Major Boyce has gone, sir," said Marigold, the next morning, as I
was tapping my breakfast egg.
"Gone?" I echoed. Boyce had made no reference the night before to
so speedy a departure.
"By the 8.30 train, sir."
Every train known by a scheduled time at Wellingsford goes to
London. There may be other trains proceeding from the station in
the opposite direction but nobody heeds them. Boyce had taken
train to London. I asked my omniscient sergeant:
"How did you find that out?"
It appeared it was the driver of the Railway Delivery Van. I
smiled at Boyce's ostrich-like faith in the invisibility of his
hinder bulk. What could occur in Wellingsford without it being
known at once to vanmen and postmen and barbers and servants and
masters and mistresses? How could a man hope to conceal his goings
and comings and secret actions? He might just as well expect to
take a secluded noontide bath in the fountain in Piccadilly
Circus.
"Perhaps that's why the matter of those repairs was so pressing,
sir," said Marigold.
"No doubt of it," said I.
Marigold hung about, his finger-tips pushing towards me mustard
and apples and tulips and everything that one does not eat with
egg. But it was no use. I had no desire to pursue the
conversation. I continued my breakfast stolidly and read the
newspaper propped up against the coffee-pot. So many circumstances
connected with Boyce's visit were of a nature that precluded
confidential discussion with Marigold,--that precluded, indeed,
confidential discussion with anyone else. The suddenness of his
departure I learned that afternoon from Mrs. Boyce, who sent me by
hand a miserable letter characteristically rambling. From it I
gathered certain facts. Leonard had come into her bedroom at seven
o'clock, awakening her from the first half-hour's sleep she had
enjoyed all night, with the news that he had been unexpectedly
summoned back. When she came to think of it, she couldn't imagine
how he got the news, for the post did not arrive till eight
o'clock, and Mary said no telegram had been delivered and there
had been no call on the telephone. But she supposed the War Office
had secret ways of communicating with officers which it would not
be well to make known. The whole of this war, with its killing off
of the sons of the best families in the land, and the sleeping in
the mud with one's boots on, to say nothing of not being able to
change for dinner, and the way in which they knew when to shoot
and when not to shoot, was all so mysterious that she had long ago
given up hope of understanding any of its details. All she could
do was to pray God that her dear boy should be spared. At any
rate, she knew the duty of an English mother when the country was
in danger; so she had sent him away with a brave face and her
blessing, as she had done before. But, although English mothers
could show themselves Spartans--(she spelt it "Spartians," dear
lady, but no matter)--yet they were women and had to sit at home
and weep. In the meanwhile, her palpitations had come on
dreadfully bad, and so had her neuritis, and she had suffered
dreadfully after eating some fish at dinner which she was sure
Pennideath, the fishmonger--she always felt that man was an
anarchist in disguise--had bought out of the condemned stock at
Billingsgate, and none of the doctor's medicines were of the
slightest good to her, and she was heartbroken at having to part
so suddenly from Leonard, and would I spare half an hour to
comfort an old woman who had sent her only son to die for his
country and was ready, when it pleased God, if not sooner, to die
in the same sacred cause?
So of course I went. The old lady, propped on pillows in an
overheated room, gave me tea and poured into my ear all the
anguish of her simple heart. In an abstracted, anxious way, she
ate a couple of crumpets and a wedge of cake with almond icing,
and was comforted.
We continued our discussion of the war--or rather Leonard, for
with her Leonard seemed to be the war. She made some remark
deliciously inept--I wish I could remember it. I made a sly
rejoinder. She sat bolt upright and a flush came into her Dresden-
china cheek and her old eyes flashed.
"You may think I'm a silly old woman, Duncan. I dare say I am. I
can't take in things as I used to do when I was young. But if
Leonard should be killed in the war--I think of it night and day--
what I should like to do would be to drive to the Market Square of
Wellingsford and wave a Union Jack round and round and fall down
dead."
I made some sort of sympathetic gesture.
"And I certainly should," she added.
"My dear friend," said I, "if I could move from this confounded
chair, I would kiss your brave hands."
And how many brave hands of English mothers, white and delicate,
coarse and toil-worn, do not demand the wondering, heart-full
homage of us all?
And hundreds of thousands of them don't know why we are fighting.
Hundreds of thousands of them have never read a newspaper in their
lives. I doubt whether they would understand one if they tried, I
doubt whether all could read one in the literal sense of the word.
We have had--we have still--the most expensive and rottenest
system of primary education in the world, the worst that
squabbling sectarians can devise. Arab children squatting round
the courtyard of a Mosque and swaying backwards and forwards as
they get by heart meaningless bits of the Koran, are not sent out
into life more inadequately armed with elementary educational
weapons than are English children. Our state of education has
nominally been systematised for forty-five years, and yet now in
our hospitals we have splendid young fellows in their early
twenties who can neither read nor write. I have talked with them.
