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Non-Combatants and Others

<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> <h3>EVENING AT VIOLETTE</h3> <h4>1</h4> After supper Kate got out the good coffee cups, and they waited for the Vinneys. Kate was rather pink, and wore a severe blouse, in which she looked plain; it was a mortification she thought she ought to practise when the Vinneys came. Evie was skilfully altering a hat. Alix made a pen-and-ink sketch of her as she bent over it. Mrs. Frampton knitted a sock. The Evening Thrill came in, and Kate opened it, for Mrs. Frampton liked to hear tit-bits of news while she worked. 'Stories impossible to doubt,' read Kate, in her prim, precise voice, 'reach us continually of atrocities practised by the enemy....' She read several, unsuitable for these pages. Mrs. Frampton clicked horror with her tongue. The papers she took in were rich in such stories. As it was impossible to doubt them, she did not try. Possibly they gave life a certain dreadful savour. 'To think of the march of civilisation, and this still going on,' Mrs. Frampton commented. 'I'm sure any one would think they'd be ashamed.' Kate said, with playful acidity (Kate had reached what with many is a playful age), 'Thank you, Alix. Thank you ever so much, Alix, for getting between me and the lamp.' Alix moved, her attempt foiled. Kate read next the letter of a private soldier at the front. 'The Boches are all cowards. They can't stand against our boys. They fly like rabbits when we charge with the bayonet. You should hear them squeal, like so many pigs. There's not a German private in the army that wants to fight. The officers have to keep flogging them on the whole time.' 'Poor things, I'm sure one can't but be sorry for them,' said Mrs. Frampton. 'Knit two and make one, purl two, slip one, pass the slipped one over, drop four and knit six.' (Or anyhow, something of that sort, for she had got to the heel, as one unfortunately at last must.) 'It's wonderful how long the war goes on, since all the Germans are like that,' said Kate, without conscious irony, as she took up her own knitting. Hers was a body-belt. 'I believe this new wool is different from the last. Somewhat stringier, it seems. Brown will have to take it back, if it is.' 'I say, just fancy,' said Evie, 'those sequin tunics at B. & H.'s have come down to seven and eleven three. I think I could rise to that, even in war time.' The war mainly affected Evie by reducing the demand for hats, and consequently lowering the salary she received at the exclusive and ladylike milliner's where she worked. As she spoke she caught sight of her three-quarter likeness as etched by Alix. 'Goodness gracious,' she commented. 'You've made me look anything on earth! I mayn't be much, but I hope I'm not that sort of freak.' 'It's very good,' said Alix complacently. 'Rather particularly good. I shall take it to the School on Monday and show it to Mr. Bendish.' 'It may be good,' said Evie, 'since you say so. All I say is, it isn't me. It's more like some wild woman out of a caravan. Don't you go telling people it's me, or they'll be coming to shut me up. There's the bell; that's them.' The Vinney party arrived. It consisted of Mr. Vincent Vinney, a bright young solicitor of twenty-eight; his lately acquired wife, a pretty girl who laughed when he was witty, which was often; his young brother Sidney, a stout, merry youth of nineteen, a bank clerk; and their cousin Miss Simon, the fat girl in the sailor blouse, which was, it seemed, her evening toilette also. (In case some should blame the Vinney brothers for not taking an active part in the war, it may be remarked that the elder supported a wife and the younger a mother, that they represented a class which, for several good reasons, produces fewer soldiers than any other, and that they both belonged to the Clerks' Drill Corps, and wore several flags on their bicycles. And young Mrs. Vinney belonged to a Voluntary Aid Detachment, not at present in working.) They came in with the latest news. The British had been driven back out of a thousand yards of trench they had taken. They hadn't enough ammunition. 'Well,' said Mrs. Frampton, knitting, and really more interested in her heel than in the fortunes of war, 'it's all very dreadful to think of. But I suppose we must leave it in the hands of the Almighty, who always moves in a mysterious way.' (Mrs. Frampton had been brought up evangelically, and so mentioned the Almighty more casually than Kate, who was High, thought fit.) 'Well, what I say is,' said young Mrs. Vinney, who was of a cheerful habit, 'it's not a bit of use being depressed by the news, because no one can ever tell if it's true or not. It's all from that Bureau, and we all know what they are. Why, they said there weren't any Russians in England, when every one knew there were crowds, and they always say the Zepp. raids don't do any damage to factories and arsenals, and every one knows they do. They don't seem to mind what they say.' 'Well, for my part,' Evie said, 'I don't see why we shouldn't all be as chirpy as we can. We can't help by being glum, can we?' 'That's just it,' said Mrs. Vinney. 'Now, there's the theatre. Of course, you know, Vin and I wouldn't go to anything really festive just now, like the Girl on the Garden Wall, but I'm not ashamed to say we did go to the Man Who Stayed Behind.' 