A few days after this, Mrs. Holmes sent me under cover a telegram which she had received from her son. It was dispatched from Aberdeen and ran: "Perfectly well. Don't worry about me. Love. Randall." And that was all I heard of him for some considerable time. What he was doing in Aberdeen, a city remote from his sphere of intellectual, political, and social activities, Heaven and himself alone knew. I must confess that I cared very little. He was alive, he was well, and his mother had no cause for anxiety. Phyllis had definitely sent him packing. There was no reason for me to allow speculation concerning him to keep me awake of nights.
I had plenty to think about besides Randall. They made me Honorary Treasurer of the local Volunteer Training Corps which had just been formed. The members not in uniform wore a red brassard with "G.R." in black. The facetious all over the country called them "Gorgeous Wrecks." I must confess that on their first few parades they did not look very military. Their composite paunchiness, beardedness, scragginess, spectacledness, impressed me unfavourably when, from my Hosea-carriage, I first beheld them. Marigold, who was one of the first to join and to leap into the grey uniform, tried to swagger about as an instructor. But as the little infantry drill he had ever learned had all been changed since the Boer War, I gathered an unholy joy from seeing him hang like a little child on the lips of the official Sergeant Instructor of the corps. In the evenings he and I mugged up the text-books together; and with the aid of the books I put him through all the new physical exercises. I was a privileged person. I could take my own malicious pleasure out of Marigold's enforced humility, but I would be hanged if anybody else should. Sergeant Marigold should instruct those volunteers as he once instructed the recruits of his own battery. So I worked with him like a nigger until there was nothing in the various drills of a modern platoon that he didn't know, and nothing that he could not do with the mathematical precision of his splendid old training.
One night during the thick of it Betty came in. I waved her into a corner of the library out of the way, and she smoked cigarettes and looked on at the performance. Now I come to think of it, we must have afforded an interesting spectacle. There was the gaunt, one-eyed, preposterously wigged image clad in undervest and shrunken yellow flannel trousers which must have dated from his gym-instructor days in the nineties, violently darting down on his heels, springing up, kicking out his legs, shooting out his arms, like an inspired marionette, all at the words of command shouted in fervent earnest by a shrivelled up little cripple in a wheel-chair.
When it was over—the weather was warm—he passed a curved forefinger over his dripping forehead, cut himself short in an instinctive action and politely dried his hand on the seat of his trousers. Then his one eye gleamed homage at Betty and he drew himself up to attention.
"Do you mind, sir, if I send in Ellen with the drinks?"
I nodded. "You'll do very well with a drink yourself, Marigold."
"It's thirsty work and weather, sir."
He made a queer movement of his hand—it would have been idiotic of him to salute—but he had just been dismissed from military drill, so his hand went up to the level of his breast and—right about turn—he marched out of the room. Betty rose from her corner and threw herself in her usual impetuous way on the ground by my chair.
"Do you know," she cried, "you two dear old things were too funny for words."
But as I saw that her eyes were foolishly moist, I was not as offended as I might have been by her perception of the ludicrous.
When I said that I had plenty to think about besides Randall, I meant to string off a list. My prolixity over the Volunteer Training Corps came upon me unawares. I wanted to show you that my time was fairly well occupied. I was Chairman of our town Belgian Relief Committee. I was a member of our County Territorial Association and took over a good deal of special work connected with one of our battalions that was covering itself with glory and little mounds topped with white crosses at the front. If you think I lived a Tom-tabby, tea-party sort of life, you are quite mistaken, If the War Office could have its way, it would have lashed me in red tape, gagged me with Regulations, and sealing-waxed me up in my bed-room. And there are thousands of us who have shaken our fists under the nose of the War Office and shouted, "All your blighting, Man-with-the-Mudrake officialdom shan't prevent us from serving our country." And it hasn't! The very Government itself, in spite of its monumental efforts, has not been able to shackle us into inertia or drug us into apathy. Such non-combatant francs-tireurs in England have done a power of good work.
And then, of course, there was the hospital which, in one way or another, took up a good deal of my time.
I was reposing in the front garden one late afternoon in mid-June, after a well-filled day, when a car pulled up at the gate, in which were Betty (at the wheel) and a wounded soldier, in khaki, his cap perched on top of a bandaged head. I don't know whether it is usual for young women in nurse's uniform to career about the country driving wounded men in motor cars, but Betty did it. She cared very little for the usual. She came in, leaving the man in the car, and crossed the lawn, flushed and bright-eyed, a refreshing picture for a tired man.
"We're in a fix up at the hospital," she announced as soon as she was in reasonable speaking distance, "and I want you to get us out of it."
Sitting on the grass, she told me the difficulty. A wounded soldier, discharged from some distant hospital, and home now on sick furlough before rejoining his depot, had been brought into the hospital with a broken head. The modern improvements on vinegar and brown paper having been applied, the man was now ready to leave. I interrupted with the obvious question. Why couldn't he go to his own home? It appeared that the prospect terrified him. On his arrival, at midday, after eight months' absence in France, he found that his wife had sold or pawned practically everything in the place, and that the lady herself was in the violent phase of intoxication. His natural remonstrances not being received with due meekness, a quarrel arose from which the lady emerged victorious. She laid her poor husband out with a poker. They could not keep him in hospital. He shied at an immediate renewal of conjugal life. He had no relations or intimate friends in Wellingsford. Where was the poor devil to go?
"I thought I might bring him along here and let the Marigolds look after him for a week or two."
"Indeed," said I. "I admire your airy ways."
"I know you do," she replied, "and that's why I've brought him."
"Is that the fellow?"
She laughed. "You're right first time. How did you guess?" She scrambled to her feet. "I'll fetch him in."
She fetched him in, a haggard, broad-shouldered man with a back like a sloping plank of wood. He wore corporal's stripes. He saluted and stood at rigid attention.
"This is Tufton," said Betty.
I despatched her in search of Marigold. To Tufton I said, regarding him with what, without vanity, I may term an expert eye:
"You're an old soldier."
"Yes, sir."
"Guards?"
His eyes brightened. "Yes, sir. Seven years in the Grenadiers. Then two years out. Rejoined on outbreak of war, sir."
I rubbed my hands together in satisfaction. "I'm an old soldier too," said I.
"So Sister told me, sir."
A delicate shade in the man's tone and manner caught at my heart. Perhaps it was the remotest fraction of a glance at my rug-covered legs, the pleased recognition of my recognition, ... perhaps some queer freemasonry of the old Army.
"You seem to be in trouble, boy," said I. "Tell me all about it and I'll do what I can to help you."
So he told his story. After his discharge from the Army he had looked about for a job and found one at the mills in Wellingsford, where he had met the woman, a mill-hand, older than himself, whom he had married. She had been a bit extravagant and fond of her glass, but when he left her to rejoin the regiment, he had had no anxieties. She did not write often, not being very well educated and finding difficult the composition of letters. A machine gun bullet had gone through his chest, just missing his lung. He had been two months in hospital. He had written to her announcing his arrival. She had not met him at the station. He had tramped home with his kit-bag on his back—and the cracked head was his reception. He supposed she had had a lot of easy money and had given way to temptation—and——
"And what's a man to do, sir?"
