DEBITS AND CREDITS




Books by Rudyard Kipling


  Actions and Reactions
  Brushwood Boy, The
  Captains Courageous
  Collected Verse
  Day’s Work, The
  Debits and Credits
  Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads
  Diversity of Creatures, A
  Eyes of Asia, The
  Feet of the Young Men, The
  Five Nations, The
  France at War
  Fringes of the Fleet
  From Sea to Sea
  History of England, A
  Independence
  Irish Guards in the Great War, The
  Jungle Book, The
  Jungle Book, Second
  Just So Song Book
  Just So Stories
  Kim
  Kipling Anthology, A Prose and Verse
  Kipling Calendar
  Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know
  Kipling Birthday Book, The
  Land and Sea Tales
  Letters of Travel
  Life’s Handicap: Being Stories of Mine Own People
  Light That Failed, The
  Many Inventions
  Naulahka, The (With Wolcott Balestier)
  Plain Tales From the Hills
  Puck of Pook’s Hill
  Rewards and Fairies
  Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Inclusive Edition, 1885-1918
  Sea Warfare
  Seven Seas, The
  Soldier Stories
  Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys, and In Black and White
  Song of the English, A
  Songs for Youth
  Songs from Books
  Stalky & Co.
  The Two Jungle Books
  They
  Traffics and Discoveries
  Under the Deodars, The Phantom ’Rickshaw, and Wee Willie Winkie
  With the Night Mail
  Years Between, The




  DEBITS AND CREDITS

  By Rudyard Kipling

  [Illustration: Colophon]


  GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
  1926




  [Illustration: Rudyard Kipling Signature]

  COPYRIGHT, 1919, 1924, 1926, BY RUDYARD KIPLING.
  COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1918, BY THE METROPOLITAN MAGAZINE COMPANY.
  COPYRIGHT, 1925, 1926, BY THE MCCALL COMPANY.
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS,
  GARDEN CITY, N. Y.




CONTENTS


                                                           PAGE

 The Enemies to Each Other                                    1
   _The Changelings_                                         19

 Sea Constables: A Tale of ’15                               20
   _The Vineyard_                                            41
   “_Banquet Night_”                                         45

 “In the Interests of the Brethren”                          47
   _To the Companions_ (_Horace, Ode 17, Bk._ V)             69

 The United Idolaters                                        70
   _The Centaurs_                                            89
   “_Late Came the God_”                                     93

 The Wish House                                              94
   _Rahere_                                                 117
   _The Survival_ (_Horace, Ode 22, Bk._ V)                 123

 The Janeites                                               124
   _Jane’s Marriage_                                        148
   _The Portent_ (_Horace, Ode 20, Bk._ V)                  153

 The Prophet and the Country                                154
   _Gow’s Watch: Act IV, Sc. 4_                             171

 The Bull That Thought                                      177
   _Alnaschar and the Oxen_                                 196
   _Gipsy Vans_                                             201

 A Madonna of the Trenches                                  203
   _Gow’s Watch: Act V. Sc. 3_                              223
   _The Birthright_                                         229

 The Propagation of Knowledge                               230
   _A Legend of Truth_                                      257

 A Friend of the Family                                     259
   _We and They_                                            277

 On the Gate: A Tale of ’16                                 281
   _The Supports_                                           303
   _Untimely_                                               309

 The Eye of Allah                                           310
   _The Last Ode: Nov. 27, B.C. 8 (Horace, Ode 31, Bk._ V)  336

 The Gardener                                               339
   _The Burden_                                             353




  THE ENEMIES TO EACH OTHER

  _With Apologies to the Shade of Mirza Mirkhond_




THE ENEMIES TO EACH OTHER


It is narrated (and God knows best the true state of the case) by Abu
Ali Jafir Bin Yakub-ulisfahani that when, in His determinate Will,
The Benefactor had decided to create the Greatest Substitute (Adam),
He despatched, as is known, the faithful and the excellent Archangel
Jibrail to gather from Earth clays, loams, and sands endowed with
various colours and attributes, necessary for the substance of our
pure Forefather’s body. Receiving the Command and reaching the place,
Jibrail put forth his hand to take them, but Earth shook and lamented
and supplicated him. Then said Jibrail: “Lie still and rejoice, for
out of thee He will create that than which (there) is no handsomer
thing--to wit a Successor and a Wearer of the Diadem over thee through
the ages.” Earth said: “I adjure thee to abstain from thy purpose, lest
evil and condemnation of that person who is created out of me should
later overtake him, and the Abiding (sorrow) be loosed upon my head. I
have no power to resist the Will of the Most High, but I take refuge
with Allah from thee.” So Jibrail was moved by the lamentations and
helplessness of Earth, and returned to the Vestibule of the Glory with
an empty hand.

After this, by the Permission, the Just and Terrible Archangel Michael
next descended, and he, likewise, hearing and seeing the abjection of
Earth, returned with an empty hand. Then was sent the Archangel Azrael,
and when Earth had once again implored God, and once again cried out,
he closed his hand upon her bosom and tore out the clays and sands
necessary.

Upon his return to the Vestibule it was asked if Earth had again taken
refuge with Allah or not? Azrael said: “Yes.” It was answered: “If
it took refuge with Me why didst thou not spare?” Azrael answered:
“Obedience (to Thee) was more obligatory than Pity (for it).” It was
answered: “Depart! I have made thee the Angel of Death to separate the
souls from the bodies of men.” Azrael wept, saying: “Thus shall all
men hate me.” It was answered: “Thou hast said that Obedience is more
obligatory than Pity. Mix thou the clays and the sands and lay them
to dry between Tayif and Mecca till the time appointed.” So, then,
Azrael departed and did according to the Command. But in his haste
he perceived not that he had torn out from Earth clays and minerals
that had lain in her at war with each other since the first; nor did
he withdraw them and set them aside. And in his grief that he should
have been decreed the Separator of Companions, his tears mingled with
them in the mixing so that the substance of Adam’s body was made
unconformable and ill-assorted, pierced with burning drops, and at
issue with itself before there was (cause of) strife.

This, then, lay out to dry for forty years between Tayif and Mecca
and, through all that time, the Beneficence of the Almighty leavened
it and rained upon it the Mercy and the Blessing, and the properties
necessary to the adornment of the Successorship. In that period, too,
it is narrated that the Angels passed to and fro above it, and among
them Eblis the Accursed, who smote the predestined Creation while it
was drying, and it rang hollow. Eblis then looked more closely and
observing that of which it was composed to be diverse and ill-assorted
and impregnated with bitter tears, he said: “Doubt not I shall soon
attain authority over this; and his ruin shall be easy.” (This, too,
lay in the foreknowledge of The Endless.)

When time was that the chain of cause and effect should be surrendered
to Man’s will, and the vessels of desire and intention entrusted to
his intelligence, and the tent of his body illuminated by the lamp of
vitality, the Soul was despatched, by Command of the Almighty, with
the Archangel Jibrail, towards that body. But the Soul being thin and
subtle refused, at first, to enter the thick and diverse clays, saying:
“I have fear of that (which is) to be.” This it cried twice, till it
received the Word: “_Enter unwillingly, and unwillingly depart._” Then
only it entered. And when that agony was accomplished, the Word came:
“_My Compassion exceedeth My Wrath._” It is narrated that these were
the first words of which our pure Forefather had cognisance.

Afterwards, by the operation of the determinate Will, there arose in
Adam a desire for a companion, and an intimate and a friend in the
Garden of the Tree. It is narrated that he first took counsel of Earth
(which had furnished) his body. Earth said: “Forbear. Is it not enough
that one should have dominion over me?” Adam answered: “There is but
one who is One in Earth or Heaven. All paired things point to the
Unity, and my soul, which came not from thee, desires unutterably.”
Earth said: “Be content in innocence, and let thy body, which I
gave unwillingly, return thus to (me) thy mother.” Adam said: “I am
motherless. What should I know?”

At that time came Eblis the Accursed who had long prepared an evil
stratagem and a hateful device against our pure Forefather, being
desirous of his damnation, and anxious to multiply causes and occasions
thereto. He addressed first his detestable words to the Peacock among
the birds of the Garden, saying: “I have great amity towards thee
because of thy beauty; but, through no fault of mine, I am forbidden
the Garden. Hide me, then, among thy tail-feathers that I may enter it,
and worship both thee and our Lord Adam, who is Master of thee.” The
Peacock said: “Not by any contrivance of mine shalt thou enter, lest
a judgment fall on my beauty and my excellence. But there is in the
Garden a Serpent of loathsome aspect who shall make thy path easy.”
He then despatched the Serpent to the Gate and after conversation and
by contrivance and a malign artifice, Eblis hid himself under the
tongue of the Serpent, and was thus conveyed past the barrier. He then
worshipped Adam and ceased not to counsel him to demand a companion and
an intimate that the delights might be increased, and the succession
assured to the Regency of Earth. For he foresaw that, among multitudes,
many should come to him. Adam therefore made daily supplication
for that blessing. It was answered him: “How knowest thou if the
gratification of thy desire be a blessing or a curse?” Adam said: “By
no means; but I will abide the chance.”

Then the somnolence fell upon him, as is narrated; and upon waking he
beheld our Lady Eve (upon whom be the Mercy and the Forgiveness). Adam
said: “O my Lady and Light of my Universe, who art thou?” Eve said: “O
my Lord and Summit of my Contentment, who art thou?” Adam said: “Of
a surety I am thine.” Eve said: “Of a surety I am thine.” Thus they
ceased to inquire further into the matter, but were united, and became
one flesh and one soul, and their felicity was beyond comparison or
belief or imagination or apprehension.

Thereafter, it is narrated, that Eblis the Stoned consorted with them
secretly in the Garden, and the Peacock with him; and they jested
and made mirth for our Lord Adam and his Lady Eve and propounded
riddles and devised occasions for the stringing of the ornaments and
the threading of subtleties. And upon a time when their felicity was
at its height, and their happiness excessive, and their contentment
expanded to the uttermost, Eblis said: “O my Master and my Mistress
declare to us, if it pleases, some comparison or similitude that lies
beyond the limits of possibility.” Adam said: “This is easy. That the
Sun should cease in Heaven or that the Rivers should dry in the Garden
is beyond the limits of possibility.” And they laughed and agreed,
and the Peacock said: “O our Lady, tell us now something of a jest
as unconceivable and as beyond belief as this saying of thy Lord.”
Our Lady Eve then said: “That my Lord should look upon me otherwise
than is his custom is beyond this saying.” And when they had laughed
abundantly, she said: “O our Servitors, tell us now something that is
further from possibility or belief than my saying.” Then the Peacock
said: “O our Lady Eve, except that thou shouldst look upon thy Lord
otherwise than is thy custom, there is nothing further than thy saying
from possibility or belief or imagination.” Then said Eblis: “Except
that the one of you should be made an enemy to the other, there is
nothing, O my Lady, further than thy saying from possibility, or
belief, or imagination, or apprehension.” And they laughed immoderately
all four together in the Garden.

But when the Peacock had gone and Eblis had seemed to depart, our Lady
Eve said to Adam: “My Lord and Disposer of my Soul, by what means did
Eblis know our fear?” Adam said: “O my Lady, what fear?” Eve said: “The
fear which was in our hearts from the first, that the one of us might
be made an enemy to the other.” Then our pure Forefather bowed his head
on her bosom and said: “O Companion of my Heart, this has been my fear
also from the first, but how didst thou know?” Eve said: “Because I am
thy flesh and thy soul. What shall we do?”

Thus, then, they came at moonrise to the Tree that had been forbidden
to them, and Eblis lay asleep under it. But he waked merrily and said:
“O my Master and my Mistress, this is the Tree of Eternity. By eating
her fruit, felicity is established for ever among mankind; nor after
eating it shall there be any change whatever in the disposition of the
hearts of the eaters.”

Eve then put out her hand to the fruit, but Adam said: “It is
forbidden. Let us go.” Eve said: “O my Lord and my Sustainer, upon my
head be it, and upon the heads of my daughters after me. I will first
taste of this Tree, and if misfortune fall on me, do thou intercede
for me; or else eat likewise, so that eternal bliss may come to us
together.”

Thus she ate, and he after her; and at once the ornaments of Paradise
disappeared from round them, and they were delivered to shame and
nudity and abjection. Then, as is narrated, Adam accused Eve in the
Presence; but our Lady Eve (upon whom be the Pity and the Recompense)
accepted (the blame of) all that had been done.

When the Serpent and the Peacock had each received their portion for
their evil contrivances (for the punishment of Eblis was reserved) the
Divine Decree of Expulsion was laid upon Adam and Eve in these words:
“_Get ye down, the one of you an enemy to the other._” Adam said: “But
I have heard that Thy Compassion exceeds Thy Wrath.” It was answered:
“I have spoken. The Decree shall stand in the place of all curses.” So
they went down, and the barriers of the Garden of the Tree were made
fast behind them.

It is further recorded by the stringers of the pearls of words and the
narrators of old, that when our pure Forefather the Lord Adam and his
adorable consort Eve (upon whom be the Glory and the Sacrifice) were
thus expelled, there was lamentation among the beasts in the Garden
whom Adam had cherished and whom our Lady Eve had comforted. Of those
unaffected there remained only the Mole, whose custom it was to burrow
in earth and to avoid the light of the Sun. His nature was malignant
and his body inconspicuous but, by the Power of the Omnipotent, Whose
Name be exalted, he was then adorned with eyes far-seeing both in the
light and the darkness.

When the Mole heard the Divine Command of Expulsion, it entered his
impure mind that he would extract profit and advancement from a secret
observation and a hidden espial. So he followed our Forefather and
his august consort, under the earth, and watched those two in their
affliction and their abjection and their misery, and the Garden was
without his presence for that time.

When his watch was complete and his observation certain, he turned him
swiftly underneath the Earth and came back saying to the Guardians of
the Gate: “Make room! I have a sure and a terrible report.” So his
passage was permitted, and he lay till evening in the Garden. Then
he said: “Can the Accursed by any means escape the Decree?” It was
answered: “By no means can they escape or avoid.” Then the Mole said:
“But I have seen that they have escaped.” It was answered: “Declare
thy observation.” The Mole said: “The enemies to each other have
altogether departed from Thy worship and Thy adoration. Nor are they
in any sort enemies to each other, for they enjoy together the most
perfect felicity, and moreover they have made them a new God.” It was
answered: “Declare the shape of the God.” The Mole said: “Their God is
of small stature, pinkish in colour, unclothed, fat and smiling. They
lay it upon the grass and, filling its hands with flowers, worship it
and desire no greater comfort.” It was answered: “Declare the name of
the God.” The Mole said: “Its name is Quabil (Cain), and I testify upon
a sure observation that it is their God and their Uniter and their
Comforter.” It was answered: “Why hast thou come to Us?” The Mole said:
“Through my zeal and my diligence; for honour and in hope of reward.”
It was answered: “Is this, then, the best that thou canst do with
the eyes which We gave thee?” The Mole said: “To the extreme of my
ability!” It was answered: “There is no need. Thou hast not added to
their burden, but to thine own. Be darkened henceforward, upon Earth
and under Earth. It is not good to spy upon any creature of God to whom
alleviation is permitted.” So, then, the Mole’s eyes were darkened and
contracted, and his lot was made miserable upon and under the Earth to
this day.

But to those two, Adam and Eve, the alleviation was permitted, till
Habil and Quabil and their sisters Labuda and Aqlemia had attained
the age of maturity. Then there came to the Greatest Substitute and
his Consort, from out of Kabul the Stony, that Peacock, by whose
contrivance Eblis the Accursed had first obtained admission into the
Garden of the Tree. And they made him welcome in all their ways and
into all their imaginings; and he sustained them with false words and
flagitious counsels, so that they considered and remembered their
forfeited delights in the Garden both arrogantly and impenitently.

Then came the Word to the Archangel Jibrail the Faithful, saying:
“Follow those two with diligence, and interpose the shield of thy
benevolence where it shall be necessary; for though We have surrendered
them for awhile (to Eblis) they shall not achieve an irremediable
destruction.” Jibrail therefore followed our First Substitute and the
Lady Eve--upon whom is the Grace and a Forgetfulness--and kept watch
upon them in all the lands appointed for their passage through the
world. Nor did he hear any lamentations in their mouths for their sins.
It is recorded that, for a hundred years they were continuously upheld
by the Peacock under the detestable power of Eblis the Stoned, who by
means of magic multiplied the similitudes of meat and drink and rich
raiment about them for their pleasure, and came daily to worship them
as Gods. (This also lay in the predestined Will of the Inscrutable).
Further, in that age, their eyes were darkened and their minds were
made turbid, and the faculty of laughter was removed from them. The
Excellent Archangel Jibrail, when he perceived by observation that they
had ceased to laugh, returned and bowed himself among the Servitors and
cried: “The last evil has fallen upon Thy creatures whom I guard! They
have ceased to laugh and are made even with the ox and the camel.” It
was answered: “This also was foreseen. Keep watch.”

After yet another hundred years Eblis, whose doom is assured, came to
worship Adam as was his custom and said: “O my Lord and my Advancer
and my Preceptor in Good and Evil, whom hast thou ever beheld in all
thy world, wiser and more excellent than thyself?” Adam said: “I have
never seen such an one.” Eblis asked: “Hast thou ever conceived of
such an one?” Adam answered: “Except in dreams I have never conceived
of such an one.” Eblis then answered: “Disregard dreams. They proceed
from superfluity of meat. Stretch out thy hand upon the world which
thou hast made and take possession.” So Adam took possession of the
mountains which he had levelled and of the rivers which he had diverted
and of the upper and lower Fires which he had made to speak and to work
for him, and he named them as possessions for himself and his children
for ever. After this, Eblis asked: “O, my Upholder and Crown of my
Belief, who has given thee these profitable things?” Adam said: “By my
Hand and my Head, I alone have given myself these things.” Eblis said:
“Praise we the Giver!” So, then, Adam praised himself in a loud voice,
and built an Altar and a Mirror behind the Altar; and he ceased not
to adore himself in the Mirror, and to extol himself daily before the
Altar, by the name and under the attributes of the Almighty.

The historians assert that on such occasions it was the custom of the
Peacock to expand his tail and stand beside our First Substitute and to
minister to him with flatteries and adorations.

After yet another hundred years, the Omnipotent Whose Name be exalted,
put a bitter remorse into the bosom of the Peacock, and that bird
closed his tail and wept upon the mountains of Serendib. Then said
the Excellent and Faithful Archangel Jibrail: “How has the Vengeance
overtaken thee, O thou least desirable of fowl?” The Peacock said:
“Though I myself would by no means consent to convey Eblis into the
Garden of the Tree, yet as is known to thee and to the All Seeing, I
referred him to the Serpent for a subtle device, by whose malice and
beneath whose tongue did Eblis secretly enter that Garden. Wherefore
did Allah change my attuned voice to a harsh cry and my beauteous
legs to unseemly legs, and hurled me into the district of Kabul the
Stony. Now I fear that He will also deprive me of my tail, which is
the ornament of my days and the delight of my eye. For that cause and
in that fear I am penitent, O Servant of God.” Jibrail then said:
“Penitence lies not in confession, but in restitution and visible
amendment.” The Peacock said: “Enlighten me in that path and prove
my sincerity.” Jibrail said: “I am troubled on account of Adam who,
through the impure magic of Eblis, has departed from humility, and
worships himself daily at an Altar and before a Mirror, in such and
such a manner.” The Peacock said: “O Courier of the Thrones, hast thou
taken counsel of the Lady Eve?” Jibrail asked: “For what reason?” The
Peacock said: “For the reason that when the Decree of Expulsion was
issued against those two, it was said: ‘_Get ye down, the one of you
an enemy unto the other_,’ and this is a sure word.” Jibrail answered:
“What will that profit?” The Peacock said: “Let us exchange our shapes
for a time and I will show thee that profit.”

Jibrail then exacted an oath from the Peacock that he would return
him his shape at the expiration of a certain time without dishonour
or fraud, and the exchange was effected, and Jibrail retired himself
into the shape of the Peacock, and the Peacock lifted himself into
the illustrious similitude of Jibrail and came to our Lady Eve and
said: “Who is God?” The Lady Eve answered him: “His name is Adam.” The
Peacock said: “How is he God?” The Lady Eve answered: “For that he
knows both Good and Evil.” The Peacock asked: “By what means attained
he to that knowledge?” The Lady Eve answered: “Of a truth it was I
who brought it to him between my hands from off a Tree in the Garden.”
The Peacock said: “The greater then thy modesty and thy meekness, O my
Lady Eve,” and he removed himself from her presence, and came again
to Jibrail a little before the time of the evening prayer. He said to
that excellent and trusty one: “Continue, I pray, to serve in my shape
at the time of the Worship at the Altar.” So Jibrail consented and
preened himself and spread his tail and pecked between his claws, after
the manner of created Peacocks, before the Altar until the entrance
of our pure Forefather and his august consort. Then he perceived by
observation that when Adam kneeled at the Mirror to adore himself the
Lady Eve abode unwillingly, and in time she asked: “Have I then no part
in this worship?” Adam answered: “A great and a redoubtable part hast
thou, O my Lady, which is to praise and worship me constantly.” The
Lady Eve said: “But I weary of this worship. Except thou build me an
Altar and make a Mirror to me also I will in no wise be present at this
worship, nor in thy bed.” And she withdrew her presence. Adam then said
to Jibrail whom he esteemed to be the Peacock: “What shall we do? If I
build not an Altar, the Woman who walks by my side will be a reproach
to me by day and a penance by night, and peace will depart from the
earth.” Jibrail answered, in the voice of the Peacock: “For the sake of
Peace on earth build her also an Altar.” So they built an Altar with a
Mirror in all respects conformable to the Altar which Adam had made,
and Adam made proclamation from the ends of the earth to the ends of
the earth that there were now two Gods upon earth--the one Man, and the
other Woman.

Then came the Peacock in the likeness of Jibrail to the Lady Eve and
said: “O Lady of Light, why is thy Altar upon the left hand and
the Altar of my Lord upon the right?” The Lady Eve said: “It is a
remediable error,” and she remedied it with her own hands, and our
pure Forefather fell into a great anger. Then entered Jibrail in
the likeness of the Peacock and said to Adam: “O my Lord and Very
Interpreter, what has vexed thee?” Adam said: “What shall we do? The
Woman who sleeps in my bosom has changed the honourable places of the
Altars, and if I suffer not the change she will weary me by night
and day, and there will be no refreshment upon earth.” Jibrail said,
speaking in the voice of the Peacock: “For the sake of refreshment
suffer the change.” So they worshipped at the changed Altars, the Altar
to the Woman upon the right, and to the Man upon the left.

Then came the Peacock, in the similitude of Jibrail the Trusty One,
to our Lady Eve and said: “O Incomparable and All-Creating, art thou
by chance the mother of Quabil and Habil (Cain and Abel)?” The Lady
Eve answered: “By no chance but by the immutable ordinance of Nature
am I their Mother.” The Peacock said, in the voice of Jibrail: “Will
they become such as Adam?” The Lady Eve answered: “Of a surety, and
many more also.” The Peacock, as Jibrail, said: “O Lady of Abundance,
enlighten me now which is the greater, the mother or the child?” The
Lady Eve answered: “Of a surety, the mother.” The disguised Peacock
then said: “O my Lady, seeing that from thee alone proceed all the
generations of Man who calls himself God, what need of any Altar to
Man?” The Lady Eve answered: “It is an error. Doubt not it shall
be rectified,” and at the time of the Worship she smote down the
left-hand Altar. Adam said: “Why is this, O my Lady and my Co-equal?”
The Lady Eve answered: “Because it has been revealed that in Me is
all excellence and increase, splendour, terror, and power. Bow down
and worship.” Adam answered: “O my Lady, but thou art Eve my mate and
no sort of goddess whatever. This have I known from the beginning.
Only for Peace’ sake I suffered thee to build an Altar to thyself.”
The Lady Eve answered: “O my Lord, but thou art Adam my mate, and by
many universes removed from any sort of Godhead, and this have I known
from the first. Nor for the sake of any peace whatever will I cease
to proclaim it.” She then proclaimed it aloud, and they reproached
each other and disputed and betrayed their thoughts and their inmost
knowledges until the Peacock lifted himself in haste from their
presence and came to Jibrail and said: “Let us return each to his own
shape; for Enlightenment is at hand.”

       *       *       *       *       *

So restitution was made without fraud or dishonour and they returned to
the temple each in his proper shape with his attributes, and listened
to the end of that conversation between the First Substitute and his
august Consort who ceased not to reprehend each other upon all matters
within their observation and their experience and their imagination.

When the steeds of recrimination had ceased to career across the plains
of memory, and when the drum of evidence was no longer beaten by the
drumstick of malevolence, and the bird of argument had taken refuge in
the rocks of silence, the Excellent and Trustworthy Archangel Jibrail
bowed himself before our pure Forefather and said: “O my Lord and Fount
of all Power and Wisdom, is it permitted to worship the Visible God?”

Then by the operation of the Mercy of Allah, the string was loosed in
the throat of our First Substitute and the oppression was lifted from
his lungs and he laughed without cessation and said: “By Allah I am no
God but the mate of this most detestable Woman whom I love, and who
is necessary to me beyond all the necessities.” But he ceased not to
entertain Jibrail with tales of the follies and the unreasonableness of
our Lady Eve till the night time.

The Peacock also bowed before the Lady Eve and said: “Is it permitted
to adore the Source and the Excellence?” and the string was loosened in
the Lady Eve’s throat and she laughed aloud and merrily and said: “By
Allah I am no goddess in any sort, but the mate of this mere Man whom,
in spite of all, I love beyond and above my soul.” But she detained the
Peacock with tales of the stupidity and the childishness of our pure
Forefather till the Sun rose.

Then Adam entered, and the two looked upon each other laughing. Then
said Adam: “O my Lady and Crown of my Torments, is it peace between
us?” And our Lady Eve answered: “O my Lord and sole Cause of my
Unreason, it is peace till the next time and the next occasion.” And
Adam said: “I accept, and I abide the chance.” Our Lady Eve said: “O
Man, wouldst thou have it otherwise upon any composition?” Adam said:
“O Woman, upon no composition would I have it otherwise--not even for
the return to the Garden of the Tree; and this I swear on thy head and
the heads of all who shall proceed from thee.” And Eve said: “I also.”
So they removed both Altars and laughed and built a new one between.

Then Jibrail and the Peacock departed and prostrated themselves before
the Throne and told what had been said. It was answered: “How left
ye them?” They said: “Before one Altar.” It was answered: “What was
written upon the Altar?” They said: “The Decree of Expulsion as it was
spoken--‘_Get ye down, the one of you an enemy unto the other_.’”

And it was answered: “Enough! It shall stand in the place of both Our
Curse and Our Blessing.”




SEA CONSTABLES

A Tale of ’15




THE CHANGELINGS


    Or ever the battered liners sank
      With their passengers to the dark,
    I was head of a Walworth Bank,
      And you were a grocer’s clerk.

    I was a dealer in stocks and shares,
      And you in butters and teas,
    And we both abandoned our own affairs
      And took to the dreadful seas.

    Wet and worry about our ways--
      Panic, onset, and flight--
    Had us in charge for a thousand days
      And a thousand-year-long night.

    We saw more than the nights could hide--
      More than the waves could keep--
    And--certain faces over the side
      Which do not go from our sleep.

    We were more tired than words can tell
      While the pied craft fled by,
    And the swinging mounds of the Western swell
      Hoisted us Heavens-high....

    Now there is nothing--not even our rank--
      To witness what we have been;
    And I am returned to my Walworth Bank,
      And you to your margarine!




SEA CONSTABLES

A Tale of ’15


The head-waiter of the Carvoitz almost ran to meet Portson and his
guests as they came up the steps from the palm-court where the string
band plays.

“Not seen you since--oh, ever so long,” he began. “_So_ glad to get
your wire. Quite well--eh?”

“Fair to middling, Henri,” Portson shook hands with him. “You’re
looking all right, too. Have you got us our table?”

Henri nodded towards a pink alcove, kept for mixed doubles, which
discreetly commanded the main dining-room’s glitter and blaze.

“Good man!” said Portson. “Now, this is serious, Henri. We put
ourselves unreservedly in your hands. We’re weather-beaten
mariners--though we don’t look it, and we haven’t eaten a Christian
meal in months. Have you thought of all that, Henri, mon ami?”

“The menu, I have compose it myself,” Henri answered with the gravity
of a high priest.

It was more than a year since Portson--of Portson, Peake and Ensell,
Stock and Share Brokers--had drawn Henri’s attention to an apparently
extinct Oil Company which, a little later, erupted profitably; and it
may be that Henri prided himself on paying all debts in full.

The most recent foreign millionaire and the even more recent foreign
actress at a table near the entrance clamoured for his attention while
he convoyed the party to the pink alcove. With his own hands he turned
out some befrilled electrics and lit four pale-rose candles.

“Bridal!” some one murmured. “Quite bridal!”

“_So_ glad you like. There is nothing too good.” Henri slid away,
and the four men sat down. They had the coarse-grained complexions
of men who habitually did themselves well, and an air, too, of
recent, red-eyed dissipation. Maddingham, the eldest, was a thick-set
middle-aged presence, with crisped grizzled hair, of the type that one
associates with Board Meetings. He limped slightly. Tegg, who followed
him, blinking, was neat, small, and sandy, of unmistakable Wavy cut,
but sheepish aspect. Winchmore, the youngest, was more on the lines of
the conventional pre-war “nut,” but his eyes were sunk in his head and
his hands black-nailed and roughened. Portson, their host, with Vandyke
beard and a comfortable little stomach, beamed upon them as they
settled to their oysters.

“_That’s_ what I mean,” said the carrying voice of the foreign actress,
whom Henri had just disabused of the idea that she had been promised
the pink alcove. “They ain’t _alive_ to the war yet. Now, what’s the
matter with those four dubs yonder joining the British Army or--or
_doing_ something?”

“Who’s your friend?” Maddingham asked.

“I’ve forgotten her name for the minute,” Portson replied, “but she’s
the latest thing in imported patriotic piece-goods. She sings ‘Sons of
the Empire, Go Forward!’ at the Palemseum. It makes the aunties weep.”

“That’s Sidney Latter. She’s not half bad,” Tegg reached for the
vinegar. “We ought to see her some night.”

“Yes. We’ve a lot of time for that sort of thing,” Maddingham grunted.
“I’ll take your oysters, Portson, if you don’t want ’em.”

“Cheer up, Papa Maddingham! ’Soon be dead!” Winchmore suggested.

Maddingham glared at him. “If I’d had you with me for _one_ week,
Master Winchmore----”

“Not the least use,” the boy retorted. “I’ve just been made a
full-lootenant. I have indeed. I couldn’t reconcile it with my
conscience to take _Etheldreda_ out any more as a plain sub. She’s too
flat in the floor.”

“Did you get those new washboards of yours fixed?” Tegg cut in.

“Don’t talk shop already,” Portson protested. “This is Vesiga soup. I
don’t know what he’s arranged in the way of drinks.”

“Pol Roger ’04,” said the waiter.

“Sound man, Henri,” said Winchmore. “But,” he eyed the waiter
doubtfully, “I don’t quite like.... What’s your alleged nationality?”

“’Henri’s nephew, monsieur,” the smiling waiter replied, and laid
a gloved hand on the table. It creaked corkily at the wrist.
“Bethisy-sur-Oise,” he explained. “My uncle he buy me _all_ the hand
for Christmas. It is good to hold plates only.”

“Oh! Sorry I spoke,” said Winchmore.

“Monsieur is right. But my uncle is very careful, even with neutrals.”
He poured the champagne.

“Hold a minute,” Maddingham cried. “First toast of obligation: For what
we are going to receive, thank God and the British Navy.”

“Amen!” said the others with a nod towards Lieutenant Tegg, of the
Royal Navy afloat, and, occasionally, of the Admiralty ashore.

“Next! ‘Damnation to all neutrals!’” Maddingham went on.

“Amen! Amen!” they answered between gulps that heralded the sole à
la Colbert. Maddingham picked up the menu. “Suprème of chicken,” he
read loudly. “Filet béarnaise, Woodcock and Richebourg ’74, Pêches
Melba, Croûtes Baron. I couldn’t have improved on it myself; though one
might,” he went on--“one _might_ have substituted quail _en casserole_
for the woodcock.”

“Then there would have been no reason for the Burgundy,” said Tegg with
equal gravity.

“You’re right,” Maddingham replied.

The foreign actress shrugged her shoulders. “What _can_ you do with
people like that?” she said to her companion. “And yet _I_’ve been
singing to ’em for a fortnight.”

“I left it all to Henri,” said Portson.

“My Gord!” the eavesdropping woman whispered. “Get on to that! Ain’t it
typical? They leave everything to Henri in this country.”

“By the way,” Tegg asked Winchmore after the fish, “where did you mount
that one-pounder of yours after all?”

“Midships. _Etheldreda_ won’t carry more weight forward. She’s wet
enough as it is.”

“Why don’t you apply for another craft?” Portson put in. “There’s a
chap at Southampton just now, down with pneumonia and----”

“No, thank you. I know _Etheldreda_. She’s nothing to write home about,
but when she feels well she can shift a bit.”

Maddingham leaned across the table. “If she does more than eleven in a
flat calm,” said he, “I’ll--I’ll give you _Hilarity_.”

“’Wouldn’t be found dead in _Hilarity_,” was Winchmore’s grateful
reply. “You don’t mean to say you’ve taken her into real wet water,
Papa? Where did it happen?”

The other laughed. Maddingham’s red face turned brick colour, and the
veins on the cheekbones showed blue through a blurr of short bristles.

“He’s been convoying neutrals--in a tactful manner,” Tegg chuckled.

Maddingham filled his glass and scowled at Tegg. “Yes,” he said,
“and here’s special damnation to me Lords of the Admiralty. A more
muddle-headed set of brass-bound apes----”

“My! My! My!” Winchmore chirruped soothingly. “It don’t seem to have
done you any good, Papa. Who were you conveyancing?”

Maddingham snapped out a ship’s name and some details of her build.

“Oh, but that chap’s a friend of _mine_!” cried Winchmore. “I ran
across him--the--not so long ago, hugging the Scotch coast--out of his
course, he said, owing to foul weather and a new type of engine--a
Diesel. That’s him, ain’t it--the complete neutral?” He mentioned an
outstanding peculiarity of the ship’s rig.

“Yes,” said Portson. “Did you board him, Winchmore?”

“No. There’d been a bit of a blow the day before and old _Ethel’s_
only dinghy had dropped off the hooks. But he signalled me all his
symptoms. He was as communicative as--as a lady in the Promenade. (Hold
on, Nephew of my Uncle! I’m going to have some more of that Béarnaise
fillet.) His smell attracted me. I chaperoned him for a couple of days.”

“Only two days. _You_ hadn’t anything to complain of,” said Maddingham
wrathfully.

“I didn’t complain. If he chose to hug things, ’twasn’t any of my
business. I’m not a Purity League. ’Didn’t care what he hugged, so long
as I could lie behind him and give him first chop at any mines that
were going. I steered in his wake (I really _can_ steer a bit now,
Portson) and let him stink up the whole of the North Sea. I thought he
might come in useful for bait. No Burgundy, thanks, Nephew of my Uncle.
I’m sticking to the Jolly Roger.”

“Go on, then--before you’re speechless. Was he any use as bait?” Tegg
demanded.

“We never got a fair chance. As I told you, he hugged the coast till
dark, and then he scraped round Gilarra Head and went up the bay nearly
to the beach.”

“’Lights out?” Maddingham asked.

Winchmore nodded. “But I didn’t worry about that. I was under his
stern. As luck ’ud have it, there was a fishing-party in the bay, and
we walked slam into the middle of ’em--a most ungodly collection of
local talent. ’First thing I knew a steam-launch fell aboard us, and a
boy--a nasty little Navy boy, Tegg--wanted to know what I was doing.
I told him, and he cursed me for putting the fish down just as they
were rising. Then the two of us (he was hanging on to my quarter with a
boat-hook) drifted on to a steam trawler and our friend the Neutral and
a ten-oared cutter full of the military, all mixed up. They were subs
from the garrison out for a lark. Uncle Newt explained over the rail
about the weather and his engine-troubles, but they were all so keen to
carry on with their fishing, they didn’t fuss. They told him to clear
off.”

“Was there anything on the move round Gilarra at that time?” Tegg
inquired.

“Oh, they spun me the usual yarns about the water being thick with ’em,
and asked me to help; but I couldn’t stop. The cutter’s stern-sheets
were piled up with mines, like lobster-pots, and from the way the
soldiers handled ’em I thought I’d better get out. So did Uncle Newt.
_He_ didn’t like it a bit. There were a couple of shots fired at
something just as we cleared the Head, and one dropped rather close
to him. (These duck-shoots in the dark are dam’ dangerous y’know.) He
lit up at once--tail-light, head-light, and side-lights. I had no more
trouble with him the rest of the night.”

“But what about the report that you sawed off the steam-launch’s
boat-hook?” Tegg demanded suddenly.

“What! You don’t mean to say that little beast of a snotty reported it?
He was scratchin’ poor old _Ethel’s_ paint to pieces. I never reported
what he said to _me_. And he called me a damned amateur, too. Well!
Well! War’s war. I missed all that fishing-party that time. My orders
were to follow Uncle Newt. So I followed--and poor _Ethel_ without a
dry rag on her.”

Winchmore refilled his glass.

“Well, don’t get poetical,” said Portson. “Let’s have the rest of your
trip.”

“There wasn’t any rest,” Winchmore insisted pathetically. “There was
just good old _Ethel_ with her engines missing like sin, and Uncle
Newt thumping and stinking half a mile ahead of us, and me eating
bread and Worcester sauce. I do when I feel that way. Besides, I
wanted to go back and join the fishing-party. Just before dark I made
out _Cordelia_--that Southampton ketch that old Jarrott fitted with
oil auxiliaries for a family cruiser last summer. She’s a beamy bus,
but she _can_ roll, and she was doing an honest thirty degrees each
way when I overhauled her. I asked Jarrott if he was busy. He said he
wasn’t. But he was. He’s like me and Nelson when there’s any sea on.”

“But Jarrott’s a Quaker. ’Has been for generations. Why does he go to
war?” said Maddingham.

“If it comes to that,” Portson said, “why do any of us?”

“Jarrott’s a mine-sweeper,” Winchmore replied with deep feeling. “The
Quaker religion (I’m not a Quaker, but I’m _much_ more religious than
any of you chaps give me credit for) has decided that mine-sweeping
is lifesaving. Consequently”--he dwelt a little on the word--“the
profession is crowded with Quakers--specially off Scarborough. ’See?
Owin’ to the purity of their lives, they ‘_all_ go to Heaven when they
die--Roll, Jordan, Roll!’”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Disgustin’,” said the actress audibly as she drew on her gloves.
Winchmore looked at her with delight. “That’s a peach-Melba, too,” he
said.

“And David Jarrott’s a mine-sweeper,” Maddingham mused aloud. “So you
turned our Neutral over to him, Winchmore, did you?”

“Yes, I did. It was the end of my beat--I wish I didn’t feel so
sleepy--and I explained the whole situation to Jarrott, over the
rail. ’Gave him all my silly instructions--those latest ones,
y’know. I told him to do nothing to imperil existing political
relations. I told him to exercise tact. I--I told him that in
my capac’ty as Actin’ Lootenant, you see. Jarrott’s only a
Lootenant-Commander--at fifty-four, too! Yes, I handed my Uncle Newt
over to Jarrott to chaperone, and I went back to my--I can say it
perfectly--pis-ca-to-rial party in the bay. Now I’m going to have
a nap. In ten minutes I shall be on deck again. This is my first
civilised dinner in nine weeks, so I don’t apologise.”

He pushed his plate away, dropped his chin on his palm and closed his
eyes.

“Lyndnoch and Jarrott’s Bank, established 1793,” said Maddingham half
to himself. “I’ve seen old Jarrott in Cowes week bullied by his skipper
and steward till he had to sneak ashore to sleep. And now he’s out
mine-sweeping with _Cordelia_! What’s happened to his--I shall forget
my own name next--Belfast-built two-hundred tonner?”

“_Goneril_,” said Portson. “He turned her over to the Service in
October. She’s--she was _Culana_.”

“_She_ was _Culana_, was she? My God! I never knew that. Where did it
happen?”

“Off the same old Irish corner I was watching last month. My young
cousin was in her; so was one of the Raikes boys. A whole nest of
mines, laid between patrols.”

“I’ve heard there’s some dirty work going on there now,” Maddingham
half whispered.

“You needn’t tell _me_ that,” Portson returned. “But one gets a little
back now and again.”

“What are you two talking about?” said Tegg, who seemed to be dozing,
too.

“_Culana_,” Portson answered as he lit a cigarette.

“Yes, that was rather a pity. But.... What about this Newt of ours?”

“_I_ took her over from Jarrott next day--off Margate,” said Portson.
“Jarrott wanted to get back to his mine-sweeping.”

“Every man to his taste,” said Maddingham. “That never appealed to me.
Had they detailed you specially to look after the Newt?”

“Me among others,” Portson admitted. “I was going down Channel when I
got my orders, and so I went on with him. Jarrott had been tremendously
interested in his course up to date--specially off the Wash. He’d
charted it very carefully and he said he was going back to find out
what some of the kinks and curves meant. Has he found out, Tegg?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Tegg thought for a moment. “_Cordelia_ was all right up to six o’clock
yesterday evening,” he said.

“’Glad of that. Then I did what Winchmore did. I lay behind this stout
fellow and saw him well into the open.”

“Did you say anything to him?” Tegg asked.

“Not a thing. He kept moving all the time.”

“’See anything?” Tegg continued.

“No. He didn’t seem to be in demand anywhere in the Channel, and, when
I got him on the edge of soundings I dropped him--as per your esteemed
orders.”

Tegg nodded again and murmured some apology.

“Where did _you_ pick him up, Maddingham?” Portson went on.

Maddingham snorted.

“Well north and west of where you left him heading up the Irish Channel
and stinking like a taxi. I hadn’t had my breakfast. My cook was
seasick; so were four of my hands.”

“I can see that meeting. Did you give him a gun across the bows?” Tegg
asked.

“No, no. Not _that_ time. I signalled him to heave to. He had his
papers ready before I came over the side. You see,” Maddingham said
pleadingly, “I’m new to this business. Perhaps I wasn’t as polite to
him as I should have been if I’d had my breakfast.”

“He deposed that Maddingham came alongside swearing like a bargee,”
said Tegg.

“Not in the least. This is what happened.” Maddingham turned to
Portson. “I asked him where he was bound for and he told me--Antigua.”

“Hi! Wake up, Winchmore. You’re missing something.” Portson nudged
Winchmore, who was slanting sideways in his chair.

“Right! All right! I’m awake,” said Winchmore stickily. “I heard every
word.”

Maddingham went on. “I told him that this wasn’t his way to Antigua----”

“Antigua. Antigua!” Winchmore finished rubbing his eyes. “‘There was a
young bride of Antigua----’”

“Hsh! Hsh!” said Portson and Tegg warningly.

“Why? It’s the proper one. ‘Who said to her spouse, “What a pig you
are!”’”

“Ass!” Maddingham growled and continued: “He told me that he’d been
knocked out of his reckoning by foul weather and engine-trouble, owing
to experimenting with a new type of Diesel engine. He was perfectly
frank about it.”

“So he was with me,” said Winchmore. “Just like a real lady. I hope you
were a real gentleman, Papa.”

“I asked him what he’d got. He didn’t object. He had some fifty
thousand gallon of oil for his new Diesel engine, and the rest was
coal. He said he needed the oil to get to Antigua with, he was taking
the coal as ballast, and he was coming back, so he told me, with
coconuts. When he’d quite finished, I said: ‘What sort of damned idiot
do you take me for?’ He said: ‘I haven’t decided yet!’ Then I said he’d
better come into port with me, and we’d arrive at a decision. He said
that his papers were in perfect order and that my instructions--mine,
please!--were not to imperil political relations. I hadn’t received
these asinine instructions, so I took the liberty of contradicting
him--perfectly politely, as I told them at the Inquiry afterward.
He was a small-boned man with a grey beard, in a glengarry, and he
picked his teeth a lot. He said: ‘The last time I met you, Mister
Maddingham, you were going to Carlsbad, and you told me all about your
blood-pressures in the wagon-lit before we tossed for upper berth.
Don’t you think you are a little old to buccaneer about the sea this
way?’ I couldn’t recall his face--he must have been some fellow that
I’d travelled with some time or other. I told him I wasn’t doing
this for amusement--it was business. Then I ordered him into port.
He said: ‘S’pose I don’t go?’ I said: ‘Then I’ll sink you.’ Isn’t it
extraordinary how natural it all seems after a few weeks? If any one
had told me when I commissioned _Hilarity_ last summer what I’d be
doing this spring I’d--I’d ... God! It _is_ mad, isn’t it?”

“Quite,” said Portson. “But not bad fun.”

“Not at all, but that’s what makes it all the madder. Well, he didn’t
argue any more. He warned me I’d be hauled over the coals for what I’d
done, and I warned him to keep two cables ahead of me and not to yaw.”

“Jaw?” said Winchmore, sleepily.

“No. Yaw,” Maddingham snarled. “Not to look as if he even wanted to
yaw. I warned him that, if he did, I’d loose off into him, end-on. But
I was absolutely polite about it. ’Give you my word, Tegg.”

“I believe you. Oh, I believe you,” Tegg replied.

“Well, so I took him into port--and that was where I first ran across
our Master Tegg. He represented the Admiralty on that beach.”

The small blinking man nodded. “The Admiralty had that honour,” he said
graciously.

Maddingham turned to the others angrily. “I’d been rather patting
myself on the back for what I’d done, you know. Instead of which, they
held a court-martial----”

“_We_ called it an Inquiry,” Tegg interjected.

“_You_ weren’t in the dock. They held a court-martial on me to find
out how often I’d sworn at the poor injured Neutral, and whether I’d
given him hot-water bottles and tucked him up at night. It’s all very
fine to laugh, but they treated me like a pickpocket. There were two
fat-headed civilian judges and that blackguard Tegg in the conspiracy.
A cursed lawyer defended my Neutral and he made fun of _me_. He dragged
in everything the Neutral had told him about my blood-pressures on the
Carlsbad trip. And that’s what you get for trying to serve your country
in your old age!” Maddingham emptied and refilled his glass.

“We _did_ give you rather a grilling,” said Tegg placidly. “It’s the
national sense of fair play.”

“I could have stood it all if it hadn’t been for the Neutral. We dined
at the same hotel while this court-martial was going on, and he used
to come over to my table and sympathise with me! He told me that I was
fighting for his ideals and the uplift of democracy, but I must respect
the Law of Nations!”

“And we respected ’em,” said Tegg. “His papers were perfectly correct;
the Court discharged him. We had to consider existing political
relations. I _told_ Maddingham so at the hotel and he----”

Again Maddingham turned to the others. “I couldn’t make up my mind
about Tegg at the Inquiry,” he explained. “He had the air of a decent
sailor-man, but he talked like a poisonous politician.”

“I was,” Tegg returned. “I had been ordered to change into that rig. So
I changed.”

Maddingham ran one fat square hand through his crisped hair and looked
up under his eyebrows like a shy child, while the others lay back and
laughed.

“I suppose I ought to have been on to the joke,” he stammered, “but I’d
blacked myself all over for the part of Lootenant-Commander R.N.V.R. in
time of war, and I’d given up thinking as a banker. If it had been put
before me as a business proposition I might have done better.”

“I thought you were playing up to me and the judges all the time,” said
Tegg. “I never dreamed you took it seriously.”

“Well, I’ve been trained to look on the law as serious. I’ve had to pay
for some of it in my time, you know.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tegg. “We were obliged to let that oily beggar
go--for reasons, but, as I told Maddingham, the night the award was
given, _his_ duty was to see that he was properly directed to Antigua.”

“Naturally,” Portson observed. “That being the Neutral’s declared
destination. And what did Maddingham do? Shut up, Maddingham!”

Said Tegg, with downcast eyes: “Maddingham took my hand and squeezed
it; he looked lovingly into my eyes (he _did_!); he turned plum-colour,
and he said: ‘I will’--just like a bridegroom at the altar. It makes me
feel shy to think of it even now. I didn’t see him after that till the
evening when _Hilarity_ was pulling out of the Basin, and Maddingham
was cursing the tug-master.”

“I was in a hurry,” said Maddingham. “I wanted to get to the Narrows
and wait for my Neutral there. I dropped down to Biller and Grove’s
yard that tide (they’ve done all my work for years) and I jammed
_Hilarity_ into the creek behind their slip, so the Newt didn’t spot me
when he came down the river. Then I pulled out and followed him over
the Bar. He stood nor-west at once. I let him go till we were well out
of sight of land. Then I overhauled him, gave him a gun across the bows
and ran alongside. I’d just had my lunch, and I wasn’t going to lose my
temper _this_ time. I said: ‘Excuse me, but I understand you are bound
for Antigua?’ He was, he said, and as he seemed a little nervous about
my falling aboard him in that swell, I gave _Hilarity_ another sheer
in--she’s as handy as a launch--and I said: ‘May I suggest that this is
not the course for Antigua?’ By that time he had his fenders overside,
and all hands yelling at me to keep away. I snatched _Hilarity_ out
and began edging in again. He said: ‘I’m trying a sample of inferior
oil that I have my doubts about. If it works all right I shall lay my
course for Antigua, but it will take some time to test the stuff and
adjust the engines to it.’ I said: ‘Very good, let me know if I can be
of any service,’ and I offered him _Hilarity_ again once or twice--he
didn’t want her--and then I dropped behind and let him go on. Wasn’t
that proper, Portson?”

Portson nodded. “I know that game of yours with _Hilarity_,” he said.
“How the deuce do you do it? My nerve always goes at close quarters in
any sea.”

“It’s only a little trick of steering,” Maddingham replied with a
simper of vanity. “You can almost shave with her when she feels like
it. I had to do it again that same evening, to establish a moral
ascendancy. He wasn’t showing any lights, and I nearly tripped over
him. He was a scared Neutral for three minutes, but I got a little
of my own back for that damned court-martial. _But_ I was perfectly
polite. I apologised profusely. I didn’t even ask him to show his
lights.”

“But did he?” said Winchmore.

“He did--every one; and a flare now and then,” Maddingham replied. “He
held north all that night, with a falling barometer and a rising wind
and all the other filthy things. Gad, how I hated him! Next morning
we got it, good and tight from the nor-nor-west out of the Atlantic,
off Carso Head. He dodged into a squall, and then he went about. We
weren’t a mile behind, but it was as thick as a wall. When it cleared,
and I couldn’t see him ahead of me, I went about too, and followed the
rain. I picked him up five miles down wind, legging it for all he was
worth to the south’ard--nine knots, I should think. _Hilarity_ doesn’t
like a following sea. We got pooped a bit, but by noon we’d struggled
back to where we ought to have been--two cables astern of him. Then
he began to signal, but his flags being end-on to us, of course, we
had to creep up on his beam--well abeam--to read ’em. _That_ didn’t
restore his morale either. He made out he’d been compelled to put back
by stress of weather before completing his oil tests. I made back I was
sorry to hear it, but would be greatly interested in the results. Then
I turned in (I’d been up all night) and my lootenant took on. He was
a widower (by the way) of the name of Sherrin, aged forty-seven. He’d
run a girls’ school at Weston-super-Mare after he’d left the Service in
’ninety-five, and he believed the English were the Lost Tribes.”

“What about the Germans?” said Portson.

“Oh, they’d been misled by Austria, who was the Beast with Horns in
Revelations. Otherwise he was rather a dull dog. He set the tops’ls
in his watch. _Hilarity_ won’t steer under any canvas, so we rather
sported round our friend that afternoon, I believe. When I came up
after dinner, she was biting his behind, first one side, then the
other. Let’s see--that would be about thirty miles east-sou-east of
Harry Island. We were running as near as nothing south. The wind
had dropped, and there was a useful cross-rip coming up from the
south-east. I took the wheel and, the way I nursed him from starboard,
he had to take the sea over his port bow. I had my sciatica on
me--buccaneering’s no game for a middle-aged man--but I gave that
fellow sprudel! By Jove; I washed him out! He stood it as long as he
could, and then he made a bolt for Harry Island. I had to ride in his
pocket most of the way there because I didn’t know that coast. We
had charts, but Sherrin never understood ’em, and I couldn’t leave
the wheel. So we rubbed along together, and about midnight this Newt
dodged in over the tail of Harry Shoals and anchored, if you please,
in the lee of the Double Ricks. It was dead calm there, except for the
swell, but there wasn’t much room to manœuvre in, and _I_ wasn’t going
to anchor. It looked too like a submarine rendezvous. But first, I
came alongside and asked him what his trouble was. He told me he had
overheated his something-or-other bulb. I’ve never been shipmates with
Diesel engines, but I took his word for it, and I said I ’ud stand by
till it cooled. Then he told me to go to hell.”

“If you were inside the Double Ricks in the dark, you were practically
there,” said Portson.

“That’s what _I_ thought. I was on the bridge, rabid with sciatica,
going round and round like a circus-horse in about three acres of
water, and wondering when I’d hit something. Ridiculous position.
Sherrin saw it. He saved me. He said it was an ideal place for
submarine attacks, and we’d better begin to repel ’em at once. As I
said, I couldn’t leave the wheel, so Sherrin fought the ship--both
quick-firers and the maxims. He tipped ’em well down into the sea or
well up at the Ricks as we went round and round. We made rather a row;
and the row the gulls made when we woke ’em was absolutely terrifying.
’Give you my word!”

“And then?” said Winchmore.

“I kept on running in circles through this ghastly din. I took one
sheer over towards his stern--I thought I’d cut it too fine, but we
missed it by inches. Then I heard his capstan busy, and in another
three minutes his anchor was up. He didn’t wait to stow. He hustled
out as he was--bulb or no bulb. He passed within ten feet of us (I
was waiting to fall in behind him) and he shouted over the rail: ‘You
think you’ve got patriotism. All you’ve got is uric acid and rotten
spite!’ I expect he was a little bored. I waited till we had cleared
Harry Shoals before I went below, and then I slept till 9 A. M. He was
heading north this time, and after I’d had breakfast and a smoke I ran
alongside and asked him where he was bound for now. He was wrapped in a
comforter, evidently suffering from a bad cold. I couldn’t quite catch
what he said, but I let him croak for a few minutes and fell back. At
9 P. M. he turned round and headed south (I was getting to know the
Irish Channel by then) and I followed. There was no particular sea
on. It was a little chilly, but as he didn’t hug the coast I hadn’t
to take the wheel. I stayed below most of the night and let Sherrin
suffer. Well, Mr. Newt kept up this game all the next day, dodging up
and down the Irish Channel. And it was infernally dull. He threw up the
sponge off Cloone Harbour. That was on Friday morning. He signalled:
‘Developed defects in engine-room. Antigua trip abandoned.’ Then he ran
into Cloone and tied up at Brady’s Wharf. You know you can’t repair
a dinghy at Cloone! I followed, of course, and berthed behind him.
After lunch I thought I’d pay him a call. I wanted to look at his
engines. I don’t understand Diesels, but Hyslop, my engineer, said
they must have gone round ’em with a hammer, for they were pretty
badly smashed up. Besides that they had offered all their oil to the
Admiralty agent there, and it was being shifted to a tug when I went
aboard him. So I’d done my job. I was just going back to _Hilarity_
when his steward said he’d like to see me. He was lying in his cabin
breathing pretty loud--wrapped up in rugs and his eyes sticking out
like a rabbit’s. He offered me drinks. I couldn’t accept ’em, of
course. Then he said: ‘Well, Mr. Maddingham, I’m all in.’ I said I was
glad to hear it. Then he told me he was seriously ill with a sudden
attack of bronchial pneumonia, and he asked me to run him across to
England to see his doctor in town. I said, of course, that was out of
the question, _Hilarity_ being a man-of-war in commission. He couldn’t
see it. He asked what had that to do with it? He thought this war was
some sort of joke, and I had to repeat it all over again. He seemed
rather afraid of dying (it’s no game for a middle-aged man, of course)
and he hoisted himself up on one elbow and began calling me a murderer.
I explained to him--perfectly politely--that I wasn’t in this job for
fun. It was business. My orders were to see that he went to Antigua,
and now that he wasn’t going to Antigua, and had sold his oil to us,
that finished it as far as I was concerned. (Wasn’t that perfectly
correct?) He said: ‘But that finishes me, too. I can’t get any doctor
in this God-forsaken hole. I made sure you’d treat me properly as soon
as I surrendered.’ I said there wasn’t any question of surrender. If
he’d been a wounded belligerent, I might have taken him aboard, though
I certainly shouldn’t have gone a yard out of my course to land him
anywhere; but as it was, he was a neutral--altogether outside the
game. You see my point? I tried awfully hard to make him understand it.
He went on about his affairs all being at loose ends. He was a rich
man--a million and a quarter, he said--and he wanted to redraft his
will before he died. I told him a good many people were in his position
just now--only they weren’t rich. He changed his tack then and appealed
to me on the grounds of our common humanity. ‘Why, if you leave me now,
Mr. Maddingham,’ he said, ‘you condemn me to death, just as surely as
if you hanged me.’”

