Powers against the Triple Entente. Besides, how is England to fight Germany? It is the elephant and the whale. England hasn't got an army, has it? I can't remember anything connected with soldiers in England, except some sort of barracks with a small temple or chapel in front of it somewhere in St. James's Park. And I suppose the German fleet is only a sort of herring-boat compared to a liner, if it comes to ships. So really I don't see how the two countries could fight each other even if they wanted to.

"Even if you don't come now, you'll be certain to be back in September, won't you? Otherwise I shall think that there is some validity in presentiments, for you went away with a notion that it was not only for a month or two that you went. Better put an end to vain superstition by coming back before.

    "Ever yours,
    "FRANCIS."

"P.S. – Send a wire if you are coming. They say the posts are disorganized.

"Donna Margherita has had words with Miss Machonochie's cook. I'm sure I don't want any harm to come to Miss Machonochie or her household, but I think there must already be a leak in her cistern. That would be a good day's work for Donna Margherita, wouldn't it? Otherwise, when we all have plenty of water, why should Miss M. alone be wanting it?"

Reading this, I felt for a moment here and there that the events of this last week must have been a dream, so vividly did the island and the island life etch themselves on a page. For a half second I could smell the frying of the pine-kernels, could hear Pasqualino's quick step across the passage, as he entered from his Brangäene duty on the balcony to tell us that Miss Machonochie's foot was coming firmly up the steps. But the next moment the huge background of war was set up again, and all these things were strangely remote and dim. They had happened, perhaps, at least I seemed to remember them, but they no longer had any touch of reality about them, were of the quality of dreams… The same unreality possessed Francis's suave surmises about the improbability of England's going to war with Germany, for the only thing that was actual was that she had done so. And not less unreal was the fact of Francis himself living the life that he and I also had lived before this cataclysm came. All that belonged to some prehistoric period which ceased something less than a week ago. Less than a week ago, too, I had been baptized and become a member of England, and already, so swiftly does the soul no less than the body adjust itself to changed conditions, the sense of having ever been otherwise, had vanished as completely as the aching of a tooth after the offender has been dealt with, and you can no longer imagine the pain it gave you.

But the letter was a difficult one to answer; I could not convey to him what had happened to me, any more than in this letter he could, except for a transient second, convey to me a realization of what had not happened to him. I began a dozen times: "I have just been to Trafalgar Square, and cannot picture to you the thrill that 'Rule, Britannia'" – Clearly that would not do. I tried again with a jest to hide the seriousness of it: "What do they know of England who only Italy know?" I tried yet again: "Since seeing you something has happened that makes – "

And at that moment the cry of a newsvendor in the street made me rush out for the sixth time that afternoon to see what the latest information was. Liège still held out, it seemed, though it was rumoured that certain of its forts had fallen. But still the most gallant of the little States held up the Titanic invasion that was pouring down upon it, maintaining in the face of terrific pressure its protest and its resistance to the onrush of that infamous sea, in the depths of which German honour already lay drowned. How could any man fail to know what the sense of the native land, of patriotism meant, when he saw what a supreme meaning it actually did have? It is the fashion of cynics to say that mankind will suffer and deny themselves for the sake of some definite concrete thing, like money or a jewel or a picture, but never for an idea. Here was an instance that blew such cynicism to atoms. Already the soil of Belgium, its cities and its plains were lost, and its people knew it But they fought, beaten and indomitable, just because it was an idea that inspired them – namely, the freedom of those who were already conquered (for none could doubt the outcome), the independence of the country which must soon for certain lay beneath the heel of Prussian murderers, who slew their children and violated their women, and could no more touch the spirit of the people than they could quench the light of the moon. Normally, perhaps, we more often feel the pull and the press of material things; but when there is heard in a man's soul the still small voice, which is greater than fire or earthquake, his true being wakes, and at the spiritual call, whether of religion or love or patriotism, he answers to an idea that far transcends all the beckonings of material sense. It is then that those we thought smug and comfort-smothered, bound in the bonds of peaceful prosperity, break from their earth-bound fetters and their sleep at the voice of the God which is immanent in them. There is no material profit to gain, but all to lose, and eagerly, like ballast that keeps them down, they cast everything else overboard, and sweep soaring into the untarnishable sunlight of their real being. For it is not only the stocks and stones of his native land that a man loves, any more than it is just the eyebrows and the throat of his mistress that he worships. He loves them because they are symbols and expression of her who inhabits them. They are the bodily tokens of the beloved spirit that dwells there. Under that inspiration the dumb lips prophecy, as the coal from the altar is laid on them, and their land becomes a temple filled, even in the darkness of their affliction, with the glory of the Lord. The terror by night and the arrow that flieth by day have no power to daunt them, for high above earthly things is set their house of defence.

