Chapter 15

After a time she knew that there was a some one else, some one he was definitely relinquishing. She dared not speak to him about it. His young dignity was militant. But one night, as she dozed beside him in the chair, he reached the limit of his repression and told her.

"An actress!" she cried, sitting bolt upright. "_Du lieber_--an actress!"

"Not an actress," he corrected her gravely. "A--a dancer. But good. She's a very good girl. Even when I was--was whole"--raging bitterness there--"I was not good enough for her."

"No actress is good. And dancers!"

"You don't know what you are talking about," he said roughly, and turned his back to her. It was almost insulting to have her assist him to his attitude of contempt, and to prop him in it with pillows behind his back. Lying there he tried hard to remember that this woman belonged to his hereditary foes. He was succeeding in hating her when he felt her heavy hand on his head.

"Poor boy! Poor little one!" she said. And her voice was husky.

When at last he was moved from the hospital to the prison camp she pinned the sleeve of his ragged uniform across his chest and kissed him, to his great discomfiture. Then she went to the curtained corner that was her quarters and wept long and silently.

The prison camp was overcrowded. Early morning and late evening prisoners were lined up to be counted. There was a medley of languages--French, English, Arabic, Russian. The barracks were built round a muddy inclosure in which the men took what exercise they could.

One night a boy with a beautiful tenor voice sang Auld Lang Syne under the boy's window. He stood with his hand on the cuff of his empty sleeves and listened. And suddenly a great shame filled him, that with so many gone forever, with men dying every minute of every hour, back at the lines, he had been so obsessed with himself. He was still bitter, but the bitterness was that he could not go back again and fight.

When he had been in the camp a month he helped two British officers to escape. One of them had snubbed him in London months before. He apologised before he left.

"You're a man, Hamilton," he said. "All you Canadians are men. I've some things to tell when I get home."

The boy could not go with them. There would be canals to swim across, and there was his empty sleeve and weakness. He would never swim again, he thought. That night, as he looked at the empty beds of the men who had gone, he remembered his medals and smiled grimly.

He was learning to use his left hand. He wrote letters home with it for soldiers who could not write. He went into the prison hospital and wrote letters for those who would never go home. But he did not write to the girl.

* * * * *

He went back at last, when the hopelessly wounded were exchanged. To be branded "hopelessly wounded" was to him a stain, a stigma. It put him among the clutterers of the earth. It stranded him on the shore of life. Hopelessly wounded!

For, except what would never be whole, he was well again. True, confinement and poor food had kept him weak and white. His legs had a way of going shaky at nightfall. But once he knocked down an insolent Russian with his left hand, and began to feel his own man again. That the Russian was weak from starvation did not matter. The point to the boy was that he had made the attempt.

Providence has a curious way of letting two lives run along, each apparently independent of the other. Parallel lines they seem, hopeless of meeting. Converging lines really, destined, through long ages, by every deed that has been done to meet at a certain point and there fuse.

Edith had left Mabel, but not to go to Lethway. When nothing else remained that way was open. She no longer felt any horror--only a great distaste. But two weeks found her at her limit. She, who had rarely had more than just enough, now had nothing.

And no glory of sacrifice upheld her. She no longer believed that by removing the burden of her support she could save Mabel. It was clear that Mabel would not be saved. To go back and live on her, under the circumstances, was but a degree removed from the other thing that confronted her.

There is just a chance that, had she not known the boy, she would have killed herself. But again the curious change he had worked in her manifested itself. He thought suicide a wicked thing.

"I take it like this," he had said in his eager way: "life's a thing that's given us for some purpose. Maybe the purpose gets clouded--I'm afraid I'm an awful duffer at saying what I mean. But we've got to work it out, do you see? Or--or the whole scheme is upset."

It had seemed very clear then.

Then, on a day when the rare sun made even the rusty silk hats of clerks on tops of omnibuses to gleam, when the traffic glittered on the streets and the windows of silversmiths' shops shone painful to the eye, she met Lethway again.