“This _is_ interesting,” Portson murmured. “I never imagined you in
this light before, Maddingham.”

“I was surprised at myself--’give you my word. But I was perfectly
polite. I said to him: ‘Try to be reasonable, sir. If you had got rid
of your oil where it was wanted, you’d have condemned lots of people to
death just as surely as if you’d drowned ’em.’ ‘Ah, but I didn’t,’ he
said. ‘That ought to count in my favour.’ ‘That was no thanks to you,’
I said. ‘You weren’t given the chance. This is war, sir. If you make up
your mind to that, you’ll see that the rest follows.’ ‘I didn’t imagine
you’d take it as seriously as all that,’ he said--and he said it quite
seriously, too. ‘Show a little consideration. Your side’s bound to win
anyway.’ I said: ‘Look here! I’m a middle-aged man, and I don’t suppose
my conscience is any clearer than yours in many respects, but this is
business. I can do nothing for you.’”

“You got that a bit mixed, I think,” said Tegg critically.

“_He_ saw what I was driving at,” Maddingham replied, “and he was
the only one that mattered for the moment. ‘Then I’m a dead man,
Mr. Maddingham,’ he said. ‘That’s _your_ business,’ I said. ‘Good
afternoon.’ And I went out.”

“And?” said Winchmore, after some silence.

“He died. I saw his flag half-masted next morning.”

There was another silence. Henri looked in at the alcove and smiled.
Maddingham beckoned to him.

“But why didn’t you lend him a hand to settle his private affairs?”
said Portson.

“Because I wasn’t acting in my private capacity. I’d been on the bridge
for three nights and--” Maddingham pulled out his watch--“this time
to-morrow I shall be there again--confound it! Has my car come, Henri?”

“Yes, Sare Francis. I am sorry.” They all complimented Henri on the
dinner, and when the compliments were paid he expressed himself still
their debtor. So did the nephew.

“Are you coming with me, Portson?” said Maddingham as he rose heavily.

“No. I’m for Southampton, worse luck! My car ought to be here, too.”

“I’m for Euston and the frigid calculating North,” said Winchmore with
a shudder. “One common taxi, please, Henri.”

Tegg smiled. “I’m supposed to sleep in just now, but if you don’t mind,
I’d like to come with you as far as Gravesend, Maddingham.”

“Delighted. There’s a glass all round left still,” said Maddingham.
“Here’s luck! The usual, I suppose? ‘Damnation to all neutrals!’”




THE VINEYARD


    At the eleventh hour he came,
    But his wages were the same
    As ours who all day long had trod
    The wine-press of the Wrath of God.

    When he shouldered through the lines
    Of our cropped and mangled vines,
    His unjaded eye could scan
    How each hour had marked its man.

    (Children of the morning-tide
    With the hosts of noon had died;
    And our noon contingents lay
    Dead with twilight’s spent array.)

    Since his back had felt no load,
    Virtue still in him abode;
    So he swiftly made his own
    Those last spoils we had not won.

    We went home, delivered thence,
    Grudging him no recompense
    Till he portioned praise or blame
    To our works before he came.

    _Till he showed us for our good--
      Deaf to mirth, and blind to scorn--
    How we might have best withstood
      Burdens that he had not borne!_




“IN THE INTERESTS OF THE BRETHREN”




“BANQUET NIGHT”


    “Once in so often,” King Solomon said,
      Watching his quarrymen drill the stone,
    “We will club our garlic and wine and bread
      And banquet together beneath my Throne.
    And all the Brethren shall come to that mess
    As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.

    “Send a swift shallop to Hiram of Tyre,
      Felling and floating our beautiful trees,
    Say that the Brethren and I desire
      Talk with our Brethren who use the seas.
    And we shall be happy to meet them at mess
    As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.

    “Carry this message to Hiram Abif--
      Excellent Master of forge and mine:--
    I and the Brethren would like it if
      He and the Brethren will come to dine
    (Garments from Bozrah or morning-dress)
    As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.

    “God gave the Hyssop and Cedar their place--
      Also the Bramble, the Fig and the Thorn--
    But that is no reason to black a man’s face
      Because he is not what he hasn’t been born.
    And, as touching the Temple, I hold and profess
    We are Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.”

    So it was ordered and so it was done,
      And the hewers of wood and the Masons of Mark,
    With foc’sle hands of the Sidon run
      And Navy Lords from the _Royal Ark_,
    Came and sat down and were merry at mess
    As Fellow-Craftsmen--no more and no less.

    _The Quarries are hotter than Hiram’s forge,
      No one is safe from the dog-whips’ reach.
    It’s mostly snowing up Lebanon gorge,
      And it’s always blowing off Joppa beach;
    But once in so often, the messenger brings
    Solomon’s mandate: “Forget these things!
    Brother to Beggars and Fellow to Kings,
    Companion of Princes--forget these things!
    Fellow-Craftsman, forget these things!”_




“IN THE INTERESTS OF THE BRETHREN”


I was buying a canary in a birdshop when he first spoke to me and
suggested that I should take a less highly coloured bird. “The colour
is in the feeding,” said he. “Unless you know how to feed ’em, it goes.
Canaries are one of our hobbies.”

He passed out before I could thank him. He was a middle-aged man with
grey hair and a short, dark beard, rather like a Sealyham terrier in
silver spectacles. For some reason his face and his voice stayed in
my mind so distinctly that, months later, when I jostled against him
on a platform crowded with an Angling Club going to the Thames, I
recognised, turned, and nodded.

“I took your advice about the canary,” I said.

“Did you? Good!” he replied heartily over the rod-case on his shoulder,
and was parted from me by the crowd.

       *       *       *       *       *

A few years ago I turned into a tobacconist’s to have a badly stopped
pipe cleaned out.

“Well! Well! And how did the canary do?” said the man behind the
counter. We shook hands, and “What’s your name?” we both asked together.

His name was Lewis Holroyd Burges, of “Burges and Son,” as I might have
seen above the door--but Son had been killed in Egypt. His hair was
whiter than it had been, and the eyes were sunk a little.

“Well! Well! To think,” said he, “of one man in all these millions
turning up in this curious way, when there’s so many who don’t turn
up at all--eh?” (It was then that he told me of Son Lewis’s death and
why the boy had been christened Lewis.) “Yes. There’s not much left for
middle-aged people just at present. Even one’s hobbies----We used to
fish together. And the same with canaries! We used to breed ’em for
colour--deep orange was our speciality. That’s why I spoke to you, if
you remember; but I’ve sold all my birds. Well! Well! And now we must
locate your trouble.”

He bent over my erring pipe and dealt with it skilfully as a surgeon. A
soldier came in, spoke in an undertone, received a reply, and went out.

“Many of my clients are soldiers nowadays, and a number of ’em belong
to the Craft,” said Mr. Burges. “It breaks my heart to give them the
tobaccos they ask for. On the other hand, not one man in five thousand
has a tobacco-palate. Preference, yes. Palate, no. Here’s your pipe,
again. It deserves better treatment than it’s had. There’s a procedure,
a ritual, in all things. Any time you’re passing by again, I assure
you, you will be welcome. I’ve one or two odds and ends that may
interest you.”

I left the shop with the rarest of all feelings on me--the sensation
which is only youth’s right--that I might have made a friend. A little
distance from the door I was accosted by a wounded man who asked for
“Burges’s.” The place seemed to be known in the neighbourhood.

I found my way to it again, and often after that, but it was not till
my third visit that I discovered Mr. Burges held a half interest in
Ackerman and Pernit’s, the great cigar-importers, which had come to him
through an uncle whose children now lived almost in the Cromwell Road,
and said that the uncle had been on the Stock Exchange.

“_I_’m a shopkeeper by instinct,” said Mr. Burges. “I like the ritual
of handling things. The shop has done me well. I like to do well by the
shop.”

It had been established by his grandfather in 1827, but the fittings
and appointments must have been at least half a century older. The
brown and red tobacco- and snuff-jars, with Crowns, Garters, and
names of forgotten mixtures in gold leaf; the polished “Oronoque”
tobacco-barrels on which favoured customers sat; the cherry-black
mahogany counter, the delicately moulded shelves, the reeded
cigar-cabinets, the German-silver-mounted scales, and the Dutch brass
roll and cake-cutter, were things to covet.

“They aren’t so bad,” he admitted. “That large Bristol jar hasn’t
any duplicate to my knowledge. Those eight snuff-jars on the
third shelf--they’re Dollin’s ware; he used to work for Wimble in
Seventeen-Forty--are absolutely unique. Is there any one in the trade
now could tell you what ‘Romano’s Hollande’ was? Or ‘Scholten’s’?
Here’s a snuff-mull of George the First’s time, and here’s a Louis
Quinze--what am I talking of? Treize, Treize, of course--grater
for making bran-snuff. They were regular tools of the shop in my
grandfather’s day. And who on earth to leave ’em to outside of the
British Museum now, _I_ can’t think!”

His pipes--I would this were a tale for virtuosi--his amazing
collection of pipes was kept in the parlour, and this gave me the
privilege of making his wife’s acquaintance. One morning, as I was
looking covetously at a jacaranda-wood “cigarro”--_not_ cigar--cabinet
with silver lock-plates and drawer-knobs of Spanish work, a wounded
Canadian came into the shop and disturbed our happy little committee.

“Say,” he began loudly, “are you the right place?”

“Who sent you?” Mr. Burges demanded.

“A man from Messines. But _that_ ain’t the point! I’ve got no
certificates, nor papers--nothin’, you understand. I left my Lodge
owin’ ’em seventeen dollars back-dues. But this man at Messines told me
it wouldn’t make any odds with _you_.”

“It doesn’t,” said Mr. Burges. “We meet to-night at 7 P. M.”

The man’s face fell a yard. “Hell!” said he. “But I’m in hospital--I
can’t get leaf.”

“_And_ Tuesdays and Fridays at 3 P. M.,” Mr. Burges added promptly.
“You’ll have to be proved, of course.”

“Guess I can get by _that_ all right,” was the cheery reply. “Toosday,
then.” He limped off, beaming.

“Who might that be?” I asked.

“I don’t know any more than you do--except he must be a Brother.
London’s full of Masons now. Well! Well! We must do what we can these
days. If you’ll come to tea this evening, I’ll take you on to Lodge
afterwards. It’s a Lodge of Instruction.”

“Delighted. Which is your Lodge?” I said, for up till then he had not
given me its name.

“‘Faith and Works 5837’--the third Saturday of every month. Our Lodge
of Instruction meets nominally every Thursday, but we sit oftener than
that now because there are so many Visiting Brothers in town.” Here
another customer entered, and I went away much interested in the range
of Brother Burges’s hobbies.

At tea-time he was dressed as for Church, and wore gold pince-nez in
lieu of the silver spectacles. I blessed my stars that I had thought to
change into decent clothes.

“Yes, we owe that much to the Craft,” he assented. “All Ritual is
fortifying. Ritual’s a natural necessity for mankind. The more things
are upset, the more they fly to it. I abhor slovenly Ritual anywhere.
By the way, would you mind assisting at the examinations, if there are
many Visiting Brothers to-night? You’ll find some of ’em very rusty
but--it’s the Spirit, not the Letter, that giveth life. The question
of Visiting Brethren is an important one. There are so many of them in
London now, you see; and so few places where they can meet.”

“You dear thing!” said Mrs. Burges, and handed him his locked and
initialed apron-case.

“Our Lodge is only just round the corner,” he went on. “You mustn’t be
too critical of our appurtenances. The place was a garage once.”

As far as I could make out in the humiliating darkness, we wandered up
a mews and into a courtyard. Mr. Burges piloted me, murmuring apologies
for everything in advance.

“You mustn’t expect----” he was still saying when we stumbled up a
porch and entered a carefully decorated ante-room hung round with
Masonic prints. I noticed Peter Gilkes and Barton Wilson, fathers of
“Emulation” working, in the place of honour; Kneller’s Christopher
Wren; Dunkerley, with his own Fitz-George book-plate below and the bend
sinister on the Royal Arms; Hogarth’s caricature of Wilkes, also his
disreputable “Night”; and a beautifully framed set of Grand Masters,
from Anthony Sayer down.

“Are these another hobby of yours?” I asked.

“Not this time,” Mr. Burges smiled. “We have to thank Brother Lemming
for them.” He introduced me to the senior partner of Lemming and Orton,
whose little shop is hard to find, but whose words and cheques in the
matter of prints are widely circulated.

“The frames are the best part of ’em,” said Brother Lemming after my
compliments. “There are some more in the Lodge Room. Come and look.
We’ve got the big Desaguliers there that nearly went to Iowa.”

I had never seen a Lodge Room better fitted. From mosaicked floor to
appropriate ceiling, from curtain to pillar, implements to seats, seats
to lights, and little carved music-loft at one end, every detail was
perfect in particular kind and general design. I said what I thought of
them all, many times over.

“I told you I was a Ritualist,” said Mr. Burges. “Look at those carved
corn-sheaves and grapes on the back of these Wardens’ chairs. That’s
the old tradition--before Masonic furnishers spoilt it. I picked up
that pair in Stepney ten years ago--the same time I got the gavel.”
It was of ancient, yellowed ivory, cut all in one piece out of some
tremendous tusk. “That came from the Gold Coast,” he said. “It belonged
to a Military Lodge there in 1794. You can see the inscription.”

“If it’s a fair question,” I began, “how much----”

“It stood us,” said Brother Lemming, his thumbs in his waistcoat
pockets, “an appreciable sum of money when we built it in 1906, even
with what Brother Anstruther--he was our contractor--cheated himself
out of. By the way, that ashlar there is pure Carrara, he tells me. I
don’t understand marbles myself. Since then I expect we’ve put in--oh,
quite another little sum. Now we’ll go to the examination-room and take
on the Brethren.”

He led me back, not to the ante-room, but a convenient chamber flanked
with what looked like confessional-boxes (I found out later that that
was what they had been, when first picked up for a song near Oswestry).
A few men in uniform were waiting at the far end. “That’s only the head
of the procession. The rest are in the ante-room,” said an officer of
the Lodge.

Brother Burges assigned me my discreet box, saying: “Don’t be
surprised. They come all shapes.”

“Shapes” was not a bad description, for my first penitent was all
head-bandages--escaped from an Officers’ Hospital, Pentonville way.
He asked me in profane Scots how I expected a man with only six teeth
and half a lower lip to speak to any purpose, so we compromised on the
signs. The next--a New Zealander from Taranaki--reversed the process,
for he was one-armed, and that in a sling. I mistrusted an enormous
Sergeant-Major of Heavy Artillery, who struck me as much too glib, so
I sent him on to Brother Lemming in the next box, who discovered he
was a Past District Grand Officer. My last man nearly broke me down
altogether. Everything seemed to have gone from him.

“I don’t blame yer,” he gulped at last. “I wouldn’t pass my own self
on my answers, but I give yer my word that so far as I’ve had any
religion, it’s been all the religion I’ve had. For God’s sake, let me
sit in Lodge again, Brother!”

When the examinations were ended, a Lodge Officer came round with
our aprons--no tinsel or silver-gilt confections, but heavily-corded
silk with tassels and--where a man could prove he was entitled to
them--levels, of decent plate. Some one in front of me tightened a
belt on a stiffly silent person in civil clothes with discharge-badge.
“’Strewth! This is comfort again,” I heard him say. The companion
nodded. The man went on suddenly: “Here! What’re you doing? Leave off!
You promised not to! Chuck it!” and dabbed at his companion’s streaming
eyes.

“Let him leak,” said an Australian signaller. “Can’t you see how happy
the beggar is?”

It appeared that the silent Brother was a “shell-shocker” whom Brother
Lemming had passed, on the guarantee of his friend and--what moved
Lemming more--the threat that, were he refused, he would have fits from
pure disappointment. So the “shocker” went happily and silently among
Brethren evidently accustomed to these displays.

We fell in, two by two, according to tradition, fifty of us at least,
and were played into Lodge by what I thought was an harmonium, but
which I discovered to be an organ of repute. It took time to settle us
down, for ten or twelve were cripples and had to be helped into long or
easy chairs. I sat between a one-footed R.A.M.C. Corporal and a Captain
of Territorials, who, he told me, had “had a brawl” with a bomb, which
had bent him in two directions. “But that’s first-class Bach the
organist is giving us now,” he said delightedly. “I’d like to know him.
_I_ used to be a piano-thumper of sorts.”

“I’ll introduce you after Lodge,” said one of the regular Brethren
behind us--a plump, torpedo-bearded man, who turned out to be a doctor.
“After all, there’s nobody to touch Bach, is there?” Those two plunged
at once into musical talk, which to outsiders is as fascinating as
trigonometry.

Now a Lodge of Instruction is mainly a parade-ground for Ritual. It
cannot initiate or confer degrees, but is limited to rehearsals and
lectures. Worshipful Brother Burges, resplendent in Solomon’s Chair (I
found out later where that, too, had been picked up), briefly told the
Visiting Brethren how welcome they were and always would be, and asked
them to vote what ceremony should be rendered for their instruction.

When the decision was announced he wanted to know whether any Visiting
Brothers would take the duties of Lodge Officers. They protested
bashfully that they were too rusty. “The very reason why,” said Brother
Burges, while the organ Bached softly. My musical Captain wriggled in
his chair.

“One moment, Worshipful Sir.” The plump Doctor rose. “We have here a
musician for whom place and opportunity are needed. Only,” he went on
colloquially, “those organ-loft steps are a bit steep.”

“How much,” said Brother Burges with the solemnity of an initiation,
“does our Brother weigh?”

“Very little over eight stone,” said the Brother. “Weighed this
morning, Worshipful Sir.”

The Past District Grand Officer, who was also a Battery-Sergeant-Major,
waddled across, lifted the slight weight in his arms and bore it to the
loft, where, the regular organist pumping, it played joyously as a soul
caught up to Heaven by surprise.

When the visitors had been coaxed to supply the necessary officers,
a ceremony was rehearsed. Brother Burges forbade the regular members
to prompt. The visitors had to work entirely by themselves, but, on
the Battery-Sergeant-Major taking a hand, he was ruled out as of too
exalted rank. They floundered badly after that support was withdrawn.

The one-footed R.A.M.C. on my right chuckled.

“D’you like it?” said the Doctor to him.

“_Do_ I? It’s Heaven to me, sittin’ in Lodge again, It’s all comin’
back now, watching their mistakes. I haven’t much religion, but all I
had I learnt in Lodge.” Recognising me, he flushed a little as one does
when one says a thing twice over in another’s hearing. “Yes, ’veiled in
all’gory and illustrated in symbols’--the Fatherhood of God, an’ the
Brotherhood of Man; an’ what more in Hell _do_ you want?... Look at
’em!” He broke off giggling. “See! See! They’ve tied the whole thing
into knots. _I_ could ha’ done it better myself--my one foot in France.
Yes, I should think they _ought_ to do it again!”

The new organist covered the little confusion that had arisen with what
sounded like the wings of angels.

When the amateurs, rather red and hot, had finished, they demanded an
exhibition-working of their bungled ceremony by Regular Brethren of the
Lodge. Then I realised for the first time what word-and-gesture-perfect
Ritual can be brought to mean. We all applauded, the one-footed
Corporal most of all.

“We _are_ rather proud of our working, and this is an audience worth
playing up to,” the Doctor said.

Next the Master delivered a little lecture on the meanings of some
pictured symbols and diagrams. His theme was a well-worn one, but his
deep holding voice made it fresh.

“Marvellous how these old copybook-headings persist,” the Doctor said.

“_That’s_ all right!” the one-footed man spoke cautiously out of
the side of his mouth like a boy in form. “But they’re the kind o’
copybook-headin’s we shall find burnin’ round our bunks in Hell.
Believe me-ee! I’ve broke enough of ’em to know. Now, h’sh!” He leaned
forward, drinking it all in.

Presently Brother Burges touched on a point which had given rise to
some diversity of Ritual. He asked for information. “Well, in Jamaica,
Worshipful Sir,” a Visiting Brother began, and explained how they
worked that detail in his parts. Another and another joined in from
different quarters of the Lodge (and the world), and when they were
well warmed the Doctor sidled softly round the walls and, over our
shoulders, passed us cigarettes.

“A shocking innovation,” he said, as he returned to the
Captain-musician’s vacant seat on my left. “But men can’t really talk
without tobacco, and we’re only a Lodge of Instruction.”

“An’ I’ve learned more in one evenin’ here than ten years.” The
one-footed man turned round for an instant from a dark, sour-looking
Yeoman in spurs who was laying down the law on Dutch Ritual. The blue
haze and the talk increased, while the organ from the loft blessed us
all.

“But this is delightful,” said I to the Doctor. “How did it all happen?”

“Brother Burges started it. He used to talk to the men who dropped
into his shop when the war began. He told us sleepy old chaps in Lodge
that what men wanted more than anything else was Lodges where they
could sit--just sit and be happy like we are now. He was right too.
We’re learning things in the war. A man’s Lodge means more to him than
people imagine. As our friend on your right said just now, very often
Masonry’s the only practical creed we’ve ever listened to since we were
children. Platitudes or no platitudes, it squares with what everybody
knows ought to be done.” He sighed. “And if this war hasn’t brought
home the Brotherhood of Man to us all, I’m--a Hun!”

“How did you get your visitors?” I went on.

“Oh, I told a few fellows in hospital near here, at Burges’s
suggestion, that we had a Lodge of Instruction and they’d be welcome.
And they came. And they told their friends. And _they_ came! That was
two years ago!--and now we’ve Lodge of Instruction two nights a week,
and a matinée nearly every Tuesday and Friday for the men who can’t get
evening leave. Yes, it’s all very curious. I’d no notion what the Craft
meant--and means--till this war.”

“Nor I, till this evening,” I replied.

“Yet it’s quite natural if you think. Here’s London--all
England--packed with the Craft from all over the world, and nowhere
for them to go. Why, our weekly visiting attendance for the last four
months averaged just under a hundred and forty. Divide by four--call
it thirty-five Visiting Brethren a time. Our record’s seventy-one, but
we have packed in as many as eighty-four at Banquets. You can see for
yourself what a potty little hole we are!”

“Banquets too!” I cried. “It must cost like anything. May the Visiting
Brethren----”

The Doctor--his name was Keede--laughed. “No, a Visiting Brother may
_not_.”

“But when a man has had an evening like this, he wants to----”

“That’s what they all say. That makes our difficulty. They do exactly
what you were going to suggest, and they’re offended if we don’t take
it.”

“Don’t you?” I asked.

“My dear man--what _does_ it come to? They can’t all stay to Banquet.
Say one hundred suppers a week--fifteen quid--sixty a month--seven
hundred and twenty a year. How much are Lemming and Orton worth? And
Ellis and McKnight--that long big man over yonder--the provision
dealers? How much d’you suppose could Burges write a cheque for and
not feel? ’Tisn’t as if he had to save for any one now. I assure you
we have no scruple in calling on the Visiting Brethren when we want
anything. We couldn’t do the work otherwise. Have you noticed how the
Lodge is kept--brass-work, jewels, furniture, and so on?”

“I have indeed,” I said. “It’s like a ship. You could eat your dinner
off the floor.”

“Well, come here on a bye-day and you’ll often find half-a-dozen
Brethren, with eight legs between ’em, polishing and ronuking and
sweeping everything they can get at. I cured a shell-shocker this
spring by giving him our jewels to look after. He pretty well polished
the numbers off ’em, but--it kept him from fighting Huns in his sleep.
And when we need Masters to take our duties--two matinées a week is
rather a tax--we’ve the choice of P.M.’s from all over the world. The
Dominions are much keener on Ritual than an average English Lodge.
Besides that----Oh, we’re going to adjourn. Listen to the greetings.
They’ll be interesting.”

The crack of the great gavel brought us to our feet, after some surging
and plunging among the cripples. Then the Battery-Sergeant-Major, in
a trained voice, delivered hearty and fraternal greetings to “Faith
and Works” from his tropical District and Lodge. The others followed,
without order, in every tone between a grunt and a squeak. I heard
“Hauraki,” “Inyanga-Umbezi,” “Aloha,” “Southern Lights” (from somewhere
Punta Arenas way), “Lodge of Rough Ashlars” (and that Newfoundland
Naval Brother looked it), two or three Stars of something or other,
half-a-dozen cardinal virtues, variously arranged, hailing from
Klondyke to Kalgoorlie, one Military Lodge on one of the fronts, thrown
in with a severe Scots burr by my friend of the head-bandages, and the
rest as mixed as the Empire itself. Just at the end there was a little
stir. The silent Brother had begun to make noises; his companion tried
to soothe him.

“Let him be! Let him be!” the Doctor called professionally. The man
jerked and mouthed, and at last mumbled something unintelligible even
to his friend, but a small dark P.M. pushed forward importantly.

“It iss all right,” he said. “He wants to say----” he spat out some
yard-long Welsh name, adding, “That means Pembroke Docks, Worshipful
Sir. We haf good Masons in Wales, too.” The silent man nodded approval.

“Yes,” said the Doctor, quite unmoved. “It happens that way sometimes.
_Hespere panta fereis_, isn’t it? The Star brings ’em all home. I must
get a note of that fellow’s case after Lodge. I saw you didn’t care for
music,” he went on, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with a little
more. It’s a paraphrase from Micah. Our organist arranged it. We sing
it antiphonally, as a sort of dismissal.”

Even I could appreciate what followed. The singing seemed confined to
half-a-dozen trained voices answering each other till the last line,
when the full Lodge came in. I give it as I heard it:

    “We have showed thee, O Man,
      What is good.
    What doth the Lord require of us?
    Or Conscience’ self desire of us?
      But to do justly--
      But to love mercy,
    And to walk humbly with our God,
      As every Mason should.”

Then we were played and sung out to the quaint tune of the “Entered
Apprentices’ Song.” I noticed that the regular Brethren of the Lodge
did not begin to take off their regalia till the lines:

    “Great Kings, Dukes, and Lords
    Have laid down their swords.”

They moved into the ante-room, now set for the Banquet, on the verse:

      “Antiquity’s pride
      We have on our side,
    Which maketh men just in their station.”

The Brother (a big-boned clergyman) that I found myself next to at
table told me the custom was “a fond thing vainly invented” on the
strength of some old legend. He laid down that Masonry should be
regarded as an “intellectual abstraction.” An Officer of Engineers
disagreed with him, and told us how in Flanders, a year before, some
ten or twelve Brethren held Lodge in what was left of a Church. Save
for the Emblems of Mortality and plenty of rough ashlars, there was no
furniture.

“I warrant you weren’t a bit the worse for that,” said the Clergyman.
“The idea should be enough without trappings.”

“But it wasn’t,” said the other. “We took a lot of trouble to make our
regalia out of camouflage-stuff that we’d pinched, and we manufactured
our jewels from old metal. I’ve got the set now. It kept us happy for
weeks.”

“Ye were absolutely irregular an’ unauthorised. Whaur was your
Warrant?” said the Brother from the Military Lodge. “Grand Lodge ought
to take steps against----”

“If Grand Lodge had any sense,” a private three places up our table
broke in, “it ’ud warrant travelling Lodges at the front and attach
first-class lecturers to ’em.”

“Wad ye confer degrees promiscuously?” said the scandalised Scot.

“Every time a man asked, of course. You’d have half the Army in.”

The speaker played with the idea for a little while, and proved that,
on the lowest scale of fees, Grand Lodge would get huge revenues.

“I believe,” said the Engineer Officer thoughtfully, “I could design a
complete travelling Lodge outfit under forty pounds weight.”

“Ye’re wrong. I’ll prove it. We’ve tried ourselves,” said the Military
Lodge man; and they went at it together across the table, each with his
own note-book.

The “Banquet” was simplicity itself. Many of us ate in haste so as to
get back to barracks or hospitals, but now and again a Brother came in
from the outer darkness to fill a chair and empty a plate. These were
Brethren who had been there before and needed no examination.

One man lurched in--helmet, Flanders mud, accoutrements and all--fresh
from the leave-train.

“’Got two hours to wait for my train,” he explained. “I remembered your
night, though. My God, this is good!”

“What is your train and from what station?” said the Clergyman
precisely. “Very well. What will you have to eat?”

“Anything. Everything. I’ve thrown up a month’s rations in the Channel.”

He stoked himself for ten minutes without a word. Then, without a word,
his face fell forward. The Clergyman had him by one already limp arm
and steered him to a couch, where he dropped and snored. No one took
the trouble to turn around.

“Is that usual too?” I asked.

“Why not?” said the Clergyman. “I’m on duty to-night to wake them
for their trains. They do not respect the Cloth on those occasions.”
He turned his broad back on me and continued his discussion with a
Brother from Aberdeen by way of Mitylene where, in the intervals of
mine-sweeping, he had evolved a complete theory of the Revelations of
St. John the Divine in the Island of Patmos.

I fell into the hands of a Sergeant-Instructor of Machine Guns--by
profession a designer of ladies’ dresses. He told me that Englishwomen
as a class “lose on their corsets what they make on their clothes,”
and that “Satan himself can’t save a woman who wears thirty-shilling
corsets under a thirty-guinea costume.” Here, to my grief, he was
buttonholed by a zealous Lieutenant of his own branch, and became a
Sergeant again all in one click.

I drifted back and forth, studying the prints on the walls and the
Masonic collection in the cases, while I listened to the inconceivable
talk all round me. Little by little the company thinned, till at last
there were only a dozen or so of us left. We gathered at the end of a
table near the fire, the night-bird from Flanders trumpeting lustily
into the hollow of his helmet, which some one had tipped over his face.

“And how did it go with you?” said the Doctor.

“It was like a new world,” I answered.

“That’s what it _is_ really.” Brother Burges returned the gold
pince-nez to their case and reshipped his silver spectacles. “Or that’s
what it might be made with a little trouble. When I think of the
possibilities of the Craft at this juncture I wonder----” He stared
into the fire.

“I wonder, too,” said the Sergeant-Major slowly, “but--on the
whole--I’m inclined to agree with you. We could do much with Masonry.”

“As an aid--as an aid--not as a substitute for Religion,” the Clergyman
snapped.

“Oh, Lord! Can’t we give Religion a rest for a bit,” the Doctor
muttered. “It hasn’t done so--I beg your pardon all around.”

The Clergyman was bristling. “Kamerad!” the wise Sergeant-Major went
on, both hands up. “Certainly not as a substitute for a creed, but as
an average plan of life. What I’ve seen at the front makes me sure of
it.”

Brother Burges came out of his muse. “There ought to be a
dozen--twenty--other Lodges in London every night; conferring degrees
too, as well as instruction. Why shouldn’t the young men join? They
practise what we’re always preaching. Well! Well! We must all do what
we can. What’s the use of old Masons if they can’t give a little help
along their own lines?”

“Exactly,” said the Sergeant-Major, turning on the Doctor. “And what’s
the darn use of a Brother if he isn’t allowed to help?”

“Have it your own way then,” said the Doctor testily. He had evidently
been approached before. He took something the Sergeant-Major handed to
him and pocketed it with a nod. “I was wrong,” he said to me, “when I
boasted of our independence. They get round us sometimes. This,” he
slapped his pocket, “will give a banquet on Tuesday. We don’t usually
feed at matinées. It will be a surprise. By the way, try another
sandwich. The ham are best.” He pushed me a plate.

“They are,” I said. “I’ve only had five or six. I’ve been looking for
them.”

“’Glad you like them,” said Brother Lemming. “Fed him myself, cured
him myself--at my little place in Berkshire. His name was Charlemagne.
By the way, Doc, am I to keep another one for next month?”

“Of course,” said the Doctor with his mouth full. “A little fatter than
this chap, please. And don’t forget your promise about the pickled
nasturtiums. They’re appreciated.” Brother Lemming nodded above the
pipe he had lit as we began a second supper. Suddenly the Clergyman,
after a glance at the clock, scooped up half-a-dozen sandwiches
from under my nose, put them into an oiled paper bag, and advanced
cautiously towards the sleeper on the couch.

“They wake rough sometimes,” said the Doctor. “Nerves, y’know.” The
Clergyman tip-toed directly behind the man’s head, and at arm’s length
rapped on the dome of the helmet. The man woke in one vivid streak, as
the Clergyman stepped back, and grabbed for a rifle that was not there.

“You’ve barely half an hour to catch your train.” The Clergyman passed
him the sandwiches. “Come along.”

“You’re uncommonly kind and I’m very grateful,” said the man, wriggling
into his stiff straps. He followed his guide into the darkness after
saluting.

“Who’s that?” said Lemming.

“’Can’t say,” the Doctor returned indifferently. “He’s been here
before. He’s evidently a P.M. of sorts.”

“Well! Well!” said Brother Burges, whose eyelids were drooping. “We
must all do what we can. Isn’t it almost time to lock up?”

“I wonder,” said I, as we helped each other into our coats, “what would
happen if Grand Lodge knew about all this.”

“About what?” Lemming turned on me quickly.

“A Lodge of Instruction open three nights and two afternoons a
week--and running a lodging-house as well. It’s all very nice, but it
doesn’t strike me somehow as regulation.”

“The point hasn’t been raised yet,” said Lemming. “We’ll settle it
after the war. Meantime we shall go on.”

“There ought to be scores of them,” Brother Burges repeated as we went
out of the door. “All London’s full of the Craft, and no places for
them to meet in. Think of the possibilities of it! Think what could
have been done _by_ Masonry _through_ Masonry _for_ all the world. I
hope I’m not censorious, but it sometimes crosses my mind that Grand
Lodge may have thrown away its chance in the war almost as much as the
Church has.”

“’Lucky for you the Padre is taking that chap to King’s Cross,” said
Brother Lemming, “or he’d be down your throat. What really troubles him
is our legal position under Masonic Law. I think he’ll inform on us one
of these days. Well, good night, all.” The Doctor and Lemming turned
off together.

“Yes,” said Brother Burges, slipping his arm into mine. “Almost as much
as the Church has. But perhaps I’m too much of a Ritualist.”

I said nothing. I was speculating how soon I could steal a march on the
Clergyman and inform against “Faith and Works No. 5837 E. C.”




THE UNITED IDOLATERS




TO THE COMPANIONS

Horace, Ode 17, Bk. V.


    How comes it that, at even-tide,
      When level beams should show most truth,
    Man, failing, takes unfailing pride
      In memories of his frolic youth?

    Venus and Liber fill their hour;
      The games engage, the law-courts prove;
    Till hardened life breeds love of power
      Or Avarice, Age’s final love.

    Yet at the end, these comfort not--
      Nor any triumph Fate decrees--
    Compared with glorious, unforgot-
      ten innocent enormities

    Of frontless days before the beard,
      When, instant on the casual jest,
    The God Himself of Mirth appeared
      And snatched us to His heaving breast.

    And we--not caring who He was
      But certain He would come again--
    Accepted all He brought to pass
      As Gods accept the lives of men....

    Then He withdrew from sight and speech,
      Nor left a shrine. How comes it now
    While Charon’s keel grates on the beach,
      He calls so clear: “Rememberest thou?”




THE UNITED IDOLATERS


His name was Brownell and his reign was brief. He came from the Central
Anglican Scholastic Agency, a soured, clever, reddish man picked up
by the Head at the very last moment of the summer holidays in default
of Macrea (of Macrea’s House) who wired from Switzerland that he had
smashed a knee mountaineering, and would not be available that term.

Looking back at the affair, one sees that the Head should have warned
Mr. Brownell of the College’s outstanding peculiarity, instead of
leaving him to discover it for himself the first day of the term,
when he went for a walk to the beach, and saw “Potiphar” Mullins,
Head of Games, smoking without conceal on the sands. “Pot,” having
the whole of the Autumn Football challenges, acceptances, and Fifteen
reconstructions to work out, did not at first comprehend Mr. Brownell’s
shrill cry of: “You’re smoking! You’re smoking, sir!” but he removed
his pipe, and answered, placably enough: “The Army Class is allowed to
smoke, sir.”

Mr. Brownell replied: “Preposterous!”

Pot, seeing that this new person was uninformed, suggested that he
should refer to the Head.

“You may be sure I shall--sure I shall, sir! Then we shall see!”

Mr. Brownell and his umbrella scudded off, and Pot returned to his
match-plannings. Anon, he observed, much as the Almighty might observe
black-beetles, two small figures coming over the Pebble-ridge a few
hundred yards to his right. They were a Major and his Minor, the
latter a new boy and, as such, entitled to his brother’s countenance
for exactly three days--after which he would fend for himself. Pot
waited till they were well out on the great stretch of mother-o’-pearl
sands; then caused his ground-ash to describe a magnificent whirl of
command in the air.

“Come on,” said the Major. “Run!”

“What for?” said the Minor, who had noticed nothing.

“’Cause we’re wanted. Leg it!”

“Oh, I can do _that_,” the Minor replied and, at the end of the sprint,
fetched up a couple of yards ahead of his brother, and much less winded.

“’Your Minor?” said Pot looking over them, seawards.

“Yes, Mullins,” the Major replied.

“All right. Cut along!” They cut on the word.

“Hi! Fludd Major! Come back!”

Back fled the elder.

“Your wind’s bad. Too fat. You grunt like a pig. Mustn’t do it!
Understand? Go away!”

“What was all that for?” the Minor asked on the Major’s return.

“To see if we could run, you fool!”

“Well, I ran faster than you, anyhow,” was the scandalous retort.

“Look here, Har--Minor, if you go on talking like this, you’ll get
yourself kicked all round Coll. An’ you mustn’t stand like you did when
a Prefect’s talkin’ to you.”

The Minor’s eyes opened with awe. “I thought it was only one of the
masters,” said he.

“Masters! It was Mullins--Head o’ Games. You _are_ a putrid young ass!”

By what seemed pure chance, Mr. Brownell ran into the School Chaplain,
the Reverend John Gillette, beating up against the soft, September rain
that no native ever troubled to wear a coat for.

“I was trying to catch you after lunch,” the latter began. “I wanted to
show you our objects of local interest.”

“Thank you! I’ve seen all _I_ want,” Mr. Brownell answered. “Gillette,
_is_ there anything about me which suggests the Congenital Dupe?”

“It’s early to say, yet,” the Chaplain answered. “Who’ve you been
meeting?”

“A youth called Mullins, I believe.” And, indeed, there was Potiphar,
ground-ash, pipe, and all, quarter-decking serenely below the
Pebble-ridge.

“Oh! I see. Old Pot--our Head of Games.”

“He was smoking. He’s smoking _now_! Before those two little boys,
too!” Mr. Brownell panted. “He had the audacity to tell me that----”

“Yes,” the Reverend John cut in. “The Army Class is allowed to
smoke--not in their studies, of course, but within limits, out of
doors. You see we have to compete against the Crammers’ establishments,
where smoking’s usual.”

This was true! Of the only school in England was this the cold truth,
and for the reason given, in that unprogressive age.

“Good Heavens!” said Mr. Brownell to the gulls and the gray sea. “And I
was never warned!”

“The Head _is_ a little forgetful. _I_ ought to have----But it’s all
right,” the Chaplain added soothingly. “Pot won’t--er--give you away.”

Mr. Brownell, who knew what smoking led to, testified out of his twelve
years’ experience of what he called the Animal Boy. He left little
unexplored or unexplained.

“There may be something in what you say,” the Reverend John assented.
“But as a matter of fact, their actual smoking doesn’t amount to much.
They talk a great deal about their brands of tobacco. Practically, it
makes them rather keen on putting down smoking among the juniors--as an
encroachment on their privilege, you see. They lick ’em twice as hard
for it as _we’d_ dare to.”

“Lick!” Mr. Brownell cried. “One expels! One expels! _I_ know the end
of these practices.” He told his companion, in detail, with anecdotes
and inferences, a great deal more about the Animal Boy.

“Ah!” said the Reverend John to himself. “You’ll leave at the end
of the term; but you’ll have a deuce of a time first.” Aloud:
“We-ell, I suppose no one can be sure of any school’s tendency at
any given moment, but, personally, I should incline to believe that
we’re reasonably free from the--er--monastic microbes of--er--older
institutions.”

“But a school’s a school. You can’t get out of _that_! It’s
preposterous! You must admit _that_,” Mr. Brownell insisted.

They were within hail of Pot by now, and the Reverend John asked him
how Affairs of State stood.

“All right, thank you, sir. How are you, sir?”

“Loungin’ round and sufferin’, my son. What about the dates of the
Exeter and Tiverton matches?”

“As late in the term as we can get ’em, don’t you think, sir?”

“Quite! Specially Blundell’s. They’re our dearest foe,” he explained to
the frozen Mr. Brownell. “Aren’t we rather light in the scrum just now,
Mullins?”

“’Fraid so, sir: but Packman’s playin’ forward this term.”

“_At_ last!” cried the Reverend John. (Packman was Pot’s
second-in-command, who considered himself a heaven-born half-back, but
Pot had been working on him diplomatically.) “He’ll be a pillar, at any
rate. Lend me one of your fuzees, please. I’ve only got matches.”

Mr. Brownell was unused to this sort of talk. “A bad beginning to a bad
business,” he muttered as they returned to College.

Pot finished out his meditations; from time to time rubbing up the
gloss on his new seven-and-sixpenny silver-mounted, rather hot,
myall-wood pipe, with its very thin crust in the bowl.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the Studies brought back brackets and pictures for their walls, so
did they bring odds and ends of speech--theatre, opera, and music-hall
gags--from the great holiday world; some of which stuck for a term,
and others were discarded. Number Five was unpacking, when Dick Four
(King’s House) of the red nose and dramatic instincts, who with Pussy
and Tertius[1] inhabited the study below, loafed up and asked them “how
their symptoms seemed to segashuate.” They said nothing at the time,
for they knew Dick had a giddy uncle who took him to the Pavilion and
the Cri, and all would be explained later. But, before they met again,
Beetle came across two fags at war in a box-room, one of whom cried
to the other: “Turn me loose, or I’ll knock the natal stuffin’ out of
you.” Beetle demanded why he, being offal, presumed to use this strange
speech. The fag said it came out of a new book about rabbits and foxes
and turtles and niggers, which was in his locker. (_Uncle Remus_ was a
popular holiday gift-book in Shotover’s year: when Cetewayo lived in
the Melbury Road, Arabi Pasha in Egypt, and Spofforth on the Oval.)
Beetle had it out and read for some time, standing by the window,
ere he carried it off to Number Five and began at once to give a
wonderful story of a Tar Baby. Stalky tore it from him because he
sputtered incoherently; McTurk, for the same cause, wrenching it from
Stalky. There was no prep that night. The book was amazing, and full of
quotations that one could hurl like javelins. When they came down to
prayers, Stalky, to show he was abreast of the latest movement, pounded
on the door of Dick Four’s study shouting a couplet that pleased him:

    “Ti-yi! Tungalee!
    I eat um pea! I pick um pea!”

Upon which Dick Four, hornpiping and squinting, and not at all unlike a
bull-frog, came out and answered from the bottom of his belly, whence
he could produce incredible noises:

    “Ingle-go-jang, my joy, my joy!
    Ingle-go-jang, my joy!
    _I’m_ right at home, my joy, my joy!----”

The chants seemed to answer the ends of their being created for the
moment. They all sang them the whole way up the corridor, and, after
prayers, bore the burdens dispersedly to their several dormitories
where they found many who knew the book of the words, but who, boylike,
had waited for a lead ere giving tongue. In a short time the College
was as severely infected with _Uncle Remus_ as it had been with
_Pinafore_ and _Patience_. King realised it specially because he was
running Macrea’s House in addition to his own and, Dick Four said, was
telling his new charges what he thought of his “esteemed colleague’s”
methods of House-control.

The Reverend John was talking to the Head in the latter’s study,
perhaps a fortnight later.

“If you’d only wired _me_,” he said. “I could have dug up something
that might have tided us over. This man’s dangerous.”

“_Mea culpa!_” the Head replied. “I had so much on hand. Our Governing
Council alone----But what do _We_ make of him?”

“Trust Youth! _We_ call him ‘Mister.’”

“‘Mister Brownell’?”

“Just ‘Mister.’ It took _Us_ three days to plumb his soul.”

“And he doesn’t approve of Our institutions? You say he is On the
Track--eh? He suspects the worst?”

The School Chaplain nodded.

“We-ell. _I_ should say that that was the one tendency we had _not_
developed. Setting aside we haven’t even a curtain in a dormitory, let
alone a lock to any form-room door--there has to be tradition in these
things.”

“So I believe. So, indeed, one knows. And--’tisn’t as if I ever
preached on personal purity either.”

The Head laughed. “No, or you’d join Brownell at term-end. By the way,
what’s this new line of Patristic discourse you’re giving us in church?
I found myself listening to some of it last Sunday.”

“Oh! My early Christianity sermons? I bought a dozen ready made in Town
just before I came down. Some one who knows his Gibbon must have done
’em. Aren’t they good?” The Reverend John, who was no hand at written
work, beamed self-approvingly. There was a knock and Pot entered.

The weather had defeated him, at last. All footer-grounds, he reported,
were unplayable, and must be rested. His idea, to keep things going,
was Big and Little Side Paper-chases thrice a week. For the Juniors, a
shortish course on the Burrows which he intended to oversee personally
the first few times, while Packman lunged Big Side across the inland
and upland ploughs, for proper sweats. There was some question of
bounds that he asked authority to vary; and, would the Head please
say which afternoons would interfere least with the Army Class, Extra
Tuition.

As to bounds, the Head left those, as usual, entirely to Pot. The
Reverend John volunteered to shift one of his extra-Tu classes from
four to five P. M. till after prayers--nine to ten. The whole question
was settled in five minutes.

“_We_ hate paper-chases, don’t we, Pot?” the Headmaster asked as the
Head of Games rose.

“Yes, sir, but it keeps ’em in training. Good night, sir.”

“To go back----” drawled the Head when the door was well shut. “No-o.
I do _not_ think so!... Ye-es! He’ll leave at the end of the term....
A-aah! How does it go? ‘Don’t ’spute wid de squinch owl. Jam de shovel
in de fier.’ Have you come across that extraordinary book, by the way?”

“Oh, yes. _We_’ve got it badly too. It has some sort of elemental
appeal, I suppose.”

Here Mr. King came in with a neat little scheme for the reorganisation
of certain details in Macrea’s House, where he had detected
reprehensible laxities. The Head sighed. The Reverend John only heard
the beginnings of it. Then he slid out softly. He remembered he had not
written to Macrea for quite a long time.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first Big Side Paper-chase, in blinding wet, was as vile as even
the groaning and bemired Beetle had prophesied. But Dick Four had
managed to run his own line when it skirted Bideford, and turned up at
the Lavatories half an hour late cherishing a movable tumour beneath
his sweater.

“Ingle-go-jang!” he chanted, and slipped out a warm but coy
land-tortoise.

“My Sacred Hat!” cried Stalky. “Brer Terrapin! Where you catchee? What
you makee-do _aveck_?”

This was Stalky’s notion of how they talked in _Uncle Remus_; and he
spake no other tongue for weeks.

“I don’t know yet; but I had to get him. ’Man with a barrow full of ’em
in Bridge Street. ’Gave me my choice for a bob. Leave him alone, you
owl! He won’t swim where you’ve been washing your filthy self! ‘_I_’m
right at home, my joy, my joy.’” Dick’s nose shone like Bardolph’s as
he bubbled in the bath.

Just before tea-time, he, “Pussy,” and Tertius broke in upon Number
Five, processionally, singing:

    “Ingle-go-jang, my joy, my joy!
    Ingle-go-jang, my joy!
    I’m right at home, my joy, my joy!
    Ingle-go-jang, my joy.”

Brer Terrapin, painted _or_ and _sable_--King’s House-colours--swung by
a neatly contrived belly-band from the end of a broken jumping-pole.
They thought rather well of taking him in to tea. They called at one or
two studies on the way, and were warmly welcomed; but when they reached
the still shut doors of the dining-hall (Richards, ex-Petty Officer, R.
N., was always unpunctual--but they needn’t have called him “Stinking
Jim”) the whole school shouted approval. After the meal, Brer Terrapin
was borne the round of the form-rooms from Number One to Number Twelve,
in an unbroken roar of homage.

“To-morrow,” Dick Four announced, “we’ll sacrifice to him. Fags in
blazin’ paper-baskets!” and with thundering “Ingle-go-jangs” the Idol
retired to its shrine.

It had been a satisfactory performance. Little Hartopp, surprised
labelling “rocks” in Number Twelve, which held the Natural History
Museum, had laughed consumedly; and the Reverend John, just before
prep, complimented Dick that he had not a single dissenter to his
following. In this respect the affair was an advance on Byzantium and
Alexandria which, of course, were torn by rival sects led by militant
Bishops or zealous heathen. _Vide_, (Beetle,) _Hypatia_, and (if Dick
Four ever listened, instead of privily swotting up his Euclid, in
Church) the Reverend John’s own sermons. Mr. King, who had heard the
noise but had not appeared, made no comment till dinner, when he told
the Common Room ceiling that he entertained the lowest opinion of Uncle
Remus’s buffoonery, but opined that it might interest certain types
of intellect. Little Hartopp, School Librarian, who had, by special
request, laid in an extra copy of the book, differed acridly. He
had, he said, heard or overheard every salient line of _Uncle Remus_
quoted, appositely too, by boys whom he would not have credited with
intellectual interests. Mr. King repeated that he was wearied by the
senseless and childish repetitions of immature minds. He recalled the
_Patience_ epidemic. Mr. Prout did not care for _Uncle Remus_--the
dialect put him off--but he thought the Houses were getting a bit
out of hand. There was nothing one could lay hold of, of course--“As
yet,” Mr. Brownell interjected darkly. “But this larking about in
form-rooms,” he added, “had potentialities which, if _he_ knew anything
of the Animal Boy, would develop--or had developed.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the Reverend John. “This is the first time
to my knowledge that Stalky has ever played second-fiddle to any one.
Brer Terrapin was entirely Dick Four’s notion. By the way, he was
painted _your_ House-colours, King.”

“Was he?” said King artlessly. “I have always held that our Dickson
Quartus had the rudiments of imagination. We will look into it--look
into it.”

“In our loathsome calling, more things are done by judicious letting
alone than by any other,” the Reverend John grunted.

“I can’t subscribe to that,” said Mr. Prout. “_You_ haven’t a House,”
and for once Mr. King backed Prout.

“Thank Heaven I haven’t. Or I should be like you two. Leave ’em alone!
Leave ’em alone! Haven’t you ever seen puppies fighting over a slipper
for hours?”

“Yes, but Gillette admits that Dickson Quartus was the only begetter
of this manifestation. I wasn’t aware that the--er--Testacean had been
tricked out in _my_ colours,” said King.

And at that very hour, Number Five Study--“prep” thrown to the
winds--were toiling inspiredly at a Tar Baby made up of Beetle’s
sweater, and half-a-dozen lavatory-towels; a condemned cretonne curtain
and ditto baize table-cloth for “natal stuffin’”; an ancient, but
air-tight puntabout-ball for the head; all three play-box ropes for
bindings; and most of Richard’s weekly blacking allowance for Prout’s
House’s boots to give tone to the whole.

“Gummy!” said Beetle when their curtain-pole had been taken down and
Tar Baby hitched to the end of it by a loop in its voluptuous back. “It
looks pretty average indecent, somehow.”

“You can use it this way, too,” Turkey demonstrated, handling the
curtain-pole like a flail. “Now, shove it in the fireplace to dry an’
we’ll wash up.”

“But--but,” said Stalky, fascinated by the unspeakable front and behind
of the black and bulging horror. “How _come_ he lookee so hellish?”

“Dead easy! If you do anything with your whole heart, Ruskin says, you
always pull off something dam’-fine. Brer Terrapin’s only a natural
animal; but Tar Baby’s Art,” McTurk explained.

“I see! ‘If you’re anxious for to shine in the high æsthetic line.’
Well, Tar Baby’s the filthiest thing _I_’ve ever seen in my life,”
Stalky concluded. “King’ll be rabid.”

The United idolaters set forth, side by side, at five o’clock next
afternoon; Brer Terrapin, wide awake, and swimming hard into nothing;
Tar Baby lurching from side to side with a lascivious abandon that made
Foxy, the School Sergeant, taking defaulters’ drill in the Corridor,
squawk like an outraged hen. And when they ceremoniously saluted
each other, like aristocratic heads on revolutionary pikes, it beat
the previous day’s performance out of sight and mind. The very fags,
offered up, till the bottoms of the paper-baskets carried away, as
heave-offerings before them, fell over each other for the honour; and
House by House, when the news spread, dropped its doings, and followed
the Mysteries--not without song.

Some say it was a fag of Prout’s who appealed for rescue from Brer
Terrapin to Tar Baby; others, that the introits to the respective
creeds (“Ingle-go-jang”--“Ti-yi-Tungalee!”) carried in themselves the
seeds of dissent. At any rate, the cleavage developed as swiftly as
in a new religion, and by tea-time when they were fairly hoarse, the
rolling world was rent to the death between Ingles _versus_ Tungles,
and Brer Terrapin had swept out Number Eleven form-room to the
War-cry: “Here I come a-bulgin’ and a-bilin’.” Prep stopped further
developments, but they agreed that, as a recreation for wet autumn
evenings, the jape was unequalled, and called for its repetition on
Saturday.

That was a brilliant evening, too. Both sides went into prayers
practically re-dressing themselves. There was a smell of singed fag
down the lines and a watery eye or so; but nothing to which the most
fastidious could have objected. The Reverend John hinted something
about roof-lifting noises.

“Oh, _no_, Padre, Sahib. We were only billin’ an’ cooin’ a bit,” Stalky
explained. “We haven’t really begun. There’s goin’ to be a tug-o’-war
next Saturday with Miss Meadow’s bed-cord----”

“‘Which in dem days would ha’ hilt a mule,’” the Reverend John quoted.
“Well, I’ve got to be impartial. I wish you both good luck.”

The week, with its three paper-chases, passed uneventfully, but for a
certain amount of raiding and reprisals on new lines that might have
warned them they were playing with fire. The Juniors had learned to
use the sacred war-chants as signals of distress; oppressed Ingles
squealing for aid against oppressing Tungles, and _vice versa_; so
that one never knew when a peaceful form-room would flare up in
song and slaughter. But not a soul dreamed, for a moment, that that
Saturday’s jape would develop into--what it did! They were rigidly
punctilious about the ritual; exquisitely careful as to the weights
on Miss Meadow’s bed-cord, kindly lent by Richards, who said he knew
nothing about mules, but guaranteed it would hold a barge’s crew; and
if Dick Four chose to caparison himself as Archimandrite of Joppa,
black as burned cork could make him, why, Stalky, in a nightgown kilted
up beneath his sweater, was equally the Pope Symmachus, just converted
from heathendom but given to alarming relapses.

It began after tea--say 6.50 P. M. It got into its stride by 7.30 when
Turkey, with pillows bound round the ends of forms, invented the Royal
Battering-Ram Corps. It grew and--it grew till a quarter to nine when
the Prefects, most of whom had fought on one side or the other, thought
it time to stop and went in with ground-ashes and the bare hand for ten
minutes....

Honours for the action were not awarded by the Head till Monday morning
when he dealt out one dozen lickings to selected seniors, eight
“millies” (one thousand), fourteen “usuals” (five hundred lines), minor
impositions past count, and a stoppage of pocket-money on a scale and
for a length of time unprecedented in modern history.

He said the College was within an ace of being burned to the ground
when the gas-jet in Number Eleven form-room--where they tried to burn
Tar Baby, fallen for the moment into the hands of the enemy--was
wrenched off, and the lit gas spouted all over the ceiling till some
one plugged the pipe with dormitory soap. He said that nothing save
his consideration for their future careers kept him from expelling
the wanton ruffians who had noosed all the desks in Number Twelve
and swept them up in one crackling mound, barring a couple that had
pitch-poled through the window. This, again, had been no man’s design
but the inspiration of necessity when Tar Baby’s bodyguard, surrounded
but defiant, was only rescued at the last minute by Turkey’s immortal
flank-attack with the battering-rams that carried away the door of
Number Nine. He said that the same remarks applied to the fireplace and
mantelpiece in Number Seven which everybody had seen fall out of the
wall of their own motion after Brer Terrapin had hitched Miss Meadow’s
bed-cord to the bars of the grate.

He said much more, too; but as King pointed out in Common Room that
evening, his canings were inept, he had _not_ confiscated the Idols
and, above all, had not castigated, as King would have castigated, the
disgusting childishness of all concerned.

“Well,” said Little Hartopp. “I saw the Prefects choking them off as
we came into prayers. You’ve reason to reckon that in the scale of
suffering.”

“And more than half the damage was done under _your_ banner, King,” the
Reverend John added.

“That doesn’t affect my judgment; though, as a matter of fact, I
believe Brer Terrapin triumphed over Tar Baby all along the line.
Didn’t he, Prout?”

“It didn’t seem to me a fitting time to ask. The Tar Babies were
handicapped, of course, by not being able to--ah--tackle a live animal.”

“I confess,” Mr. Brownell volunteered, “it was the studious perversity
of certain aspects of the orgy which impressed _me_. And yet, what can
one exp----”

“How do you mean?” King demanded. “Dickson Quartus may be eccentric,
but----”

“I was alluding to the vile and calculated indecency of that black
doll.”

Mr. Brownell had passed Tar Baby going down to battle, all round and
ripe, before Turkey had begun to use it as Bishop Odo’s holy-water
sprinkler.

