The next morning he strode in while I was at breakfast, handsome,
erect, deep-chested, the incarnation of physical strength, with a
glad light in his eyes.
"Congratulate me, old man," he cried, gripping my frail shoulder.
"I've three days' extra leave. And more than that, I go out in
command of the regiment. No temporary business but permanent rank.
Gazetted in due course. Bannatyne--that's our colonel--damned good
soldier!--has got a staff appointment. I take his place. I promise
you the Fourth King's Rifles are going to make history. Either
history or manure. History for choice. As I say, Bannatyne's a
damned good soldier, and personally as brave as a lion, but when
it comes to the regiment, he's too much on the cautious side. The
regiment's only longing to make things hum, and I'm going to let
'em do it."
I congratulated him in politely appropriate terms and went on with
my bacon and eggs. He sat on the window-seat and tapped his
gaiters with his cane life-preserver. He wore his cap.
"I thought you'd like to know," said he. "You've been so good to
the old mother while I've been away and been so charitable,
listening to my yarns, while I've been here, that I couldn't
resist coming round and telling you."
"I suppose your mother's delighted," said I.
He threw back his head and laughed, as though he had never a black
thought or memory in the world.
"Dear old mater! She has the impression that I'm going out to take
charge of the blessed campaign. So if she talks about 'my dear
son's army,' don't let her down, like a good chap--for she'll
think either me a fraud or you a liar."
He rose suddenly, with a change of expression.
"You're the only man in the world I could talk to like this about
my mother. You know the sterling goodness and loyalty that lies
beneath her funny little ways."
He strode to the window which looks out on to the garden, his back
turned on me. And there he stood silent for a considerable time. I
helped myself to marmalade and poured out a second cup of tea.
There was no call for me to speak. I had long realized that,
whatever may have been the man's sins and weaknesses, he had a
very deep and tender love for the Dresden china old lady that was
his mother. There was London of the clubs and the theatres and the
restaurants and the night-clubs, a war London full and alive, not
dead as in Augusts of far-off tradition, all ready to give him
talk and gaiety and the things that matter to the man who escapes
for a brief season from the never-ending hell of the battlefield;
ready, too, to pour flattery into his ear, to touch his scars with
the softest of its lingers. Yet he chose to stay, a recluse, in
our dull little town, avoiding even the kindly folk round about,
in order to devote himself to one dear but entirely uninteresting
old woman. It is not that he despised London, preferring the life
of the country gentleman. On the contrary, before the war Leonard
Boyce was very much the man about town. He loved the glitter and
the chatter of it. From chance words during this spell of leave, I
had divined hankering after its various fleshpots. For the sake of
one old woman he made reckless and gallant sacrifice. When he was
bored to misery he came round to me. I learned later that in
visiting Wellingsford he faced more than boredom. All of this you
must put to the credit side of his ledger.
There he stood, his great broad shoulders and bull-neck
silhouetted against the window. That broad expanse, a bit fleshy,
below the base of the skull indicates brutality. Never before, to
my eyes, had the sign asserted itself with so much aggression. I
had often wondered why, apart from the Vilboek Farm legend, I had
always disliked and distrusted him. Now I seemed to know. It was
the neck not of a man, but of a brute. The curious repulsion of
the previous evening, when he had carried me into the house, came
over me again. From junction of arm and body protruded six inches
of the steel-covered life-preserver, the washleather that hid its
ghastly knob staring at me blankly. I hated the thing. The gallant
English officer--and in my time I have known and loved a many of
the most gallant--does not go about in private life fondling a
trophy reeking with the blood of his enemies. It is the trait of a
savage. That truculent knob and that truculent bull-neck
correlated themselves most horribly in my mind. And again, with a
shiver, I had the haunting flash of a vision of him, out of the
tail of my eye, standing rigid and gaping between the two cars,
while my rugged old Marigold, in a businesslike, old-soldier sort
of way, without thought of danger or death, was swaying at the
head of the runaway horse.
Presently he turned, and his brows were set above unfathomable
hard eyes. The short-cropped moustache could not hide the curious
twitch of the lips which I had seen once before. It was obvious
that these few minutes of silence had been spent in deep thought
and had resulted in a decision. A different being from the gay,
successful soldier who had come in to announce his honours
confronted me. He threw down cap and stick and passed his hand
over his crisp brown hair.
