Part 12

"Carrying on as though one was Rob Roy M'Gregor," John remarked mentally. Then as Mendel made a strangle-knot in the purple woollen comforter, adjusted his mittens and was about to re-lock the brown bag:

"Here," he said suddenly, "you had better keep this for putting those papers in. Can't leave them lying about on the bed! It's a bit old, like me, and the worse for wear, like both of us. But I shan't improve, and you're getting over the wound you got"--he jerked his thumb as indicating a locality,--"over there. In the trenches. In Belgium."

John explained at some length, Mendel seeming to expect it--that the bit of shrapnel in his lung-tissue was of exceedingly small size. That the symptoms of slight pain and breathlessness which had persisted long after the healing of the chest-wound, had almost vanished under treatment which had involved absolute rest: the avoidance of talking; a sitting position maintained constantly, and small but frequent doses of morphia.

"Morphia, eh? Dangerous stuff. Done with it now, let's hope!" said Mendel jerkily. "Put back the papers in the bag when I've gone, and mind you always keep it locked! Look here!--I've left you the key. And so you're convalescent!" He went on in quite a different tone, suggesting that he had only dropped in to inquire about the patient's health about five minutes previously: "Well, well! And going out of Hospital in another week--I think you said?"

"Not quite that, I didn't say!" pronounced John in his English. "The C.M.O. pronounces me Posh, and the Military Medical Examination Board'll be sure to certify me Fit for Service. I expect to be drafted out to the Mediterranean pretty shortly--my battalion of the Regiment having got transferred to the Eastern Expeditionary Force."

"Say not to Gallipoli, that shambles whither British soldiers are sent as sheep to the slaughter! Stay, I babble foolishly! Have I not knowledge that the British forces were yesterday withdrawn?"

"The hell you have! Why, where did you get it?"

"I made no reference to the Place of Burning. As to my knowledge, it is common to the elders among our people: a nation that received enlightenment from the Most High in dreams and visions, when the naked woad-daubed savages of these British Isles were howling to the Moon.... Make not calf's eyes at me! ... Did not naked savages cry news for hundreds of miles from hill-top to hill-top in the War with the Booren!--and was not the murder of the Gentile General Gordon at Khartoum known within the hour to the idolaters in Damascus! What I tell you is--there is no doubt at all!"

"But--but--they don't say a word about it in the papers!"

"_Prrtsch_! Is not that what the papers are for? And now, when do you think to get back to business? I mean business in the City--not that of killing other men. Though, as to the slaying of enemies," added Mendel, with strange yellow fire burning under his shaggy eyebrows, "the Kings and warriors of Hebrew race have slain when slaying was necessary. Saul his thousands and David his tens of thousands and Joshua--who knows how many hundreds of thousands of the Amorites and Canaanites! Nay, in your own veins there runs the blood of famous men of battle. You should inherit, with your frame and muscles, a measure of their fighting blood."

"Can that be why I sing whenever there's a scrap on?" asked John, reflectively rubbing his ear.

"When scraps are on what? Tell me again, employing plainer language," acidly commanded the old man.

"I mean, when I've--not often it's not been--worse luck!" returned the young man in his slipshod grammar, "but now and then--come really to close quarters with the--the enemy, you know." ...

"The Germans? Have no fear!--I am a Damascus Jew and not an Hebrew of the Ashkenazim.... It matters not a _yod_ to me how many you have killed. What is this about singing--when do you sing?"

John scowled and the dark red flush began to creep up under his dull brown skin. He said gruffly, avoiding the inquisitive old eyes that raked him, by looking past the edge of his sole remaining screen down the vista of the long, clean, shining ward, at the big fire blazing in a deep old-fashoined grate....

