"As an example to the battalion."Campbell."
"As an example to the battalion.
"Campbell."
"What's that noise?"
"Sounds like Mills bombs," said the adjutant.
"And revolvers," muttered the colonel, and swore softly to himself with a lip that quivered strangely.
X
If ever you go to the Cobalt country, do not fail to take the boat to Ville Marie, on the blue shores of Pontiac.
There is an excellent hostelry at Ville Marie called "Les Voyageurs," where a little lady, known as Petite Simunde, has worked wonders in making it the cosiest, snuggest, neatest little place that ever warmed the heart of a lumberjack or a mining-prospector. At night her husband leads the singing with a mighty voice that shakes the rafters; for did not the former proprietor, Pierre Generaud, say that singing encouraged thirst?
At times, when Madame Des Rosiers is away for a day, Jacque Noir will regale his old friends with tales of his past life, stories that differ with every telling, and seem to indicate that the narrator himself is beginning to doubt their accuracy. At these times, too, he has been known to sing of a sailor who loved a Portuguese maid; but at the first sound of his wife's footsteps outside Monsieur Des Rosiers is the model husband, arôle, to be frank, which suits him quite well.
When the snow is very thick on the ground, and the wind howls mournfully over the lake, Jacque Noir talks of France and the weary years of war. He will point with pride to his artificial foot, and then to his decoration, and slowly tell how two men went out into the dark after a machine-gun post.
And when the guests are gone and the fire is low, when the wind is moaning quietly, while the snow falls thick—thick—thick—they speak to each other of the officer who will never come back; of the one whose hair was brown, almost like red; whose blue eyes were stern, and yet so kind.
Hand-in-hand they sit close together, and the only sounds are those of the crackling logs and the wind that is never still.
THE MAN WHO SCOFFED
I
Dennis Montague of Toronto emerged from his bath, glowing and talkative. A luxurious deep-blue dressing-gown was wrapped about his form, its color accentuating the gray-blue of his eyes. His valet stood beside his bed, on which there reposed a set of garments suitable for a gentleman bent on spending an evening out.
"Ah, Sylvester! That's right. We poor devils must look as well as the abominable fashions will permit. Did you ever wonder why the men of to-day are so commonplace? It is the clothes they wear."
Mr. Sylvester took the dressing-gown and hung it in the closet.
"For instance, my dear fellow, to-night I am in a devilishly brilliant mood; almost any moment now I might say something clever. If I had my way, I should dress in scarlet, like a toreador, and when I spoke, my sentences would have something of the dart about them…. Such would be the fusion of temperament and costume. Instead of which—by the way, mix me a cocktail—I am forced to put on this hideous shirt and a swallow-tailed monstrosity that gives one the appearance of a reformed chimney-sweep. A greater man than either of us, Sylvester, said that the world was all a stage. Then why the deuce don't we dress for our parts?"
"'Ere's your cocktail, sir."
"Good—excellent. What's the time?"
"Gone past seven-thirty, sir."
"By Jove! I shall be late. I am always late, my dear chap; it partly accounts for my extraordinary popularity. A hostess is so relieved to see me by the time I turn up that for years afterwards she associates my face with pleasant sensations. Any mail, Sylvester?"
His servant crossed to the table, on which there reposed four letters. "These came in this afternoon, sir."
"Read them to me while I dress."
"Read them, Mr. Montague?" The valet's face was a study of respectful expostulation.
"Is the idea so preposterous, my dear fellow? I believe most people write letters with the idea of having them read."
The decorous Sylvester sighed, and broke the seal of the first letter. "I would beg to remind you," he read, "that your account——"
Montague made a deprecatory gesture. "How polite these trades-people are!" he said. "I shall expect one some day to enclose forget-me-nots. The next letter?"
Sylvester solemnly opened a diminutive envelope. "Mrs. W. De-Ponsy Harris requests the pleasure——"
"Another request! What is it—a tea or a dance?"
"A dinner, sir."
"Good! I shall go. Mrs. Harris is the worst hostess in the city, but she keeps the best cook. Proceed."
The worthy Sylvester took from the table a delicately scented letter that breathed its delightful suggestion of romance to his grateful nostrils, whereupon he promptly blushed a deep, unlovely, tomato-like red. "It starts," said he, "'My Dearest Love——'"
His master glanced at him. "Don't blush," he said. "Thegrande passionis nothing to be ashamed of." He carefully adjusted his tie. "What is the young lady's name?"
"Myrtle, sir."
