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Unprofessional

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SINCE Astronomy is even less remunerative than Architecture, it was well for Harries that an uncle of his had once bought a desert in a far country, which turned out to overlie oil. The result for Harries, his only nephew, was over a million pounds invested, plus annual royalties.When the executors had arranged this, Harries, who might have been called an almost-unpaid attaché at Washe Observatory, gave a dinner to three men, whom he had tried and proved beneath glaring and hostile moons in No Man’s Land.

Vaughan, Assistant Surgeon at St. Peggotty’s, was building himself a practice near Sloane Street. Loftie, pathologist, with the beginnings of a reputation, was—for he had married the unstable daughter of one of his earlier London landladies—bacteriological advisor to a Public Department, on five-hundred-and-seventy pounds per annum, and a prospect of being graded for pension. Ackerman, also a St. Peggotty’s man, had been left a few hundreds a year just after he had qualified, and so had given up all serious work except gastronomy and the allied arts.

Vaughan and Loftie knew of Harries’ luck, which Harries explained in detail at the dinner, and stated what, at the lowest count, his income would be.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘“Tacks” can tell you.’

Ackerman made himself small in his chair, as though it had been the shell-hole whence he had once engineered their retreat.

‘We know each other fairly well,’ he began. ‘We’ve seen each other stripped to the Ultimate Atom pretty often? We needn’t camouflage? Agreed? You’re always saying what you’d do if you were independent. Have you changed your minds?’

‘Not me,’ said Vaughan, whose oft-told dream was a nursing-home of his own near Sloane Street. He had marked the very house for it.

‘Do you think I’d keep on with this sewage job if it wasn’t for the pension?’ Loftie asked. He had followed research the more keenly since, at twenty-two, he had wrecked his own happiness.

‘Be free, then,’ said Ackerman. ‘Take three thousand——’

‘Hold on,’ Harries broke in plaintively. ‘I said “up to five.”’

‘Sorry, old man! I was trying for the commission. Take up to five thousand a year from Harries for as long as you choose—for life, if you like. Then research on your own lines, Loftie, and—and—let the Bull know if you stumble on anything. That’s the idea, isn’t it?’

‘Not all.’ Harries surged a little in his seat. ‘A man’s entitled to use a telescope as well as a microscope, isn’t he? Well—I’ve got notions I want to test. They mean keeping one’s eyes open and—logging the exact times that things happen.’

‘That’s what you said when you lectured our company about Astrology—that night under Arras. D’you mean “planetary influences?”’ Loftie spoke with a scientist’s scorn.

‘This isn’t my lecture.’ Harries flushed. ‘This is my gamble. We can’t tell on what system this dam’ dynamo of our universe is wound, but we know we’re in the middle of every sort of wave, as we call ’em. They used to be “influences.”’

‘Like Venus, Cancer, and that lot?’ Vaughan inquired.

‘Yes—if you choose. Now I want Vaughan to start his clinic, and give me a chance to test my notions occasionally. No! Not faith-healing! Loftie can worry his cells and tissues with radium as much as he likes. But——’

‘We’re only on the threshold of radium,’ Loftie snapped.

‘Then get off it!’ was the blasphemous retort. ‘Radium’s a post hoc, not a propter. I want you merely to watch some of your cellgrowths all round the clock. Don’t think! Watch—and put down the times of any changes you see.

‘Or imagine?’ Loftie supplemented.

‘You’ve got it. Imagination is what we want. This rigid “thinking” game is hanging up research. You told me yourself, the other night, it was becoming all technique and no advance,’ Harries ended.

‘That’s going too far. We’re on the edge of big developments.’

‘All the better! Take the money and go ahead. Think of your lab., Lofter! Stoves, filters, sterilisers, frigidaria—everything you choose to indent for!’

‘I’ve brought along Schermoltz’s last catalogue. You might care to look at it, later.’ Ackerman passed the pamphlet into Loftie’s stretched hand.

‘Five thousand a year,’ Loftie muttered and turned the enthralling pages. ‘God! What one could afford! . . . But I’m not worth the money, Bull. Besides, it’s robbery. . . . You’ll never arrive at anything by this astrology nonsense.’

‘But you may, on your lines. What do you suppose is the good of Research?’

‘God knows,’ Loftie replied, devouring the illustrations. ‘Only—only it looks—sometimes—as if He were going to tell.’

‘That’s all we want,’ Harries coaxed. ‘Keep your eye on Him, and if He seems inclined to split about anything, put it down.’

‘I’ve had my eye on that house for the last half-year. You could build out a lift-shaft at the back.’ Vaughan looked and spoke into the future.

Here the padrone came in to say that if more drinks were needed, they should be ordered.

Ackerman ordered; Harries stared at the fire; Loftie sank deeper into the catalogue; and Vaughan into his vision of the desirable house for his clinic. The padrone came back with a loaded tray.

‘It’s too much money to take—even from you, Bull.’ Vaughan’s voice was strained. ‘If you’d lend me a few hundred for my clinic, I could . . .’

Loftie came out of the catalogue and babbled to the same effect, while he reckoned up for just how many pounds a week the horror that defiled his life and lodgings could be honourably removed from both till it drank itself dead.

Harries reared up over them like a walrus affronted.

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‘Do you remember the pill-box at Zillebeeke, and the skeleton in the door? Who pinched the bombs for us then?’ he champed.

‘Me and The Lofter,’ said Vaughan, sullen as a schoolboy.

‘What for?’

‘Because we dam’ well needed ’em.’

‘We need ’em worse now! We’re up against the beggar in the pill-box. He’s called Death—if you’ve ever heard of him. This stuff of mine isn’t money, you imbeciles! It’s a service-issue—same as socks. We—we haven’t kept on saving each other’s silly lives for this! Oh, don’t let me down! Can’t you see?’ The big voice quavered.

‘Kamerad, Bull! I’ll come in,’ said Loftie. Vaughan’s hands had gone up first, and he was the first to recover himself, saying: ‘What about “Tacks?” He isn’t let off, is he?’

‘No. I’m going to make commission out of the lot of you,’ said Ackerman. ‘Meantime! Come on, me multi-millionaires! The Bald-headed Beggar in the pill-box is old, but the night is yet young.’

The effects of five thousand a year are stimulating.

A mere Cabinet Minister, dependent on elections for his place, looking in on a Committee where Loftie was giving technical evidence, asked in too loud a whisper, if that all-but-graded Civil Servant were ‘one of my smell-and-tell temporaries.’ Loftie’s resignation was in that evening. Vaughan, assisted by an aunt, started a little nursing-home near Sloane Street, where his new household napery lift and drying-cupboards almost led to his capture by ‘just the kind of girl, my dear, to make an ideal wife for a professional man.’

Harries continued to observe the heavens, and commissioned Ackerman to find a common meeting-place. This—Simson House was its name—had been a small boys’ school in a suburb without too many trams. Ackerman put in floods of water, light and power, an almost inspired kitchen-range, a house-man and his cook-wife, and an ex-Navy petty rating as valet-plumber, steward-engineer, and butler-electrician; set four cots in four little bedrooms, and turned the classroom in the back garden into a cement-floored hall of great possibilities, which Harries was the first to recognise. He cut off a cubicle at one end of it, where he stored books, clocks, and apparatus. Next, Loftie clamoured for a laboratory and got it, dust and air-tight, with lots of the Schermoltz toys laid out among taps and sinks and glass shelves. Hither he brought various numbered odds-and-ends which Vaughan and other specialists had sent him in the past, and on which, after examination, he had pronounced verdicts of importance to unknown men and women. Some of the samples—mere webs of cancerous tissue—he had, by arts of his own, kept alive in broths and salts after sentence had been executed on their sources of origin.

There were two specimens—Numbers 127 and 128—from a rarish sort of affliction in exactly the same stage of development and precisely the same position, in two women of the same age and physique, who had come up to Vaughan on the same afternoon, just after Vaughan had been appointed Assistant Surgeon at St. Peggotty’s. And when the absurdly identical operations were over, a man, whose praise was worth having, but whose presence had made Vaughan sweat into his palms, had complimented him. So far as St. Peggotty’s knew, both cases were doing well several months after. Harries found these samples specially interesting, and would pore over them long times on end, for he had always used the microscope very neatly.

‘Suppose you watch what these do for a while,’ he suggested to Loftie one day.

‘I know what they’ll do well enough,’ the other returned. He was hunting a line of his own in respect to brain-cells.

‘Then couldn’t you put Frost on to watch ’em with a low-power lens?’ Harries went on. ‘He’s a trained observer in his own line. What? Of course he’s at your disposition, old man. You could make anything of him. Oh, by the way, do you happen to remember what time of day you operated on One-twenty-Seven and Eight?’

‘Afternoon, of course—at St. Peggotty’s—between three and five. It’s down somewhere.’

‘It don’t matter. I only wanted to get an idea. Then you’ll turn on Frost to watch ’em? Thanks awfully.’

Frost, the valet-plumber, etc., was ex-captain of a turret, with the hard blue eye of the born gunlayer—a middle-aged, uncomely man, no mean mechanic, and used to instruments of precision. He liked sitting in a warm room, looking through a microscope at what he called ‘muckings,’ with instructions to ‘watch ’em all round the clock and log all changes.’ But no sooner did he begin than Loftie, jealous as two women, and knowing what beginner’s luck may do, stood watch and watch with him. Loftie was in hard work on his brain-cells, and the monotony of this sentry-go made him fear that his mind might build theories on self-created evidence. So he told Frost, after a while, that the whole thing was absurd, as well as bad for the eyes. ‘Isn’t it?’ he added.

‘I don’t know how it is with you, sir,’ Frost replied. ‘It sometimes makes me feel as if I were seeing a sort of ripple strike up along the edges of ’em. Like broken water, with the sun tipping it. Like Portland Race in open-and-shut weather.’

‘That’s eye-strain. But when does it come on—with you?’

‘Sometimes through the middle watch—from twelve to four a.m. Then, again, it will come on through the first and second dog-watches—four to eight p.m., sir.’

‘No matter which—what sample—you are looking at?’ Loftie asked keenly.

‘I’d say it depended on the sample. Now, One-twenty-Eight—’seems to me—plays up in the middle watch—from midnight on—and One-twenty-Seven in the afternoon. I’ve logged it all.’

Three months later, at Simson House, Loftie told the others that, while not in the least departing from his own theories, there was a phenomenon, which for the sake of brevity he would call ‘tide,’ in Samples 127 and 128. It occurred at certain hours, which had all been noted and passed on to Harries—‘for what that may be worth.’

Harries smiled, and hired an expensive expert to photo the two samples and film them; which took several weeks and cost some hundreds of pounds. They all checked the magnified ‘tides’ by some curious tables which Harries had worked out—‘for what that’s worth,’ as Loftie said.

Harries said it was worth the expense, and took to spending a good deal of his leisure at Simson House. Vaughan, too, reeking of ether, would put in for shelter there, as the hunt after him (which his aunt whipped) quickened with his successes. Loftie had been almost a fixture in his lab. from the first; and poor ‘Tacks,’ who could no more have made a dishonest penny than he could have saved an honest one, catered for them so lavishly that even the cook shied at the weekly bills, which Harries flatly refused to audit.

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Three months after their first film’s ‘release,’ Loftie read them a typed paper before dinner, asserting there was ‘tide ‘ in the normal cells of all tissues which he and his helper, Frost, had observed; but he could see no sign of ‘tide’ in the malignant areas. He detailed tests and observations till they yawned. Then Frost ran the latest film for them—in slow and quick time—and they sat round the fire.

‘I’m not committing myself to anything,’ said Loftie, speaking like a badly-shaken human being, ‘but every dam’ tissue up till now seems to have its own time for its own tides. Samples from the same source have the same tides in strength and time. But, as I showed you just now, there are minute constant variations—reactions to something or other—in each tide, as individual as finger-prints. I wouldn’t stake my reputation on it except to you. But I know it’s so.’

‘What do you suppose it means?’ Vaughan half-whispered.

‘As I read it,’ Harries spoke quietly, ‘the minor differences in those “tides” in the tissues are due to interferences with the main or external influence—whichever it may be—which sets up, or which is, the main tide in all matter. They both come from without. Not within.’

‘How far out?’ Vaughan asked.

‘’Can’t tell—yet—to a few light-years. I’ve been trying to disentangle the minor interferences or influences—which may be due to the nearer—er—influences—from the main tide. In my opinion——’

‘Stop!’ Loftie cried shrilly. ‘You swore us all not to theorise before a year.’

‘Hear me out! I’ve verified some of my calculations at my end of the game, and they justify me in saying that . . . we are all justified in getting tight to-night.’

So, then, they did: being drunk with the ferment of their own speculations before they went to table. Loftie, whom Ackerman confined to strong beer as best for tired brain-cells, rose up above the savoury, and said that he was ‘the Servant of the Infil-tresimally Minute, but not of that fat tape-worm, Tacks.’ Harries described to them the vasts of the Ultimate Heavens fizzing in spirals ‘with—or rather like—champagne,’ but all one generating station of one Power drawn from the Absolute, and of one essence and substance with all things. Then he slept soundly. Vaughan—the professional man—merely wanted to telephone for a taxi that he might drive to discredit a hated West End rival by calling him to his bedroom window and there discussing ‘dichotomy’—a hard word at 3 A.M.

Then they packed Loftie off for a month’s holiday, with a cubic metre of seven-and-sixpenny detective novels, plus Vaughan’s aunt to see that he ate and dressed properly. On his return, he began certain experiments with mice, which Frost took charge of in the boiler-room, because he remembered when their ancestors served in the earliest submarines. It seemed that ‘tides’ worked in their tissues also; but slipped a little round the clock according to the season of each litter’s birth.

And there were born to them mice among mice with prodigious ‘tides.’ Some of these, inoculated at the flood, threw off the trouble, and were promoted by Frost to the rating of pets. Treated on their lowest ebbs, they perished less quickly than the average. Harries kept careful count of their times in all things and ways, and had Frost sling some of their cages on various compass-bearings or set them out in moonlight or thunderstorms.

This last was too much for Loftie, who returned once more to the legitimate drama of cultures and radium emanations, and the mysteries of malignant cells which never acknowledge any ‘tide.’ At the end of three weeks, he, and Frost, broke off the campaign.

He said to Harries one evening after watching their usual film: ‘What do you suppose germs think of?’

‘If you’ve got as far as that,’ was the answer, ‘you’ll develop an imagination one day.’

Then Vaughan came in full of trouble. His matron had been immobilised by sciatica, and his household staff had taken base advantages. He needed at once, some table-napkins, some bathtowels, two jacketed water jugs and a metal—not china—bedroom breakfast-set. Ackerman said he would speak to Frost and see what could be spared from the ship.

While they were laughing at Vaughan, St. Peggotty’s rang him up. He replied: ‘Well, well! If it was coming, it was to be expected now. . . . One of my beds empty? . . . You can have it. . . . Send her over to me. . . . You must! . . I’ll warn my people to expect her? . . . Oh? That’s all right. . . . I’ll send the car. . . . Yes, and all other expenses. . . . Because I operated on her originally, of course. We’ll expect her at nine, then. . Righto! . . . Not in the least. Thank you, old man.’

He then telephoned his home to prepare for a patient, and returned to the still circle by the fire.

‘It’s one of those twin cases of mine,’ he explained. ‘One of ’em’s back again. Recurrence—in the scar—after eighteen months.’

‘That means?’ said Harries.

‘With that particular kind of trouble—three—five months’ reprieve—perhaps. Then final recurrence. The other one’s all right, so far, they say.’

‘She would be. This one is One-twenty-Eight,’ said Loftie.

‘How do you make that out?’

Frost had entered and was going through Vaughan’s indent with Ackerman.

‘Frost, what is One-twenty-Eight’s timing?’ Loftie interposed.

‘One-two-Eight, sir? Flood from midnight till four a.m.—ebb from four to eight p.m. . . Yes, sir, I can make the table-linen all right, and the jugs. But we’re short on bath-towels just now.’

‘Would it prove anything if she lasted out nine months?’ Harries picked up the thread of talk with Vaughan.

‘No. There are rallies and reserves.’

‘A full year?’

‘I should accept that. But I know who wouldn’t.’ Vaughan gave a great name.

‘Thanks for reminding me,’ said Ackerman over his shoulder. ‘Frost, the bathroom hotwater pipe has got arterial sclerosis, too. Operate on it.’

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‘When shall you operate, Taffy?’ Harries held on.

‘To-morrow at a quarter to ten. I always feel fittest then.’

‘Think of the patient for a change. Suppose you stand-to at a few minutes to midnight tomorrow? I’ll telephone you zero from here.’

Vaughan seemed a shade taken aback. ‘Midnight? Oh, certainly,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have to warn my anaesthetist.’

‘And Ferrers ’ll swear you’ve taken to drink or drugs,’ said Ackerman. ‘Besides, think of your poor matron and the nurse who’s got to have her evening off? Much better let the woman conk out in Trades Union hours, Taffy.’

‘Dry up, padrone,’ said Loftie. ‘No need to bring in Ferrers. I’ll take his place—if you think I’m safe.’

Since this was as if Raeburn had volunteered to prime a canvas for Benjamin West, Vaughan accepted, and they sat down to eat.

When he and Loftie had refreshed their memories of One-two-Eight’s construction and arrangements, they asked Harries why he had chosen that time for the operation. Harries said that by his reckonings it should fall nearer the woman’s birthday. His guess at its actual date he wrote down and was passing it to Vaughan, when Vaughan’s Nursing Home reported the arrival of the patient, not unduly fatigued and most anxious to thank ‘Doctor’ Vaughan for the amazing kindness which had rescued her from the open ward.

The table listened to Vaughan’s reply, soothing and sustaining, and, by tone, assuming the happiest issue out of this annoying little set-back. When he hung up, he said: ‘She—wants it the day after to-morrow, because that’s her birthday. She thinks it ’ll be lucky.’

‘Make it midnight, then, of the day after tomorrow, and look at the date I wrote down. . . . No! The Devil has nothing to do with it. By the way—if it won’t cramp your style—could you set the table on——’ Harries gave a compass bearing.

‘Don’t be shy,’ said Ackerman. ‘He’d stand her on her head to operate now, if the Bull told him. Are you off, Taffy? Frost ’ll put all your towels and pots in a taxi. ’Sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings.’

Loftie’s account of the operation did not interest Frost so much as the samples he brought back. It took both of them three or four days to plant them out properly. In return, Frost told Loftie that ‘our end of the show,’ with Major Harries at the sidereal clock, waiting ‘till the sights came on,’ and Captain Ackerman at the telephone, waiting to pass the range to Captain Vaughan in Sloane Street, was ‘just like Jutland.’

‘Now, this lady of ours,’ he said after a busy silence. ‘How would she lie in her bed?’

Loftie gave a bearing which he had heard Harries give Vaughan.

‘I expect Major Harries knows, if anyone,’ was Frost’s placid comment. ‘It’s the same as ships’ compasses varying according as their heads lay when they were building.’

‘It’s crazy mad. That’s all!’

‘Which was what the Admiralty said at first about steam in the Navy,’ Frost grinned.

He put away a set of sealed cover-glasses and reverently returned some lenses to their velvet shrines.

‘Not to talk of that lady of ours—’ he straightened up as he spoke—‘some of my mice aren’t behaving as I could wish.’

‘Which?’ said Loftie. There were several types of experiments under way.

‘One or two of some that recovered after inoculation—since discharged and promoted to pets. But it looks as if they’d had a relapse. They’re highly restless—always trying to escape out—as if they were wild, not white. I don’t like it.’

‘Clean up, then,’ Loftie answered, ‘and we’ll go down to the boiler-room.’

In one of the cages there, a doe with a plum-coloured saddle was squeaking, as she strove desperately to work through the wires with semitransparent hand-like forefeet. Frost set the cage on a table under an electric and handed her dossier to Loftie. This gave her birth, age, date and nature of inoculation, date also when her system seemed to have cleared itself of the dose; and, of course, the times and strengths of her ‘tides.’ It showed dead-ebb for her at that hour.

‘What does she think she’s doing?’ Loftie whispered. ‘It isn’t her natural squeak, either.’

They watched. She laboured increasingly at the barrier; sat up as though most intently listening; leaped forward and tore into her task beneath the glare of the basement-bulb.

‘Turn it out,’ said Loftie. ‘It’s distressing her.’

Frost obeyed. In a few seconds the little noises changed to a flutter and ceased.

‘I thought so! Now we’ll look again,’ said Loftie. ‘Oh! Oh! God!’

‘Too late,’ Frost cried. ‘She’s broke her neck! Fair broken her pretty little neck between the wires! How did she do it?’

‘In convulsion,’ Loftie stammered. ‘Convulsion at the last. She pushed and pushed with her head in the wires and that acted as a wedge . . . and . . . what do you think?’

‘I expect I’m thinking pretty much the same as you are, sir.’ Frost replaced the cage under the leads and fuses which he had painted man-o’war fashion. ‘It looks like two tides meeting,’ he added. ‘That always sets up a race, and a race is worst at ebb. She must have been caught on her ebb—an’ knocked over! Pity! There ought to be some way of pulling ’em through it.’

‘Let’s see if there isn’t,’ said Loftie, and lifted out the tiny warm body with a needed droplet of blood on the end of the nose.

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One-two-Eight (Mrs. Berners) made a good recovery, and since she seemed alone in the world, Vaughan said that, as payment, she must stay on in his home and complete it to his satisfaction. She was touchingly grateful. After a few months (her strength returning) she asked to do something for her benefactors. No one seemed to look after the linen at Mr. Vaughan’s. Might she repair, count, store, and, even, give it out—for she had had experience in that line as a housekeeper. Her prayer was granted, and the work of getting at the things Vaughan had started the Home with; had bought, but had never entered; had raided from Ackerman, and thought—or worse, was quite sure—that he had sent back; or had lost by laundries and through servants, did her good. It also brought her over to Simson House to return things to Frost, where Harries and Ackerman complimented her on her appearance, and Loftie asked her to administer his chance-bought body-linen. She was delighted. She told them that, when she had nothing to do, she mostly felt in people’s way, and as if she ought to go on elsewhere. Loftie asked her why. She answered that, when her troubles were on her, they kept her busy, if it was only at trying not to cry. But now that they had been removed and by such kind gentlemen—the busiest day was none too full for her. She had a trick of tossing her head sideways and upwards, sometimes in the midst of her overseeing, and would say: ‘Well, well! I can’t keep at this all the time. I must be off elsewhere where I’m wanted’—Loftie’s Home or Simson House as the case might be.

They discussed her at long and at large, one evening, throughout a film which—Vaughan and Loftie collaborating—was based on her more recent productions.

Vaughan was well satisfied. ‘You see! Nothing has struck back. I know that her strength—notice how the tides have steadied—and our new blankets weigh a bit, too—is above normal. She has covered seven months and twenty-three days, and—I tell you—her scar is simply beautiful.’

‘We’ll take your word,’ said Harries. ‘Now bring on your mouse-film, Loftie.’

And Loftie, while Frost slowed, speeded, or went back at command, spoke of mice that had recovered apparently from certain infections, but had fallen later into a characteristic unease, followed by nervous crises—as shown—culminating in what seemed to be attempts at suicide.

In every case where an attempt had succeeded, the vacuoles—the empty centres—which do not take stain—of the brain-cells over a minute area seemed to have blown out, apparently as(‘This’ll interest you, I know. I hired it from the Dominion Weather Bureau last week.’) asa house explodes through its own windows under the vacuum set up by a tornado. They then beheld a three-storey, clapboarded hotel vomiting itself outwards, while the black hook of a tornado’s tip writhed and fished above it.

Sometimes, Loftie went on, an affected mouse would recover, after nervous upheavals very like those of tetanus—as they had seen—followed by collapse and amazingly sub-normal temperatures, and then a swift resumption of normal life. They could draw their own conclusions.

Ackerman broke their stillness. ‘Frost, go back, please, to that bit showing the movement of their heads when the attacks are coming on.’ Frost began again.

‘Who’s that like?’ Ackerman called out suddenly. ‘Am I wrong?’

‘No, sir,’ Frost groaned out of the dark. Then they all saw.

‘“Well, I can’t stay here! I’ve got to move on elsewhere where I’m wanted,”’ Ackerman quoted half-aloud. ‘And her hands working! The forefeet—I mean her hands! Look! It’s her!’

‘That’s exactly her listening attitude, too,’ said Harries. ‘I never noticed it before.’

‘Why would you—with nothing to check it by?’ said Loftie. ‘What does it mean?’

‘It means she’s as likely as not to chuck herself under a lorry some day, between here and Sloane Street,’ Frost interrupted, as though he had full knowledge and right.

‘How do you know?’ Vaughan began. ‘She’s absolutely normal.’

The flexes of the camera had not been disconnected, so they were still darkling.

‘She’s not! She’s all astray. God knows where she’s straying; but she’s not here, more’n the dead.’ Frost repacked the camera and went out. They gathered round Harries.

‘As I read it,’ he laid down, after some preliminaries, ‘she has been carried yes, tided—over the time that her trouble ought to have finished her. That is two or three months now, isn’t it, Taffy? But, she wasn’t saved by the knife. She was saved by the knife at the proper time of tide.’

‘She has lasted seven months and twenty-three days. Most unusual, I grant, with that type of growth; but not conclusive,’ was Vaughan’s retort.

‘Hear me out. Qua Death, as created. or evolved, on this planet (He needn’t exist elsewhere, you know), and especially qua the instrument of decay that was to kill her, she’s some odd weeks owing to the grave. But, qua the influence—tide, if you like—external to this swab of culture which we call our world, she has been started on a new tide of life. The gamble is that, after crises, something like those we’ve seen in the mice, that tide may carry her beyond the—er—the demand of the grave. It’s beginning to be pull-devil, pull-baker between ’em now, I should imagine.’

‘I see your line, Bull,’ said Loftie. ‘When ought her crises to be due? Because—it’s all as insane as the rest—but there may be an off-chance of——’

‘The suicidal tendency comes first,’ said Ackerman. ‘Why not have her watched when she goes out? Taffy’s nurses can keep an eye on her indoors.’

‘You’ve been reading my sleuth-tales,’ Loftie smiled.

‘Make it so, then. Any decent inquiry-agency would undertake it, I suppose,’ said Harries.

‘I’ll leave the choice to Frost. I’ll only take the commission. We’re in for a wildish time. She’s a woman—not a white mouse!’ Ackerman said, and added thoughtfully: ‘But the champion ass, as distinguished from mere professional fool, of us all, is Taffy!’

Vaughan had ordered her never to go afoot between Simson House and the Nursing Home, and, also, to take taxis to and from her little ‘exercise walks’ in the parks, where she so often picked up the nice elderly lady’s-maid with the pom, the sales-lady from the Stores, and other well-spoken lady strangers near her own class (at ever so many shillings an hour). Of Mr. Frost she saw but little that summer, owing to the pressure of his duties and some return, they told her, of rheumatism contracted in the defence of his country. The worst that came to her was a slight attack of stiff neck, caught from sitting in a draught. As to her health, she admitted that sometimes she felt a bit flustered in the head, but otherwise could not be better.

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She was recounting her mercies, a little fulsomely as usual, to Loftie one afternoon in the common-room of Simson House, where she had brought him some new shirts marked. Frost had taken them upstairs, and Loftie had hinted that he must get back to his work. She flicked her head sideways and said that she was busy, too. In the same breath, but in a whisper, she ran on ‘I don’t want to die, Mr. Loftie. But I’ve got to. I’ve reelly got to get out of this. I’m wanted elsewhere, but’—she shivered—‘I don’t like going.’

Then she raced, with lowered head, straight towards the wall. Loftie snatched at her dress, turned her, so that she struck the wall with her shoulder and fell—and Frost came down to find him grappling with her, not inexpertly.

She broke away and skimmed across the room. Frost ran and tripped her, and brought her down. She would have beaten her head on the floor, but he jerked it up, his palm beneath her chin, and dragged her to her feet. Then he closed.

She was silent, absorbed in this one business of driving to the nearest wall through whatever stood between. Small and fragile though she was, she flung the twelve-stone Frost clear of her again and again; and a side-pushing stroke of her open palm spun Loftie half across the hall. The struggle lasted without a break, but her breath had not quickened, when like a string she relaxed, repeating that she did not want to die. As she cried to Loftie to hold her, she slipped away between them, and they had to chase her round the furniture.

They backed her down on the couch at last, Loftie clinging to her knees, while Frost’s full strength and weight forced the thin arms over her head. Again the body gave, and the low, casual whisper began: ‘After what you said outside Barker’s in the wet, you don’t think I reelly want to die. Mr. Frost? I don’t—not a mite. But I’ve got to. I’ve got to go where I’m wanted.’

Frost had to kneel on her right arm then, holding her left down with both hands. Loftie, braced against the sofa, mastered her feet, till the outbreak passed in shudders that shook all three. Her eyes were shut. Frost raised an eyelid with his thumb and peered closely.

‘Lor’!’ said she, and flushed to the temples. The two shocked men leapt clear at once. She lifted a hand to her disordered hair. ‘Who’s done this?’ she said. ‘Why’ve I come all over like this? I ought to be busy dying.’ Loftie was ready to throw himself on her again, but Frost held up a hand.

‘You can suit yourself about that, Mrs. Berners,’ he said. ‘What I’ve been at you all this time to find out is, what you’ve done with our plated toast-rack, towels, etcetera.’

He shook her by the shoulders, and the rest of her pale hair descended.

‘One plated toast-rack and two egg-cups, which went over to Mr. Vaughan’s on indent last April twenty-eighth, together with four table-napkins and six sheets. I ask because I’m responsible for ’em at this end.’

‘But I’ve got to die.’

‘So we’ve all, Mrs. Berners. But before you do, I want to know what you did with. . . .’ He repeated the list and the date. ‘You know the routine between the houses as well as I do. I sent ’em by Mr. Ackerman’s orders, on Mr. Vaughan’s indent. When do you check your linen? Monthly or quarterly?’

‘Quarterly. But I’m wanted elsewhere.’

‘If you aren’t a little more to the point, Mrs. Berners, I’ll tell you where you will be wanted before long, and what for. I’m not going to lose my character on account of your carelessness—if no worse. An’ here’s Mr. Loftie. . . .’

‘Don’t drag me in,’ Loftie whispered, with male horror.

‘Leave us alone! I know me class, sir. . . . Mr. Loftie who has done everything for you.’

‘It was Mr. Vaughan. He wouldn’t let me die.’ She tried to stand, fell back, and sat up on the couch.

‘You won’t get out of it that way. Cast back in your memory and see if you can clear yourself!’ Frost began anew, scientifically as a female inquisitor; mingling details, inferences, dates, and innuendoes with reminders of housekeeping ritual: never overwhelming her, save when she tried to ride off on her one piteous side-issue, but never accepting an answer. Painfully, she drew out of her obsession, protesting, explaining, striving to pull her riven wits into service; but always hunted from one rambling defence to the next, till, with eyes like those of a stricken doe, she moaned: ‘Oh, Fred! Fred! The only thing I’ve ever took—you said so outside Barker’s—was your own ’ard ’eart.’

Frost’s face worked, but his voice was the petty-officer’s with the defaulter.

‘No such names between us, Mrs. Berners, till this is settled.’

He crumpled his wet eyes, as though judging an immense range. Then observed deliberately

‘’Ask me—I’d say you’re a common thief.’

She stared at him for as long as a shell might take to travel to an horizon. Then came the explosion of natural human wrath—she would not stoop to denial, she said—till, choking on words of abuse, she hit him weakly over the mouth, and dropped between his feet.

‘She’s come back!’ said Frost, his face transfigured. ‘What next?’

‘My room. Tell Cook to put her to bed. Fill every hot-water bottle we’ve got, and warm the blankets. I’ll telephone the Home. Then we’ll risk the injections.’

Frost slung her, limp as a towel, over his shoulder, and, turning, asked: ‘This—all these symptoms don’t need to be logged, sir—do they? We—we know something like ’em?’

Loftie nodded assent.

She came up shuddering out of the seven days’ chill of the cheated grave, and Vaughan’s nurses told her what a dreadful thing was this ‘suppressed influenza’ which had knocked her out, but that she might report for duty in a few weeks. Ackerman, who loved Vaughan more than the others put together, testified on their next film-night that Taffy was almost worthy to be called a medical man for his handling of the case.

‘Tacks,’ said Vaughan kindly, ‘you are as big a dam’ fool about my job as I was about Frost. I injected what the Lofter gave me, at the times that Harries told me. The rest was old wives’ practice.’

page 7

‘She always looked like a wet hen,’ said Harries. ‘Now she goes about like a smiling sheep. I wish I’d seen her crises. Did you or Frost time ’em, Lofter?’

‘It wasn’t worth it,’ was the light answer. ‘Just hysteria. But she’s covered her full year now. D’you suppose we’ve held her?’

‘I should say yes. I don’t know how you feel, but’—Vaughan beamed—‘the more I see of her scar, the more pleased I am. Ah! That was a lovely bit of work, even if I am only a carpenter, Tacks!’

‘But, speaking with some relation to ordinary life, what does all this lunacy of ours prove?’ Ackerman demanded.

‘Not a dam’ thing, except that it may give us some data and inferences which may serve as some sort of basis for some detail of someone else’s work in the future,’ Harries pronounced. ‘The main point, as I read it, is that it makes one—not so much think—Research is gummed up with thinking—as imagine a bit.’

‘That’ll be possible, too—by the time Frost and I have finished with this film,’ said Loftie.

It included a sequence of cultures, from mice who had overcome their suicidal fits, attenuated through a human being who, very obligingly, in the intervals of running the camera, described the effects of certain injections on his own rugged system. The earlier ones, he admitted, had ‘fair slung him round the deck.’

‘It was chuck it and chance it,’ Loftie apologised. ‘You see, we couldn’t tell, all this summer, when Mrs. Berners might play up for the grave. So I rather rushed the injections through Frost. I haven’t worked out my notes yet. You’ll get ’em later.’

He stayed to help Frost put back some of the more delicate gear, while the others went to change.

‘Not to talk about that lady of ours,’ Frost said presently. ‘My first—though, of course, her mother never warned me—drank a bit. She disgraced me all round Fratton pretty much the whole of one commission. And she died in Lock ’Ospital. So, I’ve had my knock.’

‘Some of us seem to catch it. I’ve had mine, too,’ Loftie answered.

‘I never heard that. But’—the voice changed—‘I knew it—surer than if I’d been told.’