'Why wouldn't you go to anything really festive?' Alix asked, curious as to the psychology of this position. Mrs. Vinney looked round for sympathy. 'Why, what a question! It's not the moment, of course. One wouldn't like to. You wouldn't, would you?' 'Oh, me. I'd go to anything I thought would amuse me.' 'Well,' Mrs. Vinney decided, 'I suppose you and I aren't a bit alike. I just couldn't, and there it is. I dare say it's all my silliness. But with the men out there in such danger, and laying down their lives the way they're doing ... well, I couldn't sit and look at the Girl on the Garden Wall, not if I had a stall free. The way I see it is, the men are fighting for us women, and where should we be but for them, and the least we can do is not to forget all about them, seeing gay musical plays. The way I'm made, I suppose, and I don't pretend to judge for others.' 'It's all a question of taste and feeling,' Kate pronounced absently, more interested in a new stitch she was introducing into her body-belt. The fat dark girl, Miss Simon, came in on the mention of women. It was her subject. 'Women's work in war time is every bit as important as men's, that's what I say; only they don't get the glory.' Mrs. Vinney giggled and looked at the others. 'Now Rachel's off again. She's a caution when she gets on the woman question. She spent most of her time in Holloway in the old days, didn't you, dear?' 'She thinks she ought to have the vote,' Sid Vinney explained to Alix in a whisper. Alix, who had hitherto moved in circles where every one thought, as a matter of course, that they ought to have the vote, disappointed him by her lack of spontaneous mirth. Miss Simon was inquiring, undeterred by these comments, 'Who keeps the country at home going while the men are at the war? Who brings up the families? Who nurses the soldiers? What do women get out of a war, ever?' 'The salvation of their country, Miss Simon,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'won for them by brave men.' 'After all,' said Sid, 'the women can't fight, you know. They can't fight for their country.' Miss Simon regarded him with scorn. 'How much are you fighting for your country, I'd like to know?' 'One for you, Sid,' said Evie cheerily, ignoring Sid's aggrieved, 'Well, you know I can't leave mother.' 'And fighting isn't everything,' Miss Simon went on, 'and war time isn't everything. There's women's work in peace time. What about Octavia Wills that did so much for housing? Wasn't she helping her country? And, for war work, what price Florence Nightingale? What would the country have done without her, and what did she get out of all she did?' Mrs. Frampton, who had not read the life of that strong-minded person, but cherished a mid-Victorian vision of a lady with a lamp, sounder in the heart than in the head, said, 'She kept her place as a woman, Miss Simon.' Evie, who was not listening much, finding the subject tedious, put in vaguely, 'After all, when it comes to fighting, we are left in the lurch, aren't we?' Sid said, 'Oh dear no, Miss Evie. What price Christabel and Co.? They ought to have had the iron cross all round, the militants ought. They did more to earn it than the Huns ever did.' 'Cheap sarcasm,' said Miss Simon, 'is no argument. And I don't blame any woman for using what means she's got. There are times when a woman's got to forget herself.' Kate said, 'I don't think a woman's ever got to forget herself,' and there was a murmur of applause. Alix giggled. She wondered if social evenings at Violette were often like this. 'You don't understand,' said the round-faced girl helplessly. 'You may be all right, in your station of life, but you've got to look at other women's—the poor. We've got to do something about the poor. The vote would help us.' 'There have always,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'been the poor, and there always will be.' 'That's just why,' suggested Alix, momentarily joining in, 'it might be worth while to do something about them.' Miss Simon looked at her in sudden gratitude; she had a misplaced and soon-quenched hope that this seemingly indifferent and amused girl might prove an ally. Kate said, placidly, 'Well, they say that if you were to take a lot of men and women and give them all the same money, they'd all be quite different again to-morrow....' Mrs. Frampton added that she went by the Bible. 'The poor ye shall have always with you.' 'Mrs. Frampton, it doesn't say that. And even if it did—well, it's as Miss Sandomir says, it's all the more reason for thinking about them. Anyhow, you can't take the Bible that way; it's nothing to do with it.' 'It's the plain word of God, and that's sufficient for me,' said Mrs. Frampton repressively. Vincent Vinney, tired of the poor, who are indeed exhausting, regarded in the mass as a subject for contemplation, brought the discussion back to women. 'What I'd like to know is, where is a woman to get her knowledge from, if she's to help in public affairs? A man can pick up things at his work and his club, but a woman working in the house all day has no time even to read the papers. And if she did, her husband wouldn't like her to start having opinions, perhaps different to his. There are far too many divorces and separations already because husbands and wives go different ways, and it would be worse than ever. Eh, Flossie?' Mrs. Frampton said, 'We heard of a woman only last month who went out to a public meeting—something about foreign politics, I think it was—and her baby fell on to the fire and was burnt to a cinder, poor little love.' 