"I'm sure I don't know, Corporal," said I. "It's damned hard lines on you. But, at any rate, you can look upon this as your home for as long as you like to stay."
"Thank you kindly, sir," said he.
I turned and beckoned to Betty and Marigold, who had been hovering out of earshot by the house door. They approached.
"I want to have a word with Marigold," I said.
Tufton saluted and went off with Betty. Sergeant Marigold stood stiff as a ramrod on the spot which Tufton had occupied.
"I suppose Mrs. Connor," said I, "has told you all about this poor chap?"
"Yes, sir," said Marigold.
"We must put him up comfortably. That's quite simple. The only thing that worries me is this—supposing his wife comes around here raising Cain—?"
Marigold held me with his one glittering eye—an eye glittering with the pride of the gunner and the pride (more chastened) of the husband.
"You can leave all that, sir, to Mrs. Marigold. If she isn't more than a match for any Grenadier Guardsman's wife, then I haven't been married to her for the last twenty years."
Nothing more was to be said. Marigold marched the man off, leaving me alone with Betty.
"I'm going to get in before Mrs. Marigold," she remarked, with a smile. "I'm off now to interview Madam Tufton and bring back her husband's kit."
In some ways it is a pity Betty isn't a man. She would make a splendid soldier. I don't think such a thing as fear, physical, moral, or spiritual, lurks in any recess of Betty's nature. Not every young woman would brave, without trepidation, a virago who had cracked a hard-bitten warrior's head with a poker.
"Marigold and I will come with you," I said.
She protested. It was nonsense. Suppose Mrs. Tufton went for Marigold and spoiled his beauty? No. It was too dangerous. No place for men. We argued. At last I blew the police-whistle which I wear on the end of my watch-chain. Marigold came hurrying out of the house.
"Mrs. Connor is going to take us for a run," said I.
"Very good, sir."
"Your blood be on your own heads," said Betty.
We talked a while of what had happened. Vague stories of the demoralization of wives left alone with a far greater weekly income than they had ever handled before had reached our ears. We had read them in the newspapers. But till now we had never come across an example. The woman in question belonged to a bad type. Various dregs from large cities drift into the mills around little country towns and are the despair of Mayors, curates, and other local authorities. We genteel folk regarded them as a plague-spot in the midst of us.
I remember the scandal when the troops first came in August, 1914, to Wellingsford—a scandal put a summary end to, after a fortnight's grinning amazement at our country morals, by the troops themselves. Tufton had married into an undesirable community.
"We're wasting time," said Betty.
So Marigold put me into the back of the car and mounted into the front seat by Betty, and we started.
Flowery End was the poetic name of the mean little row of red-brick houses inhabited exclusively by Mrs. Tufton and her colleagues at the mills. To get to it you turn off the High Street by the Post Office, turn to the right down Avonmore Avenue, and then to the left. There you find Flowery End, and, fifty yards further on, the main road to Godbury crosses it at right angles. Betty, who lived on the Godbury Road, was quite familiar with Flowery End. Mid-June did its best to justify the name. Here and there, in the tiny patches of front garden, a tenant tried to help mid-June by cultivating wall-flowers and geraniums and snapdragon and a rose or two; but the majority cared as much for the beauty of mid-June as for the cleanliness of their children,—an unsightly brood, with any slovenly rags about their bodies, and the circular crust of last week's treacle on their cheeks. In his abominable speeches before the war Gedge used to point out these children to unsympathetic Wellingsfordians as the Infant Martyrs of an Accursed Capitalism.
Betty pulled up the car at Number Seven. Marigold sprang out, helped her down, and would have walked up the narrow flagged path to knock at the door. But she declined his aid, and he stood sentry by the gap where the wicket gate of the garden should have been. I saw the door open on Betty's summons, and a brawny, tousled, red-faced woman appear—a most horrible and forbidding female, although bearing traces of a once blowsy beauty. As in most cottages hereabouts, you entered straight from garden-plot into the principal livingroom. On each side of the two figures I obtained a glimpse of stark emptiness.
Betty said: "Are you Mrs. Tufton? I've come to talk to you about your husband. Let me come in."
The attack was so debonair, so unquestioning, that the woman withdrew a pace or two and Betty, following up her advantage, entered and shut the door behind her. I could not have done what Betty did if I had had as many legs as a centipede. Marigold turned to me anxiously.
"You do think she's safe, sir?"
I nodded. "Anyway, stand by."
The neighbours came out of adjoining houses; slatternly women with babies, more unwashed children, an elderly, vacant male or two—the young men and maidens had not yet been released from the mills. As far as I could gather, there was amused discussion among the gossips concerning the salient features of Sergeant Marigold's physical appearance. I heard one lady bid another to look at his wicked old eye, and receive the humorous rejoinder: "Which one?" I should have liked to burn them as witches; but Marigold stood his ground, imperturbable.
Presently the door opened, and Betty came sailing down the path with a red spot on each cheek, followed by Mrs. Tufton, vociferous.
"Sergeant Marigold," cried Betty. "Will you kindly go into that house and fetch out Corporal Tufton's kit-bag?"
"Very good, madam," said Marigold.
"Sergeant or no sergeant," cried Mrs. Tufton, squaring her elbows and barring his way, "nobody's coming into my house to touch any of my husband's property...." Really what she said I cannot record. The British Tommy I know upside-down, inside-out. I could talk to you about him for the week together. The ordinary soldier's wife, good, straight, heroic soul, I know as well and and profoundly admire as I do the ordinary wife of a brother-officer, and I could tell you what she thinks and feels in her own language. But the class whence Mrs. Tufton proceeded is out of my social ken. She was stale-drunk; she had, doubtless, a vile headache; probably she felt twinges of remorse and apprehension of possible police interference. As a counter-irritant to this, she had worked herself into an astounding temper. She would give up none of her husband's belongings. She would have the law on them if they tried. Bad enough it was for her husband to come home after a year's desertion, leaving her penniless, and the moment he set eyes on her begin to knock her about; but for sergeants suffering under a blight and characterless females masquerading as hospital nurses to come and ride rough-shod over an honest working woman was past endurance. Thus I paraphrase my memory of the lady's torrential speech. "Lay your hand on me," she cried, "and I'll summons you for assault."
As Marigold could not pass her without laying hands on her, and as the laying of hands on her, no matter how lightly, would indubitably have constituted an assault in the eyes of the law, Marigold stiffly confronted her and tried to argue.
The neighbours listened in sardonic amusement. Betty stood by, with the spots burning on her cheek, clenching her slender capable fingers, furious at defeat. I was condemned to sit in the car a few yards off, an anxious spectator. In a moment's lull of the argument, Betty interposed:
"Every woman here knows what you have done. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"And you ought to be ashamed of yourself," Mrs. Tufton retorted—"taking an honest woman's husband away from her."
