Part 3

"I like the War. It is only War that gives us a normal existence. What do you do in peace-time? You stay at home; you don’t know what to do with your time; you argue with your parents, and your wife—if you have one. Everyone thinks you are an insufferable egotist—and so you are. The War comes; you only go home every five or six months. You are a hero, and, what women appreciate much more, you are a change. You know stories that have never been published. You’ve seen strange men and terrible things. Your father, instead of telling his friends that you are embittering the end of his life, introduces you to them as an oracle. These old men consult you on foreign politics. If you are married, your wife is prettier than ever; if you are not, all the girls lay siege to you.

"You like the country? Well, you live in a wood here. You love your wife? But who was it said that it is easier to die for the woman one loves than to live with her? For myself I prefer a Hotchkiss to the piano, and the chatter of my men to that of the old ladies who come to tea at my home. No, Gibbons, War is a wonderful epoch," and, holding up his glass, he said, "I drink to the gentle Hun who procures these pleasures for us."

Then he described his time at the Duchess’ hospital.

"I thought I was with the Queen of the Fairies. We got everything we wanted without asking for it. When our fiancées were coming to see us, we were propped up with cushions to match the colour of our eyes. A fortnight before I could get up, they brought twelve brightly coloured dressing-gowns for me to choose which one I would wear the first time I was allowed out of bed. I chose a red and green one, which was hung up near me, and I was in such a hurry to put it on that I got well three days quicker. There was a Scotch captain with such a beautiful wife that all the patients’ temperatures went up when she came to see him. They ended by making a special door for her near her husband’s bed, so that she need not walk down the whole ward. Oh, I hope I shall be wounded soon! Doctor, promise to send me to the Duchess’ hospital!"

But Gibbons, with eyes still full of tender memories of home, would not be consoled. The padre, who was wise and kind, made him describe the last revue at the Palace, and complacently discussed the legs and shoulders of a "sweet little thing." The colonel got out his best records and played "Mrs. Finzi-Magrini" and "Destiny Waltz" to his guests. Gibbons sat with his head in his hands during the waltz. The colonel was going to chaff him mildly about his melancholy thoughts, but the little captain got up at the end of the tune and said:

"I had better be off before dark."

"Silly ass," said Parker, after a pause.

The colonel and the padre agreed. Aurelle alone protested.

"Aurelle, my friend," said Dr. O’Grady, "if you want to be thought anything of amongst Englishmen, you must make yourself see their point of view. They don’t care for melancholy people, and have a contempt for sentiment. This applies to love as well as to patriotism and religion. If you want the colonel to despise you, stick a flag in your tunic. If you want the padre to treat you with contempt, give him a letter to censor full of pious rubbish; if you want to make Parker sick, weep over a photograph. They spend their youth hardening their skins and their hearts. They fear neither physical blows nor the blows of fate. They look upon exaggeration as the worst of vices, and coldness as a sign of aristocracy. When they are very miserable, they smile. When they are very happy, they say nothing at all. And _au fond_ John Bull is terribly sentimental, which explains everything."

"All that is perfectly true, Aurelle," said Parker, "but you must not say it. The doctor is a confounded Irishman who cannot hold his tongue."

Upon which, the doctor and Major Parker began a discussion on the Irish question in their usual amusingly sarcastic manner. The colonel looked in his box of records for "When Irish eyes are smiling," then wisely and courteously interrupted them.

"And so, Aurelle," concluded Major Parker, "you see us poor Englishmen searching hard for the solution of a problem when there isn’t one. You may think that the Irish want certain definite reforms, and that they will be happy and contented the day they get them; but not at all. What amuses them is discussion itself, plotting in theory. They play with the idea of Home Rule; if we gave it them, the game would be finished and they would invent another, probably a more dangerous one."

"Go to Ireland after the War, messiou," said the colonel, "it’s an extraordinary country. Every one is mad. You can commit the worst crimes—it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters."

"The worst crimes?" said Aurelle, "Oh, I say, sir!"

