XIII

I took by the throat the circumcised dogAnd smote him, thus!

I took by the throat the circumcised dog

And smote him, thus!

He held out a pair of large fat hands of the consistency of clay; he was of a full habit and there were pouches under his eyes. In England he would have been a small tradesman, with strong views on total abstinence, accustomed to a diet of high tea, and honoured as the life-long superintendent of a Sunday school. I was more astonished than sceptical, but perhaps, as the Comte suggested in a whisper, the Uhlan was drunk. Here, too, we heard tales of loot, especially among ladies' wardrobes. It is a curious fact that there is nothing the Hun loves so much as women's underclothing. As to what happens when he gets hold of thelingeriemany scandalous stories are told, and none more scandalous than the one which appeared in the whimsical pages ofLa Vie Parisienne. But that is, most emphatically, quite another story.

From La Ferté we drove on to Lizy, where the gendarme, wiping his mouth as he came hurriedly from the inn, told us a harrowing tale, and then to Barcy, where themaire, though busy with a pitch-fork upon a manure heap, received us with municipal gravity. We were now nearing the battlefield of the Marne, and here and there along the roadside the trunks of the poplars, green with mistletoe, were shivered as though by lightning. Yet nothing could have been more peaceful than the pastoral beauty of the countryside. We passed waggons full of roots, drawn by a team of white oxen under the yoke, and by the roadside a threshing machine was being fed by a knot of old men and young women from an oat-rick. The only hints of the cloud on the horizon were the occasional passage of a convoy and the notable absence of young men. As we raced along, the furrows, running at right angles to the road, seemed to be eddying away from us in pleats and curves, and this illusion of a stationary car in a whirling landscape was fortified by the contours of the countryside, which were those of a great plain, great as any sea, stretching away to a horizon of low chalk hills. Suddenly the car slowed down at a signal from my companion and stopped. We got out. Not a sound was to be heard except the mournful hum of the distant threshing machine, but a peculiar clicking, like the halliard of a flagstaff in a breeze, suddenly caught my ear. The wind was rising, and as I looked around me I saw innumerable little tricolour flags fluttering against small wooden staves. Itwas the battlefield of the Marne, the scene of that immortal order of Joffre's in which he exhorted the sons of France to conquer or die where they stood. As he had commanded, so had they done. With an emotion too deep for words we each contemplated these plaintive memorials of the heroes who lay where they fell. Our orderly wept and made no effort to hide his tears. I thought of Jeanne's wistful petition, but my heart sank, for these graves were to be numbered not by hundreds but by thousands. "C'est absolument impossible!" said the Comte, to whom I had communicated my quest. A sudden cry from the orderly, who was moving from grave to grave in a close scrutiny of the inscriptions, arrested us. He was standing by a wooden cross, half draped by a tattered blue coat and covered with wreaths of withered myrtle. A képi pierced with holes lay upon the grave. And sure enough, by some miracle of coincidence, he had found it. On a wooden slab we read these words:

Paul Duval,151eRég. d'Inf.6 sept. 1914MORT POUR LA PATRIE.

The sun was fast declining over the chalk hills and it grew bitter cold. I unfolded my camera, stepped back eight paces, and pressed the trigger. We clambered back into the car and resumed theroad to Meaux. As I looked over my shoulder the last things I saw in the enfolding twilight were those little flags still fluttering wistfully in the wind.

We lay the night at Meaux. It was a town which breathed the enchantments of the Middle Ages and had for me the intimacy of a personal reminiscence. Sixteen years earlier, when reading for a prize essay at Oxford, I had studied the troubled times of Étienne Marcel in the treasures of the Bibliothèque de l'École des Chartes, and I knew every kilometre of this country as though I had trodden it. Meaux, Compiègne, Senlis—they called to my mind dreamy hours in the dim religious light of muniment-rooms and days of ecstasy among the pages of Froissart. Little did I think when I read those belligerent chronicles in the sequestered alcoves of the Bodleian and the Bibliothèque Nationale, tracing out the warlike dispositions of Charles the Bad and the Dauphin and the Provost of the Merchants, that the day would come when I would be traversing these very fields engaged in detective enterprises upon the footprints of contemporary armies. Tocompare thevariae lectionesof two manuscripts concerning a fourteenth-century skirmish is good, it has all the excitement of the chase; but to be collating the field note-book of a living Hun with thedossierof a contemporary Justice de Paix, this is better. It has all the contact of reality and the breathless joy of the hue and cry. And, after all, were things so very different? Generations come and go, dynasties rise and fall, but the earth endureth for ever, and these very plains and hills and valleys that have witnessed the devastation of the Hun have also seen the ravages of the mercenaries and free companies of the Middle Age. As I lay in my bed that night at the inn I turned over the pages of my pocket volume of M. Zeller'sHistoire de France racontée par les contemporains, and hit on the "Souvenirs du brigand Aimerigot Marchès," ravisher of women, spoiler of men, devourer of widows' houses. And as I read, it seemed as though I were back in the departmentdu Contentieuxof the Ministry of War in Paris deciphering the pages of a German officer's field note-book. For thus speaks Aimerigot Marchès in the delectable pages of Froissart distilled by M. Zeller into modern French:

There is no time, diversion, nor glory in this world like that of the profession of arms and making war in the way we have. How blithe were we when we rode forth at hazard and hit ona rich abbé, an opulent prior or merchant, or a string of mules from Montpelier, Narbonne, Limoux, Toulouse, or Carcassonne laden with the fabrics of Brussels or furs from the fair of Lendit, or spices from Bruges, or the silks of Damascus and Alexandria! All was ours or was to ransom at our sweet will. Every day we had more money. The peasants of Auvergne and Limousin provisioned us and brought to our camp corn and meal, and baked bread, hay for the horses and straw for their litter, good wines, oxen, and fine fat sheep, chicken, and poultry. We carried ourselves like kings and were caparisoned as they, and when we rode forth the whole country trembled before us. Par ma foi, cette vie était bonne et belle.