"I don't know whether you're a friend of mine or not," he said,
hands on hips and gaitered legs slightly apart. "I've never been
able to make out. All through our intercourse, in spite of your
courtesy and hospitality, there has been some sort of reservation
on your part."
"If that is so," said I, diplomatically, "it is because of the
defects of my national quality."
"That's possibly what I've felt," said he. "But it doesn't matter
a damn with regard to what I want to say. It's a question not of
your feelings towards me, but my feelings towards you. I don't
want to make polite speeches--but you're a man whom I have every
reason to honour and trust. And unlike all my other brother-
officers, you have no reason to be jealous--"
"My dear fellow," I interrupted, "what's all this about? Why
jealousy?"
"You know what a pot-hunter is in athletics? A chap that is simply
out for prizes? Well, that's what a lot of them think of me. That
I'm just out to get orders and medals and distinctions and so
forth."
"That's nonsense," said I. "I happen to know. Your reputation in
the brigade is unassailable."
"In the way of my having done what I'm credited with, it is," he
answered. "But all the same, they're right."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"What I say. They're right. I'm out for everything I can get. Now
I'm out for a V.C. I see you think it abominable. That's because
you don't understand. No one but I myself could understand. I feel
I owe it to myself." He looked at me for a second or two and then
broke into a sardonic sort of laugh. "I suppose you think me a
conceited ass," he continued. "Why should Leonard Boyce be such a
vastly important person? It isn't that, I assure you."
I lit a cigarette, having waved an invitation to join me, which
with a nod he refused.
"What is it, then?"
"Has it ever struck you that often a man's most merciless creditor
is himself?"
Here was a casuistical proposition thrown at my head by the last
person I should have suspected of doing so. It was immensely
interesting, in view of my long puzzledom. I spoke warily.
"That depends on the man--on the nice balance of his dual nature.
On the one side is the power to demand mercilessly; on the other,
the instinct to respond. Of course, the criminal--"
"What are you dragging in criminals for?" he said sharply. "I'm
talking about honourable men with consciences. Criminals haven't
consciences. The devil who has just been hung for murdering three
women in their baths hadn't any dual nature, as you call it. Those
murders didn't represent to him a mountain of debt to God which
his soul was summoned to discharge. He went to his death thinking
himself a most unlucky and hardly used fellow."
His fingers went instinctively into the cigarette-box. I passed
him the matches.
"Precisely," said I. "That was the point I was about to make."
He puffed at his cigarette and looked rather foolish, as though
regretting his outburst.
"We've got away," he said, after a pause, "from what I was meaning
to tell you. And I want to tell you because I mayn't have another
chance." He turned to the window-seat and picked up his life-
preserver. "I'm out for two things. One is to kill Germans--" He
patted the covered knob--and there flashed across my mind a
boyhood's memory of Martin--wasn't it Martin?--in "Hereward the
Wake," who had a deliciously blood-curdling habit of patting his
revengeful axe.--"I've done in eighty-five with this and my
revolver. That, I consider, is my duty to my country. The other is
to get the V.C. That's for payment to my creditor self."
"In full, or on account?" said I.
"There's only one payment in full," he answered grimly, "and that
I've been offering for the past twelve months. And it's a thousand
chances to one it will be accepted before the end of this year.
And that, after all this palaver, is what I've just made up my
mind to talk to you about."
"You mean your death?"
"Just that," said he. "A man pot-hunting for Victoria Crosses
takes a thousand to one chance." He paused abruptly and shot an
eager and curiously wavering glance at me. "Am I boring you with
all this?"
"Good Heavens, no." And then as the insistence of his great figure
towering over me had begun to fret my nerves--"Sit down, man,"
said I, with an impatient gesture, "and put that sickening toy
away and come to the point."
He tossed the cane on the window-seat and sat near me on a
straight-backed chair.
