Part 6

“My suggestion is this. To-morrow, as you know, the English are attacking Hill 701, which for tactical reasons we have decided to evacuate. If after the attack they find the dead body of Paul Jouperts in, say, the second line, they will take no further trouble in the matter. You know their lack of thoroughness. Pardon me, I was two years at Oxford University. And consequently Paul Jouperts will be able to prosecute his labors undisturbed.”

The man with the medals twirled his mustache and looked thoughtfully at his colleague.

“Where is Paul at the moment?” he asked.

“He is acting as a gardener at the Convent of St. Eloise, at Mailleton-en-haut, which, as you know, is one hundred meters from the headquarters of the British central army staff.”

The man with the medals took two or three rapid turns up and down the room, then he said:

“Your plan is excellent, Hausemann. The only point of difficulty is that the attack started this morning.”

“This morning?” exclaimed the other.

“Yes; the English attacked unexpectedly at dawn. We have already evacuated the first line. We shall evacuate the second line at eleven-fifty. It is now ten-fifteen. There may be just time.”

He looked suddenly at old Sam in the way that a butcher might look at a prize heifer at an agricultural show and remarked casually:

“Yes, it is a remarkable resemblance. It seems a pity not to--do something with it.”

Then, speaking in German, he added:

“It is worth trying. And if it succeeds the higher authorities shall hear of your lucky accident and inspiration, Herr Hausemann. Instruct _Ober-lieutenant_ Schultz to send the old fool by two orderlies to the east extremity of Trench 38. Keep him there till the order of evacuation is given, then shoot him, but don’t disfigure him, and lay him out face upward.”

The aviator saluted and withdrew, accompanied by his victim. Old Sam had not understood the latter part of the conversation, and he did not catch quite all that was said in English; but he felt that somehow things were not becoming too promising, and it was time to assert himself. So he remarked when they got outside:

“Now, look ’ee ’ere, Mister, when am I goin’ to get back to my turnips?”

And the aviator replied, with a pleasant smile:

“Do not be disturbed, old Grandfather. You shall get back to the soil quite soon.”

In a few moments he found himself in a large gray car, accompanied by four soldiers. The aviator left him. The country was barren and horrible, full of great pits and rents, and he could hear the roar of the artillery and the shriek of shells. Overhead, aëroplanes were buzzing angrily. He seemed to be suddenly transported from the kingdom of God to the pit of darkness. He wondered whether the vicar had enjoyed the runner beans. He could not imagine runner beans growing here; runner beans, aye, or anything else. If this was a foreign country, give him dear old England!

_Gr-r-r! bang!_ Something exploded just at the rear of the car. The soldiers ducked, and one of them pushed him in the stomach and swore.

“An ugly-looking lout,” he thought. “If I wor twenty years younger, I’d give him a punch in the eye that ’u’d make him sit up.”

The car came to a halt by a broken wall. The party hurried out and dived behind a mound. He was pulled down a kind of shaft, and found himself in a room buried right underground, where three officers were drinking and smoking. The soldiers saluted and handed them a typewritten despatch. The officers looked at him drunkenly, and one came up and pulled his beard and spat in his face and called him “an old English swine.” He then shouted out some instructions to the soldiers, and they led him out into the narrow trench. One walked behind him, and occasionally prodded him with the butt-end of a gun. The trenches were half full of water and reeked of gases, powder, and decaying matter. Shells were constantly bursting overhead, and in places the trenches had crumbled and were nearly blocked up. They stumbled on, sometimes falling, sometimes dodging moving masses, and occasionally crawling over the dead bodies of men. At last they reached a deserted-looking trench, and one of the soldiers pushed him into the corner of it and growled something, and then disappeared round the angle. Old Sam was exhausted. He leaned panting against the mud wall, expecting every minute to be blown to pieces by one of those infernal things that seemed to be getting more and more insistent. The din went on for nearly twenty minutes, and he was alone in the trench. He fancied he heard a whistle amidst the din. Suddenly one of the soldiers who had accompanied him came stealthily round the corner, and there was a look in his eye old Sam did not like. When he was within five yards the soldier raised his rifle and pointed it at Sam’s body. Some instinct impelled the old man at that instant to throw himself forward on his face. As he did so he was aware of a terrible explosion, and he had just time to observe the soldier falling in a heap near him, and then he lost consciousness.

