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FOUR men, each entitled to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’, sat at a table playing whist. The thermometer marked—for them—one hundred and one degrees of heat. The room was darkened till it was only just possible to distinguish the pips of the cards and the very white faces of the players. A tattered, rotten punkah of whitewashed calico was puddling the hot air and whining dolefully at each stroke. Outside lay gloom of a November day in London. There was neither sky, sun, nor horizon—nothing but a brown purple haze of heat. It was as though the earth were dying of apoplexy.

From time to time clouds of tawny dust rose from the ground without wind or warning, flung themselves tablecloth-wise among the tops of the parched trees, and came down again. Then a-whirling dust-devil would scutter across the plain for a couple of miles, break, and fall outward, though there was nothing to check its flight save a long low line of piled railway-sleepers white with the dust, a cluster of huts made of mud, condemned rails, and canvas, and the one squat four-roomed bungalow that belonged to the assistant engineer in charge of a section of the Gaudhari State line then under construction.

The four, stripped to the thinnest of sleeping-suits, played whist crossly, with wranglings as to leads and returns. It was not the best kind of whist, but they had taken some trouble to arrive at it. Mottram of the Indian Survey had ridden thirty and railed one hundred miles from his lonely post in the desert since the night before; Lowndes of the Civil Service, on special duty in the political department, had come as far to escape for an instant the miserable intrigues of an impoverished native State whose king alternately fawned and blustered for more money from the pitiful revenues contributed by hard-wrung peasants and despairing camel-breeders; Spurstow, the doctor of the line, had left a cholera-stricken camp of coolies to look after itself for forty-eight hours while he associated with white men once more. Hummil, the assistant engineer, was the host. He stood fast and received his friends thus every Sunday if they could come in. When one of them failed to appear, he would send a telegram to his last address, in order that he might know whether the defaulter were dead or alive. There are very many places in the East where it is not good or kind to let your acquaintances drop out of sight even for one short week.

The players were not conscious of any special regard for each other. They squabbled whenever they met; but they ardently desired to meet, as men without water desire to drink. They were lonely folk who understood the dread meaning of loneliness. They were all under thirty years of age—which is too soon for any man to possess that knowledge.

‘Pilsener?’ said Spurstow, after the second rubber, mopping his forehead.

‘Beer’s out, I’m sorry to say, and there’s hardly enough soda-water for tonight,’ said Hummil.

‘What filthy bad management!’ Spurstow snarled.

‘Can’t help it. I’ve written and wired; but the trains don’t come through regularly yet. Last week the ice ran out—as Lowndes knows.’

‘Glad I didn’t come. I could ha’ sent you some if I had known, though. Phew! it’s too hot to go on playing bumblepuppy.’ This with a savage scowl at Lowndes, who only laughed. He was a hardened offender.

Mottram rose from the table and looked out of a chink in the shutters.

‘What a sweet day!’ said he.

The company yawned all together and betook themselves to an aimless investigation of all Hummil’s possessions—guns, tattered novels, saddlery, spurs, and the like. They had fingered them a score of times before, but there was really nothing else to do.

‘Got anything fresh?’ said Lowndes.

‘Last week’s Gazette of India, and a cutting from a home paper. My father sent it out. It’s rather amusing.’

‘One of those vestrymen that call ’emselves M.P.s again, is it?’ said Spurstow, who read his newspapers when he could get them.

‘Yes. Listen to this. It’s to your address, Lowndes. The man was making a speech to his constituents, and he piled it on. Here’s a sample, “And I assert unhesitatingly that the Civil Service in India is the preserve—the pet preserve—of the aristocracy of England. What does the democracy—what do the masses—get from that country, which we have step by step fraudulently annexed? I answer, nothing whatever. It is farmed with a single eye to their own interests by the scions of the aristocracy. They take good care to maintain their lavish scale of incomes, to avoid or stifle any inquiries into the nature and conduct of their administration, while they themselves force the unhappy peasant to pay with the sweat of his brow for all the luxuries in which they are lapped.” ’ Hummil waved the cutting above his head. ‘’Ear! ’ear!’ said his audience.

Then Lowndes, meditatively, ‘I’d give—I’d give three months’ pay to have that gentleman spend one month with me and see how the free and independent native prince works things. Old Timbersides’—this was his flippant title for an honoured and decorated feudatory prince—‘has been wearing my life out this week past for money. By Jove, his latest performance was to send me one of his women as a bribe!’

‘Good for you! Did you accept it?’ said Mottram.

‘No. I rather wish I had, now. She was a pretty little person, and she yarned away to me about the horrible destitution among the king’s women-folk. The darlings haven’t had any new clothes for nearly a month, and the old man wants to buy a new drag from Calcutta—solid silver railings and silver lamps, and trifles of that kind. I’ve tried to make him understand that he has played the deuce with the revenues for the last twenty years and must go slow. He can’t see it.’

‘But he has the ancestral treasure-vaults to draw on. There must be three millions at least in jewels and coin under his palace,’ said Hummil.

‘Catch a native king disturbing the family treasure! The priests forbid it except as the last resort. Old Timbersides has added something like a quarter of a million to the deposit in his reign.’

‘Where the mischief does it all come from?’ said Mottram.

‘The country. The state of the people is enough to make you sick. I’ve known the taxmen wait by a milch-camel till the foal was born and then hurry off the mother for arrears. And what can I do? I can’t get the court clerks to give me any accounts; I can’t raise anything more than a fat smile from the commander-in-chief when I find out the troops are three months in arrears; and old Timbersides begins to weep when I speak to him. He has taken to the King’s Peg heavily, liqueur brandy for whisky, and Heidsieck for soda-water.’

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‘That’s what the Rao of Jubela took to. Even a native can’t last long at that,’ said Spurstow. ‘He’ll go out.’

‘And a good thing, too. Then I suppose we’ll have a council of regency, and a tutor for the young prince, and hand him back his kingdom with ten years’ accumulations.’

‘Whereupon that young prince, having been taught all the vices of the English, will play ducks and drakes with the money and undo ten years’ work in eighteen months. I’ve seen that business before,’ said Spurstow. ‘I should tackle the king with a light hand if I were you, Lowndes. They’ll hate you quite enough under any circumstances.

‘That’s all very well. The man who looks on can talk about the light hand; but you can’t clean a pig-sty with a pen dipped in rose-water. I know my risks; but nothing has happened yet. My servant’s an old Pathan, and he cooks for me. They are hardly likely to bribe him, and I don’t accept food from my true friends, as they call themselves. Oh, but it’s weary work! I’d sooner be with you, Spurstow. There’s shooting near your camp.’

‘Would you? I don’t think it. About fifteen deaths a day don’t incite a man to shoot anything but himself. And the worst of it is that the poor devils look at you as though you ought to save them. Lord knows, I’ve tried everything. My last attempt was empirical, but it pulled an old man through. He was brought to me apparently past hope, and I gave him gin and Worcester sauce with cayenne. It cured him; but I don’t recommend it.’

‘How do the cases run generally?’ said Hummil.

‘Very simply indeed. Chlorodyne, opium pill, chlorodyne, collapse, nitre, bricks to the feet, and then—the burning-ghaut. The last seems to be the only thing that stops the trouble. It’s black cholera, you know. Poor devils! But, I will say, little Bunsee Lal, my apothecary, works like a demon. I’ve recommended him for promotion if he comes through it all alive.’

‘And what are your chances, old man?’ said Mottram.

‘Don’t know; don’t care much; but I’ve sent the letter in. What are you doing with yourself generally?’

‘Sitting under a table in the tent and spitting on the sextant to keep it cool,’ said the man of the survey. ‘Washing my eyes to avoid ophthalmia, which I shall certainly get, and trying to make a sub-surveyor understand that an error of five degrees in an angle isn’t quite so small as it looks. I’m altogether alone, y’ know, and shall be till the end of the hot weather.’

‘Hummil’s the lucky man,’ said Lowndes, flinging himself into a long chair. ‘He has an actual roof – torn as to the ceiling-cloth, but still a roof – over his head. He sees one train daily. He can get beer and soda-water and ice ’em when God is good. He has books, pictures—they were torn from the Graphic—and the society of the excellent sub-contractor Jevins, besides the pleasure of receiving us weekly.’

Hummil smiled grimly. ‘Yes, I’m the lucky man, I suppose. Jevins is luckier.’

‘How? Not——’

‘Yes. Went out. Last Monday.’

‘By his own hand?’ said Spurstow quickly, hinting the suspicion that was in everybody’s mind. There was no cholera near Hummil’s section. Even fever gives a man at least a week’s grace, and sudden death generally implied self-slaughter.

‘I judge no man this weather,’ said Hummil. ‘He had a touch of the sun, I fancy; for last week, after you fellows had left, he came into the verandah and told me that he was going home to see his wife, in Market Street, Liverpool, that evening.

‘I got the apothecary in to look at him, and we tried to make him lie down. After an hour or two he rubbed his eyes and said he believed he had had a fit, hoped he hadn’t said anything rude. Jevins had a great idea of bettering himself socially. He was very like Chucks in his language.’

‘Well?’

‘Then he went to his own bungalow and began cleaning a rifle. He told the servant that he was going to shoot buck in the morning. Naturally he fumbled with the trigger, and shot himself through the head—accidentally. The apothecary sent in a report to my chief; and Jevins is buried somewhere out there. I’d have wired to you, Spurstow, if you could have done anything.’

‘You’re a queer chap,’ said Mottram. ‘If you’d killed the man yourself you couldn’t have been more quiet about the business.’

‘Good Lord! what does it matter?’ said Hummil calmly. ‘I’ve got to do a lot of his overseeing work in addition to my own. I’m the only person that suffers. Jevins is out of it, by pure accident, of course, but out of it. The apothecary was going to write a long screed on suicide. Trust a babu to drivel when he gets the chance.’

‘Why didn’t you let it go in as suicide?’ said Lowndes.

‘No direct proof. A man hasn’t many privileges in his country, but he might at least be allowed to mishandle his own rifle. Besides, some day I may need a man to smother up an accident to myself. Live and let live. Die and let die.’

‘You take a pill,’ said Spurstow, who had been watching Hummil’s white face narrowly. ‘Take a pill, and don’t be an ass. That sort of talk is skittles. Anyhow, suicide is shirking your work. If I were Job ten times over, I should be so interested in what was going to happen next that I’d stay on and watch.’

‘Ah! I’ve lost that curiosity,’ said Hummil.

‘Liver out of order?’ said Lowndes feelingly.

‘No. Can’t sleep. That’s worse.’

‘By Jove, it is!’ said Mottram. ‘I’m that way every now and then, and the fit has to wear itself out. What do you take for it?’

‘Nothing. What’s the use? I haven’t had ten minutes’ sleep since Friday morning.’

‘Poor chap! Spurstow, you ought to attend to this,’ said Mottram. ‘Now you mention it, your eyes are rather gummy and swollen.’

Spurstow, still watching Hummil, laughed lightly. ‘I’ll patch him up, later on. Is it too hot, do you think, to go for a ride?’