"Why, at first when I went to the Front--no amount of stabbing stuffed sacks and shooting at dummy men--and bombing others--could"--his prominent Adam's apple jumped as he gulped, and his speech came from him in spurts of broken sentences--"bring me to swallow the idea of--killing them. Well!--first two hours of the Real Thing--I was sick and cold with sheer fright--just gibbering with horror! Then we advanced, went in with the bayonet--and I--began to like it, quite! Though when--some of us--got back and I saw--a--a--Hair and a--a--Blood on my--on mine!--that I'd got to clean off or get Hell from the Sergeant!--I was as sick--I give you my word!--as a chap who's been ordered to drink a tin-cupful of cold-drawn castor without a bit o' lemon to chew. Well, then, you see, as I was retching, comes along the N.C.O. and hands me out some chaff! 'Sick now bedad!' he was a wiry little Irishman, with a brogue thicker than the mud--'Sick, are ye?--the big bucko that was singin' as he hoisted Huns to glory wid the Haymaker's Lift!' Well, of course I thought the beggar was joking--but next time--"

"Ay, yea!--what happened the next time?"

Old Mendel rubbed his withered hands and smiling widely, revealed the fact that his still sound and white teeth were worn down quite level with the gums.

"Next time? ..."

"Next time was--rather a personal affair. Mind you--I've never talked about this to any other Service fellow. There's something different about their point of view. It was in March last--we'd been doing reserves at Richebourg St. V.--in the Neuve St. Chapelle racket, and after the battle we were taking our turn in the front-line trenches and making barricades! Shooting, you may guess, for all we were worth, and Fritz was handing it back with the Mauser, besides throwing 15 and 17-inch shells at us and enfilading our parapet with sprays of bullets from one of their machine-guns. The air was full of bangs and squeals and whistles, and every minute men were toppling over: and the fellow on my right was a pal of mine: we'd chummed up together like--a--like bricks! Well, there was a badly wounded German near, lying outside in the thick of it. Harding--my chum--put down his gun, gave me a wink--went over the top--sniped at like anything!--brought the lousy beggar back--gave him a drink,--put a coat under his head: and stowed him away behind us at the bottom of the trench, to wait for the stretcher-bearers. Then he came back to his place by me, loaded and went on shooting."

"And then?"

"Then, he--my pal--Harding--started rotting in his usual way; and I'd just said to him in my usual way, 'Do dry up, you silly, brainless lunatic!' when a revolver banged behind us, and Harding fell over on me, and I was all one smother with blood and brains--_his_! When I'd just told him he hadn't--you see the point of it?" John's mouth was stretched in laughter, but he shuddered as though cold.

"He--" Old Mendel's eyes were fierce under their bushy brows as he nodded, saying:

"_Day--day_! ... It does not need to be more plain. I understand thee clearly. The German lying at the bottom of the trench had shot the man who brought him in, through the head, from behind.... We have wolves in the Anti-Lebanon--and when taken they will fight to the death.... It is wisest to despatch them at once with the loaded club, whenever you find them trapped. But what didst thou do to thy wolf, O David! when the blood of thy Jonathan was wet upon thee?"

"I--went for the brute with the butt,--like mad!--and bashed him into jelly." John shuddered and felt for his handkerchief and mopped his face and neck. "He shot at me--twice--and nearly got me, but I--just bashed on!"

"And didst thou sing as thou didst smite?"

"They--they said--when they got me away, and it took a lot to hold me!--they said I talked a gibberish that nobody could understand."

"But I--possibly--might have understood it!" Old Mendel nodded knowingly and briskly rubbed his hands. "Well, well?"

"Well, after that I made no bones about killing Germans. There were nights when I used to creep out of the trench (nights when there was nothing much doing) with a white cotton Pierrot's costume I'd picked up pulled over my khaki, because of the star-shell showing me up dark against the snow--and until the enemy got too knowing, I made quite a bag every week--of Lonely Fritzes on Advanced Posts. Fellows began to look at me rather queerly. I think I'd got a name for being a bloodthirsty kind of beast. And the officers of my platoon'd say to a man who was noisy and wanting in caution: 'If you let a cheep out of you, So-and-so, during such and such an expedition--I'll tell Hazel to kill you!' and he'd shut up--tight as a box."

"Aha!" Mendel hugged himself with his stiff brown sleeves and chuckled. "I, Jew of Damascus as I am, do not wonder!--do not wonder, knowing the stuff of which thy forefathers were made! Now I should depart, for we have talked much, and the young woman in starched linen is nodding at me and frowning. We Jews daily thank the Creator that He did not make us women: but when there comes pestilence, or War with wounds and fever, He cannot make too many women to satisfy us! Now is there anything more to ask before I leave you?"

