Page:Kangaroo, 1923.pdf/293

 surely cannot wish me to present myself to join the colours."

There was an interval: much correspondence with Bodmin, where they seemed to have forgotten him again. Then he received a notice that he was to present himself as ordered.

What else was there to do? But he was growing devilish inside himself. However, he went: and Harriet accompanied him to the town. The recruiting place was a sort of big Sunday School—you went down a little flight of steps from the road. In a smallish ante-room like a basement he sat on a form and waited while all his papers were filed. Beside him sat a big collier, about as old as himself. And the man's face was a study of anger and devilishness growing under humiliation. After an hour's waiting Somers was called. He stripped as usual, but this time was told to put on his jacket over his complete nakedness.

And so—he was shown into a high, long schoolroom, with various sections down one side—bits of screens where various doctor-fellows were performing—and opposite, a long writing table where clerks and old military buffers in uniform sat in power: the clerks dutifully scribbling, glad to be in a safe job, no doubt, the old military buffers staring about. Near this Judgment-Day table a fire was burning, and there was a bench where two naked men sat ignominiously waiting, trying to cover their nakedness a little with their jackets, but too much upset to care really.

"Good God!" thought Somers. "Naked civilised men in their Sunday jackets and nothing else make the most heaven-forsaken sight I have ever seen."

The big stark-naked collier was being measured: a big, gaunt, naked figure, with a gruesome sort of nudity. "Oh God, oh God," thought Somers, "why do the animals none of them look like this? It doesn't look like life, like a living creature's figure. It is gruesome, with no life-meaning."

In another section a youth of about twenty-five, stark naked too, was throwing out his chest while a chit of a doctor-fellow felt him between the legs. This naked young fellow evidently thought himself an athlete, and that he must make a good impression, so he threw his head up in a would-be noble attitude, and coughed bravely when the