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+Project Gutenberg's Men, Women and Guns, by H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Men, Women and Guns
+
+Author: H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
+
+Release Date: May 25, 2011 [EBook #36211]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN, WOMEN AND GUNS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Moti Ben-Ari and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    MEN, WOMEN AND GUNS
+
+    "SAPPER"
+
+
+
+
+    MEN, WOMEN AND GUNS
+
+    BY
+    "SAPPER"
+    AUTHOR OF "MICHAEL CASSIDY, SERGEANT"
+
+    NEW YORK
+    GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1916,
+    BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+    PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+    TO
+    MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                        PAGE
+    PROLOGUE                              xi
+
+    PART ONE
+    CHAPTER
+       I. THE MOTOR-GUN                   23
+      II. PRIVATE MEYRICK--COMPANY IDIOT  49
+     III. SPUD TREVOR OF THE RED HUSSARS  77
+      IV. THE FATAL SECOND                99
+       V. JIM BRENT'S V.C.               121
+      VI. RETRIBUTION                    155
+     VII. THE DEATH GRIP                 183
+    VIII. JAMES HENRY                    211
+
+    PART TWO
+    THE LAND OF THE TOPSY TURVY
+       I. THE GREY HOUSE                 237
+      II. THE WOMEN AND--THE MEN         243
+     III. THE WOMAN AND THE MAN          249
+      IV. "THE REGIMENT"                 257
+       V. THE CONTRAST                   265
+      VI. BLACK, WHITE, AND--GREY        271
+     VII. ARCHIE AND OTHERS              287
+    VIII. ON THE STAFF                   291
+      IX. NO ANSWER                      299
+       X. THE MADNESS                    305
+      XI. THE GREY HOUSE AGAIN           311
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE
+
+
+Two days ago a dear old aunt of mine asked me to describe to her what
+shrapnel was like.
+
+"What does it feel like to be shelled?" she demanded. "Explain it to
+me."
+
+Under the influence of my deceased uncle's most excellent port I did so.
+Soothed and in that expansive frame of mind induced by the old and bold,
+I drew her a picture--vivid, startling, wonderful. And when I had
+finished, the dear old lady looked at me.
+
+"Dreadful!" she murmured. "Did I ever tell you of the terrible
+experience I had on the front at Eastbourne, when my bath-chair
+attendant became inebriated and upset me?"
+
+Slowly and sorrowfully I finished the decanter--and went to bed.
+
+But seriously, my masters, it is a hard thing that my aunt asked of me.
+There are many things worse than shelling--the tea-party you find in
+progress on your arrival on leave; the utterances of war experts; the
+non-arrival of the whisky from England. But all of those can be imagined
+by people who have not suffered; they have a standard, a measure of
+comparison. Shelling--no.
+
+The explosion of a howitzer shell near you is a definite, actual
+fact--which is unlike any other fact in the world, except the explosion
+of another howitzer shell still nearer. Many have attempted to describe
+the noise it makes as the most explainable part about it. And then
+you're no wiser.
+
+Listen. Stand with me at the Menin Gate of Ypres and listen. Through a
+cutting a train is roaring on its way. Rapidly it rises in a great
+swelling crescendo as it dashes into the open, and then its journey
+stops on some giant battlement--stops in a peal of deafening thunder
+just overhead. The shell has burst, and the echoes in that town of death
+die slowly away--reverberating like a sullen sea that lashes against a
+rock-bound coast.
+
+And yet what does it convey to anyone who patronises inebriated
+bath-chair men? ...
+
+Similarly--shrapnel! "The Germans were searching the road with
+'whizz-bangs.'" A common remark, an ordinary utterance in a letter,
+taken by fond parents as an unpleasing affair such as the cook giving
+notice.
+
+Come with me to a spot near Ypres; come, and we will take our evening
+walk together.
+
+"They're a bit lively farther up the road, sir." The corporal of
+military police stands gloomily at a cross-roads, his back against a
+small wayside shrine. A passing shell unroofed it many weeks ago; it
+stands there surrounded by debris--the image of the Virgin, chipped and
+broken. Just a little monument of desolation in a ruined country, but
+pleasant to lean against when it's between you and German guns.
+
+Let us go on, it's some way yet before we reach the dug-out by the third
+dead horse. In front of us stretches a long, straight road, flanked on
+each side by poplars. In the middle there is pave. At intervals, a few
+small holes, where the stones have been shattered and hurled away by a
+bursting shell and only the muddy grit remains hollowed out to a depth
+of two feet or so, half-full of water. At the bottom an empty tin of
+bully, ammunition clips, numbers of biscuits--sodden and muddy.
+Altogether a good obstacle to take with the front wheel of a car at
+night.
+
+A little farther on, beside the road, in a ruined, desolate cottage two
+men are resting for a while, smoking. The dirt and mud of the trenches
+is thick on them, and one of them is contemplatively scraping his boot
+with his knife and fork. Otherwise, not a soul, not a living soul in
+sight; though away to the left front, through glasses, you can see two
+people, a man and a woman, labouring in the fields. And the only point
+of interest about them is that between you and them run the two
+motionless, stagnant lines of men who for months have faced one
+another. Those two labourers are on the other side of the German
+trenches.
+
+The setting sun is glinting on the little crumbling village two or three
+hundred yards ahead, and as you walk towards it in the still evening air
+your steps ring loud on the pave. On each side the flat, neglected
+fields stretch away from the road; the drains beside it are choked with
+weeds and refuse; and here and there one of the gaunt trees, split in
+two half-way up by a shell, has crashed into its neighbour or fallen to
+the ground. A peaceful summer's evening which seems to give the lie to
+our shrine-leaner. And yet, to one used to the peace of England, it
+seems almost too quiet, almost unnatural.
+
+Suddenly, out of the blue there comes a sharp, whizzing noise, and
+almost before you've heard it there is a crash, and from the village in
+front there rises a cloud of dust. A shell has burst on impact on one of
+the few remaining houses; some slates and tiles fall into the road, and
+round the hole torn out of the sloping roof there hangs a whitish-yellow
+cloud of smoke. In quick succession come half a dozen more, some
+bursting on the ruined cottages as they strike, some bursting above them
+in the air. More clouds of dust rise from the deserted street, small
+avalanches of debris cascade into the road, and, above, three or four
+thick white smoke-clouds drift slowly across the sky.
+
+This is the moment at which it is well--unless time is urgent--to pause
+and reflect awhile. If you _must_ go on, a detour is strongly to be
+recommended. The Germans are shelling the empty village just in front
+with shrapnel, and who are you to interpose yourself between him and his
+chosen target? But if in no particular hurry, then it were wise to dally
+gracefully against a tree, admiring the setting sun, until he desists;
+when you may in safety resume your walk. _But_--do not forget that he
+may not stick to the village, and that whizz-bangs give no time. That is
+why I specified a tree, and not the middle of the road. It's nearer the
+ditch.
+
+Suddenly, without a second's warning, they shift their target.
+Whizz-bang! Duck, you blighter! Into the ditch. Quick! Move! Hang your
+bottle of white wine! Get down! Cower! Emulate the mole! This isn't the
+village in front now--he's shelling the road you're standing on! There's
+one burst on impact in the middle of the pave forty yards in front of
+you, and another in the air just over your head. And there are more
+coming--don't make any mistake. That short, sharp whizz every few
+seconds--the bang! bang! bang! seems to be going on all around you. A
+thing hums past up in the air, with a whistling noise, leaving a trail
+of sparks behind it--one of the fuses. Later, the curio-hunter may find
+it nestling by a turnip. He may have it.
+
+With a vicious thud a jagged piece of shell buries itself in the ground
+at your feet; and almost simultaneously the bullets from a well-burst
+one cut through the trees above you and ping against the road, thudding
+into the earth around. No more impact ones--they've got the range. Our
+pessimistic friend at the cross-roads spoke the truth; they're quite
+lively. Everything bursting beautifully above the road about forty feet
+up. Bitter thought--if only the blighters knew that it was empty save
+for your wretched and unworthy self cowering in a ditch, with a bottle
+of white wine in your pocket and your head down a rat-hole, surely they
+wouldn't waste their ammunition so reprehensibly!
+
+Then, suddenly, they stop, and as the last white puff of smoke drifts
+slowly away you cautiously lift your head and peer towards the village.
+Have they finished? Will it be safe to resume your interrupted promenade
+in a dignified manner? Or will you give them another minute or two?
+Almost have you decided to do so when to your horror you perceive coming
+towards you through the village itself two officers. What a position to
+be discovered in! True, only the very young or the mentally deficient
+scorn cover when shelling is in progress. But of course, just at the
+moment when you'd welcome a shell to account for your propinquity with
+the rat-hole, the blighters have stopped. No sound breaks the stillness,
+save the steps ringing towards you--and it looks silly to be found in a
+ditch for no apparent reason.
+
+Then, as suddenly as before comes salvation. Just as with infinite
+stealth you endeavour to step out nonchalantly from behind a tree, as if
+you were part of the scenery--bang! crash! from in front. Cheer-oh! the
+village again, the church this time. A shower of bricks and mortar comes
+down like a landslip, and if you are quick you may just see two black
+streaks go to ground. From the vantage-point of your tree you watch a
+salvo of shells explode in, on, or about the temporary abode of those
+two officers. You realise from what you know of the Hun that this salvo
+probably concludes the evening hate; and the opportunity is too good to
+miss. Edging rapidly along the road--keeping close to the ditch--you
+approach the houses. Your position, you feel, is now strategically
+sound, with regard to the wretched pair cowering behind rubble heaps.
+You even desire revenge for your mental anguish when discovery in the
+rodent's lair seemed certain. So light a cigarette--if you didn't drop
+them all when you went to ground yourself; if you did--whistle some
+snappy tune as you stride jauntily into the village.
+
+Don't go too fast or you may miss them; but should you see a head peer
+from behind a kitchen-range express no surprise. Just--"Toppin' evening,
+ain't it? Getting furniture for the dug-out--what?" To linger is bad
+form, but it is quite permissible to ask his companion--seated in a
+torn-up drain--if the ratting is good. Then pass on in a leisurely
+manner, _but_--when you're round the corner, run like a hare. With these
+cursed Germans, you never know.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Night--and a working-party stretching away over a ploughed field are
+digging a communication trench. The great green flares lob up half a
+mile away, a watery moon shines on the bleak scene. Suddenly a noise
+like the tired sigh of some great giant, a scorching sheet of flame that
+leaps at you out of the darkness, searing your very brain, so close does
+it seem; the ping of death past your head; the clatter of shovel and
+pick next you as a muttered curse proclaims a man is hit; a voice from
+down the line: "Gawd! Old Ginger's took it. 'Old up, mate. Say, blokes,
+Ginger's done in!" Aye--it's worse at night.
+
+Shrapnel! Woolly, fleecy puffs of smoke floating gently down wind,
+getting more and more attenuated, gradually disappearing, while below
+each puff an oval of ground has been plastered with bullets. And it's
+when the ground inside the oval is full of men that the damage is done.
+
+Not you perhaps--but someone. Next time--maybe you.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And that, methinks, is an epitome of other things besides shrapnel. It's
+_all_ the war to the men who fight and the women who wait.
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE MOTOR-GUN
+
+
+Nothing in this war has so struck those who have fought in it as its
+impersonal nature. From the day the British Army moved north, and the
+first battle of Ypres commenced--and with it trench warfare as we know
+it now--it has been, save for a few interludes, a contest between
+automatons, backed by every known scientific device. Personal rancour
+against the opposing automatons separated by twenty or thirty yards of
+smelling mud--who stew in the same discomfort as yourself--is apt to
+give way to an acute animosity against life in general, and the accursed
+fate in particular which so foolishly decided your sex at birth. But,
+though rare, there have been cases of isolated encounters, where
+men--with the blood running hot in their veins--have got down to
+hand-grips, and grappling backwards and forwards in some cellar or
+dugout, have fought to the death, man to man, as of old. Such a case has
+recently come to my knowledge, a case at once bizarre and unique: a case
+where the much-exercised arm of coincidence showed its muscles to a
+remarkable degree. Only quite lately have I found out all the facts, and
+now at Dick O'Rourke's special request I am putting them on paper. True,
+they are intended to reach the eyes of one particular person, but ...
+the personal column in the _Times_ interests others besides the lady in
+the magenta skirt, who will eat a banana at 3.30 daily by the Marble
+Arch!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now, at the very outset of my labours, I find myself--to my great
+alarm--committed to the placing on paper of a love scene. O'Rourke
+insists upon it: he says the whole thing will fall flat if I don't put
+it in; he promises that he will supply the local colour. In advance I
+apologise: my own love affairs are sufficiently trying without
+endeavouring to describe his--and with that, here goes.
+
+I will lift my curtain on the principals of this little drama, and open
+the scene at Ciro's in London. On the evening of April 21st, 1915, in
+the corner of that delectable resort, farthest away from the coon band,
+sat Dickie O'Rourke. That afternoon he had stepped from the boat at
+Folkestone on seven days' leave, and now in the boiled shirt of
+respectability he once again smelled the smell of London.
+
+With him was a girl. I have never seen her, but from his description I
+cannot think that I have lived until this oversight is rectified.
+Moreover, my lady, as this is written especially for your benefit, I
+hereby warn you that I propose to remedy my omission as soon as
+possible.
+
+And yet with a band that is second to none; with food wonderful and
+divine; with the choicest fruit of the grape, and--to top all--with the
+girl, Dickie did not seem happy. As he says, it was not to be wondered
+at. He had landed at Folkestone meaning to propose; he had carried out
+his intention over the fish--and after that the dinner had lost its
+savour. She had refused him--definitely and finally; and Dick found
+himself wishing for France again--France and forgetfulness. Only he knew
+he'd never forget.
+
+"The dinner is to monsieur's taste?" The head-waiter paused attentively
+by the table.
+
+"Very good," growled Dick, looking savagely at an ice on his plate. "Oh,
+Moyra," he muttered, as the man passed on, "it's meself is finished
+entoirely. And I was feeling that happy on the boat; as I saw the white
+cliffs coming nearer and nearer, I said to meself, 'Dick, me boy, in
+just four hours you'll be with the dearest, sweetest girl that God ever
+sent from the heavens to brighten the lives of dull dogs like
+yourself.'"
+
+"You're not dull, Dick. You're not to say those things--you're a dear."
+The girl's eyes seemed a bit misty as she bent over her plate.
+
+"And now!" He looked at her pleadingly. "'Tis the light has gone out of
+my life. Ah! me dear, is there no hope for Dickie O'Rourke? Me estate is
+mostly bog, and the ould place has fallen down, saving only the
+stable--but there's the breath of the seas that comes over the heather
+in the morning, and there's the violet of your dear eyes in the hills.
+It's not worrying you that I'd be--but is there no hope at all, at all?"
+
+The girl turned towards him, smiling a trifle sadly. There was woman's
+pity in the lovely eyes: her lips were trembling a little. "Dear old
+Dick," she whispered, and her hand rested lightly on his for a moment.
+"Dear old Dick, I'm sorry. If I'd only known sooner----" She broke off
+abruptly and fell to gazing at the floor.
+
+"Then there is someone else!" The man spoke almost fiercely.
+
+Slowly she nodded her head, but she did not speak.
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"I don't know that you've got any right to ask me that, Dick," she
+answered, a little proudly.
+
+"What's the talk of right between you and me? Do you suppose I'll let
+any cursed social conventions stand between me and the woman I love?"
+She could see his hand trembling, though outwardly he seemed quite calm.
+And then his voice dropped to a tender, pleading note--and again the
+soft, rich brogue of the Irishman crept in--that wonderful tone that
+brings with it the music of the fairies from the hazy blue hills of
+Connemara.
+
+"Acushla mine," he whispered, "would I be hurting a hair of your swate
+head, or bringing a tear to them violet pools ye calls your eyes? 'Tis
+meself that is in the wrong entoirely--but, mavourneen, I just worship
+you. And the thought of the other fellow is driving me crazy. Will ye
+not be telling me his name?"
+
+"Dick, I can't," she whispered, piteously. "You wouldn't understand."
+
+"And why would I not understand?" he answered, grimly. "Is it something
+shady he has done to you?--for if it is, by the Holy Mother, I'll murder
+him."
+
+"No, no, it's nothing shady. But I can't tell you, Dick; and oh, Dick!
+I'm just wretched, and I don't know what to do." The tears were very
+near. A whimsical look came into his face as he watched her. "Moyra, me
+dear; 'tis about ten shillings apiece we're paying for them ices; and if
+you splash them with your darling tears, the chef will give notice and
+that coon with the banjo will strike work."
+
+"You dear, Dick," she whispered, after a moment, while a smile trembled
+round her mouth. "I nearly made a fool of myself."
+
+"Divil a bit," he answered. "But let us be after discussing them two
+fair things yonder while we gets on with the ices. 'Tis the most
+suitable course for contemplating the dears; and, anyway, we'll take no
+more risks until we're through with them."
+
+And so with a smile on his lips and a jest on his tongue did a gallant
+gentleman cover the ache in his heart and the pain in his eyes, and felt
+more than rewarded by the look of thanks he got. It was not for him to
+ask for more than she would freely give; and if there was another
+man--well, he was a lucky dog. But if he'd played the fool--yes, by
+Heaven! if he'd played the fool, that was a different pair of shoes
+altogether. His forehead grew black at the thought, and mechanically his
+fists clenched.
+
+"Dick, I'd like to tell you just how things are."
+
+He pulled himself together and looked at the girl.
+
+"It is meself that is at your service, my lady," he answered, quietly.
+
+"I'm engaged. But it's a secret."
+
+His jaw dropped, "Engaged!" he faltered. "But--who to? And why is it a
+secret?"
+
+"I can't tell you who to. I promised to keep it secret; and then he
+suddenly went away and the war broke out and I've never seen him since."
+
+"But you've heard from him?"
+
+She bit her lip and looked away. "Not a line," she faltered.
+
+"But--I don't understand." His tone was infinitely tender. "Why hasn't
+he written to you? Violet girl, why would he not have written?"
+
+"You see, he's a----" She seemed to be nerving herself to speak. "You
+see, he's a German!"
+
+It was out at last.
+
+"Mother of God!" Dick leaned back in his chair, his eyes fixed on her,
+his cigarette unheeded, burning the tablecloth. "Do you love him?"
+
+"Yes." The whispered answer was hardly audible. "Oh, Dick, I wonder if
+you can understand. It all came so suddenly, and then there was this
+war, and I know it's awful to love a German, but I do, and I can't tell
+anyone but you; they'd think it horrible of me. Oh, Dick! tell me you
+understand."
+
+"I understand, little girl," he answered, very slowly. "I understand."
+
+It was all very involved and infinitely pathetic. But, as I have said
+before, Dick O'Rourke was a gallant gentleman.
+
+"It's not his fault he's a German," she went on after a while. "He
+didn't start the war--and, you see, I promised him."
+
+That was the rub--she'd promised him. Truly a woman is a wonderful
+thing! Very gentle and patient was O'Rourke with her that evening, and
+when at last he turned into his club, he sat for a long while gazing
+into the fire. Just once a muttered curse escaped his lips.
+
+"Did you speak?" said the man in the next chair.
+
+"I did _not_," said O'Rourke, and getting up abruptly he went to bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At 3 p.m. on April 22nd Dick O'Rourke received a wire. It was short and
+to the point. "Leave cancelled. Return at once." He tore round to
+Victoria, found he'd missed the boat-train, and went down to Folkestone
+on chance. For the time Moyra was almost forgotten. Officers are not
+recalled from short leave without good and sufficient reason; and as yet
+there was nothing in the evening papers that showed any activity. At
+Folkestone he met other officers--also recalled; and when the boat came
+in rumours began to spread. The whole line had fallen back--the Germans
+were through and marching on Calais--a ghastly defeat had been
+sustained.
+
+The morning papers were a little more reassuring; and in them for the
+first time came the mention of the word "gas." Everything was vague, but
+that something had happened was obvious, and also that that something
+was pretty serious.
+
+One p.m. on the 23rd found him at Boulogne, ramping like a bull. An
+unemotional railway transport officer told him that there was a very
+nice train starting at midnight, but that the leave train was cancelled.
+
+"But, man!" howled O'Rourke, "I've been recalled. 'Tis urgent!" He
+brandished the wire in his face.
+
+The R.T.O. remained unmoved, and intimated that he was busy, and that
+O'Rourke's private history left him quite cold. Moreover, he thought it
+possible that the British Army might survive without him for another
+day.
+
+In the general confusion that ensued on his replying that the said
+R.T.O. was no doubt a perfect devil as a traveller for unshrinkable
+underclothes, but that his knowledge of the British Army might be
+written on a postage-stamp, O'Rourke escaped, and ensconcing himself
+near the barrier, guarded by French sentries, at the top of the hill
+leading to St. Omer, he waited for a motor-car.
+
+Having stopped two generals and been consigned elsewhere for his pains,
+he ultimately boarded a flying corps lorry, and 4 p.m. found him at St.
+Omer. And there--but we will whisper--was a relative--one of the exalted
+ones of the earth, who possessed many motor-cars, great and small.
+
+Dick chose the second Rolls-Royce, and having pursued his unit to the
+farm where he'd left it two days before, he chivied it round the
+country, and at length traced it to Poperinghe.
+
+And there he found things moving. As yet no one was quite sure what had
+happened; but he found a solemn conclave of Army Service Corps officers
+attached to his division, and from them he gathered twenty or thirty of
+the conflicting rumours that were flying round. One thing, anyway, was
+clear: the Huns were not triumphantly marching on Calais--yet. It was
+just as a charming old boy of over fifty, who had perjured his soul over
+his age and had been out since the beginning--a standing reproach to a
+large percentage of the so-called youth of England--it was just as he
+suggested a little dinner in that hospitable town, prior to going up
+with the supply lorries, that with a droning roar a twelve-inch shell
+came crashing into the square....
+
+That night at 11 p.m. Dick stepped out of another car into a ploughed
+field just behind the little village of Woesten, and, having trodden on
+his major's face and unearthed his servant, lay down by the dying fire
+to get what sleep he could. Now and again a horse whinnied near by; a
+bit rattled, a man cursed; for the unit was ready to move at a moment's
+notice and the horses were saddled up. The fire died out--from close by
+a battery was firing, and the sky was dancing with the flashes of
+bursting shells like summer lightning flickering in the distance. And
+with his head on a sharp stone and another in his back Dick O'Rourke
+fell asleep and dreamed of--but dreams are silly things to describe. It
+was just as he'd thrown the hors-d'oeuvres at the head-waiter of Ciro's,
+who had suddenly become the hated German rival, and was wiping the
+potato salad off Moyra's face, which it had hit by mistake, with the
+table-cloth, that with a groan he turned on his other side--only to
+exchange the stones for a sardine tin and a broken pickle bottle. Which
+is really no more foolish than the rest of life nowadays....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now for a moment I must go back and, leaving our hero, describe
+shortly the events that led up to the sending of the wire that recalled
+him.
+
+Early in the morning of April 22nd the Germans launched at that part of
+the French line which lay in front of the little villages of Elverdinge
+and Brielen, a yellowish-green cloud of gas, which rolled slowly over
+the intervening ground between the trenches, carried on its way by a
+faint, steady breeze. I do not intend to describe the first use of that
+infamous invention--it has been done too often before. But, for the
+proper understanding of what follows, it is essential for me to go into
+a few details. Utterly unprepared for what was to come, the French
+divisions gazed for a short while spellbound at the strange phenomenon
+they saw coming slowly towards them. Like some liquid the heavy-coloured
+vapour poured relentlessly into the trenches, filled them, and passed
+on. For a few seconds nothing happened; the sweet-smelling stuff merely
+tickled their nostrils; they failed to realise the danger. Then, with
+inconceivable rapidity, the gas worked, and blind panic spread.
+Hundreds, after a dreadful fight for air, became unconscious and died
+where they lay--a death of hideous torture, with the frothing bubbles
+gurgling in their throats and the foul liquid welling up in their lungs.
+With blackened faces and twisted limbs one by one they drowned--only
+that which drowned them came from inside and not from out. Others,
+staggering, falling, lurching on, and of their ignorance keeping pace
+with the gas, went back. A hail of rifle-fire and shrapnel mowed them
+down, and the line was broken. There was nothing on the British
+left--their flank was up in the air. The north-east corner of the
+salient round Ypres had been pierced. From in front of St. Julian, away
+up north towards Boesienge, there was no one in front of the Germans.
+
+It is not my intention to do more than mention the rushing up of the
+cavalry corps and the Indians to fill the gap; the deathless story of
+the Canadians who, surrounded and hemmed in, fought till they died
+against overwhelming odds; the fate of the Northumbrian division--fresh
+from home--who were rushed up in support, and the field behind Fortuin
+where they were caught by shrapnel, and what was left. These things are
+outside the scope of my story. Let us go back to the gap.
+
+Hard on the heels of the French came the Germans advancing. For a mile
+or so they pushed on, and why they stopped when they did is--as far as I
+am concerned--one of life's little mysteries. Perhaps the utter success
+of their gas surprised even them; perhaps they anticipated some trap;
+perhaps the incredible heroism of the Canadians in hanging up the German
+left caused their centre to push on too far and lose touch;
+perhaps--but, why speculate? I don't know, though possibly those in High
+Places may. The fact remains they did stop; their advantage was lost and
+the situation was saved.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such was the state of affairs when O'Rourke opened his eyes on the
+morning of Saturday, April 24th. The horses were dimly visible through
+the heavy mist, his blankets were wringing wet, and hazily he wondered
+why he had ever been born. Then the cook dropped the bacon in the fire,
+and he groaned with anguish; visions of yesterday's grilled kidneys and
+hot coffee rose before him and mocked. By six o'clock he had fed, and
+sitting on an overturned biscuit-box beside the road he watched three
+batteries of French 75's pass by and disappear in the distance. At
+intervals he longed to meet the man who invented war. It must be
+remembered that, though I have given the situation as it really was, for
+the better understanding of the story, the facts at the time were not
+known at all clearly. The fog of war still wrapped in oblivion--as far
+as regimental officers were concerned, at any rate--the events which
+were taking place within a few miles of them.
+
+When, therefore, Dick O'Rourke perceived an unshaven and unwashed
+warrior, garbed as a gunner officer, coming down the road from Woesten,
+and, moreover, recognised him as one of his own term at the "Shop,"
+known to his intimates as the Land Crab, he hailed him with joy.
+
+"All hail, oh, crustacean!" he cried, as the other came abreast of him.
+"Whither dost walk so blithely?"
+
+"Halloa, Dick!" The gunner paused. "You haven't seen my major anywhere,
+have you?"
+
+"Not that I'm aware of, but as I don't know your major from Adam, my
+evidence may not be reliable. What news from the seat of war?"
+
+"None that I know of--except this cursed gun, that is rapidly driving me
+to drink."
+
+"What cursed gun? I am fresh from Ciro's and the haunts of love and
+ease. Expound to me your enigma, my Land Crab."
+
+"Haven't you heard? When the Germans----"
+
+He stopped suddenly. "Listen!" Perfectly clear from the woods
+to the north of them--the woods that lie to the west of the
+Woesten-Oostvleteren road, for those who may care for maps--there came
+the distinctive boom! crack! of a smallish gun. Three more shots, and
+then silence. The gunner turned to Dick.
+
+"There you are--that's the gun."
+
+"But how nice! Only, why curse it?"
+
+"Principally because it's German; and those four shots that you have
+just heard have by this time burst in Poperinghe."
+
+"What!" O'Rourke looked at him in amazement. "Is it my leg you would be
+pulling?"
+
+"Certainly not. When the Germans came on in the first blind rush after
+the French two small guns on motor mountings got through behind our
+lines. One was completely wrecked with its detachment The motor
+mounting of the other you can see lying in a pond about a mile up the
+road. The gun is there." He pointed to the wood.
+
+"And the next!" said O'Rourke. "D'you mean to tell me that there is a
+German gun in that wood firing at Poperinghe? Why, hang it, man! it's
+three miles behind our lines."
+
+"Taking the direction those shells are coming from, the distance from
+Poperinghe to that gun must be more than ten miles--if the gun is behind
+the German trenches. Your gunnery is pretty rotten, I know, but if you
+know of any two-inch gun that shoots ten miles, I'll be obliged if
+you'll give me some lessons." The gunner lit a cigarette. "Man, we know
+it's not one of ours, we know where they all are; we know it's a Hun."
+
+"Then, what in the name of fortune are ye standing here for talking like
+an ould woman with the indigestion? Away with you, and lead us to him,
+and don't go chivying after your bally major." Dick shouted for his
+revolver. "If there's a gun in that wood, bedad! we'll gun it."
+
+"My dear old flick," said the other, "don't get excited. The woods have
+been searched with a line of men--twice; and devil the sign of the gun.
+You don't suppose they've got a concrete mounting and the Prussian flag
+flying on a pole, do you? The detachment are probably dressed as Belgian
+peasants, and the gun is dismounted and hidden when it's not firing."
+
+But O'Rourke would have none of it. "Get off to your major, then, and
+have your mothers' meeting. Then come back to me, and I'll give you the
+gun. And borrow a penknife and cut your beard--you'll be after
+frightening the natives."
+
+That evening a couple of shots rang out from the same wood, two of the
+typical shots of a small gun. And then there was silence. A group of men
+standing by an estaminet on the road affirmed to having heard three
+faint shots afterwards like the crack of a sporting-gun or revolver; but
+in the general turmoil of an evening hate which was going on at the same
+time no one thought much about it. Half an hour later Dick O'Rourke
+returned, and there was a strange look in his eyes. His coat was torn,
+his collar and shirt were ripped open, and his right eye was gradually
+turning black. Of his doings he would vouchsafe no word. Only, as we sat
+down round the fire to dinner, the gunner subaltern of the morning
+passed again up the road.
+
+"Got the gun yet, Dick?" he chaffed.
+
+"I have that," answered O'Rourke, "also the detachment."
+
+The Land Crab paused. "Where are they?"
+
+"The gun is in a pond where you won't find it, and the detachment are
+dead--except one who escaped."
+
+"Yes, I don't think." The gunner laughed and passed on.
+
+"You needn't," answered Dick, "but that gun will never fire again."
+
+It never did. As I say, he would answer no questions, and even amongst
+the few people who had heard of the thing at all, it soon passed into
+the limbo of forgotten things. Other and weightier matters were afoot;
+the second battle of Ypres did not leave much time for vague conjecture.
+And so when, a few days ago, the question was once again recalled to my
+mind by no less a person than O'Rourke himself, I had to dig in the
+archives of memory for the remembrance of an incident of which I had
+well-nigh lost sight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You remember that gun, Bill," he remarked, lying back in the arm-chair
+of the farmhouse where we were billeted, and sipping some hot rum--"that
+German gun that got through in April and bombarded Poperinghe? I want to
+talk to you about that gun." He started filling his pipe.
+
+"'Tis the hardest proposition I've ever been up against, and sure I
+don't know what to do at all." He was staring at the fire. "You
+remember the Land Crab and how he told us the woods had been searched?
+Well, it didn't take a superhuman brainstorm to realise that if what he
+said was right and the Huns were dressed as Belgian peasants, and the
+gun was a little one, that a line of men going through the woods had
+about as much chance of finding them as a terrier has of catching a
+tadpole in the water. I says to myself, 'Dick, my boy, this is an
+occasion for stealth, for delicate work, for finesse.' So off I went on
+my lonesome and hid in the wood. I argued that they couldn't be keeping
+a permanent watch, and that even if they'd seen me come in, they'd think
+in time I had gone out again, when they noticed no further sign of me.
+Also I guessed they didn't want to stir up a hornet's nest about their
+ears by killing me--they wanted no vulgar glare of publicity upon their
+doings. So, as I say, I hid in a hole and waited. I got bored stiff;
+though, when all was said and done, it wasn't much worse than sitting in
+that blessed ploughed field beside the road. About five o'clock I
+started cursing myself for a fool in listening to the story at all, it
+all seemed so ridiculous. Not a sound in the woods, not a breath of wind
+in the trees. The guns weren't firing, just for the time everything was
+peaceful. I'd got a caterpillar down my neck, and I was just coming back
+to get a drink and chuck it up, when suddenly a Belgian labourer popped
+out from behind a tree. There was nothing peculiar about him, and if it
+hadn't been for the Land Crab's story I'd never have given him a second
+thought. He was just picking up sticks, but as I watched him I noticed
+that every now and then he straightened himself up, and seemed to peer
+around as if he was searching the undergrowth. The next minute out came
+another, and he started the stick-picking stunt too."
+
+Dick paused to relight his pipe, then he laughed. "Of course, the humour
+of the situation couldn't help striking me. Dick O'Rourke in a filthy
+hole, covered with branches and bits of dirt, watching two mangy old
+Belgians picking up wood. But, having stood it the whole day, I made up
+my mind to wait, at any rate, till night. If only I could catch the gun
+in action--even if the odds were too great for me alone--I'd be able to
+spot the hiding-place, and come back later with a party and round them
+up.
+
+"Then suddenly the evening hate started--artillery from all over the
+place--and with it the Belgian labourers ceased from plucking sticks.
+Running down a little path, so close to me that I could almost touch
+him, came one of them. He stopped about ten yards away where the dense
+undergrowth finished, and, after looking cautiously round, waved his
+hand. The other one nipped behind a tree and called out something in a
+guttural tone of voice. And then, I give you my word, out of the bowels
+of the earth there popped up a little gun not twenty yards from where
+I'd been lying the whole day. By this time, of course, I was in the same
+sort of condition as a terrier is when he's seen the cat he has set his
+heart on shin up a tree, having missed her tail by half an inch.
+
+"They clapped her on a little mounting quick as light, laid her, loaded,
+and, by the holy saints! under my very nose, loosed off a present for
+Poperinghe. The man on guard waved his hand again, and bedad! away went
+another. The next instant he was back, again an exclamation in German,
+and in about two shakes the whole thing had disappeared, and there were
+the two labourers picking sticks. I give you my word it was like a clown
+popping up in a pantomime through a trap-door; I had to pinch myself to
+make certain I was awake.
+
+"The next instant into the clearing came two English soldiers, the
+reason evidently of the sudden dismantling. Had they been armed we'd
+have had at them then and there; but, of course, so far behind the
+trenches, they had no rifles. They just peered round, saw the Belgians,
+and went off again. I heard their steps dying away in the distance, and
+decided to wait a bit longer. The two men seemed to be discussing what
+to do, and ultimately moved behind the tree again, where I could hear
+them talking. At last they came to a decision, and picking up their
+bundles of sticks came slowly down the path past me. They were not going
+to fire again that evening."
+
+Dick smiled reminiscently. "Bill, pass the rum. I'm thirsty."
+
+"What did you do, Dick?" I asked, eagerly.
+
+"What d'you think? I was out like a knife and let drive with my
+hand-gun. I killed the first one as dead as mutton, and missed the
+second, who shot like a stag into the undergrowth. Gad! It was great. I
+put two more where I thought he was, but as I still heard him crashing
+on I must have missed him. Then I nipped round the tree to find the gun.
+The only thing there was a great hole full of leaves. I ploughed across
+it, thinking it must be the other side, when, without a word of warning,
+I fell through the top--bang through the top, my boy, of the neatest
+hiding-place you've ever thought of. The whole of the centre of those
+leaves was a fake. There were about two inches of them supported on
+light hurdle-work. I was in the robber's cave with a vengeance."
+
+"Was the gun there?" I cried, excitedly.
+
+"It was. Also the Hun. The gun of small variety; the Hun of large--very
+large. I don't know which of us was the more surprised--him or me; we
+just stood gazing at one another.
+
+"'Halloa, Englishman,' he said; 'come to leave a card?'
+
+"'Quite right, Boche,' I answered. 'A p.p.c. one.'
+
+"I was rather pleased with that touch at the time, old son. I was just
+going to elaborate it, and point out that he--as the dear
+departing--should really do it, when he was at me.
+
+"Bill, my boy, you should have seen that fight. Like a fool, I never saw
+his revolver lying on the table, and I'd shoved my own back in my
+holster. He got it in his right hand, and I got his right wrist in my
+left. We'd each got the other by the throat, and one of us was for the
+count. We each knew that. At one time I thought he'd got me--we were
+crashing backwards and forwards, and I caught my head against a wooden
+pole which nearly stunned me. And, mark you, all the time I was
+expecting his pal to come back and inquire after his health. Then
+suddenly I felt him weaken, and I squeezed his throat the harder. It
+came quite quickly at the end. His pistol-hand collapsed, and I suppose
+muscular contraction pulled the trigger, for the bullet went through his
+head, though I think he was dead already." Dick O'Rourke paused, and
+looked thoughtfully into the fire.
+
+"But why in the name of Heaven," I cried, irritably, "have you kept this
+dark all the while? Why didn't you tell us at the time?"
+
+For a while he did not answer, and then he produced his pocket-book.
+From it he took a photograph, which he handed to me.
+
+"Out of that German's pocket I took that photograph."
+
+"Well," I said, "what about it? A very pretty girl for a German." Then I
+looked at it closely. "Why, it was taken in England. Is it an English
+girl?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, dryly, "it is. It's Moyra Kavanagh, whom I proposed
+to forty-eight hours previously at Ciro's. She refused me, and told me
+then she was in love with a German. I celebrate the news by coming over
+here and killing him, in an individual fight where it was man to man."
+
+"But," I cried, "good heavens! man--it was you or he."
+
+"I know that," he answered, wearily. "What then? He evidently loved her;
+if not--why the photo. Look at what's written on the back--'From
+Moyra--with all my love.' All her love. Lord! it's a rum box up." He
+sighed wearily and slowly replaced it in his case. "So I buried him, and
+I chucked his gun in a pond, and said nothing about it. If I had it
+would probably have got into the papers or some such rot, and she'd have
+wanted to know all about it. Think of it! What the deuce would I have
+told her? To sympathise and discuss her love affairs with her in
+London, and then toddle over here and slaughter him. Dash it, man, it's
+Gilbertian! And, mark you, nothing would induce me to marry her--even if
+she'd have me--without her knowing."
+
+"But---" I began, and then fell silent. The more I thought of it the
+less I liked it. Put it how you like, for a girl to take as her husband
+a man who has actually killed the man she loved and was engaged
+to--German or no German--is a bit of a pill to swallow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After mature consideration we decided to present the pill to her garbed
+in this form. On me--as a scribbler of sorts--descended the onus of
+putting it on paper. When I'd done it, and Dick had read it, he said I
+was a fool, and wanted to tear it up. Which is like a man....
+
+Look you, my lady, it was a fair fight--it was war--it was an Englishman
+against a German; and the best man won. And surely to Heaven you can't
+blame poor old Dick? He didn't know; how could he have known, how... but
+what's the use? If your heart doesn't bring it right--neither my pen nor
+my logic is likely to. Which is like a woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+PRIVATE MEYRICK--COMPANY IDIOT
+
+
+No one who has ever given the matter a moment's thought would deny, I
+suppose, that a regiment without discipline is like a ship without a
+rudder. True as that fact has always been, it is doubly so now, when men
+are exposed to mental and physical shocks such as have never before been
+thought of.
