"My dear Nephew,—You will find mentholated crystals—carried in a small bottle—a splendid preventive against the present epidemic of cold in the head! Sniff a little every night before going to bed."When are you going to marry? For goodness' sake, marry adarkgirl when you do. Our family is growing positively colorless!"Your friend, Mr. Norman, is visiting the Oxleys down here. It seems young Oxley is trying to write a play with some ideas in it, and Norman thinks he can help him! Who in the world wants to see a play withtheirideas! It's a pity you couldn't teach him to do something useful—Norman, I mean.—Young Oxley is going into the Church! Why doesn't he go to Canada! I meanNorman."Do you remember little Lilias Oxley? She had pneumonia last year, though Iwarnedher mother about flannel soaked in goose-oil and turpentine! She always looked like a hothouse flower, and now she is simplyfrail. Of course, she's pretty and has eyes that always makes fools of the men—not thatthatsignifies! Everybody says she's artistic, but all I ever hear her play is by some newfangled foreigner named Debussy, and it's all discord. She's only nineteen and looks sixteen."Of course, young Norman comes along, and instead of picking out some healthybuxomgirl, he falls in love with this bit of tinsel china! It's criminal, and should not beallowed. What kind of children will they have, if any! He calls her hisBeatrice—Heaven knows why!"They are togetherconstantly. I would write to theTimesabout it if I thought that Lord Northfellow would publish it. We should have a Minister ofEugenics! Surely Winston Churchill would be better employed at that than trying to build up a huge navy we'll never need! By the way, I see he's taken to writingnovelsnow!"Do talk to young Norman! Tell him your uncle is doing very well with pigs in Canada; and why not induce your friend to gothere, and get somecommon-sense, because every Canadian I meet has a head on his shoulders? It must be the climate!"I am going to stay here for a month, and then visit my cousin in Scotland. She has six children. Whatever induced her to marry a minister? He has no money and noprospects—except more children, I suppose!"Does that Mulvaney woman see that your room is kept aired? When you write you should have the window open and a cap on your head."I hope you will never write books! It is quite adistinctionnowadays not to."Where did you go for Christmas?—Your loving aunt,"Hannah."Feby. 8/1914."
"My dear Nephew,—You will find mentholated crystals—carried in a small bottle—a splendid preventive against the present epidemic of cold in the head! Sniff a little every night before going to bed.
"When are you going to marry? For goodness' sake, marry adarkgirl when you do. Our family is growing positively colorless!
"Your friend, Mr. Norman, is visiting the Oxleys down here. It seems young Oxley is trying to write a play with some ideas in it, and Norman thinks he can help him! Who in the world wants to see a play withtheirideas! It's a pity you couldn't teach him to do something useful—Norman, I mean.—Young Oxley is going into the Church! Why doesn't he go to Canada! I meanNorman.
"Do you remember little Lilias Oxley? She had pneumonia last year, though Iwarnedher mother about flannel soaked in goose-oil and turpentine! She always looked like a hothouse flower, and now she is simplyfrail. Of course, she's pretty and has eyes that always makes fools of the men—not thatthatsignifies! Everybody says she's artistic, but all I ever hear her play is by some newfangled foreigner named Debussy, and it's all discord. She's only nineteen and looks sixteen.
"Of course, young Norman comes along, and instead of picking out some healthybuxomgirl, he falls in love with this bit of tinsel china! It's criminal, and should not beallowed. What kind of children will they have, if any! He calls her hisBeatrice—Heaven knows why!
"They are togetherconstantly. I would write to theTimesabout it if I thought that Lord Northfellow would publish it. We should have a Minister ofEugenics! Surely Winston Churchill would be better employed at that than trying to build up a huge navy we'll never need! By the way, I see he's taken to writingnovelsnow!
"Do talk to young Norman! Tell him your uncle is doing very well with pigs in Canada; and why not induce your friend to gothere, and get somecommon-sense, because every Canadian I meet has a head on his shoulders? It must be the climate!
"I am going to stay here for a month, and then visit my cousin in Scotland. She has six children. Whatever induced her to marry a minister? He has no money and noprospects—except more children, I suppose!
"Does that Mulvaney woman see that your room is kept aired? When you write you should have the window open and a cap on your head.
"I hope you will never write books! It is quite adistinctionnowadays not to.
"Where did you go for Christmas?—Your loving aunt,
"Hannah.
"Feby. 8/1914."
The only way I can account for my aunt's love of exclamation-marks was her delight at seeing a sentence round to a good finish. I have known authors to be so overcome with the dramatic significance of their work that they put them in as a sort of public recognition thereof.
En passant…. I wonder why my aunt never wrote a serial story for one of the London dailies.
IX
War.
Our world of artificiality lay like a cracked eggshell. As drowning men, we clutched at everything that seemed stable … to find nothing that was not made of perishable stuff. Our pens that had criticized so long mocked us as we gazed at the pages which seemed to reject our thoughts before we gave them life. A few of us turned into special war writers and comforted the nation with statistics. We showed that Germany was beaten—it was a mathematical truth that could be proved. While we demonstrated our immense superiority to the enemy in figures, a little British Army was fighting against odds of six to one.
And the Fates stood by with poised shears, ready to cut the thread of Britain's destiny.
It is not pleasant to recall the arraignment of the year 1914. The Boer War had shown our weakness to every nation but ourselves; our educated men had graduated into the world using their abilities as obstructionists. We had discouraged everything that had the very odor of progress.
