On the wedding eve Betty brought the happy young man to dine with
me. He was in that state of unaccustomed and somewhat embarrassed
bliss in which a man would have dined happily with Beelzebub. A
fresh-coloured boy, with fair crisply set hair and a little
moustache a shade or two fairer, he kept on blushing radiantly, as
if apologising in a gallant sort of fashion for his existence in
the sphere of Betty's affection. As I had known him but casually
and desired to make his closer acquaintance, I had asked no one to
meet them, save Betty's aunt, whom a providential cold had
prevented from facing the night air. So, in the comfortable little
oak-panelled dining-room, hung round with my beloved collection of
Delft, I had the pair all to myself, one on each side; and in this
way I was able to read exchanges of glances whence I might form
sage conclusions. Bella, spruce parlour-maid, waited deftly.
Sergeant Marigold, when not occupied in the mild labour of filling
glasses, stood like a guardian ramrod behind my chair--a self-
assigned post to which he stuck grimly like a sentinel. As I
always sat with my back to the fire there must have been times
when, the blaze roaring more fiercely than usual up the chimney,
he must have suffered martyrdom in his hinder parts.
As I talked--for the first time on such intimate footing--with
young Connor, I revised my opinion of him and mentally took back
much that I had said in his disparagement. He was by no means the
dull dog that I had labelled him. By diligent and sympathetic
enquiry I learned that he had been a Natural Science scholar at
Trinity College, Cambridge, where he had taken a first-class
degree--specialising in geology; that by profession (his
father's) he was a mining-engineer, and, in pursuit of his
vocation, had travelled in Galicia, Mexico and Japan; furthermore,
that he had been one of the ardent little band who of recent years
had made the Cambridge Officers Training Corps an effective
school. Hitherto, when I had met him he had sat so agreeably
smiling and modestly mumchance that I had accepted him at his face
value.
I was amused to see how Betty, in order to bring confusion on me,
led him to proclaim himself. And I loved the manner in which he
did so. To hear him, one would have thought that he owed
everything in the world to Betty--from his entrance scholarship at
the University to the word of special commendation which his
company had received from the General of his Division at last
week's inspection. Yes, he was the modest, clean-bred, simple
English gentleman who, without self-consciousness or self-seeking,
does his daily task as well as it can be done, just because it is
the thing that is set before him to do. And he was over head and
ears in love with Betty.
I took it upon myself to dismiss her with a nod after she had
smoked a cigarette over her coffee. Mrs. Marigold, as a soldier's
wife, I announced, had a world of invaluable advice to give her.
Willie Connor opened the door. On the threshold she said very
prettily:
"Don't drink too much of Major Meredyth's old port. It has been
known before now to separate husbands and wives for years and
years."
He looked after her for a few seconds before he closed the door.
Oh, my God! I've looked like that, in my time, after one dear
woman.... Humanity is very simple, after all. Every generation
does exactly the same beautiful, foolish things as its forerunner.
As he approached the table, I said with a smile:--
"You're only copying your great-great-grandfather."
"In what way, sir?" he asked, resuming his place.
I pushed the decanter of port. "He watched the disappearing skirt
of your great-great-grandmother."
"She was doubtless a very venerable old lady," said he, flushing
and helping himself to wine. "I never knew her, but she wasn't a
patch on Betty!"
"But," said I, "when your great-great-grandfather opened the door
for her to pass out, she wasn't venerable at all, but gloriously
young."
"I suppose he was satisfied, poor old chap." He took a sip. "But
those days did not produce Betty Fairfaxes." He laughed. "I'm
jolly sorry for my ancestors."
Well--that is the way I like to hear a young man talk. It was the
modern expression of the perfect gentle knight. In so far as went
his heart's intention and his soul's strength to assure it, I had
no fear for Betty's happiness. He gave it to her fully into her
own hands; whether she would throw it away or otherwise misuse it
was another matter.