Is not that your very Hun? He is a true reversion to type. Only, whereas among the French he is a thing of the savage past, among the Germans he is a product of the kultured present. And to turn from the field note-book of the German soldier with its swaggering tale of loot, lust, and maudlin cups, its memoranda of stolen toys for Felix and of ravished lingerie for Bertha, all viewed in the rosy light of the writer's egotism as a laudable enterprise, to the plain depositions of the Justice de Paix, and see the reverse side of the picture with its tale of ruined homes and untilled fields, was just such an experience as it had been to turn from the glittering pages of Froissart to the sombre story of Jean de Venette,[9]a monk of Compiègne, Little Brother of the Poor and chronicler of his times, as he pondered on these things in the scriptorium:

In this year 1358, the vines, source of that beneficent liquor which gladdens the heart of man, were no longer cultivated; the fields were neither tilled nor sown; the oxen and the sheep went no longer to the pasture. The churches and houses, falling into decay, presented everywhere traces of devouring flames or sombre ruins and smouldering. The eye was no longer gladdened as before with the sight of green meadows and yellowing harvests, but rather afflicted by the aspect of briers and thistles, which clustered everywhere. The church bells no longer rang joyously to call the faithful to the divine offices, but only to give the alarm to the peasants at the approach of the enemy and the signal for flight.

As it was in the days of Jean de Venette, so it is now. I thought of that mournful passage as I wandered next day among the ruins of Choisy-au-Bac, a village not twenty miles from the place where Jean de Venette was born, and saw old women cowering among the ruins of their burnt-out homes.

If the good Carmelite of the fourteenth century returned to Meaux to-day he would have little difficulty in finding his way about the city, for though she must have aged perceptibly she can have changed but little. The timbered mills on wooden piles still stand moored in the middle of the river like so many ships, just as they stood in the twelfth century, and the cathedral with its Gothic portals and great rose-window—though it has grown in stature and added here and there a touch of the flamboyant in its tracery, even as a man will break out into insurgent adventures whenhe feels the first chill of age—is stamped with the characters of the fourteenth century. And I think Jean de Venette would find a congenial spirit in my friend the bishop, Monsignor Marbot, for like Jean he is a lover of the poor. It was Monsignor Marbot who went in procession to the battlefield of the Marne with crucifix and banner and white-robed acolytes, and in an allocution of singular beauty consecrated those stricken fields with the last rites of the Church. And it was Monsignor Marbot who remained at his post all through the German occupation to protect his flock while the Hun roamed over his diocese like a beast of prey. Though the Hun thinks nothing of shooting amaire, and has been known to murder many an obscure village priest, he fights shy of killing a bishop; there might be trouble at the Holy See. Many a moving tale did the good bishop tell me as we sat in his little house—surely the most meagre and ascetic of episcopal palaces, in which there was nothing more sumptuous than his cherry and scarlet soutane and his biretta.

We lay the night at an inn that must have been at one time a seigneurial mansion, for it had a noble courtyard. I was shown to a room, and, having unpacked my valise, I turned on the taps, but no water issued; I applied a match to the gas-jet, but no flame appeared; I tried to open thewindow, but the sash stuck. I rang the bell; that at least responded. A maid appeared; I pointed to the taps and made demonstrations with the gas-jet. To all of which she replied quite simply, "Ah! monsieur, c'est la guerre!" I had heard that answer before. With such a plea of confession and avoidance had the boots at the Hôtel de la Poste at Rouen excused a gross omission to call me in the morning, and thus also had the aged waiter at the Métropole disposed of a flagrant error in my bill. But this time it was convincing enough; gas-workers and waterworks men and carpenters were all at the war, and in the town of Meaux water was carried in pitchers and light was purchased at the chandler's. In France you get used to these things and imitate with a good grace the calm stoicism of your Allies. For, after all, the enemy was pretty near, and as I retired to my couch I could hear the thunder of their guns.

FOOTNOTE:[9]Reputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume de Nangis. See M. Lacabane in theBibliothèque de l'École des Chartes(1esérie), t. iii.

[9]Reputed author of the sequel to the chronicles of Guillaume de Nangis. See M. Lacabane in theBibliothèque de l'École des Chartes(1esérie), t. iii.

We rose early the next day, and, having paid our reckoning, were away betimes, for we were to visit the French lines and wished also to pay a flying visit to Senlis. As we left Crépy-en-Valois we entered the Forest of Compiègne, a forest of noble beeches which rose tall and straight and grey like the piers of Beauvais Cathedral, their arms meeting overhead in an intricate vaulting through which we saw the winter sun in a sapphire sky. We met two Chasseurs d'Afrique, mounted on superb Arabs and wearing red fez-like caps and yellow collar-bands. They were like figures out of a canvas of Meissonier, recalling the spacious days when men went into action with all the pomp and circumstance of war, drums beating, colours flying, plumes nodding, and the air vibrant with the silvery notes of the bugle. All that is past; to-day no bugle sounds the charge, and even the company commander's whistle has given way to certainsoft words for which the German mocking-bird will seek in vain in our Infantry Manual. As for cuirass and helmet, the range of modern guns and rifles has made them a little too ingenuous. And, sure enough, as we drove into Compiègne we found a squadron of dragoons as sombre as our own, in their mouse-colouredcouvre-casquesand cavalry cloaks, though their lances glinted in the sun. Here all was animation. Informal conventicles of Staff officers, with whom we exchanged greetings, stood about the square in front of the exquisite Hôtel de Ville, with its high-pitched roof pierced with dormer-windows and crowned with many pinnacles. North and east of Compiègne lie the zones of the respective armies, all linked up by telephone, and here we had to exchange our passes, for even a Staff officer may not enter one zone with a pass appropriate to another. But our first objective was Senlis, which lay to the south of us between Compiègne and Paris.