The sun had made her reckless. Since the boy was gone life was wretchedness, but she clung to it. She had given up all hope of Cecil's return, and what she became mattered to no one else.

Perhaps, more than anything else, she craved companionship. In all her crowded young life she had never before been alone. Companionship and kindness. She would have followed to heel, like a dog, for a kind word.

Then she met Lethway. They walked through the park. When he left her her once clear, careless glance had a suggestion of furtiveness in it.

That afternoon she packed her trunk and sent it to an address he had given her. In her packing she came across the stick of cold cream, still in the pocket of the middy blouse. She flung it, as hard as she could, across the room.

She paid her bill with money Lethway had given her. She had exactly a sixpence of her own. She found herself in Trafalgar Square late in the afternoon. The great enlisting posters there caught her eye, filled her with bitterness.

"Your king and your country need you," she read. She had needed the boy, too, but this vast and impersonal thing, his mother country, had taken him from her--taken him and lost him. She wanted to stand by the poster and cry to the passing women to hold their men back. As she now knew she hated Lethway, she hated England.

She wandered on. Near Charing Cross she spent the sixpence for a bunch of lilies of the valley, because he had said once that she was like them. Then she was for throwing them in the street, remembering the thing she would soon be.

"For the wounded soldiers," said the flower girl. When she comprehended that, she made her way into the station. There was a great crowd, but something in her face made the crowd draw back and let her through. They nudged each other as she passed.

"Looking for some one, poor child!" said a girl and, following her, thrust the flowers she too carried into Edith's hand. She put them with the others, rather dazed.

* * * * *

To Cecil the journey had been a series of tragedies. Not his own. There were two hundred of them, officers and men, on the boat across the Channel. Blind, maimed, paralysed, in motley garments, they were hilariously happy. Every throb of the turbine engines was a thrust toward home. They sang, they cheered.

Now and then some one would shout: "Are we downhearted?" And crutches and canes would come down on the deck to the unanimous shout: "No!"

Folkestone had been trying, with its parade of cheerfulness, with kindly women on the platform serving tea and buns. In the railway coach to London, where the officers sat, a talking machine played steadily, and there were masses of flowers, violets and lilies of the valley. At Charing Cross was a great mass of people, and as they slowly disembarked he saw that many were crying. He was rather surprised. He had known London as a cold and unemotional place. It had treated him as an alien, had snubbed and ignored him.

He had been prepared to ask nothing of London, and it lay at his feet in tears.

Then he saw Edith.

Perhaps, when in the fullness of years the boy goes over to the life he so firmly believes awaits him, the one thing he will carry with him through the open door will be the look in her eyes when she saw him. Too precious a thing to lose, surely, even then. Such things make heaven.

"What did I tell you?" cried the girl who had given Edith her flowers. "She has found him. See, he has lost his arm. Look out--catch him!"

But he did not faint. He went even whiter, and looking at Edith he touched his empty sleeve.

"As if that would make any difference to her!" said the girl, who was in black. "Look at her face! She's got him."

Neither Edith nor the boy could speak. He was afraid of unmanly tears. His dignity was very dear to him. And the tragedy of his empty sleeve had her by the throat. So they went out together and the crowd opened to let them by.

* * * * *

At nine o'clock that night Lethway stormed through the stage entrance of the theatre and knocked viciously at the door of Mabel's dressing room. Receiving no attention, he opened the door and went in.

The room was full of flowers, and Mabel, ready to go on, was having her pink toes rouged for her barefoot dance.

"You've got a nerve!" she said coolly.

"Where's Edith?"

"I don't know and I don't care. She ran away, when I was stinting myself to keep her. I'm done. Now you go out and close that door, and when you want to enter a lady's dressing room, knock."

He looked at her with blazing hatred.

"Right-o!" was all he said. And he turned and left her to her flowers.

At exactly the same time Edith was entering the elevator of a small, very respectable hotel in Kensington. The boy, smiling, watched her in.