"All right," he said. "I'll come to the point. I shan't see you
again. I'm going out in command. Thank God we're in the thick of
it. Round about Loos. It's a thousand to one I'll be killed. Life
doesn't matter much to me, in spite of what you may think. There
are only two people on God's earth I care for. One, of course, is
my old mother. The other is Betty Fairfax--I mean Betty Connor. I
spoke to you once about her--after I had met her here--and I gave
you to understand that I had broken off our engagement from
conscientious motives. It was an awkward position and I had to say
something. As a matter of fact I acted abominably. But I couldn't
help it." The corners of his lips suddenly worked in the odd
little twitch. "Sometimes circumstances, especially if a man's own
damn foolishness has contrived them, tie him hand and foot.
Sometimes physical instincts that he can't control." He narrowed
his eyes and bent forward, looking at me intently, and he repeated
the phrase slowly--"Physical instincts that he can't control-"
Was he referring to the incident of yesterday? I thought so. I
also believed it was the motive power of this strangely intimate
conversation.
He rose again as though restless, and once more went to the window
and seemed to seek inspiration or decision from the sight of my
roses. After a short while he turned and dragged up from his neck
a slim chain at the end of which hung a round object in a talc
case. This he unfastened and threw on the table in front of me.
"Do you know what that is?"
"Yes," said I. "Your identification disc."
"Look on the other side."
I took it up and found that the reverse contained the head cut out
from some photograph of Betty. After I had handed back the locket,
he slipped it on the chain and dropped it beneath his collar.
"I'm not a damned fool," said he.
I nodded understandingly. No one would have accused him of mawkish
sentiment. The woman whose portrait he wore night and day next his
skin was the woman he loved. He had no other way of proving his
sincerity than by exhibiting the token.
"I see," said I. "What do you propose to do?"
"I've told you. The V.C. or--" He snapped his fingers.
"But if it's the V.C. and a Brigade, and perhaps a Division--if
it's everything else imaginable except--"I snapped my fingers in
imitation--"What then?"
Again the hateful twitch of the lips, which he quickly
dissimulated in a smile.
"I'll begin to try to be a brave man." He lit another cigarette.
"But all that, my dear Meredyth," he continued, "is away from the
point. If I live, I'll ask you to forget this rotten palaver. But
I have a feeling that I shan't come back. Something tells me that
my particular form of extermination will be a head knocked into
slush. I'm absolutely certain that I shall never see you again.
Oh, I'm not morbid," he said, as I raised a protesting hand.
"You're an old soldier and know what these premonitions are. When
I came in--before I had finally made up my mind to pan out to you
like this--I felt like a boy who has been made captain of the
school. But all the same, I know I shan't see you again. So I want
you to promise me two things--quite honourable and easy."
"Of course, my dear fellow," said I rather tartly, for I did not
like the wind-up of his sentence. It was unthinkable that an
officer and a gentleman should inveigle a brother-officer into a
solemn promise to do anything dishonourable. "Of course. Anything
you like."
"One is to look after the old mother--"
"That goes without promising," said I.
"The other is to--what shall I say?--to rehabilitate my memory in
the eyes of Betty Connor. She may hear all kinds of things about
me--some true, others false--I have my enemies. She has heard
things already. I didn't know it till our last meeting here.
There's no one else on God's earth can do what I want but you. Do
you think I'm putting you into an impossible position?"
"I don't think so," said I. "Go on."
"Well--there's not much more to be said. Try to make her realise
that, whatever may be my faults--my crimes, if it comes to that--
I've done my damndest out there to make reparation. By God! I
have," he cried, in a sudden flash of passion. "See that she
realises it. And--" he thumped the hidden identification disc,
"tell her that she is the only woman that has ever really mattered
in the whole of my blasted life."
He threw his half-smoked cigarette into the fire-place and walked
over to the sideboard, where stood decanters and syphon.
"May I help myself to a drink?"
"Certainly," said I.
He gulped down half a whisky and soda and turned on me.
"You promise?"
"Of course," said I.
"She may have reasons to think the worst of me. But whatever I am
there is some good in me. I'm not altogether a worthless hound. If
you promise to make her think the best of me, I'll go away happy.