The sun was high in the heavens as we turned south-west, and, keeping to the left bank of the river, skirted the forest. Faint premonitions of spring already appeared; catkins drooped upon the hazels, primroses made patches of sulphur in the woods, and one almost expected to see the blackthorn in blossom. Silver birches gleamed against the purple haze of the more distant woodlands. The road ran straight as an arrow. As we neared Senlis I was struck by the complete absence of all traffic upon the roads; no market carts came and went, neither did any wayfarer appear. Not a wisp of smoke arose from the chimneys above the screen of trees. We passed up a double avenue of elms—just such an avenue as that along which M. Bergeret discussed metaphysics and theology with the Abbé Lantaigne—yet not a soul was to be seen upon thetrottoir. A brooding silence hung over the little town, a silence so deep as to be almost menacing. As we entered the main street I encountered a spectacle which froze my heart. Far as the eye could see along the diminishing perspective of the road were burnt-out homes, houses which once were gay with clematis and wisteria, gardens which had blossomed with the rose. And now all that remained were trampled flower-beds, tangled creepers, blackened walls, calcined rafters, twisted ironwork, and fallen masonry. And this was Senlis! Senlis which had been to the department of the Oise as the apple of its eye, a little town of quality, beautiful as porcelain, fragrant as a rose, and as a rose as sweet. As I looked upon these desecrated homes it seemed to me that the very stones cried out.

In all this desolation we looked in vain for any signs of life. It was not until we sought out thehouse of a captain of dragoons, a friend of my companion the Comte, that we found a human being in these solitudes. The house was, indeed, a melancholy ruin, but by the gate was a lodge, and in the lodge a concierge. He was a small man and middle-aged, and as he spoke he trembled with a continual agitation of body as though he were afflicted with ague. He led us into his little house, the walls of which were blackened as with fire and pierced in many places with the impact of bullets. And this was his tale.

One afternoon early in September—it was the second day of the month, he remembered it because there had been an untimely frost over night—he heard the crackle of musketry on the outskirts of the town, and a column of grey-coated men suddenly appeared in the street. An officer blew a whistle, and, as some of them broke through the gates of the mansion, the concierge fled across the lawn with bullets buzzing about his ears and shouts of laughter pursuing him as he ran. In and out among the elms he doubled like a frightened hare, the bullets zip-zipping against the tree-trunks, till he crawled into a disused culvert and lay there panting and exhausted. From his hiding-place he heard the crash of furniture, more shots, and the loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers. And then a crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. Andafter that silence. At dusk he crawled forth from his culvert, trembling, his hands and face all mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles; he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked and then was still. About the hour of nine in the evening the concierge heard voices in disputation outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid himself among the shrubberies more men entered, and, being dissatisfied with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry and sang lustily—the concierge thought they had been drinking; they sang thus, "comme ça!" and the concierge mournfully hummed a tune, a tune he had never heard before, but which he would remember all his life. I recognised it. It was Luther's hymn:

Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott.

Thus had passed the day. Meanwhile themaire, M. Odent, a good man and greatly beloved, had been arrested at the Hôtel de Ville. His secretary proposed to call his deputies. "No, no," replied themairetranquilly, "one victim is enough." He was dragged along the streets to the suburb of Chammont, the headquarters of vonKluck, and his guards buffeted him and spat upon him as he went. Arrived there, he was condemned to death. He took his companions in captivity by the hand, embraced them—"très dignement," the concierge had been told—handed them his papers, and bade them adieu. Two minutes later he was shot, and his body thrown into a shallow trench with a sprinkling of earth. The concierge had seen it the next day; the feet were protruding.

All this the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic voice, and always as he told his body twitched and the muscles of his face worked. And he spoke like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not there. He seemed to be looking at something which we could not see. As we bade him adieu he stared at us as though he saw us not, neither did he return our salutation. We clambered back into our car and turned her head round towards Compiègne. I shall never see Senlis again.

Il y a une convenance et un pacte secret entre la jeunesse et la guerre. Manier des armes, revêtir l'uniforme, monter à cheval ou marcher au commandement,être redoutable sans cesser d'être aimable, dépasser le voisin en audace, en vitesse, et en grâce s'il se peut, défier l'ennemi, connaître l'aventure, jouer ce qui a peu duré, ce qui est encore illusion, rêve, ambition, ce qui est encore une beauté, ô jeunesse, voilà ce que vous aimez! Vous n'êtes pas liée, vous n'êtes pas fanée, vous pouvez courir le monde.—René Bazin,Récits du temps de la guerre.

Our little town was like the pool of Bethesda—never had I seen such a multitude of impotent folk. The lame, the halt, and the blind congregated here as if awaiting some miracle. I met them everywhere—Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the line, in every stage of infirmity. Our town was indeed but one vast hospital—orderly, subdued, and tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to visitors and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single café, faintly illuminated, lookedlike some mysterious grotto within which the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the colours. There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from theMairieat dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle, held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and hands like old oak. We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so far as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two before an armoured motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to their insistent challenge, ended its temerarious career one dark night by rushing headlong over the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm beneath. After that the rigour of our existence was, if anything, accentuated; much was "défendu," and many things which were still lawful were not expedient. Every one talked in subdued tones—it was only the wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance. True, there were the picture postcards in the shops—I had forgotten them—nothing more characteristicallymacabrehave I ever seen. One such I bought one morning—a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, "Captain, here is the horse—I have slain the horseman" ("Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai dué le cavalier, foilà le cheval"). It was labelled "Un Héros."