+
+The condition of a man's brain after he has sat in a trench and suffered
+an intensive bombardment for two or three hours can only be described by
+one word, and that is--numbed. The actual physical concussion, apart
+altogether from the mental terror, caused by the bursting of a
+succession of large shells in a man's vicinity, temporarily robs him of
+the use of his thinking faculties. He becomes half-stunned, dazed; his
+limbs twitch convulsively and involuntarily; he mutters foolishly--he
+becomes incoherent. Starting with fright he passes through that stage,
+passes beyond it into a condition bordering on coma; and when a man is
+in that condition he is not responsible for his actions. His brain has
+ceased to work....
+
+Now it is, I believe, a principle of psychology that the brain or mind
+of a man can be divided into two parts--the objective and the
+subjective: the objective being that part of his thought-box which is
+actuated by outside influences, by his senses, by his powers of
+deduction; the subjective being that part which is not directly
+controllable by what he sees and hears, the part which the religious
+might call his soul, the Buddhist "the Spark of God," others instinct.
+And this portion of a man's nature remains acutely active, even while
+the other part has struck work. In fact, the more numbed and comatose
+the thinking brain, the more clearly and insistently does subjective
+instinct hold sway over a man's body. Which all goes to show that
+discipline, if it is to be of any use to a man at such a time, must be a
+very different type of thing to what the ordinary, uninitiated, and
+so-called free civilian believes it to be. It must be an ideal, a thing
+where the motive counts, almost a religion. It must be an appeal to the
+soul of man, not merely an order to his body. That the order to his
+body, the self-control of his daily actions, the general change in his
+mode of life will infallibly follow on the heels of the appeal to his
+soul--if that appeal be successful--is obvious. But the appeal must come
+first: it must be the driving power; it must be the cause and not the
+effect. Otherwise, when the brain is gone--numbed by causes outside its
+control; when the reasoning intellect of man is out of action--stunned
+for the time; when only his soul remains to pull the quivering, helpless
+body through,--then, unless that soul has the ideal of discipline in it,
+it _will_ fail. And failure _may_ mean death and disaster; it _will_
+mean shame and disgrace, when sanity returns....
+
+To the man seated at his desk in the company office these ideas were not
+new. He had been one of the original Expeditionary Force; but a sniper
+had sniped altogether too successfully out by Zillebecke in the early
+stages of the first battle of Ypres, and when that occurs a rest cure
+becomes necessary. At that time he was the senior subaltern of one of
+the finest regiments of "a contemptible little army"; now he was a major
+commanding a company in the tenth battalion of that same regiment. And
+in front of him on the desk, a yellow form pinned to a white slip of
+flimsy paper, announced that No. 8469, Private Meyrick, J., was for
+office. The charge was "Late falling in on the 8 a.m. parade," and the
+evidence against him was being given by C.-S.-M. Hayton, also an old
+soldier from that original battalion at Ypres. It was Major Seymour
+himself who had seen the late appearance of the above-mentioned Private
+Meyrick, and who had ordered the yellow form to be prepared. And now
+with it in front of him, he stared musingly at the office fire....
+
+There are a certain number of individuals who from earliest infancy have
+been imbued with the idea that the chief pastime of officers in the
+army, when they are not making love to another man's wife, is the
+preparation of harsh and tyrannical rules for the express purpose of
+annoying their men, and the gloating infliction of drastic punishment on
+those that break them. The absurdity of this idea has nothing to do with
+it, it being a well-known fact that the more absurd an idea is, the more
+utterly fanatical do its adherents become. To them the thought
+that a man being late on parade should make him any the worse
+fighter--especially as he had, in all probability, some good and
+sufficient excuse--cannot be grasped. To them the idea that men may not
+be a law unto themselves--though possibly agreed to reluctantly in the
+abstract--cannot possibly be assimilated in the concrete.
+
+"He has committed some trifling offence," they say; "now you will give
+him some ridiculous punishment. That is the curse of militarism--a
+chosen few rule by Fear." And if you tell them that any attempt to
+inculcate discipline by fear alone must of necessity fail, and that far
+from that being the method in the Army the reverse holds good, they
+will not believe you. Yet--it is so....
+
+"Shall I bring in the prisoner, sir?" The Sergeant-Major was standing by
+the door.
+
+"Yes, I'll see him now." The officer threw his cigarette into the fire
+and put on his hat.
+
+"Take off your 'at. Come along there, my lad--move. You'd go to sleep at
+your mother's funeral--you would." Seymour smiled at the conversation
+outside the door; he had soldiered many years with that Sergeant-Major.
+"Now, step up briskly. Quick march. 'Alt. Left turn." He closed the door
+and ranged himself alongside the prisoner facing the table.
+
+"No. 8469, Private Meyrick--you are charged with being late on the 8
+a.m. parade this morning. Sergeant-Major, what do you know about it?"
+
+"Sir, on the 8 a.m. parade this morning, Private Meyrick came running on
+'alf a minute after the bugle sounded. 'Is puttees were not put on
+tidily. I'd like to say, sir, that it's not the first time this man has
+been late falling in. 'E seems to me to be always a dreaming,
+somehow--not properly awake like. I warned 'im for office."
+
+The officer's eyes rested on the hatless soldier facing him. "Well,
+Meyrick," he said quietly, "what have you got to say?"
+
+"Nothing, sir. I'm sorry as 'ow I was late. I was reading, and I never
+noticed the time."
+
+"What were you reading?" The question seemed superfluous--almost
+foolish; but something in the eyes of the man facing him, something in
+his short, stumpy, uncouth figure interested him.
+
+"I was a'reading Kipling, sir." The Sergeant-Major snorted as nearly as
+such an august disciplinarian could snort in the presence of his
+officer.
+
+"'E ought, sir, to 'ave been 'elping the cook's mate--until 'e was due
+on parade."
+
+"Why do you read Kipling or anyone else when you ought to be doing other
+things?" queried the officer. His interest in the case surprised
+himself; the excuse was futile, and two or three days to barracks is an
+excellent corrective.
+
+"I dunno, sir. 'E sort of gets 'old of me, like. Makes me want to do
+things--and then I can't. I've always been slow and awkward like, and I
+gets a bit flustered at times. But I do try 'ard." Again a doubtful
+noise from the Sergeant-Major; to him trying 'ard and reading Kipling
+when you ought to be swabbing up dishes were hardly compatible.
+
+For a moment or two the officer hesitated, while the Sergeant-Major
+looked frankly puzzled. "What the blazes 'as come over 'im," he was
+thinking; "surely he ain't going to be guyed by that there wash. Why
+don't 'e give 'im two days and be done with it--and me with all them
+returns."
+
+"I'm going to talk to you, Meyrick." Major Seymour's voice cut in on
+these reflections. For the fraction of a moment "Two days C.B." had been
+on the tip of his tongue, and then he'd changed his mind. "I want to try
+and make you understand why you were brought up to office to-day. In
+every community--in every body of men--there must be a code of rules
+which govern what they do. Unless those rules are carried out by all
+those men, the whole system falls to the ground. Supposing everyone came
+on to parade half a minute late because they'd been reading Kipling?"
+
+"I know, sir. I see as 'ow I was wrong. But--I dreams sometimes as 'ow
+I'm like them he talks about, when 'e says as 'ow they lifted 'em
+through the charge as won the day. And then the dream's over, and I know
+as 'ow I'm not."
+
+The Sergeant-Major's impatience was barely concealed; those returns were
+oppressing him horribly.
+
+"You can get on with your work, Sergeant-Major. I know you're busy."
+Seymour glanced at the N.C.O. "I want to say a little more to Meyrick."
+
+The scandalised look on his face amused him; to leave a prisoner alone
+with an officer--impossible, unheard of.
+
+"I am in no hurry, sir, thank you."
+
+"All right then," Seymour spoke briefly. "Now, Meyrick, I want you to
+realise that the principle at the bottom of all discipline is the motive
+that makes that discipline. I want you to realise that all these rules
+are made for the good of the regiment, and that in everything you do and
+say you have an effect on the regiment. You count in the show, and I
+count in it, and so does the Sergeant-Major. We're all out for the same
+thing, my lad, and that is the regiment. We do things not because we're
+afraid of being punished if we don't, but because we know that they are
+for the good of the regiment--the finest regiment in the world. You've
+got to make good, not because you'll be dropped on if you don't, but
+because you'll pull the regiment down if you fail. And because you
+count, you, personally, must not be late on parade. It _does_ matter
+what you do yourself. I want you to realise that, and why. The rules you
+are ordered to comply with are the best rules. Sometimes we alter
+one--because we find a better; but they're the best we can get, and
+before you can find yourself in the position of the men you dream
+about--the men who lift others, the men who lead others--you've got to
+lift and lead yourself. Nothing is too small to worry about, nothing too
+insignificant. And because I think, that at the back of your head
+somewhere you've got the right idea; because I think it's natural to you
+to be a bit slow and awkward and that your failure isn't due to laziness
+or slackness, I'm not going to punish you this time for breaking the
+rules. If you do it again, it will be a different matter. There comes a
+time when one can't judge motives; when one can only judge results. Case
+dismissed."
+
+Thoughtfully the officer lit a cigarette as the door closed, and though
+for the present there was nothing more for him to do in office, he
+lingered on, pursuing his train of thoughts. Fully conscious of the
+aggrieved wrath of his Sergeant-Major at having his time wasted, a
+slight smile spread over his face. He was not given to making
+perorations of this sort, and now that it was over he wondered rather
+why he'd done it. And then he recalled the look in the private's eyes as
+he had spoken of his dreams.
+
+"He'll make good that man." Unconsciously he spoke aloud. "He'll make
+good."
+
+The discipline of habit is what we soldiers had before the war, and that
+takes time. Now it must be the discipline of intelligence, of ideal. And
+for that fear is the worst conceivable teacher. We have no time to form
+habits now; the routine of the army is of too short duration before the
+test comes. And the test is too crushing....
+
+The bed-rock now as then is the same, only the methods of getting down
+to that bed-rock have to be more hurried. Of old habitude and constant
+association instilled a religion--the religion of obedience, the
+religion of esprit de corps. But it took time. Now we need the same
+religion, but we haven't the same time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the office next door the Sergeant-Major was speaking soft words to
+the Pay Corporal.
+
+"Blimey, I dunno what's come over the bloke. You know that there
+Meyrick..."
+
+"Who, the Slug?" interpolated the other.
+
+"Yes. Well 'e come shambling on to parade this morning with 'is puttees
+flapping round his ankles--late as usual; and 'e told me to run 'im up
+to office." A thumb indicated the Major next door. "When I gets 'im
+there, instead of giving 'im three days C.B. and being done with it, 'e
+starts a lot of jaw about motives and discipline. 'E hadn't got no ruddy
+excuse; said 'e was a'reading Kipling, or some such rot--when 'e ought
+to have been 'elping the cook's mate."
+
+"What did he give him?" asked the Pay Corporal, interested.
+
+"Nothing. His blessing and dismissed the case. As if I had nothing
+better to do than listen to 'im talking 'ot air to a perisher like that
+there Meyrick. 'Ere, pass over them musketry returns."
+
+Which conversation, had Seymour overheard it, he would have understood
+and fully sympathised with. For C.-S.-M. Hayton, though a prince of
+sergeant-majors, was no student of physiology. To him a spade was a
+spade only as long as it shovelled earth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, before I go on to the day when the subject of all this trouble and
+talk was called on to make good, and how he did it, a few words on the
+man himself might not be amiss. War, the great forcing house of
+character, admits no lies. Sooner or later it finds out a man, and he
+stands in the pitiless glare of truth for what he is. And it is not by
+any means the cheery hail-fellow-well-met type, or the thruster, or the
+sportsman, who always pool the most votes when the judging starts....
+
+John Meyrick, before he began to train for the great adventure, had been
+something in a warehouse down near Tilbury. And "something" is about the
+best description of what he was that you could give. Moreover there
+wasn't a dog's chance of his ever being "anything." He used to help the
+young man--I should say young gentleman--who checked weigh bills at one
+of the dock entrances. More than that I cannot say, and incidentally the
+subject is not of surpassing importance. His chief interests in life
+were contemplating the young gentleman, listening open-mouthed to his
+views on life, and, dreaming. Especially the latter. Sometimes he would
+go after the day's work, and, sitting down on a bollard, his eyes would
+wander over the lines of some dirty tramp, with her dark-skinned crew.
+Visions of wonderful seas and tropic islands, of leafy palms with the
+blue-green surf thundering in towards them, of coral reefs and
+glorious-coloured flowers, would run riot in his brain. Not that he
+particularly wanted to go and see these figments of his imagination for
+himself; it was enough for him to dream of them--to conjure them up for
+a space in his mind by the help of an actual concrete ship--and then to
+go back to his work of assisting his loquacious companion. He did not
+find the work uncongenial; he had no hankerings after other modes of
+life--in fact the thought of any change never even entered into his
+calculations. What the future might hold he neither knew nor cared; the
+expressions of his companion on the rottenness of life in general and
+their firm in particular awoke no answering chord in his breast He had
+enough to live on in his little room at the top of a tenement house--he
+had enough over for an occasional picture show--and he had his dreams.
+He was content.
+
+Then came the war. For a long while it passed him by; it was no concern
+of his, and it didn't enter his head that it was ever likely to be until
+one night, as he was going in to see "Jumping Jess, or the Champion Girl
+Cowpuncher" at the local movies, a recruiting sergeant touched him on
+the arm.
+
+He was not a promising specimen for a would-be soldier, but that
+recruiting sergeant was not new to the game, and he'd seen worse.
+
+"Why aren't you in khaki, young fellow me lad?" he remarked genially.
+
+The idea, as I say, was quite new to our friend. Even though that very
+morning his colleague in the weigh-bill pastime had chucked it and
+joined, even though he'd heard a foreman discussing who they were to put
+in his place as "that young Meyrick was habsolutely 'opeless," it still
+hadn't dawned on him that he might go too. But the recruiting sergeant
+was a man of some knowledge; in his daily round he encountered many and
+varied types. In two minutes he had fired the boy's imagination with a
+glowing and partially true description of the glories of war and the
+army, and supplied him with another set of dreams to fill his brain.
+Wasting no time, he struck while the iron was hot, and in a few minutes
+John Meyrick, sometime checker of weigh-bills, died, and No. 8469,
+Private John Meyrick, came into being....
+
+But though you change a man's vocation with the stroke of a pen, you do
+not change his character. A dreamer he was in the beginning, and a
+dreamer he remained to the end. And dreaming, as I have already pointed
+out, was not a thing which commended itself to Company-Sergeant-Major
+Hayton, who in due course became one of the chief arbiters of our
+friend's destinies. True it was no longer coral islands--but such
+details availed not with cook's mates and other busy movers in the
+regimental hive. Where he'd got them from, Heaven knows, those tattered
+volumes of Kipling; but their matchless spirit had caught his brain and
+fired his soul, with the result--well, the first of them has been given.
+
+There were more results to follow. Not three days after he was again
+upon the mat for the same offence, only to say much the same as before.
+
+"I do try, sir--I do try; but some'ow----"
+
+And though in the bottom of his heart the officer believed him, though
+in a very strange way he felt interested in him, there are limits and
+there are rules. There comes a time, as he had said, when one can't
+judge by motives, when one can only judge by results.
+
+"You mustn't only try; you must succeed. Three days to barracks."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night in mess the officer sat next to the Colonel. "It's the
+thrusters, the martinets, the men of action who win the V.C.'s and
+D.C.M.'s, my dear fellow," said his C.O., as he pushed along the wine.
+"But it's the dreamers, the idealists who deserve them. They suffer so
+much more."
+
+And as Major Seymour poured himself out a glass of port, a face came
+into his mind--the face of a stumpy, uncouth man with deep-set eyes. "I
+wonder," he murmured--"I wonder."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The opportunities for stirring deeds of heroism in France do not occur
+with great frequency, whatever outsiders may think to the contrary. For
+months on end a battalion may live a life of peace and utter boredom,
+getting a few casualties now and then, occasionally bagging an unwary
+Hun, vegetating continuously in the same unprepossessing hole in the
+ground--saving only when they go to another, or retire to a town
+somewhere in rear to have a bath. And the battalion to which No. 8469,
+Private Meyrick, belonged was no exception to the general rule.
+
+For five weeks they had lived untroubled by anything except flies--all
+of them, that is, save various N.C.O.'s in A company. To them flies were
+quite a secondary consideration when compared to their other worry. And
+that, it is perhaps superfluous to add, was Private Meyrick himself.
+
+Every day the same scene would be enacted; every day some sergeant or
+corporal would dance with rage as he contemplated the Company Idiot--the
+title by which he was now known to all and sundry.
+
+"Wake up! Wake up! Lumme, didn't I warn you--didn't I warn yer 'arf an
+'our ago over by that there tree, when you was a-staring into the
+branches looking for nuts or something--didn't I warn yer that the
+company was parading at 10.15 for 'ot baths?"
+
+"I didn't 'ear you, Corporal--I didn't really."
+
+"Didn't 'ear me! Wot yer mean, didn't 'ear me? My voice ain't like the
+twitter of a grass'opper, is it? It's my belief you're balmy, my boy,
+B-A-R-M-Y. Savez. Get a move on yer, for Gawd's sake! You ought to 'ave
+a nurse. And when you gets to the bath-'ouse, for 'Eaven's sake pull
+yerself together! Don't forget to take off yer clothes before yer gets
+in; and when they lets the water out, don't go stopping in the bath
+because you forgot to get out. I wouldn't like another regiment to see
+you lying about when they come. They might say things."
+
+And so with slight variations the daily strafe went on. Going up to the
+trenches it was always Meyrick who got lost; Meyrick who fell into shell
+holes and lost his rifle or the jam for his section; Meyrick who forgot
+to lie down when a flare went up, but stood vacantly gazing at it until
+partially stunned by his next-door neighbour. Periodically messages
+would come through from the next regiment asking if they'd lost the
+regimental pet, and that he was being returned. It was always
+Meyrick....
+
+"I can't do nothing with 'im, sir." It was the Company-Sergeant-Major
+speaking to Seymour. "'E seems soft like in the 'ead. Whenever 'e does
+do anything and doesn't forget, 'e does it wrong. 'E's always dreaming
+and 'alf balmy."
+
+"He's not a flier, I know, Sergeant-Major, but we've got to put up with
+all sorts nowadays," returned the officer diplomatically. "Send him to
+me, and let me have a talk to him."
+
+"Very good, sir; but 'e'll let us down badly one of these days."
+
+And so once again Meyrick stood in front of his company officer, and was
+encouraged to speak of his difficulties. To an amazing degree he had
+remembered the discourse he had listened to many months previously; to
+do something for the regiment was what he desired more than anything--to
+do something big, really big. He floundered and stopped; he could find
+no words....
+
+"But don't you understand that it's just as important to do the little
+things? If you can't do them, you'll never do the big ones."
+
+"Yes, sir--I sees that; I do try, sir, and then I gets thinking, and
+some'ow--oh! I dunno--but everything goes out of my head like. I wants
+the regiment to be proud of me--and then they calls me the Company
+Idiot." There was something in the man's face that touched Seymour.
+
+"But how can the regiment be proud of you, my lad," he asked gently, "if
+you're always late on parade, and forgetting to do what you're told? If
+I wasn't certain in my own mind that it wasn't slackness and
+disobedience on your part, I should ask the Colonel to send you back to
+England as useless."
+
+An appealing look came into the man's eyes. "Oh! don't do that, sir. I
+will try 'ard--straight I will."
+
+"Yes, but as I told you once before, there comes a time when one must
+judge by results. Now, Meyrick, you must understand this finally. Unless
+you do improve, I shall do what I said. I shall tell the Colonel that
+you're not fitted to be a soldier, and I shall get him to send you away.
+I can't go on much longer; you're more trouble than you're worth. We're
+going up to the trenches again to-night, and I shall watch you. That
+will do; you may go."
+
+And so it came about that the Company Idiot entered on what was destined
+to prove the big scene in his uneventful life under the eyes of a
+critical audience. To the Sergeant-Major, who was a gross materialist,
+failure was a foregone conclusion; to the company officer, who went a
+little nearer to the heart of things, the issue was doubtful. Possibly
+his threat would succeed; possibly he'd struck the right note. And the
+peculiar thing is that both proved right according to their own
+lights....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This particular visit to the trenches was destined to be of a very
+different nature to former ones. On previous occasions peace had
+reigned; nothing untoward had occurred to mar the quiet restful
+existence which trench life so often affords to its devotees. But this
+time....
+
+It started about six o'clock in the morning on the second day of their
+arrival--a really pleasant little intensive bombardment. A succession of
+shells came streaming in, shattering every yard of the front line with
+tearing explosions. Then the Huns turned on the gas and attacked behind
+it. A few reached the trenches--the majority did not; and the ground
+outside was covered with grey-green figures, some of which were writhing
+and twitching and some of which were still. The attack had failed....
+
+But that sort of thing leaves its mark on the defenders, and this was
+their first baptism of real fire. Seymour had passed rapidly down the
+trench when he realised that for the moment it was over; and though
+men's faces were covered with the hideous gas masks, he saw by the
+twitching of their hands and by the ugly high-pitched laughter he heard
+that it would be well to get into touch with those behind. Moreover, in
+every piece of trench there lay motionless figures in khaki....
+
+It was as he entered his dugout that the bombardment started again.
+Quickly he went to the telephone, and started to get on to brigade
+headquarters. It took him twenty seconds to realise that the line had
+been cut, and then he cursed dreadfully. The roar of the bursting shells
+was deafening; his cursing was inaudible; but in a fit of almost
+childish rage--he kicked the machine. Men's nerves are jangled at
+times....
+
+It was merely coincidence doubtless, but a motionless figure in a gas
+helmet crouching outside the dugout saw that kick, and slowly in his
+bemused brain there started a train of thought. Why should his company
+officer do such a thing; why should they all be cowering in the trench
+waiting for death to come to them; why...? For a space his brain refused
+to act; then it started again.
+
+Why was that man lying full length at the bottom of the trench, with the
+great hole torn out of his back, and the red stream spreading slowly
+round him; why didn't it stop instead of filling up the little holes at
+the bottom of the trench and then overflowing into the next one? He was
+the corporal who'd called him balmy; but why should he be dead? He was
+dead--at least the motionless watcher thought he must be. He lay so
+still, and his body seemed twisted and unnatural. But why should one of
+the regiment be dead; it was all so unexpected, so sudden? And why did
+his Major kick the telephone?...
+
+For a space he lay still, thinking; trying to figure things out. He
+suddenly remembered tripping over a wire coming up to the trench, and
+being cursed by his sergeant for lurching against him. "You would," he
+had been told--"you would. If it ain't a wire, you'd fall over yer own
+perishing feet."
+
+"What's the wire for, sergint?" he had asked.
+
+"What d'you think, softie. Drying the washing on? It's the telephone
+wire to Headquarters."
+
+It came all back to him, and it had been over by the stunted pollard
+that he'd tripped up. Then he looked back at the silent, motionless
+figure--the red stream had almost reached him--and the Idea came. It
+came suddenly--like a blow. The wire must be broken, otherwise the
+officer wouldn't have kicked the telephone; he'd have spoken through it.
+
+"I wants the regiment to be proud of me--and then they calls me the
+Company Idiot." He couldn't do the little things--he was always
+forgetting, but...! What was that about "lifting 'em through the charge
+that won the day"? There was no charge, but there was the regiment. And
+the regiment was wanting him at last. Something wet touched his
+fingers, and when he looked at them, they were red. "B-A-R-M-Y. You
+ought to 'ave a nurse...."
+
+Then once again coherent thought failed him--utter physical weakness
+gripped him--he lay comatose, shuddering, and crying softly over he knew
+not what. The sweat was pouring down his face from the heat of the gas
+helmet, but still he held the valve between his teeth, breathing in
+through the nose and out through the mouth as he had been told. It was
+automatic, involuntary; he couldn't think, he only remembered certain
+things by instinct.
+
+Suddenly a high explosive shell burst near him--quite close: and a mass
+of earth crashed down on his legs and back, half burying him. He
+whimpered feebly, and after a while dragged himself free. But the action
+brought him close to that silent figure, with the ripped up back....
+
+"You ought to 'ave a nurse..." Why? Gawd above--why? Wasn't he as good a
+man as that there dead corporal? Wasn't he one of the regiment too? And
+now the Corporal couldn't do anything, but he--well, he hadn't got no
+hole torn out of his back. It wasn't his blood that lay stagnant,
+filling the little holes at the bottom of the trench....
+
+Kipling came back to him--feebly, from another world. The dreamer was
+dreaming once again.
+
+    "If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white,
+    Remember it's ruin to run from a fight."
+
+Run! Who was talking of running? He was going to save the regiment--once
+he could think clearly again. Everything was hazy just for the moment.
+
+    "And wait for supports like a soldier."
+
+But there weren't no supports, and the telephone wire was broken--the
+wire he'd tripped over as he came up. Until it was mended there wouldn't
+be any supports--until it was mended--until----
+
+With a choking cry he lurched to his feet: and staggering, running,
+falling down, the dreamer crossed the open. A tearing pain through his
+left arm made him gasp, but he got there--got there and collapsed. He
+couldn't see very well, so he tore off his gas helmet, and, peering
+round, at last saw the wire. And the wire was indeed cut. Why the
+throbbing brain should have imagined it would be cut _there_, I know
+not; perhaps he associated it particularly with the pollard--and after
+all he was the Company Idiot. But it was cut there, I am glad to say;
+let us not begrudge him his little triumph. He found one end, and some
+few feet off he saw the other. With infinite difficulty he dragged
+himself towards it. Why did he find it so terribly hard to move? He
+couldn't see clearly; everything somehow was getting hazy and red. The
+roar of the shells seemed muffled strangely--far-away, indistinct. He
+pulled at the wire, and it came towards him; pulled again, and the two
+ends met. Then he slipped back against the pollard, the two ends grasped
+in his right hand....
+
+The regiment was safe at last. The officer would not have to kick the
+telephone again. The Idiot had made good. And into his heart there came
+a wonderful peace.
+
+There was a roaring in his ears; lights danced before his eyes; strange
+shapes moved in front of him. Then, of a sudden, out of the gathering
+darkness a great white light seared his senses, a deafening crash
+overwhelmed him, a sharp stabbing blow struck his head. The roaring
+ceased, and a limp figure slipped down and lay still, with two ends of
+wire grasped tight in his hand.
+
+"They are going to relieve us to-night, Sergeant-Major." The two men
+with tired eyes faced one another in the Major's dugout The bombardment
+was over, and the dying rays of a blood-red sun glinted through the
+door. "I think they took it well."
+
+"They did, sir--very well."
+
+"What are the casualties? Any idea?"
+
+"Somewhere about seventy or eighty, sir--but I don't know the exact
+numbers."
+
+"As soon as it's dark I'm going back to headquarters. Captain Standish
+will take command."
+
+"That there Meyrick is reported missing, sir."
+
+"Missing! He'll turn up somewhere--if he hasn't been hit."
+
+"Probably walked into the German trenches by mistake," grunted the
+C.-S.-M. dispassionately, and retired. Outside the dugout men had moved
+the corporal; but the red pools still remained--stagnant at the bottom
+of the trench....
+
+"Well, you're through all right now, Major," said a voice in the
+doorway, and an officer with the white and blue brassard of the signals
+came in and sat down. "There are so many wires going back that have been
+laid at odd times, that it's difficult to trace them in a hurry." He
+gave a ring on the telephone, and in a moment the thin, metallic voice
+of the man at the other end broke the silence.
+
+"All right. Just wanted to make sure we were through. Ring off."
+
+"I remember kicking that damn thing this morning when I found we were
+cut off," remarked Seymour, with a weary smile. "Funny how childish one
+is at times."
+
+"Aye--but natural. This war's damnable." The two men fell silent. "I'll
+have a bit of an easy here," went on the signal officer after a while,
+"and then go down with you."
+
+A few hours later the two men clambered out of the back of the trench.
+"It's easier walking, and I know every stick," remarked the Major. "Make
+for that stunted pollard first."
+
+Dimly the tree stood outlined against the sky--a conspicuous mark and
+signpost. It was the signal officer who tripped over it first--that
+huddled quiet body, and gave a quick ejaculation. "Somebody caught it
+here, poor devil. Look out--duck."
+
+A flare shot up into the night, and by its light the two motionless
+officers close to the pollard looked at what they had found.
+
+"How the devil did he get here!" muttered Seymour. "It's one of my men."
+
+"Was he anywhere near you when you kicked the telephone?" asked the
+other, and his voice was a little hoarse.
+
+"He may have been--I don't know. Why?"
+
+"Look at his right hand." From the tightly clenched fingers two broken
+ends of wire stuck out.
+
+"Poor lad." The Major bit his lip. "Poor lad--I wonder. They called him
+the Company Idiot. Do you think...?"
+
+"I think he came out to find the break in the wire," said the other
+quietly. "And in doing so he found the answer to the big riddle."
+
+"I knew he'd make good--I knew it all along. He used to dream of big
+things--something big for the regiment."
+
+"And he's done a big thing, by Jove," said the signal officer gruffly,
+"for it's the motive that counts. And he couldn't know that he'd got the
+wrong wire."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"When 'e doesn't forget, 'e does things wrong."
+
+As I said, both the Sergeant-Major and his officer proved right
+according to their own lights.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+SPUD TREVOR OF THE RED HUSSARS
+
+
+It would be but a small exaggeration to say that in every God-forsaken
+hole and corner of the world, where soldiers lived and moved and had
+their being, before Nemesis overtook Europe, the name of Spud Trevor of
+the Red Hussars was known. From Simla to Singapore, from Khartoum to the
+Curragh his name was symbolical of all that a regimental officer should
+be. Senior subalterns guiding the erring feet of the young and frivolous
+from the tempting paths of night clubs and fair ladies, to the
+infinitely better ones of hunting and sport, were apt to quote him.
+Adjutants had been known to hold him up as an example to those of their
+flock who needed chastening for any of the hundred and one things that
+adjutants do not like--if they have their regiment at heart. And he
+deserved it all.
+
+I, who knew him, as well perhaps as anyone; I, who was privileged to
+call him friend, and yet in the hour of his greatest need failed him; I,
+to whose lot it has fallen to remove the slur from his name, state this
+in no half-hearted way. He deserved it, and a thousand times as much
+again. He was the type of man beside whom the ordinary English
+gentleman--the so-called white man--looked dirty-grey in comparison. And
+yet there came a day when men who had openly fawned on him left the room
+when he came in, when whispers of an unsuspected yellow streak in him
+began to circulate, when senior subalterns no longer held him up as a
+model. Now he is dead: and it has been left to me to vindicate him.
+Perchance by so doing I may wipe out a little of the stain of guilt that
+lies so heavy on my heart; perchance I may atone, in some small degree,
+for my doubts and suspicions; and, perchance too, the whitest man that
+ever lived may of his understanding and knowledge, perfected now in the
+Great Silence to which he has gone, accept my tardy reparation, and
+forgive. It is only yesterday that the document, which explained
+everything, came into my hands. It was sent to me sealed, and with it a
+short covering letter from a firm of solicitors stating that their
+client was dead--killed in France--and that according to his
+instructions they were forwarding the enclosed, with the request that I
+should make such use of it as I saw fit.
+
+To all those others, who, like myself, doubted, I address these words.
+Many have gone under: to them I venture to think everything is now
+clear. Maybe they have already met Spud, in the great vast gulfs where
+the mists of illusion are rolled away. For those who still live, he has
+no abuse--that incomparable sportsman and sahib; no recriminations for
+us who ruined his life. He goes farther, and finds excuses for us; God
+knows we need them. Here is what he has written. The document is
+reproduced exactly as I received it--saving only that I have altered all
+names. The man, whom I have called Ginger Bathurst, and everyone else
+concerned, will, I think, recognise themselves. And, pour les
+autres--let them guess.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In two days, old friend, my battalion sails for France; and, now with
+the intention full formed and fixed in my mind, that I shall not return,
+I have determined to put down on paper the true facts of what happened
+three years ago: or rather, the true motives that impelled me to do what
+I did. I put it that way, because you already know the facts. You know
+that I was accused of saving my life at the expense of a woman's when
+the _Astoria_ foundered in mid-Atlantic; you know that I was accused of
+having thrust her aside and taken her place in the boat. That accusation
+is true. I did save my life at a woman's expense. But the motives that
+impelled my action you do not know, nor the identity of the woman
+concerned. I hope and trust that when you have read what I shall write
+you will exonerate me from the charge of a cowardice, vile and
+abominable beyond words, and at the most only find me guilty of a
+mistaken sense of duty. These words will only reach you in the event of
+my death; do with them what you will. I should like to think that the
+old name was once again washed clean of the dirty blot it has on it now;
+so do your best for me, old pal, do your best.
+
+You remember Ginger Bathurst--of course you do. Is he still a budding
+Staff Officer at the War Office, I wonder, or is he over the water? I'm
+out of touch with the fellows in these days--(_the pathos of it: Spud
+out of touch, Spud of all men, whose soul was in the Army_)--one doesn't
+live in the back of beyond for three years and find Army lists and
+gazettes growing on the trees. You remember also, I suppose, that I was
+best man at his wedding when he married the Comtesse de Grecin. I told
+you at the time that I was not particularly enamoured of his choice, but
+it was _his_ funeral; and with the old boy asking me to steer him
+through, I had no possible reason for refusing. Not that I had anything
+against the woman: she was charming, fascinating, and had a pretty
+useful share of this world's boodle. Moreover, she seemed
+extraordinarily in love with Ginger, and was just the sort of woman to
+push an ambitious fellow like him right up to the top of the tree. He,
+of course, was simply idiotic: he was stark, raving mad about her; vowed
+she was the most peerless woman that ever a wretched being like himself
+had been privileged to look at; loaded her with presents which he
+couldn't afford, and generally took it a good deal worse than usual. I
+think, in a way, it was the calm acceptance of those presents that first
+prejudiced me against her. Naturally I saw a lot of her before they were
+married, being such a pal of Ginger's, and I did my best for his sake to
+overcome my dislike. But he wasn't a wealthy man--at the most he had
+about six hundred a year private means--and the presents of jewellery
+alone that he gave her must have made a pretty large hole in his
+capital.
+
+However that is all by the way. They were married, and shortly
+afterwards I took my leave big game shooting and lost sight of them for
+a while. When I came back Ginger was at the War Office, and they were
+living in London. They had a delightful little flat in Hans Crescent,
+and she was pushing him as only a clever woman can push. Everybody who
+could be of the slightest use to him sooner or later got roped in to
+dinner and was duly fascinated.
+
+To an habitual onlooker like myself, the whole thing was clear, and I
+must quite admit that much of my first instinctive dislike--and dislike
+is really too strong a word--evaporated. She went out of her way to be
+charming to me, not that I could be of any use to the old boy, but
+merely because I was his great friend; and of course she knew that I
+realised--what he never dreamed of--that she was paving the way to pull
+some really big strings for him later.
+
+I remember saying good-bye to her one afternoon after a luncheon, at
+which I had watched with great interest the complete capitulation of two
+generals and a well-known diplomatist.
+
+"You're a clever man, Mr. Spud," she murmured, with that charming air of
+taking one into her confidence, with which a woman of the world routs
+the most confirmed misogynist. "If only Ginger----" She broke off and
+sighed: just the suggestion of a sigh; but sufficient to imply--lots.
+
+"My lady," I answered, "keep him fit; make him take exercise: above all
+things don't let him get fat. Even you would be powerless with a fat
+husband. But provided you keep him thin, and never let him decide
+anything for himself, he will live to be a lasting monument and example
+of what a woman can do. And warriors and statesmen shall bow down and
+worship, what time they drink tea in your boudoir and eat buns from your
+hand. Bismillah!"
+
+But time is short, and these details are trifling. Only once again, old
+pal, I am living in the days when I moved in the pleasant paths of
+life, and the temptation to linger is strong. Bear with me a moment. I
+am a sybarite for the moment in spirit: in reality--God! how it hurts.
+
+    "Gentlemen rankers out on the spree,
+    Damned from here to eternity:
+    God have mercy on such as we.
+      Bah! Yah! Bah!"
+
+I never thought I should live to prove Kipling's lines. But that's what
+I am--a gentleman ranker; going out to the war of wars--a private. I,
+and that's the bitterest part of it, I, who had, as you know full well,
+always, for years, lived for this war, the war against those cursed
+Germans. I knew it was coming--you'll bear me witness of that fact--and
+the cruel irony of fate that has made that very knowledge my downfall is
+not the lightest part of the little bundle fate has thrown on my
+shoulders. Yes, old man, we're getting near the motives now; but all in
+good time. Let me lay it out dramatically; don't rob me of my exit--I'm
+feeling a bit theatrical this evening. It may interest you to know that
+I saw Lady Delton to-day: she's a V.A.D., and did not recognise me,
+thank Heaven!
+
+(_Need I say again that Delton is not the name he wrote. Sufficient that
+she and Spud knew one another_ _very well, in other days. But in some
+men it would have emphasised the bitterness of spirit._)
+
+Let's get on with it. A couple of years passed, and the summer of 1912
+found me in New York. I was temporarily engaged on a special job which
+it is unnecessary to specify. It was not a very important one, but, as
+you know, a gift of tongues and a liking for poking my nose into the
+affairs of nations had enabled me to get a certain amount of more or
+less diplomatic work. The job was over, and I was merely marking time in
+New York waiting for the _Astoria_ to sail. Two days before she was due
+to leave, and just as I was turning into the doors of my hotel, I ran
+full tilt into von Basel--a very decent fellow in the Prussian
+Guard--who was seconded and doing military attache work in America. I'd
+met him off and on hunting in England--one of the few Germans I know who
+really went well to hounds.
+
+"Hullo! Trevor," he said, as we met. "What are you doing here?"
+
+"Marking time," I answered. "Waiting for my boat."
+
+We strolled to the bar, and over a cocktail he suggested that if I had
+nothing better to do I might as well come to some official ball that was
+on that evening. "I can get you a card," he remarked. "You ought to
+come; your friend, Mrs. Bathurst--Comtesse de Grecin that was--is going
+to be present."
+
+"I'd no idea she was this side of the water," I said, surprised.
+
+"Oh, yes! Come over to see her people or something. Well! will you
+come?"
+
+I agreed, having nothing else on, and as he left the hotel, he laughed.
+"Funny the vagaries of fate. I don't suppose I come into this hotel once
+in three months. I only came down this evening to tell a man not to come
+and call as arranged, as my kid has got measles--and promptly ran into
+you."
+
+Truly the irony of circumstances! If one went back far enough, one might
+find that the determining factor of my disgrace was the quarrel of a
+nurse and her lover which made her take the child another walk than
+usual and pick up infection. Dash it all! you might even find that it
+was a spot on her nose that made her do so, as she didn't want to meet
+him when not looking at her best! But that way madness lies.
+
+Whatever the original cause--I went: and in due course met the Comtesse.