His consciousness appeared to return to him with a snap. He was lying on a plank in a building, and he heard some one say:

“I believe the old boy’s English.”

He looked round. There were a lot of men lying there, and others in khaki and white overalls were busy among them. He sat up, rubbed his head, and said:

“Hi, Mister, where be I now?”

Some one laughed, and a young man came up and said:

“Well, old man, you were very nearly in hell. Who the devil are you?”

Some one came up, and two of them were discussing him. One of them said:

“He’s quite all right. He was only knocked out. Better take him in to the colonel. He may be a spy.”

The other came up, touched his shoulder, and remarked:

“Can you walk, Uncle?”

He replied:

“Aye, I can walk all roight.”

“That’s an old sport!”

The young man took his arm and helped him out of the room into a courtyard. They entered another room, where an elderly, kind-faced officer was seated at a desk. The officer looked up and exclaimed:

“Good God! Bradshaw, do you know who you’ve got there?”

The younger one said:

“No. Who, sir?”

“It’s Paul Jouperts!” exclaimed the colonel.

“Paul Jouperts! Great Scott!”

The older officer addressed himself to Sam. He said:

“Well, we’ve got you once more, Paul. We shall have to be a little more careful this time.”

The young officer said:

“Shall I detail a squad, sir?”

“We can’t shoot him without a courtmartial,” replied the kind-faced senior.

Then Sam interpolated:

“Look ’ee ’ere, sir, I’m fair’ sick of all this. My name bean’t Paul. My name’s Sam. I was a-thinnin’ a loine o’ turnips--”

Both officers burst out laughing, and the younger one said:

“Good! damn good! Isn’t it amazing, sir, the way they not only learn the language, but even take the trouble to learn a dialect!”

The older man busied himself with some papers.

“Well, Sam,” he remarked, “you shall be given a chance to prove your identity. Our methods are less drastic than those of your _Boche_ masters. What part of England are you supposed to come from? Let’s see how much you can bluff us with your topographical knowledge.”

“I was a-thinnin’ a loine o’ turnips this mornin’ at ’alf-past seven on Mr. Hodge’s farm at Halvesham when one o’ these ’ere airyplanes came down among the swedes. I tells ’e to get clear o’ that, when the feller what gets out o’ the car ’e drahs a revowlver and ’e says, ‘You must ’company I--’”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted the senior officer, “that’s all very good. Now tell me--where is Halvesham? What is the name of the local vicar? I’m sure you’d know that.”

Old Sam rubbed his chin.

“I sits under the Reverend David Pryce, Mister, and a good, God-fearin’ man he be. I took him a cookin’ o’ runner beans on’y yesterday. I works for Mr. Hodge, what owns Greenway Manor and ’as a stud-farm at Newmarket, they say.”

“Charles Hodge?” asked the young officer.

“Aye, Charlie Hodge. You write and ask un if he knows old Sam Gates.”

The two officers looked at each other, and the older one looked at Sam more closely.

“It’s very extraordinary,” he remarked.

“Everybody knows Charlie Hodge,” added the younger officer.

It was at that moment that a wave of genius swept over old Sam. He put his hand to his head and suddenly jerked out:

“What’s more, I can tell ’ee where this yere Paul is. He’s actin’ a gardener in a convent at--” He puckered up his brows, fumbled with his hat, and then got out, “Mighteno.”

The older officer gasped.

“Mailleton-en-haut! Good God! what makes you say that, old man?”

Sam tried to give an account of his experience and the things he had heard said by the German officers; but he was getting tired, and he broke off in the middle to say:

“Ye haven’t a bite o’ somethin’ to eat, I suppose, Mister; or a glass o’ beer? I usually ’as my dinner at twelve o’clock.”

Both the officers laughed, and the older said:

“Get him some food, Bradshaw, and a bottle of beer from the mess. We’ll keep this old man here. He interests me.”

While the younger man was doing this, the chief pressed a button and summoned another junior officer.