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‘Where to?’ said Lowndes wearily. ‘We shall have to go away at eight, and there’ll be riding enough for us then. I hate a horse when I have to use him as a necessity. Oh, heavens! What is there to do?’

‘Begin whist again, at chick points [‘a chick’ is supposed to be eight shillings] and a gold mohur on the rub,’ said Spurstow promptly.

‘Poker. A month’s pay all round for the pool—no limit—and fifty-rupee raises. Somebody would be broken before we got up,’ said Lowndes.

‘Can’t say that it would give me any pleasure to break any man in this company,’ said Mottram. ‘There isn’t enough excitement in it, and it’s foolish.’ He crossed over to the worn and battered little camp-piano—wreckage of a married household that had once held the bungalow—and opened the case.

‘It’s used up long ago,’ said Hummil. ‘The servants have picked it to pieces.’

The piano was indeed hopelessly out of order, but Mottram managed to bring the rebellious notes into a sort of agreement, and there rose from the ragged keyboard something that might once have been the ghost of a popular music-hall song. The men in the long chairs turned with evident interest as Mottram banged the more lustily.

‘That’s good!’ said Lowndes. ‘By Jove! the last time I heard that song was in ’79, or thereabouts, just before I came out.’

‘Ah!’ said Spurstow with pride, ‘I was home in ‘80.’ And he mentioned a song of the streets popular at that date.

Mottram executed it roughly. Lowndes criticized and volunteered emendations. Mottram dashed into another ditty, not of the music-hall character, and made as if to rise.

‘Sit down,’ said Hummil. ‘I didn’t know that you had any music in your composition. Go on playing until you can’t think of anything more. I’ll have that piano tuned up before you come again. Play something festive.’

Very simple indeed were the tunes to which Mottram’s art and the limitations of the piano could give effect, but the men listened with pleasure, and in the pauses talked all together of what they had seen or heard when they were last at home. A dense dust-storm sprung up outside, and swept roaring over the house, enveloping it in the choking darkness of midnight, but Mottram continued unheeding, and the crazy tinkle reached the ears of the listeners above the flapping of the tattered ceiling-cloth.

In the silence after the storm he glided from the more directly personal songs of Scotland, half humming them as he played, into the Evening Hymn.

‘Sunday,’ said he, nodding his head.

‘Go on. Don’t apologize for it,’ said Spurstow.

Hummil laughed long and riotously. ‘Play it, by all means. You’re full of surprises today. I didn’t know you had such a gift of finished sarcasm. How does that thing go?’

Mottram took up the tune.

‘Too slow by half. You miss the note of gratitude,’ said Hummil. ‘It ought to go to the “Grasshopper’s Polka”—this way.’ And he chanted, prestissimo,

‘Glory to thee, my God, this night, For all the blessings of the light.—That shows we really feel our blessings. How does it go on?—If in the night I sleepless lie, My soul with sacred thoughts supply; May no ill dreams disturb my rest,—Quicker, Mottram!—Or powers of darkness me molest!’

‘Bah! what an old hypocrite you are!’

‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Lowndes. ‘You are at full liberty to make fun of anything else you like, but leave that hymn alone. It’s associated in my mind with the most sacred recollections——’

‘Summer evenings in the country, stained-glass window, light going out, and you and she jamming your heads together over one hymnbook,’ said Mottram.

‘Yes, and a fat old cockchafer hitting you in the eye when you walked home. Smell of hay, and a moon as big as a bandbox sitting on the top of a haycock; bats, roses, milk and midges,’ said Lowndes.

‘Also mothers. I can just recollect my mother singing me to sleep with that when I was a little chap,’ said Spurstow.

The darkness had fallen on the room. They could hear Hummil squirming in his chair.

‘Consequently,’ said he testily, ‘you sing it when you are seven fathom deep in Hell! It’s an insult to the intelligence of the Deity to pretend we’re anything but tortured rebels.’

‘Take two pills,’ said Spurstow; ‘that’s tortured liver.’

‘The usually placid Hummil is in a vile bad temper. I’m sorry for his coolies tomorrow,’ said Lowndes, as the servants brought in the lights and prepared the table for dinner.

As they were settling into their places about the miserable goat-chops, and the smoked tapioca pudding, Spurstow took occasion to whisper to Mottram, ‘Well done, David!’

‘Look after Saul, then,’ was the reply.

‘What are you two whispering about?’ said Hummil suspiciously.

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‘Only saying that you are a damned poor host. This fowl can’t be cut,’ returned Spurstow with a sweet smile. ‘Call this a dinner?’

‘I can’t help it. You don’t expect a banquet, do you?’

Throughout that meal Hummil contrived laboriously to insult directly and pointedly all his guests in succession, and at each insult Spurstow kicked the aggrieved person under the table; but he dared not exchange a glance of intelligence with either of them. Hummil’s face was white and pinched, while his eyes were unnaturally large. No man dreamed for a moment of resenting his savage personalities, but as soon as the meal was over they made haste to get away.

‘Don’t go. You’re just getting amusing, you fellows. I hope I haven’t said anything that annoyed you. You’re such touchy devils.’ Then, changing the note into one of almost abject entreaty, Hummil added, ‘I say, you surely aren’t going?’

‘In the language of the blessed Jorrocks, where I dines I sleeps,’ said Spurstow. ‘I want to have a look at your coolies tomorrow, if you don’t mind. You can give me a place to lie down in, I suppose?’

The others pleaded the urgency of their several duties next day, and, saddling up, departed together, Hummil begging them to come next Sunday. As they jogged off, Lowndes unbosomed himself to Mottram—

‘. . . And I never felt so like kicking a man at his own table in my life. He said I cheated at whist, and reminded me I was in debt! ’Told you you were as good as a liar to your face! You aren’t half indignant enough over it.’

‘Not I,’ said Mottram. ‘Poor devil! Did you ever know old Hummy behave like that before or within a hundred miles of it?’

‘That’s no excuse. Spurstow was hacking my shin all the time, so I kept a hand on myself. Else I should have—’

‘No, you wouldn’t. You’d have done as Hummy did about Jevins; judge no man this weather. By Jove! the buckle of my bridle is hot in my hand! Trot out a bit, and ‘ware rat-holes.’ Ten minutes’ trotting jerked out of Lowndes one very sage remark when he pulled up, sweating from every pore—

“Good thing Spurstow’s with him tonight.’

‘Ye-es. Good man, Spurstow. Our roads turn here. See you again next Sunday, if the sun doesn’t bowl me over.’

‘S’pose so, unless old Timbersides’ finance minister manages to dress some of my food. Goodnight, and—God bless you!’

‘What’s wrong now?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ Lowndes gathered up his whip, and, as he flicked Mottram’s mare on the flank, added, ‘You’re not a bad little chap, that’s all.’ And the mare bolted half a mile across the sand, on the word.

In the assistant engineer’s bungalow Spurstow and Hummil smoked the pipe of silence together, each narrowly watching the other. The capacity of a bachelor’s establishment is as elastic as its arrangements are simple. A servant cleared away the dining-room table, brought in a couple of rude native bedsteads made of tape strung on a light wood frame, flung a square of cool Calcutta matting over each, set them side by side, pinned two towels to the punkah so that their fringes should just sweep clear of the sleeper’s nose and mouth, and announced that the couches were ready.

The men flung themselves down, ordering the punkah-coolies by all the powers of Hell to pull. Every door and window was shut, for the outside air was that of an oven. The atmosphere within was only 104 degrees, as the thermometer bore witness, and heavy with the foul smell of badly-trimmed kerosene lamps; and this stench, combined with that of native tobacco, baked brick, and dried earth, sends the heart of many a strong man down to his boots, for it is the smell of the Great Indian Empire when she turns herself for six months into a house of torment. Spurstow packed his pillows craftily so that he reclined rather than lay, his head at a safe elevation above his feet. It is not good to sleep on a low pillow in the hot weather if you happen to be of thick-necked build, for you may pass with lively snores and gugglings from natural sleep into the deep slumber of heat-apoplexy.

‘Pack your pillows,’ said the doctor sharply, as he saw Hummil preparing to lie down at full length.

The night-light was trimmed; the shadow of the punkah wavered across the room, and the flick  of the punkah-towel and the soft whine of the rope through the wall-hole followed it. Then the punkah flagged, almost ceased. The sweat poured from Spurstow’s brow. Should he go out and harangue the coolie? It started forward again with a savage jerk, and a pin came out of the towels. When this was replaced, a tomtom in the coolie-lines began to beat with the steady throb of a swollen artery inside some brain-fevered skull. Spurstow turned on his side and swore gently. There was no movement on Hummil’s part. The man had composed himself as rigidly as a corpse, his hands clinched at his sides. The respiration was too hurried for any suspicion of sleep. Spurstow looked at the set face. The jaws were clinched, and there was a pucker round the quivering eyelids.

‘He’s holding himself as tightly as ever he can,’ thought Spurstow. ‘What in the world is the matter with him?—Hummil!’

‘Yes,’ in a thick constrained voice.

‘Can’t you get to sleep?’

‘No.’

‘Head hot? Throat feeling bulgy? or how?’

‘Neither, thanks. I don’t sleep much, you know.’

‘’Feel pretty bad?’

‘Pretty bad, thanks. There is a tomtom outside, isn’t there? I thought it was my head at first…. Oh, Spurstow, for pity’s sake give me something that will put me asleep, sound asleep, if it’s only for six hours!’ He sprang up, trembling from head to foot. ‘I haven’t been able to sleep naturally for days, and I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!’

‘Poor old chap!’

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‘That’s no use. Give me something to make me sleep. I tell you I’m nearly mad. I don’t know what I say half my time. For three weeks I’ve had to think and spell out every word that has come through my lips before I dared say it. Isn’t that enough to drive a man mad? I can’t see things correctly now, and I’ve lost my sense of touch. My skin aches—my skin aches! Make me sleep. Oh, Spurstow, for the love of God make me sleep sound. It isn’t enough merely to let me dream. Let me sleep!’

‘All right, old man, all right. Go slow; you aren’t half as bad as you think.’

The flood-gates of reserve once broken, Hummil was clinging to him like a frightened child. ‘You’re pinching my arm to pieces.’

‘I’ll break your neck if you don’t do something for me. No, I didn’t mean that. Don’t be angry, old fellow.’ He wiped the sweat off himself as he fought to regain composure. ‘I’m a bit restless and off my oats, and perhaps you could recommend some sort of sleeping mixture—bromide of potassium.’

‘Bromide of skittles! Why didn’t you tell me this before? Let go of my arm, and I’ll see if there’s anything in my cigarette-case to suit your complaint.’ Spurstow hunted among his day-clothes, turned up the lamp, opened a little silver cigarette-case, and advanced on the expectant Hummil with the daintiest of fairy squirts.

‘The last appeal of civilization,’ said he, ’and a thing I hate to use. Hold out your arm. Well, your sleeplessness hasn’t ruined your muscle; and what a thick hide it is! Might as well inject a buffalo subcutaneously. Now in a few minutes the morphia will begin working. Lie down and wait.’

A smile of unalloyed and idiotic delight began to creep over Hummil’s face. ‘I think,’ he whispered,—‘I think I’m going off now. Gad! it’s positively heavenly! Spurstow, you must give me that case to keep; you——’ The voice ceased as the head fell back.