“It is possible you didn’t----”

“_I_ never noticed anything,” said Prout. “If there had been, I should
have been the first----”

Here Little Hartopp sniggered, which did not cool the air.

“Peradventure,” King began with due intake of the breath. “Peradventure
even _I_ might have taken cognizance of the matter both for my own
House’s sake and for my colleague’s.... No! Folly I concede. Utter
childishness and complete absence of discipline in _all_ quarters, as
the natural corollary to dabbling in so-called transatlantic humour, I
frankly admit. But that there was anything esoterically obscene in the
outbreak I absolutely deny.”

“They’ve been fighting for weeks over those things,” said Mr. Prout.
“’Silly, of course, but I don’t see how it can be dangerous.”

“Quite true. Any House-master of experience knows _that_, Brownell,”
the Reverend John put in reprovingly.

“Given a normal basis of tradition and conduct--certainly,” Mr.
Brownell answered. “But with such amazing traditions as exist here,
no man with any experience of the Animal Boy can draw your deceptive
inferences. That’s all _I_ mean.”

Once again, and not for the first time, but with greater heat he
testified what smoking led to--what, indeed, he was morally certain
existed in full blast under their noses....

Gloves were off in three minutes. Pessimists, no more than poets,
love each other, and even when they work together it is one thing
to pessimise congenially with an ancient and tried associate who is
also a butt, and another to be pessimised over by an inexperienced
junior, even though the latter’s college career may have included more
exhibitions--nay, even pot-huntings--than one’s own. The Reverend John
did his best to pour water on the flames. Little Hartopp, perceiving
that it was pure oil, threw in canfuls of his own, from the wings.
In the end, words passed which would have made the Common Room
uninhabitable for the future, but that Macrea had written (the Reverend
John had seen the letter) saying that his knee was fairly re-knit and
he was prepared to take on again at half-term. This happened to be the
only date since the Creation beyond which Mr. Brownell’s self-respect
would not permit him to stay one hour. It solved the situation, amid
puffings and blowings and bitter epigrams, and a most distinguished
stateliness of bearing all round till Mr. Brownell’s departure.

       *       *       *       *       *

“My dear fellow!” said the Reverend John to Macrea, on the first night
of the latter’s return. “I _do_ hope there was nothing in my letters
to you--you asked me to keep you posted--that gave you any idea King
wasn’t doing his best with your House according to his lights?”

“Not in the least,” said Macrea. “I’ve the greatest respect for King,
but after all, one’s House is one’s House. One can’t stand it being
tinkered with by well-meaning outsiders.”

To Mr. Brownell on Bideford station-platform, the Reverend John’s last
words were:

“Well, well. You mustn’t judge us too harshly. I dare say there’s a
great deal in what you say. Oh, yes! King’s conduct was inexcusable,
absolutely inexcusable! About the smoking? Lamentable, but we must all
bow down, more or less, in the House of Rimmon. _We_ have to compete
with the Crammers’ Shops.”

To the Head, in the silence of his study, next day: “He didn’t seem
to me the kind of animal who’d keep to advantage in our atmosphere.
Luckily he lost his temper (King and he are own brothers) and he
couldn’t withdraw his resignation.”

“Excellent. After all, it’s only a few pounds to make up. I’ll slip it
in under our recent--er--barrack damages. And what do _We_ think of it
all, Gillette?”

“_We_ do not think at all--any of us,” said the Reverend John. “Youth
is its own prophylactic, thank Heaven.”

And the Head, not usually devout, echoed, “Thank Heaven!”

       *       *       *       *       *

“It was worth it,” Dick Four pronounced on review of the
profit-and-loss account with Number Five in his study.

“Heap-plenty-_bong-assez_,” Stalky assented.

“But why didn’t King ra’ar up an’ cuss Tar Baby?” Beetle asked.

“You preter-pluperfect, fat-ended fool!” Stalky began--

“Keep your hair on! We _all_ know the Idolaters wasn’t our Uncle
Stalky’s idea. But why didn’t King----”

“Because Dick took care to paint Brer Terrapin King’s House-colours.
You can always conciliate King by soothin’ his putrid
_esprit-de-maisong_. Ain’t that true, Dick?”

Dick Four, with the smile of modest worth unmasked, said it was so.

“An’ now,” Turkey yawned. “King an’ Macrea’ll jaw for the rest of the
term how he ran his house when Macrea was trying to marry fat widows in
Switzerland. Mountaineerin’! ’Bet Macrea never went near a mountain.”

“’One good job, though. I go back to Macrea for Maths. He _does_ know
something,” said Stalky.

“Why? Didn’t ‘Mister’ know anythin’?” Beetle asked.

“’Bout as much as _you_,” was Stalky’s reply.

“_I_ don’t go about pretending to. What was he like?”

“‘Mister’? Oh, rather like King--King and water.”

Only water was not precisely the fluid that Stalky thought fit to
mention.


[1] See “Slaves of the Lamp”--_Stalky and Co._




THE CENTAURS


    Up came the young Centaur-colts from the plains they were fathered
                                                                    in--
      Curious, awkward, afraid.
    Burrs in their hocks and their tails, they were gathered in
      Mobs and run up to the yard to be made.

    Starting and shying at straws, with sidelings and plungings,
      Buckings and whirlings and bolts;
    Greener than grass, but full-ripe for their bridlings and lungings,
      Up to the yards and to Chiron they bustled the colts....

    First the light web and the cavesson; then the linked keys
      To jingle and turn on the tongue. Then, with cocked ears,
    The hour of watching and envy, while comrades at ease
      Passaged and backed, making naught of these terrible gears.

    Next, over-pride and its price at the low-seeming fence,
      Too oft and too easily taken--the world-beheld fall!
    And none in the yard except Chiron to doubt the immense,
      Irretrievable shame of it all!...

    Last, the trained squadron, full-charge--the sound of a going
      Through dust and spun clods, and strong kicks, pelted in as they
                                                                  went,
    And repaid at top-speed; till the order to halt without slowing
      Brought every colt on his haunches--and Chiron content!




THE WISH HOUSE




“LATE CAME THE GOD”


    Late came the God, having sent his forerunners who were not
                                                              regarded--
      Late, but in wrath;
    Saying: “The wrong shall be paid, the contempt be rewarded
      On all that she hath.”
    He poisoned the blade and struck home, the full bosom receiving
    The wound and the venom in one, past cure or relieving.

    He made treaty with Time to stand still that the grief might be
                                                                 fresh--
    Daily renewed and nightly pursued through her soul to her flesh--
    Mornings of memory, noontides of agony, midnights unslaked for her,
    Till the stones of the streets of her Hells and her Paradise ached
                                                                for her.

    So she lived while her body corrupted upon her.
      And she called on the Night for a sign, and a Sign was allowed,
    And she builded an Altar and served by the light of her Vision--
      Alone, without hope of regard or reward, but uncowed,
    Resolute, selfless, divine.
      These things she did in Love’s honour ...
    What is a God beside Woman? Dust and derision!




THE WISH HOUSE


The new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty-minutes’ call.
During that time, Mrs. Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly,
experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London.
She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient
Sussex (“t”s softening to “d”s as one warmed) when the ’bus brought
Mrs. Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March
Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late,
destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.

Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be
ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs. Fettley, with her bag of
quilt-patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden,
and the football-ground in the valley below.

“Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,” she explained, “so
there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’
she _do_ just-about bounce ye.”

“You’ve took no hurt,” said her hostess. “You don’t brittle by agein’,
Liz.”

Mrs. Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her
liking. “No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind
when I was so’s to be called round, can ye?”

Mrs. Ashcroft shook her head slowly--she never hurried--and went on
stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket.
Mrs. Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the
geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.

“What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?” Mrs. Fettley inquired with
a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her
entrance, almost bumped into the lady.

Mrs. Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere
she stabbed home. “Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her
yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.”

“Ourn, at Keyneslade,” said Mrs. Fettley, “she’s full o’ words an’
pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts
while she clacks.”

“This ’un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church
nuns, like.”

“Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of
it....” Mrs. Fettley threw up her sharp chin. “Lord! How they dam’
cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place!”

The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially
chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match;
a regular Saturday “shopping” ’bus, for the county’s capital, fumed
behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car
backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through
pleasure-traffic.

“You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,” Mrs. Ashcroft observed.

“Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny--three times over. I
lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller--ain’t it?”

“’Tis for Arthur--my Jane’s eldest.”

“But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he?”

“No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.”

“You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them
aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music
from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ’im--pore fool me!”

“An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?” Mrs.
Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.

“He do. ’No odds ’twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ’Take all an’
give naught--an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at
a time Willie’ll ask me for!”

“They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,” Mrs. Ashcroft said.

“An’ on’y last week,” the other went on, “me daughter, she ordered a
quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ’um to be
chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.”

“I lay he charged her, then.”

“I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at
the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.”

“Tck!”

Mrs. Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had
scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the
moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if
the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment.
Mrs. Fettley peered at him closely.

“They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,” Mrs. Ashcroft explained.

“Ah,” said the other, with narrowed eyes. “I lay _he_ won’t show much
mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ’oo the dooce do he remind me
of, all of a sudden?”

“They must look arter theirselves--’same as we did.” Mrs. Ashcroft
began to set out the tea.

“No denyin’ _you_ could, Gracie,” said Mrs. Fettley.

“What’s in your head now?”

“Dunno.... But it come over me, sudden-like--about dat woman from
Rye--I’ve slipped the name--Barnsley, wadn’t it?”

“Batten--Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.”

“That’s it--Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a
hay-fork--’time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene--for stealin’ her man.”

“But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?” Mrs.
Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.

“I did--an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through
your breastes when you said it.”

“No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds--Polly. She shruck too much for
reel doin’s.”

“Allus seems to _me_,” Mrs. Fettley said after a pause, “that a man
’twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. ’Like a dog
bein’ called two ways.”

“Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz?”

“That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly
looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but--_him_!
Why, ’tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again!... Eh?”

“Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so--bein’ barren-like,
themselves.”

“Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now!... An’ Jim Batten’s been dead
this----”

“Seven and twenty years,” Mrs. Ashcroft answered briefly. “Won’t ye
draw up, Liz?”

Mrs. Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea,
bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s
tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.

“Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,” said Mrs. Ashcroft
thoughtfully. “We only go through this world once.”

“But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?” her guest suggested.

“Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.”
For Mrs. Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed
regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for
her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during
her term of office.

“An’ you that _was_ so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full
time, like. _I_’ve watched ye goin’.” Mrs. Fettley spoke with real
affection.

“Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ’eart left me still,”
Mrs. Ashcroft returned.

“You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look
back on at the day’s eend.”

“I reckon you’ve _your_ back-lookin’s, too,” was Mrs. Ashcroft’s answer.

“You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when
I’m along with you, Gra’. ’Takes two sticks to make a fire.”

Mrs. Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright
calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the
motor-traffic, and the crowded football-ground below the garden roared
almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without
interruption, before she wiped her eyes. “And,” she concluded, “they
read ’is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course
it wadn’t any o’ _my_ becomin’ concerns--let be I ’adn’t set eyes on
him for so long. O’ course _I_ couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve
no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ’is grave, either. I’ve
been schemin’ to slip over there by the ’bus some day; but they’d ask
questions at ’ome past endurance. So I ’aven’t even _that_ to stay me.”

“But you’ve ’ad your satisfactions?”

“Godd! Yess! Those four years ’e was workin’ on the rail near us. An’
the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.”

“Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ’Nother cup o’ tea?”

       *       *       *       *       *

The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the
two elderly ladies closed the kitchen-door against chill. A couple of
jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple-trees in the
garden. This time, the word was with Mrs. Ashcroft, her elbows on the
tea-table, and her sick leg propped on a stool....

“Well I never! But what did your ’usband say to that?” Mrs. Fettley
asked, when the deep-toned recital halted.

“’E said I might go where I pleased for all of ’im. But seein’ ’e
was bedrid, I said I’d ’tend ’im out. ’E knowed I wouldn’t take no
advantage of ’im in that state. ’E lasted eight or nine week. Then he
was took with a seizure-like; an’ laid stone-still for days. Then ’e
propped ’imself up abed an’ says: ‘You pray no man’ll ever deal with
you like you’ve dealed with some.’ ‘An’ you?’ I says, for _you_ know,
Liz, what a rover ’e was. ‘It cuts both ways,’ says ’e, ‘but _I_’m
death-wise, an’ I can see what’s comin’ to you.” He died a-Sunday
an’ was buried a-Thursday.... An’ yet I’d set a heap by him--one time
or--did I ever?”

“You never told me that before,” Mrs. Fettley ventured.

“I’m payin’ ye for what ye told me just now. Him bein’ dead, I wrote
up, sayin’ I was free for good, to that Mrs. Marshall in Lunnon--which
gave me my first place as kitchen-maid--Lord, how long ago! She was
well pleased, for they two was both gettin’ on, an’ I knowed their
ways. You remember, Liz, I used to go to ’em in service between whiles,
for years--when we wanted money, or--or my ’usband was away--on
occasion.”

“’E _did_ get that six months at Chichester, didn’t ’e?” Mrs. Fettley
whispered. “We never rightly won to the bottom of it.”

“’E’d ha’ got more, but the man didn’t die.”

“’None o’ your doin’s, was it, Gra’?”

“No! ’Twas the woman’s husband this time. An’ so, my man bein’ dead,
I went back to them Marshall’s, as cook, to get me legs under a
gentleman’s table again, and be called with a handle to me name. That
was the year you shifted to Portsmouth.”

“Cosham,” Mrs. Fettley corrected. “There was a middlin’ lot o’ new
buildin’ bein’ done there. My man went first, an’ got the room, an’ I
follered.”

“Well, then, I was a year-abouts in Lunnon, all at a breath, like,
four meals a day an’ livin’ easy. Then, ’long towards autumn, they two
went travellin’, like, to France; keepin’ me on, for they couldn’t do
without me. I put the house to rights for the caretaker, an’ then I
slipped down ’ere to me sister Bessie--me wages in me pockets, an’ all
’ands glad to be’old of me.”

“That would be when I was at Cosham,” said Mrs. Fettley.

“_You_ know, Liz, there wasn’t no cheap-dog pride to folk, those days,
no more than there was cinemas nor whisk-drives. Man or woman ’ud lay
hold o’ any job that promised a shillin’ to the backside of it, didn’t
they? I was all peaked up after Lunnon, an’ I thought the fresh airs
’ud serve me. So I took on at Smalldene, obligin’ with a hand at the
early potato-liftin’, stubbin’ hens, an’ such-like. They’d ha’ mocked
me sore in my kitchen in Lunnon, to see me in men’s boots, an’ me
petticoats all shorted.”

“Did it bring ye any good?” Mrs. Fettley asked.

“’Twadn’t for that I went. You know, ’s’well’s me, that na’un happens
to ye till it _’as_ ’appened. Your mind don’t warn ye before’and of
the road ye’ve took, till you’re at the far eend of it. We’ve only a
backwent view of our proceedin’s.”

“’Oo was it?”

“’Arry Mockler.” Mrs. Ashcroft’s face puckered to the pain of her sick
leg.

Mrs. Fettley gasped. “’Arry? Bert Mockler’s son! An’ _I_ never guessed!”

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “An’ I told myself--_an’_ I beleft it--that I
wanted field-work.”

“What did ye get out of it?”

“The usuals. Everythin’ at first--worse than naught after. I had signs
an’ warnings a-plenty, but I took no heed of ’em. For we was burnin’
rubbish one day, just when we’d come to know how ’twas with--with both
of us. ’Twas early in the year for burnin’, an’ I said so. ‘No!’ says
he. ‘The sooner dat old stuff’s off an’ done with,’ ’e says, ‘the
better.’ ’Is face was harder’n rocks when he spoke. Then it come over
me that I’d found me master, which I ’adn’t ever before. I’d allus
owned ’em, like.”

“Yes! Yes! They’re yourn or you’re theirn,” the other sighed. “I like
the right way best.”

“I didn’t. But ’Arry did.... ’Long then, it come time for me to go back
to Lunnon. I couldn’t. I clean couldn’t! So, I took an’ tipped a dollop
o’ scaldin’ water out o’ the copper one Monday mornin’ over me left
’and and arm. Dat stayed me where I was for another fortnight.”

“Was it worth it?” said Mrs. Fettley, looking at the silvery scar on
the wrinkled fore-arm.

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “An’ after that, we two made it up ’twixt us so’s
’e could come to Lunnon for a job in a liv’ry-stable not far from me.
’E got it. _I_ ’tended to that. There wadn’t no talk nowhere. His own
mother never suspicioned how ’twas. He just slipped up to Lunnon, an’
there we abode that winter, not ’alf a mile t’other from each.”

“Ye paid ’is fare an’ all, though”; Mrs. Fettley spoke convincedly.

Again Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “Dere wadn’t much I didn’t do for him.
’E was me master, an’--O God, help us!--we’d laugh over it walkin’
together after dark in them paved streets, an’ me corns fair wrenchin’
in me boots! I’d never been like that before. Ner he! Ner he!”

Mrs. Fettley clucked sympathetically.

“An’ when did ye come to the eend?” she asked.

“When ’e paid it all back again, every penny. Then I knowed, but I
wouldn’t _suffer_ meself to know. ‘You’ve been mortal kind to me,’ he
says. ‘Kind!’ I said. ‘’Twixt _us_?’ But ’e kep’ all on tellin’ me ’ow
kind I’d been an’ ’e’d never forget it all his days. I held it from
off o’ me for three evenin’s, because I would _not_ believe. Then ’e
talked about not bein’ satisfied with ’is job in the stables, an’ the
men there puttin’ tricks on ’im, an’ all they lies which a man tells
when ’e’s leavin’ ye. I heard ’im out, neither ’elpin’ nor ’inderin’.
At the last, I took off a liddle brooch which he’d give me an’ I says:
‘Dat’ll do. _I_ ain’t askin’ na’un.’ An’ I turned me round an’ walked
off to me own sufferin’s. ’E didn’t make ’em worse. ’E didn’t come nor
write after that. ’E slipped off ’ere back ’ome to ’is mother again.”

“An’ ’ow often did ye look for ’en to come back?” Mrs. Fettley demanded
mercilessly.

“More’n once--more’n once! Goin’ over the streets we’d used, I thought
de very pave-stones ’ud shruck out under me feet.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Fettley. “I dunno but dat don’t ’urt as much as aught
else. An’ dat was all ye got?”

“No. ’Twadn’t. That’s the curious part, if you’ll believe it, Liz.”

“I do. I lay you’re further off lyin’ now than in all your life, Gra’.”

“I am.... An’ I suffered, like I’d not wish my most arrantest enemies
to. God’s Own Name! I went through the hoop that spring! One part of it
was headaches which I’d never known all me days before. Think o’ _me_
with an ’eddick! But I come to be grateful for ’em. They kep’ me from
thinkin’....”

“’Tis like a tooth,” Mrs. Fettley commented. “It must rage an’ rugg
till it tortures itself quiet on ye; an’ then--then there’s na’un left.”

“_I_ got enough lef’ to last me all _my_ days on earth. It come about
through our charwoman’s liddle girl--Sophy Ellis was ’er name--all
eyes an’ elbers an’ hunger. I used to give ’er vittles. Otherwhiles,
I took no special notice of ’er, an’ a sight less, o’ course, when me
trouble about ’Arry was on me. But--you know how liddle maids first
feel it sometimes--she come to be crazy-fond o’ me, pawin’ an’ cuddlin’
all whiles; an’ I ’adn’t the ’eart to beat ’er off.... One afternoon,
early in spring ’twas, ’er mother ’ad sent ’er round to scutchel up
what vittles she could off of us. I was settin’ by the fire, me apern
over me head, half-mad with the ’eddick, when she slips in. I reckon
I was middlin’ short with ’er. ‘Lor’!’ she says. ‘Is _that_ all? I’ll
take it off you in two-twos!’ I told her not to lay a finger on me, for
I thought she’d want to stroke my forehead; an’--I ain’t that make.
‘_I_ won’t tech ye,’ she says, an’ slips out again. She ’adn’t been
gone ten minutes ’fore me old ’eddick took off quick as bein’ kicked.
So I went about my work. Prasin’ly, Sophy comes back, an’ creeps into
my chair quiet as a mouse. ’Er eyes was deep in ’er ’ead an’ ’er face
all drawed. I asked ’er what ’ad ’appened. ‘Nothin’,’ she says. ‘On’y
_I_’ve got it now.’ ‘Got what?’ I says. ‘Your ’eddick,’ she says, all
hoarse an’ sticky-lipped. ‘I’ve took it on me.’ ‘Nonsense,’ I says, ‘it
went of itself when you was out. Lay still an’ I’ll make ye a cup o’
tea.’ ‘’Twon’t do no good,’ she says, ‘’til your time’s up. ’Ow long do
_your_ ’eddicks last?’ ‘Don’t talk silly,’ I says, ‘or I’ll send for
the Doctor.’ It looked to me like she might be hatchin’ de measles.
‘Oh, Mrs. Ashcroft,’ she says, stretchin’ out ’er liddle thin arms. ‘I
_do_ love ye.’ There wasn’t any holdin’ agin that. I took ’er into me
lap an’ made much of ’er. ‘Is it truly gone?’ she says. ‘Yes,’ I says,
‘an’ if ’twas you took it away, I’m truly grateful.’ ‘_’Twas_ me,’ she
says, layin’ ’er cheek to mine. ‘No one but me knows how.’ An’ then
she said she’d changed me ’eddick for me at a Wish ’Ouse.”

“Whatt?” Mrs. Fettley spoke sharply.

“A Wish ’Ouse. No! _I_ ’adn’t ’eard o’ such things, either. I couldn’t
get it straight at first, but, puttin’ all together, I made out that
a Wish ’Ouse ’ad to be a house which ’ad stood unlet an’ empty long
enough for Some One, like, to come an’ in’abit there. She said, a
liddle girl that she’d played with in the livery-stables where ’Arry
worked ’ad told ’er so. She said the girl ’ad belonged in a caravan
that laid up, o’ winters, in Lunnon. Gipsy, I judge.”

“Ooh! There’s no sayin’ what Gippos know, but _I_’ve never ’eard of a
Wish ’Ouse, an’ I know--some things,” said Mrs. Fettley.

“Sophy said there was a Wish ’Ouse in Wadloes Road--just a few streets
off, on the way to our green-grocer’s. All you ’ad to do, she said, was
to ring the bell an’ wish your wish through the slit o’ the letter-box.
I asked ’er if the fairies give it ’er? ‘Don’t ye know,’ she says,
‘there’s no fairies in a Wish ’Ouse? There’s only a Token.’”

“Goo’ Lord A’mighty! Where did she come by _that_ word?” cried Mrs.
Fettley; for a Token is a wraith of the dead or, worse still, of the
living.

“The caravan-girl ’ad told ’er, she said. Well, Liz, it troubled me
to ’ear ’er, an’ lyin’ in me arms she must ha’ felt it. ‘That’s very
kind o’ you,’ I says, holdin’ ’er tight, ‘to wish me ’eddick away. But
why didn’t ye ask somethin’ nice for yourself?’ ‘You can’t do that,’
she says. ‘All you’ll get at a Wish ’Ouse is leave to take some one
else’s trouble. I’ve took Ma’s ’eadaches, when she’s been kind to me;
but this is the first time I’ve been able to do aught for you. Oh,
Mrs. Ashcroft, I _do_ just-about love you.’ An’ she goes on all like
that. Liz, I tell you my ’air e’en a’most stood on end to ’ear ’er. I
asked ’er what like a Token was. ‘I dunno,’ she says, ‘but after you’ve
ringed the bell, you’ll ’ear it run up from the basement, to the front
door. Then say your wish,’ she says, ‘an’ go away.’ ‘The Token don’t
open de door to ye, then?’ I says. ‘Oh, no,’ she says. ‘You on’y ’ear
gigglin’, like, be’ind the front door. Then you say you’ll take the
trouble off of ’oo ever ’tis you’ve chose for your love; an’ ye’ll get
it,’ she says. I didn’t ask no more--she was too ’ot an’ fevered. I
made much of ’er till it come time to light de gas, an’ a liddle after
that, ’er ’eddick--mine, I suppose--took off, an’ she got down an’
played with the cat.”

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Fettley. “Did--did ye foller it up, anyways?”

“She askt me to, but I wouldn’t ’ave no such dealin’s with a child.”

“What _did_ ye do, then?”

“’Sat in me own room ’stid o’ the kitchen when me ’eddicks come on. But
it lay at de back o’ me mind.”

“’Twould. Did she tell ye more, ever?”

“No. Besides what the Gippo girl ’ad told ’er, she knew naught, ’cept
that the charm worked. An’, next after that--in May ’twas--I suffered
the summer out in Lunnon. ’Twas hot an’ windy for weeks, an’ the
streets stinkin’ o’ dried ’orse-dung blowin’ from side to side an’
lyin’ level with the kerb. We don’t get that nowadays. I ’ad my ’ol’day
just before hoppin’,[2] an’ come down ’ere to stay with Bessie again.
She noticed I’d lost flesh, an’ was all poochy under the eyes.”

“Did ye see ’Arry?”

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. “The fourth--no, the fifth day. Wednesday ’twas.
I knowed ’e was workin’ at Smalldene again. I asked ’is mother in the
street, bold as brass. She ’adn’t room to say much, for Bessie--you
know ’er tongue--was talkin’ full-clack. But that Wednesday, I was
walkin’ with one o’ Bessie’s chillern hangin’ on me skirts, at de back
o’ Chanter’s Tot. Prasin’ly, I felt ’e was be’ind me on the footpath,
an’ I knowed by ’is tread ’e’d changed ’is nature. I slowed, an’ I
heard ’im slow. Then I fussed a piece with the child, to force him past
me, like. So ’e _’ad_ to come past. ’E just says ‘Good-evenin’,’ and
goes on, tryin’ to pull ’isself together.”

“Drunk, was he?” Mrs. Fettley asked.

“Never! S’runk an’ wizen; ’is clothes ’angin’ on ’im like bags, an’
the back of ’is neck whiter’n chalk. ’Twas all I could do not to oppen
my arms an’ cry after him. But I swallered me spittle till I was back
’ome again an’ the chillern abed. Then I says to Bessie, after supper,
‘What in de world’s come to ’Arry Mockler?’ Bessie told me ’e’d been
a-Hospital for two months, ’long o’ cuttin’ ’is foot wid a spade,
muckin’ out the old pond at Smalldene. There was poison in de dirt,
an’ it rooshed up ’is leg, like, an’ come out all over him. ’E ’adn’t
been back to ’is job--carterin’ at Smalldene--more’n a fortnight. She
told me the Doctor said he’d go off, likely, with the November frostes;
an’ ’is mother ’ad told ’er that ’e didn’t rightly eat nor sleep, an’
sweated ’imself into pools, no odds ’ow chill ’e lay. An’ spit terrible
o’ mornin’s. ‘Dearie me,’ I says. ‘But, mebbe hoppin’ ’ll set ’im right
again,’ an’ I licked me thread-point an’ I fetched me needle’s eye up
to it an’ I threads me needle under de lamp, steady as rocks. An’ dat
night (me bed was in de wash-house) I cried an’ I cried. An’ _you_
know, Liz--for you’ve been with me in my throes--it takes summat to
make me cry.”

“Yes; but chile-bearin’ is on’y just pain,” said Mrs. Fettley.

“I come round by cock-crow, an’ dabbed cold tea on me eyes to take away
the signs. Long towards nex’ evenin’--I was settin’ out to lay some
flowers on me ’usband’s grave, for the look o’ the thing--I met ’Arry
over against where the War Memorial is now. ’E was comin’ back from
’is ’orses, so ’e couldn’t _not_ see me. I looked ’im all over, an’
‘’Arry,’ I says twix’ me teeth, ‘come back an’ rest-up in Lunnon.’ ‘I
won’t take it,’ he says, ‘for I can give ye naught.’ ‘I don’t ask it,’
I says. ‘By God’s Own Name, I don’t ask na’un! On’y come up an’ see a
Lunnon doctor.’ ’E lifts ’is two ’eavy eyes at me: ‘’Tis past that,
Gra’,’ ’e says. ‘I’ve but a few months left.’ ‘’Arry!’ I says. ‘_My_
man!’ I says. I couldn’t say no more. ’Twas all up in me throat. ‘Thank
ye kindly, Gra’,’ ’e says (but ’e never says ‘my woman’), an’ ’e went
on up-street an’ ’is mother--Oh, damn ’er!--she was watchin’ for ’im,
an’ she shut de door be’ind ’im.”

Mrs. Fettley stretched an arm across the table, and made to finger Mrs.
Ashcroft’s sleeve at the wrist, but the other moved it out of reach.

“So I went on to the churchyard with my flowers, an’ I remembered my
’usband’s warnin’ that night he spoke. ’E _was_ death-wise, an’ it
_’ad_ ’appened as ’e said. But as I was settin’ down de jam-pot on
the grave-mound, it come over me there was one thing I _could_ do for
’Arry. Doctor or no Doctor, I thought I’d make a trial of it. So I
did. Nex’ mornin’, a bill came down from our Lunnon green-grocer. Mrs.
Marshall, she’d lef’ me petty cash for suchlike--o’ course--but I tole
Bess ’twas for me to come an’ open the ’ouse. So I went up, afternoon
train.”

“An’--but I know you ’adn’t--’adn’t you no fear?”

“What for? There was nothin’ front o’ me but my own shame an’ God’s
croolty. I couldn’t ever get ’Arry--’ow _could_ I? I knowed it must go
on burnin’ till it burned me out.”

“Aie!” said Mrs. Fettley, reaching for the wrist again, and this time
Mrs. Ashcroft permitted it.

“Yit ’twas a comfort to know I could try _this_ for ’im. So I went an’
I paid the green-grocer’s bill, an’ put ’is receipt in me hand-bag, an’
then I stepped round to Mrs. Ellis--our char--an’ got the ’ouse-keys
an’ opened the ’ouse. First, I made me bed to come back to (God’s Own
Name! Me bed to lie upon!). Nex’ I made me a cup o’ tea an’ sat down
in the kitchen thinkin’, till ’long towards dusk. Terrible close,
’twas. Then I dressed me an’ went out with the receipt in me ’and-bag,
feignin’ to study it for an address, like. Fourteen, Wadloes Road, was
the place--a liddle basement-kitchen ’ouse, in a row of twenty-thirty
such, an’ tiddy strips o’ walled garden in front--the paint off the
front doors, an’ na’un done to na’un since ever so long. There wasn’t
’ardly no one in the streets ’cept the cats. _’Twas_ ’ot, too! I turned
into the gate bold as brass; up de steps I went an’ I ringed the
front-door bell. She pealed loud, like it do in an empty house. When
she’d all ceased, I ’eard a cheer, like, pushed back on de floor o’ the
kitchen. Then I ’eard feet on de kitchen-stairs, like it might ha’ been
a heavy woman in slippers. They come up to de stairhead, acrost the
hall--I ’eard the bare boards creak under ’em--an’ at de front door dey
stopped. I stooped me to the letter-box slit, an’ I says: ‘Let me take
everythin’ bad that’s in store for my man, ’Arry Mockler, for love’s
sake.’ Then, whatever it was t’other side de door let its breath out,
like, as if it ’ad been holdin’ it for to ’ear better.”

“Nothin’ was _said_ to ye?” Mrs. Fettley demanded.

“Na’un. She just breathed out--a sort of _A-ah_, like. Then the steps
went back an’ down-stairs to the kitchen--all draggy--an’ I heard the
cheer drawed up again.”

“An’ you abode on de doorstep, throughout all, Gra’?”

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded.

“Then I went away, an’ a man passin’ says to me: ‘Didn’t you know
that house was empty?’ ‘No,’ I says. ‘I must ha’ been give the wrong
number.’ An’ I went back to our ’ouse, an’ I went to bed; for I was
fair flogged out. ’Twas too ’ot to sleep more’n snatches, so I walked
me about, lyin’ down betweens, till crack o’ dawn. Then I went to the
kitchen to make me a cup o’ tea, an’ I hitted meself just above the
ankle on an old roastin’-jack o’ mine that Mrs. Ellis had moved out
from the corner, her last cleanin’. An’ so--nex’ after that--I waited
till the Marshalls come back o’ their holiday.”

“Alone there? I’d ha’ thought you’d ’ad enough of empty houses,” said
Mrs. Fettley, horrified.

“Oh, Mrs. Ellis an’ Sophy was runnin’ in an’ out soon’s I was back,
an’ ’twixt us we cleaned de house again top-to-bottom. There’s allus
a hand’s turn more to do in every house. An’ that’s ’ow ’twas with me
that autumn an’ winter, in Lunnon.”

“Then na’un hap--overtook ye for your doin’s?”

Mrs. Ashcroft smiled. “No. Not then. ’Long in November I sent Bessie
ten shillin’s.”

“You was allus free-’anded,” Mrs. Fettley interrupted.

“An’ I got what I paid for, with the rest o’ the news. She said the
hoppin’ ’ad set ’im up wonderful. ’E’d ’ad six weeks of it, and now
’e was back again carterin’ at Smalldene. No odds to me _’ow_ it ’ad
’appened--’slong’s it _’ad_. But I dunno as my ten shillin’s eased me
much. ’Arry bein’ _dead_, like, ’e’d ha’ been mine, till Judgment.
’Arry bein’ alive, ’e’d like as not pick up with some woman middlin’
quick. I raged over that. Come spring, I ’ad somethin’ else to rage
for. I’d growed a nasty little weepin’ boil, like, on me shin, just
above the boot-top, that wouldn’t heal no shape. It made me sick to
look at it, for I’m clean-fleshed by nature. Chop me all over with
a spade, an’ I’d heal like turf. Then Mrs. Marshall she set ’er own
doctor at me. ’E said I ought to ha’ come to him at first go-off,
’stead o’ drawin’ all manner o’ dyed stockin’s over it for months. ’E
said I’d stood up too much to me work, for it was settin’ very close
atop of a big swelled vein, like, behither the small o’ me ankle. ‘Slow
come, slow go,’ ’e says. ‘Lay your leg up on high an’ rest it,’ he
says, ‘an’ ’twill ease off. Don’t let it close up too soon. You’ve got
a very fine leg, Mrs. Ashcroft,’ ’e says. An’ he put wet dressin’s on
it.”

“’E done right.” Mrs. Fettley spoke firmly. “Wet dressin’s to wet
wounds. They draw de humours, same’s a lamp-wick draws de oil.”

“That’s true. An’ Mrs. Marshall was allus at me to make me set down
more, an’ dat nigh healed it up. An’ then after a while they packed me
off down to Bessie’s to finish the cure; for I ain’t the sort to sit
down when I ought to stand up. You was back in the village then, Liz.”

“I was. I was, but--never did I guess!”

“I didn’t desire ye to.” Mrs. Ashcroft smiled. “I saw ’Arry once or
twice in de street, wonnerful fleshed up an’ restored back. Then, one
day I didn’t see ’im, an’ ’is mother told me one of ’is ’orses ’ad
lashed out an’ caught ’im on the ’ip. So ’e was abed an’ middlin’
painful. An’ Bessie, she says to his mother, ’twas a pity ’Arry ’adn’t
a woman of ’is own to take the nursin’ off ’er. And the old lady _was_
mad! She told us that ’Arry ’ad never looked after any woman in ’is
born days, an’ as long as she was atop the mowlds, she’d contrive for
’im till ’er two ’ands dropped off. So I knowed she’d do watch-dog for
me, ’thout askin’ for bones.”

Mrs. Fettley rocked with small laughter.

“That day,” Mrs. Ashcroft went on, “I’d stood on me feet nigh all the
time, watchin’ the doctor go in an’ out; for they thought it might be
’is ribs, too. That made my boil break again, issuin’ an’ weepin’. But
it turned out ’twadn’t ribs at all, an’ ’Arry ’ad a good night. When
I heard that, nex’ mornin’, I says to meself, ‘I won’t lay two an’
two together _yit_. I’ll keep me leg down a week, an’ see what comes
of it.’ It didn’t hurt me that day, to speak of--’seemed more to draw
the strength out o’ me like--an’ ’Arry ’ad another good night. That
made me persevere; but I didn’t dare lay two an’ two together till the
week-end, an’ then, ’Arry come forth e’en a’most ’imself again--na’un
hurt outside ner in of him. I nigh fell on me knees in de wash-house
when Bessie was up-street. ‘I’ve got ye now, my man,’ I says, ‘You’ll
take your good from me ’thout knowin’ it till my life’s end. O God send
me long to live for ’Arry’s sake!’ I says. An’ I dunno that didn’t
still me ragin’s.”

“For good?” Mrs. Fettley asked.

“They come back, plenty times, but, let be how ’twould, I knowed I
was doin’ for ’im. I _knowed_ it. I took an’ worked me pains on an’
off, like regulatin’ my own range, till I learned to ’ave ’em at my
commandments. An’ that was funny, too. There was times, Liz, when my
trouble ’ud all s’rink an’ dry up, like. First, I used to try an’ fetch
it on again; bein’ fearful to leave ’Arry alone too long for anythin’
to lay ’old of. Prasin’ly I come to see that was a sign he’d do all
right awhile, an’ so I saved myself.”

“’Ow long for?” Mrs. Fettley asked, with deepest interest.

“I’ve gone de better part of a year onct or twice with na’un more to
show than the liddle weepin’ core of it, like. _All_ s’rinked up an’
dried off. Then he’d inflame up--for a warnin’--an’ I’d suffer it.
When I couldn’t no more--an’ I _’ad_ to keep on goin’ with my Lunnon
work--I’d lay me leg high on a cheer till it eased. Not too quick. I
knowed by the feel of it, those times, dat ’Arry was in need. Then I’d
send another five shillin’s to Bess, or somethin’ for the chillern, to
find out if, mebbe, ’e’d took any hurt through my neglects. ’Twas _so_!
Year in, year out, I worked it dat way, Liz, an’ ’e got ’is good from
me ’thout knowin’--for years and years.”

“But what did _you_ get out of it, Gra’?” Mrs. Fettley almost wailed.
“Did ye see ’im reg’lar?”

“Times--when I was ’ere on me ’ol’days. An’ more, now that I’m ’ere
for good. But ’e’s never looked at me, ner any other woman ’cept ’is
mother. ’Ow I used to watch an’ listen! So did she.”

“Years an’ years!” Mrs. Fettley repeated. “An’ where’s ’e workin’ at
now?”

“Oh, ’e’s give up carterin’ quite a while. He’s workin’ for one o’ them
big tractorisin’ firms--ploughin’ sometimes, an’ sometimes off with
lorries--fur as Wales, I’ve ’eard. He comes ’ome to ’is mother ’tween
whiles; but I don’t set eyes on him now, fer weeks on end. No odds!
’Is job keeps ’im from continuin’ in one stay anywheres.”

“But--just for de sake o’ saying’ somethin’--s’pose ’Arry _did_ get
married?” said Mrs. Fettley.

Mrs. Ashcroft drew her breath sharply between her still even and
natural teeth. “_Dat_ ain’t been required of me,” she answered. “I
reckon my pains ’ull be counted agin that. Don’t _you_, Liz?”

“It ought to be, dearie. It ought to be.”

“It _do_ ’urt sometimes. You shall see it when Nurse comes. She thinks
I don’t know it’s turned.”

Mrs. Fettley understood. Human nature seldom walks up to the word
“cancer.”

“Be ye certain sure, Gra’?” she asked.

“I was sure of it when old Mr. Marshall ’ad me up to ’is study an’
spoke a long piece about my faithful service. I’ve obliged ’em on an’
off for a goodish time, but not enough for a pension. But they give me
a weekly ’lowance for life. I knew what _that_ sinnified--as long as
three years ago.”

“Dat don’t _prove_ it, Gra’.”

“To give fifteen bob a week to a woman ’oo’d live twenty year in the
course o’ nature? It _do_!”

“You’re mistook! You’re mistook!” Mrs. Fettley insisted.

“Liz, there’s _no_ mistakin’ when the edges are all heaped up,
like--same as a collar. You’ll see it. An’ I laid out Dora Wickwood,
too. _She_ ’ad it under the arm-pit, like.”

Mrs. Fettley considered awhile, and bowed her head in finality.

“’Ow long d’you reckon ’twill allow ye, countin’ from now, dearie?”

“Slow come, slow go. But if I don’t set eyes on ye ’fore next hoppin’,
this’ll be good-bye, Liz.”

“Dunno as I’ll be able to manage by then--not ’thout I have a liddle
dog to lead me. For de chillern, dey won’t be troubled, an’--O
Gra’!--I’m blindin’ up--I’m blindin’ up!”

“Oh, _dat_ was why you didn’t more’n finger with your quilt-patches
all this while! I was wonderin’.... But the pain _do_ count, don’t ye
think, Liz? The pain _do_ count to keep ’Arry--where I want ’im. Say it
can’t be wasted, like.”

“I’m sure of it--sure of it, dearie. You’ll ’ave your reward.”

“I don’t want no more’n this--_if_ de pain is taken into de reckonin’.”

“’Twill be--’twill be, Gra’.”

There was a knock on the door.

“That’s Nurse. She’s before ’er time,” said Mrs. Ashcroft. “Open to
’er.”

The young lady entered briskly, all the bottles in her bag clicking.
“Evenin’, Mrs. Ashcroft,” she began. “I’ve come raound a little earlier
than usual because of the Institute dance to-na-ite. You won’t ma-ind,
will you?”

“Oh, no. Me dancin’ days are over.” Mrs. Ashcroft was the
self-contained domestic at once. “My old friend, Mrs. Fettley ’ere, has
been settin’ talkin’ with me a while.”

“I hope she ’asn’t been fatiguing you?” said the Nurse a little
frostily.

“Quite the contrary. It ’as been a pleasure. Only--only--just at the
end I felt a bit--a bit flogged out, like.”

“Yes, yes.” The Nurse was on her knees already, with the washes to
hand. “When old ladies get together they talk a deal too much, I’ve
noticed.”

“Mebbe we do,” said Mrs. Fettley, rising. “So, now, I’ll make myself
scarce.”

“Look at it first, though,” said Mrs. Ashcroft feebly. “I’d like ye to
look at it.”

Mrs. Fettley looked, and shivered. Then she leaned over, and kissed
Mrs. Ashcroft once on the waxy yellow forehead, and again on the faded
grey eyes.

“It _do_ count, don’t it--de pain?” The lips that still kept trace of
their original moulding hardly more than breathed the words.

Mrs. Fettley kissed them and moved towards the door.


[2] Hop-picking.




RAHERE


    Rahere, King Henry’s Jester, feared by all the Norman Lords
    For his eye that pierced their bosoms, for his tongue that shamed
                                                            their swords;
    Feed and flattered by the Churchmen--well they knew how deep he stood
    In dark Henry’s crooked counsels--fell upon an evil mood.

    Suddenly, his days before him and behind him seemed to stand
    Stripped and barren, fixed and fruitless, as those leagues of naked
                                                                    sand
    When St. Michael’s ebb slinks outward to the bleak horizon-bound,
    And the trampling wide-mouthed waters are withdrawn from sight and
                                                                  sound.

    Then a Horror of Great Darkness sunk his spirit and, anon,
    (Who had seen him wince and whiten as he turned to walk alone)
    Followed Gilbert the Physician, and muttered in his ear,
    “Thou hast it, O my brother?” “Yea, I have it,” said Rahere.

    “So it comes,” said Gilbert smoothly, “man’s most immanent distress.
    ’Tis a humour of the Spirit which abhorreth all excess;
    And, whatever breed the surfeit--Wealth, or Wit, or Power, or Fame
    (And thou hast each) the Spirit laboureth to expel the same.

    “Hence the dulled eye’s deep self-loathing--hence the loaded leaden
                                                                   brow;
    Hence the burden of Wanhope that aches thy soul and body now.
    Ay, the merriest fool must face it, and the wisest Doctor learn;
    For it comes--it comes,” said Gilbert, “as it passes--to return.”

    But Rahere was in his torment, and he wandered, dumb and far,
    Till he came to reeking Smithfield where the crowded gallows are.
    (Followed Gilbert the Physician) and beneath the wry-necked dead,
    Sat a leper and his woman, very merry, breaking bread.

    He was cloaked from chin to ankle--faceless, fingerless, obscene--
    Mere corruption swaddled man-wise, but the woman whole and clean;
    And she waited on him crooning, and Rahere beheld the twain,
    Each delighting in the other, and he checked and groaned again.

    “So it comes,--it comes,” said Gilbert, “as it came when Life began.
    ’Tis a motion of the Spirit that revealeth God to man.
    In the shape of Love exceeding, which regards not taint or fall,
    Since in perfect Love, saith Scripture, can be no excess at all.

    “Hence the eye that sees no blemish--hence the hour that holds no
                                                                  shame.
    Hence the Soul assured the Essence and the Substance are the same.
    Nay, the meanest need not miss it, though the mightier pass it by;
    For it comes--it comes,” said Gilbert, “and, thou seest, it does not
                                                                   die!”




THE JANEITES




THE SURVIVAL

Horace, Ode 22, Bk. V.


    Securely, after days
      Unnumbered, I behold
    Kings mourn that promised praise
      Their cheating bards foretold.

    Of earth-constricting wars,
      Of Princes passed in chains,
    Of deeds out-shining stars,
      No word or voice remains.

    Yet furthest times receive
      And to fresh praise restore,
    Mere flutes that breathe at eve,
      Mere seaweed on the shore.

    A smoke of sacrifice;
      A chosen myrtle-wreath;
    An harlot’s altered eyes;
      A rage ’gainst love or death;

    Glazed snow beneath the moon;
      The surge of storm-bowed trees--
    The Caesars perished soon,
      And Rome Herself: But these

    Endure while Empires fall
      And Gods for Gods make room ...
    Which greater God than all
      Imposed the amazing doom?




THE JANEITES

    Jane lies in Winchester--blessed be her shade!
    Praise the Lord for making her, and her for all she made!
    And while the stones of Winchester, or Milsom Street, remain,
    Glory, love, and honour unto England’s Jane!


In the Lodge of Instruction attached to “Faith and Works No. 5837 E.
C.,” which has already been described, Saturday afternoon was appointed
for the weekly clean-up, when all visiting Brethren were welcome to
help under the direction of the Lodge Officer of the day: their reward
was light refreshment and the meeting of companions.

This particular afternoon--in the autumn of ’20--Brother Burges, P.
M., was on duty and, finding a strong shift present, took advantage
of it to strip and dust all hangings and curtains, to go over every
inch of the Pavement--which was stone, not floorcloth--by hand; and to
polish the Columns, Jewels, Working outfit and organ. I was given to
clean some Officer’s Jewels--beautiful bits of old Georgian silver-work
humanised by generations of elbow-grease--and retired to the organ
loft; for the floor was like the quarter-deck of a battleship on the
eve of a ball. Half-a-dozen brethren had already made the Pavement as
glassy as the aisle of Greenwich Chapel; the brazen chapiters winked
like pure gold at the flashing Marks on the Chairs; and a morose
one-legged brother was attending to the Emblems of Mortality with, I
think, rouge.

“They ought,” he volunteered to Brother Burges as we passed, “to be
betwixt the colour of ripe apricots an’ a half-smoked meerschaum.
That’s how we kept ’em in my Mother-Lodge--a treat to look at.”

“I’ve never seen spit-and-polish to touch this,” I said.

“Wait till you see the organ,” Brother Burges replied. “You could shave
in it when they’ve done. Brother Anthony’s in charge up there--the
taxi-owner you met here last month. I don’t think you’ve come across
Brother Humberstall, have you?”

“I don’t remember----” I began.

“You wouldn’t have forgotten him if you had. He’s a hairdresser now,
somewhere at the back of Ebury Street. ’Was Garrison Artillery. ’Blown
up twice.”

“Does he show it?” I asked at the foot of the organ-loft stairs.

“No-o. Not much more than Lazarus did, I expect.” Brother Burges fled
off to set some one else to a job.

Brother Anthony, small, dark, and hump-backed, was hissing
groom-fashion while he treated the rich acacia-wood panels of the
Lodge organ with some sacred, secret composition of his own. Under
his guidance Humberstall, an enormous, flat-faced man, carrying
the shoulders, ribs, and loins of the old Mark ’14 Royal Garrison
Artillery, and the eyes of a bewildered retriever, rubbed the stuff in.
I sat down to my task on the organ-bench, whose purple velvet cushion
was being vacuum-cleaned on the floor below.

“Now,” said Anthony, after five minutes’ vigorous work on the part of
Humberstall. “_Now_ we’re gettin’ somethin’ worth lookin’ at! Take it
easy, an’ go on with what you was tellin’ me about that Macklin man.”

“I--I ’adn’t anything against ’im,” said Humberstall, “excep’ he’d been
a toff by birth; but that never showed till he was bosko absoluto. Mere
bein’ drunk on’y made a common ’ound of ’im. But when bosko, it all
came out. Otherwise, he showed me my duties as mess-waiter very well on
the ’ole.”

“Yes, yes. But what in ’ell made you go _back_ to your Circus? The
Board gave you down-an’-out fair enough, you said, after the dump went
up at Eatables?”

“Board or no Board, _I_ ’adn’t the nerve to stay at ’ome--not with
mother chuckin’ ’erself round all three rooms like a rabbit every time
the Gothas tried to get Victoria; an’ sister writin’ me aunts four
pages about it next day. Not for _me_, thank you! till the war was
over. So I slid out with a draft--they wasn’t particular in ’17, so
long as the tally was correct--and I joined up again with our Circus
somewhere at the back of Lar Pug Noy, I think it was.” Humberstall
paused for some seconds and his brow wrinkled. “Then I--I went sick,
or somethin’ or other, they told me; but I know _when_ I reported
for duty, our Battery Sergeant Major says that I wasn’t expected
back, an’--an’, one thing leadin’ to another--to cut a long story
short--I went up before our Major--Major--I shall forget my own name
next--Major----”

“Never mind,” Anthony interrupted. “Go on! It’ll come back in talk!”

“’Alf a mo’. ’Twas on the tip o’ my tongue then.”

Humberstall dropped the polishing-cloth and knitted his brows again in
most profound thought. Anthony turned to me and suddenly launched into
a sprightly tale of his taxi’s collision with a Marble Arch refuge on a
greasy day after a three-yard skid.

“’Much damage?” I asked.

“Oh no! Ev’ry bolt an’ screw an’ nut on the chassis strained; _but_
nothing carried away, you understand me, an’ not a scratch on the body.
You’d never ’ave guessed a thing wrong till you took ’er in hand. It
_was_ a wop too: ’ead-on--like this!” And he slapped his tactful
little forehead to show what a knock it had been.

“Did your Major dish you up much?” he went on over his shoulder to
Humberstall who came out of his abstraction with a slow heave.

“We-ell! He told me I wasn’t expected back either; an’ he said ’e
couldn’t ’ang up the ’ole Circus till I’d rejoined; an’ he said that my
ten-inch Skoda which I’d been Number Three of, before the dump went up
at Eatables, had ’er full crowd. But, ’e said, as soon as a casualty
occurred he’d remember me. ‘Meantime,’ says he, ‘I particularly want
you for actin’ mess-waiter.’

“’Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ I says perfectly respectful; ‘but I didn’t
exactly come back for _that_, sir.’”

“‘Beggin’ _your_ pardon, ’Umberstall,’ says ’e, ‘but I ’appen to
command the Circus! Now, you’re a sharp-witted man,’ he says; ‘an’ what
we’ve suffered from fool-waiters in Mess ’as been somethin’ cruel.
You’ll take on, from now--under instruction to Macklin ’ere.’ So this
man, Macklin, that I was tellin’ you about, showed me my duties....
’Ammick! I’ve got it! ’Ammick was our Major, an’ Mosse was Captain!”
Humberstall celebrated his recapture of the name by labouring at the
organ-panel on his knee.

“Look out! You’ll smash it,” Anthony protested.

“Sorry! Mother’s often told me I didn’t know my strength. Now,
here’s a curious thing. This Major of ours--it’s all comin’ back to
me--was a high-up divorce-court lawyer; an’ Mosse, our Captain, was
Number One o’ Mosse’s Private Detective Agency. You’ve heard of it?
’Wives watched while you wait, an’ so on. Well, these two ’ad been
registerin’ together, so to speak, in the Civil line for years on end,
but hadn’t ever met till the War. Consequently, at Mess their talk was
mostly about famous cases they’d been mixed up in. ’Ammick told the
Law-courts’ end o’ the business, an’ all what had been left out of
the pleadin’s; an’ Mosse ’ad the actual facts concernin’ the errin’
parties--in hotels an’ so on. I’ve heard better talk in our Mess than
ever before or since. It comes o’ the Gunners bein’ a scientific corps.”

“That be damned!” said Anthony. “If anythin’ ’appens to ’em they’ve got
it all down in a book. There’s no book when your lorry dies on you in
the ’Oly Land. _That’s_ brains.”

“Well, _then_,” Humberstall continued, “come on this secret society
business that I started tellin’ you about. When those two--’Ammick an’
Mosse--’ad finished about their matrimonial relations--and mind you,
they weren’t radishes--they seldom or ever repeated--they’d begin, as
often as not, on this Secret Society woman I was tellin’ you of--this
Jane. She was the only woman I ever ’eard ’em say a good word for.
’Cordin’ to them Jane was a none-such. _I_ didn’t know then she was
a Society. ’Fact is, I only ’ung out ’arf an ear in their direction
at first, on account of bein’ under instruction for mess-duty to this
Macklin man. What drew _my_ attention to her was a new Lieutenant
joinin’ up. We called ’im ‘Gander’ on account of his profeel, which
was the identical bird. ’E’d been a nactuary--workin’ out ’ow long
civilians ’ad to live. Neither ’Ammick nor Mosse wasted words on ’im
at Mess. They went on talking as usual, an’ in due time, _as_ usual,
they got back to Jane. Gander cocks one of his big chilblainy ears an’
cracks his cold finger-joints. ‘By God! Jane?’ says ’e. ‘Yes, Jane,’
says ’Ammick pretty short an’ senior. ‘Praise ’Eaven!’ says Gander. ‘It
was “Bubbly” where I’ve come from down the line.’ (Some damn review or
other, I expect.) Well, neither ’Ammick nor Mosse was easy-mouthed,
or for that matter mealy-mouthed; but no sooner ’ad Gander passed that
remark than they both shook ’ands with the young squirt across the
table an’ called for the port back again. It _was_ a password, all
right! Then they went at it about Jane--all three, regardless of rank.
That made me listen. Presently, I ’eard ’Ammick say----”

“’Arf a mo’,” Anthony cut in. “But what was _you_ doin’ in Mess?”

“Me an’ Macklin was refixin’ the sand-bag screens to the dug-out
passage in case o’ gas. We never knew when we’d cop it in the ’Eavies,
don’t you see. But we knew we ’ad been looked for for some time, an’ it
might come any minute. But, as I was sayin’, ’Ammick says what a pity
’twas Jane ’ad died barren. ‘I deny that,’ says Mosse. ‘I maintain she
was fruitful in the ’ighest sense o’ the word.’ An’ Mosse knew about
such things, too. ‘I’m inclined to agree with ’Ammick,’ says young
Gander. ‘Any’ow, she’s left no direct an’ lawful prog’ny.’ I remember
every word they said, on account o’ what ’appened subsequently. I
’adn’t noticed Macklin much, or I’d ha’ seen he was bosko absoluto.
Then _’e_ cut in, leanin’ over a packin’-case with a face on ’im like
a dead mackerel in the dark. ‘Pahardon me, gents,’ Macklin says,
‘but this _is_ a matter on which I _do_ ’appen to be moderately
well-informed. She _did_ leave lawful issue in the shape o’ one son;
an’ ’is name was ’Enery James.’

“‘By what sire? Prove it,’ says Gander, before ’is senior officers
could get in a word.

“‘I will,’ says Macklin, surgin’ on ’is two thumbs. _An’_, mark you,
none of ’em spoke! I forget whom he said was the sire of this ’Enery
James-man; but ’e delivered ’em a lecture on this Jane-woman for more
than a quarter of an hour. I know the exact time, because my old
Skoda was on duty at ten-minute intervals reachin’ after some Jerry
formin’-up area; and her blast always put out the dug-out candles.
I relit ’em once, an’ again at the end. In conclusion, this Macklin
fell flat forward on ’is face, which was how ’e generally wound up ’is
notion of a perfect day. Bosko absoluto!

“‘Take ’im away,’ says ’Ammick to me. ‘’E’s sufferin’ from shell-shock.’

“To cut a long story short, _that_ was what first put the notion into
my ’ead. Wouldn’t it you? Even ’ad Macklin been a ’igh-up Mason----”

“Wasn’t ’e, then?” said Anthony, a little puzzled.

“’E’d never gone beyond the Blue Degrees, ’e told me. Any’ow, ’e’d
lectured ’is superior officers up an’ down; ’e’d as good as called ’em
fools most o’ the time, in ’is toff’s voice. I ’eard ’im an’ I saw ’im.
An’ all he got was--me told off to put ’im to bed! And all on account
o’ Jane! Would _you_ have let a thing like that get past you? Nor me,
either! Next mornin’, when his stummick was settled, I was at him
full-cry to find out ’ow it was worked. Toff or no toff, ’e knew his
end of a bargain. First, ’e wasn’t takin’ any. He said I wasn’t fit to
be initiated into the Society of the Janeites. That only meant five bob
more--fifteen up to date.