Yet—we muddled through. Men still use that word as if it were something creditable instead of hideous. We won, because, behind the Britain that muddled and obstructed, there was the Britain of noble mothers and noble sons.
And into the first winter our orgy of statistics went on, like an endless Babylonian feast … while the British fleet—which we should never need—strained and plunged in the icy gales of the North Sea, grimly, silently, saving the world for Civilization.
Great days. Fateful days. Terrible days.
One Friday night early in December I received a note from Norman, asking me to meet him for dinner at "Arcadia." I had not seen him for six months, but his debonair charm was as potent as ever, and we chatted of the past like friends who had not met for years. As if by mutual consent, we avoided the present until I noticed that the orchestra was different.
"Where is Klotz?" I asked suddenly.
"Gone."
"Where?"
"To the war. He was a German reservist and got away."
"And his wife?"
"She is confined to her bed all the time, but fortunately there is an excellent woman looking after her and young Siegfried. By the way, what a conductor he'll make some day!"
By the subterfuge I knew who was paying for the woman, though his income was always slender. Stimulated by a British-born orchestra that played with a respectability beyond question, we pursued bubbles of conversation for half-an-hour, saying many clever things and arriving at no conclusions; but both of us knew that, behind the badinage, there was the consciousness of war gripping our brains like a fever.
"What do you think," I said at last, "of the question of enlisting?" It would have been a mockery to deny the fever any longer.
"Why should I enlist?" His smile was so disarming that I regretted my move at once.
"Don't misunderstand me," I said hastily. "You are not needed, and you never will be. Besides——" My voice trailed off into the insincere platitudes that always come to the lips when conscience is to be drugged.
He lit a cigarette. "Pest," he said, "most men are participants in life; a few, like myself, are onlookers. It was my choice when I was a mere youngster—wisely or not, I do not know—but the pose has become reality now. I am a jester at the court of the world, a wordy fellow with a touch of melancholy in his humor, watching and commenting on the real things of life. Before there was a war I blew bubbles, and now I am fit for nothing else. Have a cigarette?"
"Thanks."
He passed his hand across his brow with the same weariness I had noticed before.
"To gaze on life," he went on after a pause, "and not to live it, spares one many sorrows. Even love, which comes to most men as an overwhelming passion, stole into my life like a perfume of Cashmere. When I was twelve years of age and living on the south coast, I used to pass a little dream-girl of seven years or so. The purity of her face stayed with me like a melody a mother sings to her child. Then she was ill, and for three weeks I never saw her. Finally she came one day in a chair, and her beauty was the most exquisite thing I had ever seen. It made me think that the God who gave us this beautiful world sometimes cherishes a soul as sweet as hers and keeps it in a body that is frail, so that through life He can watch it like a flower, tenderly, lovingly;… and when He wants it back again He has but to whisper, and, like a violet bending to a summer breeze, it hears and obeys…. I have sometimes thought that even tears shed for such a one have in them the quality of dew, and serve to keep the memory green and pleasant.
"The next day I brought her a rose. Though we had never spoken, she took it, and gave me her face to kiss…. I lost my mother when I was very young, but this dream-girl's kiss supplied that inspiration for the ideal that a child takes from its mother. I could not have been impure after that—I could not have been unkind. The next day she was gone, and I never saw her again until I went to Surrey to visit young Oxley. She was his sister."
"And you found?"
"That the dream-child had become a woman—the charm of Spring had softened to the witchery of Summer."
He shrugged his shoulders and relit his cigarette, which had gone out.
"That, my dear Pest, is how love came to me."
I frowned in an endeavor to pierce his apparently superficial dismissal of the subject.
"Don't you intend to marry her?" I said.
"Marry her?" He laughed, but there was little mirth in the sound. "Does a jester marry?" His eyes hardened, and there was a new ring to his voice. "Who am I to take a wife? Aposeur, aflâneur, in a world of men, I stand discredited beside the poorest workman whose toil brings in a pittance for his wife and kiddies. England is calling for men—for men, I say." He brought his fist with a crash on the table. "What can I offer her—my parlor accomplishments? My minstrel's mummery that shudders at the sight of a sword? Can I blow bubbles in a world where hearts are breaking?"
There were tears in his voice, but his eyes were flashing furiously.
"Hexcuse me." A man had stepped up to us, wearing the armlet of a recruit. His face was oddly familiar, but I could not recall it until a light was switched on just behind him, and I recognized the pumpkin-faced man of Christmas Eve.
"I just thought of 'ow I'd like for to tell you as I've been took for the Army O.K."
We shook his hand and wished him the best of luck.
"Funny thing, sir, as 'ow the 'ole bloomin' time I was planning to sign hup I was a-thinkin' of you and that there fiddle. 'You wouldn't like to meet 'im,' I kind o' sez to myself, 'and you not in the harmy, you wouldn't,' I sez."
"Instead of which," smiled Norman, all trace of his intensity gone, "I am the one who is the slacker."
"But didn't I see you in the line the day we was going for to join hup?"
Norman laughed. "I was probably a hundred miles away," he said. "Pest, have I a double?"
The recruit scratched his head. "I could 'a sworn hit was you," he said, and launched into a graphic description of drill and the absurdities thereof, a recital which appeared to have no prospect of an ending until we were interrupted by the restaurant proprietor, who took Norman to one side for a consultation concerning the medieval cook.
