Chapter SIX: Social Customs of the Islanders

We are now at a rest-camp, recharging our batteries after the fatigues of sea travel before proceeding to the conquest of Germany.

The camp is situated deep in rural England. At our feet, in a valley, lies an ancient city, dominated by a mighty cathedral. It was once a walled city, but only the gates remain now—King’s Gate and West Gate. At the top of the High Street stands a great rough-hewn statue of Alfred the Great—dead for more than a thousand years. He makes a fine figure, with his coat of mail and uplifted broadsword. Mr. Eddie Gillette, among whose sterling virtues sentiment finds no place, compares him, not unfavourably, with a New York traffic cop. Mr. Joe McCarthy, still dyspeptic from the effects of prolonged ocean travel, describes the deceased monarch as a tough guy, and adds further that in his opinion this is a dead town. Al Thompson, of finer clay, inspects the statue approvingly, then passes on with a handful of interested spectators to the cathedral, whose grey walls keep eternal vigil over the dust of Saxon, Norman, and English dead—much of it ancestral American dust.

Elderly gentlemen in maroon dressing-gowns conduct the party round, and in piping tones introduce the New World to the Old. But not all Old. In one nook of the great fabric, guarded by Old Glory itself, gleaming brightly in the twilight, stands an Innovation—a temporary shrine dedicated to fallen American soldiers, particularly those who have died in English hospitals from wounds received in France. After the War the memorial is to take the form of a permanent stained-glass window. At present in England people are not manufacturing stained-glass windows—only earning them.

The countryside is full of camps—typically English—not spacious and bewildering such as those which scared the mountaineer from Tennessee, but prim and tidy, like an English kitchen-garden. The white conical tents are set out in close, level rows, like cabbages. The Headquarters tent and the Officers’ Mess are fenced in by a ring of curious boundary-stones, set a few feet apart and carefully whitewashed. The district is full of English soldiers. We have never seen them before, and we regard them with interest. We note with gratification that they are in the main smaller than ourselves and not so well set-up, though sturdy enough. Their teeth appear to require attention: gold teeth have not yet reached this country. They wear ragged mustaches, and smoke eternal cigarettes. The language that they speak is entirely incomprehensible.

Their officers, on the other hand, present a decidedly gay and frivolous appearance. They look very young; they wear their caps at a rakish angle; they carry canes. They are secretly regarded by many of us as verging upon the Clarence class. But the old stagers of our camp warn us not to form our judgments too hastily. When we are able to read the biography which every British soldier carries upon his sleeve or breast—scraps of ribbon, service chevrons, wound stripes, and the like—we will realize that things, especially in England, are not always what they seem.

In fact, we have begun to realize this already. They are not communicative, the people we meet here. They talk little of the War, except possibly to belittle their own conduct thereof or disparage their own leaders; but we are dimly conscious that England is not making a display of company manners at present. Her luxurious private parks are scarred by horse-lines; her golf-courses are growing potatoes. Her great country-houses, badly in need of paint and plaster, are flying Red Cross flags, and convalescent soldiers in hospital blue lounge upon balustraded terraces where peacocks were wont to strut. Her automobiles appear to have enlisted in the Army: they wear a businesslike uniform of grey paint, and are driven by attractive young women in khaki. Every one appears to wear a uniform of some kind—certainly no one wears mourning—and all seem too busy to worry about ceremony.

When we arrived in this town, after our long cross-country journey from our landing port, we were conscious of a pleasant feeling of anticipation. We thought of the folk who had seen us off at home—cramming the railway stations, cheering, waving, weeping—and though we naturally did not expect such a demonstration, we did expect something. Well, it did not turn out that way. We arrived almost furtively, in the dead of night, in a station where one gas-lamp in six was burning. We were warned to fall in quietly, and to refrain from noise as we marched through the town.

“Not a very overwhelming display of cordiality, I’m afraid,” said Major Floyd; “but we are up against official secrets again. A lady called Dora:[1] you will become well acquainted with her. It is not officially known to any one—except the Boche, of course—that this is an American Rest Depot, so we are concealing the fact from the inhabitants. The streets are a bit dark, I’m afraid; but we are precious short of coal—supplying France and Italy as well as ourselves—and that hits our lighting arrangements rather hard. Besides, we have the Gothas to think of. Are your men ready to move off, Colonel? Very good: I’ll lead the way. You will notice our solitary attempt at the glad-hand business just outside the station.”

The “solitary attempt” proved to be a discreetly illuminated notice spanning the street on the _façade_ of an arch. It said: WELCOME, AMERICA!

As an emotional outburst the greeting was perhaps open to criticism on the score of reticence; but to some of us, who knew our stiff, angular, inarticulate England better than others, there was something rather moving about the whole idea.

