In due course Captain Connor's regiment went off to France; not
with drums beating and colours flying--I wish to Heaven it had; if
there had been more pomp and circumstance in England, the popular
imagination would not have remained untouched for so long a time--
but in the cold silent hours of the night, like a gang of
marauders. Betty did not go to bed after he had left, but sat by
the fire till morning. Then she dressed in uniform and resumed her
duties at the hospital. Many a soldier's bride was doing much the
same. And her days went on just as they did before her marriage.
She presented a smiling face to the world; she said:
"If I'm as happy as can be expected in the circumstances, I think
it my duty to look happier."
It was a valiant philosophy.
The falling of a chimney-stack brought me up against Daniel Gedge,
who before the war did all my little repairs. The chimney I put
into the hands of Day & Higgins, another firm of builders.
A day or two afterwards Hosea shied at something and I discovered
it was Gedge, who had advanced into the roadway expressing a
desire to have a word with me. I quieted the patriotic Hosea and
drew up by the kerb. Gedge was a lean foxy-faced man with a long,
reddish nose and a long blunt chin from which a grizzled beard
sprouted aggressively forwards. He had hard, stupid grey eyes.
"I hope you 'll excuse the liberty I take in stopping you, sir,"
he said, civilly.
"That's all right," said I. "What's the matter?"
"I thought I had given you satisfaction these last twenty years."
I assented. "Quite correct," said I.
"Then, may I ask, sir, without offence, why you've called in Day &
Higgins?"
"You may," said I, "and, with or without offence, I'll answer your
question. I've called them in because they're good loyal people.
Higgins has joined the army, and so has Day's eldest boy, while
you have been going on like a confounded pro-German."
"You've no right to say that, Major Meredyth."
"Not when you go over to Godbury"--the surging metropolis of the
County some fifteen miles off--"and tell a pack of fools to strike
because this is a capitalists' war? Not when you go round the
mills here, and do your best to stop young fellows from fighting
for their country? God bless my soul, in whose interests are you
acting, if not Germany's?"
He put on his best platform manner. "I'm acting in the best
interests of the people of this country. The war is wrong and
incredibly foolish and can bring no advantage to the working man.
Why should he go and be killed or maimed for life? Will it put an
extra penny in his pocket or his widow's? No. Oh!"--he checked my
retort--"I know everything you would say. I see the arguments
every day in all your great newspapers. But the fact remains that
I don't see eye to eye with you, or those you represent. You think
one way, I think another. We agree to differ."
"We don't," said I. "I don't agree at all."
"At any rate," he said, "I can't see how a difference of political
opinion can affect my ability now to put a new chimney-stack in
your house, any more than it has done in the past."
"In the past," said I, "political differences were parochial
squabbles in comparison with things nowadays. You're either for
England, or against her."
He smiled wryly. "I'm for England. We both are. You think her
salvation lies one way. I think another. This is a free country in
which every man has a right to his own opinion."
"Exactly so," said I. "Therefore you'll admit that I've a right to
the opinion that you ought to be locked up either in a gaol or a
lunatic asylum as a danger to the state, and that, having that
rightful opinion, I'm justified in not entrusting the safety of my
house to one who, in my aforesaid opinion, is either a criminal or
a lunatic."
Dialectically, I had him there. It afforded me keen enjoyment.
Besides being a John Bull Englishman, I am a cripple and therefore
ever so little malicious.
"It's all very well for you to talk, Major Meredyth," said he,
"but your opinions cost you nothing--mine are costing me my
livelihood. It isn't fair."
"You might as well say," I replied, "that I, who have never dared
to steal anything in my life, live in ease and comfort, whereas
poor Bill Sykes, who has devoted all his days to burglary, has
seven years' penal servitude. No, Gedge," said I, gathering up the
reins, "it can't be done. You can't have it both ways."
He put a detaining hand on Hosea's bridle and an evil flash came
into his hard grey eyes.
"I'll have it some other way, then," he said. "A way you've no
idea of. A way that'll knock all you great people of Wellingsford
off your high horses. If you drive me to it, you'll see. I'll bide
my time and I don't care whether it breaks me."
