This FreedomHutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
General
This Freedom
Hutchinson, A. S. M. (Arthur Stuart-Menteth)
Marriage -- Fiction; Women -- Social and moral questions -- Fiction
There he is, down there at the tutor’s. He wanted to do war work, not
sitting there grinding lessons. All the tutor’s pupils did. Naturally
they did. The boy couldn’t go in the army. He was too young. He was in a
rural district. He got doing land-work. They all did. It was supposed to
be done in leisure hours. Naturally it encroached on, and unfitted for,
work hours. “After all,” as the tutor wrote, “how can you blame the
boys? After all, it’s very hard to seem to try to check this patriotic
spirit.” After all! Oh, why do people say “after all” when they mean
quite the contrary? This was before all, this seductive escape
from uncongenial duties, precedent of all, influencing to all that
happened--after all. Naturally it interfered with scholastic work. That
was condoned. As naturally it interfered with discipline. That was
not mentioned by the tutor. If he was cognisant of it was not domestic
discipline everywhere relaxed “on account of the war”?
There Huggo is. These are his holidays. After the setback at Tidborough
he was to have spent all his holidays at home. He was not, for the
future, to go away on invitations. That war! He never spent any of his
holidays at home. How could the boy be tied down in London with this war
on? He made his land-work his excuse, most plausible. He spent all his
holidays with friends whose homes were in rural districts.
Then it turned out that he had not, as he had given out, been always
at the house of friends. He was found in cottage lodgings living with a
friend, a fellow-pupil at the tutor’s; on land-work truly, but in gross
deception, and in worse.
It came out quite by chance and in a way very horrible. Harry discovered
it. Harry, early in 1915, had been absorbed into the Home Office. His
work was very largely in connection with a special secret service body
dealing with spies. He examined in private arrested suspects. He advised
and he directed on criminal matters therewith connected. He was working,
under immense pressure, terrible hours. He was hardly ever in to dinner.
He often was away all night. He frequently was away travelling for days
together. When he was seen he showed signs of strain to Rosalie.
He came in one evening about nine o’clock. It was early in 1916. Huggo
was then seventeen. Rosalie heard him in the hall and heard that some
one was with him. She heard him, by the dining-room door, say, “You’d
better go in there and get something to eat. I’ll attend to you
presently.”
His voice was iron hard. Who was with him? What was the matter?
He came in to her. His face was iron hard. He shut the door. “Do you
know who I’ve got here with me? Do you know where I’ve been? Do you know
what’s happened?”
His manner was extraordinary. His voice was like heavy axes, thudding.
His face was dark and passionate, menacing. Happened? Things were always
happening in these appalling days. She said, “Oh, what is it, Harry?”
“It’s Huggo.”
“Huggo?”
“Huggo!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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