‘Yes. God help us!’ said Loftie, and shook his hand. Frost, not letting go of it, continued ‘One thing more, sir. I didn’t properly take it in at the time—not being then concerned—but—that first operation on that lady of mine, was it of a nature that’ll preclude—so to say—expectations of—of offspring?’

‘Absolutely, old man,’ Loftie’s free hand dropped on Frost’s shoulder.

‘Pity! There ought to be some way of pulling ’em through it—somehow—oughtn’t there?’

Surgical and Medical

[a short tale]

CRICH, THE ORDERLY, sat on a camp-stool cheering Parker, who lay suspiciously quiet. Parker had come from Queensland, via New Jersey, among other cities, and the registered voters of Colesberg had shot him across the spine below the shoulders.

‘My stomach’s a trifle out of order,’ said Parker cheerily. ‘They can’t get it to work. Except for that I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with me.’

Crich looked at me, to signify that it would b, better for Parker if he had a little more feeling. ‘We’re comin’ on beautifully, ain’t we?’ said Crich, and Parker nodded.

‘I’m the last o’ four—all spinal cases — all in this tent too!’ said Parker. ‘I’ve seen ’em all go, and here am I hangin’ on by my finger-nails. They all went, didn’t they?’

‘Yes,’ said Crich, his braces round his hips; ‘an’ they all called for me ‘fore they went. ‘Member Tommy?

Parker smiled. Sir Philip Sidney smiled very much in that fashion. ‘Oh, yes. I was on special allowance of brandy, but Tommy he always looked for a little of mine in his lemonade.’ Couldn’t speak much, but he used to roll his eyes to my bed. Tommy liked his tot of brandy and lemonade. When did he go, Crich ?’

‘Yes’day afternoon. You was asleep, Parker. He said “Crich, old man, where are you?” he said. “Right here in front o’ you,” I says, and I went up to ‘im, ’cause I knew what was comin’. “I can’t see you, Crich,” he says. Then I laid ‘old of his arms by my two ‘ands. “That’s better,” he says. “If I Can’t see you I can feel you,” he says. “Don’t let go, Crich,” he says, and in a minute or two he was off, as quiet as anything. You was asleep, Parker. Oh, yes, they all asked for old Crich to take ‘old of when they went off Parker’s goin’ to best the lot of ’em.’ Thus to me. ‘Last o’ four spinal cases, he is, an’ he’s goin’ to Netley , an’ he’ll be all right in a few weeks. ‘Ave some more tomatoes, Parker?’

The giant turned his head and raised an arm. He could not quite reach the tomatoes. Crick stepped across the tent, and lavishly douched the cut fruit with oil and vinegar, and exhibited Parker in the act of eating. Then Parker talked of real estate speculations in Orange, New Jersey, and stock-riding in Queensland; Crick supplying an ever-appreciative chorus. I watched the superbly-built body, so all alive to the chest-line, so all dead below, and it seemed to me unfair that nervous anxiety to make Cape Colony a ‘little haven of peace’ had led a ‘neutral Government’ to postpone the ordinary preparations for war till the Colesberg rebels (all registered voters, remember) could conveniently mangle Parker’s spinal cord. I laid it upon Crich, the hairy-chested and adequate, that Parker must not die, and Crich hopefully hopeless said, out of Parker’s hearing, that he would do his damnedest.

That was some weeks ago. I have seen Parker twice or thrice since, but to-day his bed is empty. He has bested the registered voter of Colesberg, all the young doctors who prophesied death, and Crich, who couldn’t see any other way out of it.

He has gone home in a steamer to Netley, with the chance of living, half-dead for a year or two, and the ghost of a chance that he may partially recover. This is a load off my mind. For some absurd reason Parker was my war-fetish. He held on through the black days ere Ladysmith was relieved; he heard of Cronje’s surrender, and now, at Madeira, he will learn that Bloemfontein is his and ours.

The war goes better. With Parker and Bloemfontein disposed of we can attend to the hospitals. Dinniss, the light-moustached Sergeant Major of a Horse battery, has gone away; but not before he saved the lives of three or four depressed and morbid, by his cheerfulness and his yarns.

Dinniss has six-and-twenty years’ service. He refused his majority eleven years ago, because it was not in his beloved battery, and he is an encyclopaedia of military knowledge — the unofficial brand. I heard him tell his tent confidentially that if he had known what sort of a silly sort of war this war was going to turn out, he would have retired on his laurels early in October.

He caught something at Magersfontein, which has kept him in bed for a few weeks, but now he is at the Front again. He was more or less in charge of the Horse battery which, out of pure politeness, stood still to take the Boer fire when our naval gun on the left of the line did not see the flag of truce, went on firing, and brought down a fresh Boer fusillade.

Said Dinniss: ‘Of course, we sat tight to show it was a mistake, but the shells were makin’ our horses skittish, so I said: “Send a driver to their heads. They’re a little shy.” I looked round, an’ there wasn’t any drivers! D’you know what they were doin’ Chasin’ rats round a bush! Yiss! Rat-huntin’ under fire. On my worrud, I don’t believe drivers have sowls. No, not one!’

‘Were they Cockneys, by any chance, Dinniss?’ ‘Ye may say so. We come from St. John’s Wood, London, N.W.’ The tent and the orderlies grieved when Dinniss left, for he had great authority, and most persuasive tact. Now, Derby of the Inniskillings had no authority. He lived on his tongue and his skill in outflanking orderlies. Derby got it badly in the leg, and hopped like a cock robin in scarlet flannel between the tents. He was marked for England, and the day before he sailed all Rondebosch was too small for his transports.

A visitor came by with pipes and tobacco to give the men, and Derby steered him towards a convalescent. ‘D’you want to buy a pipe?’ said Derby with a serious face. ‘They’re only threepence, and the baccy’s one and threepence a stick. It’s dirt cheap.’ The convalescent fingered the stock and demanded cigarettes. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Derby, ‘but we’re sold out of cigarettes. If you’ll give your order, maybe this man will —’ Then the convalescent tumbled to the jest, and Derby had to run for it all between the tent-pegs. There should be lively times on Derby’s boat home, but he is the kindest of souls to an invalid.

The Twins are not on their feet yet. They are both Australians, both have broken legs, they lie side by side, their legs in slings, and the one loyally caps the other’s tallest yarns. A few days back talk turned on what blackfellows could do with a boomerang.

A Fusilier cut to pieces with barbed wire, a 9th Lancer, and a West Yorkshireman told the twins to draw it mild. Sticks could not twist and turn in that way. It was as absurd as the word Woolloomooloo. Entered then from another tent Rae, of Manitoba, hit at Slinger’s or Arundel.

Rae said he did not understand boomerangs, but things could be made to curve in the air, for all the 9th Lancer said. For instance, there was a game called baseball. Rae illustrated with his sound arm how a pitcher sends in a curved ball, and the Twins, applauding, welcomed him as an ally. They had a file of Australian papers with pictures of boomerangs. Would the 9th Lancer please get them out from the shelf, and they would explain. So, under the pines planted in South Africa by men from the North, Welshman,Tyke ,Cockney, and Canadian bent their heads over a Melbourne weekly, while a Queenslander read the letterpress

Johnson, of a Highland regiment — he looked very like Alan Breck had tried to stop a shell-splinter with his stomach, and it cost him eight weeks’ agony. The first time we met he walked crab-fashion, his blue eyes alight with pain. Hear, O Heaven, and bear witness, O Earth, that there would be no more of South Africa for Johnson and his stomach! A fortnight later we sat in the sun with a whispering Guardsman, half of whose larynx had been put out of commission by a down-dropping bullet.

But Johnson was a changed man. He had developed a scheme, and explained it as he sat grasping his ankles and rocking to and fro. They were going to send him to Green Point with other convalescents. The odds were they would send him home, and that did not suit Johnson’s revised book. ‘I’m a saddler by trade. They’ll not overlook the likes of me when they’re repairing collars and harnesses. I’ll not be sent home till the war is over — if I can help it. Surely they’ll need a collar-maker. Then I’ll be able to get back again.’

He went off to draw his kit, walking corkily, and the Guardsman whispered husky congratulations. But there is no spring in McConnell, sergeant of another Highland regiment — nothing but sour disgust. He got it in the hand, round Paardeberg, a rending, shattering bullet, that has marked him for England. And there is what is left of his Company to consider, and there is his unpaid debt to the Boer, drawing interest every day, and there is his right hand throbbing and aching in the night watches. His chief interest is the daily paper and the list of the Boer dead. He lies in his corner, smoking, brooding, and meditating how to escape England. But his hand—his right hand, with the iron-hard forearm — is useless. He always comes back to that.

Not far from him lies Carter, who went downhill by reason of a fractured thigh and some fever.

Then he got bed-sores — two, he told me — and then they got him an air-mattress. Carter came near to losing his life, but the story in the ward is that Neeld, a graceless Cockney Highlander, bucked him up, precisely as Dinniss bucked up the man shot through the lungs.

Anyhow, Carter is spared, which is a sign of grace, and they have taken him out for a small walk in a wheeled chair. ‘He kep’ askin’ us all the way uphill if he was too heavy,’ said one of Carter’s steeds — a convalescent with a head-wound. ‘Well, you see, it’s voluntary, not compulsory, takin’ convalescents out,’ says Carter, rather tremulous about the mouth.

‘You don’t weigh more’n a rat now,’ is the answer, and then, the voice touched with a beautiful tenderness, ‘Did ye like it, ‘Arry?’

Did he like it? After three months he has seen trees and sunshine, and felt the big sky above him. He picked up the good dirt of the earth and let it run through his fingers. Now he is going to sleep. In a little while Mylton will be fit to wheel out. He hails from St. John, New Brunswick — the old city of many fires over against the racing Fundy tide. The scent of the Wynberg pine-needles makes him one jelly of home-sickness. Providence sent to his bedside one who knows his city, and street by street and suburb by suburb, ‘from Castor in the Forum to Mars without the wall’—from the fragrant lumber-mills to Loch Lomond. Mylton goes over it all rejoicing. Yes, he knows, moreover, Dalhousie, Gaspe, and Baie Chaleur. And how he longs to see them! Two yards away a Yorkshire Reservist points out to a man who is fashioning a canvas and wool belt that of all places under heaven there is none like to Bradford. He is married, with four children and a damaged shoulder; but all will be well when he returns to Bradford, ‘in t’ steamer.’

Lascelles, Tasmanian Mounted Infantry, holds quite other views. He had come through much rough-and-tumble work, ending with abscess of the liver. That removed, they have put him to light duty at Maitland Camp till he is fit to sit a horse. His eyes are sunk and heavy, but he sees far. He is the son of a Hobart fruitgrower. What about fruit-growing in this country? Is himself an apple man, but understands peaches and plums. Has noticed while in hospital that many apples sent to convalescents were full of codlin-grub, which he considers far more serious than Boers.

What about red-scale and the other fruit-pests? What about packing and freight-rates? In Tasmania the wood for an apple-crate costs threepence halfpenny, and the completed article less than fivepence. On the other hand, South Africa is nearer London than Hobart. Lascelles works out the sum in his head, and emerges to say that he has dug up many samples of soil round Kimberley; has also looked over many farms up-country as he rode through.

Lascelles thinks that Tasmania being a small place — a young man might do worse than settle here and grow up in a new country, eh? It is represented to Lascelles that he is the kind of man we need badly. Yes, Mr. Lascelles, this is the one land for the new man of colonial experience — for open-air men used to large spaces and plain living – thousands of them. Here is everything — horses, cattle, wool, and fruit. Do you know any more young men of the same views Manitoba ranchers, New Zealand sheep-men, fruitgrowers of the South?

If so, bring them along, and we will make such a country as the world has never seen. Lascelles admits that he has talked to several friends about the wisdom of settling here after the war. They think well of it. In twenty minutes I have pledged the honour of the Empire to the hilt on behalf of Lascelles & Co. If they mean business everything shall be made easy for their first start. I will lend them money on mortgage (at least, you will, and we shall get four per cent on it). I will slap down railways along the valleys where the fruit grows, so that no farm need haul her dried prunes more than five miles to the rail. (This is not so mad as it sounds, for such valleys are few.)

I will arrange low freights, if I have to go on my knees to German shipping firms. I will break the Covent Garden fruit-ring into flinders. I will erect coldstorage warehouses by the acre, and chilled fruit-cars at 40° uniform shall be as common as cattle-trucks on all our lines. I will develop under the care of half-a-dozen picked Canal officers from India such a scheme of irrigation (it will not cost more than three millions to begin with) as shall beat the Bara Doab, Colorado, and the Queensland colonies combined.

Mr. Lascelles accepts everything calmly. He is young and has the divine faith. ‘In twenty years’ time!’ he says, and his eye with a budding stye on it glows.

‘Ah, but it’s all a gamble,’ I make haste to qualify. ‘One has to take one’s chances.’

‘I’ll take ’em,’ says Mr. Lascelles; and, when you come to think of it, a man who has been risking his life for a few weeks is not going to be deterred by the prospect of one fruit farm or a score, for that matter failing on Iris hands.

Meantime, will you please take notes of the few schemes I have committed you to? Because in five years you will be lending money on them and they will pay more than trappy gold-reefs or South American tramways. The tents arc full of boys who, with a little steering, would settle here. Nixon, of Vancouver, for instance, is in real estate and life insurance when he is at home. He was also in the Canadian rush on the Paardeberg laager. Being a youth of cheerful and speculative temperament, he would be shrewd enough to pronounce on the chances of a new country if any one brought him the facts and the figures — and the fancies. As it is, lie lies in bed with a bullet through his leg and thinks about a Vancouver girl. Colliss, also a Western man in real estate, would be another splendid recruit. He shed his blood for the country with a vengeance, the bullet narrowly missing an artery. He would stay in the country if properly approached. He is sinful proud of the fact that of eight hundred and fifty Canadians engaged in this business not more than four hundred and sixty are at this date available. And they were not cut down by sickness nor cut off by Boer patrols. We may assume, then, that among the hospitals are three hundred Canadians of the very stamp and breed we require — young, sound, clean, intelligent, well educated, of whom seventy-five per cent hold or have held land. Three hundred possible heads of sane and soaped families. And not a man to show them maps and photos and plans to lure them to stay in South Africa. We shall let all these beautiful men, and hundreds and hundreds more, go back to their own place and never lift finger to stay them. Truly we are the most wasteful as we are the most idle nation under heaven!

Derby, and Dinniss, and Crich, and Neeld, and Johnson, and the young postman at Crieff, and my own postman at Rottingdean (he is here in a bearer company), and the man that drives the big brewery wagon at Newhaven (he is here in the Black Watch, and was hit at Magersfontein), must go home when the war is ended. Blessings and thanks go with them. They are all either Reserve men, their places waiting for them, or men of the Regular Line without a trade.

But we need Mylton when he gets better, and Nixon, and Colliss, and Lascelles, and the Twins, and a few thousand more of their kidney to stay and inherit.

For the land is a good land. It has been wilfully and wickedly starved — starved by policy and craft through many years lest an incompetent race should be found out before the face of the nations.

RUDYARD KIPLING

With Number Three

page 1 of 5

All the world over, nursing their scars,
Sit the poor fighting-men broke in our wars
Sit the poor fighting-men, surly and grim,
Mocking the lilt of the conquerors’ hymn.
Dust of the battle o’erwhelmed them and hid
Fame never found them for aught that they did.
Wounded and spent, to the lazar they drew,
Lining the road where the legions went through.
Sons of the Laurel, that press to your meed
Worthy God’s pity most ye that succeed
Ye that tread triumphing crowned toward the stars,
Pity poor fighting-men broke in our wars!

THE SUN HAD FADED the Red Cross on her panels almost to brick colour; had warped her woodwork and blistered her paint. For three months she had jackalled behind the army – now at Belmont, now at Magersfontein, now at Rensburg, and in that time had carried over thirteen hundred sick and wounded. In her appointments, her doctors, her two Nursing Sisters , and her nineteen orderlies there was neither veneer nor pretence, coquetry of uniforms, nor the suspicion of official side. She was starkly set for the work in hand, her gear worn smooth by use and habit, detailed for certain business only, and to that business most strictly attending.

Since she started from no known platform I came aboard early, and while we lay silent as a ship in port, the big stock-pot purring in the kitchen, the bottles clicking in the pharmacy as the doctor counted them over, I felt that peace had never been in our generation – that Number Three Hospital Train – iodoform-scented, washed, scrubbed, and scoured – had plied since the beginning of time.

Know now that hospital trains have the right of way over all traffic, and since their crews feed aboard them, need only stop to water and change engines. We slipped out of Cape Town into the twilight at a steady twenty-five mile an hour on our six-hundred-mile journey North. Some day you in England will realise what it means to handle armies and their supplies over this distance on a single three-foot-six line. The war has been a war of shunting and side-tracking, of telegraphs and time-tables; so we may hope that the railway men, who have worked like devils, will not be overlooked when the decorations fall ripe.

Because the line runs through Cape Colony, and because Cape Colony is – we have the highest authority for it – loyally trying to be ‘neutral’, every bridge, every culvert, every point at which the line may be cut or blown up is guarded by a little detachment of armed men. These are drawn chiefly from local corps, such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Volunteer Rifles. They do not like the work; they love still less the ‘loyalty’ which has made the fatigue necessary.

Said a dust-spotted, begrimed Sergeant of the ‘Duke’s’ as Number Three, double-headed, panted up the Hex River pass into the Karroo, ‘We’ve been here since November. I don’t mind telling you we’re pretty sick of it. We haven’t had a look-in at the Front yet. We sit here and patrol the line. Lovely work!’

The setting of the picture hardly varied a hair’s breadth. A single track, lifting and dancing in the heat, the brown, hairless hills dusted with split stones, the sleek mirages, the knots of khaki figures, the dingy tents, repeated themselves as though we were running in circles. Here was a water-tank. Number Three drank of it, sucking thirstily; here a speckle of tin houses and a refreshment-room, which we had no need to enter; here a new-laid siding. Number Three flung them all behind her; but for the men with rifles, the red-eyed, bristlebearded, disgusted track-watchers there was no escape.

Suddenly we overhauled a train-load of horses, Bhownagar’s and Jamnagar’s gifts to the war; stolid saises and a sowar or two in charge.
‘Whence dost thou come?’
‘From Bombay, with a Sahib.’ (The man looked like a Hyderabadi, but he had taken off most of his clothes.
‘Dost thou know the name of this land?’
‘No.’
‘Dost thou know whither thou goest?’
‘I do not know.’
‘What, then, dost thou do?’
‘I go with my Sahib.’

Great is the East, serene and immutable! We left them feeding and watering as the order was.

A few miles farther on – forty or fifty are of no account in this huge place – were guns, infantry, and buck-wagons, rumbling towards De Aar, and, I think, New South Wales Lancers. Then, a Victorian contingent camped by the wayside, happier than the ‘Duke’s’ because they were nearer the Front, but wrathful in that certain Canadians still farther up the line had had the audacity to make a camp called Maple Leaf. They wanted news of the Burma Military Police, long men on little fat ponies like clockwork mice, recently landed, and vanished. Corps have a knack of disappearing bodily in this country. Of the Burmans I knew nothing, but could furnish information more or less accurate of some Malay Light Horse lately seen in Cape Town, and of some Yeomanry details.

‘Ah,’ said Australia, with a rifle, by the water-tank, ‘wait till you see our Queensland bushmen. My word! They’re something.’

Then he expressed a private and unprintable opinion about those arrogant Canucks up the line, which opinion, twisted the other way, I got back again from a Canadian, an Eastern Province man, a few hours later.

Strictly in confidence, I may tell you that the Colonial Corps are riding just the least little bit in the world jealous. They have each the honour of a new country to uphold, and it is neck and neck between them. So I sat joyously on the rear platform while Number Three ran the links of Empire through my hands. English of the Midlands, Cockney, Scots, Irish, Welsh, Queenslander, Victorian, and Canadian, one after another, we picked them up and dropped them with a flying word.

There was nothing wrong with that chain, and by the same token, it seemed to have got hold of something at last, for a truckload of Boer prisoners slid by in charge of what looked like a few disreputable bearded veldt-cornets.

‘Ho!’ said an orderly critically. ‘And where did you pick them up?’
‘Round Paardeberg. There’s more to follow. Most of these is Transvaalers.’

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‘That’s all right,’ said the orderly.

The Army, you see, is collecting Transvaalers, and has come a long way for samples. ‘An’ which might be prisoner and which is guard?’ Said the veldt-cornet with a battered helmet, ‘I’m a sergeant of Northamptons in charge.’

‘Oh, you are, are you? Then what are you doin’ with Labby’s friends? Take ’em along. Mr. Labouchere won’t be pleased at you.’

But the Sergeant was mightily pleased, save that his prisoners had not washed for some time. He said so. Then we drew to the home of lies, which is De Aar – a junction, the pivot of many of our manoeuvres and a telegraph centre.

It smelt like Umballa platform in the hot weather, and they kept a hell there of fifty half-naked telegraph operators, sweating under the blazing kerosene lamps, each man with two pairs of hands and some extra ears. Outside was thick darkness, and the shunting of trucks – thousands of trucks: but the steady boom of the racing instruments beat through all other noises like the noise of hiving bees.

There was some need to work, and, at least, one very good reason in the shape of a big saloon that glided past us in the night, a lit window revealing just a chair and a neat empty table. The Sirdar (Lord Kitchener) was on the move; going down to Naauwpoort to arrange surprises, and it is not at all healthy to be idle when Kitchener passes by. Therefore, and before this war is over, you will hear all sorts of baseless tales from a certain type of officer who has been made to work: and you must not believe them.

After De Aar time-tables ceased. We were cut adrift on the Sargasso Sea of accumulated rolling-stock between that place and Orange River. Here the rumours begin. There had been a killing – a big killing – the first satisfactory killing – at Paardeberg, up the Modder. Roberts held Cronje in a ring of fire burning day and night. That was none of our concern. We had some news that many wounded waited for us at Modder – thirty officers, at least, and twice as many men – all more or less bad cases.

Here and there one could catch the name of a dead man, and the Sister’s lips tightened. Was So-and-so alive? Well, he was a week ago someone had seen him. And Such-another? Oh, Such-another had been buried a week back. Could Number Three go ahead? Oh yes; but there was a block at the Modder, and Kimberley was sending down a full train.

Number Three whistled madly. Her business was to get up, load, and get away again. Belmont, with the bullet-holes through the station name-board, interested her not, nor Graspan either. She had been that road too often hot on the heels of the very fight itself. She checked despairingly, fifth in a line of long trains on the red smear of Modder Plain. The old bridge, wrecked by the Boers, was now all but repaired.

At present, Number Three would go over the trestle, but as to when Number Three would get across, authority could not say, and whistling was just waste of steam. Merciful rain had laid the dust which normally lies ten inches thick, and one could look all across the brick-red land.

By this time you probably know more about Modder than I; will have seen a hundred photographs of the naked, coverless plain that tilts to the thin line of trees and the dirty little river; lifting again northwards, as a slow wave of the Atlantic lifts, towards Shooter’s Hill, where the naval gun played. North of this again, a bluish lump in the morning light, rises Magersfontein. At that precise moment – but the camp fills and empties as quickly as the river – most of our men were out with Roberts nearly thirty miles to the westward. Vast empty acreages showed where their accommodation had stood. Men, horses, and wheels had wiped out every trace of herbage, and the diminishing perspective of their patient single files attested how far afield the camp-oxen had to go to graze. Horsemen by twos and threes wandered forth attacking interminable distances in which they were swallowed up. Sidings solid with trucks spurred left and right across the plain, and the trucks on the main line backed up to the very shoulders of the riveters repairing the bridge.

Number Three fought her way inch by inch, and was met by a little knot of Army Sisters. In civilisation their uniform is hideous, but out here one sees the use of the square-cut vermilion cape. Everything else is dust coloured, so a man need not ask where a Sister may be. She leaps to the eye across all the camp.

‘And where are our wounded?’ asks Number Three. ‘Still coming in from Paardeberg. They’re being dressed. You’ll get them later. Where are your spare doctors?’ We had come up with six surgeons taken from the big Wynberg and Rondebosch hospitals, where for months they had lived on a promise of work at the Front. They were not R.A.M.C. men, but house surgeons fresh from the Home hospitals, young, enthusiastic, and happy, though their baggage had been cut down to the thirty-five-pound scale, and they had not the ghost of a notion where they were going.

They were uncarted like stags on Modder platform, gazed awhile, met a man in authority, and were swiftly commandeered. Two or three doctors lay dead or wounded across the plains, and there was a hot press for the Medical Service.

Half a mile across the plain, behind the graves of the Highland Brigade, lay the hospital-tents, and thither loaded mule-and ox-wagons were heading. Like Number Three, they had been at the work a weary while. There came no surprise or bewilderment, hardly even any pity to the onlooker, as the big Red Crosses lurched and pitched. This, said the wagons, is the custom with the wounded. Stricken men are gathered as soon as possible by the bearer companies, whose casualty-list is a heavy one. They are dressed for the first time swiftly and efficiently; they are then put into the tilted wagons till they reach the hospital that sends them to the rail. The rail takes the badly wounded to Cape Town and the sea which leads to Netley.

This is the system, said the wagons, and here was the system all naked to the glaring day. Three nights had the wagons been on the road, rained upon, thundered over, and lightened about, jolted and jerked, and jarred; but the long and the short of it was that of eight hundred wounded the wagons had lost not one.

‘Would the hospitals take delivery, please?’ said the wagons, and they drew aside to rest; for their cattle were very, very tired.

As for Number Three? No, it would not be wise to visit Magersfontein. The train might be filled and sent away at any moment.

There was the old official ring about this, and I was not the least surprised that we waited eleven hours time to have gone to Magersfontein and back on all fours. But I am glad I stayed by Number Three. It is early days to make that field of blood a show-place, and one can collect shells on other beaches when peace comes again.

The station was the centre of local society. The Staff, including a German prince, lived across the road in a battered caravanserai with scores of ponies tied to the veranda. The platform was banked with Red Cross cases, badly needed at Kimberley, and with mail bags badly needed by the men who came up, fingered them curiously, and slunk away. Business first, mails later. The telegraph office was a small edition of De Aar, hideously overworked. A knot of Sappers came up from the river, where they had been tamping ballast under new sidings. Other Sappers with ‘R.P.R.’ on their hats followed.

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These last were the details of the Railway Pioneers, skilled mechanicians, and the like, of Johannesburg; and under the grime and the khaki one met a host of a certain weird dinner given in the Gold Reef city two years ago.

One gets used to privates with visiting-cards, and it is perfectly natural to discuss bacteriology, West African exploration, and the ethics of publishing, the intricacies of the Bankruptcy Act, and the prospects of the Labour party in South Australia with spurred troopers.

So it was not disconcerting to meet men of the Chitral siege, once prisoners in the hands of Omra Khan, old schoolmates, Indian Staff Corps men doing duty as ‘tail-twisters’ in the Transport, lost acquaintances of ten years ago, side by side with the fellow passenger of three weeks back, unrecognisable to-day under sunburn, hair, and dust.

It was only an undress rehearsal for the Day of Judgment.

A detail of Army Service men en route for Kimberley spread themselves at ease on their baggage, and chaffed a quartermaster-sergeant who had lost his sword but by the regulations was miserably tied to the empty scabbard till he could return the thing to store. A knot of excited Life Guards demanded news of French’s division. ‘Out since Sunday week and no news. We belong to ’em. We were sick. We want to rejoin. Do you know where he is?’

A Colonial suggested that cavalry divisions always suspend operations for the return of one corporal of horse and two dozen troopers.

A Gunner driver in a cart pored over a three-days’ old Cape paper, for there is no news at the Modder. A man with a drawn face came out from nowhere and told a story. His wife had died at home of influenza: was dead and buried. His people could look after the children, thank God! But it hurt – it hurt cruelly. He spoke and vanished.

Half a mile up the line a private of Highlanders was cooking potatoes and semolina together. He was in luck. Had helped ‘swipe’ a Boer wagon overturned by our shell-fire, and picked up the semolina out of the dust.

A knot of officers had made themselves a rude messhouse in a roofless hut, with a blanket for shade. One of them wished to see a Sister of Number Three – to tell her that So-and-so was dead. A little gathering moved across the dust to look for the graves of the Highland Brigade. Even now the name-boards are split and blistered, and the date carries us back a thousand years. And so it went on, hour after hour, this procession of faces, this tangle of half-caught tales. Towards evening the remnants, as it were, of a battalion moved from the hospital tent in broken squads, one man supporting another.

They were our ‘light’ cases – men denied the merciful cushioning shock of severe wounds – in acute and annoying pain. They would go down to Naauwpoort by the Kimberley train, but first they must be called over.

They reached the platform haltingly; their uniforms were darkened in places by patches as of carelessly spilled varnish, and sometimes their trouser hems were gummy with the same stuff. They sat down by companies in the dust, half a score of regiments mixed. Their officers got them fruit and cigarettes; the more sound filled their companions’ water-bottles. They chaffed greatly in undertones, but they did not say one single word which by any construction could be considered even coarse. They did not complain, they did not growl, they did not curse. They were going to Naauwpoort to get well. In a few days they would return. They had out-marched and out-manoeuvred their enemy – on a couple of biscuits a day, for they had also out-marched their provisions. Their companions were now attending to that enemy, and they were content.

On their departure Number Three waked to life. The wagons were coming from the hospitals. The doors of the cars flew back; orderlies went to their stretchers; the side-boards were ripped out of the bunks; the cook put the last flavouring to the big stock-pot; the Sisters stood to attention, each in her ward – a doctor and a Sister responsible for half a train apiece – and the blessed morphine needles were made ready. They want rest from pain, our wounded. Food and clean sheets will often bring it, but on occasion we must help Nature.

The worn, chipped, and scratched rifles clattered into the arm-racks, the thin dusty kits followed, and after them the loaded stretchers.

‘Fractured thigh,’ said an orderly. ‘Which? Left or right?’ said the Sister.
‘Right,’ said the man, and was slipped on his back accordingly, injured leg outside, where it could be got at easiest.

‘Special,’said the orderly. Here was a clean stomachwound. He could eat milk and slops in a bunk marked to that effect, and the gentemanly Mauser bullet would suffer him to live. Down the car he went, thinking nobly of his soul, and in no way approving of milk-diet. Entered one amputation below the right elbow, very cheery. Full diet for this amputation; but no full diet for yonder lung-shot, who cannot lie down without pain. Were there any sick?

There were no sick, and the doctors thanked Heaven. They would sooner bring down three trains of wounded than one of sick.

Dysentery that milks the heart out of a man and shames him before his kind; rheumatism, which is the seven devils of toothache, in the marrow of your bones; typhoid of the loaded breath and the silly eye, incontinent and consuming; pneumonia that stabs in the back and drives the poor soul, suffocating and bewildered, through the hells of delirium – we are clear of these for this journey, at least. The clean aseptic bullet-kiss and the shell-splinter is all our care.

Quietly and quickly, but above all quietly, come the stretchers.

Fractured shoulder; elbow joint; lung again from left to right, but nothing vital touched; shattered forearm (owner says explosive bullet); two head-cases, but both will live. Eye, head, and neck; upper arm; thigh again; two or three clean shots through the thigh (owners very hungry); shoulder smashed and top of finger shot off (owner much annoyed over this little extra); forearm again, and ‘Please, sir, me bandages are pinchin’ me horrid.’

It isn’t the bandages, but the doctor does not say so. He exhibits the merciful squirt, and the bandages miraculously loosen themselves.

Now come the Officers.

One Colonel, bearded like the heavy swell of the ‘Sixties; another Colonel (the Highlanders must have been catching it); a Major; a bearded Captain (on investigation this turns out to be a Lieutenant, aged twenty-three, when he is shaved); and a sprinkling of subalterns and doctors. In each man’s bed is a bag holding shirt, pyjamas, towel, brush, sponge, soap, and toothbrush. They call it the Good Hope bag, but it was evidently invented by a thoughtful she-angel.

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Man after man shakes off or is helped out of the creased, dusty, greasy, blood-stained khaki and nestles into the luxury of clean body-clothes between clean sheets. They have rest; now they must have food, thick soup for choice, if they will only stay awake to drink it; and milk and brandy for the stomach and lung people.

Theoretically, six hundred miles of rail should be bad for wounded men. Practically it does them all the good in the world.

In the first place, they are cleanly and honourably out of it. Not for weeks the sun and the dust, the foul water, and the weary marching; the booted sleep, and the plug-plug of the rifle-butt against the shoulder.

Many of them will be permanently lost. The ship will take them to England; they will find their billets waiting, and they will return to live before the faces of their fathers.

Moreover, these are they who have come out of a winning fight. Cronje’s end is certain. They left the guns pounding the soul out of his laager by the Modder.

It is not as was that terrible journey after Magersfontein, when doctors and Sisters had to sit up with weeping men – men who had been killed in heaps of a sudden one day and damned in heaps by their General the next – men who tried to explain but broke down and turned their faces to the wall and cried miserably and hopelessly.

Number Three’s Staff will remember that Magersfontein trip as long as they live.

This is distinctly a better business. They are going off to sleep, like tired children, already – thirty-one officers and sixty-six men. They will be different people tomorrow. The doctors look at the Sisters and nod joyously. A good train-load; no one will be lost, and that little end car for once need not do duty as a mortuary.

Number Twenty-seven wants something solid to eat. Number Twenty-seven won’t get it. He is shot through the stomach, and it is a miracle that he is not under the Modder dirt. He can have some more milk and brandy….

‘Please, Sister, there’s a Colonel hoppin’ about the alley-way.’

A Sister advances to cut him off. Mere doctors are helpless here. They dare not herd Colonels like ostriches. Besides, he has one sound leg. He says so.

‘But you are to get on to your back and he down,’ is the order.
‘But, Please, Sister, I feel quite fit.’

‘But I say so.’
A wave of her hand eliminates the Colonel. He will hop no more to-night.
A fractured Victorian (shoulder and collar-bone by the look of it) and a child with a slung arm have dodged the eye of authority for a few minutes, and suadente diabolo (but I knew Australians liked tea) are drinking tea in the Staff carriage.

The child is nineteen; he has one month’s service; he does not appreciate a Sister’s drawing comparisons between him and a seventeen-year-old middy, carted off the field at Graspan. It was his first engagement. He was scooping potted meat out of a can when the advance began. Then he was firing. A bullet hit his rifle on the trigger-guard, broke up, and continued through his hand, which is now extensively bandaged. It hurts a little.

‘Of course it does if you let it hang down like that,’ says the Sister; and she deftly loops up the sling while the child blushes adorably.

He argues impersonally on the advantages of retaining the forefinger of the right hand. Not his forefinger by name, but abstract forefinger. One wants it for shooting and writing, don’t you know. Oh, there are a heap of things one can do with it.