It was time to interfere. I called out:
"Betty, let us get back. I'll fix the man up with everything he wants."
At the moment of her turning to me a telegraph boy hopped from his bicycle on the off-side of the ear and touched his cap.
"I've a telegram for Mrs. Connor, sir. I recognised the car and I think that's the lady. So instead of going on to the house—"
I cut him short. Yes. That was Mrs. Connor of Telford Lodge. He dodged round the car and, entering the garden path, handed the orange-coloured envelope to Betty. She took it from him absent-mindedly, her heart and soul engaged in the battle with Mrs. Tufton. The boy stood patient for a second or two.
"Any answer, ma'am?"
She turned so that I could see her face in profile, and impatiently opened the envelope and glanced at the message. Then she stiffened, seeming in a curious way to become many inches taller, and grew deadly white. The paper dropped from her hand. Marigold picked it up.
The diversion of the telegraph boy had checked Mrs. Tufton's eloquence and compelled the idle interest of the neighbours. I cried out from the car:
"What's the matter?"
But I don't think Betty heard me. She recovered herself, took the telegram from Marigold, and showed it to the woman.
"Read it," said Betty, in a strange, hard voice. "This is to tell me that my husband was killed yesterday in France. Go on your knees and thank God that you have a brave husband still alive and pray that you may be worthy of him."
She went into the house and in a moment reappeared like a ghost of steel, carrying the disputed canvas kit-bag over her shoulder. The woman stared open-mouthed and said nothing. Marigold came forward to relieve Betty of her burden, but she waved him imperiously away, passed him and, opening the car-door, threw the bag at my feet. Not one of the rough crowd moved a foot or uttered a sound, save a baby in arms two doors off, who cut the silence with a sickly wail and was immediately hushed by its mother. Betty turned to the attendant Marigold.
"You can drive me home."
She sat by my side. Marigold took the wheel in front and drove on. She sought for my hand, held it in an iron grip, and said not a word. It was but a five minutes' run at the pace to which Marigold, time-worn master of crises of life and death, put the car. Betty held herself rigid, staring straight in front of her, and striving in vain to stifle horrible little sounds that would break through her tightly closed lips.
When we pulled up at her door she said queerly: "Forgive me. I'm a damned little coward."
And she bolted from the car into the house.
Thus over the sequestered vale of Wellingsford, far away from the sound of shells, even off the track of marauding Zeppelins, rode the fiery planet, Mars. There is not a homestead in Great Britain that in one form or another has not caught a reflection of its blood-red ray. No matter how we may seek distraction in work or amusement, the angry glow is ever before our eyes, colouring our vision, colouring our thoughts, colouring our emotions for good or for ill. We cannot escape it. Our personal destinies are inextricably interwoven with the fate directing the death grapple of the thousand miles or so of battle line, and arbitrating on the doom of colossal battleships.
Our local newspaper prints week by week its ever-lengthening Roll of Honour. The shells that burst and slew these brave fellows spread their devastation into our little sheltered town; in a thundering crash tearing off from the very trunk of life here a friend, there a son, there a father, there a husband. And I repeat, at the risk of wearisome insistence, that our sheltered homeland shares the calm, awful fatalism of the battlefield; we have to share it because every rood of our country is, spiritually, as much a battlefield as the narrow, blood-sodden wastes of Flanders and France.
Willie Connor, fine brave gentleman, was dead. My beloved Betty was a widow. No Victoria Cross for Betty. Even if there had been one, no children to be bred from birth on its glorious legend. The German shell left Betty stripped and maimed. With her passionate generosity she had given her all; even as his all had been nobly given by her husband. And then all of both had been swept ruthlessly away down the gory draught of sacrifice.
Poor Betty! "I'm a damned little coward," she said, as she bolted into the house. The brave, foolish words rang in my ears all that night. In the early morning I wondered what I should do. A commonplace message, written or telephoned, would be inept. I shrank from touching her, although I knew she would feel my touch to be gentle. You have seen, I hope, that Betty was dearer to me than anyone else in the world, and I knew that, apart from the stirring emotions in her own young life, Betty held me in the closest affection. When she needed me, she would fly the signal. Of that I felt assured. Still...
While I was in this state of perplexity, Marigold came in to rouse me and get me ready for the day.
"I've taken the liberty, sir," said he, "to telephone to Telford Lodge to enquire after Mrs. Connor. The maid said she had Mrs. Connor's instructions to reply that she was quite well."
The good, admirable fellow! I thanked him. While I was shaving, he said in his usual wooden way:
"Begging your pardon, sir, I thought you might like to send Mrs. Connor a few flowers, so I took upon myself to cut some roses, first thing this morning, with the dew on them."
Of course I cut myself and the blood flowed profusely.
"Why the dickens do you spring things like that on people while they're shaving?" I cried.
"Very sorry, sir," said he, solicitous with sponge and towel.
"All the same, Marigold," said I, "you've solved a puzzle that has kept me awake since early dawn. We'll go out as soon as I'm dressed and we'll send her every rose in the garden."
I have an acre or so of garden behind the house of which I have not yet spoken, save incidentally—for it was there that just a year ago poor Althea Fenimore ate her giant strawberries on the last afternoon of her young life; and a cross-grained old misanthropist, called Timbs, attends to it and lavishes on the flowers the love which, owing, I suspect, to blighted early affection, he denies to mankind. I am very fond of my garden and am especially interested in my roses. Do you know an exquisitely pink rose—the only true pink—named Mrs. George Norwood? ... I bring myself up with a jerk. I am not writing a book on roses. When the war is over perhaps I shall devote my old age to telling you what I feel and know and think about them....
I had a battle with Timbs. Timbs was about sixty. He had shaggy, bushy eyebrows over hard little eyes, a shaggy grey beard, and a long, clean-shaven, obstinate upper lip. Stick him in an ill-fitting frock coat and an antiquated silk hat, and he would be the stage model of a Scottish Elder. As a matter of fact he was Hampshire born and a devout Roman Catholic. But he was as crabbed an old wretch as you can please. He flatly refused to execute my order. I dismissed him on the spot. He countered with the statement that he was an old man who had served me faithfully for many years. I bade him go on serving me faithfully and not be a damned fool. The roses were to be cut. If he didn't cut them, Marigold would.
"He's been a-cutting them already," he growled. "Before I came."
Timbs loathed Marigold—why, I could never discover—and Marigold had the lowest opinion of Timbs. It was an offence for Marigold to desecrate the garden by his mere footsteps; to touch a plant or a flower constituted a damnable outrage. On the other side, Timbs could not approach my person for the purpose of rendering me any necessary physical assistance, without incurring Marigold's violent resentment.
"He'll go on cutting them," said I, "unless you start in at once."
He began. I sent off Marigold in search of a wheelbarrow. Then, having Timbs to myself, I summoned him to my side.