We tramped under the sign. Those who had the fancy to turn and look up at the other face of the arch found another notice: GOD-SPEED!

“‘God-speed’! That’s a bit sudden,” observed a young machine-gunner to a grizzled English sergeant who was acting as assistant shepherd. “We’ve hardly arrived yet.”

“That ain’t meant for you, my lad,” replied the veteran. “You ain’t supposed to read that—yet. That’s for another lot of your boys what are starting off to-night for France. You’ll likely meet ’em coming down the ’ill as you goes up.”

We did. And when the event took place—when the two bands of tramping American exiles brushed hands for a moment in the soft summer darkness of a strange land—I fear there was some transgression of official regulations on the subject of silent and secret night marching. But, after all, there are limits to human virtue.

Yes, everybody here appears decidedly busy—especially the women. That shrewd observer of humanity, Al Thompson, does not fail to remark upon the fact in a letter to his wife:

_You get kind of used here to see a woman do all the chores
that we all considered a man’s job. Driving automobiles, or
cleaning windows high up in the air, or delivering mails, or
tending a street-car, or despatching trains. They have boys,
quite little fellers, to help them with the trains. The woman
does the work and the boy blows a whistle, like what you would
expect of a boy. I seen a whole bunch of girls one day outside
a factory, with their faces and hands stained yellow. That was
picric acid: they make shells with it. It spoils their looks
some, but they should worry. They just waved their hands and
laughed at us when we tried to josh them. I reckon the girls at
home are all doing that too now; but don’t you go for to stain
yourself yellow, my dear._

But the Islanders are not too busy to make an attempt to entertain us. Some of these attempts are rather formidable. To boys like Second Lieutenant Sam Richards and his crony Jim Hollis, in whose pleasant little home town far west of the Alleghenies every one knows every one else, and young men and maidens usually exchange invitations over the telephone (which instrument is practically unknown in English rural districts), and that awful shibboleth of English society, the language of the third person, is happily extinct, it is a little alarming to find upon the bulletin-board in the Mess a stiff square of white pasteboard bearing the legend:

+--------------------------------------+
| _Col. Adams and Officers_ |
| |
| LADY WYVERN-GRYPHON |
| |
| AT HOME |
| |
| SATURDAY, JULY 6TH, 3:30 P.M.-7:00 |
| |
| AT |
| BROADOAK PARK |
| |
| LAWN TENNIS R.S.V.P. |
+--------------------------------------+

Jim Hollis scrutinized this document whimsically. Then he turned to his companion.

“We must get this right,” he said. “Who is Lady Wy-Wy—?”

“Never mind,” said Sam. “Call her Lady Whiskey-Syphon—I bet the name isn’t pronounced the way it’s spelled, anyway.”

“Well,” continued Jim, “who _is_ Lady Whiskey-Syphon, and what does this ‘ad.’ mean?”

“It means,” replied Sam, whose sense of humour was always stimulated by the contemplation of British National institutions, “that this Lady has been away and now she’s back home.”

“For three and a half hours?”

“Yes. These people have a bunch of homes, like our millionaires. They own real-estate lots all over the country, and it stands to reason they have a home in each.”

“And why does she put ‘Lawn Tennis’ down there in that corner?”

“Because she’s going to _play_ lawn tennis, from three-thirty to seven. That’s easy.”

“But what does she want to tell us for? We are nothing in her young life.”

“She wants us to go play with her,” explained Sam gently. “Nobody can play lawn tennis by themselves. She wants _you_, boy.”

“Where does it say that?” enquired the incredulous James.

“It doesn’t say it. The English don’t say it. It would sound too eager. They just mention the event casually, and if you want to go you can.”

“But I don’t want to go.”

“Well, write and say so.”

“Why? It doesn’t tell me to do that on the card.”

“Doesn’t it? Jim Hollis, haven’t you got any sisters to tell you what things mean? Look at that R.S.V.P. down there! That’s the reference-number of the file, and you quote it in replying.”

Jim paled.

“Listen, how do you address anybody like that?” he enquired, despairingly.

Sam’s eyes twinkled.

“Ask the Adjutant,” he advised.

Reference to that overworked official elicited the information that the invitation had already been accepted by the Colonel on behalf of the Mess, and that if the regiment were still in England on July the sixth two or three officers would be detailed to accompany him to Broadoak Park.

“Me for the backwoods on the sixth!” murmured Master Hollis fervently.

But the very next day, as Jim and Sam were toiling up the hill to the camp after inspecting the cathedral, they were overtaken by an elderly automobile. It drew up beside them, and a rather gruff voice enquired:

“Won’t you get in and let me drive you up to the camp? I am going that way, anyhow.”

