frightful war....

CHAPTER VI

I

This frightful war! On his brain like a weight. On his heart like a
pressing hand.

Came Christmas by which, at the outset, everybody knew it would be over,
and it was not over. Came June, 1915, concerning which, at the outset,
he had joined with Mr. Fortune, Twyning and Harold in laughter at his
own grotesque idea of the war lasting to the dramatic effect of a
culminating battle on the centenary of Waterloo, and the war had lasted,
and was still lasting.

"This frightful war!" The words were constantly upon his lips,
ejaculated to himself in reception of new manifestations of its
eruptions; forever in his mind, like a live thing gnawing there. Other
people seemed to suffer the war in spasms, isolated amidst the round of
their customary routines, of dejection or of optimistic reassurance. The
splendid sentiment of "Business as usual" was in many valiant mouths.
The land, in so far as provisions and prices were concerned, continued
to flow in milk and honey as the British Isles had always flowed in milk
and honey. In July a rival multiple grocer's shop opened premises
opposite the multiple grocer's shop already established in the shopping
centre of the Garden Home and Mabel told Sabre how very exciting it was.
The rivals piled their windows, one against the other, with stupendous
stacks of margarine and cheese at sevenpence the pound each; and then
one day, "Whatever do you think?" the new man interspersed his mountains
of margarine and cheese with wooden bowls running over with bright new
pennies, and flamed his windows with announcements that this was "The
Money-back Shop." You bought a pound of margarine for sevenpence and
were handed a penny with your purchase! And the next day, "Only fancy!"
the other man also had bright new pennies (in bursting bags from the
bank) and also bellowed that he too was a Money-back Shop.

"The fact is the war really hasn't mattered a bit," Mabel said. "I think
it's wonderful. And when you remember at the beginning how people rushed
to buy up food and what awful ideas of starvation went about; you were
one of the worst."

And Sabre agreed that it really was wonderful: and agreed too with
Mabel's further opinion that he really ought not to get so fearfully
depressed.

But he remained fearfully depressed. The abundance of food, and such
manifestations of plenty as the bowls and bags of bright new pennies
meant nothing to him. He knew noth