"Oh yes, anything you like—the most unheard-of things. You can go out hunting in brown breeches, fish in your neighbour’s salmon river—nothing will happen; no one will take the smallest notice of you."

"I do believe," said Aurelle, "that I am beginning to understand the Irish question."

"I will finish your education," said the doctor. "A year before the War a Liberal M.P. who was visiting Ireland said to an old peasant, ’Well, my friend, we are soon going to give you Home Rule!’ ’God save us, your honour,’ said the man, ’do not do that.’ ’What?’ said the astonished Member. ’You don’t want Home Rule now?’ ’Your honour,’ said the man, ’I’ll tell you. You are a good Christian, your honour? It’s to heaven you want to go? So do I, but we do not want to go there to-night.’"

*CHAPTER VIII*

CHORUS: "What, Jupiter not so strong as these goddesses?"

PROMETHEUS: "Yes, even he cannot escape destiny."

When young Lieutenant Warburton, temporarily commanding B Company of the Lennox Highlanders, took over his trench, the captain he came to relieve said to him:

"This part is not too unhealthy; they are only thirty yards off, but they are tame Boches. All they ask is to be left alone."

"We will wake things up a bit," said Warburton to his men, when the peaceable warrior had departed.

When wild beasts are too well fed, they become domesticated; but a few well-directed rockets will make them savage again. In virtue of this principle, Warburton, having provided himself with a star shell, instead of sending it straight up fired it horizontally towards the German trenches.

A distracted Saxon sentry cried, "Liquid-fire attack!" The Boche machine-guns began to bark. Warburton, delighted, replied with grenades. The enemy called the artillery to its assistance. A telephone call, a hail of shrapnel, and immediate reprisals by the British big guns.

The next day the German _communiqué_ said: "An attack by the British under cover of liquid-fire at H—— was completely checked by the combined fire of our infantry and artillery."

0275 Private Scott, H.J., who served his King and country under the strenuous Warburton, disapproved heartily of his officer’s heroic methods. Not that he was a coward, but the War had taken him by surprise when he had just married a charming girl, and, as Captain Gadsby of the Pink Hussars says, "a married man is only half a man." Scott counted the days he spent in the trenches, and this one was the first of ten, and his chief was reckless.

The god who guards lovers intervened the next day by the simple means of a scrap of paper asking for a man from the regiment, mechanic by trade, to look after a machine at P—— for disinfecting clothes. P—— was a pretty little town at least eight miles from the front line, rather deserted by the inhabitants on account of _marmites_, but all the same a safe and comfortable retreat for a troglodyte of the trenches.

0275 Private Scott, mechanic by trade, put his name down. His lieutenant abused him; his colonel recommended him; and his general nominated him. An old London omnibus painted a military grey took him away to his new life, far from Warburton and his perils.

The machine which Scott had to look after was in the yard of a college, an old building covered with ivy; and Abbé Hoboken, the principal, received him, when he arrived, as if he were a general.

"Are you a Catholic, my son?" he asked him in the English of the college.

Luckily for Scott, he did not understand, and answered vaguely:

"Yes, sir."

This involuntary renunciation of the Scotch Presbyterian Church procured him a room belonging to a mobilized Belgian professor and a bed with sheets.

Now, at that very moment, Hauptmann Reineker, who commanded a German battery of heavy artillery at Paschendaele, was in a very bad temper.

The evening post had brought him an ambiguous letter from his wife in which she mentioned too often, and with an affectation of indifference, a wounded officer of the Guards, whom she had been nursing for several days.

During the night, he surveyed his gun-emplacements on the outskirts of a wood, then he said suddenly:

"Wolfgang, have you any shells available?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many?"

"Three."

"Good! Wake up Theresa’s crew."

He then verified his calculations by his map.

The men, half awake, loaded the enormous gun. Heineker gave the order, and, shaking up everyone and everything, the shell started forth, hurtling through the night.