I felt a hand on my arm and turned to see our friend of the pumpkin face making secret and terrifying signs for me to lend him my ear.
"'E's a-'iding something," he whispered hoarsely. "I ain't been a chandlery merchant hall my life, wot does most o' 'is business hon tick, without hit learning me to remember faces. Hitwere'im. 'E was turned down for a bad 'eart!"
Whereupon he made a semi-mystic sign with his thumb and forefinger to indicate that the whole affair was a secret between gentlemen.
That night, in bed, the sensitive, delicate features of Basil Norman remained in my memory. I had surprised his secret which he would admit to no one; not to the girl he loved; not to himself. It was the same spirit that had made him defy the whole of Westminster. We had called him Puck and the Blower of Bubbles, and he himself had said he was lighter than air…. But Basil Norman's life had been one endless battle with an indomitable soul that refused to yield to the body.
I could not sleep well that night.
X
I did not meet Basil Norman for nearly four years. I joined the Artists' Rifles early in 1915, fought for eleven months, and was given a commission. After a short time in England I went out in all the glory of a Sam Browne and one star, but in a few months I was wounded in the chest, which earned me Blighty and a surfeit of Aunt Hannah, who still contended that had we only concentrated on anarmyinstead of anavy——
As I write, it all seems a blurred memory of colorless monotony, mud, fatigue, death, and grim humor. In January, 1918, after a term of duty as musketry instructor, I returned to France, and fought through the horrible spring battles until, with cruel coincidence, I was wounded again in the same place, and once more came to England with a bullet in my chest—a bullet they dared not extract. In September I was discharged.
One morning in November I sat by the fire in my den at Sloane Square. I had resumed the tenancy of the rooms, and Mrs. Mulvaney looked upon me as being even less mature than before, warning me about goloshes when it was wet, and umbrellas when it wasn't, but appeared likely to be.
How long I sat there I do not know, but memory began to weave its spell, driving my surroundings into a dim obscurity and bringing back incidents of the past with vivid clarity. I gripped my head with both hands, and, for the hundredth time, sought the truth that lay buried in the holocaust of the nations…. My wound hurt again, and a dizziness crept over me like a fog that rises from the sea and enshrouds the land.
Futile…. Futile….
Had some one spoken? The words sounded distinctly…. I could have sworn I heard them.
Was the whole war a dream, or was it real? Once more I was in Sloane Square; there was my desk with its litter of papers, my pipe-rack, my books…. Had I ever left them? Could it be true that I had led men against machine-gun fire—and that I had killed? Were those boys who died beside me, smiling like children in their sleep, really dead? Was it all some hideous fantasy of an unhealthy brain—a gigantic charade invented by the greatest buffoon of all time?
Futile…. Futile…. Futile.
I cursed, and pressed my brow with my hands. It was a fight for sanity, as so many men have fought in the solitude of their rooms since the hell of Flanders.
Like a panorama the events of the war crossed my mind, and yet those that stood out most clearly were the unimportant things that came as mere incidents during the unfolding of the world's destiny. The senior chaplain's dog, which was shot by an A.P.M. and mourned by a whole division … the new arrival who thought he was a special charge of the Lord's, and who persisted in looking over the top during the day—we buried him next morning … the night that the female impersonator from a divisional concert-party lured the colonel into amorous confession … the little chap who got no mail at Christmas, and said he hadn't received a letter for two years … one after the other these human trivialities coursed through my brain, forcing the vaster issues aside.
From no apparent cause, the strain of reminiscence turned toward Basil Norman. I had seen him somewhere, but whether in London or in the country my poor tired brain seemed unable to determine. And then, with no regard for relevancy, I was with my battalion once more, marching with the Australians to hold a strategical point that one of our brigades had saved from the disaster of March. Who was it said that the Australians lacked discipline? Look at them grinning like youngsters at a game, with the odds against any coming out alive! Discipline? Hell!
We rested at a cross-roads and smoked; one of our Tommies was singing the refrain of a song that urged the country to call up all his relations, even his father and his mother, but "for Gawd's sake" not to take him. The sublime incongruity of it was so thoroughly British that we laughed and called for a repetition. A few minutes later the Australians passed us, going forward, and there was a reckless air of bravado about them that boded ill for the Hun.
We waited an hour, two hours—perhaps more.
By Jove! Coming around the bend in the road was the brigade that had held the line. Good work, you chaps! Well done! Bravo! That's it, you fellows; give them a cheer! Beneath the mud and the dust and the beards, they were livid with fatigue; the skin beneath their eyes had dropped, and their jaws hung impotently, like those of idiots. There wasn't a sound from their ranks as, too weary to lift them, they dragged their feet through the dust of the road. They had held their position for fifty-six hours, attacked incessantly from three sides by overwhelming numbers. Damned good, you fellows; damned good!
Still buffeted by imagination, my memory of the scene seemed to fade; yet one impression lingered that was both livid and blurred. It was when that brigade, or what was left of it, had almost passed, and we were tightening up the straps of our kits, that I caught a glimpse of his face, or that of a man who could have passed as his twin. The soldier beside him was limping painfully and leaning on him heavily in an endeavor to keep up, and beneath the grimy pallor of that face I could see the old wistful, whimsical smile…. I tried to cry out, but something stuck in my throat, and next moment we were falling in.