‘Not for a good deal,’ said Spurstow to the unconscious form. ‘And now, my friend, sleeplessness of your kind being very apt to relax the moral fibre in little matters of life and death, I’ll just take the liberty of spiking your guns.’

He paddled into Hummil’s saddle-room in his bare feet and uncased a twelve-bore rifle, an express, and a revolver. Of the first he unscrewed the nipples and hid them in the bottom of a saddlery-case; of the second he abstracted the lever, kicking it behind a big wardrobe. The third he merely opened, and knocked the doll-head bolt of the grip up with the heel of a riding-boot.

‘That’s settled,’ he said, as he shook the sweat off his hands. ‘These little precautions will at least give you time to turn. You have too much sympathy with gun-room accidents.’

And as he rose from his knees, the thick muffled voice of Hummil cried in the doorway, ‘You fool!’

Such tones they use who speak in the lucid intervals of delirium to their friends a little before they die.

Spurstow started, dropping the pistol. Hummil stood in the doorway, rocking with helpless laughter.

‘That was awf’ly good of you, I’m sure,’ he said, very slowly, feeling for his words. ‘I don’t intend to go out by my own hand at present. I say, Spurstow, that stuff won’t work. What shall I do? What shall I do?’ And panic terror stood in his eyes.

‘Lie down and give it a chance. Lie down at once.’

‘I daren’t. It will only take me half-way again, and I shan’t be able to get away this time. Do you know it was all I could do to come out just now? Generally I am as quick as lightning; but you had clogged my feet. I was nearly caught.’

‘Oh yes, I understand. Go and lie down.’

‘No, it isn’t delirium; but it was an awfully mean trick to play on me. Do you know I might have died?’

As a sponge rubs a slate clean, so some power unknown to Spurstow had wiped out of Hummil’s face all that stamped it for the face of a man, and he stood at the doorway in the expression of his lost innocence. He had slept back into terrified childhood.

‘Is he going to die on the spot?’ thought Spurstow. Then, aloud, ‘All right, my son. Come back to bed, and tell me all about it. You couldn’t sleep; but what was all the rest of the nonsense?’

‘A place, a place down there,’ said Hummil, with simple sincerity. The drug was acting on him by waves, and he was flung from the fear of a strong man to the fright of a child as his nerves gathered sense or were dulled.

‘Good God! I’ve been afraid of it for months past, Spurstow. It has made every night hell to me; and yet I’m not conscious of having done anything wrong.’

‘Be still, and I’ll give you another dose. We’ll stop your nightmares, you unutterable idiot!’

‘Yes, but you must give me so much that I can’t get away. You must make me quite sleepy, not just a little sleepy. It’s so hard to run then.’

‘I know it; I know it. I’ve felt it myself. The symptoms are exactly as you describe.’

‘Oh, don’t laugh at me, confound you! Before this awful sleeplessness came to me I’ve tried to rest on my elbow and put a spur in the bed to sting me when I fell back. Look!’

‘By Jove! the man has been rowelled like a horse! Ridden by the nightmare with a vengeance! And we all thought him sensible enough. Heaven send us understanding! You like to talk, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sometimes. Not when I’m frightened. Then I want to run. Don’t you?’

‘Always. Before I give you your second dose try to tell me exactly what your trouble is.’

Hummil spoke in broken whispers for nearly ten minutes, whilst Spurstow looked into the pupils of his eyes and passed his hand before them once or twice.

At the end of the narrative the silver cigarette-case was produced, and the last words that Hummil said as he fell back for the second time were, ‘Put me quite to sleep; for if I’m caught I die, I die!’

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‘Yes, yes; we all do that sooner or later, thank Heaven who has set a term to our miseries,’ said Spurstow, settling the cushions under the head. ‘It occurs to me that unless I drink something I shall go out before my time. I’ve stopped sweating, and—I wear a seventeen-inch collar.’ He brewed himself scalding hot tea, which is an excellent remedy against heat-apoplexy if you take three or four cups of it in time. Then he watched the sleeper.

‘A blind face that cries and can’t wipe its eyes, a blind face that chases him down corridors! H’m! Decidedly, Hummil ought to go on leave as soon as possible; and, sane or otherwise, he undoubtedly did rowel himself most cruelly. Well, Heaven send us understanding!’

At mid-day Hummil rose, with an evil taste in his mouth, but an unclouded eye and a joyful heart.

‘I was pretty bad last night, wasn’t I?’ said he.

‘I have seen healthier men. You must have had a touch of the sun. Look here: if I write you a swinging medical certificate, will you apply for leave on the spot?’

‘No.’

‘Why not? You want it.’

‘Yes, but I can hold on till the weather’s a little cooler.’

‘Why should you, if you can get relieved on the spot?’

‘Burkett is the only man who could be sent; and he’s a born fool.’

‘Oh, never mind about the line. You aren’t so important as all that. Wire for leave, if necessary.’

Hummil looked very uncomfortable.

‘I can hold on till the Rains,’ he said evasively.

‘You can’t. Wire to headquarters for Burkett.’

‘I won’t. If you want to know why, particularly, Burkett is married, and his wife’s just had a kid, and she’s up at Simla, in the cool, and Burkett has a very nice billet that takes him into Simla from Saturday to Monday. That little woman isn’t at all well. If Burkett was transferred she’d try to follow him. If she left the baby behind she’d fret herself to death. If she came—and Burkett’s one of those selfish little beasts who are always talking about a wife’s place being with her husband—she’d die. It’s murder to bring a woman here just now. Burkett hasn’t the physique of a rat. If he came here he’d go out; and I know she hasn’t any money, and I’m pretty sure she’d go out too. I’m salted in a sort of way, and I’m not married. Wait till the Rains, and then Burkett can get thin down here. It’ll do him heaps of good.’

‘Do you mean to say that you intend to face—what you have faced, till the Rains break?’

‘Oh, it won’t be so bad, now you’ve shown me a way out of it. I can always wire to you. Besides, now I’ve once got into the way of sleeping, it’ll be all right. Anyhow, I shan’t put in for leave. That’s the long and the short of it.’

‘My great Scott! I thought all that sort of thing was dead and done with.’

‘Bosh! You’d do the same yourself. I feel a new man, thanks to that cigarette-case. You’re going over to camp now, aren’t you?’

‘Yes; but I’ll try to look you up every other day, if I can.’

‘I’m not bad enough for that. I don’t want you to bother. Give the coolies gin and ketchup.’

‘Then you feel all right?’

‘Fit to fight for my life, but not to stand out in the sun talking to you. Go along, old man, and bless you!’

Hummil turned on his heel to face the echoing desolation of his bungalow, and the first thing he saw standing in the verandah was the figure of himself. He had met a similar apparition once before, when he was suffering from overwork and the strain of the hot weather.

‘This is bad—already,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘If the thing slides away from me all in one piece, like a ghost, I shall know it is only my eyes and stomach that are out of order. If it walks—my head is going.’

He approached the figure, which naturally kept at an unvarying distance from him, as is the use of all spectres that are born of overwork. It slid through the house and dissolved into swimming specks within the eyeball as soon as it reached the burning light of the garden. Hummil went about his business till even. When he came in to dinner he found himself sitting at the table. The vision rose and walked out hastily. Except that it cast no shadow it was in all respects real.

No living man knows what that week held for Hummil. An increase of the epidemic kept Spurstow in camp among the coolies, and all he could do was to telegraph to Mottram, bidding him go to the bungalow and sleep there. But Mottram was forty miles away from the nearest telegraph, and knew nothing of anything save the needs of the survey till he met, early on Sunday morning, Lowndes and Spurstow heading towards Hummil’s for the weekly gathering.

‘Hope the poor chap’s in a better temper,’ said the former, swinging himself off his horse at the door. ‘I suppose he isn’t up yet.’

‘I’ll just have a look at him,’ said the doctor. ‘If he’s asleep there’s no need to wake him.’

And an instant later, by the tone of Spurstow’s voice calling upon them to enter, the men knew what had happened. There was no need to wake him.

The punkah was still being pulled over the bed, but Hummil had departed this life at least three hours.

The body lay on its back, hands clinched by the side, as Spurstow had seen it lying seven nights previously. In the staring eyes was written terror beyond the expression of any pen.

Mottram, who had entered behind Lowndes, bent over the dead and touched the forehead lightly with his lips. ‘Oh, you lucky, lucky devil!’ he whispered.

But Lowndes had seen the eyes, and withdrew shuddering to the other side of the room.

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‘Poor chap! poor old chap! And the last time I met him I was angry. Spurstow, we should have watched him. Has he——?’

Deftly Spurstow continued his investigations, ending by a search round the room.

‘No, he hasn’t,’ he snapped. ‘There’s no trace of anything. Call the servants.’

They came, eight or ten of them, whispering and peering over each other’s shoulders.

‘When did your Sahib go to bed?’ said Spurstow.

‘At eleven or ten, we think,’ said Hummil’s personal servant.

‘He was well then? But how should you know?’

‘He was not ill, as far as our comprehension extended. But he had slept very little for three nights. This I know, because I saw him walking much, and specially in the heart of the night.’

As Spurstow was arranging the sheet, a big straight-necked hunting-spur tumbled on the ground. The doctor groaned. The personal servant peeped at the body.

‘What do you think, Chuma?’ said Spurstow, catching the look on the dark face.

‘Heaven-born, in my poor opinion, this that was my master has descended into the Dark Places, and there has been caught because he was not able to escape with sufficient speed. We have the spur for evidence that he fought with Fear. Thus have I seen men of my race do with thorns when a spell was laid upon them to overtake them in their sleeping hours and they dared not sleep.’

‘Chuma, you’re a mud-head. Go out and prepare seals to be set on the Sahib’s property.’

‘God has made the Heaven-born. God has made me. Who are we, to enquire into the dispensations of God? I will bid the other servants hold aloof while you are reckoning the tale of the Sahib’s property. They are all thieves, and would steal.’

‘As far as I can make out, he died from—oh, anything; stoppage of the heart’s action, heat-apoplexy, or some other visitation,’ said Spurstow to his companions. ‘We must make an inventory of his effects, and so on.’

‘He was scared to death,’ insisted Lowndes. ‘Look at those eyes! For pity’s sake don’t let him be buried with them open!’

‘Whatever it was, he’s clear of all the trouble now,’ said Mottram softly.

Spurstow was peering into the open eyes.

‘Come here,’ said he. ‘Can you see anything there?’

‘I can’t face it!’ whimpered Lowndes. ‘Cover up the face! Is there any fear on earth that can turn a man into that likeness? It’s ghastly. Oh, Spurstow, cover it up!’

‘No fear—on earth,’ said Spurstow. Mottram leaned over his shoulder and looked intently.

‘I see nothing except some grey blurs in the pupil. There can be nothing there, you know.’

‘Even so. Well, let’s think. It’ll take half a day to knock up any sort of coffin; and he must have died at midnight. Lowndes, old man, go out and tell the coolies to break ground next to Jevins’s grave. Mottram, go round the house with Chuma and see that the seals are put on things. Send a couple of men to me here, and I’ll arrange.’

