Part 9

"Very good," he said. "It all goes all right now, except the dance. Mr. Kosky will take care of that." He raised his voice. "Principals, same time to-morrow! Good morning, Miss St. Leger! Good morning, Tubby, old man!" His voice boomed louder. "Now then, chorus ladies and chorus gentlemen, please!"

The damosels round the stage laid down their khaki socks, hitched up their own stockings, and gathered in groups in the wings. Simultaneously a procession of six gentlemen appeared from the direction of the stage-door, extinguishing cigarettes.

Liss hurriedly introduced Marjorie. Lancaster shook hands.

"I think we can find a place for you in the show," he said, regarding her with critical approval. "Can you sing?"

Marjorie, with a sudden and incongruous recollection of the harmonium at Netherby on Sunday afternoons, smiled, and replied that she could sing a little.

"Mr. Kay will try your voice after rehearsal. No previous experience, I suppose?"

"No."

"It doesn't matter. You had better sit and watch this rehearsal this morning, and try to learn our language. Baby, my dear, run along and get into your place."

Liss, who appeared to be the _enfant gate_ of the establishment, scampered away, and presently appeared among the chattering throng on the prompt side. Mr. Lancaster clapped his hands. There was silence.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen," he explained, "we are going to try the first new number in the Second Act--'Honolulu Lulu.' Places, please, and try to put some ginger in it this time! You come on laughing and chatting. Now--_commence_!" He clapped his hands again. "For pity's sake, everybody, _desist_! Gentlemen, gentlemen, remember that you are happy South Sea Islanders, without a care in the world--not welshers coming back from a dirty day at Kempton! Again, please! And ladies, don't come bolting on in that panic-stricken way. You aren't taking shelter from an air raid; you are young village belles, come to participate in the Annual Festival of the Sun! You are joyful! You are glad! You are going to sing about it! For the Lord's sake, _smile_! Phil, old man, the symphony once more, if you please! All come in at the end of six bars. La-la! La-la! La-la! _Now_, all together! No! no! no! _no_!" Mr. Lancaster clapped his hands and beat his breast alternately. "Ladies, ladies, _ladies_! Let me tell you, for the last time, that it is a human impossibility to sing with the mouth shut! It can't be done! For generations and centuries people have been trying to sing out of their noses, and their ears, and the back of their necks; but no one has ever succeeded yet. Open your little mouths! Open them wide! And _keep_ them open, for the love of Mike!"

And so on, until a standard of approximate harmony was attained.

*IV*

Next day Marjorie walked on at her first rehearsal, and practised the new numbers with the rest. Mr. Lancaster's attitude towards her was the same as Mr. Lee's. That is to say, he addressed her much as an old gentleman of seventy might address a little girl of six.

"Now, dear, I know you are feeling nervous, and aren't going to do yourself justice, just at first--"

"I am not a bit nervous, thank you," said Marjorie.

"Oh, yes, you are," said Mr. Lancaster. "But remember that I understand about that, and am making allowances all the time. So don't be frightened; but keep your head up, and sing out, that's a good girl!"

"He's a hard nut," remarked her next-door neighbour into her ear--"but he never swears at you. At least, if he does, he always apologises afterwards. He's quite a gentleman."

In a few days Marjorie was admitted an accepted member of the choral sisterhood. She found her colleagues, for the most part, young, friendly, talkative, excitable, and as improvident as grasshoppers. Most of them possessed a "boy" of some kind--usually a callow subaltern of the one-star brand, with a vocabulary largely composed of the expressions "priceless" and "pathetic." Some of them were married. A few had husbands actually out in France, or farther afield. One or two had babies, and talked about them a good deal.

Of the principals, Miss St. Leger, with her magnetic personality and tough little Chicago voice, was a prime favourite with everybody. Her hold over the audience was wonderful: she could galvanise a Wednesday matinee into enthusiasm. Compared with her, the second girl, Phyllis Lane, was no more than an attractive amateur. But both were kind to their humbler sisters. Indeed, nearly everybody was kind to everybody in those days. The theatrical profession is conspicuous for its big generosities and petty jealousies. In August, nineteen-sixteen, the former had almost entirely obliterated the latter. A huge daily casualty-list is a very levelling--indeed, binding--influence, especially in such a community; there was not a girl in the chorus at the Imperial who had not an interest, actual or prospective, in that casualty-list.