I don't care a damn whether I die or live. That's the truth. As
long as I'm alive I can take care of myself. I'm not dreaming of
asking you to say a word to win her favour. That would be
outrageous impudence. You clearly understand. I don't want you
ever to mention my name unless I'm dead. If I feel that I've an
advocate in you--advocatus diaboli, if you like--I'll go away
happy. You've got your brief. You know my life at home. You know
my record."
"My dear fellow," said I, "I promise to do everything in my power
to carry out your wishes. But as to your record--are you quite
certain that I know it?"
You must realise that there was a curious tension in the
situation, at any rate as far as it affected myself. Here was a
man with whom, for reasons you know, I had studiously cultivated
the most formal social relations, claiming my active participation
in the secret motives of his heart. Since his first return from
the front a bluff friendliness had been the keynote of our
intercourse. Nothing more. Now he came and without warning
enmeshed me in this intimate net of love and death. I promised to
do his bidding--I could not do otherwise. I was in the position of
an executor according to the terms of a last will and testament.
Our comradeship in arms--those of our old Army who survive will
understand--forbade refusal. Besides, his intensity of purpose won
my sympathy and admiration. But I loved him none the more. To my
cripple's detested sensitiveness, as he stood over me, he loomed
more than ever the hulking brute. His semi-confessions and
innuendoes exacerbated my feelings of distrust and repulsion. And
yet, at the same tune, I could not--nor did I try to--repress an
immense pity for the man; perhaps less for the man than for the
soul in pain. At the back of his words some torment burned at red
heat, remorselessly. He sought relief. Perhaps he sought it from
me because I was as apart as a woman from his physical splendour,
a kind of bodiless creature with just a brain and a human heart,
the ghost of an old soldier, far away from the sphere of poor
passions and little jealousies.
I felt the tentacles of the man's nature blindly and convulsively
groping after something within me that eluded them. That is the
best way in which I can describe the psychology of these strange
moments. The morning sun streamed into my little oak-panelled
dining-room and caught the silver and fruit on the breakfast table
and made my frieze of old Delft glow blue like the responsive
western sky. With his back to the vivid window, Leonard Boyce
stood cut out black like a silhouette. That he, too, felt the
tension, I know; for a wasp crawled over his face, from cheek-
bone, across his temples, to his hair, and he did not notice it.
Instinctively I said the words: "Your record. Are you quite
certain that I know it?"
With what intensity, with what significance in my eyes, I may have
said them, I know not. I repeat that I had a subconsciousness,
almost uncanny, that we were souls rather than men, talking to
each other. He sat down once more, drawing the chair to the table
and resting his elbow on it.
"My record," said he. "What about it?"
Again please understand that I felt I had the man's soul naked
before me. An imponderable hand plucked away my garments of
convention.
"Some time ago," said I, "you spoke of my attitude towards you
being marked by a certain reserve. That is quite true. It dates
back many years. It dates back from the South African War. From an
affair at Vilboek's Farm."
Again his lips twitched; but otherwise he did not move.
"I remember," he answered. "My men saw me run away. I came out of
it quite clean."
I said: "I saw the man afterwards in hospital at Cape Town. His
name was Somers. He told me quite a different story."
His face grew grey. He glanced at me for a fraction of a second.
"What did he tell you?" he asked quietly.
In the fewest possible words I repeated what I have set down
already in this book. When I had ended, he said in the same
toneless way:
"You have believed that all these years?"
"I have done my best not to believe it. The last twelve months
have disproved it."
He shook his head. "They haven't. Nothing I can do in this world
can disprove it. What that man said was true."
"True?"
I drew a deep breath and stared at him hard. His eyes met mine.
They were very sad and behind them lay great pain. Although I
expressed astonishment, it proceeded rather from some reflex
action than from any realised shock to my consciousness. I say the
whole thing was uncanny. I knew, as soon as he sat down by the
table, that he would confess to the Vilboek story. And yet, at
last, when he did confess and there were no doubts lingering in my
mind, I gasped and stared at him.
"I was a bloody coward," he said. "That's frank enough. When they
rode away and left me, I tried to shoot myself--and I couldn't. If
the man Somers hadn't returned, I think I should have waited until
they sent to arrest me. But he did come back and the instinct of
self-preservation was too strong. I know my story about the men's
desertion and my forcing him to back me up was vile and
despicable. But I clung to life and it was my only chance.