Then the colour goes out of his face, and the Sister whirls him into bed.

The Victorian turns pale dun and thinks he will he down.

One finds out later from other men that the child was a most plucky child, and would not take chloroform when they dressed him. His hand is horribly cut up, and his rifle in the rack is smashed across the stock. The nickel-nosed bullet has sunk a quarter of an inch into the steel trigger-guard. It would be unfair to steal that rifle.

The child is asleep. He looks about thirteen. Now the covers are drawn on the lamps; the night watches are set, and we take our last turn down the corridor.

A thunderstorm chases Number Three southward, the lightning spills all over the veldt, and the sun-warped roofs leak. Thirty or forty or fifty thousand men are lying tentless in this downpour, but it must be flooding out Cronje in the bed of the Modder.

Our children are here asleep – deeply and beautifully asleep – all except one man, whose eyes shine like the eyes of a prepared moth.

‘What is the matter?’
I haven’t slept in these’ he picks up the sheet ‘since the third of November. It’s too comfortable to sleep. Oh, Lord, it is comfortable.’ He squirms luxuriously in his bunk.

Through the long night when we stop all voices are lowered. Footsteps halt before us and voices whisper: ‘Have you any New South Wales Lancers, sir, please?’

‘No, we have not. Have we any Oxfords? Yes, a Sergeant, but nobody is coming to wake up this train. Yes, we are full, but they are all doing well. No’ – for the tenth time – ‘there are no dying. They are in bed and asleep, and you must go away.’ All this in tense whispers.

Doctors and Sisters call it an easy night. They are not actually on their feet or fanning a pneumonia case from eleven to six.

Well, they had their reward in the clean rain-washed morning when every runnel of the Karroo was bankfull and the waste-water (some day we shall get big dams with a system to them) spilled away profligately. Our children were hungry – mutinously hungry. Officers fancied this and fancied that. Milk men wanted to know why they were not full-dieters, and full-dieters sent verbal messages by orderlies asking for more – much more.

‘You won’t get any breakfast till they are all fed,’ said to me an orderly with a pyramid of porridge basins. ‘You’d better fill up on Osborne biscuits. You see, ‘arf of ’em ‘aven’t the use of their ‘ands.’

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So they stoked them – the ”arf that’adn’t the use of their ‘ands’ – and they re-dressed their bandages, and they washed their little faces and combed their little hair, and then the cry went up for tobacco.

Some of the men had changed past recognition during the night. The lines of pain, the tense drawn expressions were gone. They had rested; their bellies were full; they were smoking. You must remember that a wounded man is not a sick man. He is generally in superb physical condition; he has been off all excess liquor for some months, and so responds readily to stimulants. His blood is clean, and he breathes the best of air. Give him half a chance, and he will clamber up again hand over fist.

Then, all animal needs satisfied, some of them wanted to send word home; and that was a full morning’s job. The usual form ran: ‘Dear Mother, Just a few lines to tell you I was hit at Paardeberg on Feb. 18th, when we fought Cronje. I was hit in such-and-such a place, but please do not worry about me, as I am coming on all right. It was a bit hard in the carts, but I am lying in bed in the train here, and we are all going down to the hospital, and I am quite comfortable, and I shall be all right in a few weeks, so please do not worry about me, because I am all right and doing well.’

Their first thought in every instance was that she should not worry. One man – a Celt, to be sure – launched into some description of the fight (I saw him later at Wynberg covering sheets and sheets) and a few others had business matters to adjust; but for the bulk, the word, the assurance, and the message of love, sufficed. Remember, it was not the Army that you and I know, but the Army of the People, heavily laced with Reservists, family folk, who have kiddies and businesses over the sea. Blacksmiths, gardeners, clubporters, and small shopkeepers were among those represented, and their physique was almost as admirable as their spirit.

One man only of all that train broke down – and small blame to him. He was a badly shotten ‘lunger,’ and there seemed no way to make him easy, sitting or lying. He got out his home-photos – the little tintypes that one carries in the inside pocket and the cruel home-sickness atop of the pain took him and broke him for a minute or two. I think he had come out of some well-ordered country-house, for he returned to the manner of the lodge-porter in his talk.

There were quiet men, deeply concerned for the probable loss of a working arm. There were mildly – oh, so mildly ! – riotous men, who staggered about visiting from bunk to bunk. There were funny men, worth their weight in silver to the ward. There were just men admitting that their enemy up in a tree had sighted more quickly than they, ‘but my section got him with four bullets, and he came down like a pheasant, sir.’ There were silent men breathing quickly, counting each turn of the wheels; and there were doubting Thomases who needed particular information about Wynberg hospital.

I heard a good deal of all sorts, but I did not hear one word of complaint.

So it is in the base hospital. From at least a thousand wounded met at Rondebosch and Wynberg under fairly intimate circumstances, orderlies out of earshot and the talk running free, I did not gather one whimper.

A badly hit man – fracture or stomach – is, of course, glad he is going home – till the steamer comes round. Then he is not so pleased.

A slightly wounded man takes all the ward to witness that so soon as he is mended, wild horses won’t keep him away from his family. Ten days later, he is lying – lying like a skirmish-line under pom-pom fire – to his doctor with intent to rejoin.

The hospitals have their own esprit de corps, and tents are proud to be able to say they are all going back. But our boys counted rest before all things; and Number Three hurried them to it. Our little world on wheels had hardly come to know itself when we were halfway home. A little letter-writing; a small ‘smoker’ between two cool windows where wounded Colonels and subalterns met in pyjamas and talked over good men killed, while the idle rifles clicked in the rack behind; another ravenous meal or two (‘Which will you ‘ave, sir? Steak or rissole?’ ‘Oh, both. I’ve been dreaming of steaks since Jacobsdal!’); another and an easier night, and then the thrice-blessed firs of Wynberg, the waiting hooded ambulances, a good road, and Number 1 and 2 Hospitals just round the corner.

Once more the business of the stretchers, the tally of fractures and perforations; the whispered cautions, and the louder words of good cheer. It is not in the official bond, but Number Three’s Staff a little worn with night-watching, dusty and heavy-eyed – will see the boys up to their beds. They know every one of the cases now, and a word or two in season will be profitable.

In an hour Number Three stands empty and stripped. Blankets, sheets, and bedding must be renewed; a hundred things go to the wash; and they swish and swill the floors.

To-morrow night her work begins again.

 

RUDYARD KIPLING

The Wish House

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THE new Church Visitor had just left after a twenty minutes’ call. During that time, Mrs. Ashcroft had used such English as an elderly, experienced, and pensioned cook should, who had seen life in London. She was the readier, therefore, to slip back into easy, ancient Sussex (Ts softening to ‘d’s as one warmed) when the ’bus brought Mrs. Fettley from thirty miles away for a visit, that pleasant March Saturday. The two had been friends since childhood; but, of late, destiny had separated their meetings by long intervals.Much was to be said, and many ends, loose since last time, to be ravelled up on both sides, before Mrs. Fettley, with her bag of quilt-patches, took the couch beneath the window commanding the garden, and the football-ground in the valley below.

‘Most folk got out at Bush Tye for the match there,’ she explained, ‘so there weren’t no one for me to cushion agin, the last five mile. An’ she do just-about bounce ye.’

‘You’ve took no hurt,’ said her hostess. ‘You don’t brittle by agein’, Liz.’

Mrs. Fettley chuckled and made to match a couple of patches to her liking. ‘No, or I’d ha’ broke twenty year back. You can’t ever mind when I was so’s to be called round, can ye? ‘

Mrs. Ashcroft shook her head slowly—she never hurried—and went on stitching a sack-cloth lining into a list-bound rush tool-basket. Mrs. Fettley laid out more patches in the Spring light through the geraniums on the window-sill, and they were silent awhile.

‘What like’s this new Visitor o’ yourn?’ Mrs. Fettley inquired, with a nod towards the door. Being very short-sighted, she had, on her entrance, almost bumped into the lady.

Mrs. Ashcroft suspended the big packing-needle judicially on high, ere she stabbed home. ‘Settin’ aside she don’t bring much news with her yet, I dunno as I’ve anythin’ special agin her.’

‘Ourn, at Keyneslade,’ said Mrs. Fettley, ‘she’s full o’ words an’ pity, but she don’t stay for answers. Ye can get on with your thoughts while she clacks.’

‘This ’un don’t clack. She’s aimin’ to be one o’ those High Church nuns, like.’

‘Ourn’s married, but, by what they say, she’ve made no great gains of it . . .’ Mrs. Fettley threw up her sharp chin. ‘Lord! How they dam’ cherubim do shake the very bones o’ the place! ‘

The tile-sided cottage trembled at the passage of two specially chartered forty-seat charabancs on their way to the Bush Tye match; a regular Saturday’ shopping’ ’bus, for the county’s capital, fumed behind them; while, from one of the crowded inns, a fourth car backed out to join the procession, and held up the stream of through pleasure-traffic.

‘You’re as free-tongued as ever, Liz,’ Mrs. Ashcroft observed.

‘Only when I’m with you. Otherwhiles, I’m Granny—three times over. I lay that basket’s for one o’ your gran’chiller—ain’t it? ‘

‘’Tis for Arthur—my Jane’s eldest.’

‘But he ain’t workin’ nowheres, is he? ‘

‘No. ’Tis a picnic-basket.’

‘You’re let off light. My Willie, he’s allus at me for money for them aireated wash-poles folk puts up in their gardens to draw the music from Lunnon, like. An’ I give it ’im—pore fool me! ‘

‘An’ he forgets to give you the promise-kiss after, don’t he?’ Mrs. Ashcroft’s heavy smile seemed to strike inwards.

‘He do. ’No odds ’twixt boys now an’ forty year back. ’Take all an’ give naught-an’ we to put up with it! Pore fool we! Three shillin’ at a time Willie’ll ask me for!’

‘They don’t make nothin’ o’ money these days,’ Mrs. Ashcroft said.

‘An’ on’y last week,’ the other went on, ‘me daughter, she ordered a quarter pound suet at the butchers’s; an’ she sent it back to ’im to be chopped. She said she couldn’t bother with choppin’ it.’

‘I lay he charged her, then.’

‘I lay he did. She told me there was a whisk-drive that afternoon at the Institute, an’ she couldn’t bother to do the choppin’.’

‘Tck!’

Mrs. Ashcroft put the last firm touches to the basket-lining. She had scarcely finished when her sixteen-year-old grandson, a maiden of the moment in attendance, hurried up the garden-path shouting to know if the thing were ready, snatched it, and made off without acknowledgment. Mrs. Fettley peered at him closely.

‘They’re goin’ picnickin’ somewheres,’ Mrs. Ashcroft explained.

‘Ah,’ said the other, with narrowed eyes. ‘I lay he won’t show much mercy to any he comes across, either. Now ’oo the dooce do he remind me of, all of a sudden? ‘

‘They must look arter theirselves—’same as we did.’ Mrs. Ashcroft began to set out the tea.

‘No denyin’ you could, Gracie,’ said Mrs. Fettley.

‘What’s in your head now?’

‘Dunno . . . But it come over me, sudden-like—about dat woman from Rye—I’ve slipped the name—Barnsley, wadn’t it? ‘

‘Batten—Polly Batten, you’re thinkin’ of.’

‘That’s it—Polly Batten. That day she had it in for you with a hay-fork—’time we was all hayin’ at Smalldene—for stealin’ her man.’

‘But you heered me tell her she had my leave to keep him?’ Mrs. Ashcroft’s voice and smile were smoother than ever.

‘I did—an’ we was all looking that she’d prod the fork spang through your breastes when you said it.’

‘No-oo. She’d never go beyond bounds—Polly. She shruck too much for reel doin’s.’

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‘Allus seems to me,’ Mrs. Fettley said after a pause, ‘that a man ’twixt two fightin’ women is the foolishest thing on earth. ’Like a dog bein’ called two ways.’

‘Mebbe. But what set ye off on those times, Liz? ‘

‘That boy’s fashion o’ carryin’ his head an’ arms. I haven’t rightly looked at him since he’s growed. Your Jane never showed it, but—him! Why, ’tis Jim Batten and his tricks come to life again! . . . Eh?’

‘Mebbe. There’s some that would ha’ made it out so—bein’ barren-like, themselves.’

‘Oho! Ah well! Dearie, dearie me, now! . . . An’ Jim Batten’s been dead this——’

‘Seven and twenty year,’ Mrs. Ashcroft answered briefly. ‘Won’t ye draw up, Liz?’

Mrs. Fettley drew up to buttered toast, currant bread, stewed tea, bitter as leather, some home-preserved pears, and a cold boiled pig’s tail to help down the muffins. She paid all the proper compliments.

‘Yes. I dunno as I’ve ever owed me belly much,’ said Mrs. Ashcroft thoughtfully. ‘We only go through this world once.’

‘But don’t it lay heavy on ye, sometimes?’ her guest suggested.

‘Nurse says I’m a sight liker to die o’ me indigestion than me leg.’ For Mrs. Ashcroft had a long-standing ulcer on her shin, which needed regular care from the Village Nurse, who boasted (or others did, for her) that she had dressed it one hundred and three times already during her term of office.

‘An’ you that was so able, too! It’s all come on ye before your full time, like. I’ve watched ye goin’.’ Mrs. Fettley spoke with real affection.

‘Somethin’s bound to find ye sometime. I’ve me ’eart left me still,’ Mrs. Ashcroft returned.

‘You was always big-hearted enough for three. That’s somethin’ to look back on at the day’s eend.’

‘I reckon you’ve your back-lookin’s, too,’ was Mrs. Ashcroft’s answer.

‘You know it. But I don’t think much regardin’ such matters excep’ when I’m along with you, Gra’. ’Takes two sticks to make a fire.’

Mrs. Fettley stared, with jaw half-dropped, at the grocer’s bright calendar on the wall. The cottage shook again to the roar of the motortraffic, and the crowded football-ground below the garden roared almost as loudly; for the village was well set to its Saturday leisure.

.     .     .     .     .

Mrs. Fettley had spoken very precisely for some time without interruption, before she wiped her eyes. ‘And,’ she concluded, ‘they read ’is death-notice to me, out o’ the paper last month. O’ course it wadn’t any o’ my becomin’ concerns—let be I ’adn’t set eyes on him for so long. O’ course I couldn’t say nor show nothin’. Nor I’ve no rightful call to go to Eastbourne to see ’is grave, either. I’ve been schemin’ to slip over there by the ’bus some day; but they’d ask questions at ’ome past endurance. So I ’aven’t even that to stay me.’

‘But you’ve ’ad your satisfactions?’

‘Godd! Yess! Those four years ’e was workin’ on the rail near us. An’ the other drivers they gave him a brave funeral, too.’

‘Then you’ve naught to cast-up about. ’Nother cup o’ tea?’

.     .     .     .     .

The light and air had changed a little with the sun’s descent, and the two elderly ladies closed the kitchen-door against chill. A couple of jays squealed and skirmished through the undraped apple-trees in the garden. This time, the word was with Mrs. Ashcroft, her elbows on the teatable, and her sick leg propped on a stool . . . .

‘Well I never! But what did your ’usband say to that?’ Mrs. Fettley asked, when the deep-toned recital halted.

‘’E said I might go where I pleased for all of ’im. But seein’ ’e was bedrid, I said I’d ’tend ’im out. ’E knowed I wouldn’t take no advantage of ’im in that state. ’E lasted eight or nine week. Then he was took with a seizure-like; an’ laid stone-still for days. Then ’e propped ’imself up abed an’ says: “You pray no man’ll ever deal with you like you’ve dealed with some.” “An’ you?” I says, for you know, Liz, what a rover ’e was. “It cuts both ways,” says ’e, “but I’m death-wise, an’ I can see what’s comin’ to you.” He died a-Sunday an’ was buried a-Thursday . . . An’ yet I’d set a heap by him—one time or—did I ever? ‘

‘You never told me that before,’ Mrs. Fettley ventured.

‘I’m payin’ ye for what ye told me just now. Him bein’ dead, I wrote up, sayin’ I was free for good, to that Mrs. Marshall in Lunnon—which gave me my first place as kitchen-maid—Lord, how long ago! She was well pleased, for they two was both gettin’ on, an’ I knowed their ways. You remember, Liz, I used to go to ’em in service between whiles, for years—when we wanted money, or — or my ’usband was away — on occasion.’

‘’E did get that six months at Chichester, didn’t ’e?’ Mrs. Fettley whispered. ‘We never rightly won to the bottom of it.’

‘’E’d ha’ got more, but the man didn’t die.’

‘’None o’ your doin’s, was it, Gra’?’

‘No! ’Twas the woman’s husband this time. An’ so, my man bein’ dead, I went back to them Marshall’s, as cook, to get me legs under a gentleman’s table again, and be called with a handle to me name. That was the year you shifted to Portsmouth.’

‘Cosham,’ Mrs. Fettley corrected. ‘There was a middlin’ lot o’ new buildin’ bein’ done there. My man went first, an’ got the room, an’ I follered.’

‘Well, then, I was a year—abouts in Lunnon, all at a breath, like, four meals a day an’ livin’ easy. Then, ’long towards autumn, they two went travellin’, like, to France; keepin’ me on, for they couldn’t do without me. I put the house to rights for the caretaker, an’ then I slipped down ’ere to me sister Bessie—me wages in me pockets, an’ all ’ands glad to be’old of me.’

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‘That would be when I was at Cosham,’ said Mrs. Fettley.

‘You know, Liz, there wasn’t no cheap-dog pride to folk, those days, no more than there was cinemas nor whisk-drives. Man or woman ’ud lay hold o’ any job that promised a shillin’ to the backside of it, didn’t they? I was all peaked up after Lunnon, an’ I thought the fresh airs ’ud serve me. So I took on at Smalldene, obligin’ with a hand at the early potato-liftin, stubbin’ hens, an’ such-like. They’d ha’ mocked me sore in my kitchen in Lunnon, to see me in men’s boots, an me petticoats all shorted.’

‘Did it bring ye any good?’ Mrs. Fettley asked.

‘’Twadn’t for that I went. You know, ’s’well’s me, that na’un happens to ye till it ’as ’appened. Your mind don’t warn ye before’and of the road ye’ve took, till you’re at the far eend of it. We’ve only a backwent view of our proceedin’s.’

‘’Oo was it? ‘

‘’Arry Mockler.’ Mrs. Ashcroft’s face puckered to the pain of her sick leg.

Mrs. Fettley gasped. ‘’Arry? Bert Mockler’s son! An’ I never guessed! ‘

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. ‘An’ I told myself—an’ I beleft it—that I wanted field-work.’

‘What did ye get out of it? ‘

‘The usuals. Everythin’ at first—worse than naught after. I had signs an’ warnings a-plenty, but I took no heed of ’em. For we was burnin’ rubbish one day, just when we’d come to know how ’twas with—with both of us. ’Twas early in the year for burnin’, an’ I said so. “No!” says he. “ The sooner dat old stuff’s off an’ done with,” ’e says, “the better.” ’Is face was harder’n rocks when he spoke. Then it come over me that I’d found me master, which I ’adn’t ever before. I’d allus owned ’em, like.’

‘Yes ! Yes ! They’re yourn or you’re theirn,’ the other sighed. ‘I like the right way best.’

‘I didn’t. But ’Arry did . . . ’Long then, it come time for me to go back to Lunnon. I couldn’t. I clean couldn’t! So, I took an’ tipped a dollop o’ scaldin’ water out o’ the copper one Monday mornin’ over me left ’and and arm. Dat stayed me where I was for another fortnight.’

‘Was it worth it?’ said Mrs. Fettley, looking at the silvery scar on the wrinkled fore-arm.

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. ‘An’ after that, we two made it up ’twixt us so’s ’e could come to Lunnon for a job in a liv’rystable not far from me. ’E got it. I’tended to that. There wadn’t no talk nowhere. His own mother never suspicioned how ’twas. He just slipped up to Lunnon, an’ there we abode that winter, not ’alf a mile ’tother from each.’

‘Ye paid ’is fare an’ all, though’; Mrs. Fettley spoke convincedly.

Again Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. ‘Dere wadn’t much I didn’t do for him. ’E was me master, an’—O God, help us!—we’d laugh over it walkin’ together after dark in them paved streets, an’ me corns fair wrenchin’ in me boots! I’d never been like that before. Ner he! Ner he!’

Mrs. Fettley clucked sympathetically.

‘An’ when did ye come to the eend?’ she asked.

‘When ’e paid it all back again, every penny. Then I knowed, but I wouldn’t suffer meself to know. “You’ve been mortal kind to me,” he says. “Kind!” I said. “’Twixt us?” But ’e kep’ all on tellin’ me ’ow kind I’d been an’ ’e’d never forget it all his days. I held it from off o’ me for three evenin’s, because I would not believe. Then ’e talked about not bein’ satisfied with ’is job in the stables, an’ the men there puttin’ tricks on ’im, an’ all they lies which a man tells when ’e’s leavin’ ye. I heard ’im out, neither ’elpin’ nor ’inderin’. At the last, I took off a fiddle brooch which he’d give me an’ I says: “Dat’ll do. I ain’t askin’ na’un’.” An’ I turned me round an’ walked off to me own sufferin’s. ’E didn’t make ’em worse. ’E didn’t come nor write after that. ’E slipped off ’ere back ’ome to ’is mother again.’

‘An’ ’ow often did ye look for ’en to come back?’ Mrs. Fettley demanded mercilessly.

‘More’n once—more’n once! Goin’ over the streets we’d used, I thought de very pave-stones ’ud shruck out under me feet.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Fettley. ‘I dunno but dat don’t ’urt as much as aught else. An’ dat was all ye got? ‘

‘No. ’Twadn’t. That’s the curious part, if you’ll believe it, Liz.’

‘I do. I lay you’re further off lyin’ now than in all your life, Gra’.’

‘I am . . . An’ I suffered, like I’d not wish my most arrantest enemies to. God’s Own Name! I went through the hoop that spring! One part of it was ’eddicks which I’d never known all me days before. Think o’ me with an ’eddick! But I come to be grateful for ’em. They kep’ me from thinkin’ . . .’

‘’Tis like a tooth,’ Mrs. Fettley commented. ‘It must rage an’ rugg till it tortures itself quiet on ye; an’ then—then there’s na’un left.’

‘I got enough lef’ to last me all my days on earth. It come about through our charwoman’s fiddle girl—Sophy Ellis was ’er name—all eyes an’ elbers an’ hunger. I used to give ’er vittles. Otherwhiles, I took no special notice of ’er, an’ a sight less, o’ course, when me trouble about ’Arry was on me. But—you know how fiddle maids first feel it sometimes—she come to be crazy-fond o’ me, pawin’ an’ cuddlin’ all whiles; an’ I ’adn’t the ’eart to beat ’er off . . . One afternoon, early in spring ’twas, ’er mother ’ad sent ’er round to scutchel up what vittles she could off of us. I was settin’ by the fire, me apern over me head, halfmad with the ’eddick, when she slips in. I reckon I was middlin’ short with ’er. “Lor’!” she says. “Is that all? I’ll take it off you in two-twos! “ I told her not to lay a finger on me, for I thought she’d want to stroke my forehead; an’—I ain’t that make. “I won’t tech ye,” she says, an’ slips out again. She ’adn’t been gone ten minutes ’fore me old ’eddick took off quick as bein’ kicked. So I went about my work. Prasin’ly, Sophy comes back, an’ creeps into my chair quiet as a mouse. ’Er eyes was deep in ’er ’ead an’ ’er face all drawed. I asked ’er what ’ad ’appened. “Nothin’,” she says. “On’y I’ve got it now.” “Got what?” I says. “ Your ’eddick,” she says, all hoarse an’ sticky-tipped. “I’ve took it on me.” “Nonsense,” I says, “it went of itself when you was out. Lay still an’ I’ll make ye a cup o’ tea.” “’Twon’t do no good,” she says, “till your time’s up. ’Ow long do your ’eddicks last?” “Don’t talk silly,” I says, “or I’ll send for the Doctor.” It looked to me like she might be hatchin’ de measles. “Oh, Mrs. Ashcroft,” she says, stretchin’ out ’er fiddle thin arms. “I do love ye.” There wasn’t any holdin’ agin that. I took ’er into me lap an’ made much of ’er. “Is it truly gone?” she says. “Yes,” I says, “an’ if ’twas you took it away, I’m truly grateful.” “’Twas me,” she says, layin’ ’er cheek to mine. “No one but me knows how.” An’ then she said she’d changed me ’eddick for me at a Wish ’Ouse.’

page 4

‘Whatt?’ Mrs. Fettley spoke sharply.

‘A Wish House. No! I’adn’t ’eard o’ such things, either. I couldn’t get it straight at first, but, puttin’ all together, I made out that a Wish ’Ouse ’ad to be a house which ’ad stood unlet an’ empty long enough for Some One, like, to come an’ in’abit there. She said a fiddle girl that she’d played with in the livery-stables where ‘Arty worked ’ad told ’er so. She said the girl ’ad belonged in a caravan that laid up, o’ winters, in Lunnon. Gipsy, I judge.’

‘Ooh! There’s no sayin’ what Gippos know, but I’ve never ’eard of a Wish ’Ouse, an’ I know—some things,’ said Mrs. Fettley.

‘Sophy said there was a Wish ’Ouse in Wadloes Road just a few streets off, on the way to our green-grocer’s. All you ’ad to do, she said, was to ring the bell an’ wish your wish through the slit o’ the letter-box. I asked ’er if the fairies give it ’er? “Don’t ye know,” she says, “there’s no fairies in a Wish ’Ouse? There’s on’y a Token.”’

‘Goo’ Lord A’mighty! Where did she come by that word?’ cried Mrs. Fettley; for a Token is a wraith of the dead or, worse still, of the living.

‘The caravan-girl ’ad told ’er, she said. Well, Liz, it troubled me to ’ear ’er, an’ lyin’ in me arms she must ha’ felt it. “That’s very kind o’ you,” I says, holdin’ ’er tight, “to wish me ’eddick away. But why didn’t ye ask somethin’ nice for yourself?” “You can’t do that,” she says. “All you’ll get at a Wish ’Ouse is leave to take some one else’s trouble. I’ve took Ma’s ’eddicks, when she’s been kind to me; but this is the first time I’ve been able to do aught for you. Oh, Mrs. Ashcroft, I do just—about love you.” An’ she goes on all like that. Liz, I tell you my ’air e’en a’most stood on end to ’ear ’er. I asked ’er what like a Token was. “I dunno,” she says, “but after you’ve ringed the bell, you’ll ’ear it run up from the basement, to the front door. Then say your wish,” she says, “an’ go away.” “The Token don’t open de door to ye, then?” I says. “Oh no,” she says. “You on’y ’ear gigglin’, like, be’ind the front door. Then you say you’ll take the trouble off of ’oo ever ’tis you’ve chose for your love; an’ yell get it,” she says. I didn’t ask no more—she was too ’ot an’ fevered. I made much of ’er till it come time to light de gas, an’ a fiddle after that, ’er ’eddick—mine, I suppose—took off, an’ she got down an’ played with the cat.’

‘Well, I never!’ said Mrs. Fettley. ‘Did—did ye foller it up, anyways?‘

‘She askt me to, but I wouldn’t ’ave no such dealin’s with a child.’

‘What did ye do, then?’

‘’Sat in me own room ’stid o’ the kitchen when me ’eddicks come on. But it lay at de back o’ me mind.’

‘’Twould. Did she tell ye more, ever?’

‘No. Besides what the Gippo girl ’ad told ’er, she knew naught, ’cept that the charm worked. An’, next after that—in May ’twas—I suffered the summer out in Lunnon. ’Twas hot an’ windy for weeks, an’ the streets stinkin’ o’ dried ’orsedung blowin’ from side to side an’ lyin’ level with the kerb. We don’t get that nowadays. I ’ad my ’ol’day just before hoppin’, an’ come down ’ere to stay with Bessie again. She noticed I’d lost flesh, an’ was all poochy under the eyes.’

‘Did ye see ‘Arry?”

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded. ‘The fourth—no, the fifth day. Wednesday ’twas. I knowed ’e was workin’ at Smalldene again. I asked ’is mother in the street, bold as brass. She ’adn’t room to say much, for Bessie—you know ’er tongue—was talkin’ full-clack. But that Wednesday, I was walkin’ with one o’ Bessie’s chillern hangin’ on me skirts, at de back o’ Chanter’s Tot. Prasin’ly, I felt ’e was be’ind me on the footpath, an’ I knowed by ’is tread ’e’d changed ’is nature. I slowed, an’ I heard ’im slow. Then I fussed a piece with the child, to force him past me, like. So ’e ’ad to come past. ’E just says “Good-evenin’,” and goes on, tryin’ to pull ’isself together.’

‘Drunk, was he?’ Mrs. Fettley asked.

‘Never! S’runk an’ wizen; ’is clothes ’angin’ on ’im like bags, an’ the back of ’is neck whiter’n chalk. ’Twas all I could do not to oppen my arms an’ cry after him. But I swallered me spittle till I was back ’ome again an’ the chillern abed. Then I says to Bessie, after supper, “What in de world’s come to ‘Arry Mockler?” Bessie told me ’e’d been a-Hospital for two months, ’long o’ cuttin’ ’is foot wid a spade, muckin’ out the old pond at Smalldene. There was poison in de dirt, an’ it rooshed up ’is leg, like, an’ come out all over him. ’E ’adn’t been back to ’is job—carterin’ at Smalldene—more’n a fortnight. She told me the Doctor said he’d go off, likely, with the November frostes; an’ ’is mother ’ad told ’er that ’e didn’t rightly eat nor sleep, an’ sweated ’imself into pools, no odds ’ow chill ’e lay. An’ spit terrible o’ mornin’s. “Dearie me,” I says. “But, mebbe, hoppin’ ’ll set ’im right again,” an’ I licked me thread-point an’ I fetched me needle’s eye up to it an’ I threads me needle under de lamp, steady as rocks. An’ dat night (me bed was in de wash-house) I cried an’ I cried. An’ you know, Liz—for you’ve been with me in my throes—it takes summat to make me cry.’

‘Yes; but Chile-bearin’ is on’y just pain,’ said Mrs. Fettley.

‘I come round by cock-crow, an’ dabbed cold tea on me eyes to take away the signs. Long towards nex’ evenin’—I was settin’ out to lay some flowers on me ’usband’s grave, for the look o’ the thing—I met ’Arry over against where the War Memorial is now. ’E was comin’ back from ’is ’orses, so ’e couldn’t not see me. I looked ’im all over, an’ “’Arry,” I says twix’ me teeth, “come back an’ rest-up in Lunnon.” “I won’t take it,” he says, “for I can give ye naught.” “I don’t ask it,” I says. “By God’s Own Name, I don’t ask na’un ! On’y come up an’ see a Lunnon doctor.” ’E lifts ’is two ’eavy eyes at me: “’Tis past that, Gra’,” ’e says. “I’ve but a few months left.” “’Arry!” I says. “My man!” I says. I couldn’t say no more. ’Twas all up in me throat. “Thank ye kindly, Gra’,” ’e says (but ’e never says “my woman”), an’ ’e went on upstreet an’ ’is mother—Oh, damn ’er!—she was watchin’ for ’im, an’ she shut de door be’ind ’im.’

Mrs. Fettley stretched an arm across the table, and made to finger Mrs. Ashcroft’s sleeve at the wrist, but the other moved it out of reach.

‘So I went on to the churchyard with my flowers, an’ I remembered my ’usband’s warnin’ that night he spoke. ’E was death-wise, an’ it ’ad ’appened as ’e said. But as I was settin’ down de jam-pot on the grave-mound, it come over me there was one thing I could do for ’Arry. Doctor or no Doctor, I thought I’d make a trial of it. So I did. Nex’ mornin’, a bill came down from our Lunnon green-grocer. Mrs. Marshall, she’d lef’ me petty cash for suchlike—o’ course—but I tole Bess ’twas for me to come an’ open the ’ouse. So I went up, afternoon train.’

‘An’—but I know you ’adn’t—’adn’t you no fear? ‘

‘What for? There was nothin’ front o’ me but my own shame an’ God’s croolty. I couldn’t ever get ’Arry—’ow could I? I knowed it must go on burnin’ till it burned me out.’

page 5

‘Aie!’ said Mrs. Fettley, reaching for the wrist again, and this time Mrs. Ashcroft permitted it.

‘Yit ’twas a comfort to know I could try this for ’im. So I went an’ I paid the green-grocer’s bill, an’ put ’is receipt in me hand-bag, an’ then I stepped round to Mrs. Ellis—our char-an’ got the ’ouse-keys an’ opened the ’ouse. First, I made me bed to come back to (God’s Own Name! Me bed to lie upon!). Nex’ I made me a cup o’ tea an’ sat down in the kitchen thinkin’, till ’long towards dusk. Terrible close, ’twas. Then I dressed me an’ went out with the receipt in me ’and-bag, feignin’ to study it for an address, like. Fourteen, Wadloes Road, was the place—a liddle basement-kitchen ’ouse, m a row of twenty-thirty such, an’ tiddy strips o’ walled garden in front—the paint off the front doors, an’ na’un done to na’un since ever so long. There wasn’t ’ardly no one in the streets ’cept the cats. ’Twas ’ot, too! I turned into the gate bold as brass; up de steps I went an’ I ringed the front-door bell. She pealed loud, like it do in an empty house. When she’d all ceased, I ’eard a cheer, like, pushed back on de floor o’ the kitchen. Then I ’eard feet on de kitchen-stairs, like it might ha’ been a heavy woman in slippers. They come up to de stairhead, acrost the hall—I ’eard the bare boards creak under ’em—an’ at de front door dey stopped. I stooped me to the letter-box slit, an’ I says: “Let me take everythin’ bad that’s in store for my man, ’Arry Mockler, for love’s sake.” Then, whatever it was ’tother side de door let its breath out, like, as if it ’ad been holdin’ it for to ’ear better.’

‘Nothin’ was said to ye?’ Mrs. Fettley demanded.

‘Na’un. She just breathed out—a sort of A-ah, like. Then the steps went back an’ downstairs to the kitchen—all draggy—an’ I heard the cheer drawed up again.’

‘An’ you abode on de doorstep, throughout all, Gra’? ‘

Mrs. Ashcroft nodded.