0275 Private Scott, then, who adored his wife and had accepted a post without honour for her sake, was sleeping peacefully in the bedroom of a mobilized Belgian professor: and Captain Reineker, whose wife no longer loved him, and whom he mistrusted, was striding furiously up and down amongst the frozen woods; and these two circumstances, widely apart from one another, were developed independently in an indifferent world.

Now the calculations of Reineker, like most calculations, went wrong. He was 400 yards out. His landmark was the church. From the church to the college was 400 yards. A light wind increased the deviation by 20 yards, and from that moment the Reineker and the Scott situation began to have points in common. At this particular point the chest of 0275 Private Scott received the full force of the .305 shell, and he was blown into a thousand bits, which, amongst other things, put an end to the Scott situation.

*CHAPTER IX*

"The ideal of the English Church has been to provide a resident gentleman for every parish in the Kingdom, and there have been worse ideals."—SHANE LESLIE.

Aurelle, arriving for tea at the Mess, found only the padre repairing a magic lantern.

"Hullo, messiou," he said, "very glad to see you. I am getting my lantern ready for a sporting sermon to the men of B Company when they come out of the trenches."

"What, padre, you preach sermons now with a magic lantern?’

"My boy, I am trying to make the men come; there are too many who keep away. I know very well that the regiment has a good many Presbyterians, but if you could see the Irish regiments—not a man misses going to Mass. Ah, messiou, the Catholic padres have more influence than we have. I ask myself, why? I go every day to the trenches, and even if the men think me an old fool they might at least recognize that I am a sportsman."

"The regiment is very fond of you, padre. But, if you don’t mind my saying so, I think that Catholic priests have a special influence. Confession has something to do with it, but their vow of celibacy more, because, in a sort of way, it makes them different from other people. Even the doctor tones down his best stories when Father Murphy dines with us."

"But, my boy, I love O’Grady’s stories; I am an old soldier and a man of the world. When I was shooting in Africa a negro queen made me a present of three young negresses."

"Padre!"

"Oh, I let them go the same day, which annoyed them somewhat. But I don’t see why, after that, I need play Mrs. Grundy in the Mess."

One of the orderlies brought some boiling water, and the padre asked Aurelle to make the tea.

"When I was married—_not_ that way, messiou; it’s curious that no Frenchman can make tea. Always warm the teapot first, my boy; you cannot make good tea with a cold teapot."

"You were talking about your wedding, padre."

"Yes, I wanted to tell you how indignant all these Pharisees were, who want me to behave like a prude with young people, when I merely wanted to be reasonable. When I was going to be married, I naturally had to ask one of my colleagues to perform the ceremony. After having settled the important points, I said to him, ’In the Marriage Service of the Church of England there is one passage which I consider absolutely indecent. Yes, yes, I know quite well that it is what St. Paul said. Well, probably in his time he had a perfect right to say such things, and they were adapted to the manners and customs of the Corinthians, but they are not meant for the ears of a young girl from Aberdeen in 1906. My fiancée is innocent, and I will not have her shocked.’ The young man, a worldly-minded little curate, went and complained to the bishop, who sent for me and said haughtily, ’So it is _you_ who are taking upon yourself to forbid the reading of the Epistle to the Corinthians? I would have you know that I am not the man to put up with nonsense of this sort.’ ’All right,’ I replied, ’I would have you know that I am not the man to put up with an insult to my wife. If this fellow insists on reading the passage I shall say nothing in the church, out of respect for the sacred edifice, but I promise you that after the ceremony I shall box his ears.’

"Well, messiou, the bishop looked at me carefully to see if I was in earnest. Then he remembered my campaign in the Transvaal, the negro Queen, and the dangers of a scandal, and he answered me with unction, ’I do not see after all that the passage that shocks you is absolutely essential to the marriage ceremony.’"

Dr. O’Grady here came in and asked for a cup of tea.

"Who made this tea?" he demanded. "You, Aurelle? How much tea did you put in?"

"One spoonful for each cup."

"Now listen to an axiom—one spoonful for each cup and then one for the pot. It is curious that no Frenchman knows how to make tea."

Aurelle changed the subject.

"The padre was telling me about his wedding."