The male members of the company, as was only natural at the time, were remarkable neither for their youth nor their physical fitness. In addition to the phlebitic Ames, there were--Jack Hopeleigh, a well-preserved hero with a light baritone--he was registered under the Derby Scheme in group forty-three; Hubert Hartshorn, a comic manservant, who owed his irresistible wheezy laugh to the fact that he had been badly gassed at Ypres more than twelve months previously, and was now discharged permanently unfit; and one Valentine Rigg, a stage lawyer, who for forty years had earned a modest but steady income by arriving in the Third Act with a black bag, and clearing up all misunderstandings just before the clock struck eleven.

To the student of humanity the chorus gentlemen were really more interesting than the principals. There was a dismal individual named Chivers, who now kept a stationer's shop in Brixton, but had once been in grand opera--Carl Rosa's chorus. He contributed a reedy tenor to the ensemble. There was a plump little man with a round face and little tufts of white whisker, invaluable in scenes of revelry where guests of the "jolly old uncle" type were required. This was his first theatrical engagement for fifteen years. In the interim he had supported life with invincible cheerfulness, as a bookmaker's clerk, a traveller in hymn-books, and head-waiter in an old-fashioned Brighton hotel. There was a discharged corporal of the Machine Gun Corps, with lungs of brass, the D.C.M. ribbon on his waistcoat, and twenty-seven fragments of German H.E. in his left leg. There was an unpleasant-looking youth named Mervyn, with bobbed hair and a patronising manner--debarred from volunteering his services to his country by reason of a susceptibility to chills upon the liver. Popular rumour located these elsewhere.

And there was Alf Spender--"Uncle Ga-Ga." His age was a mystery. His own estimate, for war purposes, was forty-one. The ladies of the chorus put it among themselves at a hundred and fifty. It was possibly fifty-four, or thereabouts. He was a frail creature, with a simple soul, and what Americans call a "single-track" mind. He had been a super or chorus man ever since he could remember; and until the year nineteen fourteen had never relinquished a humble ambition to achieve a speaking part. But now all that was cast to the winds. His single track was carrying other traffic. Somewhere within his ill-nourished frame burned the pure white flame of genuine patriotism. His one desire was to be admitted to the privilege of khaki, and to do his humble part in "teaching those dirty Germans a lesson." He never rested in his efforts to qualify. He dyed his scanty locks; he endeavoured, by daily study of a manual of Swedish exercises, to school his feeble limbs and sickly body to the requisite pitch of efficiency. He offered himself at every recruiting station in London, giving a different name at each. But all in vain; no one would accept him. He could pass no physical test; a big heart was not enough.

"Still, I haven't given up hope," he confided to Marjorie. "I have just discovered a really admirable hair-tonic; and there's a new strengthening-food come on the market, which may help. Of course, the chief difficulty is my teeth; an M.O. turns me down the moment he examines them! I haven't many, you see, and what I have don't fit together very well; and good dentistry runs into money--a fiver, at least. But I don't despair--not by any means. They will want me in time! It seems inhuman to say so, but I do trust this battle that's just started on the Somme won't finish the war right off. I couldn't bear to see the troops coming back victorious, and feel that I did nothing to help!"

Here was another Willing Horse. Marjorie's heart warmed to him; they became friends. They shared a newspaper at rehearsals, discussing Sir Douglas Haig's daily bulletin word by word. They read between the lines, and decided that, despite newspaper heroics to the contrary, the gigantic offensive of July the First had only been partially successful.

"We never got through on the left at all," said Alf. "Look at that place on the map--Thiepval. We were meant to carry that bang off, and we didn't! They don't say so, but we didn't! We have broken their line all right, but the trouble is that we have broken it on too narrow a front--and I think it's all because of that Thiepval place. We must widen the gap, or the attack fails. Shall I tell you what I would do if I were head of the Army Council?"