‘Then I went away, an’ a man passin’ says to me: “Didn’t you know that house was empty?” “No,” I says. “I must ha’ been give the wrong number.” An’ I went back to our ’ouse, an’ I went to bed; for I was fair flogged out. ’Twas too ’ot to sleep more’n snatches, so I walked me about, lyin’ down betweens, till crack o’ dawn. Then I went to the kitchen to make me a cup o’ tea, an’ I hitted meself just above the ankle on an old roastin’ jack o’ mine that Mrs. Ellis had moved out from the corner, her last cleanin’. An’ so—nex’ after that—I waited till the Marshalls come back o’ their holiday.’

‘Alone there? I’d ha’ thought you’d ’ad enough of empty houses,’ said Mrs. Fettley, horrified.

‘Oh, Mrs. Ellis an’ Sophy was runnin’ in an’ out soon’s I was back, an’ ’twixt us we cleaned de house again top-to-bottom. There’s allus a hand’s turn more to do in every house. An’ that’s ’ow ’twas with me that autumn an’ winter, in Lunnon.’

‘Then na’un hap—overtook ye for your doin’s? ‘

Mrs. Ashcroft smiled. ‘No. Not then. ’Long in November I sent Bessie ten shillin’s.’

‘You was allus free-’anded,’ Mrs. Fettley interrupted.

‘An’ I got what I paid for, with the rest o’ the news. She said the hoppin’ ’ad set ’im up wonderful. ’E’d ’ad six weeks of it, and now ’e was back again carterin’ at Smalldene. No odds to me ’ow it ’ad ’appened—’slong’s it ’ad. But I dunno as my ten shillin’s eased me much. ’Arry bein’ dead, like, ’e’d ha’ been mine, till Judgment. ’Arry bein’ alive, ’e’d like as not pick up with some woman middlin’ quick. I raged over that. Come spring, I ’ad somethin’ else to rage for. I’d growed a nasty little weepin’ boil, like, on me shin, just above the boot-top, that wouldn’t heal no shape. It made me sick to look at it, for I’m clean-fleshed by nature. Chop me all over with a spade, an’ I’d heal like turf. Then Mrs. Marshall she set ’er own doctor at me. ’E said I ought to ha’ come to him at first go-off, ’stead o’ drawn’ all manner o’ dyed stockm’s over it for months. ’E said I’d stood up too much to me work, for it was settin’ very close atop of a big swelled vein, like, behither the small o’ me ankle. “Slow come, slow go,” ’e says. “Lay your leg up on high an’ rest it,” he says, “an’ ’twill ease off. Don’t let it close up too soon. You’ve got a very fine leg, Mrs. Ashcroft,” ’e says. An’ he put wet dressin’s on it.’

‘’E done right.’ Mrs. Fettley spoke firmly. ‘Wet dressin’s to wet wounds. They draw de humours, same’s a lamp-wick draws de oil.’

‘That’s true. An’ Mrs. Marshall was allus at me to make me set down more, an’ dat nigh healed it up. An’ then after a while they packed me off down to Bessie’s to finish the cure; for I ain’t the sort to sit down when I ought to stand up. You was back in the village then, Liz.’

‘I was. I was, but—never did I guess!’

‘I didn’t desire ye to.’ Mrs. Ashcroft smiled. ‘I saw ’Arry once or twice in de street, wonnerful fleshed up an’ restored back. Then, one day I didn’t see ’im, an’ ’is mother told me one of ’is ’orses ’ad lashed out an’ caught ’im on the ’ip. So ’e was abed an’ middlin’ painful. An’ Bessie, she says to his mother, ’twas a pity ’Arry ’adn’t a woman of ’is own to take the nursin’ off ’er. And the old lady was mad! She told us that ’Arry ’ad never looked after any woman in ’is born days, an’ as long as she was atop the mowlds, she’d contrive for ’im till ’er two ’ands dropped off. So I knowed she’d do watch-dog for me, ’thout askin’ for bones.’

Mrs. Fettley rocked with small laughter.

‘That day,’ Mrs. Ashcroft went on, ‘I’d stood on me feet nigh all the time, watchin’ the doctor go in an’ out; for they thought it might be ’is ribs, too. That made my boil break again, issuin’ an’ weepin’. But it turned out ’twadn’t ribs at all, an’ ’Arry ’ad a good night. When I heard that, nex’ mornin’, I says to meself, “I won’t lay two an’ two together yit. I’ll keep me leg down a week, an’ see what comes of it.” It didn’t hurt me that day, to speak of—’seemed more to draw the strength out o’ me like—an’ ’Arry ’ad another good night. That made me persevere; but I didn’t dare lay two an’ two together till the week-end, an’ then, ’Arry come forth e’en a’most ’imself again—na’un hurt outside ner in of him. I nigh fell on me knees in de washhouse when Bessie was up-street. “I’ve got ye now, my man,” I says. “You’ll take your good from me ’thout knowin’ it till my life’s end. O God, send me long to live for ’Arry’s sake!” I says. An’ I dunno that didn’t still me ragin’s.’

‘For good?’ Mrs. Fettley asked.

‘They come back, plenty times, but, let be how ’twould, I knowed I was doin’ for ’im. I knowed it. I took an’ worked me pains on an’ off, like regulatin’ my own range, till I learned to ’ave ’em at my commandments. An’ that was funny, too. There was times, Liz, when my trouble ’ud all s’rink an’ dry up, like. First, I used to try an’ fetch it on again; bein’ fearful to leave ’Arry alone too long for anythin’ to lay ’old of. Prasin’ly I come to see that was a sign he’d do all right awhile, an’ so I saved myself’

‘’Ow long for?’ Mrs. Fettley asked, with deepest interest.

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‘I’ve gone de better part of a year onct or twice with na’un more to show than the liddle weepin’ core of it, like. All s’rinked up an’ dried off. Then he’d inflame up—for a warnin’—an’ I’d suffer it. When I couldn’t no more—an’ I ’ad to keep on goin’ with my Lunnon work—I’d lay me leg high on a cheer till it eased. Not too quick. I knowed by the feel of it, those times, dat ’Arry was in need. Then I’d send another five shillin’s to Bess, or somethin’ for the chillern, to find out if, mebbe, ’e’d took any hurt through my neglects. ’Twas so! Year in, year out, I worked it dat way, Liz, an’ ’e got ’is good from me ’thout knowin’—for years and years.’

‘But what did you get out of it, Gra’?’ Mrs. Fettley almost wailed. ‘Did ye see ’im reg’lar? ‘

‘Times—when I was ’ere on me ’ol’days. An’ more, now that I’m ’ere for good. But ’e’s never looked at me, ner any other woman ’cept ’is mother. ’Ow I used to watch an’ listen! So did she.’

‘Years an’ years!’ Mrs. Fettley repeated. ‘An’ where’s ’e workin’ at now?’

‘Oh, ’e’s give up carterin’ quite a while. He’s workin’ for one o’ them big tractorisin’ firms—plowin’ sometimes, an’ sometimes off with lorries—fur as Wales, I’ve ’eard. He comes ’ome to ’is mother ’tween whiles; but I don’t set eyes on him now, fer weeks on end. No odds! ’Is job keeps ’im from continuin’ in one stay anywheres.’

‘But just for de sake o’ sayin’ somethin’—s’pose ’Arry did get married?’ said Mrs. Fettley.

Mrs. Ashcroft drew her breath sharply between her still even and natural teeth. ‘Dat ain’t been required of me,’ she answered. ‘I reckon my pains ’ull be counted agin that. Don’t you, Liz?’

‘It ought to be, dearie. It ought to be.’

‘It do ’urt sometimes. You shall see it when Nurse comes. She thinks I don’t know it’s turned.’

Mrs. Fettley understood. Human nature seldom walks up to the word ‘cancer.’

‘Be ye certain sure, Gra’?’ she asked.

‘I was sure of it when old Mr. Marshall ’ad me up to ’is study an’ spoke a long piece about my faithful service. I’ve obliged ’em on an’ off for a goodish time, but not enough for a pension. But they give me a weekly ’lowance for life. I knew what that sinnified—as long as three years ago.

‘Dat don’t prove it, Gra’.’

‘To give fifteen bob a week to a woman ’oo’d live twenty year in the course o’ nature? It do!’

‘You’re mistook! You’re mistook!’ Mrs. Fettley insisted.

‘Liz, there’s no mistakin’ when the edges are all heaped up, like—same as a collar. You’ll see it. An’ I laid out Dora Wickwood, too. She ’ad it under the arm-pit, like.’

Mrs. Fettley considered awhile, and bowed her head in finality.

‘’Ow long d’you reckon ’twill allow ye, countin’ from now, dearie?’

‘Slow come, slow go. But if I don’t set eyes on ye ’fore next hoppin’, this’ll be good-bye, Liz.’

‘Dunno as I’ll be able to manage by then—not ’thout I have a liddle dog to lead me. For de chillern, dey won’t be troubled, an’—O Gra’! I’m blindin’ up—I’m blindin’ up!’

‘Oh, dat was why you didn’t more’n finger with your quilt-patches all this while! I was wonderin’ . . . But the pain do count, don’t ye think, Liz? The pain do count to keep ’Arry where I want ’im. Say it can’t be wasted, like.’

‘I’m sure of it—sure of it, dearie. You’ll ’ave your reward.’

‘I don’t want no more’n this—if de pain is taken into de reckonin’.’

‘’Twill be—’twill be, Gra’.’

There was a knock on the door.

‘That’s Nurse. She’s before ’er time,’ said Mrs. Ashcroft. ‘Open to ’er.’

The young lady entered briskly, all the bottles in her bag clicking. ‘Evenin’, Mrs. Ashcroft,’ she began. ‘I’ve come raound a little earlier than usual because of the Institute dance to-na-ite. You won’t ma-ind, will you? ,

‘Oh, no. Me dancin’ days are over.’ Mrs. Ashcroft was the self-contained domestic at once.

‘My old friend, Mrs. Fettley ’ere, has been settin’ talkin’ with me a while.’

‘I hope she ’asn’t been fatiguing you?’ said the Nurse a little frostily.

‘Quite the contrary. It ’as been a pleasure. Only—only—just at the end I felt a bit—a bit flogged out like.’

‘Yes, yes.’ The Nurse was on her knees already, with the washes to hand. ‘When old ladies get together they talk a deal too much, I’ve noticed.’

‘Mebbe we do,’ said Mrs. Fettley, rising. ‘So now I’ll make myself scarce.’

‘Look at it first, though,’ said Mrs. Ashcroft feebly. ‘I’d like ye to look at it.’

Mrs. Fettley looked, and shivered. Then she leaned over, and kissed Mrs. Ashcroft once on the waxy yellow forehead, and again on the faded grey eyes.

‘It do count, don’t it—de pain?’ The lips that still kept trace of their original moulding hardly more than breathed the words.

Mrs. Fettley kissed them and moved towards the door.

Wireless

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‘IT’S a funny thing, this Marconi business, isn’t it?’ said Mr. Shaynor, coughing heavily. ‘Nothing seems to make any difference, by what they tell me—storms, hills, or anything; but if that’s true we shall know before morning.’‘Of course it’s true,’ I answered, stepping behind the counter. ‘Where’s old Mr. Cashell?’‘He’s had to go to bed on account of his influenza. He said you’d very likely drop in.’

‘Where’s his nephew?’

‘Inside, getting the things ready. He told me that the last time they experimented they put the pole on the roof of one of the big hotels here, and the batteries electrified all the water-supply, and’—he giggled—‘the ladies got shocks when they took their baths.’

‘I never heard of that.’

‘The hotel wouldn’t exactly advertise it, would it? Just now, by what Mr. Cashell tells me, they’re trying to signal from here to Poole, and they’re using stronger batteries than ever. But, you see, he being the guvnor’s nephew and all that (and it will be in the papers too), it doesn’t matter how they electrify things in this house. Are you going to watch?’

‘Very much. I’ve never seen this game. Aren’t you going to bed?’

‘We don’t close till ten on Saturdays. There’s a good deal of influenza in town, too, and there’ll be a dozen prescriptions coming in before morning. I generally sleep in the chair here. It’s warmer than jumping out of bed every time. Bitter cold, isn’t it?’

‘Freezing hard. I’m sorry your cough’s worse.’

‘Thank you. I don’t mind cold so much. It’s this wind that fair cuts me to pieces.’ He coughed again hard and hackingly, as an old lady came in for ammoniated quinine. ‘We’ve just run out of it in bottles, madam,’ said Mr. Shaynor, returning to the professional tone, ‘but if you will wait two minutes, I’ll make it up for you, madam.’

I had used the shop for some time, and my acquaintance with the proprietor had ripened into friendship. It was Mr. Cashell who revealed to me the purpose and power of Apothecaries’ Hall what time a fellow-chemist had made an error in a prescription of mine, had lied to cover his sloth, and when error and lie were brought home to him had written vain letters.

‘A disgrace to our profession,’ said the thin, mild-eyed man, hotly, after studying the evidence. ‘You couldn’t do a better service to the profession than report him to Apothecaries’ Hall.’

I did so, not knowing what djinns I should evoke; and the result was such an apology as one might make who had spent a night on the rack.

I conceived great respect for Apothecaries’ Hall, and esteem for Mr. Cashell, a zealous craftsman who magnified his calling. Until Mr. Shaynor came down from the North his assistants had by no means agreed with Mr. Cashell. ‘They forget,’ said he, ‘that, first and foremost, the compounder is a medicine-man. On him depends the physician’s reputation. He holds it literally in the hollow of his hand, Sir.’

Mr. Shaynor’s manners had not, perhaps, the polish of the grocery and Italian warehouse next door, but he knew and loved his dispensary work in every detail. For relaxation he seemed to go no farther afield than the romance of drugs—their discovery, preparation, packing, and export—but it led him to the ends of the earth, and on this subject, and the Pharmaceutical Formulary, and Nicholas Culpepper, most confident of physicians, we met.

Little by little I grew to know something of his beginnings and his hopes—of his mother, who had been a school-teacher in one of the northern counties, and of his red-headed father, a small job-master at Kirby Moors, who died when he was a child; of the examinations he had passed and of their exceeding and increasing difficulty; of his dreams of a shop in London; of his hate for the price-cutting Co-operative stores; and, most interesting, of his mental attitude towards customers.

‘There’s a way you get into,’ he told me, ‘of serving them carefully, and I hope, politely, without stopping your own thinking. I’ve been reading Christy’s New Commercial Plants all this autumn, and that needs keeping your mind on it, I can tell you. So long as it isn’t a prescription, of course, I can carry as much as half a page of Christy in my head, and at the same time I could sell out all that window twice over, and not a penny wrong at the end. As to prescriptions, I think I could make up the general run of ’em in my sleep, almost.’

For reasons of my own, I was deeply interested in Marconi experiments at their outset in England; and it was of a piece with Mr. Cashell’s unvarying thoughtfulness that, when his nephew the electrician appropriated the house for a long-range installation, he should, as I have said, invite me to see the result.

The old lady went away with her medicine, and Mr. Shaynor and I stamped on the tiled floor behind the counter to keep ourselves warm. The shop, by the light of the many electrics, looked like a Paris-diamond mine, for Mr. Cashell believed in all the ritual of his craft. Three superb glass jars—red, green, and blue—of the sort that led Rosamond to parting with her shoes—blazed in the broad plate-glass windows, and there was a confused smell of orris, Kodak films, vulcanite, tooth-powder, sachets, and almond-cream in the air. Mr. Shaynor fed the dispensary stove, and we sucked cayenne-pepper jujubes and menthol lozenges. The brutal east wind had cleared the streets, and the few passers-by were muffled to their puckered eyes. In the Italian warehouse next door some gay feathered birds and game, hung upon hooks, sagged to the wind across the left edge of our window-frame.

‘They ought to take these poultry in—all knocked about like that,’ said Mr. Shaynor. ‘Doesn’t it make you feel fair perishing? See that old hare! The wind’s nearly blowing the fur off him.’

I saw the belly-fur of the dead beast blown apart in ridges and streaks as the wind caught it, showing bluish skin underneath. ‘Bitter cold,’ said Mr. Shaynor, shuddering. ‘Fancy going out on a night like this! Oh, here’s young Mr. Cashell.’

The door of the inner office behind the dispensary opened, and an energetic, spade-bearded man stepped forth, rubbing his hands.

‘I want a bit of tin-foil, Shaynor,’ he said. ‘Good-evening. My uncle told me you might be coming.’ This to me, as I began the first of a hundred questions.

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‘I’ve everything in order,’ he replied. ‘We’re only waiting until Poole calls us up. Excuse me a minute. You can come in whenever you like—but I’d better be with the instruments. Give me that tin-foil. Thanks.’

While we were talking, a girl—evidently no customer—had come into the shop, and the face and bearing of Mr. Shaynor changed. She leaned confidently across the counter.

‘But I can’t,’ I heard him whisper uneasily—the flush on his cheek was dull red, and his eyes shone like a drugged moth’s. ‘I can’t. I tell you I’m alone in the place.’

‘No, you aren’t. Who’s that? Let him look after it for half an hour. A brisk walk will do you good. Ah, come now, John.’

‘But he isn’t——’

‘I don’t care. I want you to; we’ll only go round by St. Agnes’. If you don’t——’

He crossed to where I stood in the shadow of the dispensary counter, and began some sort of broken apology about a lady-friend.

‘Yes,’ she interrupted. ‘You take the shop for half an hour—to oblige me, won’t you?’

She had a singularly rich and promising voice that well matched her outline.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it—but you’d better wrap yourself up, Mr. Shaynor.’

‘Oh, a brisk walk ought to help me. We’re only going round by the church.’ I heard him cough grievously as they went out together.

I refilled the stove, and, after reckless expenditure of Mr. Cashell’s coal, drove some warmth into the shop. I explored many of the glass-knobbed drawers that lined the walls, tasted some disconcerting drugs, and, by the aid of a few cardamoms, ground ginger, chloric-ether, and dilute alcohol, manufactured a new and wildish drink, of which I bore a glassful to young Mr. Cashell, busy in the back office. He laughed shortly when I told him that Mr. Shaynor had stepped out—but a frail coil of wire held all his attention, and he had no word for me bewildered among the batteries and rods. The noise of the sea on the beach began to make itself heard as the traffic in the street ceased. Then briefly, but very lucidly, he gave me the names and uses of the mechanism that crowded the tables and the floor.

‘When do you expect to get the message from Poole?’ I demanded, sipping my liquor out of a graduated glass.

‘About midnight, if everything is in order. We’ve got our installation-pole fixed to the roof of the house. I shouldn’t advise you to turn on a tap or anything to-night. We’ve connected up with the plumbing, and all the water will be electrified.’ He repeated to me the history of the agitated ladies at the hotel at the time of the first installation.

‘But what is it?’ I asked. ‘Electricity is out of my beat altogether.’

‘Ah, if you knew that you’d know something nobody knows. It’s just It—what we call Electricity, but the magic—the manifestations—the Hertzian waves—are all revealed by this. The coherer, we call it.’

He picked up a glass tube not much thicker than a thermometer, in which, almost touching, were two tiny silver plugs, and between them an infinitesimal pinch of metallic dust. ‘That’s all,’ he said, proudly, as though himself responsible for the wonder. ‘That is the thing that will reveal to us the Powers—whatever the Powers may be—at work—through space—a long distance away.’

Just then Mr. Shaynor returned alone and stood coughing his heart out on the mat.

‘Serves you right for being such a fool,’ said young Mr. Cashell, as annoyed as myself at the interruption. ‘Never mind—we’ve all the night before us to see wonders.’

Shaynor clutched the counter, his handkerchief to his lips. When he brought it away I saw two bright red stains.

‘I—I’ve got a bit of a rasped throat from smoking cigarettes,’ he panted. ‘I think I’ll try a cubeb.’

‘Better take some of this. I’ve been compounding while you’ve been away.’ I handed him the brew.

‘’Twon’t make me drunk, will it? I’m almost a teetotaller. My word! That’s grateful and comforting.’

He set down the empty glass to cough afresh.

‘Brr! But it was cold out there! I shouldn’t care to be lying in my grave a night like this. Don’t you ever have a sore throat from smoking?’ He pocketed the handkerchief after a furtive peep.

‘Oh, yes, sometimes,’ I replied, wondering, while I spoke, into what agonies of terror I should fall if ever I saw those bright-red danger-signals under my nose. Young Mr. Cashell among the batteries coughed slightly to show that he was quite ready to continue his scientific explanations, but I was thinking still of the girl with the rich voice and the significantly cut mouth, at whose command I had taken charge of the shop. It flashed across me that she distantly resembled the seductive shape on a gold-framed toilet-water advertisement whose charms were unholily heightened by the glare from the red bottle in the window. Turning to make sure, I saw Mr. Shaynor’s eyes bent in the same direction, and by instinct recognised that the flamboyant thing was to him a shrine. ‘What do you take for your—cough?’ I asked.

‘Well, I’m the wrong side of the counter to believe much in patent medicines. But there are asthma cigarettes and there are pastilles. To tell you the truth, if you don’t object to the smell, which is very like incense, I believe, though I’m not a Roman Catholic, Blaudett’s Cathedral Pastilles relieve me as much as anything.’

‘Let’s try.’ I had never raided a chemist’s shop before, so I was thorough. We unearthed the pastilles—brown, gummy cones of benzoin—and set them alight under the toilet-water advertisement, where they fumed in thin blue spirals.

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‘Of course,’ said Mr. Shaynor, to my question, ‘what one uses in the shop for one’s self comes out of one’s pocket. Why, stock-taking in our business is nearly the same as with jewellers—and I can’t say more than that. But one gets them’—he pointed to the pastille-box—‘at trade prices.’ Evidently the censing of the gay, seven-tinted wench with the teeth was an established ritual which cost something.

‘And when do we shut up shop?’

‘We stay like this all night. The guv—old Mr. Cashell—doesn’t believe in locks and shutters as compared with electric light. Besides, it brings trade. I’ll just sit here in the chair by the stove and write a letter, if you don’t mind. Electricity isn’t my prescription.’

The energetic young Mr. Cashell snorted within, and Shaynor settled himself up in his chair over which he had thrown a staring red, black, and yellow Austrian jute blanket, rather like a table-cover. I cast about, amid patent-medicine pamphlets, for something to read, but finding little, returned to the manufacture of the new drink. The Italian warehouse took down its game and went to bed. Across the street blank shutters flung back the gaslight in cold smears; the dried pavement seemed to rough up in goose-flesh under the scouring of the savage wind, and we could hear, long ere he passed, the policeman flapping his arms to keep himself warm. Within, the flavours of cardamoms and chloric-ether disputed those of the pastilles and a score of drugs and perfume and soap scents. Our electric lights, set low down in the windows before the tun-bellied Rosamond jars, flung inward three monstrous daubs of red, blue, and green, that broke into kaleidoscopic lights on the faceted knobs of the drug-drawers, the cut-glass scent flagons, and the bulbs of the sparklet bottles. They flushed the white-tiled floor in gorgeous patches; splashed along the nickel-silver counter-rails, and turned the polished mahogany counter-panels to the likeness of intricate grained marbles—slabs of porphyry and malachite. Mr. Shaynor unlocked a drawer, and ere he began to write, took out a meagre bundle of letters. From my place by the stove, I could see the scalloped edges of the paper with a flaring monogram m the corner and could even smell the reek of chypre. At each page he turned toward the toilet-water lady of the advertisement and devoured her with over-luminous eyes. He had drawn the Austrian blanket over his shoulders, and among those warring lights he looked more than ever the incarnation of a drugged moth—a tiger-moth as I thought.

He put his letter into an envelope, stamped it with stiff mechanical movements, and dropped it in the drawer. Then I became aware of the silence of a great city asleep—the silence that underlay the even voice of the breakers along the sea-front—a thick, tingling quiet of warm life stilled down for its appointed time, and unconsciously I moved about the glittering shop as one moves in a sick-room. Young Mr. Cashell was adjusting some wire that crackled from time to time with the tense, knuckle-stretching sound of the electric spark. Upstairs, where a door shut and opened swiftly, I could hear his uncle coughing abed.

‘Here,’ I said, when the drink was properly warmed, ‘take some of this, Mr. Shaynor.’

He jerked in his chair with a start and a wrench, and held out his hand for the glass. The mixture, of a rich port-wine colour, frothed at the top.

‘It looks,’ he said, suddenly, ‘it looks—those bubbles—like a string of pearls winking at you—rather like the pearls round that young lady’s neck.’ He turned again to the advertisement where the female in the dove-coloured corset had seen fit to put on all her pearls before she cleaned her teeth.

‘Not bad, is it?’ I said.

‘Eh?’

He rolled his eyes heavily full on me, and, as I stared, I beheld all meaning and consciousness die out of the swiftly dilating pupils. His figure lost its stark rigidity, softened into the chair, and, chin on chest, hands dropped before him, he rested open-eyed, absolutely still.

‘I’m afraid I’ve rather cooked Shaynor’s goose,’ I said, bearing the fresh drink to young Mr. Cashell. ‘Perhaps it was the chloric-ether.’

‘Oh, he’s all right.’ The spade-bearded man glanced at him pityingly. ‘Consumptives go off in those sort of dozes very often. It’s exhaustion . . . I don’t wonder. I daresay the liquor will do him good. It’s grand stuff.’ He finished his share appreciatively. ‘well, as I was saying—before he interrupted—about this little coherer. The pinch of dust, you see, is nickelfilings. The Hertzian waves, you see, come out of space from the station that despatches ’em, and all these little particles are attracted together—cohere, we call it—for just so long as the current passes through them. Now, its important to remember that the current is an induced current. There are a good many kinds of induction——’

‘Yes, but what is induction?’

‘That’s rather hard to explain untechnically. But the long and the short of it is that when a current of electricity passes through a wire there’s a lot of magnetism present round that wire; and if you put another wire parallel to, and within what we call its magnetic field—why, then the second wire will also become charged with electricity.’

‘On its own account?’

‘On its own account.’

‘Then let’s see if I’ve got it correctly. Miles off, at Poole, or wherever it is——’

‘It will be anywhere in ten years.’

‘You’ve got a charged wire——’

‘Charged with Hertzian waves which vibrate, say two hundred and thirty million times a second.’ Mr. Cashell snaked his forefinger rapidly through the air.

‘All right—a charged wire at Poole, giving out these waves into space. Then this wire of yours sticking out into space—on the roof of the house—in some mysterious way gets charged with those waves from Poole——’

‘Or anywhere—it only happens to be Poole to-night.’

‘And those waves set the coherer at work, just like an ordinary telegraph-office ticker?’

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‘No! That’s where so many people make the mistake. The Hertzian waves wouldn’t be strong enough to work a great heavy Morse instrument like ours. They can only just make that dust cohere, and while it coheres (a little while for a dot and a longer while for a dash) the current from this battery—the home battery’—he laid his hand on the thing—‘can get through to the Morse printing-machine to record the dot or dash. Let me make it clearer. Do you know anything about steam?’

‘Very little. But go on.’

‘Well, the coherer is like a steam-valve. Any child can open a valve and start a steamer’s engines, because a turn of the hand lets in the main steam, doesn’t it? Now, this home battery here ready to print is the main steam. The coherer is the valve, always ready to be turned on. The Hertzian wave is the child’s hand that turns it.’

‘I see. That’s marvellous.’

‘Marvellous, isn’t it? And, remember, we’re only at the beginning. There’s nothing we shan’t be able to do in ten years. I want to live—my God, how I want to live, and see it develop!’ He looked through the door at Shaynor breathing lightly in his chair. ‘Poor beast! And he wants to keep company with Fanny Brand.’

‘Fanny who?’ I said, for the name struck an obscurely familiar chord in my brain—something connected with a stained handkerchief, and the word ‘arterial.’

‘Fanny Brand—the girl you kept shop for.’ He laughed. ‘That’s all I know about her, and for the life of me I can’t see what Shaynor sees in her, or she in him.’

‘Can’t you see what he sees in her?’ I insisted.

‘Oh, yes, if that’s what you mean. She’s a great, big, fat lump of a girl, and so on. I suppose that’s why he’s so crazy after her. She isn’t his sort. Well, it doesn’t matter. My uncle says he’s bound to die before the year’s out. Your drink’s given him a good sleep, at any rate.’ Young Mr. Cashell could not catch Mr. Shaynor’s face, which was half turned to the advertisement.

I stoked the stove anew, for the room was growing cold, and lighted another pastille. Mr. Shaynor in his chair, never moving, looked through and over me with eyes as wide and lustreless as those of a dead hare.

‘Poole’s late,’ said young Mr. Cashell, when I stepped back. ‘I’ll just send them a call.’

He pressed a key in the semi-darkness, and with a rending crackle there leaped between two brass knobs a spark, streams of sparks, and sparks again.

‘Grand, isn’t it? That’s the Power—our unknown Power—kicking and fighting to be let loose,’ said young Mr. Cashell. ‘There she goes—kick—kick—kick into space. I never get over the strangeness of it when I work a sending-machine—waves going into space, you know. T.R. is our call. Poole ought to answer with L.L.L.’

We waited two, three, five minutes. In that silence, of which the boom of the tide was an orderly part, I caught the clear ‘kiss—kiss—kiss’ of the halliards on the roof, as they were blown against the installation-pole.

‘Poole is not ready. I’ll stay here and call you when he is.’

I returned to the shop, and set down my glass an a marble slab with a careless clink. As I did so, Shaynor rose to his feet, his eyes fixed once more on the advertisement, where the young woman bathed in the light from the red jar simpered pinkly over her pearls. His lips moved without cessation. I stepped nearer to listen. ‘And threw—and threw—and threw,’ he repeated; his face all sharp with some inexplicable agony.

I moved forward astonished. But it was then he found words—delivered roundly and clearly. These:

And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s young breast.

The trouble passed off his countenance, and he returned lightly to his place, rubbing his hands.

It had never occurred to me, though we had many times discussed reading and prize-competitions as a diversion, that Mr, Shaynor ever read Keats, or could quote him at all appositely. There was, after all, a certain stained-glass effect of light on the high bosom of the highly-polished picture which might, by stretch of fancy, suggest, as a vile chromo recalls some incomparable canvas, the line he had spoken. Night, my drink, and solitude were evidently turning Mr. Shaynor into a poet. He sat down again and wrote swiftly on his villainous note-paper, his lips quivering.

I shut the door into the inner office and moved up behind him. He made no sign that he saw or heard. I looked over his shoulder, and read, amid half-formed words, sentences, and wild scratches:—

——Very cold it was. Very cold
The hare—the hare—the hare—
The birds——

He raised his head sharply, and frowned toward the blank shutters of the poulterer’s shop where they jutted out against our window. Then one clear line came:—

The bare, in spite of fur, was very cold.

The head, moving machine-like, turned right to the advertisement where the Blaudett’s Cathedral pastille reeked abominably. He grunted, and went on:—

Incense in a censer——
Before her darling picture framed in gold—
Maiden’s picture—angel’s portrait—

‘Hsh!’ said Mr. Cashell guardedly from the inner office, as though in the presence of spirits. ‘There’s something coming through from somewhere; but it isn’t Poole.’ I heard the crackle of sparks as he depressed the keys of the transmitter. In my own brain, too, something crackled, or it might have been the hair on my head. Then I heard my own voice, in a harsh whisper: ‘Mr. Cashell, there is something coming through here, too. Leave me alone till I tell you.’

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‘But I thought you’d come to see this wonderful thing—Sir,’ indignantly at the end.

‘Leave me alone till I tell you. Be quiet.’

I watched—I waited. Under the blue-veined hand—the dry hand of the consumptive—came away clear, without erasure:—

And my weak spirit fails
To think how the dead must freeze—

he shivered as he wrote—

Beneath the churchyard mould.

Then he stopped, laid the pen down, and leaned back.

For an instant, that was half an eternity, the shop spun before me in a rainbow-tinted whirl, in and through which my own soul most dispassionately considered my own soul as that fought with an over-mastering fear. Then I smelt the strong smell of cigarettes from Mr. Shaynor’s clothing, and heard, as though it had been the rending of trumpets, the rattle of his breathing. I was still in my place of observation, much as one would watch a rifle-shot at the butts, halfbent, hands on my knees, and head within a few inches of the black, red, and yellow blanket of his shoulder. I was whispering encouragement, evidently to my other self, sounding sentences, such as men pronounce in dreams.

‘If he has read Keats, it proves nothing. If he hasn’t—like causes must beget like effects. There is no escape from this law. You ought to be grateful that you know “St. Agnes’ Eve” without the book; because, given the circumstances, such as Fanny Brand, who is the key of the enigma, and approximately represents the latitude and longitude of Fanny Brawne; allowing also for the bright red colour of the arterial blood upon the handkerchief, which was just what you were puzzling over in the shop just now; and counting the effect of the professional environment, here almost perfectly duplicated—the result is logical and inevitable. As inevitable as induction.’

Still, the other half of my soul refused to be comforted. It was cowering in some minute and inadequate corner—at an immense distance.

Hereafter, I found myself one person again, my hands still gripping my knees, and my eyes glued on the page before Mr. Shaynor. As dreamers accept and explain the upheaval of landscapes and the resurrection of the dead, with excerpts from the evening hymn or the multiplication-table, so I had accepted the facts, whatever they might be, that I should witness, and had devised a theory, sane and plausible to my mind, that explained them all. Nay, I was even in advance of my facts, walking hurriedly before them, assured that they would fit my theory. And all that I now recall of that epoch-making theory are the lofty words: ‘If he has read Keats it’s the chloric-ether. If he hasn’t, it’s the identical bacillus, or Hertzian wave of tuberculosis, plus Fanny Brand and the professional status which, in conjunction with the main-stream of subconscious thought common to all mankind, has thrown up temporarily an induced Keats.’

Mr. Shaynor returned to his work, erasing and rewriting as before with swiftness. Two or three blank pages he tossed aside. Then he wrote, muttering:

The little smoke of a candle that goes out.

‘No,’ he muttered. ‘Little smoke—little smoke—little smoke. What else?’ He thrust his chin forward toward the advertisement, whereunder the last of the Blaudett’s Cathedral pastilles fumed in its holder. ‘Ah!’ Then with relief:—

The little smoke that dies in moonlight cold.

Evidently he was snared by the rhymes of his first verse, for he wrote and rewrote ‘gold—cold—mould’ many times. Again he sought inspiration from the advertisement, and set down, without erasure, the line I had overheard:—

And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s young breast.

As I remembered the original it is ‘fair’—a trite word—instead of ‘young,’ and I found myself nodding approval, though I admitted that the attempt to reproduce ‘Its little smoke in pallid moonlight died’ was a failure.

Followed without a break ten or fifteen lines of bald prose—the naked soul’s confession of its physical yearning for its beloved—unclean as we count uncleanliness; unwholesome, but human exceedingly; the raw material, so it seemed to me in that hour and in that place, whence Keats wove the twenty-sixth, seventh, and eighth stanzas of his poem. Shame I had none in overseeing this revelation; and my fear had gone with the smoke of the pastille.