"Ah, yes; poor little Myrtle! What a pity a woman clings to a romance that is dead. There is something morbid in women that makes them do it. It is like embracing a corpse."
"Shall I read it, sir?"
"No, no; don't bother. I know what is in it. On the third page she declares she hates me, and on the fifth she denies it. Myrtle runs so deucedly to form."
A look of relief crossed the rotund countenance of Mr. Sylvester as he took up the last letter. "It's from a society for educating the poor, sir."
"Tear it up. What we need is a society for educating the rich." Completely dressed, Montague turned round and struck an attitude. "It is my intention some day," he said with mock airiness, "to found aConservatoire Universelle, where philanthropists will be taught charity, ministers of the gospel gain humility, musicians learn to feel, and newspaper writers take up the elements of language. Heavens! such scope as I should have! Stick your head out of the window and see if a taxi is waiting."
Sylvester raised the window and surveyed the street below. "It's there, sir," he said, drawing his head in.
"Then I shall leave you. Mrs. Le Roy is giving a dinner-party this evening, and she invariably has guests who listen charmingly. Good-night, Sylvester."
"Good-night, sir."
When he was gone, William Sylvester scratched his thinly covered head. He then shrugged his shoulders, and followed this action by pouring out a glass of sherry. He took a sip. "'Eavens!" he said aloud; "'ow 'e do talk!"
II
Montague leaned back in the taxicab and, enjoying that sense of contentment almost invariably engendered by a smooth-running vehicle, allowed his mind to browse in the meadows of memory.
It was a process which gave him considerable pleasure, for he was a man who respected his own accomplishments—though given to satirical comment on those of others. Satisfaction with his past had bred in him a contentment with the present…. And he never doubted the future; for was not to-morrow merely to-day carried on?
There were many reasons tending towards his peace of mind. One: that he was twenty-eight years of age. At such a period in a man's life he meets older men on a footing of equality, and younger men with patronage. Women of all ages admire him, and their husbands ask him to lunch at their clubs. There is no age more gratifying to the vanity.
The man of twenty-eight is an Ambassador of Youth meeting the Plenipotentiaries of Age as an equal.
Unfortunately for Dennis Montague, he allowed his own excellent opinion of himself to deepen with the admiration of others until it completely outstripped all rivals. At twenty-six he had his first great love affair—with himself. At twenty-eight it had ripened into a sort of reverence. Occasionally he flirted with women, but such incidents were mere inconstancies, peccadillos, which never seriously threatened his own overwhelmingaffaire d'amour.
Born in Ottawa, Dennis was the son of an ambitious mother and a high-placed Government official. Educated for the law, he had applied a dexterous intellect to that noble and musty study, and had succeeded in having himself called to the Bar when he was twenty-three. Up to that time he had known no other civilization than that found in the capital of his native land, where a peer of the realm, graciously appointed by the Imperial Government to act as interpreter between the Mother Country and the Dominion of Canada, regularly spends his appointed term at the Government House, thereby stimulating Ottawa's social activities to fever-heat. It even produces a philosophy of its own among the capital's tuft-hunters. For, even ifthisgovernor-general doesn't ask us to dinner, there's always a chance that thenextone will.
Montague became a noted figure in Ottawa's younger social set, and, though he expressed contempt for all such things, found a certain gratification in seeing his name appear constantly in the social columns of the city's press. It was a soothing sensation to read the chronicle of his adolescent activities…. Few people can resist a glow of pleasure on seeing in the morning paper that they were where they were the previous evening.
Even in the remotest rural districts of America the weekly journal records that "Hank Wilson went over to Hiram Johnston's farm at Hen's Creek to see his new barn. Hiram Johnston is one of the most enterprising farmers that we got."
But—there is something solid about that barn.
After the legal profession had opened its portals to Montague he moved to Toronto, accepting a junior partnership in a firm of some standing. To his amazement, he found that in Toronto theentréeinto the best circles—and he could not exist in any other—was more difficult than in Ottawa. Though both cities had that reverence for wealth which is universal, Toronto's large population made a sudden and successfuldébutfar from easy. There were so many sets—those who yachted, danced, and golfed; those who danced and golfed; and those who merely golfed. Montague decided that the last class was too fatiguing.
Then there were those extraordinary people who practiced the arts in an amiable way. There is probably no city in the world where there exists more comfortable talent than in Toronto. For a time music was the occupation of musicians, but society embraced it, to the benefit of them both, with the result that musical homes abound.