Though I have ever loved women, en tout bien et tout honneur,
their ways have never ceased from causing me mystification. I
think I can size up a man, especially given such an opportunity as
I had in the case of Willie Connor--I have been more or less
trained in the business all my man's life; but Betty Fairfax, whom
I had known intimately for as many years as she could remember,
puzzled me exceedingly. I defy anyone to have picked a single
fault in her demeanour towards her husband of to-morrow. She lit a
cigarette for him in the most charming way in the world, and when
he guided the hand that held the match, she touched his crisp hair
lightly with the fingers of the other. She was all smiles. When we
met in the drawing-room, she retailed with a spice of mischief
much of Mrs. Marigold's advice. She had seated herself on the
music stool. Swinging round, she quoted:
"'Even the best husband,' she said, 'will go on swelling himself
up with vanity just because he's a man. A sensible woman, Miss,
lets him go on priding of himself, poor creature. It sort of helps
his dignity when the time comes for him to eat out of your hand,
and makes him think he's doing you a favour.'"
"When are you going to eat out of my hand, Willie?" she asked.
"Haven't I been doing it for the past week?"
"Oh, they always do that before they're married--so Mrs. Marigold
informed me. I mean afterwards."
"Don't you think, my dear," I interposed, "it depends on what your
hands hold out for him to eat?"
Her eyes wavered a bit under mine.
"If he's good," she answered, "they'll be always full of nice
things."
She sat, flushed, happy, triumphant, her arms straight down, her
knuckles resting on the leathern seat, her silver-brocaded,
slender feet, clear of the floor, peeping close together beneath
her white frock.
"And if he isn't good?"
"They'll be full of nasty medicine."
She laughed and pivoted round and, after running over the keys of
the piano for a second or two, began to play Gounod's "Death March
of a Marionette." She played it remarkably well. When she had
ended, Connor walked from the hearth, where he had been standing,
to her side. I noticed a little puzzled look in his eyes.
"Delightful," said he. "But, Betty, what put that thing suddenly
into your head?"
"We had been talking nonsense," she replied, picking out a chord
or two, without looking al him. "And I thought we ought to give
all past vanities and frivolities and lunacies a decent burial."
He put both hands very tenderly on her shoulders.
"Requiescat," said he.
She spread out her fingers and struck the two resonant chords of
an "Amen," and then glanced up at him, laughing.
After a while, Marigold announced her car, or, rather, her aunt's
car. They took their leave. I gave them my benediction. Presently,
Betty, fur-coated, came running in alone. She flung herself down,
in her impetuous way, beside my wheel-chair. No visit of Betty's
would have been complete without this performance.
"I haven't had a word with you all the evening, Majy, dear. I've
told Willie to discuss strategy with Sergeant Marigold in the
hall, till I come. Well--you thought I was a damn little fool the
other day, didn't you? What do you think now?"
"I think, my dear," said I, with a hand on her forehead, "that you
are marrying a very gallant English gentleman of whose love any
woman in the land might be proud."
She clutched me round the neck and brought her young face near
mine--and looked at me--I hesitate to say it,--but so it seemed,--
somewhat haggardly.
"I love to hear you say that, it means so much to me. Don't think
I haven't a sense of proportion. I have. In all this universal
slaughter and massacre, a woman's life counts as much as that of a
mosquito." She freed an arm and snapped her fingers. "But to the
woman herself, her own life can't help being of some value. Such
as it is, I want to give it all, every bit of it, to Willie. He
shall have everything, everything, everything that I can give
him."
I looked into the young, drawn, pleading face long and earnestly.
No longer was I mystified. I remembered her talk with me a couple
of days before, and I read her riddle.
She had struck gold. She knew it. Gold of a man's love. Gold of a
man's strength. Gold of a man's honour. Gold of a man's stainless
past. Gold of a man's radiant future. And though she wore the
mocking face and talked the mocking words of the woman who
expected such a man to "eat out of her hand," she knew that never
out of her hand would he eat save that which she should give him
in honourable and wifely service. She knew that. She was
exquisitely anxious that I should know it too. Floodgates of
relief were expressed when she saw that I knew it. Not that I,
personally, counted a scrap. What she craved was a decent human
soul's justification of her doings. She craved recognition of her
action in casting away base metal forever and taking the pure gold
to her heart.