‘That’s it,’ I murmured. ‘That’s how it’s blocked out. Go on! Ink it in, man. Ink it in!’

Mr. Shaynor returned to broken verse wherein ‘loveliness’ was made to rhyme with a desire to look upon ‘her empty dress.’ He picked up a fold of the gay, soft blanket, spread it over one hand, caressed it with infinite tenderness, thought, muttered, traced some snatches which I could not decipher, shut his eyes drowsily, shook his head, and dropped the stuff. Here I found myself at fault, for I could not then see (as I do now) in what manner a red, black, and yellow Austrian blanket coloured his dreams.

In a few minutes he laid aside his pen, and, chin on hand, considered the shop with thoughtful and intelligent eyes. He threw down the blanket, rose, passed along a line of drug-drawers, and read the names on the labels aloud. Returning, he took from his desk Christy’s New Commercial Plants and the old Culpepper that I had given him, opened and laid them side by side with a clerky air, all trace of passion gone from his face, read first in one and then in the other, and paused with pen behind his ear.

‘What wonder of Heaven’s coming now?’ I thought.

‘Manna—manna—manna,’ he said at last, under wrinkled brows. ‘That’s what I wanted. Good! Now then! Now then! Good! Good! Oh, by God, that’s good!’ His voice rose and he spoke rightly and fully without a falter:—

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Candied apple, quince and plum and gourd,
With jellies smoother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates in argosy transferred
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon.

He repeated it once more, using ‘blander’ for ‘smoother’ in the second line; then wrote it down without erasure, but this time (my set eyes missed no stroke of any word) he substituted ‘soother’ for his atrocious second thought, so that it came away under his hand as it is written in the book—as it is written in the book.

A wind went shouting down the street, and on the heels of the wind followed a spurt and rattle of rain.

After a smiling pause—and good right had he to smile—he began anew, always tossing the last sheet over his shoulder:—

The sharp rain falling on the window-pane.
Rattling sleet—the wind-blown sleet.

Then prose: ‘It is very cold of mornings when the wind brings rain and sleet with it. I heard the sleet on the window-pane outside, and thought of you, my darling. I am always thinking of you. I wish we could both run away like two lovers into the storm and get that little cottage by the sea which we are always thinking about, my own dear darling. We could sit and watch the sea beneath our windows. It would be a fairyland all of our own—a fairy sea—a fairy sea . . . .’

He stopped, raised his head, and listened. The steady drone of the Channel along the sea-front that had borne us company so long leaped up a note to the sudden fuller surge that signals the change from ebb to flood. It beat in like the change of step throughout an army—this renewed pulse of the sea—and filled our ears till they, accepting it, marked it no longer.

A fairyland for you and me
Across the foam-beyond . . .
A magic foam, a perilous sea.

He grunted again with effort and bit his underlip. My throat dried, but I dared not gulp to moisten it lest I should break the spell that was drawing him nearer and nearer to the highwater mark but two of the sons of Adam have reached. Remember that in all the millions permitted there are no more than five—five little lines—of which one can say: ‘These are the pure Magic. These are the clear Vision. The rest is only poetry.’ And Mr. Shaynor was playing hot and cold with two of them!

I vowed no unconscious thought of mine should influence the blindfold soul, and pinned myself desperately to the other three, repeating and re-repeating:—

A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover.

But though I believed my brain thus occupied, my every sense hung upon the writing under the dry, bony hand, all brown-fingered with chemicals and cigarette-smoke.

Our windows fronting on the dangerous foam,

(he wrote, after long, irresolute snatches), and then—

Our open casements facing desolate seas
Forlorn—forlorn—

Here again his face grew peaked and anxious with that sense of loss I had first seen when the Power snatched him. But this time the agony was tenfold keener. As I watched it mounted like mercury in the tube. It lighted his face from within till I thought the visibly scourged soul must leap forth naked between his jaws, unable to endure. A drop of sweat trickled from my forehead down my nose and splashed on the back of my hand.

Our windows facing on the desolate seas
And pearly foam of magic fairyland—

‘Not yet—not yet,’ he muttered, ‘wait a minute. Please wait a minute. I shall get it then—

Our magic windows fronting on the sea,
The dangerous foam of desolate seas . . .
For aye.

Ouh, my God!’

From head to heel he shook—shook from the marrow of his bones outwards—then leaped to his feet with raised arms, and slid the chair screeching across the tiled floor where it struck the drawers behind and fell with ajar. Mechanically, I stooped to recover it.

As I rose, Mr. Shaynor was stretching and yawning at leisure.

‘I’ve had a bit of a doze,’ he said. ‘How did I come to knock the chair over? You look rather——’

‘The chair startled me,’ I answered. ‘It was so sudden in this quiet.’

Young Mr. Cashell behind his shut door was offendedly silent.

‘I suppose I must have been dreaming,’ said Mr. Shaynor.

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‘I suppose you must,’ I said. ‘Talking of dreams—I—I noticed you writing—before——’

He flushed consciously.

‘I meant to ask you if you’ve ever read anything written by a man called Keats.’

‘Oh! I haven’t much time to read poetry, and I can’t say that I remember the name exactly. Is he a popular writer?’

‘Middling. I thought you might know him because he’s the only poet who was ever a druggist. And he’s rather what’s called the lover’s poet.’

‘Indeed. I must dip into him. What did he write about?’

‘A lot of things. Here’s a sample that may interest you.’

Then and there, carefully, I repeated the verse he had twice spoken and once written not ten minutes ago.

‘Ah! Anybody could see he was a druggist from that line about the tinctures and syrups. It’s a fine tribute to our profession.’

‘I don’t know,’ said young Mr. Cashell, with icy politeness, opening the door one half-inch, ‘if you still happen to be interested in our trifling experiments. But, should such be the case——’

I drew him aside, whispering, ‘Shaynor seemed going off into some sort of fit when I spoke to you just now. I thought, even at the risk of being rude, it wouldn’t do to take you off your instruments just as the call was coming through. Don’t you see?’

‘Granted—granted as soon as asked,’ he said, unbending. ‘I did think it a shade odd at the time. So that was why he knocked the chair down?’

‘I hope I haven’t missed anything,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid I can’t say that, but you’re just in time for the end of a rather curious performance. You can come in too, Mr. Shaynor. Listen, while I read it off’.’

The Morse instrument was ticking furiously. Mr. Cashell interpreted: ‘“ K.K.V. Can make nothing of your signals.”’ A pause. ‘“ M.M.V. M.M.V. Signals unintelligible. Purpose anchor Sandown Bay. Examine instruments to-morrow.” Do you know what that means? It’s a couple of men-o’-war working Marconi signals off the Isle of Wight. They are trying to talk to each other. Neither can read the other’s messages, but all their messages are being taken in by our receiver here. They’ve been going on for ever so long. I wish you could have heard it.’

‘How wonderful!’ I said. ‘Do you mean we’re overhearing Portsmouth ships trying to talk to each other—that we’re eavesdropping across half South England?’

‘Just that. Their transmitters are all right, but their receivers are out of order, so they only get a dot here and a dash there. Nothing clear.’

‘Why is that?’

‘God knows—and Science will know tomorrow. Perhaps the induction is faulty; perhaps the receivers aren’t tuned to receive dust the number of vibrations per second that the transmitter sends. Only a word here and there. Just enough to tantalise.’

Again the Morse sprang to life.

‘That’s one of ’em complaining now. Listen “Disheartening—most disheartening.” It’s quite pathetic. Have you ever seen a spiritualistic stance? It reminds me of that sometimes—odds and ends of messages coming out of nowhere—a word here and there—no good at all.’

‘But mediums are all impostors,’ said Mr. Shaynor, in the doorway, lighting an asthma-cigarette. ‘They only do it for the money they can make. I’ve seen ’em.’

‘Here’s Poole, at last—clear as a bell. L.L.I,. Now we shan’t be long.’ Mr. Cashell rattled the keys merrily. ‘Anything you’d like to tell ’em?’

No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I’ll go home and get to bed. I’m feeling a little tired.’

Winning the Victoria Cross

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THE HISTORY of the Victoria Cross has been told so often that it is only necessary to say that the Order was created by Queen Victoria on January 29th, 1856, in the year of the peace with Russia, when the new racing Cunard paddle-steamer Persia of three thousand tons was making thirteen knots between England and America, and all the world wondered at the advance of civilization and progress. Any rank of the English Army, Navy, Reserve or Volunteer forces, from a duke to a cook, can wear on his left breast the little ugly bronze Maltese cross with the crowned lion atop and the inscription “For Valour” below, if he has only “performed some single act of valour or devotion to his country, in the presence of the enemy.” Nothing else makes any difference; for it is explicitly laid down in the warrant that “neither rank, nor long service, nor wounds, nor any other circumstance whatsoever, save the merit of conspicuous bravery, shall be held to establish a sufficient claim to this Order.”

There are many kinds of bravery, and if one looks through the records of the four hundred and eleven men, living and dead, that have held the Victoria Cross before the Great War, one finds instances of every imaginable variety of heroism.

There is bravery in the early morning, when it takes great courage even to leave warm blankets, let alone walk into dirt, cold and death; on foot and on horse; empty or fed; sick or well; coolness of brain that thinks out a plan at dawn and holds to it all through the long, murderous day bravery of the mind that makes the jerking nerves hold still and do nothing except show a good example ; sheer reckless strength that hacks through a crowd of amazed men and comes out grinning on the other side; enduring spirit that wears through a long siege, never losing heart or manners or temper; quick, flashing bravery that heaves a lighted shell overboard or rushes the stockade while others are gaping at it; and the calculated craftsmanship that camps alone before the angry rifle-pit or shell-hole, and cleanly and methodically wipes out every soul in it.

Before the Great War, England dealt with many different peoples, and, generally speaking, all of them, Zulu, Malay, Maori, Burman, Boer, the little hillsman of the North-east Indian Frontier, Afreedi, Pathan, Biluch, the Arab of East Africa and the Sudanese of the North of Africa and the rest, played a thoroughly good game. For this we owe them many thanks; since they showed us every variety of climate and almost every variety of attack, from long-range fire to hand-to-hand scrimmage; except, of course, the ordered movements of Continental armies and the scientific ruin of towns. . . . That came later and on the largest scale.

It is rather the fashion to look down on these little wars and to call them “military promenades” and so forth, but in reality no enemy can do much more than poison your wells, rush your camp, ambuscade you, kill you with his climate, fight you body to body, make you build your own means of communication under his fire, and horribly cut up your wounded. He may do this on a large or small scale, but the value of the teaching is the same.

It is in these rough-and-tumble affairs that many of the first Crosses were won; and some of the records for the far-away Crimea and the Indian Mutiny are well worth remembering, if only to show that valour never varies.

The Crimea was clean fighting as far as the enemy were concerned,—for the very old men say that no one could wish for better troops than the Russians of Inkerman and Alma,—but our own War Office then, as two generations later, helped the enemy with ignorant mismanagement and neglect. In the Mutiny of 1857 all India, Bengal and the North-West Provinces, seemed to be crumbling like sand-bag walls in flood, and wherever there were three or four Englishmen left, they had to kill or be killed till help came. Hundreds of Crosses must have been won then, had anybody had time to notice; for the average of work allowing for the improvements in mankilling machinery was as high as in the Great War.

For instance—this is a rather extensive and varied record—one man shut up in the Residency at Lucknow stole out three times at the risk of his life to get cattle for the besieged to eat. Later, he extinguished a fire near a powder-magazine and a month afterwards put out another fire. Then he led twelve men to capture two guns which were wrecking the Residency at close range. Next day he captured an outlying position full of mutineers; three days later he captured another gun, and finished up by capturing a fourth. So he got his Cross.

Another young man was a lieutenant in the Southern Mahratta Horse, and a full regiment of mutineers broke into his part of the world, upsetting the minds of the people. He collected some loyal troopers, chased the regiment eighty miles, stormed the fort they had taken refuge in, and killed, captured or wounded every soul there.

Then there was a lance-corporal who afterwards rose to be Lieutenant-Colonel. He was the enduring type of man, for he won his Cross merely for taking a hand in every fight that came along through nearly seventy consecutive days.

There were also two brothers who earned the Cross about six times between them for leading forlorn hopes and such-like. Likewise there was a private of “persuasive powers and cheerful disposition,” so the record says, who was cut off with nine companions in a burning house while the mutineers were firing in at the windows. He, however, cheerfully persuaded the enemy to retire, and in the end all his party were saved through his practical “cheerfulness.” He must have been a man worth knowing.

And there was a little man in the Sutherland Highlanders—a private who eventually became a Major-General. In one attack near Lucknow he killed eleven men with his claymore, which is a heating sort of weapon to handle.

Even he was not more thorough than two troopers who rode to the rescue of their Colonel, cut off and knocked down by mutineers. They helped him to rise, and they must have been annoyed, for the three of them killed all the mutineers—about fifty.

Then there was a negro captain of the foretop, William Hall, R.N., who with two other negroes, Samuel Hodge and W. J. Gordon of the 4th and 1st West Indian Infantry, came up the river with the Naval Brigade from Calcutta to work big guns. They worked them so thoroughly that each got a Cross. They must have done a good deal, for no one is quite so crazy reckless as a West Indian negro when he is really excited.

There was a man in the Mounted Police who with sixty horsemen charged one thousand mutineers and broke them up. And so the tale runs on.

Three Bengal Civilian Government officers were, I believe, the only strict non-combatants who ever received the Cross. As a matter of fact they had to fight with the rest, but the story of “Lucknow” Kavanagh’s adventures in disguise, of Ross Mangle’s heroism after the first attempt to relieve the Little House at Arrah had failed (Arrah was a place where ten white men and fifty-six loyal natives barricaded themselves in a billiard-room in a garden and stood the siege of three regiments of mutineers for three weeks), and of McDonell’s cool-headedness in the retreat down the river, are things that ought to be told by themselves. Almost any one can fight well on the winning side, but those men who can patch up a thoroughly bad business and pull it off in some sort of shape, are most to be respected.

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Army chaplains and doctors are officially supposed to be non-combatants—they are not really so—but about twenty years after the Mutiny a chaplain was decorated under circumstances that made it impossible to overlook his bravery. Still, I do not think he quite cared for the publicity. He was a regimental chaplain—in action a chaplain is generally supposed to stay with or near the doctor—and he seems to have drifted up close to a cavalry charge, for he helped a wounded officer of the Ninth Lancers into an ambulance. He was then going about his business when he found two troopers who had tumbled into a water-course all mixed with their horses, and a knot of Afghans were hurrying to attend to them. The record says that he rescued both men, but the tale, as I heard it unofficially, declares that he found a revolver somewhere with which he did excellent work while the troopers were struggling out of the ditch. This seems very possible, for the Afghans do not leave disabled men without the strongest hint, and I know that in nine cases out of ten if you want a coherent account of what happened in an action you had better ask the chaplain or the Roman Catholic priest of a battalion.

But it is difficult to get details. I have met perhaps a dozen or so of V.C.’s, and in every case they explained that they did the first thing that came to their hand without worrying about alternatives. One man headed a charge into a mass of Afghans, who are very good fighters so long as they stay interested in their work, and cut down five of them. All he said was: “Well, they were there, and they couldn’t go away. What was a man to do? Write ’em a note and, ask ’em to shift?”

Another man I questioned was a doctor. Army doctors, by the way, have special opportunities for getting Crosses. Their duty compels them to stay somewhere within touch of the firing-line, and most of them run right up and lie down, keeping an eye on the wounded.

It is a heart-breaking thing for a doctor who has pulled a likely young private of twenty-three through typhoid fever and set him on his feet and watched him develop, to see the youngster wasted with a casual bullet. It must have been this feeling that made my friend do the old, splendid thing that never grows stale—rescue a wounded man under fire. He won this Cross, but all he said was: “I didn’t want any unauthorized consultations—or amputations—while I was Medical Officer in charge. ’Tisn’t etiquette.”

His own head was very nearly blown off as he was tying up an artery—for it was blind, bad bush-fighting, with puffs of smoke popping in and out among the high grass and never a man visible—but he only grunted when his helmet was cracked across by a bullet, and went on tightening the tourniquet.

As I have hinted, in most of our little affairs before the war, the enemy knew nothing about the Geneva Convention or the treatment of wounded, but fired at a doctor on his face value as a white man. One cannot blame them—it was their custom, but it was exceedingly awkward when our doctors took care of their wounded who did not understand these things and tried to go on fighting in hospital.

There is an interesting tale of a wounded Sudanese—what our soldiers used to call a “fuzzy”—who was carefully attended to in a hospital after a fight. As soon as he had any strength again, he proposed to a native orderly that they two should massacre all the infidel wounded in the other beds. The orderly did not see it; so, when the doctor came in he found the “Fuzzy” was trying to work out his plan singlehanded. The doctor had a very unpleasant scuffle with that simple-minded man, but, at last, he slipped the chloroform-bag over his nose. The man understood bullets and was not afraid of them; but this magic smelly stuff that sent him to sleep, cowed him altogether, and he gave no more trouble in the ward.

So a doctor’s life is always a little hazardous and, besides his professional duties, he may find himself senior officer in charge of what is left of the command, if the others have been shot down. As doctors are always full of theories, I believe they rather like this chance of testing them. Sometimes doctors have run out to help a mortally wounded man of their battalion, because they know that he may have last messages to give, and it eases him to die with some human being holding his hand. This is a most noble thing to do under fire, because it means sitting still among bullets. Chaplains have done it also, but it is part of what they reckon as their regular duty.

Another V.C. of my acquaintance—he was anything but a doctor or a chaplain—once saved a trooper whose horse had been killed. His method was rather original. The man was on foot and the enemy—Zulus this time—was coming down at a run, and the trooper said, very decently, that he did not see his way to perilling his officer’s life by double-weighting the only available horse.

To this his officer replied: “If you don’t get up behind me, I’ll get off and give you such a licking as you’ve never had in your life.” The man was more afraid of fists than of assagais, and the good horse pulled them both out of the scrape. Now by our Regulations an officer who insults or “threatens with violence” a subordinate in the Service is liable to lose his commission and to be declared “incapable of serving the King in any capacity”; but for some reason or other the trooper never reported his superior.

The humour and the honour of fighting are by no means all on one side. A good many years ago there was a war in New Zealand against the Maoris, who, though they tortured prisoners and occasionally ate a man, liked fighting for its own sake. One of their chiefs cut off a detachment of our men in a stockade where he might have starved them out, and eaten them at leisure later. But word reached him that they were short of provisions, and so he sent in a canoeful of pig and potatoes with the message that it was no fun to play that game with weak men, and he would be happy to meet them after rest and a full meal. There are many cases in which men, very young as a rule, have forced their way through a stockade of thorns that hook or bamboos that cut and held on in the face of heavy fire or just so long as served to bring up their comrades. Those who have done this say that getting in is exciting enough, but the bad time, when the minutes drag like hours, lies between the first scuffle with the angry faces in the smoke, and the “Hi, get out o’ this!”that shows that the others of our side are tumbling up behind. They say it is as bad as football when you get off the ball just as slowly as you dare, so that your own side may have time to come up.

Most men, after they have been shot over a little, only want a lead to do good work; so the result of a young man’s daring is often out of all proportion to his actual performances.

Here is a case which never won notice because very few people talked about it—a case of the courage of Ulysses, one might say.

A column of troops, heavily weighted with sick and wounded, had drifted into a bad place—a pass where an enemy, hidden behind rocks, were picking them off at known ranges, as they retreated. Half a battalion was acting as rearguard—company after company facing about on the narrow road and trying to keep down the wicked, flickering fire from the hill-sides. And it was twilight; and it was cold and raining; and it was altogether horrible for every one.

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Presently, the rear-guard began to fire a little too quickly and to hurry back to the main body a little too soon, and the bearers put down the ambulances a little too often, and looked on each side of the road for possible cover. Altogether, there were the makings of a nasty little breakdown—and after that would come primitive slaughter.

A boy whom I knew was acting command of one company that was specially bored and sulky, and there were shouts from the column of “Hurry up! Hurry there!” neither necessary nor soothing. He kept his men in hand as well as he could, hitting down rifles when they fired wild, till some one along the line shouted: “What on earth are you fellows waiting so long for?”

Then my friend—I am rather proud that he was my friend—hunted for his pipe and tobacco, filled the bowl in his pocket because, he said afterwards, he didn’t want any one to see how his hand shook, lit a fuzee, and shouted back between very short puffs: “Hold on a minute. I’m lighting my pipe.”

There was a roar of rather crackly laughter and the company joker said: “Since you are so pressin’, I think I’ll ’ave a draw meself.”

I don’t believe either pipe was smoked out, but—and this is a very big but—the little bit of acting steadied the company, and the news of it ran down the line, and even the wounded in the doolies laughed, and every one felt better. Whether the enemy heard the laughing, or was impressed by the even “one-two-three-four” firing that followed it, will never, be known, but the column came to camp at the regulation step and not at a run, with very few casualties. That is what one may call the courage of the much-enduring Ulysses, but the only comment that I ever heard on the affair was the boy’s own, and all he said was: “It was transpontine (which means theatrical), but necessary.”

Of course he must have been a good boy from the beginning, for little bits of pure inspiration seldom come to or are acted upon by slovens, self-indulgent or undisciplined people. I have not yet met one V.C. who had not strict notions about washing and shaving and keeping himself decent on his way through the civilized world, whatever he may have done outside it.

Indeed, it is very curious, after one has known hundreds of young men and young officers, to sit still at a distance and watch them come forward to success in their profession. Somehow, the clean and considerate man mostly seems to take hold of circumstances at the right end.

One of the youngest of the V.C.’s of his time I used to know distantly as a beautiful being whom they called Aide-de-Camp to a big official in India. So far as strangers could judge, his duties consisted in wearing a uniform faced with blue satin, and in seeing that every one was looked after at the dances and dinners. He would wander about smiling, with eyes at the back of his head, introducing men who were strangers and a little uncomfortable, to girls whose dance-cards were rather empty; taking old and uninteresting women into supper, and tucking them into their carriages afterwards; or pleasantly steering white-whiskered native officers all covered with medals and half-blind with confusion through the maze of a big levee into the presence of the Viceroy or Commander-in-Chief, or whoever it was they were being presented to.

After a few years of this work, his chance came, and he made the most of it. We were then smoking out a nest of caravan-raiders, slave-dealers, and general thieves who lived somewhere under the Karakoram Mountains among glaciers about sixteen thousand feet above sea-level. The mere road to the place was too much for many mules, for it ran by precipices and round rock-curves and over roaring, snow-fed rivers.

The enemy—they were called Kanjuts—had fortified themselves in a place nearly as impregnable as nature and man could make it. One position was on the top of a cliff about twelve hundred feet high, whence they could roll stones directly on the head of any attacking force. Our men objected to the stones much more than to the rifle-fire. They were camped in a river-bed at the bottom of an icy pass with some three tiers of these cliff like defences above them, and the Kanjuts on each tier were very well armed. To make all specially pleasant, it was December.

This ex-aide-de-camp happened to be a good mountaineer, and he was told off with a hundred native troops, Goorkhas and Dogra Sikhs, to climb up into the top tier of the fortifications. The only way of arriving was to follow a sort of shoot in the cliff-face which the enemy had worn smooth by throwing rocks down. Even in daylight, in peace, and with good guides, it would have been fair mountaineering.

He went up in the dark, by eye and guess, against some two thousand Kanjuts very much at war with him. When he had climbed eight hundred feet almost perpendicular he found he had to come back, because even he and his Goorkha cragsmen could find no way.

credit: H. R. Millar

He returned to the river-bed and tried again in a new place, working his men up between avalanches of stones that slid along and knocked people over. When he struggled to the top he had to take his men into the forts with the bayonet and the kukri, the little Goorkha knife. The attack was so utterly bold and unexpected that it broke the hearts of the enemy and practically ended the campaign; and if you could see the photograph of the place you would understand why.

It was hard toe-nail and finger-nail crag-climbing under fire, and the men behind him were not regulars, but what are called Imperial Service troops—men raised by the semi-independent kings and used to defend the frontier. They enjoyed themselves immensely, and the little aide-de-camp got a deserved Victoria Cross. The courage of Ulysses again; for he had to think as he climbed, and until he was directly underneath the fortifications, one chance-hopping boulder might just have planed his men off all along the line.

But there is a heroism beyond all, for which no Victoria Cross is ever given, because there is no official enemy nor any sort of firing, except one volley in the early morning at some spot where the noise does not echo into the newspapers.

It is necessary from time to time to send unarmed men into No Man’s Land and the Back of Beyond across the Khudajanta Khan (The Lord-knows-where) Mountains, just to find out what is going on there among people who some day or other may become dangerous enemies.

The understanding is that if the men return with their reports so much the better for them. They may then receive some sort of decoration, given, so far as the public can make out, for no real reason. If they do not come back—and people disappear very mysteriously at the Back of Beyond—that is their own concern, and no questions will be asked, and no enquiries made.

They tell a tale of one man who, some years ago, strayed into No Man’s Land to see how things were, and met a very amiable set of people, who asked him to a round of dinners and lunches and dances. And all that time he knew, and they knew that he knew, that his hosts were debating between themselves whether they should suffer him to live till next morning, and if they decided not to let him live, in what way they should wipe him out most quietly.

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The only consideration that made them hesitate was that they could not tell from his manner whether there were five hundred Englishmen within a few miles of him or no Englishmen at all within five hundred miles of him; and, as matters stood at that moment, they could not very well go out to look and make sure.

So he danced and dined with those pleasant, merry folk,—all good friends,—and talked about hunting and shooting and so forth, never knowing when the polite servants behind his chair would turn into the firing-party. At last his hosts decided, without rude words said, to let him go; and when they made up their minds they did it very handsomely; for, you must remember, there is no malice borne on either side in that game.

They gave him a farewell banquet and drank his health, and he thanked them for his delightful visit, and they said: “So glad you’re glad. Au revoir,”and he came away looking a little bored.

Later on, so the tale runs, his hosts discovered that their guest had been given up for lost by his friends in England, where no one ever expected to see him again. Then they were sorry that they had not put him against a wall and shot him.

That is a case of the cold-blooded courage worked up to after years of training—courage of mind forcing the body through an unpleasant situation for the sake of the game.

When all is said and done, courage of mind is the finest thing any one can hope to attain to. A weak or undisciplined soul is apt to become reckless under strain (which is only being afraid the wrong way about), or to act for its own immediate advantage. For this reason the Victoria Cross is jealously guarded, and if there be suspicion that the man is playing to the gallery or out pot-hunting for medals, as they call it, he is often left to head his charges and rescue his wounded all over again as a guarantee of good faith.

In the Great War there was very little suspicion, or chance, of gallery-play for the V.C., because there was ample opportunity and, very often, strong necessity, for a man to repeat his performances several times over. Moreover, he was generally facing much deadlier weapons than mere single rifles or edged tools, and the rescue of wounded under fire was, by so much, a more serious business. But one or two War V.C.’s of my acquaintance have told me that if you can manage the little matter of keeping your head, it is not as difficult as it sounds to get on the blind side of a machinegun, or to lie out under its lowest line of fire. where, they say, you are “quite comfortable if you don’t fuss.” Also, every V.C. of the Great War I have spoken to has been rather careful to explain that he won his Cross because what he did happened to be done when and where some one could notice it. Thousands of men they said did just the same, but in places where there were no observers. And that is true; for the real spirit of the Army changes very little through the years.

Men are taught to volunteer for anything and everything; going out quietly after, not before, the authorities have filled their place. They are also instructed that it is cowardly, it is childish, and it is cheating to neglect or scamp the plain work immediately in front of them, the duties they are trusted to do, for the sake of stepping aside to snatch at what to an outsider may resemble fame or distinction. Above all, their own hard equals, whose opinion is the sole opinion worth having, are always sitting unofficially in judgment on them.

The Order itself is a personal decoration, and the honour and glory of it belongs to the wearer; but he can only win it by forgetting himself, his own honour and glory, and by working for something beyond and outside and apart from his own self. And there seems to be no other way in which you get anything in this world worth the keeping.

 

Please note: This story has been edited to remove some offensive wording, as we specifically recommend it for young people.

The Winged Hats

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THE next day happened to be what they called a Wild Afternoon. Father and Mother went out to pay calls; Miss Blake went for a ride on her bicycle, and they were left all alone till eight o’clock. When they had seen their dear parents and their dear preceptress politely off the premises they got a cabbage-leaf full of raspberries from the gardener, and a Wild Tea from Ellen. They ate the raspberries to prevent their squashing, and they meant to divide the cabbage-leaf with Three Cows down at the Theatre, but they came across a dead hedgehog which they simply had to bury, and the leaf was too useful to waste.

Then they went on to the Forge and found old Hobden the hedger at home with his son, the Bee Boy who is not quite right in his head, but who can pick up swarms of bees in his naked hands; and the Bee Boy told them the rhyme about the slow-worm:—

‘If I had eyes as I could see,
No mortal man would trouble me.’

They all had tea together by the hives, and Hobden said the loaf-cake which Ellen had given them was almost as good as what his wife used to make, and he showed them how to set a wire at the right height for hares. They knew about rabbits already.

Then they climbed up Long Ditch into the lower end of Far Wood. This is sadder and darker than the Volaterrae end because of an old marlpit full of black water, where weepy, hairy moss hangs round the stumps of the willows and alders. But the birds come to perch on the dead branches, and Hobden says that the bitter willow-water is a sort of medicine for sick animals.

They sat down on a felled oak-trunk in the shadows of the beech undergrowth, and were looping the wires Hobden had given them, when they saw Parnesius.

‘How quietly you came!’ said Una, moving up to make room. ‘Where’s Puck?’

‘The Faun and I have disputed whether it is better that I should tell you all my tale, or leave it untold,’ he replied.

‘I only said that if he told it as it happened you wouldn’t understand it,’ said Puck, jumping up like a squirrel from behind the log.

‘I don’t understand all of it,’ said Una, ‘but I like hearing about the little Picts.’

‘What I can’t understand,’ said Dan, ‘is how Maximus knew all about the Picts when he was over in Gaul.’

‘He who makes himself Emperor anywhere must know everything, everywhere,’ said Parnesius. ‘We had this much from Maximus’s mouth after the Games.’

‘Games? What games?’ said Dan.

Parnesius stretched his arm out stiffly, thumb pointed to the ground. ‘Gladiators! That sort of game,’ he said. ‘There were two days’ Games in his honour when he landed all unexpected at Segedunum on the East end of the Wall. Yes, the day after we had met him we held two days’ games; but I think the greatest risk was run, not by the poor wretches on the sand, but by Maximus. In the old days the Legions kept silence before their Emperor. So did not we! You could hear the solid roar run West along the Wall as his chair was carried rocking through. the crowds. The garrison beat round him—clamouring, clowning, asking for pay, for change of quarters, for anything that came into their wild heads. That chair was like a little boat among waves, dipping and falling, but always rising again after one had shut the eyes.’ Parnesius shivered.

‘Were they angry with him?’ said Dan.

‘No more angry than wolves in a cage when their trainer walks among them. If he had turned his back an instant, or for an instant had ceased to hold their eyes, there would have been another Emperor made on the Wall that hour. Was it not so, Faun?’

‘So it was. So it always will be,’ said Puck.

‘Late in the evening his messenger came for us, and we followed to the Temple of Victory, where he lodged with Rutilianus, the General of the Wall. I had hardly seen the General before, but he always gave me leave when I wished to take Heather. He was a great glutton, and kept five Asian cooks, and he came of a family that believed in oracles. We could smell his good dinner when we entered, but the tables were empty. He lay snorting on a couch. Maximus sat apart among long rolls of accounts. Then the doors were shut.

‘“These are your men,” said Maximus to the General, who propped his eye-corners open with his gouty fingers, and stared at us like a fish.

‘“I shall know them again, Cæsar,” said Rutilianus.

‘“Very good,” said Maximus. “Now hear! You are not to move man or shield on the Wall except as these boys shall tell you. You will do nothing, except eat, without their permission. They are the head and arms. You are the belly!”

‘“As Cæsar pleases,” the old man grunted. “If my pay and profits are not cut, you may make my Ancestors’ Oracle my master. Rome has been! Rome has been!” Then he turned on his side to sleep.

‘“He has it,” said Maximus. “We will get to what I need.”

‘He unrolled full copies of the number of men and supplies on the Wall—down to the sick that very day in Hunno Hospital. Oh, but I groaned when his pen marked off detachment after detachment of our best—of our least worthless men! He took two towers of our Scythians, two of our North British auxiliaries, two Numidian cohorts, the Dacians all, and half the Belgians. It was like an eagle pecking a carcass.

1 ‘“And now, how many catapults have you?” He turned up a new list, but Pertinax laid his open hand there.

‘“No, Cæsar,” said he. “Do not tempt the Gods too far. Take men, or engines, but not both; else we refuse.”’

‘Engines?’ said Una.

‘The catapults of the Wall—huge things forty feet high to the head—firing nets of raw stone or forged bolts. Nothing can stand against them. He left us our catapults at last, but he took a Cæsar’s half of our men without pity. We were a shell when he rolled up the lists!

‘“Hail, Cæsar! We, about to die, salute you!” said Pertinax, laughing. “If any enemy even leans against the Wall now, it will tumble.”

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‘“Give me the three years Allo spoke of,” he answered, “and you shall have twenty thousand men of your own choosing up here. But now it is a gamble—a game played against the Gods, and the stakes are Britain, Gaul, and perhaps, Rome. You play on my side?”

‘“We will play, Cæsar,” I said, for I had never met a man like this man.

‘“Good. To-morrow,” said he, “I proclaim you Captains of the Wall before the troops.”

‘So we went into the moonlight, where they were cleaning the ground after the Games. We saw great Roma Dea atop of the Wall, the frost on her helmet, and her spear pointed towards the North Star. We saw the twinkle of night-fires all along the guard towers, and the line of the black catapults growing smaller and smaller in the distance. All these things we knew till we were weary; but that night they seemed very strange to us, because the next day we knew we were to be their masters.

‘The men took the news well; but when Maximus went away with half our strength, and we had to spread ourselves into the emptied towers, and the townspeople complained that trade would be ruined, and the Autumn gales blew—it was dark days for us two. Here Pertinax was more than my right hand. Being born and bred among the great country-houses in Gaul, he knew the proper words to address to all—from Roman-born Centurions to those dogs of the Third—the Libyans. And he spoke to each as though that man were as high-minded as himself. Now I saw so strongly what things were needed to be done, that I forgot things are only accomplished by means of men. That was a mistake.