The strong-armed servants when they returned to their own kind told a strange story of the doctor Sahib vainly trying to call their master back to life by magic arts—to wit, the holding of a little green box that clicked to each of the dead man’s eyes, and of a bewildered muttering on the part of the doctor Sahib, who took the little green box away with him.

The resonant hammering of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the floor and there is no protest against the indignity of hasty disposal.

At the last moment Lowndes was seized with scruples of conscience. ‘Ought you to read the service, from beginning to end?’ said he to Spurstow.

‘I intend to. You’re my senior as a civilian. You can take it if you like.’

‘I didn’t mean that for a moment. I only thought if we could get a chaplain from somewhere, I’m willing to ride anywhere, and give poor Hummil a better chance. That’s all.’

‘Bosh!’ said Spurstow, as he framed his lips to the tremendous words that stand at the head of the burial service.

After breakfast they smoked a pipe in silence to the memory of the dead. Then Spurstow said absently—

‘Tisn’t medical science.’

‘What?’

‘Things in a dead man’s eye.’

‘For goodness’ sake leave that horror alone!’ said Lowndes. ‘I’ve seen a native die of pure fright when a tiger chivied him. I know what killed Hummil.’

‘The deuce you do! I’m going to try to see.’ And the doctor retreated into the bathroom with a Kodak camera. After a few minutes there was the sound of something being hammered to pieces, and he emerged, very white indeed.

‘Have you got a picture?’ said Mottram. ‘What does the thing look like?’

‘It was impossible, of course. You needn’t look, Mottram. I’ve torn up the films. There was nothing there. It was impossible.’

‘That,’ said Lowndes, very distinctly, watching the shaking hand striving to relight the pipe, ‘is a damned lie.’

Mottram laughed uneasily. ‘Spurstow’s right,’ he said. ‘We’re all in such a state now that we’d believe anything. For pity’s sake let’s try to be rational.’

There was no further speech for a long time. The hot wind whistled without, and the dry trees sobbed. Presently the daily train, winking brass, burnished steel, and spouting steam, pulled up panting in the intense glare. ‘We’d better go on that,’ said Spurstow. ‘Go back to work. I’ve written my certificate. We can’t do any more good here, and work’ll keep our wits together. Come on.’

No one moved. It is not pleasant to face railway journeys at mid-day in June. Spurstow gathered up his hat and whip, and, turning in the doorway, said—

‘There may be Heaven—there must be Hell. Meantime, there is our life here. We-ell?’

Neither Mottram nor Lowndes had any answer to the question.

page 1 of 9

‘A THROBBING vein,’ said Dr. Gilbert soothingly, ‘is the mother of delusion.’

‘Then how do you account for my knowing when the thing is due?’ Conroy’s voice rose almost to a break.

‘Of course, but you should have consulted a doctor before using—palliatives.’

‘It was driving me mad. And now I can’t give them up.’

‘Not so bad as that! One doesn’t form fatal habits at twenty-five. Think again. Were you ever frightened as a child?’

‘I don’t remember. It began when I was a boy.’

‘With or without the spasm? By the way, do you mind describing the spasm again?’

‘Well,’ said Conroy, twisting in the chair, ‘I’m no musician, but suppose you were a violin-string—vibrating—and some one put his finger on you? As if a finger were put on the naked soul! Awful!’

‘So’s indigestion—so’s nightmare—while it lasts.’

‘But the horror afterwards knocks me out for days. And the waiting for it . . . and then this drug habit! It can’t go on!’ He shook as he spoke, and the chair creaked.

‘My dear fellow,’ said the doctor, ‘when you’re older you’ll know what burdens the best of us carry. A fox to every Spartan.’

‘That doesn’t help me. I can’t! I can’t!’ cried Conroy, and burst into tears.

‘Don’t apologise,’ said Gilbert, when the paroxysm ended. ‘I’m used to people coming a little—unstuck in this room.’

‘It’s those tabloids!’ Conroy stamped his foot feebly as he blew his nose. ‘They’ve knocked me out. I used to be fit once. Oh, I’ve tried exercise and everything. But—if one sits down for a minute when it’s due—even at four in the morning-it runs up behind one.’

‘Ye-es. Many things come in the quiet of the morning. You always know when the visitation. is due?’

‘What would I give not to be sure!’ he sobbed.

‘We’ll put that aside for the moment. I’m thinking of a case where what we’ll call anæmia of the brain was masked (I don’t say cured) by vibration. He couldn’t sleep, or thought he couldn’t, but a steamer voyage and the thump of the screw——’

‘A steamer? After what I’ve told you!’ Conroy almost shrieked. ‘I’d sooner . . . ’

‘Of course not a steamer in your case, but a long railway journey the next time you think it will trouble you. It sounds absurd, but——’

‘I’d try anything. I nearly have,’ Conroy sighed.

‘Nonsense! I’ve given you a tonic that will clear that notion from your head. Give the train a chance, and don’t begin the journey by bucking yourself up with tabloids. Take them along, but hold them in reserve—in reserve.’

‘D’you think I’ve self-control enough, after what you’ve heard?’ said Conroy.

Dr. Gilbert smiled. ‘Yes. After what I’ve seen,’ he glanced round the room, ‘I have no hesitation in saying you have quite as much self-control as many other people. I’ll write you later about your journey. Meantime, the tonic,’ and he gave some general directions before Conroy left.

An hour later Dr. Gilbert hurried to the links, where the others of his regular week-end game awaited him. It was a rigid round, played as usual at the trot, for the tension of the week lay as heavy on the two King’s Counsels and Sir John Chartres as on Gilbert. The lawyers were old enemies of the Admiralty Court, and Sir John of the frosty eyebrows and Abernethy manner was bracketed with, but before, Rutherford Gilbert among nerve-specialists.

At the Club-house afterwards the lawyers renewed their squabble over a tangled collision case, and the doctors as naturally compared professional matters.

‘Lies—all lies,’ said Sir John, when Gilbert had told him Conroy’s trouble. ‘Post hoc, propter hoc. The man or woman who drugs is ipso facto a liar. You’ve no imagination.’

‘’Pity you haven’t a little—occasionally.

‘I have believed a certain type of patient in my time. It’s always the same. For reasons not given in the consulting-room they take to the drug. Certain symptoms follow. They will swear to you, and believe it, that they took the drug to mask the symptoms. What does your man use? Najdolene? I thought so. I had practically the duplicate of your case last Thursday. Same old Najdolene—same old lie.’

‘Tell me the symptoms, and I’ll draw my own inferences, Johnnie.’

‘Symptoms! The girl was rank poisoned with Najdolene. Ramping, stamping possession. Gad, I thought she’d have the chandelier down.’

‘Mine came unstuck too, and he has the physique of a bull,’ said Gilbert. ‘What delusions had yours?’

‘I Faces—faces with mildew on them. In any other walk of life we’d call it the Horrors. She told me, of course, she took the drugs to mask the faces. Post hoc, propter hoc again. All liars!’

‘What’s that?’ said the senior K.C. quickly. ‘Sounds professional.’

‘Go away! Not for you, Sandy.’ Sir John turned a shoulder against him and walked with Gilbert in the chill evening.

‘To Conroy in his chambers came, one week later, this letter:

page 2

‘He knows I’m scarcely fit to look after myself,’ was Conroy’s thought. ‘And he wants me to look after a woman!’

Yet, at the end of half an hour’s irresolution, he accepted.

Now Conroy’s trouble, which had lasted for years, was this:

On a certain night, while he lay between sleep and wake, he would be overtaken by a long shuddering sigh, which he learned to know was the sign that his brain had once more conceived its horror, and in time—in due time—would bring it forth.

Drugs could so well veil that horror that it shuffled along no worse than as a freezing dream in a procession of disorderly dreams; but over the return of the event drugs had no control. Once that sigh had passed his lips the thing was inevitable, and through the days granted before its rebirth he walked in torment. For the first two years he had striven to fend it off by distractions, but neither exercise nor drink availed. Then he had come to the tabloids of the excellent M. Najdol. These guarantee, on the label, ‘Refreshing and absolutely natural sleep to the soul-weary.’ They are carried in a case with a spring which presses one scented tabloid to the end of the tube, whence it can be lipped off in stroking the moustache or adjusting the veil.

Three years of M. Najdol’s preparations do not fit a man for many careers. His friends, who knew he did not drink, assumed that Conroy had strained his heart through valiant outdoor exercises, and Conroy had with some care invented an imaginary doctor, symptoms, and regimen, which he discussed with them and with his mother in Hereford. She maintained that he would grow out of it, and recommended nux vomica.

When at last Conroy faced a real doctor, it was, he hoped, to be saved from suicide by a strait-waistcoat. Yet Dr. Gilbert had but given him more drugs—a tonic, for instance, that would couple railway carriages—and had advised a night in the train. Not alone the horrors of a railway journey (for which a man who dare keep no servant must e’en pack, label, and address his own bag), but the necessity for holding himself in hand before a stranger ‘a little shaken in her nerves.’

He spent a long forenoon packing, because when he assembled and counted things his mind slid off to the hours that remained of the day before his night, and he found himself counting minutes aloud. At such times the injustice of his fate would drive him to revolts which no servant should witness, but on this evening Dr. Gilbert’s tonic held him fairly calm while he put up his patent razors.

Waterloo Station shook him into real life. The change for his ticket needed concentration, if only to prevent shillings and pence turning into minutes at the booking-office; and he spoke quickly to a porter about the disposition of his bag. The old 10.8 from Waterloo to the West was an all-night caravan that halted, in the interests of the milk traffic, at almost every station.

Dr. Gilbert stood by the door of the one composite corridor coach; an older and stouter man behind him. ‘So glad you’re here!’ he cried. ‘Let me get your ticket.’

‘Certainly not,’ Conroy answered. ‘I got it myself—long ago. My bag’s in too,’ he added proudly.

‘I beg your pardon. Miss Henschil’s here. I’ll introduce you.’

‘But—but,’ he stammered—‘think of the state I’m in. If anything happens I shall collapse.’

‘Not you. You’d rise to the occasion like a bird. And as for the self-control you were talking of the other day’—Gilbert swung him round—‘look!’

A young man in an ulster over a silk-faced frock-coat stood by the carriage window, weeping shamelessly.

‘Oh, but that’s only drink,’ Conroy said. ‘I haven’t had one of my—my things since lunch.’

‘Excellent!’ said Gilbert. ‘I knew I could depend on you. Come along. Wait for a minute, Chartres.’

A tall woman, veiled, sat by the far window. She bowed her head as the doctor murmured Conroy knew not what. Then he disappeared and the inspector came for tickets.

‘My maid—next compartment,’ she said slowly.

Conroy showed his ticket, but in returning it to the sleeve-pocket of his ulster the little silver Najdolene case slipped from his glove and fell to the floor. He snatched it up as the moving train flung him into his seat.

‘How nice!’ said the woman. She leisurely lifted her veil, unbuttoned the first button of her left glove, and pressed out from its palm a Najdolene-case.

‘Don’t!’ said Conroy, not realising he had spoken.