Afterwards, with the horror of the thing hanging over me, I didn't
care so much about life. In the little fighting that was left for
me I deliberately tried to throw it away. I ask you to believe
that."
"I do," I said. "You were mentioned in dispatches for gallantry in
action."
He passed his hand over his eyes. Looking up, he said:
"It is strange that you of all men, my neighbour here, should have
heard of this. Not a whisper of its being known has ever reached
me. How many people do you think have any idea of it?"
I told him all that I knew and concluded by showing him Reggie
Dacre's letter, which I had kept in the letter-case in my pocket.
He returned it to me without a word. Presently he broke a spell of
silence. All this time he had sat fixed in the one attitude--only
shifted once, when Marigold entered to clear away the breakfast
things and was dismissed by me with a glance and a gesture.
"Do you remember," he said, "a talk we had about fear, in April,
the first time I was over? I described what I knew. The paralysis
of fear. Since we are talking as I never thought to talk with a
human being, I may as well make my confession. I'm a man of strong
animal passions. When I see red, I daresay I'm just a brute beast.
But I'm a physical coward. Owing to this paralysis of fear, this
ghastly inhibition of muscular or nervous action, I have gone
through things even worse than that South-African business. I go
about like a man under a curse. Even out there, when I don't care
a damn whether I live or die, the blasted thing gets hold of me."
He swung himself away from the table and shook his great clenched
firsts. "By the grace of God, no one yet has seemed to notice it.
I suppose I have a swift brain and as soon as the thing is over I
can cover it up. It's my awful terror that one day I shall be
found out and everything I've gained shall be stripped away from
me."
"But what about a thing like this?" said I, tapping Colonel
Dacre's letter.
"That's all right," he answered grimly. "That's when I know what
I'm facing. That's deliberate pot-hunting. It's saving face as the
Chinese say. It's doing any damned thing that will put me right
with myself."
He got up and swung about the room. I envied him, I would have
given a thousand pounds to do the same just for a few moments. But
I was stuck in my confounded chair, deprived of physical outlet.
Suddenly he came to a halt and stood once more over me.
"Now you know what kind of a fellow I am, what do you think of
me?"
It was a brutal question to fling at my head. It gave me no time
to co-ordinate my ideas. What was one to make of a man avowedly
subject to fits of the most despicable cowardice from the
consequences of which he used any unscrupulous craftiness to
extricate himself, and yet was notorious in his achievement of
deeds of the most reckless courage? It is a problem to which I
have devoted all the months occupied in waiting this book. How the
dickens could I solve it at a minute's notice? The situation was
too blatant, too raw, too near bedrock, too naked and unashamed,
for me to take refuge in platitudinous generalities of excuse. The
bravest of men know Fear. They know him pretty intimately. But
they manage to kick him to Hades by the very reason of their being
brave men. I had to take Leonard Boyce as I found him. And I must
admit that I found him a tragically miserable man. That is how I
answered his question--in so many words.
"You're not far wrong," said he.
He picked up cap and stick.
"When I get up to town I shall make my will. I've never worried
about it before. Can I appoint you my executor?"
"Certainly," said I.
"I'm very grateful. I'll assure you a fireworks sort of finish, so
that you shan't be ashamed. And--I don't ask impossibilities--I
can't hold you to your previous promise--but what about Betty
Connor?"
"You may count," said I, "on my acting like an officer and a
gentleman, and, if I may say so, like a Christian."
He said: "Thank you, Meredyth. Good-bye." Then he stuck on his
cap, brought his fingers to the peak in salute and marched to the
door.
"Boyce!" I cried sharply.
He turned. "Yes?"
"Aren't you going to shake hands with me?"
He retraced the few steps to my chair.
"I didn't know whether it would be--" he paused, seeking for a
word--"whether it would be agreeable."
Then I broke down. The strain had been too great for my sick man's
nerves. I forgot all about the brutality of his bull-neck, for he
faced me in all his gallant manhood and there was a damnable
expression in his eyes like that of a rated dog. I stretched out
my hand.
"My dear good fellow," I cried, "what the hell are you talking
about?"
