Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/254

 It was in mid-winter 1915 that Somers and Harriet went down to Cornwall. The spirit of the war—the spirit of collapse and of human ignominy, had not travelled so far yet. It came in advancing waves.

We hear so much of the bravery and horrors at the front. Brave the men were, all honour to them. It was at home the world was lost. We hear too little of the collapse of the proud human spirit at home, the triumph of sordid, rampant, raging meanness. "The bite of a jackal is blood-poisoning and mortification." And at home stayed all the jackals, middle-aged, male and female jackals. And they bit us all. And blood-poisoning and mortification set in.

We should never have let the jackals loose, and patted them on the head. They were feeding on our death all the while.

Away in the west Richard and Harriet lived alone in their cottage by the savage Atlantic. He hardly wrote at all, and never any propaganda. But he hated the war, and said so to the few Cornish people around. He laughed at the palpable lies of the press, bitterly. And because of his isolation and his absolute separateness, he was marked out as a spy.

"I am not a spy," he said, "I leave it to dirtier people. I am myself, and I won't have popular lies."

So, there began the visits from the policeman. A large, blue, helmeted figure at the door.

"Excuse me, sir, I have just a few enquiries to make."

The police-sergeant always a decent, kindly fellow, driven by the military.

Somers and Harriet lived now with that suspense about them in the very air they breathed. They were suspects.

"Then let them suspect," said he. "I do nothing to them, so what can they do to me."

He still believed in the constitutional liberty of an Englishman.

"You know," said Harriet, ""you do say things to these Cornish people."

"I only say, when they tell me newspaper lies, that they are lies."

But now the two began to be hated, hated far more than they knew.