“‘Make it one Bradbury,’ ’e says. ‘It’s dirt-cheap. You saw me ’old the
Circus in the ’ollow of me ’and?’

“No denyin’ it. I _’ad_. So, for one pound, he communicated me the
Pass-word of the First Degree which was _Tilniz an’ trap-doors_.

“‘I know what a trap-door is,’ I says to ’im, ‘but what in ’ell’s
_Tilniz_?’

“‘You obey orders,’ ’e says, ‘an’ next time I ask you what you’re
thinkin’ about you’ll answer, “_Tilniz an’ trap-doors_,” in a smart
and soldierly manner. I’ll spring that question at me own time. All
you’ve got to do is to be distinck.’

“We settled all this while we was skinnin’ spuds for dinner at the
back o’ the rear-truck under our camouflage-screens. Gawd, ’ow that
glue-paint did stink! Otherwise, ’twasn’t so bad, with the sun comin’
through our pantomime-leaves, an’ the wind marcelling the grasses
in the cutting. Well, one thing leading to another, nothin’ further
’appened in this direction till the afternoon. We ’ad a high standard
o’ livin’ in Mess--an’ in the Group, for that matter. I was takin’ away
Mosse’s lunch--dinner ’e would never call it--an’ Mosse was fillin’
’is cigarette-case previous to the afternoon’s duty. Macklin, in the
passage, comin’ in as if ’e didn’t know Mosse was there, slings ’is
question at me, an’ I give the countersign in a low but quite distinck
voice, makin’ as if I ’adn’t seen Mosse. Mosse looked at me through and
through, with his cigarette-case in his ’and. Then ’e jerks out ’arf a
dozen--best Turkish--on the table an’ exits. I pinched ’em an’ divvied
with Macklin.

“‘You see ’ow it works,’ says Macklin. ‘Could you ’ave invested a
Bradbury to better advantage?’

“‘So far, no,’ I says. ‘Otherwise, though, if they start provin’ an’
tryin’ me, I’m a dead bird. There must be a lot more to this Janeite
game.’

“’Eaps an’ ’eaps,’ he says. ‘But to show you the sort of ’eart I
’ave, I’ll communicate you all the ’Igher Degrees among the Janeites,
includin’ the Charges, for another Bradbury; but you’ll ’ave to work,
Dobbin.’”

“’Pretty free with your Bradburys, wasn’t you?” Anthony grunted
disapprovingly.

“What odds? _Ac-tually_, Gander told us, we couldn’t expect to av’rage
more than six weeks’ longer apiece, an’, any’ow, _I_ never regretted
it. But make no mistake--the preparation was somethin’ cruel. In the
first place, I come under Macklin for direct instruction _re_ Jane.”

“Oh! Jane _was_ real, then?” Anthony glanced for an instant at me as he
put the question. “I couldn’t quite make that out.”

“Real!” Humberstall’s voice rose almost to a treble. “Jane? Why, she
was a little old maid ’oo’d written ’alf a dozen books about a hundred
years ago. ’Twasn’t as if there was anythin’ _to_ ’em either. _I_ know.
I had to read ’em. They weren’t adventurous, nor smutty, nor what you’d
call even interestin’--all about girls o’ seventeen (they begun young
then, I tell you), not certain ’oom they’d like to marry; an’ their
dances an’ card-parties an’ picnics, and their young blokes goin’ off
to London on ’orseback for ’air-cuts an’ shaves. It took a full day in
those days, if you went to a proper barber. They wore wigs, too, when
they was chemists or clergymen. All that interested me on account o’ me
profession, an’ cuttin’ the men’s ’air every fortnight. Macklin used to
chip me about bein’ an ’airdresser. ’E _could_ pass remarks, too!”

Humberstall recited with relish a fragment of what must have been
a superb commination-service, ending with, “You lazy-minded,
lousy-headed, long-trousered, perfumed perookier.”

“An’ you took it?” Anthony’s quick eyes ran over the man.

“Yes. I was after my money’s worth; an’ Macklin, havin’ put ’is ’and
to the plough, wasn’t one to withdraw it. Otherwise, if I’d pushed
’im, I’d ha’ slew ’im. Our Battery Sergeant Major nearly did. For
Macklin had a wonderful way o’ passing remarks on a man’s civil life;
an’ he put it about that our B. S. M. had run a dope an’ dolly-shop
with a Chinese woman, the wrong end o’ Southwark Bridge. Nothin’ you
could lay ’old of, o’ course; but----” Humberstall let us draw our own
conclusions.

“That reminds me,” said Anthony, smacking his lips. “I ’ad a bit of
a fracas with a fare in the Fulham Road last month. He called me a
parastit-ic Forder. I informed ’im I was owner-driver, an’ ’e could see
for ’im-self the cab was quite clean. That didn’t suit ’im. ’E said it
was crawlin’.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“One o’ them blue-bellied Bolshies of post-war Police (neglectin’
point-duty, as usual) asked us to flirt a little quieter. My joker
chucked some Arabic at ’im. That was when we signed the Armistice. ’E’d
been a Yeoman--a perishin’ Gloucestershire Yeoman--that I’d helped
gather in the orange crop with at Jaffa, in the ’Oly Land!”

“And after that?” I continued.

“It ’ud be ’ard to say. I know ’e lived at Hendon or Cricklewood. I
drove ’im there. We must ’ave talked Zionism or somethin’, because
at seven next mornin’ him an’ me was tryin’ to get petrol out of a
milkshop at St. Albans. They ’adn’t any. In lots o’ ways this war has
been a public noosance, as one might say, but there’s no denyin’ it
’elps you slip through life easier. The dairyman’s son ’ad done time on
Jordan with camels. So he stood us rum an’ milk.”

“Just like ’avin’ the Password, eh?” was Humberstall’s comment.

“That’s right! Ours was _Imshee kelb_.[3] Not so ’ard to remember as
your Jane stuff.”

“Jane wasn’t so very ’ard--not the way Macklin used to put ’er,”
Humberstall resumed. “I ’ad only six books to remember. I learned
the names by ’eart as Macklin placed ’em. There was one, called
_Persuasion_, first; an’ the rest in a bunch, except another about some
Abbey or other--last by three lengths. But, as I was sayin’, what beat
me was there was nothin’ _to_ ’em nor _in_ ’em. Nothin’ at all, believe
me.”

“You seem good an’ full of ’em, any’ow,” said Anthony.

“I mean that ’er characters was no _use_! They was only just like
people you run across any day. One of ’em was a curate--the Reverend
Collins--always on the make an’ lookin’ to marry money. Well, when I
was a Boy Scout, ’im or ’is twin brother was our troop-leader. An’
there was an upstandin’ ’ard-mouthed Duchess or a Baronet’s wife that
didn’t give a curse for any one ’oo wouldn’t do what she told ’em to;
the Lady--Lady Catherine (I’ll get it in a minute) De Bugg. Before
Ma bought the ’airdressin’ business in London I used to know of an
’olesale grocer’s wife near Leicester (I’m Leicestershire myself) that
might ’ave been ’er duplicate. And--oh yes--there was a Miss Bates;
just an old maid runnin’ about like a hen with ’er ’ead cut off, an’
her tongue loose at both ends. I’ve got an aunt like ’er. Good as
gold--but, _you_ know.”

“Lord, yes!” said Anthony, with feeling. “An’ did you find out what
_Tilniz_ meant? I’m always huntin’ after the meanin’ of things meself.”

“Yes, ’e was a swine of a Major-General, retired, and on the make.
They’re all on the make, in a quiet way, in Jane. ’E was so much of
a gentleman by ’is own estimation that ’e was always be’avin’ like a
hound. _You_ know the sort. ’Turned a girl out of ’is own ’ouse because
she ’adn’t any money--_after_, mark you, encouragin’ ’er to set ’er
cap at his son, because ’e thought she had.”

“But that ’appens all the time,” said Anthony. “Why, me own mother----”

“That’s right. So would mine. But this Tilney was a man, an’ some’ow
Jane put it down all so naked it made you ashamed. I told Macklin that,
an’ he said I was shapin’ to be a good Janeite. ’Twasn’t _his_ fault if
I wasn’t. ’Nother thing, too; ’avin’ been at the Bath Mineral Waters
’Ospital in ’Sixteen, with trench-feet, was a great advantage to me,
because I knew the names o’ the streets where Jane ’ad lived. There was
one of ’em--Laura, I think, or some other girl’s name--which Macklin
said was ’oly ground. ‘If you’d been initiated _then_,’ he says, ‘you’d
ha’ felt your flat feet tingle every time you walked over those sacred
pavin’-stones.’

“‘My feet tingled right enough,’ I said, ‘but not on account of Jane.
Nothin’ remarkable about that,’ I says.

“‘’Eaven lend me patience!’ he says, combin’ ’is ’air with ’is little
hands. ‘Every dam’ thing about Jane is remarkable to a pukka Janeite!
It was there,’ he says, ‘that Miss What’s-her-Name’ (he had the name;
I’ve forgotten it), ‘made up ’er engagement again, after nine years,
with Captain T’other Bloke.’ An’ he dished me out a page an’ a half of
one of the books to learn by ’eart--_Persuasion_, I think it was.”

“’You quick at gettin’ things off by ’eart?” Anthony demanded.

“Not as a rule. I was then, though, or else Macklin knew ’ow to deliver
the Charges properly. ’E said ’e’d been some sort o’ schoolmaster once,
and he’d make my mind resume work or break ’imself. That was just
before the Battery Sergeant Major ’ad it in for him on account o’ what
he’d been sayin’ about the Chinese wife an’ the dolly-shop.”

“What did Macklin really say?” Anthony and I asked together.
Humberstall gave us a fragment. It was hardly the stuff to let loose on
a pious post-war world without revision.

“And what had your B. S. M. been in civil life?” I asked at the end.

“’Ead-embalmer to an ’olesale undertaker in the Midlands,” said
Humberstall; “but, o’ course, _when_ he thought ’e saw his chance he
naturally took it. He came along one mornin’ lickin’ ’is lips. ‘You
don’t get past me this time,’ ’e says to Macklin. ‘You’re for it,
Professor.’

“‘’Ow so, me gallant Major,’ says Macklin; ’an’ what for?’

“‘For writin’ obese words on the breech o’ the ten-inch,’ says the
B. S. M. She was our old Skoda that I’ve been tellin’ you about. We
called ’er ‘Bloody Eliza.’ She ’ad a badly wore obturator an’ blew
through a fair treat. I knew by Macklin’s face the B. S. M. ’ad dropped
it somewhere, but all he vow’saifed was, ‘Very good, Major. We will
consider it in Common Room.’ The B. S. M. couldn’t ever stand Macklin’s
toff’s way o’ puttin’ things; so he goes off rumblin’ like ’ell’s bells
in an ’urricane, as the Marines say. Macklin put it to me at once, what
had I been doin’? Some’ow he could read me like a book.

“Well, all _I_’d done--an’ I told ’im _he_ was responsible for it--was
to chalk the guns. ’Ammick never minded what the men wrote up on ’em.
’E said it gave ’em an interest in their job. You’d see all sorts of
remarks chalked on the side-plates or the gear-casin’s.”

“What sort of remarks?” said Anthony, keenly.

“Oh! ’Ow Bloody Eliza, or Spittin’ Jim--that was our old Mark Five
Nine-point-two--felt that morning, an’ such things. But it ’ad come
over me--more to please Macklin than anythin’ else--that it was time
we Janeites ’ad a look in. So, as I was tellin’ you, I’d taken an’
rechristened all three of ’em, on my own, early that mornin’. Spittin’
Jim I ’ad chalked ‘The Reverend Collins’--that Curate I was tellin’
you about; an’ our cut-down Navy Twelve, ‘General Tilney,’ because
it was worse wore in the groovin’ than anything _I_’d ever seen. The
Skoda (an’ that was where _I_ dropped it) I ’ad chalked up ‘The Lady
Catherine De Bugg.’ I made a clean breast of it all to Macklin. He
reached up an’ patted me on the shoulder. ‘You done nobly,’ he says.
‘You’re bringin’ forth abundant fruit, like a good Janeite. But I’m
afraid your spellin’ has misled our worthy B. S. M. _That’s_ what it
is,’ ’e says, slappin’ ’is little leg. ‘’Ow might you ’ave spelt De
Burgh, for example?’

“I told ’im. ’Twasn’t right; an’ ’e nips off to the Skoda to make it
so. When ’e comes back, ’e says that the Gander ’ad been before ’im
an’ corrected the error. But we two come up before the Major, just the
same, that afternoon after lunch; ’Ammick in the chair, so to speak,
Mosse in another, an’ the B. S. M. chargin’ Macklin with writin’ obese
words on His Majesty’s property, on active service. When it transpired
that me an’ not Macklin was the offendin’ party, the B. S. M. turned
’is hand in and sulked like a baby. ’E as good as told ’Ammick ’e
couldn’t hope to preserve discipline unless examples was made--meanin’,
o’ course, Macklin.”

“Yes, I’ve heard all that,” said Anthony with a contemptuous grunt.
“The worst of it is, a lot of it’s true.”

“’Ammick took ’im up sharp about Military Law, which he said was even
more fair than the civilian article.”

“My Gawd!” This came from Anthony’s scornful mid-most bosom.

“’Accordin’ to the unwritten law of the ’Eavies,’ says ’Ammick,
‘there’s no objection to the men chalkin’ the guns, if decency is
preserved. On the other ’and,’ says he, ‘we ’aven’t yet settled the
precise status of individuals entitled so to do. I ’old that the
privilege is confined to combatants only.’

“‘With the permission of the Court,’ says Mosse, who was another
born lawyer, ‘I’d like to be allowed to join issue on that point.
Prisoner’s position is very delicate an’ doubtful, an’ he has no legal
representative.’

“‘Very good,’ says ’Ammick. ‘Macklin bein’ acquitted----’

“‘With submission, me lud,’ says Mosse. ‘I hope to prove ’e was
accessory before the fact.’

“‘_As_ you please,’ says ’Ammick. ‘But in that case, ’oo the ’ell’s
goin’ to get the port I’m tryin’ to stand the Court?’

“‘I submit,’ says Mosse, ‘prisoner, bein’ under direct observation o’
the Court, could be temporarily enlarged for that duty.’

“So Macklin went an’ got it, an’ the B. S. M. had ’is glass with the
rest. Then they argued whether mess servants an’ non-combatants was
entitled to chalk the guns (’Ammick _versus_ Mosse). After a bit,
’Ammick as C. O. give ’imself best, an’ me an’ Macklin was severely
admonished for trespassin’ on combatants’ rights, an’ the B. S. M. was
warned that if we repeated the offence ’e could deal with us summ’rily.
He ’ad some glasses o’ port an’ went out quite ’appy. Then my turn
come, while Macklin was gettin’ them their tea; an’ one thing leadin’
to another, ’Ammick put me through all the Janeite Degrees, you might
say. ’Never ’ad such a doin’ in my life.”

“Yes, but what did you tell ’em?” said Anthony. “I can’t ever _think_
my lies quick enough when I’m for it.”

“No need to lie. I told ’em that the back-side view o’ the Skoda, when
she was run up, put Lady De Bugg into my ’ead. They gave me right
there, but they said I was wrong about General Tilney. ’Cordin’ to
them, our Navy twelve-inch ought to ’ave been christened Miss Bates.
I said the same idea ’ad crossed my mind, till I’d seen the General’s
groovin’. Then I felt it had to be the General or nothin’. But they
give me full marks for the Reverend Collins--our Nine-point-two.”

“An’ you fed ’em _that_ sort o’ talk?” Anthony’s fox-coloured eyebrows
climbed almost into his hair.

“While I was assistin’ Macklin to get tea--yes. Seein’ it was an
examination, I wanted to do ’im credit as a Janeite.”

“An’--an’ what did they say?”

“They said it was ’ighly creditable to us both. I don’t drink, so they
give me about a hundred fags.”

“Gawd! What a Circus you must ’ave been,” was Anthony’s gasping comment.

“It _was_ a ’appy little Group. I wouldn’t ’a changed with any other.”

Humberstall sighed heavily as he helped Anthony slide back the
organ-panel. We all admired it in silence, while Anthony repocketed
his secret polishing mixture, which lived in a tin tobacco-box. I
had neglected my work for listening to Humberstall. Anthony reached
out quietly and took over a Secretary’s Jewel and a rag. Humberstall
studied his reflection in the glossy wood.

“Almost,” he said critically, holding his head to one side.

“Not with an Army. You could with a Safety, though,” said Anthony. And,
indeed, as Brother Burges had foretold, one might have shaved in it
with comfort.

“Did you ever run across any of ’em afterwards, any time?” Anthony
asked presently.

“Not so many of ’em left to run after, now. With the ’Eavies it’s
mostly neck or nothin’. We copped it. In the neck. In due time.”

“Well, _you_ come out of it all right.” Anthony spoke both stoutly and
soothingly; but Humberstall would not be comforted.

“That’s right; but I almost wish I ’adn’t,” he sighed. “I was ’appier
there than ever before or since. Jerry’s March push in ’Eighteen did
us in; an’ yet, ’ow could we ’ave expected it? ’Ow _could_ we ’ave
expected it? We’d been sent back for rest an’ runnin’-repairs, back
pretty near our base; an’ our old loco’ that used to shift us about
o’ nights, she’d gone down the line for repairs. But for ’Ammick we
wouldn’t even ’ave ’ad our camouflage-screens up. He told our Brigadier
that, whatever ’e might be in the Gunnery line, as a leadin’ Divorce
lawyer he never threw away a point in argument. So ’e ’ad us all
screened in over in a cuttin’ on a little spur-line near a wood; an’
’e saw to the screens ’imself. The leaves weren’t more than comin’ out
then, an’ the sun used to make our glue-paint stink. Just like actin’
in a theatre, it was! But ’appy. _But_ ’appy! I expect if we’d been
caterpillars, like the new big six-inch hows, they’d ha’ remembered us.
But we was the old La Bassee ’15 Mark o’ Heavies that ran on rails--not
much more good than scrap-iron that late in the war. An’, believe me,
gents--or Brethren, as I should say--we copped it cruel. Look ’ere!
It was in the afternoon, an’ I was watchin’ Gander instructin’ a class
in new sights at Lady Catherine. All of a sudden I ’eard our screens
rip overhead, an’ a runner on a motor-bike come sailin’, sailin’
through the air--like that bloke that used to bicycle off Brighton
Pier--and landed one awful wop almost atop o’ the class. ‘’Old ’ard,’
says Gander. ‘That’s no way to report. What’s the fuss?’ ‘Your screens
’ave broke my back, for one thing,’ says the bloke on the ground;
‘an’ for another, the ’ole front’s gone.’ ‘Nonsense,’ says Gander. ’E
’adn’t more than passed the remark when the man was vi’lently sick an’
conked out. ’E ’ad plenty papers on ’im from Brigadiers and C. O.’s
reporting ’emselves cut off an’ askin’ for orders. ’E was right both
ways--his back an’ our front. The ’ole Somme front washed out as clean
as kiss-me-’and!” His huge hand smashed down open on his knee.

“We ’eard about it at the time in the ’Oly Land. Was it reelly as quick
as all that?” said Anthony.

“Quicker! Look ’ere! The motor-bike dropped in on us about four
pip-emma. After that, we tried to get orders o’ some kind or other, but
nothin’ came through excep’ that all available transport was in use
and not likely to be released. _That_ didn’t ’elp us any. About nine
o’clock comes along a young Brass ’At in brown gloves. We was quite a
surprise to ’im. ’E said they were evacuating the area and we’d better
shift. ‘Where to?’ says ’Ammick, rather short.

“‘Oh, somewhere Amiens way,’ he says. ‘Not that I’d guarantee Amiens
for any length o’ time; but Amiens might do to begin with.’ I’m giving
you the very words. Then ’e goes off swingin’ ’is brown gloves, and
’Ammick sends for Gander and orders ’im to march the men through Amiens
to Dieppe; book thence to New’aven, take up positions be’ind Seaford,
an’ carry on the war. Gander said ’e’d see ’im damned first. ’Ammick
says ’e’d see ’im court-martialled after. Gander says what ’e meant
to say was that the men ’ud see all an’ sundry damned before they
went into Amiens with their gun-sights wrapped up in their putties.
’Ammick says ’e ’adn’t said a word about putties, an’ carryin’ off the
gun-sights was purely optional. ‘Well, anyhow,’ says Gander, ’putties
_or_ drawers, they ain’t goin’ to shift a step unless you lead the
procession.’

“‘Mutinous ’ounds,’ says ’Ammick. ‘But we live in a democratic age.
D’you suppose they’d object to kindly diggin’ ’emselves in a bit?’ ‘Not
at all,’ says Gander. ‘The B. S. M.’s kept ’em at it like terriers for
the last three hours.’ ‘That bein’ so,’ says ’Ammick, ‘Macklin’ll now
fetch us small glasses o’ port.’ Then Mosse comes in--he could smell
port a mile off--an’ he submits we’d only add to the congestion in
Amiens if we took our crowd there, whereas, if we lay doggo where we
was, Jerry might miss us, though he didn’t seem to be missin’ much that
evenin’.

“The ’ole country was pretty noisy, an’ our dumps we’d lit ourselves
flarin’ Heavens high as far as you could see. Lyin’ doggo was our best
chance. I believe we might ha’ pulled it off, if we’d been left alone,
but along towards midnight--there was some small stuff swishin’ about,
but nothin’ particular--a nice little baldheaded old gentleman in
uniform pushes into the dug-out wipin’ his glasses an’ sayin’ ’e was
thinkin’ o’ formin’ a defensive flank on our left with ’is battalion
which ’ad just come up. ’Ammick says ’e wouldn’t form much if ’e was
’im. ‘Oh, don’t say _that_,’ says the old gentleman, very shocked. ‘One
must support the Guns, mustn’t one?’ ’Ammick says we was refittin’ an’
about as effective, just then, as a public lav’tory. ‘Go into Amiens,’
he says, ‘an’ defend ’em there.’ ‘Oh no,’ says the old gentleman, ‘me
an’ my laddies _must_ make a defensive flank for you,’ an’ he flips
out of the dug-out like a performin’ bull-finch, chirruppin’ for his
‘laddies.’ Gawd in ’Eaven knows what sort o’ push they was--little
boys mostly--but they ’ung on to ’is coat-tails like a Sunday-school
treat, an’ we ’eard ’em muckin’ about in the open for a bit. Then a
pretty tight barrage was slapped down for ten minutes, an’ ’Ammick
thought the laddies had copped it already. ‘It’ll be our turn next,’
says Mosse. ‘There’s been a covey o’ Gothas messin’ about for the
last ’alf-hour--lookin’ for the Railway Shops I expect. They’re just
as likely to take us.’ ‘Arisin’ out o’ that,’ says ’Ammick, ‘one of
’em sounds pretty low down now. We’re for it, me learned colleagues!’
‘Jesus!’ says Gander, ‘I believe you’re right, sir.’ And that was the
last word _I_ ’eard on the matter.”

“Did they cop you then?” said Anthony.

“They did. I expect Mosse was right, an’ they took us for the Railway
Shops. When I come to, I was lyin’ outside the cuttin’, which was
pretty well filled up. The Reverend Collins was all right; but Lady
Catherine and the General was past prayin’ for. I lay there, takin’
it in, till I felt cold an’ I looked at meself. Otherwise, I ’adn’t
much on excep’ me boots. So I got up an’ walked about to keep warm.
Then I saw somethin’ like a mushroom in the moonlight. It was the
nice old gentleman’s bald ’ead. I patted it. ’Im and ’is laddies ’ad
copped it right enough. Some battalion run out in a ’urry from England,
I suppose. They ’adn’t even begun to dig in--pore little perishers!
I dressed myself off ’em there, an’ topped off with a British warm.
Then I went back to the cuttin’ an’ some one says to me: ‘Dig, you ox,
dig! Gander’s under.’ So I ’elped shift things till I threw up blood
an’ bile mixed. Then I dropped, an’ they brought Gander out--dead--an’
laid ’im next me. ’Ammick ’ad gone too--fair tore in ’alf, the B. S. M.
said; but the funny thing was he talked quite a lot before ’e died, an’
nothin’ to ’im below ’is stummick, they told me. Mosse we never found.
’E’d been standing by Lady Catherine. She’d up-ended an’ gone back on
’em, with ’alf the cuttin’ atop of ’er, by the look of things.”

“And what come to Macklin?” said Anthony.

“Dunno.... ’E was with ’Ammick. I expect I must ha’ been blown clear of
all by the first bomb; for I was the on’y Janeite left. We lost about
half our crowd either under, or after we’d got ’em out. The B. S. M.
went off ’is rocker when mornin’ came, an’ he ran about from one to
another sayin’: ‘That was a good push! That was a great crowd! Did ye
ever know any push to touch ’em?’ An’ then ’e’d cry. So what was left
of us made off for ourselves, an’ I came across a lorry, pretty full,
but they took me in.”

“Ah!” said Anthony with pride. “They all take a taxi when it’s rainin’.
’Ever ’eard that song?”

“They went a long way back. Then I walked a bit, an’ there was a
hospital-train fillin’ up, an’ one of the Sisters--a grey-headed
one--ran at me wavin’ ’er red ’ands an’ sayin’ there wasn’t room for
a louse in it. I was past carin’. But she went on talkin’ and talkin’
about the war, an’ her pa in Ladbroke Grove, an’ ’ow strange for ’er
at ’er time of life to be doin’ this work with a lot o’ men, an’ next
war, ’ow the nurses ’ud ’ave to wear khaki breeches on account o’ the
mud, like the Land Girls; an’ that reminded ’er, she’d boil me an egg
if she could lay ’ands on one, for she’d run a chicken-farm once. You
never ’eard anythin’ like it--outside o’ Jane. It set me off laughin’
again. Then a woman with a nose an’ teeth on ’er, marched up. ‘What’s
all this?’ she says. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Nothing,’ I says, ‘only make
Miss Bates, there, stop talkin’ or I’ll die.’ ‘Miss Bates?’ she says.
‘What in ’Eaven’s name makes you call ’er that?’ ‘Because she is,’ I
says. ‘D’you know what you’re sayin’?’ she says, an’ slings her bony
arm round me to get me off the ground. ‘’Course I do,’ I says, ‘an’
if you knew Jane you’d know too.’ ‘That’s enough,’ says she. ‘You’re
comin’ on this train if I have to kill a Brigadier for you,’ an’ she
an’ an ord’ly fair hove me into the train, on to a stretcher close to
the cookers. That beef-tea went down well! Then she shook ’ands with me
an’ said I’d hit off Sister Molyneux in one, an’ then she pinched me an
extra blanket. It was ’er own ’ospital pretty much. I expect she was
the Lady Catherine de Burgh of the area. Well, an’ so, to cut a long
story short, nothing further transpired.”

“’Adn’t you ’ad enough by then?” asked Anthony.

“I expect so. Otherwise, if the old Circus ’ad been carryin’ on, I
might ’ave ’ad another turn with ’em before Armistice. Our B. S. M. was
right. There never was a ’appier push. ’Ammick an’ Mosse an’ Gander an’
the B. S. M. an’ that pore little Macklin-man makin’ an’ passin’ an’
raisin’ me an’ gettin’ me on to the ’ospital train after ’e was dead,
all for a couple of Bradburys. I lie awake nights still, reviewing
matters. There never was a push to touch ours--never!”

Anthony handed me back the Secretary’s Jewel resplendent.

“Ah,” said he. “No denyin’ that Jane business was more useful to you
than the Roman Eagles or the Star an’ Garter. ’Pity there wasn’t any of
you Janeites in the ’Oly Land. _I_ never come across ’em.”

“Well, as pore Macklin said, it’s a very select Society, an’ you’ve
got to be a Janeite in your ’eart, or you won’t have any success. An’
yet he made _me_ a Janeite! I read all her six books now for pleasure
’tween times in the shop; an’ it brings it all back--down to the smell
of the glue-paint on the screens. You take it from me, Brethren,
there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place. Gawd bless
’er, whoever she was.”

Worshipful Brother Burges, from the floor of the Lodge, called us all
from Labour to Refreshment. Humberstall hove himself up--so very a
cart-horse of a man one almost expected to hear the harness creak on
his back--and descended the steps.

He said he could not stay for tea because he had promised his mother to
come home for it, and she would most probably be waiting for him now at
the Lodge door.

“One or other of ’em always comes for ’im. He’s apt to miss ’is gears
sometimes,” Anthony explained to me, as we followed.

“Goes on a bust, d’you mean?”

“’Im! He’s no more touched liquor than ’e ’as women since ’e was born.
No, ’e’s liable to a sort o’ quiet fits, like. They came on after the
dump blew up at Eatables. But for them, ’e’d ha’ been Battery Sergeant
Major.”

“Oh!” I said. “I couldn’t make out why he took on as mess-waiter when
he got back to his guns. That explains things a bit.”

“’Is sister told me the dump goin’ up knocked all ’is Gunnery
instruction clean out of ’im. The only thing ’e stuck to was to get
back to ’is old crowd. Gawd knows ’ow ’e worked it, but ’e did. He fair
deserted out of England to ’em, she says; an’ when they saw the state
’e was in, they ’adn’t the ’eart to send ’im back or into ’ospital.
They kep’ ’im for a mascot, as you might say. That’s _all_ dead true.
’Is sister told me so. But I can’t guarantee that Janeite business,
excep’ ’e never told a lie since ’e was six. ’Is sister told me so.
What do _you_ think?”

“He isn’t likely to have made it up out of his own head,” I replied.

“But people don’t get so crazy-fond o’ books as all that, do they? ’E’s
made ’is sister try to read ’em. She’d do anythin’ to please him. But,
as I keep tellin’ ’er, so’d ’is mother. D’you ’appen to know anything
about Jane?”

“I believe Jane was a bit of a match-maker in a quiet way when she was
alive, and I know all her books are full of match-making,” I said.
“_You’d_ better look out.”

“Oh, _that’s_ as good as settled,” Anthony replied, blushing.


[3] “Get out, you dog.”




JANE’S MARRIAGE


    Jane went to Paradise:
      That was only fair.
    Good Sir Walter met her first,
      And led her up the stair.
    Henry and Tobias,
      And Miguel of Spain,
    Stood with Shakespeare at the top
      To welcome Jane--

    Then the Three Archangels
      Offered out of hand,
    Anything in Heaven’s gift
      That she might command.
    Azrael’s eyes upon her,
      Raphael’s wings above,
    Michael’s sword against her heart,
      Jane said: “Love.”

    Instantly the under-
      standing Seraphim
    Laid their fingers on their lips
      And went to look for him.
    Stole across the Zodiac,
      Harnessed Charles’s Wain,
    And whispered round the Nebulae
      “Who loved Jane?”

    In a private limbo
      Where none had thought to look,
    Sat a Hampshire gentleman
      Reading of a book.
    It was called _Persuasion_,
      And it told the plain
    Story of the love between
      Him and Jane.

    He heard the question
      Circle Heaven through--
    Closed the book and answered:
      “I did--and do!”
    Quietly but speedily
      (As Captain Wentworth moved)
    Entered into Paradise
      The man Jane loved!




THE PROPHET AND THE COUNTRY




THE PORTENT

Horace, Ode 20, Bk. V.


    Oh, late withdrawn from human-kind
      And following dreams we never knew!
    Varus, what dream has Fate assigned
      To trouble you?

    Such virtue as commends the law
      Of Virtue to the vulgar horde
    Suffices not. You needs must draw
      A righteous sword;

    And, flagrant in well-doing, smite
      The priests of Bacchus at their fane,
    Lest any worshipper invite
      The God again.

    Whence public strife and naked crime
      And--deadlier than the cup you shun--
    A people schooled to mock, in time,
      All law--not one.

    Cease, then, to fashion State-made sin,
      Nor give thy children cause to doubt
    That Virtue springs from iron within--
      Not lead without.




THE PROPHET AND THE COUNTRY


North of London stretches a country called “The Midlands,” filled with
brick cities, all absolutely alike, but populated by natives who,
through heredity, have learned not only to distinguish between them
but even between the different houses; so that at meals and at evening
multitudes return, without confusion or scandal, each to the proper
place.

Last summer, desperate need forced me to cross that area, and I fell
into a motor-licence “control” which began in a market-town filled
with unherded beeves carrying red numbered tickets on their rumps. An
English-speaking policeman inspected my licence on a bridge, while the
cattle blundered and blew round the car. A native in plain clothes
lolled out an enormous mulberry-coloured tongue, with which he licked
a numbered label, precisely like one of those on the behinds of the
bullocks, and made to dab it on my wind-screen. I protested. “But it
will save you trouble,” he said. “You’re liable to be held up for your
licence from now on. This is your protection. Everybody does it.”

“Oh! If that’s the case----” I began weakly.

He slapped it on the glass and I went forward--the man was right--all
the cars I met were “protected” as mine was--till I reached some county
or other which marked the limit of the witch-doctoring, and entered,
at twilight, a large-featured land where the Great North Road ran,
bordered by wide way-wastes, between clumps of old timber.

Here the car, without warning, sobbed and stopped. One does not expect
the make-and-break of the magneto--that tiny two-inch spring of finest
steel--to fracture; and by the time we had found the trouble, night
shut down on us. A rounded pile of woods ahead took one sudden star
to its forehead and faded out; the way-waste melted into the darker
velvet of the hedge; another star reflected itself in the glassy black
of the bitumened road; and a weak moon struggled up out of a mist-patch
from a valley. Our lights painted the grass unearthly greens, and the
tree-boles bone-white. A church clock struck eleven, as I curled up
in the front seat and awaited the progress of Time and Things, with
some notion of picking up a tow towards morning. It was long since I
had spent a night in the open, and the hour worked on me. Time was
when such nights, and the winds that heralded their dawns, had been
fortunate and blessed; but those Gates, I thought, were for ever
shut....

I diagnosed it as a baker’s van on a Ford chassis, lit with unusual
extravagance. It pulled up and asked what the trouble might be. The
first sentence sufficed, even had my lights not revealed the full
hairless face, the horn-rimmed spectacles, the hooded boots below,
and the soft hat, fashioned on no block known to the Eastern trade,
above, the yellow raincoat. I explained the situation. The resources
of Mr. Henry Ford’s machines did not run to spare parts of my car’s
type, but--it was a beautiful night for camping-out. He himself was
independent of hotels. His outfit was a caravan hired these months
past for tours of Great Britain. He had been alone since his wife
died, of duodenal ulcer, five years ago. Comparative Ethnology was his
present study. No, not a professor, nor, indeed, ever at any College,
but a “realtor”--a dealer in real estate in a suburb of the great
and cultured centre of Omaha, Nebraska. Had I ever heard of it? I
had once visited the very place and there had met an unforgettable
funeral-furnisher; but I found myself (under influence of the night and
my Demon) denying all knowledge of the United States. I had, I said,
never left my native land; but the passion of my life had ever been
the study of the fortunes and future of the U. S. A.; and to this end
I had joined three Societies, each of which regularly sent me all its
publications.

He jerked her on to the grass beside my car, where our mingled lights
slashed across the trunks of a little wood; and I was invited into his
pitch-pine-lined caravan, with its overpowering electric installation,
its flap-table, typewriter, drawers and lockers below the bunk. Then he
spoke, every word well-relished between massy dentures; the inky-rimmed
spectacles obscuring the eyes and the face as expressionless as the
unrelated voice.

He spoke in capital letters, a few of which I have preserved, on our
National Spirit, which, he had sensed, was Homogeneous and in Ethical
Contact throughout--Unconscious but Vitally Existent. That was his
Estimate of our Racial Complex. It was an Asset, but a Democracy
postulating genuine Ideals should be more multitudinously-minded and
diverse in Outlook. I assented to everything in a voice that would have
drawn confidences from letter-boxes.

He next touched on the Collective Outlook of Democracy, and thence
glanced at Herd Impulse, and the counterbalancing necessity for
Individual Self-Expression. Here he began to search his pockets,
sighing heavily from time to time.

“Before my wife died, sir, I was rated a one-hundred-per-cent.
American. I am now--but.... Have you ever in Our Literature read a book
called _The Man Without a Country_? I’m him!” He still rummaged, but
there was a sawing noise behind the face.

“And you may say, first and last, drink did it!” he added. The noise
resumed. Evidently he was laughing, so I laughed too. After all, if a
man must drink, what better lair than a caravan? At his next words I
repented.

“On my return back home after her burial, I first received my Primal
Urge towards Self-Expression. Till then I had never realised myself....
Ah!”

He had found it at last in a breast pocket--a lank and knotty cigar.

“And what, sir, is your genuine Opinion of Prohibition?” he asked when
the butt had been moistened to his liking.

“Oh!--er! It’s a--a gallant adventure!” I babbled, for somehow I had
tuned myself to listen-in to tales of other things. He turned towards
me slowly.

“The Revelation _qua_ Prohibition that came to me on my return back
home from her funeral was _not_ along those lines. This is the Platform
_I_ stood on.” I became, thenceforward, one of vast crowds being
addressed from that Platform.

“There are Races, sir, which have been secluded since their origin
from the microbes--the necessary and beneficent microbes--of
Civ’lisation. Once those microbes are introdooced to ’em, those races
re-act precisely in proportion to their previous immunity _or_ Racial
Virginity. Measles, which I’ve had twice and never laid by for, are
as fatal to the Papuan as pneumonic plague to the White. Alcohol, for
them, is disaster, degeneration, and death. Why? You can’t get ahead
of Cause and Effect. Protect any race from its natural and God-given
bacteria and you automatically create the culture for its decay, when
that protection is removed. That, sir, is my Thesis.”

The unlit cigar between his lips circled slowly, but I had no desire to
laugh.

“The virgin Red Indian fell for the Firewater of the Paleface as soon
as it was presented to him. For Firewater, sir, he parted with his
lands, his integrity, an’ his future. What is he now? An Ethnological
Survival under State Protection. You get me? Immunise, or virg’nise,
the Cit’zen of the United States to alcohol, an’ you as surely redooce
him to the mental status an’ outlook of that Redskin. _That_ is the
Ne-mee-sis of Prohibition. And the Process has begun, sir. Haven’t you
noticed it already”--he gulped--“among Our People?”

“Well,” I said. “Men don’t always act as they preach, of course.”

“You won’t abrade _my_ National Complex. What’s the worst you’ve seen
in connection with Our People--and Rum?” The round lenses were full on
me. I chanced it.

“I’ve seen one of ’em on a cross-Channel boat, talking Prohibition in
the bar--pretty full. He had three drinks while I listened.”

“I thought you said you’d never quit England?” he replied.

“Oh, we don’t count France,” I amended hastily.

“Then was you ever at Monte Carlo? No? Well, I was--this spring. One of
our tourist steamers unloaded three hundred of ’em at the port o’ Veel
Franshe; and they went off to Monte Carlo to dine. I saw ’em, sir, come
out of the dinner-hall of that vast Hotel opp’site the Cassino there,
not drunk, but all--_all_ havin’ drink taken. In that hotel lounge
after that meal, I saw an elderly cit’zen up an’ kiss eight women,
none of ’em specially young, sittin’ in a circle on the settees; the
rest of his crowd applaudin’. Folk just shrugged their shoulders, and
the French nigger on the door, I heard him say: ‘It’s only the Yanks
tankin’ up.’ It galled me. As a one-hundred-per-cent. American, it
galled me unspeakably. And _you’ve_ observed the same thing durin’ the
last few years?”

I nodded. The face was working now in the yellow lights reflected from
the close-buttoned raincoat. He dropped his hand on his knee and struck
it again and again, before he steadied himself with the usual snap and
grind of his superb dentist-work.

“My Rev’lation _qua_ the Peril of Prohibition was laid on me on my
return back home in the hour of my affliction. I’d been discussin’
Prohibition with Mrs. Tarworth only the week before. Her best friend,
sir, a neighbour of ours, had filled one of the vases in our parlour
with chrysanthemums out of a bust wreath. I can’t ever smell to those
flowers now ’thout it all comin’ back. Yes, sir, in my hour of woe
it was laid on me to warn my land of the Ne-mee-sis of Presumption.
There’s only one Sin in the world--and that is Presumption. Without
strong Presumption, sir, we’d never have fixed Prohibition the way we
did.... An’ when I retired that night I reasoned it out that there was
but one weapon for me to work with to convey my message to my native
land. That, sir, was the Movies. So I reasoned it. I reasoned it
so-oo! Now the Movies wasn’t a business I’d ever been interested in,
though a regular attendant.... Well, sir, within ten days after I had
realised the Scope an’ Imperativeness of my Rev’lation, I’d sold out
an’ re-invested so’s everything was available. I quit Omaha, sir, the
freest--the happiest--man in the United States.”

A puff of air from the woods licked through the open door of the
caravan, trailing a wreath of mist with it. He pushed home the door.

“So you started in on Anti-Prohibition films?” I suggested.

“Sir?--More! It was laid on me to feature the Murder of Immunised
America by the Microbe of Modern Civ’lisation which she had
presumptuously defied. That text inspired all the titling. Before
I arrived at the concept of the Appeal, I was months studyin’ the
Movie business in every State of Our Union, in labour and trava-il.
The Complete Concept, sir, with its Potential’ties, came to me of a
Sunday afternoon in Rand Park, Keokuk, Iowa--the centre of our native
pearl-button industry. As a boy, sir, I used to go shell-tongin’ after
mussels, in a shanty-boat on the Cumberland River, Tennessee, always
hopin’ to find a thousand dollar pearl. (The shell goes to Keokuk for
manufacture.) I found my pearl in Keokuk--where my Concept came to me!
Excuse me!”

He pulled out a drawer of card-indexed photographs beneath the bunk,
ran his long fingers down the edges, and drew out three.

The first showed the head of an elderly Red Indian chief in full
war-paint, the lined lips compressed to a thread, eyes wrinkled,
nostrils aflare, and the whole face lit by so naked a passion of hate
that I started.

“That,” said Mr. Tarworth, “is the Spirit of the Tragedy--both of the
Red Indians who initially, and of our Whites who subsequently, sold
’emselves and their heritage for the Firewater of the Paleface. The
Captions run in diapason with that note throughout. But for a Film
Appeal, you must have a balanced _leet-motif_ interwoven with the
footage. Now this close-up of the Red Man I’m showin’ you, punctuates
the action of the dramma. He recurs, sir, watchin’ the progressive
degradation of his own people, from the advent of the Paleface
with liquor, up to the extinction of his race. After that, you see
him, again, more and more dominant, broodin’ over an’ rejoicin’ in
the downfall of the White American artificially virg’nised against
Alcohol--the identical cycle repeated. I got this shot of Him in
Oklahoma, one of our Western States, where there’s a crowd of the
richest Red Indians (drawin’ oil-royalties) on earth. But they’ve got
a Historical Society that chases ’em into paint and feathers to keep
up their race-pride, _and_ for the Movies. He was an Episcopalian
and owns a Cadillac, I was told. The sun in his eyes makes him look
that way. He’s indexed as ‘Rum-in-the-Cup’ (that’s the element of
Popular Appeal), but, say”--the voice softened with the pride of
artistry--“ain’t He just _it_ for my purposes?”

He passed me the second photo. The cigar rolled again and he held on:

“Now in every Film Appeal, you must balance your _leet-motif_ by
balancin’ the Sexes. The American Women, sir, handed Prohibition to
Us while our boys were away savin’ _you_. I know the type--’born an’
bred with it. She watches throughout the film what She’s brought
about--watches an’ watches till the final Catastrophe. She’s Woman
Triumphant, balanced against Rum-in-the-Cup--the Degraded Male.
I hunted the whole of the Middle West for Her in vain, ’fore I
remembered--not Jordan, but Abanna and Parphar--Mrs. Tarworth’s best
friend at home. I was then in Texarkhana, Arkansas, fixin’ up a deal
I’ll tell you about; but I broke for Omaha that evenin’ to get a shot
of Her. When I arrived so sudden she--she--thought, I guess, I meant
to make her Number Two. That’s Her. You wouldn’t realise the Type, but
it’s _it_.”

I looked; saw the trained sweetness and unction in the otherwise
hardish, ignorant eyes; the slightly open, slightly flaccid mouth; the
immense unconscious arrogance, the immovable certitude of mind, and
the other warning signs in the poise of the broad-cheeked head. He was
fingering the third photo.

“And when the American Woman realises the Scope an’ the Impact an’
the Irrevocability of the Catastrophe which she has created by Her
Presumption, She--She registers Despair. That’s Her--at the finale.”

It was cruelty beyond justification to have pinned down any living
creature in such agony of shame, anger, and impotence among life’s
wreckage. And this was a well-favoured woman, her torment new-launched
on her as she stood gripping the back of a stamped-velvet chair.

“And so you went back to Texarkhana without proposing,” I began.

“Why, yes. There was only forty-seven minutes between trains. I told
her so. But I got both shots.”

I must have caught my breath, for, as he took the photo back again,
he explained: “In the Movie business we don’t employ the actool. This
is only the Basis we build on to the nearest professional type. That
secures controlled emphasis of expression. She’s only the Basis.”

“I’m glad of that,” I said. He lit his cigar, and relaxed beneath the
folds of the loose coat.

“Well, sir, having secured my _leet-motifs_ and Sex-balances, the
whole of the footage coverin’ the downfall of the Red Man was as good
as given me by a bust Congregational Church that had been boosting
Prohibition near Texarkhana. That was why I’d gone there. One of their
ladies, who was crazy about Our National dealin’s with the Indian, had
had the details documented in Washington; an’ the resultant film must
have cost her any God’s dollars you can name. It was all there--the Red
Man partin’ with his lands and furs an’ women to the early settlers for
Rum; the liquor-fights round the tradin’-posts; the Government Agents
swindlin’ ’em with liquor; an’ the Indians goin’ mad from it; the Black
Hawk War; the winnin’ of the West--by Rum mainly--the whole jugful of
Shame. But that film failed, sir, because folk in Arkansaw said it was
an aspersion on the National Honour, and, anyway, buying land needful
for Our inevitable development was more Christian than the bloody
wars of Monarchical Europe. The Congregationalists wanted a new organ
too; so I traded a big Estey organ for their film. My notion was to
interweave it with parallel modern instances, from Monte Carlo and the
European hotels, of White American Degradation; the Main Caption bein’:
‘The Firewater of the Paleface Works as Indifferently as Fate.’ An’ old
Rum-in-the-Cup’s close-up shows broodin’--broodin’--broodin’--through
it all! You sense my Concept?”

He relighted his cigar.

“_I_ saw it like a vision. But, from there on, I had to rely on my
own Complex for intuition. I cut out all modern side-issues--the
fight against Prohibition; bootlegging; home-made Rum manufacture;
wood-alcohol tragedies, an’ all that dope. ’Dunno as I didn’t elim’nate
to excess. The Revolt of the Red Blood Corpuscules should ha’ been
stressed.”

“What’s _their_ share in it?”

“Vital! They clean up waste and deleterious matter in the humane
system. Under the microscope they rage like lions. Deprive ’em of
their job by sterilisin’ an’ virg’nising the system, an’ the Red Blood
Corpuscules turn on the humane system an’ destroy it bodily. Mentally,
too, mebbe. Ain’t that a hell of a thought?”

“Where did you get it from?”

“It came to me--with the others,” he replied as simply as Ezekiel might
have told a fellow-captive beside Chebar. “But it’s too high for a
Democracy. So I cut it right out. For Film purposes I assumed that,
at an unspecified date, the United States had become virg’nised to
liquor. The Taint was out of the Blood, and, apparently, the Instinct
had aborted. ‘The Triumph of Presumption’ is the Caption. But from
there on, I fell down because, for the film Appeal, you cannot present
such an Epoch without featurin’ confirmatory exhibits which, o’ course,
haven’t as yet materialised. That meant that the whole Cultural Aspect
o’ that Civ’lisation of the Future would have to be built up at
Hollywood; an’ half a million dollars wouldn’t cover it. ‘The Vision of
Virg’nised Civ’lisation.’ A hell of a proposition! But it don’t matter
now.”

He dropped his head and was still for a little.

“Never mind,” I said. “How does the idea work out--in your mind?”

“In my mind? As inevitably, sir, as the Red Man’s Fall through
Rum. My notion was a complete Cultural Exposay of a She-dom’nated
Civ’lisation, built on a virginal basis _qua_ alcohol, with immensely
increased material Productivity (say, there’d be money in that from big
Businesses demonstratin’ what they’ll prodooce a hundred years hence),
_and_ a side-wipe at the practically non-existent birth-rate.”

“Why that, too?” I asked.

He gave me the reason--a perfectly sound one--which has nothing to do
with the tale, and went on:

“After that Vision is fully realised, the End comes--as remorselessly
for the White as for the Red. How? The American Woman--you will recall
the first close-up of that lady I showed you, interweavin’ throughout
the narr’tive--havin’ accomplished all she set out to do, wishes to
demonstrate to the world the Integral Significance of Her Life-work.
Why not? She’s never been blamed in Her life. So delib’rately, out
of High Presumption, the American Woman withdraws all inhibit’ry
legislation, all barriers against Alcohol--to show what She has made of
Her Men. The Captions here run--‘The Zeenith of Presumption. America
Stands by Herself--Guide and Saviour of Humanity.’ ‘Let Evil do Its
Damnedest! We are above It.’ Say, ain’t that a hell of a thought?”

“A bit extravagant, isn’t it?”

“Extrav’gance? In the life of actool men an’ women? It don’t exist.
Well, anyway, that’s my top-note before the _day-bakkle_. There’s an
interval while the Great World-Wave is gatherin’ to sweep aside the
Children of Presumption. Nothin’ eventuates for a while. The Machine of
Virg’nised Civ’lisation functions by its own stored energy. And then,
sir--_then_ the World-Wave crashes down on the White as it crashed on
the Red Skin! (All this while old Rum-in-the-Cup is growin’ more an’
more dom’nant, as I told you.) But now, owin’ to the artificialised
mentality of the victims and the immune pop’lation, its effects are
Cataclysmic. ‘The Alcohol Appeal, held back for five Generations, wakes
like a Cyclone.’ That’s the Horror I’m stressin’. And Europe, and Asia,
and the Ghetto exploit America--cold. ‘A Virg’nised People let go all
holts, and part with their All.’ It is no longer a Dom’nation--but an
Obsession. Then a _Po_-ssession! Then come the Levelled Bay’nets of
Europe. Why so? Because the liquor’s peddled out, sir, under armed
European guards to the elderly, pleadin’ American Whites who pass over
their title-deeds--their businesses, fact’ries, canals, sky-scrapers,
town-lots, farms, little happy-lookin’ homes--everything--for it. You
can see ’em wadin’ into the ocean, from Oyster Bay to Palm Beach, under
great flarin’ sunsets of National Decay, to get at the stuff sooner.
And Europe’s got ’em by the gullet--peddlin’ out the cases, or a single
bottle at a time, to each accordin’ to his need--under the Levelled
Bay’nets of Europe.”

“But why lay all the responsibility on Europe?” I broke in. “Surely
some progressive American Liquor Trust would have been in the game from
the first?”

“Sure! But the Appeal is National, and there are some things, sir, that
the American People will _not_ stand for. It was Europe or nothing.
Otherwise, I could not have stressed the effect of the Levelled
Bay’nets of Europe. You see those bay’nets keepin’ order in the vast
cathedrals of the new religions--the broken whisky bottles round the
altar--the Priest himself, old and virg’nised, pleadin’ and prayin’
with his flock till, in the zeenith of his agony an’ his denunciations,
he too falls an’ wallows with the rest of ’em! Extrav’gant? No!
Logic. An’ so it spreads, from West to East, from East to West up to
the dividin’ line where the European and the Asiatic Liquor Trust
has parcelled out the Land o’ Presumption. No paltry rum-peddlin’ at
tradin’-posts _this_ time, but mile-long electric freight-trains,
surgin’ and swoopin’ from San Francisco an’ Boston with their seven
thousand ton of alcohol, till they meet head-on at the Liquor Line, an’
you see the little American People fawnin’ an’ pleadin’ round their
big wheels an’ tryin’ to slip in under the Levelled Bay’nets of Europe
to handle and touch the stuff, even if they can’t drink it. It’s
horrible--horrible! ‘The Wages of Sin!’ ‘The Death of the She-Dom’nated
Sons of Presumption!’”

He stood up, his head high in the caravan’s resonant roof, and mopped
his face.

“Go on!” I said.

“There ain’t much more. You see the devirg’nised European an’ the
immemorially sophisticated Asiatic, who can hold their liquor,
spreadin’ out an’ occupyin’ the land (the signs in the streets register
that) like--like a lavva-flow in Honolulu. There’s jest a hint, too, of
the Return of the Great Scourge, an’ how it fed on all this fresh human
meat. Jest a few feet of the flesh rottin’ off the bones--’same as
when Syph’lis originated in the Re-nay-sanse Epoch. Last of all--date
not specified--will be the herdin’ of the few survivin’ Americans into
their reservation in the Yellowstone Park by a few slouchin’, crippled
remnants of the Redskins. ’Get me? ‘Presumption’s Ultimate Reward.’
‘The Wheel Comes Full Circle.’ An’ the final close-up of Rum-in-the-Cup
with his Hate-Mission accomplished.”

He stooped again to the photos in the bunk-locker.

“I shot that,” he said, “when I was in the Yellowstone. It’s a document
to build up my Last Note on. They’re jest a party of tourists watchin’
grizzly bears rakin’ in the hotel dump-heaps (they keep ’em to show).
That wet light hits back well off their clothes, don’t it?”

I saw six or seven men and women, in pale-coloured raincoats, gathered,
with no pretence at pose, in a little glade. One man was turning up
his collar, another stooping to a bootlace, while a woman opened her
umbrella over him. They faced towards a dimly defined heap of rubbish
and tins; and they looked unutterably mean.

“Yes.” He took it back from me. “That would have been the final
note--the dom’nant resolvin’ into a minor. But it don’t matter now.”

“Doesn’t it?” I said, stupidly enough.

“Not to me, sir. My Church--I’m a Fundamentalist, an’ I didn’t read ’em
more than half the scenario--started out by disownin’ me for aspersin’
the National Honour. A bunch of our home papers got holt of it next.
They said I was a ren’gade an’ done it for dollars. An’ then the
ladies on the Social Betterment an’ Uplift Committees took a hand. In
_your_ country you don’t know the implications of _that_! I’m--I’m a
one-hundred-per-cent. American, but--I didn’t know what men an’ women
are. I guess none of us do at home, or we’d say so, instead o’ playin’
at being American Cit’zens. There’s no law with Us under which a man
can be jailed for aspersin’ the National Honour. There’s no need. It
got into the Legislature, an’ one Senator there he spoke for an hour,
demandin’ to have me unanimously an’ internationally disavowed by--by
my Maker, I presoom. No one else stood by me. I’d been to the big Jew
combines that control the Movie business in our country. I’d been to
Heuvelstein--he represents sixty-seven millions dollars’ interests.
They say he’s never read a scenario in his life. He read every last
word of mine aloud. He laughed some, but he said he was doin’ well in
a small way, and he didn’t propose to start up any pogroms against the
Chosen in New York. He said I was ahead of my time. I know that. An’
then--my wife’s best friend was back of this--folk at home got talkin’
about callin’ for an inquiry into my state o’ mind, an’ whether I was
fit to run my own affairs. I saw a lawyer or two over that, an’ I came
to a realisin’ sense of American Law _an’_ Justice. That was another
of the things I didn’t know. It made me sick to my stummick, sir--sick
with physical an’ mental terror an’ dread. So I quit. I changed my
name an’ quit two years back. Those ancient prophets an’ martyrs
haven’t got much on me in the things a Democracy hands you if you don’t
see eye to eye with it. Therefore, I have no abidin’-place except this
old caravan. Now sir, we two are like ships that pass in the night,
except, as I said, I’ll be very pleased to tow you into Doncaster this
morning. Is there anythin’ about _me_ strikes _you_ in any way as
deviatin’ from sanity?”

“Not in the least,” I replied quickly. “But what have you done with
your scenario?”

“Deposited it in the Bank of England at London.”

“Would you sell it?”

“_No_, sir.”

“Couldn’t it be produced here?”

“I am a one-hundred-per-cent. American. The way _I_ see it, I could not
be a party to an indirect attack on my Native Land.”

Once again he ground his jaws. There did not seem to be much left to
say. The heat in the shut caravan was more and more oppressive. Time
had stood still with me listening. I was aware now that the owls had
ceased hooting and that a night had gone out of the world. I rose from
the bunk. Mr. Tarworth, carefully rebuttoning his raincoat, opened the
door.

“Good Lord Gord Almighty!” he cried with a child’s awed reverence.
“It’s sun-up. Look!”

Daylight was just on the heels of dawn, with the sun following. The
icy-blackness of the Great North Road banded itself with smoking mists
that changed from solid pearl to writhing opal, as they lifted above
hedge-row level. The dew-wet leaves of the upper branches turned
suddenly into diamond facets, and that wind, which runs before the
actual upheaval of the sun, swept out of the fragrant lands to the
East, and touched my cheek--as many times it had touched it before, on
the edge, or at the ends, of inconceivable experiences.