"Do you hold with a man sacrificing his life for his country?"
He looked at me for a moment or two, in his dour, crabbed way.
"I've got a couple of sons in France, trying their best to do it," he replied.
That was the first I had ever heard of it. I had always regarded him as a gnarled old bachelor without human ties. Where he had kept the sons and the necessary mother I had not the remotest notion.
"You're proud of them?"
"I am."
"And if one was killed, would you grudge his grave a few roses? For the sake of him wouldn't you sacrifice a world of roses?"
His manner changed. "I don't understand, sir. Is anybody killed?"
"Didn't I say that all these roses were for Mrs. Connor?"
He dropped his secateur. "Good God, sir! Is it Captain Connor?"
The block-headed idiot of a Marigold had not told him! Marigold is a very fine fellow, but occasionally he manifests human frailties that are truly abominable.
"We are going to sacrifice all our roses, Timbs," said I, "for the sake of a very gallant Englishman. It's about all we can do."
Of course I ought to have entered upon all this explanation when I first came on the scene; but I took it for granted that Timbs knew of the tragedy.
"Need we cut those blooms of the Rayon d'Or?" asked Timbs, alluding to certain roses under conical paper shades which he had been breathlessly tending for our local flower show. "We'll cut them first," said I.
Looking back through the correcting prism of time, I fancy this slaughter of the innocents may have been foolishly sentimental. But I had a great desire to lay all that I could by way of tribute of consolation at Betty's feet, and this little sacrifice of all my roses seemed as symbolical an expression of my feelings as anything that my unimaginative brain could devise.
During the forenoon I superintended the packing of the baskets of roses in Pawling the florist's cart, which I was successful in engaging for the occasion,—neither wheelbarrow nor donkey carriage nor two-seater, the only vehicles at my disposal, being adequate; and when I saw it start for its destination, I wheeled myself, by way of discipline, through my bereaved garden. It looked mighty desolate. But though all the blooms had gone, there were a myriad buds which next week would burst into happy flower. And the sacrifice seemed trivial, almost ironical; for in Betty's heart there were no buds left.
After lunch I went to the hospital for the weekly committee meeting. To my amazement the first person I met in the corridor was Betty—Betty, white as wax, with black rings round unnaturally shining eyes. She waited for me to wheel myself up to her. I said severely:
"What on earth are you doing here? Go home to bed at once."
She put her hand on the back of my chair and bent down.
"I'm better here. And so are the dear roses. Come and see them."
I followed her into one of the military wards on the ground floor, and the place was a feast of roses. I had no idea so many could have come from my little garden. And the ward upstairs, she told me, was similarly beflowered. By the side of each man's bed stood bowl or vase, and the tables and the window sills were bright with blooms. It was the ward for serious cases—men with faces livid from gas-poisoning, men with the accursed trench nephritis, men with faces swathed in bandages hiding God knows what distortions, men with cradles over them betokening mangled limbs, men recovering from operations, chiefly the picking of bits of shrapnel and splinters of bone from shattered arms and legs; men with pale faces, patient eyes, and with cheery smiles round their lips when we passed by. A gramophone at the end of the room was grinding out a sentimental tune to which all were listening with rapt enjoyment. I asked one man, among others, how he was faring. He was getting on fine. With the death-rattle in his throat the wounded British soldier invariably tells you that he is getting on fine.
"And ain't these roses lovely? Makes the place look like a garden. And that music—seems appropriate, don't it, sir?"
I asked what the gramophone was playing. He looked respectfully shocked.
"Why, it's 'The Rosary,' sir."
After we had left him, Betty said:
"That's the third time they've asked for it to-day. They've got mixed up with the name, you see. They're beautiful children, aren't they?"
I should have called them sentimental idiots, but Betty saw much clearer than I did. She accompanied me back to the corridor and to the Committee Room door. I was a quarter of an hour late.
"I've kept the precious Rayon d'Ors for myself," she said. "How could you have the heart to cut them?"
"I would have cut out my heart itself, for the matter of that," said I, "if it would have done any good."
She smiled in a forlorn kind of way.
"Don't do that, for I shall want it inside you more than ever now. Tell me, how is Tufton?"
"Tufton—?"
"Yes—Tufton."
I must confess that my mind being so full of Betty, I had clean forgotten Tufton. But Betty remembered.
I smiled. "He's getting on fine," said I. I reached out my hand and held her cold, slim fingers. "Promise me one thing, my dear."
"All right," she said.
"Don't overdo things. There's a limit to the power of bearing strain. As soon as you feel you're likely to go FUT, throw it all up and come and see me and let us lay our heads together."
"I despise people who go FUT," said Betty.
"I don't," said I.
We nodded a mutual farewell. She opened the Committee Room door for me and walked down the corridor with a swinging step, as though she would show me how fully she had made herself mistress of circumstance.
Some evenings later she came in, as usual, unheralded, and established herself by my chair.
The scents of midsummer came in through the open windows, and there was a great full moon staring in at us from a cloudless sky. Letters from the War Office, from brother-officers, from the Colonel, from the Brigadier General himself, had broken her down. She gave me the letters to read. Everyone loved him, admired him, trusted him. "As brave as a lion," wrote one. "Perhaps the most brilliant company officer in my brigade," wrote the General. And his death—the tragic common story. A trench; a high-explosive shell; the fate of young Etherington; and no possible little wooden cross to mark his grave.
And Betty, on the floor by my side, gave way.
The proud will bent. She surrendered herself to a paroxysm of sorrow.
She was not in a fit state to return to the hospital, where, I learned, she shared a bedroom with Phyllis Gedge. I shrank from sending her home to the tactless comforting of her aunts. They were excellent, God-fearing ladies, but they had never understood Betty. All her life they had worried her with genteel admonitions. They had regarded her marriage with disfavour, as an act of foolhardiness—I even think they looked on her attitude as unmaidenly; and now in her frozen widowhood they fretted her past endurance. On the night when the news came they sent for the vicar of their parish—not my good friend who christened Hosea—a very worthy, very serious, very evangelistically religious fellow, to administer spiritual consolation. If Betty had sat devoutly under him on Sundays, there might have been some reason in the summons. But Betty, holding her own religious views, had only once been inside the church—on the occasion of her wedding—and had but the most formal acquaintance with the good man.... No, I could not send Betty home, unexpectedly, to have her wounds mauled about by unskilful fingers. Nothing remained but to telephone to the hospital and put her in Mrs. Marigold's charge for the night. So broken was my dear Betty, that she allowed herself to be carried off without a word.... Once before, years ago, she had behaved with the same piteous docility; and that was when, a short-frocked maiden, she had fallen from an apple tree and badly hurt herself, and Marigold had carried her into the house and Mrs. Marigold had put her to bed....
In the morning I found her calm and sedate at the breakfast table.
"You've been and gone and done for both of us, Majy dear," she remarked, pouring out tea.
"What do you mean?"
"Our reputations. What a scandal in Wellingsford!"