"A padre ought not to be married," said the doctor. "You know what St. Paul said, ’A married man seeks to please his wife and not God.’"

"You have put your foot in it now," said Aurelle. "Don’t talk to him about St. Paul; he has just been strafing him badly."

"Excuse me," said the padre, "I only strafed a bishop."

"Padre," said the doctor, "judge not——"

"Oh, I know," said the padre, "the Master said that, but He did not know any bishops." Then he returned to his old subject. "Tell me, O’Grady, you are Irish; why have the Catholic chaplains more influence than we?"

"Padre," said the doctor, "listen to a parable. It is your turn. A man had committed a murder. He was not suspected, but remorse made him restless and miserable. One day, as he was passing an Anglican church, it seemed to him that the secret would be easier to bear if he could share it with someone else, so he entered and asked the vicar to hear his confession.

"The vicar was a very well brought up young man, and had been at Eton and Oxford. Enchanted with this rare piece of luck, he said eagerly, ’Most certainly, open your heart to me; you can talk to me as if I were your father!’ The other began: ’I have killed a man.’ The vicar sprang to his feet. ’And you come here to tell me that? Horrible murderer! I am not sure that it is not my duty, as a citizen to take you to the nearest police station. In any case it is my duty as a gentleman not to keep you a moment longer under my roof.’

"And the man went away. A few miles farther on he saw a Roman Catholic church. A last hope made him enter, and he knelt down behind some old women who were waiting by the confessional. When his turn came he could just distinguish the priest praying in the shadows, his head in his hands. ’Father,’ he said, ’I am not a Catholic, but I should like to confess to you.’ ’I am listening, my son.’ ’Father, I have committed murder.’

"He awaited the effect of this terrible revelation. In the austere silence of the church the voice of the priest said simply, ’How many times, my son?’"

"Doctor," said the padre, "you know that I am Scotch. I can only take in a story eight days after I hear it."

"That one will take you longer, padre," said the doctor.

*CHAPTER X*

S. W. Tarkington, an officer of fifty-three, honorary lieutenant and quartermaster, was possessed of a vain but keen desire to win one more ribbon before retiring. The laws of nature and eighteen years of good conduct had given him the South African medal and the long service ribbon. But with a little luck even an honorary lieutenant may pick up a Military Cross if the bullets fall in the right place. That is why Tarkington was always to be found in dangerous corners where he had no business, and that is why, on the day Loos was taken, he wandered with his rheumatic old joints over the soaking battlefield and carried in eighteen wounded men on his back. But he met no general and no one knew anything about it, except the wounded, who have no influence.

From there the regiment was sent to the north and went into the line in the Ypres salient. There existed, no doubt, excellent sentimental and military reasons for defending this piece of ground, but as a winter residence it left much to be desired. Tarkington did not fear the danger—shells were part of the day’s work—but his rheumatism feared the water, and the rain falling incessantly on the greasy clay made a damp and icy paste which no doctor would recommend for the oiling of old joints. Tarkington, whose painfully swollen feet now made the shortest march a Chinese torture, finally realized that he must apply to be sent to hospital.

"It’s just my luck," he said to his confidant, the sergeant-major. "I have the pain without the wound."

So he went off limping and swearing to find the colonel in his dug-out, and told him of the state of his legs.

The colonel was in a bad temper that morning. A communication from the headquarters of the division had pointed out to him that the proportion of trench feet in his regiment had reached 3.6 per cent., whereas the average of the corps was only 2.7. And would he take the necessary precautions to reduce his percentage in the future?

The necessary precautions had been taken; he had sent for the doctor and given him the communication.

"And see here, O’Grady. You may have bronchitis, sore throats and gastric enteritis, but I do not want any more trench feet for three days."

You may imagine how Tarkington was received when he came to exhibit his paralysed feet.