+She gave me a couple of dances, and I found that she, too, had booked
+her passage on the _Astoria_. I met very few people I knew, and having
+found it the usual boring stunt, I decided to get a glass of champagne
+and a sandwich and then retire to bed. I took them along to a small
+alcove where I could smoke a cigarette in peace, and sat down. It was as
+I sat down that I heard from behind a curtain which completely screened
+me from view, the words "English Army" spoken in German. And the voice
+was the voice of the Comtesse.
+
+Nothing very strange in the words you say, seeing that she spoke German,
+as well as several other languages, fluently. Perhaps not--but you know
+what my ideas used to be--how I was obsessed with the spy theory: at any
+rate, I listened. I listened for a quarter of an hour, and then I got my
+coat and went home--went home to try and see a way through just about
+the toughest proposition I'd ever been up against. For the
+Comtesse--Ginger Bathurst's idolised wife--was hand in glove with the
+German Secret Service. She was a spy, not of the wireless installation
+up the chimney type, not of the document-stealing type, but of a very
+much more dangerous type than either, the type it is almost impossible
+to incriminate.
+
+I can't remember the conversation I overheard exactly, I cannot give it
+to you word for word, but I will give you the substance of it. Her
+companion was von Basel's chief--a typical Prussian officer of the most
+overbearing description.
+
+"How goes it with you, Comtesse?" he asked her, and I heard the scrape
+of a match as he lit a cigarette.
+
+"Well, Baron, very well."
+
+"They do not suspect?"
+
+"Not an atom. The question has never been raised even as to my national
+sympathies, except once, and then the suggestion--not forced or
+emphasised in any way--that, as the child of a family who had lost
+everything in the '70 war, my sympathies were not hard to discover, was
+quite sufficient. That was at the time of the Agadir crisis."
+
+"And you do not desire revanche?"
+
+"My dear man, I desire money. My husband with his pay and private income
+has hardly enough to dress me on."
+
+"But, dear lady, why, if I may ask, did you marry him? With so many
+others for her choice, surely the Comtesse de Grecin could have
+commanded the world?"
+
+"Charming as a phrase, but I assure you that the idea of the world at
+one's feet is as extinct as the dodo. No, Baron, you may take it from me
+he was the best I could do. A rising junior soldier, employed on a staff
+job at the War Office, _persona grata_ with all the people who really
+count in London by reason of his family, and moreover infatuated with
+his charming wife." Her companion gave a guttural chuckle; I could feel
+him leering. "I give the best dinners in London; the majority of his
+senior officers think I am on the verge of running away with them, and
+when they become too obstreperous, I allow them to kiss my--fingers.
+
+"Listen to me, Baron," she spoke rapidly, in a low voice so that I could
+hardly catch what she said. "I have already given information about some
+confidential big howitzer trials which I saw; it was largely on my
+reports that action was stopped at Agadir; and there are many other
+things--things intangible, in a certain sense--points of view, the state
+of feeling in Ireland, the conditions of labour, which I am able to hear
+the inner side of, in a way quite impossible if I had not the entree
+into that particular class of English society which I now possess. Not
+the so-called smart set, you understand; but the real ruling set--the
+leading soldiers, the leading diplomats. Of course they are
+discreet----"
+
+"But you are a woman and a peerless one, chere Comtesse. I think we may
+leave that cursed country in your hands with perfect safety. And, sooner
+perhaps than even we realise, we may see der Tag."
+
+Such then was briefly the conversation I overheard. As I said, it is not
+given word for word--but that is immaterial. What was I to do? That was
+the point which drummed through my head as I walked back to my hotel;
+that was the point which was still drumming through my head as the dawn
+came stealing in through my window. Put yourself in my place, old man;
+what would you have done?
+
+I, alone, of everyone who knew her in London, had stumbled by accident
+on the truth. Bathurst idolised her, and she exaggerated no whit when
+she boasted that she had the entree to the most exclusive circle in
+England. I know; I was one of it myself. And though one realises that it
+is only in plays and novels that Cabinet Ministers wander about
+whispering State secrets into the ears of beautiful adventuresses, yet
+one also knows in real life how devilish dangerous a really pretty and
+fascinating woman can be--especially when she's bent on finding things
+out and is clever enough to put two and two together.
+
+Take one thing alone, and it was an aspect of the case that particularly
+struck me. Supposing diplomatic relations became strained between us and
+Germany--and I firmly believed, as you know, that sooner or later they
+would; supposing mobilisation was ordered--a secret one; suppose any of
+the hundred and one things which would be bound to form a prelude to a
+European war--and which at all costs must be kept secret--had occurred;
+think of the incalculable danger a clever woman in her position might
+have been, however discreet her husband was. And, my dear old boy, you
+know Ginger!
+
+Supposing the Expeditionary Force were on the point of embarkation. A
+wife might guess their port of departure and arrival by an artless
+question or two as to where her husband on the Staff had motored to that
+day. But why go on? You see what I mean. Only to me, at that time--and
+now I might almost say that I am glad events have justified me--it
+appealed even more than it would have, say, to you. For I was so
+convinced of the danger that threatened us.
+
+But what was I to do? It was only my word against hers. Tell Ginger? The
+idea made even me laugh. Tell the generals and the diplomatists? They
+didn't want to kiss _my_ hand. Tell some big bug in the Secret Service?
+Yes--that anyway; but she was such a devilish clever woman, that I had
+but little faith in such a simple remedy, especially as most of them
+patronised her dinners themselves.
+
+Still, that was the only thing to be done--that, and to keep a look-out
+myself, for I was tolerably certain she did not suspect me. Why should
+she?
+
+And so in due course I found myself sitting next her at dinner as the
+_Astoria_ started her journey across the water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I am coming to the climax of the drama, old man; I shall not bore you
+much longer. But before I actually give you the details of what occurred
+on that ill-fated vessel's last trip, I want to make sure that you
+realise the state of mind I was in, and the action that I had decided
+on. Firstly, I was convinced that my dinner partner--the wife of one of
+my best friends--was an unscrupulous spy. That the evidence would not
+have hung a fly in a court of law was not the point; the evidence was my
+own hearing, which was good enough for me.
+
+Secondly, I was convinced that she occupied a position in society which
+rendered it easy for her to get hold of the most invaluable information
+in the event of a war between us and Germany.
+
+Thirdly, I was convinced that there would be a war between us and
+Germany.
+
+So much for my state of mind; now, for my course of action.
+
+I had decided to keep a watch on her, and, if I could get hold of the
+slightest incriminating evidence, expose her secretly, but mercilessly,
+to the Secret Service. If I could not--and if I realised there was
+danger brewing--to inform the Secret Service of what I had heard, and,
+sacrificing Ginger's friendship if necessary, and my own reputation for
+chivalry, swear away her honour, or anything, provided only her capacity
+for obtaining information temporarily ceased. Once that was done, then
+face the music, and be accused, if needs be, of false swearing,
+unrequited love, jealousy, what you will. But to destroy her capacity
+for harm to my country was my bounden duty, whatever the social or
+personal results to me.
+
+And there was one other thing--and on this one thing the whole course of
+the matter was destined to hang: _I alone could do it, for I alone knew
+the truth._ Let that sink in, old son; grasp it, realise it, and read my
+future actions by the light of that one simple fact.
+
+I can see you sit back in your chair, and look into the fire with the
+light of comprehension dawning in your eyes; it does put the matter in a
+different complexion, doesn't it, my friend? You begin to appreciate the
+motives that impelled me to sacrifice a woman's life; so far so good.
+You are even magnanimous: what is one woman compared to the danger of a
+nation?
+
+Dear old boy, I drink a silent toast to you. Have you no suspicions?
+What if the woman I sacrificed was the Comtesse herself? Does it
+surprise you; wasn't it the God-sent solution to everything?
+
+Just as a freak of fate had acquainted me with her secret; so did a
+freak of fate throw me in her path at the end....
+
+We hit an iceberg, as you may remember, in the middle of the night, and
+the ship foundered in under twenty minutes.
+
+You can imagine the scene of chaos after we struck, or rather you
+can't. Men were running wildly about shouting, women were screaming, and
+the roar of the siren bellowing forth into the night drove people to a
+perfect frenzy. Then all the lights went out, and darkness settled down
+like a pall on the ship. I struggled up on deck, which was already
+tilting up at a perilous angle, and there--in the mass of scurrying
+figures--I came face to face with the Comtesse. In the panic of the
+moment I had forgotten all about her. She was quite calm, and smiled at
+me, for of course our relations were still as before.
+
+Suddenly there came the shout from close at hand, "Room for one more
+only." What happened then, happened in a couple of seconds; it will take
+me longer to describe.
+
+There flashed into my mind what would occur if I were drowned and the
+Comtesse was saved. There would be no one to combat her activities in
+England; she would have a free hand. My plans were null and void if I
+died; I must get back to England--or England would be in peril. I must
+pass on my information to someone--for I alone knew.
+
+"Hurry up! one more." Another shout from near by, and looking round I
+saw that we were alone. It was she or I.
+
+She moved towards the boat, and as she did so I saw the only possible
+solution--I saw what I then thought to be my duty; what I still
+consider--and, God knows, that scene is never long out of my mind--what
+I still consider to have been my duty. I took her by the arm and twisted
+her facing me.
+
+"As Ginger's wife, yes," I muttered; "as the cursed spy I know you to
+be, no--a thousand times no."
+
+"My God!" she whispered. "My God!"
+
+Without further thought I pushed by her and stepped into the boat, which
+was actually being lowered into the water. Two minutes later the
+_Astoria_ sank, and she went down with her....
+
+That is what occurred that night in mid-Atlantic. I make no excuses, I
+offer no palliation; I merely state facts.
+
+Only had I not heard what I did hear in that alcove she would have been
+just--Ginger's wife. Would the Expeditionary Force have crossed so
+successfully, I wonder?
+
+As I say, I did what I still consider to have been my duty. If both
+could have been saved, well and good; but if it was only one, it _had_
+to be me, or neither. That's the rub; should it have been neither?
+
+Many times since then, old friend, has the white twitching face of that
+woman haunted me in my dreams and in my waking hours. Many times since
+then have I thought that--spy or no spy--I had no right to save my life
+at her expense; I should have gone down with her. Quixotical, perhaps,
+seeing she was what she was; but she was a woman. One thing and one
+thing only I can say. When you read these lines, I shall be dead; they
+will come to you as a voice from the dead. And, as a man who faces his
+Maker, I tell you, with a calm certainty that I am not deceiving myself,
+that that night there was no trace of cowardice in my mind. It was not a
+desire to save my own life that actuated me; it was the fear of danger
+to England. An error of judgment possibly; an act of cowardice--no. That
+much I state, and that much I demand that you believe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now we come to the last chapter--the chapter that you know. I'd been
+back about two months when I first realised that there were stories
+going round about me. There were whispers in the club; men avoided me;
+women cut me. Then came the dreadful night when a man--half drunk--in
+the club accused me of cowardice point-blank, and sneeringly contrasted
+my previous reputation with my conduct on the _Astoria_. And I realised
+that someone must have seen. I knocked that swine in the club down; but
+the whispers grew. I knew it. Someone had seen, and it would be sheer
+hypocrisy on my part to pretend that such a thing didn't matter. It
+mattered everything: it ended me. The world--our world--judges deeds,
+not motives; and even had I published at the time this document I am
+sending to you, our world would have found me guilty. They would have
+said what you would have said had you spoken the thoughts I saw in your
+eyes that night I came to you. They would have said that a sudden wave
+of cowardice had overwhelmed me, and that brought face to face with
+death I had saved my own life at the expense of a woman's. Many would
+have gone still further, and said that my black cowardice was rendered
+blacker still by my hypocrisy in inventing such a story; that first to
+kill the woman, and then to blacken her reputation as an excuse, showed
+me as a thing unfit to live. I know the world.
+
+Moreover, as far as I knew then--I am sure of it now--whoever it was who
+saw my action, did not see who the woman was, and therefore the
+publication of this document at that time would have involved Ginger,
+for it would have been futile to publish it without names. Feeling as I
+did that perhaps I should have sunk with her; feeling as I did that, for
+good or evil, I had blasted Ginger's life, I simply couldn't do it. You
+didn't believe in me, old chap; at the bottom of their hearts all my old
+pals thought I'd shown the yellow streak; and I couldn't stick it. So I
+went to the Colonel, and told him I was handing in my papers. He was in
+his quarters, I remember, and started filling his pipe as I was
+speaking.
+
+"Why, Spud?" he asked, when I told him my intention.
+
+And then I told him something of what I have written to you. I said it
+to him in confidence, and when I'd finished he sat very silent.
+
+"Good God!" he muttered at length. "Ginger's wife!"
+
+"You believe me, Colonel?" I asked.
+
+"Spud," he said, putting his hands on my shoulders, "that's a damn
+rotten thing to ask me--after fifteen years. But it's the regiment." And
+he fell to staring at the fire.
+
+Aye, that was it. It was the regiment that mattered. For better or for
+worse I had done what I had done, and it was my show. The Red Hussars
+must not be made to suffer; and their reputation would have suffered
+through me. Otherwise I'd have faced it out. As it was, I had to go; I
+knew it. I'd come to the same decision myself.
+
+Only now, sitting here in camp with the setting sun glinting through the
+windows of the hut, just a Canadian private under an assumed name,
+things are a little different. The regiment is safe; I must think now of
+the old name. The Colonel was killed at Cambrai; therefore you alone
+will be in possession of the facts. Ginger, if he reads these words,
+will perhaps forgive me for the pain I have inflicted on him. Let him
+remember that though I did a dreadful thing to him, a thing which up to
+now he has been ignorant of, yet I suffered much for his sake after.
+During my life it was one thing; when I am dead his claims must give way
+to a greater one--my name.
+
+Wherefore I, Patrick Courtenay Trevor, having the unalterable intention
+of meeting my Maker during the present war, and therefore feeling in a
+measure that I am, even as I write, standing at the threshold of His
+Presence, do swear before Almighty God that what I have written is the
+truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help me, God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The fall-in is going, old man. Good-bye.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE FATAL SECOND
+
+
+It was in July of 1914--on the Saturday of Henley Week. People who were
+there may remember that, for once in a way, our fickle climate was
+pleased to smile upon us.
+
+Underneath the wall of Phyllis Court a punt was tied up. The prizes had
+been given away, and the tightly packed boats surged slowly up and down
+the river, freed at last from the extreme boredom of watching crews they
+did not know falling exhausted out of their boats. In the punt of which
+I speak were three men and a girl. One of the men was myself, who have
+no part in this episode, save the humble one of narrator. The other
+three were the principals; I would have you make their acquaintance. I
+would hurriedly say that it is not the old, old story of a woman and two
+men, for one of the men was her brother.
+
+To begin with--the girl. Pat Delawnay--she was always called Pat, as she
+didn't look like a Patricia--was her name, and she was--well, here I
+give in. I don't know the colour of her eyes, nor can I say with any
+certainty the colour of her hair; all I know is that she looked as if
+the sun had come from heaven and kissed her, and had then gone back
+again satisfied with his work. She was a girl whom to know was to
+love--the dearest, most understanding soul in God's whole earth. I'd
+loved her myself since I was out of petticoats.
+
+Then there was Jack Delawnay, her brother. Two years younger he was, and
+between the two of them there was an affection and love which is
+frequently conspicuous by its absence between brother and sister. He was
+a cheery youngster, a good-looking boy, and fellows in the regiment
+liked him. He rode straight, and he had the money to keep good cattle.
+In addition, the men loved him, and that means a lot when you size up an
+officer.
+
+And then there was the other. Older by ten years than the boy--the same
+age as myself--Jerry Dixon was my greatest friend. We had fought
+together at school, played the ass together at Sandhurst, and entered
+the regiment on the same day. He had "A" company and I had "C," and the
+boy was one of his subalterns. Perhaps I am biassed, but to me Jerry
+Dixon had one of the finest characters I have ever seen in any man. He
+was no Galahad, no prig; he was just a man, a white man. He had that
+cheerily ugly face which is one of the greatest gifts a man can have,
+and he also had Pat as his fiancee, which was another.
+
+My name is immaterial, but everyone calls me Winkle, owing to---- Well,
+some day I may tell you.
+
+The regiment, our regiment, was the, let us call it the Downshires.
+
+We had come over from Aldershot and were week-ending at the Delawnays'
+place--they always took one on the river for Henley. At the moment Jerry
+was holding forth, quite unmoved by exhortations to "Get out and get
+under" bawled in his ears by blackened gentlemen of doubtful voice and
+undoubted inebriation.
+
+As I write, the peculiar--the almost sinister--nature of his
+conversation, in the light of future events, seems nothing short of
+diabolical. And yet at the time we were just three white-flannelled men
+and a girl with a great floppy hat lazing over tea in a punt. How the
+gods must have laughed!
+
+"My dear old Winkle"--he was lighting a cigarette as he spoke--"you
+don't realise the deeper side of soldiering at all. The subtle nuances
+(French, Pat, in case my accent is faulty) are completely lost upon
+you."
+
+I remember smiling to myself as I heard Jerry getting warmed up to his
+subject, and then my attention wandered, and I dozed off. I had heard it
+all before so often from the dear old boy. We always used to chaff him
+about it in the mess. I can see him now, after dinner, standing with his
+back to the ante-room fire, a whisky-and-soda in his hand and a dirty
+old pipe between his teeth.
+
+"It's all very well for you fellows to laugh," he would say, "but I'm
+right for all that. It is absolutely essential to think out beforehand
+what one would do in certain exceptional eventualities, so that when
+that eventuality does arise you won't waste any time, but will
+automatically do the right thing."
+
+And then the adjutant recalled in a still small voice how he first
+realised the orderly-room sergeant's baby was going to be sick in his
+arms at the regiment's Christmas-tree festivities, and, instead of
+throwing it on the floor, he had clung to it for that fatal second of
+indecision. As he admitted, it was certainly not one of the things he
+had thought out beforehand.
+
+He's gone, too, has old Bellairs the adjutant. I wonder how many fellows
+I'll know when I get back to them next week? But I'm wandering.
+
+"Winkle, wake up!" It was Pat speaking. "Jerry is being horribly
+serious, and I'm not at all certain it will be safe to marry him; he'll
+be experimenting on me."
+
+"What's he been saying?" I murmured sleepily.
+
+"He's been thinking what he'd do," laughed Jack, "if the stout female
+personage in yonder small canoe overbalanced and fell in. There'll be no
+fatal second then, Jerry, my boy. It'll be a minute even if I have to
+hold you. You'd never be able to look your friends in the face again if
+you didn't let her drown."
+
+"Ass!" grunted Jerry. "No, Winkle, I was just thinking, amongst other
+things, of what might very easily happen to any of us three here, and
+what did happen to old Grantley in South Africa." Grantley was one of
+our majors. "He told me all about it one day in one of his expansive
+moods. It was during a bit of a scrap just before Paardeburg, and he had
+some crowd of irregular Johnnies. He was told off to take a position,
+and apparently it was a fairly warm proposition. However, it was
+perfectly feasible if only the men stuck it. Well, they didn't, but they
+would have except for his momentary indecision. He told me that there
+came a moment in the advance when one man wavered. He knew it and felt
+it all through him. He saw the man--he almost saw the deadly contagion
+spreading from that one man to the others--and he hesitated and was
+lost. When he sprang forward and tried to hold 'em, he failed. The fear
+was on them, and they broke. He told me he regarded himself as every bit
+as much to blame as the man who first gave out."
+
+"But what could he have done, Jerry?" asked Pat.
+
+"Shot him, dear--shot him on the spot without a second's thought--killed
+the origin of the fear before it had time to spread. I venture to say
+that there are not many fellows in the Service who would do it--without
+thinking: and you can't think--you dare not, even if there was time. It
+goes against the grain, especially if you know the man well, and it's
+only by continually rehearsing the scene in your mind that you'd be able
+to do it."
+
+We were all listening to him now, for this was a new development I'd
+never heard before.
+
+"Just imagine the far-reaching results one coward--no, not coward,
+possibly--but one man who has reached the breaking-point, may have.
+Think of it, Winkle. A long line stretched out, attacking. One man in
+the centre wavers, stops. Spreading outwards, the thing rushes like
+lightning, because, after all, fear is only an emotion, like joy and
+sorrow, and one knows how quickly they will communicate themselves to
+other people. Also, in such a moment as an attack, men are particularly
+susceptible to emotions. All that is primitive is uppermost, and their
+reasoning powers are more or less in abeyance."
+
+"But the awful thing, Jerry," said Pat quietly, "is that you would never
+know whether it had been necessary or not. It might not have spread; he
+might have answered to your voice--oh! a thousand things might have
+happened."
+
+"It's not worth the risk, dear. One man's life is not worth the risk.
+It's a risk you just dare not take. It may mean everything--it may mean
+failure--it may mean disgrace." He paused and looked steadily across the
+shifting scene of gaiety and colour, while a long bamboo pole with a
+little bag on the end, wielded by some passing vocalist, was thrust
+towards him unheeded. Then with a short laugh he pulled himself
+together, and lit a cigarette. "But enough of dull care. Let us away,
+and gaze upon beautiful women and brave men. What's that little tune
+they're playing?"
+
+"That's that waltz--what the deuce is the name, Pat?" asked Jack,
+untying the punt.
+
+"'Destiny,'" answered Pat briefly, and we passed out into the stream.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A month afterwards we three were again at Henley, not in flannels in a
+punt on the river, but in khaki, with a motor waiting at the door of the
+Delawnays' house to take us back to Aldershot. I do not propose to dwell
+over the scene, but in the setting down of the story it cannot be left
+out. Europe was at war; the long-expected by those scoffed-at alarmists
+had actually come. England and Germany were at each other's throats.
+
+Inside the house Jack was with his mother. Personally, I was standing in
+the garden with the grey-haired father; and Jerry was--well, where else
+could he have been?
+
+As is the way with men, we discussed the roses, and the rascality of the
+Germans, and everything except what was in our hearts. And in one of the
+pauses in our spasmodic conversation we heard her voice, just over the
+hedge:
+
+"God guard and keep you, my man, and bring you back to me safe!" And the
+voice was steady, though one could feel those dear eyes dim with tears.
+
+And then Jerry's, dear old Jerry's voice--a little bit gruff it was, and
+a little bit shaky: "My love! My darling!"
+
+But the old man was going towards the house, blowing his nose; and
+I--don't hold with love and that sort of thing at all. True, I blundered
+into a flower-bed, which I didn't see clearly, as I went towards the
+car, for there are things which one may not hear and remain unmoved.
+Perhaps, if things had been different, and Jerry--dear old
+Jerry--hadn't---- But there, I'm wandering again.
+
+At last we were in the car and ready to start.
+
+"Take care of him, Jerry; he and Pat are all we've got." It was Mrs.
+Delawnay speaking, standing there with the setting sun on her sweet
+face and her husband's arm about her.
+
+"I'll be all right, mater," answered Jack gruffly. "Buck up! Back for
+Christmas!"
+
+"I'll look after him, Mrs. Delawnay," answered Jerry, but his eyes were
+fixed on Pat, and for him the world held only her.
+
+As the car swung out of the gate, we looked back the last time and
+saluted, and it was only I who saw through a break in the hedge two
+women locked in each other's arms, while a grey-haired gentleman sat
+very still on a garden-seat, with his eyes fixed on the river rolling
+smoothly by.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was on the Aisne I took it. Through that ghastly fourteen days we had
+slogged dully south away from Mons, ever getting nearer Paris. Through
+the choking dust, with the men staggering as they walked--some asleep,
+some babbling, some cursing--but always marching, marching, marching;
+digging at night, only to leave the trenches in two hours and march on
+again; with ever and anon a battery of horse tearing past at a gallop,
+with the drivers lolling drunkenly in their saddles, and the guns
+jolting and swaying behind the straining, sweating horses, to come into
+action on some ridge still further south, and try to check von Kluck's
+hordes, if only for a little space. Every bridge in the hands of
+anxious-faced sapper officers, prepared for demolition one and all, but
+not to be blown up till all our troops were across. Ticklish work, for
+should there be a fault, there is not much time to repair it.
+
+But at last it was over, and we turned North. A few days later, in the
+afternoon, my company crossed a pontoon bridge on the Aisne, and two
+hours afterwards we dug ourselves in a mile and a half beyond it. The
+next morning, as I was sitting in one of the trenches, there was a
+sudden, blinding roar--and oblivion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I will pass rapidly over the next six weeks--over my journey from the
+clearing hospital to the base at Havre, of my voyage back to England in
+a hospital ship, and my ultimate arrival at Drayton Hall, the Delawnays'
+place in Somerset, where I had gone to convalesce.
+
+During the time various fragments of iron were being picked from me and
+the first shock of the concussion was wearing off, we had handed over
+our trenches on the Aisne to the French, and moved north to Flanders.
+
+Occasional scrawls came through from Jack and Jerry, but the people in
+England who had any knowledge at all of the fighting and of what was
+going on, grew to dread with an awful dread the sight of the
+telegraph-boy, and it required an effort of will to look at those
+prosaic casualty lists in the morning papers.
+
+Then suddenly without warning, as such news always does, it came. The
+War Office, in the shape of a whistling telegraph-boy, regretted to
+inform Mr. Delawnay that his son, Lieutenant Jack Delawnay of the Royal
+Downshire Regiment, had been killed in action.
+
+Had it been possible during the terrible days after the news came, I
+would have gone away, but I was still too weak to move; and I like to
+think that, perhaps, my presence there was some comfort to them, as a
+sort of connection through the regiment with their dead boy. After the
+first numbing shock, the old man bore it grandly.
+
+"He was all I had," he said to me one day as I lay in bed, "but I give
+him gladly for his country's sake." He stood looking at the broad
+fields. "All his," he muttered; "all would have been the dear lad's--and
+now six inches of soil and a wooden cross, perhaps not that."
+
+And Pat, poor little Pat, used to come up every day and sit with me,
+sometimes in silence, with her great eyes fixed on the fire, sometimes
+reading the paper, because my eyes weren't quite right yet.
+
+For about a fortnight after the news we did not think it strange; but
+then, as day by day went by, the same fear formulated in both our minds.
+I would have died sooner than whisper it; but one afternoon I found her
+eyes fixed on mine. We had been silent for some time, and suddenly in
+the firelight I saw the awful fear in her mind as clearly as if she had
+spoken it.
+
+"You're thinking it too, Winkle," she whispered, leaning forward. "Why
+hasn't he written? Why hasn't Jerry written one line? Oh, my God! don't
+say that _he_ has been----"
+
+"Hush, dear!" I said quietly. "His people would have let you know if
+they had had a wire."
+
+"But, Winkle, the Colonel has written that Jack died while gallantly
+leading a counter attack to recover lost trenches. Surely, Jerry would
+have found time for a line, unless something had happened to him; Jack
+was actually in his company."
+
+All of which I knew, but could not answer.
+
+"Besides," she went on after a moment, "you know how dad is longing for
+details. He wants to know everything about Jack, and so do we all. But
+oh, Winkle! I want to know if my man is all right. Brother and
+lover--not both, oh, God--not both!" The choking little sobs wrung my
+heart.
+
+The next day we got a wire from him. He was wounded slightly in the arm,
+and was at home. He was coming to us. Just that--no more. But, oh! the
+difference to the girl. Everything explained, everything clear, and the
+next day Jerry would be with her. Only as I lay awake that night
+thinking, and the events of the last three weeks passed through my mind,
+the same thought returned with maddening persistency. Slightly wounded
+in the arm, evidently recently as there was no mention in the casualty
+list, and for three weeks no line, no word. And then I cursed myself as
+an ass and a querulous invalid.
+
+At three o'clock he arrived, and they all came up to my room. The first
+thing that struck me like a blow was that it was his left arm which was
+hit--and the next was his face. Whether Pat had noticed that his writing
+arm was unhurt, I know not; but she had seen the look in his eyes, and
+was afraid.
+
+Then he told the story, and his voice was as the voice of the dead. Told
+the anxious, eager father and mother the story of their boy's heroism.
+How, having lost some trenches, the regiment made a counter attack to
+regain them. How first of them all was Jack, the men following him, as
+they always did, until a shot took him clean through the heart, and he
+dropped, leaving the regiment to surge over him for the last forty
+yards, and carry out gloriously what they had been going to do.
+
+And then the old man, pulling out the letter from the Colonel, and
+trying to read it through his blinding tears: "He did well, my boy," he
+whispered, "he did well, and died well. But, Jerry, the Colonel says in
+his letter," and he wiped his eyes and tried to read, "he says in his
+letter that Jack must have been right into their trenches almost, as he
+was killed at point-blank range with a revolver. One of those swine of
+German officers, I suppose." He shook his fist in the air. "Still he was
+but doing his duty. I must not complain. But you say he was forty yards
+away?"
+
+"It's difficult to say, sir, in the dark," answered Jerry, still in the
+voice of an automatic machine. "It may have been less than forty."
+
+And then he told them all over again; and while they, the two old dears,
+whispered and cried together, never noticing anything amiss, being only
+concerned with the telling, and caring no whit for the method thereof,
+Pat sat silently in the window, gazing at him with tearless eyes, with
+the wonder and amazement of her soul writ clear on her face for all to
+see. And I--I lay motionless in bed, and there was something I could not
+understand, for he would not look at me, nor yet at her, but kept his
+eyes fixed on the fire, while he talked like a child repeating a lesson.
+
+At last it was over; their last questions were asked, and slowly,
+arm-in-arm, they left the room, to dwell alone upon the story of their
+idolised boy. And in the room the silence was only broken by the
+crackling of the logs.
+
+How long we sat there I know not, with the firelight flickering on the
+stern set face of the man in the chair. He seemed unconscious of our
+existence, and we two dared not speak to him, we who loved him best, for
+there was something we could not understand. Suddenly he got up, and
+held out his arms to Pat. And when she crept into them, he kissed her,
+straining her close, as if he could never stop. Then, without a word, he
+led her to the door, and, putting her gently through, shut it behind
+her. Still without a word he came back to the chair, and turned it so
+that the firelight no longer played on his face. And then he spoke.
+
+"I have a story to tell you, Winkle, which I venture to think will
+entertain you for a time." His voice was the most terrible thing I have
+ever listened to.... "Nearly four weeks ago the battalion was in the
+trenches a bit south of Ypres. It was bad in the retreat, as you know;
+it was bad on the Aisne; but they were neither of them in the same
+county as the doing we had up north. One night--they'd shelled us off
+and on for three days and three nights--we were driven out of our
+trenches. The regiment on our right gave, and we had to go too. The next
+morning we were ordered to counter attack, and get back the ground we
+had lost. It was the attack in which we lost so heavily."
+
+He stopped speaking for a while, and I did not interrupt.
+
+"When I got that order overnight Jack was with me, in a hole that passed
+as a dugout. At the moment everything was quiet; the Germans were
+patching up their new position; only a maxim spluttered away a bit to
+one flank. To add to the general desolation a steady downpour of rain
+drenched us, into which, without cessation the German flares went
+shooting up. I think they were expecting a counter attack at once...."
+
+Again he paused, and I waited.
+
+"You know the condition one gets into sometimes when one is heavy for
+sleep. We had it during the retreat if you remember--a sort of coma, the
+outcome of utter bodily exhaustion. One used to go on walking, and all
+the while one was asleep--or practically so. Sounds came to us dimly as
+from a great distance; they made no impression on us--they were just a
+jumbled phantasmagoria of outside matters, which failed to reach one's
+brain, except as a dim dream. I was in that condition on the night I am
+speaking of; I was utterly cooked--beat to the world; I was finished for
+the time. I've told you this, because I want you to understand the
+physical condition I was in."
+
+He leaned forward and stared at the fire, resting his head on his hands.
+
+"How long I'd dozed heavily in that wet-sodden hole I don't know, but
+after a while above the crackle of the maxim, separate and distinct from
+the soft splash of the rain, and the hiss of the flares, and the hundred
+and one other noises that came dimly to me out of the night, I heard
+Jack's voice--at least I think it was Jack's voice."
+
+Of a sudden he sat up in the chair, and rising quickly he came and leant
+over the foot of the bed.
+
+"Devil take it," he cried bitterly, "I know it was Jack's voice--_now_.
+I knew it the next day when it was too late. What he said exactly I
+shall never know--at the time it made no impression on me; but at this
+moment, almost like a spirit voice in my brain, I can hear him. I can
+hear him asking me to watch him. I can hear him pleading--I can hear his
+dreadful fear of being found afraid. As a whisper from a great distance
+I can hear one short sentence--'Jerry, my God, Jerry--I'm frightened!'
+
+"Winkle, he turned to me in his weakness--that boy who had never failed
+before, that boy who had reached the breaking-point--and I heeded him
+not. I was too dead beat; my brain couldn't grasp it."
+
+"But, Jerry," I cried, "it turned out all right the next day; he..."
+The words died away on my lips as I met the look in his eyes.
+
+"You'd better let me finish," he interrupted wearily. "Let me get the
+whole hideous tragedy off my mind for the first and the last time. Early
+next morning we attacked. In the dim dirty light of dawn I saw the boy's
+face as he moved off to his platoon; and even then I didn't remember
+those halting sentences that had come to me out of the night. So instead
+of ordering him to the rear on some pretext or other as I should have
+done, I let him go to his platoon.
+
+"As we went across the ground that morning through a fire like nothing I
+had ever imagined, a man wavered in front of me. I felt it clean through
+me. I knew fear had come. I shouted and cheered--but the wavering was
+spreading; I knew that too. So I shot him through the heart from behind
+at point-blank range as I had trained myself to do--in that eternity
+ago--before the war. The counter attack was successful."
+
+"Great Heavens, Jerry!" I muttered, "who did you shoot?" though I knew
+the answer already.
+
+"The man I shot was Jack Delawnay. Whether at the time I was actively
+conscious of it, I cannot say. Certainly my training enabled me to act
+before any glimmering of the aftermath came into my mind. _This_ is the
+aftermath."
+
+I shuddered at the utter hopelessness of his tone, though the full
+result of his action had not dawned on me yet; my mind was dazed.
+
+"But surely Jack was no coward," I said at length.
+
+"He was not; but on that particular morning he gave out. He had reached
+the limit of his endurance."
+
+"The Colonel's letter," I reminded him; "it praised the lad."
+
+"Lies," he answered wearily, "all lies, engineered by me. Not because I
+am ashamed of what I did, but for the lad's sake, and hers, and the old
+people. I loved the boy, as you know, but he failed, and _there was no
+other way_. And where the fiend himself is gloating over it is that he
+knows it was the only time Jack did fail. If only I hadn't been so beat
+the night before; if only his words had reached my brain before it was
+too late. If only ... I think," he added, after a pause, "I think I
+shall go mad. Sometimes I wish I could."
+
+"And what of Pat?" I asked, at length breaking the silence.
+
+The hands grasping the bed tightened, and grew white.
+
+"I said 'Good-bye' to her before your eyes, ten minutes ago. I shall
+never see her again."
+
+"But, Great Heavens, Jerry!" I cried, "you can't give her up like that.
+She idolises the ground you walk on, she worships you, and she need
+never know. You were only doing your duty after all."
+
+"Stop!" he cried, and his voice was a command. "As you love me, old
+friend, don't tempt me. For three weeks those arguments have been
+flooding everything else from my mind. Do you remember at Henley, when
+she said, 'He might have answered to your voice?' Winkle, it's true,
+Jack might have. And I killed him. Just think if I married her, and she
+did find out. Her brother's murderer--in her eyes. The man who has
+wrecked her home, and broken her father and mother. It's inconceivable,
+it's hideous. Ah! don't you see how utterly final it all is? She may
+have been right; and if she was, then I, who loved her better than the
+world, have murdered her brother, and broken the old people's hearts for
+the sake of a theory. The fact that my theory has been put into
+practice, at the expense of everything I have to live for, is full of
+humour, isn't it?" And his laugh was wild.
+
+"Steady, Jerry," I said sternly. "What do you mean to do?"
+
+"You'll see, old man, in time," he answered. "First and foremost, get
+back to the regiment, arm or no arm. I would not have come home, but I
+had to see her once more."
+
+"You talk as if it was the end." I looked at him squarely.
+
+"It is," he answered. "It's easy out there."
+
+"Your mind is made up?"
+
+"Absolutely." He gave a short laugh. "Good-bye, old friend. Ease it to
+her as well as you can. Say I'm unstrung by the trenches, anything you
+like; but don't let her guess the truth."
+
+For a long minute he held my hand. Then he turned away. He walked to the
+mantelpiece, and there was a photograph of her there. For a long time he
+looked at it, and it seemed to me he whispered something. A sudden
+dimness blinded my eyes, and when I looked again he had gone--through
+the window into the night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did not see Pat until I left Drayton Hall after that ghastly night,
+save only once or twice with her mother in the room.
+
+But an hour before I left she came to me, and her face was that of a
+woman who has passed through the fires.
+
+"Tell me, Winkle, shall I ever see him again? You know what I mean."
+
+"You will never see him again, Pat," and the look in her eyes made me
+choke.
+
+"Will you tell me what it was he told you before he went through the
+window? You see, I was in the hall waiting for him," and she smiled
+wearily.
+
+"I can't, Pat dear; I promised him," I muttered. "But it was nothing
+disgraceful."
+
+"Disgraceful!" she cried proudly. "Jerry, and anything disgraceful. Oh,
+my God! Winkle dear," and she broke down utterly, "do you remember the
+waltz they were playing that day--'Destiny'?"
+
+And then I went. Whether that wonderful woman's intuition has told her
+something of what happened, I know not. But yesterday morning I got a
+letter from the Colonel saying that Jerry had chucked his life away,
+saving a wounded man. And this morning she will have seen it in the
+papers.
+
+God help you, Pat, my dear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+JIM BRENT'S V.C.
+
+
+If you pass through the Menin-Gate at Ypres, and walk up the slight rise
+that lies on the other side of the moat, you will come to the parting of
+the ways. You will at the same time come to a spot of unprepossessing
+aspect, whose chief claim to notoriety lies in its shell-holes and
+broken-down houses. If you keep straight on you will in time come to the
+little village of Potige; if you turn to the right you will eventually
+arrive at Hooge. In either case you will wish you hadn't.
+
+Before the war these two roads--which join about two hundred yards east
+of the rampart walls of Ypres--were adorned with a fair number of
+houses. They were of that stucco type which one frequently sees in
+England spreading out along the roads that lead to a largish town.
+Generally there is one of unusually revolting aspect that stands proudly
+by itself a hundred yards or so from the common herd and enclosed in a
+stuccoesque wall. And there my knowledge of the type in England ends.
+
+In Belgium, however, my acquaintance with this sort of abode is
+extensive. In taking over a house in Flanders that stands unpleasantly
+near the Hun, the advertisement that there are three sitting, two bed,
+h. and c. laid on, with excellent onion patch, near railway and good
+golf-links, leaves one cold. The end-all and be-all of a house is its
+cellar. The more gloomy, and dark, and generally horrible the cellar,
+the higher that house ranks socially, and the more likely are you to
+find in it a general consuming his last hamper from Fortnum & Mason by
+the light of a tallow dip. And this applies more especially to the Hooge
+road.