"Tell me that I am doing the right thing, dear," she said, "and
to-morrow I'll be the happiest woman in the world."
And I told her, in the most fervent manner in my power.
"You quite understand?" she said, standing up, looking very young
and princess-like, her white throat gleaming between her furs and
up-turned chin.
"You will find, my dear," said I, "that the significance of your
Dead March of a Marionette will increase every day of your married
life."
She stiffened in a sudden stroke of passion, looking, for the
instant, electrically beautiful.
"I wish," she cried, "someone had written the Dead March of a
Devil."
She bent down, kissed me, and went out in a whirr of furs and
draperies.
Of course, all I could do was to scratch my thin iron-grey hair
and light a cigar and meditate in front of the fire. I knew all
about it--or at any rate I thought I did, which, as far as my
meditation in front of the fire is concerned, comes to the same
thing.
Betty had cast out the base metal of her love for Loenard Boyce in
order to accept the pure gold of the love of Willie Connor. So she
thought, poor girl. She had been in love with Boyce. She had been
engaged to Boyce. Boyce, for some reason or the other, had turned
her down. Spretae injuria formae--she had cast Boyce aside. But
for all her splendid surrender of her womanhood to Willie Connor,
for the sake of her country, she still loved Leonard Boyce. Or, if
she wasn't in love with him, she couldn't get him out of her head
or her senses. Something like that, anyhow. I don't pretend to
know exactly what goes on in the soul or nature, or whatever it
is, of a young girl, who has given her heart to a man. I can only
use the crude old phrase: she was still in love (in some sort of
fashion) with Leonard Boyce, and she was going to marry, for the
highest motives, somebody else.
"Confound the fellow," said I, with an irritable gesture and
covered myself with cigar ash.
She had called Boyce a devil and implied a wish that he were dead.
For myself I did not know what to make of him, for reasons which I
will state. I never approved of the engagement. As a matter of
fact, I knew--and was one of the very few who knew--of a black
mark against him--the very blackest mark that could be put against
a soldier's name. It was a puzzling business. And when I say I
knew of the mark, I must be candid and confess that its awful
justification lies in the conscience of one man living in the
world to-day--if indeed he be still alive.
Boyce was a great bronzed, bull-necked man, with an overpowering
personality. People called him the very model of a soldier. He was
always admired and feared by his men. His fierce eye and deep,
resonant voice, and a suggestion of hidden strength, even of
brutality, commanded implicit obedience. But both glance and voice
would soften caressingly and his manner convey a charm which made
him popular with men--brother officers and private soldiers alike
--and with women. With regard to the latter--to put things crudely
--they saw in him the essential, elemental male. Of that I am
convinced. It was the open secret of his many successes. And he
had a buoyant, boyish, disarming, chivalrous way with him. If he
desired a woman's lips he would always begin by kissing the hem of
her skirt.
Had I not known what I did, I, an easy-going sort of Christian
temperamentally inclined to see the best in my fellow-creatures,
and, as I boastingly said a little while ago, a trained judge of
men, should doubtless have fallen, like most other people, under
the spell of his fascination. But whenever I met him, I used to
look at him and say to myself: "What's at the back of you anyway?
What about that business at Vilboek's Farm?"
Now this is what I knew--with the reservation I have made above--
and to this day he is not aware of my knowledge.
It was towards the end of the Boer War. Boyce had come out rather
late; for which, of course, he was not responsible. A soldier has
to go when he is told. After a period of humdrum service he was
sent off with a section of mounted infantry to round up a certain
farm-house suspected of harbouring Boer combatants. The excursion
was a mere matter of routine--of humdrum commonplace. As usual it
was made at night, but this was a night of full dazzling moon. The
farm lay in a hollow of the veldt, first seen from the crest of a
kopje. There it lay below, ramshackle and desolate, a rough wall
around; flanked by outbuildings--barn and cowsheds. The section
rode down. The stoep led to a shuttered front. There was no sign
of life. The moonlight blazed full on it. They dismounted,
tethered their horses behind the wall, and entered the yard. The
place was deserted, derelict--not even a cat.
