He looked at a rosebud as though it interested him. Then he remarked rather casually:
"I thought," he said, "that if I was to go to war I'd better do the thing properly. It seemed--sort of half and half--not to be eligible for the trenches.... I ought to have told you...."
"I was shy about it at first.... I thought perhaps the war would be over before it was necessary to discuss anything.... Didn't want to go into it."
"Exactly," said Mr. Britling as though that was a complete explanation.
"It's been a good year for your roses," said Hugh.
Hugh was to stop the night. He spent what seemed to him and every one a long, shy, inexpressive evening. Only the small boys were really natural and animated. They were much impressed and excited by his departure, and wanted to ask a hundred questions about the life in the trenches. Many of them Hugh had to promise to answer when he got there. Then he would see just exactly how things were. Mrs. Britling was motherly and intelligent about his outfit. "Will you want winter things?" she asked....
But when he was alone with his father after every one had gone to bed they found themselves able to talk.
"This sort of thing seems more to us than it would be to a French family," Hugh remarked, standing on the hearthrug.
"Yes," agreed Mr. Britling. "Their minds would be better prepared.... They'd have their appropriate things to say. They have been educated by the tradition of service--and '71."
"The older men ought to go before you boys. Who is to carry on if a lot of you get killed?"
Hugh reflected. "In the stiffest battle that ever can be the odds are against getting killed," he said.
"One in three or four in the very hottest corners."
"Every one is going through something of this sort."
"All the decent people, at any rate," said Mr. Britling....
"It will be an extraordinary experience. Somehow it seems out of proportion--"
"With life generally. As one has known it."
"It isn't in proportion," Mr. Britling admitted.
He considered his phrasing. "It's not," he said, "as though one was going into another part of the same world, or turning up another side of the world one was used to. It is just as if one had been living in a room and one had been asked to step outside.... It makes me think of a queer little thing that happened when I was in London last winter. I got into Queer Company. I don't think I told you. I went to have supper with some students in Chelsea. I hadn't been to the place before, but they seemed all right--just people like me--and everybody. And after supper they took me on to some people _they_ didn't know very well; people who had to do with some School of Dramatic Art. There were two or three young actresses there and a singer and people of that sort, sitting about smoking cigarettes, and we began talking plays and books and picture shows and all that stuff; and suddenly there was a knocking at the door and some one went out and found a policeman with a warrant on the landing. They took off our host's son.... It had to do with a murder...."