‘I feared nothing from the Picts, at least for that year, but Allo warned me that the Winged Hats would soon come in from the sea at each end of the Wall to prove to the Picts how weak we were. So I made ready in haste, and none too soon. I shifted our best men to the ends of the Wall, and set up screened catapults by the beach. The Winged Hats would drive in before the snow-squalls—ten or twenty boats at a time—on Segedunum or Ituna, according as the wind blew.

‘Now a ship coming in to land men must furl her sail. If you wait till you see her men gather up the sail’s foot, your catapults can jerk a net of loose stones (bolts only cut through the cloth) into the bag of it. Then she turns over, and the sea makes everything clean again. A few men may come ashore, but very few . . . . It was not hard work, except the waiting on the beach in blowing sand and snow. And that was how we dealt with the Winged Hats that winter.

‘Early in the Spring, when the East winds blow like skinning-knives, they gathered again off Segedunum with many ships. Allo told me they would never rest till they had taken a tower in open fight. Certainly they fought in the open. We dealt with them thoroughly through a long day: and when all was finished, one man dived clear of the wreckage of his ship, and swam towards shore. I waited, and a wave tumbled him at my feet.

‘As I stooped, I saw he wore such a medal as I wear.’ Parnesius raised his hand to his neck. ‘Therefore, when he could speak, I addressed him a certain Question which can only be answered in a certain manner. He answered with the necessary Word—the Word that belongs to the Degree of Gryphons in the science of Mithras my God. I put my shield over him till he could stand up. You see I am not short, but he was a head taller than I. He said: “What now?” I said: “At your pleasure, my brother, to stay or go.”

‘He looked out across the surf. There remained one ship unhurt, beyond range of our catapults. I checked the catapults and he waved her in. She came as a hound comes to a master. When she was yet a hundred paces from the beach, he flung back his hair, and swam out. They hauled him in, and went away. I knew that those
who worship Mithras are many and of all races, so I did not think much more upon the matter.

‘A month later I saw Allo with his horses by the Temple of Pan, O Faun—and he gave me a great necklace of gold studded with coral.

‘At first I thought it was a bribe from some tradesman in the town—meant for old Rutilianus. “Nay,” said Allo. “This is a gift from Amal, that Winged Hat whom you saved on the beach. He says you are a Man.”’

‘“He is a Man, too. Tell him I can wear his gift,” I answered.

‘“Oh, Amal is a young fool; but, speaking as sensible men, your Emperor is doing such great things in Gaul that the Winged Hats are anxious to be his friends, or, better still, the friends of his servants. They think you and Pertinax could lead them to victories.” Allo looked at me like a one-eyed raven.

‘“Allo,” I said, “you are the corn between the two millstones. Be content if they grind evenly, and don’t thrust your hand between them.”

‘“I?” said Allo. “I hate Rome and the Winged Hats equally; but if the Winged Hats thought that some day you and Pertinax might join them against Maximus, they would leave you in peace while you considered. Time is what we need—you and I and Maximus. Let me carry a pleasant message back to the Winged Hats—something for them to make a council over. We barbarians are all alike. We sit up half the night to discuss anything a Roman says. Eh?”

‘“We have no men. We must fight with words,” said Pertinax. “Leave it to Allo and me.”

‘So Allo carried word back to the Winged Hats that we would not fight them if they did not fight us; and they (I think they were a little tired of losing men in the sea) agreed to a sort of truce. I believe Allo, who being a horse-dealer loved lies, also told them we might some day rise against Maximus as Maximus had risen against Rome.

‘Indeed, they permitted the corn-ships which I sent to the Picts to pass North that season without harm. Therefore the Picts were well fed that winter, and since they were in some sort my children, I was glad of it. We had only two thousand men on the Wall, and I wrote many times to Maximus and begged—prayed—him to send me only one cohort of my old North British troops. He could not spare them. He needed them to win more victories in Gaul.

‘Then came news that he had defeated and slain the Emperor Gratian, and thinking he must now be secure, I wrote again for men. He answered: “You will learn that I have at last settled accounts with the pup Gratian. There was no need that he should have died, but he became confused and lost his head, which is a bad thing to befall any Emperor. Tell your Father I am content to drive two mules only; for unless my old General’s son thinks himself destined to destroy me, I shall rest Emperor of Gaul and Britain, and then you, my two children, will presently get all the men you need. Just now I can spare none.”’

‘What did he mean by his General’s son?’ said Dan.

‘He meant Theodosius Emperor of Rome, who was the son of Theodosius the General under whom Maximus had fought in the old Pict War. The two men never loved each other, and when Gratian made the younger Theodosius Emperor of the East (at least, so I’ve heard), Maximus carried on the war to the second generation. It was his fate, and it was his fall. But Theodosius the Emperor is a good man. As I know.’ Parnesius was silent for a moment and then continued.

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‘I wrote back to Maximus that, though we had peace on the Wall, I should be happier with a few more men and some new catapults. He answered: “You must live a little longer under the shadow of my victories, till I can see what young Theodosius intends. He may welcome me as a brother-Emperor, or he may be preparing an army. In either case I cannot spare men just now.”’

‘But he was always saying that,’ cried Una.

‘It was true. He did not make excuses; but thanks, as he said, to the news of his victories, we had no trouble on the Wall for a long, long time. The Picts grew fat as their own sheep among the heather, and as many of my men as lived were well exercised in their weapons. Yes, the Wall looked strong. For myself, I knew how weak we were. I knew that if even a false rumour of any defeat to Maximus broke loose among the Winged Hats, they might come down in earnest, and then—the Wall must go! For the Picts I never cared, but in those years I learned something of the strength of the Winged Hats. They increased their strength every day, but I could not increase my men. Maximus had emptied Britain behind us, and I felt myself to be a man with a rotten stick standing before a broken fence to turn bulls.

‘Thus, my friends, we lived on the Wall, waiting—waiting—waiting for the men that Maximus never sent.

‘Presently he wrote that he was preparing an army against Theodosius. He wrote—and Pertinax read it over my shoulder in our quarters: “Tell your Father that my destiny orders me to drive three mules or be torn in pieces by them. I hope within a year to finish with Theodosius, son of Theodosius, once and for all. Then you shall have Britain to rule, and Pertinax, if he chooses, Gaul. To-day I wish strongly you were with me to beat my Auxiliaries into shape. Do not, I pray you, believe any rumour of my sickness. I have a little evil in my old body which I shall cure by riding swiftly into Rome.”

‘Said Pertinax: “It is finished with Maximus. He writes as a man without hope. I, a man without hope, can see this. What does he add at the bottom of the roll? ‘Tell Pertinax I have met his late Uncle, the Duumvir of Divio, and that he accounted to me quite truthfully for all his Mother’s monies. I have sent her with a fitting escort, for she is the mother of a hero, to Nicaea, where the climate is warm.’

‘“That is proof,” said Pertinax. “Nicaea is not far by sea from Rome. A woman there could take ship and fly to Rome in time of war. Yes, Maximus foresees his death, and is fulfilling his promises one by one. But I am glad my Uncle met him.”’

‘“You think blackly to-day?’ I asked.

‘“I think truth. The Gods weary of the play we have played against them. Theodosius will destroy Maximus. It is finished!’

‘“Will you write him that?” I said.

‘“See what I shall write,” he answered, and he took pen and wrote a letter cheerful as the light of day, tender as a woman’s and full of jests. Even I, reading over his shoulder, took comfort from it till—I saw his face!

‘“And now,” he said, sealing it, “we be two dead men, my brother. Let us go to the Temple.”

‘We prayed awhile to Mithras, where we had many times prayed before. After that, we lived day by day among evil rumours till winter came again.

‘It happened one morning that we rode to the East shore, and found on the beach a fair-haired man, half frozen, bound to some broken planks. Turning him over, we saw by his belt-buckle that he was a Goth of an Eastern Legion. Suddenly he opened his eyes and cried loudly, “He is dead! The letters were with me, but the Winged Hats sank the ship.” So saying, he died between our hands.

‘We asked not who was dead. We knew! We raced before the driving snow to Hunno, thinking perhaps Allo might be there. We found him already at our stables, and he saw by our faces what we had heard.

‘“It was in a tent by the sea,” he stammered. “He was beheaded by Theodosius. He sent a letter to you, written while he waited to be slain. The Winged Hats met the ship and took it. The news is running through the heather like fire. Blame me not! I cannot hold back my young men any more.”

‘“I would we could say as much for our men,” said Pertinax, laughing. “But, Gods be praised, they cannot run away.”

‘“What do you do?” said Allo. “I bring an order—a message—from the Winged Hats that you join them with your men, and march South to plunder Britain.”

‘“It grieves me,” said Pertinax, “but we are stationed here to stop that thing.”

‘“If I carry back such an answer they will kill me,” said Allo. “I always promised the Winged Hats that you would rise when Maximus fell. I—I did not think he could fall.”

‘“Alas! my poor barbarian,” said Pertinax, still laughing. “Well, you have sold us too many good ponies to be thrown back to your friends. We will make you a prisoner, although you are an ambassador.’

‘“Yes, that will be best,” said Allo, holding out a halter. We bound him lightly, for he was an old man.

‘“Presently the Winged Hats may come to look for you, and that will give us more time. See how the habit of playing for time sticks to a man!” said Pertinax, as he tied the rope.

‘“No,” I said. “Time may help. If Maximus wrote us a letter while he was a prisoner, Theodosius must have sent the ship that brought it. If he can send ships, he can send men.”

‘“How will that profit us?” said Pertinax. “We serve Maximus, not Theodosius. Even if by some miracle of the Gods Theodosius down South sent and saved the Wall, we could not expect more than the death Maximus died.”

‘“It concerns us to defend the Wall, no matter what Emperor dies, or makes die,” I said.

‘“That is worthy of your brother the philosopher,” said Pertinax. “Myself I am without hope, so I do not say solemn and stupid things! Rouse the Wall!”

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‘We armed the Wall from end to end; we told the officers that there was a rumour of Maximus’s death which might bring down the Winged Hats, but we were sure, even if it were true, that Theodosius, for the sake of Britain, would send us help. Therefore, we must stand fast . . . . My friends, it is above all things strange to see how men bear ill news! Often the strongest till then become the weakest, while the weakest, as it were, reach up and steal strength from the Gods. So it was with us. Yet my Pertinax by his jests and his courtesy and his labours had put heart and training into our poor numbers during the past years—more than I should have thought possible. Even our Libyan cohort—the Thirds—stood up in their padded cuirasses and did not whimper.

‘In three days came seven chiefs and elders of the Winged Hats. Among them was that tall young man, Amal, whom I had met on the beach, and he smiled when he saw my necklace. We made them welcome, for they were ambassadors. We showed them Allo, alive but bound. They thought we had killed him, and I saw it would not have vexed them if we had. Allo saw it too, and it vexed him. Then in our quarters at Hunno we came to council.

‘They said that Rome was falling, and that we must join them. They offered me all South Britain to govern after they had taken a tribute, out of it.

‘I answered, “Patience. This Wall is not weighed off like plunder. Give me proof that my General is dead.”

‘“Nay,” said one elder, “prove to us that he lives”; and another said, cunningly, “What will you give us if we read you his last words?”

‘“We are not merchants to bargain,” cried Amal. “Moreover, I owe this man my life. He shall have his proof.” He threw across to me a letter (well I knew the seal) from Maximus.

“We took this out of the ship we sank,” he cried. “I cannot read, but I know one sign, at least, which makes me believe.” He showed me a dark stain on the outer roll that my heavy heart perceived was the valiant blood of
Maximus.

‘“Read!” said Amal. “Read, and then let us hear whose servants you are!”

‘Said Pertinax, very softly, after he had looked through it: “I will read it all. Listen, barbarians!” He read that which I have carried next my heart ever since.’

Parnesius drew from his neck a folded and spotted piece of parchment, and began in a hushed voice:—

‘To Parnesius and Pertinax, the not unworthy Captains of the Wall; from Maximus, once Emperor of Gaul and Britain, now prisoner waiting death by the sea in the camp of Theodosius—Greeting and Good-bye!”

‘“Enough,” said young Amal; “there is your proof! You must join us now!”

‘Pertinax looked long and silently at him, till that fair man blushed like a girl. Then read Pertinax:—

‘“I have joyfully done much evil in my life to those who have wished me evil, but if ever I did any evil to you two I repent, and I ask your forgiveness. The three mules which I strove to drive have torn me in pieces as your Father prophesied. The naked swords wait at the tent door to give me the death I gave to Gratian. Therefore I, your General and your Emperor, send you free and honourable dimissal from my service, which you entered, not for money or office, but, as it makes me warm to believe, because you loved me!”

‘“By the Light of the Sun,” Amal broke in. “This was in some sort a Man! We may have been mistaken in his servants!”

‘And Pertinax read on: “You gave me the time for which I asked. If I have failed to use it, do not lament. We have gambled very splendidly against the Gods, but they hold weighted dice, and I must pay the forfeit. Remember, I have been; but Rome is; and Rome will be. Tell Pertinax his Mother is in safety at Nicaea, and her monies are in charge of the Prefect at Antipolis. Make my remembrances to your Father and to your Mother, whose friendship was great gain to me. Give also to my little Picts and to the Winged Hats such messages as their thick heads can understand. I would have sent you three Legions this very day if all had gone aright. Do not forget me. We have worked together. Farewell!   Farewell!   Farewell!”

‘Now, that was my Emperor’s last letter.’ (The children heard the parchment crackle as Parnesius returned it to its place.)

‘“I was mistaken,” said Amal. “The servants of such a man will sell nothing except over the sword. I am glad of it.” He held out his hand to me.

‘“But Maximus has given you your dismissal,” said an elder. “You are certainly free to serve—or to rule—whom you please. Join—do not follow—join us!”

‘“We thank you,” said Pertinax. “But Maximus tells us to give you such messages as—pardon me, but I use his words—your thick heads can understand.” He pointed through the door to the foot of a catapult wound up.

‘“We understand,” said an elder. “The Wall must be won at a price?”

‘“It grieves me,” said Pertinax, laughing, “but so it must be won,” and he gave them of our best Southern wine.

‘They drank, and wiped their yellow beards in silence till they rose to go.

‘Said Amal, stretching himself (for they were barbarians), “We be a goodly company; I wonder what the ravens and the dogfish will make of some of us before this snow melts.”

‘“Think rather what Theodosius may send,” I answered; and though they laughed, I saw that my chance shot troubled them.

‘Only old Allo lingered behind a little.

‘“You see,” he said, winking and blinking, “I am no more than their dog. When I have shown their men the secret short ways across our bogs, they will kick me like one.”

‘“Then I should not be in haste to show them those ways,” said Pertinax, “till I was sure that Rome could not save the Wall.”

‘“You think so? Woe is me!” said the old man. “I only wanted peace for my people,” and he went out stumbling through the snow behind the tall Winged Hats.

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‘In this fashion then, slowly, a day at a time, which is very bad for doubting troops, the War came upon us. At first the Winged Hats swept in from the sea as they had done before, and there we met them as before—with the catapults; and they sickened of it. Yet for a long time they would not trust their duck-legs on land, and I think when it came to revealing the secrets of the tribe, the little Picts were afraid or ashamed to show them all the roads across the heather. I had this from a Pict prisoner. They were as much our spies as our enemies, for the Winged Hats oppressed them, and took their winter stores. Ah, foolish Little People!

‘Then the Winged Hats began to roll us up from each end of the Wall. I sent runners Southward to see what the news might be in Britain, but the wolves were very bold that winter, among the deserted stations where the troops had once been, and none came back. We had trouble too with the forage for the ponies along the Wall. I kept ten, and so did Pertinax. We lived and slept in the saddle, riding east or west, and we ate our worn-out ponies. The people of the town also made us some trouble till I gathered them all in one quarter behind Hunno. We broke down the Wall on either side of it to make as it were a citadel. Our men fought better in close order.

‘By the end of the second month we were deep in the War as a man is deep in a snowdrift or in a dream. I think we fought in our sleep. At least I know I have gone on the Wall and come off again, remembering nothing between, though my throat was harsh with giving orders, and my sword, I could see, had been used.

‘The Winged Hats fought like wolves—all in a pack. Where they had suffered most, there they charged in most hotly. This was hard for the defenders, but it held them from sweeping on into Britain.

‘In those days Pertinax and I wrote on the plaster of the bricked archway into Valentia the names of the towers, and the days on which they fell one by one. We wished for some record.

‘And the fighting? The fight was always hottest to left and right of the great statue of Roma Dea, near to Rutilianus’s house. By the Light of the Sun, that old fat man, whom we had not considered at all, grew young again among the trumpets! I remember he said his sword was an oracle! “Let us consult the Oracle,” he would say, and put the handle against his ear, and shake his head wisely. “And this day is allowed Rutilianus to live,” he would say, and, tucking up his cloak, he would puff and pant and fight well. Oh, there were jests in plenty on the Wall to take the place of food!

‘We endured for two months and seventeen days—always being pressed from three sides into a smaller space. Several times Allo sent in word that help was at hand. We did not believe it, but it cheered our men.

‘The end came not with shoutings of joy, but, like the rest, as in a dream. The Winged Hats suddenly left us in peace for one night, and the next day; which is too long for spent men. We slept at first lightly, expecting to be roused, and then like logs, each, where he lay. May you never need such sleep! When I waked our towers were full of strange, armed men, who watched us snoring. I roused Pertinax, and we leaped up together.

‘“What?” said a young man in clean armour. “Do you fight against Theodosius? Look!”

‘North we looked over the red snow. No Winged Hats were there. South we looked over the white snow, and behold there were the Eagles of two strong Legions encamped. East and west we saw flame and fighting, but by Hunno all was still.

‘“Trouble no more,” said the young man. “Rome’s arm is long. Where are the Captains of the Wall?’

‘We said we were those men.

‘“But you are old and grey-haired,” he cried. “Maximus said that they were boys.”

‘“Yes, that was true some years ago,” said Pertinax. “What is our fate to be, you fine and well-fed child?”

‘“I am called Ambrosius, a secretary of the Emperor,” he answered. “Show me a certain letter which Maximus wrote from a tent at Aquileia, and perhaps I will believe.”

‘I took it from my breast, and when he had read it he saluted us, saying: “Your fate is in your own hands. If you choose to serve Theodosius, he will give you a Legion. If it suits you to go to your homes, we will give you a Triumph.”

‘“I would like better a bath, wine, food, razors, soaps, oils, and scents,” said Pertinax, laughing.

‘“Oh, I see you are a boy,” said Ambrosius. “And you?” turning to me.

‘“We bear no ill-will against Theodosius, but in War——” I began.

‘“In War it is as it is in Love,” said Pertinax. “Whether she be good or bad, one gives one’s best once, to one only. That given, there remains no second worth giving or taking.”

‘“That is true,” said Ambrosius. “I was with Maximus before he died. He warned Theodosius that you would never serve him, and frankly I say I am sorry for my Emperor.”

‘“He has Rome to console him,” said Pertinax. “I ask you of your kindness to let us go to our homes and get this smell out of our nostrils.”

‘None the less they gave us a Triumph!’

‘It was well earned,’ said Puck, throwing some leaves into the still water of the marlpit. The black, oily circles spread dizzily as the children watched them.

‘I want to know, oh, ever so many things,’ said Dan. ‘What happened to old Allo? Did the Winged Hats ever come back? And what did Amal do?’

‘And what happened to the fat old General with the five cooks?’ said Una. ‘And what did your Mother say when you came home? . . .’

‘She’d say you’re settin’ too long over this old pit, so late as ’tis already,’ said old Hobden’s voice behind them. ‘Hst!’ he whispered.

He stood still, for not twenty paces away a magnificent dog-fox sat on his haunches and looked at the children as though he were an old friend of theirs.

‘Oh, Mus’ Reynolds, Mus’ Reynolds!’ said Hobden, under his breath. ‘If I knowed all was inside your head, I’d know something wuth knowin’. Mus’ Dan an’ Miss Una, come along o’ me while I lock up my liddle hen-house.’

William the Conqueror – part II

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So let us melt and make no noise,
No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
’Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the Laity our love.
A VALEDICTION

IT WAS punishing work, even though he travelled by night and camped by day; but within the limits of his vision there was no man whom Scott could call master. He was as free as Jimmy Hawkins—freer, in fact, for the Government held the Head of the Famine tied neatly to a telegraph-wire, and if Jimmy had ever regarded telegrams seriously, the death-rate of that famine would have been much higher than it was.

At the end of a few days’ crawling Scott learned something of the size of the India which he served, and it astonished him. His carts, as you know, were loaded with wheat, millet, and barley, good food-grains needing only a little grinding. But the people to whom he brought the life-giving stuffs were rice-eaters. They could hull rice in their mortars, but they knew nothing of the heavy stone querns of the North, and less of the material that the white man convoyed so laboriously. They clamoured for rice—unhusked paddy, such as they were accustomed to—and, when they found that there was none, broke away weeping from the sides of the cart. What was the use of these strange hard grains that choked their throats? They would die. And then and there very many of them kept their word. Others took their allowance, and bartered enough millet to feed a man through a week for a few handfuls of rotten rice saved by some less unfortunate. A few put their share into the rice-mortars, pounded it, and made a paste with foul water; but they were very few. Scott understood dimly that many people in the India of the South ate rice, as a rule, but he had spent his service in a grain Province, had seldom seen rice in the blade or ear, and least of all would have believed that in time of deadly need men could die at arm’s length of plenty, sooner than touch food they did not know. In vain the interpreters interpreted; in vain his two policemen showed in vigorous pantomime what should be done. The starving crept away to their bark and weeds, grubs, leaves, and clay, and left the open sacks untouched. But sometimes the women laid their phantoms of children at Scott’s feet, looking back as they staggered away.

Faiz Ullah opined it was the will of God that these foreigners should die, and it remained only to give orders to burn the dead. None the less there was no reason why the Sahib should lack his comforts, and Faiz Ullah, a campaigner of experience, had picked up a few lean goats and had added them to the procession. That they might give milk for the morning meal, he was feeding them on the good grain that these imbeciles rejected. “Yes,” said Faiz Ullah; “if the Sahib thought fit, a little milk might be given to some of the babies”; but, as the Sahib well knew, babies were cheap, and, for his own part, Faiz Ullah held that there was no Government order as to babies. Scott spoke forcefully to Faiz Ullah and the two policemen, and bade them capture goats where they could find them. This they most joyfully did, for it was a recreation, and many ownerless goats were driven in. Once fed, the poor brutes were willing enough to follow the carts, and a few days’ good food—food such as human beings died for lack of—set them in milk again.

“But I am no goatherd,” said Faiz Ullah. “It is against my izzat [my honour].”

“When we cross the Bias River again we will talk of izzat,” Scott replied. “Till that day thou and the policemen shall be sweepers to the camp, if I give the order.”

“Thus, then, it is done,” grunted Faiz Ullah, “if the Sahib will have it so”; and he showed how a goat should be milked, while Scott stood over him.

“Now we will feed them,” said Scott; “twice a day we will feed them”; and he bowed his back to the milking, and took a horrible cramp.

When you have to keep connection unbroken between a restless mother of kids and a baby who is at the point of death, you suffer in all your system. But the babies were fed. Each morning and evening Scott would solemnly lift them out one by one from their nest of gunny-bags under the cart-tilts. There were always many who could do no more than breathe, and the milk was dropped into their toothless mouths drop by drop, with due pauses when they choked. Each morning, too, the goats were fed; and since they would straggle without a leader, and since the natives were hirelings, Scott was forced to give up riding, and pace slowly at the head of his flocks, accommodating his step to their weaknesses. All this was sufficiently absurd, and he felt the absurdity keenly; but at least he was saving life, and when the women saw that their children did not die, they made shift to eat a little of the strange foods, and crawled after the carts, blessing the master of the goats.

“Give the women something to live for,” said Scott to himself, as he sneezed in the dust of a hundred little feet, “and they’ll hang on somehow. This beats William’s condensed-milk trick all to pieces. I shall never live it down, though.”

He reached his destination very slowly, found that a rice-ship had come in from Burmah, and that stores of paddy were available; found also an overworked Englishman in charge of the shed, and, loading the carts, set back to cover the ground he had already passed. He left some of the children and half his goats at the famine-shed. For this he was not thanked by the Englishman, who had already more stray babies than he knew what to do with. Scott’s back was suppled to stooping now, and he went on with his wayside ministrations in addition to distributing the paddy. More babies and more goats were added unto him; but now some of the babies wore rags, and beads round their wrists or necks. “That” said the interpreter, as though Scott did not know, “signifies that their mothers hope in eventual contingency to resume them offeecially.”

“The sooner, the better,” said Scott; but at the same time he marked, with the pride of ownership, how this or that little Ramasawmy was putting on flesh like a bantam. As the paddy-carts were emptied he headed for Hawkins’s camp by the railway, timing his arrival to fit in with the dinner-hour, for it was long since he had eaten at a cloth. He had no desire to make any dramatic entry, but an accident of the sunset ordered it that when he had taken off his helmet to get the evening breeze, the low light should fall across his forehead, and he could not see what was before him; while one waiting at the tent door beheld with new eyes a young man, beautiful as Paris, a god in a halo of golden dust, walking slowly at the head of his flocks, while at his knee ran small naked Cupids. But she laughed—William, in a slate-coloured blouse, laughed consumedly till Scott, putting the best face he could upon the matter, halted his armies and bade her admire the kindergarten. It was an unseemly sight, but the proprieties had been left ages ago, with the tea-party at Amritsar Station, fifteen hundred miles to the north.

“They are coming on nicely,” said William. “We’ve only five-and-twenty here now. The women are beginning to take them away again.”

“Are you in charge of the babies, then?”

“Yes—Mrs. Jim and I. We didn’t think of goats, though. We’ve been trying condensed-milk and water.”

“Any losses?”

“More than I care to think of;” said William, with a shudder. “And you?”

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Scott said nothing. There had been many little burials along his route—one cannot burn a dead baby—many mothers who had wept when they did not find again the children they had trusted to the care of the Government.

Then Hawkins came out carrying a razor, at which Scott looked hungrily, for he had a beard that he did not love. And when they sat down to dinner in the tent he told his tale in few words, as it might have been an official report. Mrs. Jim snuffled from time to time, and Jim bowed his head judicially; but William’s grey eyes were on the clean-shaven face, and it was to her that Scott seemed to appeal.

“Good for the Pauper Province!” said William, her chin on her hand, as she leaned forward among the wine-glasses. Her cheeks had fallen in, and the scar on her forehead was more prominent than ever, but the well-turned neck rose roundly as a column from the ruffle of the blouse which was the accepted evening-dress in camp.

“It was awfully absurd at times,” said Scott. “You see, I didn’t know much about milking or babies. They’ll chaff my head off, if the tale goes up North.”

“Let ’em,” said William, haughtily. “We’ve all done coolie-work since we came. I know Jack has.” This was to Hawkins’s address, and the big man smiled blandly.

“Your brother’s a highly efficient officer, William,” said he, “and I’ve done him the honour of treating him as he deserves. Remember, I write the confidential reports.”

“Then you must say that William’s worth her weight in gold,” said Mrs. Jim. “I don’t know what we should have done without her. She has been everything to us.” She dropped her hand upon William’s, which was rough with much handling of reins, and William patted it softly. Jim beamed on the company. Things were going well with his world. Three of his more grossly incompetent men had died, and their places had been filled by their betters. Every day brought the Rains nearer. They had put out the famine in five of the Eight Districts, and, after all, the death-rate had not been too heavy—things considered. He looked Scott over carefully, as an ogre looks over a man, and rejoiced in his thews and iron-hard condition.

“He’s just the least bit in the world tucked up,” said Jim to himself, “but he can do two men’s work yet.” Then he was aware that Mrs. Jim was telegraphing to him, and according to the domestic code the message ran: “A clear case. Look at them!”

He looked and listened. All that William was saying was: “What can you expect of a country where they call a bhistee [a water-carrier] a tunni-cutch?” and all that Scott answered was: “I shall be glad to get back to the Club. Save me a dance at the Christmas Ball, won’t you?”

“It’s a far cry from here to the Lawrence Hall,” said Jim. “Better turn in early, Scott. It’s paddy-carts tomorrow; you’ll begin loading at five.”

“Aren’t you going to give Mr. Scott a single day’s rest?”

“’Wish I could, Lizzie, but I’m afraid I can’t. As long as he can stand up we must use him.”

“Well, I’ve had one Europe evening, at least. By Jove, I’d nearly forgotten! What do I do about those babies of mine?”

“Leave them here,” said William—“we are in charge of that—and as many goats as you can spare. I must learn how to milk now.”

“If you care to get up early enough tomorrow I’ll show you. I have to milk, you see. Half of ’em have beads and things round their necks. You must be careful not to take ’em off; in case the mothers turn up.”

“You forget I’ve had some experience here.”

“I hope to goodness you won’t overdo.” Scott’s voice was unguarded.

“I’ll take care of her,” said Mrs. Jim, telegraphing hundred-word messages as she carried William off; while Jim gave Scott his orders for the coming campaign. It was very late—nearly nine o’clock.

“Jim, you’re a brute,” said his wife, that night; and the Head of the Famine chuckled.

“Not a bit of it, dear. I remember doing the first Jandiala Settlement for the sake of a girl in a crinoline, and she was slender, Lizzie. I’ve never done as good a piece of work since. He’ll work like a demon.”

“But you might have given him one day.”

“And let things come to a head now? No, dear; it’s their happiest time.”

“I don’t believe either of the darlings know what’s the matter with them. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it lovely?”

“Getting up at three to learn to milk, bless her heart! Oh, ye Gods, why must we grow old and fat?”

“She’s a darling. She has done more work under me——”

“Under you? The day after she came she was in charge and you were her subordinate. You’ve stayed there ever since; she manages you almost as well as you manage me.”

“She doesn’t, and that’s why I love her. She’s as direct as a man—as her brother.”

“Her brother’s weaker than she is. He’s always to me for orders; but he’s honest, and a glutton for work. I confess I’m rather fond of William, and if I had a daughter——”

The talk ended. Far away in the Derajat was a child’s grave more than twenty years old, and neither Jim nor his wife spoke of it any more.

“All the same, you’re responsible,” Jim added, a moment’s silence.

“Bless ’em!” said Mrs. Jim, sleepily.

Before the stars paled, Scott, who slept in an empty cart, waked and went about his work in silence; it seemed at that hour unkind to rouse Faiz Ullah and the interpreter. His head being close to the ground, he did not hear William till she stood over him in the dingy old riding-habit, her eyes still heavy with sleep, a cup of tea and a piece of toast in her hands. There was a baby on the ground, squirming on a piece of blanket, and a six-year-old child peered over Scott’s shoulder.

“Hai, you little rip,” said Scott, “how the deuce do you expect to get your rations if you aren’t quiet?”

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A cool white hand steadied the brat, who forthwith choked as the milk gurgled into his mouth.

“’Mornin’,” said the milker. “You’ve no notion how these little fellows can wriggle.”

“Oh, yes, I have.” She whispered, because the world was asleep. “Only I feed them with a spoon or a rag. Yours are fatter than mine. And you’ve been doing this day after day?” The voice was almost lost.

“Yes; it was absurd. Now you try,” he said, giving place to the girl. “Look out! A goat’s not a cow.”

The goat protested against the amateur, and there was a scuffle, in which Scott snatched up the baby. Then it was all to do over again, and William laughed softly and merrily. She managed, however, to feed two babies, and a third.

“Don’t the little beggars take it well?” said Scott. “I trained ’em.”

They were very busy and interested, when lo! it was broad daylight, and before they knew, the camp was awake, and they kneeled among the goats, surprised by the day, both flushed to the temples. Yet all the round world rolling up out of the darkness might have heard and seen all that had passed between them.

“Oh,” said William, unsteadily, snatching up the tea and toast, “I had this made for you. It’s stone-cold now. I thought you mightn’t have anything ready so early. ’Better not drink it. It’s—it’s stone-cold.”

“That’s awfully kind of you. It’s just right. It’s awfully good of you, really. I’ll leave my kids and goats with you and Mrs. Jim, and, of course, any one in camp can show you about the milking.”

“Of course,” said William; and she grew pinker and pinker and statelier and more stately, as she strode back to her tent, fanning herself with the saucer.

There were shrill lamentations through the camp when the elder children saw their nurse move off without them. Faiz Ullah unbent so far as to jest with the policemen, and Scott turned purple with shame because Hawkins, already in the saddle, roared.

A child escaped from the care of Mrs. Jim, and, running like a rabbit, clung to Scott’s boot, William pursuing with long, easy strides.

“I will not go—I will not go!” shrieked the child, twining his feet round Scott’s ankle. “They will kill me here. I do not know these people.”

“I say,” said Scott, in broken Tamil, “I say, she will do you no harm. Go with her and be well fed.”

“Come!” said William, panting, with a wrathful glance at Scott, who stood helpless and, as it were, hamstrung.

“Go back,” said Scott quickly to William. “I’ll send the little chap over in a minute.”

The tone of authority had its effect, but in a way Scott did not exactly intend. The boy loosened his grasp, and said with gravity: “I did not know the woman was thine. I will go.” Then he cried to his companions, a mob of three-, four-, and five-year-olds waiting on the success of his venture ere they stampeded: “Go back and eat. It is our man’s woman. She will obey his orders.”

Jim collapsed where he sat; Faiz Ullah and the two policemen grinned; and Scott’s orders to the cartmen flew like hail.

“That is the custom of the Sahibs when truth is told in their presence,” said Faiz Ullah. “The time comes that I must seek new service. Young wives, especially such as speak our language and have knowledge of the ways of the Police, make great trouble for honest butlers in the matter of weekly accounts.”

What William thought of it all she did not say, but when her brother, ten days later, came to camp for orders, and heard of Scott’s performances, he said, laughing: “Well, that settles it. He’ll be Bakri Scott to the end of his days.” (Bakri in the Northern vernacular, means a goat.) “What a lark! I’d have given a month’s pay to have seen him nursing famine babies. I fed some with conjee [rice-water], but that was all right.”

“It’s perfectly disgusting,” said his sister, with blazing eyes. “A man does something like—like that—and all you other men think of is to give him an absurd nickname, and then you laugh and think it’s funny.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Jim, sympathetically.

“Well, you can’t talk, William. You christened little Miss Demby the Button-quail, last cold weather; you know you did. India’s the land of nicknames.”

“That’s different,” William replied. “She was only a girl, and she hadn’t done anything except walk like a quail, and she does. But it isn’t fair to make fun of a man.”