It was Basil Norman, and the lame soldier beside him was the man with a face like a pumpkin. Either that or my brain had become the plaything of fancy.
Again my memory became a blank, and for a few minutes everything seemed obscured. Some one was shouting! It was taken up by another, then by many—the whole air was filled with noise…. I heard a woman's voice. Good God! Had the Germans broken through?… "Steady, men—get your aim first."… The shouting grew in intensity, and I pressed my brow with my hands until the marks stood out like wounds. With a cry as of an animal in pain, I rose to my feet and shook the shadows from my eyes. There was my room—the smoldering fire—my chair … but the shouting—it was louder than before.
Feeling my reason tottering, I crossed to the window and threw it open. People were running, and crying some word as they ran; one woman wept openly, and no one heeded her; a taxi passed crowded to the roof with hatless, gesticulating enthusiasts. Was the whole world mad? From every direction came the noise of deep-throated shouting, swelling into a vastTe Deumof sound. A soldier with one foot leaned against a lamp-post and rested his muscles from their labor with the crutches.
"Hello!" I cried. The khaki seemed to restore my grip on things. "I say—hello!"
He turned round and hobbled over to my window. "Wot's the trouble?" he said.
"This shouting," I cried; "these people running like rabbits. What does it all mean?"
"Wot! don't you know?" He smacked his lips in appreciation of the surprise he had in store for me. "Why, Fritz 'as took the count, 'e 'as."
"Then,——" Confound it; what made my lips quiver so? "Then—it's peace?… You mean … it's peace?"
He nodded half-a-dozen times. "The war," he said, feeling the importance of his declaration, "is napoo. Kaiser Bill 'as 'opped the twig, and the hold firm of 'im and Gott is for sale, with the goodwill thrown in, Idon'tthink."
I leaned out of the window, and we grasped hands.
Futile…. Futile…. Futile.
No—by Heaven, no! Not while we remember our dead; not while the spirit of comradeship still lives in the breasts of those who went out there; never, if the Britain of the future is worthy of her knights of the greatest crusade of all, and of the mothers who gave that which had sprung from their very heart-beats.
"Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain."
Half-mad with joy, I rushed into the street and urged my hospitality on the mutilated soldier, who came into my den and took a seat by the fire, while I fetched a decanter and cigars that we might make the occasion a jovial one. As I came into the room I noticed that he was examining me curiously.
"Hexcuse me," he said, "but if I may make so bold—wasn't you 'is pal?"
"Good heavens!" I cried, a light bursting upon me. "You're the man with a face like a—like a——" I suppose I blushed.
"Don't 'esitate," he grinned. "Many a time over there 'e told me you called me Pumpkin-Fice,' and, beggin' your pardon, sir, I likes it a sight better than 'Pest.'"
"Then—it was Norman I saw in March?"
"Ay." He sipped his glass meditatively. "'E lied about 'is 'eart, and was took O.K. late in 'fifteen. 'E was a ranker like the rest of us, but 'e was a proper gentleman, 'e was—that is, not just like we hunderstands the word in Hengland, but arealgentleman. 'E never preached and 'e never whined, but them two heyes just kept twinklin', and whenever hany of us was a bit windy, 'e 'd sort of buck us hup by that there smile 'e 'ad. I ain't much on langwidge, not 'avin' no eddication to speak of, or I'd hexplain better; but when little Sawyers got 'is from a sniper, and 'e knew 'is ticket was punched for to go West, the sergeant says, 'Fetch the padre,' but Sawyers 'e says, 'No, it's Bubbles I want.'… I ain't much on religion neither, and I've done a 'eap o' filthy swearin', which I guess is all down agin me in the book; but wherever Bubbles is goin' is good enough for me, whether it's brimstin and blazes or hangels playin' 'arps."
"Tell me"—I dreaded the answer to the question—"where is he now?"
"'E's took a cottage hover in the Hisle o' Wight," he said, clearing his throat and speaking slowly, "and 'e's married to the sweetest creetur I ever saw houtside a book. Blime! after I gets hout o' 'ospital, me not 'avin' any hold woman of my own, 'e finds me hout and sends a letter sayin' to go there for my convalessings, which likewise I did. That's 'is haddress on the top of that there letter."
I took the paper from his hand, but kept my eyes on his face; he was keeping something from me. "Tell me the truth about him," I said, and waited.
He shifted uneasily in his chair. "'E got a blighty near 'is 'eart," he said, making a supreme effort, "and 'e'll never get hup from 'is chair no more."
XI
The packet for the Isle of Wight threaded its way through the traffic of incoming vessels, and ran by a cruiser that had just come from the bloodless Trafalgar of German shame, where the second navy of the world surrendered without a fight.
A man next to me grunted. "It's all right for us to crow," he said; "but Germany was beaten, and she did the right thing."
I looked at him—he was quite sincere. His hair was unduly long, and he carried a manuscript case—probably one of the statistical writers still going strong.
"In your wildest flights of imagination," I said, "even if the combined fleets of the world were against him, could you picture Beatty leading the British Navy out to surrender?"
"Supposing he were ordered?"
As if in answer to his question, our course took us by the hull of theVictory, straining at her moorings in the November wind.
"In that case," I said, "Beatty would have had two blind eyes."