He stamped his foot and tugged at the bridle. Two or three
passers-by halted wonderingly and Prettilove, the hairdresser,
moved across the pavement from his shop door where he had been
taking the air.
"My good fellow," said I, "you have lost your temper and are
talking drivel. Kindly unhand my donkey."
Prettilove, who has a sycophantic sense of humour, burst into a
loud guffaw. Gedge swung angrily away, and Hosea and I continued
our interrupted progress down the High Street. Although I had
called his dark menaces drivel, I could not help wondering what it
meant. Was he going to guide a German Army to Wellingsford? Was
he, a modern Guy Fawkes, plotting to blow up the Town Hall while
Mayor and Corporation sat in council? He was not the man to utter
purely idle threats. What the dickens was he going to do?
Something mean and dirty and underhand. I knew his ways, He was
always getting the better of somebody. The wise never let him put
in a pane of glass without a specification and estimate, and if he
had not been by far the most competent builder in the town--
perhaps the only one who thoroughly knew his business in all its
branches--no one would have employed him.
When I next saw Betty, it was in one of the corridors of the
hospital, after a committee meeting; she stopped by my chair to
pass the time of day. Through the open doorway of a ward I
perceived a well-known figure in nurse's uniform.
"Why," said I, "there's Phyllis Gedge."
Betty nodded. "She has just come in as a probationer."
"I thought her father wouldn't let her. I've heard--Heaven knows
whether it's true, but it sounds likely--that he said if men were
such fools as to get shot he didn't see why his daughter should
help to mend them."
"He has consented now," said Betty, "and Phyllis is delighted."
"No doubt it's a bid for popular favour," said I. And I told her
of his dwindling business and of my encounter with him. When I
came to his threat Betty's brows darkened.
"I don't like that at all," she said.
"Why? What do you think he means?"
"Mischief." She lowered her voice, for, it being visiting day at
the hospital, people were passing up and down the corridor.
"Suppose he has some of the people here in his power?"
"Blackmail--?" I glanced up at her sharply. "What do you know
about it?"
"Nothing," she replied abruptly. Then she looked down and fingered
her wedding-ring. "I only said 'suppose.'"
A Sister appeared at the door of the ward and seeing us together
paused hoveringly.
"I rather think you're wanted," said I.
I left the hospital somewhat disturbed in mind. Summons to duty
had cut our conversation short; but I knew that no matter how long
I had cross-questioned Betty I should have got nothing further
out of her. She was a remarkably outspoken young woman. What she
said she meant, and what she didn't want to say all the cripples
in the British Army could not have dragged out of her.
I tried her again a few days later. A slight cold, aided and
abetted by a dear exaggerating idiot of a tyrannical doctor,
confined me to the house and she came flying in, expecting to find
me in extremis. When she saw me clothed and in my right mind and
smoking a big cigar, she called me a fraud.
"Look here," said I, after a while. "About Gedge--" again her brow
darkened and her lips set stiffly--"do you think he has his knife
into young Randall Holmes?"
I had worried about the boy. Naturally, if Gedge found the
relations between his daughter and Randall unsatisfactory, no one
could blame him for any outbreak of parental indignation. But he
ought to break out openly, while there was yet time--before any
harm was done--not nurse some diabolical scheme of subterraneous
vengeance. Betty's brow cleared, and she laughed. I saw at once
that I was on a wrong track.
"Why should he have his knife into Randall? I suppose you've got
Phyllis in your mind."
"I have. How did you guess?"
She laughed again.
"What other reason could he have? But how did you come to hear of
Randall and Phyllis?"
"Never mind," said I, "I did. And if Gedge is angry, I can to some
extent sympathize with him."
"But he's not. Not the least little bit in the world," she
declared, lighting a cigarette. "Gedge and Randall are as thick as
thieves, and Phyllis won't have anything to do with either of
them."
"Now, my dear," said I. "Now that you're married, become a real
womanly woman and fill my empty soul with gossip."
