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