“Gateshead,” he remarked, “ring up the G. H. Q. and instruct them to arrest the gardener in that convent at the top of the hill and then to report.”

The officer saluted and went out, and in a few minutes a tray of hot food and a large bottle of beer were brought to the old man, and he was left alone in the corner of the room to negotiate this welcome compensation. And in the execution he did himself and his county credit. In the meanwhile the officers were very busy. People were coming and going and examining maps, and telephone bells were ringing furiously. They did not disturb old Sam’s gastric operations. He cleaned up the mess tins and finished the last drop of beer. The senior officer found time to offer him a cigarette, but he replied:

“Thank ’ee kindly, sir, but I’d rather smoke my pipe.”

The colonel smiled and said:

“Oh, all right; smoke away.”

He lighted up, and the fumes of the shag permeated the room. Some one opened another window, and the young officer who had addressed him at first suddenly looked at him and exclaimed:

“Innocent, by God! You couldn’t get shag like that anywhere but in Norfolk.”

It must have been an hour later when another officer entered and saluted.

“Message from the G. H. Q., sir,” he said.

“Well?”

“They have arrested the gardener at the convent of St. Eloise, and they have every reason to believe that he is the notorious Paul Jouperts.”

The colonel stood up, and his eyes beamed. He came over to old Sam and shook his hand.

“Mr. Gates,” he said, “you are an old brick. You will probably hear more of this. You have probably been the means of delivering something very useful into our hands. Your own honor is vindicated. A loving Government will probably award you five shillings or a Victoria Cross or something of that sort. In the meantime, what can I do for you?”

Old Sam scratched his chin.

“I want to get back ’ome,” he said.

“Well, even that might be arranged.”

“I want to get back ’ome in toime for tea.”

“What time do you have tea?”

“Foive o’clock or thereabouts.”

“I see.”

A kindly smile came into the eyes of the colonel. He turned to another officer standing by the table and said:

“Raikes, is any one going across this afternoon with despatches?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the other officer. “Commander Jennings is leaving at three o’clock.”

“You might ask him if he could see me.”

Within ten minutes a young man in a flight-commander’s uniform entered.

“Ah, Jennings,” said the colonel, “here is a little affair which concerns the honor of the British army. My friend here, Sam Gates, has come over from Halvesham, in Norfolk, in order to give us valuable information. I have promised him that he shall get home to tea at five o’clock. Can you take a passenger?”

The young man threw back his head and laughed.

“Lord!” he exclaimed, “what an old sport! Yes, I expect I can manage it. Where is the God-forsaken place?”

A large ordnance-map of Norfolk (which had been captured from a German officer) was produced, and the young man studied it closely.

At three o’clock precisely old Sam, finding himself something of a hero and quite glad to escape from the embarrassment which the position entailed upon him, once more sped skyward in a “dratted airyplane.”

At twenty minutes to five he landed once more among Mr. Hodge’s swedes. The breezy young airman shook hands with him and departed inland. Old Sam sat down and surveyed the familiar field of turnips.

“A noice thing, I must say!” he muttered to himself as he looked along the lines of unthinned turnips. He still had twenty minutes, and so he went slowly along and completed a line which he had begun in the morning. He then deliberately packed up his dinner-things and his tools and started out for home.

As he came round the corner of Stillway’s meadow and the cottage came in view, his niece stepped out of the copse with a basket on her arm.

“Well, Uncle,” she said, “is there any noos?”

It was then that old Sam really lost his temper.

“Noos!” he said. “Noos! Drat the girl! What noos should there be? Sixty-nine year’ I live in these ’ere parts, hoein’ and weedin’ and thinnin’, and mindin’ Charlie Hodge’s sheep. Am I one o’ these ’ere story-book folk havin’ noos ’appen to me all the time? Ain’t it enough, ye silly, dab-faced zany, to earn enough to buy a bite o’ some’at to eat and a glass o’ beer and a place to rest a’s head o’night without always wantin’ noos, noos, noos! I tell ’ee it’s this that leads ’ee to ’alf the troubles in the world. Devil take the noos!”

And turning his back on her, he went fuming up the hill.