"Nothing, I--Here, hold on for half a mo'! There is a question. If I stick to my guns and don't turn Hebrew, what becomes of my grandfather's cash?"

"Provision in the event you name is duly made in the Will. The three hundred and eighty thousand pounds will go to found an Orthodox Jews University that is to be built near Jerusalem--the money being vested in the hands of certain Trustees. There are three Trustees. Lord ----, Sir Arthur ---- and Professor ----" the speaker named three names of power--not only in Israel:--"but you will not let the money go to found the University. _Shalôm!_ Is that not all?"

"All--except that I've not yet asked after my Uncle Benjamin Simonoff at Hull."

"Thy Uncle Benjamin prospers exceedingly. Trade failed with Russia when the North Sea Ports were closed; but the warehouses were full--and Government paid much money for tallow, tar, green hides and tanned skins. Benjamin is enlisted in a Home Defence Corps, and both his sons are on the sea, serving in converted Hull trawlers. They sweep for mines, set snares for what they call 'tin fish' and seem content with life.... Woman, I have said that I am departing! Had I not, it is not seemly for your sex to thrust themselves into the private talk of men!"

"But you've been here already over an hour, and the doctors--"

The Ward Sister had swept down on him:

"I go, I go! ... Nay, but, look to the boy! He is swooning! ... Woe to me! heedless and forgetful of his weakness.... I thought but of confuting the errors of an Epicurean--and lo! I have injured the child I loved!"

John, struggling in the clutches of a return-attack of breathlessness, propped up high against hard pillows, tried to tell Old Mendel not to bother, that he, John, was as right as nine-pence, or would be in the shake of a guinea-pig's tail. But the words were lost in suffocating gasps and pantings; from which, administered by Nurse's skilful hands, the prick of a subcutaneous injection of morphia presently delivered him....

The semi-relapse entailed another fortnight in Hospital: its tedium infinitely relieved by the fulfilment of John's promise to swot over the documents and papers in the bag. Which contained, besides a pair of well-darned spare socks, and a clean blue-spotted handkerchief of Mendel's, a bag of brown peppermint-rock, of the highly-flavoured kind most fondly associated by John Hazel with the blameless days of infancy. Alas! that the writer should be bound to the Wheel of Truth as concerning this young man, so unheroic a hero. As soon as he was well enough, he ate it all up.

VII

Three weeks at a Soldier's Seaside Convalescent Home on the outskirts of a West Coast Winter resort, intervened before John's return to Campden Hill Terrace.

It had been strange to recognise upon his mother's cheerful, well-preserved comeliness the strained and sharpened look that is the stamp of War upon the human countenance. Maurice--who was later on to develop into a mechanic-private in what was then the Royal Flying Corps--the chrysalis or pupa-stage of ultimate transformation into a Lieutenant-Pilot--was Overseas at an Advance Depot of the A.S.C. and didn't write punctually. And the double-fronted millinery and florist's business in Dove Street was languishing. Fruit and flowers were only bought to be sent on to the Wounded in the Hospitals. Nobody wanted ravishing hats when the men the hats were meant to slay were being killed in the trenches; besides, British women were all agreed by now that in War-time some kind of uniform was the only possible wear. So Lady Delphinia had departed to France to open a Hostel for Officers at one of the Allied Bases, and the huge benevolent octopus of Organised Activity had enveloped within its tentacles Mrs. Hazel and her set. They spent their days strenuously at various West End Centres, in making every imaginable aid,--from list slippers to body belts, from artificial legs and arms to life-saving waistcoats--for the Fleet and the Forces; and if they took comfort from the knowledge that their neighbours at the trestle-tables in the crowded work-rooms were occasionally Duchesses, who shall grudge John's mother and her intimates the gratification they derived from this fact!

Of the visit of Mendel Bartoth to the Hospital at Colthill, John said nothing to his mother. After all, it was his affair. His and Maurice's--because it was provided under the conditions of the Will of Eli Hazaël that, should the elder of the two surviving male representatives of his House decline to adopt the Judaism of his forefathers (and incidentally forfeit a sum of £380,000), the younger should be offered the fortune thus foregone.