He did not kiss her, greatly to the disappointment of the hall porter. As the elevator rose the boy stood at salute, the fingers of his left hand to the brim of his shabby cap. In his eyes, as they followed her, was all that there is of love--love and a new understanding.

She had told him, and now he knew. His creed was still the same. Right was right and wrong was wrong. But he had learned of that shadowy No Man's Land between the lines, where many there were who fought their battles and were wounded, and even died.

As he turned and went out two men on crutches were passing along the quiet street. They recognised him in the light of the doorway, and stopped in front of him. Their voices rang out in cheerful unison:

"Are we downhearted? No!"

Their crutches struck the pavement with a resounding thump.

THE GAME

I

The Red Un was very red; even his freckles were red rather than copper-coloured. And he was more prodigal than most kings, for he had two crowns on his head. Also his hair grew in varying directions, like a wheatfields after a storm. He wore a coat without a tail, but with brass buttons to compensate, and a celluloid collar with a front attached. It was the Red Un's habit to dress first and wash after, as saving labour; instead of his neck he washed his collar.

The Red Un was the Chief Engineer's boy and rather more impressive than the Chief, who was apt to decry his own greatness. It was the Red Un's duty to look after the Chief, carry in his meals, make his bed, run errands, and remind him to get his hair cut now and then. It was the Red Un's pleasure to assist unassumingly in the surveillance of that part of the ship where the great god, Steam, ruled an underworld of trimmers and oilers and stokers and assistant engineers--and even, with reservations, the Chief. The Red Un kept a sharp eye on the runs and read the Chief's log daily--so much coal in the bunkers; so much water in the wells; so many engine-room miles in twenty-four hours--which, of course, are not sea miles exactly, there being currents and winds, and God knows what, to waste steam on.

The Red Un, like the assistants, was becoming a bear on the speed market. He had learned that, just when the engines get heated enough to work like demons, and there is a chance to break a record and get a letter from the management, some current or other will show up--or a fog, which takes the very tripe out of the cylinders and sends the bridge yapping for caution.

The Red Un was thirteen; and he made the Chief's bed by pulling the counterpane neatly and smoothly over the chaos underneath--and got away with it, the Chief being weary at night. Also, in odd moments he made life miserable for the crew. Up to shortly before, he had had to use much energy and all his wits to keep life in his starved little body; and even keeping an eye on the log and the Chief's hair, and slipping down into the engine room, where he had no manner of business, hardly used up his activities. However, he did not lie and he looked the Chief square in the eye, as man to man.

The Chief had salvaged him out of the Hudson, when what he had taken for a bobbing red tomato had suddenly revealed a blue face and two set and desperate eyes. After that the big Scot had forgotten all about him, except the next day when he put on his shoes, which had shrunk in the drying. The liner finished coaling about that time, took on passengers, luggage, steamer baskets and a pilot, and, having stowed the first two, examined the cards on the third and dropped the last, was pointed, nose to the east wind, for the race.

The arrow on the twin dials pointed to Stand By! for the long voyage--three thousand miles or so without a stop. The gong, and then Half Ahead!--great elbows thrust up and down, up and down; the grunt of power overcoming inertia, followed by the easy swing of limitless strength. Full Ahead!--and so off again for the great struggle--man's wits and the engines and the mercy of God against the upreaching of the sea.

The Chief, who sometimes dreamed his greatness, but who ignored it waking, snapped his watch shut.

"Eleven-eleven!" he said to the Senior Second. "Well, here's luck!" That is what he said aloud; to himself he always said a bit of a prayer, realising perhaps even more than the bridge how little man's wits count in the great equation. He generally said something to the effect that "After all, it's up to Thee, O Lord!"