_Collier’s, The National Weekly_

“MOMMA”

BY

RUPERT HUGHES

“MOMMA”[4]

By RUPERT HUGHES

Momma was sick, right sick. Momma was awful sick! Momma looked like she was going to die any minute. And she didn’t care if she did. She up and as good as told Poppa that.

Poppa was scared almost to death when he realized it. He was all alone with her, and had none of the children to talk to about it; though, for the matter of that, Momma and Poppa had never told the children about their own ailments. And now the children had growed up and vamoosed. All that was left of the fact that there ever had been any children round the place was the two old names Momma and Poppa that the old folks had caught by contagion and got to calling each other by from hearing themselves called them by the children when they were children.

Momma and Poppa had been drifting down life like a pair of old mud turtles floating south on an old log. And now all of a sudden one of them felt that the other’n was going to roll off into the muddy water and sink downward, backward, dead!

Perhaps the poor turtles know and grieve and mourn to the full capacity of their tight shells.

But Poppa was a human, gifted with sympathy. He was old acquaintances with grief of every sort, a pitiful postgraduate in all a man knows who has been a lover, a husband, and a father, and has seen children born from one pain and ache to another and another, who has seen some of his own little children die, or pray for death in the long procession of disappointments and thwarted hopes that begin with the first irretrievable rattle lost over the edge of the crib, and pass on to the rainy holidays, the sunny schooldays, the warm Christmases, cracked dolls, lost games, indignities from parents who misunderstand and spank, from sweethearts who misunderstand and flirt, and so on and so forth to the dreary, shabby campfollower sorrows that trudge along at the tail end of the parade.

Poppa’s habit had been to take things as they come, because, as somebody said, that’s the only way they come. He had grown so jaded with existence that he became a veteran Horatio, who, as Will Shakespeare said, “fortune’s buffets and rewards hast ta’en with equal thanks.”

Nothing had excited him much of late at the store, at home, at church, the lodge, or in the newspapers. As he had worn what seemed to be the same suit of clothes for years, so his face had worn the same suit of expressions. It was hard to tell his smile from his scowl. Funny things all had a touch of misfortune in them for somebody, and sad things were all kind of funny, so the same twitch at the muscles about his mouth served for an acknowledgment of everything unusual.

But now, when Momma almost wisht she was dead, that last dreadful word twitched Poppa’s very heart. He felt as if in the calm slumber of habitude somebody had reached into his breast and given his heart a yank. And it shivered and rattled as an old doorbell clamors pulled hard at midnight by somebody crying: “Wake up! Your house is on fire!”

* * * * *

Poppa woke up. Instinct told him that he must save Momma and himself from the incredible disaster of her death. His business worries had kept him from noticing the little symptoms of her decline, though she had stopped quarreling with him, and had simply quarreled with life, with everything: the food, the neighbors, her clothes, the weather, her stummick, her head, her eyes, her feet, her hands, her appetite, her looks--she even complained of her looks!

And now, as if scales had been scraped off his eyes, Poppa saw that Momma didn’t look good. She didn’t look a bit good. She looked something scandalous.

Poppa belonged to a lodge, and he had gone to numberless funerals. Yet he had hardly even imagined that some day his fellow members might in turn come to his house, all dressed up with sashes and plumes and swords, to march alongside the black wagon that should carry his one woman in a box to a ditch.

As if some one had set a moving picture going against the wall of his own sitting room, he saw the whole thing, and he shuddered back from it with a cry that struck inward and cut downward and stuck. He had a fishbone in his throat.

He became suddenly young and arrantly afraid. He wanted to run to his wife and cling to her and beg her not to think of such things. But he had given up the habit of hugging Momma or taking her into his lap or sitting on the arm of her chair since the ancient days when the first child began to take notice.

He wanted to go back to the old ways, but it would have looked foolish, and the two frumps had been afraid of each other’s love for years and years.

He did nothing and said nothing; but he did a heap of thinking. “Heap” was the word, for his thoughts were like a pile of dead leaves, tarnished, crumpled brown leaves that had been green and radiant and breathing once.

His thoughts were a heap of autumnal rubbish set on fire. Red torment ran through them, and they writhed and twisted as if a new life had come back to them just that they might suffer a little more.