"Yes--do," said Marjorie, eagerly.

"I would secretly construct some sort of contrivance that would protect our troops as they dashed across No Man's Land. That's the most dangerous moment. I'm not worrying about artillery fire, mind you! You may dodge that, or you may not; anyhow, there's a sporting chance about it. It's those machine guns! The Germans have them fixed in such a way that when they are all fired at once there is not a yard of ground that isn't a running river of bullets. Now mark you, once we get across that bullet zone, we have the Hun at our mercy. We British"--Alf's emaciated frame stiffened exultantly--"can do _anything_ with the bayonet! But we must get across first!"

"But how?" Marjorie sighed despairingly.

"I don't know: I haven't enough technical knowledge. But some sort of armour-plated motor 'bus would be the idea. I'll bet old Kitchener would have fixed it, if he'd been alive. Oh, dear!" (The _Hampshire_ had gone down some six weeks previously.) "By the way, have you heard from Mr. Birnie of late?"

Then Marjorie would tell him all Roy's news. Naturally it contained little of military value, but our two enthusiasts read it--or rather, approved portions thereof--with all the solemn deference due to the Authority on the Spot.

"He may get home on leave some time soon," Marjorie said. "He went out last August, and it's July now. Leave is long over-due, but they stopped it all for weeks before the battle. His battalion was in the opening attack, I think, but they are out now, refitting."

"It must have been an anxious time for you while they were in," said Alf. "Did you know?"

"Yes--at least, I knew a few weeks before that they were at Bray-sur-Somme; so when the news of the attack came I felt pretty certain."

Alf's mild blue eyes flashed.

"I wish I had been with him," he said, "instead of"--he glanced disparagingly downstage, to where Phil Kay, entrenched in the orchestra, was resisting Tubby Ames's bi-weekly offensive--"_this_! It must be a grand moment, coming back to rest, right out of a battle--all mud-splashed, and exhausted, knowing you have made good! Did he give you any details when he wrote?"

"The only detail that mattered," said Marjorie with an unsteady little laugh, "was this!"

She produced a field post card--muddy, crumpled, evidently dispatched by the grimy hand of a stretcher-bearer or a ration orderly. On the back were printed certain alternative statements, familiar enough by this time, designed by the authorities to cover all the chances incident to the life of a soldier in the field. They were all deleted with a blunt pencil, save the first:

_I am well_.

"That was the nicest letter I ever had from him!" said Marjorie.

"And I bet that's saying a good deal!" replied Alf, with a stately little bow. "Now, touching this Delville Wood, on the right--"

But here the battle-call of Mr. Lancaster was heard in the stalls; and our strategists turned reluctantly from the prosecution of the military campaign to the maintenance of civilian morale.

*V*

The Second Edition was produced in due course, with the success inevitable in that enthusiastic, unsophisticated, _carpe diem_ period. Marjorie appeared successively, and with distinction, as a Lady Guest at the reception of a most unconvincing Duchess, where she flourished an empty champagne glass painted yellow inside; as a Bird of Paradise in the chorus of an ornithological ditty entitled, "If my Girl was a Bird, I would Build Her a Nest," contributed by the well-preserved light baritone aforementioned; as a damsel of the South Sea Islands, participating, with somewhat improbable ritual, in the Annual Festival of the Sun; and in other less exacting roles. Her most distinguished appearance was in the Finale (in a tableau of the Allied Nations), as The Spirit of France. In this she was entrusted with a separate entrance, a solitary walk down stage, and the deliverance of a rhymed couplet of a patriotic nature, in which General Joffre suffered the indignity of rhyming with "Our hats we doff," "nasty cough." She was quite composed, and offered her outrageous contribution with such _aplomb_ as to arouse frantic applause. Liss was a dancer, and her activities were mostly linked with those of seven other little creatures like herself. She was whole-heartedly delighted with her friend's successful graduation.