He shook hands with the Senior Second, which also was his habit; and he smiled too, but rather grimly. They were playing a bit of a game, you see; and so far the Chief had won all the tricks--just an amusing little game and nothing whatever to do with a woman; the Second was married, but the Chief had put all such things out of his head years before, when he was a youngster and sailing to the Plate. Out of his head, quite certainly; but who dreams of greatness for himself alone? So the Chief, having glanced about and run his hand caressingly over various fearful and pounding steel creatures, had climbed up the blistering metal staircase to his room at the top and was proceeding to put down eleven-eleven and various other things that the first cabin never even heard of, when he felt that he was being stared at from behind.

Now and then, after shore leave, a drunken trimmer or stoker gets up to the Chief's room and has to be subdued by the power of executive eye or the strength of executive arm. As most Chiefs are Scots, the eye is generally sufficient. So the Chief, mightily ferocious, turned about, eye set, as one may say, to annihilate a six-foot trimmer in filthy overalls and a hangover, and saw--a small red-haired boy in a Turkish towel.

The boy quailed rather at the eye, but he had the courage of nothing to lose--not even a pair of breeches--and everything to gain.

"Please," said the apparition, "the pilot's gone, and you can't put me off!"

The Chief opened his mouth and shut it again. The mouth, and the modification of an eye set for a six-foot trimmer to an eye for a four-foot-ten urchin in a Turkish towel, produced a certain softening. The Red Un, who was like the Chief in that he earned his way by pitting his wits against relentless Nature, smiled a little--a surface smile, with fear just behind.

"The Captain's boy's my size; I could wear his clothes," he suggested.

Now, back in that time when the Chief had kept a woman's picture in his breast pocket instead of in a drawer of his desk, there had been small furtive hopes, the pride of the Scot to perpetuate his line, the desire of a man for a manchild. The Chief had buried all that in the desk drawer with the picture; but he had gone overboard in his best uniform to rescue a wharf-rat, and he had felt a curious sense of comfort when he held the cold little figure in his arms and was hauled on deck, sputtering dirty river water and broad Scotch, as was his way when excited.

"And where ha' ye been skulking since yesterday?" he demanded.

"In the bed where I was put till last night. This morning early----" he hesitated.

"Don't lie! Where were ye?"

"In a passenger's room, under a bed. When the passengers came aboard I had to get out."

"How did ye get here?"

This met with silence. Quite suddenly the Chief recognised the connivance of the crew, perhaps, or of a kindly stewardess.

"Who told you this was my cabin?" A smile this time, rather like the Senior Second's when the Chief and he had shaken hands.

"A nigger!" he said. "A coloured fella in a white suit."

There was not a darky on the boat. The Red Un, whose code was the truth when possible, but any lie to save a friend--and that's the code of a gentleman--sat, defiantly hopeful, arranging the towel to cover as much as possible of his small person.

"You're lying! Do you know what we do with liars on this ship? We throw them overboard!"

"Then I'm thinking," responded the Turkish towel, "that you'll be needing another Chief Engineer before long!"

Now, as it happened, the Chief had no boy that trip. The previous one had been adopted after the last trip by a childless couple who had liked the shape of his nose and the way his eyelashes curled on his cheek. The Chief looked at the Red Un; it was perfectly clear that no one would ever adopt him for the shape of his nose, and he apparently lacked lashes entirely. He rose and took a bathrobe from a hook on the door.

"Here," he said; "cover your legs wi' that, and say a prayer if ye' know wan. The Captain's a verra hard man wi' stowaways."

The Captain, however, who was a gentleman and a navigator and had a sense of humour also, was not hard with the Red Un. It being impracticable to take the boy to him, the great man made a special visit to the boy. The Red Un, in the Chief's bathrobe, sat on a chair, with his feet about four inches from the floor, and returned the Captain's glare with wide blue eyes.

"Is there any reason, young man, why I shouldn't order you to the lockup for the balance of this voyage?" the Captain demanded, extra grim, and trying not to smile.

"Well," said the Red Un, wiggling his legs nervously, "you'd have to feed me, wouldn't you? And I might as well work for my keep."