The terror stung him to a determination. “I’ll call the doctor,” he said. He rose from his chair and shuffled to the telephone. Momma ran after him and dragged his hands down, crying: “I don’t want to see that old fool. I’ll go jump in the river if you send for him. I couldn’t stand the sight of him.”

“When a woman’s too sick to see the doctor,” Poppa said, “it’s high time somebody called him in.”

He backed round and bunted her away with the minimum of grace and the maximum of devotion, and held her at a distance until he got the number.

Momma flopped helplessly into a chair and cried like a petulant little girl, while Poppa ordered the doctor to put on his shoes and come right over.

She was still pouting like a little girl when Dr. Noxon came. Her lips were pushed out and her chin was purse-drawn when he asked her what was the matter of her. He held her wrist in one hand and his watch in the other, glanced at her tongue, and in a lowered voice asked one or two very personal questions.

Poppa did most of the talking, while Dr. Noxon nodded and said: “I see, I see.” As might have been expected, he left two sets of pills, one kind to be taken after each meal and before retiring, and another kind of pill to be taken on arising and every three hours.

Momma could hardly keep from laughing in the old owl’s face, and as soon as he closed the door she bust right out. It was not a nice laugh--hysterics like. She whooped: “I’ve seen that old nuisance leave those same fool pills on those same fool pieces of paper since we first came to Carthage and called him in. Everybody that ever took ’em has died, and I guess it’s my turn! And I don’t care!”

Her laughter ended in the wild weeping of a young girl, and Poppa was almost distracted. She went to bed all wore out, but she couldn’t sleep.

She kept him awake worse when she laid still trying not to wake him than she did when she thrashed about and groaned.

* * * * *

That was a long night, and Poppa entertained a whole herd of nightmares without falling asleep, or, if he did, he didn’t know it and it didn’t do him a mite of good.

He waited a day or two to see what effect Dr. Noxon’s immemorial pills would have. They had even less effect than he expected they would.

The third day he took the almost sacrilegious step of seeing one of the other doctors. Dr. Champe refused to call since Mrs. Lundy was known to be one of Dr. Noxon’s regular customers, a life member in his pill association.

But Poppa threatened to brain Champe if he didn’t see Momma, and he consented to see her if she would call after dark. Poppa had to drive her there “like a pig to market,” he said, and he was more wore out than what she was.

Dr. Champe gave spoon medicines. They were bittersweet and sticky, and had no effect whatever except to cause a brief ague of nausea and leave a nasty taste on the tongue.

A third doctor tried massage, another electricity. Momma even flirted with science--science with a capital S. But the optimism that was ladled out to her made her sicker than Dr. Champe’s sticky sweet medicine. She was in one of those moods when a cheerful word or a smile is a deadly insult.

The last doctor in town advised a trip, a change of climate and environment. Momma ridiculed the idea, but Poppa telegraphed their married daughter in Terre Haute that Momma was coming, and he fairly boosted her on the train.

Momma was dismal and ashamed of being dumped as a burden on a daughter she had always babied even after Hattie (now Mrs. Fred Eppes) had babies of her own. So the reunion lacked the delight that belonged to the occasion.

Hattie hugged her mother hard and squealed: “Why, Momma, you’re looking fine!”

Momma was doleful enough to remember her own woes, and she groaned: “You just say that! I don’t feel a bit good and I’m a sight! Don’t show me to any of your swell Terra Hut friends, for I’ll disgrace you.”

Hattie had hard sledding before her. Her mother did not even want to cheer up. She wanted to be sick, and she doubled her misery by bewailing the fact that she couldn’t throw off her gloom. She tried to smile once or twice, but Hattie begged her not to.

Since Momma would neither go calling nor receive callers, she was not easy to entertain. She was ashamed of her shabby clothes and her dowdy appearance, and so was Hattie.

Hattie would not admit it, though she did say that Poppa, with all his money, ought to dress her up better. Poor Poppa had tried to. The average American husband does not often get the chance to complain of his wife’s thrift in clothes, but Mr. Lundy, little as he noticed such things, had finally urged Momma to spend a little more money on duds now that the children were buying their own. But his well-meant hints had only depressed her the more, and she had retorted that he was sick and tired of her and her old face.