Which was the sum total of our conversation until we landed at Ryde, when our paths diverged, never, I hope, to meet again. Probably, over the week-end, he was polishing up some powerful articles on the absurdity of Reconstruction.
By the time the train had reached the little station of St. Louis, just beyond Ventnor, the wind had blown away any clouds, and the sun was shining radiantly. As I emerged from my carriage I felt a throb of exhilaration shoot through my veins, but depart as quickly as it had come, when I realized how near was the tragedy which I had soon to witness. I heard my name spoken, and, turning, saw a ruddy-faced, storm-blown fellow of fifty odd years, whose whole bearing smacked of nor'-westers and mizzen-tops. When I admitted to my name, he seized my bag without a word, and started down the road with the swaying motion peculiar to mariners.
We had hardly gone any distance, when he stopped at a gate which proved to be the back entrance to a garden, and following him through it, I was led along a path which was strewn with leaves in all the wealth of autumnal coloring, while through the trees there was the deep blue of the sea, flecked with crests of foam. We had gone about fifty yards when we came upon a cottage, in front of which, on a promontory, was a neatly trimmed lawn, guarded by six trees that stood like sentinels. The lower branches had been cut to give a better view, and their appearance lent a quaintly tropical look to the place, as if they were palms. In front of the house, fields sloped gradually to the edge of the cliff, which overlooked the sea beneath.
"My dear old Pest!"
Against the background of trees I had failed to notice him sitting in an invalid's chair. In three strides I was by his side, his hands in mine … but no words came to my faltering lips. For a moment the gray of his eyes softened to a look of understanding; then the old smile, just as charming as ever, irradiated his face.
"This is an event," he said, "to be entered in the log.—Sindbad!"
The ex-seaman who had acted as my guide pulled at his forelock.
"Ay, ay, cap'n!"
"Take this gentleman's things to the guestroom upstairs."
"The cabin to starboard? Werry good, cap'n."
Heavens! such a voice! There were fog, gale, piracy, rum, and combat in it.
"Sindbad," said Norman, in answer to my look, "is one of my indiscretions—like 'Arcadia.' He turned up here one day with such a tale of the sea as would have shamed Robert Louis Stevenson at his best. So far as I can discover, he has been in every naval fight since Aboukir Bay. He's a bit hazy on the Jutland scrap, but hints darkly at the possibility of an invasion by Spain. He is convinced that theArmadais only hiding and waiting its time."
In spite of myself, I laughed.
"As he refused to go, I decided to employ him as a man-of-all-work, and, as he appeared to have forgotten his own name, I gave him that of 'Sindbad,' which pleased him as much as me. As a result of my engaging him, the lawn you stand on is the quarter-deck which he never fails to salute. As nearly as I can discover, we are sailing a perpetual voyage—you see by this view that the illusion is possible—and we're living in the imminent danger and hope of an attack by the Spanish. By the way, old man, would you rather go upstairs and clean up? Are you cold sitting there? Sometimes, being so comfortable myself, I forget all about my guests."
I protested, sincerely, that I was quite contented where I was.
"Good!" he smiled. "Now tell me all about London…. I see you were hit twice. From more than a dozen sources I've heard how splendid you were in France."
His voice was so bright, with its old, happy mannerism of rapidity of words, with the occasional slurring rallentando, and his gaiety so infectious, that, under his influence, I felt the clouds about my brain lifting—not only those caused by grief for his helpless condition, but those born of my own black moods which drove sleep from my eyes for nights at a time. I had come determined to be cheerful and to bring encouragement to the invalid, but already I was drinking in the elixir of his spirit and feeling my arteries throb with a kind of ecstasy. His charm was more potent than before.
For a few minutes we chatted about France and the old Westminster boys who had won renown. We talked of many things, and laughed to find that we were still boys.
"By the way," he said, during a momentary lull in the stream of reminiscence, "I must apologize for my wife. She is doing some necessary shopping in Ventnor, but will be back by the next train."
"I heard you were married," I said, but got no further. Delicacy forbade my asking him how his dream of love had become a reality. He must have read the question in my eyes, however, for he offered me his cigarettes, which, with him, was always a prelude to a change in the tone of conversation.
"I did not write to her after I went to France," he said quietly, "because … well, I've spoken to you before of my sense of intuition—and I knew that mine would be a heavy price to pay. It was not fair to fasten her with a life none too robust at its best, because of a love-fantasy between two children. When I was hit, and they broke the news to me that—that this was to be my luck, the one thing that comforted me was the thought that she was free and would not have to share my captivity. By-the-by, Pest, isn't the sea fascinating? It is never the same for two days together."
He was still a Puck, lightening his moods whenever they threatened to hurt the listener with their intensity.
"Pest," he said, after a pause, "she came to me…. When everything was dark, and I was groping blindly for some hand that would start me just a—a little on my path, she came—out of the mists. I urged her to leave me. I argued that she was not fair—and for answer she kissed me…. Pest, it was a moment of such exquisite happiness, a happiness so poignant, that I wish I could have died then. I was never so fit for heaven."
The figure of Sindbad appeared from the house, tugged at its forelock, and disappeared into the garden to trim some shrubs.
"How did you happen to come here?" I asked.