She looked me clearly in the eyes and smiled, and her hand did not shake as she held my cup. And by these signs I knew that she had taken herself again in grip and forbade reference to the agony through which she had passed.
Quickly she turned the conversation to the Tuftons. What had happened? I told her meagrely. She insisted on fuller details. So, flogged by her, I related what I had gleaned from Marigold's wooden reports. He always conveyed personal information as though he were giving evidence against a defaulter. I had to start all over again. Apparently this had happened: Mrs. Tufton had arrayed herself, not in sackcloth and ashes, for that was apparently her normal attire, but in an equivalent, as far as a symbol of humility was concerned; namely, in decent raiment, and had sought her husband's forgiveness. There had been a touching scene in the scullery which Mrs. Marigold had given up to them for the sake of privacy, in which the lady had made tearful promises of reform and the corporal had magnanimously passed the sponge over the terrible reckoning on her slate. Would he then go home to his penitent wife? But the gallant fellow, with the sturdy common-sense for which the British soldier is renowned, contrasted the clover in which he was living here with the aridness of Flowery End, and declined to budge. High sentiment was one thing, snug lying was another. Next time he came back, if she had re-established the home in its former comfort, he didn't say as how he wouldn't—
"But," she cried—and this bit I didn't tell Betty—"the next time you may come home dead!"
"Then," replied Tufton, "let me see what a nice respectable coffin, with brass handles and lots of slap-up brass nails and a brass plate, you can get ready for me."
Since the first interview, I informed Betty, there had been others daily—most decorous. They were excellent friends. Neither seemed to perceive anything absurd in the situation. Even Marigold looked on it as a matter of course.
"I have an idea," said Betty. "You know we want some help in the servant staff of the hospital?"
I did. The matron had informed the Committee, who had empowered her to act.
"Why not let me tackle Mrs. Tufton while she is in this beautifully chastened and devotional mood? In this way we can get her out of the mills, out of Flowery End, fill her up with noble and patriotic emotions instead of whisky, and when Tufton returns, present her to him as a model wife, sanctified by suffering and ennobled by the consciousness of duty done. It would be splendid!"
For the first time since the black day there came a gleam of fun into Betty's eyes and a touch of colour into her cheeks.
"It would indeed," said I. "The only question is whether Tufton would really like this Red Cross Saint you'll have provided for him."
"In case he does not," said Betty, "you can provide him with a refuge as you are doing now."
She rose from the table, announcing her intention of going straight to the hospital. I realised with a pang that breakfast was over; that I had enjoyed a delectable meal; that, by some sort of dainty miracle, she had bemused me into eating and drinking twice my ordinary ration; that she had inveigled me into talking—a thing I have never done during breakfast for years—it is as much as Marigold's ugly head is worth to address a remark to me during the unsympathetic duty—why, if my poached egg regards me with too aggressive a pinkiness, I want to slap it—and into talking about those confounded Tuftons with a gusto only provoked by a glass or two of impeccable port after a good dinner. One would have thought, considering the anguished scene of the night before, that it would have been one of the most miserably impossible tete-a-tete breakfasts in the whole range of such notoriously ghastly meals. But here was Betty, serene and smiling, as though she had been accustomed to breakfast with me every morning of her life, off to the hospital, with a hard little idea in her humorous head concerning Mrs. Tufton's conversion.
The only sign she gave of last night's storm was when, by way of good-bye, she bent down and kissed my cheek.
"You know," she said, "I love you too much to thank you."
And she went off with her brave little head in the air.
In the afternoon I went to Wellings Park. Sir Anthony was away, but Lady Fenimore was in. She showed me a letter she had received from Betty in reply to her letter of condolence:
"My dears,
"It is good to realise one has such rocks to lean on. You long to help and comfort me. Well, I'll tell you how to do it. You just forget. Leave it to me to do all the remembering.
"Yours, Betty."
On the first of July there was forwarded to me from the club a letter in an unknown handwriting. I had to turn to the signature to discover the identity of my correspondent. It was Reggie Dacre, Colonel Dacre, whom I had met in London a couple of months before. As it tells its own little story, I transcribe it.
"Dear Major Meredyth:
"I should like to confirm by the following anecdote, which is going the round of the Brigade, what I recently told you about our friend Boyce. I shouldn't worry you, but I feel that if one has cast an unjustifiable slur on a brother-officer's honour—and I can't tell you how the thing has lain on my conscience—one shouldn't leave a stone unturned to rehabilitate him, even in the eyes of one person.
"There has been a good deal of scrapping around Ypres lately—that given away by the communiques; but for reasons which both the Censor and yourself will appreciate, I can't be more explicit as to locality. Enough to say that somewhere in this region—or sector, as we call it nowadays—there was a certain bit of ground that had been taken and retaken over and over again. B.'s Regiment was in this fighting, and at one particular time we were holding a German front trench section. A short distance further on the enemy held a little farm building, forming a sort of redoubt. They sniped all day long. They also had a machine gun. I can't give you accurate details, for I can only tell you what I've heard; but the essentials are true. Well, we got that farmhouse. We got it single-handed. Boyce put up the most amazing bluff that has ever happened in this war. He crawls out by himself, without anybody knowing—it was a pitch-black night—gets through the barbed wire, heaven knows how, up to the house; lays a sentry out with his life-preserver; gives a few commands to an imaginary company; and summons the occupants—two officers and fifteen men—to surrender. Thinking they are surrounded, they obey like lambs, come out unarmed, with their hands up, officers and all, and are comfortably marched off in the dark, as prisoners into our trenches. They say that when the German officers discovered how they had been done, they foamed so hard that we had to use empty sandbags as strait waistcoats.
"Now, it's picturesque, of course, and being picturesque, it has flown from mouth to mouth. But it's true. Verb. sap.
"Hoping some time or other to see you again,
"Yours sincerely,"R. DACRE,"Lt. Col."
I quote this letter here for the sake of chronological sequence. It gave me a curious bit of news. No man could have performed such a feat without a cold brain, soundly beating heart, and nerves of steel. It was not an act of red-hot heroism. It was done in cold blood, a deliberate gamble with death on a thousand to one chance. It was staggeringly brave.
I told the story to Mrs. Boyce. Her comment was characteristic:
"But surely they would have to surrender if called upon by a British Officer."
To the Day of Judgment I don't think she will understand what Leonard did. Leonard himself, coming home slightly wounded two or three weeks afterwards, pooh-poohed the story as one of no account and only further confused the dear lady's ill-conceived notions.
In the meanwhile life at Wellingsford flowed uneventfully. Now and again a regiment or a brigade, having finished its training, disappeared in a night, and the next day fresh troops arrived to fill its place. And this great, silent movement of men went on all over the country. Sometimes our hearts sank. A reserve Howitzer Territorial Brigade turned up in Wellings Park with dummy wooden guns. The officers told us that they had been expecting proper guns daily for the past two months. Marigold shook a sad head. But all things, even six-inch howitzers, come to him who waits.