‘I beg your pardon.’ The deep voice was measured, even, and low. Conroy knew what made it so.

‘I said “don’t”! He wouldn’t like you to do it!’

‘No, he would not.’ She held the tube with its ever-presented tabloid between finger and thumb. ‘But aren’t you one of the—ah—“soulweary” too?’

‘That’s why. Oh, please don’t! Not at first. I—I haven’t had one since morning. You—you’ll set me off!’

‘You? Are you so far gone as that?’

page 3

He nodded, pressing his palms together. The train jolted through Vauxhall points, and was welcomed with the clang of empty milk-cans for the West.

After long silence she lifted her great eyes, and, with an innocence that would have deceived any sound man, asked Conroy to call her maid to bring her a forgotten book.

‘Conroy shook his head. ‘No. Our sort can’t read. Don’t!’

‘Were you sent to watch me?’ The voice never changed.

‘Me? I need a keeper myself much more—this night of all! ‘

‘This night? Have you a night, then? They disbelieved me when I told them of mine.’ She leaned back and laughed, always slowly. ‘Aren’t doctors stu-upid? They don’t know.’

She leaned her elbow on her knee, lifted her veil that had fallen, and, chin in hand, stared at him. He looked at her—till his eyes were blurred with tears.

‘Have I been there, think you?’ she said.

‘Surely—surely,’ Conroy answered, for he had well seen the fear and the horror that lived behind the heavy-lidded eyes, the fine tracing on the broad forehead, and the guard set about the desirable mouth.

‘Then—suppose we have one—just one apiece? I’ve gone without since this afternoon.’

He put up his hand, and would have shouted, but his voice broke.

‘Don’t! Can’t you see that it helps me to help you to keep it off? Don’t let’s both go down together.’

‘But I want one. It’s a poor heart that never rejoices. Just one. It’s my night.’

‘It’s mine—too. My sixty-fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh.’ He shut his lips firmly against the tide of visualised numbers that threatened to carry him along.

‘Ah, it’s only my thirty-ninth.’ She paused as he had done. ‘I wonder if I shall last into the sixties . . . . Talk to me or I shall go crazy. You’re a man. You’re the stronger vessel. Tell me when you went to pieces.’

‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven—eight—I beg your pardon.’

‘Not in the least. I always pretend I’ve dropped a stitch of my knitting. I count the days till the last day, then the hours, then the minutes. Do you?’

‘I don’t think I’ve done very much else for the last——’ said Conroy, shivering, for the night was cold, with a chill he recognised.

‘Oh, how comforting to find some one who can talk sense! It’s not always the same date, is it? ’

‘What difference would that make?’ He unbuttoned his ulster with a jerk. ‘You’re a sane woman. Can’t you see the wicked—wicked—wicked’ (dust flew from the padded arm-rest as he struck it) ‘unfairness of it? What have I done?’

She laid her large hand on his shoulder very firmly.

‘If you begin to think over that,’ she said, ‘you’ll go to pieces and be ashamed. Tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine. Only be quiet—be quiet, lad, or you’ll set me off!’ She made shift to soothe him, though her chin trembled.

‘Well,’ said he at last, picking at the arm-rest between them, ‘mine’s nothing much, of course.’

‘Don’t be a fool! That’s for doctors—and mothers.’

‘It’s Hell,’ Conroy muttered. ‘It begins on a steamer—on a stifling hot night. I come out of my cabin. I pass through the saloon where the stewards have rolled up the carpets, and the boards are bare and hot and soapy.’

‘I’ve travelled too,’ she said.

‘Ah! I come on deck. I walk down a covered alleyway. Butcher’s meat, bananas, oil, that sort of smell.’

Again she nodded.

‘It’s a lead-coloured steamer, and the sea’s lead-coloured. Perfectly smooth sea—perfectly still ship, except for the engines running, and her waves going off in lines and lines and lines—dull grey’. ‘All this time I know something’s going to happen.

‘I know. Something going to happen,’ she whispered.

‘Then I hear a thud in the engine-room. Then the noise of machinery falling down—like fire-irons—and then two most awful yells. They’re more like hoots, and I know—I know while I listen—that it means that two men have died as they hooted. It was their last breath hooting out of them—in most awful pain. Do you understand?’

‘I ought to. Go on.’

‘That’s the first part. Then I hear bare feet running along the alleyway. One of the scalded men comes up behind me and says quite distinctly, “My friend! All is lost!” Then he taps me on the shoulder and I hear him drop down dead.’ He panted and wiped his forehead.

‘So that is your night?’ she said.

‘That is my night. It comes every few weeks—so many days after I get what I call sentence. Then I begin to count.’

‘Get sentence? D’ycu mean this? ‘She half closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and shuddered. ‘“Notice” I call it. Sir John thought it was all lies.’

She had unpinned her hat and thrown it on the seat opposite, showing the immense mass of her black hair, rolled low in the nape of the columnar neck and looped over the left ear. But Conroy had no eyes except for her grave eyes.

‘Listen now! ‘said she. ‘I walk down a road, a white sandy road near the sea. There are broken fences on either side, and Men come and look at me over them.’

‘Just men? Do they speak?’

page 4

‘They try to. Their faces are all mildewy—eaten away,’ and she hid her face for an instant with her left hand. ‘It’s the Faces—the Faces!’

‘Yes. Like my two hoots. I know.’

‘Ah! But the place itself—the bareness—and the glitter and the salt smells, and the wind blowing the sand! The Men run after me and I run . . . . I know what’s coming too. One of them touches me.’

‘Yes! What comes then? We’ve both shirked that.’

‘One awful shock—not palpitation, but shock, shock, shock!’

‘As though your soul were being stopped—as you’d stop a finger-bowl humming?’ he said.

‘Just that,’ she answered. ‘One’s very soul—the soul that one lives by—stopped. So!’

She drove her thumb deep into the arm-rest. ‘And now,’ she whined to him, ‘now that we’ve stirred each other up this way, mightn’t we have just one?’

‘No,’ said Conroy, shaking. ‘Let’s hold on. We’re past’—he peered out of the black windows—‘Woking. There’s the Necropolis. How long till dawn?’

‘Oh, cruel long yet. If one dozes for a minute, it catches one.’

‘And how d’you find that this’—he tapped the palm of his glove—‘helps you?’

‘It covers up the thing from being too real—if one takes enough—you know. Only—only—one loses everything else. I’ve been no more than a bogie-girl for two years. What would you give to be real again? This lying’s such a nuisance.’

‘One must protect oneself—and there’s one’s mother to think of,’ he answered.

‘True. I hope allowances are made for us somewhere. Our burden—can you hear?—our burden is heavy enough.’

She rose, towering into the roof of the carriage. Conroy’s ungentle grip pulled her back.

‘Now you are foolish. Sit down,’ said he.

‘But the cruelty of it! Can’t you see it? Don’t you feel it? Let’s take one now—before I——’

‘Sit down!’ cried Conroy, and the sweat stood again on his forehead. He had fought through a few nights, and had been defeated on more, and he knew the rebellion that flares beyond control to exhaustion.

She smoothed her hair and dropped back, but for a while her head and throat moved with the sickening motion of a captured wry-neck.

‘Once,’ she said, spreading out her hands, ‘I ripped my counterpane from end to end. That takes strength. I had it then. I’ve little now. “All dorn,” as my little niece says. And you, lad?’

‘“All dorn”! Let me keep your case for you till the morning.’

‘But the cold feeling is beginning.’

‘Lend it me, then.’

‘And the drag down my right side. I shan’t be able to move in a minute.’

‘I can scarcely lift my arm myself,’ said Conroy. ‘We’re in for it.’

‘Then why are you so foolish? You know it’ll be easier if we have only one—only one apiece.’

She was lifting the case to her mouth. With tremendous effort Conroy caught it. The two moved like jointed dolls, and when their hands met it was as wood on wood.

‘You must—not!’ said Conroy. His jaws stiffened, and the cold climbed from his feet up.

‘Why—must—I—not?’ She repeated the words idiotically.

Conroy could only shake his head, while he bore down on the hand and the case in it.

Her speech went from her altogether. The wonderful lips rested half over the even teeth, the breath was in the nostrils only, the eyes dulled, the face set grey, and through the glove the hand struck like ice.

Presently her soul came back and stood behind her eyes—only thing that had life in all that place—stood and looked for Conroy’s soul. He too was fettered in every limb, but somewhere at an immense distance he heard his heart going about its work as the engine-room carries on through and beneath the all but overwhelming wave. His one hope, he knew, was not to lose the eyes that clung to his, because there was an Evil abroad which would possess him if he looked aside by a hairbreadth.

The rest was darkness through which some distant planet spun while cymbals clashed. (Beyond Farnborough the 10.8 rolls out many empty milk-cans at every halt.) Then a body came to life with intolerable pricklings. Limb by limb, after agonies of terror, that body returned to him, steeped in most perfect physical weariness such as follows a long day’s rowing. He saw the heavy lids droop over her eyes—the watcher behind them departed—and, his soul sinking into assured peace, Conroy slept.

Light on his eyes and a salt breath roused him without shock. Her hand still held his. She slept, forehead down upon it, but the movement of his waking waked her too, and she sneezed like a child.

‘I—I think it’s morning,’ said Conroy.

‘And nothing has happened! Did you see your Men? I didn’t see my Faces. Does it mean we’ve escaped? Did—did you take any after I went to sleep? I’ll swear I didn’t,’ she stammered.

‘No, there wasn’t any need. We’ve slept through it.’

‘No need! Thank God! There was no need! Oh, look!’

page 5

The train was running under red cliffs along a sea-wall washed by waves that were colourless in the early light. Southward the sun rose mistily upon the Channel.

She leaned out of the window and breathed to the bottom of her lungs, while the wind wrenched down her dishevelled hair and blew it below her waist.

‘Well!’ she said with splendid eyes. ‘Aren’t you still waiting for something to happen?’

‘No. Not till next time. We’ve been let off,’ Conroy answered, breathing as deeply as she.

‘Then we ought to say our prayers.’

‘What nonsense! Some one will see us.’

‘We needn’t kneel. Stand up and say “Our Father.” We must!’

It was the first time since childhood that Conroy had prayed. They laughed hysterically when a curve threw them against an arm-rest.

‘Now for breakfast!’ she cried. ‘My maid—Nurse Blaber—has the basket and things. It’ll be ready in twenty minutes. Oh! Look at my hair! ‘and she went out laughing.

Conroy’s first discovery, made without fumbling or counting letters on taps, was that the London and South Western’s allowance of washing-water is inadequate. He used every drop, rioting in the cold tingle on neck and arms. To shave in a moving train balked him, but the next halt gave him a chance, which, to his own surprise, he took. As he stared at himself in the mirror he smiled and nodded. There were points about this person with the clear, if sunken, eye and the almost uncompressed mouth. But when he bore his bag back to his compartment, the weight of it on a limp arm humbled that new pride.

‘My friend,’ he said, half aloud, ‘you go into training. Your putty.’

She met him in the spare compartment, where her maid had laid breakfast.

‘By Jove,’ he said, halting at the doorway, ‘I hadn’t realised how beautiful you were!’