Suddenly a shot rang out from somewhere in the main building, and
the Sergeant, the next man to Boyce, fell dead, shot through the
brain. The men looked at Boyce for command and saw a hulking idiot
paralysed by fear.
"His mouth hung open and his eyes were like a silly servant girl's
looking at a ghost." So said my informant.
Two more shots and two men fell. Boyce still stood white and
gasping, unable to move a muscle or utter a sound. His face looked
ghastly in the moonlight. A shot pierced his helmet, and the shock
caused him to stagger and lose his legs. A corporal rushed up,
thinking he was hit, and, finding him whole, rose, in order to
leave him there, and, in rising, got a bullet through the neck.
Thus there were four men killed, and the Commanding Officer, of
his own accord, put out of action. It all happened in a few
confused moments. Then the remaining men did what Boyce should
have commanded as soon as the first shot was fired--they rushed
the house.
It contained one solitary inmate, an old man with a couple of
Mauser rifles, whom they had to shoot in self-defence.
Meanwhile Boyce, white and haggard-eyed, had picked himself up;
revolver in hand he stood on the stoep. His men came out, cursed
him to his face while giving him their contemptuous reports
brought the dead bodies of their comrades into the house and laid
them out decently, together with the body of the white-bearded
Boer. After that they mounted their horses without a word to him
and rode off. And he let them ride; for his authority was gone;
and he knew that they justly laid the deaths of their comrades at
the door of his cowardice.
What he did during the next few awful hours is known only to God
and to Boyce himself. The four dead men, his companions, have told
no tales. But at last, one of his men--Somers was his name--came
riding back at break-neck speed. When he had left the moon rode
high in the heavens; when he returned it was dawn--and he had a
bloody tunic and the face of a man who had escaped from hell. He
threw himself from his horse and found Boyce, sitting on the stoep
with his head in his hands. He shook him by the shoulder. Boyce
started to his feet. At first he did not recognise Somers. Then he
did and read black tidings in the man's eyes.
"What's the matter?"
"They're all wiped out, sir. The whole blooming lot."
He told a tale of heroic disaster. The remnant of the section had
ridden off in hot indignation and had missed their way. They had
gone in a direction opposite to safety, and after a couple of
hours had fallen in with a straggling portion of a Boer Commando.
Refusing to surrender, they had all been killed save Somers, who,
with a bullet through his shoulder, had prudently turned bridle
and fled hell for leather.
Boyce put his hands up to his head and walked about the yard for a
few moments. Then he turned abruptly and stood toweringly over the
scared survivor--a tough, wizened little Cockney of five foot six.
"Well, what's going to happen now?" he asked, in his soft,
dangerous voice.
Somers replied, "I must leave that to you, sir."
Boyce regarded him glitteringly for a long time. A scheme of
salvation was taking vivid shape in his mind....
"My report of this occurrence will be that as soon as, say, three
men dropped here, the rest of the troop got into a panic and made
a bolt of it. Say the Sergeant and myself remained. We broke into
the house and did for the old Boer, who, however, unfortunately
did for the Sergeant. Then I alone went out in search of my men
and following their track found they had gone in a wrong
direction, and eventually scented danger, which was confirmed by
my meeting you, with your bloody tunic and your bloody tale."
"But good God! sir," cried the man, "You'd be having me shot for
running away. I could tell a damned different story, Captain
Boyce."
"Who would believe you?"
The Cockney intelligence immediately appreciated the situation. It
also was ready for the alternative it guessed at the back of
Boyce's mind.
"I know it's a mess, sir," he replied, with a straight look at
Boyce. "A mess for both of us, and, as I have said, I'll leave it
to you, sir."
"Very well," said Boyce. "It's the simplest thing in the world.
There were four killed at once, including Sergeant Oldham. You
remained faithful when the others bolted. You and I tackled the
old Boer and you got wounded. You and I went on trek for the rest
of the troop. We got within breathing distance of the Commando--
how many strong?"