My companion breathed deeply, while the low glare searched the folds
of his coat and the sags and wrinkles of his face. We heard the
far-away pulse of a car through the infinite, clean-born, light-filled
stillness. It neared and stole round the bend--a motor-hearse on its
way to some early or distant funeral, one side of the bright oak coffin
showing beneath the pall, which had slipped a little. Then it vanished
in a blaze of wet glory from the sun-drenched road, amid the songs of a
thousand birds.

Mr. Tarworth laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Say, Neighbour,” he said. “There’s somethin’ very soothin’ in the
Concept of Death after all.”

Then he set himself, kindly and efficiently, to tow me towards
Doncaster, where, when the day’s life should begin again, one might
procure a new magneto make-and-break--that tiny two-inch spring of
finest steel, failure of which immobilises any car.




GOW’S WATCH


Act IV.--Scene 4

_The Head of the Bargi Pass--in snow. Gow and Ferdinand with their
Captains._

 GOW (_to Ferdinand_).
 The Queen’s host would be delivered me to-day--but that these Mountain
 Men have sent battalia to hold the Pass. They’re shod, helmed and
 torqued with soft gold. For the rest, naked. By no argument can I
 persuade ’em their gilt carcasses against my bombards avail not.
 What’s to do, Fox?

    FERDINAND.
    Fatherless folk go furthest. These loud pagans
    Are doubly fatherless. Consider; they came
    Over the passes, out of all man’s world--
    Adullamites, unable to endure
    Its ancient pinch and belly-ache--full of revenges,
    Or wilfully forgetful. The land they found
    Was manless--her raw airs uncloven by speech,
    Earth without wheel-track, hoof-mark, hearth or plough-share
    Since God created; nor even a cave where men,
    When night was a new thing, had hid themselves.

 GOW.
 Excellent. Do I fight them, or let go?

    FERDINAND.
    Unused earth, air and water for their spoil,
    And none to make comparison of their deeds.
    No unbribed dead to judge, accuse ’em or comfort--
    Their present all their future and their past.
    What should they know of reason--litters of folk--
    New whelped to emptiness?

 GOW.
 Nothing. They bar my path.

 FERDINAND.
 Turn it, then--turn it.

 Give them their triumph. They’ll be wiser anon--Some thirty generations
 hence.

 GOW.
 Amen! I’m no disposed murderer. (_To the Mountain Men_) Most
 magnificent Señors! Lords of all Suns, Moons, Firmaments--Sole
 Architects of Yourselves and this present Universe! Yon Philosopher in
 the hairy cloak bids me wait only a thousand years, till ye’ve sorted
 yourselves more to the likeness of mankind.

 THE PRIEST OF THE MOUNTAIN MEN.
 There are none beside ourselves to lead the world!

 GOW.
 That is common knowledge. I supplicate you to allow us the head of the
 Pass, that we may better reach the Queen’s host yonder. Ye will not?
 Why?

 THE PRIEST.
 Because it is our will. There is none other law for all the earth.

 GOW.
 (That a few feet of snow on a nest of rocky mountains should have
 hatched this dream-people!)
 (_To Priest_) Ye have reason in nature--all
 you’ve known of it.... But--a thousand years--I fear they will not
 suffice.

 THE PRIEST.
 Go you back! We hold the passes into and out of the world. Do you defy
 us?

 FERDINAND. (_To Gow_)
 I warned you. There’s none like them under Heaven. Say it!

 GOW.
 Defy your puissance, Señors? Not I. We’ll have our bombards away, all,
 by noon; and our poor hosts with them. And you, Señors, shall have
 your triumph upon us.

 FERDINAND.
 Ah! That touches! Let them shout and blow their horns half a day and
 they’ll not think of aught else!

 GOW.
 Fall to your riots then! Señors, ye have won. We’ll leave you the head
 of the Pass--for thirty generations.
 (_Loudly_) The mules to the bombards and away!

 FERDINAND.
 Most admirably you spoke to my poor text.

 GOW.
 Maybe the better, Fox, because the discourse has drawn them to the
 head of the Pass. Meantime, our main body has taken the lower road,
 with all the Artillery.

 FERDINAND.
 Had you no bombards here, then?

 GOW.
 None, Innocence, at all! None, except your talk and theirs!




THE BULL THAT THOUGHT




THE BULL THAT THOUGHT


Westward from a town by the Mouths of the Rhône, runs a road so
mathematically straight, so barometrically level, that it ranks among
the world’s measured miles and motorists use it for records.

I had attacked the distance several times, but always with a Mistral
blowing, or the unchancy cattle of those parts on the move. But once,
running from the East, into a high-piled, almost Egyptian, sunset,
there came a night which it would have been sin to have wasted. It was
warm with the breath of summer in advance; moonlit till the shadow of
every rounded pebble and pointed cypress wind-break lay solid on that
vast flat-floored waste; and my Mr. Leggatt, who had slipped out to
make sure, reported that the road-surface was unblemished.

“_Now_,” he suggested, “we might see what she’ll do under strict
road-conditions. She’s been pullin’ like the Blue de Luxe all day.
Unless I’m all off, it’s her night out.”

We arranged the trial for after dinner--thirty kilometres as near as
might be; and twenty-two of them without even a level crossing.

There sat beside me at table d’hôte an elderly, bearded Frenchman
wearing the rosette of by no means the lowest grade of the Legion of
Honour, who had arrived in a talkative Citroën. I gathered that he
had spent much of his life in the French Colonial Service in Annam
and Tonquin. When the War came, his years barring him from the front
line, he had supervised Chinese woodcutters who, with axe and dynamite,
deforested the centre of France for trench-props. He said my chauffeur
had told him that I contemplated an experiment. He was interested in
cars--had admired mine--would, in short, be greatly indebted to me if I
permitted him to assist as an observer. One could not well refuse; and,
knowing my Mr. Leggatt, it occurred to me there might also be a bet in
the background.

While he went to get his coat, I asked the proprietor his name.
“Voiron--Monsieur André Voiron,” was the reply. “And his business?”
“Mon Dieu! He is Voiron! He is all those things, there!” The proprietor
waved his hands at brilliant advertisements on the dining-room walls,
which declared that Voiron Frères dealt in wines, agricultural
implements, chemical manures, provisions and produce throughout that
part of the globe.

He said little for the first five minutes of our trip, and nothing at
all for the next ten--it being, as Leggatt had guessed, Esmeralda’s
night out. But, when her indicator climbed to a certain figure and held
there for three blinding kilometres, he expressed himself satisfied,
and proposed to me that we should celebrate the event at the hotel. “I
keep yonder,” said he, “a wine on which I should value your opinion.”

On our return, he disappeared for a few minutes, and I heard him
rumbling in a cellar. The proprietor presently invited me to the
dining-room, where, beneath one frugal light, a table had been set with
local dishes of renown. There was, too, a bottle beyond most known
sizes, marked black on red, with a date. Monsieur Voiron opened it, and
we drank to the health of my car. The velvety, perfumed liquor, between
fawn and topaz, neither too sweet nor too dry, creamed in its generous
glass. But I knew no wine composed of the whispers of angels’ wings,
the breath of Eden and the foam and pulse of Youth renewed. So I asked
what it might be.

“It is champagne,” he said gravely.

“Then what have I been drinking all my life?”

“If you were lucky, before the War, and paid thirty shillings a bottle,
it is possible you may have drunk one of our better-class _tisanes_.”

“And where does one get this?”

“Here, I am happy to say. Elsewhere, perhaps, it is not so easy. We
growers exchange these real wines among ourselves.”

I bowed my head in admiration, surrender, and joy. There stood the
most ample bottle, and it was not yet eleven o’clock. Doors locked and
shutters banged throughout the establishment. Some last servant yawned
on his way to bed. Monsieur Voiron opened a window and the moonlight
flooded in from a small pebbled court outside. One could almost hear
the town of Chambres breathing in its first sleep. Presently, there was
a thick noise in the air, the passing of feet and hooves, lowings, and
a stifled bark or two. Dust rose over the courtyard wall, followed by
the strong smell of cattle.

“They are moving some beasts,” said Monsieur Voiron, cocking an
ear. “Mine, I think. Yes, I hear Christophe. Our beasts do not like
automobiles--so we move at night. You do not know our country--the
Crau, here, or the Camargue? I was--I am now, again--of it. All France
is good; but this is the best.” He spoke, as only a Frenchman can, of
his own loved part of his own lovely land.

“For myself, if I were not so involved in all these affairs,” he
pointed to the advertisements--“I would live on our farm with my
cattle, and worship them like a Hindu. You know our cattle of the
Camargue, Monsieur. No? It is not an acquaintance to rush upon lightly.
There are no beasts like them. They have a mentality superior to that
of others. They graze and they ruminate, by choice, facing our Mistral,
which is more than some automobiles will do. Also they have in them
the potentiality of thought--and when cattle think--I have seen what
arrives.”

“Are they so clever as all that?” I asked idly.

“Monsieur, when your sportif chauffeur camouflaged your limousine so
that she resembled one of your Army lorries, I would not believe her
capacities. I bet him--ah--two to one--she would not touch ninety
kilometres. It was proved that she could. I can give you no proof, but
will you believe me if I tell you what a beast who thinks can achieve?”

“After the War,” said I spaciously, “everything is credible.”

“That is true! Everything inconceivable has happened; but still we
learn nothing and we believe nothing. When I was a child in my father’s
house--before I became a Colonial Administrator--my interest and my
affection were among our cattle. We of the old rock live here--have
you seen?--in big farms like castles. Indeed, some of them may have
been Saracenic. The barns group round them--great white-walled barns,
and yards solid as our houses. One gate shuts all. It is a world
apart; an administration of all that concerns beasts. It was there I
learned something about cattle. You see, they are our playthings in
the Camargue and the Crau. The boy measures his strength against the
calf that butts him in play among the manure-heaps. He moves in and out
among the cows, who are--not so amiable. He rides with the herdsmen
in the open to shift the herds. Sooner or later, he meets as bulls
the little calves that knocked him over. So it was with me--till it
became necessary that I should go to our Colonies.” He laughed. “Very
necessary. That is a good time in youth, Monsieur, when one does
these things which shock our parents. Why is it always Papa who is so
shocked and has never heard of such things--and Mamma who supplies the
excuses?... And when my brother--my elder who stayed and created the
business--begged me to return and help him, I resigned my Colonial
career gladly enough. I returned to our own lands, and my well-loved,
wicked white and yellow cattle of the Camargue and the Crau. My Faith,
I could talk of them all night, for this stuff unlocks the heart,
without making repentance in the morning.... Yes! It was after the War
that this happened. There was a calf, among Heaven knows how many of
ours--a bull-calf--an infant indistinguishable from his companions.
He was sick, and he had been taken up with his mother into the big
farmyard at home with us. Naturally the children of our herdsmen
practised on him from the first. It is in their blood. The Spaniards
make a cult of bull-fighting. Our little devils down here bait bulls
as automatically as the English child kicks or throws balls. This
calf would chase them with his eyes open, like a cow when she hunts
a man. They would take refuge behind our tractors and wine-carts in
the centre of the yard: he would chase them in and out as a dog hunts
rats. More than that, he would study their psychology, his eyes in
their eyes. Yes, he watched their faces to divine which way they would
run. He himself, also, would pretend sometimes to charge directly at
a boy. Then he would wheel right or left--one could never tell--and
knock over some child pressed against a wall who thought himself safe.
After this, he would stand over him, knowing that his companions must
come to his aid; and when they were all together, waving their jackets
across his eyes and pulling his tail, he would scatter them--how he
would scatter them! He could kick too, sideways like a cow. He knew
his ranges as well as our gunners, and he was as quick on his feet as
our Carpentier. I observed him often. Christophe--the man who passed
just now--our chief herdsman, who had taught me to ride with our beasts
when I was ten--Christophe told me that he was descended from a yellow
cow of those days that had chased us once into the marshes. ‘He kicks
just like her,’ said Christophe. ‘He can side-kick as he jumps. Have
you seen, too, that he is not deceived by the jacket when a boy waves
it? He uses it to find the boy. They think they are feeling him. He
is feeling them always. He thinks, that one.’ I had come to the same
conclusion. Yes--the creature was a thinker along the lines necessary
to his sport; and he was a humorist also, like so many natural
murderers. One knows the type among beasts as well as among men. It
possesses a curious truculent mirth--almost indecent but infallibly
significant----”

Monsieur Voiron replenished our glasses with the great wine that went
better at each descent.

“They kept him for some time in the yards to practise upon. Naturally
he became a little brutal; so Christophe turned him out to learn
manners among his equals in the grazing lands, where the Camargue joins
the Crau. How old was he then? About eight or nine months, I think. We
met again a few months later--he and I. I was riding one of our little
half-wild horses, along a road of the Crau, when I found myself almost
unseated. It was he! He had hidden himself behind a wind-break till
we passed, and had then charged my horse from behind. Yes, he had
deceived even my little horse! But I recognised him. I gave him the
whip across the nose, and I said: ‘Apis, for this thou goest to Arles!
It was unworthy of thee, between us two.’ But that creature had no
shame. He went away laughing, like an Apache. If he had dismounted me,
I do not think it is I who would have laughed--yearling as he was.”

“Why did you want to send him to Arles?” I asked.

“For the bull-ring. When your charming tourists leave us, we institute
our little amusements there. Not a real bull-fight, you understand,
but young bulls with padded horns, and our boys from hereabouts and in
the city, go to play with them. Naturally, before we send them we try
them in our yards at home. So we brought up Apis from his pastures.
He knew at once that he was among the friends of his youth--he almost
shook hands with them--and he submitted like an angel to padding his
horns. He investigated the carts and tractors in the yards, to choose
his lines of defence and attack. And then--he attacked with an _élan_,
and he defended with a tenacity and forethought that delighted us. In
truth, we were so pleased that I fear we trespassed upon his patience.
We desired him to repeat himself, which no true artist will tolerate.
But he gave us fair warning. He went out to the centre of the yard,
where there was some dry earth; he kneeled down and--you have seen a
calf whose horns fret him thrusting and rooting into a bank? He did
just that, very deliberately, till he had rubbed the pads off his
horns. Then he rose, dancing on those wonderful feet that twinkled, and
he said: ‘Now, my friends, the buttons are off the foils. Who begins?’
We understood. We finished at once. He was turned out again on the
pastures till it should be time to amuse them at our little metropolis.
But, some time before he went to Arles--yes, I think I have it
correctly--Christophe, who had been out on the Crau, informed me that
Apis had assassinated a young bull who had given signs of developing
into a rival. That happens, of course, and our herdsmen should prevent
it. But Apis had killed in his own style--at dusk, from the ambush of
a wind-break--by an oblique charge from behind which knocked the other
over. He had then disembowelled him. All very possible, _but_--the
murder accomplished--Apis went to the bank of a wind-break, knelt,
and carefully, as he had in our yard, cleaned his horns in the earth.
Christophe, who had never seen such a thing, at once borrowed (do you
know, it is most efficacious when taken that way?) some Holy Water from
our little chapel in those pastures, sprinkled Apis (whom it did not
affect), and rode in to tell me. It was obvious that a thinker of that
bull’s type would also be meticulous in his toilette; so, when he was
sent to Arles, I warned our consignees to exercise caution with him.
Happily, the change of scene, the music, the general attention, and the
meeting again with old friends--all our bad boys attended--agreeably
distracted him. He became for the time a pure _farceur_ again; but his
wheelings, his rushes, his rat-huntings were more superb than ever.
There was in them now, you understand, a breadth of technique that
comes of reasoned art, and, above all, the passion that arrives after
experience. Oh, he had learned, out there on the Crau! At the end of
his little turn, he was, according to local rules, to be handled in all
respects except for the sword, which was a stick, as a professional
bull who must die. He was manœuvred into, or he posed himself in, the
proper attitude; made his rush; received the point on his shoulder and
then--turned about and cantered toward the door by which he had entered
the arena. He said to the world: ‘My friends, the representation is
ended. I thank you for your applause. I go to repose myself.’ But our
Arlesians, who are--not so clever as some, demanded an encore, and
Apis was headed back again. We others from his country, we knew what
would happen. He went to the centre of the ring, kneeled, and, slowly,
with full parade, plunged his horns alternately in the dirt till the
pads came off. Christophe shouts: ‘Leave him alone, you straight-nosed
imbeciles! Leave him before you must.’ But they required emotion; for
Rome has always debauched her loved Provincia with bread and circuses.
It was given. Have you, Monsieur, ever seen a servant, with pan and
broom, sweeping round the baseboard of a room? In a half-minute Apis
has them all swept out and over the barrier. Then he demands once more
that the door shall be opened to him. It is opened and he retires as
though--which truly, is the case--loaded with laurels.”

Monsieur Voiron refilled the glasses, and allowed himself a cigarette,
which he puffed for some time.

“And afterwards?” I said.

“I am arranging it in my mind. It is difficult to do it justice.
Afterwards--yes, afterwards--Apis returned to his pastures and his
mistresses and I to my business. I am no longer a scandalous old
‘sportif’ in shirtsleeves howling encouragement to the yellow son of a
cow. I revert to Voiron Frères--wines, chemical manures, _et cetera_.
And next year, through some chicane which I have not the leisure to
unravel, and also, thanks to our patriarchal system of paying our older
men out of the increase of the herds, old Christophe possesses himself
of Apis. Oh, yes, he proves it through descent from a certain cow that
my father had given his father before the Republic. Beware, Monsieur,
of the memory of the illiterate man! An ancestor of Christophe had
been a soldier under our Soult against your Beresford, near Bayonne. He
fell into the hands of Spanish guerrillas. Christophe and his wife used
to tell me the details on certain Saints’ Days when I was a child. Now,
as compared with our recent war, Soult’s campaign and retreat across
the Bidassoa----”

“But did you allow Christophe just to annex the bull?” I demanded.

“You do not know Christophe. He had sold him to the Spaniards before he
informed me. The Spaniards pay in coin--douros of very pure silver. Our
peasants mistrust our paper. You know the saying: ‘A thousand francs
paper; eight hundred metal, and the cow is yours.’ Yes, Christophe
sold Apis, who was then two and a half years old, and to Christophe’s
knowledge thrice at least an assassin.”

“How was that?” I said.

“Oh, his own kind only; and always, Christophe told me, by the same
oblique rush from behind, the same sideways overthrow, and the same
swift disembowelment, followed by this levitical cleaning of the horns.
In human life he would have kept a manicurist--this Minotaur. And so,
Apis disappears from our country. That does not trouble me. I know in
due time I shall be advised. Why? Because, in this land, Monsieur, not
a hoof moves between Berre and the Saintes Maries without the knowledge
of specialists such as Christophe. The beasts are the substance, and
the drama of their lives to them. So when Christophe tells me, a little
before Easter Sunday, that Apis makes his début in the bull-ring of
a small Catalan town on the road to Barcelona, it is only to pack my
car and trundle there across the frontier with him. The place lacked
importance and manufactures, but it had produced a matador of some
reputation, who was condescending to show his art in his native town.
They were even running one special train to the place. Now our French
railway system is only execrable, but the Spanish----”

“You went down by road, didn’t you?” said I.

“Naturally. It was not too good. Villamarti was the matador’s name.
He proposed to kill two bulls for the honour of his birthplace. Apis,
Christophe told me, would be his second. It was an interesting trip,
and that little city by the sea was ravishing. Their bull-ring dates
from the middle of the seventeenth century. It is full of feeling.
The ceremonial too--when the horsemen enter and ask the Mayor in his
box to throw down the keys of the bull-ring--that was exquisitely
conceived. You know, if the keys are caught in the horseman’s hat, it
is considered a good omen. They were perfectly caught. Our seats were
in the front row beside the gates where the bulls enter, so we saw
everything.

“Villamarti’s first bull was not too badly killed. The second
matador, whose name escapes me, killed his without distinction--a
foil to Villamarti. And the third, Chisto, a laborious, middle-aged
professional who had never risen beyond a certain dull competence, was
equally of the background. Oh, they are as jealous as the girls of the
Comédie Française, these matadors! Villamarti’s troupe stood ready
for his second bull. The gates opened, and we saw Apis, beautifully
balanced on his feet, peer coquettishly round the corner, as though he
were at home. A picador--a mounted man with the long lance-goad--stood
near the barrier on his right. He had not even troubled to turn his
horse, for the capeadors--the men with the cloaks--were advancing to
play Apis--to feel his psychology and intentions, according to the
rules that are made for bulls who do not think.... I did not realise
the murder before it was accomplished! The wheel, the rush, the oblique
charge from behind, the fall of horse and man were simultaneous.
Apis leaped the horse, with whom he had no quarrel, and alighted,
all four feet together (it was enough), between the man’s shoulders,
changed his beautiful feet on the carcass, and was away, pretending to
fall nearly on his nose. Do you follow me? In that instant, by that
stumble, he produced the impression that his adorable assassination
was a mere bestial blunder. Then, Monsieur, I began to comprehend
that it was an artist we had to deal with. He did not stand over the
body to draw the rest of the troupe. He chose to reserve that trick.
He let the attendants bear out the dead, and went on to amuse himself
among the capeadors. Now to Apis, trained among our children in the
yards, the cloak was simply a guide to the boy behind it. He pursued,
you understand, the person, not the propaganda--the proprietor, not
the journal. If a third of our electors of France were as wise, my
friend!... But it was done leisurely, with humour and a touch of
truculence. He romped after one man’s cloak as a clumsy dog might
do, but I observed that he kept the man on his terrible left side.
Christophe whispered to me: ‘Wait for his mother’s kick. When he has
made the fellow confident it will arrive.’ It arrived in the middle
of a gambol. My God! He lashed out in the air as he frisked. The
man dropped like a sack, lifted one hand a little towards his head,
and--that was all. So you see, a body was again at his disposition;
a second time the cloaks ran up to draw him off, but a second time,
Apis refused his grand scene. A second time he acted that his murder
was accident and--he convinced his audience! It was as though he had
knocked over a bridge-gate in the marshes by mistake. Unbelievable? I
saw it.”

The memory sent Monsieur Voiron again to the champagne, and I
accompanied him.

“But Apis was not the sole artist present. They say Villamarti comes
of a family of actors. I saw him regard Apis with a new eye. He, too,
began to understand. He took his cloak and moved out to play him
before they should bring on another picador. He had his reputation.
Perhaps Apis knew it. Perhaps Villamarti reminded him of some boy with
whom he had practised at home. At any rate Apis permitted it--up to a
certain point; but he did not allow Villamarti the stage. He cramped
him throughout. He dived and plunged clumsily and slowly, but always
with menace and always closing in. We could see that the man was
conforming to the bull--not the bull to the man; for Apis was playing
him towards the centre of the ring, and, in a little while--I watched
his face--Villamarti knew it. But I could not fathom the creature’s
motive. ‘Wait,’ said old Christophe. ‘He wants that picador on the
white horse yonder. When he reaches his proper distance he will get
him. Villamarti is his cover. He used me once that way.’ And so it
was, my friend! With the clang of one of our own Seventy-fives, Apis
dismissed Villamarti with his chest--breasted him over--and had arrived
at his objective near the barrier. The same oblique charge; the head
carried low for the sweep of the horns; the immense sideways fall of
the horse, broken-legged and half-paralysed; the senseless man on the
ground and--behold Apis between them, backed against the barrier--his
right covered by the horse; his left by the body of the man at his
feet. The simplicity of it! Lacking the carts and tractors of his
early parade-grounds he, being a genius, had extemporised with the
materials at hand, and dug himself in. The troupe closed up again,
their left wing broken by the kicking horse, their right immobilised
by the man’s body which Apis bestrode with significance. Villamarti
almost threw himself between the horns, but--it was more an appeal than
an attack. Apis refused him. He held his base. A picador was sent at
him--necessarily from the front, which alone was open. Apis charged--he
who, till then, you realise, had not used the horn! The horse went over
backwards, the man half beneath him. Apis halted, hooked him under
the heart, and threw him to the barrier. We heard his head crack, but
he was dead before he hit the wood. There was no demonstration from
the audience. They, also, had begun to realise this Foch among bulls!
The arena occupied itself again with the dead. Two of the troupe
irresolutely tried to play him--God knows in what hope!--but he moved
out to the centre of the ring. ‘Look!’ said Christophe. ‘Now he goes to
clean himself. That always frightened me.’ He knelt down; he began to
clean his horns. The earth was hard. He worried at it in an ecstasy of
absorption. As he laid his head along and rattled his ears, it was as
though he were interrogating the Devils themselves upon their secrets,
and always saying impatiently: ‘Yes, I know that--and _that_--and
_that_! Tell me more--_more_!’ In the silence that covered us, a woman
cried: ‘He digs a grave! Oh, Saints, he digs a grave!’ Some others
echoed this--not loudly--as a wave echoes in a grotto of the sea.

“And when his horns were cleaned, he rose up and studied poor
Villamarti’s troupe, eyes in eyes, one by one, with the gravity of an
equal in intellect and the remote and merciless resolution of a master
in his art. This was more terrifying than his toilette.”

“And they--Villamarti’s men?” I asked.

“Like the audience, were dominated. They had ceased to posture, or
stamp, or address insults to him. They conformed to him. The two other
matadors stared. Only Chisto, the oldest, broke silence with some
call or other, and Apis turned his head towards him. Otherwise he was
isolated, immobile--sombre--meditating on those at his mercy. Ah!

“For some reason the trumpet sounded for the _banderillas_--those gay
hooked darts that are planted in the shoulders of bulls who do not
think, after their neck-muscles are tired by lifting horses. When such
bulls feel the pain, they check for an instant, and, in that instant,
the men step gracefully aside. Villamarti’s banderillero answered the
trumpet mechanically--like one condemned. He stood out, poised the
darts and stammered the usual patter of invitation.... And after? I
do not assert that Apis shrugged his shoulders, but he reduced the
episode to its lowest elements, as could only a bull of Gaul. With
his truculence was mingled always--owing to the shortness of his
tail--a certain Rabelaisian abandon, especially when viewed from the
rear. Christophe had often commented upon it. Now, Apis brought that
quality into play. He circulated round that boy, forcing him to break
up his beautiful poses. He studied him from various angles, like an
incompetent photographer. He presented to him every portion of his
anatomy except his shoulders. At intervals he feigned to run in upon
him. My God, he was cruel! But his motive was obvious. He was playing
for a laugh from the spectators which should synchronise with the
fracture of the human morale. It was achieved. The boy turned and ran
towards the barrier. Apis was on him before the laugh ceased; passed
him; headed him--what do I say?--herded him off to the left, his
horns beside and a little in front of his chest: he did not intend
him to escape into a refuge. Some of the troupe would have closed
in, but Villamarti cried: ‘If he wants him he will take him. Stand!’
They stood. Whether the boy slipped or Apis nosed him over I could
not see. But he dropped, sobbing. Apis halted like a car with four
brakes, struck a pose, smelt him very completely and turned away. It
was dismissal more ignominious than degradation at the head of one’s
battalion. The representation was finished. Remained only for Apis to
clear his stage of the subordinate characters.

“Ah! His gesture then! He gave a dramatic start--this Cyrano of the
Camargue--as though he was aware of them for the first time. He moved.
All their beautiful breeches twinkled for an instant along the top
of the barrier. He held the stage alone! But Christophe and I, we
trembled! For, observe, he had now involved himself in a stupendous
drama of which he only could supply the third act. And, except for an
audience on the razor-edge of emotion, he had exhausted his material.
Molière himself--we have forgotten, my friend, to drink to the health
of that great soul--might have been at a loss. And Tragedy is but a
step behind Failure. We could see the four or five Civil Guards, who
are sent always to keep order, fingering the breeches of their rifles.
They were but waiting a word from the Mayor to fire on him, as they do
sometimes at a bull who leaps the barrier among the spectators. They
would, of course, have killed or wounded several people--but that would
not have saved Apis.”

Monsieur Voiron drowned the thought at once, and wiped his beard.

“At that moment Fate--the Genius of France, if you will--sent to
assist in the incomparable finale, none other than Chisto, the
eldest, and, I should have said (but never again will I judge!) the
least inspired of all; mediocrity itself but, at heart--and it is
the heart that conquers always, my friend--at heart an artist. He
descended stiffly into the arena, alone and assured. Apis regarded
him, his eyes in his eyes. The man took stance, with his cloak, and
called to the bull as to an equal: ‘Now, Señor, we will show these
honourable caballeros something together.’ He advanced thus against
this thinker who at a plunge--a kick--a thrust--could, we all knew,
have extinguished him. My dear friend, I wish I could convey to you
something of the unaffected bonhomie, the humour, the delicacy, the
consideration bordering on respect even, with which Apis, the supreme
artist, responded to this invitation. It was the Master, wearied after
a strenuous hour in the atelier, unbuttoned and at ease with some
not inexpert but limited disciple. The telepathy was instantaneous
between them. And for good reason! Christophe said to me: ‘All’s well.
That Chisto began among the bulls. I was sure of it when I heard him
call just now. He has been a herdsman. He’ll pull it off.’ There was
a little feeling and adjustment, at first, for mutual distances and
allowances.

“Oh, yes! And here occurred a gross impertinence of Villamarti. He had,
after an interval, followed Chisto--to retrieve his reputation. My
Faith! I can conceive the elder Dumas slamming his door on an intruder
precisely as Apis did. He raced Villamarti into the nearest refuge at
once. He stamped his feet outside it, and he snorted: ‘Go! I am engaged
with an artist.’ Villamarti went--his reputation left behind for ever.

“Apis returned to Chisto saying: ‘Forgive the interruption. I am not
always master of my time, but you were about to observe, my dear
confrère...?’ Then the play began. Out of compliment to Chisto, Apis
chose as his objective (every bull varies in this respect) the inner
edge of the cloak--that nearest to the man’s body. This allows but a
few millimetres clearance in charging. But Apis trusted himself as
Chisto trusted him, and, this time, he conformed to the man, with
inimitable judgment and temper. He allowed himself to be played into
the shadow or the sun, as the delighted audience demanded. He raged
enormously; he feigned defeat; he despaired in statuesque abandon,
and thence flashed into fresh paroxysms of wrath--but always with the
detachment of the true artist who knows he is but the vessel of an
emotion whence others, not he, must drink. And never once did he forget
that honest Chisto’s cloak was to him the gauge by which to spare even
a hair on the skin. He inspired Chisto too. My God! His youth returned
to that meritorious beef-sticker--the desire, the grace, and the
beauty of his early dreams. One could almost see that girl of the past
for whom he was rising, rising to these present heights of skill and
daring. It was his hour too--a miraculous hour of dawn returned to gild
the sunset. All he knew was at Apis’ disposition. Apis acknowledged
it with all that he had learned at home, at Arles and in his lonely
murders on our grazing-grounds. He flowed round Chisto like a river
of death--round his knees, leaping at his shoulders, kicking just
clear of one side or the other of his head; behind his back hissing
as he shaved by; and once or twice--inimitable!--he reared wholly up
before him while Chisto slipped back from beneath the avalanche of that
instructed body. Those two, my dear friend, held five thousand people
dumb with no sound but of their breathings--regular as pumps. It was
unbearable. Beast and man realised together that we needed a change of
note--a _détente_. They relaxed to pure buffoonery. Chisto fell back
and talked to him outrageously. Apis pretended he had never heard such
language. The audience howled with delight. Chisto slapped him; he
took liberties with his short tail, to the end of which he clung while
Apis pirouetted; he played about him in all postures; he had become
the herdsman again--gross, careless, brutal, but comprehending. Yet
Apis was always the more consummate clown. All that time (Christophe
and I saw it) Apis drew off towards the gates of the _toril_ where so
many bulls enter but--have you ever heard of one that returned? _We_
knew that Apis knew that as he had saved Chisto, so Chisto would save
him. Life is sweet to us all; to the artist who lives many lives in
one, sweetest. Chisto did not fail him. At the last, when none could
laugh any longer, the man threw his cape across the bull’s back, his
arm round his neck. He flung up a hand at the gate, as Villamarti,
young and commanding but _not_ a herdsman, might have raised it, and he
cried: ‘Gentlemen, open to me and my honourable little donkey.’ They
opened--I have misjudged Spaniards in my time!--those gates opened to
the man and the bull together, and closed behind them. And then? From
the Mayor to the Guarda Civile they went mad for five minutes, till
the trumpets blew and the fifth bull rushed out--an unthinking black
Andalusian. I suppose some one killed him. My friend, my very dear
friend, to whom I have opened my heart, I confess that I did not watch.
Christophe and I we were weeping together like children of the same
Mother. Shall we drink to Her?”




ALNASCHAR AND THE OXEN


    There’s a pasture in a valley where the hanging woods divide,
      And a Herd lies down and ruminates in peace;
    Where the pheasant rules the nooning, and the owl the twilight tide,
      And the war-cries of our world die out and cease.
    Here I cast aside the burden that each weary week-day brings
      And, delivered from the shadows I pursue,
    On peaceful, postless Sabbaths I consider Weighty Things--
      Such as Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew!

    At the gate beside the river where the trouty shallows brawl,
      I know the pride that Lobengula felt,
    When he bade the bars be lowered of the Royal Cattle Kraal,
      And fifteen miles of oxen took the veldt.
    From the walls of Bulawayo in unbroken file they came
      To where the Mount of Council cuts the blue ...
    I have only six and twenty, but the principle’s the same
      With my Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew!

    To a luscious sound of tearing, where the clovered herbage rips,
      Level-backed and level-bellied watch ’em move--
    See those shoulders, guess that heart-girth, praise those loins,
                                                      admire those hips,
      And the tail set low for flesh to make above!
    Count the broad unblemished muzzles, test the kindly mellow skin
      And, where yon heifer lifts her head at call,
    Mark the bosom’s just abundance ’neath the gay and clean-cut chin,
      And those eyes of Juno, overlooking all!

    Here is colour, form and substance! I will put it to the proof
      And, next season, in my lodges shall be born
    Some very Bull of Mithras, flawless from his agate hoof
      To his even-branching ivory, dusk-tipped horn.
    He shall mate with block-square virgins--kings shall seek his like
                                                                in vain,
      While I multiply his stock a thousandfold,
    Till an hungry world extol me, builder of a lofty strain
      That turns one standard ton at two years old!

    _There’s a valley, under oakwood, where a man may dream his dream,
      In the milky breath of cattle laid at ease,
    Till the moon o’ertops the alders, and her image chills the stream,
      And the river-mist runs silver round their knees!
    Now the footpaths fade and vanish; now the ferny clumps deceive;
      Now the hedgerow-folk possess their fields anew;
    Now the Herd is lost in darkness, and I bless them as I leave,
      My Sussex Cattle feeding in the dew!_




A MADONNA OF THE TRENCHES




GIPSY VANS


    Unless you come of the gipsy stock
      That steals by night and day,
    Lock your heart with a double lock
      And throw the key away.
    Bury it under the blackest stone
      Beneath your father’s hearth,
    And keep your eyes on your lawful own
      And your feet to the proper path.
        _Then you can stand at your door and mock
          When the gipsy-vans come through ...
        For it isn’t right that the Gorgio stock
          Should live as the Romany do._

    Unless you come of the gipsy blood
      That takes and never spares,
    Bide content with your given good
      And follow your own affairs.
    Plough and harrow and roll your land,
      And sow what ought to be sowed;
    But never let loose your heart from your hand,
      Nor flitter it down the road!
        _Then you can thrive on your boughten food
          As the gipsy-vans come through ...
        For it isn’t nature the Gorgio blood
          Should love as the Romany do._

    Unless you carry the gipsy eyes
      That see but seldom weep,
    Keep your head from the naked skies
      Or the stars’ll trouble your sleep.
    Watch your moon through your window-pane
      And take what weather she brews.
    But don’t run out in the midnight rain
      Nor home in the morning dews.
        _Then you can huddle and shut your eyes
          As the gipsy-vans come through ...
        For it isn’t fitting the Gorgio ryes
          Should walk as the Romany do._

    Unless you come of the gipsy race
      That counts all time the same,
    Be you careful of Time and Place
      And Judgment and Good Name:
    Lose your life for to live your life
      The way that you ought to do;
    And when you are finished, your God and your wife
      And the Gipsies’ll laugh at you!
        _Then you can rot in your burying-place
          As the gipsy-vans come through ...
        For it isn’t reason the Gorgio race
          Should die as the Romany do._




A MADONNA OF THE TRENCHES

    “Whatever a man of the sons of men
      Shall say to his heart of the lords above,
    They have shown man, verily, once and again,
      Marvellous mercy and infinite love.

           *       *       *       *       *

    “O sweet one love, O my life’s delight,
      Dear, though the days have divided us,
    Lost beyond hope, taken far out of sight,
      Not twice in the world shall the Gods do thus.”

                                    Swinburne, “Les Noyades.”


Seeing how many unstable ex-soldiers came to the Lodge of Instruction
(attached to Faith and Works E.C. 5837) in the years after the War, the
wonder is there was not more trouble from Brethren whom sudden meetings
with old comrades jerked back into their still raw past. But our round,
torpedo-bearded local Doctor--Brother Keede, Senior Warden--always
stood ready to deal with hysteria before it got out of hand; and when
I examined Brethren unknown or imperfectly vouched for on the Masonic
side, I passed on to him anything that seemed doubtful. He had had his
experience as medical officer of a South London Battalion, during the
last two years of the War; and, naturally, often found friends and
acquaintances among the visitors.

Brother C. Strangwick, a young, tallish, new-made Brother, hailed
from some South London Lodge. His papers and his answers were above
suspicion, but his red-rimmed eyes had a puzzled glare that might mean
nerves. So I introduced him particularly to Keede, who discovered in
him a Headquarters Orderly of his old Battalion, congratulated him on
his return to fitness--he had been discharged for some infirmity or
other--and plunged at once into Somme memories.

“I hope I did right, Keede,” I said when we were robing before Lodge.

“Oh, quite. He reminded me that I had him under my hands at Sampoux in
’Eighteen, when he went to bits. He was a Runner.”

“Was it shock?” I asked.

“Of sorts--but not what he wanted me to think it was. No, he wasn’t
shamming. He had Jumps to the limit--but he played up to mislead me
about the reason of ’em.... Well, if we could stop patients from lying,
medicine would be too easy, I suppose.”

I noticed that, after Lodge-working, Keede gave him a seat a couple of
rows in front of us, that he might enjoy a lecture on the Orientation
of King Solomon’s Temple, which an earnest Brother thought would be
a nice interlude between labour and the high tea that we called our
“Banquet.” Even helped by tobacco it was a dreary performance. About
half-way through, Strangwick, who had been fidgeting and twitching
for some minutes, rose, drove back his chair grinding across the
tessellated floor, and yelped: “Oh, My Aunt! I can’t stand this any
longer.” Under cover of a general laugh of assent he brushed past us
and stumbled towards the door.

“I thought so!” Keede whispered to me. “Come along!” We overtook him in
the passage, crowing hysterically and wringing his hands. Keede led him
into the Tyler’s Room, a small office where we stored odds and ends of
regalia and furniture, and locked the door.

“I’m--I’m all right,” the boy began, piteously.

“’Course you are.” Keede opened a small cupboard which I had seen
called upon before, mixed sal volatile and water in a graduated glass,
and, as Strangwick drank, pushed him gently on to an old sofa. “There,”
he went on. “It’s nothing to write home about. I’ve seen you ten times
worse. I expect our talk has brought things back.”

He hooked up a chair behind him with one foot, held the patient’s hands
in his own, and sat down. The chair creaked.

“Don’t!” Strangwick squealed. “I can’t stand it! There’s nothing on
earth creaks like they do! And--and when it thaws we--we’ve got to slap
’em back with a spa-ade! ’Remember those Frenchmen’s little boots under
the duck-boards?... What’ll I do? What’ll I do about it?”

Some one knocked at the door, to know if all were well.

“Oh, quite, thanks!” said Keede over his shoulder. “But I shall need
this room awhile. Draw the curtains, please.”

We heard the rings of the hangings that drape the passage from Lodge to
Banquet Room click along their poles, and what sound there had been, of
feet and voices, was shut off.

Strangwick, retching impotently, complained of the frozen dead who
creak in the frost.

“He’s playing up still,” Keede whispered. “_That’s_ not his real
trouble--any more than ’twas last time.”

“But surely,” I replied, “men get those things on the brain pretty
badly. ’Remember in October----”

“This chap hasn’t, though. I wonder what’s really helling him. What are
you thinking of?” said Keede peremptorily.

“French End an’ Butcher’s Row,” Strangwick muttered.

“Yes, there were a few there. But, suppose we face Bogey instead of
giving him best every time.” Keede turned towards me with a hint in his
eye that I was to play up to his leads.

“What was the trouble with French End?” I opened at a venture.

“It was a bit by Sampoux, that we had taken over from the French.
They’re tough, but you wouldn’t call ’em tidy as a nation. They
had faced both sides of it with dead to keep the mud back. All
those trenches were like gruel in a thaw. Our people had to do the
same sort of thing--elsewhere; but Butcher’s Row in French End was
the--er--show-piece. Luckily, we pinched a salient from Jerry just
then, an’ straightened things out--so we didn’t need to use the Row
after November. You remember, Strangwick?”

“My God, yes! When the duckboard-slats were missin’ you’d tread on ’em,
an’ they’d creak.”

“They’re bound to. Like leather,” said Keede. “It gets on one’s nerves
a bit, but----”

“Nerves? It’s real! It’s real!” Strangwick gulped.

“But at your time of life, it’ll all fall behind you in a year or so.
I’ll give you another sip of--paregoric, an’ we’ll face it quietly.
Shall we?”

Keede opened his cupboard again and administered a carefully dropped
dark dose of something that was not sal volatile. “This’ll settle you
in a few minutes,” he explained. “Lie still, an’ don’t talk unless you
feel like it.”

He faced me, fingering his beard.

“Ye-es. Butcher’s Row wasn’t pretty,” he volunteered. “Seeing
Strangwick here, has brought it all back to me again. ’Funny thing! We
had a Platoon Sergeant of Number Two--what the deuce was his name?--an
elderly bird who must have lied like a patriot to get out to the front
at his age; but he was a first-class Non-Com., and the last person,
you’d think, to make mistakes. Well, he was due for a fortnight’s home
leave in January ’Eighteen. You were at B. H. Q. then, Strangwick,
weren’t you?”

“Yes. I was Orderly. It was January twenty-first”; Strangwick spoke
with a thickish tongue, and his eyes burned. Whatever drug it was, had
taken hold.

“About then,” Keede said. “Well, this Sergeant, instead of coming down
from the trenches the regular way an’ joinin’ Battalion Details after
dark, an’ takin’ that funny little train for Arras, thinks he’ll warm
himself first. So he gets into a dug-out, in Butcher’s Row, that used
to be an old French dressing-station, and fugs up between a couple
of braziers of pure charcoal! As luck ’ud have it, that was the only
dug-out with an inside door opening inwards--some French anti-gas
fitting, I expect--and, by what we could make out, the door must
have swung to while he was warming. Anyhow, he didn’t turn up at the
train. There was a search at once. We couldn’t afford to waste Platoon
Sergeants. We found him in the morning. He’d got his gas all right. A
machine-gunner reported him, didn’t he, Strangwick?”

“No, sir. Corporal Grant--o’ the Trench Mortars.”

“So it was. Yes, Grant--the man with that little wen on his neck.
’Nothing wrong with your memory, at any rate. What was the Sergeant’s
name?”

“Godsoe--John Godsoe,” Strangwick answered.

“Yes, that was it. I had to see him next mornin’--frozen stiff between
the two braziers--and not a scrap of private papers on him. _That_ was
the only thing that made me think it mightn’t have been--quite an
accident.”

Strangwick’s relaxing face set, and he threw back at once to the
Orderly Room manner.

“I give my evidence--at the time--to you, sir. He passed--overtook me,
I should say--comin’ down from supports, after I’d warned him for leaf.
I thought he was goin’ through Parrot Trench as usual; but ’e must ’ave
turned off into French End where the old bombed barricade was.”

“Yes. I remember now. You were the last man to see him alive. That
was on the twenty-first of January, you say? Now, _when_ was it that
Dearlove and Billings brought you to me--clean out of your head?...
Keede dropped his hand, in the style of magazine detectives, on
Strangwick’s shoulder. The boy looked at him with cloudy wonder, and
muttered: “I was took to you on the evenin’ of the twenty-fourth of
January. But you don’t think I did him in, do you?”

I could not help smiling at Keede’s discomfiture; but he recovered
himself. “Then what the dickens _was_ on your mind that evening--before
I gave you the hypodermic?”

“The--the things in Butcher’s Row. They kept on comin’ over me. You’ve
seen me like this before, sir.”

“But I knew that it was a lie. You’d no more got stiffs on the brain
then, than you have now. You’ve got something, but you’re hiding it.”

“’Ow do _you_ know, Doctor?” Strangwick whimpered.

“D’you remember what you said to me, when Dearlove and Billings were
holding you down that evening?”

“About the things in Butcher’s Row?”

“Oh, no! You spun me a lot of stuff about corpses creaking; but you
let yourself go in the middle of it--when you pushed that telegram at
me. What did you mean, f’rinstance, by asking what advantage it was for
you to fight beasts of officers if the dead didn’t rise?”

“Did I say ‘Beasts of Officers’?”

“You did. It’s out of the Burial Service.”

“I suppose, then, I must have heard it. As a matter of fact, I ’ave.”
Strangwick shuddered extravagantly.

“Probably. And there’s another thing--that hymn you were shouting till
I put you under. It was something about Mercy and Love. ’Remember it?”

“I’ll try,” said the boy obediently, and began to paraphrase, as nearly
as possible thus: “‘Whatever a man may say in his heart unto the Lord,
yea verily I say unto you--Gawd hath shown man, again and again,
marvellous mercy an’--an’ somethin’ or other love.’” He screwed up his
eyes and shook.

“Now where did you get _that_ from?” Keede insisted.

“From Godsoe--on the twenty-first Jan.... ’Ow could _I_ tell what ’e
meant to do?” he burst out in a high, unnatural key--“Any more than I
knew _she_ was dead.”

“Who was dead?” said Keede.

“Me Auntie Armine.”

“The one the telegram came to you about, at Sampoux, that you wanted me
to explain--the one that you were talking of in the passage out here
just now when you began: ‘O Auntie,’ and changed it to ‘O Gawd,’ when I
collared you?”

“That’s her! I haven’t a chance with you, Doctor. _I_ didn’t know there
was anything wrong with those braziers. How could I? We’re always usin’
’em. Honest to God, I thought at first go-off he might wish to warm
himself before the leaf-train. I--I didn’t know Uncle John meant to
start--’ouse-keepin’.” He laughed horribly, and then the dry tears came.

Keede waited for them to pass in sobs and hiccoughs before he
continued, “Why? Was Godsoe your Uncle?”

“No,” said Strangwick, his head between his hands. “Only we’d known him
ever since we were born. Dad ’ad known him before that. He lived almost
next street to us. Him an’ Dad an’ Ma an’--an’ the rest had always been
friends. So we called him Uncle--like children do.”

“What sort of man was he?”

“One o’ _the_ best, sir. ’Pensioned Sergeant with a little money left
him--quite independent--and very superior. They had a sittin’-room full
o’ Indian curios that him and his wife used to let sister an’ me see
when we’d been good.”

“Wasn’t he rather old to join up?”

“That made no odds to him. He joined up as Sergeant Instructor at
the first go-off, an’ when the Battalion was ready he got ’imself
sent along. He wangled me into ’is Platoon when I went out--early in
’Seventeen. Because Ma wanted it, I suppose.”

“I’d no notion you knew him that well,” was Keede’s comment.

“Oh, it made no odds to him. He ’ad no pets in the Platoon, but ’e’d
write ’ome to Ma about me an’ all the doin’s. You see,” Strangwick
stirred uneasily on the sofa, “we’d known him all our lives--lived in
the next street an’ all.... An’ him well over fifty. Oh dear me! _Oh_
dear me! What a bloody mix-up things are, when one’s as young as me!”
he wailed of a sudden.

But Keede held him to the point. “He wrote to your Mother about you?”

“Yes. Ma’s eyes had gone bad followin’ on air-raids. ’Blood-vessels
broke behind ’em from sittin’ in cellars an’ bein’ sick. She had to
’ave ’er letters read to her by Auntie. Now I think of it, that was the
only thing that you might have called anything at all----”

“Was that the Aunt that died, and that you got the wire about?” Keede
drove on.

“Yes--Auntie Armine--Ma’s younger sister an’ she nearer fifty than
forty. What a mix-up! An’ if I’d been asked any time about it, I’d
’ave sworn there wasn’t a single sol’tary item concernin’ her that
everybody didn’t know an’ hadn’t known all along. No more conceal to
her doin’s than--than so much shop-front. She’d looked after sister an’
me, when needful--hoopin’ cough an’ measles--just the same as Ma. We
was in an’ out of her house like rabbits. You see, Uncle Armine is a
cabinet-maker, an’ second-’and furniture, an’ we liked playin’ with the
things. She ’ad no children, and when the War came, she said she was
glad of it. But she never talked much of her feelin’s. She kept herself
to herself, you understand.” He stared most earnestly at us to help out
our understandings.

“What was she like?” Keede inquired.

“A biggish woman, an’ had been ’andsome, I believe, but, bein’ used
to her, we two didn’t notice much--except, per’aps, for one thing. Ma
called her ’er proper name, which was Bella; but Sis an’ me always
called ’er Auntie Armine. See?”

“What for?”

“We thought it sounded more like her--like somethin’ movin’ slow, in
armour.”

“Oh! And she read your letters to your mother, did she?”

“Every time the post came in she’d slip across the road from opposite
an’ read ’em. An’--an’ I’ll go bail for it that that was all there was
to it for as far back as _I_ remember. Was I to swing to-morrow, I’d
go bail for _that!_ ’Tisn’t fair of ’em to ’ave unloaded it all on me,
because--because--if the dead _do_ rise, why, what in ’ell becomes of
me an’ all I’ve believed all me life? I want to know _that_! I--I----”

But Keede would not be put off. “Did the Sergeant give you away at all
in his letters?” he demanded, very quietly.

“There was nothin’ to give away--we was too busy--but his letters about
me were a great comfort to Ma. I’m no good at writin’. I saved it
all up for my leafs. I got me fourteen days every six months an’ one
over.... I was luckier than most, that way.”

“And when you came home, used you to bring ’em news about the
Sergeant?” said Keede.

“I expect I must have; but I didn’t think much of it at the time. I
was took up with me own affairs--naturally. Uncle John always wrote to
me once each leaf, tellin’ me what was doin’ an’ what I was li’ble to
expect on return, an’ Ma ’ud ’ave that read to her. Then o’ course I
had to slip over to his wife an’ pass her the news. An’ then there was
the young lady that I’d thought of marryin’ if I came through. We’d got
as far as pricin’ things in the windows together.”

“And you didn’t marry her--after all?”

Another tremor shook the boy. “_No!_” he cried. “’Fore it ended, I knew
what reel things reelly mean! I--I never dreamed such things could
be!... An’ she nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt!... But there
wasn’t a sign nor a hint from first to last, so ’ow _could_ I tell?
Don’t you _see_ it? All she said to me after me Christmas leaf in ’18,
when I come to say good-bye--all Auntie Armine said to me was: ‘You’ll
be seein’ Mister Godsoe soon?’ ‘Too soon for my likings,’ I says. ‘Well
then, tell ’im from me,’ she says, ‘that I expect to be through with my
little trouble by the twenty-first of next month, an’ I’m dyin’ to see
him as soon as possible after that date.’”

“What sort of trouble was it?” Keede turned professional at once.

“She’d ’ad a bit of a gatherin’ in ’er breast, I believe. But she never
talked of ’er body much to any one.”

“_I_ see,” said Keede. “And she said to you?”

Strangwick repeated: “‘Tell Uncle John I hope to be finished of my
drawback by the twenty-first, an’ I’m dying to see ’im as soon as ’e
can after that date.’ An’ then she says, laughin’: ‘But you’ve a head
like a sieve. I’ll write it down, an’ you can give it him when you see
’im.’ So she wrote it on a bit o’ paper an’ I kissed ’er good-bye--I
was always her favourite, you see--an’ I went back to Sampoux. The
thing hardly stayed in my mind at all, d’you see. But the next time I
was up in the front line--I was a Runner, d’ye see--our platoon was
in North Bay Trench an’ I was up with a message to the Trench Mortar
there that Corporal Grant was in charge of. Followin’ on receipt of
it, he borrowed a couple of men off the platoon, to slue ’er round or
somethin’. I give Uncle John Auntie Armine’s paper, an’ I give Grant
a fag, an’ we warmed up a bit over a brazier. Then Grant says to me:
‘I don’t like it’; an’ he jerks ’is thumb at Uncle John in the bay
studyin’ Auntie’s message. Well, _you_ know, sir, you had to speak to
Grant about ’is way of prophesyin’ things--after Rankine shot himself
with the Very light.”

“I did,” said Keede, and he explained to me: “Grant had the Second
Sight--confound him! It upset the men. I was glad when he got pipped.
What happened after that, Strangwick?”

“Grant whispers to me: ‘Look, you damned Englishman. ’E’s for it.’
Uncle John was leanin’ up against the bay, an’ hummin’ that hymn I was
tryin’ to tell you just now. He looked different all of a sudden--as
if ’e’d got shaved. _I_ don’t know anything of these things, but I
cautioned Grant as to his style of speakin’, if an officer ’ad ’eard
him, an’ I went on. Passin’ Uncle John in the bay,’e nods an’ smiles,
which he didn’t often, an’ he says, pocketin’ the paper: ‘This suits
_me_. I’m for leaf on the twenty-first, too.’”

“He said that to you, did he?” said Keede.

“_Pre_cisely the same as passin’ the time o’ day. O’ course I returned
the agreeable about hopin’ he’d get it, an’ in due course, I returned
to ’Eadquarters. The thing ’ardly stayed in my mind a minute. That was
the eleventh January--three days after I’d come back from leaf. You
remember, sir, there wasn’t anythin’ doin’ either side round Sampoux
the first part o’ the month. Jerry was gettin’ ready for his March
Push, an’ as long as he kept quiet, we didn’t want to poke ’im up.”

“I remember that,” said Keede. “But what about the Sergeant?”

“I must have met him, on an’ off, I expect, goin’ up an’ down, through
the ensuin’ days, but it didn’t stay in me mind. Why needed it? And on
the twenty-first Jan., his name was on the leaf-paper when I went up to
warn the leaf-men. I noticed _that_, o’ course. Now that very afternoon
Jerry ’ad been tryin’ a new trench-mortar, an’ before our ’Eavies could
out it, he’d got a stinker into a bay an’ mopped up ’alf a dozen.
They were bringin’ ’em down when I went up to the supports, an’ that
blocked Little Parrot, same as it always did. _You_ remember, sir?”

“Rather! And there was that big machine-gun behind the Half-House
waiting for you if you got out,” said Keede.

“I remembered that too. But it was just on dark an’ the fog was comin’
off the Canal, so I hopped out of Little Parrot an’ cut across the
open to where those four dead Warwicks are heaped up. But the fog
turned me round, an’ the next thing I knew I was knee-over in that old
’alf-trench that runs west o’ Little Parrot into French End. I dropped
into it--almost atop o’ the machine-gun platform by the side o’ the old
sugar boiler an’ the two Zoo-ave skel’tons. That gave me my bearin’s,
an’ so I went through French End, all up those missin’ duckboards, into
Butcher’s Row where the _poy-looz_ was laid in six deep each side, an’
stuffed under the duckboards. It had froze tight, an’ the drippin’s had
stopped, an’ the creakin’s had begun.”

“Did that really worry you at the time?” Keede asked.

“No,” said the boy with professional scorn. “If a Runner starts
noticin’ such things he’d better chuck. In the middle of the Row, just
before the old dressin’-station you referred to, sir, it come over me
that somethin’ ahead on the duckboards was just like Auntie Armine,
waitin’ beside the door; an’ I thought to meself ’ow truly comic it
would be if she could be dumped where I was then. In ’alf a second I
saw it was only the dark an’ some rags o’ gas-screen, ’angin’ on a bit
of board, ’ad played me the trick. So I went on up to the supports an’
warned the leaf-men there, includin’ Uncle John. Then I went up Rake
Alley to warn ’em in the front line. I didn’t hurry because I didn’t
want to get there till Jerry ’ad quieted down a bit. Well, then a
Company Relief dropped in--an’ the officer got the wind up over some
lights on the flank, an’ tied ’em into knots, an’ I ’ad to hunt up me
leaf-men all over the blinkin’ shop. What with one thing an’ another,
it must ’ave been ’alf-past eight before I got back to the supports.
There I run across Uncle John, scrapin’ mud off himself, havin’
shaved--quite the dandy. He asked about the Arras train, an’ I said,
if Jerry was quiet, it might be ten o’clock. ‘Good!’ says ’e. ‘I’ll
come with you.’ So we started back down the old trench that used to run
across Halnaker, back of the support dug-outs. _You_ know, sir.”

Keede nodded.