+
+Arrived at the fork, let us turn right-handed and proceed along the
+deserted road. A motor-car is not to be advised, as at this stage of the
+promenade one is in full sight of the German trenches. For about two or
+three hundred yards no houses screen you, and then comes a row of the
+stucco residences I have mentioned. Also at this point the road bends to
+the left. Here, out of sight, occasional men sun themselves in the
+heavily-scented air, what time they exchange a little playful badinage
+in a way common to Thomas Atkins. At least, that is what happened some
+time ago; now, of course, things may have changed in the garden city.
+
+And at this point really our journey is ended, though for interest we
+might continue for another quarter of a mile. The row of houses stops
+abruptly, and away in front stretches a long straight road. A few
+detached mansions of sorts, in their own grounds, flank it on each side.
+At length they cease, and in front lies the open country. The
+poplar-lined road disappears out of sight a mile ahead, where it tops a
+gentle slope. And half on this side of the rise, and half on the other,
+there are the remnants of the tit-bit of the whole bloody charnel-house
+of the Ypres salient--the remnants of the village of Hooge. A closer
+examination is not to be recommended. The place where you stand is known
+in the vernacular as Hell Fire Corner, and the Hun--who knows the range
+of that corner to the fraction of an inch--will quite possibly resent
+your presence even there. And shrapnel gives a nasty wound.
+
+Let us return and seek safety in a cellar. It is not what one would call
+a good-looking cellar; no priceless prints adorn the walls, no Turkey
+carpet receives your jaded feet. In one corner a portable gramophone
+with several records much the worse for wear reposes on an upturned
+biscuit-box, and lying on the floor, with due regard to space economy,
+are three or four of those excellent box-mattresses which form the
+all-in-all of the average small Belgian house. On top of them are laid
+some valises and blankets, and from the one in the corner the sweet
+music of the sleeper strikes softly on the ear. It is the senior
+subaltern, who has been rambling all the preceding night in Sanctuary
+Wood--the proud authors of our nomenclature in Flanders quite rightly
+possess the humour necessary for the production of official communiques.
+
+In two chairs, smoking, are a couple of officers. One is a major of the
+Royal Engineers, and another, also a sapper, belongs to the gilded
+staff. The cellar is the temporary headquarters of a field
+company--office, mess, and bedroom rolled into one.
+
+"I'm devilish short-handed for the moment, Bill." The Major thoughtfully
+filled his pipe. "That last boy I got a week ago--a nice boy he was,
+too--was killed in Zouave Wood the day before yesterday, poor devil.
+Seymour was wounded three days ago, and there's only Brent, Johnson, and
+him"--he indicated the sleeper. "Johnson is useless, and Brent----" He
+paused, and looked full at the Staff-captain. "Do you know Brent well,
+by any chance?"
+
+"I should jolly well think I did. Jim Brent is one of my greatest pals,
+Major."
+
+"Then perhaps you can tell me something I very much want to know. I have
+knocked about the place for a good many years, and I have rubbed
+shoulders, officially and unofficially, with more men than I care to
+remember. As a result, I think I may claim a fair knowledge of my
+fellow-beings. And Brent--well, he rather beats me."
+
+He paused as if at a loss for words, and looked in the direction of the
+sleeping subaltern. Reassured by the alarming noise proceeding from the
+corner, he seemed to make up his mind.
+
+"Has Brent had some very nasty knock lately--money, or a woman, or
+something?"
+
+The Staff-captain took his pipe from his mouth, and for some seconds
+stared at the floor. Then he asked quietly, "Why? What are you getting
+at?"
+
+"This is why, Bill. Brent is one of the most capable officers I have
+ever had. He's a man whose judgment, tact, and driving power are
+perfectly invaluable in a show of this sort--so invaluable, in fact"--he
+looked straight at his listener--"that his death would be a very real
+loss to the corps and the Service. He's one of those we can't replace,
+and--he's going all out to make us have to."
+
+"What do you mean?" The question expressed no surprise; the speaker
+seemed merely to be demanding confirmation of what he already knew.
+
+"Brent is deliberately trying to get killed. There is not a shadow of
+doubt about it in my mind. Do you know why?"
+
+The Staff-officer got up and strolled to a table on which were lying
+some illustrated weekly papers. "Have you last week's _Tatler_?" He
+turned over the leaves. "Yes--here it is." He handed the newspaper to
+the Major. "That is why."
+
+"_A charming portrait of Lady Kathleen Goring; who was last week married
+to that well-known sportsman and soldier Sir Richard Goring. She was, it
+will be remembered, very popular in London society as the beautiful Miss
+Kathleen Tubbs--the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Silas P. Tubbs, of
+Pittsburg, Pa._"
+
+The Major put down the paper and looked at the Staff-captain; then
+suddenly he rose and hurled it into the corner. "Oh, damn these women,"
+he exploded.
+
+"Amen," murmured the other, as, with a loud snort, the sleeper awoke.
+
+"Is anything th' matter?" he murmured, drowsily, only to relapse at once
+into unconsciousness.
+
+"Jim was practically engaged to her; and then, three months ago, without
+a word of explanation, she gave him the order of the boot, and got
+engaged to Goring." The Staff-captain spoke savagely. "A damn rotten
+woman, Major, and Jim's well out of it, if he only knew. Goring's a
+baronet, which is, of course, the reason why this excrescence of the
+house of Tubbs chucked Jim. As a matter of fact, Dick Goring's not a bad
+fellow--he deserves a better fate. But it fairly broke Jim up. He's not
+the sort of fellow who falls in love easily; this was his one and only
+real affair, and he took it bad. He told me at the time that he never
+intended to come back alive."
+
+"Damn it all!" The Major's voice was irritable. "Why, his knowledge of
+the lingo alone makes him invaluable."
+
+"Frankly, I've been expecting to hear of his death every day. He's not
+the type that says a thing of that sort without meaning it."
+
+A step sounded on the floor above. "Look out, here he is. You'll stop
+and have a bit of lunch, Bill?"
+
+As he spoke the light in the doorway was blocked out, and a man came
+uncertainly down the stairs.
+
+"Confound these cellars. One can't see a thing, coming in out of the
+daylight. Who's that? Halloa, Bill, old cock, 'ow's yourself?"
+
+"Just tottering, Jim. Where've you been?"
+
+"Wandered down to Vlamertinghe this morning early to see about some
+sandbags, and while I was there I met that flying wallah Petersen in the
+R.N.A.S. Do you remember him, Major? He was up here with an armoured car
+in May. He told me rather an interesting thing."
+
+"What's that, Jim?" The Major was attacking a brawn with gusto. "Sit
+down, Bill. Whisky and Perrier in that box over there."
+
+"He tells me the Huns have got six guns whose size he puts at about
+9-inch; guns, mark you, not howitzers--mounted on railway trucks at
+Tournai. From there they can be rushed by either branch of the line--the
+junction is just west--to wherever they are required."
+
+"My dear old boy," laughed Bill, as he sat down. "I don't know your
+friend Petersen, and I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that
+he is in all probability quite right. But the information seems to be
+about as much use as the fact that it is cold in Labrador."
+
+"I wonder," answered Brent, thoughtfully--"I wonder." He was rummaging
+through a pile of papers in the stationery box.
+
+The other two men looked at one another significantly. "What
+hare-brained scheme have you got in your mind now, Brent?" asked the
+Major.
+
+Brent came slowly across the cellar and sat down with a sheet of paper
+spread out on his knee. For a while he examined it in silence, comparing
+it with an ordnance map, and then he spoke. "It's brick, and the drop is
+sixty feet, according to this--with the depth of the water fifteen."
+
+"And the answer is a lemon. What on earth are you talking about, Jim?"
+
+"The railway bridge over the river before the line forks."
+
+"Good Lord! My good fellow," cried the Major, irritably, "don't be
+absurd. Are you proposing to blow it up?" His tone was ponderously
+sarcastic.
+
+"Not exactly," answered the unperturbed Brent, "but something of the
+sort--if I can get permission."
+
+The two men laid down their knives and stared at him solemnly.
+
+"You are, I believe, a sapper officer," commenced the Major. "May I ask
+first how much gun-cotton you think will be necessary to blow up a
+railway bridge which gives a sixty-foot drop into water; second, how you
+propose to get it there; third, how you propose to get yourself there;
+and fourth, why do you talk such rot?"
+
+Jim Brent laughed and helped himself to whisky. "The answer to the first
+question is unknown at present, but inquiries of my secretary will be
+welcomed--probably about a thousand pounds. The answer to the second
+question is that I don't. The answer to the third is--somehow; and for
+the fourth question I must ask for notice."
+
+"What the devil are you driving at, Jim?" said the Staff-captain,
+puzzled. "If you don't get the stuff there, how the deuce are you going
+to blow up the bridge?"
+
+"You may take it from me, Bill, that I may be mad, but I never
+anticipated marching through German Belgium with a party of sappers and
+a G.S. wagon full of gun-cotton. Oh, no--it's a one-man show."
+
+"But," ejaculated the Major, "how the----"
+
+"Have you ever thought, sir," interrupted Brent, "what would be the
+result if, as a heavy train was passing over a bridge, you cut one rail
+just in front of the engine?"
+
+"But----" the Major again started to speak, and was again cut short.
+
+"The outside rail," continued Brent, "so that the tendency would be for
+the engine to go towards the parapet wall. And no iron girder to hold it
+up--merely a little brick wall"--he again referred to the paper on his
+knee--"three feet high and three bricks thick. No nasty parties of men
+carrying slabs of gun-cotton; just yourself--with one slab of gun-cotton
+in your pocket and one primer and one detonator--that and the
+psychological moment. Luck, of course, but when we dispense with the
+working party we lift it from the utterly impossible into the realm of
+the remotely possible. The odds are against success, I know; but----" He
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"But how do you propose to get there, my dear chap?" asked the Major,
+peevishly. "The Germans have a rooted objection to English officers
+walking about behind their lines."
+
+"Yes, but they don't mind a Belgian peasant, do they? Dash it, they've
+played the game on us scores of times, Major--not perhaps the bridge
+idea, but espionage by men disguised behind our lines. I only propose
+doing the same, and perhaps going one better."
+
+"You haven't one chance in a hundred of getting through alive." The
+Major viciously stabbed a tongue.
+
+"That is--er--beside the point," answered Brent, shortly.
+
+"But how could you get through their lines to start with?" queried Bill.
+
+"There are ways, dearie, there are ways. Petersen is a man of much
+resource."
+
+"Of course, the whole idea is absolutely ridiculous." The Major snorted.
+"Once and for all, Brent, I won't hear of it. We're far too short of
+fellows as it is."
+
+And for a space the subject languished, though there was a look on Jim
+Brent's face which showed it was only for a space.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now when a man of the type of Brent takes it badly over a woman, there
+is a strong probability of very considerable trouble at any time. When,
+in addition to that, it occurs in the middle of the bloodiest war of
+history, the probability becomes a certainty. That he should quite fail
+to see just what manner of woman the present Lady Goring was, was
+merely in the nature of the animal. He was--as far as women were
+concerned--of the genus fool. To him "the rag, and the bone, and the
+hank of hair" could never be anything but perfect. It is as well that
+there are men like that.
+
+All of which his major--who was a man of no little understanding--knew
+quite well. And the knowledge increased his irritation, for he realised
+the futility of trying to adjust things. That adjusting business is
+ticklish work even between two close pals; but when the would-be
+adjuster is very little more than a mere acquaintance, the chances of
+success might be put in a small-sized pill-box. To feel morally certain
+that your best officer is trying his hardest to get himself killed, and
+to be unable to prevent it, is an annoying state of affairs. Small
+wonder, then, that at intervals throughout the days that followed did
+the Major reiterate with solemnity and emphasis his remark to the
+Staff-captain anent women. It eased his feelings, if it did nothing
+else.
+
+The wild scheme Brent had half suggested did not trouble him greatly. He
+regarded it merely as a temporary aberration of the brain. In the South
+African war small parties of mounted sappers and cavalry had undoubtedly
+ridden far into hostile country, and, getting behind the enemy, had
+blown up bridges, and generally damaged their lines of communication.
+But in the South African war a line of trenches did not stretch from
+sea to sea.
+
+And so, seated one evening at the door of his commodious residence
+talking things over with his colonel, he did not lay any great stress on
+the bridge idea. Brent had not referred to it again; and in the cold
+light of reason it seemed too foolish to mention.
+
+"Of course," remarked the C.R.E., "he's bound to take it soon. No man
+can go on running the fool risks you say he does without stopping one.
+It's a pity; but, if he won't see by himself that he's a fool, I don't
+see what we can do to make it clear. If only that confounded girl--" He
+grunted and got up to go. "Halloa! What the devil is this fellow doing?"
+
+Shambling down the road towards them was a particularly decrepit and
+filthy specimen of the Belgian labourer. In normal circumstances, and in
+any other place, his appearance would have called for no especial
+comment; the brand is not a rare one. But for many months the salient of
+Ypres had been cleared of its civilian population; and this sudden
+appearance was not likely to pass unnoticed.
+
+"Venez, ici, monsieur, tout de suite." At the Major's words the old man
+stopped, and paused in hesitation; then he shuffled towards the two men.
+
+"Will you talk to him, Colonel?" The Major glanced at his senior
+officer.
+
+"Er--I think not; my--er--French, don't you know--er--not what it was."
+The worthy officer retired in good order, only to be overwhelmed by a
+perfect deluge of words from the Belgian.
+
+"What's he say?" he queried, peevishly. "That damn Flemish sounds like a
+dog fight."
+
+"Parlez-vous Francais, monsieur?" The Major attempted to stem the tide
+of the old man's verbosity, but he evidently had a grievance, and a
+Belgian with a grievance is not a thing to be regarded with a light
+heart.
+
+"Thank heavens, here's the interpreter!" The Colonel heaved a sigh of
+relief. "Ask this man what he's doing here, please."
+
+For a space the distant rattle of a machine-gun was drowned, and then
+the interpreter turned to the officers.
+
+"'E say, sare, that 'e has ten thousand franc behind the German line,
+buried in a 'ole, and 'e wants to know vat 'e shall do."
+
+"Do," laughed the Major. "What does he imagine he's likely to do? Go and
+dig it up? Tell him that he's got no business here at all."
+
+Again the interpreter spoke.
+
+"Shall I take 'im to Yper and 'and 'im to the gendarmes, sare?"
+
+"Not a bad idea," said the Colonel, "and have him----"
+
+What further order he was going to give is immaterial, for at that
+moment he looked at the Belgian, and from that villainous old ruffian he
+received the most obvious and unmistakable wink.
+
+"Er--thank you, interpreter; I will send him later under a guard."
+
+The interpreter saluted and retired, the Major looked surprised, the
+Colonel regarded the Belgian with an amazed frown. Then suddenly the old
+villain spoke.
+
+"Thank you, Colonel. Those Ypres gendarmes would have been a nuisance."
+
+"Great Scot!" gasped the Major. "What the----"
+
+"What the devil is the meaning of this masquerade, sir?" The Colonel was
+distinctly angry.
+
+"I wanted to see if I'd pass muster as a Belgian, sir. The interpreter
+was an invaluable proof."
+
+"You run a deuced good chance of being shot, Brent, in that rig. Anyway,
+I wish for an explanation as to why you're walking about in that get-up.
+Haven't you enough work to do?"
+
+"Shall we go inside, sir? I've got a favour to ask you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We are not very much concerned with the conversation that took place
+downstairs in that same cellar, when two senior officers of the corps
+of Royal Engineers listened for nearly an hour to an apparently
+disreputable old farmer. It might have been interesting to note how the
+sceptical grunts of those two officers gradually gave place to silence,
+and at length to a profound, breathless interest, as they pored over
+maps and plans. And the maps were all of that country which lies behind
+the German trenches.
+
+But at the end the old farmer straightened himself smartly.
+
+"That is the rough outline of my plan, sir. I think I can claim that I
+have reduced the risk of not getting to my objective to a minimum. When
+I get there I am sure that my knowledge of the patois renders the chance
+of detection small. As for the actual demolition itself, an enormous
+amount will depend on luck; but I can afford to wait. I shall have to be
+guided by local conditions. And so I ask you to let me go. It's a long
+odds chance, but if it comes off it's worth it."
+
+"And if it does, what then? What about you?" The Colonel's eyes and Jim
+Brent's met.
+
+"I shall have paid for my keep, Colonel, at any rate."
+
+Everything was very silent in the cellar; outside on the road a man was
+singing.
+
+"In other words, Jim, you're asking me to allow you to commit suicide."
+
+He cleared his throat; his voice seemed a little husky.
+
+"Good Lord! sir--it's not as bad as that. Call it a forlorn hope, if you
+like, but ..." The eyes of the two men met, and Brent fell silent.
+
+"Gad, my lad, you're a fool, but you're a brave fool! For Heaven's sake,
+give me a drink."
+
+"I may go, Colonel?"
+
+"Yes, you may go--as far, that is, as I am concerned. There is the
+General Staff to get round first."
+
+But though the Colonel's voice was gruff, he seemed to have some
+difficulty in finding his glass.
+
+As far as is possible in human nature, Jim Brent, at the period when he
+gained his V.C. in a manner which made him the hero of the hour--one
+might almost say of the war--was, I believe, without fear. The blow he
+had received at the hands of the girl who meant all the world to him had
+rendered him utterly callous of his life. And it was no transitory
+feeling: the mood of an hour or a week. It was deeper than the ordinary
+misery of a man who has taken the knock from a woman, deeper and much
+less ostentatious. He seemed to view life with a contemptuous toleration
+that in any other man would have been the merest affectation. But it was
+not evinced by his words; it was shown, as his Major had said, by his
+deeds--deeds that could not be called bravado because he never
+advertised them. He was simply gambling with death, with a cool hand and
+a steady eye, and sublimely indifferent to whether he won or lost. Up to
+the time when he played his last great game he had borne a charmed life.
+According to the book of the words, he should have been killed a score
+of times, and he told me himself only last week that he went into this
+final gamble with a taunt on his lips and contempt in his heart. Knowing
+him as I do, I believe it. I can almost hear him saying to his grim
+opponent, "Dash it all! I've won every time; for Heaven's sake do
+something to justify your reputation."
+
+But--he didn't; Jim won again. And when he landed in England from a
+Dutch tramp, having carried out the maddest and most hazardous exploit
+of the war unscathed, he slipped up on a piece of orange-peel and broke
+his right leg in two places, which made him laugh so immoderately when
+the contrast struck him that it cured him--not his leg, but his mind.
+However, all in due course.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first part of the story I heard from Petersen, of the Naval Air
+Service. I ran into him by accident in a grocer's shop in
+Hazebrouck--buying stuff for the mess.
+
+"What news of Jim?" he cried, the instant he saw me.
+
+"Very sketchy," I answered. "He's the worst letter-writer in the world.
+You know he trod on a bit of orange-peel and broke his leg when he got
+back to England."
+
+"He would." Petersen smiled. "That's just the sort of thing Jim would
+do. Men like him usually die of mumps, or the effects of a bad oyster."
+
+"Quite so," I murmured, catching him gently by the arm. "And now come to
+the pub over the way and tell me all about it. The beer there is of a
+less vile brand than usual."
+
+"But I can't tell you anything, my dear chap, that you don't know
+already!" he expostulated. "I am quite prepared to gargle with you,
+but----"
+
+"Deux bieres, ma'm'selle, s'il vous plait." I piloted Petersen firmly to
+a little table. "Tell me all, my son!" I cried. "For the purposes of
+this meeting I know nix, and you as part hero in the affair have got to
+get it off your chest."
+
+He laughed, and lit a cigarette. "Not much of the heroic in my part of
+the stunt, I assure you. As you know, the show started from Dunkirk,
+where in due course Jim arrived, armed with credentials extracted only
+after great persuasion from sceptical officers of high rank. How he ever
+got there at all has always been a wonder to me: his Colonel was the
+least of his difficulties in that line. But Jim takes a bit of stopping.
+
+"My part of the show was to transport that scatter-brained idiot over
+the trenches and drop him behind the German lines. His idea was novel, I
+must admit, though at the time I thought he was mad, and for that matter
+I still think he's mad. Only a madman could have thought of it, only Jim
+Brent could have done it and not been killed.
+
+"From a height of three thousand feet, in the middle of the night, he
+proposed to bid me and the plane a tender farewell and descend to terra
+firma by means of a parachute."
+
+"Great Scot," I murmured. "Some idea."
+
+"As you say--some idea. The thing was to choose a suitable night. As Jim
+said, 'the slow descent of a disreputable Belgian peasant like an angel
+out of the skies will cause a flutter of excitement in the tender heart
+of the Hun if it is perceived. Therefore, it must be a dark and overcast
+night.'
+
+"At last, after a week, we got an ideal one. Jim arrayed himself in his
+togs, took his basket on his arm--you know he'd hidden the gun-cotton in
+a cheese--and we went round to the machine. By Jove! that chap's a
+marvel. Think of it, man." Petersen's face was full of enthusiastic
+admiration. "He'd never even been up in an aeroplane before, and yet the
+first time he does, it is with the full intention of trusting himself to
+an infernal parachute, a thing the thought of which gives me cold feet;
+moreover, of doing it in the dark from a height of three thousand odd
+feet behind the German lines with his pockets full of detonators and
+other abominations, and his cheese full of gun-cotton. Lord! he's a
+marvel. And I give you my word that of the two of us--though I've flown
+for over two years--I was the shaky one. He was absolutely cool; not the
+coolness of a man who is keeping himself under control, but just the
+normal coolness of a man who is doing his everyday job."
+
+Petersen finished his beer at a gulp, and we encored the dose.
+
+"Well, we got off about two. We were not aiming at any specific spot,
+but I was going to go due east for three-quarters of an hour, which I
+estimated should bring us somewhere over Courtrai. Then he was going to
+drop off, and I was coming back. The time was chosen so that I should be
+able to land again at Dunkirk about dawn.
+
+"I can't tell you much more. We escaped detection going over the lines,
+and about ten minutes to three, at a height of three thousand five
+hundred, old Jim tapped me on the shoulder. He understood exactly what
+to do--as far as we could tell him: for the parachute is still almost in
+its infancy.
+
+"As he had remarked to our wing commander before we started: 'A most
+valuable experiment, sir; I will report on how it works in due course.'
+
+"We shook hands. I could see him smiling through the darkness; and then,
+with his basket under his arm, that filthy old Belgian farmer launched
+himself into space.
+
+"I saw him for a second falling like a stone, and then the parachute
+seemed to open out all right. But of course I couldn't tell in the dark;
+and just afterwards I struck an air-pocket, and had a bit of trouble
+with the bus. After that I turned round and went home again. I'm looking
+forward to seeing the old boy and hearing what occurred."
+
+And that is the unvarnished account of the first part of Jim's last game
+with fate. Incidentally, it's the sort of thing that hardly requires any
+varnishing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rest of the yarn I heard later from Brent himself, when I went round
+to see him in hospital, while I was back on leave.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, lady, dear," he said to the sister as I arrived,
+"don't let anyone else in. Say I've had a relapse and am biting the
+bed-clothes. This unpleasant-looking man is a great pal of mine, and I
+would commune with him awhile."
+
+"It's appalling, old boy," he said to me as she went out of the room,
+"how they cluster. Men of dreadful visage; women who gave me my first
+bath; unprincipled journalists--all of them come and talk hot air until
+I get rid of them by swooning. My young sister brought thirty-four
+school friends round last Tuesday! Of course, my swoon is entirely
+artificial; but the sister is an understanding soul, and shoos them
+away." He lit a cigarette.
+
+"I saw Petersen the other day in Hazebrouck," I told him as I sat down
+by the bed. "He wants to come round and see you as soon as he can get
+home."
+
+"Good old Petersen. I'd never have brought it off without him."
+
+"What happened, Jim?" I asked. "I've got up to the moment when you left
+his bus, with your old parachute, and disappeared into space. And of
+course I've seen the official announcement of the guns being seen in the
+river, as reported by that R.F.C. man. But there is a gap of about three
+weeks; and I notice you have not been over-communicative to the
+half-penny press."
+
+"My dear old man," he answered, seriously, "there was nothing to be
+communicative about. Thinking it over now, I am astounded how simple the
+whole thing was. It was as easy as falling off a log. I fell like a
+stone for two or three seconds, because the blessed umbrella wouldn't
+open. Then I slowed up and floated gently downwards. It was a most
+fascinating sensation. I heard old Petersen crashing about just above
+me; and in the distance a search-light was moving backwards and forwards
+across the sky, evidently looking for him. I should say it took me about
+five minutes to come down; and of course all the way down I was
+wondering where the devil I was going to land. The country below me was
+black as pitch: not a light to be seen--not a camp-fire--nothing. As the
+two things I wanted most to avoid were church steeples and the temporary
+abode of any large number of Huns, everything looked very favourable. To
+be suspended by one's trousers from a weathercock in the cold, grey
+light of dawn seemed a sorry ending to the show; and to land from the
+skies on a general's stomach requires explanation."
+
+He smiled reminiscently. "I'm not likely to forget that descent,
+Petersen's engine getting fainter and fainter in the distance, the first
+pale streaks of light beginning to show in the east, and away on a road
+to the south the headlamps of a car moving swiftly along. Then the
+humour of the show struck me. Me, in my most picturesque disguise,
+odoriferous as a family of ferrets in my borrowed garments, descending
+gently on to the Hun like the fairy god-mother in a pantomime. So I
+laughed, and--wished I hadn't. My knees hit my jaw with a crack, and I
+very nearly bit my tongue in two. Cheeses all over the place, and there
+I was enveloped in the folds of the collapsing parachute. Funny, but for
+a moment I couldn't think what had happened. I suppose I was a bit dizzy
+from the shock, and it never occurred to me that I'd reached the ground,
+which, not being able to see in the dark, I hadn't known was so close.
+Otherwise I could have landed much lighter. Yes, it's a great machine
+that parachute." He paused to reach for his pipe.
+
+"Where did you land?" I asked.
+
+"In the middle of a ploughed field. Couldn't have been a better place if
+I'd chosen it. A wood or a river would have been deuced awkward. Yes,
+there's no doubt about it, old man, my luck was in from the very start.
+I removed myself from the folds, picked up my cheeses, found a
+convenient ditch alongside to hide the umbrella in, and then sat tight
+waiting for dawn.
+
+"I happen to know that part of Belgium pretty well, and when it got
+light I took my bearings. Petersen had borne a little south of what we
+intended, which was all to the good--it gave me less walking; but it was
+just as well I found a sign-post almost at once, as I had no map, of
+course--far too dangerous; and I wasn't very clear on names of villages,
+though I'd memorized the map before leaving. I found I had landed
+somewhere south of Courtrai, and was about twelve kilometres due north
+of Tournai.
+
+"And it was just as I'd decided that little fact that I met a horrible
+Hun, a large and forbidding-looking man. Now, the one thing on which I'd
+been chancing my arm was the freedom allowed to the Belgians behind the
+German lines, and luck again stepped in.
+
+"Beyond grunting 'Guten Morgen' he betrayed no interest in me whatever.
+It was the same all along. I shambled past Uhlans, and officers and
+generals in motor-cars--Huns of all breeds and all varieties, and no one
+even noticed me. And after all, why on earth should they?
+
+"About midday I came to Tournai; and here again I was trusting to luck.
+I'd stopped there three years ago at a small estaminet near the station
+kept by the widow Demassiet. Now this old lady was, I knew, thoroughly
+French in sympathies; and I hoped that, in case of necessity, she would
+pass me off as her brother from Ghent, who was staying with her for a
+while. Some retreat of this sort was, of course, essential. A homeless
+vagabond would be bound to excite suspicion.
+
+"Dear old woman--she was splendid. After the war I shall search her out,
+and present her with an annuity, or a belle vache, or something dear to
+the Belgian heart. She never even hesitated. From that night I was her
+brother, though she knew it meant her death as well as mine if I was
+discovered.
+
+"'Ah, monsieur,' she said, when I pointed this out to her, 'it is in the
+hands of le bon Dieu. At the most I have another five years, and these
+Allemands--pah!' She spat with great accuracy.
+
+"She was good, was the old veuve Demassiet."
+
+Jim puffed steadily at his pipe in silence for a few moments.
+
+"I soon found out that the Germans frequented the estaminet; and, what
+was more to the point--luck again, mark you--that the gunners who ran
+the battery I was out after almost lived there. When the battery was at
+Tournai they had mighty little to do, and they did it, with some skill,
+round the beer in her big room.
+
+"I suppose you know what my plan was. The next time that battery left
+Tournai I proposed to cut one of the metals on the bridge over the River
+Scheldt, just in front of the engine, so close that the driver couldn't
+stop, and so derail the locomotive. I calculated that if I cut the
+outside rail--the one nearest the parapet wall--the flange on the inner
+wheel would prevent the engine turning inwards. That would merely cause
+delay, but very possibly no more. I hoped, on the contrary, to turn it
+outwards towards the wall, through which it would crash, dragging after
+it with any luck the whole train of guns.
+
+"That being the general idea, so to speak, I wandered off one day to see
+the bridge. As I expected, it was guarded, but by somewhat
+indifferent-looking Huns--evidently only lines of communication troops.
+For all that, I hadn't an idea how I was going to do it. Still, luck,
+always luck; the more you buffet her the better she treats you.
+
+"One week after I got there I heard the battery was going out: and they
+were going out that night. As a matter of fact, that hadn't occurred to
+me before--the fact of them moving by night, but it suited me down to
+the ground. It appeared they were timed to leave at midnight, which
+meant they'd cross the bridge about a quarter or half past. And so at
+nine that evening I pushed gently off and wandered bridgewards.
+
+"Then the fun began. I was challenged, and, having answered thickly, I
+pretended to be drunk. The sentry, poor devil, wasn't a bad fellow, and
+I had some cold sausage and beer. And very soon a gurgling noise
+pronounced the fact that he found my beer good.
+
+"It was then I hit him on the base of his skull with a bit of gas-pipe.
+That sentry will never drink beer again." Brent frowned. "A nasty blow,
+a dirty blow, but a necessary blow." He shrugged his shoulders and then
+went on.
+
+"I took off his top-coat and put it on. I put on his hat and took his
+rifle and rolled him down the embankment into a bush. Then I resumed his
+beat. Discipline was a bit lax on that bridge, I'm glad to say; unless
+you pulled your relief out of bed no one else was likely to do it for
+you. As you may guess, I did not do much pulling.
+
+"I was using two slabs of gun-cotton to make sure--firing them
+electrically. I had two dry-cells and two coils of fine wire for the
+leads. The cells would fire a No. 13 Detonator through thirty yards of
+those leads--and that thirty yards just enabled me to stand clear of the
+bridge. It took me twenty minutes to fix it up, and then I had to wait.
+
+"By gad, old boy, you've called me a cool bird; you should have seen me
+during that wait. I was trembling like a child with excitement:
+everything had gone so marvellously. And for the first time in the whole
+show it dawned on me that not only was there a chance of getting away
+afterwards, but that I actually wanted to. Before that moment I'd
+assumed on the certainty of being killed."
+
+For a moment he looked curiously in front of him, and a slight smile
+lurked round the corners of his mouth. Then suddenly, and apropos of
+nothing, he remarked, "Kathleen Goring tea'd with me yesterday. Of
+course, it was largely due to that damned orange-skin, but I--er--did
+not pass a sleepless night."
+
+Which I took to be indicative of a state of mind induced by the rind of
+that nutritious fruit, rather than any reference to his broken leg. For
+when a man has passed unscathed through parachute descents and little
+things like that, only to lose badly on points to a piece of peel, his
+sense of humour gets a jog in a crucial place. And a sense of humour is
+fatal to the hopeless, undying passion. It is almost as fatal, in fact,
+as a hiccough at the wrong moment.
+
+"It was just about half-past twelve that the train came along. I was
+standing by the end of the bridge, with my overcoat and rifle showing in
+the faint light of the moon. The engine-driver waved his arm and shouted
+something in greeting and I waved back. Then I took the one free lead
+and waited until the engine was past me. I could see the first of the
+guns, just coming abreast, and at that moment I connected up with the
+battery in my pocket. Two slabs of gun-cotton make a noise, as you know,
+and just as the engine reached the charge, a sheet of flame seemed to
+leap from underneath the front wheels. The driver hadn't time to do a
+thing--the engine had left the rails before he knew what had happened.
+And then things moved. In my wildest moments I had never expected such a
+success. The engine crashed through the parapet wall and hung for a
+moment in space. Then it fell downward into the water, and by the mercy
+of Allah the couplings held. The first two guns followed it, through the
+gap it had made, and then the others overturned with the pull before
+they got there, smashing down the wall the whole way along. Every single
+gun went wallop into the Scheldt--to say nothing of two passenger
+carriages containing the gunners and their officers. The whole thing was
+over in five seconds; and you can put your shirt on it that before the
+last gun hit the water yours truly had cast away his regalia of office
+and was legging it like a two-year-old back to the veuve Demassiet and
+Tournai. It struck me that bridge might shortly become an unhealthy
+spot."
+
+Jim Brent laughed. "It did. I had to stop on with the old lady for two
+or three days in case she might be suspected owing to my sudden
+departure--and things hummed. They shot the feldwebel in charge of the
+guard; they shot every sentry; they shot everybody they could think of;
+but--they never even suspected me. I went out and had a look next day,
+the day I think that R.F.C. man spotted and reported the damage. Two of
+the guns were only fit for turning into hairpins, and the other four
+looked very like the morning after.
+
+"Then, after I'd waited a couple of days, I said good-bye to the old
+dear and trekked off towards the Dutch frontier, gaining immense
+popularity, old son, by describing the accident to all the soldiers I
+met.
+
+"That's all, I think. I had words with a sentry at the frontier, but I
+put it across him with his own bundook. Then I wandered to our
+Ambassador, and sailed for England in due course. And--er--that's that."
+
+Such is the tale of Jim Brent's V.C. There only remains for me to give
+the wording of his official report on the matter.
+
+"I have the honour to report," it ran, "that at midnight on the 25th
+ult., I successfully derailed the train conveying six guns of calibre
+estimated at about 9-inch, each mounted on a railway truck. The engine,
+followed by the guns, departed from sight in about five seconds, and
+fell through a drop of some sixty feet into the River Scheldt from the
+bridge just west of Tournai. The gunners and officers--who were in two
+coaches in rear--were also killed. Only one seemed aware that there was
+danger, and he, owing to his bulk, was unable to get out of the door of
+his carriage. He was, I think, in command. I investigated the damage
+next day when the military authorities were a little calmer, and beg to
+state that I do not consider the guns have been improved by their
+immersion. One, at least, has disappeared in the mud. A large number of
+Germans who had no connection with this affair have, I am glad to
+report, since been shot for it.
+
+"I regret that I am unable to report in person, but I am at present in
+hospital with a broken leg, sustained by my inadvertently stepping on a
+piece of orange-peel, which escaped my notice owing to its remarkable
+similarity to the surrounding terrain. This similarity was doubtless due
+to the dirt on the orange-peel."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Which, I may say, should not be taken as a model for official reports by
+the uninitiated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+RETRIBUTION
+
+
+On the Promenade facing the Casino at Monte Carlo two men were seated
+smoking. The Riviera season was at its height, and passing to and fro in
+front of them were the usual crowd of well-dressed idlers, who make up
+the society of that delectable, if expensive, resort. Now and again a
+casual acquaintance would saunter by, to be greeted with a smile from
+one, and a curt nod from the other, who, with his eyes fixed on the
+steps in front of him, seemed oblivious of all else.
+
+"Cheer up, Jerry; she won't be long. Give the poor girl time to digest
+her luncheon." The cheerful one of the twain lit a cigarette; and in the
+process received the glad eye from a passing siren of striking aspect.
+"Great Caesar, old son!" he continued, when she was swallowed up in the
+crowd, "you're losing the chance of a lifetime. Here, gathered together
+to bid us welcome, are countless beautiful women and brave men. We are
+for the moment the star turn of the show--the brave British sailors whom
+the ladies delight to honour. Never let it be said, old dear, that you
+failed them in this their hour of need."
+
+"Confound it, Ginger, I know all about that!" The other man sighed and,
+coming suddenly out of his brown study, he too leant forward and fumbled
+for his cigarette-case. "But it's no go, old man. I'm getting a deuced
+sight too old and ugly nowadays to chop and change about. There comes a
+time of life when if a man wants to kiss one particular woman, he might
+as well kiss his boot for all the pleasure fooling around with another
+will give him."
+
+Ginger Lawson looked at him critically. "My lad, I fear me that Nemesis
+has at length descended on you. No longer do the ortolans and caviare of
+unregenerate bachelorhood tempt you; rather do you yearn for ground rice
+and stewed prunes in the third floor back. These symptoms----"
+
+"Ginger," interrupted the other, "dry up. You're a dear, good soul, but
+when you try to be funny, I realise the type of man who writes mottoes
+for crackers." He started up eagerly, only to sit down again
+disappointed.
+
+"Not she, not she, my love," continued the other imperturbably. "And, in
+the meanwhile, doesn't it strike you that you are committing a bad
+tactical error in sitting here, with a face like a man that's eaten a
+bad oyster, on the very seat where she's bound to see you when she does
+finish her luncheon and come down?"
+
+"I suppose that means you want me to cocktail with you?"
+
+"More impossible ideas have fructified," agreed Ginger, rising.
+
+"No, I'm blowed if----!"
+
+"Come on, old son." Lawson dragged him reluctantly to his feet. "All the
+world loves a lover, including the loved one herself; but you look like
+a deaf-mute at a funeral, who's swallowed his fee. Come and have a
+cocktail at Ciro's, and then, merry and bright and caracoling like a
+young lark, return and snatch her from under the nose of the accursed
+Teuton."
+
+"Do you think she's going to accept him, Ginger?" he muttered anxiously,
+as they sauntered through the drifting crowd.
+
+"My dear boy, ask me another. But she's coming to the ball dance on
+board to-night, and if the delicate pink illumination of your special
+kala jugger, shining softly on your virile face, and toning down the
+somewhat vivid colour scheme of your sunburned nose, doesn't melt her
+heart, I don't know what will----"
+
+Which all requires a little explanation. Before the war broke out it was
+the custom each year for that portion of the British Fleet stationed in
+the Mediterranean, and whose headquarters were at Malta, to make a
+cruise lasting three weeks or a month to some friendly sea-coast, where
+the ports were good and the inhabitants merry. Trieste, perhaps, and up
+the Adriatic; Alexandria and the countries to the East; or, best of all,
+the Riviera. And at the time when my story opens the officers of the
+British Mediterranean Fleet, which had come to rest in the wonderful
+natural anchorage of Villefranche, were doing their best to live up to
+the reputation which the British naval officer enjoys the world over.
+Everywhere within motor distance of their vessels they were greeted with
+joy and acclamation; there were dances and dinners, women and wine--and
+what more for a space can any hard-worked sailor-man desire? During
+their brief intervals of leisure they slept and recuperated on board,
+only to dash off again with unabated zeal to pastures new, or renewed,
+as the case might be.
+
+Foremost amongst the revellers on this, as on other occasions, was Jerry
+Travers, torpedo-lieutenant on the flagship. Endowed by Nature with an
+infinite capacity for consuming cocktails, and with a disposition which
+not even the catering of the Maltese mess man could embitter, his sudden
+fall from grace was all the more noticeable. From being a tireless
+leader of revels, he became a mooner in secret places, a melancholy
+sigher in the wardroom. Which fact did not escape the eyes of the
+flagship wardroom officers. And Lawson, the navigating lieutenant, had
+deputed himself as clerk of the course.