I have read to them. I have written letters for them. Clean-cut,
decent, brave, honourable Englishmen--not gutter-bred Hooligans
dragged from the abyss by the recruiting sergeant, but men who
have thrown up good employment because something noble inside them
responded to the Great Call. And to the eternal disgrace of
governments in this disastrously politician-ridden land such men
have not been taught to read and write. It is of no use anyone
saying to me that it is not so. I know of my own certain intimate
knowledge that it is so.
Even among those who technically have "the Three R's," I have met
scores of men in our Wellingsford Hospital who, bedridden for
months, would give all they possess to be able to enjoy a novel--
say a volume of W. W. Jacobs, the writer who above all others has
conferred the precious boon of laughter on our wounded--but to
whom the intellectual strain of following the significance of
consecutive words is far too great. Thousands and thousands of men
have lain in our hospitals deprived, by the criminal insanity of
party politicians, of the infinite consolation of books.
Christ, whom all these politicians sanctimoniously pretend to make
such a fuss of, once said that a house divided against itself
cannot stand. And yet we regard this internecine conflict between
our precious political parties as a sacred institution. By Allah,
we are a funny people!
Of course your officials at the Board of Education--that
beautiful timber-headed, timber-hearted, timber-souled structure--
could come down on me with an avalanche of statistics. "Look at
our results," they cry. I look. There are certain brains that even
our educational system cannot benumb. A few clever ones, at the
cost of enormously expensive machinery, are sent to the
universities, where they learn how to teach others the important
things whereby they achieved their own unimportant success. The
shining lights are those whom we turn out as syndicalist leaders
and other kinds of anti-patriotic demagogues. We systematically
deny them the wine of thought, but give them the dregs. But in the
past we did not care; they were vastly clever people, a credit to
our national system. It gave them chances which they took. We were
devilish proud of them.
On the other hand, the vast mass are sent away with the
intellectual equipment of a public school-boy of twelve, and, as
I have declared, a large remnant have not been taught even how to
read and write. The storm of political controversy on educational
matters has centred round such questions as whether the story of
Joseph and his Brethren and the Parable of the Prodigal Son should
be taught to little Baptists by a Church of England teacher, and
what proportion of rates paid by Church of England ratepayers
should go to giving little Baptists a Baptistical training. If
there was a Christ who could come down among us, with what
scorching sarcasm would he not shrivel up the Scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites, who in His Name have prevented the People
from learning how to read and write.
Look through Hansard. There never has been a Debate in the House
of Commons devoted to the question of Education itself. If the War
can teach us any lessons, as a nation--and sometimes I doubt
whether it will--it ought at least to teach us the essential
vicious rottenness of our present educational system.
This tirade may seem a far cry from Mrs. Boyce and her sister
mothers. It is not. I started by saying that there are hundreds of
thousands of British mothers, with sons in the Army, who have
never read a line of print dealing with the war, who have the
haziest notion of what it is all about. All they know is that we
are fighting Germans, who for some incomprehensible reason have
declared themselves to be our enemies; that the Germans, by
hearsay accounts, are dreadful people who stick babies on bayonets
and drop bombs on women and children. They really know little
more. But that is enough. They know that it is the part of a man
to fight for his country. They would not have their sons be called
cowards. They themselves have the blind, instinctive, and
therefore sacred love of country, which is named patriotism--and
they send forth their sons to fight.
I stand up to kiss the white and delicate hand of the gentlewoman
who sends her boy to the war, for its owner knows as well as I do
(or ought to) all that is involved in this colossal struggle. But
to the toil-worn, coarse-handed mother I go on bended knees;
nothing intellectual comes within the range of her ideas. Her boy
is fighting for England. She would be ashamed if he were not. Were
she a man she would fight too. He has gone "with a good 'eart"--
the stereotyped phrase with which every English private soldier,
tongue-tied, hides the expression of his unconquerable soul. How
many times have I not heard it from wounded men healed of their
wounds? I have never heard anything else. "The man who says he
WANTS to go back is a liar. But if they send me, I'll go WITH A
GOOD 'EART"--The phrase which ought to be immortalized on every
grave in Flanders and France and Gallipoli and Mesopotamia.