"I had always looked on the island," he said, smiling, "as the only spot in England where a twentieth-century Robinson Crusoe could find a sanctuary from the world, and, by the courtesy of the gentleman who owned the place, I was able to purchase it at a ridiculously low price. As a matter of fact, he was offered twice the amount quoted to me, but refused because I was a disabled Tommy. We came here strangers, but really the kindness of every one is so great that the ordeal is turning into a privilege. You have no idea, Pest, how extraordinarily sympathetic and courteous these people are."
"I suppose, though," I said softly, "that it is rather—lonely."
"Lonely?" he laughed. "Bless your heart, old boy! talk about a French savant and hissalon—this place is a positive Mecca for all the distinguished pilgrims on the island. For instance, there is the editor of theTribune—a man who thinks editorially and talks colossally. He claims that any one who has read Boswell'sLife of Johnson, Cervantes'Don Quixote, and Carlyle'sFrench Revolutionis educated. He never reads anything else, but keeps on reading these three in an endless cycle. We have perfectly stupendous arguments that never get anywhere, but utterly exhaust both of us. Then there's the station-master. How many passengers boarded the train here when you were coming off?"
"Four, I think."
"Ah, yes; this is Saturday—a busy day. Some trains we don't get any, and others just one or two; but in anticipation of a rush at some future date, he's invented a scheme of getting tickets out of a drawer, stamped and all complete, by merely pressing a button. I assure you it's going to revolutionize the booking systems of the world—we've been working on it for weeks, but so far all we've got is the button. The plans are prodigious, though. And the Tommies! Gor blime, Pest! there's a convalescent home just down the road, and it's a queer day that at least two of the beggars don't come up for a 'jaw' about old times. You talk about your officers' messes and brass hats; why, it's real life in the ranks. I tell you, Pest, I would rather be the man that coined the word 'Cheerio' than the greatest general the world has seen."
A merchant-ship, still wearing its strange motley of camouflage, sailed past only a couple of miles from shore.
"Look!" whispered Norman, and pointed down the garden.
Sindbad was crouched behind some bushes, surveying the vessel through a dilapidated telescope. After a careful scrutiny, he resumed his labors, shaking his head and muttering darkly to himself.
Norman chuckled hilariously. "He's on the look-out for Spaniards," he said.
"What a villainous telescope!"
"Isn't it? He always has it by him, though. I'll swear you can't see half-a-mile with the blessed thing."
A huge black hound appeared from the direction of the conservatory, and, after the canine manner, expressed his wriggliest delight at the sight of Norman, ending by sitting solemnly beside the chair and laying one paw on the invalid's knee.
"Good-afternoon, Mr. Jones," said Norman.
The dog thumped the ground four times with his tail, and emitted a yawn like the sound of a train emerging from a tunnel.
"Mr. Jones," said I, "changes from cordiality to ennui with rather startling rapidity."
The hound acknowledged his name by a solitary thump, and then groaned with the air of a Stiggins contemplating the wickedness of a Weller.
"What breed is he?" I asked.
"Dog—just dog. He is, if I may say so, the battle-ground of his ancestors. Every breed but that of bull can be traced in him, and each has its moment of ascendancy. Mr. Jones possesses a most remarkable hereditary system."
The subject of our conversation became suddenly tense. A bird had hopped on to the quarter-deck, and was pecking at the ground in a manner that would infuriate any self-respecting dog.
Gathering up his loins, Mr. Jones stalked the intruder to within four yards, and then fell in a heap on the spot—where the bird had been. After surveying the landscape with a puzzled air, as if to indicate to us that foul work was afloat, he walked to the end of the lawn and gazed thoughtfully at the sea. Having thoroughly demonstrated his indifference as to whether he ever caught a bird or not, he yawned terrifically, and left the scene for the comfort of the kitchen.
XII
And so, partly with banter, but with many moments that were tense with feeling, we talked while the afternoon wore on. Norman was in the midst of some anecdote of either Sindbad or Mr. Jones, when he paused, and a look of delighted anticipation lit his countenance.
"That's the whistle," he said. "The train's right on time to-day." He sighed happily, as a lover about to meet his sweetheart after a long absence.
"Sindbad," he cried, "pipe all hands to tea. Tell Mrs. M'Gillicuddy we'll have it in the music-room."
Telescope under his arm, the worthy buccaneer—for I am convinced he sailed under Captain Kidd—shuffled into the house, and the noise of the train could be distinctly heard as it emptied its crowd of one or two at the little station.
"I shall go and open the gate," I said, but he stopped me.
"He is with her, Pest."
"Who?"
"Wait…. I have kept a surprise for you."
A minute later I saw his wife at the end of the path as she waved to him. She came through the leafy garden with a grace of movement that made the scene a delicate, colorful picture, and even before she had reached us I could see that her beauty was as exquisite, as perfect, as an orchid's. All sacrificed to an invalid….
With the tenderest of smiles in her eyes, which were blue as the sky, she advanced towards us and kissed him; and I, who detest things sentimental as I would the plague, thought it was the loveliest tribute I had ever seen. Before he could speak, she turned and gave me both her hands.
"I won't apologize," she said, and her voice was as sweet as a brook's, "because I know you both enjoyed your talk of old times the better for my absence."
"It was a wonderful afternoon," I said, "but it would have been doubly so with you here."
And then I, the Pest, the cynic, the modernist, stooped and kissed her hand. It seemed the natural thing to do, and she accepted it with the understanding heart that Nature had given her.
"But, Lilias, where is the lad?"
"Oh," she laughed gaily, "the station-master kept him a moment to show him an entirely new button he had thought of. But here he is now."