+
+Staying at the Hotel de Paris was an American, who was afflicted with
+the dreadful name of Honks; with him were his wife and his daughter
+Maisie. Maisie Honks has not a prepossessing sound; but she was the girl
+who was responsible for Jerry Travers's downfall. He had met her at a
+ball in Nice just after the Fleet arrived, and, from that moment he had
+become a trifle deranged. Brother officers entering his cabin unawares
+found him gazing into the infinite with a slight squint. His Marine
+servant spread the rumour on the lower deck that "'e'd taken to poetry,
+and 'orrible noises in his sleep." Like a goodly number of men who have
+walked merrily through life, sipping at many flowers, but leaving each
+with added zest for the next, when he took it he took it hard. And
+Maisie had just about reduced him to idiocy. I am no describer of girls,
+but I was privileged to know and revere the lady from afar, and I can
+truthfully state that I have rarely, if ever, seen a more absolute dear.
+She wasn't fluffy, and she wasn't statuesque; she did not have violet
+eyes which one may liken to mountain pools, or hair of that colour
+described as spun-gold. She was just--Maisie, one of the most adorable
+girls that ever happened. And Jerry, as I say, had taken it very badly.
+
+Unfortunately, there was a fly in the ointment--almost of bluebottle
+size--in the shape of another occupant of the Hotel de Paris, who had
+also taken it very badly, and at a much earlier date. The Baron von
+Dressler--an officer in the German Navy, and a member of one of the
+oldest Prussian families--had been staying at Monte Carlo for nearly a
+month, on sick leave after a severe dose of fever. And he, likewise,
+worshipped with ardour and zeal at the Honks shrine. Moreover, being
+apparently a very decent fellow, and living as he did in the same hotel,
+he had, as Jerry miserably reflected, a bit of a preponderance in
+artillery, especially as he had opened fire more than a fortnight before
+the British Navy had appeared on the scene. This, then, was the general
+situation; and the particular feature of the moment, which caused an
+outlook on life even more gloomy than usual in the heart of the
+torpedo-lieutenant, was that the Baron von Dressler had been invited to
+lunch with his adored one, while he had not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Something potent, Fritz." Lawson piloted him firmly to the bar and
+addressed the presiding being respectfully. "Something potent and heady
+which will make this officer's sad heart bubble once again with the joie
+de vivre. He has been crossed in love."
+
+"Don't be an ass, Ginger," said the other peevishly.
+
+"My dear fellow, the credit of the Navy is at stake. Admitted that
+you've had a bad start in the Honks stakes, nevertheless--you never
+know--our Teuton may take a bad fall. And, incidentally, there they both
+are, to say nothing of Honks pere et mere." He was peering through the
+window. "No, you don't, my boy!" as the other made a dash for the door.
+"The day is yet young. Lap it up; repeat the dose; and then in the
+nonchalant style for which our name is famous we will sally forth and
+have at them."
+
+"Confound it, Ginger! they seem to be on devilish good terms. Look at
+the blighter, bending towards her as if he owned her." Travers stood in
+the window rubbing his hands with his handkerchief nervously.
+
+"What d'you expect him to do? Look the other way?" The navigating
+officer snorted. "You make me tired, Torps. Come along if you're ready;
+and try and look jaunty and debonair."
+
+"Heavens! old boy; I'm as nervous as an ugly girl at her first party."
+They were passing into the street. "My hands are clammy and my boots are
+bursting with feet."
+
+"I don't mind about your boots; but for goodness' sake dry your hands.
+No self-respecting woman would look at a man with perspiring palms."
+
+Ten minutes later three pairs of people might have been seen strolling
+up and down the Promenade. And as the arrangement of those pairs was
+entirely due to the navigating lieutenant, their composition is perhaps
+worthy of a paragraph. At one end, as was very right and proper, Jerry
+and Miss Honks discussed men and matters--at least, I assume so--with a
+zest that seemed to show his nervousness was only transient. In the
+middle the stage-manager and Mrs. Honks discussed Society, with a
+capital "S"--a subject of which the worthy woman knew nothing and talked
+a lot. At the other end Mr. Honks poured into the unresponsive ear of an
+infuriated Prussian nobleman his new scheme for cornering sausages.
+Which shows what a naval officer can do when he gets down to it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Now, it is certainly not my intention to recount in detail the course of
+Jerry Travers's love affair during his stay on the Riviera. Sufficient
+to say, it did not run smoothly. But there are one or two things which I
+must relate--things which concern our three principals. They cover the
+first round in the contest--the round which the German won on points.
+And though they have no actual bearing on the strange happenings which
+brought about the second and last round, in circumstances nothing short
+of miraculous at a future date, yet for the proper understanding of the
+retribution that came upon the Hun at the finish it is well that they
+should be told.
+
+They occurred that same evening, at the ball given by the British Navy
+on the flagship. Few sights, I venture to think, are more imposing, and
+to a certain extent more incongruous, than a battleship in gala mood.
+For days beforehand, men skilled in electricity erect with painstaking
+care a veritable fairyland of coloured lights, which shine softly on the
+deck cleared for dancing, and discreet kala juggers prepared with equal
+care by officers skilled in love. Everywhere there is peace and luxury;
+the music of the band steals across the silent water; the engine of
+death is at rest. Almost can one imagine the mighty turbines, the great
+guns, the whole infernal paraphernalia of destruction, laughing grimly
+at their master's amusements--those masters whose brains forged them and
+riveted them and gave them birth; who with the pressure of a finger can
+launch five tons of death at a speck ten miles away; whose lightest
+caprice they are bound to obey--and yet who now cover them with flimsy
+silks and fairy lights, while they dance and make love to laughing,
+soft-eyed girls. And perhaps there was some such idea in the
+gunnery-lieutenant's mind as he leant against the breech of a
+twelve-inch gun, waiting for his particular guest. "Not yet, old man,"
+he muttered thoughtfully--"not yet. To-night we play; to-morrow--who
+knows?"
+
+Above, the lights shone out unshaded, silhouetting the battle-cruiser
+with lines of fire against the vault of heaven, sprinkled with the
+golden dust of a myriad stars; while ceaselessly across the violet water
+steam-pinnaces dashed backwards and forwards, carrying boatloads of
+guests from the landing-stage, and then going back for more. At the top
+of the gangway the admiral, immaculate in blue and gold, welcomed them
+as they arrived; the flag-lieutenant, with the weight of much
+responsibility on his shoulders, having just completed a last lightning
+tour of the ship, only to discover a scarcity of hairpins in
+the ladies' cloak-room, stood behind him. And in the wardroom the
+engineer-commander--a Scotsman of pessimistic outlook--reviled with
+impartiality all ball dances, adding a special clause for the one now
+commencing. But then, off duty, he had no soul above bridge.
+
+In this setting, then, appeared the starters for the Honks stakes on the
+night in question, only, for the time being, the positions were
+reversed. Now the Baron was the stranger in a strange land; Jerry was at
+home--one of the hosts. Moreover, as has already been discreetly hinted,
+there was a certain and very particular kala jugger. And into this very
+particular kala jugger Jerry, in due course, piloted his adored one.
+
+I am now coming to the region of imagination. I was not in that dim-lit
+nook with them, and therefore I am not in a position to state with any
+accuracy what occurred. But--and here I must be discreet--there was a
+midshipman, making up in cheek and inquisitiveness what he lacked in
+years and stature. Also, as I have said, the Honks stakes were not a
+private matter--far from it. The prestige of the British Navy was at
+stake, and betting ran high in the gunroom, or abode of "snotties."
+Where this young imp of mischief hid, I know not; he swore himself that
+his overhearing was purely accidental, and endeavoured to excuse his
+lamentable conduct by saying that he learned a lot!
+
+His account of the engagement was breezy and nautical; and as there is,
+so far as I know, no other description of the operations extant, I give
+it for what it is worth.
+
+Jerry, he told me in the Union Club, Valetta, at a later date, opened
+the action with some tentative shots from his lighter armament. For ten
+minutes odd he alternately Honked and Maisied, till, as my ribald
+informant put it, the deck rang with noises reminiscent of a jibbing
+motor-car. She countered ably with rhapsodies over the ship, the band,
+and life in general, utterly refusing to be drawn into personalities.
+
+Then, it appeared, Jerry's self-control completely deserted him, and
+with a hoarse and throaty noise he opened fire with the full force of
+his starboard broadside; he rammed down the loud pedal and let drive.
+
+He assured her that she was the only woman he could ever love; he seized
+her ungloved hand and fervently kissed it; in short, he offered her his
+hand and heart in the most approved style, the while protesting his
+absolute unworthiness to aspire to such an honour as her acceptance of
+the same.
+
+"Net result, old dear," murmured my graceless informant, pressing the
+bell for another cocktail, "nix--a frost absolute, a frost complete."
+
+"She thought he and the whole ship were bully, and wasn't that little
+boy who'd brought them out in the launch the cutest ever, but she
+reckoned sailors cut no ice with poppa. She was just too sorry for words
+it had ever occurred, but there it was, and there was nothing more to be
+said."
+
+For the truth of these statements I will not vouch. I do know that on
+the night in question Jerry was refused by the only woman he'd ever
+really cared about, because he told me so, and the method of it is of
+little account. And if there be any who may think I have dealt with this
+tragedy in an unfeeling way, I must plead in excuse that I have but
+quoted my informant, and he was one of those in the gunroom who had lost
+money on the event.
+
+Anyway, let me, as a sop to the serious-minded, pass on to the other
+little event which I must chronicle before I come to my finale. In this
+world the serious and the gay, the tears and the laughter, come to us
+out of the great scroll of fate in strange, jumbled succession. The
+lucky dip at a bazaar holds no more variegated procession of surprises
+than the mix up we call life brings to each and all. And so, though my
+tone in describing Jerry's proposal has perhaps been wantonly flippant,
+and though the next incident may seem to some to savour of
+melodrama--yet, is it not life, my masters, is it not life?
+
+I was in the wardroom when it occurred. Jerry, standing by the
+fireplace, was smoking a cigarette, and looking like the proverbial
+gentleman who has lost a sovereign and found sixpence. There were
+several officers in there at the time, and--the Baron von Dressler. And
+the Prussian had been drinking.
+
+Not that he was by any means drunk, but he was in that condition when
+some men become merry, some confidential, some--what shall I say?--not
+exactly pugnacious, but on the way to it. He belonged to the latter
+class. All the worst traits of the Prussian officer, the domineering,
+sneering, aggressive mannerisms--which, to do him justice, in normal
+circumstances he successfully concealed, at any rate, when mixing with
+other nationalities--were showing clearly in his face. He was once again
+the arrogant, intolerant autocrat--truly, _in vino veritas_. Moreover,
+his eyes were wandering with increasing frequency to Jerry, who, so far,
+seemed unconscious of the scrutiny.
+
+After a while I caught Ginger Lawson's eye and he shrugged his shoulders
+slightly. He told me afterwards that he had been fearing a flare-up for
+some minutes, but had hoped it would pass over. However, he strolled
+over to Jerry and started talking.
+
+"Mop that up, Jerry," he said, "and come along and do your duty. Baron,
+you don't seem to be dancing much to-night. Can't I find you a partner?"
+
+"Thank you, but I probably know more people here than you do." The tone
+even more than the words was a studied insult. "Lieutenant Travers's
+duty seems to have been unpleasant up to date, which perhaps accounts
+for his reluctance to resume it. Are you--er--lucky at cards?" This time
+the sneer was too obvious to be disregarded.
+
+Jerry looked up, and the eyes of the two men met. "It is possible, Baron
+von Dressier," he remarked icily, "that in your navy remarks of that
+type are regarded as witty. Would it be asking you too much to request
+that you refrain from using them in a ship where they are merely
+considered vulgar?"
+
+By this time a dead silence had settled on the wardroom, one of those
+awkward silences which any scene of this sort produces on those who are
+in the unfortunate position of onlookers.
+
+Von Dressler was white with passion. "You forget yourself, lieutenant. I
+would have you to know that my uncle is a prince of the blood royal."
+
+"That apparently does not prevent his nephew from failing to remember
+the customs that hold amongst gentlemen."
+
+"Gentlemen!" The Prussian looked round the circle of silent officers
+with a scornful laugh; the fumes of the spirits he had drunk were
+mounting to his head with his excitement. "You mean--shopkeepers."
+
+With a muttered curse several officers started forward; no ball is a
+teetotal affair, I suppose, and scenes of this sort are dangerous at any
+time. Travers held up his hand, sharply, incisively.
+
+"Gentlemen, remember this--er--Prussian officer and gentleman is our
+guest. That being the case, sir"--he turned to the German--"you are
+quite safe in insulting us as much as you like."
+
+"The question of safety would doubtless prove irresistible to an
+Englishman." The face of the German was distorted with rage, he seemed
+to be searching in his mind for insults; then suddenly he tried a new
+line.
+
+"Bah! I am not a guttersnipe to bandy words with you. You will not have
+long to wait, you English, and then--when the day does come, my friends;
+when, at last, we come face to face, then, by God! then----"
+
+"Well, what then, Baron von Dressler?" A stern voice cut like a whiplash
+across the wardroom; standing in the door was the admiral himself, who
+had entered unperceived.
+
+For a moment the coarse, furious face of the Prussian paled a little;
+then with a supreme effort of arrogance he pulled himself together.
+"Then, sir, we shall see--the world will see--whether you or we will be
+the victor. The old and effete versus the new and efficient. Der Tag."
+He lifted his hand and let it drop; in the silence one could have heard
+a pin drop.
+
+"The problem you raise is of interest," answered the admiral, in the
+same icy tone. "In the meanwhile any discussion is unprofitable; and in
+the surroundings in which you find yourself at present it is more than
+unprofitable--it is a gross breach of all good form and service
+etiquette. As our guest we were pleased to see you; you will pardon my
+saying that now I can no longer regard you as a guest. Will you kindly
+give orders, Lieutenant Travers, for a steam-pinnace? Baron von Dressler
+will go ashore."
+
+Such was the other matter that concerned my principals, and which, of
+necessity, I have had to record. Such an incident is probably almost
+unique; but when there's a girl at the bottom of things and wine at the
+top, something is likely to happen. The most unfortunate thing about it
+all, as far as Jerry was concerned, was an untimely indisposition on the
+part of Honks mere. As a coincidence nothing could have been more
+disastrous.
+
+The pinnace was at the foot of the gangway, and the Baron--his eyes
+savage--was just preparing to take an elaborate and sarcastic farewell
+of the silent torpedo-lieutenant, who was regarding him with an air of
+cold contempt, when Mr. Honks appeared on the scene.
+
+"Say, Baron, are you going away?"
+
+"I am, Mr. Honks. My presence seems distasteful to the officers."
+
+The American seemed hardly to hear the last part of the remark. "I guess
+we'll quit too. My wife's been taken bad. Can we come in your boat,
+Baron?"
+
+"I shall be more than delighted." His eyes came round with ill-concealed
+triumph to Travers's impassive face as the American bustled away. "I
+venture to think that the Honks stakes are still open."
+
+"By Heaven! You blackguard!" muttered Jerry, his passion overcoming him
+for a moment. "I believe I'd give my commission to smash your damned
+face in with a marline-spike and chuck you into the sea."
+
+"I won't forget what you say," answered the German vindictively, "One
+day I'll make you eat those words; and then when I've sunk your
+rat-eaten ship, it will be me that uses the marline-spike--you swine."
+
+It was as well for Jerry, and for the Baron too, that at this
+psychological moment the Honks menage arrived, otherwise that German
+would probably have gone into the sea.
+
+"Good night, lady," murmured Jerry, when he had solicitously inquired
+after her mother's health. "Is there no hope?" He was desperately
+anxious to seize the second or two left; he knew she would not hear the
+true account of what had happened from the Baron.
+
+"I guess not," she answered softly. "But come and call." With a smile
+she was gone, and from the boat there came the Baron's voice mocking
+through the still air, "Good night, Lieutenant Travers. Thank you so
+much."
+
+And, drowned by the band that started at that moment, the wonderful and
+fearful curse that left the torpedo-lieutenant's lips drifted into the
+night unheard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Let us go on a couple of years. The moment thought of by the
+gunnery-lieutenant, the day acclaimed by the Prussian officer had come.
+England was at war. Der Tag was a reality. No longer did silks and
+shaded lights form part of the equipment of the Navy, but grim and
+sombre, ruthlessly stripped of everything not absolutely necessary, the
+great grey monsters watched tirelessly through the flying scud of the
+North Sea for "the fleet that stayed at home." Only their submarines
+were out, and these, day by day, diminished in numbers, until the men
+who sent them out looked at one another fearfully--so many went out, so
+few came back.
+
+Tearing through the water one day, away a bit to the south-west of
+Bantry Bay, with the haze of Ireland lying like a smudge on the horizon,
+was a lean, villainous-looking torpedo-boat-destroyer. She was plunging
+her nose into the slight swell, now and again drenching the oilskinned
+figure standing motionless on the bridge. Behind her a great cloud of
+black smoke drifted across the grey water, and the whole vessel was
+quivering with the force of her engines. She was doing her maximum and a
+bit more, but still the steady, watchful eyes of the officer on the
+bridge seemed impatient, and every now and again he cursed softly and
+with wonderful fluency under his breath.
+
+It was our friend Jerry, who at the end of his time on the flagship had
+been given one of the newest T.B.D.'s, and now with every ounce he could
+get out of her he was racing towards the spot from which had come the
+last S.O.S. message, nearly an hour ago. There was something grimly
+foreboding about those agonised calls sent out to the world for perhaps
+twenty minutes, and then--silence, nothing more. German submarines, he
+reflected, as for the tenth time he peered at his wrist-watch, German
+submarines engaged once again in the only form of war they could compete
+in or dared undertake. And not for the first time his thoughts went back
+to the vainglorious boastings of his friend the Baron.
+
+"Damn him," he muttered. "I haven't forgotten the sweep."
+
+There were many things he hadn't forgotten; how, when he'd gone to call
+on the lady as requested, she had been "out," and it was that sort of
+"out" that means "in." How a letter had been answered courteously but
+distinctly coldly, and, impotent with rage, he had been forced to the
+conclusion that she was offended with him. And with the Prussian able to
+say what he liked, it was not difficult to find the reason.
+
+Then the Fleet left, and Jerry resigned himself to the inevitable, a
+proceeding which was not made easier by the many rumours he heard to the
+effect that the Baron himself had done the trick. Distinctly he wanted
+once again to meet that gentleman.
+
+"We ought to see her, if she hasn't sunk, sir, by now." The
+sub-lieutenant on the bridge spoke in his ear.
+
+Travers nodded and shrugged his shoulders. He had realised that fact for
+some minutes.
+
+"Something on the starboard bow." The voice of the look-out man came to
+his ears.
+
+"It's a boat, an open boat," cried the sub., after a careful inspection,
+"and it's pretty full, by Jove!"
+
+A curt order, and the T.B.D. swung round and tore down on the little
+speck bobbing in the water. And they were still a few hundred yards away
+when a look of dawning horror strangely mixed with joy spread over
+Jerry's face. His glass was fixed on the boat, and who in God's name was
+the woman--impossible, of course--but surely.... If it wasn't her it was
+her twin sister; his hand holding the glass trembled with eagerness, and
+then at last he knew. The woman standing up in the stern of the boat
+_was_ Maisie, and as he got nearer he saw there was a look on her face
+which made him catch his breath sharply.
+
+"Great God!" The sub's voice roused him. "What have they been doing?" No
+need to ask whom he meant by "they." "The boat is a shambles."
+
+The destroyer slowed down, and from the crew who looked into that
+little open boat came dreadful curses. It ran with blood; and at the
+bottom women and children moaned feebly, while an elderly man contorted
+with pain in the stern, writhed and sobbed in agony. And over this black
+scene the eyes of the man and the woman met.
+
+"Carefully, carefully, lads," Travers sang out. This was no time for
+questions, only the poor torn fragments counted. Afterwards, perhaps.
+Very tenderly the sailors lifted out the bodies, and one of them--a
+little girl in his arms, with a dreadful wound in her head--jabbered
+like a maniac with the fury of his rage. And so after many days they
+again came face to face.
+
+"Are you wounded?" he whispered.
+
+"No." Her voice was hard and strained; she was near the breaking point.
+"They sunk us without warning--the _Lucania_--and then shelled us in the
+open boats."
+
+"Dear heavens!" Jerry's voice was shaking. "Ah! but you're not hurt, my
+lady; they didn't hit you?"
+
+"My mother was drowned, and my father too." She was swaying a little.
+"It was the U 99."
+
+"Ah!" The man's voice was almost a sigh.
+
+"Submarine on the port bow, sir." A howl came from the look-out,
+followed by the sharp, detonating reports of the destroyer's
+quick-firers. And then a roaring cheer. Like lightning Jerry was upon
+the bridge, and even he could scarcely contain himself. There, lying
+helpless in the water, with a huge hole in her conning tower, wallowed
+the U 99. Two direct hits from the destroyer's guns in a vital spot, and
+the submarine was a submarine no longer. Just one of those strokes of
+poetic justice which happen so rarely in war.
+
+Like rats from a sinking ship the Germans were pouring up and diving
+into the water, and with snarling faces the Englishmen waited for them,
+waited for them with the dying proofs of their vileness still lying on
+the deck as one by one they came on board. Suddenly with a sucking noise
+the submarine foundered, and over the seething, troubled waters where
+she had been a sheet of blackish oil slowly spread.
+
+But Jerry spared no glance for the sinking boat--he did not so much as
+look at the German sailors huddled fearfully together. With hard,
+merciless eyes he faced the submarine commander. For the first time in
+his life he saw red: for the first time in his life there was murder in
+his soul, and the heavy belaying-pin in his hand seemed to goad him on.
+"Suppose the positions had been reversed," mocked a voice in his brain.
+"Would he have hesitated?" The night two years ago surged back to his
+mind; the plaintive crying of the dying child struck on his ears. He
+stepped a pace forward with a snarl--his grip tightened on the
+bar--when suddenly the man who had carried up the little girl gave a
+hoarse cry, and with all his force smote the nearest German in the
+mouth. The German fell like a stone.
+
+"Stand fast." Jerry's voice dominated the scene. The old traditions had
+come back: the old wonderful discipline. The iron pin dropped with a
+clang on the deck. "It is not their fault, they were only obeying his
+orders." And once again his eyes rested on their officer.
+
+"So we meet again, Baron von Dressler," he remarked, "and the rat-eaten
+ship is not sunk. Is this your work?" He pointed to the mangled bodies.
+
+"It is not," muttered the Prussian.
+
+"You lie, you swine, you lie! Unfortunately for you you didn't quite
+carry out your infamous butchery completely enough. There is one person
+on board who knows the U 99 sank the _Lucania_ without warning and was
+in the boat you shelled."
+
+"I don't believe you, I----"
+
+"Then perhaps you'll believe her. I rather think you know her--very
+well." As he spoke he was looking behind the Prussian, to where
+Maisie--roused from her semi-stupor by the Baron's voice--had got up,
+and with her hand to her heart was swaying backwards and forwards. "Look
+behind you, you cur."
+
+The Prussian turned, and then with a cry staggered back, white to the
+lips. "You, great heavens, you--Maisie----"
+
+And so once again the three principals of my little drama were face to
+face: only the setting had changed. No longer sensuous music and the
+warm, violet waters of the Riviera for a background; this time the
+moaning of dying men and children was the ghastly orchestra, and, with
+the grey scud of the Atlantic flying past them, the Englishman and the
+German faced one another, while the American girl stood by. And watching
+them were the muttering sailors.
+
+At last she spoke. "This ring, I believe, is yours." She took a
+magnificent half-hoop of diamonds from her engagement finger and flung
+it into the sea. Then she moved towards him.
+
+"You drowned my mother, and for that I strike you once." She hit him in
+the face with an iron-shod pin. "You drowned my father, and for that I
+strike you again." Once again she struck him in the face. "I will leave
+a fighting man and a gentleman to deal with you for those poor mites."
+With a choking sob she turned away, and once again sank down on the coil
+of rope.
+
+The Prussian, sobbing with pain and rage, with the blood streaming from
+his face, was not a pretty sight; but in Travers's face there was no
+mercy.
+
+"'The old and effete versus the new and efficient!' I seem to recall
+those words from our last meeting. May I congratulate you on your
+efficiency? Bah! you swine"--his face flamed with sudden passion--"if
+you aren't skulking in Kiel, you're butchering women. By heavens! I can
+conceive of nothing more utterly perfect than flogging you to death."
+
+The Prussian shrank back, his face livid with fear.
+
+"They were my orders," he muttered. "For God's sake----"
+
+"Oh, don't be frightened, Baron von Dressler." The Englishman's voice
+was once again under control. "The old and effete don't do that. You
+were safe as our guest two years ago; you are safe as our prisoner now.
+Your precious carcass will be returned safe and sound to your Royal
+uncle at the end of the war, and my only hope is that your face will
+still bear those honourable scars. Moreover, if what you say is true, if
+the orders of your Government include shelling an open boat crammed with
+defenceless women and children--and neutrals at that--I can only say
+that their infamy is so incredible as to force one to the conclusion
+that they are not responsible for their actions. But--make no
+mistake--they will get their retribution."
+
+For a moment he fell silent, looking at the cowering, blood-stained
+face opposite him, and then a pitiful wail behind him made him turn
+round.
+
+"Mummie, I'se hurted." On her knees beside the little girl was Maisie,
+soothing her as best she could, easing the throbbing head, whispering
+that mummie couldn't come for a while. "I'se hurted, mummie--I'se
+hurted."
+
+Travers turned back again, and the eyes of the two men met.
+
+"My God! Is it possible that a sailor could do such a thing?"
+
+His voice was barely above a whisper, yet the Prussian heard and winced.
+In the depths of even the foulest bully there is generally some little
+redeeming spark.
+
+"I'se hurted; I want my mummie."
+
+The Prussian's lips moved, but no sound came, while in his eyes was the
+look of a man haunted. Travers watched him silently; and at length he
+spoke again.
+
+"As I said, your rulers will get their deserts in time, but I think,
+Baron von Dressler, your Nemesis has come on you already. That little
+poor kid is asking you for her mother. Don't forget it in the years to
+come, Baron. No, I don't think you _will_ forget it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My story is finished. Later on, when some of the dreadful nightmare
+through which she had passed had been effaced from her mind, Maisie and
+the man who had come to her out of the grey waters discussed many
+things. And the story which the Prussian had told her after the dance on
+the flagship was finally discredited.
+
+Can anyone recommend me a good cheap book on "Things a Best Man Should
+Know"?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE DEATH GRIP
+
+
+Two reasons have impelled me to tell the story of Hugh Latimer, and both
+I think are good and sufficient. First I was his best friend, and second
+I know more about the tragedy than anyone else--even including his wife.
+I saw the beginning and the end; she--poor broken-hearted girl--saw only
+the end.
+
+There have been many tragedies since this war started; there will be
+many more before Finis is written--and each, I suppose, to its own
+particular sufferers seems the worst. But, somehow, to my mind Hugh's
+case is without parallel, unique--the devil's arch of cruelty. I will
+give you the story--and you shall judge for yourself.
+
+Let us lift the curtain and present a dug-out in a support trench
+somewhere near Givenchy. A candle gutters in a bottle, the grease
+running down like a miniature stalactite congeals on an upturned
+packing-case. On another packing-case the remnants of a tongue, some
+sardines, and a goodly array of bottles with some tin mugs and plates
+completes the furniture--or almost. I must not omit the handsome
+coloured pictures--three in all--of ladies of great beauty and charm,
+clad in--well, clad in something at any rate. The occupants of this
+palatial abode were Hugh Latimer and myself; at the rise of the curtain
+both lying in corners, on piles of straw.
+
+Outside, a musician was coaxing noises from a mouth-organ; occasional
+snatches of song came through the open entrance, intermingled with
+bursts of laughter. One man, I remember, was telling an interminable
+story which seemed to be the history of a gentleman called Nobby Clark,
+who had dallied awhile with a lady in an estaminet at Bethune, and had
+ultimately received a knock-out blow with a frying-pan over the right
+eye, for being too rapid in his attentions. Just the usual dull,
+strange, haunting trench life--which varies not from day's end to day's
+end.
+
+At intervals a battery of our own let drive, the blast of the explosion
+catching one through the open door; at intervals a big German shell
+moaned its way through the air overhead--an express bound for somewhere.
+Had you looked out to the front, you would have seen the bright green
+flares lobbing monotonously up into the night, all along the line.
+War--modern war; boring, incredible when viewed in cold blood....
+
+"Hullo, Hugh." A voice at the door roused us both from our doze, and
+the Adjutant came in. "Will you put your watches right by mine? We are
+making a small local attack to-morrow morning, and the battalion is to
+leave the trenches at 6.35 exactly."
+
+"Rather sudden, isn't it?" queried Hugh, setting his watch.
+
+"Just come through from Brigade Headquarters. Bombs are being brought up
+to H.15. Further orders sent round later. Bye-bye."
+
+He was gone, and once more we sat thinking to the same old accompaniment
+of trench noises; but in rather a different frame of mind. To-morrow
+morning at 6.35 peace would cease; we should be out and running over the
+top of the ground; we should be...
+
+"Will they use gas, I wonder?" Hugh broke the silence.
+
+"Wind too fitful," I answered; "and I suppose it's only a small show."
+
+"I wonder what it's for. I wish one knew more about these affairs; I
+suppose one can't, but it would make it more interesting."
+
+The mouth-organ stopped; there were vigorous demands for an encore.
+
+"Poor devils," he went on after a moment. "I wonder how many?--I wonder
+how many?"
+
+"A new development for you, Hugh." I grinned at him. "Merry and bright,
+old son--your usual motto, isn't it?"
+
+He laughed. "Dash it, Ginger--you can't always be merry and bright. I
+don't know why--perhaps it's second sight--but I feel a sort of
+presentiment of impending disaster to-night. I had the feeling before
+Clements came in."
+
+"Rot, old man," I answered cheerfully. "You'll probably win a V.C., and
+the greatest event of the war will be when it is presented to your
+cheeild."
+
+Which prophecy was destined to prove the cruellest mixture of truth and
+fiction the mind of man could well conceive....
+
+"Good Lord!" he said irritably, taking me seriously for a moment; "we're
+a bit too old soldiers to be guyed by palaver about V.C.'s." Then he
+recovered his good temper. "No, Ginger, old thing, there's big things
+happening to-morrow. Hugh Latimer's life is going into the melting-pot.
+I'm as certain of it as--as that I'm going to have a whisky and soda."
+He laughed, and delved into a packing-case for the seltzogene.
+
+"How's the son and heir?? I asked after a while.
+
+"Going strong," he answered. "Going strong, the little devil."
+
+And then we fell silent, as men will at such a time. The trench outside
+was quiet; the musician, having obliged with his encore, no longer
+rendered the night hideous--even the guns were still. What would it be
+to-morrow night? Should I still be...? I shook myself and started to
+scribble a letter; I was getting afraid of inactivity--afraid of my
+thoughts.
+
+"I'm going along the trenches," said Hugh suddenly, breaking the long
+silence. "I want to see the Sergeant-Major and give some orders."
+
+He was gone, and I was alone. In spite of myself my thoughts would drift
+back to what he had been saying, and from there to his wife and the son
+and heir. My mind, overwrought, seemed crowded with pictures: they
+jumbled through my brains like a film on a cinematograph.
+
+I saw his marriage, the bridal arch of officers' swords, the
+sweet-faced, radiant girl. And then his house came on to the screen--the
+house where I had spent many a pleasant week-end while we trained and
+sweated to learn the job in England. He was a man of some wealth was
+Hugh Latimer, and his house showed it; showed moreover his perfect,
+unerring taste. Bits of stuff, curios, knick-knacks from all over the
+world met one in odd corners; prints, books, all of the very best,
+seemed to fit into the scheme as if they'd grown there. Never did a
+single thing seem to whisper as you passed, "I'm really very rare and
+beautiful, but I've been dragged into the wrong place, and now I know
+I'm merely vulgar." There are houses I wot of where those clamorous
+whispers drown the nightingales. But if you can pass through rooms full
+of bric-a-brac--silent bric-a-brac: bric-a-brac conscious of its
+rectitude and needing no self apology, you may be certain that the owner
+will not give you port that is improved by a cigarette.
+
+Then came the son, and Hugh's joy was complete. A bit of a dreamer, a
+bit of a poet, a bit of a philosopher, but with a virility all his own;
+a big man--a man in a thousand, a man I was proud to call Friend. And
+he--at the dictates of "Kultur"--was to-morrow at 6.35 going to expose
+himself to the risk of death, in order to wrest from the Hun a small
+portion of unprepossessing ground. Truly, humour is not dead in the
+world!...
+
+A step outside broke the reel of pictures, and the Sapper Officer looked
+in. "I hear a whisper of activity in the dark and stilly morn," he
+remarked brightly. "Won't it be nice?"
+
+"Very," I said sarcastically. "Are you coming?"
+
+"No, dear one. That's why I thought it would be so nice. My opposite
+number and tireless companion and helper to-morrow morning will prance
+over the greensward with you, leading his merry crowd of minions,
+bristling with bowie knives, sandbags, and other impedimenta."
+
+"Oh! go to Hell," I said crossly. "I want to write a letter."
+
+"Cheer up, Ginger." He dropped his bantering tone. "I'll be up to drink
+a glass of wine with you to-morrow night in the new trench. Tell Latimer
+that the wire is all right--it's been thinned out and won't stop him,
+and that there are ladders for getting out of the trench on each
+traverse."
+
+"Have you been working?" I asked.
+
+"Four hours, and got caught by shrapnel in the middle. Night-night, and
+good luck, old man."
+
+He was gone; and when he had, I wished him back again. For the game
+wasn't new to him--he'd done it before; and I hadn't. It tends to give
+one confidence....
+
+It was about four I woke up. For a few blissful moments I lay forgetful;
+then I turned and saw Hugh. There was a new candle in the bottle, and by
+its flicker I saw the glint in his sombre eyes, the clear-cut line of
+his profile. And I remembered....
+
+I felt as if something had caught me by the stomach--inside: a sinking
+feeling, a feeling of nausea: and for a while I lay still. Outside in
+the darkness the men were rousing themselves; now and again a curse was
+muttered as someone tripped over a leg he didn't see; and once the
+Sergeant-Major's voice rang out--"'Ere, strike a light with them
+breakfasts."
+
+"Awake, Ginger?" Hugh prodded me with his foot. "You'd better get
+something inside you, and then we'll go round and see that everything is
+O.K."
+
+"Have you had any sleep, Hugh?"
+
+"No. I've been reading." He put Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird" on the table.
+With his finger on the title he looked at me musingly, "Shall we find it
+to-day, I wonder?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have lingered perhaps a little long on what is after all only the
+introduction to my story. But it is mainly for the sake of Hugh's wife
+that I have written it at all; to show her how he passed the last few
+hours before--the change came. Of what happened just after 6.35 on that
+morning I cannot profess to have any very clear idea. We went over the
+parapet I remember, and forward at the double. For half an hour
+beforehand a rain of our shells had plastered the German trenches in
+front of us, and during those eternal thirty minutes we waited tense.
+Hugh Latimer alone of all the men I saw seemed absolutely unconscious of
+anything unusual. Some of the men were singing below their breath, and
+one I remember sucked his teeth with maddening persistency. And one and
+all watched me curiously, speculatively--or so it seemed to me. Then we
+were off, and of crossing No-Man's-Land I have no recollection. I
+remember a man beside me falling with a crash and nearly tripping me
+up--and then, at last, the Huns. I let drive with my revolver from the
+range of a few inches into the fat, bloated face of a frightened-looking
+man in dirty grey, and as he crashed down I remember shouting, "There's
+the Blue Bird for you, old dear." Little things like that do stick. But
+everything else is just a blurred phantasmagoria in my mind. And after a
+while it was over. The trench was full of still grey figures, with here
+and there a khaki one beside them. A sapper officer forced his way
+through shouting for a working-party. We were the flanking company, and
+vital work had to be done and quick. Barricades rigged up, communication
+trenches which now ran to our Front blocked up, the trench made to fire
+the other way. For we knew there would be a counter-attack, and if you
+fail to consolidate what you've won you won't keep it long. It was while
+I slaved and sweated with the men shifting sandbags--turning the
+parados, or back of the trench into the new parapet, or front--that I
+got word that Hugh was dead. I hadn't seen him since the morning, and
+the rumour passed along from man to man.
+
+"The Captain's took it. Copped it in the head. Bomb took him in the
+napper."
+
+But there was no time to stop and enquire, and with my heart sick within
+me I worked on. One thing at any rate; it had only been a little show,
+but it had been successful--the dear chap hadn't lost his life in a
+failure. Then I saw the doctor for a moment.
+
+"No, he's not dead," he said, "but--he's mighty near it. You know he
+practically ran the show single-handed on the left flank."
+
+"What did he do?" I cried.
+
+"Do? Why he kept a Hun bombing-party who were working up the trench at
+bay for half an hour by himself, which completely saved the situation,
+and then went out into the open, when he was relieved, and pulled in
+seven men who'd been caught by a machine-gun. It was while he was
+getting the last one that a bomb exploded almost on his head. Why he
+wasn't killed on the spot, I simply can't conceive." And the doctor was
+gone.
+
+But strange things happen, and the hand of Death is ever capricious. Was
+it not only the other day that we exploded a mine, and sailing through
+the air there came a Hun--a whole complete Hun. Stunned and winded he
+fell on the parapet of our trench, and having been pulled in and
+revived, at last sat up. "Goot," he murmured; "I hof long vanted to
+surrender...."
+
+Hugh Latimer was not dead--that was the great outstanding fact; though
+had I known the writing in the roll of Fate, I would have wished a
+thousand times that the miracle had not happened. There are worse
+things than death....
+
+And now I bring the first part of my tragedy to a halt; the beginning as
+I called it--that part which Hugh's wife did not know. She, with all the
+world, saw the announcement in the paper, the announcement--bald and
+official of the deed for which he won his V.C. It was much as the doctor
+described it to me. She, with all the world, saw his name in the
+Casualty List as wounded; and on receipt of a telegram from the War
+Office, she crossed to France in fear and trembling--for the wire did
+not mince words; his condition was very critical. He did not know
+her--he was quite unconscious, and had been so for days. That night they
+were trephining, and there was just a hope....
+
+The next morning Hugh knew his wife.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the next three months I did not see him. The battalion was still up,
+and I got no chance of going down to Boulogne. He didn't stay there
+long, but, following the ordinary routine of the R.A.M.C., went back to
+England in a hospital ship, and into a home in London. Sir William
+Cremer, the eminent brain specialist, who had operated on him, and been
+particularly interested in his case, kept him under his eye for a
+couple of months, and then he went to his own home to recuperate.
+
+All this and a lot more besides I got in letters from his wife. The King
+himself had graciously come round and presented him with the cross--and
+she was simply brimming over with happiness, dear soul. He was ever so
+much better, and very cheerful; and Sir William was a perfect dear; and
+he'd actually taken out six ounces of brain during the operation, and
+wasn't it wonderful. Also the son and heir grew more perfect every day.