Next morning the company were called at eleven, to be photographed. The morning after, Marjorie reported for duty at the canteen, and was received with open arms by the Mouldy Old Copper. With renewed enthusiasm she settled down to the old drudgery. She was supporting herself; her long and dreary evenings were over; and, best of all, she was really Doing Something to Help.

*VI*

One morning a few weeks later Mrs. Clegg was deposited by the Rolls-Royce at the front door of Buckholm, and was ushered by Mr. Bates into the amber drawing-room. She entered with the uneasy self-consciousness of the visitor to a great house who has come, not to pay an intimate call, but to attend a committee meeting.

"The other ladies have not yet arrived, madam," announced Bates; and added, in stately reproof: "It is not quite eleven o'clock. Her ladyship will be down presently. Will you please to be seated?" He deposited the flustered and untimely caller upon a sofa, handed her a magazine, and left her alone.

Mrs. Clegg mechanically turned over the pages of the magazine. It was one of those periodicals which was doing its characteristic best at that time to compensate our warriors in the field for compulsory severance from domestic felicity by a weekly display, on a generous--nay, prodigal--scale, of the forms and features of loved ones far away--particularly of such as happened to be connected with the lighter walks of the lyric drama. Mrs. Clegg's eye was caught by a photograph on the middle page--of a tall, slender girl, draped from head to foot in what looked like a flag, with the Cap of Liberty perched upon her fair head. The face seemed familiar. Mrs. Clegg adjusted her tortoise-shell lorgnette--at home, when reading, she wore simple spectacles--and examined the photograph in greater detail. Then she perused the journalistic effusion underneath. It began:

One cannot have _Too Many Girls_ of This Kind, Can one?...

Mrs. Clegg was a dutiful wife. On her way home she stopped at the railway station and bought a copy of the magazine at the book-stall. After dinner she showed the middle page to her husband. It was a courageous act, for no such literature had ever been introduced into Netherby before.

That night, when the household had retired to bed, Albert Clegg reopened the Family Bible, lying since prayers at the head of the dining-room table; turned to the Births, Marriages, and Deaths and sent his fountain-pen scouting down the first column. Presently he came to the name he wanted. He scored it out--scored it, and scored it, to complete obliteration. When he had finished, Marjorie had joined Aunt Eliza in the ranks of the Legion of the Lost.

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE BOOK OF THE WORDS*

We were due back in the line that night, and I was struggling, in company with one humid orderly-room sergeant and several hundred houseflies, to clean up the usual orderly-room mess--indents, returns, and other nuisances which, in the absence of the adjutant, usually fall upon the patient shoulders of that regimental tweeny, the second-in-command.

I was seated at the kitchen table of a farm-house in Picardy. The weather had been wet and misty for weeks--the weather at critical moments in this war was invariably pro-Boche--but this afternoon the sun had reappeared and summer had come back with a rush. Still, on the overworked highway outside mud still lay deep. At the farm-gate two transport men were admonishing two mules, in the only way they knew, for indicating reluctance (in the only way _they_ knew) to hauling the headquarters company's field-kitchen out of the oozy ruts where it had reposed for ten days. Through the open door, looking east, I could descry the wrecked spire of Albert Church, with its golden Virgin and Child projecting horizontally from the summit, like the flame of a candle in a steady draught.

To my ears all the time, through the heavy summer air, came the incessant muffled thunder of guns, and guns, and more guns--British guns, new British guns; hundreds of them--informing Brother Boche that he, the originator of massed artillery tactics, was "for it" himself at last. The bombardment had begun systematically about the middle of the month, all up and down the Western Front. Last Saturday it had intensified in the neighbourhood of the Somme and Ancre Valleys; I had lain awake in my billet, listening, and recalling that summer afternoon, less than two years ago, when Lord Eskerley had gloomily explained to me that it took at least three years to make a British gunner. This afternoon the whole earth trembled; the final eruption could not be much longer delayed.