Coming up the path, carrying a couple of parcels, was a boy of, perhaps, ten years of age. His hair was golden and curly, and his eyes had a dreamy look that contrasted strangely with the strength of his chin. He had the poise and the appearance of a thoughtful, well-bred youth; but there was something, I could not say what, that told me he was not English.
He touched his cap to me as he came on the lawn and smiled cordially to Basil.
"Do you remember the gentleman?" asked Norman.
The boy shook his head and unconsciously moved nearer to the woman, who placed her hand on his shoulder.
"You shouldn't forget each other," laughed Norman, "for once he played the drums under your baton."
A few minutes later we went in for tea, the boy and Mrs. Norman going first. I waited while Sindbad prepared to move the invalid, and then turned to him for an explanation.
"Klotz was killed," said Norman swiftly, "and his wife died a month later, after she heard of his death. We have adopted Siegfried as our ward."
XIII
That night a storm came up from the sea, and the house rattled and shook in the clutch of a November gale. The trees that looked like palms swayed and bent before the wind, and the many-colored leaves in the garden fled like refugees before an attack, and covered the ground with their quivering bodies.
We were gathered in the music-room, the cosy warmth from a fire of logs making pleasant contrast to the snarling wind outside. The evening had been a memorable one. The woman whose beauty was so delicate had charmed us with her voice, her playing; charmed us without effort or knowing how.
From a lounge, Norman's vivacity, which always had in it the quality of sympathy, illuminated everything that happened. When she sang a little extract of the eighteenth century, "Bergère Légère," it was he who knew that it had been a favorite of Marie Antoinette's. When she played the love theme which Puccini gives the strings in the first act ofMadame Butterfly, it was Norman who, by a dozen deftly chosen words, created the atmosphere of Japan and brought before us the cruel tenderness of Pinkerton's love for Cho Cho San. After Siegfried had played MacDowell's conception of "Mid-ocean," Norman recalled in a moment the genius of America's greatest composer, the genius that had finally crossed the thin barrier to insanity. From that we talked of the sea, while the wind howled outside, and I spoke of the many moods of blue that colored it in a single day, and, without giving the effect of quotation or of monologue, he brought his artistry into play with three lines of Keats's sonnet "Blue."
Whenever any of us spoke, his sensitive rhythmic intellectuality seemed to hover about us, acknowledging thought where it struggled to the surface, adding some subtle touch of color when our efforts seemed too drab. Under its influence we talked our best, we thought our best, we were our best.
At nine o'clock Siegfried rose to go to bed, and advanced to shake hands with me.
"Well," I said, "and do you still intend to be a conductor?"
He smiled a little self-consciously.
"There is much to learn," he said, "and—I do not want to leave my home."
Norman lit a cigarette—his old mannerism when emotions were taut.
"Parents," he said, "and quasi-parents like us, march straight towards loneliness. Our greatest concern is to have our children ready to leave us as soon as they hear the call of the world, knowing that such a moment will be the proudest and the saddest of our lives."
"Good-night," said Siegfried to me. "Goodnight, Uncle Bubbles." He turned wistfully to Mrs. Norman, who smiled and linked her arm in his.
"Won't you come along?" she said to me. "Siegfried is very proud of his room, and would like you to see it." It was her way of hiding her knowledge that the little chap was frightened by the storm. So we saw him safely in bed, and admired his books, and wished him pleasant dreams. We had just left his room and were about to descend the stairs, when we paused as the sound of rain beating against the house came to our ears. We hurried about for a few moments seeing that all windows were closed, and were going to rejoin Norman, when I stopped her.
"Mrs. Norman," I said haltingly, "it is never easy for an Englishman to express the emotion he feels, but may I tell you how touched I am by your devotion to your husband? Without you, his life would be—unbearable."
She did not smile or protest, but her eyes looked straight into mine.
"To live day by day," she said slowly, her fingers playing with a necklace that hung about her full white throat, "near a soul like Basil's, to commune with a brain like his … to feel the inspiration of his nature that is so in tune with the beauty of the world, is a happiness few women can experience. If it were not too cruel, I could feel thankful for his wound that has given him so completely to me."
I stood by her on the creaking stairs as the rain swept in torrents against the house, and her murmuring tones mingled with the sounds of the storm.
"Perhaps you cannot understand," she said gently, "but loving Basil as I do, and having him dependent on me, is a selfish happiness that only a woman could really know."
And out of the night a truth came to me that, though it never, never could be mine, the most precious thing in this world is a woman's heart.
XIV
It was eleven o'clock, and Basil Norman and I were alone. The storm had subsided, and, through the sound of the rain, we could hear the waves breaking against the shore.
"I do not want Siegfried to go to school yet," he was saying; "he is so full of promise and latent genius that I dread the risk of having it all standardized into what we call a public-school man. I am coaching him in languages and the three R's, but more than anything else I want him to form his own conception of the scheme of the universe, so that when he takes his position among the world's musicians—as I am confident he will—he'll have the echo of what he interprets in his own breast. Music is so vast, yet musicians, as a class, are people of little depth."
"Has the lad a chance in England with his German name?"
"Yes. England must realize that genius has no nationality."
"What was Siegfried like when you took him first?"