+Which news, needless to say, cheered me immensely.
+
+Then came the first premonition of something wrong. For a fortnight I'd
+not heard from her, and then I got a letter which wasn't quite so
+cheerful.
+
+"... Hugh doesn't seem able to sleep." So ran part of it. "He is
+terribly restless, and at times dreadfully irritable. He doesn't seem to
+have any pain in his head, which is a comfort. But I'm not quite easy
+about him, Ginger. The other evening I was sitting opposite to him in
+the study, and suddenly something compelled me to look at him. I have
+never seen anything like the look in his eyes. He was staring at the
+fire, and his right hand was opening and shutting like a bird's talon. I
+was terrified for a moment, and then I forced myself to speak calmly.
+
+"'Why this ferocious expression, old boy,' I said, with a laugh. For a
+moment he did not answer, but his eyes left the fire, and travelled
+slowly round till they met mine. I never knew what that phrase meant
+till then; it always struck me as a sort of author's license. But that
+evening I felt them coming, and I could have screamed. He gazed at me in
+silence and then at last he spoke.
+
+"'Have you ever heard of the Death Grip? Some day I'll tell you about
+it.' Then he looked away, and I made an excuse to go out of the room,
+for I was shaking with fright. It was so utterly unlike Hugh to make a
+silly remark like that. When I came back later, he was perfectly calm
+and his own self again. Moreover, he seemed to have completely forgotten
+the incident, because he apologised for having been asleep.
+
+"I wanted Sir William to come down and see him; or else for us to go up
+to town, as I expect Sir William is far too busy. But Hugh wouldn't hear
+of it, and got quite angry--so I didn't press the matter. But I'm
+worried, Ginger...."
+
+I read this part of the letter to our doctor. We were having an omelette
+of huit-oeufs, and une bouteille de vin rouge in a little estaminet way
+back, I remember; and I asked him what he thought.
+
+"My dear fellow," he said, "frankly it's impossible to say. You know
+what women are; and that letter may give quite a false impression of
+what really took place. You see what I mean: in her anxiety she may
+have exaggerated some jocular remark. She's had a very wearing time, and
+her own nerves are probably a bit on edge. But----" he paused and leaned
+back. "Encore du vin, s'il vous plait, mam'selle. But, Ginger, it's no
+good pretending, there may be a very much more sinister meaning behind
+it all. The brain is a most complex organisation, and even such men as
+Cremer are only standing on the threshold of knowledge with regard to
+it. They know a lot--but how much more there is to learn! Latimer, as
+you know, owes his life practically to a miracle. Not once in a thousand
+times would a man escape instant death under such circumstances. A great
+deal of brain matter was exposed, and subsequently removed at Boulogne
+by Sir William, when he trephined. And it is possible that some radical
+alteration has taken place in Hugh Latimer's character, soul--whatever
+you choose to call that part of a man which controls his life--as a
+result of the operation. If what Mrs. Latimer says is the truth--and
+when I say that I mean if what she says is to be relied on as a cold,
+bald statement of what happened--then I am bound to say that I think the
+matter is very serious indeed."
+
+"God Almighty!" I cried, "do you mean to say that you think there is a
+chance of Hugh going mad?"
+
+"To be perfectly frank, I do; always granted that that letter is
+reliable. I consider it vital that whether he wishes to or whether he
+doesn't, Sir William Cremer should be consulted. And--_at once_." The
+doctor emphasised his words with his fist on the table.
+
+"Great Scott! Doc," I muttered. "Do you really think there is danger?"
+
+"I don't know enough of the case to say that. But I do know something
+about the brain, enough to say that there might be not only danger, but
+hideous danger, to everyone in the house." He was silent for a bit and
+then rapped out. "Does Mrs. Latimer share the same room as her husband?"
+
+"I really don't know," I answered. "I imagine so."
+
+"Well, I don't know how well you know her; but until Sir William gives a
+definite opinion, if I knew her well enough, I would strongly advise her
+to sleep in another room--_and lock the door_."
+
+"Good God! you think ..."
+
+"Look here, Ginger, what's the good of beating about the bush. It is
+possible--I won't say probable--that Hugh Latimer is on the road to
+becoming a homicidal maniac. And if, by any chance, that assumption is
+correct, the most hideous tragedy might happen at any moment. Mam'selle,
+l'addition s'il vous plait. You're going on leave shortly, aren't you?"
+
+"In two days," I answered.
+
+"Well, go down and see for yourself; it won't require a doctor to
+notice the symptoms. And if what I fear is correct, track out Cremer in
+his lair--find him somehow and find him quickly."
+
+We walked up the road together, and my glance fell on the plot of ground
+on the right, covered so thickly with little wooden crosses. As I looked
+away the doctor's eyes and mine met. And there was the same thought in
+both our minds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three days later I was in Hugh's house. His wife met me at the station,
+and before we got into the car my heart sank. I knew something was
+wrong.
+
+"How is he?" I asked, as we swung out of the gates.
+
+"Oh! Ginger," she said. "I'm frightened--frightened to death."
+
+"What is it, lady," I cried. "Has he been looking at you like that
+again, the way you described in the letter?"
+
+"Yes--it's getting more frequent. And at nights--oh! my God! it's awful.
+Poor old Hugh."
+
+She broke down at that, while I noticed that her hands were all
+trembling, and that dark shadows were round her eyes.
+
+"Tell me about it," I said, "for we must do something."
+
+She pulled herself together, and called through the speaking-tube to
+the chauffeur. "Go a little way round, Jervis. I don't want to get in
+till tea-time."
+
+Then she turned to me. "Since his operation I've been using another
+room." The doctor's words flashed into my mind. "Sir William thought it
+essential that he should have really long undisturbed nights, and I'm
+such a light sleeper. For a few weeks everything panned out splendidly.
+He seemed to get better and stronger, and he was just the same dear old
+Hugh he's always been. Then gradually the restlessness started; he
+couldn't sleep, he became irritable,--and the one thing which made him
+most irritable of all was any suggestion that he wasn't going on all
+right; or any hint even that he should see a doctor. Then came the
+incident I wrote to you about. Since that evening I've often caught the
+same look in his eye." She shuddered, and again I noticed the quiver in
+her hands, but she quickly controlled herself. "Last night, I woke up
+suddenly. It must have been about three, for it was pitch dark, and I
+think I'd been asleep some hours. I don't know what woke me; but in an
+instant I knew there was someone in the room. I lay trembling with
+fright, and suddenly out of the darkness came a hideous chuckle. It was
+the most awful, diabolical noise I've ever heard. Then I heard his
+voice.
+
+"He was muttering, and all I could catch were the words 'Death-Grip.' I
+nearly fainted with terror, but forced myself to keep consciousness. How
+long he stood there I don't know, but after an eternity it seemed, I
+heard the door open and shut. I heard him cross the passage, and go into
+his own room. Then there was silence. I forced myself to move; I
+switched on the light, and locked the door. And when dawn came in
+through the windows, I was still sitting in a chair sobbing, shaking
+like a terrified child.
+
+"This morning he was perfectly normal, and just as cheerful and loving
+as he'd ever been. Oh! Ginger, what am I to do?" She broke down and
+cried helplessly.
+
+"You poor kid," I said; "what an awful experience! You must lock your
+door to-night, and to-morrow, with or without Hugh's knowledge, I shall
+go up to see Cremer."
+
+"You don't think; oh! it couldn't be true that Hugh, my Hugh, is
+going----" She wouldn't say the word, but just gazed at me fearfully
+through her tears.
+
+"Hush, my lady," I said quietly. "The brain is a funny thing; perhaps
+there is some pressure somewhere which Sir William will be able to
+remove."
+
+"Why, of course that's it. I'm tired, stupid--it's made me exaggerate
+things. It will mean another operation, that's all. Wasn't it splendid
+about his getting the V.C.; and the King, so gracious, so kind...." She
+talked bravely on, and I tried to help her.
+
+But suppose there wasn't any pressure; suppose there was nothing to
+remove; suppose.... And in my mind I saw the plot with the little wooden
+crosses; in my mind I heard the express for somewhere booming sullenly
+overhead. And I wondered ... shuddered.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hugh met us at the door; dear old Hugh, looking as well as he ever did.
+
+"Splendid, Ginger, old man! So glad you managed the leave all right."
+
+"Not a hitch, Hugh. You're looking very fit."
+
+"I am. Fit as a flea. You ask Elsie what she thinks."
+
+His wife smiled. "You're just wonderful, old boy, except for your
+sleeplessness at night. I want him to see Sir William Cremer, Ginger,
+but he doesn't think it worth while."
+
+"I don't," said Hugh shortly. "Damn that old sawbones."
+
+In another man the remark would have passed unnoticed; but the chauffeur
+was there, and a maid, and his wife--and the expression was quite
+foreign to Hugh.
+
+But I am bound to say that except for that one trifling thing I noticed
+absolutely nothing peculiar about him all the evening. At dinner he was
+perfectly normal; quite charming--his own brilliant self. When he was in
+the mood, I have seldom heard his equal as a conversationalist, and that
+night he was at the top of his form. I almost managed to persuade myself
+that my fears were groundless....
+
+"I want to have a buck with Ginger, dear," he said to his wife after
+dinner was over. "A talk over the smells and joys of Flanders."
+
+"But I should like to hear," she answered. "It's so hard to get you men
+to talk."
+
+"I don't think you would like to hear, my dear." His tone was quite
+normal, but there was a strange note of insistence in it. "It's shop,
+and will bore you dreadfully." He still stood by the door waiting for
+her to pass through. After a moment's hesitation she went, and Hugh
+closed the door after her. What suggested the analogy to my mind I
+cannot say, but the way in which he performed the simple act of closing
+the door seemed to be the opening rite of some ceremony. Thus could I
+picture a morphomaniac shutting himself in from prying gaze, before
+abandoning himself to his vice; the drunkard, at last alone, returning
+gloatingly to his bottle. Perhaps my perceptions were quickened, but it
+seemed to me that Hugh came back to me as if I were his colleague in
+some guilty secret--as if his wife were alien to his thoughts, and now
+that she was gone, we could talk.... His first words proved I was right.
+
+"Now we can talk, Ginger," he remarked. "These women don't understand."
+He pushed the port towards me.
+
+"Understand what?" I was watching him closely.
+
+"Life, my boy, _the_ life. The life of an eye for an eye and a tooth for
+a tooth. Gad! it was a great day that, Ginger." His eyes were fixed on
+me, and for the first time I noticed the red in them, and a peculiar
+twitch in the lids.
+
+"Did you find the Blue Bird?" I asked quietly.
+
+"Find it?" He laughed--and it was not a pleasant laugh. "I used to think
+it lay in books, in art, in music." Again he gave way to a fit of
+devilish mirth. "What damned fools we are, old man, what damned fools.
+But you mustn't tell her." He leaned over the table and spoke
+confidentially. "She'd never understand; that's why I got rid of her."
+He lifted his glass to the light, looking at it as a connoisseur looks
+at a rare vintage, while all the time a strange smile--a cruel
+smile--hovered round his lips. "Music--art," his voice was full of
+scorn. "Only we know better. Did I ever tell you about that grip I
+learned in Sumatra--the Death Grip?"
+
+He suddenly fired the question at me, and for a moment I did not
+answer. All my fears were rushing back into my mind with renewed
+strength; it was not so much the question as the tone--and the eyes of
+the speaker.
+
+"No, never." I lit a cigarette with elaborate care.
+
+"Ah! Someday I must show you. You take a man's throat in your right
+hand, and you put your left behind his neck--like that." His hands were
+curved in front of him--curved as if a man's throat was in them. "Then
+you press and press with the two thumbs--like that; with the right thumb
+on a certain muscle in the neck, and the left on an artery under the
+ear; and you go on pressing, until--until there's no need to press any
+longer. It's wonderful." I can't hope to give any idea of the dreadful
+gloating tone in his voice.
+
+"I got a Prussian officer like that, that day," he went on after a
+moment. "I saw his dirty grey face close to mine, and I got my hands on
+his throat. I'd forgotten the exact position for the grip, and then
+suddenly I remembered it. I squeezed and squeezed--and, Ginger, the grip
+was right. I squeezed his life out in ten seconds." His voice rose to a
+shout.
+
+"Steady, Hugh," I cried. "You'll be frightening Elsie."
+
+"Quite right," he answered; "that would never do. I haven't told her
+that little incident--she wouldn't understand. But I'm going to show
+her the grip one of these days. As a soldier's wife, I think it's a
+thing she ought to know."
+
+He relapsed into silence, apparently quite calm, though his eyelids
+still twitched, while I watched him covertly from time to time. In my
+mind now there was no shadow of doubt that the doctor's fears were
+justified; I knew that Hugh Latimer was insane. That his loss of mental
+balance was periodical and not permanent was not the point; layman
+though I was, I could realise the danger to everyone in the house. At
+the moment the tragedy of the case hardly struck me; I could only think
+of the look on his face, the gloating, watching look--and Elsie and the
+boy....
+
+At half-past nine he went to bed, and I had a few words with his wife.
+
+"Lock your door to-night," I said insistently, "as you value everything,
+lock your door. I am going to see Cremer to-morrow."
+
+"What's he been saying?" she asked, and her lips were white. "I heard
+him shouting once."
+
+"Enough to make me tell you to lock your door," I said as lightly as I
+could. "Elsie, you've got to be brave; something has gone wrong with
+poor old Hugh for the time, and until he's put right again, there are
+moments when he's not responsible for his actions. Don't be uneasy; I
+shall be on hand to-night."
+
+"I shan't be uneasy" she answered, and then she turned away, and I saw
+her shoulders shaking. "My Hugh--my poor old man." I caught the
+whispered words, and she was gone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I suppose it was about two that I woke with a start. I had meant to keep
+awake the whole night, and with that idea I had not undressed, but,
+sitting in a chair before the fire, had tried to keep myself awake with
+a book. But the journey from France had made me sleepy, and the book had
+slipped to the floor, as has been known to happen before. The light was
+still on, though the fire had burned low; and I was cramped and stiff.
+For a moment I sat listening intently--every faculty awake; and then I
+heard a door gently close, and a step in the passage. I switched off the
+light and listened.
+
+Instinctively, I knew the crisis had come, and with the need for action
+I became perfectly cool. Soft footsteps, like a man walking in his
+socks, came distinctly through the door which I had left ajar--once a
+board creaked. And after that sharp ominous crack there was silence for
+a space; the nocturnal walker was cautious, cautious with the devilish
+cunning of the madman.
+
+It seemed to me an eternity as I listened--straining to hear in the
+silent house--then once again there came the soft pad-pad of stockinged
+feet; nearer and nearer till they halted outside my door. I could hear
+the heavy breathing of someone outside, and then stealthily my door was
+pushed open. In the dim light which filtered in from the passage Hugh's
+figure was framed in the doorway. With many pauses and very cautious
+steps he moved to the bed, while I pressed against the wall watching
+him.
+
+His hands wandered over the pillows, and then he muttered to himself.
+"Old Ginger--I suppose he hasn't come to bed yet. And I wanted to show
+him that little grip--that little death-grip." He chuckled horribly.
+"Never mind--Elsie, dear little Elsie; I will show her first. Though she
+won't understand so well--only Ginger would really understand."
+
+He moved to the door, and once again the slow padding of his feet
+sounded in the passage; while he still muttered, though I could not hear
+what he said. Then he came to his wife's door and cautiously turned the
+handle....
+
+What happened then happened quickly. He realised quickly that it was
+locked, and this seemed to infuriate him. He gave an inarticulate shout,
+and rattled the door violently; then he drew back to the other side of
+the passage and prepared to charge it. And at that moment we closed.
+
+I had followed him out of my room, and, knowing myself to be far
+stronger than him, I threw myself on him without a thought I hadn't
+reckoned on the strength of a madman, and for two minutes he threw me
+about as if I were a child. We struggled and fought, while frightened
+maids wrung their hands--and a white-faced woman watched with tearless
+eyes. And at last I won; when his temporary strength gave out, he was as
+weak as a child. Poor old Hugh! Poor old chap!...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir William Cremer came down the next day, and to him I told everything.
+He made all the necessary wretched arrangements, and the dear fellow was
+taken away--seemingly quite sane--and telling Elsie he'd be back soon.
+
+"They say I need a change, old dear, and this old tyrant says I've been
+restless at night." He had his hand on Sir William's shoulder as he
+spoke, while the car was waiting at the door.
+
+"Jove! little girl--you do look a bit washed out Have I been worrying
+you?"
+
+"Of course not, old man." Her voice was perfectly steady.
+
+"There you are, Sir William." He turned triumphantly to the doctor.
+"Still perhaps you're right. Where's the young rascal? Give me a kiss,
+you scamp--and look after your mother while I'm away. I'll be back
+soon." He went down the steps and into the car.
+
+"And very likely he will, Mrs. Latimer. Keep your spirits up and never
+despair." Sir William patted her shoulder paternally, but over her bent
+head I saw his eyes.
+
+"God knows," he said reverently to me as he followed Hugh. "The brain is
+such a wonderful thing; just a tiny speck and a genius becomes a madman.
+God knows."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Later on I too went away, carrying in my mind the picture of a girl--she
+was no more--holding a little bronze cross in front of a laughing
+baby--the cross on which is written, "For Valour." And once again my
+mind went back to that little plot in Flanders covered with wooden
+crosses.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+JAMES HENRY
+
+
+James Henry was the sole remaining son of his mother, and she was a
+widow. His father, some twelve months previously, had inadvertently
+encountered a motor-car travelling at great speed, and had forthwith
+been laid to rest. His sisters--whom James Henry affected to
+despise--had long since left the parental roof and gone to seek their
+Fortunes in the great world; while his brothers had in all cases died
+violent deaths, following in the steps of their lamented father. In
+fact, as I said, James Henry was alone in the world saving only for his
+mother: and as she'd married again since his father's death he felt that
+his responsibility so far as she was concerned was at an end. In fact,
+he frequently cut her when he met her about the house.
+
+Relations had become particularly strained after this second matrimonial
+venture. An aristocrat of the most unbending description himself, he had
+been away during the period of her courtship--otherwise, no doubt, he
+would have protected his father's stainless escutcheon. As it was, he
+never quite recovered from the shock.
+
+It was at breakfast one morning that he heard the news. Lady Monica told
+him as she handed him his tea. "James Henry," she remarked
+reproachfully, "your mother is a naughty woman." True to his
+aristocratic principle of stoical calm he continued to consume his
+morning beverage. There were times when the mention of his mother bored
+him to extinction. "A very naughty woman," she continued. "Dad"--she
+addressed a man who had just come into the room--"it's occurred."
+
+"What--have they come?"
+
+"Yes--last night. Five."
+
+"Are they good ones?"
+
+Lady Alice laughed. "I was just telling James Henry what I thought of
+his Family when you came in. I'm afraid Harriet Emily is incorrigible."
+
+"Look at James!" exclaimed the Earl--"he's spilled his tea all over the
+carpet." He was inspecting the dishes on the sideboard as he spoke.
+
+"He always does. His whiskers dribble. Jervis tells me that he thinks
+Harriet Emily must have--er--flirted with a most undesirable
+acquaintance."
+
+"Oh! has she?" Her father opened the morning paper and started to enjoy
+his breakfast. "We must drown 'em, my dear, drown---- Hullo! the
+Russians have crossed the----" It sounded like an explosion in a
+soda-water factory, and James Henry protested.
+
+"Quite right, Henry. He oughtn't to do it at breakfast. It doesn't
+really make any one any happier. Did _you_ know about your mother? Now
+don't gobble your food." Lady Monica held up an admonishing finger.
+"Four of your brothers and sisters are more or less respectable, James,
+but there's _one_--there's one that is distinctly reminiscent of a
+dachshund. Oh! 'Arriet, 'Arriet--I'm ashamed of you."
+
+James Henry sneezed heavily and got down from the table. Always a
+perfect gentleman, he picked up the crumbs round his chair, and even
+went so far as to salvage a large piece of sausage skin which had
+slipped on to the floor. Then, full of rectitude and outwardly
+unconcerned, he retired to a corner behind a cupboard and earnestly
+contemplated a little hole in the floor.
+
+Outwardly calm--yes: that at least was due to the memory of his
+blue-blooded father. But inwardly, he seethed. With his head on one side
+he alternately sniffed and blew as he had done regularly every morning
+for the past two months. His father's wife the mother of a sausage-dog!
+Incredible! It must have been that miserable fat beast who lived at the
+Pig and Whistle. The insolence--the inconceivable impertinence of such
+an unsightly, corpulent traducer daring to ally himself with One of the
+Fox Terriers. He growled slightly in his disgust, and three mice inside
+the wall laughed gently. But--still, the girls are ever frail. He
+blushed slightly at some recollection, and realised that he must make
+allowances. But a sausage dog! Great Heavens!
+
+"James--avancons, mon brave." Lady Monica was standing in the window.
+"We will hie us to the village. Dad, don't forget that our branch of the
+Federated Association of Women War Workers are drilling here this
+afternoon."
+
+"Good Heavens! my dear girl--is it?" Her father gazed at her in alarm.
+"I think--er--I think I shall have to--er--run up to Town--er--this
+afternoon."
+
+"I thought you'd have to, old dear. In fact, I've ordered the car for
+you. Come along, Henry--we must go and get a boy scout to be bandaged."
+
+James Henry gave one last violently facial contortion at the entrance of
+the mouse's lair, and rose majestically to his feet. If she wanted to go
+out, he fully realised that he must go with her: Emily would have to
+wait. He would go round later and see his poor misguided mother and
+reason with her; but just at present the girl was his principal duty.
+She generally asked his advice on various things when they went for a
+walk, and the least he could do was to pretend to be interested at any
+rate.
+
+Apparently this morning she was in need of much counsel and help.
+Having arrived at a clearing in the wood, on the way to the village, she
+sat down on the fallen trunk of a tree, and addressed him.
+
+"James--what am I to do? Derek is coming this afternoon before he goes
+back to France. What shall I tell him, Henry--what _shall_ I tell him?
+Because I know he'll ask me again. Thank you, old man, but you're not
+very helpful, and I'd much sooner you kept it yourself."
+
+Disgustedly James Henry removed the carcase of a field mouse he had just
+procured, and resigned himself to the inevitable.
+
+"I'm fond of him; I like him--in fact at times more than like him. But
+is it the _real_ thing? Now what do you think, James Henry?--tell me all
+that is in your mind. Ought I----"
+
+It was then that he gave his celebrated rendering of a young typhoon,
+owing to the presence of a foreign substance--to wit, a fly--in a
+ticklish spot on his nose.
+
+"You think that, do you? Well, perhaps you're right. Come on, my lad, we
+must obtain the victim for this afternoon. I wonder if those little boys
+like it? To do some good and kindly action each day--that's their motto,
+James. And as one person to another you must admit that to be revived
+from drowning, resuscitated from fainting, brought to from an epileptic
+fit, and have two knees, an ankle, and a collarbone set at the same
+time is some good action even for a boy scout."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was not until after lunch that James Henry paid his promised call on
+his mother. Maturer considerations had but strengthened his resolve to
+make allowances. After all, these things do happen in the best families.
+He was, indeed, prepared to be magnanimous and forgive; he was even
+prepared to be interested; the only thing he wasn't prepared for was the
+nasty bite he got on his ear. That settled it. It was then that he
+finally washed his hands of his undutiful parent. As he told her, he
+felt more sorrow than anger; he should have realised that anyone who
+could have dealings with a sausage-hound must be dead to all sense of
+decency--and that the only thing he asked was that in the future she
+would conceal the fact that they were related.
+
+Then he left her--and trotting round to the front of the house, found
+great activity in progress on the lawn.
+
+"Good Heavens! James Henry, do they often do this?" With a shout of joy
+he recognised the speaker. And having told him about Harriet, and blown
+heavily at a passing spider and then trodden on it, he sat down beside
+the soldier on the steps. The game on the lawn at first sight looked
+dull; and he only favoured it with a perfunctory glance. In fact, what
+on earth there was in it to make the soldier beside him shake and shake
+while the tears periodically rolled down his face was quite beyond
+Henry.
+
+The principal player seemed to be a large man--also in khaki--with a
+loud voice. Up to date he had said nothing but "Now then, ladies," at
+intervals, and in a rising crescendo. Then it all became complicated.
+
+"Now then, ladies, when I says Number--you numbers from Right to Left in
+an heven tone of voice. The third lady from the left 'as no lady behind
+'er--seeing as we're a hodd number. She forms the blank file. Yes, you,
+mum--you, I means."
+
+"What are you pointing at me for, my good man?" The Vicar's wife
+suddenly realised she was being spoken to. "Am I doing anything wrong?"
+
+"No, mum, no. Not this time. I was only saying as you 'ave no one behind
+you."
+
+"Oh! I'll go there at once--I'm so sorry." She retired to the rear rank.
+"Dear Mrs. Goodenough, _did_ I tread upon your foot?--so clumsy of me!
+Oh, what is that man saying now? But you've just told me to come here.
+You did nothing of the sort? How rude!"
+
+But as I said, the game did not interest James Henry, so he wandered
+away and played in some bushes. There were distinct traces of a recently
+moving mole which was far more to the point. Then having found--after a
+diligent search and much delight in pungent odours--that the mole was a
+has-been, our Henry disappeared for a space. And far be it from me to
+disclose where he went: his intentions were always strictly honourable.
+
+When he appeared again the Earl had just returned from London, and was
+talking to the tall soldier-man. The Women War Workers had departed,
+and, as James Henry approached, his mistress came out and joined the two
+men.
+
+"Have those dreadful women gone, my dear?" asked the Earl as he saw her.
+
+"You're very rude, Dad. The Federated Association of the W.W.W. is a
+very fine body of patriotic women. What did you think of our drill,
+Derek?"
+
+"Wonderful, Monica. Quite the most wonderful thing I've ever seen." The
+soldier solemnly offered her a cigarette.
+
+"You men are all jealous. We're coming out to France as V.A.D.'s soon."
+
+"Good Lord, Derek--you ought to have seen their first drill. In one
+corner of the lawn that poor devil of a sergeant with his face a shiny
+purple alternately sobbed and bellowed like a bull--while twenty-seven
+W.W.W.'s tied themselves into a knot like a Rugby football scrum, and
+told one another how they'd done it. It was the most heart-rending
+sight I've ever seen."
+
+"Dear old Dad!" The girl blew a cloud of smoke. "You told it better last
+time."
+
+"Don't interrupt, Monica. The final tableau----"
+
+"Which one are you going to tell him, dear? The one where James Henry
+bit the Vicar's wife in the leg, or the one where the sergeant with a
+choking cry of 'Double, damn you!' fell fainting into the rhododendron
+bush?"
+
+"I think the second is the better," remarked the soldier pensively.
+"Dogs always bite the Vicar's wife's leg. Not a hobby I should
+personally take up, but----"
+
+They all laughed. "Now run indoors, old 'un, and tell John to get you a
+mixed Vermouth--I want to talk to Derek." The girl gently pushed her
+father towards the open window.
+
+It was at that particular moment in James Henry's career that, having
+snapped at a wasp and partially killed it, he inadvertently sat on the
+carcase by mistake. As he explained to Harriet Emily afterwards, it
+wasn't so much the discomfort of the proceeding which annoyed him, as
+the unfeeling laughter of the spectators. And it was only when she'd
+bitten him in the other ear that he remembered he had disowned her that
+very afternoon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But elsewhere, though he was quite unaware of the fact, momentous
+decisions as to his future were being taken. The Earl had gone in to get
+his mixed Vermouth, and outside his daughter and the soldier-man sat and
+talked. It was fragmentary, disjointed--the talk of old friends with
+much in common. Only in the man's voice there was that suppressed note
+which indicates things more than any mere words. Monica heard it and
+sighed--she'd heard it so often before in his voice. James Henry had
+heard it too during a previous talk--one which he had graced with his
+presence--and had gone to the extent of discussing it with a friend. On
+this occasion he had been gently dozing on the man's knee, when suddenly
+he had been rudely awakened. In his dreams he had heard her say, "Dear
+old Derek--I'm afraid it's No. You see, I'm not sure;" which didn't seem
+much to make a disturbance about.
+
+"Would you believe it," he remarked later, "but as she spoke the
+soldier-man's grip tightened on my neck till I was almost choked."
+
+"What did you do?" asked his Friend, a disreputable "long-dog." "Did you
+bite him?"
+
+"I did not." James Henry sniffed. "It was not a biting moment. Tact was
+required. I just gave a little cough, and instantly he took his hand
+away. 'Old man,' he whispered to me--she'd left us--'I'm sorry. I
+didn't mean to--I wasn't thinking.' So I licked his hand to show him I
+understood."
+
+"I know what you mean. I'm generally there when my bloke comes out of
+prison, and he always kicks me. But it's meant kindly."
+
+"As a matter of fact that is not what I mean--though I daresay your
+experiences on such matters are profound." James was becoming
+blue-blooded. "The person who owns you, and who is in the habit of going
+to--er--prison, no doubt shows his affection for you in that way. And
+very suitable too. But the affair to which I alluded is quite different.
+The soldier-man is almost as much in my care as the girl. And so I know
+his feelings. At the time, he was suffering though why I don't
+understand; and therefore it was up to me to suffer with him. It helped
+him."
+
+"H'm," the lurcher grunted. "Daresay you're right. What about a trip to
+the gorse? I haven't seen a rabbit for some time."
+
+And if Henry had not sat on the wasp, his neck might again have been
+squeezed that evening. As it was, the danger period was over by the time
+he reappeared and jumped into the girl's lap. Not only had the sixth
+proposal been gently turned down--but James's plans for the near future
+had been settled for him in a most arbitrary manner.
+
+"Well, old man, how's the tail?" laughed the soldier. James Henry
+yawned--the subject seemed a trifle personal even amongst old friends.
+"Have you heard you're coming with me to France?"
+
+"And you must bring him to me as soon as I get over," cried the girl.
+
+"At once, dear lady. I'll ask for special leave, and if necessary an
+armistice."
+
+"Won't you bark at the Huns, my cherub?" She laughed and got up. "Go to
+your uncle--I'm going to dress."
+
+What happened then was almost more than even the most long-suffering
+terrier could stand. He was unceremoniously bundled into his uncle's
+arms by his mistress, and at the same moment she bent down. A strange
+noise was heard such as he had frequently noted, coming from the top of
+his own head, when his mistress was in an affectionate mood--a peculiar
+form of exercise he deduced, which apparently amused some people. But
+the effect on the soldier was electrical. He sprang out of his chair
+with a shout--"Monica--you little devil--come back," and James Henry
+fell winded to the floor. But a flutter of white disappearing indoors
+was the only answer....
+
+"She's not sure, James, my son--she's not sure." The man pulled out his
+cigarette case and contemplated him thoughtfully. "And how the deuce
+are we to make her sure? I want it, and her father wants it, and so
+does she if she only knew it. They're the devil, James Henry--they're
+the devil."
+
+But his hearer did not want philosophy; he wanted his tummy rubbed. He
+lay with one eye closed, his four paws turned up limply towards the sky,
+and sighed gently. Never before had the suggestion failed; enthusiastic
+admirers had always taken the hint gladly, and he had graciously allowed
+them the pleasure. But this time--horror upon horror--not only was there
+no result, but in a dreamy, contemplative manner the soldier actually
+deposited his used and still warm match carefully on the spot where
+James Henry's wind had been. Naturally there was only one possible
+course open to him. He rose quietly, and left. It was only when he was
+thinking the matter over later that it struck him that his exit would
+have been more dignified if he hadn't sat down halfway across the lawn
+to scratch his right ear. It was more than likely that a completely
+false construction would be put on that simple action by anyone who
+didn't know he'd had words with Harriet Emily.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus James Henry--gentleman, at his country seat in England. I have gone
+out of my way to describe what may be taken as an average day in his
+life, in order to show him as he was before he went to France to be
+banished from the country--cashiered in disgrace a few weeks after his
+arrival. Which only goes to prove the change that war causes in even the
+most polished and courtly.
+
+I am told that the alteration for the worse started shortly after his
+arrival at the front. What did it I don't know--but he lost one whisker
+and a portion of an ear, thus giving him a somewhat lopsided appearance;
+though rakish withal. It may have been a detonator which went off as he
+ate it--it may have been foolish curiosity over a maxim--it may even
+have been due to the fact that he found a motor-bicycle standing still,
+what time it made strange provocative noises, and failed to notice that
+the back wheel was off the ground and rotating at a great pace.
+
+Whatever it was it altered James Henry. Not that it soured his
+temper--not at all; but it made him more reckless, less careful of
+appearances. He forgot the repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere,
+and a series of incidents occurred which tended to strain relations all
+round.
+
+There was the question of the three dead chickens, for instance. Had
+they disappeared decently and in order much might have been thought but
+nothing would have been known. But when they were deposited on their
+owner's doorstep, with James Henry mounting guard over the corpses
+himself, it was a little difficult to explain the matter away. That was
+the trouble--his sense of humour seemed to have become distorted.
+
+The pastime of hunting for rats in the sewers of Ypres cannot be too
+highly commended; but having got thoroughly wet in the process, James
+Henry's practice of depositing the rat and himself on the Adjutant's bed
+was open to grave criticism.
+
+But enough: these two instances were, I am sorry to state, but types of
+countless other regrettable episodes which caused the popularity of
+James Henry to wane.
+
+The final decree of death or banishment came when James had been in the
+country some seven weeks.
+
+On the day in question a dreadful shout was heard, followed by a flood
+of language which I will refrain from committing to print. And then the
+Colonel appeared in the door of his dug-out.
+
+"Where is that accursed idiot, Murgatroyd? Pass the word along for the
+damn fool."
+
+"'Urry up, Conky. The ole man's a-twittering for you." Murgatroyd
+emerged from a recess.
+
+"What's 'e want?"
+
+"I'd go and find out, cully. I think 'e's going to mention you in 'is
+will." At that moment a fresh outburst floated through the stillness.
+
+"Great 'Eavens!" Murgatroyd reluctantly rose to his feet. "So long,
+boys. Tell me mother she was in me thoughts up to the end." He paused
+outside the dug-out and then went manfully in. "You wanted me, sir."
+
+"Look at this, you blithering ass, look at this." The Colonel was
+searching through his Fortnum and Mason packing-case on the floor.
+"Great Heavens! and the caviar too--imbedded in the butter. Five defunct
+rodents in the brawn"--he threw each in turn at his servant, who dodged
+round the dug-out like a pea in a drum--"the marmalade and the pate de
+fois gras inseparably mixed together, and the whole covered with a thick
+layer of disintegrating cigar."
+
+"It wasn't me, sir," Murgatroyd spoke in an aggrieved tone.
+
+"I didn't suppose it was, you fool." The Colonel straightened himself
+and glared at his hapless minion. "Great Heavens! there's another rat on
+my hairbrush."
+
+"One of the same five, sir. It ricocheted off my face." With a
+magnificent nonchalance his servant threw it out of the door. "I think,
+sir, it must be James 'Enry."
+
+"Who the devil is James Henry?"
+
+"Sir Derek Temple's little dawg, sir."
+
+"Indeed." The Colonel's tone was ominous. "Go round and ask Sir Derek
+Temple to be good enough to come and see me at once."
+
+What happened exactly at that interview I cannot say; although I
+understand that James Henry considered an absurd fuss had been made
+about a trifle. In fact he found it so difficult to lie down with any
+comfort that night that he missed much of his master's conversation with
+him.
+
+"You've topped it, James, you've put the brass hat on. The old man
+threatens to turn out a firing party if he ever sees you again."
+
+James feigned sleep: this continual harping on what was over and done
+with he considered the very worst of form. Even if he had put the caviar
+in the butter and his foot in the marmalade--well, hang it all--what
+then? He'd presented the old buster with five dead rats, which was more
+than he'd do for a lot of people.
+
+"In fact, James, you are not popular, my boy--and I shudder to think
+what Monica will do with you when she gets you. She's come over, you may
+be pleased to hear, Henry. She is V.A.D.-ing at a charming hospital that
+overlooks the sea. James, why can't I go sick--and live for a space at
+that charming hospital that overlooks the sea? Think of it: here am I,
+panting to have my face washed by her, panting----"
+
+For a moment he rhapsodised in silence. "Breakfast in bed, poached egg
+in the bed: oh! James, my boy, and she probably never even thinks of
+me."
+
+He took a letter out of his pocket and held it under the light of the
+candle. "'Not much to do at present, but delightful weather. The
+hospital is nearly empty, though there's one perfect dear who is almost
+fit--a Major in some Highland regiment.'
+
+"Listen to that, James. Some great raw-boned, red-kneed Scotchman, and
+she calls him a perfect dear!" His listener blew resignedly and again
+composed himself to slumber.
+
+"'How is James behaving? I'd love to see the sweet pet again.' Sweet
+pet: yes--my boy--you look it. 'Do you remember how annoyed he was when
+I put him in your arms that afternoon at home?' Do you hear that,
+James?--do I remember? Monica, you adorable soul...." He relapsed into
+moody thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At what moment during that restless night the idea actually came I know
+not. Possibly a diabolical chuckle on the part of James Henry, who was
+hunting in his dreams, goaded him to desperation. But it is an undoubted
+fact that when Sir Derek Temple rose the next morning he had definitely
+determined to embark on the adventure which culminated in the tragedy of
+the cat, the General, and James. The latter is reputed to regard the
+affair as quite trifling and unworthy of the fierce glare of publicity
+that beat upon it. The cat, has, or rather had, different views.
+
+Now, be it known to those who live in England that it is one thing to
+say in an airy manner, as Derek had said to Lady Monica, that he would
+come and see her when she landed in France; it is another to do it. But
+to a determined and unprincipled man nothing is impossible; and though
+it would be the height of indiscretion for me to hint even at the
+methods he used to attain his ends, it is a certain fact that in the
+afternoon of the second day following the episode of the five rodents he
+found himself at a certain seaport town with James Henry as the other
+member of the party. And having had his hair cut, and extricated his
+companion from a street brawl, he hired a motor and drove into the
+country.
+
+Now, Derek Temple's knowledge of hospitals and their ways was not
+profound. He had a hazy idea that on arriving at the portals he would
+send in his name, and that in due course he could consume a tete-a-tete
+tea with Monica in her private boudoir. He rehearsed the scene in his
+mind: the quiet, cutting reference to Highlanders who failed to
+understand the official position of nurses--the certainty that this
+particular one was a scoundrel: the fact that, on receiving her letter,
+he had at once rushed off to protect her.
+
+And as he got to this point the car turned into the gates of a palatial
+hotel and stopped by the door. James Henry jumped through the open
+window, and his master followed him up the steps.
+
+"Is Lady Monica Travers at home; I mean--er--is she in the hospital?" He
+addressed an R.A.M.C. sergeant in the entrance.
+
+"No dawgs allowed in the 'ospital, sir." The scandalised N.C.O. glared
+at James Henry, who was furiously growling at a hot-air grating in the
+floor. "You must get 'im out at once, sir: we're being inspected
+to-day."