"Now that’s the limit. _I_ send down an officer for trench feet? Read, Tarkington, read, and do you imagine I am going to transform 3.5 into 3.6 to please _you_? Look up, my friend, General Routine Orders No. 324—’Trench Feet result from a contraction of the superficial arteries with the consequence that the skin no longer being nourished dies and mortifies.’ Therefore, all you have to do is to watch your arteries. Tarkington, I am extremely sorry, old man, but that is all I can do for you."

"Just my luck," said the old man to his friend the sergeant-major. "I have thirty-seven years’ service; I have never been ill; and when, for the first time in my life, I ask for sick leave, it happens on the very same day that headquarters have strafed the colonel over that very subject."

His feet became red, then blue, and had begun to turn black when the colonel went away on leave. The command in his absence was taken over by Major Parker, who, being the second son of a peer, paid small attention to remarks from the brigade. He saw the distress of the unfortunate Tarkington, and sent him to the field hospital, where they decided to send him to England. It seemed that Tarkington was not the kind to be acclimatized in the Flemish marshes.

He was taken to B—— and put on board the hospital ship _Saxonia_, with the wounded, doctors and nurses. The port officials had ascertained to their annoyance the day before that a number of floating mines were in the Channel.

The authorities argued over the origin of these mines, which the N.T.O. said were those of the Allies, while the M.L.O. thought they were the enemy’s. But there was no argument about one detail: every boat that had come into contact with one had been cut in two and sunk immediately.

The captain of the _Saxonia_ was convinced that the Channel was free from mines. He risked it—and was blown up.

So Tarkington jumped into the sea. As a good soldier, his instinct was to devote his last minutes to keeping calm, and he swam about quietly with the gas mask that he had been advised never to lose hanging round his neck.

A salvage boat picked him up, unconscious, and he was taken to a hospital on the English coast. He recovered consciousness, but felt very ill from his immersion in the water.

"Just like my cursed luck!" he groaned. "They stop me starting for a month, and when at last I do get off, it is in the only ship that has gone down for a year."

"They are all alike," said the colonel, on his return from leave. "Here’s a blighter who grumbles at having his feet in water, and then takes advantage of my absence to go and have a salt-water bath!"

Now, a few months before, King George, after his accident in France, had crossed the Channel on board the _Saxonia_. The fate of the ship naturally interested His Majesty, who came to see the survivors, and, as Tarkington was the only officer, he had the inestimable privilege of quite a long conversation with the King. The result of this was that a few days afterwards a regiment "somewhere in France" received a memorandum from general headquarters asking for a statement of the services of Tarkington, S. W.

The memorandum being accompanied by certain verbal comments on the subject of "a very distinguished personage" by an officer in a red-banded gold-peaked cap, the colonel wrote nice things—which he had never said to him—of Tarkington, S. W., and the sergeant-major gave details of the brilliant conduct of the quartermaster at Loos.

The _London Gazette_ a fortnight later recapitulated these exploits in a supplement to the list of awards and honours, and Tarkington, honorary captain, M.C., meditating on his fate, found the world not such a bad place after all.

*CHAPTER XI*

The first encounter that the brigade had with the village was not happy.

The village looked distrustfully on the brigade, with its bare knees and its language like the rolling of a drum. The brigade found the village short of _estaminets_ and pretty girls. The people of Hondezeele bewailed the departure of a division of London Territorials, with their soft voices and full pockets, and wherever Aurelle went they did nothing but sing the praises of these sons of their adoption.

"Your Scotchmen, we know them. We cannot understand what they say—and my little girls can speak English."

"Scotch—Promenade—no bon!" said the little girls.

"I had the general’s chauffeur here," went on the old woman, "a nice boy, sir. Billy, they called him. He washed up for me, and pleasant spoken, too, and good manners. An officers’ Mess? Certainly not. I can make more selling fried potatoes and beer to the boys, and even eggs, although they cost me threepence each."

"Fried potatoes, two painnies a plate, aigs and bacon, one franc," chorused the little girls.

Aurelle went on to the next house, where other old women mourned other Billys, Harrys, Gingers, and Darkies.

One stout lady explained that noise gave her palpitations; another, quite seventy-five, that it was not proper for a girl living alone.