‘The same to you, lad. Sit down. I could eat a horse.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said the maid quietly. ‘The less you eat the better.’ She was a small, freckled woman, with light fluffy hair and pale-blue eyes that looked through all veils.

‘This is Miss Blaber,’said Miss Henschil. ‘He’s one of the soul-weary too, Nursey.’

‘I know it. But when one has just given it up a full meal doesn’t agree. That’s why I’ve only brought you bread and butter.’

She went out quietly, and Conroy reddened.

‘We’re still children, you see,’ said Miss Henschil. ‘But I’m well enough to feel some shame of it. D’you take sugar?’

They starved together heroically, and Nurse Blaber was good enough to signify approval when she came to clear away.

‘Nursey?’ Miss Henschil insinuated, and flushed.

‘Do you smoke?’ said the nurse coolly to Conroy.

‘I haven’t in years. Now you mention it, I think I’d like a cigarette—or something.’

‘I used to. D’you think it would keep me quiet?’ Miss Henschil said.

‘Perhaps. Try these.’ The nurse handed them her cigarette-case.

‘Don’t take anything else,’ she commanded, and went away with the tea-basket.

‘Good!’ grunted Conroy, between mouthfuls of tobacco.

‘Better than nothing,’ said Miss Henschil; but for a while they felt ashamed, yet with the comfort of children punished together.

‘Now,’ she whispered, ‘who were you when you were a man?’

Conroy told her, and in return she gave him her history. It delighted them both to deal once more in worldly concerns—families, names, places, and dates—with a person of understanding.

She came, she said, of Lancashire folk—wealthy cotton-spinners, who still kept the broadened a and slurred aspirate of the old stock. She lived with an old masterful mother in an opulent world north of Lancaster Gate, where people in Society gave parties at a Mecca called the Langham Hotel.

She herself had been launched into Society there, and the flowers at the ball had cost eighty-seven pounds; but, being reckoned peculiar, she had made few friends among her own sex. She had attracted many men, for she was a beauty—the beauty, in fact, of Society, she said.

She spoke utterly without shame or reticence, as a life-prisoner tells his past to a fellow-prisoner; and Conroy nodded across the smoke-rings.

‘Do you remember when you got into the carriage?’ she asked. ‘(Oh, I wish I had some knitting!) Did you notice aught, lad?’

Conroy thought back. It was ages since. ‘Wasn’t there some one outside the door—crying? ‘he asked.

‘He’s—he’s the little man I was engaged to,’ she said. ‘But I made him break it off. I told him ’twas no good. But he won’t, yo’ see.’

‘That fellow? Why, he doesn’t come up to your shoulder.’

‘That’s naught to do with it. I think all the world of him. I’m a foolish wench’—her speech wandered as she settled herself cosily, one elbow on the arm-rest. ‘We’d been engaged—I couldn’t help that—and he worships the ground I tread on. But it’s no use. I’m not responsible, you see. His two sisters are against it, though I’ve the money. They’re right, but they think it’s the dri-ink,’ she drawled. ‘They’re Methody—the Skinners. You see, their grandfather that started the Patton Mills, he died o’ the dri-ink.’

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‘I see,’ said Conroy. The grave face before him under the lifted veil was troubled.

‘George Skinner.’ She breathed it softly. ‘I’d make him a good wife, by God’s gra-ace—if I could. But it’s no use. I’m not responsible. But he’ll not take “No” for an answer. I used to call him “Toots.” He’s of no consequence, yo’ see.’

‘That’s in Dickens,’ said Conroy, quite quickly, ‘I haven’t thought of Toots for years. He was at Doctor Blimber’s.’

‘And so—that’s my trouble,’ she concluded, ever so slightly wringing her hands. ‘But I—don’t you think—there’s hope now?’

‘Eh?’ said Conroy. ‘Oh yes! This is the first time I’ve turned my corner without help. With your help, I should say.’

‘It’ll come back, though.’

‘Then shall we meet it in the same way? Here’s my card. Write me your train, and we’ll go together.’

‘Yes. We must do that. But between times—when we want—’ She looked at her palm, the four fingers working on it. ‘It’s hard to give ’em up.’

‘I But think what we have gained already, and let me have the case to keep.’

She shook her head, and threw her cigarette out of the window. ‘Not yet.’

‘Then let’s lend our cases to Nurse, and we’ll get through to-day on cigarettes. I’ll call her while we feel strong.’

She hesitated, but yielded at last, and Nurse accepted the offerings with a smile.

‘You’ll be all right,’ she said to Miss Henschil. ‘But if I were you’—to Conroy—, ‘I’d take strong exercise.’

When they reached their destination Conroy set himself to obey Nurse Blaber. He had no remembrance of that day, except one streak of blue sea to his left, gorse-bushes to his right, and, before him, a coast-guard’s track marked with white-washed stones that he counted up to the far thousands. As he returned to the little town he saw Miss Henschil on the beach below the cliffs. She kneeled at Nurse Blaber’s feet, weeping and pleading.

Twenty-five days later a telegram came to Conroy’s rooms: ‘Notice given. Waterloo again. Twenty fourth.’ That same evening he was wakened by the shudder and the sigh that told him his sentence had gone forth. Yet he reflected on his pillow that he had, in spite of lapses, snatched something like three weeks of life, which included several rides on a horse before breakfast—the hour one most craves Najdolene; five consecutive evenings on the river at Hammersmith in a tub where he had well stretched the white arms that passing crews mocked at; a game of rackets at his club; three dinners, one small dance, and one human flirtation with a human woman. More notable still, he had settled his month’s accounts, only once confusing petty cash with the days of grace allowed him. Next morning he rode his hired beast in the park victoriously. He saw Miss Henschil on horseback near Lancaster Gate, talking to a young man at the railings.

She wheeled and cantered toward him.

‘By Jove! How well you look!’ he cried, without salutation. ‘I didn’t know you rode.’

‘I used to once,’ she replied. ‘I’m all soft now.’

They swept off together down the ride.

‘Your beast pulls,’ he said.

‘Wa-ant him to. Gi-gives me something to think of. How’ve you been?’ she panted. ‘I wish chemists’ shops hadn’t red lights.’

‘Have you slipped out and bought some, then?’

‘You don’t know Nursey. Eh, but it’s good to be on a horse again! This chap cost me two hundred.’

‘Then you’ve been swindled,’ said Conroy.

‘I know it, but it’s no odds. I must go back to Toots and send him away. He’s neglecting his work for me.’

She swung her heavy-topped animal on his none too sound hocks. ‘’Sentence come, lad?’

‘Yes. But I’m not minding it so much this time.’

‘Waterloo, then—and God help us!’ She thundered back to the little frock-coated figure that waited faithfully near the gate.

Conroy felt the spring sun on his shoulders and trotted home. That evening he went out with a man in a pair oar, and was rowed to a standstill. But the other man owned he could not have kept the pace five minutes longer.

He carried his bag all down Number 3 platform at Waterloo, and hove it with one hand into the rack.

‘Well done!’ said Nurse Blaber, in the corridor. ‘We’ve improved too.’

Dr. Gilbert and an older man came out of the next compartment.

‘Hallo!’ said Gilbert. ‘Why haven’t you been to see me, Mr. Conroy? Come under the lamp. Take off your hat. No—no. Sit, you young giant. Ve-ry good. Look here a minute, Johnnie.’

A little, round-bellied, hawk-faced person glared at him.

‘Gilbert was right about the beauty of the beast,’ he muttered. ‘D’you keep it in your glove now?’ he went on, and punched Conroy in the short ribs.

‘No,’ said Conroy meekly, but without coughing. ‘Nowhere—on my honour! I’ve chucked it for good.’

‘Wait till you are a sound man before you say that, Mr. Conroy.’ Sir John Chartres stumped out, saying to Gilbert in the corridor, ‘It’s all very fine, but the question is shall I or we “Sir Pandarus of Troy become,” eh? We’re bound to think of the children.’

‘Have you been vetted?’ said Miss Henschil, a few minutes after the train started. ‘May I sit with you? I—I don’t trust myself yet. I can’t give up as easily as you can, seemingly.’

‘Can’t you? I never saw any one so improved in a month.’

page 7

‘Look here!’ She reached across to the rack, single-handed lifted Conroy’s bag, and held it at arm’s length. ‘I counted ten slowly. And I didn’t think of hours or minutes,’ she boasted.

‘Don’t remind me,’ he cried.

‘Ah! Now I’ve reminded myself. I wish I hadn’t. Do you think it’ll be easier for us to-night?’

‘Oh, don’t.’ The smell of the carriage had brought back all his last trip to him, and Conroy moved uneasily.

‘I’m sorry. I’ve brought some games,’ she went on. ‘Draughts and cards—but they all mean counting. I wish I’d brought chess, but I can’t play chess. What can we do? Talk about something.’

‘Well, how’s Toots, to begin with?’ said Conroy.

‘Why? Did you see him on the platform?’

‘No. Was he there? I didn’t notice.’

‘Oh yes. He doesn’t understand. He’s desperately jealous. I told him it doesn’t matter. Will you please let me hold your hand? I believe I’m beginning to get the chill.’

‘Toots ought to envy me,’ said Conroy.

‘He does. He paid you a high compliment the other night. He’s taken to calling again—in spite of all they say.’

Conroy inclined his head. He felt cold, and knew surely he would be colder.

‘He said,’ she yawned. ‘(Beg your pardon.) He said he couldn’t see how I could help falling in love with a man like you; and he called himself a damned little rat, and he beat his head on the piano last night.’

‘The piano? You play, then?’

‘Only to him. He thinks the world of my accomplishments. Then I told him I wouldn’t have you if you were the last man on earth instead of only the best-looking—not with a million in each stocking.’

‘No, not with a million in each stocking,’ said Conroy vehemently. ‘Isn’t that odd?’

‘I suppose so—to any one who doesn’t know. Well, where was I? Oh, George as good as told me I was deceiving him, and he wanted to go away without saying good-night. He hates standing a-tiptoe, but he must if I won’t sit down.’

Conroy would have smiled, but the chill that foreran the coming of the Lier-in-Wait was upon him, and his hand closed warningly on hers.

‘And—and so—’ she was trying to say, when her hour also overtook her, leaving alive only the fear-dilated eyes that turned to Conroy. Hand froze on hand and the body with it as they waited for the horror in the blackness that heralded it. Yet through the worst Conroy saw, at an uncountable distance, one minute glint of light in his night. Thither would he go and escape his fear; and behold, that light was the light in the watchtower of her eyes, where her locked soul signalled to his soul: ‘Look at me!’

In time, from him and from her, the Thing sheered aside, that each soul might step down and resume its own concerns. He thought confusedly of people on the skirts of a thunderstorm, withdrawing from windows where the torn night is, to their known and furnished beds. Then he dozed, till in some drowsy turn his hand fell from her warmed hand.

‘That’s all. The Faces haven’t come,’ he heard her say. ‘All—thank God! I don’t feel even I need what Nursey promised me. Do you?’

‘No.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘But don’t make too sure.’

‘Certainly not. We shall have to try again next month. I’m afraid it will be an awful nuisance for you.’