Justice and wisdom went to the making of the Will, with consideration and magnanimity. John was to have two years clear in which to make up his mind. In the meanwhile, there was the acceptable sum of £500 to be earned by taking a run up North as soon as his health was sufficiently restored.

Consequently upon a bitter grey-white morning in the February of 1916, Private John Hazel found himself seated in a grimy third-class compartment of the Kelso Express, steaming out of a vast and murky London terminus, upon the strangest errand of his life.

The thing was real. He might have dreamed old Mendel: but that there could be no doubt in face of all those proofs. The typewritten papers and the queer crumbly parchments were in the brown calfskin bag beside him. And, queerest of all, the ring: the intaglio of the bust of Hercules in black onyx in its ancient setting of pale greenish gold, incredibly battered, was on the third finger of his big left hand....

He squeezed the back sheet of his _Pall Mall Gazette_ into a ball, observant of the inferior quality of the paper--cleared away the clammy fog and grime that obscured the window next him--and settled down to read the News.

Front after front had burst into roaring flame; the brown shuttle of the Army and the dark blue shuttle of the Navy, driven back and forth with dizzying rapidity, wove the bloody web of War upon the loom of Fate daily, hourly, momentarily....

Sir Douglas Haig had succeeded Sir John French in command of our Forces in France in the previous December. De Wet and other South Africans had been pardoned. General Smuts had been appointed to command in East Africa; the Germans had been repulsed at Loos, a Zeppelin raid on Paris had twice been unsuccessfully attempted; the Senussi Arabs had been beaten in West Egypt, the Kut Relief Force were at grips with the Turkish forces;--France was fighting superbly to hold Vimy Ridge her own. And the Military Service Bill was effective in Great Britain; and the final act of the Evacuation, ringing down the curtain on the unsuccessful tragedy of the Gallipoli Peninsula was fading from the minds of men.... A bad, bad business! John commented mentally. He wished the Blooming Bungler who was responsible for all that waste of blood and prestige and money could be jammed into a British trench-mortar of the old-fashioned, big-bellied, Jumbo pattern--and biffed--say 450 yards--into the Turkish lines! And then he fell to staring at the women in blue overalls not innocent of grease, with the initials of the Railway Company in braid that was no longer white--and blue caps with shiny peaks and white braid badges. And the other women who tapped and greased wheels, and rattled along luggage trucks, and trolleys of lamps and foot-warmers;--not forgetting yet other women in dark blue serge uniforms with bright steel buttons, who had clipped his ticket for Scotland when he passed the Barrier.

For London was astonishingly altered by the War. Not only by the temporary War Constructions, the Specials, and the sand-bagging and wire-netting of public and private buildings: not only by glassless windows--shattered walls and holes in the concrete pavement,--wounds torn by High Explosive bombs dropped by Zeppelins and Gothas on the grey breast of the City, that in John Hazel's estimation was built about the hub of the world. The most remarkable of all the War-changes was in the women. In Belgium and France the women young and old had done men's work, and sometimes looked as though they enjoyed doing it. Somehow one expected it of Continental womanhood. But that British womanhood should conduct trams and omnibuses in dark grey jackets with black leather buttons and belts, short skirts to suit, and black leather gaiters, slouch hats or shiny-peaked caps,--intrigued John Hazel wonderfully. A young woman had driven him to King's Cross from Campden Hill, smart and business-like in a yellow oilskin coat, peaked yellow oilskin cap--_toujours_ the peaked cap--big leathern gauntlet-gloves, strap-satchel and general air of confident competency.... She had not overcharged: and had thrust back John's proffered _douceur_ with the succinct statement: "We don't take tips from soldiers, _these_ days!"

And whizzed smoothly out of John Hazel's ken, leaving the young man standing staring after her, with the calfskin bag in one hand and a suit-case in the other; amidst the very audible smiles of the lady-porters and luggage-clerks.

The door of the compartment opened at this juncture, admitting a drab-faced elderly woman in greasy blue overalls. With a grimy duster she flapped the seats of the comfortless third-class, raising a cloud of cindery dust that made the sole passenger sneeze; whisked a collection of orange-peel, nut-shells, toffee-papers and "Puss-Puss!" and "Woodbine" cigarette wrappers under the opposite seat, and fell out again over John Hazel's boots, leaving the atmosphere murkier than ever.