This worried Montague. The younger set in Ottawa knew no such phenomena.
Looking farther afield, he next caught a glimpse of the University family, an after-growth of the larger life of Toronto 'Varsity. But he avoided that. His mind was dexterous, but needed lesser minds beside it to give it the sparkle of contrast.
In desperation he turned to the purelynouveaux riches, only to find that they had made entangling alliances with all the other fraternities.
There was only one well untapped—the Canadian Militia; but his mind rejected that at once. He had always agreed with Disraeli that soldiering was fit only for fools in peace-time and for barbarians in times of war.
He joined the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
His dinner-parties on the verandas of that beautiful place caused him to be noticed. A friend of his introduced him to one of the society reporters. He invited her to a dinner, and sent her home in a limousine.
Toronto wavered. He was certainly good-looking, and had not the "C'est entendu" column of one of the largest dailies recorded that "Mr. Dennis Montague's dinner-parties at the Yacht Club have a——" followed by several French words that were most impressive?
With the genius of a great general, he saw that the gates were unlocked. Now for some stroke to thrust them open! For two months he cogitated, and then one day it came to him with a flash, as ideas occasionally present themselves to authors.
He engaged Mr. Sylvester as a valet. Toronto society surrendered unconditionally.
It was not so much that Sylvester was a valet, but that he had a nice appreciation of effect. Sometimes, when his master was playing tennis on the lawns of the Yacht Club, the unobtrusive servant would be seen patiently waiting outside the wire-screen, with a letter, or a suit-case, or some verbal question concerning domestic economy. Montague appeared annoyed and raised his salary.
But triumph is satisfying only if it leads to further victories; and Dennis began to cast about for somerôlewhich would distinguish him from his fellows. The death of his father handed on to him a yearly income which made his position secure; but he was not satisfied. It was then that he learned to scoff.
It was an experiment at first, but an immediately successful one. His brain, always keen and linked to a facile vocabulary, became focused on the unlovely task of ridiculing life; and as he was ever careful not to satirize the set with whom he was dining, his popularity became tremendous. By a process of catalogue culture he was able to talk on a variety of subjects; his method being that if one heard the waltz fromLa Bohème, one was entitled to discuss Puccini. One of Brangwyn's earlier efforts in a friend's house was sufficient basis for him to pose as a judge of etchings. He read part of one book by a myriad of writers, then discarding their works, held forth on the authors themselves.
With young men of observant and creative minds there are two paths which, early in life's journey, offer puzzling deviation. To follow one (and to youth it seems the less attractive), a man must bend his faculties to the discovering and the interpreting of the beauty of life; the other leads to the annihilation of everything that is genuine and that can be used as a target for cynicism. Montague chose the second path, and spared nothing but himself.
Even when the war gripped the city, and one by one the little gods of puny social life crashed impotently to destruction, he continued his glittering way unperturbed. The war was young, and the 1st Canadian Division was merely holding the line somewhere near a place called Ypres…. The market for superficiality was still brisk.
The taxi came to a stop outside a lovely home in Chestnut Park, and, paying the driver, Montague mounted the steps and rang the bell.
"I wonder," he mused, "who the deuce I shall have as a dinner partner?"
III
After his usual apologies for tardiness, Montague led Mrs. Le Roy in to dinner, and like the seasoned campaigner he had become, glanced at the guests for conversational adversaries. His host and hostess were noisy and given to platitudes; there was a soft-voiced American from the South who seemed only anxious to be attentive and courteous to the woman next him; on the other side there was a young woman who was so consistently effusive that she was the most invited-out guest in Toronto—but never had a love affair; beside her was a young subaltern in an obviously new uniform. Montague had a vague idea that he had seen that well-groomed uninspired face in some bank. And he was right. Less than six months back the bank manager had written to the General Office about this youth—"He's a decent enough fellow, but lacking in initiative."
Just beyond the subaltern Montague saw the finely chiseled features of Vera Dalton, and for some reason unknown to himself his color mounted as their eyes met. He had known her in Ottawa, though she had steadfastly avoided his friends, and later, when her parents had come to Toronto, he had seen her at odd intervals. He liked to think of her as an old friend, though there was something about her that made his flippancy difficult in her presence; but beyond their occasional meetings at certain houses, neither one had made any attempt to develop the friendship.