“Then Uncle John says something to me about seein’ Ma an’ the rest of
’em in a few days, an’ had I any messages for ’em? Gawd knows what made
me do it, but I told ’im to tell Auntie Armine I never expected to see
anything like _her_ up in our part of the world. And while I told him
I laughed. That’s the last time I _’ave_ laughed. ‘Oh--you’ve seen
’er, ’ave you?’ says he, quite natural-like. Then I told ’im about the
sand-bags an’ rags in the dark, playin’ the trick. ‘Very likely,’ says
he, brushin’ the mud off his puttees. By this time, we’d got to the
corner where the old barricade into French End was--before they bombed
it down, sir. He turns right an’ climbs across it. ‘No thanks,’ says I.
‘I’ve been there once this evenin’.’ But he wasn’t attendin’ to me. He
felt behind the rubbish an’ bones just inside the barricade, an’ when
he straightened up, he had a full brazier in each hand.

“‘Come on, Clem,’ he says, an’ he very rarely give me me own name. ‘You
aren’t afraid, are you?’ he says. ‘It’s just as short, an’ if Jerry
starts up again he won’t waste stuff here. He knows it’s abandoned.’
‘Who’s afraid now?’ I says. ‘Me for one,’ says he. ‘I don’t want _my_
leaf spoiled at the last minute.’ Then ’e wheels round an’ speaks that
bit you said come out o’ the Burial Service.”

For some reason Keede repeated it in full, slowly: “If, after the
manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth
it me if the dead rise not?”

“That’s it,” said Strangwick. “So we went down French End
together--everything froze up an’ quiet, except for their creakin’s. I
remember thinkin’----” his eyes began to flicker.

“Don’t think. Tell what happened,” Keede ordered.

“Oh! Beg y’ pardon! He went on with his braziers, hummin’ his hymn,
down Butcher’s Row. Just before we got to the old dressin’-station he
stops and sets ’em down an’ says: ‘Where did you say she was, Clem? Me
eyes ain’t as good as they used to be.’

“‘In ’er bed at ’ome,’ I says. ‘Come on down. It’s perishin’ cold, an’
_I’m_ not due for leaf.’

“‘Well, I am,’ ’e says. ‘_I_ am....’ An’ then--’give you me word I
didn’t recognise the voice--he stretches out ’is neck a bit in a way
’e ’ad, an’ he says: ‘Why, Bella!’ ’e says. ‘Oh, Bella!’ ’e says.
‘Thank Gawd!’ ’e says. Just like that! An’ then I saw--I tell you I
_saw_--Auntie Armine herself standin’ by the old dressin’-station
door where first I’d thought I’d seen her. He was lookin’ at ’er an’
she was lookin’ at him. I saw it, an’ me soul turned over inside me
because--because it knocked out everything I’d believed in. I ’ad
nothin’ to lay ’old of, d’ye see? An’ ’e was lookin’ at ’er as though
he could ’ave et ’er, an’ she was lookin’ at ’im the same way, out of
’er eyes. Then he says: ‘Why, Bella,’ ’e says, ‘this must be only
the second time we’ve been alone together in all these years.’ An’ I
saw ’er half hold out her arms to ’im in that perishin’ cold. An’ she
nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt! You can shop me for a lunatic
to-morrow, but I saw it--I _saw_ ’er answerin’ to his spoken word!...
Then ’e made a snatch to unsling ’is rifle. Then ’e cuts ’is hand away
saying: ‘No! Don’t tempt me, Bella. We’ve all Eternity ahead of us. An
hour or two won’t make any odds.’ Then he picks up the braziers an’
goes on to the dug-out door. He’d finished with me. He pours petrol
on ’em, an’ lights it with a match, an’ carries ’em inside, flarin’.
All that time Auntie Armine stood with ’er arms out--an’ a look in ’er
face! _I_ didn’t know such things was or could be! Then he comes out
an’ says: ‘Come in, my dear’; an’ she stoops an’ goes into the dug-out
with that look on her face--that look on her face! An’ then ’e shuts
the door from inside an’ starts wedgin’ it up. So ’elp me Gawd, I saw
an’ ’eard all these things with my own eyes an’ ears!”

He repeated his oath several times. After a long pause Keede asked him
if he recalled what happened next.

“It was a bit of a mix-up, for me, from then on. I must have carried
on--they told me I did, but--but I was--I felt a--a long way inside of
meself, like--if you’ve ever had that feelin’. I wasn’t rightly on the
spot at all. They woke me up sometime next morning, because ’e ’adn’t
showed up at the train; an’ some one had seen him with me. I wasn’t
’alf cross-examined by all an’ sundry till dinner-time.

“Then, I think, I volunteered for Dearlove, who ’ad a sore toe, for a
front-line message. I had to keep movin’, you see, because I hadn’t
anything to hold _on_ to. Whilst up there, Grant informed me how he’d
found Uncle John with the door wedged an’ sand-bags stuffed in the
cracks. I hadn’t waited for that. The knockin’ when ’e wedged up was
enough for me. ’Like Dad’s coffin.”

“No one told _me_ the door had been wedged,” Keede spoke severely.

“No need to black a dead man’s name, sir.”

“What made Grant go to Butcher’s Row?”

“Because he’d noticed Uncle John had been pinchin’ charcoal for a week
past an’ layin’ it up behind the old barricade there. So when the ’unt
began, he went that way straight as a string, an’ when he saw the door
shut, he knew. He told me he picked the sand-bags out of the cracks
an’ shoved ’is hand through and shifted the wedges before any one come
along. It looked all right. You said yourself, sir, the door must ’ave
blown to.”

“Grant knew what Godsoe meant, then?” Keede snapped.

“Grant knew Godsoe was for it; an’ nothin’ earthly could ’elp or
’inder. He told me so.”

“And then what did you do?”

“I expect I must ’ave kept on carryin’ on, till Headquarters give me
that wire from Ma--about Auntie Armine dyin’.”

“When had your Aunt died?”

“On the mornin’ of the twenty-first. The mornin’ of the 21st! That tore
it, d’ye see? As long as I could think, I had kep’ tellin’ myself it
was like those things you lectured about at Arras when we was billeted
in the cellars--the Angels of Mons, and so on. But that wire tore it.”

“Oh! Hallucinations! I remember. And that wire tore it?” said Keede.

“Yes! You see”--he half lifted himself off the sofa--“there wasn’t a
single gor-dam thing left abidin’ for me to take hold of, here or
hereafter. If the dead _do_ rise and I saw ’em--why--why _anything_ can
’appen. Don’t you understand?”

He was on his feet now, gesticulating stiffly.

“For I saw ’er,” he repeated. “I saw ’im an’ ’er--she dead since
mornin’ time, an’ he killin’ ’imself before my livin’ eyes so’s to
carry on with ’er for all Eternity--an’ she ’oldin’ out ’er arms for
it! I want to know where I’m _at_! Look ’ere, you two--why stand _we_
in jeopardy every hour?”

“God knows,” said Keede to himself.

“Hadn’t we better ring for some one?” I suggested. “He’ll go off the
handle in a second.”

“No he won’t. It’s the last kick-up before it takes hold. I know how
the stuff works. Hul-lo.”

Strangwick, his hands behind his back and his eyes set, gave tongue in
the strained, cracked voice of a boy reciting. “Not twice in the world
shall the Gods do thus,” he cried again and again.

“And I’m damned if it’s goin’ to be even once for me!” he went on with
sudden insane fury. “_I_ don’t care whether we _’ave_ been pricin’
things in the windows.... _Let_ ’er sue if she likes! She don’t know
what reel things mean. _I_ do--I’ve ’ad occasion to notice ’em....
_No_, I tell you! I’ll ’ave ’em when I want ’em, an’ be done with ’em;
but not till I see that look on a face ... that look.... I’m not takin’
any. The reel thing’s life an’ death. It _begins_ at death, d’ye see.
_She_ can’t understand.... Oh, go on an’ push off to Hell, you an’ your
lawyers. I’m fed up with it--fed up!”

He stopped as abruptly as he had started, and the drawn face broke back
to its natural irresolute lines. Keede, holding both his hands, led him
back to the sofa, where he dropped like a wet towel, took out some
flamboyant robe from a press, and drew it neatly over him.

“Ye-es. _That’s_ the real thing at last,” said Keede. “Now he’s got it
off his mind he’ll sleep. By the way, who introduced him?”

“Shall I go and find out?” I suggested.

“Yes; and you might ask him to come here. There’s no need for us to
stand to all night.”

So I went to the Banquet which was in full swing, and was seized by an
elderly, precise Brother from a South London Lodge who followed me,
concerned and apologetic. Keede soon put him at his ease.

“The boy’s had trouble,” our visitor explained. “I’m most mortified he
should have performed his bad turn here. I thought he’d put it be’ind
him.”

“I expect talking about old days with me brought it all back,” said
Keede. “It does sometimes.”

“Maybe! Maybe! But over and above that, Clem’s had post-war trouble,
too.”

“Can’t he get a job? He oughtn’t to let that weigh on him, at his time
of life,” said Keede cheerily.

“’Tisn’t that--he’s provided for--but”--he coughed confidentially
behind his dry hand--“as a matter of fact, Worshipful Sir, he’s--he’s
implicated for the present in a little breach of promise action.”

“Ah! That’s a different thing,” said Keede.

“Yes. That’s his reel trouble. No reason given, you understand. The
young lady in every way suitable, an’ she’d make him a good little wife
too, if I’m any judge. But he says she ain’t his ideel or something.
’No getting at what’s in young people’s minds these days, is there?”

“I’m afraid there isn’t,” said Keede. “But he’s all right now. He’ll
sleep. You sit by him, and when he wakes, take him home quietly....
Oh, we’re used to men getting a little upset here. You’ve nothing to
thank us for, Brother--Brother----”

“Armine,” said the old gentleman. “He’s my nephew by marriage.”

“That’s all that’s wanted!” said Keede.

Brother Armine looked a little puzzled. Keede hastened to explain. “As
I was saying, all he wants now is to be kept quiet till he wakes.”




GOW’S WATCH

Act V. Scene 3.


_After the Battle. The_ PRINCESS _by the Standard on the Ravelin_.

_Enter_ GOW, _with the Crown of the Kingdom_.

    GOW.
    Here’s earnest of the Queen’s submission.
    This by her last herald--and in haste.

    PRINCESS.
    ’Twas ours already. Where is the woman?

    GOW.
    ’Fled with her horse. They broke at dawn.
    Noon has not struck, and you’re Queen questionless.

    PRINCESS.
    By you--through you. How shall I honour _you_?

    GOW.
    Me? But for what?

    PRINCESS.
    For all--all--all--
    Since the realm sunk beneath us! Hear him! “For what?”
    Your body ’twixt my bosom and her knife,
    Your lips on the cup she proffered for my death;
    Your one cloak over me, that night in the snows,
    We held the Pass at Bargi. Every hour
    New strengths, to this most unbelievable last.
    “Honour him?” I will honour--will honour you--....
    ’Tis at your choice.

    GOW.
    Child, mine was long ago.

                 (_Enter_ FERDINAND, _as from horse_.)

    But here’s one worthy honour. Welcome, Fox!

    Ferdinand. And to you, Watchdog. This day clenches all.
    We’ve made it and seen it.

    GOW.
                           Is the city held?

    FERDINAND.
    Loyally. Oh, they’re drunk with loyalty yonder.
    A virtuous mood. Your bombards helped ’em to it....
    But here’s my word for you. The Lady Frances----

    PRINCESS.
    I left her sick in the city. No harm, I pray.

    FERDINAND.
    Nothing that she called harm. In truth, so little
    That (_to_ GOW) I am bidden tell you, she’ll be here
    Almost as soon as I.

    GOW.
                     She says it?

    FERDINAND.
                            Writes.
    This. (_Gives him letter._) Yester eve.
    ’Twas given me by the priest--
    He with her in her hour.

    GOW.
                         So? (_Reads_) So it is.
    She will be here. (_To_ FERDINAND) And all is safe in the city?

    FERDINAND.
    As thy long sword and my lean wits can make it.
    You’ve naught to stay for. Is it the road again?

    GOW.
    Ay. This time, not alone.... She will be here.

    PRINCESS.
    I am here. You have not looked at me awhile.

    GOW. The rest is with you, Ferdinand....
    Then free.

    PRINCESS. And at my service more than ever. I claim--
    (Our wars have taught me)--being your Queen, now, claim
    You wholly mine.

    GOW.
    Then free.... She will be here! A little while----

    PRINCESS (_to_ FERDINAND).
    He looks beyond, not at me.

    FERDINAND.
    Weariness.
    We are not so young as once was. ’Two days’ fight--
    A worthy servitor--to be allowed
    Some freedom.

    PRINCESS.
    I have offered him all he would.

    FERDINAND.
    He takes what he has taken.

          (_The Spirit of the_ LADY FRANCES _appears to_ GOW.)

    GOW.
                                       Frances!

    PRINCESS.
                                      Distraught!

    FERDINAND.
    An old head-blow, may be. He has dealt in them.

    GOW (_to the Spirit_).
    What can the Grave against us, O my Heart,
    Comfort and light and reason in all things
    Visible and invisible--my one God?
    Thou that wast I these barren unyoked years
    Of triflings now at end! Frances!

    PRINCESS.
    She’s old.

    FERDINAND.
    True. By most reckonings old.
    They must keep other count.

    PRINCESS.
    He kisses his hand to the air!

    FERDINAND.
    His ring, rather, he kisses. Yes--for sure--the ring.

    GOW.
    Dear and most dear. And now, those very arms. (_Dies._)

    PRINCESS.
    Oh, look! He faints. Haste, you! Unhelm him! Help!

    FERDINAND.
    Needless. No help
    Avails against that poison. He is sped.

    PRINCESS.
    By his own hand? _This_ hour? When I had offered----

    FERDINAND.
    He had made other choice--an old, old choice,
    Ne’er swerved from, and now patently sealed in death.

    PRINCESS.
    He called on--the Lady Frances was it? Wherefore?

    FERDINAND.
    Because she was his life. Forgive, my friend--
    (_covers_ GOW’S _face_).
    God’s uttermost beyond me in all faith,
    Service and passion--if I unveil at last
    The secret. (_To the Princess_) Thought--dreamed you,
                                                        it was for _you_
    He poured himself--for you resoldered the Crown?
    Struck here, held there, amended, broke, built up
    His multiplied imaginings for _you_?

    PRINCESS.
    I thought--I thought he----

    FERDINAND.
    Looked beyond. _Her_ wish
    Was the sole Law he knew. _She_ did not choose
    Your House should perish. Therefore he bade it stand.
    Enough for him when she had breathed a word:
    ’Twas his to make it iron, stone, or fire,
    Driving our flesh and blood before his ways
    As the wind straws. Her one face unregarded
    Waiting you with your mantle or your glove--
    That is the God whom he is gone to worship.

           (_Trumpets without. Enter the Prince’s Heralds._)

    And here’s the work of Kingship begun again.
    These from the Prince of Bargi--to whose sword
    You owe such help as may, he thinks, be paid....
    He’s equal in blood, in fortune more than peer,
    Young, most well favoured, with a heart to love--
    And two States in the balance. Do you meet him?

    PRINCESS.
    God and my Misery! I have seen Love at last.
    What shall content me after?




THE PROPAGATION OF KNOWLEDGE




THE BIRTHRIGHT

    _The miracle of our land’s speech--so known
    And long received, none marvel when ’tis shown!_


    We have such wealth as Rome at her most pride
    Had not or (having) scattered not so wide;
    Nor with such arrant prodigality
    Beneath her any pagan’s foot let lie....
    Lo! Diamond that cost some half their days
    To find and t’other half to bring to blaze:
    Rubies of every heat, wherethrough we scan
    The fiercer and more fiery heart of man:
    Emerald that with the uplifted billow vies,
    And Sapphires evening remembered skies:
    Pearl perfect, as immortal tears must show,
    Bred, in deep waters, of a piercing woe;
    And tender Turkis, so with charms y-writ,
    Of woven gold, Time dares not bite on it.
    Thereafter, in all manners worked and set,
    Jade, coral, amber, crystal, ivories, jet,--
    Showing no more than various fancies, yet,
    Each a Life’s token or Love’s amulet....
    Which things, through timeless arrogance of use,
    We neither guard nor garner, but abuse;
    So that our scholars--nay, our children--fling
    In sport or jest treasure to arm a King;
    And the gross crowd, at feast or market, hold
    Traffic perforce with dust of gems and gold!




THE PROPAGATION OF KNOWLEDGE


The Army Class “English,” which included the Upper Fifth, was trying
to keep awake; for “English” (Literature--Augustan epoch--eighteenth
century) came at last lesson, and that, on a blazing July afternoon,
meant after every one had been bathing. Even Mr. King found it hard to
fight against the snore of the tide along the Pebble Ridge, and spurred
himself with strong words.

Since, said he, the pearls of English Literature existed only to be
wrenched from their settings and cast before young swine rooting
for marks, it was his loathed business--in anticipation of the Army
Preliminary Examination which, as usual, would be held at the term’s
end, under the auspices of an official examiner sent down _ad hoc_--to
prepare for the Form a General Knowledge test-paper, which he would
give them next week. It would cover their studies up to date of the
Augustans and _King Lear_, which was the selected--and strictly
expurgated--Army Exam. play for that year. Now, English Literature,
as he might have told them, was _not_ divided into water-tight
compartments, but flowed like a river. For example, Samuel Johnson,
glory of the Augustans and no mean commentator of Shakespeare, was but
one in a mighty procession which----

At this point Beetle’s nodding brows came down with a grunt on the
desk. He had been soaking and sunning himself in the open sea-baths
built out on the rocks under the cliffs, from two-fifteen to four-forty.

The Army Class took Johnson off their minds. With any luck, Beetle
would last King till the tea-bell. King rubbed his hands and began to
carve him. He had gone to sleep to show his contempt (_a_) for Mr.
King, who might or might not matter, and (_b_) for the Augustans,
who, none the less, were not to be sneered at by one whose vast and
omnivorous reading, for which such extraordinary facilities had been
granted (this was because the Head had allowed Beetle the run of his
library), naturally overlooked such _epigonoi_ as Johnson, Swift,
Pope, Addison, and the like. Harrison Ainsworth and Marryat doubtless
appealed----

Even so, Beetle, salt-encrusted all over except his spectacles and
steeped in delicious languors, was sliding back to sleep again, when
“Taffy” Howell, the leading light of the Form, who knew his Marryat as
well as Stalky did his Surtees, began in his patent, noiseless whisper:
“‘Allow me to observe--in the most delicate manner in the world--just
to hint----’”

“Under pretext of studying literature, a desultory and unformed mind
would naturally return, like the dog of Scripture----”

“‘You’re a damned trencher-scrapin’, napkin-carryin’, shillin’-seekin’,
up-an-down-stairs &c.’” Howell breathed.

Beetle choked aloud on the sudden knowledge that King was the ancient
and eternal Chucks--later Count Shucksen--of _Peter Simple_. He had not
realised it before.

“Sorry, sir. I’m afraid I’ve been asleep, sir,” he sputtered.

The shout of the Army Class diverted the storm. King was grimly glad
that Beetle had condescended to honour truth so far. Perhaps he
would now lend his awakened ear to a summary of the externals of Dr.
Johnson, as limned by Macaulay. And he read, with intention, the just
historian’s outline of a grotesque figure with untied shoe-strings,
that twitched and grunted, gorged its food, bit its finger-nails, and
neglected its ablutions. The Form hailed it as a speaking likeness of
Beetle; nor were they corrected.

Then King implored him to vouchsafe his comrades one single fact
connected with Dr. Johnson which might at any time have adhered to
what, for decency’s sake, must, Mr. King supposed, be called his mind.

Beetle was understood to say that the only thing he could remember was
in French.

“You add, then, the Gallic tongue to your accomplishments? The
information plus the accent? ’Tis well! Admirable Crichton, proceed!”

And Beetle proceeded with the text of an old Du Maurier drawing in a
back-number of _Punch_:

    “De tous ces défunts cockolores
    Le moral Fénelon,
    Michel Ange et Johnson
    (Le Docteur) sont les plus awful bores.”

To which Howell, wooingly, just above his breath:

“‘Oh, _won’t_ you come up, come up?’”

Result, as the tea-bell rang, one hundred lines, to be shown up at
seven-forty-five that evening. This was meant to blast the pleasant
summer interval between tea and prep. Howell, a favourite in “English”
as well as Latin, got off; but the Army Class crashed in to tea with a
new Limerick.

       *       *       *       *       *

The imposition was a matter of book-keeping, as far as Beetle was
concerned; for it was his custom of rainy afternoons to fabricate
store of lines in anticipation of just these accidents. They covered
such English verse as interested him at the moment, and helped to fix
the stuff in his memory. After tea, he drew the required amount from
his drawer in Number Five Study, thrust it into his pocket, went up
to the Head’s house, and settled himself in the big Outer Library
where, ever since the Head had taken him off all mathematics, he
did précis-work and French translation. Here he buried himself in a
close-printed, thickish volume which had been his chosen browse for
some time. A hideous account of a hanging, drawing, and quartering
had first attracted him to it; but later he discovered the book
(_Curiosities of Literature_ was its name) full of the finest confused
feeding--such as forgeries and hoaxes, Italian literary societies,
religious and scholastic controversies of old when men (even that most
dreary John Milton, of _Lycidas_) slanged each other, not without
dust and heat, in scandalous pamphlets; personal peculiarities of the
great; and a hundred other fascinating inutilities. This evening he
fell on a description of wandering, mad Elizabethan beggars, known as
Tom-a-Bedlams, with incidental references to Edgar who plays at being a
Tom-a-Bedlam in _Lear_, but whom Beetle did not consider at all funny.
Then, at the foot of a left-hand page, leaped out on him a verse--of
incommunicable splendour, opening doors into inexplicable worlds--from
a song which Tom-a-Bedlams were supposed to sing. It ran:

    With a heart of furious fancies
      Whereof I am commander,
    With a burning spear and a horse of air,
      To the wilderness I wander.
    With a knight of ghosts and shadows
      I summoned am to tourney,
    Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end--
      Methinks it is no journey.

He sat, mouthing and staring before him, till the prep-bell rang and it
was time to take his lines up to King’s study and lay them, as hot from
the press, in the impot-basket appointed. He carried his dreams on to
Number Five. They knew the symptoms of old.

“Readin’ again,” said Stalky, like a wife welcoming her spouse from the
pot-house.

“Look here, I’ve found out something----” Beetle began. “Listen----”

“No, you don’t--till afterwards. It’s Turkey’s prep.” This meant it
was a Horace Ode through which Turkey would take them for a literal
translation, and all possible pitfalls. Stalky gave his businesslike
attention, but Beetle’s eye was glazed and his mind adrift throughout,
and he asked for things to be repeated. So, when Turkey closed the
Horace, justice began to be executed.

“I’m all right,” he protested. “I swear I heard a lot what Turkey said.
Shut up! Oh, shut _up_! Do shut up, you putrid asses.” Beetle was
speaking from the fender, his head between Turkey’s knees, and Stalky
largely over the rest of him.

“What’s the metre of the beastly thing?” McTurk waved his Horace. “Look
it up, Stalky. Twelfth of the Third.”

“_Ionicum a minore_,” Stalky reported, closing his book in turn. “Don’t
let him forget it”; and Turkey’s Horace marked the metre on Beetle’s
skull, with special attention to elisions. It hurt.

    “Miserar’ est neq’ amori dare ludum neque dulci
    Mala vino laver’ aut ex----”

“Got it? You liar! You’ve no ear at all! Chorus, Stalky!”

Both Horaces strove to impart the measure, which was altogether
different from its accompaniment. Presently Howell dashed in from his
study below.

“Look _out_! If you make this infernal din we’ll have some one up the
staircase in a sec.”

“We’re teachin’ Beetle Horace. He was goin’ to burble us some muck he’d
read,” the tutors explained.

“’Twasn’t muck! It was about those Tom-a-Bedlams in _Lear_.”

“Oh!” said Stalky. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“’Cause you didn’t listen. They had drinkin’-horns an’ badges, and
there’s a Johnson note on Shakespeare about the meanin’ of Edgar sayin’
‘My horn’s dry.’ But Johnson’s dead-wrong about it. Aubrey says----”

“Who’s Aubrey?” Howell demanded. “Does King know about him?”

“Dunno. Oh yes, an’ Johnson started to learn Dutch when he was seventy.”

“What the deuce for?” Stalky asked.

“For a change after his Dikker, I suppose,” Howell suggested.

“And I looked up a lot of other English stuff, too. I’m goin’ to try it
all on King.”

“Showin’-off as usual,” said the acid McTurk, who, like his race, lived
and loved to destroy illusions.

“No. For a draw. He’s an unjust dog! If you read, he says you’re
showin’-off. If you don’t, you’re a mark-huntin’ Philistine. What does
he want you to do, curse him?”

“Shut up, Beetle!” Stalky pronounced. “There’s more than draws in this.
You’ve cribbed your maths off me ever since you came to Coll. You don’t
know what a co-sine is, even _now_. Turkey does all your Latin.”

“I like that! Who does both your _Picciolas_?”

“French don’t count. It’s time you began to work for your giddy livin’
an’ help us. _You_ aren’t goin’ up for anythin’ that matters. Play for
your side, as Heffles says, or die the death! You don’t want to die
the death, again, do you? Now, let’s hear about that stinkard Johnson
swottin’ Dutch. You’re sure it was Sammivel, not Binjamin? You _are_ so
dam’ inaccurate!”

Beetle conducted an attentive class on the curiosities of literature
for nearly a quarter of an hour. As Stalky pointed out, he promised to
be useful.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Horace Ode next morning ran well; and King was content. Then, in
full feather, he sailed round the firmament at large, and, somehow,
apropos to something or other, used the word “della Cruscan”--“if any
of you have the faintest idea of its origin.” Some one hadn’t caught it
correctly; which gave Beetle just time to whisper “Bran--an’ mills,” to
Howell, who said promptly: “Hasn’t it somethin’ to do with mills--an’
bran, sir?” King cast himself into poses of stricken wonder. “Oddly
enough,” said he, “it has.”

They were then told a great deal about some silly Italian Academy
of Letters which borrowed its office furniture from the equipment
of mediæval flour-mills. And: “How has our Ap-Howell come by his
knowledge?” Howell, being, indeed, Welsh, thought that it might have
been something he had read in the holidays. King openly purred over him.

“If that had been _me_,” Beetle observed while they were toying with
sardines between lessons, “he’d ha’ dropped on me for showin’-off.”

“See what we’re savin’ you from,” Stalky answered. “I’m playin’
Johnson, ’member, this afternoon.”

That, too, came cleanly off the bat; and King was gratified by this
interest in the Doctor’s studies. But Stalky hadn’t a ghost of a notion
how he had come by the fact.

“Why didn’t you say your father told you?” Beetle asked at tea.

“My-y Lord! Have you ever seen the guv’nor?” Stalky collapsed shrieking
among the piles of bread and butter. “Well, look here. Taffy goes in
to-morrow about those drinkin’ horns an’ Tom-a-Bedlams. You cut up to
the library after tea, Beetle. You know what King’s English papers are
like. Look out useful stuff for answers an’ we’ll divvy at prep.”

At prep, then, Beetle, loaded with assorted curiosities, made
his forecast. He argued that there were bound to be a good many
“what-do-you-know-abouts” those infernal Augustans. Pope was generally
a separate item; but the odds were that Swift, Addison, Steele,
Johnson, and Goldsmith would be lumped under one head. Dryden was
possible, too, though rather outside the Epoch.

“Dryden. Oh! ‘Glorious John!’ ’Know _that_ much, anyhow,” Stalky
vaunted.

“Then lug in Claude Halcro in the _Pirate_,” Beetle advised. “He’s
always sayin’ ‘Glorious John.’ King’s a hog on Scott, too.”

“No-o. I don’t read Scott. You take this Hell Crow chap, Taffy.”

“Right. What about Addison, Beetle?” Howell asked.

“’Drank like a giddy fish.”

“We all know that,” chorused the gentle children.

“He said, ‘See how a Christian can die’; an’ he hadn’t any
conversation, ’cause some one or other----”

“Guessin’ again, _as_ usual,” McTurk sneered. “Who?”

“’Cynical man called Mandeville--said he was a silent parson in a
tie-wig.”

“Right-ho! I’ll take the silent parson with wig and ’purtenances. Taffy
can have the dyin’ Christian,” Stalky decided.

Howell nodded, and resumed: “What about Swift, Beetle?”

“’Died mad. Two girls. Saw a tree, an’ said: ‘I shall die at the top.’
Oh yes, an’ his private amusements were ‘ridiculous an’ trivial.’”

Howell shook a wary head. “Dunno what that might let me in for with
King. You can have it, Stalky.”

“I’ll take that,” McTurk yawned. “King doesn’t matter a curse to me,
an’ he knows it. ‘Private amusements contemptible.’” He breathed all
Ireland into the last perverted word.

“Right,” Howell assented. “Bags I the dyin’ tree, then.”

“’Cheery lot, these Augustans,” Stalky sighed. “’Any more of ’em been
croakin’ lately, Beetle?”

“My Hat!” the far-seeing Howell struck in. “King always gives us a
stinker half-way down. What about Richardson--that ‘Clarissa’ chap,
y’know?”

“I’ve found out lots about him,” said Beetle, promptly.

“He was the ‘Shakespeare of novelists.’”

“King won’t stand that. He says there’s only one Shakespeare. ’Mustn’t
rot about Shakespeare to King,” Howell objected.

“An’ he was ‘always delighted with his own works,’” Beetle continued.

“Like you,” Stalky pointed out.

“Shut up. Oh yes, an’----” he consulted some hieroglyphics on a scrap
of paper--“the--the impassioned Diderot (dunno who _he_ was) broke
forth: ‘O Richardson, thou singular genius!’”

Howell and Stalky rose together, each clamouring that he had bagged
that first.

“I _must_ have it!” Howell shouted. “King’s never seen me breakin’
forth with the impassioned Diderot. He’s _got_ to! Give me Diderot, you
impassioned hound!”

“Don’t upset the table. There’s tons more. An’ his genius was ‘fertile
and prodigal.’”

“All right! _I_ don’t mind bein’ ‘fertile and prodigal’ for a change,”
Stalky volunteered. “King’s going to enjoy this exam. If he was the
Army Prelim. chap we’d score.”

“The Prelim. questions will be pretty much like King’s stuff,” Beetle
assured them.

“But it’s always a score to know what your examiner’s keen on,” Howell
said, and illustrated it with an anecdote. “’Uncle of mine stayin’ with
my people last holidays----”

“Your Uncle Diderot?” Stalky asked.

“No, you ass! Captain of Engineers. He told me he was up for a Staff
exam. to an old Colonel-bird who believed that the English were the
lost Tribes of Israel, or something like that. He’d written tons o’
books about it.”

“All Sappers are mad,” said Stalky. “That’s one of the things the
guv’nor _did_ tell me.”

“Well, ne’er mind. My uncle played up, o’ course. ’Said he’d
always believed it, too. And _so_ he got nearly top-marks for
field-fortification. ’Didn’t know a thing about it, either, he said.”

“Good biznai!” said Stalky. “Well, go on, Beetle. What about Steele?”

“Can’t I keep anything for myself?”

“Not _much_! King’ll ask you where you got it from, and you’d show off,
an’ he’d find out. This ain’t your silly English Literature, you ass.
It’s our marks. Can’t you see that?”

Beetle very soon saw it was exactly as Stalky had said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some days later a happy, and therefore not too likeable, King was
explaining to the Reverend John in his own study how effort, zeal,
scholarship, the humanities, and perhaps a little natural genius for
teaching, could inspire even the mark-hunting minds of the young. His
text was the result of his General Knowledge paper on the Augustans and
_King Lear_.

“Howell,” he said, “I was not surprised at. He _has_ intelligence. But,
frankly, I did not expect young Corkran to burgeon. Almost one might
believe he occasionally read a book.”

“And McTurk too?”

“Yes. He had somehow arrived at a rather just estimate of Swift’s
lighter literary diversions. They _are_ contemptible. And in the ‘Lear’
questions--they were all attracted by Edgar’s character--Stalky had dug
up something about Aubrey on Tom-a-Bedlams from some unknown source.
Aubrey, of all people! I’m sure I only alluded to him once or twice.”

“Stalky among the prophets of ‘English’! And he didn’t remember where
he’d got it either?”

“No. Boys are amazingly purblind and limited. But if they keep this
up at the Army Prelim., it is conceivable the Class may not do itself
discredit. I told them so.”

“I congratulate you. Ours is the hardest calling in the world, with the
least reward. By the way, who are they likely to send down to examine
us?”

“It rests between two, I fancy. Martlett--with me at Balliol--and
Hume. _They_ wisely chose the Civil Service. Martlett has published
a brochure on Minor Elizabethan Verse--journeyman work, of
course--enthusiasms, but no grounding. Hume I heard of lately as having
infected himself in Germany with some Transatlantic abominations about
Shakespeare and Bacon. He was Sutton.” (The Head, by the way, was a
Sutton man.)

King returned to his examination-papers and read extracts from them, as
mothers repeat the clever sayings of their babes.

“Here’s old Taffy Howell, for instance--apropos to Diderot’s eulogy of
Richardson. ‘The impassioned Diderot broke forth: “Richardson, thou
singular genius!”’”

It was the Reverend John who stopped himself, just in time, from
breaking forth. He recalled that, some days ago, he had heard Stalky on
the stairs of Number Five, hurling the boots of many fags at Howell’s
door and bidding the “impassioned Diderot” within “break forth” at his
peril.

“Odd,” said he, gravely, when his pipe drew again. “Where did Diderot
say that?”

“I’ve forgotten for the moment. Taffy told me he’d picked it up in the
course of holiday reading.”

“Possibly. One never knows what heifers the young are ploughing with.
Oh! How did Beetle do?”

“The necessary dates and his handwriting defeated him, I’m glad to
say. I cannot accuse myself of having missed any opportunity to
castigate that boy’s inordinate and intolerable conceit. But I’m afraid
it’s hopeless. I think I touched him somewhat, though, when I read
Macaulay’s stock piece on Johnson. The others saw it at once.”

“Yes, you told me about that at the time,” said the Reverend John,
hurriedly.

“And our esteemed Head having taken him off maths for this
précis-writing--whatever that means!--has turned him into a most
objectionable free-lance. He was without any sense of reverence before,
and promiscuous cheap fiction--which is all that his type of reading
means--aggravates his worst points. When it came to a trial he was
simply nowhere.”

“Ah, well! Ours is a hard calling--specially if one’s sensitive.
Luckily, I’m too fat.” The Reverend John went out to bathe off the
Pebble Ridge, girt with a fair linen towel whose red fringe signalled
from half a mile away.

       *       *       *       *       *

There lurked on summer afternoons, round the fives-court or the gym,
certain watchful outcasts who had exhausted their weekly ration of
three baths, and who were too well known to Cory the bathman to outface
him by swearing that they hadn’t. These came in like sycophantic pups
at walk, and when the Reverend John climbed the Pebble Ridge, more than
a dozen of them were at his heels, with never a towel among them. One
could only bathe off the Ridge with a House Master, but by custom, a
dozen details above a certain age, no matter whence recruited, made
a “House” for bathing, if any kindly Master chose so to regard them.
Beetle led the low, growing reminder: “House! House, sir? We’ve got a
House now, Padre.”

“Let it be law as it is desired,” boomed the Reverend John. On which
word they broke forward, hirpling over the unstable pebbles and
stripping as they ran, till, when they touched the sands, they were as
naked as God had made them, and as happy as He intended them to be.

It was half-flood--dead-smooth, except for the triple line of combers,
a mile from wing to wing, that broke evenly with a sound of ripping
canvas, while their sleek rear-guards formed up behind. One swam forth,
trying to copy the roll, rise, and dig-out of the Reverend John’s
side-stroke, and manœuvred to meet them so that they should crash on
one’s head, when for an instant one glanced down arched perspectives
of beryl, before all broke in fizzy, electric diamonds and the pulse
of the main surge slung one towards the beach. From a good comber’s
crest one was hove up almost to see Lundy on the horizon. In its long
cream-streaked trough, when the top had turned over and gone on, one
might be alone in mid-Atlantic. Either way it was divine. Then one
capered on the sands till one dried off; retrieved scattered flannels,
gave thanks in chorus to the Reverend John, and lazily trailed up to
five-o’clock call-over, taken on the lower cricket field.

“Eight this week,” said Beetle, and thanked Heaven aloud.

“Bathing seems to have sapped your mind,” the Reverend John remarked.
“Why did you do so vilely with the Augustans?”

“They _are_ vile, Padre. So’s _Lear_.”

“The other two did all right, though.”

“I expect they’ve been swottin’,” Beetle grinned.

“I’ve expected that, too, in my time. But I want to hear about the
‘impassioned Diderot,’ please.”

“Oh, that was Howell, Padre. You mean when Diderot broke forth:
‘Richardson, thou singular genius’? He’d read it in the holidays
somewhere.”

“I _beg_ your pardon. Naturally, Taffy would read Diderot in the
holidays. Well, I’m sorry I can’t lick you for this; but if any one
ever finds out anything about it, you’ve only yourself to thank.”

Beetle went up to College and to the Outer Library, where he had
on tap the last of a book called _Elsie Venner_, by a man called
Oliver Wendell Holmes--all about a girl who was interestingly allied
to rattlesnakes. He finished what was left of her, and cast about
for more from the same hand, which he found on the same shelf, with
the trifling difference that the writer’s Christian name was now
Nathaniel, and he did not deal in snakes. The authorship of Shakespeare
was his theme--not that Shakespeare with whom King oppressed the
Army Class, but a low-born, poaching, ignorant, immoral village
lout who could not have written one line of any play ascribed to
him. (Beetle wondered what King would say to Nathaniel if ever they
met.) The real author was Francis Bacon, of Bacon’s Essays, which
did not strike Beetle as any improvement. He had “done” the essays
last term. But evidently Nathaniel’s views annoyed people, for the
margins of his book--it was second-hand, and the old label of a public
library still adhered--flamed with ribald, abusive, and contemptuous
comments by various hands. They ranged from “Rot!” “Rubbish!” and
such like to crisp counter-arguments. And several times some one
had written: “This beats Delia.” One copious annotator dissented,
saying: “Delia is supreme in this line,” “Delia beats this hollow.”
“See Delia’s Philosophy, page so and so.” Beetle grieved he could
not find anything about Delia (he had often heard King’s views on
lady-writers as a class) beyond a statement by Nathaniel, with
pencilled exclamation-points rocketting all round it that “Delia
Bacon discovered in Francis Bacon a good deal more than Macaulay.”
Taking it by and large, with the kind help of the marginal notes, it
appeared that Delia and Nathaniel between them had perpetrated every
conceivable outrage against the Head-God of King’s idolatry: and King
was particular about his idols. Without pronouncing on the merits
of the controversy, it occurred to Beetle that a well-mixed dose of
Nathaniel ought to work on King like a seidlitz powder. At this point
a pencil and a half sheet of impot-paper came into action, and he went
down to tea so swelled with Baconian heresies and blasphemies that he
could only stutter between mouthfuls. He returned to his labours after
the meal, and was visibly worse at prep.

“I say,” he began, “have you ever heard that Shakespeare never wrote
his own beastly plays?”

“’Fat lot of good to us!” said Stalky. “We’ve got to swot ’em up just
the same. Look here! This is for English parsin’ to-morrow. It’s _your_
biznai.” He read swiftly from the school _Lear_ (Act II., Sc. 2) thus:

    Steward:
                                   “Never any:
    It pleased the King his master, very late,
    To strike at me, upon his misconstruction;
    When he, conjunct, an’ flatterin’ his displeasure,
    Tripped me behind: bein’ down, insulted, railed,
    And put upon him such a deal of man,
    That worthy’d him, got praises of the King
    For him attemptin’ who was self-subdued;
    And, in the fleshment of this dread exploit,
    Drew me on here.”

“Now then, my impassioned bard, _construez_! That’s Shakespeare.”

“’Give it up! He’s drunk,” Beetle declared at the end of a blank half
minute.

“No, he isn’t,” said Turkey. “He’s a steward--on the estate--chattin’
to his employers.”

“Well--look here, Turkey. You ask King if Shakespeare ever wrote his
own plays, an’ he won’t give a dam’ what the steward said.”

“I’ve not come here to play with ushers,” was McTurk’s view of the case.

“I’d do it,” Beetle protested, “only he’d slay _me_! He don’t love me
when I ask about things. I can give you the stuff to draw him--tons
of it!” He broke forth into a précis, interspersed with praises, of
Nathaniel Holmes and his commentators--especially the latter. He also
mentioned Delia, with sorrow that he had not read her. He spoke through
nearly the whole of prep; and the upshot of it was that McTurk relented
and promised to approach King next “English” on the authenticity of
Shakespeare’s plays.

       *       *       *       *       *

The time and tone chosen were admirable. While King was warming himself
by a preliminary canter round the Form’s literary deficiencies, Turkey
coughed in a style which suggested a reminder to a slack _employé_
that it was time to stop chattering and get to work. As King began to
bristle, Turkey inquired: “I’d be glad to know, sir, if it’s true that
Shakespeare did not write his own plays at all?”

“Good God!” said King most distinctly. Turkey coughed again piously.
“They all say so in Ireland, sir.”

“Ireland--Ireland--Ireland!” King overran Ireland with one blast of
flame that should have been written in letters of brass for instruction
to-day. At the end, Turkey coughed once more, and the cough said: “It
is Shakespeare, and not my country, that you are hired to interpret to
me.” He put it directly, too: “An’ is it true at all about the alleged
plays, sir?”

“It is not,” Mr. King whispered, and began to explain, on lines that
might, perhaps, have been too freely expressed for the parents of those
young (though it gave their offspring delight), but with a passion,
force, and wealth of imagery which would have crowned his discourse at
any university. By the time he drew towards his peroration the Form was
almost openly applauding. Howell noiselessly drummed the cadence of
“Bonnie Dundee” on his desk; Paddy Vernon framed a dumb: “Played! Oh,
_well_ played, sir!” at intervals; Stalky kept tally of the brighter
gems of invective; and Beetle sat aghast but exulting among the spirits
he had called up. For though their works had never been mentioned,
and though Mr. King said he had merely glanced at the obscene
publications, he seemed to know a tremendous amount about Nathaniel and
Delia--especially Delia.

“I told you so!” said Beetle, proudly, at the end.

“What? _Him!_ I wasn’t botherin’ myself to listen to him an’ his
Delia,” McTurk replied.

Afterwards King fought his battle over again with the Reverend John in
the Common Room.

“Had I been that triple ass Hume, I might have risen to the bait. As it
is, I flatter myself I left them under no delusions as to Shakespeare’s
authenticity. Yes, a small drink, please. Virtue has gone out of me
indeed. But _where_ did they get it from?”

“The devil! The young devil,” the Reverend John muttered, half aloud.

“I could have excused devilry. It was ignorance. Sheer, crass, insolent
provincial ignorance! I tell you, Gillett, if the Romans had dealt
faithfully with the Celt, _ab initio_, this--this would never have
happened.”

“Quite so. I should like to have heard your remarks.” “I’ve told ’em
to tell me what they remember of them, with their own conclusions, in
essay form next week.”

Since he had loosed the whirlwind, the fair-minded Beetle offered to
do Turkey’s essay for him. On Turkey’s behalf, then, he dealt with
Shakespeare’s lack of education, his butchering, poaching, drinking,
horse-holding, and errand-running as Nathaniel had described them;
lifted from the same source pleasant names, such as “rustic” and “sorry
poetaster,” on which last special hopes were built; and expressed
surprise that one so ignorant could have done “what he was attributed
to.” His own essay contained no novelties. Indeed, he withheld one or
two promising “subsequently transpireds” for fear of distracting King.

       *       *       *       *       *

But, when the essays were read, Mr. King confined himself wholly to
Turkey’s pitiful, puerile, jejune, exploded, unbaked, half-bottomed
thesis. He touched, too, on the “lie in the soul,” which was,
fundamentally, vulgarity--the negation of Reverence and the Decencies.
He broke forth into an impassioned defence of “mere atheism,” which he
said was often no more than mental flatulence--transitory and curable
by knowledge of life--in no way comparable, for essential enormity,
with the debasing pagan abominations to which Turkey had delivered
himself. He ended with a shocking story about one Jowett, who seemed to
have held some post of authority where King came from, and who had told
an atheistical undergraduate that if he could not believe in a Personal
God by five that afternoon he would be expelled--as, with tears of rage
in his eyes, King regretted that he could not expel McTurk. And Turkey
blew his nose in the middle of it.

But the aim of education being to develop individual judgment, King
could not well kill him for his honest doubts about Shakespeare. And
he himself had several times quoted, in respect to other poets: “There
lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.”
So he treated Turkey in Form like a coiled puff-adder; and there was a
tense peace among the Augustans. The only ripple was the day before the
Army Examiner came, when Beetle inquired if he “need take this exam.,
sir, as I’m not goin’ up for anything.” Mr. King said there was great
need--for many reasons, none of them flattering to vanity.

As far as the Army Class could judge, the Examiner was not worse than
his breed, and the written “English” paper ran closely on the lines of
King’s mid-term General Knowledge test. Howell played his “impassioned
Diderot” to the Richardson lead; Stalky his parson in the wig; McTurk
his contemptible Swift; Beetle, Steele’s affectionate notes out of
the spunging-house to “Dearest Prue,” all in due order. There were,
however, one or two leading questions about Shakespeare. A boy’s hand
shot up from a back bench.

“In answering Number Seven--reasons for Shakespeare’s dramatic
supremacy”--he said, “are we to take it Shakespeare _did_ write the
plays he is supposed to have written, sir?”

The Examiner hesitated an instant. “It is generally assumed that he
did.” But there was no reproof in his words. Beetle began to sit down
slowly.

Another hand and another voice: “Have we got to say we believe he did,
sir? Even if we do not?”

“You are not called upon to state your beliefs. But we can go into that
at _viva voce_ this afternoon--if it interests you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“What did you do that for?” Paddy Vernon demanded at dinner.

“It’s the lost tribes of Israel game, you ass,” said Howell.

“To make sure,” Stalky amplified. “If he was like King, he’d have shut
up Beetle an’ Turkey at the start, but he’d have thought King gave us
the Bacon notion. Well, he didn’t shut ’em up; so they’re playin’ it
again this afternoon. If he stands it then, he’ll be sure King gave us
the notion. Either way, it’s dead-safe for us--_an’_ King.”

At the afternoon’s _viva voce_, before they sat down to the Augustans,
the Examiner wished to hear, “with no bearing on the examination, of
course,” from those two candidates who had asked him about Question
Seven. Which were they?

“Take off your gigs, you owl,” said Stalky between his teeth. Beetle
pocketed them and looked into blurred vacancy with a voice coming out
of it that asked: “Who--what gave you that idea about Shakespeare?”
From Stalky’s kick he knew the question was for him.

“Some people say, sir, there’s a good deal of doubt about it nowadays,
sir.”

“Ye-es, that’s true, but----”

“It’s his knowin’ so much about legal phrases,” Turkey was in
support--a lone gun barking somewhere to his right.

“That is a crux, I admit. Of course, whatever one may think privately,
officially Shakespeare _is_ Shakespeare. But how have _you_ been taught
to look at the question?”

“Well, Holmes says it’s impossible he could----”

“On the legal phraseology alone, sir,” McTurk chimed in.

“Ah, but the theory is that Shakespeare’s experiences in the society of
that day brought him in contact with all the leading intellects.” The
Examiner’s voice was quite colloquial now.

“But they didn’t think much of actors then, sir, did they?” This was
Howell cooing like a cushat dove. “I mean----”

The Examiner explained the status of the Elizabethan actor in some
detail, ending: “And that makes it the more curious, doesn’t it?”

“And this Shakespeare was supposed to be writin’ plays and actin’ in
’em _all_ the time?” McTurk asked, with sinister meaning.

“Exactly what I--what lots of people have pointed out. Where did he get
the time to acquire all his special knowledge?”

“Then it looks as if there was something in it, doesn’t it, sir?”

“That,” said the Examiner, squaring his elbows at ease on the desk, “is
a very large question which----”

“Yes, sir!”--in half-a-dozen eagerly attentive keys....

For decency’s sake a few Augustan questions were crammed in
conscience-strickenly, about the last ten minutes. Howell took them
since they involved dates, but the answers, though highly marked,
were scarcely heeded. When the clock showed six-thirty the Examiner
addressed them as “Gentlemen”; and said he would have particular
pleasure in speaking well of this Army Class, which had evinced such a
genuine and unusual interest in English Literature, and which reflected
the greatest credit on their instructors. He passed out: the Form
upstanding, as custom was.

“He’s goin’ to congratulate King,” said Howell. “Don’t make a row!
‘Don’t--make--a--noise--Or else you’ll wake the Baby!’”...

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. King of Balliol, after Mr. Hume of Sutton had complimented him, as
was only just, before all his colleagues in Common Room, was kindly
taken by the Reverend John to his study, where he exploded on the
hearth-rug.

“He--he thought _I_ had loosed this--this rancid Baconian rot among
them. He complimented me on my breadth of mind--my being abreast of the
times! You heard him? That’s how they think at Sutton. It’s an open
stye! A lair of bestial! They have a chapel there, Gillett, and they
pray for their souls--their _souls_!”

“His particular weakness apart, Hume was perfectly sincere about what
you’d done for the Army Class. He’ll report in that sense, too. That’s
a feather in your cap, and a deserved one. He said their interest in
Literature was unusual. That is _all_ your work, King.”

“But I bowed down in the House of Rimmon while he Baconised all over
me!--poor devil of an usher that I am! You heard it! I ought to have
spat in his eye! Heaven knows I’m as conscious of my own infirmities
as my worst enemy can be; but what have I done to deserve this? What
_have_ I done?”

“That’s just what I was wondering,” the Reverend John replied. “Have
you, perchance, done anything?”

“Where? How?”

“In the Army Class, for example.”

“Assuredly not! My Army Class? I couldn’t wish for a better--keen,
interested enough to read outside their allotted task--intelligent,
receptive! They’re head and shoulders above last year’s. The idea that
I, forsooth, should, even by inference, have perverted their minds with
this imbecile and unspeakable girls’-school tripe that Hume professes!
_You_ at least know that I have my standards; and in Literature and in
the Classics, I hold _maxima debetur pueris reverentia_.”[4]

“It’s singular, not plural, isn’t it?” said the Reverend John. “But
you’re absolutely right as to the principle!... Ours is a deadly
calling, King--specially if one happens to be sensitive.”


[4] The greatest respect is due to young persons.




A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY




A LEGEND OF TRUTH


    Once on a time, the ancient legends tell,
    Truth, rising from the bottom of her well,
    Looked on the world, but, hearing how it lied,
    Returned to her seclusion horrified.
    There she abode, so conscious of her worth,
    Not even Pilate’s Question called her forth,
    Nor Galileo, kneeling to deny
    The Laws that hold our Planet ’neath the sky.
    Meantime, her kindlier sister, whom men call
    Fiction, did all her work and more than all,
    With so much zeal, devotion, tact, and care,
    That no one noticed Truth was otherwhere.

    Then came a War when, bombed and gassed and mined,
    Truth rose once more, perforce, to meet mankind,
    And through the dust and glare and wreck of things,
    Beheld a phantom on unbalanced wings,
    Reeling and groping, dazed, dishevelled, dumb,
    But semaphoring direr deeds to come.
    Truth hailed and bade her stand; the quavering shade,
    Clung to her knees and babbled, “Sister, aid!
    I am--I was--thy Deputy, and men
    Besought me for my useful tongue or pen
    To gloss their gentle deeds, and I complied,
    And they, and thy demands, were satisfied.
    But this--” she pointed o’er the blistered plain,
    Where men as Gods and devils wrought amain--
    “This is beyond me! Take thy work again.”

    Tablets and pen transferred, she fled afar,
    And Truth assumed the record of the War....
    She saw, she heard, she read, she tried to tell
    Facts beyond precedent and parallel--
    Unfit to hint or breathe, much less to write,
    But happening every minute, day and night.
    She called for proof. It came. The dossiers grew.
    She marked them, first, “Return. This can’t be true.”
    Then, underneath the cold official word:
    “This is not really half of what occurred.”

    She faced herself at last, the story runs,
    And telegraphed her sister: “Come at once.
    Facts out of hand. Unable overtake
    Without your aid. Come back for Truth’s own sake!
    Co-equal rank and powers if you agree.
    _They need us both, but you far more than me!_”




A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY


There had been rather a long sitting at Lodge “Faith and Works,” 5837
E. C., that warm April night. Three initiations and two raisings, each
conducted with the spaciousness and particularity that our Lodge prides
itself upon, made the Brethren a little silent and the strains of
certain music had not yet lifted from them.

“There are two pieces that ought to be barred for ever,” said a Brother
as we were sitting down to the “banquet.” “‘Last Post’ is the other.”

“I can just stand ‘Last Post.’ It’s ‘Tipperary’ breaks me,” another
replied. “But I expect every one carries his own firing-irons inside
him.”

I turned to look. It was a sponsor for one of our newly raised
Brethren--a fat man with a fish-like and vacant face, but evidently
prosperous. We introduced ourselves as we took our places. His name was
Bevin, and he had a chicken farm near Chalfont-St.-Giles, whence he
supplied, on yearly contract, two or three high-class London hotels. He
was also, he said, on the edge of launching out into herb-growing.

“There’s a demand for herbs,” said he; “but it all depends upon your
connections with the wholesale dealers. _We_ ain’t systematic enough.
The French do it much better, especially in those mountains on the
Swiss an’ Italian sides. They use more herbal remedies than we do. Our
patent-medicine business has killed that with us. But there’s a demand
still, if your connections are sound. I’m going in for it.”

A large, well-groomed Brother across the table (his name was Pole, and
he seemed some sort of professional man) struck in with a detailed
account of a hollow behind a destroyed village near Thiepval, where,
for no ascertainable reason, a certain rather scarce herb had sprung up
by the acre, he said, out of the overturned earth.

“Only you’ve got to poke among the weeds to find it, and there’s any
quantity of bombs an’ stuff knockin’ about there still. They haven’t
cleaned it up yet.”

“Last time _I_ saw the place,” said Bevin, “I thought it ’ud be that
way till Judgment Day. You know how it lay in that dip under that
beet-factory. I saw it bombed up level in two days--into brick-dust
mainly. They were huntin’ for St. Firmin Dump.” He took a sandwich and
munched slowly, wiping his face, for the night was close.

“Ye-es,” said Pole. “The trouble is there hasn’t been any judgment
taken or executed. That’s why the world is where it is now. We didn’t
need anything but justice--afterwards. Not gettin’ that, the bottom
fell out of things, naturally.”

“That’s how I look at it too,” Bevin replied. “We didn’t want all
that talk afterwards--we only wanted justice. What _I_ say is,
there _must_ be a right and a wrong to things. It can’t all be
kiss-an’-make-friends, no matter what you do.”

A thin, dark brother on my left, who had been attending to a cold
pork pie (there are no pork pies to equal ours, which are home-made),
suddenly lifted his long head, in which a pale blue glass eye swivelled
insanely.

“Well,” he said slowly. “_My_ motto is ‘Never again.’ Ne-ver again for
me.”

“Same here--till next time,” said Pole, across the table. “You’re from
Sidney, ain’t you?”

“How d’you know!” was the short answer.

“You spoke.” The other smiled. So did Bevin, who added: “_I_ know how
your push talk, well enough. Have you started that Republic of yours
down under yet?”

“No. But we’re goin’ to. _Then_ you’ll see.”

“Carry on. No one’s hindering,” Bevin pursued.

The Australian scowled. “No. We know they ain’t. And--and--that’s
what makes us all so crazy angry with you.” He threw back his head
and laughed the spleen out of him. “What _can_ you do with an Empire
that--that don’t care what you do?”

“I’ve heard that before,” Bevin laughed, and his fat sides shook. “Oh,
I know _your_ push inside-out.”

“When did you come across us? My name’s Orton--no relation to the
Tichborne one.”

“Gallip’li--dead mostly. My battalion began there. We only lost half.”

“Lucky! They gambled _us_ away in two days. ’Member the hospital on the
beach?” asked Orton.

“Yes. An’ the man without the face--preaching,” said Bevin, sitting up
a little.

“Till he died,” said the Australian, his voice lowered.

“_And_ afterwards,” Bevin added, lower still.

“Christ! Were you there that night?”

Bevin nodded. The Australian choked off something he was going to say,
as a brother on his left claimed him. I heard them talk horses, while
Bevin developed his herb-growing projects with the well-groomed brother
opposite.

At the end of the banquet, when pipes were drawn, the Australian
addressed himself to Bevin, across me, and as the company re-arranged
itself, we three came to anchor in the big ante-room where the best
prints are hung. Here our brother across the table joined us, and
moored alongside.

The Australian was full of racial grievances, as must be in a young
country; alternating between complaints that his people had not been
appreciated enough in England, or too fulsomely complimented by an
hysterical Press.

“No-o,” Pole drawled, after awhile. “You’re altogether wrong. We hadn’t
time to notice anything--we were all too busy fightin’ for our lives.
What _your_ crowd down under are suffering from is growing-pains.
You’ll get over ’em in three hundred years or so--if you’re allowed to
last so long.”

“Who’s going to stoush us?” Orton asked fiercely.

This turned the talk again to larger issues and
possibilities--delivered on both sides straight from the shoulder
without malice or heat, between bursts of song from round the piano at
the far end. Bevin and I sat out, watching.

“Well, _I_ don’t understand these matters,” said Bevin at last. “But
I’d hate to have one of your crowd have it in for me for anything.”