'Well, she might just as likely have been going out shopping.' 'But she wasn't,' said Kate conclusively. 'I don't think,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'that a woman desires any more than her home and her husband and children, if she's a proper woman.' Evie's contribution was, 'Well, I must say I do prefer men to girls, and I don't mind saying so.' Sid's was, 'I heard of a man whose wife took to talking about politics, and he hung his coat to one peg in her wardrobe and his trousers to another, and he said, 'Now, Eliza, which will you wear?' It was apparently the combination of this anecdote and Evie's remark before it that broke Miss Simon down. She suddenly collapsed into indignant tears. Every one was uncomfortable. Mrs. Frampton said kindly, 'Come, come, my dear, it's only talk. It isn't worth crying about, I'm sure, with so many real troubles in the world just now.' 'You won't see,' sobbed Miss Simon, who looked particularly plain when crying. 'You none of you see. Except her'—she indicated Alix—'and she won't talk; she only smiles to herself at all of us. You tell silly tales, and you say silly things, and you think you've scored—but you haven't. It isn't argument, that you like men more than women or women more than men. And that man married to Eliza was an idiot, and not a bit funny or clever, and you all think he scored over her.' 'Well, really,' said Sid, and grinned sheepishly at the others. Kate had fetched a glass of water. 'Drink some,' she said kindly. 'It'll make you feel better.' But Miss Simon pushed it aside and mopped her eyes and blew her nose and pulled herself together. <h4>2</h4> 'Fancy crying before every one,' thought Evie. 'And just from being in a passion about getting the worst of it in talk. She is a specimen.' 'The boys shouldn't draw Rachel on to make such a silly of herself,' thought young Mrs. Vinney. 'Poor girl, she must have been working too hard, she's quite hysterical,' thought Mrs. Frampton. 'Having her staying with them must draw Vin and Floss very close together,' thought Kate, who had loved Vin long before Floss met him. 'We shan't have any more fun out of this evening; we'll go home,' thought Vincent, and glanced at his wife. 'What a difference between one girl and another,' thought Sid, and gazed at Evie. 'I wonder if many people are like these,' thought Alix, speculating. Were discussions at Violette, discussions in all the thousands of Violettes, always like this? Not argument, not ideas, not facts. Merely statements, quotations rather, of hackneyed and outworn sentiments, prejudices second-hand, yet indomitable, unassailable, undying, and the relation of stories, without relevance or force, and (but this much more rarely, surely) a burst of bitterness and emotion to wind it all up. Curious. Rachel Simon, like the rest, was stupid and ignorant, her brain a chaos of half-assimilated, inaccurate facts (she said Wills when she meant Hill) and crude sentiments. She seemed to belong, oddly, to an outworn age (the late eighties, was it? Alix wasn't old enough to know). But Alix was sorry for her, remembering the look in her face when they had each in turn dealt her a finishing blow. Alix rather wished Evie hadn't made that idiotic remark about men and girls; wished Mrs. Frampton hadn't talked of proper women; wished Kate hadn't said 'But she wasn't'; even wished she herself had joined in a little. Only it was all too inane.... <h4>3</h4> To change the subject Vincent Vinney said they had collared another German baker spy down in Camberwell. 'These bakers,' said Mrs. Frampton, 'do seem to be dreadful people. We've left off taking our Hovis loaf, since they found that wireless in Camberwell the other day.' 'You can't be too careful, can you?' said Mrs. Vinney. 'For my part I'd like to see every German in England shut up in gaol for a life-sentence. But we must be trotting, Mrs. Frampton, or we shall miss our beauty-sleep. Good-night; we've enjoyed the evening awfully. Oh, Evie, I've got those blouse patterns from Harrod's; can you come round to-morrow afternoon and help me choose? Come early and stay to tea. You too, Kate, won't you? You are a girl; you never come when I ask you.' Kate looked uncomfortable, and helped Miss Simon (now composed, but looking plainer than ever with her red eyes and nose) into her coat. To see the Vinneys together by their own fire-side was rather more than Kate could bear, though she had a good deal of stolid outward endurance. Her hands shook as she handled the ugly green coat. She wanted to avoid shaking hands with the Vinneys, but she could not. The familiar physical thrill ran through her at Vincent's hearty clasp, and left her limp. 'I'm afraid it's commencing to rain,' said Kate. 'Good-night all,' said Mrs. Frampton. 'We've had quite a little discussion, haven't we? I'm sure one ought to talk things out sometimes, it improves the mind. Now I do hope you won't all get wet. You must take our umbrellas.' <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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