There rose then from this quiet little land, sure and untroubled as the rising of the moon, a race of heroes. From further east, across the Rhine, there was another rising, the monstrous birth of a presence and a portent undreamed of. It towered into the sky, and soon at its breath the forts of Liège and of Namur crumbled and fell, and it passed on phallic and murderous over the corpses of slain children and violated mothers. Those who thought they knew Germany could not at first believe that this was the spirit and these the infamies of the land they loved. She who had stood for so much to them, she the mother of music, the cradle of sciences, the lover of all that was lovely, was changed as by the waving of a magician's rod into a monster of hell, oozing with the slime of the nethermost pit. Many could not credit the tales that flooded the press, and put them down to mere sensational news-mongering. But they were true, though they were not the whole truth; the half of it had not been told us. The race of musicians, scientists, artists, of chivalrous knights, still took as their motto: "The women and children first." But they played upon the words, and smiled to each other at the pun. Pleading the necessity that knows no law, they had torn up their treaty, avowing that it was but a scrap of paper, and dishonouring for ever the value of their word, now, like some maniac, they mutilated the law they had murdered. It may be that Germany was but the first victim of Prussian militarism, and Belgium the second; but Germany had sold its soul, and it kept its bargain with the power that had bought it.

While still Francis's letter remained unanswered on my desk, I received another from him, written several days later, which had made a quicker transit.

"This is all damnable," he said. "Of course we had to come in when Belgium was invaded. I skulked all day in the house while it was yet uncertain, for I simply dared not show an English face in the streets for shame. Thank God that's all right. I never thought I could have cared so much. They sang 'Rule, Britannia,' in the Piazza to-day, wonderfully vague and sketchy. You know what my singing is, but I tell you I joined. It was a strange thing to hear that tune in a country which was supposed to be allied with the nation on whom England has declared war, but there it was. They say that Italy has declared neutrality. You'll know by the time you get this whether that is so. By the way, if it is true that we are sending an Expeditionary Force to France, just send me a wire, will you? The papers are full of news one day which is contradicted the next, and one doesn't know what to believe about England's attitude and doings.

"There's no news on this dead-alive island. I feel frightfully cut off, and it's odd to feel cut off in the place where you've lived for so long. I began an article on the early French mystics last week, but I can't get on with it. Mind you send me a telegram.

    "FRANCIS."

I sent the telegram saying that an Expeditionary Force to help the French to hold their frontier had already landed in France, and more men were being sent. Next morning I received a brief telegram in answer:

"Am starting for England to-day."

Liège fell, Namur fell, and like a torrent that has gathered strength and volume from being momentarily damned up, the stream of the invaders roared through France, and on her as well as on England descended the perils of their darkest and most hazardous hour. Sheer weight of metal drove the line of the Allies back and back, wavering and dinted but never broken. In England, but for the hysterical screams of a few journalists who spoke of the "scattered units" of a routed army making their way back singly or in small companies, the temper of the nation remained steadfast and unshaken, and in France, though daily the thunder of the invaders boomed ever nearer to Paris, nothing had power to shake the inflexible will of our ally. It mattered not that the seat of the Government must be transferred to Bordeaux, and thither they went; but the heart of France beat on without a tremor, waiting for the day which none doubted would come, when they turned and faced the advancing tide, breasted it, and set up the breakwater that stretched from the North Sea to the borders of Switzerland. Right across France was it established, through ruined homesteads and devastated valleys, and against it in vain did the steel billows beat.

Here I have a little anticipated events, for it was in the days while still the Germans swept unchecked across north-eastern France that Francis arrived, after a devious and difficult journey, that brought him on shipboard at Havre. He had no psychological account to give of the change that had occurred between his first letter and his telegram; he had simply been unable to do anything else than come.

"I know you like analysis," he said, "but really there is no analysis to give you. I was, so I found myself, suddenly sick with anxiety that England should come into the war (I think I wrote you that), and when your telegram came, saying we were sending a force abroad, I merely had to come home and see if there was anything for me to do. One has got to do something, you know, got to do something! Fancy my having been English all these years, and it's only coming out now, like getting measles when you're grown up."

There was no need then to explain, and Francis, in his philosophical manner, tried to define what it was that had so moved him, and found, as so often happens when we attempt to fit words to a force that is completely unmaterial, that he could at first only mention a quantity of things that it was not. It was not that he felt the smallest affection for London, or Lincoln, or Leeds; he did not like Piccadilly any more than he had done before, or the mud, or the veiled atmosphere. Nor did he regard any of the inhabitants of our island with a greater warmth than previously. Besides myself, he had after his long absence abroad no one whom he could call a friend, and of the rest, the porter who had carried his luggage to the train at Southampton had not thanked him for a reasonable tip; the guard had been uncivil; the motor driver who brought him to my house was merely a fool. Indeed, whatever component part of the entity that made up England he considered, he found he disliked it, and yet the thought of all those disagreeable things as a whole had been enough to make him leave the siren isle, and come post-haste across the continent to get to that surly northern town, in which he had not set foot for a dozen years. And, being here, he did not regret, as an impulsive and ill-considered step, his exile from Alatri. There was no fault to be found with that; it had been as imperative as the physical needs of thirst and hunger. He got up, gesticulating, in Italian fashion.