"There's no gossip at all about it," she replied serenely. "It's
all sordid and romantic fact. The two men hold long discussions
together at Gedge's house, Gedge talking anti-patriotism and
Randall talking rot which he calls philosophy. You can hear them,
can't you? Their meeting-ground is the absurdity of Randall
joining the army."
"And Phyllis?"
"She is a loyal little soul and as miserable as can be. She's
deplorably in love with Randall. She has told me so. And because
she's in love with a man whom she knows to be a slacker she's
eaten up with shame. Now she won't speak to him To avoid meeting
him she lives entirely at the hospital--a paying probationer."
"That must be since the last Committee Meeting," I said.
'Yes."
"And Daniel Gedge pays a guinea a week?"
"He doesn't," said Betty. "I do."
I accepted the information with a motion of the head. She went on
after a minute or so. "I have always been fond of the child"--
there were only three or four years difference between them!--
"and so I want to protect her. The time may come when she'll need
protection. She has told me things--not now--but long ago--which
frightened her. She came to me for advice. Since then I've kept an
eye on her--as far as I could. Her coming into the hospital helps
me considerably."
"When you say 'things which frightened her,' do you mean in
connection with her father?"
Again the dark look in Betty's eyes.
"Yes," she said. "He's an evil, dangerous man."
That was all I could get out of her. If she had meant me to know
the character of Gedge's turpitude, she would have told me of her
own accord. But in our talk at the hospital she had hinted at
blackmail--and blackmailers are evil, dangerous men.
I went to see Sir Anthony about it. Beyond calling him a damned
scoundrel, a term which he applied to all pro-Germans, pacifists
and half the Cabinet, he did not concern himself about Gedge.
Young Randall Holmes's intimacy with the scoundrel seemed to him a
matter of far greater importance. He strode up and down his
library, choleric and gesticulating.
"A gentleman and a scholar to hob-nob with a traitorous beast like
that! I know that he writes for a filthy weekly paper. Somebody
sent me a copy a few days ago. It's rot--but not actually
poisonous like that he must hear from Gedge. That's the reason, I
suppose, he's not in the King's uniform. I've had my eye on him
for some time. That's why I've not asked him to the house."
I told Sir Anthony of my interview with the young man. He waxed
wroth. In a country with a backbone every Randall Holmes in the
land would have been chucked willy-nilly into the army. But the
country had spinal disorders. It had locomotor ataxy. The result
of sloth and self-indulgence. We had the Government we deserved
... I need not quote further. You can imagine a fine old fox-
hunting Tory gentleman, with England filling all the spaces of his
soul, blowing off the steam of his indignation.
When he had ended, "What," said I, "is to be done?"
"I'll lay my horsewhip across the young beggar's shoulders the
next time I meet him."
"Capital," said I. "If I were you I should never ride abroad
except in my mayor's gown and chain, so that you can give an
official character to the thrashing."
He glanced swiftly at me in his bird-like fashion, his brow
creased into a thousand tiny horizontal lines--it always took him
a fraction of a second to get clear of the literal significance of
words--and then he laughed. Personal violence was out of the
question. Why, the young beggar might summon him for assault. No;
he had a better idea. He would put in a word at the proper
quarter, so that every recruiting sergeant in the district should
have orders to stop him at every opportunity.
"I shouldn't do that," said I.
"Then, I don't know what the deuce I can do," said Sir Anthony.
As I didn't know, either, our colloquy was fruitless. Eventually
Sir Anthony said:
"Perhaps it's likely, after all, that Gedge may offend young
Oxford's fastidiousness. It can't be long before he discovers
Gedge to be nothing but a vulgar, blatant wind-bag; and then he
may undergo some reaction."
I agreed. It seemed to be the most sensible thing he had said.
Give Gedge enough rope and he would hang himself. So we parted.
I have said before that when I want to shew how independent I am
of everybody I drive abroad in my donkey carriage. But there are
times when I have to be dependent on Marigold for carrying me into
the houses I enter; on these helpless occasions I am driven about
by Marigold in a little two-seater car. That is how I visited
Wellings Park and that is how I set off a day or two later to call
on Mrs. Boyce.