She was fair without being blond, and avoiding the riotous climax of color so tempting to fair women, she dressed in subtle shades, with colors suggested rather than displayed. Her face had a poise and a composure that had nothing in common with placidity; and she was feminine without being helpless or making a constant sex appeal. She had always interested Montague, and even though their conversations had consisted of neatly worded nothings, her memory had a habit of lingering with him in a way that disturbed his self-admiration. Two things he felt about her—one, that she disliked him; the other, that he held some power over her.
He removed his eyes from hers, and, glancing for a moment at the remaining guests, who sat like a jury with Mr. Le Roy at the end as foreman, he drained his glass and leaped into the conversational ring with a vivacious effrontery that was startling. Naturally of high spirits and easily stimulated by applause, he juggled phrase and quotation, tossed words into the air, and, as though he were a conjurer, watched them link together into ideas. He held his listeners in wonder and challenged them all on subjects ranging from New Thought to the latest scandal. Once the American held him with a witty retort, but Montague feinted with an epigram and stabbed him with a paradox. On one occasion the newly created subaltern, stirred by wine and a certain courage derived from his khaki, threw a truism into the arena in the hope that it would trip the talker, but Montague, catching it on the point of his wit, twirled it about, and hurled it at its source, laughing as the discomfited young officer retired behind the barriers of self-conscious silence.
His hearers applauded by look and word, and Mrs. Le Roy whispered to her servant to keep Montague's glass full…. She was delighted…. She had never seen him glitter so.
And Montague noted the applause, emptying his glass again and again; but it was neither wine nor the incense of flattery that had stirred his pulse to such energy…. In that glance from Vera's eyes he had read a truth. His power, whatever it was, had mastered her dislike, and he knew that in the evening before him she would bend in his arms as the bow yields to the strength of the archer.
IV
After dinner they danced. Mrs. Le Roy was not a gifted hostess, but she acted on the principle that food, wine and music—provided the food and the wine were high-class, and the music was not—would make any evening a success. Few of her guests disagreed with her; their feet and their tongues were light, and they danced and talked without self-consciousness or mental effort.
Twice Montague had danced with the girl, but it amused him to leave her each time with some mocking pleasantry, the only answer to the smoldering question of her eyes. It was nearly midnight when he led her, almost without asking, into the deserted recess of the Le Roy's conservatory, and, beckoning her to a settee, sat down beside her. With her hands clasped on her lap she gazed fixedly at the shadowy garden showing outside.
Montague looked at her, and his eyes grew bright as they noted her poise, tempered by fear of him. He leaned over and rested his hand on hers.
"Please don't," she said quietly, making no effort to withdraw her own.
"Women always say 'don't,'" he said. "I suppose they enjoy a sort of preliminarytête-à-têtewith conscience before committing an indiscretion."
"But I mean it, Dennis."
"All women mean it, my dear Vera."
Her color deepened, and she tried to release her hands from his, but his grip tightened until it hurt. She made no further attempt, and he moved still closer to her.
"Please let me go," she said, keeping her eyes steadily from him.
"You are inartistic."
"But I ask you—and you are a gentleman." Something of the dislike that he had always known she felt for him crept into her voice and left a nice tinge of irony.
"I have a valet and three addresses," he said, "and only pay my tailor once a year…. In most countries that gives one the standing of a gentleman."
She bit her lip and glanced quickly at him. His pulses, already stirred by wine and the intrigue of a midnight amour, leaped into a fever at the glimpse of burning eyes and lips that slightly trembled. He placed his hand on her shoulder and drew her face towards his.
"Why," she said hesitatingly—"why do you want to kiss me?"
Montague smiled. "The eternal question, Vera. It has trapped more men into proposals than all the wiles of a generation of fond mothers."
"But you don't love me," she said, her hands pressed against the lapels of his jacket in self-defense.
"On such a night as this," he said, "who could help but love you?"
"Dennis, please let me go—I mean it—I shall call for help."
His brow contracted with a sudden frown. "You come here," he said, "at midnight—into a deserted conservatory … with me. Then, because I do what you knew from the start I would do, you suddenly decide to play 'Little Miss Prude from the Convent.'"
"I—I should not have come. I did not want to, Dennis."
His lips curved into a smile. "Then why did you?"
Her eyes pleaded with him not to prolong the scene, but he was mad with the joy of seeing this sensitive woman, who had so long kept him at a distance, caught in the meshes of his fascination, and he held her in his arms, confident of his power to sway her at his will.
"I fought against it, Dennis," she said quickly. "But—I had to come. Oh, why force me to say such a thing. Can you not see how unfair you are?"