It was at this little town, on a memorable afternoon early in the war, that I was first admitted to the freedom of the soldiers of France. The ward was flooded with the soft lambent light of September sunshine, and it sheltered, I should say, some twenty-three men. Four were playing cards at the bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier had answered on tripping feet to the cry of "Garçon!" in a big Paris hotel, and was now asous-officierin 321st Regiment, recovering from wounds received in the thick of the fighting round Mülhausen. He was enjoying his convalescence. For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup, a peculiarly satisfying experience. Charles Lamb would have agreed with him. Has he not written that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing your own job—particularly if he does it badly? Thesous-officiernearly wept with joy when, amoment later, the orderly upset the soup. With him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in that leisurely manner which appears to be one of the principal charms of the plumber's vocation. A paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a professional eye while he appropriated his cards. An Alsatian completed the party. In a distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the voluptuous pages ofLa Vie Parisienne.

Thesous-officier, being an artiste in his way, had been giving me a histrionic exhibition of shell-fire. With a long intake and a discharge of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane. He extended his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the height of the leaping earth.

"Quinze mètres—comme ça, monsieur! Les Allemands? Ah! cochons!And they shoot execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (sur l'épaule)—so! They shoot under the arm (sous le bras)—so! And they like to join hands like children—they are afraid to go alone. They came out of the wood crouching like dogs—one behind theother. They are a bad lot—canaille. They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on church-towers. There was one of our sappers—diable!they tied him to a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him."

"But you make them pay for that?"

He smiled grimly. "Mais oui!When they see us they throw everything away and run. If we catch them, they put up their hands and say, 'Pas de mal, Alsatien.' But we're used to that trick. We just go through them like butter and say, 'Pour vous!' A littleétrenne, you know, monsieur, what you call 'Christmas-box'!" He laughed at some grim recollection.

"Deutschen Hunde! Stink-preussen![10]Ja!" It was the Alsatian who was speaking.

"Sie sprechen Deutsch!"[11]I exclaimed in astonishment.

"Ja, ich kann nicht anders—um so mehr schade!"[12]he replied mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact. "But," I interpolated, "itmust be very painful for those of you who cannot get away like yourself."

"Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German army. They watch us—and they put Prussiansous-officiersover us to spy. So when we see thesous-officiersneaking about, we raise our voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when we are alone—well, then we say what we think."

And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits—how they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies, like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied territory. Also how the German guns get the range at once. And other such things. All of which the paperhanger listened to in thoughtful silence and then told a tale.

"An officer in the uniform of your Army, monsieur, strolled up to my company one day. He was very pleasant, and his French was so good—not too good, just the kind of French that you English messieurs"—he bowed apologetically to me—"usually speak. Oh! he was very clever. And he talked with our captain about the battle for a long time. And then our captain noticedsomething—two things. First, monsieur, the English officer was very troubled with his eyes—he was always applying a large white handkerchief to the pupil. And it occur to the captain that the English officers do not carry white handkerchiefs but 'khaki.' What was the matter with the officer's eye? It could not be a fly—the weather was too cold; it had been raining. It could not be the dust; the ground was too wet. And the German shells—they begin to fall right in the midst of us—they had been so wide before. So the captain was very concerned for monsieur l'officier's eyes, and he takes him aside very politely and says he had better see the doctor. Asous-officierand two men shall take him to the doctor. Which they do. Only the 'doctor' was theliaisonofficer with our brigade—an English officer. And he finds that the officer is a spy—a Bosche. He have no more trouble with his eyes," added the paperhanger laconically. It was too good a story to spoil by cross-examination, so I left it at that.

"You like the bayonet?" I asked.

"Ah, yes! we love the bayonet. It is abon enfant," said thesous-officier. "And they can't fence (escrimer), the Bosches—they are toolourds. I remember we caught them once in a quarry. Our men fought like tiger-cats—so quick, so agile. And you know, monsieur, no one said a word. Nor asound except the clash of steel." His eyes flashed at the recollection. "They make a funny noise when you go through them—they grunt,comme un cochon." Perhaps I shuddered slightly. "Ah, yes! monsieur, but they play such dirty tricks (ruses honteuses). Of course they cry out in French, and put up their hands after they have shot down our comrades under their white flags." He gave a snort of contempt.

"What do they cry?"

"Oh, all kinds of things. 'I have a wife and eight children.' The German pig has a big litter." He looked, and no doubt felt himself to be, a minister of justice. And after all, I reflect, the Belgians once had wives and children too. Many of them have neither wife nor child any longer. And so perish all Germans!

The plumber, who had been studying his "hand," looked up from the cards. "We have killed a great number of the Bosches," he said dispassionately. "Yes, a great number. It was in a beetroot field, and there were as many dead Germans as beetroots. Near by was a corn-field; the flames were leaping up the shocks of yellow corn and the bodies caught fire—such a stench! And the faces of the dead! Especially after they have been killed with the bayonet—they are quite black. I suppose it's the grease."

"The grease?"

"Yes, we always grease our bayonets, you know. To prevent them getting rusty."

