Part 8

"Please don't," she said quietly, making no effort to withdraw her own.

"Women always say 'don't,'" he said. "I suppose they enjoy a sort of preliminary _tête-à-tête_ with conscience before committing an indiscretion."

"But I mean it, Dennis."

"All women mean it, my dear Vera."

Her color deepened, and she tried to release her hands from his, but his grip tightened until it hurt. She made no further attempt, and he moved still closer to her.

"Please let me go," she said, keeping her eyes steadily from him.

"You are inartistic."

"But I ask you--and you are a gentleman." Something of the dislike that he had always known she felt for him crept into her voice and left a nice tinge of irony.

"I have a valet and three addresses," he said, "and only pay my tailor once a year.... In most countries that gives one the standing of a gentleman."

She bit her lip and glanced quickly at him. His pulses, already stirred by wine and the intrigue of a midnight amour, leaped into a fever at the glimpse of burning eyes and lips that slightly trembled. He placed his hand on her shoulder and drew her face towards his.

"Why," she said hesitatingly--"why do you want to kiss me?"

Montague smiled. "The eternal question, Vera. It has trapped more men into proposals than all the wiles of a generation of fond mothers."

"But you don't love me," she said, her hands pressed against the lapels of his jacket in self-defense.

"On such a night as this," he said, "who could help but love you?"

"Dennis, please let me go--I mean it--I shall call for help."

His brow contracted with a sudden frown. "You come here," he said, "at midnight--into a deserted conservatory ... with me. Then, because I do what you knew from the start I would do, you suddenly decide to play 'Little Miss Prude from the Convent.'"

"I--I should not have come. I did not want to, Dennis."

His lips curved into a smile. "Then why did you?"

Her eyes pleaded with him not to prolong the scene, but he was mad with the joy of seeing this sensitive woman, who had so long kept him at a distance, caught in the meshes of his fascination, and he held her in his arms, confident of his power to sway her at his will.

"I fought against it, Dennis," she said quickly. "But--I had to come. Oh, why force me to say such a thing. Can you not see how unfair you are?"

She struggled to her feet, but he stood before her, barring the way to the door.

His breath came faster. This was a charming surrender! It had gracefulness, novelty, charm.... Only, something in her eyes warned him to come no closer.

"I have admitted, Dennis Montague," she said breathlessly, "that I came here because you fascinated me. It's true; you have always fascinated me. But I tell you that down in my heart I loathe you, detest you, for the coward that you are." Montague drew back as though fired upon by a masked battery. "In all the years I have known you," she went on furiously, as though fearing that her courage would leave her before the finish, "you have done nothing that was not selfish, mean, and cowardly--above everything else, cowardly. Look at the girls you have known----" Montague interrupted her with an impatient gesture, but she went on: "More than a dozen I could name have given you the depth and the sweetness of their first love, inspired by you, called forth by you. Do you realize what a woman's heart is and what she gives with it? And you--you are too cowardly to face marriage, too cowardly to love with your own heart--too selfish to leave women's hearts alone."

Montague took a cigarette-case from his pocket. "May I smoke?" he said coolly.

"You are a coward about your profession as well," she hurried on, ignoring his interruption. "Your mother, I know, had great dreams for you. She planned, worked, sacrificed for you. Yet you are too much of a coward seriously to face competition with what you choose to call 'the little legal minds of the city.'"

"And thirdly?" he said, lighting a cigarette.

"Yes, thirdly," she said desperately, although his easy nonchalance was fast undermining her courage, "you are not in the army. Yet no one could say that Dennis Montague is not fit. I can only presume, like every one else, that you are afraid."

"And lastly?" He was still calm, although keener eyes than hers would have noticed a dark, ominous flush under his eyes.

"And, lastly," she said, unconsciously repeating his formula, "you scoff at everything that is good and pure, sneering at religion, and drawing yourself aside from your fellow-creatures as though they were loathsome. Yet I say to you, Dennis, that there is not a man in the slums whose soul isn't far, far richer than yours. It is only a coward, afraid to face the real things, who scoffs at life."