“Scott won’t care,” said Martyn. “You can’t get a rise out of old Scotty. I’ve been trying for eight years, and you’ve only known him for three. How does he look?”

“He looks very well,” said William, and went away with a flushed cheek. “Bakri Scott, indeed!” Then she laughed to herself, for she knew her country. “But it will he Bakri all the same”; and she repeated it under her breath several times slowly, whispering it into favour.

When he returned to his duties on the railway, Martyn spread the name far and wide among his associates, so that Scott met it as he led his paddy-carts to war. The natives believed it to be some English title of honour, and the cart-drivers used it in all simplicity till Faiz Ullah, who did not approve of foreign japes, broke their heads. There was very little time for milking now, except at the big camps, where Jim had extended Scott’s idea and was feeding large flocks on the useless northern grains. Sufficient paddy had come now into the Eight Districts to hold the people safe, if it were only distributed quickly, and for that purpose no one was better than the big Canal officer, who never lost his temper, never gave an unnecessary order, and never questioned an order given. Scott pressed on, saving his cattle, washing their galled necks daily, so that no time should be lost on the road; reported himself with his rice at the minor famine-sheds, unloaded, and went back light by forced night-march to the next distributing centre, to find Hawkins’s unvarying telegram: “Do it again.” And he did it again and again, and yet again, while Jim Hawkins, fifty miles away, marked off on a big map the tracks of his wheels gridironing the stricken lands. Others did well—Hawkins reported at the end they all did well—but Scott was the most excellent, for he kept good coined rupees by him, settled for his own cart-repairs on the spot, and ran to meet all sorts of unconsidered extras, trusting to be recouped later on. Theoretically, the Government should have paid for every shoe and iinchpin, for every hand employed in the loading; but Government vouchers cash themselves slowly, and intelligent and efficient clerks write at great length, contesting unauthorised expenditures of eight annas. The man who wants to make his work a success must draw on his own bank-account of money or other things as he goes.

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“I told you he’d work,” said Jimmy to his wife, at the end of six weeks. “He’s been in sole charge of a couple of thousand men up north, on the Mosuhl Canal, for a year; but he gives less trouble than young Martyn with his ten constables; and I’m morally certain—only Government doesn’t recognise moral obligations—he’s spent about half his pay to grease his wheels. Look at this, Lizzie, for one week’s work! Forty miles in two days with twelve carts; two days’ halt building a famine-shed for young Rogers. (Rogers ought to have built it himself, the idiot!) Then forty miles back again, loading six carts on the way, and distributing all Sunday. Then in the evening he pitches in a twenty-page Demi-Official to me, saying the people where he is might be ‘advantageously employed on relief-work,’ and suggesting that he put ’em to work on some broken-down old reservoir he’s discovered, so as to have a good water-supply when the Rains break. ‘Thinks he can cauk the dam in a fortnight. Look at his marginal sketches—aren’t they clear and good—I knew he was pukka, but I didn’t know he was as pukka as this.”

“I must show these to William,” said Mrs. Jim. “The child’s wearing herself out among the babies.”

“Not more than you are, dear. Well, another two months ought to see us out of the wood. I’m sorry it’s not in my power to recommend you for a V. C.”

William sat late in her tent that night, reading through page after page of the square handwriting, patting the sketches of proposed repairs to the reservoir, and wrinkling her eyebrows over the columns of figures of estimated water-supply. “And he finds time to do all this,” she cried to herself, “and—well, I also was present. I’ve saved one or two babies.”

She dreamed for the twentieth time of the god in the golden dust, and woke refreshed to feed loathsome black children, scores of them, wastrels picked up by the wayside, their bones almost breaking their skin, terrible and covered with sores.

Scott was not allowed to leave his cart-work, but his letter was duly forwarded to the Government, and he had the consolation, not rare in India, of knowing that another man was reaping where he had sown. That also was discipline profitable to the soul.

“He’s much too good to waste on canals,” said Jimmy. “Any one can oversee coolies. You needn’t be angry, William; he can—but I need my pearl among bullock-drivers, and I’ve transferred him to the Khanda district, where he’ll have it all to do over again. He should be marching now.”

“He’s not a coolie,” said William, furiously. “He ought to be doing his regulation work.”

“He’s the best man in his service, and that’s saying a good deal; but if you must use razors to cut grindstones, why, I prefer the best cutlery.”

“Isn’t it almost time we saw him again?” said Mrs. Jim. “I’m sure the poor boy hasn’t had a respectable meal for a month. He probably sits on a cart and eats sardines with his fingers.”

“All in good time, dear. Duty before decency—wasn’t it Mr. Chucks said that?”

“No; it was Midshipman Easy,” William laughed. “I sometimes wonder how it will feel to dance or listen to a band again, or sit under a roof. I can’t believe I ever wore a ball-frock in my life.”

“One minute,” said Mrs. Jim, who was thinking. “If he goes to Khanda, he passes within five miles of us. Of course he’ll ride in.”

“Oh, no, he won’t,” said William.

“How do you know, dear?”

“It will take him off his work. He won’t have time.”

“He’ll make it,” said Mrs. Jim, with a twinkle.

“It depends on his own judgment. There’s absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t, if he thinks fit,” said Jim.

“He won’t see fit,” William replied, without sorrow or emotion. “It wouldn’t be him if he did.”

“One certainly gets to know people rather well in times like these,” said Jim, drily; but William’s face was serene as ever, and even as she prophesied, Scott did not appear.

The Rains fell at last, late, but heavily; and the dry, gashed earth was red mud, and servants killed snakes in the camp, where every one was weather-bound for a fortnight—all except Hawkins, who took horse and plashed about in the wet, rejoicing. Now the Government decreed that seed-grain should be distributed to the people, as well as advances of money for the purchase of new oxen; and the white men were doubly worked for this new duty, while William skipped from brick to brick laid down on the trampled mud, and dosed her charges with warming medicines that made them rub their little round stomachs; and the milch goats throve on the rank grass. There was never a word from Scott in the Khanda district, away to the southeast, except the regular telegraphic report to Hawkins. The rude country roads had disappeared; his drivers were half mutinous; one of Martyn’s loaned policemen had died of cholera; and Scott was taking thirty grains of quinine a day to fight the fever that comes with the rain: but those were things Scott did not consider necessary to report. He was, as usual, working from a base of supplies on a railway line, to cover a circle of fifteen miles radius, and since full loads were impossible, he took quarter-loads, and toiled four times as hard by consequence; for he did not choose to risk an epidemic which might have grown uncontrollable by assembling villagers in thousands at the relief-sheds. It was cheaper to take Government bullocks, work them to death, and leave them to the crows in the wayside sloughs.

That was the time when eight years of clean living and hard condition told, though a man’s head were ringing like a bell from the cinchona, and the earth swayed under his feet when he stood and under his bed when he slept. If Hawkins had seen fit to make him a bullock-driver, that, he thought, was entirely Hawkins’s own affair. There were men in the North who would know what he had done; men of thirty years’ service in his own department who would say that it was “not half bad”; and above, immeasurably above, all men of all grades, there was William in the thick of the fight, who would approve because she understood. He had so trained his mind that it would hold fast to the mechanical routine of the day, though his own voice sounded strange in his own ears, and his hands, when he wrote, grew large as pillows or small as peas at the end of his wrists. That steadfastness bore his body to the telegraph-office at the railway-station, and dictated a telegram to Hawkins saying that the Khanda district was, in his judgment, now safe, and he “waited further orders.”

The Madrassee telegraph-clerk did not approve of a large, gaunt man falling over him in a dead faint, not so much because of the weight as because of the names and blows that Faiz Ullah dealt him when he found the body rolled under a bench. Then Faiz Ullah took blankets, quilts, and coverlets where he found them, and lay down under them at his master’s side, and bound his arms with a tent-rope, and filled him with a horrible stew of herbs, and set the policeman to fight him when he wished to escape from the intolerable heat of his coverings, and shut the door of the telegraph-office to keep out the curious for two nights and one day; and when a light engine came down the line, and Hawkins kicked in the door, Scott hailed him weakly but in a natural voice, and Faiz Ullah stood back and took all the credit.

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“For two nights, Heaven-born, he was pagal” said Faiz Ullah. “Look at my nose, and consider the eye of the policeman. He beat us with his bound hands; but we sat upon him, Heaven-born, and though his words were tez, we sweated him. Heaven-born, never has been such a sweat! He is weaker now than a child; but the fever has gone out of him, by the grace of God. There remains only my nose and the eye of the constabeel. Sahib, shall I ask for my dismissal because my Sahib has beaten me?” And Faiz Ullah laid his long thin hand carefully on Scott’s chest to be sure that the fever was all gone, ere he went out to open tinned soups and discourage such as laughed at his swelled nose.

“The district’s all right,” Scott whispered. “It doesn’t make any difference. You got my wire?” I shall be fit in a week. ’Can’t understand how it happened. I shall be fit in a few days.”

“You’re coming into camp with us,” said Hawkins.

“But look here—but—”

“It’s all over except the shouting. We sha’n’t need you Punjabis any more. On my honour, we sha’n’t. Martyn goes back in a few weeks; Arbuthnot’s returned already; Ellis and Clay are putting the last touches to a new feeder-line the Government’s built as relief-work. Morten’s dead—he was a Bengal man, though; you wouldn’t know him. ’Pon my word, you and Will—Miss Martyn—seem to have come through it as well as anybody.”—“Oh, how is she, by-the-way”.” The voice went up and down as he spoke.

“Going strong when I left her. The Roman Catholic Missions are adopting the unclaimed babies to turn them into little priests; the Basil Mission is taking some, and the mothers are taking the rest. You should hear the little beggars howl when they’re sent away from William. She’s pulled down a bit, but so are we all. Now, when do you suppose you’ll be able to move?”

“I can’t come into camp in this state. I won’t,” he replied pettishly.

“Well, you are rather a sight, but from what I gathered there it seemed to me they’d be glad to see you under any conditions. I’ll look over your work here, if you like, for a couple of days, and you can pull yourself together while Faiz Ullah feeds you up.”

Scott could walk dizzily by the time Hawkins’s inspection was ended, and he flushed all over when Jim said of his work that it was “not half bad,” and volunteered, further, that he had considered Scott his right-hand man through the famine, and would feel it his duty to say as much officially.

So they came back by rail to the old camp; but there were no crowds near it; the long fires in the trenches were dead and black, and the famine-sheds were almost empty.

“You see!” said Jim. “There isn’t much more to do. ’Better ride up and see the wife. They’ve pitched a tent for you. Dinner’s at seven. I’ve some work here.”

Riding at a foot-pace, Faiz Ullah by his stirrup, Scott came to William in the brown-calico riding-habit, sitting at the dining-tent door, her hands in her lap, white as ashes, thin and worn, with no lustre in her hair. There did not seem to be any Mrs. Jim on the horizon, and all that William could say was: “My word, how pulled down you look!”

“I’ve had a touch of fever. You don’t look very well yourself.”

“Oh, I’m fit enough. We’ve stamped it out. I suppose you know?”

Scott nodded. “We shall all be returned in a few weeks. Hawkins told me.”

“Before Christmas, Mrs. Jim says. Sha’n’t you be glad to go back—I can smell the wood-smoke already”; William sniffed. “We shall be in time for all the Christmas doings. I don’t suppose even the Punjab Government would be base enough to transfer Jack till the new year?”

“It seems hundreds of years ago—the Punjab and all that—doesn’t it? Are you glad you came?”

“Now it’s all over, yes. It has been ghastly here, though. You know we had to sit still and do nothing, and Sir Jim was away so much.”

“Do nothing! How did you get on with the milking?”

“I managed it somehow—after you taught me. ’Remember?”

Then the talk stopped with an almost audible jar. Still no Mrs. Jim.

“That reminds me, I owe you fifty rupees for the condensed-milk. I thought perhaps you’d be coming here when you were transferred to the Khanda district, and I could pay you then; but you didn’t.”

“I passed within five miles of the camp, but it was in the middle of a march, you see, and the carts were breaking down every few minutes, and I couldn’t get ’em over the ground till ten o’clock that night. I wanted to come awfully. You knew I did, didn’t you?”

“I—believe—I—did,” said William, facing him with level eyes. She was no longer white.

“Did you understand?”

“Why you didn’t ride in? Of course I did.”

“Why?”

“Because you couldn’t, of course. I knew that.”

“Did you care?”

“If you had come in—but I knew you wouldn’t—but if you had, I should have cared a great deal. You know I should.”

“Thank God I didn’t! Oh, but I wanted to! I couldn’t trust myself to ride in front of the carts, because I kept edging ’em over here, don’t you know?”

“I knew you wouldn’t,” said William, contentedly. “Here’s your fifty.”

Scott bent forward and kissed the hand that held the greasy notes. Its fellow patted him awkwardly but very tenderly on the head.

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“And you knew, too, didn’t you?” said William, in a new voice.

“No, on my honour, I didn’t. I hadn’t the—the cheek to expect anything of the kind, except . . I say, were you out riding anywhere the day I passed by to Khanda?”

William nodded, and smiled after the manner of an angel surprised in a good deed.

“Then it was just a speck I saw of your habit in the——”

“Palm-grove on the Southern cart-road. I saw your helmet when you came up from the nullah by the temple—just enough to be sure that you were all right. D’ you care?”

This time Scott did not kiss her hand, for they were in the dusk of the dining-tent, and, because William’s knees were trembling under her, she had to sit down in the nearest chair, where she wept long and happily, her head on her arms; and when Scott imagined that it would be well to comfort her, she needing nothing of the kind, she ran to her own tent; and Scott went out into the world, and smiled upon it largely and idiotically. But when Faiz Ullah brought him a drink, he found it necessary to support one hand with the other, or the good whisky and soda would have been spilled abroad. There are fevers and fevers.

But it was worse—much worse—the strained, eye-shirking talk at dinner till the servants had withdrawn, and worst of all when Mrs. Jim, who had been on the edge of weeping from the soup down, kissed Scott and William, and they drank one whole bottle of champagne, hot, because there was no ice, and Scott and William sat outside the tent in the starlight till Mrs. Jim drove them in for fear of more fever.

Apropos of these things and some others William said: “Being engaged is abominable, because, you see, one has no official position. We must be thankful we’ve lots of things to do.”

“Things to do!” said Jim, when that was reported to him. “They’re neither of them any good any more. I can’t get five hours’ work a day out of Scott. He’s in the clouds half the time.”

“Oh, but they’re so beautiful to watch, Jimmy. It will break my heart when they go. Can’t you do anything for him?”

“I’ve given the Government the impression—at least, I hope I have—that he personally conducted the entire famine. But all he wants is to get on to the Luni Canal Works, and William’s just as bad. Have you ever heard ’em talking of barrage and aprons and waste-water—It’s their style of spooning, I suppose.”

Mrs. Jim smiled tenderly. “Ah, that’s in the intervals—bless ’em.”

And so Love ran about the camp unrebuked in broad daylight, while men picked up the pieces and put them neatly away of the Famine in the Eight Districts.
. . . . .
Morning brought the penetrating chill of the Northern December, the layers of wood-smoke, the dusty grey-blue of the tamarisks, the domes of ruined tombs, and all the smell of the white Northern plains, as the mail-train ran on to the mile-long Sutlej Bridge. William, wrapped in a poshteen—a silk-embroidered sheepskin jacket trimmed with rough astrakhan—looked out with moist eyes and nostrils that dilated joyously. The South of pagodas and palm-trees, the overpopulated Hindu South, was done with. Here was the land she knew and loved, and before her lay the good life she understood, among folk of her own caste and mind.

They were picking them up at almost every station now—men and women coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles of polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers and saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets like William’s, for the Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern heat. And William was among them and of them, her hands deep in her pockets, her collar turned up over her ears, stamping her feet on the platforms as she walked up and down to get warm, visiting from carriage to carriage and everywhere being congratulated. Scott was with the bachelors at the far end of the train, where they chaffed him mercilessly about feeding babies and milking goats; but from time to time he would stroll up to William’s window, and murmur: “Good enough, isn’t it?” and William would answer with sighs of pure delight: “Good enough, indeed.” The large open names of the home towns were good to listen to. Umballa, Ludianah, Phillour, Jullundur, they rang like the coming marriage-bells in her ears, and William felt deeply and truly sorry for all strangers and outsiders—visitors, tourists, and those fresh-caught for the service of the country.

It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the Christmas Ball, William was, unofficially, you might say, the chief and honoured guest among the Stewards, who could make things very pleasant for their friends. She and Scott danced nearly all the dances together, and sat out the rest in the big dark gallery overlooking the superb teak floor, where the uniforms blazed, and the spurs clinked, and the new frocks and four hundred dancers went round and round till the draped flags on the pillars flapped and bellied to the whirl of it.

About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came over from the Club to play “Waits,” and that was a surprise the Stewards had arranged—before any one knew what had happened, the band stopped, and hidden voices broke into “Good King Wenceslaus,” and William in the gallery hummed and beat time with her foot:

“Mark my footsteps well, my page,
Tread thou in them boldly.
Thou shalt feel the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly!”

“Oh, I hope they are going to give us another! Isn’t it pretty, coming out of the dark in that way? Look—look down. There’s Mrs. Gregory wiping her eyes!”

“It’s like Home, rather,” said Scott. “I remember——”

“Hsh! Listen!—dear.” And it began again:

“When shepherds watched their flocks by night—”

“A-h-h!” said William, drawing closer to Scott.

“All seated on the ground,
The Angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around.
‘Fear not,’ said he (for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind);
‘Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind.’”

This time it was William that wiped her eyes.

William the Conqueror – part I

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I have done one braver thing
Than all the worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is to keep that hid.
(The Undertaking)

“IS IT officially declared yet?” “They’ve gone as far as to admit extreme local scarcity, and they’ve started relief-works in one or two districts, the paper says.”

“That means it will be declared as soon as they can make sure of the men and the rolling-stock. ’Shouldn’t wonder if it were as bad as the ’78 Famine.”

“’Can’t be,” said Scott, turning a little in the long cane chair.

“We’ve had fifteen-anna crops in the north, and Bombay and Bengal report more than they know what to do with. They’ll be able to check it before it gets out of hand. It will only be local.”

Martyn picked the Pioneer from the table, read through the telegrams once more, and put up his feet on the chair-rests. It was a hot, dark, breathless evening, heavy with the smell of the newly watered Mall. The flowers in the Club gardens were dead and black on their stalks, the little lotus-pond was a circle of caked mud, and the tamarisk-trees were white with the dust of weeks. Most of the men were at the band-stand in the public gardens—from the Club verandah you could hear the native Police band hammering stale waltzes—or on the polo-ground, or in the high-walled fives-court, hotter than a Dutch oven. Half a dozen grooms, squatted at the heads of their ponies, waited their masters’ return. From time to time a man would ride at a foot-pace into the Club compound, and listlessly loaf over to the whitewashed barracks beside the main building. These were supposed to be chambers. Men lived in them, meeting the same white faces night after night at dinner, and drawing out their office-work till the latest possible hour, that they might escape that doleful company.

“What are you going to do?.” said Martyn, with a yawn. “Let’s have a swim before dinner.”

“’Water’s hot. I was at the bath today.”

“Play you game o’ billiards—fifty up.”

“It’s a hundred and five in the hall now. Sit still and don’t be so abominably energetic.”

A grunting camel swung up to the porch, his badged and belted rider fumbling a leather pouch.

“Kubber-kargaz—ki—yektraaa,” the man whined, handing down the newspaper extra—a slip printed on one side only, and damp from the press. It was pinned up on the green-baize board, between notices of ponies for sale and fox-terriers missing.

Martyn rose lazily, read it, and whistled. “It’s declared!” he cried. “One, two, three—eight districts go under the operations of the Famine Code ek dum. They’ve put Jimmy Hawkins in charge.”

“Good business!” said Scott, with the first sign of interest he had shown. “When in doubt hire a Punjabi. I worked under Jimmy when I first came out and he belonged to the Punjab. He has more bundobust than most men.”

“Jimmy’s a Jubilee Knight now,” said Martyn.”He’s a good chap, even though he is a thrice-born civilian and went to the Benighted Presidency. What unholy names these Madras districts rejoice in—all ungas or rungas or pillays or polliums.”

A dog-cart drove up in the dusk, and a man entered, mopping his head. He was editor of the one daily paper at the capital of a Province of twenty-five million natives and a few hundred white men: as his staff was limited to himself and one assistant, his office-hours ran variously from ten to twenty a day.

“Hi, Raines; you’re supposed to know everything,” said Martyn, stopping him. “How’s this Madras ‘scarcity’ going to turn out?”

“No one knows as yet. There’s a message as long as your arm coming in on the telephone. I’ve left my cub to fill it out. Madras has owned she can’t manage it alone, and Jimmy seems to have a free hand in getting all the men he needs. Arbuthnot’s warned to hold himself in readiness.”

“‘Badger’ Arbuthnot?”

“The Peshawur chap. Yes: and the Pi wires that Ellis and Clay have been moved from the Northwest already, and they’ve taken half a dozen Bombay men, too. It’s pukka famine, by the looks of it.”

“They’re nearer the scene of action than we are; but if it comes to indenting on the Punjab this early, there’s more in this than meets the eye,” said Martyn.

“Here today and gone tomorrow. ’Didn’t come to stay for ever,” said Scott, dropping one of Marryat’s novels, and rising to his feet. “Martyn, your sister’s waiting for you.”

A rough grey horse was backing and shifting at the edge of the verandah, where the light of a kerosene lamp fell on a brown-calico habit and a white face under a grey-felt hat.

“Right, O!” said Martyn. “I’m ready. Better come and dine with us, if you’ve nothing to do, Scott. William, is there any dinner in the house?”

“I’ll go home and see,” was the rider’s answer. “You can drive him over—at eight, remember.”

Scott moved leisurely to his room, and changed into the evening-dress of the season and the country: spotless white linen from head to foot, with a broad silk cummerbund. Dinner at the Martyns’ was a decided improvement on the goat-mutton, twiney-tough fowl, and tinned entrees of the Club. But it was a great pity that Martyn could not afford to send his sister to the hills for the hot weather. As an Acting District Superintendent of Police, Martyn drew the magnificent pay of six hundred depreciated silver rupees a month, and his little four-roomed bungalow said just as much. There were the usual blue-and-white-striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the usual glass-studded Amritsar phulkaris draped on nails driven into the flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did not match, picked up at sales of dead men’s effects; and the usual streaks of black grease where the leather punka-thong ran through the wall. It was as though everything had been unpacked the night before to be repacked next morning. Not a door in the house was true on its hinges. The little windows, fifteen feet up, were darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the beams of the wood-ceiled roof. But all this was part of Scott’s life. Thus did people live who had such an income; and in a land where each man’s pay, age, and position are printed in a

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book, that all may read, it is hardly worth while to play at pretence in word or deed. Scott counted eight years’ service in the Irrigation Department, and drew eight hundred rupees a month, on the understanding that if he served the State faithfully for another twenty-two years he could retire on a pension of some four hundred rupees a month. His working-life, which had been spent chiefly under canvas or in temporary shelters where a man could sleep, eat, and write letters, was bound up with the opening and guarding of irrigation canals, the handling of two or three thousand workmen of all castes and creeds, and the payment of vast sums of coined silver.

He had finished that spring, not without credit, the last section of the great Mosuhl Canal, and—much against his will, for he hated office-work—had been sent in to serve during the hot weather on the accounts and supply side of the Department, with sole charge of the sweltering sub-office at the capital of the Province. Martyn knew this; William, his sister, knew it; and everybody knew it. Scott knew, too, as well as the rest of the world, that Miss Martyn had come out to India four years ago to keep house for her brother, who, as every one knew, had borrowed the money to pay for her passage, and that she ought, as all the world said, to have married at once. In stead of this, she had refused some half a dozen subalterns, a Civilian twenty years her senior, one Major, and a man in the Indian Medical Department. This, too, was common property. She had “stayed down three hot weathers,” as the saying is, because her brother was in debt and could not afford the expense of her keep at even a cheap hill-station. Therefore her face was white as bone, and in the centre of her forehead was a big silvery scar about the size of a shilling—the mark of a Delhi sore, which is the same as a “Bagdad date.” This comes from drinking bad water, and slowly eats into the flesh till it is ripe enough to be burned out.

None the less William had enjoyed herself hugely in her four years. Twice she had been nearly drowned while fording a river; once she had been run away with on a camel; had witnessed a midnight attack of thieves on her brother’s camp; had seen justice administered, with long sticks, in the open under trees; could speak Urdu and even rough Punjabi with a fluency that was envied by her seniors; had entirely fallen out of the habit of writing to her aunts in England, or cutting the pages of the English magazines; had been through a very bad cholera year, seeing sights unfit to be told; and had wound up her experiences by six weeks of typhoid fever, during which her head had been shaved and hoped to keep her twenty-third birthday that September. It is conceivable that the aunts would not have approved of a girl who never set foot on the ground if a horse were within hail; who rode to dances with a shawl thrown over her skirt; who wore her hair cropped and curling all over her head; who answered indifferently to the name of William or Bill; whose speech was heavy with the flowers of the vernacular; who could act in amateur theatricals, play on the banjo, rule eight servants and two horses, their accounts and their diseases, and look men slowly and deliberately between the eyes—even after they had proposed to her and been rejected.

“I like men who do things,” she had confided to a man in the Educational Department, who was teaching the sons of cloth-merchants and dyers the beauty of Wordsworth’s Excursion in annotated cram-books; and when he grew poetical, William explained that she “didn’t understand poetry very much; it made her head ache,” and another broken heart took refuge at the Club. But it was all William’s fault. She delighted in hearing men talk of their own work, and that is the most fatal way of bringing a man to your feet.

Scott had known her for some three years, meeting her, as a rule, under canvass, when his camp and her brother’s joined for a day on the edge of the Indian Desert. He had danced with her several times at the big Christmas gatherings, when as many as five hundred white people came in to the station; and had always a great respect for her housekeeping and her dinners.

She looked more like a boy than ever when, the meal ended, she sat, rolling cigarettes, her low forehead puckered beneath the dark curls as she twiddled the papers and stuck out her rounded chin when the tobacco stayed in place, or, with a gesture as true as a school-boy’s throwing a stone, tossed the finished article across the room to Martyn, who caught it with one hand, and continued his talk with Scott. It was all “shop,”—canals and the policing of canals; the sins of villagers who stole more water than they had paid for, and the grosser sin of native constables who connived at the thefts; of the transplanting bodily of villages to newly irrigated ground, and of the coming fight with the desert in the south when the Provincial funds should warrant the opening of the long-surveyed Luni Protective Canal System. And Scott spoke openly of his great desire to be put on one particular section of the work where he knew the land and the people; and Martyn sighed for a billet in the Himalayan foot-hills, and said his mind of his superiors, and William rolled cigarettes and said nothing, but smiled gravely on her brother because he was happy.

At ten Scott’s horse came to the door, and the evening was ended.

The lights of the two low bungalows in which the daily paper was printed showed bright across the road. It was too early to try to find sleep, and Scott drifted over to the editor. Raines, stripped to the waist like a sailor at a gun, lay half asleep in a long chair, waiting for night telegrams. He had a theory that if a man did not stay by his work all day and most of the night he laid himself open to fever: so he ate and slept among his files.

“Can you do it?” be said drowsily. “I didn’t mean to bring you over.”

“About what—I’ve been dining at the Martyns’.”

“The Madras famine, of course. Martyn’s warned, too. They’re taking men where they can find ’em. I sent a note to you at the Club just now, asking if you could do us a letter once a week from the south—between two and three columns, say. Nothing sensational, of course, but just plain facts about who is doing what, and so forth. Our regular rates—ten rupees a column.”

“’Sorry, but it’s out of my line,” Scott answered, staring absently at the map of India on the wall. “It’s rough on Martyn—very. ’Wonder what he’lldo with his sister? ’Wonder what the deuce they’ll do with me? I’ve no famine experience. This is the first I’ve heard of it. Am I ordered?”

“Oh, yes. Here’s the wire. They’ll put you on to relief-works,” Raines said, “with a horde of Madrassis dying like flies; one native apothecary and half a pint of cholera-mixture among the ten thousand of you. It comes of your being idle for the moment. Every man who isn’t doing two men’s work seems to have been called upon. Hawkins evidently believes in Punjabis. It’s going to be quite as bad as anything they have had in the last ten years.”

“It’s all in the day’s work, worse luck. I suppose I shall get my orders officially some time tomorrow. I’m awfully glad I happened to drop in. ’Better go and pack my kit now. Who relieves me here—do you know?”

Raines turned over a sheaf of telegrams. “McEuan,” said he, “from Murree.”

Scott chuckled. “He thought he was going to be cool all summer. He’ll be very sick about this. Well, no good talking. ’Night.”

page 3

Two hours later, Scott, with a clear conscience, laid himself down to rest on a string cot in a bare room. Two worn bullock trunks, a leather water-bottle, a tin ice-box, and his pet saddle sewed up in sacking were piled at the door, and the Club secretary’s receipt for last month’s bill was under his pillow. His orders came next morning, and with them an unofficial telegram from Sir James Hawkins; who was not in the habit of forgetting good men when he had once met them, bidding him report himself with all speed at some unpronounceable place fifteen hundred miles to the south, for the famine was sore in the land, and white men were needed.

A pink and fattish youth arrived in the red-hot noonday, whimpering a little at fate and famines, which never allowed any one three months’ peace. He was Scott’s successor—another cog in the machinery, moved forward behind his fellow whose services, as the official announcement ran, “were placed at the disposal of the Madras Government for famine duty until further orders.” Scott handed over the funds in his charge, showed him the coolest corner in the office, warned him against excess of zeal, and, as twilight fell, departed from the Club in a hired carriage, with his faithful body-servant, Faiz Ullah, and a mound of disordered baggage atop, to catch the southern mail at the loopholed and bastioned railway-station. The heat from the thick brick walls struck him across the face as if it had been a hot towel; and he reflected that there were at least five nights and four days of this travel before him. Faiz Ullah, used to the chances of service, plunged into the crowd on the stone platform, while Scott, a black cheroot between his teeth, waited till his compartment should be set away. A dozen native policemen, with their rifles and bundles, shouldered into the press of Punjabi farmers, Sikh craftsmen, and greasy-locked Afreedee pedlars, escorting with all pomp Martyn’s uniform-case, water-bottles, ice-box, and bedding-roll. They saw Faiz Ullah’s lifted hand, and steered for it.

“My Sahib and your Sahib,” said Faiz Ullah to Martyn’s man, “will travel together. Thou and I, O brother, will thus secure the servants’ places close by; and because of our masters’ authority none will dare to disturb us.”

When Faiz Ullah reported all things ready, Scott settled down at full length, coatless and bootless, on the broad leather-covered bunk. The heat under the iron-arched roof of the station might have been anything over a hundred degrees. At the last moment Martyn entered, dripping.

“Don’t swear,” said Scott, lazily; “it’s too late to change your carriage; and we’ll divide the ice.”

“What are you doing here?” said the police-man.

“I’m lent to the Madras Government, same as you. By Jove, it’s a bender of a night! Are you taking any of your men down?”

“A dozen. I suppose I shall have to superintend relief distributions. ’Didn’t know you were under orders too.”

“I didn’t till after I left you last night. Raines had the news first. My orders came this morning. McEuan relieved me at four, and I got off at once. ’Shouldn’t wonder if it wouldn’t be a good thing—this famine—if we come through it alive.”

“Jimmy ought to put you and me to work together,” said Martyn; and then, after a pause: “My sister’s here.”

“Good business,” said Scott, heartily. “Going to get off at Umballa, I suppose, and go up to Simla. Who’ll she stay with there?”

“No-o; that’s just the trouble of it. She’s going down with me.”

Scott sat bolt upright under the oil-lamps as the train jolted past Tarn-Taran. “What! You don’t mean you couldn’t afford—”

“’Tain’t that. I’d have scraped up the money somehow.”

“You might have come to me, to begin with,” said Scott, stiffly; “we aren’t altogether strangers.”

“Well, you needn’t be stuffy about it. I might, but—you don’t know my sister. I’ve been explaining and exhorting and all the rest of it all day—lost my temper since seven this morning, and haven’t got it back yet—but she wouldn’t hear of any compromise. A woman’s entitled to travel with her husband if she wants to; and William says she’s on the same footing. You see, we’ve been together all our lives, more or less, since my people died. It isn’t as if she were an ordinary sister.”

“All the sisters I’ve ever heard of would have stayed where they were well off.”

“She’s as clever as a man, confound—” Martyn went on. “She broke up the bungalow over my head while I was talking at her. ’Settled the whole subchiz in three hours—servants, horses, and all. I didn’t get my orders till nine.”

“Jimmy Hawkins won’t be pleased,” said Scott “A famine’s no place for a woman.”

“Mrs. Jim—I mean Lady Jim’s in camp with him. At any rate, she says she will look after my sister. William wired down to her on her own responsibility, asking if she could come, and knocked the ground from under me by showing me her answer.”

Scott laughed aloud. “If she can do that she can take care of herself, and Mrs. Jim won’t let her run into any mischief. There aren’t many women, sisters or wives, who would walk into a famine with their eyes open. It isn’t as if she didn’t know what these things mean. She was through the Jalo cholera last year.”

The train stopped at Amritsar, and Scott went back to the ladies’ compartment, immediately behind their carriage. William, with a cloth riding-cap on her curls, nodded affably.

“Come in and have some tea,” she said. “’Best thing in the world for heat-apoplexy.”

“Do I look as if I were going to have heat-apoplexy?”

“’Never can tell,” said William, wisely. “It’s always best to be ready.”

She had arranged her compartment with the knowledge of an old campaigner. A felt-covered water-bottle hung in the draught of one of the shuttered windows; a tea-set of Russian china, packed in a wadded basket, stood on the seat; and a travelling spirit-lamp was clamped against the woodwork above it.

William served them generously, in large cups, hot tea, which saves the veins of the neck from swelling inopportunely on a hot night. It was characteristic of the girl that, her plan of action once settled, she asked for no comments on it. Life among men who had a great deal of work to do, and very little time to do it in, had taught her the wisdom of effacing, as well as of fending for, herself. She did not by word or deed suggest that she would be useful, comforting, or beautiful in their travels, but continued about her business serenely: put the cups back without clatter when tea was ended, and made cigarettes for her guests.

“This time last night,” said Scott, “we didn’t expect—er—this kind of thing, did we?”

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“I’ve learned to expect anything,” said William. “You know, in our service, we live at the end of the telegraph; but, of course, this ought to be a good thing for us all, departmentally—if we live.”