“Would you? Why?” Orton pierced him with his pale, artificial eye.

“Well, you’re a trifle--what’s the word?--vindictive?--spiteful? At
least, that’s what _I_’ve found. I expect it comes from drinking stewed
tea with your meat four times a day,” said Bevin. “No! I’d hate to have
an Australian after me for anything in particular.”

Out of this came his tale--somewhat in this shape:

It opened with an Australian of the name of Hickmot or Hickmer--Bevin
called him both--who, finding his battalion completely expended at
Gallipoli, had joined up with what stood of Bevin’s battalion, and had
there remained, unrebuked and unnoticed. The point that Bevin laboured
was that his man had never seen a table-cloth, a china plate, or a
dozen white people together till, in his thirtieth year, he had walked
for two months to Brisbane to join up. Pole found this hard to believe.

“But it’s true,” Bevin insisted. “This chap was born an’ bred among the
black fellers, as they call ’em, two hundred miles from the nearest
town, four hundred miles from a railway, an’ ten thousand from the
grace o’ God--out in Queensland near some desert.”

“Why, of course. We come out of everywhere,” said Orton. “What’s wrong
with that?”

“Yes--but----Look here! From the time that this man Hickmot was twelve
years old he’d ridden, driven--what’s the word?--conducted sheep for
his father for thousands of miles on end, an’ months at a time, alone
with these black fellers that you daren’t show the back of your neck
to--else they knock your head in. That was all that he’d ever done till
he joined up. He--he--didn’t _belong_ to anything in the world, you
understand. And he didn’t strike other men as being a--a human being.”

“Why? He was a Queensland drover. They’re all right,” Orton explained.

“I dare say; but--well, a man notices another man, don’t he? You’d
notice if there was a man standing or sitting or lyin’ near you,
wouldn’t you? So’d any one. But you’d never notice Hickmot. His
bein’ anywhere about wouldn’t stay in your mind. He just didn’t draw
attention any more than anything else that happened to be about. Have
you got it?”

“Wasn’t he any use at his job?” Pole inquired.

“I’ve nothing against him that way, an’ I’m--I was his platoon
sergeant. He wouldn’t volunteer specially for any doings, but he’d slip
out with the party and he’d slip back with what was left of ’em. No
one noticed him, and he never opened his mouth about any doings. You’d
think a man who had lived the way he’d lived among black fellers an’
sheep would be noticeable enough in an English battalion, wouldn’t you?”

“It teaches ’em to lie close; but _you_ seem to have noticed him,”
Orton interposed, with a little suspicion.

“Not at the time--but afterwards. If he was noticeable it was on
account of his _un_noticeability--same way you’d notice there not being
an extra step at the bottom of the staircase when you thought there
was.”

“Ye-es,” Pole said suddenly. “It’s the eternal mystery of personality.
‘God before Whom ever lie bare----’ Some people can occlude their
personality like turning off a tap. I beg your pardon. Carry on!”

“Granted,” said Bevin. “I think I catch your drift. I used to think I
was a student of human nature before I joined up.”

“What was your job--before?” Orton asked.

“Oh, I was _the_ young blood of the village. Goal-keeper in our soccer
team, secretary of the local cricket and rifle--oh, lor’!--clubs. Yes,
an’ village theatricals. My father was the chemist in the village.
_How_ I did talk! _What_ I did know!” He beamed upon us all.

“_I_ don’t mind hearing you talk,” said Orton, lying back in his chair.
“You’re a little different from some of ’em. What happened to this dam’
drover of yours?”

“He was with our push for the rest of the war--an’ I don’t think he
ever sprung a dozen words at one time. With his upbringing, you see,
there wasn’t any subject that any man knew about he _could_ open up on.
He kept quiet, and mixed with his backgrounds. If there was a lump of
dirt, or a hole in the ground, or what was--was left after anythin’ had
happened, it would be Hickmot. That was all he wanted to be.”

“A camouflager?” Orton suggested.

“You have it! He was the complete camouflager all through. That’s him
to a dot. Look here! He hadn’t even a nickname in his platoon! And then
a friend of mine from our village, of the name of Vigors, came out with
a draft. Bert Vigors. As a matter of fact, I was engaged to his sister.
And Bert hadn’t been with us a week before they called him ‘The Grief.’
His father was an oldish man, a market-gardener--high-class vegetables,
bit o’ glass, an’--an’ all the rest of it. Do you know anything about
that particular business?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Pole, “except that glass is expensive, and
one’s man always sells the cut flowers.”

“Then you _do_ know something about it. It is. Bert was the old man’s
only son, an’--_I_ don’t blame him--he’d done his damnedest to get
exempted--for the sake of the business, you understand. But he caught
it all right. The tribunal wasn’t takin’ any the day he went up. Bert
was for it, with a few remarks from the patriotic old was-sers on the
bench. Our county paper had ’em all.”

“That’s the thing that made one really want the Hun in England for a
week or two,” said Pole.

“_Mwor osee!_ The same tribunal, havin’ copped Bert, gave unconditional
exemption to the opposition shop--a man called Margetts, in the
market-garden business, which he’d established _since_ the war, with
his two sons who, every one in the village knew, had been pushed into
the business to save their damned hides. But Margetts had a good
lawyer to advise him. The whole case was frank and above-board to a
degree--our county paper had it all in too. Agricultural produce--vital
necessity; the plough mightier than the sword; an’ those ducks on the
bench, who had turned down Bert, noddin’ and smilin’ at Margetts all
full of his cabbage and green peas. What happened? The usual. Vigors’
business--he’s sixty-eight, with asthma--goes smash, and Margetts and
Co. double theirs. So, then, that was Bert’s grievance, an’ he joined
us full of it. That’s why they called him ‘The Grief.’ Knowing the
facts, I was with him; but being his sergeant, I had to check him,
because grievances are catchin’, and three or four men with ’em make
Companies--er--sticky. Luckily Bert wasn’t handy with his pen. He had
to cork up his grievance mostly till he came across Hickmot, an’ Gord
in Heaven knows what brought those two together. No! _As_ y’were. I’m
wrong about God! I always am. It was Sheep. Bert knew’s much about
sheep as I do--an’ that’s Canterbury lamb--but he’d let Hickmot talk
about ’em for hours, in return for Hickmot listenin’ to his grievance.
Hickmot ’ud talk sheep--the one created thing he’d ever open up on--an’
Bert ’ud talk his grievance while they was waiting to go over the top.
I’ve heard ’em again an’ again, and, of course, I encouraged ’em. Now,
look here! Hickmot hadn’t seen an English house or a field or a road
or--or anything any civ’lised man is used to in all his life! Sheep an’
blacks! Market-gardens an’ glass an’ exemption-tribunals! An’ the men’s
teeth chatterin’ behind their masks between rum-issue an’ zero. Oh,
there was fun in Hell those days, wasn’t there, boys?”

“Sure! Oh, sure!” Orton chuckled, and Pole echoed him.

“Look here! When we were lying up somewhere among those forsaken
chicken-camps back o’ Doullens, I found Hickmot making mud-pies in
a farmyard an’ Bert lookin’ on. He’d made a model of our village
according to Bert’s description of it. He’d preserved it in his head
through all those weeks an’ weeks o’ Bert’s yap; an’ he’d coughed it
all up--Margetts’ house and gardens, old Mr. Vigors’ ditto; both pubs;
my father’s shop, everything that he’d been told by Bert done out to
scale in mud, with bits o’ brick and stick. Haig ought to have seen it;
but as his sergeant I had to check him for misusin’ his winkle-pin on
dirt. ’Come to think of it, a man who runs about uninhabited countries,
with sheep, for a livin’ must have gifts for mappin’ and scalin’
things somehow or other, or he’d be dead. _I_ never saw anything like
it--_all_ out o’ what Bert had told him by word of mouth. An’ the next
time we went up the line Hickmot copped it in the leg just in front of
me.”

“Finish?” I asked.

“Oh, no. Only beginnin’. That was in December, somethin’ or other,
’16. In Jan’ry Vigors copped it for keeps. I buried him--snowin’ blind
it was--an’ before we’d got him under the whole show was crumped. I
wanted to bury him again just to spite ’em (I’m a spiteful man by
nature), but the party wasn’t takin’ any more--even if they could have
found it. But, you see, we had buried him all right, which is what
they want at home, and I wrote the usual trimmin’s about the chaplain
an’ the full service, an’ what his captain had said about Bert bein’
recommended for a pip, an’ the irreparable loss an’ so on. That was in
Jan’ry ’17. In Feb’ry some time or other I got saved. My speciality
had come to be bombin’s and night-doings. Very pleasant for a young
free man, but--there’s a limit to what you can stand. It takes all men
differently. Noise was what started me, at last. I’d got just up to the
edge--wonderin’ when I’d crack an’ how many of our men I’d do in if it
came on me while we were busy. I had that nice taste in the mouth and
the nice temperature they call trench-fever, an’--I had to feel inside
my head for the meanin’ of every order I gave or was responsible for
executin’. _You_ know!”

“We do. Go on!” said Pole in a tone that made Orton look at him.

“So, you see, the bettin’ was even on my drawin’ a V. C. or getting
Number Umpty rest-camp or--a firing party before breakfast. But Gord
saved me. (I made friends with Him the last two years of the war. The
others went off too quick.) They wanted a bombin’-instructor for the
training-battalion at home, an’ He put it into their silly hearts to
indent for me. It took ’em five minutes to make me understand I was
saved. Then I vomited, an’ then I cried. _You_ know!” The fat face of
Bevin had changed and grown drawn, even as he spoke; and his hands
tugged as though to tighten an imaginary belt.

“I was never keen on bombin’ myself,” said Pole. “But
bombin’-instruction’s murder!”

“I don’t deny it’s a shade risky, specially when they take the pin
out an’ start shakin’ it, same as the Chinks used to do in the woods
at Beauty, when they were cuttin’ ’em down. But you live like a home
defence Brigadier, besides week-end leaf. As a matter o’ fact, I
married Bert’s sister soon’s I could after I got the billet, an’ I used
to lie in our bed thinkin’ of the old crowd on the Somme an’--feelin’
what a swine I was. Of course, I earned two V. C.’s a week behind the
traverse in the exercise of my ord’nary duties, but that isn’t the
same thing. An’ yet I’d only joined up because--because I couldn’t dam’
well help it.”

“An’ what about your Queenslander?” the Australian asked.

“_Too de sweet! Pronto!_ We got a letter in May from a Brighton
hospital matron, sayin’ that one of the name of Hickmer was anxious for
news o’ me, previous to proceedin’ to Roehampton for initiation into
his new leg. Of course, we applied for him by return. Bert had written
about him to his sister--my missus--every time he wrote at all; an’
any pal o’ Bert’s--well, _you_ know what the ladies are like. I warned
her about his peculiarities. She wouldn’t believe till she saw him. He
was just the same. You’d ha’ thought he’d show up in England like a
fresh stiff on snow--but you never noticed him. You never heard him;
and if he didn’t want to be seen he wasn’t there. He just joined up
with his background. I knew he could do that with men; but how in Hell,
seein’ how curious women are, he could camouflage with the ladies--my
wife an’ my mother to wit--beats _me_! He’d feed the chickens for us;
he’d stand on his one leg--it was off above the knee--and saw wood for
us. He’d run--I mean he’d hop--errands for Mrs. B. or mother; our dog
worshipped him from the start, though I never saw him throw a word
to him; and--_yet_ he didn’t take any place anywhere. You’ve seen a
rabbit--you’ve seen a pheasant--hidin’ in a ditch? ’Put your hand on it
sometimes before it moved, haven’t you? Well, that was Hickmot--with
two women in the house crazy to find out--find out--anything about him
that made him human. _You_ know what women are! He stayed with us a
fortnight. He left us on a Sat’day to go to Roehampton to try his leg.
On Friday he came over to the bombin’ ground--not sayin’ anything,
_as_ usual--to watch me instruct my Suicide Club, which was only half
an hour’s run by rail from our village. He had his overcoat on, an’
as soon as he reached the place it was _mafeesh_ with him, as usual.
Rabbit-trick again! You never noticed him. He sat in the bomb-proof
behind the pit where the duds accumulate till it’s time to explode ’em.
Naturally, that’s strictly forbidden to the public. So he went there,
an’ no one noticed him. When he’d had enough of watchin’, he hopped off
home to feed our chickens for the last time.”

“Then how did _you_ know all about it?” Orton said.

“Because I saw him come into the place just as I was goin’ down into
the trench. Then he slipped my memory till my train went back. But it
would have made no difference what our arrangements were. If Hickmer
didn’t choose to be noticed, he _wasn’t_ noticed. Just for curiosity’s
sake I asked some o’ the Staff Sergeants whether they’d seen him on
the ground. Not one--not one single one had--or could tell me what
he was like. An’ Sat’day noon he went off to Roehampton. We saw him
into the train ourselves, with the lunch Mrs. B. had put up for him--a
one-legged man an’ his crutch, in regulation blue, khaki warm an’
kit-bag. Takin’ everything together, per’aps he’d spoken as many as
twenty times in the thirteen days he’d been with us. I’m givin’ it you
straight as it happened. An’ now--look here!--this is what _did_ happen.

“Between two and three that Sunday morning--dark an’ blowin’ from the
north--I was woke up by an explosion an’ people shoutin’ ‘Raid!’ The
first bang fetched ’em out like worms after rain. There was another
some minutes afterwards, an’ me an’ a Sergeant in the Shropshires on
leaf told ’em all to take cover. They did. There was a devil of a
long wait an’ there was a third pop. Everybody, includin’ me, heard
aeroplanes. I didn’t notice till afterwards that----”

Bevin paused.

“What?” said Orton.

“Oh, I noticed a heap of things afterwards. What we noticed first--the
Shropshire Sergeant an’ me--was a rick well alight back o’ Margetts’
house, an’, with that north wind, blowin’ straight on to another
rick o’ Margetts’. It went up all of a whoosh. The next thing we saw
by the light of it was Margetts’ house with a bomb-hole in the roof
and the rafters leanin’ sideways like--like they always lean on such
occasions. So we ran there, and the first thing we met was Margetts in
his split-tailed nightie callin’ on his mother an’ damnin’ his wife. A
man always does that when he’s cross. Have you noticed? Mrs. Margetts
was in her nightie too, remindin’ Margetts that he hadn’t completed
his rick insurance. An’ that’s a woman’s lovin’ care all over. Behind
them was their eldest son, in trousers an’ slippers, nursin’ his
arm an’ callin’ for the doctor. They went through us howlin’ like
_flammenwerfer_ casualties--right up the street to the surgery.

“Well, there wasn’t anything to do except let the show burn out. We
hadn’t any means of extinguishing conflagrations. Some of ’em fiddled
with buckets, an’ some of ’em tried to get out some o’ Margetts’
sticks, but his younger son kept shoutin’, ‘Don’t! Don’t! It’ll be
stole! It’ll be stole!’ So it burned instead, till the roof came down
top of all--a little, cheap, dirty villa. In _reel_ life one whizbang
would have shifted it; but in our civil village it looked that damned
important and particular you wouldn’t believe. We couldn’t get round
to Margetts’ stable because of the two ricks alight, but we found
some one had opened the door early an’ the horses was in Margetts’
new vegetable piece down the hill which he’d hired off old Vigors
to extend his business with. I love the way a horse always looks
after his own belly--same as a Gunner. They went to grazin’ down the
carrots and onions till young Margetts ran to turn ’em out, an’ then
they got in among the glass frames an’ cut themselves. Oh, we had a
regular Russian night of it, everybody givin’ advice an’ fallin’ over
each other. When it got light we saw the damage. House, two ricks an’
stable _mafeesh_; the big glasshouse with every pane smashed and the
furnace-end of it blown clean out. All the horses an’ about fifteen
head o’ cattle--butcher’s stores from the next field--feeding in the
new vegetable piece. It was a fair clean-up from end to end--house,
furniture, fittin’s, plant, an’ all the early crops.”

“Was there any other damage in the village?” I asked.

“I’m coming to it--the curious part--but I wouldn’t call it damage. I
was renting a field then for my chickens off the Merecroft Estate. It’s
accommodation-land, an’ there was a wet ditch at the bottom that I had
wanted for ever so long to dam up to make a swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s
ducks.”

“Ah!” said Orton, half turning in his chair, all in one piece.

“S’pose I was allowed? Not me. Their Agent came down on me for
tamperin’ with the Estate’s drainage arrangements. An’ all I wanted was
to bring the bank down where the ditch narrows--a couple of cartloads
of dirt would have held the water back for half a dozen yards--not more
than that, an’ I could have made a little spillway over the top with
three boards--same as in trenches. Well, the first bomb--the one that
woke me up--had done my work for me better than I could. It had dropped
just under the hollow of the bank an’ brought it all down in a fair
landslide. I’d got my swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks, an’ I didn’t
see how the Estate could kick at the Act o’ God, d’you?”

“And Hickmot?” said Orton, grinning.

“Hold on! There was a Parish Council meetin’ to demand reprisals, of
course, an’ there was the policeman an’ me pokin’ about among the ruins
till the Explosives Expert came down in his motor car at three P.M.
Monday, an’ he meets all the Margetts off their rockers, howlin’ in the
surgery, an’ he sees my swim-hole fillin’ up to the brim.”

“What did he say?” Pole inquired.

“He sized it up at once. (He had to get back to dine in town that
evening.) He said all the evidence proved that it was a lucky shot
on the part of one isolated Hun ’plane goin’ home, an’ we weren’t to
take it to heart. I don’t know that anybody but the Margetts did. He
said they must have used incendiary bombs of a new type--which he’d
suspected for a long time. I don’t think the man was any worse than
God intended him to be. I don’t _reelly_. But the Shropshire Sergeant
said----”

“And what did _you_ think?” I interrupted.

“I didn’t think. I knew by then. I’m not a Sherlock Holmes; but havin’
chucked ’em an’ chucked ’em back and kicked ’em out of the light an’
slept with ’em for two years, an’ makin’ my livin’ out of them at
that time, I could recognise the fuse of a Mills bomb when I found
it. I found all three of ’em. ’Curious about that second in Margetts’
glasshouse. Hickmot mus’ have raked the ashes out of the furnace,
popped it in, an’ shut the furnace door. It operated all right. Not
one livin’ pane left in the putty, and all the brickwork spread round
the yard in streaks. Just like that St. Firmin village we were talking
about.”

“But how d’you account for young what’s-his-name gettin’ his arm
broken?” said Pole.

“Crutch!” said Bevin. “If you or me had taken on that night’s doin’s,
with one leg, we’d have hopped and sweated from one flank to another
an’ been caught half-way between. Hickmot didn’t. I’m as sure as I’m
sittin’ here that he did his doings quiet and comfortable at his full
height--he was over six feet--and no one noticed him. This is the way
_I_ see it. He fixed the swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks first. We
used to talk over our own affairs in front of him, of course, and he
knew just what she wanted in the way of a pond. So he went and made
it at his leisure. Then he prob’ly went over to Margetts’ and lit the
first rick, knowin’ that the wind ’ud do the rest. When young Margetts
saw the light of it an’ came out to look, Hickmot would have taken post
at the back-door an’ dropped the young swine with his crutch, same as
we used to drop Huns comin’ out of a dug-out. _You_ know how they blink
at the light? Then he must have walked off an’ opened Margetts’ stable
door to save the horses. They’d be more to him than any man’s life.
Then he prob’ly chucked one bomb on top o’ Margetts’ roof, havin’ seen
that the first rick had caught the second and that the whole house was
bound to go. D’you get me?”

“Then why did he waste his bomb on the house?” said Orton. His glass
eye seemed as triumphant as his real one.

“For camouflage, of course. He was camouflagin’ an air-raid. When
the Margetts piled out of their place into the street, he prob’ly
attended to the glasshouse, because that would be Margetts’ chief means
o’ business. After that--I think so, because otherwise I don’t see
where all those extra cattle came from that we found in the vegetable
piece--he must have walked off an’ rounded up all the butcher’s beasts
in the next medder, an’ driven ’em there to help the horses. And when
he’d finished everything he’d set out to do, I’ll lay my life an’ kit
he curled up like a bloomin’ wombat not fifty yards away from the whole
flamin’ show--an’ let us run round him. An’ when he’d had his sleep
out, he went up to Roehampton Monday mornin’ by some train that he’d
decided upon in his own mind weeks an’ weeks before.”

“Did he know all the trains then?” said Pole.

“Ask me another. I only know that if he wanted to get from any place to
another without bein’ noticed, he did it.”

“And the bombs? He got ’em from you, of course,” Pole went on.

“What do _you_ think? He was an hour in the park watchin’ me instruct,
sittin’, as I remember, in the bomb-proof by the dud-hole, in his
overcoat. He got ’em all right. He took neither more nor less than he
wanted; an’ I’ve told you what he did with ’em--one--two--_an’_ three.”

“’Ever see him afterwards?” said Orton.

“Yes. ’Saw him at Brighton when I went down there with the missus, not
a month after he’d been broken in to his Roehampton leg. You know how
the boys used to sit all along Brighton front in their blues, an’ jump
every time the coal was bein’ delivered to the hotels behind them?
I barged into him opposite the Old Ship, an’ I told him about our
air-raid. I told him how Margetts had gone off his rocker an’ walked
about starin’ at the sky an’ holdin’ reprisal-meetin’s all by himself;
an’ how old Mr. Vigors had bought in what he’d left--tho’ of course I
said what _was_ left--o’ Margetts’ business; an’ how well my swim-hole
for the ducks was doin’. It didn’t interest him. He didn’t want to come
over to stay with us any more, either. We were a long, long way back in
his past. You could see that. He wanted to get back with his new leg,
to his own God-forsaken sheep-walk an’ his black fellers in Queensland.
I expect he’s done it now, an’ no one has noticed him. But, by Gord! He
_did_ leak a little at the end. He did that much! When we was waitin’
for the tram to the station, I said how grateful I was to Fritz for
moppin’ up Margetts an’ makin’ our swim-hole all in one night. Mrs. B.
seconded the motion. We couldn’t have done less. Well, then Hickmot
said, speakin’ in his queer way, as if English words were all new to
him: ‘Ah, go on an’ bail up in Hell,’ he says. ‘Bert was my friend.’
That was all. I’ve given it you just as it happened, word for word.
_I_’d hate to have an Australian have it in for _me_ for anything I’d
done to _his_ friend. Mark _you_, I don’t say there’s anything _wrong_
with you Australians, Brother Orton. I only say they ain’t like us or
any one else that I know.”

“Well, do you want us to be?” said Orton.

“No, no. It takes all sorts to make a world, as the sayin’ is. And
now”--Bevin pulled out his gold watch--“if I don’t make a move of it
I’ll miss my last train.”

“Let her go,” said Orton serenely. “You’ve done some lorry-hoppin’ in
your time, haven’t you--Sergeant?”

“When I was two an’ a half stone lighter, Digger,” Bevin smiled in
reply.

“Well, I’ll run you out home before sun-up. I’m a haulage-contractor
now--London and Oxford. There’s an empty of mine ordered to Oxford.
We can go round by your place as easy as not. She’s lyin’ out
Vauxhall-way.”

“My Gord! An’ see the sun rise again! ’Haven’t seen him since I can’t
remember when,” said Bevin, chuckling. “Oh, there was fun sometimes
in Hell, wasn’t there, Australia?”; and again his hands went down to
tighten the belt that was missing.




WE AND THEY


    Father, Mother, and Me
      Sister and Auntie say
    All the people like us are We,
      And every one else is They.
    And They live over the sea,
      While We live over the way,
    But--would you believe it?--They look upon We
      As only a sort of They!

    We eat pork and beef
      With cow-horn-handled knives.
    They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,
      Are horrified out of Their lives;
    And They who live up a tree,
      And feast on grubs and clay,
    (Isn’t it scandalous?) look upon We
      As a simply disgusting They!

    We shoot birds with a gun.
      They stick lions with spears.
    Their full-dress is un--.
      We dress up to Our ears.
    They like Their friends for tea.
      We like Our friends to stay;
    And, after all that, They look upon We
      As an utterly ignorant They!

    We eat kitcheny food.
      We have doors that latch.
    They drink milk or blood,
      Under an open thatch.
    We have Doctors to fee.
      They have Wizards to pay.
    And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We
      As a quite impossible They!

    All good people agree,
      And all good people say,
    All nice people, like Us, are We
      And every one else is They:
    But if you cross over the sea,
      Instead of over the way,
    You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
      As only a sort of They!




ON THE GATE

A Tale of ’16




ON THE GATE

A Tale of ’16


If the Order Above be but the reflection of the Order Below (as that
Ancient affirms, who had some knowledge of the Order) it is not outside
the Order of Things that there should have been confusion also in the
Department of Death. The world’s steadily falling death-rate, the
rising proportion of scientifically prolonged fatal illnesses, which
allowed months of warning to all concerned, had weakened initiative
throughout the Necrological Departments. When the War came, these were
as unprepared as civilised mankind; and, like mankind, they improvised
and recriminated in the face of Heaven.

As Death himself observed to St. Peter who had just come off The Gate
for a rest: “One does the best one can with the means at one’s disposal
but----”

“_I_ know,” said the good Saint sympathetically. “Even with what help I
can muster, I’m on The Gate twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four.”

“Do you find your volunteer staff any real use?” Death went on. “Isn’t
it easier to do the work oneself than----”

“One must guard against that point of view,” St. Peter returned, “but I
know what you mean. Office officialises the best of us.... What is it
_now_?” He turned to a prim-lipped Seraph who had followed him with an
expulsion-form for signature. St. Peter glanced it over. “Private R.
M. Buckland,” he read, “on the charge of saying that there is no God.
’That all?”

“He says he is prepared to prove it, sir, and--according to the
Rules----”

“If you will make yourself acquainted with the Rules, you’ll find they
lay down that ‘the fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ That
decides it; probably shell-shock. Have you tested his reflexes?”

“No, sir. He kept _on_ saying that there----”

“Pass him in at once! Tell off some one to argue with him and give him
the best of the argument till St. Luke’s free. Anything else?”

“A hospital-nurse’s record, sir. She has been nursing for two years.”

“A long while,” St. Peter spoke severely. “She may very well have grown
careless.”

“It’s her civilian record, sir. I judged best to refer it to you.” The
Seraph handed him a vivid scarlet docket.

“The next time,” said St. Peter folding it down and writing on one
corner, “that you get one of these--er--tinted forms, mark it Q.M.A.
and pass bearer at once. Don’t worry over trifles.” The Seraph flashed
off and returned to the clamorous Gate.

“Which Department is Q.M.A.?” said Death. St. Peter chuckled.

“It’s not a department. It’s a Ruling. ‘_Quia multum amavit._’ A most
useful Ruling. I’ve stretched it to.... Now, I wonder what that child
actually did die of.”

“I’ll ask,” said Death, and moved to a public telephone near by.
“Give me War Check and Audit: English side: non-combatant,” he began.
“Latest returns.... Surely you’ve got them posted up to date by now!...
Yes! Hospital Nurse in France.... No! _Not_ ‘nature and aliases.’ I
said--what--was--nature--of--illness?... Thanks.” He turned to St.
Peter. “Quite normal,” he said. “Heart-failure after neglected pleurisy
following overwork.”

“Good!” St. Peter rubbed his hands. “That brings her under the higher
allowance--G.L.H. scale--‘Greater love hath no man--’ But _my_ people
ought to have known that from the first.”

“Who is that clerk of yours?” asked Death. “He seems rather a stickler
for the proprieties.”

“The usual type nowadays,” St. Peter returned. “A young Power in charge
of some half-baked Universe. Never having dealt with life yet, he’s
somewhat nebulous.”

Death sighed. “It’s the same with my old Departmental Heads. Nothing on
earth will make my fossils on the Normal Civil Side realise that we are
dying in a new age. Come and look at them. They might interest you.”

“Thanks, I will, but----Excuse me a minute! Here’s my zealous young
assistant on the wing once more.”

The Seraph had returned to report the arrival of overwhelmingly heavy
convoys at The Gate, and to ask what the Saint advised.

“I’m just off on an inter-departmental inspection which will take
me some time,” said St. Peter. “You _must_ learn to act on your own
initiative. So I shall leave you to yourself for the next hour or two,
merely suggesting (I don’t wish in any way to sway your judgment)
that you invite St. Paul, St. Ignatius (Loyola, I mean) and--er--St.
Christopher to assist as Supervising Assessors on the Board of
Admission. Ignatius is one of the subtlest intellects we have, and
an officer and a gentleman to boot. I assure you,” the Saint turned
towards Death, “he revels in dialectics. If he’s allowed to prove his
case, he’s quite capable of letting off the offender. St. Christopher,
of course, will pass anything that looks wet and muddy.”

“They are nearly all that now, sir,” said the Seraph.

“So much the better; and--as I was going to say--St. Paul is an
embarrass--a distinctly strong colleague. Still--we all have our
weaknesses. Perhaps a well-timed reference to his seamanship in the
Mediterranean--by the way, look up the name of his ship, will you?
Alexandria register, I think--might be useful in some of those sudden
maritime cases that crop up. I needn’t tell _you_ to be firm, of
course. That’s your besetting--er--I mean--reprimand ’em severely and
publicly, but--” the Saint’s voice broke--“oh, my child, _you_ don’t
know what it is to need forgiveness. Be gentle with ’em--be very gentle
with ’em!”

Swiftly as a falling shaft of light the Seraph kissed the sandalled
feet and was away.

“Aha!” said St. Peter. “He can’t go far wrong with that Board of
Admission as I’ve--er--arranged it.”

They walked towards the great central office of Normal Civil Death,
which, buried to the knees in a flood of temporary structures,
resembled a closed cribbage-board among spilt dominoes.

They entered an area of avenues and cross-avenues, flanked by long, low
buildings, each packed with seraphs working wing to folded wing.

“Our temporary buildings,” Death explained. “’Always being added to.
This is the War-side. You’ll find nothing changed on the Normal Civil
Side. They are more human than mankind.”

“It doesn’t lie in _my_ mouth to blame them,” said St. Peter.

“No, I’ve yet to meet the soul you wouldn’t find excuse for,” said
Death tenderly; “but then _I_ don’t--er--arrange my Boards of
Admission.”

“If one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help itself,”
St. Peter laughed, as the shadow of the main porch of the Normal Civil
Death Offices darkened above them.

“This façade rather recalls the Vatican, doesn’t it?” said the Saint.

“They’re quite as conservative. ’Notice how they still keep the old
Holbein uniforms? ’Morning, Sergeant Fell. How goes it?” said Death as
he swung the dusty doors and nodded at a Commissionaire, clad in the
grim livery of Death, even as Hans Holbein has designed it.

“Sadly. Very sadly indeed, sir,” the Commissionaire replied. “So many
pore ladies and gentlemen, sir, ’oo might well ’ave lived another few
years, goin’ off as you might say, in every direction with no time for
the proper obsequities.”

“Too bad,” said Death sympathetically. “Well, we’re none of us as young
as we were, Sergeant.”

They climbed a carved staircase, behung with the whole millinery of
undertaking at large. Death halted on a dark Aberdeen granite landing
and beckoned a messenger.

“We’re rather busy to-day, sir,” the messenger whispered, “but I think
His Majesty will see _you_.”

“Who _is_ the Head of this Department if it isn’t you?” St. Peter
whispered in turn.

“You may well ask,” his companion replied. “I’m only--” he checked
himself and went on. “The fact is, our Normal Civil Death side is
controlled by a Being who considers himself all that I am and more.
He’s Death as men have made him--in their own image.” He pointed to
a brazen plate, by the side of a black-curtained door, which read:
“Normal Civil Death, K.G., K.T., K.P., P.C., etc.” “He’s as human as
mankind.”

“I guessed as much from those letters. What do they mean?”

“Titles conferred on him from time to time. King of Ghosts; King of
Terrors; King of Phantoms; Pallid Conqueror, and so forth. There’s no
denying he’s earned every one of them. A first-class mind, but just a
leetle bit of a sn----”

“His Majesty is at liberty,” said the messenger.

Civil Death did not belie his name. No monarch on earth could have
welcomed them more graciously; or, in St. Peter’s case, with more of
that particularity of remembrance which is the gift of good kings. But
when Death asked him how his office was working, he became at once the
Departmental Head with a grievance.

“Thanks to this abominable War,” he began testily, “my N.C.D. has to
spend all its time fighting for mere existence. Your new War-side seems
to think that nothing matters _except_ the war. I’ve been asked to
give up two-thirds of my Archives Basement (E. 7--E. 64) to the Polish
Civilian Casualty Check and Audit. Preposterous! Where am I to move my
Archives? And they’ve just been cross-indexed, too!”

“As I understood it,” said Death, “our War-side merely applied for
desk-room in your basement. They were prepared to leave your Archives
_in situ_.”

“Impossible! We may need to refer to them at any moment. There’s a
case now which is interesting Us all--a Mrs. Ollerby. Worcestershire by
extraction--dying of an internal hereditary complaint. At any moment,
We may wish to refer to her dossier, and how _can_ We if Our basement
is given up to people over whom We exercise no departmental control?
This war has been made excuse for slackness in every direction.”

“Indeed!” said Death. “You surprise me. I thought nothing made any
difference to the N.C.D.”

“A few years ago I should have concurred,” Civil Death replied. “But
since this--this recent outbreak of unregulated mortality there
has been a distinct lack of respect towards certain aspects of Our
administration. The attitude is bound to reflect itself in the office.
The official is, in a large measure, what the public makes him. Of
course, it is only temporary reaction, but the merest outsider would
notice what I mean. Perhaps _you_ would like to see for yourself?”
Civil Death bowed towards St. Peter, who feared that he might be taking
up his time.

“Not in the least. If I am not the servant of the public, what am I?”
Civil Death said, and preceded them to the landing. “Now, this--”
he ushered them into an immense but badly lighted office--“is our
International Mortuary Department--the I.M.D. as we call it. It works
with the Check and Audit. I should be sorry to say offhand how many
billion sterling it represents, invested in the funeral ceremonies of
all the races of mankind.” He stopped behind a very bald-headed clerk
at a desk. “And yet We take cognizance of the minutest detail, do not
We?” he went on. “What have We here, for example?”

“Funeral expenses of the late Mr. John Shenks Tanner,” the clerk
stepped aside from the red-ruled book. “Cut down by the executors on
account of the War from £173:19:1 to £47:18:4. A sad falling off, if I
may say so, Your Majesty.”

“And what was the attitude of the survivors?” Civil Death asked.

“Very casual. It was a motor-hearse funeral.”

“A pernicious example, spreading, I fear, even in the lowest classes,”
his superior muttered. “Haste, lack of respect for the Dread Summons,
carelessness in the Subsequent Disposition of the Corpse and----”

“But as regards people’s real feelings?” St. Peter demanded of the
clerk.

“That isn’t within the terms of our reference, Sir,” was the answer.
“But we _do_ know that as often as not, they don’t even buy black-edged
announcement-cards nowadays.”

“Good Heavens!” said Civil Death swellingly. “No cards! I must look
into this myself. Forgive me, St. Peter, but we Servants of Humanity,
as you know, are not our own masters. No cards, indeed!” He waved them
off with an official hand, and immersed himself in the ledger.

“Oh, come along,” Death whispered to St. Peter. “This is a blessed
relief!”

They two walked on till they reached the far end of the vast dim
office. The clerks at the desks here scarcely pretended to work. A
messenger entered and slapped down a small autophonic reel.

“Here you are!” he cried. “Mister Wilbraham Lattimer’s last dying
speech and record. He made a shockin’ end of it.”

“Good for Lattimer!” a young voice called from a desk. “Chuck it over!”

“Yes,” the messenger went on. “Lattimer said to his brother: ‘Bert, I
haven’t time to worry about a little thing like dying these days, and
what’s more important, _you_ haven’t either. You go back to your Somme
doin’s, and I’ll put it through with Aunt Maria. It’ll amuse her and
it won’t hinder you.’ That’s nice stuff for your boss!” The messenger
whistled and departed. A clerk groaned as he snatched up the reel.

“How the deuce am I to knock this into official shape?” he began. “Pass
us the edifying Gantry Tubnell. I’ll have to crib from him again, I
suppose.”

“Be careful!” a companion whispered, and shuffled a typewritten form
along the desk. “I’ve used Tubby twice this morning already.”

The late Mr. Gantry Tubnell must have demised on approved departmental
lines, for his record was much thumbed. Death and St. Peter watched the
editing with interest.

“I can’t bring in Aunt Maria _any_ way,” the clerk broke out at last.
“Listen here, every one! She has heart-disease. She dies just as she’s
lifted the dropsical Lattimer to change his sheets. She says: ‘Sorry,
Willy! I’d make a dam’ pore ’ospital nurse!’ Then she sits down and
croaks. Now _I_ call that good! I’ve a great mind to take it round to
the War-side as an indirect casualty and get a breath of fresh air.”

“Then you’ll be hauled over the coals,” a neighbour suggested.

“I’m used to that, too,” the clerk sniggered.

“Are you?” said Death, stepping forward suddenly from behind a high
map-stand. “Who are you?” The clerk cowered in his skeleton jacket.

“I’m not on the Regular Establishment, Sir,” he stammered. “I’m
a--Volunteer. I--I wanted to see how people behaved when they were in
trouble.”

“Did you? Well, take the late Mr. Wilbraham Lattimer’s and Miss Maria
Lattimer’s papers to the War-side General Reference Office. When they
have been passed upon, tell the Attendance Clerk that you are to serve
as probationer in--let’s see--in the Domestic Induced Casualty Side--7
G.S.”

The clerk collected himself a little and spoke through dry lips.

“But--but I’m--I slipped in from the Lower Establishment, Sir,” he
breathed.

There was no need to explain. He shook from head to foot as with the
palsy; and under all Heaven none tremble save those who come from that
class which “also believe and tremble.”

“Do you tell Me this officially, or as one created being to another?”
Death asked after a pause.

“Oh, non-officially, Sir. Strictly non-officially, so long as you know
all about it.”

His awe-stricken fellow-workers could not restrain a smile at Death
having to be told about anything. Even Death bit his lips.

“I don’t think you will find the War-side will raise any objection,”
said he. “By the way, they don’t wear that uniform over there.”

Almost before Death ceased speaking, it was ripped off and flung on
the floor, and that which had been a sober clerk of Normal Civil Death
stood up an unmistakable, curly-haired, bat-winged, faun-eared Imp of
the Pit. But where his wings joined his shoulders there was a patch of
delicate dove-coloured feathering that gave promise to spread all up
the pinion. St. Peter saw it and smiled, for it was a known sign of
grace.

“Thank Goodness!” the ex-clerk gasped as he snatched up the Lattimer
records and sheered sideways through the skylight.

“Amen!” said Death and St. Peter together, and walked through the door.

“Weren’t you hinting something to me a little while ago about _my_ lax
methods?” St. Peter demanded, innocently.

“Well, if one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help
itself,” Death retorted. “Now, I shall have to pitch in a stiff
demi-official asking how that young fiend came to be taken on in the
N.C.D. without examination. And I must do it before the N.C.D. complain
that I’ve been interfering with their departmental transfers. _Aren’t_
they human? If you want to go back to The Gate I think our shortest way
will be through here and across the War-Sheds.”

They came out of a side-door into Heaven’s full light. A phalanx of
Shining Ones swung across a great square singing:

    “To Him Who made the Heavens abide, yet cease not from their motion,
    To Him Who drives the cleansing tide twice a day round ocean--
    Let His Name be magnified in all poor folk’s devotion!”

Death halted their leader, and asked a question.

“We’re Volunteer Aid Serving Powers,” the Seraph explained, “reporting
for duty in the Domestic Induced Casualty Department--told off to help
relatives, where we can.”

The shift trooped on--such an array of Powers, Honours, Glories, Toils,
Patiences, Services, Faiths and Loves as no man may conceive even by
favour of dreams. Death and St. Peter followed them into a D.I.C.D.
Shed on the English side, where, for the moment, work had slackened.
Suddenly a name flashed on the telephone-indicator. “Mrs. Arthur
Bedott, 317, Portsmouth Avenue, Brondesbury. Husband badly wounded. One
child.” Her special weakness was appended.

A Seraph on the raised dais that overlooked the Volunteer Aids waiting
at the entrance, nodded and crooked a finger. One of the new shift--a
temporary Acting Glory--hurled himself from his place and vanished
earthward.

“You may take it,” Death whispered to St. Peter, “there will be a
sustaining epic built up round Private Bedott’s wound for his wife and
Baby Bedott to cling to. And here--” they heard wings that flapped
wearily--“here, I suspect, comes one of our failures.”

A Seraph entered and dropped, panting, on a form. His plumage was
ragged, his sword splintered to the hilt; and his face still worked
with the passions of the world he had left, as his soiled vesture
reeked of alcohol.

“Defeat,” he reported hoarsely, when he had given in a woman’s name.
“Utter defeat! Look!” He held up the stump of his sword. “I broke this
on her gin-bottle.”

“So? We try again,” said the impassive Chief Seraph. Again he beckoned,
and there stepped forward that very Imp whom Death had transferred from
the N.C.D.

“Go _you_!” said the Seraph. “We must deal with a fool according to her
folly. Have you pride enough?”

There was no need to ask. The messenger’s face glowed and his nostrils
quivered with it. Scarcely pausing to salute, he poised and dived, and
the papers on the desks spun beneath the draught of his furious vans.

St. Peter nodded high approval. “_I_ see!” he said. “He’ll work on her
pride to steady her. By all means--‘if by all means,’ as my good Paul
used to say. Only it ought to read ‘by any manner of possible means.’
Excellent!”

“It’s difficult, though,” a soft-eyed Patience whispered. “I fail again
and again. I’m only fit for an old-maid’s tea-party.”

Once more the record flashed--a multiple-urgent appeal on behalf of a
few thousand men, worn-out body and soul. The Patience was detailed.

“Oh, me!” she sighed, with a comic little shrug of despair, and took
the void softly as a summer breeze at dawning.

“But how does this come under the head of Domestic Casualties? Those
men were in the trenches. I heard the mud squelch,” said St. Peter.

“Something wrong with the installation--as usual. Waves are always
jamming here,” the Seraph replied.

“So it seems,” said St. Peter as a wireless cut in with the muffled
note of some one singing (sorely out of tune), to an accompaniment of
desultory poppings:

“Unless you can love as the Angels love With the breadth of Heaven
be----”

“_Twickt!_” It broke off. The record showed a name. The waiting Seraphs
stiffened to attention with a click of tense quills.

“As you were!” said the Chief Seraph. “He’s met her.”

“Who is she?” said St. Peter.

“His mother. You never get over your weakness for romance,” Death
answered, and a covert smile spread through the Office.

“Thank Heaven, I don’t. But I really ought to be going----”

“Wait one minute. Here’s trouble coming through, I think,” Death
interposed.

A recorder had sparked furiously in a broken run of S.O.S.’s that
allowed no time for inquiry.

“Name! Name!” an impatient young Faith panted at last. “It _can’t_ be
blotted out.” No name came up. Only the reiterated appeal.

“False alarm!” said a hard-featured Toil, well used to mankind. “Some
fool has found out that he owns a soul. ’Wants work. _I_’d cure him!...”

“Hush!” said a Love in Armour, stamping his mailed foot. The office
listened.

“’Bad case?” Death demanded at last.

“Rank bad, Sir. They are holding back the name,” said the Chief Seraph.
The S.O.S. signals grew more desperate, and then ceased with an
emphatic thump. The Love in Armour winced.

“Firing-party,” he whispered to St. Peter. “’Can’t mistake that noise!”

“What is it?” St. Peter cried nervously.

“Deserter; spy; murderer,” was the Chief Seraph’s weighed answer. “It’s
out of my department--now. No--hold the line! The name’s up at last.”

It showed for an instant, broken and faint as sparks on charred
wadding, but in that instant a dozen pens had it written. St. Peter
with never a word gathered his robes about him and bundled through the
door, headlong for The Gate.

“No hurry,” said Death at his elbow. “With the present rush your man
won’t come up for ever so long.”

“’Never can be sure these days. Anyhow, the Lower Establishment will be
after him like sharks. He’s the very type they’d want for propaganda.
Deserter--traitor--murderer. Out of my way, please, babies!”

A group of children round a red-headed man who was telling them
stories, scattered laughing. The man turned to St. Peter.

“Deserter, traitor, murderer,” he repeated. “Can _I_ be of service?”

“You can!” St. Peter gasped. “Double on ahead to The Gate and tell them
to hold up all expulsions till I come. Then,” he shouted as the man
sped off at a long hound-like trot, “go and picket the outskirts of the
Convoys. Don’t let any one break away on any account. Quick!”

But Death was right. They need not have hurried. The crowd at The Gate
was far beyond the capacities of the Examining Board even though, as
St. Peter’s Deputy informed him, it had been enlarged twice in his
absence.

“We’re doing our best,” the Seraph explained, “but delay is inevitable,
Sir. The Lower Establishment are taking advantage of it, as usual,
at the tail of the Convoys. I’ve doubled all pickets there, and I’m
sending more. Here’s the extra list, Sir--Arc J., Bradlaugh C., Bunyan
J., Calvin J. Iscariot J. reported to me just now, as under your
orders, and took ’em with him. Also Shakespeare W. and----”

“Never mind the rest,” said St. Peter. “I’m going there myself.
Meantime, carry on with the passes--don’t fiddle over ’em--and give
me a blank or two.” He caught up a thick block of Free Passes,
nodded to a group in khaki at a passport table, initialled their
Commanding Officer’s personal pass as for “Officer and Party,”
and left the numbers to be filled in by a quite competent-looking
Quarter-master-Sergeant. Then, Death beside him, he breasted his way
out of The Gate against the incoming multitude of all races, tongues,
and creeds that stretched far across the plain.

An old lady, firmly clutching a mottle-nosed, middle-aged Major by the
belt, pushed across a procession of keen-faced _poilus_, and blocked
his path, her captive held in that terrible mother-grip no Power has
yet been able to unlock.

“I found him! I’ve got him! Pass him!” she ordered.

St. Peter’s jaw fell. Death politely looked elsewhere.

“There are a few formalities,” the Saint began.

“With Jerry in this state? Nonsense! How like a man! My boy never gave
me a moment’s anxiety in----”

“Don’t, dear--don’t!” The Major looked almost as uncomfortable as St.
Peter.

“Well, nothing compared with what he _would_ give me if he weren’t
passed.”

“Didn’t I hear you singing just now?” Death asked, seeing that his
companion needed a breathing-space.

“Of course you did,” the mother intervened. “He sings beautifully. And
that’s _another_ reason! You’re bass, aren’t you now, darling?”

St. Peter glanced at the agonised Major and hastily initialled him a
pass. Without a word of thanks the Mother hauled him away.

“Now, under what conceivable Ruling do you justify that?” said Death.

“I.W.--the Importunate Widow. It’s scandalous!” St. Peter groaned. Then
his face darkened as he looked across the great plain beyond The Gate.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “The Lower Establishment is out in full
force to-night. I hope our pickets are strong enough----”

The crowd here had thinned to a disorderly queue flanked on both
sides by a multitude of busy, discreet emissaries from the Lower
Establishment who continually edged in to do business with them, only
to be edged off again by a line of watchful pickets. Thanks to the
khaki everywhere, the scene was not unlike that which one might have
seen on earth any evening of the old days outside the refreshment-room
by the Arch at Victoria Station, when the Army trains started. St.
Peter’s appearance was greeted by the usual outburst of cock-crowing
from the Lower Establishment.

“Dirty work at the cross-roads,” said Death dryly.

“I deserve it!” St. Peter grunted, “but think what it must mean for
Judas.”

He shouldered into the thick of the confusion where the pickets coaxed,
threatened, implored, and in extreme cases bodily shoved the wearied
men and women past the voluble and insinuating spirits who strove to
draw them aside.

A Shropshire Yeoman had just accepted, together with a forged pass, the
assurance of a genial runner of the Lower Establishment that Heaven
lay round the corner, and was being stealthily steered thither, when
a large hand jerked him back, another took the runner in the chest,
and some one thundered: “Get out, you crimp!” The situation was then
vividly explained to the soldier in the language of the barrack-room.

“Don’t blame _me_, Guv’nor,” the man expostulated. “I ’aven’t seen a
woman, let alone angels, for umpteen months. I’m from Joppa. Where ’you
from?”

“Northampton,” was the answer. “Rein back and keep by me.”

“What? You ain’t ever Charley B. that my dad used to tell about? I
thought you always said----”

“I shall say a deal more soon. Your Sergeant’s talking to that woman in
red. Fetch him in--quick!”

Meantime, a sunken-eyed Scots officer, utterly lost to the riot
around, was being buttonholed by a person of reverend aspect who
explained to him, that, by the logic of his own ancestral creed, not
only was the Highlander irrevocably damned, but that his damnation had
been predetermined before Earth was made.

“It’s unanswerable--just unanswerable,” said the young man sorrowfully.
“I’ll be with ye.” He was moving off, when a smallish figure
interposed, not without dignity.

“Monsieur,” it said, “would it be of any comfort to you to know that
_I_ am--I was--John Calvin?” At this the reverend one cursed and swore
like the lost Soul he was, while the Highlander turned to discuss with
Calvin, pacing towards The Gate, some alterations in the fabric of a
work of fiction called the _Institutio_.

Others were not so easily held. A certain Woman, with loosened hair,
bare arms, flashing eyes and dancing feet, shepherded her knot of
waverers, hoarse and exhausted. When the taunt broke out against her
from the opposing line: “Tell ’em what you were! Tell ’em if you dare!”
she answered unflinchingly, as did Judas who, worming through the crowd
like an Armenian carpet-vendor, peddled his shame aloud that it might
give strength to others.

“Yes,” he would cry, “I am everything they say, but if _I_’m here it
must be a moral cert for _you_, gents. This way, please. Many mansions,
gentlemen! Go-ood billets! Don’t you notice these low people, Sar.
_Plees_ keep hope, gentlemen!”

When there were cases that cried to him from the ground--poor souls
who could not stick it but had found their way out with a rifle
and a boot-lace, he would tell them of his own end, till he made
them contemptuous enough to rise up and curse him. Here St. Luke’s
imperturbable bedside manner backed and strengthened the other’s
almost too oriental flux of words.

In this fashion and step by step, all the day’s Convoy were piloted
past that danger-point where the Lower Establishment are, for reasons
not given us, allowed to ply their trade. The pickets dropped to the
rear, relaxed, and compared notes.

“What always impresses me most,” said Death to St. Peter, “is the
sheeplike simplicity of the intellectual mind.” He had been watching
one of the pickets apparently overwhelmed by the arguments of an
advanced atheist who--so hot in his argument that he was deaf to the
offers of the Lower Establishment to make him a god--had stalked,
talking hard--while the picket always gave ground before him--straight
past the Broad Road.

“He was plaiting of long-tagged epigrams,” the sober-faced picket
smiled. “Give that sort only an ear and they’ll follow ye gobbling like
turkeys.”

“And John held his peace through it all,” a full fresh voice broke in.
“‘It may be so,’ says John. ‘Doubtless, in your belief, it _is_ so,’
says John. ‘Your words move me mightily,’ says John, and gorges his
own beliefs like a pike going backwards. And that young fool, so busy
spinning words--words--words--that he trips past Hell Mouth without
seeing it!... Who’s yonder, Joan?”

“One of your English. ’Always late. Look!” A young girl with
short-cropped hair pointed with her sword across the plain towards a
single faltering figure which made at first as though to overtake the
Convoy, but then turned left towards the Lower Establishment, who were
enthusiastically cheering him as a leader of enterprise.

“That’s my traitor,” said St. Peter. “He has no business to report to
the Lower Establishment before reporting to Convoy.”

The figure’s pace slackened as he neared the applauding line. He looked
over his shoulder once or twice, and then fairly turned tail and fled
again towards the still Convoy.

“Nobody ever gave me credit for anything I did,” he began, sobbing and
gesticulating. “They were all against me from the first. I only wanted
a little encouragement. It was a regular conspiracy, but _I_ showed ’em
what I could do! _I_ showed ’em! And--and--” he halted again. “Oh, God!
What are you going to do with _me_?”

No one offered any suggestion. He ranged sideways like a doubtful dog,
while across the plain the Lower Establishment murmured seductively.
All eyes turned to St. Peter.

“At this moment,” the Saint said half to himself, “I can’t recall any
precise ruling under which----”

“My own case?” the ever-ready Judas suggested.

“No-o! That’s making too much of it. And yet----”

“Oh, hurry up and get it over,” the man wailed, and told them all
that he had done, ending with the cry that none had ever recognised
his merits; neither his own narrow-minded people, his inefficient
employers, nor the snobbish jumped-up officers of his battalion.

“You see,” said St. Peter at the end. “It’s sheer vanity. It isn’t even
as if we had a woman to fall back upon.”

“Yet there was a woman or I’m mistaken,” said the picket with the
pleasing voice who had praised John.

“Eh--what? When?” St. Peter turned swiftly on the speaker. “Who was the
woman?”

“The wise woman of Tekoah,” came the smooth answer. “I remember,
because that verse was the private heart of my plays--some of ’em.”

But the Saint was not listening. “You have it!” he cried. “Samuel Two,
Double Fourteen. To think that _I_ should have forgotten! ‘For we
must needs die and are as water spilled on the ground which cannot be
gathered up again. Neither doth God respect any person, _yet_--’ Here
you! Listen to this!”

The man stepped forward and stood to attention. Some one took his cap
as Judas and the picket John closed up beside him.

“‘_Yet doth He devise means_ (d’you understand that?) _devise means
that His banished be not expelled from Him!_’ This covers your case. I
don’t know what the means will be. That’s for you to find out. They’ll
tell you yonder.” He nodded towards the now silent Lower Establishment
as he scribbled on a pass. “Take this paper over to them and report for
duty there. You’ll have a thin time of it; but they won’t keep you a
day longer than I’ve put down. Escort!”

“Does--does that mean there’s any hope?” the man stammered.

“Yes--I’ll show you the way,” Judas whispered. “I’ve lived there--a
very long time!”

“I’ll bear you company a piece,” said John, on his left flank.
“There’ll be Despair to deal with. Heart up, Mr. Littlesoul!”

The three wheeled off, and the Convoy watched them grow smaller and
smaller across the plain.

St. Peter smiled benignantly and rubbed his hands.

“And now we’re rested,” said he, “I think we might make a push for
billets this evening, gentlemen, eh?”

The pickets fell in, guardians no longer but friends and companions
all down the line. There was a little burst of cheering and the whole
Convoy strode away towards the not so distant Gate.

The Saint and Death stayed behind to rest awhile. It was a heavenly
evening. They could hear the whistle of the low-flighting Cherubim,
clear and sharp, under the diviner note of some released Seraph’s
wings, where, his errand accomplished, he plunged three or four stars
deep into the cool Baths of Hercules; the steady dynamo-like hum of the
nearer planets on their axes; and, as the hush deepened, the surprised
little sigh of some new-born sun a universe of universes away. But
their minds were with the Convoy that their eyes followed.

Said St. Peter proudly at last: “If those people of mine had seen that
fellow stripped of all hope in front of ’em, I doubt if they could have
marched another yard to-night. Watch ’em stepping out now, though!
Aren’t they human?”

“To whom do you say it?” Death answered with something of a tired
smile. “I’m more than human. _I_’ve got to die some time or other. But
all other created Beings--afterwards....”

“_I_ know,” said St. Peter softly. “And that is why I love you, O
Azrael!”

For now they were alone Death had, of course, returned to his true
majestic shape--that only One of all created beings who is doomed to
perish utterly, and knows it.

“Well, that’s _that_--for me!” Death concluded as he rose. “And yet--”
he glanced towards the empty plain where the Lower Establishment had
withdrawn with their prisoner. “‘Yet doth He devise means.’”




THE SUPPORTS

                    (_Song of the Waiting Seraphs._)


    _Full Chorus._

    _To Him Who bade the Heavens abide yet cease not from their motion,
    To Him Who tames the moonstruck tide twice a day round Ocean----
    Let His Names be magnified in all poor folks’ devotion!_

    _Powers and Gifts._

    Not for Prophecies or Powers, Visions, Gifts, or Graces,
    But the unregardful hours that grind us in our places
    With the burden on our backs, the weather in our faces.

    _Toils._

    Not for any Miracle of easy Loaves and Fishes,
    But for doing, ’gainst our will, work against our wishes--
    Such as finding food to fill daily-emptied dishes.

    _Glories._

    Not for Voices, Harps or Wings or rapt illumination,
    But the grosser Self that springs of use and occupation,
    Unto which the Spirit clings as her last salvation.

    _Powers, Glories, Toils, and Gifts._

    _(He Who launched our Ship of Fools many anchors gave us,
    Lest one gale should start them all--one collision stave us.
                  Praise Him for the petty creeds
                  That prescribe in paltry needs,
    Solemn rites to trivial deeds and, by small things, save us!)_

    _Services and Loves._

    Heart may fail, and Strength outwear, and Purpose turn to Loathing,
    But the everyday affair of business, meals, and clothing,
    Builds a bulkhead ’twixt Despair and the Edge of Nothing.