+
+"Heel, James, heel. He'll be quite all right, Sergeant. Just find out,
+will you, about Lady Monica Travers?"
+
+"Beg pardon, sir, but are you a patient?"
+
+"Patient--of course I'm not a patient. Do I look like a patient?"
+
+"Well, sir, there ain't no visiting allowed when the sisters is on
+duty."
+
+"What? But it's preposterous. Do you mean to say I can't see her unless
+I'm a patient? Why, man, I've got to go back in an hour."
+
+"Very sorry, sir--but no visiting allowed. Very strict 'ere, and as I
+says we're full of brass 'ats to-day."
+
+For a moment Derek was nonplussed; this was a complication on which he
+had not reckoned.
+
+"But look here, Sergeant, you know..." and even as he spoke he looked
+upstairs and beheld Lady Monica. Unfortunately she had not seen him, and
+the situation was desperate. Forcing James Henry into the arms of the
+outraged N.C.O., he rushed up the stairs and followed her.
+
+"Derek!" The girl stopped in amazement. "What in the world are you doing
+here?"
+
+"Monica, my dear, I've come to see you. Tell me that you don't really
+love that damn Scotchman."
+
+An adorable smile spread over her face. "You idiot! I don't love anyone.
+My work fills my life."
+
+"Rot! You said in your letter you had nothing to do at present. Monica,
+take me somewhere where I can make love to you."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the sort. In the first place you aren't allowed
+here at all; and in the second I don't want to be made love to."
+
+"And in the third," said Derek grimly, as the sound of a procession
+advancing down a corridor came from round the corner, "you're being
+inspected to-day, and that--if I mistake not--is the great pan-jan-drum
+himself."
+
+"Oh! good Heavens. Derek, I'd forgotten. Do go, for goodness' sake.
+Run--I shall be sacked."
+
+"I shall not go. As the great man himself rounds that corner I shall
+kiss you with a loud trumpeting noise.'
+
+"You brute! Oh! what shall I do?--there they are. Come in here." She
+grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him into a small deserted
+sitting-room close by.
+
+"You darling," he remarked and promptly kissed her. "Monica, dear, you
+must listen----"
+
+"Sit down, you idiot. I'm sure they saw me. You must pretend you're a
+patient just come in. I know I shall be sacked. The General is
+dreadfully particular. Put this thermometer in your mouth. Quick, give
+me your hand--I must take your pulse."
+
+"I think," said a voice outside the door, "that I saw--er--a patient
+being brought into one of these rooms."
+
+"Surely not, sir. These rooms are all empty." The door opened and the
+cavalcade paused. "Er--Lady Monica... really."
+
+"A new patient, Colonel," she remarked. "I am just taking his
+temperature." Derek, his eyes partially closed, lay back in a chair,
+occasionally uttering a slight groan.
+
+"The case looks most interesting." The General came and stood beside
+him. "Most interesting. Have you--er--diagnosed the symptoms, sister?"
+His lips were twitching suspiciously.
+
+"Not yet, General. The pulse is normal--and the temperature"--she looked
+at the thermometer--"is--good gracious me! have you kept it properly
+under your tongue?" She turned to Derek, who nodded feebly. "The
+temperature is only 93." She looked at the group in an awestruck manner.
+
+"Most remarkable," murmured the General. "One feels compelled to wonder
+what it would have been if he'd had the right end in his mouth." Derek
+emitted a hollow groan. "And where do you feel it worst, my dear boy?"
+continued the great man, gazing at him through his eyeglass.
+
+"Dyspepsia, sir," he whispered feebly. "Dreadful dyspepsia. I can't
+sleep, I--er--Good Lord!" His eyes opened, his voice rose, and with a
+fixed stare of horror he gazed at the door. Through it with due
+solemnity came James Henry holding in his mouth a furless and very dead
+cat. He advanced to the centre of the group--laid it at the General's
+feet--and having sneezed twice sat down and contemplated his handiwork:
+his tail thumping the floor feverishly in anticipation of well-merited
+applause.
+
+It was possibly foolish, but, as Derek explained afterwards to Monica,
+the situation had passed beyond him. He arose and confronted the
+General, who was surveying the scene coldly, and with a courtly
+exclamation of "Your cat, I believe, sir," he passed from the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The conclusion of this dreadful drama may be given in three short
+sentences.
+
+The first was spoken by the General. "Let it be buried." And it was so.
+
+The second was whispered by Lady Monica--later. "Darling, I had to _say_
+we were engaged: it looked so peculiar." And it was even more so.
+
+The third was snorted by James Henry. "First I'm beaten and then I'm
+kissed. Damn all cats!"
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE LAND OF TOPSY TURVY
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE LAND OF TOPSY TURVY
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE GREY HOUSE
+
+
+You come on it unexpectedly, round a little spur in the side of the
+valley, which screens it from view. It stands below you as you first see
+it, not a big house, not a little one, but just comfortable. It seems in
+keeping with the gardens, the tennis courts, the orchards which lie
+around it in a hap-hazard sort of manner, as if they had just grown
+there years and years ago and had been too lazy to move ever since.
+Peace is the keynote of the whole picture--the peace and contentment of
+sleepy unwoken England.
+
+Down in the valley below, the river, brown and swollen, carries on its
+bosom the flotsam and jetsam of its pilgrimage through the country. Now
+and then a great branch goes bobbing by, only to come to grief in the
+shallows round the corner--the shallows where the noise of the water on
+the rounded stones lulls one to sleep at night, and sounds a ceaseless
+reveille each morning. On the other side of the water the woods stretch
+down close to the bank, though the upper slopes of the hills are bare,
+and bathed in the golden light of the dying winter sun. Slowly the dark
+shadow line creeps up--creeps up to meet the shepherd coming home with
+his flock. Faint, but crisp, the barks of his dog, prancing excitedly
+round him, strike on one's ears, and then of a sudden--silence. They
+have entered the purple country; they have left the golden land, and the
+dog trots soberly at his master's heels. One last peak alone remains,
+dipped in flaming yellow, and then that too is touched by the finger of
+oncoming night. For a few moments it survives, a flicker of fire on its
+rugged tip, and then--the end; like a grim black sentinel it stands
+gloomy and sinister against the evening sky.
+
+The shepherd is out of sight amongst the trees; the purple is changing
+to grey, the grey to black; there is no movement saving only the
+tireless swish of the river....
+
+To the man leaning over the gate the scene was familiar--but familiarity
+had not robbed it of its charm. Involuntarily his mind went back to the
+days before the Madness came--to the days when others had stood beside
+him watching those same darkening hills, with the smoke of their pipes
+curling gently away in the still air. Back from a day's shooting, back
+from an afternoon on the river, and a rest at the top of the hill before
+going in to tea in the house below. So had he stood countless times in
+the past--with those others....
+
+The Rabbit, with a gun under his arm, and his stubby briar glowing red
+in the paling light. The Rabbit, with his old shooting-coat, with the
+yarn of the one woodcock he nearly got, with his cheery laugh. But they
+never found anything of him--an eight-inch shell is at any rate
+merciful.
+
+Torps--the naval candidate: one of the worst and most gallant riders
+that ever threw a leg across a horse. Somewhere in the depths of the
+Pacific, with the great heaving combers as his grave, he lies
+peacefully; and as for a little while he had gasped and struggled while
+hundreds of others gasped and struggled near him--perhaps he, too, had
+seen the hills opposite once again even as the Last Fence loomed in
+front and the whispered Kismet came from his lips....
+
+Hugh--the son of the house close by. Twice wounded, and now out again in
+Mesopotamia. Did the sound of the water come to him as the sun dropped,
+slow and pitiless, into the west? The same parching, crawling days
+following one another in deadly monotony: the same....
+
+"Dreaming, Jim?" A woman's voice behind him broke on the man's thoughts.
+
+"Yes, lady," he answered soberly. "Dreaming. Some of the ghosts we knew
+have been coming to me out of the blue grey mists." He fell into step
+beside her, and they moved towards the house.
+
+"Ah! don't," she whispered--"don't! Oh! it's wicked, this war; cruel,
+damnable." She stopped and faced him, her breast rising and falling
+quickly. "And we can't follow you, Jim--we women. You go into the
+unknown."
+
+"Yes--yours is the harder part. You can only wait and wonder."
+
+"Wait and wonder!" She laughed bitterly. "Hope and pray--while God
+sleeps."
+
+"Hush, lady!" he answered quietly; "for that way there lies no peace. Is
+Sybil indoors?"
+
+"Yes--she's expecting you. Thank goodness you're not going out yet
+awhile, Jim; the child is fretting herself sick over her brother as it
+is--and when you go...."
+
+"Yes--when I go, what then?" he asked quietly. "Because I'm very nearly
+fit again, Lady Alice. My arm is nearly all right."
+
+"Do you want to go back, Jim?" Her quiet eyes searched his face. "Look
+at that."
+
+They had rounded a corner, and in front of them a man was leaning
+against a wall talking to the cook. They were in the stage known as
+walking-out--or is it keeping company? The point is immaterial and
+uninteresting. But the man, fit and strong, was in a starred trade. He
+was a forester--or had been since the first rumour of compulsion had
+startled his poor tremulous spirit. A very fine, but not unique example
+of the genuine shirker....
+
+"What has he to do with us?" said Jim bitterly. "That thing takes his
+stand along with the criminals, and the mental degenerates. He's worse
+than a conscientious objector. And we've got no choice. He reaps the
+benefits for which he refuses to fight. I don't want to go back to
+France particularly; every feeling I've got revolts at the idea just at
+present. I want to be with Sybil, as you know; I want to--oh! God knows!
+I was mad over the water--it bit into me; I was caught by the fever.
+It's an amazing thing how it gets hold of one. All the dirt and
+discomfort, and the boredom and the fright--one would have thought...."
+He laughed. "I suppose it's the madness in the air. But I'm sane now."
+
+"Are you? I wonder for how long. Let's go in and have some tea." The
+woman led the way indoors; there was silence again save only for the
+sound of the river.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE WOMEN AND--THE MEN
+
+
+When Jim Denver told Lady Alice Conway that he was sane again, he spoke
+no more than the truth. A few weeks in France, and then a shattered arm
+had brought him back to England with more understanding than he had ever
+possessed before. He had gone out the ordinary Englishman--casual,
+sporting, easy going, somewhat apathetic; he had come back a thinker as
+well, at times almost a dreamer. It affects different men in different
+ways--but none escape. And that is what those others cannot
+understand--those others who have not been across. Even the man who
+comes back on short leave hardly grasps how the thing has changed him:
+hardly realises that the madness is still in his soul. He has not time;
+his leave is just an interlude. He is back again in France almost before
+he realises he has left it. In mind he has never left it.
+
+There is humour there in plenty--farce even; boredom, excitement,
+passion, hatred. Every human emotion runs its full gamut in the Land of
+Topsy Turvy; in the place where the life of a man is no longer
+three-score years and ten, but just so long as the Great Reaper may
+decide and no more. And you are caught in the whirl--you are tossed here
+and there by a life of artificiality, a life not of one's own seeking,
+but a life which, having once caught you, you are loath to let go.
+
+Which is a hard saying, and one impossible of comprehension to those who
+wait behind--to the wives, to the mothers, to the women. To them the
+leave-train pulling slowly out of Victoria Station, with their man
+waving a last adieu from the carriage window, means the ringing down of
+the curtain once again. The unknown has swallowed him up--the unknown
+into which they cannot follow him. Be he in a Staff office at the base
+or with his battalion in the trenches, he has gone where the woman to
+whom he counts as all the world cannot even picture him in her mind. To
+her Flanders is Flanders and war is war--and there are casualty lists.
+What matter that his battalion is resting; what matter that he is going
+through a course somewhere at the back of beyond? He has gone into the
+Unknown; the whistle of the train steaming slowly out is the voice of
+the call-boy at the drop curtain. And now the train has passed out of
+sight--or is it only that her eyes are dim with the tears she kept back
+while he was with her?
+
+At last she turns and goes blindly back to the room where they had
+breakfast; she sees once more the chair he used, the crumpled morning
+paper, the discarded cigarette. And there let us leave her with
+tear-stained face and a pathetic little sodden handkerchief clutched in
+one hand. "O God! dear God! send him back to me." Our women do not show
+us this side very much when we are on leave; perhaps it is as well, for
+the ground on which we stand is holy....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And what of the man? The train is grinding through Herne Hill when he
+puts down his _Times_ and catches sight of another man in his brigade
+also returning from leave.
+
+"Hullo, old man! What sort of a time have you had?"
+
+"Top-hole. How's yourself? Was that your memsahib at the station?"
+
+"Yes. Dislike women at these partings as a general rule--but she's
+wonderful."
+
+"They're pulling the brigade out to rest, I hear."
+
+"So I believe. Anyway, I hope they've buried that dead Hun just in front
+of us. He was getting beyond a joke...."
+
+He is back in the life over the water again; there is nothing
+incongruous to him in his sequence of remarks; the time of his leave has
+been too short for the contrast to strike him. In fact, the whirl of
+gaiety in which he has passed his seven days seems more unreal than his
+other life--than the dead German. And it is only when a man is wounded
+and comes home to get fit, when he idles away the day in the home of his
+fathers, with a rod or a gun to help him back to convalescence, when the
+soothing balm of utter peace and contentment creeps slowly through his
+veins, that he looks back on the past few months as a runner on a race
+just over. He has given of his best; he is ready to give of his best
+again; but at the moment he is exhausted; panting, but at rest For the
+time the madness has left him; he is sane. But it is only for the
+time....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He is able to think coherently; he is able to look on things in their
+proper perspective. He knows. The bits in the kaleidoscope begin to
+group coherently, to take definite form, and he views the picture from
+the standpoint of a rational man. To him the leave-train contains no
+illusions; the territory is not unknown. No longer does a dead Hun dwarf
+his horizon to the exclusion of all else. He has looked on the thing
+from close quarters; he has been mad with passion and shaking with
+fright; he has been cold and wet, he has been hot and thirsty. Like a
+blaze of tropical vegetation from which individual colours refuse to be
+separated, so does the jumble of his life in Flanders strike him as he
+looks back on it. Isolated occurrences seem unreal, hard to identify.
+The little things which then meant so much now seem so paltry; the
+things he hardly noticed now loom big. Above all, the grim absurdity of
+the whole thing strikes him; civilisation has at last been defined....
+
+He marvels that men can be such wonderful, such super-human fools; his
+philosophy changes. He recalls grimly the particular night on which he
+crept over a dirty ploughed field and scrambled into a shell-hole as he
+saw the thin green streak of a German flare like a bar of light against
+the blackness; then the burst--the ghostly light flooding the desolate
+landscape--the crack of a solitary rifle away to his left. And as the
+flare came slowly hissing down, a ball of fire, he saw the other
+occupant of his hiding-place--a man's leg, just that, nothing more. And
+he laughs; the thing is too absurd.
+
+It is; it is absurd; it is monstrous, farcical. The realisation has come
+to him; he is sane--for a time.
+
+Sane: but for how long? It varies with the type. There are some who love
+the game--who love it for itself alone. They sit on the steps of the War
+Office, and drive their C.O.'s mad: they pull strings both male and
+female, until the powers that be rise in their wrath, and consign them
+to perdition and--France.
+
+There are others who do not take it quite like that. They do not _want_
+to go back particularly--and if they were given an important job in
+England, a job for which they had special aptitude, in which they knew
+they were invaluable, they would take it without regret. But though they
+may not seek earnestly for France--neither do they seek for home. Their
+wants do not matter; their private interests do not count: it is only
+England to-day....
+
+And lastly there is a third class, the class to whom that accursed
+catch-phrase, "Doing his bit," means everything. There are some who
+consider they have done their bit--that they need do no more. They draw
+comparisons and become self-righteous. "Behold I am not as other men
+are," they murmur complacently; "have not I kept the home fires burning,
+and amassed money making munitions?" "I am doing my bit." "I have been
+out; I have been hit--and _he_ has not. Why should I go again? I have
+done my bit." Well, friend, it may be as you say. But methinks there is
+only one question worth putting and answering to-day. Don't bother about
+having done your bit. Are you doing your _all_? Let us leave it at
+that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE WOMAN AND THE MAN
+
+
+"When's your board, Jim?" The flickering light of the fire lit up the
+old oak hall, playing on the face of the girl buried in an easy chair.
+Tea was over, and they were alone.
+
+"On Tuesday, dear," he answered gravely.
+
+"But you aren't fit, old man; you don't think you're fit yet, do you?"
+There was a note of anxiety in her voice.
+
+"I'm perfectly fit, Sybil," he said quietly--"perfectly fit, my dear."
+
+"Then you'll go back soon?" She looked at him with frightened eyes.
+
+"Just as soon as they'll send me. I am going to ask the Board to pass me
+fit 'for General Service.'"
+
+"Oh, Jim!"--he hardly caught the whisper. "Oh, Jim! my man."
+
+"Well----" he came over and knelt in front of her.
+
+"It makes me sick," she cried fiercely, "to think of you and Hugh and
+men like you--and then to think of all these other cowardly beasts. My
+dear, my dear--do you _want_ to go back?"
+
+"At present, I don't. I'm utterly happy here with you, and the old
+peaceful country life. I'm afraid, Syb--I'm afraid of going on with it
+I'm afraid of its sapping my vitality--I'm afraid of never wanting to go
+back." His voice died away, and then suddenly he leant forward and
+kissed her on the mouth.
+
+"Come over here a moment," he stood up and drew her to him. "Come over
+here." With his arm round her shoulders he led her over to a great
+portrait in oils that hung against the wall, the portrait of a
+stern-faced soldier in the uniform of a forgotten century. To the girl
+the picture of her great-grandfather was not a thing of surpassing
+interest--she had seen it too often before. But she was a girl of
+understanding, and she realised that the soul of the man beside her was
+in the melting-pot; and, moreover, that she might make or mar the mould
+into which it must run. So in her wisdom she said nothing, and waited.
+
+"I want you to listen to me for a bit, Syb," he began after a while.
+"I'm not much of a fist at talking--especially on things I feel very
+deeply about. I can't track my people back like you can. The
+corresponding generation in my family to that old buster was a junior
+inkslinger in a small counting-house up North. And that junior
+inkslinger made good: you know what I'm worth to-day if the governor
+died."
+
+He started to pace restlessly up and down the hall, while the girl
+watched him quietly.
+
+"Then came this war and I went into it--not for any highfalutin motives,
+not because I longed to avenge Belgium--but simply because my pals were
+all soldiers or sailors, and it never occurred to me not to. In fact at
+first I was rather pleased with myself--I treated it as a joke more or
+less. The governor was inordinately proud of me; the mater had about
+twelve dozen photographs of me in uniform sent round the country to
+various bored and unwilling recipients; and lots of people combined to
+tell me what a damn fine fellow I was. Do you think he'd have thought
+so?" He stopped underneath the portrait and for a while gazed at the
+painted face with a smile.
+
+"That old blackguard up there--who lived every moment of his life--do
+you think he would have accounted that to me for credit? What would _he_
+say if he knew that in a crisis like this there are men who cloak
+perfect sight behind blue glasses; that there are men who have joined
+home defence units though they are perfectly fit to fight anywhere? And
+what would he say, Sybil, if he knew that a man, even though he'd done
+something, was now resting on his oars--content?"
+
+"Go on, dear!" The girl's eyes were shining now.
+
+"I'm coming to the point This morning the old dad started on the line of
+various fellows he knew whose sons hadn't been out yet; and he didn't
+see why I should go a second time--before they went. The business
+instinct to a certain extent, I suppose--the point of view of a business
+man. But would _he_ understand that?" Again he nodded to the picture.
+
+"I think----" She began to speak, and then fell silent.
+
+"Ah! but would he, my dear? What of Hugh, of the Rabbit, of Torps? With
+them it was bred in the bone--with me it was not. For years I and mine
+have despised the soldier and the sailor: for years you and yours have
+despised the counting-house. And all that is changing. Over there the
+tinkers, the tailors, the merchants, are standing together with the old
+breed of soldier--the two lots are beginning to understand one
+another--to respect one another. You're learning from us, and we're
+learning from you, though _he_ would never have believed that possible."
+
+Jim was standing very close to the girl, and his voice was low.
+
+"It's because I'm not very sure of one of the lessons I've learnt: it's
+because at times I do think it hard that others should not take their
+fair share that I must get back to that show quick--damn quick.
+
+"I want to be worthy of that old ancestor of yours--now that I'm going
+to marry one of his family. I know we're all mad--I know the world's
+mad; but, Syb, dear, you wouldn't have me sane, would you; not for ever?
+And I shall be if I stay here any longer...."
+
+"I understand, Jim," she answered, after a while. "I understand exactly.
+And I wouldn't have you sane, except just now for a little while.
+Because it's a glorious madness, and"--she put both her arms round his
+neck and kissed him passionately--"and I love you."
+
+Which was quite illogical and inconsequent--but there you are. What is
+not illogical and inconsequent nowadays?
+
+From which it will be seen that Jim Denver was not of the first of the
+three types which I have mentioned. He did not love the game for itself
+alone; my masters, there are not many who do. But there was no job in
+England in which he would prove invaluable: though there were many which
+with a little care he might have adorned beautifully.
+
+And just because there _is_ blood in the counting-house, which only
+requires to be brought out to show itself, he knew that he must go
+back--he knew that it was his job.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That wild enthusiasm which he had shared with other subalterns in his
+battalion before they had been over the first time was lacking now; he
+was calmer--more evenly balanced. He had attained the courage of
+knowledge instead of the courage of ignorance.
+
+No longer did the men who waited to be fetched excuse him--even though
+he had "done his bit." No longer was it possible to shelter behind
+another man's failure, and plead for so-called equality of sacrifice. To
+him had come the meaning of tradition--that strange, nameless something
+which has kept regiments in a position, battered with shells, stunned
+with shock, gassed, brain reeling, mind gone, with nothing to hold them
+except that nameless something which says to them, "Hold on!" While
+other regiments, composed of men as brave, have not held. To him had
+come that quality which has sent men laughing and talking without a
+quaver to their death; that quality which causes men--eaten with fever,
+lonely, weary to death, thinking themselves forsaken even of God--to
+carry on the Empire's work in the uttermost corners of the globe, simply
+because it is their job.
+
+He had assimilated to a certain extent the ideas of that stern, dead
+soldier; he had visualised them; he had realised that the destinies of a
+country are not entrusted to all her children. Many are not worthy to
+handle them, which makes the glory for the few all the greater....
+
+    Winds of the world, give answer! They are whimpering
+        to and fro--
+    And what should they know of England, who only
+        England know?
+    The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume
+        and brag,
+    They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at
+        the English Flag.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
+        But a soul goes out on the East wind that died for
+            England's sake--
+    Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid--
+        Because on the bones of the English the English flag is
+            stayed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+"THE REGIMENT"
+
+
+On the Tuesday a board of doctors passed Jim Denver fit for General
+Service, having first given him the option of a month's home service if
+he liked. Two days after he turned up at the depot of his regiment,
+where he found men in various stages of convalescence--light duty,
+ordinary duty at home, and fit to go out like himself. One or two he
+knew, and most of them he didn't. There were a few old regular officers
+and a large number of very new ones--who were being led in the way they
+should go.
+
+But there is little to tell of the time he spent waiting to go out. This
+is not a diary of his life--not even an account of it; it is merely an
+attempt to portray a state of mind--an outlook on life engendered by
+war, in a man whom war had caused to think for the first time.
+
+And so the only incidents which I propose to give of his time at the
+depot is a short account of a smoking concert he attended and a
+conversation he had the following day with one Vane, a stockbroker. The
+two things taken individually meant but little: taken together--well,
+the humour was the humour of the Land of Topsy Turvy. A delicate humour,
+not to be appreciated by all: with subtle shades and delicate strands
+and bloody brutality woven together....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A sudden silence settled on the gymnasium; the man at the piano turned
+round so as to hear better; the soldiers sitting astride the horse
+ceased laughing and playing the fool.
+
+At a table at the end of the big room, seen dimly through the
+smoke-clouded atmosphere, sat a group of officers, while the regimental
+sergeant-major, supported by other great ones of the non-commissioned
+rank near by, presided over the proceedings.
+
+Occasionally a soldier-waiter passed behind the officers' chairs, armed
+with a business-like bottle and a box of dangerous-looking cigars; and
+unless he was watched carefully he was apt to replenish the liquid
+refreshment in a manner which suggested that he regarded soda as harmful
+in the extreme to the human system. Had he not received his instructions
+from that great man the regimental himself?
+
+For an hour and a half the smoking concert had been in progress; the
+Brothers Bimbo, those masterly knock-about comedians, had given their
+performance amid rapturous applause. In life the famous pair were a
+machine-gun sergeant and a cook's mate; but on such gala occasions they
+became the buffoons of the regiment. They were the star comics: a
+position of great responsibility and not to be lightly thought of. An
+officer had given a couple of rag-time efforts; the melancholy corporal
+in C Company had obliged with a maundering tune of revolting
+sentimentality, and one of A Company scouts had given a so-called comic
+which caused the padre to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the floor,
+though at times his mouth twitched suspiciously, and made the colonel
+exclaim to his second in command in tones of heartfelt relief: "Thank
+Heavens, my wife couldn't come!" Knowing his commanding officer's wife
+the second in command agreed in no less heartfelt voice.
+
+But now a silence had settled on the great room: and all eyes were
+turned on the regimental sergeant-major, who was standing up behind the
+table on which the programme lay, and behind which he had risen every
+time a new performer had appeared during the evening, in order to
+introduce him to the assembly. There are many little rites and
+ceremonies in smoking concerts....
+
+This time, however, he did not inform the audience that Private
+MacPherson would now oblige--that is the mystic formula. He stood there,
+waiting for silence.
+
+"Non-commissioned officers and men"--his voice carried to every corner
+of the building--"I think you will all agree with me that we are very
+pleased to see Colonel Johnson and all our officers here with us
+to-night. It is our farewell concert in England: in a few days we shall
+all be going--somewhere; and it gives us all great pleasure to welcome
+the officers who are going to lead us when we get to that somewhere.
+Therefore I ask you all to fill up your glasses and drink to the health
+of Colonel Johnson and all our officers."
+
+A shuffling of feet; an abortive attempt on the part of the pianist to
+strike up "For he's a jolly good fellow" before his cue, an attempt
+which died horribly in its infancy under the baleful eye of the
+sergeant-major; a general creaking and grunting and then--muttered,
+shouted, whispered from a thousand throats--"Our Officers." The pianist
+started--right this time--and in a second the room was ringing with the
+well-known words. Cheers, thunderous cheers succeeded it, and through it
+all the officers sat silent and quiet. Most were new to the game; to
+them it was just an interesting evening; a few were old at it; a few,
+like Jim, had been across, and it was they who had a slight lump in
+their throats. It brought back memories--memories of other men, memories
+of similar scenes....
+
+At last the cheering died away, only to burst out again with renewed
+vigour. The colonel was standing up, a slight smile playing round his
+lips, the glint of many things in his quiet grey eyes. To the second in
+command, a sterling soldier but one of little imagination, there came
+for the first time in his life the meaning of the phrase, "the windows
+of the soul." For in the eyes of the man who stood beside him he saw
+those things of which no man speaks; the things which words may kill.
+
+He saw understanding, affection, humour, pain; he saw the pride of
+possession struggling with the sorrow of future loss; he saw the desire
+to test his creation struggling with the fear that a first test always
+brings; he saw visions of glorious possibilities, and for a fleeting
+instant he saw the dreadful abyss of a hideous failure. Aye, for a few
+moments the second in command looked not through a glass darkly, but saw
+into the unplumbed depths of a man who had been weighed in the balance
+and not found wanting; a man who had faced responsibility and would face
+it again; a man of honour, a man of humour, a man who knew.
+
+"My lads," he began--and the quiet, well-modulated voice reached every
+man in the room just as clearly as the harsher voice of the previous
+speaker--"as the sergeant-major has just said, in a few days we shall be
+sailing for--somewhere. The bustle and fulness of your training life
+will be over; you will be confronted with the real thing. And though I
+do not want to mar the pleasure of this evening in any way or to
+introduce a serious tone to the proceedings, I do want to say just one
+or two things which may stick in your minds and, perhaps, on some
+occasion may help you. This war is not a joke; it is one of the most
+hideous and ghastly tragedies that have ever been foisted on the world;
+I have been there and I know. You are going to be called on to stand all
+sorts of discomfort and all sorts of boredom; there will be times when
+you'd give everything you possess to know that there was a
+picture-palace round the corner. You may not think so now, but remember
+my words when the time comes--remember, and stick it.
+
+"There will be times when there's a sinking in your stomach and a
+singing in your head; when men beside you are staring upwards with the
+stare that does not see; when the sergeant has taken it through the
+forehead and the nearest officer is choking up his life in the corner of
+the traverse. But--there's still your rifle; perhaps there's a
+machine-gun standing idle; anyway, remember my words then, and stick it.
+
+"Stick it, my lads, as those others have done before you. Stick it, for
+the credit of the regiment, for the glory of our name. Remember always
+that that glory lies in your hands, each one of you individually. And
+just as it is in the power of each one of you to tarnish it irreparably,
+so is it in the power of each one of you to keep it going undimmed. Each
+one of us counts, men"--his voice sank a little--"each one of us has to
+play the game. Not because we're afraid of being punished if we're found
+out, but because it _is_ the game."
+
+He looked round the room slowly, almost searchingly, while the arc light
+spluttered and then burnt up again with a hiss.
+
+"The Regiment, my lads--the Regiment." His voice was tense with feeling.
+"It is only the Regiment that counts."
+
+He raised his glass, and the men stood up:
+
+"The Regiment."
+
+A woman sobbed somewhere in the body of the gym., and for a moment, so
+it seemed to Denver, the wings of Death flapped softly against the
+windows. For a moment only--and then:
+
+"Private Mulvaney will now oblige."
+
+Jim walked slowly home. He remembered just such another evening before
+his own battalion went out. Would those words of the Colonel have their
+effect: would some white-faced man stick it the better for the
+remembrance of that moment: would some machine-gun fired with trembling
+dying hands take its toll? Perhaps--who knows? The ideal of the soldier
+is there--the ideal towards which the New Armies are led. Thus the first
+incident....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CONTRAST
+
+
+The following afternoon Denver, strolling back from the town, was hailed
+by a man in khaki, standing in the door of his house. He knew the man
+well, Vane, by name--had dined with him often in the days when he was in
+training himself. A quiet man, with a pleasant wife and two children.
+Vane was a stockbroker by trade: and just before Jim went out he had
+enlisted.
+
+"Come in and have a gargle. I've just got back on short leave." Vane
+came to the gate.
+
+"Good," Jim answered. "Mrs. Vane must be pleased." They strolled up the
+drive and in through the door. "You're looking very fit, old man.
+Flanders seems to suit you."
+
+"My dear fellow, it does. It's the goods. I never knew what living was
+before. The thought of that cursed office makes me tired--and once"--he
+shrugged his shoulders--"it filled my life. Say when."
+
+"Cheer oh!" They clinked glasses. "I thought you were taking a
+commission."
+
+"I am--very shortly. The colonel has recommended me for one, and I
+gather the powers that be approve. But in a way I'm sorry, you know.
+I've got a great pal in my section--who kept a whelk stall down in
+Whitechapel."
+
+"They're the sort," laughed Jim. "The Cockney takes some beating."
+
+"This bird's a flier. We had quite a cheery little show the other night,
+just him and me. About a week ago we were up in the trenches--bored
+stiff, and yet happy in a way, you know, when Master Boche started to
+register.[1] I suppose it was a new battery or something, but they were
+using crumps, not shrapnel. They weren't very big, but they were very
+close--and they got closer. You know that nasty droning noise, then the
+hell of an explosion--that great column of blackish yellow smoke, and
+the bits pinging through the air overhead."
+
+"I do," remarked Jim tersely.
+
+Vane laughed. "Well, he got a bracket; the first one was fifty yards
+short of the trench, and the second was a hundred yards over. Then he
+started to come back--always in the same line; and the line passed
+straight through our bit of the trench.
+
+"''Ere, wot yer doing, you perishers? Sargint, go and stop 'em. Tell 'em
+I've been appointed purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse of the 'Un
+Emperor.' Our friend of the whelk stall was surveying the scene with
+intense disfavour. A great mass of smoke belched up from the ground
+twenty yards away, and he ducked instinctively. Then we waited--fifteen
+seconds about was the interval between shots. The men were a bit white
+about the gills--and, well the feeling in the pit of my tummy was what
+is known as wobbly. You know that feeling too?"
+
+"I do," remarked Jim even more tersely.
+
+Vane finished his drink. "Then it came, and we cowered. There was a roar
+like nothing on earth--the back of the trench collapsed, and the whole
+lot of us were buried. If the shell had been five yards short, it would
+have burst in the trench, and my whelk friend would have whelked no
+more."
+
+Vane laughed. "We emerged, plucking mud from our mouths, and cursed. The
+Hun apparently was satisfied and stopped. The only person who wasn't
+satisfied was the purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse. He brooded
+through the day, but towards the evening he became more cheerful.
+
+"'Look 'ere,' he said to me, ''ave you ever killed a 'Un?'
+
+"'I think I did once,' I said. 'A fat man with a nasty face.'
+
+"'Oh! you 'ave, 'ave you? Well, wot abaht killing one to-night. If they
+thinks I'm going to stand that sort of thing, they're ---- ---- wrong.'
+The language was the language of Whitechapel, but the sentiments were
+the sentiments of even the most rabid purist of speech.
+
+"To cut a long story short, we went. And we were very lucky."
+
+"You bumped your face into 'em, did you?" asked Jim, interested.
+
+"We did. Man, it was a grand little scrap while it lasted, and it was
+the first one I'd had. It won't be the last."
+
+"Did you kill your men?"
+
+"Did we not? Welks brained his with the butt of his gun; and I did the
+trick with a bayonet." Vane became a little apologetic. "You know it was
+only my first, and I can't get it out of my mind." Then his eyes shone
+again. "To feel that steel go in--Good God! man--it was IT: it was...."
+
+Then came the interruption. "Dear," said a voice at the door, "the
+children are in bed; will you go up and say good night."... Thus the
+second incident....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I said, taken separately the two incidents mean but little: taken
+together--there is humour: the whole humour of war.
+
+An itinerant fishmonger and a worthy stockbroker are inculcated with
+wonderful ideals in order to fit them for sallying forth at night and
+killing complete strangers. And they revel in it....
+
+The highest form of emotionalism on one hand: a hole in the ground full
+of bluebottles and smells on the other....
+
+War ... war in the twentieth century.
+
+But there is nothing incompatible in it: it is only strange when
+analysed in cold blood. And Jim Denver, as I have said, was sane again:
+while Vane, the stockbroker, was still mad.
+
+In fact, it is quite possible that the peculiar significance of the
+interruption in his story never struck him: that he never noticed the
+Contrast.
+
+And what is going to be the result of it all on the Vanes of England?
+"Once the office filled my life." No man can go to the land of Topsy
+Turvy and come back the same--for good or ill it will change him. Though
+the madness leave him and sanity return, it will not be the same
+sanity. Will he ever be content to settle down again after--the lawyer,
+the stockbroker, the small clerk? Back to the old dull routine, the same
+old train in the morning, the same deadly office, the same old home each
+evening. It hardly applies to the Jim Denvers--the men of money: but
+what of the others?
+
+Will the scales have dropped from the eyes of the men who have really
+been through it? Shall we ever get back to the same old way? Heaven
+knows--but let us hope not. Anyway, it is all mere idle conjecture--and
+a digression to boot.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 1: For the benefit of the uninitiated, let me explain that the
+process of registering consists of finding the exact range to a certain
+object from a particular gun or battery. To find this range it is
+necessary to obtain what is known as a bracket: _i.e._ one burst beyond
+the object, and one burst short. The range is then known to lie between
+these two: and by a little adjustment the exact distance can be found.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BLACK, WHITE, AND--GREY
+
+
+Four weeks after his board Jim Denver once again found himself in
+France.
+
+Having reported his arrival, he sat down to await orders. Boulogne is
+not a wildly exhilarating place; though there is always the hotel where
+one may consume cocktails and potato chips, and hear strange truths
+about the war from people of great knowledge and understanding.
+
+Moreover--though this is by the way--in Boulogne you get the first sniff
+of that atmosphere which England lacks; that subtle, indefinable
+something which war _in_ a country produces in the spirit of its
+people....
+
+Gone is the stout lady of doubtful charm engaged in mastering the
+fox-trot, what time a band wails dismally in an alcove; gone is the
+wild-eyed flapper who bumps madly up and down the roads on the carrier
+of a motor-cycle. It has an atmosphere of its own this fair land of
+France to-day. It is laughing through its tears, and the laughter has an
+ugly sound--for the Huns. They will hear that laughter soon, and the
+sound will give them to think fearfully.
+
+But at the moment when Jim landed it was all very boring. The R.T.O. at
+Boulogne was bored; the A.S.C. officers at railhead were bored; the
+quartermaster guarding the regimental penates in a field west of Ypres
+was bored.
+
+"Cheer up, old son," Jim remarked, slapping the last-named worthy
+heavily on the back. "You look peevish."
+
+"Confound you," he gasped, when he'd recovered from choking. "This is my
+last bottle of whisky."
+
+"Where's the battalion?" laughed Denver.
+
+"Where d'you think? In a Turkish bath surrounded by beauteous houris?"
+the quartermaster snorted. "Still in the same damn mud-hole near Hooge."
+
+"Good! I'll trot along up shortly. You know, I'm beginning to be glad I
+came back. I didn't want to particularly, at first: I was enjoying
+myself at home--but I felt I ought to, and now--'pon my soul---- How are
+you, Jones?"
+
+A passing sergeant stopped and saluted. "Grand, sir. How's yourself? The
+boys will be glad you've come back."
+
+Denver stood chatting with him for a few moments and then rejoined the
+pessimistic quartermaster.
+
+"Don't rhapsodise," begged that worthy--"don't rhapsodise; eat your
+lunch. If you tell me it will be good to see your men again, I shall
+assault you with the remnants of the tinned lobster. I know it will be
+good--no less than fifteen officers have told me so in the last six
+weeks. But I don't care--it leaves me quite, quite cold. If you're in
+France, you pine for England; when you're in England, you pine for
+France; and I sit in this damn field and get giddy."
+
+Which might be described as to-day's great thought.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus did Jim Denver come back to his regiment. Once again the life of
+the moles claimed him--the life of the underworld: that strange
+existence of which so much has been written, and so little has been
+really grasped by those who have not been there. A life of incredible
+dreariness--yet possessing a certain "grip" of its own. A life of
+peculiar contrasts--where the suddenness--the abruptness of things
+strikes a man forcibly: the extraordinary contrasts of black and white.
+Sometimes they stand out stark and menacing, gleaming and brilliant;
+more often do they merge into grey. But always are they there....
+
+As I said before, my object is not to give a diary of my hero's life. I
+am not concerned with his daily vegetation in his particular hole, with
+Hooge on his right front and a battered farm close to. Sleep, eat, read,
+look through a periscope and then repeat the performance. Occasionally
+an aerial torpedo, frequently bombs, at all times pessimistic sappers
+desiring working parties. But it was very much the "grey" of trench life
+during the three days that Jim sat in the front line by the wood that is
+called "Railway."