She struggled to her feet, but he stood before her, barring the way to the door.
His breath came faster. This was a charming surrender! It had gracefulness, novelty, charm…. Only, something in her eyes warned him to come no closer.
"I have admitted, Dennis Montague," she said breathlessly, "that I came here because you fascinated me. It's true; you have always fascinated me. But I tell you that down in my heart I loathe you, detest you, for the coward that you are." Montague drew back as though fired upon by a masked battery. "In all the years I have known you," she went on furiously, as though fearing that her courage would leave her before the finish, "you have done nothing that was not selfish, mean, and cowardly—above everything else, cowardly. Look at the girls you have known——" Montague interrupted her with an impatient gesture, but she went on: "More than a dozen I could name have given you the depth and the sweetness of their first love, inspired by you, called forth by you. Do you realize what a woman's heart is and what she gives with it? And you—you are too cowardly to face marriage, too cowardly to love with your own heart—too selfish to leave women's hearts alone."
Montague took a cigarette-case from his pocket. "May I smoke?" he said coolly.
"You are a coward about your profession as well," she hurried on, ignoring his interruption. "Your mother, I know, had great dreams for you. She planned, worked, sacrificed for you. Yet you are too much of a coward seriously to face competition with what you choose to call 'the little legal minds of the city.'"
"And thirdly?" he said, lighting a cigarette.
"Yes, thirdly," she said desperately, although his easy nonchalance was fast undermining her courage, "you are not in the army. Yet no one could say that Dennis Montague is not fit. I can only presume, like every one else, that you are afraid."
"And lastly?" He was still calm, although keener eyes than hers would have noticed a dark, ominous flush under his eyes.
"And, lastly," she said, unconsciously repeating his formula, "you scoff at everything that is good and pure, sneering at religion, and drawing yourself aside from your fellow-creatures as though they were loathsome. Yet I say to you, Dennis, that there is not a man in the slums whose soul isn't far, far richer than yours. It is only a coward, afraid to face the real things, who scoffs at life."
Weak from the effort she had made, her voice subsided into silence and a cold sweat broke out on her brow and the palms of her hands.
"Will you smoke, Vera?"
"No, thanks," she answered faintly.
"Do. It would soothe you."
"No, I thank you." She repressed a sudden desire to fly from the conservatory. She had become suddenly afraid of the cool, smiling figure beside her.
"As far as girls are concerned," he said quietly, replacing the cigarette-case in his pocket, "just as long as they angle for us with every artifice of dress and rouge and coquetry, so long will they catch us and the consequences. As for the law, which my mother planned for me, I regret that my father left me the instincts of a gentleman, not of an attorney. I am not boring you?"
She made no reply.
"As for the army, I don't happen to be interested in the war. I disapprove of the crudeness of our Canadian civilization. I disapprove of England's lack of the artistic. I disapprove of German militarism, Scotch bagpipes, Swiss cheese, Chinese laundries, and American politics. Why should I fight for one when I disapprove of them all? As for my fellow-man, I shun the ordinary man of the streets because he does not think, read, or bathe often enough. I am not hostile to him; I merely ignore him. I am not a coward at all, my dear Vera; I am merely an artist among artisans."
He bowed gracefully. "Let us return to the dancing," he said.
With a frightened, inquiring glance, she took his arm, and without a word they left the conservatory. At the door of the ballroom they paused, and she laid a timid hand on his arm. It will ever be a mystery to men how women can love and despise the same object.
"Dennis," she said, "will you try to forget what I have said?" Her courage had gone, fled before his coolness and the fascination he held for her, though she had striven with all her womanhood to free herself from it.
"I wish to Heaven I could," he said grimly.
V
The morning sunshine invaded the rooms of Dennis Montague with pervading cheeriness. It was nearing the end of April, and a hundred birds sang of the winter wonders of arid Africa, and of the witcheries of the Nile, where Pygmies are at war with the butterflies, and the great god Memnon raises his mighty shout to greet the dawn of day.
Oblivious to the sunshine and everything but his thoughts, Montague lay in bed, and sought to wrestle with the truth he had heard the night before. It was impossible to dismiss the thing from his mind. His brain throbbed with resentment, questioning, searching her words—striving to convince himself that her charge of cowardice was the vituperation of an unrequited love. But it was useless. He could explain her actions, dissect her motives, applaud his own pose, but he could not eliminate the feeling of personal nausea which clung to him, as though he had suddenly sickened of his whole nature.