    _Patiences._

    _(Praise Him, then, Who orders it that, though Earth be flaring
                  And the crazy skies are lit
                  By the searchlights of the Pit,
    Man should not depart a whit from his wonted bearing.)_

    _Hopes._

    He Who bids the wild-swans’ host still maintain their flight on
                  Air-roads over islands lost--
                  Ages since ’neath Ocean lost--
    Beaches of some sunken coast their fathers would alight on--

    _Faiths._

    _He shall guide us through this dark, not by new-blown glories,
    But by every ancient mark our fathers used before us,
    Till our children ground their ark where the proper shore is._

    _Services, Patiences, Faiths, Hopes, and Loves._

    He Who used the clay that clings on our boots to make us,
    Shall not suffer earthly things to remove or shake us:
            But, when Man denies His Lord,
            Habit without Fleet or Sword
            (Custom without threat or word)
    Sees the ancient fanes restored--the timeless rites o’ertake us.

    _Full Chorus._

    _For He Who makes the Mountains smoke and rives the Hills asunder,
            And, to-morrow, leads the grass--
            Mere unconquerable grass--
    Where the fuming crater was, to heal and hide it under,
            He shall not--He shall not--
    Shall not lay on us the yoke of too long Fear and Wonder!_




THE EYE OF ALLAH




UNTIMELY


    Nothing in life has been made by man for man’s using
    But it was shown long since to man in ages
    Lost as the name of the maker of it,

    Who received oppression and scorn for his wages--
    Hate, avoidance, and scorn in his daily dealings--
    Until he perished, wholly confounded.

    More to be pitied than he are the wise
    Souls which foresaw the evil of loosing
    Knowledge or Art before time, and aborted
    Noble devices and deep-wrought healings,
    Lest offence should arise.

    Heaven delivers on earth the Hour that cannot be thwarted,
    Neither advanced, at the price of a world or a soul, and its Prophet
    Comes through the blood of the vanguards who dreamed
                                             --too soon--it had sounded.




THE EYE OF ALLAH


The Cantor of St. Illod’s being far too enthusiastic a musician to
concern himself with its Library, the Sub-Cantor, who idolised every
detail of the work, was tidying up, after two hours’ writing and
dictation in the Scriptorium. The copying-monks handed him in their
sheets--it was a plain Four Gospels ordered by an Abbot at Evesham--and
filed out to vespers. John Otho, better known as John of Burgos, took
no heed. He was burnishing a tiny boss of gold in his miniature of
the Annunciation for his Gospel of St. Luke, which it was hoped that
Cardinal Falcodi, the Papal Legate, might later be pleased to accept.

“Break off, John,” said the Sub-Cantor in an undertone.

“Eh? Gone, have they? I never heard. Hold a minute, Clement.”

The Sub-Cantor waited patiently. He had known John more than a dozen
years, coming and going at St. Illod’s, to which monastery John, when
abroad, always said he belonged. The claim was gladly allowed for, more
even than other Fitz Otho’s, he seemed to carry all the Arts under his
hand, and most of their practical receipts under his hood.

The Sub-Cantor looked over his shoulder at the pinned-down sheet where
the first words of the Magnificat were built up in gold washed with
red-lac for a background to the Virgin’s hardly yet fired halo. She was
shown, hands joined in wonder, at a lattice of infinitely intricate
arabesque, round the edges of which sprays of orange-bloom seemed
to load the blue hot air that carried back over the minute parched
landscape in the middle distance.

“You’ve made her all Jewess,” said the Sub-Cantor, studying the
olive-flushed cheek and the eyes charged with foreknowledge.

“What else was Our Lady?” John slipped out the pins. “Listen, Clement.
If I do not come back, this goes into my Great Luke, whoever finishes
it.” He slid the drawing between its guard-papers.

“Then you’re for Burgos again--as I heard?”

“In two days. The new Cathedral yonder--but they’re slower than the
Wrath of God, those masons--is good for the soul.”

“_Thy_ soul?” The Sub-Cantor seemed doubtful.

“Even mine, by your permission. And down south--on the edge of the
Conquered Countries--Granada way--there’s some Moorish diaper-work
that’s wholesome. It allays vain thought and draws it toward the
picture--as you felt, just now, in my Annunciation.”

“She--it was very beautiful. No wonder you go. But you’ll not forget
your absolution, John?”

“Surely.” This was a precaution John no more omitted on the eve of his
travels than he did the recutting of the tonsure which he had provided
himself with in his youth, somewhere near Ghent. The mark gave him
privilege of clergy at a pinch, and a certain consideration on the road
always.

“You’ll not forget, either, what we need in the Scriptorium. There’s
no more true ultramarine in this world now. They mix it with that
German blue. And as for vermilion----”

“I’ll do my best always.”

“And Brother Thomas (this was the Infirmarian in charge of the
monastery hospital) he needs----”

“He’ll do his own asking. I’ll go over his side now, and get me
re-tonsured.”

John went down the stairs to the lane that divides the hospital and
cook-house from the back-cloisters. While he was being barbered,
Brother Thomas (St. Illod’s meek but deadly persistent Infirmarian)
gave him a list of drugs that he was to bring back from Spain by hook,
crook, or lawful purchase. Here they were surprised by the lame, dark
Abbot Stephen, in his fur-lined night-boots. Not that Stephen de Sautré
was any spy; but as a young man he had shared an unlucky Crusade, which
had ended, after a battle at Mansura, in two years’ captivity among the
Saracens at Cairo where men learn to walk softly. A fair huntsman and
hawker, a reasonable disciplinarian but a man of science above all,
and a Doctor of Medicine under one Ranulphus, Canon of St. Paul’s, his
heart was more in the monastery’s hospital work than its religious. He
checked their list interestedly, adding items of his own. After the
Infirmarian had withdrawn he gave John generous absolution, to cover
lapses by the way; for he did not hold with chance-bought Indulgences.

“And what seek you _this_ journey?” he demanded, sitting on the bench
beside the mortar and scales in the little warm cell for stored drugs.

“Devils, mostly,” said John, grinning.

“In Spain? Are not Abana and Pharphar----?”

John, to whom men were but matter for drawings, and well-born to boot
(since he was a de Sanford on his mother’s side), looked the Abbot
full in the face and--“Did _you_ find it so?” said he.

“No. They were in Cairo too. But what’s your special need of ’em?”

“For my Great Luke. He’s the master-hand of all Four when it comes to
devils.”

“No wonder. He was a physician. You’re not.”

“Heaven forbid! But I’m weary of our Church-pattern devils. They’re
only apes and goats and poultry conjoined. ’Good enough for plain
red-and-black Hells and Judgment Days--but not for me.”

“What makes you so choice in them?”

“Because it stands to reason and Art that there are all musters of
devils in Hell’s dealings. Those Seven, for example, that were haled
out of the Magdalene. They’d be she-devils--no kin at all to the beaked
and horned and bearded devils-general.”

The Abbot laughed.

“And see again! The devil that came out of the dumb man. What use is
snout or bill to _him_? He’d be faceless as a leper. Above all--God
send I live to do it!--the devils that entered the Gadarene swine.
They’d be--they’d be--I know not yet what they’d be, but they’d be
surpassing devils. I’d have ’em diverse as the Saints themselves. But
now, they’re all one pattern, for wall, window, or picture-work.”

“Go on, John. You’re deeper in this mystery than I.”

“Heaven forbid! But I say there’s respect due to devils, damned tho’
they be.”

“Dangerous doctrine.”

“My meaning is that if the shape of anything be worth man’s thought to
picture to man, it’s worth his best thought.”

“That’s safer. But I’m glad I’ve given you Absolution.”

“There’s less risk for a craftsman who deals with the outside shapes of
things--for Mother Church’s glory.”

“Maybe so, but John”--the Abbot’s hand almost touched John’s
sleeve--“tell me, now, is--is she Moorish or--or Hebrew?”

“She’s mine,” John returned.

“Is that enough?”

“I have found it so.”

“Well--ah well! It’s out of my jurisdiction but--how do they look at it
down yonder?”

“Oh, they drive nothing to a head in Spain--neither Church nor King,
bless them! There’s too many Moors and Jews to kill them all, and if
they chased ’em away there’d be no trade nor farming. Trust me, in the
Conquered Countries, from Seville to Granada, we live lovingly enough
together--Spaniard, Moor, and Jew. Ye see, _we_ ask no questions.”

“Yes--yes,” Stephen sighed. “And always there’s the hope, she may be
converted.”

“Oh yes, there’s always hope.”

The Abbot went on into the hospital. It was an easy age before Rome
tightened the screw as to clerical connections. If the lady were
not too forward, or the son too much his father’s beneficiary in
ecclesiastical preferments and levies, a good deal was overlooked. But,
as the Abbot had reason to recall, unions between Christian and Infidel
led to sorrow. None the less, when John with mule, mails, and man,
clattered off down the lane for Southampton and the sea, Stephen envied
him.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was back, twenty months later, in good hard case, and loaded down
with fairings. A lump of richest lazuli, a bar of orange-hearted
vermilion, and a small packet of dried beetles which make most glorious
scarlet, for the Sub-Cantor. Besides that, a few cubes of milky marble,
with yet a pink flush in them, which could be slaked and ground down
to incomparable background-stuff. There were quite half the drugs
that the Abbot and Thomas had demanded, and there was a long deep-red
cornelian necklace for the Abbot’s Lady--Anne of Norton. She received
it graciously, and asked where John had come by it.

“Near Granada,” he said.

“You left all well there?” Anne asked. (Maybe the Abbot had told her
something of John’s confession.)

“I left all in the hands of God.”

“Ah me! How long since?”

“Four months less eleven days.”

“Were you--with her?”

“In my arms. Childbed.”

“And?”

“The boy too. There is nothing now.”

Anne of Norton caught her breath.

“I think you’ll be glad of that,” she said after a while.

“Give me time, and maybe I’ll compass it. But not now.”

“You have your handwork and your art and--John--remember there’s no
jealousy in the grave.”

“Ye-es! I have my Art, and Heaven knows I’m jealous of none.”

“Thank God for that at least,” said Anne of Norton, the always ailing
woman who followed the Abbot with her sunk eyes. “And be sure I shall
treasure this,” she touched the beads, “as long as I shall live.”

“I brought--trusted--it to you for that,” he replied, and took leave.
When she told the Abbot how she had come by it, he said nothing, but as
he and Thomas were storing the drugs that John handed over in the cell
which backs on to the hospital kitchen-chimney, he observed, of a cake
of dried poppy-juice: “This has power to cut off all pain from a man’s
body.”

“I have seen it,” said John.

“But for pain of the soul there is, outside God’s Grace, but one drug;
and that is a man’s craft, learning, or other helpful motion of his own
mind.”

“That is coming to me, too,” was the answer.

John spent the next fair May day out in the woods with the monastery
swineherd and all the porkers; and returned loaded with flowers and
sprays of spring, to his own carefully kept place in the north bay of
the Scriptorium. There with his travelling sketch-books under his left
elbow, he sunk himself past all recollections in his Great Luke.

Brother Martin, Senior Copyist (who spoke about once a fortnight)
ventured to ask, later, how the work was going.

“All here!” John tapped his forehead with his pencil. “It has been
only waiting these months to--ah God!--be born. Are ye free of your
plain-copying, Martin?”

Brother Martin nodded. It was his pride that John of Burgos turned to
him, in spite of his seventy years, for really good page-work.

“Then see!” John laid out a new vellum--thin but flawless. “There’s no
better than this sheet from here to Paris. Yes! Smell it if you choose.
Wherefore--give me the compasses and I’ll set it out for you--if ye
make one letter lighter or darker than its next, I’ll stick ye like a
pig.”

“Never, John!” the old man beamed happily.

“But I will! Now, follow! Here and here, as I prick, and in script of
just this height to the hair’s-breadth, ye’ll scribe the thirty-first
and thirty-second verses of Eighth Luke.”

“Yes, the Gadarene Swine! ‘_And they besought him that he would not
command them to go out into the abyss. And there was a herd of many
swine_’”----Brother Martin naturally knew all the Gospels by heart.

“Just so! Down to ‘_and he suffered them_.’ Take your time to it. My
Magdalene has to come off my heart first.”

Brother Martin achieved the work so perfectly that John stole some soft
sweetmeats from the Abbot’s kitchen for his reward. The old man ate
them; then repented; then confessed and insisted on penance. At which
the Abbot, knowing there was but one way to reach the real sinner, set
him a book called _De Virtutibus Herbarum_ to fair-copy. St. Illod’s
had borrowed it from the gloomy Cistercians, who do not hold with
pretty things, and the crabbed text kept Martin busy just when John
wanted him for some rather specially spaced letterings.

“See now,” said the Sub-Cantor reprovingly. “You should not do such
things, John. Here’s Brother Martin on penance for your sake----”

“No--for my Great Luke. But I’ve paid the Abbot’s cook. I’ve drawn him
till his own scullions cannot keep straight-faced. _He_’ll not tell
again.”

“Unkindly done! And you’re out of favour with the Abbot too. He’s made
no sign to you since you came back--never asked you to high table.”

“I’ve been busy. Having eyes in his head, Stephen knew it. Clement,
there’s no Librarian from Durham to Torre fit to clean up after you.”

The Sub-Cantor stood on guard; he knew where John’s compliments
generally ended.

“But outside the Scriptorium----”

“Where I never go.” The Sub-Cantor had been excused even digging in the
garden, lest it should mar his wonderful book-binding hands.

“In all things outside the Scriptorium you are the master-fool of
Christendie. Take it from me, Clement. I’ve met many.”

“I take everything from you,” Clement smiled benignly. “You use me
worse than a singing-boy.”

They could hear one of that suffering breed in the cloister below,
squalling as the Cantor pulled his hair.

“God love you! So I do! But have you ever thought how I lie and steal
daily on my travels--yes, and for aught you know, murder--to fetch you
colours and earths?”

“True,” said just and conscience-stricken Clement. “I have often
thought that were I in the world--which God forbid!--I might be a
strong thief in some matters.”

Even Brother Martin, bent above his loathed _De Virtutibus_, laughed.

       *       *       *       *       *

But about mid-summer, Thomas the Infirmarian conveyed to John the
Abbot’s invitation to supper in his house that night, with the request
that he would bring with him anything that he had done for his Great
Luke.

“What’s toward?” said John, who had been wholly shut up in his work.

“Only one of his ‘wisdom’ dinners. You’ve sat at a few since you were a
man.”

“True: and mostly good. How would Stephen have us----?”

“Gown and hood over all. There will be a doctor from Salerno--one
Roger, an Italian. Wise and famous with the knife on the body. He’s
been in the Infirmary some ten days, helping me--even me!”

“’Never heard the name. But our Stephen’s _physicus_ before _sacerdos_,
always.”

“And his Lady has a sickness of some time. Roger came hither in chief
because of her.”

“Did he? Now I think of it, I have not seen the Lady Anne for a while.”

“Ye’ve seen nothing for a long while. She has been housed near a
month--they have to carry her abroad now.”

“So bad as that, then?”

“Roger of Salerno will not yet say what he thinks. But----”

“God pity Stephen!... Who else at table, beside thee?”

“An Oxford friar. Roger is his name also. A learned and famous
philosopher. And he holds his liquor too, valiantly.”

“Three doctors--counting Stephen. I’ve always found that means two
atheists.”

Thomas looked uneasily down his nose. “That’s a wicked proverb,” he
stammered. “You should not use it.”

“Hoh! Never come you the monk over me, Thomas! You’ve been Infirmarian
at St. Illod’s eleven years--and a lay-brother still. Why have you
never taken orders, all this while?”

“I--I am not worthy.”

“Ten times worthier than that new fat swine--Henry
Who’s-his-name--that takes the Infirmary Masses. He bullocks in with
the Viaticum, under your nose, when a sick man’s only faint from being
bled. So the man dies--of pure fear. Ye know it! I’ve watched your face
at such times. Take Orders, Didymus. You’ll have a little more medicine
and a little less Mass with your sick then; and they’ll live longer.”

“I am unworthy--unworthy,” Thomas repeated pitifully.

“Not you--but--to your own master you stand or fall. And now that my
work releases me for a while, I’ll drink with any philosopher out of
any school. And Thomas,” he coaxed, “a hot bath for me in the Infirmary
before vespers.”

       *       *       *       *       *

When the Abbot’s perfectly cooked and served meal had ended, and the
deep-fringed naperies were removed, and the Prior had sent in the keys
with word that all was fast in the Monastery, and the keys had been
duly returned with the word: “Make it so till Prime,” the Abbot and
his guests went out to cool themselves in an upper cloister that took
them, by way of the leads, to the South Choir side of the Triforium.
The summer sun was still strong, for it was barely six o’clock, but the
Abbey Church, of course, lay in her wonted darkness. Lights were being
lit for choir-practice thirty feet below.

“Our Cantor gives them no rest,” the Abbot whispered. “Stand by this
pillar and we’ll hear what he’s driving them at now.”

“Remember all!” the Cantor’s hard voice came up. “This is the soul
of Bernard himself, attacking our evil world. Take it quicker than
yesterday, and throw all your words clean-bitten from you. In the loft
there! Begin!”

The organ broke out for an instant, alone and raging. Then the voices
crashed together into that first fierce line of the “_De Contemptu
Mundi_.”[5]

“_Hora novissima_--_tempora pessima_”--a dead pause till, the assenting
_sunt_ broke, like a sob, out of the darkness, and one boy’s voice,
clearer than silver trumpets, returned the long-drawn _vigilemus_.

“_Ecce minaciter, imminet Arbiter_” (organ and voices were leashed
together in terror and warning, breaking away liquidly to the
“_ille supremus_”). Then the tone-colours shifted for the prelude
to--“_Imminet, imminet, ut mala terminet_----”

“Stop! Again!” cried the Cantor; and gave his reasons a little more
roundly than was natural at choir-practice.

“Ah! Pity o’ man’s vanity! He’s guessed we are here. Come away!” said
the Abbot. Anne of Norton, in her carried chair, had been listening
too, further along the dark Triforium, with Roger of Salerno. John
heard her sob. On the way back, he asked Thomas how her health stood.
Before Thomas could reply the sharp-featured Italian doctor pushed
between them. “Following on our talk together, I judged it best to tell
her,” said he to Thomas.

“What?” John asked simply enough.

“What she knew already.” Roger of Salerno launched into a Greek
quotation to the effect that every woman knows all about everything.

“I have no Greek,” said John stiffly. Roger of Salerno had been giving
them a good deal of it, at dinner.

“Then I’ll come to you in Latin. Ovid hath it neatly. ‘_Utque malum
late solet immedicabile cancer_----’ but doubtless you know the rest,
worthy Sir.”

“Alas! My school-Latin’s but what I’ve gathered by the way from fools
professing to heal sick women. ‘_Hocus-pocus_----’ but doubtless you
know the rest, worthy Sir.”

Roger of Salerno was quite quiet till they regained the dining-room,
where the fire had been comforted and the dates, raisins, ginger, figs,
and cinnamon-scented sweetmeats set out, with the choicer wines, on the
after-table. The Abbot seated himself, drew off his ring, dropped it,
that all might hear the tinkle, into an empty silver cup, stretched his
feet towards the hearth, and looked at the great gilt and carved rose
in the barrel-roof. The silence that keeps from Compline to Matins had
closed on their world. The bull-necked Friar watched a ray of sunlight
split itself into colours on the rim of a crystal salt-cellar; Roger
of Salerno had re-opened some discussion with Brother Thomas on a type
of spotted fever that was baffling them both in England and abroad;
John took note of the keen profile, and--it might serve as a note for
the Great Luke--his hand moved to his bosom. The Abbot saw, and nodded
permission. John whipped out silver-point and sketch-book.

“Nay--modesty is good enough--but deliver your own opinion,” the
Italian was urging the Infirmarian. Out of courtesy to the foreigner
nearly all the talk was in table-Latin; more formal and more copious
than monk’s patter. Thomas began with his meek stammer.

“I confess myself at a loss for the cause of the fever unless--as Varro
saith in his _De Re Rustica_--certain small animals which the eye
cannot follow enter the body by the nose and mouth, and set up grave
diseases. On the other hand, this is not in Scripture.”

Roger of Salerno hunched head and shoulders like an angry cat. “Always
_that_!” he said, and John snatched down the twist of the thin lips.

“Never at rest, John,” the Abbot smiled at the artist. “You should
break off every two hours for prayers, as we do. St. Benedict was no
fool. Two hours is all that a man can carry the edge of his eye or
hand.”

“For copyists--yes. Brother Martin is not sure after one hour. But when
a man’s work takes him, he must go on till it lets him go.”

“Yes, that is the Demon of Socrates,” the Friar from Oxford rumbled
above his cup.

“The doctrine leans toward presumption,” said the Abbot. “Remember,
‘Shall mortal man be more just than his Maker?’”

“There is no danger of justice”; the Friar spoke bitterly. “But at
least Man might be suffered to go forward in his Art or his thought.
Yet if Mother Church sees or hears him move anyward, what says she?
‘No!’ Always ‘No.’”

“But if the little animals of Varro be invisible”--this was Roger of
Salerno to Thomas--“how are we any nearer to a cure?”

“By experiment”--the Friar wheeled round on them suddenly. “By reason
and experiment. The one is useless without the other. But Mother
Church----”

“Ay!” Roger de Salerno dashed at the fresh bait like a pike. “Listen,
Sirs. Her bishops--our Princes--strew our roads in Italy with carcasses
that they make for their pleasure or wrath. Beautiful corpses! Yet if
I--if we doctors--so much as raise the skin of one of them to look at
God’s fabric beneath, what says Mother Church? ‘Sacrilege! Stick to
your pigs and dogs, or you burn!’”

“And not Mother Church only!” the Friar chimed in. “_Every_ way we are
barred--barred by the words of some man, dead a thousand years, which
are held final. Who is any son of Adam that his one say-so should close
a door towards truth? I would not except even Peter Peregrinus, my own
great teacher.”

“Nor I Paul of Aegina,” Roger of Salerno cried. “Listen Sirs! Here is a
case to the very point. Apuleius affirmeth, if a man eat fasting of the
juice of the cut-leaved buttercup--_sceleratus_ we call it, which means
‘rascally’”--this with a condescending nod towards John--“his soul will
leave his body laughing. Now this is the lie more dangerous than truth,
since truth of a sort is in it.”

“He’s away!” whispered the Abbot despairingly.

“For the juice of that herb, I know by experiment, burns, blisters, and
wries the mouth. I know also the _rictus_, or pseudo-laughter on the
face of such as have perished by the strong poisons of herbs allied
to this ranunculus. Certainly that spasm resembles laughter. It seems
then, in my judgment, that Apuleius, having seen the body of one thus
poisoned, went off at score and wrote that the man died laughing.”

“Neither staying to observe, nor to confirm observation by experiment,”
added the Friar, frowning.

Stephen the Abbot cocked an eyebrow toward John.

“How think _you_?” said he.

“I’m no doctor,” John returned, “but I’d say Apuleius in all these
years might have been betrayed by his copyists. They take shortcuts to
save ’emselves trouble. Put case that Apuleius wrote the soul _seems
to_ leave the body laughing, after this poison. There’s not three
copyists in five (_my_ judgment) would not leave out the ‘seems to.’
For who’d question Apuleius? If it seemed so to him, so it must be.
Otherwise any child knows cut-leaved buttercup.”

“Have you knowledge of herbs?” Roger of Salerno asked curtly.

“Only, that when I was a boy in convent, I’ve made tetters round my
mouth and on my neck with buttercup-juice, to save going to prayer o’
cold nights.”

“Ah!” said Roger. “I profess no knowledge of tricks.” He turned aside,
stiffly.

“No matter! Now for your own tricks, John,” the tactful Abbot broke in.
“You shall show the doctors your Magdalene and your Gadarene Swine and
the devils.”

“Devils? Devils? _I_ have produced devils by means of drugs; and have
abolished them by the same means. Whether devils be external to mankind
or immanent, I have not yet pronounced.” Roger of Salerno was still
angry.

“Ye dare not,” snapped the Friar from Oxford. “Mother Church makes Her
own devils.”

“Not wholly! Our John has come back from Spain with brand-new ones.”
Abbot Stephen took the vellum handed to him, and laid it tenderly on
the table. They gathered to look. The Magdalene was drawn in palest,
almost transparent, grisaille, against a raging, swaying background of
woman-faced devils, each broke to and by her special sin, and each, one
could see, frenziedly straining against the Power that compelled her.

“I’ve never seen the like of this grey shadow-work,” said the Abbot.
“How came you by it?”

“_Non nobis!_ It came to me,” said John, not knowing he was a
generation or so ahead of his time in the use of that medium.

“Why is she so pale?” the Friar demanded.

“Evil has all come out of her--she’d take any colour now.”

“Ay, like light through glass. _I_ see.”

Roger of Salerno was looking in silence--his nose nearer and
nearer the page. “It is so,” he pronounced finally. “Thus it is in
epilepsy--mouth, eyes, and forehead--even to the droop of her wrist
there. Every sign of it! She will need restoratives, that woman, and,
afterwards, sleep natural. No poppy-juice, or she will vomit on her
waking. And thereafter--but I am not in my Schools.” He drew himself
up. “Sir,” said he, “you should be of Our calling. For, by the Snakes
of Aesculapius, you _see_!”

The two struck hands as equals.

“And how think you of the Seven Devils?” the Abbot went on.

These melted into convoluted flower- or flame-like bodies, ranging
in colour from phosphorescent green to the black purple of outworn
iniquity, whose hearts could be traced beating through their substance.
But, for sign of hope and the sane workings of life, to be regained,
the deep border was of conventionalised spring flowers and birds, all
crowned by a kingfisher in haste, atilt through a clump of yellow iris.

Roger of Salerno identified the herbs and spoke largely of their
virtues.

“And now, the Gadarene Swine,” said Stephen. John laid the picture on
the table.

Here were devils dishoused, in dread of being abolished to the Void,
huddling and hurtling together to force lodgment by every opening
into the brute bodies offered. Some of the swine fought the invasion,
foaming and jerking; some were surrendering to it, sleepily, as
to a luxurious back-scratching; others, wholly possessed, whirled
off in bucking droves for the lake beneath. In one corner the freed
man stretched out his limbs all restored to his control, and Our
Lord, seated, looked at him as questioning what he would make of his
deliverance.

“Devils indeed!” was the Friar’s comment. “But wholly a new sort.”

Some devils were mere lumps, with lobes and protuberances--a hint of a
fiend’s face peering through jelly-like walls. And there was a family
of impatient, globular devillings who had burst open the belly of their
smirking parent, and were revolving desperately towards their prey.
Others patterned themselves into rods, chains and ladders, single or
conjoined, round the throat and jaws of a shrieking sow, from whose
ear emerged the lashing, glassy tail of a devil that had made good his
refuge. And there were granulated and conglomerate devils, mixed up
with the foam and slaver where the attack was fiercest. Thence the eye
carried on to the insanely active backs of the downward-racing swine,
the swineherd’s aghast face, and his dog’s terror.

Said Roger of Salerno, “I pronounce that these were begotten of drugs.
They stand outside the rational mind.”

“Not these,” said Thomas the Infirmarian, who as a servant of
the Monastery should have asked his Abbot’s leave to speak. “Not
_these_--look!--in the bordure.”

The border to the picture was a diaper of irregular but balanced
compartments or cellules, where sat, swam, or weltered, devils in
blank, so to say--things as yet uninspired by Evil--indifferent, but
lawlessly outside imagination. Their shapes resembled, again, ladders,
chains, scourges, diamonds, aborted buds, or gravid phosphorescent
globes--some well-nigh star-like.

Roger of Salerno compared them to the obsessions of a Churchman’s mind.

“Malignant?” the Friar from Oxford questioned.

“‘Count everything unknown for horrible,’” Roger quoted with scorn.

“Not I. But they are marvellous--marvellous. I think----”

The Friar drew back. Thomas edged in to see better, and half opened his
mouth.

“Speak,” said Stephen, who had been watching him. “We are all in a sort
doctors here.”

“I would say then”--Thomas rushed at it as one putting out his life’s
belief at the stake--“that these lower shapes in the bordure may not be
so much hellish and malignant as models and patterns upon which John
has tricked out and embellished his proper devils among the swine above
there!”

“And that would signify?” said Roger of Salerno sharply.

“In my poor judgment, that he may have seen such shapes--without help
of drugs.”

“Now who--_who_”--said John of Burgos, after a round and unregarded
oath--“has made thee so wise of a sudden, my Doubter?”

“I wise? God forbid! Only John, remember--one winter six years ago--the
snowflakes melting on your sleeve at the cookhouse-door. You showed me
them through a little crystal, that made small things larger.”

“Yes. The Moors call such a glass the Eye of Allah,” John confirmed.

“You showed me them melting--six-sided. You called them, then, your
patterns.”

“True. Snow-flakes melt six-sided. I have used them for diaper-work
often.”

“Melting snow-flakes as seen through a glass? By art optical?” the
Friar asked.

“Art optical? _I_ have never heard!” Roger of Salerno cried.

“John,” said the Abbot of St. Illod’s commandingly, “was it--is it so?”

“In some sort,” John replied, “Thomas has the right of it. Those shapes
in the bordure were my workshop-patterns for the devils above. In _my_
craft, Salerno, we dare not drug. It kills hand and eye. My shapes are
to be seen honestly, in nature.”

The Abbot drew a bowl of rose-water towards him. “When I was prisoner
with--with the Saracens after Mansura,” he began, turning up the fold
of his long sleeve, “there were certain magicians--physicians--who
could show--” he dipped his third finger delicately in the water--“all
the firmament of Hell, as it were, in--” he shook off one drop from his
polished nail on to the polished table--“even such a supernaculum as
this.”

“But it must be foul water--not clean,” said John.

“Show us then--all--all,” said Stephen. “I would make sure--once more.”
The Abbot’s voice was official.

John drew from his bosom a stamped leather box, some six or eight
inches long, wherein, bedded on faded velvet, lay what looked like
silver-bound compasses of old box-wood, with a screw at the head which
opened or closed the legs to minute fractions. The legs terminated, not
in points, but spoon-shapedly, one spatula pierced with a metal-lined
hole less than a quarter of an inch across, the other with a half-inch
hole. Into this latter John, after carefully wiping with a silk rag,
slipped a metal cylinder that carried glass or crystal, it seemed, at
each end.

“Ah! Art optic!” said the Friar. “But what is that beneath it?”

It was a small swivelling sheet of polished silver no bigger than a
florin, which caught the light and concentrated it on the lesser hole.
John adjusted it without the Friar’s proffered help.

“And now to find a drop of water,” said he, picking up a small brush.

“Come to my upper cloister. The sun is on the leads still,” said the
Abbot, rising.

They followed him there. Half way along, a drip from a gutter had made
a greenish puddle in a worn stone. Very carefully, John dropped a drop
of it into the smaller hole of the compass-leg, and, steadying the
apparatus on a coping, worked the screw in the compass-joint, screwed
the cylinder, and swung the swivel of the mirror till he was satisfied.

“Good!” He peered through the thing. “My Shapes are all here. Now look,
Father! If they do not meet your eye at first, turn this nicked edge
here, left or right-handed.”

“I have not forgotten,” said the Abbot, taking his place. “Yes! They
are here--as they were in my time--my time past. There is no end to
them, I was told.... There _is_ no end!”

“The light will go. Oh, let me look! Suffer me to see, also!” the Friar
pleaded, almost shouldering Stephen from the eye-piece. The Abbot gave
way. His eyes were on time past. But the Friar, instead of looking,
turned the apparatus in his capable hands.

“Nay, nay,” John interrupted, for the man was already fiddling at the
screws. “Let the Doctor see.”

Roger of Salerno looked, minute after minute. John saw his blue-veined
cheek-bones turn white. He stepped back at last, as though stricken.

“It is a new world--a new world and--Oh, God Unjust!--I am old!”

“And now Thomas,” Stephen ordered.

John manipulated the tube for the Infirmarian, whose hands shook, and
he too looked long. “It is Life,” he said presently in a breaking
voice. “No Hell! Life created and rejoicing--the work of the Creator.
They live, even as I have dreamed. Then it was no sin for me to dream.
No sin--O God--no sin!”

He flung himself on his knees and began hysterically the _Benedicite
omnia Opera_.

“And now I will see how it is actuated,” said the Friar from Oxford,
thrusting forward again.

“Bring it within. The place is all eyes and ears,” said Stephen.

They walked quietly back along the leads, three English counties laid
out in evening sunshine around them; church upon church, monastery upon
monastery, cell after cell, and the bulk of a vast cathedral moored on
the edge of the banked shoals of sunset.

When they were at the after-table once more they sat down, all except
the Friar who went to the window and huddled bat-like over the thing.
“I see! I see!” he was repeating to himself.

“He’ll not hurt it,” said John. But the Abbot, staring in front of him,
like Roger of Salerno, did not hear. The Infirmarian’s head was on the
table between his shaking arms.

John reached for a cup of wine.

“It was shown to me,” the Abbot was speaking to himself, “in Cairo,
that man stands ever between two Infinities--of greatness and
littleness. Therefore, there is no end--either to life--or----”

“And _I_ stand on the edge of the grave,” snarled Roger of Salerno.
“Who pities _me_?”

“Hush!” said Thomas the Infirmarian. “The little creatures shall be
sanctified--sanctified to the service of His sick.”

“What need?” John of Burgos wiped his lips. “It shows no more than the
shapes of things. It gives good pictures. I had it at Granada. It was
brought from the East, they told me.”

Roger of Salerno laughed with an old man’s malice. “What of Mother
Church? Most Holy Mother Church? If it comes to Her ears that we have
spied into Her Hell without Her leave, where do we stand?”

“At the stake,” said the Abbot of St. Illod’s, and, raising his voice a
trifle. “You hear that? Roger Bacon, heard you that?”

The Friar turned from the window, clutching the compasses tighter.

“No, no!” he appealed. “Not with Falcodi--not with our English-hearted
Foulkes made Pope. He’s wise--he’s learned. He reads what I have put
forth. Foulkes would never suffer it.”

“‘Holy Pope is one thing, Holy Church another,’” Roger quoted.

“But I--_I_ can bear witness it is no Art Magic,” the Friar went on.
“Nothing is it, except Art optical--wisdom after trial and experiment,
mark you. I can prove it, and--my name weighs with men who dare think.”

“Find them!” croaked Roger of Salerno. “Five or six in all the world.
That makes less than fifty pounds by weight of ashes at the stake. I
have watched such men--reduced.”

“I will not give this up!” The Friar’s voice cracked in passion and
despair. “It would be to sin against the Light.”

“No, no! Let us--let us sanctify the little animals of Varro,” said
Thomas.

Stephen leaned forward, fished his ring out of the cup, and slipped it
on his finger. “My sons,” said he, “we have seen what we have seen.”

“That it is no magic but simple Art,” the Friar persisted.

“’Avails nothing. In the eyes of Mother Church we have seen more than
is permitted to man.”

“But it was Life--created and rejoicing,” said Thomas.

“To look into Hell as we shall be judged--as we shall be proved--to
have looked, is for priests only.”

“Or green-sick virgins on the road to sainthood who, for cause any
mid-wife could give you----”

The Abbot’s half-lifted hand checked Roger of Salerno’s outpouring.

“Nor may even priests see more in Hell than Church knows to be there.
John, there is respect due to Church as well as to Devils.”

“My trade’s the outside of things,” said John quietly. “I have my
patterns.”

“But you may need to look again for more,” the Friar said.

“In my craft, a thing done is done with. We go on to new shapes after
that.”

“And if we trespass beyond bounds, even in thought, we lie open to the
judgment of the Church,” the Abbot continued.

“But thou knowest--_knowest_!” Roger of Salerno had returned to the
attack. “Here’s all the world in darkness concerning the causes of
things--from the fever across the lane to thy Lady’s--thine own
Lady’s--eating malady. Think!”

“I have thought upon it, Salerno! I have thought indeed.”

Thomas the Infirmarian lifted his head again; and this time he did not
stammer at all. “As in the water, so in the blood must they rage and
war with each other! I have dreamed these ten years--I thought it was a
sin--but my dreams and Varro’s are true! Think on it again! Here’s the
Light under our very hand!”

“Quench it! You’d no more stand to roasting than--any other. I’ll give
you the case as Church--as I myself--would frame it. Our John here
returns from the Moors, and shows us a hell of devils contending in the
compass of one drop of water. Magic past clearance! You can hear the
faggots crackle.”

“But thou knowest! Thou hast seen it all before! For man’s poor sake!
For old friendship’s sake--Stephen!” The Friar was trying to stuff the
compasses into his bosom as he appealed.

“What Stephen de Sautré knows, you his friends know also. I would have
you, now, obey the Abbot of St. Illod’s. Give to me!” He held out his
ringed hand.

“May I--may John here--not even make a drawing of one--one screw?” said
the broken Friar, in spite of himself.

“Nowise!” Stephen took it over. “Your dagger, John. Sheathed will
serve.”

He unscrewed the metal cylinder, laid it on the table, and with the
dagger’s hilt smashed some crystal to sparkling dust which he swept
into a scooped hand and cast behind the hearth.

“It would seem,” said he, “the choice lies between two sins. To deny
the world a Light which is under our hand, or to enlighten the
world before her time. What you have seen, I saw long since among
the physicians at Cairo. And I know what doctrine they drew from it.
Hast _thou_ dreamed, Thomas? I also--with fuller knowledge. But this
birth, my sons, is untimely. It will be but the mother of more death,
more torture, more division, and greater darkness in this dark age.
Therefore I, who know both my world and the Church, take this Choice
on my conscience. Go! It is finished.”

He thrust the wooden part of the compasses deep among the beech logs
till all was burned.


[5] Hymn No. 226, A. and M., “The world is very evil.”




THE LAST ODE

(_Nov. 27_, B.C. 8.)

Horace, Ode 31, Bk. V.


    As watchers couched beneath a Bantine oak,
        Hearing the dawn-wind stir,
    Know that the present strength of night is broke
        Though no dawn threaten her
    Till dawn’s appointed hour--so Virgil died,
    Aware of change at hand, and prophesied

    Change upon all the Eternal Gods had made
        And on the Gods alike--
    Fated as dawn but, as the dawn, delayed
        Till the just hour should strike--

    A Star new-risen above the living and dead;
        And the lost shades that were our loves restored
    As lovers, and for ever. So he said;
        Having received the word....

    Maecenas waits me on the Esquiline:
        Thither to-night go I....
    And shall this dawn restore us, Virgil mine,
        To dawn? Beneath what sky?




THE GARDENER




THE GARDENER

    One grave to me was given,
      One watch till Judgment Day;
    And God looked down from Heaven
      And rolled the stone away.

    _One day in all the years,
      One hour in that one day,
    His Angel saw my tears,
      And rolled the stone away!_


Every one in the village knew that Helen Turrell did her duty by all
her world, and by none more honourably than by her only brother’s
unfortunate child. The village knew, too, that George Turrell had
tried his family severely since early youth, and were not surprised to
be told that, after many fresh starts given and thrown away, he, an
Inspector of Indian Police, had entangled himself with the daughter of
a retired non-commissioned officer, and had died of a fall from a horse
a few weeks before his child was born. Mercifully, George’s father and
mother were both dead, and though Helen, thirty-five and independent,
might well have washed her hands of the whole disgraceful affair, she
most nobly took charge, though she was, at the time, under threat of
lung trouble which had driven her to the South of France. She arranged
for the passage of the child and a nurse from Bombay, met them at
Marseilles, nursed the baby through an attack of infantile dysentery
due to the carelessness of the nurse, whom she had had to dismiss, and
at last, thin and worn but triumphant, brought the boy late in the
autumn, wholly restored, to her Hampshire home.

All these details were public property, for Helen was as open as the
day, and held that scandals are only increased by hushing them up. She
admitted that George had always been rather a black sheep, but things
might have been much worse if the mother had insisted on her right to
keep the boy. Luckily, it seemed that people of that class would do
almost anything for money, and, as George had always turned to her
in his scrapes, she felt herself justified--her friends agreed with
her--in cutting the whole non-commissioned officer connection, and
giving the child every advantage. A christening, by the Rector, under
the name of Michael, was the first step. So far as she knew herself,
she was not, she said, a child-lover, but, for all his faults, she had
been very fond of George, and she pointed out that little Michael had
his father’s mouth to a line; which made something to build upon.

As a matter of fact, it was the Turrell forehead, broad, low, and
well-shaped, with the widely-spaced eyes beneath it, that Michael had
most faithfully reproduced. His mouth was somewhat better cut than the
family type. But Helen, who would concede nothing good to his mother’s
side, vowed he was a Turrell all over, and, there being no one to
contradict, the likeness was established.

In a few years Michael took his place, as accepted as Helen had always
been--fearless, philosophical, and fairly good-looking. At six, he
wished to know why he could not call her “Mummy,” as other boys called
their mothers. She explained that she was only his auntie, and that
aunties were not quite the same as mummies, but that, if it gave him
pleasure, he might call her “Mummy” at bedtime, for a pet-name between
themselves.

Michael kept his secret most loyally, but Helen, as usual, explained
the fact to her friends; which when Michael heard, he raged.

“Why did you tell? _Why_ did you tell?” came at the end of the storm.

“Because it’s always best to tell the truth,” Helen answered, her arm
round him as he shook in his cot.

“All right, but when the troof’s ugly I don’t think it’s nice.”

“Don’t you, dear?”

“No, I don’t, and”--she felt the small body stiffen--“now you’ve told,
I won’t call you ‘Mummy’ any more--not even at bedtimes.”

“But isn’t that rather unkind?” said Helen, softly.

“I don’t care! I don’t care! You’ve hurted me in my insides and I’ll
hurt you back. I’ll hurt you as long as I live!”

“Don’t, oh, don’t talk like that, dear! You don’t know what----”

“I will! And when I’m dead I’ll hurt you worse!”

“Thank goodness, I shall be dead long before you, darling.”

“Huh! Emma says, ‘’Never know your luck.’” (Michael had been talking to
Helen’s elderly, flat-faced maid.) “Lots of little boys die quite soon.
So’ll I. _Then_ you’ll see!”

Helen caught her breath and moved towards the door, but the wail of
“Mummy! Mummy!” drew her back again, and the two wept together.

       *       *       *       *       *

At ten years old, after two terms at a prep. school, something or
somebody gave him the idea that his civil status was not quite regular.
He attacked Helen on the subject, breaking down her stammered defences
with the family directness.

“’Don’t believe a word of it,” he said, cheerily, at the end. “People
wouldn’t have talked like they did if my people had been married. But
don’t you bother, Auntie. I’ve found out all about my sort in English
Hist’ry and the Shakespeare bits. There was William the Conqueror
to begin with, and--oh, heaps more, and they all got on first-rate.
’Twon’t make any difference to you, my being _that_--will it?”

“As if anything could----” she began.

“All right. We won’t talk about it any more if it makes you cry.” He
never mentioned the thing again of his own will, but when, two years
later, he skilfully managed to have measles in the holidays, as his
temperature went up to the appointed one hundred and four he muttered
of nothing else, till Helen’s voice, piercing at last his delirium,
reached him with assurance that nothing on earth or beyond could make
any difference between them.

The terms at his public school and the wonderful Christmas, Easter,
and Summer holidays followed each other, variegated and glorious as
jewels on a string; and as jewels Helen treasured them. In due time
Michael developed his own interests, which ran their courses and gave
way to others; but his interest in Helen was constant and increasing
throughout. She repaid it with all that she had of affection or could
command of counsel and money; and since Michael was no fool, the War
took him just before what was like to have been a most promising
career.

He was to have gone up to Oxford, with a scholarship, in October. At
the end of August he was on the edge of joining the first holocaust of
public-school boys who threw themselves into the Line; but the captain
of his O.T.C., where he had been sergeant for nearly a year, headed him
off and steered him directly to a commission in a battalion so new that
half of it still wore the old Army red, and the other half was breeding
meningitis through living over-crowdedly in damp tents. Helen had been
shocked at the idea of direct enlistment.

“But it’s in the family,” Michael laughed.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you believed that old story all this
time?” said Helen. (Emma, her maid, had been dead now several years.)
“I gave you my word of honour--and I give it again--that--that it’s all
right. It is indeed.”

“Oh, _that_ doesn’t worry me. It never did,” he replied valiantly.
“What I meant was, I should have got into the show earlier if I’d
enlisted--like my grandfather.”

“Don’t talk like that! Are you afraid of it’s ending so soon, then?”

“No such luck. You know what K. says.”

“Yes. But my banker told me last Monday it couldn’t _possibly_ last
beyond Christmas--for financial reasons.”

“’Hope he’s right, but our Colonel--and he’s a Regular--says it’s going
to be a long job.”

Michael’s battalion was fortunate in that, by some chance which meant
several “leaves,” it was used for coast-defence among shallow trenches
on the Norfolk coast; thence sent north to watch the mouth of a Scotch
estuary, and, lastly, held for weeks on a baseless rumour of distant
service. But, the very day that Michael was to have met Helen for four
whole hours at a railway-junction up the line, it was hurled out, to
help make good the wastage of Loos, and he had only just time to send
her a wire of farewell.

In France luck again helped the battalion. It was put down near the
Salient, where it led a meritorious and unexacting life, while the
Somme was being manufactured; and enjoyed the peace of the Armentières
and Laventie sectors when that battle began. Finding that it had sound
views on protecting its own flanks and could dig, a prudent Commander
stole it out of its own Division, under pretence of helping to lay
telegraphs, and used it round Ypres at large.

A month later, and just after Michael had written Helen that there was
nothing special doing and therefore no need to worry, a shell-splinter
dropping out of a wet dawn killed him at once. The next shell uprooted
and laid down over the body what had been the foundation of a barn
wall, so neatly that none but an expert would have guessed that
anything unpleasant had happened.

       *       *       *       *       *

By this time the village was old in experience of war, and, English
fashion, had evolved a ritual to meet it. When the postmistress handed
her seven-year-old daughter the official telegram to take to Miss
Turrell, she observed to the Rector’s gardener: “It’s Miss Helen’s turn
now.” He replied, thinking of his own son: “Well, he’s lasted longer
than some.” The child herself came to the front-door weeping aloud,
because Master Michael had often given her sweets. Helen, presently,
found herself pulling down the house-blinds one after one with great
care, and saying earnestly to each: “Missing _always_ means dead.”
Then she took her place in the dreary procession that was impelled to
go through an inevitable series of unprofitable emotions. The Rector,
of course, preached hope and prophesied word, very soon, from a prison
camp. Several friends, too, told her perfectly truthful tales, but
always about other women, to whom, after months and months of silence,
their missing had been miraculously restored. Other people urged her
to communicate with infallible Secretaries of organisations who could
communicate with benevolent neutrals, who could extract accurate
information from the most secretive of Hun prison commandants. Helen
did and wrote and signed everything that was suggested or put before
her.

Once, on one of Michael’s leaves, he had taken her over a munition
factory, where she saw the progress of a shell from blank-iron to
the all but finished article. It struck her at the time that the
wretched thing was never left alone for a single second; and “I’m being
manufactured into a bereaved next-of-kin,” she told herself, as she
prepared her documents.

In due course, when all the organisations had deeply or sincerely
regretted their inability to trace, etc., something gave way within her
and all sensation--save of thankfulness for the release--came to an end
in blessed passivity. Michael had died and her world had stood still
and she had been one with the full shock of that arrest. Now she was
standing still and the world was going forward, but it did not concern
her--in no way or relation did it touch her. She knew this by the ease
with which she could slip Michael’s name into talk and incline her head
to the proper angle, at the proper murmur of sympathy.

In the blessed realisation of that relief, the Armistice with all its
bells broke over her and passed unheeded. At the end of another year
she had overcome her physical loathing of the living and returned
young, so that she could take them by the hand and almost sincerely
wish them well. She had no interest in any aftermath, national or
personal, of the War, but, moving at an immense distance, she sat on
various relief committees and held strong views--she heard herself
delivering them--about the site of the proposed village War Memorial.

Then there came to her, as next of kin, an official intimation,
backed by a page of a letter to her in indelible pencil, a silver
identity-disc, and a watch, to the effect that the body of Lieutenant
Michael Turrell had been found, identified, and re-interred in
Hagenzeele Third Military Cemetery--the letter of the row and the
grave’s number in that row duly given.

So Helen found herself moved on to another process of the
manufacture--to a world full of exultant or broken relatives, now
strong in the certainty that there was an altar upon earth where they
might lay their love. These soon told her, and by means of time-tables
made clear, how easy it was and how little it interfered with life’s
affairs to go and see one’s grave.

“_So_ different,” as the Rector’s wife said, “if he’d been killed in
Mesopotamia, or even Gallipoli.”

The agony of being waked up to some sort of second life drove Helen
across the Channel, where, in a new world of abbreviated titles,
she learnt that Hagenzeele Third could be comfortably reached by an
afternoon train which fitted in with the morning boat, and that there
was a comfortable little hotel not three kilometres from Hagenzeele
itself, where one could spend quite a comfortable night and see one’s
grave next morning. All this she had from a Central Authority who lived
in a board and tar-paper shed on the skirts of a razed city full of
whirling lime-dust and blown papers.

“By the way,” said he, “you know your grave, of course?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Helen, and showed its row and number typed on
Michael’s own little typewriter. The officer would have checked it, out
of one of his many books; but a large Lancashire woman thrust between
them and bade him tell her where she might find her son, who had been
corporal in the A.S.C. His proper name, she sobbed, was Anderson, but,
coming of respectable folk, he had of course enlisted under the name of
Smith; and had been killed at Dickiebush, in early ’Fifteen. She had
not his number nor did she know which of his two Christian names he
might have used with his alias; but her Cook’s tourist ticket expired
at the end of Easter week, and if by then she could not find her child
she should go mad. Whereupon she fell forward on Helen’s breast; but
the officer’s wife came out quickly from a little bedroom behind the
office, and the three of them lifted the woman on to the cot.

“They are often like this,” said the officer’s wife, loosening the
tight bonnet-strings. “Yesterday she said he’d been killed at Hooge.
Are you sure you know your grave? It makes such a difference.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Helen, and hurried out before the woman on the
bed should begin to lament again.

       *       *       *       *       *

Tea in a crowded mauve and blue striped wooden structure, with a false
front, carried her still further into the nightmare. She paid her bill
beside a stolid, plain-featured Englishwoman, who, hearing her inquire
about the train to Hagenzeele, volunteered to come with her.

“I’m going to Hagenzeele myself,” she explained. “Not to Hagenzeele
Third; mine is Sugar Factory, but they call it La Rosière now. It’s
just south of Hagenzeele Three. Have you got your room at the hotel
there?”

“Oh yes, thank you. I’ve wired.”

“That’s better. Sometimes the place is quite full, and at others
there’s hardly a soul. But they’ve put bathrooms into the old Lion
d’Or--that’s the hotel on the west side of Sugar Factory--and it draws
off a lot of people, luckily.”

“It’s all new to me. This is the first time I’ve been over.”

“Indeed! This is my ninth time since the Armistice. Not on my own
account. _I_ haven’t lost any one, thank God--but, like every one else,
I’ve a lot of friends at home who have. Coming over as often as I do,
I find it helps them to have some one just look at the--the place and
tell them about it afterwards. And one can take photos for them, too.
I get quite a list of commissions to execute.” She laughed nervously
and tapped her slung Kodak. “There are two or three to see at Sugar
Factory this time, and plenty of others in the cemeteries all about. My
system is to save them up, and arrange them, you know. And when I’ve
got enough commissions for one area to make it worth while, I pop over
and execute them. It _does_ comfort people.”

“I suppose so,” Helen answered, shivering as they entered the little
train.

“Of course it does. (Isn’t it lucky we’ve got window-seats?) It must
do or they wouldn’t ask one to do it, would they? I’ve a list of quite
twelve or fifteen commissions here”--she tapped the Kodak again--“I
must sort them out to-night. Oh, I forgot to ask you. What’s yours?”

“My nephew,” said Helen. “But I was very fond of him.”

“Ah yes! I sometimes wonder whether _they_ know after death? What do
you think?”

“Oh, I don’t--I haven’t dared to think much about that sort of thing,”
said Helen, almost lifting her hands to keep her off.

“Perhaps that’s better,” the woman answered. “The sense of loss must be
enough, I expect. Well, I won’t worry you any more.”

Helen was grateful, but when they reached the hotel Mrs. Scarsworth
(they had exchanged names) insisted on dining at the same table
with her, and after the meal, in the little, hideous salon full of
low-voiced relatives, took Helen through her “commissions” with
biographies of the dead, where she happened to know them, and sketches
of their next of kin. Helen endured till nearly half-past nine, ere she
fled to her room.

Almost at once there was a knock at her door and Mrs. Scarsworth
entered; her hands, holding the dreadful list, clasped before her.

“Yes--yes--_I_ know,” she began. “You’re sick of me, but I want to
tell you something. You--you aren’t married are you? Then perhaps you
won’t.... But it doesn’t matter. I’ve _got_ to tell some one. I can’t
go on any longer like this.”

“But please----” Mrs. Scarsworth had backed against the shut door, and
her mouth worked dryly.

“In a minute,” she said. “You--you know about these graves of mine
I was telling you about downstairs, just now? They really _are_
commissions. At least several of them are.” Her eye wandered round the
room. “What extraordinary wall-papers they have in Belgium, don’t you
think?... Yes. I swear they are commissions. But there’s _one_, d’you
see, and--and he was more to me than anything else in the world. Do
you understand?”

Helen nodded.

“More than any one else. And, of course, he oughtn’t to have been. He
ought to have been nothing to me. But he _was_. He _is_. That’s why I
do the commissions, you see. That’s all.”

“But why do you tell me?” Helen asked desperately.

“Because I’m _so_ tired of lying. Tired of lying--always lying--year
in and year out. When I don’t tell lies I’ve got to act ’em and I’ve
got to think ’em, always. _You_ don’t know what that means. He was
everything to me that he oughtn’t to have been--the one real thing--the
only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I’ve had to
pretend he wasn’t. I’ve had to watch every word I said, and think out
what lie I’d tell next, for years and years!”

“How many years?” Helen asked.

“Six years and four months before, and two and three-quarters after.
I’ve gone to him eight times, since. To-morrow’ll make the ninth,
and--and I can’t--I _can’t_ go to him again with nobody in the world
knowing. I want to be honest with some one before I go. Do you
understand? It doesn’t matter about _me_. I was never truthful, even as
a girl. But it isn’t worthy of _him_. So--so I--I had to tell you. I
can’t keep it up any longer. Oh, I can’t!”

She lifted her joined hands almost to the level of her mouth, and
brought them down sharply, still joined, to full arms’ length below her
waist. Helen reached forward, caught them, bowed her head over them,
and murmured: “Oh, my dear! My dear!” Mrs. Scarsworth stepped back, her
face all mottled.

“My God!” said she. “Is _that_ how you take it?”

Helen could not speak, the woman went out; but it was a long while
before Helen was able to sleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning Mrs. Scarsworth left early on her round of commissions,
and Helen walked alone to Hagenzeele Third. The place was still in
the making, and stood some five or six feet above the metalled road,
which it flanked for hundreds of yards. Culverts across a deep ditch
served for entrances through the unfinished boundary wall. She climbed
a few wooden-faced earthen steps and then met the entire crowded level
of the thing in one held breath. She did not know that Hagenzeele
Third counted twenty-one thousand dead already. All she saw was a
merciless sea of black crosses, bearing little strips of stamped tin
at all angles across their faces. She could distinguish no order or
arrangement in their mass; nothing but a waist-high wilderness as of
weeds stricken dead, rushing at her. She went forward, moved to the
left and the right hopelessly, wondering by what guidance she should
ever come to her own. A great distance away there was a line of
whiteness. It proved to be a block of some two or three hundred graves
whose headstones had already been set, whose flowers were planted out,
and whose new-sown grass showed green. Here she could see clear-cut
letters at the ends of the rows, and, referring to her slip, realised
that it was not here she must look.

A man knelt behind a line of headstones--evidently a gardener, for he
was firming a young plant in the soft earth. She went towards him,
her paper in her hand. He rose at her approach and without prelude or
salutation asked: “Who are you looking for?”

“Lieutenant Michael Turrell--my nephew,” said Helen slowly and word for
word, as she had many thousands of times in her life.

The man lifted his eyes and looked at her with infinite compassion
before he turned from the fresh-sown grass towards the naked black
crosses.

“Come with me,” he said, “and I will show you where your son lies.”

       *       *       *       *       *

When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the
distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went
away, supposing him to be the gardener.




THE BURDEN


    One grief on me is laid
      Each day of every year,
    Wherein no soul can aid,
      Whereof no soul can hear:
    Whereto no end is seen
      Except to grieve again--
    Ah, Mary Magdalene,
      Where is there greater pain?

    To dream on dear disgrace
      Each hour of every day--
    To bring no honest face
      To aught I do or say:
    To lie from morn till e’en--
      To know my lies are vain--
    Ah, Mary Magdalene,
      Where can be greater pain?

    To watch my steadfast fear
      Attend my every way
    Each day of every year--
      Each hour of every day:
    To burn, and chill between--
      To quake and rage again--
    Ah, Mary Magdalene,
      Where shall be greater pain?

    _One grave to me was given--
      To guard till Judgment Day--
    But God looked down from Heaven
      And rolled the Stone away!
    One day of all my years--
      One hour of that one day--
    His Angel saw my tears
      And rolled the Stone away!_


THE END




Transcriber’s Notes


A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public
domain.