"He was arrogant, sullen, and in his child's brain was the knowledge that his father had fought against us. To make him forget his unhappy past, and partly to satisfy a caprice of my own, I—well, you would say I blew bubbles. We invented a little city of make-believe. From the hill at the back of the house you can look down on all these houses, and at dusk, when the mist rises from the sea and the windows begin to glow with light, it is quaint enough for a study by Rackham. In our little City of Bubbles there dwelt such celebrities as Aladdin, Jack the Giant Killer, Midshipman Easy, Peter Pan, poor Wilde's Happy Prince, and Heaven knows how many more. They were very real to Siegfried and me, and Lilias used to have many a laugh over the troubles of our little family. But I had not counted on Sindbad; he was filling Siegfried with stories of buried treasure and men forced to walk the plank (all of them absolutely authenticated by the narrator), and the lurking Prussian began to appear. He stole down to Ventnor and bought books on the war … he began to glory in the stand Germany was making. So I was not surprised when, one day, he suggested that we should play soldiers.
"Pest, you should have been there. Siegfried was Napoleon, and I was Hindendorff, his chief of Staff. Sindbad was given command of a naval brigade, and was also in charge of a large fleet lying in hiding to cope with the Spaniard, should he emerge. In addition to these modest duties, he had to wheel my chair. Lilias came along as a composite representative of all the women's services. Napoleon's plans were that we should attack the City of Bubbles, which was being defended by a heavy force on the fringe of the hill. I omitted to mention our flying cavalry in the person of Mr. Jones; but owing to a misunderstanding of our objective he waged separate war on birds all afternoon, inflicting no casualties, but covering an immense area of ground. We began the attack about half-a-mile back; but when Napoleon ordered Sindbad's naval brigade into action, we were unable to find him, until Mr. Jones discovered him behind a rock, scrutinizing a passing merchantman through the inevitable telescope. After some persuasion, we induced Sindbad to attack, but half-way to his objective he remembered that he had left his pipe in the kitchen, to which he repaired, leaving his troops in the air, as we used to say in France, and taking away the mobility which, as Chief of Staff, I needed urgently. There is no question that Sindbad possesses imagination, but it is an unreliable one.
"To make the story short, we won by a brilliant ruse of Napoleon's, who got word to the enemy that the tuck-shops in Ventnor were being evacuated, which was as effective as his famous "Sauve qui peut" at Waterloo, for they fled ignominiously, and we captured the city, after inflicting heavy casualties."
I looked at him and waited. Behind the nonsense I could see some serious thought was lurking, but what I could not conjecture.
"The next day," he resumed, "Siegfried was tired, and asked me to tell how Peter Pan frustrated the pirates. 'Peter is dead,' said I. Siegfried suppressed a sob, and asked when he died. 'He was killed in our attack,' I said. After a long pause, he mentioned the probability of Mr. Midshipman Easy being at home. 'He is dead,' said I. Again his question, and again my answer: 'He was killed in our attack.' He went out; but on going to bed that night he asked if Cinderella was really very pretty. 'Not now,' I said, 'for she is lying dead.' Does it seem ludicrous, Pest? That night he cried himself to sleep, and it is not easy to listen to a youngster's sobs when you know that a word from you will do away with them. For two long dreary weeks our City of Bubbles was a City of the Dead…. Then I suggested that we play soldiers again and make another attack. After all, Pest, it isn't every Tommy gets a chance of being Chief of Staff. I wish you could have seen his face. It was as though I had struck him with a whip, and he left me without a word. That afternoon the Wizard of Oz visited our city and brought them all back to life. That was some months ago, and our little dream-world is only a serio-humorous memory for Siegfried and me now. But during that night he cried himself to sleep I think the Prussian in him died."
For several minutes we listened to the rain.
"The greatest of the Arts," said Norman, very slowly, "is life. I don't think our writers, our painters, our men who dream in bronze realize that. If they did, it would not be said that the English are the least artistic people in the world; for you and I know that is not true. Scott going to his death in the Antarctic snow was a great artist. The sailor standing to one side when the last boat is filled, and those six Tommies at Grieswald in Germany, holding their ground against a row of bayonets and taking a sentence of two years' imprisonment rather than aid the Hun in making munitions—are they not artists? Where we fail as a race is in our authors, composers, painters, who divorce themselves from the real spirit of England and wonder that the products of their brains quicken no pulse and stir no imagination. Our educationists, our leaders in every movement allied with culture, have too often striven to choke the imaginativeness and blind the eyes of our youth to the beauty of life, which is one of its greatest truths. One has but to read the despairing lines written by bereaved mothers for their sons who have fallen, to feel the sorrow of England crying for expression; instead of which, our triumph, our courage, our artistry are mute and inarticulate."
The rain had ceased, and the wind was moaning over the sea as if it had been balked of its prey.
"Mark my words, Pest," he said dreamily, "as a nation we shall have no self-expression until our artists take for their model the greatest of all Arts—Life."
His eyes were fixed on the smouldering coals, and over his face there was a mystic veil—a thing not of this world but born of the undying spirit. It was like a mist that settles on a river in the hour between sunset and night.
"Basil," I cried; and the sound of my own voice startled me. I do not know what words were surging to my lips, for he turned to me and the smile of compassion in his eyes held me silent.
Something choked in my throat…. I felt that I wanted to struggle to my feet and stand at the salute. For the face that looked into mine was that of aCONQUEROR.
A burning ember fell from the grate and lay on the tiled surface of the hearth.