A knock at the door interrupted the thread of his thoughts, and his valet entered with a tray of breakfast-things.
"Good morning, sir." Sylvester carefully rearranged the tray on a little table beside the bed. "It's a beautiful morning, sir. There's great news too."
"What is it?"
"Canadians 'ave saved Calais, sir—leastways they've stopped them for the time."
"They're in action, eh?"
"'Orrible, too, sir; the paper says the Germans used poison gas."
"Good God!"
"Yes, sir—the French Colonials gave way, yelling that 'ell was let loose, and the Canadians went up and 'eld the line."
Montague put down the cup of coffee untasted. "What does it say—about casualties?"
"Why, sir it looks as if some battalions was pretty well wiped out. 'Ere's the paper, sir——"
"No—no. I don't want to see it. Tell me—it says … the Canadians held against … gas?"
"Yes, sir."
"Are our Toronto chaps in it?"
"Very 'eavy, sir. It seems as if the 'Ighland Brigade got it the worst."
Montague sank back on the pillow, his face grim and pallid.
"Come along, sir; 'ere's your breakfast."
His master gazed at the ceiling. "Sylvester," he said listlessly, "for a long time you have ministered to my body. What can you do for a soul that is starving?"
The valet beamed reassuringly. A large and varied experience as a servant to young gentlemen had inured him to morning-after repentances.
"That's all right, sir," he said, rubbing his hands genially. "A bromo-seltzer will fix you up. 'Ello, sir!" The sound of a military band drew him to the window. "It's one of the new battalions—blooming near a thousand of them. Seems like 'ome, it does, when the Guards used to do London in all their swankin' regimentals."
A battalion swung past in steady rhythmical tread to the stirring strains of the Welsh hymn of freedom, "Men of Harlech"—and there was a youthful vigorousness about the men, a suggestion of unconquerable manhood…. And on every man's face there was written pride and determination. For their comrades had been tried at Ypres…. They had held the line…. And, by the living God, the Hun would pay for that foul gas given to the wind to carry against defenseless men.
The last ranks of the battalion passed, and the music ceased as suddenly as it had come. The birds resumed their chorus, and William Sylvester his imperturbable mask of deference. Languidly Montague rose from his bed and lit a cigarette.
"Our civilization," he said quietly, "need not pride itself on raising those men. Men have always been brave since the beginning of time. The terrible failure of our age is that it has produced men like me—a coward."
Mr. Sylvester scratched his head. "Lord bless me, sir!" he ventured, "you're not a coward. Why, look at the jump you took at last year's horse show."
Montague turned on him with a vehemence that the valet had never before seen in his master. "I tell you I am a coward," he said fiercely. "Don't I know that my place is with these men? In that battalion that passed there are married men with families, there are only sons of widows, there are brothers, sweethearts. Who is there to care if I go? My death would not cause a single tear; and yet I stay—not that I am afraid of bullets or death, but because I know that I should have to sleep beside men who are filthy, unclean, and that I should grow filthy too. I abhor it. I detest it. Yet I stand aside and let others go."
"You—you are a gentleman, sir."
"A gentleman!" Montague laughed raspingly. "My own definition last night was 'a man with a valet and three addresses.' What a fool I was! No, I am not a gentleman. I have never been one. The greatest gentleman of all time was a carpenter. That is the truth I have to burn into my soul."
He sank into a chair, and shadows of fatigue marred his face. "Last night, Sylvester," he said slowly, "I lay awake for hours, and sometimes in the awful darkness that surrounds one when sleep refuses to come, things seem clearer and more cruel than in daylight. Last night I saw myself for the first time…. I do not say I shall change…. It is too late, I think…."
An hour later he left his flat, fully dressed, and strolled into the sun-lit streets. A newsboy dashed past, screaming in strident tones, "All night fighting—Canadian Line still holding;" and then, apparently feeling the announcement needed identification, he shrieked, "All about that great big European War."
Montague heard his name spoken. It was the ex-bank clerk, the young subaltern with the uninspired face.
"Good-bye," he said rather shyly.
"Where are you going?"
"Marching orders," said the other. "We leave here to-morrow. By jove, we've got something to fight for now!"
Montague murmured his best wishes and moved on, but the words that kept running through his brain were those of the boy's manager who had written "A decent enough fellow, but lacking in initiative."