“It knocks us out of the running in our own Province,” Scott replied, with equal gravity. “I hoped to be put on the Luni Protective Works this cold weather, but there’s no saying how long the famine may keep us.”

“Hardly beyond October, I should think,” said Martyn. “It will be ended, one way or the other, then.”

“And we’ve nearly a week of this,” said William. “Sha’n’t we be dusty when it’s over?”

For a night and a day they knew their surroundings, and for a night and a day, skirting the edge of the great Indian Desert on a narrow-gauge railway, they remembered how in the days of their apprenticeship they had come by that road from Bombay. Then the languages in which the names of the stations were written changed, and they launched south into a foreign land, where the very smells were new. Many long and heavily laden grain-trains were in front of them, and they could feel the hand of Jimmy Hawkins from far off. They waited in extemporised sidings while processions of empty trucks returned to the north, and were coupled on to slow, crawling trains, and dropped at midnight, Heaven knew where; but it was furiously hot, and they walked to and fro among sacks, and dogs howled.

Then they came to an India more strange to them than to the untravelled Englishman—the flat, red India of palm-tree, palmyra-palm, and rice—the India of the picture-books, of Little Harry and His Bearer—all dead and dry in the baking heat. They had left the incessant passenger-traffic of the north and west far and far behind them. Here the people crawled to the side of the train, holding their little ones in their arms; and a loaded truck would be left behind, the men and women clustering round it like ants by spilled honey. Once in the twilight they saw on a dusty plain a regiment of little brown men, each bearing a body over his shoulder; and when the train stopped to leave yet another truck, they perceived that the burdens were not corpses, but only foodless folk picked up beside dead oxen by a corps of Irregular troops. Now they met more white men, here one and there two, whose tents stood close to the line, and who came armed with written authorities and angry words to cut off a truck. They were too busy to do more than nod at Scott and Martyn, and stare curiously at William, who could do nothing except make tea, and watch how her men staved off the rush of wailing, walking skeletons, putting them down three at a time in heaps, with their own hands uncoupling the marked trucks, or taking receipts from the hollow-eyed, weary white men, who spoke another argot than theirs. They ran out of ice, out of soda-water, and out of tea; for they were six days and seven nights on the road, and it seemed to them like seven times seven years.

At last, in a dry, hot dawn, in a land of death, lit by long red fires of railway-sleepers, where they were burning the dead, they came to their destination, and were met by Jim Hawkins, the Head of the Famine, unshaven, unwashed, but cheery, and entirely in command of affairs.

Martyn, he decreed then and there, was to live on trains till further orders; was to go back with empty trucks, filling them with starving people as he found them, and dropping them at a famine-camp on the edge of the Eight Districts. He would pick up supplies and return, and his constables would guard the loaded grain-cars, also picking up people, and would drop them at a camp a hundred miles south. Jim Hawkins was very glad to see Scott again—would that same hour take charge of a convoy of bullock-carts, and would go south, feeding as he went, to yet another famine-camp, where he would leave his starving—there would he no lack of starving on the route—and wait for orders by telegraph. Generally, Scott was in all small things to act as he thought best.

William bit her under lip. There was no one in the wide world like her one brother, but Martyn’s orders gave him no discretion.

She came out on the platform, masked with dust from head to foot, a horse-shoe wrinkle on her forehead, put here by much thinking during the past week, but as self-possessed as ever. Mrs. Jim—who should have been Lady Jim but that no one remembered the title—took possession of her with a little gasp.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” she almost sobbed. “You oughtn’t to, of course, but there—there isn’t another woman in the place, and we must help each other, you know; and we’ve all the wretched people and the little babies they are selling.”

“I’ve seen some,” said William.

“Isn’t it ghastly? I’ve bought twenty; they’re in our camp; but won’t you have something to eat first? We’ve more than ten people can do here; and I’ve got a horse for you. Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come, dear. You’re a Punjabi, too, you know.”

“Steady, Lizzie,” said Hawkins, over his shoulder. “We’ll look after you, Miss Martyn. ’Sorry I can’t ask you to breakfast, Martyn. You’ll have to eat as you go. Leave two of your men to help Scott. These poor devils can’t stand up to load carts. Saunders” (this to the engine-driver, who was half asleep in the cab), “back down and get those empties away. You’ve ‘line clear’ to Anundrapillay; they’ll give you orders north of that. Scott, load up your carts from that B.P.P. truck, and be off as soon as you can. The Eurasian in the pink shirt is your interpreter and guide. You’ll find an apothecary of sorts tied to the yoke of the second wagon. He’s been trying to bolt; you’ll have to look after him. Lizzie, drive Miss Martyn to camp, and tell them to send the red horse down here for me.”

Scott, with Faiz Ullah and two policemen, was already busied with the carts, backing them up to the truck and unbolting the sideboards quietly, while the others pitched in the bags of millet and wheat. Hawkins watched him for as long as it took to fill one cart.

“That’s a good man,” he said. “If all goes well I shall work him hard.” This was Jim Hawkins’s notion of the highest compliment one human being could pay another.

An hour later Scott was under way; the apothecary threatening him with the penalties of the law for that he, a member of the Subordinate Medical Department, had been coerced and bound against his will and all laws governing the liberty of the subject; the pink-shirted Eurasian begging leave to see his mother, who happened to be dying some three miles away: “Only verree, verree short leave of absence, and will presently return, sar—”; the two constables,armed with staves, bringing up the rear; and Faiz Ullah, a Mohammedan’s contempt for all Hindoos and foreigners in every line of his face, explaining to the drivers that though Scott Sahib was a man to be feared on all fours, he, Faiz Ullah, was Authority Itself.

The procession creaked past Hawkins’s camp—three stained tents under a clump of dead trees, behind them the famine-shed, where a crowd of hopeless ones tossed their arms around the cooking-kettles.

“’Wish to Heaven William had kept out of it,” said Scott to himself, after a glance. “We’ll have cholera, sure as a gun, when the Rains break.”

But William seemed to have taken kindly to the operations of the Famine Code, which, when famine is declared, supersede the workings of the ordinary law. Scott saw her, the centre of a mob of weeping women, in a calico riding-habit, and a blue-grey felt hat with a gold puggaree.

“I want fifty rupees, please. I forgot to ask Jack before he went away. Can you lend it me? It’s for condensed-milk for the babies,” said she.

Scott took the money from his belt, and handed it over without a word. “For goodness sake, take care of yourself,” he said.

“Oh, I shall be all right. We ought to get the milk in two days. By the way, the orders are, I was to tell you, that you’re to take one of Sir Jim’s horses.There’s a grey Cabuli here that I thought would be just your style, so I’ve said you’d take him. Was that right?”

“That’s awfully good of you. We can’t either of us talk much about style, I am afraid.”

Scott was in a weather-stained drill shooting-kit, very white at the seams and a little frayed at the wrists. William regarded him thoughtfully, from his pith helmet to his greased ankle-boots. “You look very nice, I think. Are you sure you’ve everything you’ll need—quinine, chlorodyne, and so on?”

“’Think so,” said Scott, patting three or four of his shooting-pockets as he mounted and rode alongside his convoy.

“Good-bye,” he cried.

“Good-bye, and good luck,” said William. “I’m awfully obliged for the money.” She turned on a spurred heel and disappeared into the tent, while the carts pushed on past the famine-sheds, past the roaring lines of the thick, fat fires, down to the baked Gehenna of the South.

 

Weland’s Sword

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THE children were at the Theatre, acting to Three Cows as much as they could remember of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their father had made them a small play out of the big Shakespeare one, and they had rehearsed it with him and with their mother till they could say it by heart. They began where Nick Bottom the weaver comes out of the bushes with a donkey’s head on his shoulders, and finds Titania Queen of the Fairies asleep. Then they skipped to the part where Bottom asks three little fairies to scratch his head and bring him honey, and they ended where he falls asleep in Titania’s arms. Dan was Puck and Nick Bottom, as well as all three Fairies. He wore a pointy-eared cloth cap for Puck, and a paper donkey’s head out of a Christmas cracker—but it tore if you were not careful—for Bottom. Una was Titania, with a wreath of columbines and a foxglove wand.

The Theatre lay in a meadow called the Long Slip. A little millstream, carrying water to a mill two or three fields away, bent round one corner of it, and in the middle of the bend lay a large old Fairy Ring of darkened grass, which was the stage. The mill-stream banks, overgrown with willow, hazel, and guelder-rose, made convenient places to wait in till your turn came; and a grown-up who had seen it said that Shakespeare himself could not have imagined a more suitable setting for his play. They were not, of course, allowed to act on Midsummer Night itself, but they went down after tea on Midsummer Eve, when the shadows were growing, and they took their supper—hard-boiled eggs, Bath Oliver biscuits, and salt in an envelope—with them. Three Cows had been milked and were grazing steadily with a tearing noise that one could hear all down the meadow; and the noise of the mill at work sounded like bare feet running on hard ground. A cuckoo sat on a gatepost singing his broken June tune, ‘cuckoo-cuk,’ while a busy kingfisher crossed from the millstream to the brook which ran on the other side of the meadow. Everything else was a sort of thick, sleepy stillness smelling of meadow-sweet and dry grass.

Their play went beautifully. Dan remembered all his parts—Puck, Bottom, and the three Fairies—and Una never forgot a word of Titania—not even the difficult piece where she tells the Fairies how to feed Bottom with ‘apricocks, green figs, and dewberries,’ and all the lines end in ‘ies.’ They were both so pleased that they acted it three times over from beginning to end before they sat down in the unthistly centre of the Ring to eat eggs and Bath Olivers. This was when they heard a whistle among the alders on the bank, and they jumped.

The bushes parted. In the very spot where Dan had stood as Puck they saw a small, brown, broad-shouldered, pointy-eared person with a snub nose, slanting blue eyes, and a grin that ran right across his freckled face. He shaded his forehead as though he were watching Quince, Snout, Bottom, and the others rehearsing Pyramus and Thisbe, and, in a voice as deep as Three Cows asking to be milked, he began:

‘What hempen homespuns have we swaggering here,
So near the cradle of the fairy Queen?’

He stopped, hollowed one hand round his ear, and, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, went on:

‘What, a play toward? I’ll be an auditor;
An actor too, perhaps, if I see cause:’

The children looked and gasped. The small thing—he was no taller than Dan’s shoulder—stepped quietly into the Ring.

‘I’m rather out of practice,’ said he; ‘but that’s the way my part ought to be played.’

Still the children stared at him—from his dark blue cap, like a big columbine flower, to his bare, hairy feet. At last he laughed.

‘Please don’t look like that. It isn’t my fault. What else could you expect?’ he said.

‘We didn’t expect any one,’ Dan answered, slowly. ‘This is our field.’

‘Is it?’ said their visitor, sitting down. ‘Then what on Human Earth made you act Midsummer Night’s Dream three times over, on Midsummer Eve, in the middle of a Ring, and under—right under one of my oldest hills in Old England? Pook’s Hill—Puck’s Hill—Puck’s Hill—Pook’s Hill! It’s as plain as the nose on my face.’

He pointed to the bare, fern-covered slope of Pook’s Hill that runs up from the far side of the mill-stream to a dark wood. Beyond that wood the ground rises and rises for five hundred feet, till at last you climb out on the bare top of Beacon Hill, to look over the Pevensey Levels and the Channel and half the naked South Downs.

‘By Oak, Ash, and Thorn!’ he cried, still laughing. ‘If this had happened a few hundred years ago you’d have had all the People of the Hills out like bees in June!’

‘We didn’t know it was wrong,’ said Dan.

‘Wrong!’ The little fellow shook with laughter. ‘Indeed, it isn’t wrong. You’ve done something that Kings and Knights and Scholars in old days would have given their crowns and spurs and books to find out. If Merlin himself had helped you, you couldn’t have managed better! You’ve broken the Hills—you’ve broken the Hills! It hasn’t happened in a thousand years.’

‘We—we didn’t mean to,’ said Una.

‘Of course you didn’t! That’s just why you did it. Unluckily the Hills are empty now, and all the People of the Hills are gone. I’m the only one left. I’m Puck, the oldest Old Thing in England, very much at your service if—if you care to have anything to do with me. If you don’t, of course you’ve only to say so, and I’ll go.’

He looked at the children and the children looked at him for quite half a minute. His eyes did not twinkle any more. They were very kind, and there was the beginning of a good smile on his lips.

Una put out her hand. ‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘We like you.’

‘Have a Bath Oliver,’ said Dan, and he passed over the squashy envelope with the eggs.

‘By Oak, Ash, and Thorn,’ cried Puck, taking off his blue cap, ‘I like you too. Sprinkle a plenty salt on the biscuit, Dan, and I’ll eat it with you. That’ll show you the sort of person I am. Some of us’—he went on, with his mouth full—, ‘couldn’t abide Salt, or Horse-shoes over a door, or Mountain-ash berries, or Running Water, or Cold Iron, or the sound of Church Bells. But I’m Puck!’

He brushed the crumbs carefully from his doublet and shook hands.

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‘We always said, Dan and I,’ Una stammered, ‘that if it ever happened we’d know ex-actly what to do; but—but now it seems all different somehow.’

‘She means meeting a fairy,’ said Dan. ‘I never believed in ’em—not after I was six, anyhow.’

‘I did,’ said Una. ‘At least, I sort of half believed till we learned “Farewell Rewards.” Do you know “Farewell Rewards and Fairies”?’

‘Do you mean this?’ said Puck. He threw his big head back and began at the second line:—

‘Good housewives now may say,
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they;
And though they sweep their hearths no less

(‘Join in, Una!’)

Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?’

The echoes flapped all along the flat meadow.

‘Of course I know it,’ he said.

‘And then there’s the verse about the Rings,’ said Dan. ‘When I was little it always made me feel unhappy in my inside.’

‘“Witness those rings and roundelays,” do you mean ?’ boomed Puck, with a voice like a great church organ.

‘Of theirs which yet remain,
Were footed in Queen Mary’s days
On many a grassy plain.
But since of late Elizabeth,
And later James came in,
Are never seen on any heath
As when the time hath been.’

‘It’s some time since I heard that sung, but there’s no good beating about the bush: it’s true. The People of the Hills have all left. I saw them come into Old England and I saw them go. Giants, trolls, kelpies, brownies, goblins, imps; wood, tree, mound, and water spirits; heath-people, hill-watchers, treasure-guards, good people, little people, pishogues, leprechauns, night-riders, pixies, nixies, gnomes, and the rest—gone, all gone! I came into England with Oak, Ash, and Thorn, and when Oak, Ash, and Thorn are gone I shall go too.’

Dan looked round the meadow—at Una’s oak by the lower gate, at the line of ash trees that overhang Otter Pool where the mill-stream spills over when the mill does not need it, and at the gnarled old white-thorn where Three Cows scratched their necks.

‘It’s all right,’ he said; and added, ‘I’m planting a lot of acorns this autumn too.’

‘Then aren’t you most awfully old?’ said Una.

‘Not old—fairly long-lived, as folk say hereabouts. Let me see—my friends used to set my dish of cream for me o’ nights when Stonehenge was new. Yes, before the Flint Men made the Dewpond under Chanctonbury Ring.’

Una clasped her hands, cried ‘Oh!’ and nodded her head.

‘She’s thought a plan,’ Dan explained. ‘She always does like that when she thinks a plan.’

‘I was thinking—suppose we saved some of our porridge and put it in the attic for you. They’d notice if we left it in the nursery.’

‘Schoolroom,’ said Dan, quickly, and Una flushed, because they had made a solemn treaty that summer not to call the schoolroom the nursery any more.

‘Bless your heart o’ gold!’ said Puck. ‘You’ll make a fine considering wench some market-day. I really don’t want you to put out a bowl for me; but if ever I need a bite, be sure I’ll tell you.’

He stretched himself at length on the dry grass, and the children stretched out beside him, their bare legs waving happily in the air. They felt they could not be afraid of him any more than of their particular friend old Hobden the hedger. He did not bother them with grownup questions, or laugh at the donkey’s head, but lay and smiled to himself in the most sensible way.

‘Have you a knife on you?’ he said at last.

Dan handed over his big one-bladed outdoor knife, and Puck began to carve out a piece of turf from the centre of the Ring.

‘What’s that for—Magic?’ said Una, as he pressed up the square of chocolate loam that cut like so much cheese.

‘One of my little magics,’ he answered, and cut another. ‘You see, I can’t let you into the Hills because the People of the Hills have gone; but if you care to take seizin from me, I may be able to show you something out of the common here on Human Earth. You certainly deserve it.’

‘What’s taking seizin?’ said Dan, cautiously.

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‘It’s an old custom the people had when they bought and sold land. They used to cut out a clod and hand it over to the buyer, and you weren’t lawfully seized of your land—it didn’t really belong to you—till the other fellow had actually given you a piece of it—like this.’ He held out the turves.

‘But it’s our own meadow,’ said Dan, drawing back. ‘Are you going to magic it away?’

Puck laughed. ‘Iknow it’s your meadow, but there’s a great deal more in it than you or your father ever guessed. Try!’

He turned his eyes on Una.

‘I’ll do it,’ she said. Dan followed her example at once.

‘Now are you two lawfully seized and possessed of all Old England,’ began Puck, in a sing-song voice. ‘By Right of Oak, Ash, and Thorn are you free to come and go and look and know where I shall show or best you please. You shall see What you shall see and you shall hear What you shall hear, though It shall have happened three thousand year; and you shall know neither Doubt nor Fear. Fast! Hold fast all I give you.’

The children shut their eyes, but nothing happened.

‘Well?’ said Una, disappointedly opening them. ‘I thought there would be dragons.’

‘“Though It shall have happened three thousand year,”’ said Puck, and counted on his fingers. ‘No; I’m afraid there were no dragons three thousand years ago.’

‘But there hasn’t happened anything at all,’ said Dan.

‘Wait awhile,’ said Puck. ‘You don’t grow an oak in a year—and Old England’s older than twenty oaks. Let’s sit down again and think. I can do that for a century at a time.’

‘Ah, but you’re a fairy,’ said Dan.

‘Have you ever heard me use that word yet?’ said Puck, quickly.

‘No. You talk about “the People of the Hills,” but you never say “fairies,”’ said Una. ‘I was wondering at that. Don’t you like it?’

‘How would you like to be called “mortal” or “human being” all the time?’ said Puck; ‘or “son of Adam” or “daughter of Eve”?’

‘I shouldn’t like it at all,’ said Dan. ‘That’s how the Djinns and Afrits talk in the Arabian Nights.’

‘And that’s how I feel about saying—that word that I don’t say. Besides, what you call them are made-up things the People of the Hills have never heard of—little buzzflies with butterfly wings and gauze petticoats, and shiny stars in their hair, and a wand like a school-teacher’s cane for punishing bad boys and rewarding good ones. I know ’em!’

‘We don’t mean that sort,’ said Dan. ‘We hate ’em too.’

‘Exactly,’ said Puck. ‘Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don’t care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed! I’ve seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou’-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with fright. Out they’d go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they’d be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic—Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!’

‘Splendid,’ said Dan, but Una shuddered.

‘I’m glad they’re gone, then; but what made the People of the Hills go away?’ Una asked.

‘Different things. I’ll tell you one of them some day—the thing that made the biggest flit of any,’ said Puck. ‘But they didn’t all flit at once. They dropped off, one by one, through the centuries. Most of them were foreigners who couldn’t stand our climate. They flitted early.’

‘How early?’ said Dan.

‘A couple of thousand years or more. The fact is they began as Gods. The Phoenicians brought some over when they came to buy tin; and the Gauls, and the Jutes, and the Danes, and the Frisians, and the Angles brought more when they landed. They were always landing in those days, or being driven back to their ships, and they always brought their Gods with them. England is a bad country for Gods. Now, I began as I mean to go on. A bowl of porridge, a dish of milk, and a little quiet fun with the country folk in the lanes was enough for me then, as it is now. I belong here, you see, and I have been mixed up with people all my days. But most of the others insisted on being Gods, and having temples, and altars, and priests, and sacrifices of their own.’

‘People burned in wicker baskets?’ said Dan. ‘Like Miss Blake tells us about?’

‘All sorts of sacrifices,’ said Puck. ‘If it wasn’t men, it was horses, or cattle, or pigs, or metheglin—that’s a sticky, sweet sort of beer. I never liked it. They were a stiff-necked, extravagant set of idols, the Old Things. But what was the result? Men don’t like being sacrificed at the best of times; they don’t even like sacrificing their farm-horses. After a while men simply left the Old Things alone, and the roofs of their temples fell in, and the Old Things had to scuttle out and pick up a living as they could. Some of them took to hanging about trees, and hiding in graves and groaning o’ nights. If they groaned loud enough and long enough they might frighten a poor countryman into sacrificing a hen, or leaving a pound of butter for them. I remember one Goddess called Belisama. She became a common wet water-spirit somewhere in Lancashire. And there were hundreds of other friends of mine. First they were Gods. Then they were People of the Hills, and then they flitted to other places because they couldn’t get on with the English for one reason or another. There was only one Old Thing, I remember, who honestly worked for his living after he came down in the world. He was called Weland, and he was a smith to some Gods. I’ve forgotten their names, but he used to make them swords and spears. I think he claimed kin with Thor of the Scandinavians.’

‘Heroes of Asgard Thor?’ said Una. She had been reading the book.

‘Perhaps,’ answered Puck. ‘None the less, when bad times came, he didn’t beg or steal. He worked; and I was lucky enough to be able to do him a good turn.’

‘Tell us about it,’ said Dan. ‘I think I like hearing of Old Things.’

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They rearranged themselves comfortably, each chewing a grass stem. Puck propped himself on one strong arm and went on:

‘Let’s think! I met Weland first on a November afternoon in a sleet storm, on Pevensey Level——’

‘Pevensey? Over the hill, you mean?’ Dan pointed south.

‘Yes; but it was all marsh in those days, right up to Horsebridge and Hydeneye. I was on Beacon Hill—they called it Brunanburgh then—when I saw the pale flame that burning thatch makes, and I went down to look. Some pirates—I think they must have been Peofn’s men—were burning a village on the Levels, and Weland’s image—a big, black wooden thing with amber beads round its neck—lay in the bows of a black thirty-two-oar galley that they had just beached. Bitter cold it was! There were icicles hanging from her deck and the oars were glazed over with ice, and there was ice on Weland’s lips. When he saw me he began a long chant in his own tongue, telling me how he was going to rule England, and how I should smell the smoke of his altars from Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight. I didn’t care? I’d seen too many Gods charging into Old England to be upset about it. I let him sing himself out while his men were burning the village, and then I said (I don’t know what put it into my head), “Smith of the Gods,” I said, “the time comes when I shall meet you plying your trade for hire by the wayside.”’

‘What did Weland say?’ said Una. ‘Was he angry?’

‘He called me names and rolled his eyes, and I went away to wake up the people inland. But the pirates conquered the country, and for centuries Weland was a most important God. He had temples everywhere—from Lincolnshire to the Isle of Wight, as he said—and his sacrifices were simply scandalous. To do him justice, he preferred horses to men; but men or horses, I knew that presently he’d have to come down in the world—like the other Old Things. I gave him lots of time—I gave him about a thousand years—and at the end of ’em I went into one of his temples near Andover to see how he prospered. There was his altar, and there was his image, and there were his priests, and there were the congregation, and everybody seemed quite happy, except Weland and the priests. In the old days the congregation were unhappy until the priests had chosen their sacrifices; and so would you have been. When the service began a priest rushed out, dragged a man up to the altar, pretended to hit him on the head with a little gilt axe, and the man fell down and pretended to die. Then everybody shouted: “A sacrifice to Weland! A sacrifice to Weland!”’

‘And the man wasn’t really dead?’ said Una.

‘Not a bit. All as much pretence as a dolls’ tea-party. Then they brought out a splendid white horse, and the priest cut some hair from its mane and tail and burned it on the altar, shouting, “A sacrifice!” That counted the same as if a man and a horse had been killed. I saw poor Weland’s face through the smoke, and I couldn’t help laughing. He looked so disgusted and so hungry, and all he had to satisfy himself was a horrid smell of burning hair. Just a dolls’ tea-party’

‘I judged it better not to say anything then (’twouldn’t have been fair), and the next time I came to Andover, a few hundred years later, Weland and his temple were gone, and there was a Christian bishop in a church there. None of the People of the Hills could tell me anything about him, and I supposed that he had left England.’ Puck turned; lay on the other elbow, and thought for a long time.

‘Let’s see,’ he said at last. ‘It must have been some few years later—a year or two before the Conquest, I think—that I came back to Pook’s Hill here, and one evening I heard old Hobden talking about Weland’s Ford.’

‘If you mean old Hobden the hedger, he’s only seventy-two. He told me so himself,’ said Dan. ‘He’s a intimate friend of ours.’

‘You’re quite right,’ Puck replied. ‘I meant old Hobden’s ninth great-grandfather. He was a free man and burned charcoal hereabouts. I’ve known the family, father and son, so long that I get confused sometimes. Hob of the Dene was my Hobden’s name, and he lived at the Forge cottage. Of course, I pricked up my ears when I heard Weland mentioned, and I scuttled through the woods to the Ford just beyond Bog Wood yonder.’ He jerked his head westward, where the valley narrows between wooded hills and steep hop-fields.

‘Why, that’s Willingford Bridge,’ said Una. ‘We go there for walks often. There’s a kingfisher there.’

‘It was Weland’s Ford then, dear. A road led down to it from the Beacon on the top of the hill—a shocking bad road it was—and all the hillside was thick, thick oak-forest, with deer in it. There was no trace of Weland, but presently I saw a fat old farmer riding down from the Beacon under the greenwood tree. His horse had cast a shoe in the clay, and when he came to the Ford he dismounted, took a penny out of his purse, laid it on a stone, tied the old horse to an oak, and called out: “Smith, Smith, here is work for you!” Then he sat down and went to sleep. You can imagine how I felt when I saw a whitebearded, bent old blacksmith in a leather apron creep out from behind the oak and begin to shoe the horse. It was Weland himself. I was so astonished that I jumped out and said: “What on Human Earth are you doing here, Weland?”’

‘Poor Weland!’ sighed Una.

He pushed the long hair back from his forehead (he didn’t recognise me at first). Then he said: “You ought to know. You foretold it, Old Thing. I’m shoeing horses for hire. I’m not even Weland now,” he said. “They call me Wayland-Smith.”’

‘Poor chap!’ said Dan. ‘What did you say?’

‘What could I say? He looked up, with the horse’s foot on his lap, and he said, smiling, “I remember the time when I wouldn’t have accepted this old bag of bones as a sacrifice, and now I’m glad enough to shoe him for a penny.”

‘“Isn’t there any way for you to get back to Valhalla, or wherever you come from?” I said.

‘“I’m afraid not,” he said, rasping away at the hoof. He had a wonderful touch with horses. The old beast was whinnying on his shoulder. “You may remember that I was not a gentle God in my Day and my Time and my Power. I shall never be released till some human being truly wishes me well.”

‘“Surely,” said I, “the farmer can’t do less than that. You’re shoeing the horse all round for him.”

‘“Yes,” said he, “and my nails will hold a shoe from one full moon to the next. But farmers and Weald clay,’ said he, “are both uncommon cold and sour.”

‘Would you believe it, that when that farmer woke and found his horse shod he rode away without one word of thanks? I was so angry that I wheeled his horse right round and walked him back three miles to the Beacon, just to teach the old sinner politeness.’

‘Were you invisible?’ said Una. Puck nodded, gravely.

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‘The Beacon was always laid in those days ready to light, in case the French landed at Pevensey; and I walked the horse about and about it that lee-long summer night. The farmer thought he was bewitched—well, he was, of course—and began to pray and shout. I didn’t care! I was as good a Christian as he any fair-day in the County, and about four o’clock in the morning a young novice came along from the monastery that used to stand on the top of Beacon Hill.’

‘What’s a novice?’ said Dan.

‘It really means a man who is beginning to be a monk, but in those days people sent their sons to a monastery just the same as a school. This young fellow had been to a monastery in France for a few months every year, and he was finishing his studies in the monastery close to his home here. Hugh was his name, and he had got up to go fishing hereabouts. His people owned all this valley. Hugh heard the farmer shouting, and asked him what in the world he meant. The old man spun him a wonderful tale about fairies and goblins and witches; and I know he hadn’t seen a thing except rabbits and red deer all that night. (The People of the Hills are like otters—they don’t show except when they choose.) But the novice wasn’t a fool. He looked down at the horse’s feet, and saw the new shoes fastened as only Weland knew how to fasten ’em. (Weland had a way of turning down the nails that folks called the Smith’s Clinch.)

‘“H’m!” said the novice. “Where did you get your horse shod?”

‘The farmer wouldn’t tell him at first, because the priests never liked their people to have any dealings with the Old Things. At last he confessed that the Smith had done it. “What did you pay him?” said the novice. “Penny,” said the farmer, very sulkily. “That’s less than a Christian would have charged,” said the novice. “I hope you threw a ‘Thank you’ into the bargain.” “No,” said the farmer; “Wayland-Smith’s a heathen.” “Heathen or no heathen,” said the novice, “you took his help, and where you get help there you must give thanks.”

“What?” said the farmer—he was in a furious temper because I was walking the old horse in circles all this time—“What, you young jackanapes?” said he. “Then by your reasoning I ought to say ‘Thank you’ to Satan if he helped me?” “Don’t roll about up there splitting reasons with me,” said the novice. “Come back to the Ford and thank the Smith, or you’ll be sorry.”

‘Back the farmer had to go. I led the horse, though no one saw me, and the novice walked beside us, his gown swishing through the shiny dew and his fishing-rod across his shoulders spearwise. When we reached the Ford again—it was five o’clock and misty still under the oaks—the farmer simply wouldn’t say “Thank you.” He said he’d tell the Abbot that the novice wanted him to worship heathen gods. Then Hugh the novice lost his temper. He just cried, “Out!” put his arm under the farmer’s fat leg, and heaved him from his saddle on to the turf, and before he could rise he caught him by the back of the neck and shook him like a rat till the farmer growled, “Thank you, Wayland-Smith.”’

‘Did Weland see all this?’ said Dan.

‘Oh, yes, and he shouted his old war-cry when the farmer thudded on to the ground. He was delighted. Then the novice turned to the oak tree and said, “Ho, Smith of the Gods! I am ashamed of this rude farmer; but for all you have done in kindness and charity to him and to others of our people, I thank you and wish you well.” Then he picked up his fishing-rod—it looked more like a tall spear than ever—and tramped off down your valley.’

‘And what did poor Weland do?’ said Una.

‘He laughed and he cried with joy, because he had been released at last, and could go away. But he was an honest Old Thing. He had worked for his living and he paid his debts before he left. “I shall give that novice a gift,” said Weland. “A gift that shall do him good the wide world over and Old England after him. Blow up my fire, Old Thing, while I get the iron for my last task.” Then he made a sword—a dark grey, wavy-lined sword—and I blew the fire while he hammered. By Oak, Ash, and Thorn, I tell you, Weland was a Smith of the Gods! He cooled that sword in running water twice, and the third time he cooled it in the evening dew, and he laid it out in the moonlight and said Runes (that’s charms) over it, and he carved Runes of Prophecy on the blade. “Old Thing,” he said to me, wiping his forehead, “this is the best blade that Weland ever made. Even the user will never know how good it is. Come to the monastery.”

‘We went to the dormitory where the monks slept, we saw the novice fast asleep in his cot, and Weland put the sword into his hand, and I remember the young fellow gripped it in his sleep. Then Weland strode as far as he dared into the Chapel and threw down all his shoeing-tools-his hammers, and pincers, and rasps—to show that he had done with them for ever. It sounded like suits of armour falling, and the sleepy monks ran in, for they thought the monastery had been attacked by the French. The novice came first of all, waving his new sword and shouting Saxon battle-cries. When they saw the shoeing-tools they were very bewildered, till the novice asked leave to speak, and told what he had done to the farmer, and what he had said to Wayland-Smith, and how, though the dormitory light was burning, he had found the wonderful rune-carved sword in his cot.

‘The Abbot shook his head at first, and then he laughed and said to the novice: “Son Hugh, it needed no sign from a heathen God to show me that you will never be a monk. Take your sword, and keep your sword, and go with your sword, and be as gentle as you are strong and courteous. We will hang up the Smith’s tools before the Altar,” he said, “because, whatever the Smith of the Gods may have been in the old days, we know that he worked honestly for his living and made gifts to Mother Church.” Then they went to bed again, all except the novice, and he sat up in the garth playing with his sword. Then Weland said to me by the stables: “Farewell, Old Thing; you had the right of it. You saw me come to England, and you see me go. Farewell!”

With that he strode down the hill to the corner of the Great Woods—Woods Corner, you call it now—to the very place where he had first landed—and I heard him moving through the thickets towards Horsebridge for a little, and then he was gone. That was how it happened. I saw it.’

Both children drew a long breath.

‘But what happened to Hugh the novice?’ said Una.

‘And the sword?’ said Dan.

Puck looked down the meadow that lay all quiet and cool in the shadow of Pook’s Hill. A corncrake jarred in a hay-field near by, and the small trouts of the brook began to jump. A big white moth flew unsteadily from the alders and flapped round the children’s heads, and the least little haze of water-mist rose from the brook.

‘Do you really want to know?’ Puck said.

‘We do,’ cried the children. ‘Awfully!’

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‘Very good. I promised you that you shall see What you shall see, and you shall hear What you shall hear, though It shall have happened three thousand year; but just now it seems to me that, unless you go back to the house, people will be looking for you. I’ll walk with you as far as the gate.’

‘Will you be here when we come again?’ they asked.

‘Surely, sure-ly,’ said Puck. ‘I’ve been here some time already. One minute first, please.’

He gave them each three leaves—one of Oak, one of Ash, and one of Thorn.

‘Bite these,’ said he. ‘Otherwise you might be talking at home of what you’ve seen and heard, and—if I know human beings—they’d send for the doctor. Bite!’

They bit hard, and found themselves walking side by side to the lower gate. Their father was leaning over it.

‘And how did your play go?’ he asked.

‘Oh, splendidly,’ said Dan. ‘Only afterwards, I think, we went to sleep. It was very hot and quiet. Don’t you remember, Una?’

Una shook her head and said nothing.

‘I see,’ said her father.

‘Late—late in the evening Kilmeny came home,
For Kilmeny had been she could not tell where,
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare.

‘But why are you chewing leaves at your time of life, daughter? For fun?’

‘No. It was for something, but I can’t azactly remember,’ said Una.

And neither of them could till——