"About a couple of hundred, sir."
"And of course we bolted back without knowing anything about the
troop, except that we are sure that, dead or alive, the Boers have
accounted for them. If you'll agree to this report, we can ride
back to Headquarters and I think I can promise you sergeant's
stripes in a very short time!"
"I agree to the report, sir," said Somers, "because I don't see
that I can do anything else. But to hell with the stripes under
false pretences and don't you try playing that sort of thing off
on me."
"As you like," replied Boyce, unruffled. "Provided we understand
each other on the main point."
So they left the farm and rode to Headquarters and Boyce made his
report, and as all save one of his troop were dead, there were
none, save that one, to gainsay him. On his story no doubt was
cast; but an officer who loses his whole troop in the military
operation of storming a farm-house garrisoned by one old man does
not find peculiar favour in the eyes of his Colonel. Boyce took a
speedy opportunity of transference, and got into the thick of some
fighting. Then he served with distinction and actually got
mentioned in dispatches for pluckily rescuing a wounded man under
fire.
For a long time Somers kept his mouth shut; but at last he began
to talk. The ugly rumour spread. It even reached my battery which
was a hundred miles away; for Johnny Dacre, one of my subs, had a
brother in Boyce's old regiment. For my own part I scouted the
story as soon as I heard it, and I withered up young Dacre for
daring to bring such abominable slander within my Rhadamanthine
sphere. I dismissed the calumny from my mind. Providentially, (as
I heard later), the news came of Boyce's "mention," and Somers was
set down as a liar. The poor devil was had up before the Colonel
and being an imaginative and nervous man denied the truth of the
rumour and by dexterous wriggling managed to exculpate himself
from the charge of being its originator.
I must, parenthetically, crave indulgence for these apparently
irrelevant details. But as, in this chronicle, I am mainly
concerned with the career of Leonard Boyce, I have no option but
to give them. They are necessary for a conception of the character
of a remarkable man to whom I have every reason and every
honourable desire to render justice. It is necessary, too, that I
should state clearly the manner in which I happened to learn the
facts of the affair at Vilboek's Farm, for I should not like you
to think that I have given a credulous ear to idle slander.
It was in Cape Town, whither I had been despatched, on a false
alarm of enteric. I was walking with Johnny Dacre up Adderley
Street, dun with kahki, when he met his brother Reginald, who was
promptly introduced to Johnny's second in command. Reggie was off
to hospital to see one of his men who had been badly hurt.
"It's the chap," he said to his brother, "who was with Boyce
through that shady affair at Vilboek's Farm."
"I don't know why you call it a shady affair," said I, somewhat
acidly. "I know Captain Boyce--he is a near neighbour of mine at
home--and he has proved himself to be a gallant officer and a
brave man."
The young fellow reddened. "I'm awfully sorry, sir. I withdraw the
word 'shady.' But this poor chap has something on his mind, and
everyone has a down on him. He led a dog's life till he was
knocked out, and he has been leading a worse one since. I don't
call it fair." He looked at me squarely out of his young blue
eyes--the lucky devil, he is commanding his regiment now in
Flanders, with the D.S.O. ribbon on his tunic. "Will you come with
me and see him, sir?"
"Certainly," said I, for I had nothing to do, and the boy's
earnestness impressed me.
On our way he told me of such mixture of rumour and fact as he was
acquainted with. It was then that I heard the man Somers's name
for the first time. We entered the hospital, sat by the side of
the man's bed, and he told us the story of Vilboek's Farm which I
have, in bald terms, just related. Shortly afterwards I returned
to the front, where the famous shell knocked me out of the Army
forever.
What has happened to Somers I don't know. He was, I learned, soon
afterwards discharged from the Army. He either died or disappeared
in the full current of English life. Perhaps he is with our armies
now. It does not matter. What matters is my memory of his nervous,
sallow, Cockney face, its earnestness, its imprint of veracity,
and the damning lucidity of his narrative.
I exacted from my young friends a promise to keep the unsavoury
tale to themselves. No good would arise from a publicity which
would stain the honour of the army. Besides, Boyce had made good.