VI
His walk, unplanned as it was, drew him towards the center of the city. He mechanically avoided the streets that were crowded, and, like a bit of flotsam on the ocean's surface, was guided and buffeted until, turning down a quiet side-street, he emerged upon the corner of a huge stone building. He glanced up, to realize that it was the Armories and was about to change his course when a recruiting sergeant, noticing his hesitation, stepped up to him.
"Beg pardon," he said, "but was you lookin' to sign up?"
"Sign up?" Montague repeated the words automatically.
"Sure—sign up with the Brindle's Battalion."
"The Brindle's Battalion?"
"Come off that parrot stuff," growled Sergeant Saunders.
Montague shook himself together. "I beg your pardon," he said stiffly.
The sergeant shuffled uneasily. "Say, don't be so dashed polite," he said, not ill-naturedly. "I'm here to get recruits. We're a tough bunch; we're a rough bunch; but we're men. Our boys ain't strong on polish or eddication, and they're no boozeless, non-smoking crowd; but they're straight, and they're game, and they're men."
"They're men," repeated Montague, dazed by a dizziness that seemed to wrap himself and the sergeant in an enveloping mist.
"That's what I said," reiterated Sergeant Saunders, mentally noting that he would make Montague drop his sing-song if he ever got the opportunity. "What do you say, old scout?"
Montague glanced up. "Will you take me?" he said.
"Will we take you?" A broad, brown hand grasped Montague's arm, and he found himself being led into a room in the Armories, where he discovered that his full name was Dennis Oliver Montague, that he was twenty-eight years of age, that he was an Anglican, and that his Uncle Charles was his next of kin. He further found that he was the property of His Majesty King George the Fifth for the duration of the war and six months after. "So 'elp me; and shove 'im in to the medico.—Glad you signed up, my lad; you'll never regret it. We've got a man's job for you, and—close that bleeding door, Nokes.—All right.—Next!"
With whirlwind rapidity Dennis stripped for the doctor, who pronounced him an excellent example of cannon-fodder; and, still dazed, he put on his clothes and emerged into the open air, a red band about his arm proclaiming to the world that he was now Private D. O. Montague, of the Brindle's Battalion, C.E.F. He gasped, shrugged his shoulders, then went home.
VII
Sergeant Skimps surveyed the squad of recruits with the eye of a man who had seen recruits for twenty years and was impervious to any emotion on the subject.
"You're soldiers now," he began, his dialect strongly reminiscent of Bow Bells; "you're in the service now, so, kiss me, 'Arry, get your 'air cut, all of yer. We don't go in for Paderooskies in the harmy. Then 'old yer 'eads hup and put yer chests hout has though you was somebody. You ain't, but don't go tellin' no one." (A gentle murmur greeted this sally.) "Halways respeck yer hofficers and non-commissioned hofficers, and don't go slapping the colonel on the back and hoffering 'im a cigar. You're in the harmy—that bloke at the hend, spit out that there tobacco—g'wan!—a filthy 'abit on parade, and it'll get C.B. for yer. Where do you 'ail from, hany'ow?—a nice specimen, I don't think—chewing when a sawgeant's talking to yer. Now, then, fall in—hanother 'arf-hour's drill."
For five hours that day alternately Sergeant Skimps talked, and his tired squad turned, marched, and wheeled about the gravel parade-ground. Weary to the point of exhaustion, already deaf to the interminable harangue of Sergeant Skimps, the hour of four-thirty found Montague with his first day in the army finished. He had only one desire—to seek his apartment, to feel the cool shower upon his body, and to lounge in languid repose in his dressing-gown, soothed by the inevitable cigarette. He broke away from the group, but was hailed by a ruddy-faced Little Englander, who had made various overtures to him during the day.
"Going up?" said the other, his accent proclaiming his British birth, tempered by ten years of Canadian citizenship.
"Yes," said Montague; "but I'm in a hurry."
"Right-o! I'm with you." He swung along beside Montague. "This is the life," he said cheerily.
"What?" asked Montague.
"Soldiering—a dollar ten a day, short hours, and no work—what ho!"
"Do you mean to say you like it?" asked Montague, wishing his companion reeked a little less of his recent exertions.
"Why not like it?" said Private Waller. "We're in it, ain't we?"
"I suppose so," said the other shortly.
Private Waller rubbed his hands together. "He's a sergeant, ain't he?"
"Do you mean that strutting bounder who drilled us to-day?"
"Lordee! don't let him hear you say that." The little man went pale at the thought. "Say, if you don't like him, just wait until you see Sergeant-Major 'Awkins."