Weak from the effort she had made, her voice subsided into silence and a cold sweat broke out on her brow and the palms of her hands.

"Will you smoke, Vera?"

"No, thanks," she answered faintly.

"Do. It would soothe you."

"No, I thank you." She repressed a sudden desire to fly from the conservatory. She had become suddenly afraid of the cool, smiling figure beside her.

"As far as girls are concerned," he said quietly, replacing the cigarette-case in his pocket, "just as long as they angle for us with every artifice of dress and rouge and coquetry, so long will they catch us and the consequences. As for the law, which my mother planned for me, I regret that my father left me the instincts of a gentleman, not of an attorney. I am not boring you?"

She made no reply.

"As for the army, I don't happen to be interested in the war. I disapprove of the crudeness of our Canadian civilization. I disapprove of England's lack of the artistic. I disapprove of German militarism, Scotch bagpipes, Swiss cheese, Chinese laundries, and American politics. Why should I fight for one when I disapprove of them all? As for my fellow-man, I shun the ordinary man of the streets because he does not think, read, or bathe often enough. I am not hostile to him; I merely ignore him. I am not a coward at all, my dear Vera; I am merely an artist among artisans."

He bowed gracefully. "Let us return to the dancing," he said.

With a frightened, inquiring glance, she took his arm, and without a word they left the conservatory. At the door of the ballroom they paused, and she laid a timid hand on his arm. It will ever be a mystery to men how women can love and despise the same object.

"Dennis," she said, "will you try to forget what I have said?" Her courage had gone, fled before his coolness and the fascination he held for her, though she had striven with all her womanhood to free herself from it.

"I wish to Heaven I could," he said grimly.

V

The morning sunshine invaded the rooms of Dennis Montague with pervading cheeriness. It was nearing the end of April, and a hundred birds sang of the winter wonders of arid Africa, and of the witcheries of the Nile, where Pygmies are at war with the butterflies, and the great god Memnon raises his mighty shout to greet the dawn of day.

Oblivious to the sunshine and everything but his thoughts, Montague lay in bed, and sought to wrestle with the truth he had heard the night before. It was impossible to dismiss the thing from his mind. His brain throbbed with resentment, questioning, searching her words--striving to convince himself that her charge of cowardice was the vituperation of an unrequited love. But it was useless. He could explain her actions, dissect her motives, applaud his own pose, but he could not eliminate the feeling of personal nausea which clung to him, as though he had suddenly sickened of his whole nature.

A knock at the door interrupted the thread of his thoughts, and his valet entered with a tray of breakfast-things.

"Good morning, sir." Sylvester carefully rearranged the tray on a little table beside the bed. "It's a beautiful morning, sir. There's great news too."

"What is it?"

"Canadians 'ave saved Calais, sir--leastways they've stopped them for the time."

"They're in action, eh?"

"'Orrible, too, sir; the paper says the Germans used poison gas."

"Good God!"

"Yes, sir--the French Colonials gave way, yelling that 'ell was let loose, and the Canadians went up and 'eld the line."

Montague put down the cup of coffee untasted. "What does it say--about casualties?"

"Why, sir it looks as if some battalions was pretty well wiped out. 'Ere's the paper, sir----"

"No--no. I don't want to see it. Tell me--it says ... the Canadians held against ... gas?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are our Toronto chaps in it?"

"Very 'eavy, sir. It seems as if the 'Ighland Brigade got it the worst."

Montague sank back on the pillow, his face grim and pallid.

"Come along, sir; 'ere's your breakfast."

His master gazed at the ceiling. "Sylvester," he said listlessly, "for a long time you have ministered to my body. What can you do for a soul that is starving?"

The valet beamed reassuringly. A large and varied experience as a servant to young gentlemen had inured him to morning-after repentances.

"That's all right, sir," he said, rubbing his hands genially. "A bromo-seltzer will fix you up. 'Ello, sir!" The sound of a military band drew him to the window. "It's one of the new battalions--blooming near a thousand of them. Seems like 'ome, it does, when the Guards used to do London in all their swankin' regimentals."