As she took little interest in anything foreign to her own inside,
she was not to most people an exhilarating companion. She even
discussed the war in terms of her digestion. But we were old
friends. Being a bit of a practical philosopher I could always
derive some entertainment from her serial romance of a Gastric
Juice, and besides, she was the only person in Wellingsford whom I
did not shrink from boring with the song of my own ailments.
Rather than worry the Fenimores or Betty or Mrs. Holmes with my
aches and pains I would have hung on, like the idiot boy of Sparta
with the fox, until my vitals were gnawed out--parenthetically, it
has always worried me to conjecture why a boy should steal a fox,
why it should have been so valuable to the owner, and to what use
he put it. In the case of all my other friends I regarded myself
as too much of an obvious nuisance, as it was, for me to work on
their sympathy for infirmities that I could hide; but with Mrs.
Boyce it was different. The more I chanted antistrophe to her
strophe of lamentation the more was I welcome in her drawing-room.
I had not seen her for some weeks. Perhaps I had been feeling
remarkably well with nothing in the world to complain about, and
therefore unequipped with a topic of conversation. However, hearty
or not, it was time for me to pay her a visit. So I ordered the
car.
Mrs. Boyce lived in a comfortable old house half a mile or so
beyond the other end of the town, standing in half a dozen well-
wooded acres. It was a fair April afternoon, all pale sunshine and
tenderness. A dream of fairy green and delicate pink and shy blue
sky melting into pearl. The air smelt sweet. It was good to be in
it, among the trees and the flowers and the birds.
Others must have also felt the calls of the spring, for as we were
driving up to the house, I caught a glimpse of the lawn and of two
figures strolling in affectionate attitude. One was that of Mrs.
Boyce; the other, khaki-clad and towering above her, had his arm
round her waist. The car pulled up at the front door. Before we
had time to ring, a trim parlour-maid appeared.
"Mrs. Boyce is not at home, sir."
Marigold, who, when my convenience was in question, swept away
social conventions like cobwebs, fixed her with his one eye, and
before I could interfere, said:
"I'm afraid you're mistaken. I've just seen Major Boyce and Madam
on the lawn."
The maid reddened and looked at me appealingly.
"My orders were to say not at home, sir."
"I quite understand, Mary," said I. "Major Boyce is home on short
leave, and they don't want to be disturbed. Isn't that it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Marigold," said I. "Right about turn."
Marigold, who had stopped the car, got out unwillingly and went to
the starting-handle. That I should be refused admittance to a
house which I had deigned to honour with my presence he regarded
as an intolerable insult. He also loved to have tea, as a pampered
guest, in other folks' houses. When he got home Mrs. Marigold, as
like as not, would give him plain slabs of bread buttered by her
economical self. I knew my Marigold. He gave a vicious and
ineffectual turn or two and then stuck his head in the bonnet.
The situation was saved by the appearance from the garden of Mrs.
Boyce herself, a handsome, erect, elegantly dressed old lady in
the late sixties, pink and white like a Dresden figure and in her
usual condition of resplendent health. She held out her hand.
"I couldn't let you go without telling you that Leonard is back. I
don't want the whole town to know. If it did, I should see nothing
of him, his leave is so short. That's why I told Mary to say 'not
at home.' But an old friend like you--Would you like to see him?"
Marigold closed the bonnet and stood up with a grimace which
passed for a happy smile.
"I should, of course," said I, politely. "But I quite understand.
You have everything to say to each other. No. I won't stay"
--Marigold's smile faded into woodenness--"I only turned in idly to
see how you were getting on. But just tell me. How is Leonard?
Fit, I hope?"
"He's wonderful," she said.
I motioned Marigold to start the car.
"Give him my kind regards," said I. "No, indeed. He doesn't want
to see an old crock like me." The engine rattled. "I hope he's
pleased at finding his mother looking so bonny."
"It's only excitement at having Leonard," she explained earnestly.