A cockney of even ten years' Canadian citizenship loses his h's when excited. Montague began to wince under it, and wished a dozen times that his companion would hold his tongue and give him a chance to think, to separate the varied experiences of the day, and to edit his thoughts. He shrugged his shoulders and acknowledged the greeting of Mrs. Merryweather from a huge motor-car. Waller's eyes bulged.
"I say, you know some swells, don't you? What was you—a chauffeur?"
Montague considered. "No; I was a sort of social buffoon."
Waller considered. "Something in the plumbing line?" he ventured.
"Not exactly," answered Montague, and muttered, "Duration of the war—and six months after—with plebs like this!"
"I'm a carpenter by trade," vouchsafed Private Waller, and then emitted a shout of delight. "I say," he cried; "blime, if it ain't the missus!"
In a few moments they reached a little Englishwoman, not much more than a girl, who was guiding a baby-carriage containing a chubby little youngster of some two years of age.
"'Ello, Bill!" she said. "'Ow's the army?"
"Great," said her husband; "but meet my pal, Private Montague.—Private Montague, meet my old woman."
"Glad to know any friend of Bill's," said Mrs. Waller warmly.
Montague bowed. "Thank you," he said gravely. "You are giving up a lot in letting your husband go to the war."
"You said I had to, Emily."
The girl pouted. "'E would go."
"But you wanted to go, Bill."
"Of course; but I said——"
"I know—about the biby; but——"
"There you go again. Didn't you say I must?"
"Oh, well, Mr. Montague"—the little woman looked frankly into his gray-blue, unreadable eyes—"the biby's a boy, and when he grows up I cawn't say to 'im, ''Arry, your father was a slacker!' Now, can I, Mr. Montague?"
He made no answer, but a thoughtful look crept into the hard, unsmiling eyes.
"Come and have a bit of supper, pard?" Private Waller rubbed his hands together at the prospect.
"No—no, thanks," said Montague hastily. He was longing for privacy and the solace that comes with solitude. "Some other night, perhaps, when we have our uniforms."
"Good enough!" cried the cheery little man. "Then we'll do Queen Street together and show the girls—what ho—oh no!"
Montague raised his hat. "Good evening," he said.
"So long," said Private Waller. "See you in the morning."
When they were alone the husband turned to his young wife with an air of pride. "What do you think of my pal?" he asked, with an air of proprietorship.
"G'wan," said Emily disdainfully; "'e ain't your pal."
"He is, too."
"'E ain't!" She tossed her head. "Don't I know one when I sees one; me, the daughter of a footman in Lady Swankbourne's? 'E your pal! 'E blooming well ain't—'e's agentleman!"
Far up the street Montague was striding towards his home, wondering if any one had seen him with the Wallers, or had heard the garrulous little cockney call him pard. Good heavens! what would his friends say; or, for that matter, how could he face Sylvester if he had been seen by that polite scion of servitude? "But I'll see it through," he muttered savagely, biting his lip, "if only to prove that the under-dog, like all other dogs, is a thing without a soul!"
VIII
It was early in November about eighteen months later that Vera Dalton, returning from her self-imposed task at a Military Convalescent Home, found a letter awaiting her which bore the heading that will cast its unique spell over us and our children for generations to come—"Somewhere in France."
Sorrow had come into her home, as it had into so many hundreds of others, but it had mellowed, not marred her womanliness.
Into the vortex of the nations she had seen the young men of Canada flinging themselves with laughing voices and sturdy courage. With the other women of the city she had watched the endless stream of youth as though, across the seas, some Hamelin Piper were playing an irresistible, compelling melody…. And still the cry was for more—more sons, more brothers, more fathers! Month after month the ceaseless crusade went on—month after month new battalions sprang into being, trained a short time, and then made for the sea…. Always the sea, waiting with its foaming restlessness to carry its human cargo to the slaughter.
The sea … the sea….
It became the symbol of sacrifice to her. Across its turbulent expanse, youth was forfeiting its life for the blindness of the past. The hungry fire of war was being fed with human hearts…. But such is the nature of fire that what lives through it is imperishable.
A year ago Montague had gone with his battalion—without even a good-bye. She had never heard of him, but the ordeal of the flames had left him stripped of his artificiality as a tree stricken by a sudden frost is robbed in a moment of its foliage. It is not only the best in men that lives through war—vile passions vie with courage and great sacrifice…. But artificial things succumb and crumple with the scorching heat, and are blown into space by the breath of passions, base or noble—it matters not—they arereal.
With trembling hands she opened the letter.