A battalion swung past in steady rhythmical tread to the stirring strains of the Welsh hymn of freedom, "Men of Harlech"--and there was a youthful vigorousness about the men, a suggestion of unconquerable manhood.... And on every man's face there was written pride and determination. For their comrades had been tried at Ypres.... They had held the line.... And, by the living God, the Hun would pay for that foul gas given to the wind to carry against defenseless men.

The last ranks of the battalion passed, and the music ceased as suddenly as it had come. The birds resumed their chorus, and William Sylvester his imperturbable mask of deference. Languidly Montague rose from his bed and lit a cigarette.

"Our civilization," he said quietly, "need not pride itself on raising those men. Men have always been brave since the beginning of time. The terrible failure of our age is that it has produced men like me--a coward."

Mr. Sylvester scratched his head. "Lord bless me, sir!" he ventured, "you're not a coward. Why, look at the jump you took at last year's horse show."

Montague turned on him with a vehemence that the valet had never before seen in his master. "I tell you I am a coward," he said fiercely. "Don't I know that my place is with these men? In that battalion that passed there are married men with families, there are only sons of widows, there are brothers, sweethearts. Who is there to care if I go? My death would not cause a single tear; and yet I stay--not that I am afraid of bullets or death, but because I know that I should have to sleep beside men who are filthy, unclean, and that I should grow filthy too. I abhor it. I detest it. Yet I stand aside and let others go."

"You--you are a gentleman, sir."

"A gentleman!" Montague laughed raspingly. "My own definition last night was 'a man with a valet and three addresses.' What a fool I was! No, I am not a gentleman. I have never been one. The greatest gentleman of all time was a carpenter. That is the truth I have to burn into my soul."

He sank into a chair, and shadows of fatigue marred his face. "Last night, Sylvester," he said slowly, "I lay awake for hours, and sometimes in the awful darkness that surrounds one when sleep refuses to come, things seem clearer and more cruel than in daylight. Last night I saw myself for the first time.... I do not say I shall change.... It is too late, I think...."

An hour later he left his flat, fully dressed, and strolled into the sun-lit streets. A newsboy dashed past, screaming in strident tones, "All night fighting--Canadian Line still holding;" and then, apparently feeling the announcement needed identification, he shrieked, "All about that great big European War."

Montague heard his name spoken. It was the ex-bank clerk, the young subaltern with the uninspired face.

"Good-bye," he said rather shyly.

"Where are you going?"

"Marching orders," said the other. "We leave here to-morrow. By jove, we've got something to fight for now!"

Montague murmured his best wishes and moved on, but the words that kept running through his brain were those of the boy's manager who had written "A decent enough fellow, but lacking in initiative."

VI

His walk, unplanned as it was, drew him towards the center of the city. He mechanically avoided the streets that were crowded, and, like a bit of flotsam on the ocean's surface, was guided and buffeted until, turning down a quiet side-street, he emerged upon the corner of a huge stone building. He glanced up, to realize that it was the Armories and was about to change his course when a recruiting sergeant, noticing his hesitation, stepped up to him.

"Beg pardon," he said, "but was you lookin' to sign up?"

"Sign up?" Montague repeated the words automatically.

"Sure--sign up with the Brindle's Battalion."

"The Brindle's Battalion?"

"Come off that parrot stuff," growled Sergeant Saunders.

Montague shook himself together. "I beg your pardon," he said stiffly.

The sergeant shuffled uneasily. "Say, don't be so dashed polite," he said, not ill-naturedly. "I'm here to get recruits. We're a tough bunch; we're a rough bunch; but we're men. Our boys ain't strong on polish or eddication, and they're no boozeless, non-smoking crowd; but they're straight, and they're game, and they're men."

"They're men," repeated Montague, dazed by a dizziness that seemed to wrap himself and the sergeant in an enveloping mist.

"That's what I said," reiterated Sergeant Saunders, mentally noting that he would make Montague drop his sing-song if he ever got the opportunity. "What do you say, old scout?"

Montague glanced up. "Will you take me?" he said.