They accepted gratefully—it was a blazing hot day—and presently found themselves chatting composedly, with the American’s natural instinct for easy conversation, with a high-nosed, deep-voiced old lady in black.

“One ought to be thankful to be able to drive anywhere these days,” remarked their hostess—“let alone give any one a lift. Do you know how much petrol the Controller allows me? Ten gallons a month! And I live five miles from a railway station! It used to be six gallons, but I get a little more now because I am taking in more patients. My house is a hospital, you know.”

They did not know; but it did not seem to matter, for the old lady continued:

“I hope you are coming to my tennis-party on the sixth. You will meet some charming girls—mostly V.A.D.’s. You got a card, I suppose?”

Jim, shrinking back into the cushions, pressed uneasily upon the toe of his brother officer. But Lady Wyvern-Gryphon swept on:

“I realized afterwards how stupid I had been to send out the cards at all. It would have been much simpler and more considerate to do what I am doing now—pay an informal call on your Colonel and ask him to bring along any officers who might have nothing better to do on the day, instead of bothering busy men to answer silly written invitations. But one can never do a thing except in the way one has done it for forty years—even with a War on. You must have thought me very tiresome.” (She pronounced it “tarsome.”) “What quaint experiences you must be having among us!”

“We are having very pleasant experiences,” said Jim.

“That’s nice of you. You said it much more promptly than an Englishman would have done, too. Do you know,” continued this most informal _grande dame_, rounding suddenly upon the speaker, “that when you smile you are amazingly like my second son?”

“He is in France, I suppose?” hazarded Jim.

“Yes—he is in France. And—he is not coming back to me, I fear.” The old lady’s voice was as gruff as ever. “It happened at Le Cateau, nearly four years ago. He was mentioned in Despatches, though. One will always feel glad of that.”

“And proud,” added Sam Richards.

“Oh, yes—proud too. Pride is the greatest boon bestowed on mothers in war-time. I don’t know why the clergy are always preaching against it. Before this War I possessed four sons, and a certain modicum of pride. Now I have only one son, but I have four times as much pride. One finds it very sustaining. Have you boys mothers?”

Both boys nodded assent.

“Well, if you will give me their addresses I will write to them both, and say I have seen you. Mothers like first-hand information, you know.”

Visiting-cards were produced shyly, and disappeared into a little black bag.

“I have never been in America,” continued Lady Wyvern-Gryphon. “But one of my daughters-in-law is American. She came from Philadelphia. Is that anywhere near your homes? You know it, at any rate.”

They confessed that they lived some fifteen hundred miles from Philadelphia.

“Indeed!” remarked her ladyship, not at all perturbed. “That is interesting. We have no conception of distance in this country. Now tell me, how does an American country town differ from a town like this? What does a street look like, compared with one of ours?”

“Wider, and straighter,” said Jim.

“With maple trees growing along,” added Sam.

“The houses are wooden,” continued Jim, warming up—“painted white, with a piazza, and wire doors to keep the flies out in—”

“And no fences between the houses,” continued Sam, almost shouting. “And none in front. You just step right down on the street.”

“And in summer-time,” interrupted Jim, with eyes closed rapturously, “when the sun strikes down through the maple trees, an’—oh, _gee_, I wish I was there now!”

After that our two lieutenants took entire charge of the conversation. They conducted Lady Wyvern-Gryphon, street by street, block by block, through their home town. They described the railroad station, where the great trunk track runs through and the mail trains pause for brief refreshment on their long journey to the Pacific Coast. They described the Pullman cars; the porters with their white jackets and black faces; they related, with affectionate relish, one or two standard anecdotes aimed at that common target of American sarcasm, the upper berth. They described the street-car system, and explained carefully that to get from Sam’s house to Jim’s you had to change cars at the corner of M Street and Twenty-first—

“There’s a drug-store on the corner,” mentioned Jim. (Whether as a topographical pointer or in wistful reference to far-distant ice-cream soda, is not known.)

They passed on to the million-dollar Insurance Building downtown; the State University on the hill above; the Country Club, with its summer games and winter dances. Finally, being American and not English, they spoke frankly, naturally, and appreciatively of their womenkind. Altogether, being but boys, and homesick boys at that, they spoke all that was in their hearts, and incidentally conveyed considerable warmth to the heart of a rather formidable, extremely lonely, old lady.

They saluted politely when the time came to part, and informed their new friend that they were very pleased to have known her.

“And I am very pleased to have known _you!_” replied her ladyship, with a heartiness which would have surprised some of her friends. “Don’t bother about that tennis invitation. You probably won’t be here, anyway, to judge from the speed with which you all scuttle through this country. Come to lunch to-morrow instead, and tell me more.”

They went.

[1] D.O.R.A. Defence of the Realm Act.