He was a man of few words, but in three sentences he had given me a battle-picture as clearly visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paperhanger to further recollections, more particularly the stunning effects of the French shell-fire. He had found four dead Germans—they had been surprised by a shell while playing cards in a billet. "They still had the cards in their hands, monsieur, just as you see us—and they hadn't got a scratch. They were like the statues in the Louvre."

"Yes," said thesous-officier, "I have seen them like that. I remember I found a big Bosche—six feet four he must have been—sitting dead in a house which we had shelled. His face was just like wax, and he sat there like a wooden doll with his long arms hanging down stiff—yes!comme une poupée. And I couldn't find a scratch on him—not one! And do you know what he had on—a woman's chemise!Écoutez!" he added suddenly, and he held up a monitory hand.

Echoing down the corridor outside there came nearer and nearer the beat of a drum and with it the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the measure—who can ever forget it! It stirs the blood like atrumpet. The door was kicked open and two convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing a festive cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christmas "crackers." He was playing a fife, and the drummer was close upon his heels.

Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice:

Allons! enfants de la Patrie!

A strange electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The Turco—"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of his any one could understand—who had been deploying imaginary troops, with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the passage way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum, more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed! To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying men with itsviaticum. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to the side of men:

Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,La terre en produit de nouveauxContre vous tout prêts à se battre.Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons:Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.

Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:

S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,

La terre en produit de nouveaux

Contre vous tout prêts à se battre.

Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons:

Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.

As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of joy:

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

It was the note of the conqueror.

FOOTNOTES:[10]German swine! Stinking Prussians![11]You speak German![12]Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!

[10]German swine! Stinking Prussians!

[11]You speak German!

[12]Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!

My friend T—— and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill like a gully—between tall houses standing so close together that one might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite. The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous stones, was unmistakable.

"New drafts!" said T——. Instinctively weboth moved to the window. We knew that the Army authorities were rushing troops across the Channel every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room, the upturned faces of the men.

"Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from thatvade mecum(price one penny) of the British soldier:French, and how to speak it. It was night, not day, but that didn't matter.

"Good-night," came a piping treble voice from the floor above us.

"Good-night"—"Good-night, old chap"—"Good-night, my son"—the men shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely saluted.

"It's Peter," said T——; "he'll be frightfully bucked up."

"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase—the rest of the household were plunged in slumber—turned the handle of the bedroom door, and could just make out in thedarkness a little figure in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window.

"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's shoulder from the window.

"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They saluted me! Didyousee?" he said, turning to me.

"I did, Major Peter."

"You're kidding!"

"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to salute you too, now."

This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to Peter. "Right oh!" he said. And from that time forward I always addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was ordering him to bed. At such times—there was a nightly contest on the matter—the paternal authority could not afford to concede any prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from the Army, only to be reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning.

"Come up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow, will you?" said Peter. "I know lots of officersup there. I'll introduce you," he added patronisingly. Peter had been a bare fortnight at the Base, it being holiday at his preparatory school at Beckenham, and he had already become familiar and domestic with every one in authority from the Base Commandant downwards. "Thank you," I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed at a word from his father. By the side of the bed was a small library. It consisted ofThe Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes,The Cock-House at Fellsgarth, and Newbolt'sPages from Froissart. Peter was rather eclectic in his tastes, but they were thoroughly sound. On the table were the contents of Peter's pockets, turned out nightly by the express orders of his father, for this is war-time, and the wear and tear of schoolboys' jackets is a prodigious item of expenditure. I made a rapid mental inventory of them:

(1) A button of the Welsh Fusiliers.(2) Some dozen cartridge-cases from a Lewis machine-gun requisitioned by Peter from the Flying-Ground.(3) A miniature aeroplane—the wings rather crumpled as though the aviator had been forced to make a hurried descent.(4) A knife.(5) Several pieces of string.(6) A coloured "alley."(7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-Dorrien.(8) A top.(9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull's-eyes, and acid drops.

(1) A button of the Welsh Fusiliers.

(2) Some dozen cartridge-cases from a Lewis machine-gun requisitioned by Peter from the Flying-Ground.

(3) A miniature aeroplane—the wings rather crumpled as though the aviator had been forced to make a hurried descent.

(4) A knife.

(5) Several pieces of string.

(6) A coloured "alley."

(7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-Dorrien.

(8) A top.

(9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull's-eyes, and acid drops.

For the kit of an officer of field rank in His Majesty's Army it was certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber officers at the Front.

The next morning we ascended the downs above the harbour, and Peter piloted me to the Flying-Ground. Here we came upon a huge hangar in which were docked half a dozen aeroplanes, light as a Canadian canoe and graceful as a dragon-fly. Peter calmly climbed up into one of them and proceeded to move levers and adjust controls, explaining the whole business to me with the professional confidence of a fully certificated airman.

"Hulloa, that you, Peter?" said a voice from the other side of the aeroplane. The owner wore the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast.

"It's me, Captain S——," said Peter. "Allow me to introduce my friend ----" he added, looking down over the side of the aeroplane. "He's attached to the staff at G.H.Q.," he added impressively. For the first time I realised, with great gratification, that Peter thought me rather a personage.

The Captain and I discussed the merits of thenew Lewis machine-gun, while Peter went off to give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and monoplanes.

"That kid knows a thing or two," I heard one of them say to the other in an undertone. "Jolly little chap." Peter has an undoubted gift for Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form master has prophesied a Mathematical Scholarship at Cambridge. Peter, however, has other views. He has determined to join the Army at the earliest opportunity. He is now ten years of age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the prospect of the war not lasting another seven years. When I told him that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q. had, in a saturnine moment, answered my question as to when the war would end with a gloomy "Never," he was mightily pleased. That was a bit of all right, he remarked.

Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one of those Indian dynasties which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the public service—the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian Police. Wherever there's a bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or Pathans, wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether it's plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of Peter's family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Majorin the R.F.A., saved a battery at X—— Y——. Another is the chief of the most mysterious of our public services—a man who speaks little and listens a great deal, who never commits anything to writing, and who changes his address about once every three months. For if you have a price on your head you have to be careful to cover up your tracks. He neither drinks nor smokes, and he will never marry, for his work demands an almost sacerdotal abnegation. Peter knows very little about this uncle, except that, as he remarked to me, "Uncle Dick's got eyes like gimlets." But Peter has seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in public Uncle Dick, whom I happen to know as well as one can ever hope to know such a bird of passage, always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored expression. Uncle Dick, although Peter does not know it, is the counsellor of Secretaries of State, and one of the trusted advisers of the G.H.Q. Staff. Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him most, although I knew him least. Some day, if and when I have the honour to know him better, I shall write a book about him, and I shall call itThe Man behind the Scenes.

Such was Peter's family. It may help you to understand Peter, who, if he feared God, certainly regarded not man. Now the Flying Corps captain had promised Peter that he would let him see thenew Lewis machine-gun. It is a type of gun specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the bore, worked by a trigger-handle, and it makes a noise like the back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-power. It plays no great part in this story, except that it was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse of Peter's private correspondence. For, after the Captain had discharged his gun at a hedge and made a large rabbit-burrow in it, Peter proceeded to pick up the cartridge-cases, which lay thick as catkins. This interested me, as Peter already had a pocketful.

"What do you want all those for, Major Peter?" I asked.

"Well, you see," said Peter, "the kids at school"—Peter now calls other boys of the same age as himself "kids," on the same principle that a West African negro who is rising in the world refers to his fellows as "niggers"—"keep on bothering me to send them things, and a fellow must send them something."

He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket. "That's from Jackson minor," he said. "Cheek, isn't it?"

I began reading the letter aloud.

Dear old Pan—You must be having a ripping time. I see your letter is headed "The Front" ...

I looked at Peter. He was blushing uncomfortably.

... so I suppose you've seen a lot. The whole school's fritefully bucked up about you, and we're one up on Fenner's....

"What's Fenner's?" I said to Peter.

"Oh, that's another school at Beckenham. They're stinkers. Put on no end of side because some smug of theirs won a schol' at Uppingham last term. But we beat them at footer."

We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said, "Rot!" So I showed him the envelope of your letter with "Passed by the Censor" on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said, "That's proof," and he dried up. He did look sick. I hope you'll get the V.C. or something—the Head'll be sure to give us a half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head's newspaper when he leaves it lying about—you know how he swanks about it—said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that was rot, and that it meant they'd given him a lot of other chaps to command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So, Pan, old man, mind you get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you can't bring it off, then come home with a medal or something.

"Peter," I called out. Peter had turned his back on me and was pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky.

"Major Peter," I said ingratiatingly, with a salute. Peter turned round. He was very red.

"I didn't mean you to read all that rot," he said. "I meant what he says at the end."

I read on—this time in silence:

I say, have you killed any Huns yet? Very decent of the Head to tell your governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't get torpeedod—we hope they'll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never saw one. We've given up German this term—beastly language; it's just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never know what he's driving at.

Then followed a sentence heavily underlined:

By the way I'll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last term if you'll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some blood on it, German blood I mean.—Yours to a cinder,Arthur Jackson.

By the way I'll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last term if you'll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some blood on it, German blood I mean.—Yours to a cinder,

Arthur Jackson.

I handed this priceless missive back to Peter.

"Cheek, isn't it?" said Peter rather hurriedly. "His old knife for a bayonet!"

"But if you put 'the Front' at the top of your letters, Major Peter, you can't be surprised at his asking for one, you know."

Peter blushed.

"Well, I heard Dad say we were the back of the Front, and the fellows wouldn't think anything of me if I hadn't beennearthe Front," he said, apologetically. "Hullo, they're going up!"

An aeroplane was skimming along the ground as a moor-hen scuppers across the water, themechanics having assisted her initial progress by pushing the lower stays and then ducking under the planes, as she gathered way, and just missing decapitation. It's a way they have. She took a run for it, her engine humming like a top, and then rose, and gradually climbed the sky. Peter gazed at her wistfully. "And he promised to take me up some day," he said sadly.

"Yes, some day, Peter," I said encouragingly. "But it's time we were getting back. You know you've got to catch the leave-boat at four o'clock this afternoon."

Peter's father and I stood on the quay, having taken farewell of Peter. There was an eminent Staff Officer going home on leave—a very great man at G.H.Q., a lieutenant-general, who inspired no less fear than respect among us all. He knew Peter's father in his distant way, and had not only returned his salute, but had even condescended to ask, in his laconic style, "Who is the boy?"—whereupon Peter's father had, with some nervousness, introduced him. All the other officers going home on leave, from a Brigadier down to the subalterns, stood at a respectful distance, glancing furtively at the hawk-like profile of the great man, and lowering their voices. It was a tribute not only to rank but to power. As the ship gatheredway and moved slowly out of the harbour I pulled the sleeve of Peter's father. "Look!" I said. The Lieutenant-General and Peter were engaged in an animated conversation on the deck, and the great man, usually as silent as the sphinx and not less inscrutable, was evidently contesting with some warmth and great interest, as though hard put to keep his end up, some point of debate propounded to him by Peter.

"T——, old chap," I said, "Peter'll be a great man some day."

Peter's father said nothing, but his eyes grew misty. Perhaps he was thinking of that lonely grave in the distant plains of the Deccan where Peter's mother sleeps.

