Without it our lives would be meaningless. So let us thank Him for the duties that accompany our privileges and pray that we may always discharge them as His faithful servants...Now let us thank the Lord for all His other mercies to us, for the reunion of families, for the produce of the land which comes to our table...â
Edward, inspiration gone, eye flitting round the room in search of reasons for giving thanks, was obliged to pause every now and then to collect and review fresh evidence of the divine magnanimity. In this way, among the more commonly acknowledged gifts of heaven he came to give thanks for some curious things: âthe chairs on which we rest our tired bodies,â for example, âthe faithful dogsâ of Kilnalough, or, most curious of all, âthe splendid century made by Hobbs against Lancashire yesterday.â It seemed to the Major that there might possibly be no end to this list: after all, if one was going to give thanks for chairs, dogs, and cricketers, why should one ever stop?
As it happened, however, Edward did stop, after a particularly long and distressing pause, by giving thanks for all those present who had come safely through âthe dark watches of the night.â âAmen to that, anyway,â thought the Major peevishly.
But Edward had not quite finished. He still had to commemorate the Fallen. The Major, who was hungry again (either because the country air was giving him an appetite or because he had vomited up the only solid meal he had consumed in the last twenty-four hours) and who had been entertaining disabused thoughts about Edwardâs prayers, now felt displeased with himself. With his eye distractedly on a giant silver dish bearing a domed lid surmounted by an ornamental spike (strangely reminiscent of a Boche helmet) beneath which he believed eggs, bacon and kidneys to be cooling, he did his best to reverse his thoughts into a more pious direction.
The breakfast room, though small by comparison with the dining-room, was spacious, airy, and on sunny days presumably sunny since it faced south and was lit by immense windows, the upper part of which (beyond where a man with his feet planted on the low sill might be able to reach) was opaque with grime. The Spencer family and a number of the hotel guests were grouped round the largest table, hands on the backs of chairs and chins on chests (with the exception of Ripon who with his head on one side was staring up at a generous cobweb billowing near the ceiling). Behind them, grouped at random in an attitude of devotion or subjection (rather as if they had been left chairless in a frantic game of Musical Chairs) stood Murphy, three or four maids in uniform, a hugely fat lady in an apron and Evans, the tutor, his face pitted and pale as death. The servants, the Major assumed, were not taking part in this alien act of worship but merely waiting for it to be over so that they could serve breakfast. But Edward was still going through his ritual.
To the wall behind the table was attached a carved wooden memorial in the shape of a gigantic book with open pages; from behind them rose the head of a unicorn. Book and unicorn together made up the Spencer family crest; all Angelaâs letters had been embossed with it. In this case the varnished, elaborately curling pages had recently had two long lists of names chiselled into them, startling in their newness, the white wood beneath the varnish exposed like wounds.
Who were these poor chaps? the Major wondered distantly, without pity. On what basis had selection been made? Young men from Kilnalough? But recruiting had been poor in Ireland. Connolly, the Sinn Feiners, Nationalists of every hue had declared that Irishmen should not fight in the British Army. But if not from Kilnalough from Trinity, perhaps, or from some heroic cricket club or old school. There were so many ways in which the vast army of the dead could be drilled, classified, inspected, and made to
Edward, inspiration gone, eye flitting round the room in search of reasons for giving thanks, was obliged to pause every now and then to collect and review fresh evidence of the divine magnanimity. In this way, among the more commonly acknowledged gifts of heaven he came to give thanks for some curious things: âthe chairs on which we rest our tired bodies,â for example, âthe faithful dogsâ of Kilnalough, or, most curious of all, âthe splendid century made by Hobbs against Lancashire yesterday.â It seemed to the Major that there might possibly be no end to this list: after all, if one was going to give thanks for chairs, dogs, and cricketers, why should one ever stop?
As it happened, however, Edward did stop, after a particularly long and distressing pause, by giving thanks for all those present who had come safely through âthe dark watches of the night.â âAmen to that, anyway,â thought the Major peevishly.
But Edward had not quite finished. He still had to commemorate the Fallen. The Major, who was hungry again (either because the country air was giving him an appetite or because he had vomited up the only solid meal he had consumed in the last twenty-four hours) and who had been entertaining disabused thoughts about Edwardâs prayers, now felt displeased with himself. With his eye distractedly on a giant silver dish bearing a domed lid surmounted by an ornamental spike (strangely reminiscent of a Boche helmet) beneath which he believed eggs, bacon and kidneys to be cooling, he did his best to reverse his thoughts into a more pious direction.
The breakfast room, though small by comparison with the dining-room, was spacious, airy, and on sunny days presumably sunny since it faced south and was lit by immense windows, the upper part of which (beyond where a man with his feet planted on the low sill might be able to reach) was opaque with grime. The Spencer family and a number of the hotel guests were grouped round the largest table, hands on the backs of chairs and chins on chests (with the exception of Ripon who with his head on one side was staring up at a generous cobweb billowing near the ceiling). Behind them, grouped at random in an attitude of devotion or subjection (rather as if they had been left chairless in a frantic game of Musical Chairs) stood Murphy, three or four maids in uniform, a hugely fat lady in an apron and Evans, the tutor, his face pitted and pale as death. The servants, the Major assumed, were not taking part in this alien act of worship but merely waiting for it to be over so that they could serve breakfast. But Edward was still going through his ritual.
To the wall behind the table was attached a carved wooden memorial in the shape of a gigantic book with open pages; from behind them rose the head of a unicorn. Book and unicorn together made up the Spencer family crest; all Angelaâs letters had been embossed with it. In this case the varnished, elaborately curling pages had recently had two long lists of names chiselled into them, startling in their newness, the white wood beneath the varnish exposed like wounds.
Who were these poor chaps? the Major wondered distantly, without pity. On what basis had selection been made? Young men from Kilnalough? But recruiting had been poor in Ireland. Connolly, the Sinn Feiners, Nationalists of every hue had declared that Irishmen should not fight in the British Army. But if not from Kilnalough from Trinity, perhaps, or from some heroic cricket club or old school. There were so many ways in which the vast army of the dead could be drilled, classified, inspected, and made to
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