They have kept their promise like honest gentlemen. I have never,
personally, heard further reference to the affair, and of course I
have never mentioned it to anyone.
Now, it is right for me to mention that, for many years, I lived
in a horrible state of dubiety with regard to Boyce. There is no
doubt that, after the Vilboek business, he acted in an exemplary
manner; there is no doubt that he performed the gallant deed for
which he got his mention. But what about Somers's story? I tried
to disbelieve it as incredible. That an English officer--not a
nervous wisp of a man like Somers, but a great, hulking, bull-
necked gladiator--should have been paralysed with fear by one shot
coming out of a Boer farm, and thereby demoralised and
incapacitated from taking command of a handful of men; that,
instead of blowing his brains out, he should have imposed his
Mephistophelian compact upon the unhappy Somers and carried off
the knavish business successfully--I could not believe it. On the
other hand, there was the British private. I have known him all my
life, God bless him! Thank God, it is my privilege to know him
now, as he lies knocked to bits, cheerily, in our hospital. It was
inconceivable that out of sheer funk he could abandon a popular
officer. And his was not even a scratch crowd, but a hard-bitten
regiment with all sorts of glorious names embroidered on its
colours....
I hope you see my difficulty in regard to my Betty's love affairs.
I had nothing against Boyce, save this ghastly story, which might
or might not be true. Officially, he had made an unholy mess of
such a simple military operation as rounding up a Boer farm, and
the prize of one dead old Boer had covered him with ridicule; but
officially, also, he had retrieved his position by distinguished
service. After all, it was not his fault that his men had run
away. On the other hand...well, you cannot but appreciate the
vicious circle of my thoughts, when Betty, in her frank way, came
and told me of her engagement to him. What could I say? It would
have been damnable of me to hint at scandal of years gone by. I
received them both and gave them my paralytic blessing, and
Leonard Boyce accepted it with the air of a man who might have
been blessed, without a qualm of conscience, by the Third Person
of the Trinity in Person.
This was in April, 1914. He had retired from the Army some years
before with the rank of Major, and lived with his mother--he was a
man of means--in Wellingsford. In the June of that year he went
off salmon fishing in Norway. On the outbreak of war he returned
to England and luckily got his job at once. He did not come back
to Wellingsford. His mother went to London and stayed there until
he was ordered out to the front. I had not seen him since that
June. And, as far as I am aware, my dear Betty had not seen him
either.
Marigold entered.
"Well?" said I.
"I thought you rang, sir."
"You didn't," I said. "You thought I ought to have rung, But you
were mistaken."
I have on my mantelpiece a tiny, corroded, wooden Egyptian bust,
of so little value that Mr. Hatoun of Cairo (and every visitor to
Cairo knows Hatoun) gave it me as Baksheesh; it is, however, a
genuine bit from a poor humble devil's tomb of about five thousand
years ago. And it has only one positive eye and no expression.
Marigold was the living replica of it--with his absurd wig.
"In a quarter of an hour," said I, "I shall have rung."
"Very good, sir," said Marigold.
But he had disturbed the harmonical progression of my reflections.
They all went anyhow. When he returned, all I could say was:
"It's Miss Betty's wedding to-morrow. I suppose I've got a morning
coat and a top hat."
"You have a morning coat, sir," said Marigold. "But your last silk
hat you gave to Miss Althea, sir, to make a work-bag out of the
outside."
"So I did," said I.
It was an unpleasant reminiscence. A hat is about as symbolical a
garment as you may be pleased to imagine. I wanted to wear at the
live Betty's wedding the ceremonious thing which I had given, for
purposes of vanity, to the dead Althea. I was cross with Marigold.
"Why did you let me do such a silly thing? You might have known
that I should want it some day or other. Why didn't you foresee
such a contingency?"
"Why," asked Marigold woodenly, "didn't you or I, sir, or many
wiser than us, foresee the war?"
"Because we were all damned fools," said I.
Marigold approached my chair with his great inexorable tentacles
of arms. It was bed time.
"I'm sorry about the hat, sir," said he.