Little more was heard of Randall Holmes. He corresponded with his mother through a firm of London solicitors, and his address and his doings remained a mystery. He was alive, he professed robust health, and in reply to Mrs. Holmes's frantically expressed hope that he was adopting no course that might discredit his father's name, he twitted her with intellectual volte-face to the views of Philistia, but at the same time assured her that he was doing nothing which the most self-righteous bourgeois would consider discreditable.
"But it IS discreditable for him to go away like this and not let his own mother know where he is," cried the poor woman.
And of course I agreed with her. I find it best always to agree with mothers; also with wives.
After her own lapse from what Mrs. Boyce would have called "Spartianism," Betty kept up her brave face. When Willie Connor's kit came home she told me tearlessly about the heartrending consignment. Now and then she spoke of him—with a proud look in her eyes. She was one of the women of England who had the privilege of being the wife of a hero. In this world one must pay for everything worth having. Her widowhood was the price. All the tears of a lifetime could not bring him back. All the storms of fate could not destroy the glory of those few wonderful months. He was laughing, so she heard, when he met his death. So would she, in honour of him, go on laughing till she met hers.
"And that silly little fool, Phyllis, is still crying her eyes out over Randall," she said. "Don't I think she was wrong in sending him away? If she had married him she might have influenced him, made him get a commission in the army. I've threatened to beat her if she talks such nonsense. Why can't people take a line and stick to it?"
"This isn't a world of Bettys, my dear," said I.
"Rubbish! The outrageous Mrs. Tufton's doing it."
Apparently she was. She followed Betty about as the lamb followed Mary. Tufton, after a week or two at Wellington Barracks, had been given sergeant's stripes and sent off with a draft to the front. Betty's dramatic announcement of her widowhood seemed to have put the fear of death into the woman's soul. As soon as her husband landed in France she went scrupulously through the closely printed casualty lists of non-commissioned officers and men in The Daily Mail, in awful dread lest she should see her husband's name. Betty vainly assured her that, in the first place, she would hear from the War Office weeks before anything could appear in the papers, and that, in the second, his name would occur under the heading "Grenadier Guards," and not under "Royal Field Artillery," "Royal Engineers," "Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry," "R.A.M.C.," or Australian and Canadian contingents. Mrs. Tufton went through the lot from start to finish. Once, indeed, she came across the name, in big print, and made a bee-line through the wards for Betty—an offence for which the Matron nearly threw her, there and then, into the street. It was that of the gallant Colonel of a New Zealand Regiment at Gallipoli. Betty had to point to the brief biographical note to prove to the distracted woman that the late Colonel Tufton of New Zealand could not be identical with Sergeant Tufton of the Grenadiers. She regarded Mrs. Tufton as a brand she had plucked from the burning and took a great deal of trouble with her. On the other hand, I imagine Mrs. Tufton looked upon herself as a very important person, a sergeant's wife, and the confidential intimate of a leading sister at the Wellingsford Hospital. In fact, Marigold mentioned her notorious vanity.
"What does it matter," cried Betty, when I put this view before her, "how swelled her head may be, so long as it isn't swollen with drink?"
And I could find no adequate reply.
Towards the end of the month comes Boyce to Wellingsford, this time not secretly; for the day after his arrival he drove his mother through the town and incidentally called on me. A neglected bullet graze on the neck had turned septic. An ugly temperature had sent him to hospital. The authorities, as soon as the fever had abated and left him on the high road to recovery, had sent him home. A khaki bandage around his bull-throat alone betokened anything amiss. He would be back, he said, as soon as the Medical Board at the War Office would let him.
On this occasion, for the first time since South African days, I met him without any mistrust. What had passed between Betty and himself, I did not know. Relations between man and woman are so subtle and complicated, that unless you have the full pleadings on both sides in front of you, you cannot arbitrate; and, as often as not, if you deliver the most soul-satisfying of judgments, you are hopelessly wrong, because there are all important, elusive factors of personality, temperament, sex, and what not which all the legal acumen in the world could not set down in black and white. So half unconsciously I ruled out Betty from my contemplation of the man. I had been obsessed by the Vilboek Farm story, and by that alone. Reggie Dacre—to say nothing of personages in high command—had proved it to be a horrible lie. He had Marshal Ney's deserved reputation—le brave des braves—and there is no more coldly critical conferrer of such repute than the British Army in the field. To win it a man not only has to do something heroic once or twice—that is what he is there for—but he has to be doing it all the time. Boyce had piled up for himself an amazing record, one that overwhelmed the possibility of truth in old slanders. When I gripped him by the hand, I felt immeasurable relief at being able to do so without the old haunting suspicion and reservation.
He spoke, like thousands of others of his type—the type of the fine professional English soldier—with diffident modesty of such personal experiences as he deigned to recount. The anecdotes mostly had a humorous side, and were evoked by allusion. Like all of us stay-at-homes, I cursed the censorship for leaving us so much in the dark. He laughed and cursed the censorship for the opposite reason.
"The damned fools—I beg your pardon, Mother, but when a fool is too big a fool even for this world, he must be damned—the damned fools allow all sorts of things to be given away. They were nearly the death of me and were the death of half a dozen of my men."
And he told the story. In a deserted brewery behind the lines the vats were fitted up as baths for men from the trenches, and the furnaces heated ovens in which horrible clothing was baked. This brewery had been immune from attack until an officially sanctioned newspaper article specified its exact position. A few days after the article appeared, in fact, as soon as a copy of the paper reached Germany, a thunderstorm of shells broke on the brewery. Out of it poured a helter-skelter stream of stark-naked men, who ran wherever they could for cover. From one point of view it was vastly comic. In the meanwhile the building containing all their clothes, and all the spare clothing for a brigade, was being scientifically destroyed. That was more comic still. The bather cut off from his garments is a world-wide joke. The German battery, having got the exact range, were having a systematic, Teutonic afternoon's enjoyment. But from another point of view the situation was desperate. There were these poor fellows, hordes of them, in nature's inadequate protection against the weather, shivering in the cold, with the nearest spare rag of clothing some miles away. Boyce got them together, paraded them instantly under the shell fire, and led them at a rush into the blazing building to salve stores. Six never came out alive. Many were burned and wounded. But it had to be done, or the whole crowd would have perished from exposure. Tommy is fairly tough; but he cannot live mother-naked through a March night of driving sleet.
"No," said Boyce, "if you suffered daily from the low cunning of Brother Bosch, you wouldn't cry for things to be published in the newspapers."
At the end of their visit I accompanied my guests to the hall. Marigold escorted Mrs. Boyce to the car. Leonard picked up his cap and cane and turned to shake hands. I noticed that the knob of the cane was neatly cased in wash-leather. Idly I enquired the reason. He smiled grimly as he slipped off the cover and exposed the polished deep vermilion butt of the life-preserver which Reggie Dacre had described.