(October 1914)

My train left Paris at 1.52 in the afternoon. It was due at Calais at eight o'clock the same evening. But it soon became apparent that something was amiss with our journey—we crawled along at a pace which barely exceeded six miles an hour. At every culvert, guarded by its solitary sentry, we seemed to pause to take breath. As we approached Amiens, barely halfway on our journey, somewhere about 9.30p.m., we passed on the opposite line of rails a Red Cross train, stationary, and throwing deep rhomboid shadows in the candid moonlight. One glimpse of an open horse-box revealed to me in a flash the secret of our languor. It was a cold, keen night; the full moon rode high in a starless sky, and there must have been ten or twelve degrees of frost. We had left far behind us the diaphanous veils of mist hoveringabove river banks, out of which the poplars stood argent and fragile, as though the landscape were a Japanese print. Through the open door of the horse-box I saw a soldier stretched upon his straw, with a red gaping wound in his half-naked body. Over him stooped a nurse, improvising with delicate ministries a hasty dressing. In the next carriage the black face of a wounded Senegalese looked out, unearthly in the moonlight. Ahead of us an interminable line of trains (some seventy of them I was told) had passed, conveying fresh troops. Then I knew. The Germans, hovering like a dark cloud some twenty miles away, had been reinforced, and a fierce battle was in progress. The news of it had travelled by some mysterious telepathy to every village along the line, and at every crossing groups of pale-faced women, silent and intent, kept a restless vigil. They looked like ghosts in the moonlight; no cheer escaped them as we passed, no hand waved an exuberant greeting. In the twilight we had already seen red-trousered soldiers, vivid as poppies against the grass, digging trenches along the line, and at one point a group of sappers improvising a wire footbridge across the river. The contagion of suspense was in the air,—you seemed to catch it in the faint susurrus of the poplars.

"Shall we get to Calais?" I asked.

"Bon Dieu! I know not," was the reply of the harassed guard.

We pursued our stealthy journey, reached Abbeville somewhere about midnight, and Boulogne in the small hours. 4a.m.Calais at last! I joyfully exclaimed. But between Calais Ville and Calais Maritime a group of officers boarded our train and, for some mysterious reason, we were headed off to Dunkirk. It grew colder and more cold, and I had had no food since noon of yesterday. But my thoughts were with our men, the men whom I had lately come to know, now lying out on the bare earth in the moonlit trenches, keeping their everlasting vigil and blowing on their fingers numbed with cold. We reached Dunkirk at 6a.m.No explanation why the train had played truant at Calais was vouchsafed me, nor was any hope held out of a return. In those days I was travelling as a private person, and was not yet endowed with the prerogatives by which, in the name of a Secretary of State, I could requisition cars and impress men to do my bidding.

At a hopeless moment I had the good fortune to fall in with a King's Messenger, carrying despatches, who was in the next carriage. He produced his special passports, and the prestige of "Courrier du Roi," Knight of the Order of the Silver Greyhound, worked a miracle. Every onewas at our service. We were escorted to the military headquarters of Dunkirk—through streets already echoing with the march of French infantry, each carrying a big baton of bread and munching as he kept step, to an office in which the courteous commandant was just completing his toilet. The Consul was summoned, the headquarters hotel of the English officers was rung up, and thither we went through an ambuscade of motor-cars in the courtyard.

A lieutenant of the Naval Flying Squadron was ready for us with his powerful Rolls-Royce, and we were soon on the high road to Calais. Everywhere were the stratagems of war: a misty haze of barbed-wire entanglements in the distant fields, deep trenches, earthworks six feet thick masking rows of guns. Time pressed, but every mile or so we were stopped by a kind of Hampton Court maze, thrown across the road, in the shape of high walls of earth and stone, compelling our lieutenant at the steering-wheel to zigzag in and out, and thereby putting us at the mercy of the sentry who stood beside his hut of straw and hurdles, and presented his bayonet at the bonnet as though preparing to receive cavalry. The corporal came up, and with him a little group of French soldiers, their cheeks impoverished, their glassy eyes sunk in deep black hollows by their eternal vigil. "OfficierAnglais!" "Courrier du Roi!" we exclaimed, and were sped on our way with a weary smile and "Bonjour! messieurs." Women and old men were already toiling in the fields, stooping like the figures in Millet's "Gleaners," as we raced through an interminable avenue of poplars, past closed inns, past depopulated farms, past wooden windmills, perched high upon wooden platforms like gigantic dovecots. At each challenge a sombre word was exchanged about Antwerp—again that strange telepathy of peril. Calais at last! and a great empty boat with a solitary fellow-passenger.

He was a London wine-merchant of repute, who had got here at last from Rheims, whither he had gone to pay his yearly inspection of the champagne vintage, only to find the red wine-press of war. Three weeks he had lived like primitive man in the wine-cellars of Rheims, with the shells screaming overhead—screaming, he says, just like the long-drawn sobbing whistle of an express train as it leaves a tunnel. Never has he lived such days before; never, he fervently prays, will he live them again. From his narrative I got a glimpse of a subterranean existence, as tenebrous and fearful as the deepest circle of Dante'sInferno, with a river of tears falling always in the darkness of the vaults. A great wine-cellar—there are tenmiles of them at Rheims—crowded with four thousand people, lighted only by candles, and swarming with huge rats; the blanched faces of women, the crying of children, the wail of babies at the breast. Overhead the crash of falling masonry—the men had armed themselves with big iron pikes to hew their way out in case the vaults fell in. Life in these catacombs was one long threnody of anguish. Outside, the conscious stone of the great monument of mediaeval aspiration was being battered to pieces, and the glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fellowship of the martyrs, suffered another and a less resurgent martyrdom. After days of this crepuscular existence he emerged to find the cathedral less disfigured than he had feared. One masterpiece of the mediaeval craftsmen's chisel is, however, irremediably destroyed—the figure of the devil. We hope it is a portent.

