§ 7
but not all the world of joan was at war. the sheldrick circle, for example, after some wide fluctuations during which sydney almost became a nurse and babs nearly enlisted into the women’s legion, took a marked list under the influence of one of the sons-in-law towards pacifism. antonia, who had taken two german prizes at school, was speedily provoked by the general denunciation of “kultur” into a distinctly pro-german attitude. the sheldrick circle settled down on the whole as a pro-german circle, with a poor opinion of president wilson, a marked hostility to belgians, and a disposition to think the hardships of drowning by u-boats much exaggerated.
the sheldricks were like seedlings that begin flourishing and then damp off. from amusing schoolfellows they had changed into irritating and disappointing friends. energy leaked out of them at adolescence. they seemed to possess the vitality for positive convictions no longer, they displayed an instinctive hostility to any wave of popular feeling that threatened to swamp their weak but still obstinate individualities. their general attitude towards life was one of protesting refractoriness. whatever it was that people believed or did, you were given to understand by undertones and abstinences that the sheldricks knew better, and for the most exquisite reasons didn’t. all their friends were protesters and rebels and seceders, or incomprehensible poets, or inexplicable artists. and from the first the war was altogether too big and strong for them. confronted by such questions as whether fifty years of belligerent preparation, culminating in the most cruel and wanton invasion of a peaceful country it is possible to imagine, was to be resisted by mankind or condoned, the sheldricks fell back upon the 476counter statement that sir edward grey, being a landowner, was necessarily just as bad as a german junker, or that the government of russia was an unsatisfactory one.
in a few months it was perfectly clear to the sheldricks that they would have nothing to do with the war at all. they were going to ignore it. sydney just went on quietly doing her little statuettes that nobody would buy, little portrait busts of her sisters and suchlike things; now and then her mother contrived to get her a commission. babs kept on trying to get a part in somebody’s play; antonia continued to produce djibbahs in chocolate and grocer’s blue and similar tints. one saw the sisters drifting about london in costumes still trailingly pre-raphaelite when all the rest of womankind was cutting its skirts shorter and shorter, their faces rather pained in expression and deliberately serene, ignoring the hopes and fears about them, the stir, the huge effort, the universal participation. it was not their affair, thank you. they were not going to wade through this horrid war; they were going round.
every time joan went to see them, either they had become more phantomlike and incredible, or she had become coarser and more real. would they ever get round? she asked herself; and what would they be like when at last they attempted, if ever they attempted, to rejoin the main stream of human interests again?
they kept up their saturday evenings, but their gatherings became thinner and less and less credible as the war went on. the first wave of military excitement carried off most of the sightly young men, and presently the more capable and enterprising of the women vanished one after another to nurse, to join the women’s legion, to become substitute clerks and release men to volunteer, to work in canteens and so forth. there was, however, a certain coming and going of ambiguous adventurers, who in those early days went almost unchallenged between london and belgium on ambulance work, on mysterious missions and with no missions at all. belgian refugees drifted in and, when they found a lack of sympathy for their simple thirst for the destruction of germans under all possible circumstances, out again. then ireland called her own, and patrick lynch went off to die a martyr’s death 477with arms in his hands after three days of the most exhilarating mixed shooting in the streets of dublin. antonia discovered passionate memories as soon as he was dead, and nobody was allowed to mention the name of bunny in the sheldrick circle for fear of spoiling the emotional atmosphere. hetty reinhart, after some fluctuations, went khaki, flitted from one ministry to another in various sorts of clerical capacities, took such opportunities as offered of entertaining young officers lonely in our great capital, and was no more seen in hampstead. what was left of this little group in the hampstead quartier latin drew together into a band of resistance to the creeping approach of compulsory service.
huntley’s lofty scorn of the war had intensified steadily; the harsh disappointment of joan’s patriotism had stung him to great efforts of self-justification, and he became one of the most strenuous writers in the extreme pacifist press. not an act or effort of the allies, he insisted, that was not utterly vile in purpose and doomed to accelerate our defeat. not an act of the enemy’s that was not completely thought out, wisely calculated, and planned to give the world peace and freedom on the most reasonable terms. he was particularly active in preparing handbills and pamphlets of instruction for lifelong conscientious objectors to war service who had not hitherto thought about the subject. community of view brought him very close in feeling to both babs and sydney sheldrick. there was much talk of a play he was to write which was to demonstrate the absurdity of englishmen fighting germans just because germans insisted upon fighting englishmen, and which was also to bring out the peculiarly charming babsiness of babs. he studied her thoroughly and psychologically and physiologically and intensively and extensively.
by a great effort of self-control he abstained from sending his writings to joan. once however they were near meeting. on one of joan’s rare calls babs told her that he was coming to discuss the question whether he should go to prison and hunger-strike, or consent to take up work of national importance. babs was very full of the case for each alternative. she was doubtful which course involved the greatest moral courage. moral courage, it was evident, was 478being carried to giddy heights by huntley. it would be pure hypocrisy, he felt, to ignore the vital value of his writings, and while he could go on with these quite comfortably while working as a farm hand, with a little judicious payment to the farmer, their production would become impossible in prison. he must crucify himself upon the cross of harsh judgments, he felt, and take the former course. he wanted to make his views exactly clear to every one to avoid misunderstanding.
joan hesitated whether she should stay and insult him or go, and chose the seemlier course.