17735 P'V'TE THOMAS ATKINS 1ST GOD'S OWN REG'T HE DIED WITH A GOOD
'EART
So, you see, I looked at this rather silly malade imaginaire of an
old lady with whom I was taking tea, and suddenly conceived for
her a vast respect--even veneration. I say "rather silly." I had
many a time qualified the adjective much more forcibly. I took her
to have the intellectual endowment of a hen. But then she flashed
out suddenly before me an elderly Jeanne d'Arc. That to me Leonard
Boyce was suspect did not enter at all into the question. To her--
and that was all that mattered--he was Sir Galahad, Lancelot, King
Arthur, Bayard, St. George, Hector, Lysander, Miltiades, all
rolled into one. The passion of her life was spent on him. To do
him justice, he had never failed to display to her the most tender
affection. In her eyes he was perfection. His death would mean the
wiping out of everything between Earth and Heaven. And yet,
paramount in her envisagement of such a tragedy was the idea of a
public proclamation of the cause of England in which he died.
In this war the women of England--the women of Great Britain and
Ireland--the women of the far-flung regions of the British Empire,
have their part.
Now and then mild business matters call me up to London. On these
occasions Marigold gets himself up in a kind of yachting kit which
he imagines will differentiate him from the ordinary chauffeur and
at the same time proclaim the dignity of the Meredyth-Marigold
establishment. He loves to swagger up the steps of my Service Club
and announce my arrival to the Hall Porter, who already, warned by
telephone of my advent, has my little wicker-work tricycle chair
in readiness. I think he feels, dear fellow, that he and I are
keeping our end up; that, although there are only bits of us left,
we are there by inalienable right as part and parcel of the
British Army--none of your Territorials or Kitcheners, but the old
original British Army whose prestige and honour were those of his
own straight soul. The Hall Porter is an ex-Sergeant-Major, and he
and Marigold are old acquaintances, and the meeting of the two
warriors is acknowledged by a wink and a military jerk of the
head. I think it is Marigold that impresses Bunworthy with a
respect for me, for that august functionary never fails to descend
the steps and cross the pavement to my modest little two-seater;
an act of graciousness which (so I am given to understand by my
friends) he will only perform in the case of Royalty Itself. A
mere Field-marshal has to mount the steps unattended like any
subaltern.
These red-letter days when I drive through the familiar (and now
exciting) hubbub of London, I love (strange taste!) every motor
omnibus, every pretty woman, every sandwich-man, every fine young
fellow in khaki, every car-load of men in blue hospital uniform. I
love the smell of London, the cinematographic picture of London,
the thrill of London. To understand what I mean you have only got
to get rid of your legs and keep your heart and nerves and
memories, and live in a little country town.
Yes, my visits to London are red-letter days. To get there with
any enjoyment to myself involves such a fussification, and such an
unauthorised claim on the services of other people, that my visits
are few and far between.
A couple of hours in a club smoking-room--to the normal man a mere
putting in of time, a vain surcease from boredom, a vacuous habit
--is to me, a strange wonder and delight. After Wellingsford the
place is resonant with actualities. I hear all sorts of things;
mostly lies, I know; but what matter? When a man tells me that his
cousin knows a man attached as liaison officer to the staff of
General Joffre, who has given out confidentially that such and
such a thing is going to happen I am all ears. I feel that I am
sucked into the great whirlpool of Vast Events. I don't care a bit
about being disillusioned afterwards. The experience has done me
good, made a man of me and sent me back to Wellingsford as an
oracle. And if you bring me a man who declares that he does not
like being an oracle, I will say to his face that he is an
unblushing liar.
All this is by way of preface to the statement that on the third
of May (vide diary) I went to the club. It was just after lunch
and the great smoking-room was full of men in khaki and men in
blue and gold, with a sprinkling of men, mostly elderly, in mufti;
and from their gilt frames the full-length portraits of departed
men of war in gorgeous uniforms looked down superciliously on
their more sadly attired descendants. I got into a corner by the
door, so as to be out of the way, for I knew by experience that
should there be in the room a choleric general, he would
inevitably trip over the casually extended front wheel of my
chair, greatly to the scandal of modest ears and to my own
physical discomfiture.
Various seniors came up and passed the time of the day with me--
one or two were bald-headed retired colonels of sixty, dressed in
khaki, with belts like equators on a terrestrial globe and with a
captain's three stars on their sleeves. Gallant old boys, full of
gout and softness, they had sunk their rank and taken whatever
dull jobs, such as guarding internment camps or railway bridges,
the War Office condescendingly thought fit to give them. They
listened sympathetically to my grievances, for they had grievances
of their own. When soldiers have no grievances the Army will
perish of smug content.
"Why can't they give me a billet in the Army Pay and let me
release a man sounder of wind and limb?" I asked. "What's the good
of legs to a man who sits on his hunkers all day in an office and
fills up Army forms? I hate seeing you lucky fellows in uniform."
"We're not a pretty sight," said the most rotund, who was a wag in
his way.