"Will we take you?" A broad, brown hand grasped Montague's arm, and he found himself being led into a room in the Armories, where he discovered that his full name was Dennis Oliver Montague, that he was twenty-eight years of age, that he was an Anglican, and that his Uncle Charles was his next of kin. He further found that he was the property of His Majesty King George the Fifth for the duration of the war and six months after. "So 'elp me; and shove 'im in to the medico.--Glad you signed up, my lad; you'll never regret it. We've got a man's job for you, and--close that bleeding door, Nokes.--All right.--_Next!_"

With whirlwind rapidity Dennis stripped for the doctor, who pronounced him an excellent example of cannon-fodder; and, still dazed, he put on his clothes and emerged into the open air, a red band about his arm proclaiming to the world that he was now Private D. O. Montague, of the Brindle's Battalion, C.E.F. He gasped, shrugged his shoulders, then went home.

VII

Sergeant Skimps surveyed the squad of recruits with the eye of a man who had seen recruits for twenty years and was impervious to any emotion on the subject.

"You're soldiers now," he began, his dialect strongly reminiscent of Bow Bells; "you're in the service now, so, kiss me, 'Arry, get your 'air cut, all of yer. We don't go in for Paderooskies in the harmy. Then 'old yer 'eads hup and put yer chests hout has though you was somebody. You ain't, but don't go tellin' no one." (A gentle murmur greeted this sally.) "Halways respeck yer hofficers and non-commissioned hofficers, and don't go slapping the colonel on the back and hoffering 'im a cigar. You're in the harmy--that bloke at the hend, spit out that there tobacco--g'wan!--a filthy 'abit on parade, and it'll get C.B. for yer. Where do you 'ail from, hany'ow?--a nice specimen, I don't think--chewing when a sawgeant's talking to yer. Now, then, fall in--hanother 'arf-hour's drill."

For five hours that day alternately Sergeant Skimps talked, and his tired squad turned, marched, and wheeled about the gravel parade-ground. Weary to the point of exhaustion, already deaf to the interminable harangue of Sergeant Skimps, the hour of four-thirty found Montague with his first day in the army finished. He had only one desire--to seek his apartment, to feel the cool shower upon his body, and to lounge in languid repose in his dressing-gown, soothed by the inevitable cigarette. He broke away from the group, but was hailed by a ruddy-faced Little Englander, who had made various overtures to him during the day.

"Going up?" said the other, his accent proclaiming his British birth, tempered by ten years of Canadian citizenship.

"Yes," said Montague; "but I'm in a hurry."

"Right-o! I'm with you." He swung along beside Montague. "This is the life," he said cheerily.

"What?" asked Montague.

"Soldiering--a dollar ten a day, short hours, and no work--what ho!"

"Do you mean to say you like it?" asked Montague, wishing his companion reeked a little less of his recent exertions.

"Why not like it?" said Private Waller. "We're in it, ain't we?"

"I suppose so," said the other shortly.

Private Waller rubbed his hands together. "He's a sergeant, ain't he?"

"Do you mean that strutting bounder who drilled us to-day?"

"Lordee! don't let him hear you say that." The little man went pale at the thought. "Say, if you don't like him, just wait until you see Sergeant-Major 'Awkins."

A cockney of even ten years' Canadian citizenship loses his h's when excited. Montague began to wince under it, and wished a dozen times that his companion would hold his tongue and give him a chance to think, to separate the varied experiences of the day, and to edit his thoughts. He shrugged his shoulders and acknowledged the greeting of Mrs. Merryweather from a huge motor-car. Waller's eyes bulged.

"I say, you know some swells, don't you? What was you--a chauffeur?"

Montague considered. "No; I was a sort of social buffoon."

Waller considered. "Something in the plumbing line?" he ventured.

"Not exactly," answered Montague, and muttered, "Duration of the war--and six months after--with plebs like this!"

"I'm a carpenter by trade," vouchsafed Private Waller, and then emitted a shout of delight. "I say," he cried; "blime, if it ain't the missus!"

In a few moments they reached a little Englishwoman, not much more than a girl, who was guiding a baby-carriage containing a chubby little youngster of some two years of age.

"'Ello, Bill!" she said. "'Ow's the army?"