"In reality I'm far from well. But I wouldn't tell him for
worlds."
"What's that you wouldn't tell, mother?" cried a soft, cheery
voice, and Leonard, the fine flower of English soldiery, turned
the corner of the house.
There he stood, tall, deep-chested, clear-eyed, bronzed, his heavy
chin in the air, his bull-neck not detracting from his physical
handsomeness, but giving it a seal of enormous strength.
"My dear fellow," he cried, grasping my hand heartily, "how glad I
am to see you. Come along in and let mother give you some tea.
Nonsense!" he waved away my protest. "Marigold, stop that engine
and bring in the Major. I've got lots of things to tell you.
That's right."
He strode boyishly to the front door, which he threw open wide to
admit Marigold and myself and followed us with Mrs. Boyce into the
drawing-room, talking all the while. I must confess that I was
just a little puzzled by his exuberant welcome. And, to judge by
the blank expression that flitted momentarily over her face, so
was his mother. If he were so delighted by my visit, why had he
not crossed the lawn at once as soon as he saw the car? Why had he
sent his mother on ahead? I was haunted by an exchange of words
overheard in imagination:
"Confound the fellow! What has he come here for?"
"Mary will say 'not at home.'"
"But he has spotted us. Do go and get rid of him."
"Such an old friend, dear."
"We haven't time for old fossils. Tell him to go and bury
himself."
And (in my sensitive fancy) she had delivered the import of the
message. I had gathered that my visit was ill-timed. I was
preparing to cut it short, when Leonard himself came up and
whisked me against my will to the tea-table. If my hypothesis were
correct he had evidently changed his mind as to the desirability
of getting rid, in so summary a fashion, of what he may have
considered to be an impertinent and malicious little factor in
Wellingsford gossip.
At any rate, if he was playing a part, he played it very well. It
was not in the power of man to be more cordial and gracious. He
gave me a vivid account of the campaign. He had been through
everything, the retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Aisne, the
great rush north, and the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on the 17th of
March. I listened, fascinated, to his tale, which he told with a
true soldier's impersonal modesty.
"I was glad," said I, after a while, "to see you twice mentioned
in dispatches."
Mrs. Boyce turned on me triumphantly. "He is going to get his D.
S. O."
"By Jove!" said I.
Leonard laughed, threw one gaitered leg over the other and held up
his hands at her.
"Oh, you feminine person!" He smiled at me. "I told my dear old
mother as a dead and solemn secret."
"But it will be gazetted in a few days, dear."
"One can never be absolutely sure of these things until they're in
black and white. A pretty ass I'd look if there was a hitch--say
through some fool of a copying clerk--and I didn't get it after
all. It's only dear, silly understanding things like mothers that
would understand. Other people wouldn't. Don't you think I'm
right, Meredyth?"
Of course he was. I have known, in my time, of many
disappointments. It is not every recommendation for honours that
becomes effective. I congratulated him, however, and swore to
secrecy.
"It's all luck," said he. "Just because a man happens to be
spotted. If my regiment got its deserts, every Jack man would walk
about in a suit of armour made of Victoria Crosses. Give me some
more tea, mother."
"The thing I shall never understand, dear," she said, artlessly,
looking up at him, while she handed him his cup, "is when you see
a lot of murderous Germans rushing at you with guns and shells and
bayonets, how you are not afraid."
He threw back his head and laughed in his debonair fashion; but I
watched him narrowly and I saw the corners of his mouth twitch for
the infinitesimal fraction of a second.
"Oh, sometimes we're in an awful funk, I assure you," he replied
gaily. "Ask Meredyth."
"We may be," said I, "but we daren't shew it--I'm speaking of
officers. If an officer funks he's generally responsible for the
death of goodness knows how many men. And if the men funk they're
liable to be shot for cowardice in the face of the enemy."
"And what happens to officers who are afraid?"
"If it's known, they get broke," said I.
Boyce swallowed his tea at a gulp, set down the cup, and strode to
the window. There was a short pause. Presently he turned.