For Britain was ready to strike at last. True, she had struck before, both recently and frequently; but that had been mainly in self-defence, or for experiment, or to create a diversion. Now she was in a position to strike home. For nearly two years the Willing Horse had stood up indomitably under the strain, while a nation, mainly willing, but shamefully unready, was getting into condition. To-day that nation was ready; every man worth his salt was at last a trained soldier. Never before in our history had such an army been gathered, and never again would such an army be seen, as strained at the leash behind that twenty-five mile front on the thirtieth of June, nineteen sixteen. True, we launched greater armies, and won greater victories in the two years that followed; but--the very flower of a race can bloom but once in a generation. The flower of our generation bloomed and perished during the four months of the First Battle of the Somme. We shall not look upon their like again. It is to be doubted if any generation will--or any race.

Sometimes, in these later days of reaction and uncertainty, we are inclined to wonder whether that sacrifice was justified; whether it would not have been better to wait just a little longer. But in truth we had waited long enough. Strategy might advocate delay, but honour could not. For four months Verdun had stood up like a rock against the rolling tide of assault; it was time we took some weight off Verdun's shoulders. For two years the half-equipped armies of Russia had maintained a suicidal offensive on our account; even now fresh German divisions were streaming away from the Western Front to the Eastern. It was time we called them back. Strategy or no strategy, we meant to accomplish those two purposes. And we did--with something over. Perhaps the Flowers who sleep by the Somme to-day feel, on that account, that what they perished for was worth while. They kept the faith.

I had just dictated provisional Battalion Orders for the morrow; made the usual mistakes in the weekly Strength Return; and was wrestling with an incomprehensible document--highly prized by that section of the Round Games Department which sees to it that wherever the British soldier goes, whether singly or in battalions, his daily rations and weekly pay are diverted from their normal course to meet him--when there came a scuttering of hooves, and Master Roy Birnie, our esteemed sniping and intelligence officer, came flying round the corner on a borrowed horse (mine), as if all the Germans in Picardy were after him. However, this was merely Roy's exuberant way of coming home for his tea. He descended, hitched his steed to the farm-pump, and came striding into the kitchen with blood in his young eye. I dismissed the sergeant in quest of tea. Roy favoured me with a formal salute, then sat down, and began:

"Uncle Alan, I wonder why every battalion in the British Army (except ours) is entirely composed of damn fools!"

"I have heard that speculation so often upon the lips of members of other units of the British Army," I replied, "that I have given up trying to find the answer. Tell me your trouble."

Roy accepted the invitation at once.

"Well," he said, "I had a peach of an observation post up in the front line. It was an old derelict mill-wheel affair--one of those contraptions you see on the end wall of every farm-house in this country, with a poor brute of a mongrel dog inside, treadmilling away to work a churn, or play the pianola, or something. It lies out flat in front of C Company's sector, on top of a little rise, looking like nothing at all. You know it?"

"Yes," I said. "It has been there for months; it is one of the accepted features of the landscape by this time."

"That's right; the Boche has never suspected it. Well, I have been using it as an O. Pip for six weeks. There is a private covered sap leading out to it, and once you're inside you can stand in a pit, with your little circular peep-show all round you. Why, through one loophole I can see right away to Beaumont Hamel! Now, as you know, ten days ago we handed over to the Late and Dirties. This morning, when I went up into the line to see about taking over again to-morrow, what do you think I found--in my own special private O.P.?"

"I don't know," I said. "A hairpin?"

"Uncle Alan, for the Lord's sake don't play the fool! I'll _tell_ you what I found; the whole floor of the post--_my_ post, mind you--was covered with empty cartridge cases! Some Late-and-Dirty perisher had been in there with a rifle, firing volleys--no, _salvoes_--out of it! With an oily barrel, too, I'll bet! Of course the Boche has the place registered now; and next time there is any general unpleasantness brewing, up it will go! And I hope the Late-and-Dirty dog who gave it away will be inside, that's all!"

"It's rotten luck, I admit, boy. But in this case it doesn't particularly matter. In a day or two, we hope, your observation post will be far in rear of us. Perhaps some clerkly gentleman from the base will be making his nest therein."

Roy's face brightened suddenly.

"When do we push off?" he asked eagerly.