"It's a sort of fetish I feel I must carry around with me," he explained. "When I've got it in my hand, I don't seem to care a damn what I do. When I haven't, I miss it. Remember the story of Sir Walter Scott's boy with the butter? Something like that, you know. But in its bare state it's not a pretty sight for the mother."
"It ought to have a name," said I. "The poilu calls his bayonet Rosalie."
He looked at it darkly for a moment, before refitting the wash-leather.
"I might call it The Reminder," said he. "Good-bye." And he turned quickly and strode out of the door.
The Reminder of what? He puzzled me. Why, in spite of all my open-heartedness, did he still contrive to leave me with a sense of the enigmatic?
Although he showed himself openly about the town, he held himself aloof from social intercourse with the inhabitants. He called, I know, on Mrs. Holmes, and on one or two others who have no place in this chronicle. But he refused all proposals of entertainment, notably an invitation to dinner from the Fenimores. Sir Anthony met him in the street, upbraided him in his genial manner for neglect of his old friends, and pressingly asked him to dine at Wellings Park. Just a few old friends. The duties of a distinguished soldier, said he, did not begin and end on the field. He must uplift the hearts of those who had to stay at home. Sir Anthony had a nervous trick of rattling off many sentences before his interlocutor could get in a word. When he had finished, Boyce politely declined the invitation.
"And with a damned chilly, stand-offish politeness," cried Sir Anthony furiously, when telling me about it. "Just as if I had been Perkins, the fish-monger, asking him to meet the Prettiloves at high tea. It's swelled head, my dear chap; that's what it is. Just swelled head. None of us are good enough for him and his laurels. He's going to remain the modest mossy violet of a hero blushing unseen. Oh, damn the fellow!"
I did my best to soothe my touchy and choleric friend. No soldier, said I, likes to be made a show of. Why had he suggested a dinner party? A few friends. Anyone in Boyce's position knew what that meant. It meant about thirty gawking, gaping people for whom he didn't care a hang. Why hadn't Anthony asked the Boyces to dine quietly with Edith and himself—with me thrown in, for instance, if they wanted exotic assistance? Let me try, I said, to fix matters up.
So the next day I called on Boyce and told him, with such tact as I have at command, of Sir Anthony's wounded feelings.
"My dear Meredyth," said he. "I can only say to you what I tried to explain to the irascible little man. If I accepted one invitation, I should have to accept all invitations or give terrible offence all over the place. I'm here a sick man and my mother's an invalid. And I merely want to be saved from my friends and have a quiet time with the old lady. Of course if Sir Anthony is offended, I'm only too sorry, and I beg you to assure him that I never intended the slightest discourtesy. The mere idea of it distresses me."
The explanation was reasonable, the apology frank. Sir Anthony received them both grumpily. He had his foibles. He set his invitations to dinner in a separate category from those of the rag-tag and bobtail of Wellingsford society. So for the sake of principle he continued to damn the fellow.
On the other hand, for the sake of principle, reparation for injustice, I continued to like the fellow and found pleasure in his company. For one thing, I hankered after the smoke and smell and din of the front, and Boyce succeeded more than anyone else in satisfying my appetite. While he talked, as he did freely with me alone, I got near to the grim essence of things. Also, with the aid of rough military maps, he made actions and strategical movements of which newspaper accounts had given me but a confused notion, as clear as if I had been a chief of staff. Often he went to considerable trouble in obtaining special information. He appeared to set himself out to win my esteem. Now a cripple is very sensitive to kindness. I could not reject his overtures. What interested motive could he have in seeking out a useless hulk like me? On the first opportunity I told Betty of the new friendship, having a twinge or two of conscience lest it might appear to her disloyal.
"But why in the world shouldn't you see him, dear?" she said, open-eyed. "He brings the breath of battle to you and gives you fresh life. You're looking ever so much better the last few days. The only thing is," she added, turning her head away, "that I don't want to run the risk of meeting him again."
Naturally I took precautions against such an occurrence. The circumstances of their last meeting at my house lingered unpleasantly in my mind. Perhaps, for Betty's sake, I ought to have turned a cold shoulder on Boyce. But when you have done a man a foul injustice for years, you must make him some kind of secret reparation. So, by making him welcome, I did what I could.
Now I don't know whether I ought to set down a trivial incident mentioned in my diary under the date of the 15th August, the day before Boyce left Wellingsford to join his regiment in France. In writing an account of other people's lives it is difficult to know what to put in and what to leave out. If you bring in your own predilections or prejudices or speculations concerning them, you must convey a distorted impression. You lie about them unconsciously. A fact is a fact, and, if it is important, ought to be recorded. But when you are not sure whether it is a fact or not, what are you to do?
Perhaps I had better narrate what happened and tell you afterwards why I hesitate.
Marigold had driven me over to Godbury, where I had business connected with a County Territorial Association, and we were returning home. It was a moist, horrible, depressing August day. A slimy, sticky day. Clouds hung low over the reeking earth. The honest rain had ceased, but wet drops dribbled from the leaves of the trees and the branches and trunks exuded moisture. The thatched roofs of cottages were dank. In front gardens roses and hollyhocks drooped sodden. The very droves of steers coming from market sweated in the muggy air. The good slush of the once dusty road, broken to bits by military traffic, had stiffened into black grease. Round a bend of the road we skidded alarmingly. Marigold has a theory that in summer time a shirt next the skin is the only wear for humans and square-tread tyres the only wear for motor-cars. With some acerbity I pointed out the futility of his proposition. With the blandness of superior wisdom he assured me that we were perfectly safe. You can't knock into the head of an artilleryman who has been trained to hang on to a limber by the friction of his trousers, that there can be any danger in the luxurious seat of a motor-car.
There is a good straight half mile of the Godbury Road which is known in the locality as "The Gut." It is sunken and very narrow, being flanked on one side by the railway embankment, and on the other by the grounds of Godbury Chase. A most desolate bit of road, half overhung by trees and oozing with all the moisture of the country-side. On this day it was the wettest, slimiest bit of road in England. We had almost reached the end of it, when it entered the head of a stray puppy dog to pause in the act of crossing and sit down in the middle and hunt for fleas. To spare the abominable mongrel, Marigold made a sudden swerve. Of course the car skidded. It skidded all over the place, as if it were drunk, and, aided by Marigold, described a series of ghastly half-circles. At last he performed various convulsive feats of jugglery, with the result that the car, which was nosing steadily for the ditch, came to a stand-still. Then Marigold informed me in unemotional tones that the steering gear had gone.
"It's all the fault of that there dog," said he, twisting his head so as to glare at the little beast, who, after a yelp and a bound, had calmly recaptured his position and resumed his interrupted occupation.
"It's all the fault of that there Marigold," I retorted, "who can't see the sense of using studded tyres on a greasy surface. What's to be done now?"
Marigold thrust his hand beneath his wig and scratched his head. He didn't exactly know. He got out and stared intently at the car. If mind could have triumphed over matter, the steering gear would have become disfractured. But the good Marigold's mind was not powerful enough. He gave up the contest and looked at me and the situation. There we were, broadside on to the narrow road, and only manhandling could bring us round to a position of safety by the side. He was for trying it there and then; but I objected, having no desire to be slithered into the ditch.