Fear--the acquired fear of encountering the glare of a Sergeant, or the chilly stare of the wearer of a Sam Browne, had hitherto arrested the hand of the Junior Partner in the thriving Cornhill firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, Insurance-brokers,--when it would fain have placed on the rubber pad of the Booking Office pigeon-hole, the fare for a First Class Return.

But now, the prospect of a run of some three hundred and fifty odd miles North in captivity so grim, chilly and unsavoury, prompted a young man with muscles still soft from confinement to a Hospital bed, and the kindly coddling of Hospital Sisters,--and with the warning of the C.M.O. with regard to avoidance of bronchitis still fresh in mind,--to extract a soiled ten-shilling note or "pinky" from a pigskin wallet; to project the upper half of his big body from the carriage-window, and endeavour, not unsuccessfully, to catch the eye of the guard.

"Na, na, nae Second Class. Ye'll have hearrd that ava' at the Booking Office!"

The silver-braided functionary, checked momentarily in his stride by the appeal of an agitated old lady, presented his highly-dried and sandily-bearded countenance upon a level with the buttons of John's front tunic-pockets, and inclined a freckled ear to the young man's appeal. The answer came in the droning chant of Berwick:

"Ye can pay the differ between the firr'st an' third-class--I'm no' for stopping ye. Though, ye ken, wi' ilka officer that gets in, ye'll rin the same risk!"

"Of being turned out with a flea in my ear, you mean," returned John Hazel, not unobservant of the mahogany _reflet_ of certain Sam Brownes, isolated or in knots, upon the platform, in juxtaposition with open carriage-doors, or mingling with the scanty groups of would-be passengers under the arc-lights (camouflaged with blue paint) that cast false pallor on the freshest cheek, and made sickly faces masks of Death; and threw long purplish shadows of people and things (at angles suggestive of Futurist Art) upon the greasy asphalte of the Northern terminus....

"O, ay! If ye're willin' to tak the risk...."

The glitter of a certain medal on the Private's breast, and the shine of two parallel strips of gold braid upon his cuff, had caught the sharp grey eyes of the guard. He thrust back the offered note on the confounded John, leaped at his suitcase and tore it from the rack, and shepherded his huge charge through the clank and rattle and roll of luggage trucks, foot-warmer barrows, and lamp-trolleys, shouting:

"Come awa' wi' you, man!--there's a firr'st weel forward, wi' a twa--three women-bodies that would gie guid skelps to the officer that daured look crookit at ony Tommy--forbye a lang black lad wi' the D.C.M.!"

Thus John Hazel, suffering for once from an acute attack of bashfulness, found himself installed in a corner of a fairly-warmed if faintly-lighted first-class compartment, containing in addition to many cloaks, rugs, pillows, tea-baskets, and other cosy accompaniments of travel,--three ladies of uncertain ages, but very definite position in life,--also a Young Person of highly-coloured exotic charms, clamorously perfumed; whose crimson hair was surmounted by a French officer's tasselled _képi_, and who displayed, below marvellously abbreviated skirts, silk stockings of open trellis-work, ending in such boots of yellow leather with tinsel cross-laces as are commonly associated with Principal Boys in Pantomime....

Of the three ladies, two carried the dark blue uniform of a Voluntary Aid Detachment of the British Red Cross Society and held officers' rank of sorts, for both were pipped. While the third, an incredibly tall, thin woman, with eyebrows arched and black as musical slurs, pale greenish-gold hair, a white, triangular face, and a V-shaped mouth as scarlet as a Pierrot's, wore upon her khaki sleeve the brassard of the Liberal Ladies' War Service Legion, with the lapel, shoulder and hat-badges distinctive of a Commandant.

All three displayed the roughened hands and damaged finger-nails characteristic of British womanhood at this strenuous period. Theirs was the unabashed and frank regard, born of the calm self-confidence which springs--not from the conviction, but from the established fact of being Somebody in Society. All three were loud of voice, long of limb, easy if abrupt of movement: prone to discuss their own and their friends' private affairs in the presence of strangers; as though the man or woman in the corner, palpably an alien from Their Set, must in consequence be deaf and dumb.