"Great," said her husband; "but meet my pal, Private Montague.--Private Montague, meet my old woman."

"Glad to know any friend of Bill's," said Mrs. Waller warmly.

Montague bowed. "Thank you," he said gravely. "You are giving up a lot in letting your husband go to the war."

"You said I had to, Emily."

The girl pouted. "'E would go."

"But you wanted to go, Bill."

"Of course; but I said----"

"I know--about the biby; but----"

"There you go again. Didn't you say I must?"

"Oh, well, Mr. Montague"--the little woman looked frankly into his gray-blue, unreadable eyes--"the biby's a boy, and when he grows up I cawn't say to 'im, ''Arry, your father was a slacker!' Now, can I, Mr. Montague?"

He made no answer, but a thoughtful look crept into the hard, unsmiling eyes.

"Come and have a bit of supper, pard?" Private Waller rubbed his hands together at the prospect.

"No--no, thanks," said Montague hastily. He was longing for privacy and the solace that comes with solitude. "Some other night, perhaps, when we have our uniforms."

"Good enough!" cried the cheery little man. "Then we'll do Queen Street together and show the girls--what ho--oh no!"

Montague raised his hat. "Good evening," he said.

"So long," said Private Waller. "See you in the morning."

When they were alone the husband turned to his young wife with an air of pride. "What do you think of my pal?" he asked, with an air of proprietorship.

"G'wan," said Emily disdainfully; "'e ain't your pal."

"He is, too."

"'E ain't!" She tossed her head. "Don't I know one when I sees one; me, the daughter of a footman in Lady Swankbourne's? 'E your pal! 'E blooming well ain't--'e's a _gentleman_!"

Far up the street Montague was striding towards his home, wondering if any one had seen him with the Wallers, or had heard the garrulous little cockney call him pard. Good heavens! what would his friends say; or, for that matter, how could he face Sylvester if he had been seen by that polite scion of servitude? "But I'll see it through," he muttered savagely, biting his lip, "if only to prove that the under-dog, like all other dogs, is a thing without a soul!"

VIII

It was early in November about eighteen months later that Vera Dalton, returning from her self-imposed task at a Military Convalescent Home, found a letter awaiting her which bore the heading that will cast its unique spell over us and our children for generations to come--"Somewhere in France."

Sorrow had come into her home, as it had into so many hundreds of others, but it had mellowed, not marred her womanliness.

Into the vortex of the nations she had seen the young men of Canada flinging themselves with laughing voices and sturdy courage. With the other women of the city she had watched the endless stream of youth as though, across the seas, some Hamelin Piper were playing an irresistible, compelling melody.... And still the cry was for more--more sons, more brothers, more fathers! Month after month the ceaseless crusade went on--month after month new battalions sprang into being, trained a short time, and then made for the sea.... Always the sea, waiting with its foaming restlessness to carry its human cargo to the slaughter.

The sea ... the sea....

It became the symbol of sacrifice to her. Across its turbulent expanse, youth was forfeiting its life for the blindness of the past. The hungry fire of war was being fed with human hearts.... But such is the nature of fire that what lives through it is imperishable.

A year ago Montague had gone with his battalion--without even a good-bye. She had never heard of him, but the ordeal of the flames had left him stripped of his artificiality as a tree stricken by a sudden frost is robbed in a moment of its foliage. It is not only the best in men that lives through war--vile passions vie with courage and great sacrifice.... But artificial things succumb and crumple with the scorching heat, and are blown into space by the breath of passions, base or noble--it matters not--they are _real_.

With trembling hands she opened the letter.

"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE.

"MY DEAR GIRL,--In a couple of hours we are going over the parapet to reach the German lines or gain oblivion--or worse. All around me the men I have worked with, slept with, fought with, are writing to, or thinking of, some loved one at home. I do not know whether the love you once felt for me has died or not, but it was once strong enough to hurt me as no one had ever done before--to tear my soul out to where I could see its rottenness with my own eyes. I could not live with myself after that, and as you must have heard, for I believe it was a drawing-room jest for some time, I joined a battalion composed almost entirely of men from the factories, the workshops, and the streets.