"Physical fear is a very curious thing," he said in a voice
unnecessarily loud. "I've seen it take hold of men of proved
courage and paralyse them. It's just like an epileptic fit--beyond
a man's control. I've known a fellow--the most reckless, hare-
brained daredevil you can imagine--to stand petrified with fear on
the bank of a river, and let a wounded comrade drown before his
eyes. And he was a good swimmer too."
"What happened to him?" I asked.
He met my gaze for a moment, looked away, and then met it again--
it seemed defiantly.
"What happened to him? Well--" there was the tiniest possible
pause--a pause that only an uneasy, suspicious repository of the
abominable story of Vilboek's Farm could have noticed--"Well, as
he stood there he got plugged--and that was the end of him. But
what I--"
"Was he an officer, dear?"
"No, no, mother, a sergeant," he answered abruptly, and in the
same breath continued. "What I was going to say is this. No one as
far as I know has ever bothered to work out the psychology of
fear. Especially the sudden thing that hits a man's heart and
makes him stand stock-still like a living corpse--unable to move a
muscle--all his willpower out of gear--just as a motor is out of
gear. I've seen a lot of it. Those men oughtn't to be called
cowards. It's as much a fit, say, as epilepsy. Allowances ought to
made for them."
It was a warm day, the windows were closed, my valetudinarian
hostess having a horror of draughts, and a cheery fire was blazing
up the chimney. Boyce took out a handkerchief and mopped his
forehead.
"Dear old mother," said he, "you keep this room like an oven."
"It is you who have got so excited talking, dear," said Mrs.
Boyce. "I'm sure it can't be good for your heart. It is just the
same with me. I remember I had to speak quite severely to Mary a
week--no, to-day's Tuesday--ten days ago, and I had dreadful
palpitations afterwards and broke out into a profuse perspiration
and had to send for Doctor Miles."
"Now, that's funny," said I. "When I'm excited about anything I
grow quite cold."
Boyce lit a cigarette and laughed. "I don't see where the
excitement in the present case comes in. Mother started an
interesting hare, and I followed it up. Anyhow--"he threw himself
on the sofa, blew a kiss to his mother in the most charming way in
the world, and smiled on me--"anyhow, to see you two in this
dearest bit of dear old England is like a dream. And I'm not going
to think of the waking up. I want all the cushions and the
lavender and the neat maid's caps and aprons--I said to Mary this
morning when she drew my curtains: 'Stay just there and let me
look at you so that I can realise I'm at home and not in my little
grey trench in West Flanders'--she got red and no doubt thought me
a lunatic and felt inclined to squawk--but she stayed and looked
jolly pretty and refreshing--only for a minute or two, after which
I dismissed her--yes, my dears, I want everything that the old
life means, the white table linen, the spring flowers, the scent
of the air which has never known the taint of death, and all that
this beautiful mother of England, with her knitting needles,
stands for. I want to have a debauch of sweet and beautiful
things."
"As far as I can give them you shall have them. My dear--" she
dropped her knitting in her lap and looked over at him tragically
--"I quite forgot to ask. Did Mary put bath-salts, as I ordered,
into your bath this morning?"
Leonard threw away his cigarette and slapped his leg.
"By George!" he cried. "That explains it. I was wondering where
the Dickens that smell of ammonia came from."
"If you use it every day it makes your skin so nice and soft,"
remarked Mrs. Boyce.
He laughed, and made the obvious jest on the use of bath-salts in
the trenches.
"I wonder, mother, whether you have any idea of what trenches and
dug-outs look like."
He told her, very picturesquely, and went on to a general sketch
of life at the front. He entertained me with interesting talk for
the rest of my visit. I have already said that he was a man of
great personal charm.
He accompanied me to the car and saw me comfortably tucked in.
"You won't give me away, will you?" he said, shaking hands.
"How?" I asked.
"By telling any one I'm here."
I promised and drove off. Marigold, full of the tea that is given
to a guest, strove cheerfully to engage me in conversation. I hate
to snub Marigold, excellent and devoted fellow, so I let him talk;
but my mind was occupied with worrying problems.