This being a fundamental truth on which most economics and all governments are founded, and the Captain having a boy of his own at home, he gave a grudging consent, for the sake of discipline, to the Red Un's working for his keep as the Chief's boy, and left. Outside the door he paused.

"The little devil's starved," he said. "Put some meat on those ribs, Chief, and--be a bit easy with him!"

This last was facetious, the Chief being known to have the heart of a child.

So the Red Un went on the payroll of the line, and requisition was made on the storekeeper for the short-tailed coat and the long trousers, and on the barber for a hair-cut. And in some curious way the Red Un and the Chief hit it off. It might have been a matter of red blood or of indomitable spirit.

Spirit enough and to spare had the Red Un. On the trip out he had licked the Captain's boy and the Purser's boy; on the incoming trip he had lashed the Doctor's boy to his triumphant mast, and only three days before he had settled a row in the stokehole by putting hot ashes down the back of a drunken trimmer, and changing his attitude from menace with a steel shovel to supplication and prayer.

He had no business in the stokehole, but by that time he knew every corner of the ship--called the engines by name and the men by epithets; had named one of the pumps Marguerite, after the Junior Second's best girl; and had taken violent partisanship in the eternal rivalry of the liner between the engine room and the bridge.

"Aw, gwan!" he said to the Captain's boy. "Where'd you and your Old Man be but for us? In a blasted steel tank, floating about on the bloomin' sea! What's a ship without insides?"

The Captain's boy, who was fourteen, and kept his bath sponge in a rubber bag, and shaved now and then with the Captain's razor, retorted in kind.

"You fellows below think you're the whole bally ship!" he said loftily. "Insides is all right--we need 'em in our business. But what'd your steel tank do, with the engines goin', if she wasn't bein' navigated? Steamin' in circles, like a tinklin' merry-go-round!"

It was some seconds after this that the Purser, a well-intentioned but interfering gentleman with a beard, received the kick that put him in dry dock for two days.

II

They were three days out of New York on the Red Un's second round trip when the Second, still playing the game and almost despairing, made a strategic move. The Red Un was laying out the Chief's luncheon on his desk--a clean napkin for a cloth; a glass; silver; a plate; and the menu from the first-cabin dining saloon. The menu was propped against a framed verse:

_But I ha' lived and I ha' worked! All thanks to Thee, Most High._

And as he placed the menu, the Red Un repeated the words from McAndrew's hymn. It had rather got him at first; it was a new philosophy of life. To give thanks for life was understandable, even if unnecessary. But thanks for work! There was another framed card above the desk, more within the Red Un's ken: "Cable crossing! Do not anchor here!"

The card worked well with the first class, resting in the Chief's cabin after the arduous labours of seeing the engines.

The Chief was below, flat on his back in a manhole looking for a staccato note that did not belong in his trained and orderly chorus. There was grease in his sandy hair, and the cranks were only a few inches from his nose. By opening the door the Red Un was able to command the cylinder tops, far below, and the fiddley, which is the roof of hell or a steel grating over the cylinders to walk on--depending on whether one is used to it or not. The Chief was naturally not in sight.

This gave the Red Un two minutes' leeway--two minutes for exploration. A drawer in the desk, always heretofore locked, was unfastened--that is, the bolt had been shot before the drawer was entirely closed. The Red Un was jealous of that drawer. In two voyages he had learned most of the Chief's history and, lacking one of his own, had appropriated it to himself. Thus it was not unusual for him to remark casually, as he stood behind the Chief's chair at dinner: "We'd better send this here postcard to Cousin Willie, at Edinburgh."

"Ou-ay!" the Chief would agree, and tear off the postcard of the ship that topped each day's menu; but, so far, all hints as to this one drawer had been futile; it remained the one barrier to their perfect confidence, the fly in the ointment of the Red Un's content.

Now, at last---- Below, a drop of grease in the Chief's eye set him wiping and cursing; over his head hammered, banged and lunged his great babies; in the stokehole a gaunt and grimy creature, yclept the Junior Second, stewed in his own sweat and yelled for steam.