"I would just as soon," said I, "ride a giraffe shod with roller skates."
He didn't even smile. He turned his one reproachful eye on me. What was to be done? I told him. We must wait for assistance. When I had been transferred into the vehicle of a passing Samaritan, it was time enough for the manhandling.
Fate brought the Samaritan very quickly. A car coming from Godbury tooted violently, then slowed down, stopped, and from it jumped Leonard Boyce. As he was to rescue me from a position of peculiar helplessness, I regarded his great khaki-clad figure as that of a ministering angel. I beamed on him.
"Hallo! What's the matter?" he asked cheerily.
I explained. Being merciful, I spared Marigold and threw the blame on the dog and on the County Council for allowing the roads to get into such a filthy condition.
"That's all right," said Boyce. "We'll soon fix you up. First we'll get you into my car. Then Marigold and I will slue this one round, and then we'll send him a tow."
Marigold nodded and approached to lift me out.
Then, what happened next, happened in the flash of a few breathless seconds. There was the dull thud of hoofs. A scared bay thoroughbred, coming from Godbury, galloping hell for leather, with a dishevelled boy in khaki on his back. The boy had lost his stirrups; he had lost his reins; he had lost his head. He hung half over the saddle and had a death grip on the horse's mane. And the uncontrolled brute was thundering down on us. There was my infernal car barring the narrow road. I remember bracing myself to meet the shock. An end, thought I, of Duncan Meredyth. I saw Boyce leap aside like a flash and appear to stand stock-still. The next second I saw Marigold semaphore a few yards in front of the car and then swing sickeningly at the horse's bit; and then the whole lot of them, Marigold, horse and rider, come down in a convulsive heap on the greasy road. To my intense relief I saw Marigold pick himself up and go to the head of the plunging, prostrate horse. In a moment or two he had got the beast on his feet, where he stood quivering. It was a fine, smart piece of work on the part of the old artilleryman. I was so intent on his danger that I forgot all about Boyce: but as soon as the three crashed down, I saw him run to assist the young subaltern who had rolled himself clear.
"By Jove, that was a narrow shave!" he cried cordially, giving him a hand.
"It was indeed, sir," said the young man, scraping the mud off his face. "That's the second time the brute has done it. He shies and bucks and kicks like a regular devil. This time he shied at a steam lorry and bucked my feet out of the stirrups. Everybody in the squadron has turned him down, and I'm the junior, I've had to take him." He eyed the animal resentfully. "I'd just like to get him on some grass and knock hell out of him!"
"I'm glad to see you're not hurt," said Boyce with a smile.
"Oh, not a bit, sir," said the boy. He turned to Marigold. "I don't know how to thank you. It was a jolly plucky thing to do. You've saved my life and that of the gentleman in the car. If we had busted into it, there would have been pie." He came to the side of the car. "I think you're Major Meredyth, sir. I must have given you an awful fright. I'm so sorry. My name is Brown. I'm in the South Scottish Horse."
He had a courteous charm of manner in spite of his boyish desire to appear unshaken by the accident. A little bravado is an excellent thing. I laughed and held out my hand.
"I'm glad to meet you—although our meeting might have been contrived less precipitously. This is Sergeant Marigold, late R.F.A., who does me the honour of looking after me. And this is Major Boyce."
Observe the little devil of malice that made me put Marigold first.
"Of the Rifles?"
A quick gleam of admiration showed in the boy's eyes as he saluted. No soldier could be stationed at Wellingsford without hearing of the hero of the neighbourhood. A great hay waggon came lumbering down the road and pulled up, there being no room for it to pass. This put an end to social amenities. Brown mounted his detested charger and trotted off. Marigold transferred me to Boyce's car. Several pairs of brawny arms righted the two-seater and Boyce and I drove off, leaving Marigold waiting with his usual stony patience for the promised tow. On the way Boyce talked gaily of Marigold's gallantry, of the boy's spirit, of the idiotic way in which impossible horses were being foisted on newly formed cavalry units. When we drew up at my front door, it occurred to me that there was no Marigold in attendance.
"How the deuce," said I, "am I going to get out?"
Boyce laughed. "I don't think I'll drop you."
His great arms picked me up with ease. But while he was carrying me I experienced a singular physical revolt. I loathed his grip. I loathed the enforced personal contact. Even after he had deposited me—very skilfully and gently—in my wheel-chair in the hall, I hated the lingering sense of his touch. He owed his whisky and soda to the most elementary instinct of hospitality. Besides, he was off the next day, back to the trenches and the hell of battle, and I had to bid him good-bye and God-speed. But when he went, I felt glad, very glad, as though relieved of some dreadful presence. My old distrust and dislike returned increased a thousandfold.
It was only when he got my frail body in his arms, which I realized were twice as strong as my good Marigold's, that I felt the ghastly and irrational revulsion. The only thing to which I can liken it, although it seems ludicrous, is what I imagine to be the instinctive recoil of a woman who feels on her body the touch of antipathetic hands. I know that my malady has made me a bit supersensitive. But my vanity has prided itself on keeping up a rugged spirit in a fool of a body, so I hated myself for giving way to morbid sensations. All the same, I felt that if I were alone in a burning house, and there were no one but Leonard Boyce to save me, I should prefer incineration to rescue.
And now I will tell you why I have hesitated to give a place in this chronicle to the incident of the broken-down car and the runaway horse.
It all happened so quickly, my mind was so taken up with the sudden peril, that for the life of me I cannot swear to the part played by Leonard Boyce. I saw him leap aside, and had the fragment of an impression of him standing motionless between the radiator of his car and the tail of mine which was at right angles. The next time he thrust himself on my consciousness was when he was lugging young Brown out of reach of the convulsive hoofs. In the meanwhile Marigold, single-handed, had rushed into the jaws of death and stopped the horse. But as it was a matter of seconds, I had no reason for believing that, but for adventitious relative positions on the road, Boyce would not have done the same.... And yet out of the corner of my eye I got an instantaneous photograph of him standing bolt upright between the two cars, while the abominable bay brute, with distended red nostrils and wild eyes, was thundering down on us.
On the other hand, the swift pleasure in the boy's eyes when he realised that he was in the presence of the popular hero, proved him free of doubts such as mine. And when Marigold, having put the car in hospital, came to make his report, and lingered in order to discuss the whole affair, he said, in wooden deprecation of my eulogy:
"If Major Boyce hadn't jumped in, sir, young Mr. Brown's head would have been kicked into pumpkin-squash."
Well, I have known from long experience that there are no more untrustworthy witnesses than a man's own eyes; especially in the lightning dramas of life.
I was kept awake all night, and towards the dawn I came into thorough agreement with Sir Anthony and I heartily damned the fellow.
What had I to do with him that he should rob me of my sleep?