"Where does it come from?" he said. "What is it that called me? Is it something from without? Is it a mixture, a chemical soul-mixture of the grumpy porter and the grey sea, and this dismal, half-lit afternoon that is considered a lovely day in London? Or is it from within, some instinct bred from fifty generations of English blood, that just sat quiet in me and only waited till it was wanted? I hate doing things without knowing the reason why I do them. I always said 'Why?' when I was a child, and I only don't say 'Why?' now, because if I want to know something, I sit and think about it instead of asking other people. But all the way here I've been considering it, and I can't see why I had to come back. I don't think it's only something internal. There's a magnet outside that suddenly turned its poles to us, and instantly we jumped to it like iron filings and stuck there. There's no shirking it. There I was in Italy, saying to myself that I wasn't an iron filing, and should stop exactly where I was. But the magnet didn't care. It just turned towards me, and I jumped. It will keep me attached, I suppose, as long as there's any use for me."

He was feeling his way gropingly but unerringly down into himself, and I listened as this, the simplest of men, but that deft surgeon of minds, cut and dissected down into his own.

"The magnet, the magnet!" he said. "I think that the magnet is something that lies behind mere patriotism. Patriotism perhaps is the steel of which it is made; it is the material through which the force is sent, the channel of its outpouring, but … but it isn't only to put myself at the disposal of England in my infinitesimal manner that I have come back. England is the steel of the magnet – yes, just that; but England isn't the force that magnetizes it."

He dropped down on the hearth-rug, and lay there with the back of his hands over his eyes, as he so often lay on the beach at the Palazzo a mare.

"I haven't wasted all those years at Alatri," he said, "when I was gardening and mooning about and looking at the sea. I have come to realize what I remember saying to you once, when I picked up a bit of green stone on the beach, that it was you or me and God. To do that I had got to get out of myself… We collect a hard shell round ourselves like mussels or oysters, and we speak of it as 'ours.' It's just that which we are bound to get rid of, if we are to see things in any way truly. We talk of 'having' things; that's the illusion we suffer from. We can't enter into our real kingdom till we quite get rid of the sense that anything is ours, thus abdicating from the kingdom we falsely believed to be our own. That's the glorious and perfect paradox of mysticism. We have everything the moment we get rid of ourselves, and the sense that we have anything. You can express it in a hundred ways: the lover expresses it when he says: 'Oh, my beloved, I am you!' Christ expresses it when He says: 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' As long as you cling to anything, you can't get at your soul, in which is God.

"Patriotism, standing by the honour of your country when your country is staking itself on a principle, seems to me a materialization of this force, the steel through which it can act. Well, when you believe in a principle, as I do, you've got to live up to your belief in it, and suffer any amount of personal inconvenience. You mustn't heed that, or else you are not getting outside yourself. So if England wants a limb or an eye, or anything else, why, it's hers, not mine."

He was silent a moment.

"And perhaps there's another thing, another drama, another war going on," he said. "Do you remember some fable in Plato, where Socrates says that all that happens here upon earth is but a reflection, an adumbration of the Real? Is it possible, do you think, that in the sphere of the eternal some great conflict is waging, and Michael and his angels are fighting against the dragon? Plato is so often right, you know. He says that is why beauty affects the soul, because the soul is reminded of the true beauty, which it saw once, and will see again. Why else should we love beauty, you know?"

He got up with a laugh.

"But it's puzzling work is talking, as Mr. Tulliver said. However, there's my guess at the answer of the riddle, as to why I came home. And it really is such a relief to me to find that I didn't cling to what I had. I was always afraid that I might, when it came to the point. But it wasn't the slightest effort to give it up, all that secure quiet life; the effort would have been not to give it up. I don't in the least want to be shot, or taken prisoner, or brutally maimed, but if any of those things are going to happen to me, I shan't quarrel with them."

"And when the war is over?" I asked.

"Why, naturally, I shall go back to Alatri by the earliest possible train and continue thinking. That's what I'm alive for, except when it's necessary to act my creed, instead of spelling out more of it. I say, may we have dinner before long? This beastly bracing English air makes me very hungry."

Francis refused all thought of getting a commission, since it seemed to him that this was not doing the thing properly, and enlisted next day as a private. For myself, since circumstances over which I had no control prevented my doing anything of the sort, I found work connected with the war which to some extent was a palliative of the sense of uselessness. It was quite dull, very regular, and entailed writing an immense quantity of letters.

And at this point I propose to pass over a whole year in which the grim relentless business went on. Like wrestlers, the opposing armies on the Western Front were locked in a deadly grip, each unable to advance, each refusing to give ground. On the east Russia advanced and was swept back again; in the Balkans, owing to our inept diplomacy Turkey and Bulgaria joined the enemy. During the spring Italy abandoned her neutrality and joined the Allies. Expeditions were sent out to Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles. For a year the war flamed, and the smoke of its burning overshadowed the earth.

SEPTEMBER, 1915