+
+One episode is perhaps worthy of note. It was just one of those harmless
+little jests which give one an appetite for a hunk of bully washed down
+by a glass of tepid whisky and water. Now be it known to those who do
+not dabble in explosives, there are in the army two types of fuze which
+are used for firing charges. Each type is flexible, and about the
+thickness of a stout and well-nourished worm. Each, moreover, consists
+of an inner core which burns, protected by an outer covering--the idea
+being that on lighting one end a flame should pass along the burning
+inner core and explode in due course whatever is at the other end.
+There, however, their similarity ends; and their difference becomes so
+marked that the kindly powers that be have taken great precautions
+against the two being confused.
+
+The first of these fuzes is called Safety--and the outer covering is
+black. In this type the inner core burns quite slowly at the rate of two
+or three feet to the minute. This is the fuze which is used in the
+preparation of the jam-tin bomb: an instrument of destruction which has
+caused much amusement to the frivolous. A jam tin is taken and is
+filled with gun cotton, nails, and scraps of iron. Into the gun cotton
+is inserted a detonator; and into the detonator is inserted two inches
+of safety-fuze. The end of the safety-fuze is then lit, and the jam tin
+is presented to the Hun. It will readily be seen by those who are
+profound mathematicians, that if three feet of safety-fuze burn in a
+minute, two inches will burn in about three seconds--and three seconds
+is just long enough for the presentation ceremony. This in fact is the
+principal of all bombs both great and small.
+
+The second of these fuzes is called Instantaneous--and the outer
+covering is orange. In this type the inner core burns quite quickly, at
+the rate of some thirty yards to the second, or eighteen hundred times
+as fast as the first. Should, therefore, an unwary person place two
+inches of this second fuze in his jam tin by mistake, and light it, it
+will take exactly one-600th of a second before he gets to the motto.
+Which is "movement with a meaning quite its own."
+
+To Jim then came an idea. Why not with care and great cunning remove
+from the inner core of Instantaneous fuze its vulgar orange covering,
+and substitute instead a garb of sober black--and thus disguised present
+several bombs of great potency _unlighted_ to the Hun.
+
+The afternoon before they left for the reserve trenches he staged his
+comedy in one act and an epilogue. A shower of bombs was propelled in
+the direction of the opposing cave-dwellers to the accompaniment of loud
+cries, cat calls, and other strange noises. The true artist never
+exaggerates, and quite half the bombs had genuine safety-fuze in them
+and were lit before being thrown. The remainder were not lit, it is
+perhaps superfluous to add.
+
+The lazy peace of the afternoon was rudely shattered for the Huns. Quite
+a number of genuine bombs had exploded dangerously near their
+trench--while some had even taken effect in the trench. Then they
+perceived several unlit ones lying about--evidently propelled by nervous
+men who had got rid of them before lighting them properly. And there was
+much laughter in that German trench as they decided to give the epilogue
+by lighting them and throwing them back. Shortly after a series of
+explosions, followed by howls and groans, announced the carrying out of
+that decision. And once again the Hymn of Hate came faintly through the
+drowsy stillness....
+
+Those are the little things which occasionally paint the grey with a dab
+of white; the prowls at night--the joys of the sniper who has just
+bagged a winner and won the bag of nuts--all help to keep the spirits up
+when the pattern of earth in your particular hole causes a rush of blood
+to the head.
+
+Incidentally this little comedy was destined to be Jim Denver's last
+experience of the Hun at close quarters for many weeks to come. The grey
+settled down like a pall, to lift in the fulness of time, to _the_ black
+and white day of his life. But for the present--peace. And yet only
+peace as far as he was concerned personally. That very night, close to
+him so that he saw it all, some other battalions had a chequered hour or
+so--which is all in the luck of the game. To-day it's the man over the
+road--to-morrow it's you....
+
+They occurred about 2 a.m.--the worries of the men over the road. Denver
+had moved to his other hole, courteously known as the reserve trenches,
+and there seated in his dug-out he discussed prospects generally with
+the Major. There were rumours that the division was moving from Ypres,
+and not returning there--a thought which would kindle hope in the most
+pessimistic.
+
+"Don't you believe it," answered the Major gloomily. "Those rumours are
+an absolute frost."
+
+"Cheer up! cully, we'll soon be dead." Denver laughed. "Have some rum."
+
+He poured some out into a mug and passed the water. "Quiet
+to-night--isn't it? I was reading to-day that the Italians----"
+
+"You aren't going to quote any war expert at me, are you?"
+
+"Well--er--I was: why not?"
+
+"Because I have a blood-feud with war experts. I loathe and detest the
+breed. Before I came out here their reiterated statement made monthly
+that we should be on the Rhine by Tuesday fortnight was a real comfort.
+We always got to Tuesday fortnight--but we've never actually paddled in
+the bally river."
+
+"To err is human; to get paid for it is divine," murmured Jim.
+
+"Bah!" the Major filled his pipe aggressively. "What about the
+steam-roller, what about the Germans being reduced to incurable
+epileptics in the third line trenches--what about that drivelling ass
+who said the possession of heavy guns was a disadvantage to an army
+owing to their immobility?"
+
+"Have some more rum, sir?" remarked Jim soothingly.
+
+"But I could have stood all that--they were trifles." The Major was
+getting warmed up to it. "This is what finished me." He pulled a piece
+of paper out of his pocket. "Read that, my boy--read that and ponder."
+
+Jim took the paper and glanced at it.
+
+"I carry that as my talisman. In the event of my death I've given orders
+for it to be sent to the author."
+
+"But what's it all about?" asked Denver.
+
+"'At the risk of repeating myself, I wish again to asseverate what I
+drew especial attention to last week, and the week before, and the one
+before that; as a firm grasp of this essential fact is imperative to an
+undistorted view of the situation. Whatever minor facts may now or again
+crop up in this titanic conflict, we must not shut our eyes to the rules
+of war. They are unchangeable, immutable; the rules of Caesar were the
+rules of Napoleon, and are in fact the rules that I myself have
+consistently laid down in these columns. They cannot change: this war
+will be decided by them as surely as night follows day; and those
+ignorant persons who are permitted to express their opinions elsewhere
+would do well to remember that simple fact.'"
+
+"What the devil is this essential fact?"
+
+"Would you like to know? I got to it after two columns like that."
+
+"What was it?" laughed Jim.
+
+"'An obstacle in an army's path is that which obstructs the path of the
+army in question.'"
+
+"After that--more rum." Jim solemnly decanted the liquid. "You deserve
+it. You...."
+
+"Stand to." A shout from the trench outside--repeated all along until it
+died away in the distance. The Major gulped his rum and dived for the
+door--while Jim groped for his cap. Suddenly out of the still night
+there came a burst of firing, sudden and furious. The firing was taken
+up all along the line, and then the guns started and a rain of shrapnel
+came down behind the British lines.
+
+Away--a bit in front on the other side of the road to Jim's trench there
+were woods--woods of unenviable reputation. Hence the name of
+"Sanctuary." In the middle of them, on the road, lay the ruined chateau
+and village of Hooge--also of unenviable reputation.
+
+And towards these woods the eyes of all were turned.
+
+"What the devil is it?" shouted the man beside Jim. "Look at them lights
+in the trees."
+
+The devil it was. Dancing through the darkness of the trees were flames
+and flickering lights, like will-o'-the-wisps playing over an Irish bog.
+And men, looking at one another, muttered sullenly. They remembered the
+gas; what new devilry was this?
+
+Up in the woods things were moving. Hardly had the relieving regiments
+taken over their trenches, when from the ground in front there seemed to
+leap a wall of flame. It rushed towards them and, falling into the
+trenches and on to the men's clothes, burnt furiously like brandy round
+a plum pudding. The woods were full of hurrying figures dashing blindly
+about, cursing and raving. For a space pandemonium reigned. The Germans
+came on, and it looked as if there might be trouble. The regiments who
+had just been relieved came back, and after a while things straightened
+out a little. But our front trenches in those woods, when morning broke,
+were not where they had been the previous night....
+
+Liquid fire--yet one more invention of "Kultur"; gas; the moat at Ypres
+poisoned with arsenic; crucifixion; burning death squirted from the
+black night--suddenly, without warning: truly a great array of Kultured
+triumphs.... And with it all--failure. To fight as a sportsman fights
+and lose has many compensations; to fight as the German fights and lose
+must be to taste of the dregs of hell.
+
+But that is how they _do_ fight, whatever interesting surmises one may
+make of their motives and feelings. And that is how it goes on over the
+water--the funny mixture of the commonplace of everyday with the great
+crude, cruel realities of life and death.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But as I said, for the next few weeks the grey screen cloaked those
+crude realities as far as Jim was concerned. Rumour for once had proved
+true; the division was pulled out, and his battalion found itself near
+Poperinghe.
+
+"Months of boredom punctuated by moments of intense fright" is a
+definition of war which undoubtedly Noah would have regarded as a
+chestnut. And I should think it doubtful if there has ever been a war
+in which this definition was more correct.
+
+Jim route marched: he trained bombers: he dined in Poperinghe and went
+to the Follies. Also, he allowed other men to talk to him of their plans
+for leave: than which no more beautiful form of unselfishness is laid
+down anywhere in the Law or the Prophets.
+
+On the whole the time did not drag. There is much of interest for those
+who have eyes to see in that country which fringes the Cock Pit of
+Europe. Hacking round quietly most afternoons on a horse borrowed from
+someone, the spirit of the land got into him, that blood-soaked, quiet,
+uncomplaining country, whose soul rises unconquerable from the battered
+ruins.
+
+Horses exercising, lorries crashing and lurching over the pave roads.
+G.S. wagons at the walk, staff motors--all the necessary wherewithal to
+preserve the safety of the mud holes up in front--came and went in a
+ceaseless procession; while every now and then a local cart with
+mattresses and bedsteads, tables and crockery, tied on perilously with
+bits of string, would come creaking past--going into the unknown,
+leaving the home of years.
+
+Ypres, that tragic charnel house, with the great jagged holes torn out
+of the pave; with the few remaining walls of the Cathedral and Cloth
+Hall cracked and leaning outwards; with the strange symbolical touch of
+the black hearse which stood untouched in one of the arches. Rats
+everywhere, in the sewers and broken walls; in the crumbling belfry
+above birds, cawing discordantly. The statue of the old gentleman which
+used to stand serene and calm amidst the wreckage, now lay broken on its
+face. But the stench was gone--the dreadful stench of death which had
+clothed it during the second battle; it was just a dead town--dead and
+decently buried in great heaps of broken brick....
+
+Vlamertinghe, with the little plot of wooden crosses by the cross roads;
+Elverdinghe, where the gas first came, and the organ pipes lay twisted
+in the wreckage of the unroofed church; where the long row of French
+graves rest against the chateau wall, graves covered with long
+grass--each with an empty bottle upside down at their head.
+
+    And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
+    Among the Guests star-scatter'd on the Grass,
+    ... turn down an empty Glass.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And in the family archives are some excellent reproductions--not
+photographs of course, for the penalty for carrying a camera is death at
+dawn--of ruined churches and shell-battered chateaux. Perhaps the most
+interesting one, at any rate the most human, is a "reproduction" of a
+group of cavalry men. They had been digging in a little village a mile
+behind the firing-line--a village battered and dead from which the
+inhabitants had long since fled. Working in the garden of the local
+doctor, they were digging a trench which ran back to the cellar of the
+house, when on the scene of operations had suddenly appeared the doctor
+himself. By signs he possessed himself of a shovel, and, pacing five
+steps from the kitchen door and three from the tomato frame, he too
+started to dig.
+
+"His wife's portrait, probably," confided the cavalry officer to Jim, as
+they watched the proceeding. "Or possibly an urn with her ashes."
+
+It was a sergeant who first gave a choking cry and fainted; he was
+nearest the hole.
+
+"Yes," remarked Jim, "he's found the urn."
+
+With frozen stares they watched the last of twelve dozen of light beer
+go into the doctor's cart. With pallid lips the officer saw three dozen
+of good champagne snatched from under his nose.
+
+"Heavens! man," he croaked, "it was _dry_ too. If our trench had been a
+yard that way...." He leant heavily on his stick, and groaned.
+
+The moment was undoubtedly pregnant with emotion.
+
+"'E'ad a nasty face, that man--a nasty face. Oh, 'orrible."
+
+Hushed voices came from the group of leaners. The "reproduction" depicts
+the psychological moment when the doctor with a joyous wave of the hand
+wished them "_Bonjour, messieurs,_" and drove off.
+
+"Not one--not one ruddy bottle--not the smell of a perishing cork.
+Stung!"
+
+But Jim had left.
+
+Which very silly and frivolous story is topsy-turvy land up to date, or
+at any rate typical of a large bit of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+ARCHIE AND OTHERS
+
+
+However, to be serious. It was as he came away from this scene of alarm
+and despondency that Jim met an old pal who boasted the gunner badge,
+and whom conversation revealed as the proud owner of an Archie, or
+anti-aircraft gun. And as the salient is perhaps more fruitful in
+aeroplanes than any other part of the line, and the time approached five
+o'clock (which is generally the hour of their afternoon activity), Jim
+went to see the fun.
+
+In front, an observing biplane buzzed slowly to and fro, watching the
+effect of a mother[1] shooting at some mark behind the German lines.
+With the gun concealed in the trees, a gunner subaltern altered his
+range and direction as each curt wireless message flashed from the
+'plane. "Lengthen 200--half a degree left." And so on till they got it.
+Occasionally, with a vicious crack, a German anti-aircraft shell would
+explode in the air above in a futile endeavour to reach the observer,
+and a great mass of acrid yellow or black fumes would disperse slowly.
+Various machines, each intent on its own job, rushed to and fro, and in
+the distance, like a speck in the sky, a German monoplane was travelling
+rapidly back over its own lines, having finished its reconnaissance.
+
+Behind it, like the wake of a steamer, little dabs of white plastered
+the blue sky. English shrapnel bursting from other anti-aircraft guns.
+Jim's gunner friend seemed to know most of them by name, as old pals
+whom he had watched for many a week on the same errand; and from him Jim
+gathered that the moment approached for the appearance of Panting
+Lizzie. Lizzie, apparently, was a fast armoured German biplane which
+came over his gun every fine evening about the same hour. For days and
+weeks had he fired at it, so far without any success, but he still had
+hopes. The gun was ready, cocked wickedly upon its motor mounting,
+covered with branches and daubed with strange blotches of paint to make
+it less conspicuous. Round the motor itself the detachment consumed tea,
+a terrier sat up and begged, a goat of fearsome aspect looked pensive.
+In front, in a chair, his eye glued to a telescope on a tripod, sat the
+look-out man.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was just as Jim and his pal were getting down to a whisky and soda
+that Lizzie hove in sight. The terrier ceased to beg, the goat departed
+hurriedly, the officer spoke rapidly in a language incomprehensible to
+Jim, and the fun began. There are few things so trying to listen to as
+an Archie, owing to the rapidity with which it fires; the gun pumps up
+and down with a series of sharp cracks, every two or three shots being
+followed by more incomprehensible language from the officer. Adjustment
+after each shot is impossible owing to the fact that three or four
+shells have left the gun and are on their way before the first one
+explodes. It was while Jim, with his fingers in his ears, was watching
+the shells bursting round the aeroplane and marvelling that nothing
+seemed to happen, that he suddenly realised that the gun had stopped
+firing. Looking at the detachment, he saw them all gazing upwards. From
+high up, sounding strangely faint in the air, came the zipping of a
+Maxim.
+
+"By Gad!" muttered the gunner officer; "this is going to be some fight."
+
+Bearing down on Panting Lizzie came a British armoured 'plane, and from
+it the Maxim was spitting. And now there started a very pretty air duel.
+I am no airman, to tell of spirals, and glides, and the multifarious
+twistings and turnings. At times the German's Maxim got going as well;
+at times both were silent, manoeuvring for position. The Archies were
+not firing--the machines were too close together. Once the German seemed
+to drop like a stone for a thousand feet or so. "Got him!" shouted
+Jim--but the gunner shook his head.
+
+"A common trick," he answered. "He found it getting a bit warm, and that
+upsets one's range. You'll find he'll be off now."
+
+Sure enough he was--with his nose for home he turned tail and fled. The
+gunner shouted an order, and they opened fire again, while the British
+'plane pursued, its Maxim going continuously. Generally honour is
+satisfied without the shedding of blood; each, having consistently
+missed the other and resisted the temptations of flying low over his
+opponents' guns, returns home to dinner. But in this case--well, whether
+it was Archie or whether it was the Maxim is really immaterial. Suddenly
+a great sheet of flame seemed to leap from the German machine and a puff
+of black smoke: it staggered like a shot bird and then, without warning,
+it fell--a streak of light, like some giant shooting star rushing to the
+earth. The Maxim stopped firing, and after circling round a couple of
+times the British machine buzzed contentedly back to bed. And in a
+field--somewhere behind our lines--there lay for many a day, deep
+embedded in a hole in the ground, the battered remnants of Panting
+Lizzie, with its great black cross stuck out of the earth for all to
+see. Somewhere in the debris, crushed and mangled beyond recognition,
+could have been found the remnants of two German airmen. Which might be
+called the black and white of the overworld.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 1: 9.2" Howitzer.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+ON THE STAFF
+
+
+But now rumour was getting busy in earnest--things were in the air.
+There were talks of a great offensive--and although there be rumour in
+England, though bucolic stationmasters have brushed the snow from the
+steppes of Russia out of railway carriages, I have no hesitation in
+saying that for quality and quantity the rumours that float round the
+army in France have de Rougemont beat to a frazzle. In this case
+expectations were fulfilled, and two or three days after the decease of
+Panting Lizzie, Jim and his battalion shook the dust of the Ypres
+district from their feet and moved away south.
+
+It was then that our hero raised his third star. Shades of Wellington! A
+captain in a year. But I make no comment. A sense of humour, invaluable
+at all times, is indispensable in this war, if one wishes to preserve an
+unimpaired digestion.
+
+But another thing happened to him, too, about this time, for, owing to
+the sudden sickness of a member of his General's Staff, he found himself
+attached temporarily for duty. No longer did he flat foot it, but in a
+large and commodious motor-car he viewed life from a different
+standpoint. And, solely owing to this temporary appointment, he was able
+to see the launching of the attack near Loos at the end of September. He
+saw the wall of gas and smoke roll slowly forward towards the German
+trenches over the wide space that separated the trenches in that part of
+the line. Great belching explosions seemed to shatter the vapour
+periodically, as German shells exploded in it, causing it to rise in
+swirling eddies, as from some monstrous cauldron, only to sink sullenly
+back and roll on. And behind it came the assaulting battalions, lines of
+black pigmies charging forward.
+
+And later he heard of the Scotsmen who chased the flying Huns like
+terriers after rats, grunting, cursing, swearing, down the gentle slope
+past Loos and up the other side; on to Hill 70, where they swayed
+backwards and forwards over the top, while some with the lust of killing
+on them fought their way into the town beyond--and did not return. He
+heard of the battery that blazed over open sights at the Germans during
+the morning, till, running out of ammunition, the guns ceased fire, a
+mark to every German rifle. The battery remained there during the day,
+for there was not cover for a terrier, let alone a team of horses, and
+between the guns were many strange tableaux as Death claimed his toll.
+They got them away that night, but not before the gunners had taken back
+the breech-blocks--in case; for it was touch and go.
+
+But this attack has already been described too often, and so I will say
+no more. I would rather write of those things which happened to Jim
+Denver himself, before he left the Land of Topsy Turvy for the second
+time. Only I venture to think that when the full story comes to be
+written--if ever--of that last week in September, or the surging forward
+past Loos and the Lone Tree to Hulluch and the top of 70, of the cavalry
+who waited for the chance that never came, and the German machine-guns
+hidden in the slag-heaps, the reading will be interesting. What happened
+would fill a book; what might have happened--a library.
+
+It was a couple of days afterwards that he saw his first big batch of
+German prisoners. Five or six miles behind the firing-line in a great
+grass field, fenced in on all sides by barbed wire, was a batch of some
+seven hundred--almost all of them Prussians and Jaegers. Munching food
+contentedly, they sat in rows on the ground; their dirty grey uniforms
+coated with dust and mud--unwashed, unshaven, and--well, if you are
+contemplating German prisoners, get "up wind." All around the field
+Tommies stood and gazed, now and again offering them cigarettes. A few
+prisoners who could speak English got up and talked.
+
+It struck Jim Denver then that he viewed these men with no antipathy; he
+merely gazed at them curiously as one gazes at animals in a "Zoo." And
+as we English are ever prone to such views, and as the Hymn of Hate and
+like effusions are regarded, and rightly so, as occasions for mirth, it
+was perhaps as well for Jim to realise the other point of view. There
+are two sides to every question, and the Germans believe in their hate
+just as we believe in our laughter. But when it is over, it will be
+unfortunate if we forget the hate too quickly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What a nation we are!" said a voice beside Jim. He turned round and
+found a doctor watching the scene with a peculiar look in his eyes.
+"Suppose it had been the other way round! Suppose those were our men
+while the Germans were the captors! Do you think the scene would be like
+this?" His face twisted into a bitter smile. "There would have been
+armed soldiers walking up and down the ranks, kicking men in the
+stomach, hitting them on the head with rifle butts, tearing bandages off
+wounds--just for the fun of the thing. Sharing food!"--he laughed
+contemptuously--"why, they'd have been starving. Giving 'em
+cigarettes!--why, they'd have taken away what they had already."
+
+He turned and looked up the road. Walking down it were thirty or so
+German officers. From the button in the centre of their jackets hung in
+nearly every case the ribbon of the Iron Cross. Laughing, talking--one
+or two sneering--they came along and halted by the gate into the field.
+They had been questioned, and were waiting to be marched off with the
+men. A hundred yards or so away the cavalry escort was forming up.
+
+"Man," cried the doctor, suddenly gripping Jim's arm in a vice, "it's
+wicked!" In his eyes there was an ugly look. "Look at those swine--all
+toddling off to Donington Hall--happy as you like. And think of the
+other side of the picture. Stuck with bayonets, hit, brutally treated,
+half-starved, thrown into cattle trucks. Good Heaven! it's horrible."
+
+"We're not the sort to go in for retribution," said Jim, after a moment.
+"After all--oh! I don't know--but it's not quite cricket, is it? Just
+because they're swine...?"
+
+"Cricket!" the other snorted. "You make me tired. I tell you I'm sick to
+death of our kid-glove methods. No retribution! I suppose if a buck
+nigger hit your pal over the head with a club you'd give him a tract on
+charity and meekness. What would our ranting pedagogues say if their
+own sons had been crucified by the Germans as some of our wounded have
+been? You think I'm bitter?" He looked at Jim. "I am. You see, I was a
+prisoner myself until a few weeks ago." He turned and strolled away down
+the road....
+
+And now the escort was ready. An order shouted in the field, and the men
+got up, falling in in some semblance of fours. Slowly they filed through
+the gate and, with their own officers in front, the cortege started. Led
+by an English cavalry subaltern, with troopers at four or five horses'
+lengths alongside--some with swords drawn, the others with rifles--the
+procession moved sullenly off. A throng of English soldiers gazed
+curiously at them as they passed by; small urchins ran in impudently
+making faces at them. And in the doors of the houses dark-haired,
+grim-faced women watched them pass with lowering brows....
+
+A mixture, those prisoners--a strange mixture. Some with the faces of
+educated men, some with the faces of beasts; some men in the prime of
+life, some mere boys; slouching, squelching through the mud with the
+vacant eyes that the Prussian military system seems to give to its
+soldiers. The look of a man who has no vestige of imagination or
+initiative; the look of a stoical automaton; callous, boorish, sottish
+as befits a man who willingly or unwillingly has sold himself body and
+soul to a system.
+
+And as they wind through the mining villages on their way to a railhead,
+these same grim-faced French women watch them as they go by. They do not
+see the offspring of a system; they only see a group of beast-men--the
+men whose brothers have killed their husbands. After all, has not Madame
+got in her house a refugee--her cousin--whose screams even now ring out
+at night...?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a few days more Jim stayed on with the general. Their feeding-place
+was a little cafe on the main road to Lens. There each morning might our
+hero have been found, in a filthy little back room, drinking coffee out
+of a thick mug, with an omelette cooked to perfection on his plate.
+Never was there such dirt in any room; never a household so prolific of
+children. Every window was smashed; the back garden one huge shell hole;
+but, absolutely unperturbed by such trifles, that stout, good-hearted
+Frenchwoman pursued her sturdy way. She had had the Boches there--"mais
+oui"--but what matter? They did not stay long. "Une omelette, monsieur;
+du cafe? Certainement, monsieur. Toute de suite."
+
+It might have been in a different world from Ypres and
+Poperinghe--instead of only twenty miles to the south. Gone were the
+flat, cultivated fields; great slag-heaps and smoking chimneys were
+everywhere. And in spite of the fact that active operations were in
+progress, there seemed to be no more gunning than the normal daily
+contribution at Lizerne, Boesinge, and Jim's old friend and first love,
+Hooge. Aeroplanes, too, seemed scarcer. True, one morning, standing in
+the road outside the cafe, he saw for the first time a fleet of 'planes
+starting out on a raid. Now one and then another would disappear behind
+a fleecy white cloud, only to reappear a few moments later glinting in
+the rays of the morning sun, until at length the whole fleet, in
+dressing and order like a flight of geese, their wings tipped with fire,
+moved over the blue vault of heaven. The drone of their engines came
+faintly from a great height, until, as if at some spoken word from the
+leader, the whole swung half-right and vanished into a bank of clouds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+NO ANSWER
+
+
+But the grey period for Jim was drawing to a close. To-day it's the man
+over the road that tops the bill; to-morrow it's you, as I said before:
+and a change of caste was imminent in our friend's performance. One does
+not seek these things--they occur; and then they're over, and one waits
+for the next. There is no programme laid down, no book of the words
+printed. Things just happen--sometimes they lead to a near acquaintance
+with iodine, and a kind woman in a grey dress who takes your temperature
+and washes your face; and at others to a dinner with much good wine
+where the laughter is merry and the revelry great. Of course there are
+many other alternatives: you may never reach the hospital--you may never
+get the dinner; you may get a cold in the nose, and go to the
+Riviera--or you may get a bad corn and get blood-poisoning from using a
+rusty jack knife to operate. The caprice of the spirit of Topsy Turvy is
+quite wonderful.
+
+For instance, on the very morning that the Staff Officer came back to
+his job, and Jim returned to his battalion, his company commander asked
+him to go to a general bomb store in a house just up the road, and see
+that the men who were working there were getting on all right. The
+regiment was for the support trenches that night, and preparing bombs
+was the order of the day.
+
+Just as he started to go, a message arrived that the C.O. wished to see
+him. So the company commander went instead; and entered the building
+just as a German shell came in by another door. By all known laws a man
+going over Niagara in an open tub would not willingly have changed
+places with him; an 8-inch shell exploding in the same room with you is
+apt to be a decisive moment in your career.
+
+But long after the noise and the building had subsided, and from high up
+in the air had come a fusillade of small explosions and little puffs of
+smoke, where the bombs hurled up from the cellar went off in turn--Jim
+perceived his captain coming down the road. He had been hurled through
+the wall as it came down, across the road, and had landed intact on a
+manure heap. And it was only when he hit the colonel a stunning blow
+over the head with a French loaf at lunch time that they found out he
+was temporarily as mad as a hatter. So they got him away in an ambulance
+and Jim took over the company. As I say--things just happen.
+
+That night they moved up into support trenches--up that dirty, muddy
+road with the cryptic notices posted at various places: "Do not loiter
+here," "This cross-road is dangerous," "Shelled frequently," etc. And at
+length they came to the rise which overlooks Loos and found they were to
+live in the original German front line--now our support trench. They
+were for the front line in the near future--but at present their job was
+work on this support trench and clearing up the battlefield near them.
+
+Now this war is an impersonal sort of thing taking it all the way round.
+Those who stand in front trenches and blaze away at advancing Huns are
+not, I think, actuated by personal fury against the men they kill. You
+may pick out a fat one perhaps with a red beard and feel a little
+satisfaction when you kill him because his face offends you, but you
+don't really feel any individual animosity towards him. One gets so used
+to death on a large scale that it almost ceases to affect one. An
+isolated man lying dead and twisted by the road, where one doesn't
+expect to find him, moves one infinitely more than a wholesale
+slaughter. The thing is too vast, too overpowering for a man's brain to
+realise.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But of all the things which one may be called on to do, the clearing of
+a battlefield after an advance brings home most poignantly the tragedy
+of war. You see the individual then, not the mass. Every silent figure
+lying sprawled in fantastic attitude, every huddled group, every
+distorted face tells a story.
+
+Here is an R.A.M.C. orderly crouching over a man lying on a stretcher.
+The man had been wounded--a splint is on his leg, while the dressing is
+still in the orderly's hand. Then just as the orderly was at work, the
+end came for both in a shrapnel shell, and the tableau remains,
+horribly, terribly like a tableau at some amateur theatricals.
+
+Here are a group of men caught by the fire of the machine-gun in the
+corner, to which even now a dead Hun is chained--riddled,
+unrecognisable.
+
+Here is an officer lying on his back, his knees doubled up, a revolver
+gripped in one hand, a weighted stick in the other. His face is black,
+so death was instantaneous. Out of the officer's pocket a letter
+protrudes--a letter to his wife. Perhaps he anticipated death before he
+started, for it was written the night before the advance--who knows?
+
+And it is when, in the soft half-light of the moon, one walks among
+these silent remnants, and no sound breaks the stillness save the noise
+of the shovels where men are digging their graves; when the guns are
+silent and only an occasional burst of rifle fire comes from away in
+front, where the great green flares go silently up into the night, that
+for a moment the human side comes home to one. One realises that though
+monster guns and minenwerfer and strange scientific devices be the paper
+money of this war, now as ever the standard coinage--the bed-rock gold
+of barter--is still man's life. The guns count much--but the man counts
+more.
+
+Take out his letter carefully--it will be posted later. Scratch him a
+grave, there's work to be done--much work, so hurry. His name has been
+sent in to headquarters--there's no time to waste. Easy, lads,
+easy--that's right--cover him up. A party of you over there and get on
+with that horse--_there's no time to waste_....
+
+But somewhere in England a telegraph boy comes whistling up the drive,
+and the woman catches her breath. With fingers that tremble she takes
+the buff envelope--with fearful eyes she opens the flimsy paper.
+Superbly she draws herself up--"There is no answer...."
+
+Lady, you are right. There is no answer, no answer this side of the
+Great Divide. Just now--with your aching eyes fixed on _his_ chair you
+face your God, and ask Why? He knows, dear woman, He knows, and in time
+it will all be clear--the why and the wherefore. Surely it must be so.
+
+But just now it's Hell, isn't it? You know so little: you couldn't help
+him at the end; he had to go into the Deep Waters alone. With the
+shrapnel screaming overhead he lies at peace, while above him it still
+goes on--the work of life and death: the work that brooks no delay. He
+is part of the Price....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE MADNESS
+
+
+All the next day the battalion worked on the trenches. To men used to
+the water and slush of Ypres they came as a revelation--the trenches and
+dug-outs in the chalk district. Great caves had been hollowed out of the
+ground under the barbed wire in front, with two narrow shafts sloping
+steeply down from the trench to each, so small and narrow that you must
+crawl on hands and knees to get in or out. And up these shafts they
+hauled and pushed the dead Germans. Caught like rats, they had been
+gassed and bombed before they could get out, though some few had managed
+to crawl up after the assaulting battalions had passed over and to open
+fire on the supporting ones as they came up. Jim and his men threw them
+out to be buried at night, and they confined their attention during the
+day to building up the trenches and shifting the parapet round. German
+sandbags look like an assortment out of a cheap village draper's--pink
+and black and every kind of colour, but they hold earth, which is the
+main point. So with due care the battalion patted them into shape again
+and then took a little sleep.
+
+That night they moved on again. Now the first trench which they had
+occupied had been behind Loos, and there our new line was a mile away to
+their front on the side of a hill. The place they were now bound for was
+nothing like so peaceful. It was that part of the original German front
+where their old line marked the limit of our advance. We had not pushed
+on beyond it, and the fighting was continuous and bloody.
+
+Now without going into details, perhaps a few words of explanation might
+not be amiss. To many who may read them, they will seem as extracts from
+the "Child's Guide to Knowledge," or reminiscent of those great truths
+one learned at one's nurse's knee. But to some, who know nothing about
+it, they may be of use.
+
+When one occupies the German front line and the Hun has been driven into
+his second, the communication trenches which ran between are still
+there. The trenches which used to run to their rear now run to your
+front and are a link between you and the enemy. And as somewhat
+naturally their knowledge of the position is accurate and yours is
+sketchy, the situation is not all it might be. Moreover, as no
+communication trenches exist between the two old front lines--over what
+was No-man's-land--any reserves must come across the open, and should
+it be necessary to retire, a contingency which must always be faced, the
+retreat must be across the open as well.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But when you're in a German redoubt, where the trenches would have put a
+maze to shame, the work of consolidating the position is urgent and
+difficult. Communication trenches to your front have to be reconnoitred
+and partially filled in; wire put up; Maxims arranged to shoot down
+straight lengths of trench; new trenches dug to the rear. Which is all
+right if the enemy is half a mile away, but when the distance is twenty
+yards, when without cessation he bombs you from unexpected quarters,
+your temper gets frayed.
+
+This type of fighting ceases to be impersonal. No longer do you throw
+bombs mechanically from one trench to another. No longer do you have no
+actual animosity against the men over the way. You understand the
+feelings of the guard when their German prisoners laughed on seeing men
+gassed--earlier in the war. And you realise that when a man's blood is
+up, you might just as well preach on the wickedness of retribution as
+request a man-eating tiger to postpone his dinner. The joy of killing a
+man you hate is wonderful; the unfortunate thing is that in these days,
+when far from leading to the hangman, it frequently leads to much kudos
+and a medal, so few of us have ever really had the opportunity....
+
+In the place where Jim found himself it was at such close quarters that
+bombs were the only possible weapon. For two days and two nights it went
+on. Little parties of Germans surged up unexpected openings, sometimes
+establishing themselves, sometimes fighting hand-to-hand in wet, sticky
+chalk. Then, unless they were driven out--bombers to the fore again: a
+series of sharp explosions, a dash round a traverse, a grunting,
+snarling set-to in the dark, and all would be over one way or the other.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Then one morning Jim's company got driven out of a forward piece of the
+trench they were holding. Worn out and tired, their faces grey with
+exhaustion, their clothes grey with chalk, heavy-eyed, unshaven, driven
+out by sheer weight of numbers and bombs, they fell back--those that
+remained--down a communication trench. But they were different men from
+the men who went into the place three days before; the primitive
+passions of man were rampant--they asked no mercy, they gave none. Back,
+after a short breather, they went, and when they won through by sheer
+bloody fighting, they found a thing which sent them tearing mad with
+rage. The wounded they had left behind had been bombed to death. The
+junior subaltern was pulled out of a corner by a traverse--mangled
+horribly--and he told Jim.
+
+"They packed us in here and between the next two or three traverses and
+lobbed bombs over," he whispered. And Jim swore horribly. "They're
+coming back," muttered the dying boy. "Listen."
+
+The next instant the Germans were at it again, and the fighting became
+like the fighting of wild beasts. Men stabbed and hacked and cursed;
+rifle butts cracked down on heads; triggers were pulled with the muzzle
+an inch from a man's face. And because the German face to face is no
+match for the English or French, in a short time there was peace, while
+men, panting like exhausted runners, bound up one another's scratches,
+and passed back the serious cases to the rear. They knew it was only a
+temporary respite, and while Jim eased the dying boy, they stacked bombs
+in heaps where they could get at them quickly. It was then that the
+German officer crawled out. Down some hole or other in a bomb recess he
+had hidden during the fight--and then, thinking his position dangerous,
+decided for peaceful capture. It was unfortunate for him the junior
+subaltern was still alive--but only Jim heard the whisper:
+
+"That's the man who told them to bomb us."
+
+"That's interesting," said Jim, and his face was white, while his eyes
+were red.
+
+Quietly he picked up a pick, and moved towards the German officer.
+Through the Huns who had come back again, fighting, stabbing, picking
+his way, Jim Denver moved relentlessly. And at last he reached
+him--reached him and laughed gently. The German sprang at him and Jim
+struck him with his fist; the German screamed for help, but there was
+none to help; every man was fighting grimly for his own life. Then still
+without a word he drove the pick.... Once again he laughed gently, and
+turned his mind to other things.
+
+For hours they hung on, bombing, shooting, at a yard's range, and in the
+forefront, cheering them, holding them, doing the work of ten, was Jim.
+His revolver ammunition was exhausted, his loaded stick was broken; his
+eyes had a look of madness: temporarily he was mad--mad with the lust of
+killing. It was almost the last bomb the Germans threw that took him,
+and that took him properly. But the remnant of his company who carried
+him back, when relief came up from the battalion, contained no one more
+cheery than him. As a fight they'll never have a better; and it's better
+to take it when the fighting is bloody, and it's man to man, than to
+stop a shrapnel at the estaminet two miles down the road. That isn't
+even grey--it's mottled; especially if the red wine is just coming....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE GREY HOUSE AGAIN
+
+
+So they carried him home for the second time--back to the Land of
+Sanity: to the place where the noise of the water sounded ceaselessly
+over the rounded stones. And resting one afternoon on a sofa in the
+drawing-room Jim dozed.
+
+The door burst open, and Sybil came in. "Boy, do you see, they've given
+you a D.S.O. 'For conspicuous gallantry in holding up an almost isolated
+position for several hours against vastly superior numbers of the enemy.
+He was badly wounded just before relief came.'"
+
+Her eyes were shining. "Oh! my dear--I'm so proud of you! Do you
+remember saying it was a glorious madness?"
+
+Into his mind there flashed the picture of a German officer's
+face--distorted with terror--cringing: just as a pick came down....
+
+"Yes, girl, I remember," he answered softly. "I remember. But, thank
+God! I'm sane again now."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now I will ring down the curtain. For Jim Denver the black and white
+have gone; even the grey of the Land of Topsy Turvy is hazy and
+indistinct. The guns are silent: the men and the women are--sane.
+
+The shepherd is out of sight amongst the trees; the purple is changing
+to grey, the grey to black; there is no sound saving only the tireless
+murmur of the river....
+
+THE END
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+Herman Cyril McNeile was an officer in the Royal Engineers who
+published under the pseudonym "Sapper".
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Hyphen added: "bed[-]rock" (p. 303).
+
+Hyphen removed: "ward[-]room" (p. 167), "sand[-]bags" (p. 188),
+"stock[-]broker" (p. 265).
+
+The following words are inconsistently hyphenated but have not been
+changed: "dug[-]out", "half[-]way", "sand[-]bags", "sign[-]post",
+"super[-]human", "table[-]cloth".
+
+Page 291: "Panting Lizze" changed to "Panting Lizzie".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Men, Women and Guns, by
+H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
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