Then we discussed what we knew and what we didn't know of the
Battle of Ypres, and the withdrawal of our Second Army, and shook
our heads dolorously over the casualty lists, every one of which
in those days contained the names of old comrades and of old
comrades' boys. And when they had finished their coffee and mild
cigars they went off well contented to their dull jobs and the
room began to thin. Other acquaintances on their way out paused
for a handshake and a word, and I gathered scraps of information
that had come "straight from Kitchener," and felt wonderfully wise
and cheerful.
I had been sitting alone for a few minutes when a man rose from a
far corner, a tall soldierly figure, his arm in a sling, and came
straight towards me with that supple, easy stride that only years
of confident command can give. He had keen blue eyes and a
pleasant bronzed face which I knew that I had seem somewhere
before. I noticed on his sleeve the crown and star of a
lieutenant-colonel. He said pleasantly:
"You're Major Meredyth, aren't you?"
"Yes," said I.
"You don't remember me. No reason why you should. But my name's
Dacre--Reggie Dacre, brother of Johnnie Dacre in your battery. We
met in Cape Town."
I held out my hand.
"Of course," said I. "You took me to a hospital. Do sit down for a
bit. You a member here?"
"No. I belong to the Naval and Military. Lunching with old General
Donovan, a sort of god-father of mine. He told me who you were. I
haven't seen you since that day in South Africa."
I asked for news of Johnnie, who had been lost to my ken for
years. Johnnie had been in India, and was now doing splendidly
with his battery somewhere near La Bassee. I pointed to the sling.
Badly hurt? No, a bit of flesh torn by shrapnel. Bone, thank God,
not touched. It was only horny-headed idiots like the British R.
A. M. C. that would send a man home for such a trifle. It was
devilish hard lines to be hoofed away from the regiment
practically just after he had got his command. However, he would
be back in a week or two. He laughed.
"Lucky to be alive at all."
"Or not done in for ever like myself," said I.
"I didn't like to ask--" he said. Men would rather die than commit
the indelicacy of appearing to notice my infirmity.
"You haven't been out there?"
"No such luck," said I. "I got this little lot about a fortnight
after I saw you. Johnnie was still on sick leave and so was out of
that scrap."
He commiserated with me on my ill-fortune, and handed me his
cigarette case. We smoked.
"You've been on my mind for months," he said abruptly.
"I?"
He nodded. "I thought I recognised you. I asked the General who
you were. He said 'Meredyth of the Gunners.' So I knew I was right
and made a bee line for you. Do you remember the story of that man
in the hospital?"
"Perfectly," said I.
"About Boyce of the King's Watch?"
"Yes," said I. "I saw Boyce, home on leave, about a fortnight ago.
I suppose you saw his D.S.O. gazetted?"
"I did. And he deserves a jolly sight more," he exclaimed
heartily. "I've come to the conclusion that that fellow in the
hospital--I forget the brute's name--"
"Somers," said I.
"Yes, Somers. I've come to the conclusion that he was the
damn'dest, filthiest, lyingest hound that ever was pupped."
"I'm glad to hear it," said I. "It was a horrible story. I
remember making your brother and yourself vow eternal secrecy."
"You can take it from me that we haven't breathed a word to
anybody. As a matter of fact, the whole damn thing had gone out of
my head for years. Then I begin to hear of a fellow called Boyce
of the Rifles doing the most crazy magnificent things. I make
enquiries and find it's the same Leonard Boyce of the Vilboek Farm
story. We're in the same Brigade.
"You don't often hear of individual men out there--your mind's too
jolly well concentrated on your own tiny show. But Boyce has sort
of burst out beyond his own regiment and, with just one or two
others, is beginning to be legendary. He has done the maddest
things and won the V.C. twenty times over. So that blighter
Somers, accusing him of cowardice, was a ghastly liar. And then I
remembered taking you up to hear that damnable slander, and I felt
that I had a share in it, as far as you were concerned, and I
longed to get at you somehow and tell you about it. I wanted to
get it off my chest. And now," said he with a breath of relief,
"thank God, I've been able to do so."
"I wish you would tell me of an incident or two," said I.
"He has got a life-preserver that looks like an ordinary cane--had
it specially made. It's quite famous. Men tell me that the knob is
a rich, deep, polished vermilion. He'll take on any number of
Boches with it single-handed. If there's any sign of wire-cutting,
he'll not let the men fire, but will take it on himself, and creep
like a Gurkha and do the devils in. One night he got a whole
listening post like that. He does a lot of things a second in
command hasn't any business to do, but his men would follow him
anywhere. He bears a charmed life. I could tell you lots of
things--but I see my old General's getting restive." He rose,
stretched out his hand. "At any rate, take my word for it--if
there's a man in the British Army who doesn't know what fear is,
that man is Leonard Boyce."
He nodded in his frank way and rejoined his old General. As I had
had enough exciting information for one visit to town, I motored
back to Wellingsford.