The King's Messenger had posted from a distant country, and his way through Dijon had been truly a Via Dolorosa. Thirty-six people standing in the corridor, and in his own crowded compartment—he had surrendered his royal prerogative of exclusion—was a woman on the verge of hysteria, finding relief not in tears but in an endless recital of her sorrow. She and her husband had a son—the only son of his mother—gone to the front, reported badly wounded, and for days, like Joseph and Mary, the anxious parents had sought him, only to find him on the threshold of death, with a bullet in his liver. Again and again she beguiled her anguish by chronicles of his miraculous childhood—his precocious intelligence at five, his prescience at six, his unfathomable wisdom at seven. The silent company of wayfarers listened in patience to the twice-told tale. No one could say her nay as she repeated her litany of pain. She was, indeed, the only passenger in that compartment whose eyes were dry.Stabat Mater Dolorosa.

It was the Duchess of X.'s Hospital at a certainplageon the coast. I had motored thither through undulating country dotted with round beehive ricks and past meadows on which a flock of gulls, looking in the distance like a bed of white crocuses, were settled in platoons. As we neared the coast the scenery changed to shifting dunes of pale sand, fine as flour, and tufted with tussocks of wiry grass. Here clumps of broom and beech, with an occasional fir, maintained a desperate existence against the salt winds from the Atlantic, and the beeches held up plaintive arms like caryatids supporting the intolerable architrave of the sky. The bare needle-like branches of the broom and fir stood out blackly against the biscuit-coloured sand with the sharp outlines of an etching.

I had taken a hospitable cup of tea with the Duchess in the Matron's room. She was clothed in fine linen but without her purple; she worethe ordinary and serviceable slate-coloured dress of a nurse. It was here I had the honour of being introduced to Barbara. She was nursing a doll with great tenderness, and had been asking the Duchess why she did not wear her "cowonet."

"This is Barbara—our little Egyptian," said the matron.

Barbara repudiated the description hotly.

"She was born in Egypt," explained the matron.

"Ah," I said, "that wasn't your fault, Barbara, was it? But it was Egypt's good fortune."

Barbara ignored the compliment with the simplicity of childhood, and proceeded to explain with great seriousness: "You see, Mummy was travelling, and she comed to Egypt. She didn't know I was going to happen," she added as if to clear Mummy of any imputation of thoughtlessness.

"And your birthday, Barbara?"

Barbara and I discovered that both of us have birthdays in March—only six days apart. This put us at once on a footing of intimacy—we must have been born under the same star. Barbara proceeded to inform me that she rather liked birthdays—except the one which happened in Egypt. I had half a mind to execute a deed of conveyance on the spot, assigning to her all my own birthdays as an estatepour autre vie, with allprofits à prendreand presents arising therefrom, for I am thirty-eight and have no further use for them.

"I am afraid there are more than six years between us, Barbara," I said pensively.

Barbara regarded me closely with large round eyes.

"About ten, I fink. I'm seven, you know."

"How nice of you to say that, Barbara. Then I'm only seventeen."

Barbara regarded me still more closely.

"A little more, p'waps—ten monfs."

"Thank you, Barbara. I'll remind you of that some day." After all, ten years is no obstacle to the course of true love. "But what is the matter with the doll?" Despite a rosy flush the doll has a field-dressing round her auburn locks, and one leg is immensely stout owing to a tourniquet.

Barbara looked at me rather less favourably than before. It was evident that she now thought poorly of my intelligence, and that I had made afaux pas.

"I'm a nurse," Barbara explained, loftily, showing an armlet bearing the ensign of the Red Cross. I was about to remind her of 1 & 2 Geo. V. cap. 20, which threatens the penalties of a misdemeanour against all who wear the Red Cross without the authority of Army Council, but Ithought better of it. Instead of anything so foolish, I exhibit a delicate solicitude about the health of the patient. I put myself right by referring to it as "he." A less intelligent observer might pronounce it to be decidedly of the female sex. Still, I reflected, women have enlisted in the Army before now. I proceeded to inspect the injured limb with professional gravity. "A compound fracture, I think, Barbara. He will require careful nursing."

Barbara liked this—no one in the matron's room had ever exhibited such a clinical interest in the case before, and she thinks "fwacture" rather imposing.

"Let me feel his pulse," I said. I held a waxen arm between my thumb and forefinger, and looked at my wrist-watch for some seconds, Barbara gazing at me intently.

"Hum! hum! I think we had better take his temperature," I said, as I held a clinical thermometer in the shape of a fountain-pen to the rosebud lips of the patient. "103, I think."

"Will you wite a pwescwiption?" asked Barbara anxiously.

"Certainly, an admirable suggestion, Barbara. Let me see, will this do, do you think?" I scribbled on my Field Note-book, tore out the page, and handed it to Barbara.

She scrutinised it closely. It puzzled her, though her bewilderment was nothing to the astonishment which that prescription would have excited in a member of the medical profession.

"Fank you," said Barbara, who was no less pleased than puzzled, and who tried to look as if she quite understood. Her little face, with its halo of golden curls, was turned up to mine, and she now regarded me with a respect for my professional attainments which was truly gratifying.

I was transcribing a temperature-chart for Barbara's patient when a tactless messenger came to say that my car was at the door. Barbara hung on my arm. "Will you come again, and take his tempewature—Pwomise?"

I promised.

Back to Index Next