‘Not to me, I assure you,’ said Conroy, and they leaned back and laughed at the flatness of the words, after the hells through which they had just risen.

‘And now,’ she said, strict eyes on Conroy, ‘why wouldn’t you take me—not with a million in each stocking? ‘

‘I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been puzzling over.’

‘So have I. We’re as handsome a couple as I’ve ever seen. Are you well off, lad?’

‘They call me so,’ said Conroy, smiling.

‘That’s North country.’ She laughed again. ‘Setting aside my good looks and yours, I’ve four thousand a year of my own, and the rents should make it six. That’s a match some old cats would lap tea all night to fettle up.’

‘It is. Lucky Toots!’ said Conroy.

‘Ay,’ she answered, ‘he’ll be the luckiest lad in London if I win through. Who’s yours?’

‘No—no one, dear. I’ve been in Hell for years. I only want to get out and be alive and—so on. Isn’t that reason enough?’

‘Maybe, for a man. But I never minded things much till George came. I was all stu-upid like.’

‘So was I, but now I think I can live. It ought to be less next month, oughtn’t it?’ he said.

‘I hope so. Ye-es. There’s nothing much for a maid except to be married, and — ask no more. Whoever yours is, when you’ve found her, she shall have a wedding present from Mrs. George Skinner that——’

‘But she wouldn’t understand it any more than Toots.’

‘He doesn’t matter—except to me. I can’t keep my eyes open, thank God! Good-night, lad.’

Conroy followed her with his eyes. Beauty there was, grace there was, strength, and enough of the rest to drive better men than George Skinner to beat their heads on piano-tops—but for the new-found life of him Conroy could not feel one flutter of instinct or emotion that turned to herward. He put up his feet and fell asleep, dreaming of a joyous, normal world recovered—with interest on arrears. There were many things in it, but no one face of any one woman.

page 8

Thrice afterward they took the same train, and each time their trouble shrank and weakened. Miss Henschil talked of Toots, his multiplied calls, the things he had said to his sisters, the much worse things his sisters had replied; of the late (he seemed very dead to them) M. Najdol’s gifts for the soul-weary; of shopping, of house rents, and the cost of really artistic furniture and linen.

Conroy explained the exercises in which he delighted—mighty labours of play undertaken against other mighty men, till he sweated and; having bathed, slept. He had visited his mother, too, in Hereford, and he talked something of her and of the home-life, which his body, cut out of all clean life for five years, innocently and deeply enjoyed. Nurse Blaber was a little interested in Conroy’s mother, but, as a rule, she smoked her cigarette and read her paper-backed novels in her own compartment.

On their last trip she volunteered to sit with them, and buried herself in The Cloister and the Hearth while they whispered together. On that occasion (it was near Salisbury) at two in the morning, when the Lier-in-Wait brushed them with his wing, it meant no more than that they should cease talk for the instant, and for the instant hold hands, as even utter strangers on the deep may do when their ship rolls underfoot.

‘But still,’ said Nurse Blaber, not looking up, ‘I think your Mr. Skinner might feel jealous of all this.’

‘It would be difficult to explain,’ said Conroy.

‘Then you’d better not be at my wedding,’ Miss Henschil laughed.

‘After all we’ve gone through, too. But I suppose you ought to leave me out. Is the day fixed?’ he cried.

‘Twenty-second of September—in spite of both his sisters. I can risk it now.’ Her face was glorious as she flushed.

‘My dear chap!’ He shook hands unreservedly, and she gave back his grip without flinching. ‘I can’t tell you how pleased I am!’

‘Gracious Heavens!’ said Nurse Blaber, in a new voice. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. I forgot I wasn’t paid to be surprised.’

‘What at? Oh, I see!’ Miss Henschil explained to Conroy. ‘She expected you were going to kiss me, or I was going to kiss you, or something.’

‘After all you’ve gone through, as Mr. Conroy said.’

‘But I couldn’t, could you?’ said Miss Henschil, with a disgust as frank as that on Conroy’s face.

‘It would be horrible—horrible. And yet, of course, you’re wonderfully handsome. How d’you account for it, Nursey?’

Nurse Blaber shook her head. ‘I was hired to cure you of a habit, dear. When you’re cured I shall go on to the next case—that senile-decay one at Bournemouth I told you about.’

‘And I shall be left alone with George! But suppose it isn’t cured,’ said Miss Henschil of a sudden. ‘Suppose it comes back again. What can I do? I can’t send for him in this way when I’m a married woman!’ She pointed like an infant.

‘I’d come, of course,’ Conroy answered. ‘But, seriously, that is a consideration.’

They looked at each other, alarmed and anxious, and then toward Nurse Blaber, who closed her book, marked the place, and turned to face them.

‘Have you ever talked to your mother as you have to me?’ she said.

‘No. I might have spoken to dad—but mother’s different. What d’you mean?’

‘And you’ve never talked to your mother either, Mr. Conroy?’

‘Not till I took Najdolene. Then I told her it was my heart. There’s no need to say anything, now that I’m practically over it, is there?’

‘Not if it doesn’t come back, but——’ She beckoned with a stumpy, triumphant finger that drew their heads close together. ‘You know I always go in and read a chapter to mother at tea, child.’

‘I know you do. You’re an angel.’ Miss Henschil patted the blue shoulder next her. ‘Mother’s Church of England now,’ she explained. ‘But she’ll have her Bible with her pikelets at tea every night like the Skinners.’

‘It was Naaman and Gehazi last Tuesday that gave me a clue. I said I’d never seen a case of leprosy, and your mother said she’d seen too many.’

‘Where? She never told me,’ Miss Henschil began.

‘A few months before you were born—on her trip to Australia—at Mola or Molo something or other. It took me three evenings to get it all out.’

‘Ay—mother’s suspicious of questions,’ said Miss Henschil to Conroy. ‘She’ll lock the door of every room she’s in, if it’s but for five minutes. She was a Tackberry from Jarrow way, yo’ see.’

‘She described your men to the life—men with faces all eaten away, staring at her over the fence of a lepers’ hospital in this Molo Island. They begged from her, and she ran, she told me, all down the street, back to the pier. One touched her and she nearly fainted. She’s ashamed of that still.’

‘My men? The sand and the fences? ‘Miss Henschil muttered.

‘Yes. You know how tidy she is and how she hates wind. She remembered that the fences were broken—she remembered the wind blowing. Sand—sun—salt wind—fences—faces—I got it all out of her, bit by bit. You don’t know what I know! And it all happened three or four months before you were born. There!’ Nurse Blaber slapped her knee with her little hand triumphantly.

‘Would that account for it?’ Miss Henschil shook from head to foot.

‘Absolutely. I don’t care who you ask! You never imagined the thing. It was laid on you. It happened on earth to you! Quick, Mr. Conroy, she’s too heavy for me! I’ll get the flask.’

Miss Henschil leaned forward and collapsed, as Conroy told her afterwards, like a factory chimney. She came out of her swoon with teeth that chartered on the cup.

page 9

‘No—no,’ she said, gulping. ‘It’s not hysterics. Yo’ see I’ve no call to hev ’em any more. No call—no reason whatever. God be praised! Can’t yo’ feel I’m a right woman now?’

‘Stop hugging me!’ said Nurse Blaber. ‘You don’t know your strength. Finish the brandy and water. It’s perfectly reasonable, and I’ll lay long odds Mr. Conroy’s case is something of the same. I’ve been thinking——’

‘I wonder——’ said Conroy, and pushed the girl back as she swayed again.

Nurse Blaber smoothed her pale hair. ‘Yes. Your trouble, or something like it, happened somewhere on earth or sea to the mother who bore you. Ask her, child. Ask her and be done with it once for all.’

‘I will,’ said Conroy . . . . ‘There ought to be——’ He opened his bag and hunted breathlessly.

‘Bless you! Oh, God bless you, Nursey!’ Miss Henschil was sobbing. ‘You don’t know what this means to me. It takes it all off—from the beginning.’

‘But doesn’t it make any difference to you now?’ the nurse asked curiously. ‘Now that you’re rightfully a woman?’

Conroy, busy with his bag, had not heard. Miss Henschil stared across, and her beauty, freed from the shadow of any fear, blazed up within her. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But it hasn’t changed anything. I want Toots. He has never been out of his mind in his life—except over silly me.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Conroy, stooping under the lamp, Bradshaw in hand. ‘If I change at Templecombe—for Bristol (Bristol—Hereford—yes)—I can be with mother for breakfast in her room and find out.’

‘Quick, then,’ said Nurse Blaber. ‘We’ve passed Gillingham quite a while. You’d better take some of our sandwiches.’ She went out to get them. Conroy and Miss Henschil would have danced, but there is no room for giants in a South-Western compartment.

‘Good-bye, good luck, lad. Eh, but you’ve changed already—like me. Send a wire to our hotel as soon as you’re sure,’ said Miss Henschil. ‘What should I have done without you?’

‘Or I?’ said Conroy. ‘But it’s Nurse that’s saving us really.’

‘Then thank her,’ said Miss Henschil, looking straight at him. ‘Yes, I would. She’d like it.’

When Nurse Blaber came back after the parting at Templecombe her nose and her eyelids were red, but, for all that, her face reflected a great light even while she sniffed over The Cloister and the Hearth.

Miss Henschil, deep in a house furnisher’s catalogue, did not speak for twenty minutes. Then she said, between adding totals of best, guest, and servants’ sheets, ‘But why should our times have been the same, Nursey?’

‘Because a child is born somewhere every second of the clock,’ Nurse Blaber answered.

‘And besides that, you probably set each other off by talking and thinking about it. You shouldn’t, you know.’

‘Ay, but you’ve never been in Hell,’ said Miss Henschil.

The telegram handed in at Hereford at 12.46 and delivered to Miss Henschil on the beach of a certain village at 2.7 ran thus:

‘“Absolutely confirmed. She says she remembers hearing noise of accident in engine-room returning from India eighty-five.”’

‘He means the year, not the thermometer,’ said Nurse Blaber, throwing pebbles at the cold sea.

‘“And two men scalded thus explaining my hoots.” (The idea of telling me that!) “Subsequently silly clergyman passenger ran up behind her calling for joke, ‘Friend, all is lost,’ thus accounting very words.”

Nurse Blaber purred audibly.

‘“She says only remembers being upset minute or two. Unspeakable relief. Best love Nursey, who is jewel. Get out of her what she would like best.” Oh, I oughtn’t to have read that,’ said Miss Henschil.

‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t want anything,’ said Nurse Blaber, ‘and if I did I shouldn’t get it.’

page 1 of 7

THE horror, the confusion, and the separation of the murderer from his comrades were all over before I came. There remained only on the barrack-square the blood of man calling from the ground. The hot sun had dried it to a dusky goldbeater-skin film, cracked lozenge-wise by the heat; and as the wind rose, each lozenge, rising a little, curled up at the edges as if it were a dumb tongue. Then a heavier gust blew all away down wind in grains of dark coloured dust. It was too hot to stand in the sunshine before breakfast. The men were in barracks talking the matter over. A knot of soldiers’ wives stood by one of the entrances to the married quarters, while inside a woman shrieked and raved with wicked filthy words.A quiet and well-conducted sergeant had shot down, in broad daylight just after early parade, one of his own corporals, had then returned to barracks and sat on a cot till the guard came for him. He would, therefore, in due time be handed over to the High Court for trial. Further, but this he could hardly have considered in his scheme of revenge, he would horribly upset my work; for the reporting of that trial would fall on me without a relief. What that trial would be like I knew even to weariness. There would be the rifle carefully uncleaned, with the fouling marks about breech and muzzle, to be sworn to by half a dozen superfluous privates; there would be heat, reeking heat, till the wet pencil slipped sideways between the fingers; and the punkah would swish and the pleaders would jabber in the verandahs, and his Commanding Officer would put in certificates to the prisoner’s moral character, while the jury would pant and the summer uniforms of the witnesses would smell of dye and soaps; and some abject barrack-sweeper would lose his head in cross-examination, and the young barrister who always defended soldiers’ cases for the credit that they never brought him, would say and do wonderful things, and would then quarrel with me because I had not reported him correctly. At the last, for he surely would not be hanged, I might meet the prisoner again, ruling blank account-forms in the Central jail, and cheer him with the hope of his being made a warder in the Andamans.

The Indian Penal Code and its interpreters do not treat murder, under any provocation whatever, in a spirit of jest. Sergeant Raines would be very lucky indeed if he got off with seven years, I thought. He had slept the night upon his wrongs, and killed his man at twenty yards before any talk was possible. That much I knew. Unless, therefore, the case was doctored a little, seven years would be his least; and I fancied it was exceedingly well for Sergeant Raines that he had been liked by his Company.

That same evening—no day is so long as the day of a murder—I met Ortheris with the dogs, and he plunged defiantly into the middle of the matter. ‘I’ll be one o’ the witnesses,’ said he. ‘I was in the verandah when Mackie come along. ’E come from Mrs. Raines’s quarters. Quigley, Parsons, an’ Trot, they was in the inside verandah, so they couldn’t ’ave ’eard nothing. Sergeant Raines was in the verandah talkin’ to me, an’ Mackie ’e come along acrost the square an’ ’e sez, “.Well;” sez ’e, “’ave they pushed your ’elmet off yet, Sergeant?” ’e sez. An’ at that Raines ’e catches ’is breath an’ ’e sez, “My Gawd, I can’t stand this!” sez ’e, an’ ’e picks up my rifle an’ shoots Mackie. See?’

‘But what were you doing with your rifle in the outer verandah an hour after parade? ’

‘Cleanin’ ’er,’ said Ortheris, with the sullen brassy stare that always went with his choicer lies.

He might as well have said that he was dancing naked, for at no time did his rifle need hand or rag on her twenty minutes after parade. Still, the High Court would not know his routine.

‘Are you going to stick to that—on the’ Book?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Like a bloomin’ leech.’

‘All right, I don’t want to know any more. Only remember that Quigley, Parsons, and Trot couldn’t have been where you say without hearing something; and there’s nearly certain to be a barrack-sweeper who was knocking about the square at the time. There always is.’

‘’Twasn’t the sweeper. It was the beastie. ’E’s all right.’

Then I knew that there was going to be some spirited doctoring, and I felt sorry for the Government Advocate who would conduct the prosecution.

When the trial came on I pitied him more, for he was always quick to lose his temper and made a personal matter of each lost cause. Raines’s young barrister had for once put aside his unslaked and welling passion for alibis and insanity, had forsworn gymnastics and fireworks, and worked soberly for his client. Mercifully the hot weather was yet young, and there had been no flagrant cases of barrack-shootings up to the time; and the jury was a good one, even for an Indian jury, where nine men out of every twelve are accustomed to weighing evidence. Ortheris stood firm and was not shaken by any cross-examination. The one weak point in his tale—the presence of his rifle in the outer verandah—went unchallenged by civilian wisdom, though some of the witnesses could not help smiling. The Government Advocate called for the rope, contending throughout that the murder had been a deliberate one. Time had passed, he argued, for that reflection which comes so naturally to a man whose honour is lost. There was also the Law, ever ready and anxious to right the wrongs of the common soldier if, indeed, wrong had been done. But he doubted much whether there had been any sufficient wrong. Causeless suspicion over-long brooded upon had led, by his theory, to deliberate crime. But his attempts to minimise the motive failed. The most disconnected witness knew—had known for weeks—the causes of offence; and the prisoner, who naturally was the last of all to know, groaned in the dock while he listened. The one question that the trial circled round was whether Raines had fired under sudden and blinding provocation given that very morning; and in the summing-up it was clear that Ortheris’s evidence told. He had contrived most artistically to suggest that he personally hated the Sergeant, who had come into the verandah to give him a talking to for insubordination. In a weak moment the Government Advocate asked one question too many. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ Ortheris replied, ‘’e was callin’ me a dam’ impudent little lawyer.’ The Court shook. The jury brought it in a killing, but with every provocation and extenuation known to God or man, and the Judge put his hand to his brow before giving sentence, and the Adam’s apple in the prisoner’s throat went up and down like mercury pumping before a cyclone.

In consideration of all considerations, from his Commanding Officer’s certificate of good conduct to the sure loss of pension, service, and honour, the prisoner would get two years, to be served in India, and—there need be no demonstration in Court. The Government Advocate scowled and picked up his papers; the guard wheeled with a clash, and the prisoner was relaxed to the Secular Arm, and driven to the jail in a broken-down ticca-gharri.

His guard and some ten or twelve military witnesses, being less important, were ordered to wait till’ what was officially called the cool of the evening before marching back to cantonments. They gathered together in one of the deep red brick verandahs of a disused lock-up and congratulated Ortheris, who bore his honours modestly. I sent my work into the office and joined them. Ortheris watched the Government Advocate driving off to lunch.

‘That’s a nasty little bald-’eaded little butcher, that is,’ he said. ‘’E don’t please me. ’E’s got a colley dog wot do, though. I’m goin’ up to Murree in, a week. That dawg’ll bring fifteen rupees anywheres.’

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‘You had better spend ut in Masses,’ said Terence, unbuckling his belt; for he had been on the prisoner’s guard, standing helmeted and bolt upright for three long hours.

‘Not me,’ said Ortheris cheerfully. ‘Gawd’ll put it down to B Comp’ny’s barrick-damages one o’ these days. You look strapped, Terence.’

‘Faith, I’m not so young as I was. That guard-mountin’ wears on the sole av the fut, and this’—he sniffed contemptuously at the brick verandah—‘is as hard setting as standin’!’

‘Wait a minute. I’ll get the cushions out of my cart,’ I said.

‘’Strewth—sofies. We’re going it gay,’ said Ortheris, as Terence dropped himself section by section on the leather cushions, saying prettily, ‘May ye niver want a soft place wheriver you go, an’ power to share ut wid a frind. Another for yourself? That’s good. It lets me sit longways. Stanley, pass me a pipe. Augrrh! An’, that’s another man gone all to pieces bekaze av a woman. I must ha’ been on forty or fifty prisoners’ gyards, first an’ last; an’ I hate ut new ivry time.’

‘Let’s see: You were on Losson’s, Lancey’s, Dugard’s, and Stebbins’s, that I can remember,’ I said.

‘Ay, an’ before that an’ before that—scores av thim,’ he answered with a worn smile. ‘’Tis better to die than to live for them, though. Whin Raines comes out—he’ll be changin’ his kit at the jail now—he’ll think that too. He shud, ha’ shot himself an’ the woman by rights an’ made a clean bill av all. Now he’s left the woman—she tuk tay wid Dinah Sunday gone last—an’ he’s left himself. Mackie’s the lucky man.’

‘He’s probably getting it hot where he is,’ I ventured, for I knew something of the dead Corporal’s record.

‘Be sure av that,’ said Terence, spitting over the edge of the verandah. ‘But fwhat he’ll get there is light marchin’ordher to fwhat he’d ha’ got here if he’d lived.’

‘Surely not. He’d have gone on and forgotten—like the others.’

‘Did ye know Mackie well, sorr?’ said Terence.

‘He was on the Pattiala guard of honour last winter, and I went out shooting with him in an ekka for the day, and I found him rather an amusing man.’

‘Well, he’ll ha’ got shut av aniusemints, excipt turnin’ from wan side to the other, these few years to come. I knew Mackie, an’ I’ve seen too many to be mistuk in the muster av wan man. He might ha’ gone on an’ forgot as you say, sorr, but he was a man wid an educashin, an’ he used ut for his schames; an’ the same educashin, an’ talkin’, an’ all that made him able to do fwhat he had a mind to wid a woman, that same wud turn back again in the long-run an’ tear him alive. I can’t say fwhat that I mane to say bekaze I don’t know how, but Mackie was the spit an’ livin’ image av a man that I saw march the same march all but; an’ ’twas worse for him that he did not come by Mackie’s ind. Wait while I remember now,. ’Twas whin I was in the Black Tyrone, an’ he was drafted us from Portsmouth; an’ fwhat was his misbegotten name? Larry—Larry Tighe ut was; an’ wan of the draft said he was a gentleman-ranker, an’ Larry tuk an’ three-parts killed him for saying so. An’ he was a big man, an’ a strong man, an’ a handsome man, an’ that tells heavy in practice wid some women, but, takin’ them by an’ large, not wid all. Yet ’twas wid all that Larry dealt—all—for he cud put the comether on any woman that trod the green earth av God, an’ he knew ut. Like Mackie that’s roastin’ now, he knew ut, an’ niver did he put the comether on any woman save an’ excipt for the black shame. ’Tis not me that shud be talkin’, dear knows, dear knows, but the most av my mis—misallinces was for pure devilry, an’ mighty sorry I have been whin harm came; an’ time an’ again wid a girl, ay, an’ a woman too, for the matter av that, whin I have seen by the eyes av her that I was makin’ more throuble than I talked, I have hild off an’ let be for the sake av the mother that bore me. But Larry, I’m thinkin’, he was suckled by a she-devil, for he never let wan go that came nigh to listen to him. ’Twas his business, as if it might ha’ ben sinthry-go. He was a good soldier too. Now there was the Colonel’s governess—an’ he a privit too!—that was never known in barricks; an’ wan av the Major’s maids, and she was promised to a man; an’ some more outside; an’ fwhat ut was amongst us we’ll never know till Judgment Day. ’Twas the nature av the baste to put the comether on the best av thim—not the prettiest by any manner av manes—but the like av such women as you cud lay your hand on the Book an’ swear there was niver thought av foolishness in. An’ for that very reason, mark you, he was niver caught. He came close to ut wanst or twice, but caught he niver was, an’ that cost him more at the ind than the beginnin’. He talked to me more than most, bekaze he tould me, barrin’ the accident av my educashin, I’d av been the same kind av divil he was. “An’ is ut like,” he wud say, houldin’ his head high—“is ut like that I’d iver be thrapped? For fwhat am I when all’s said an’ done?” he sez. “A damned privit,” sez he. “An’ is ut like, think you, that thim I know wud be connect wid a privit like me? Number tin thousand four hundred an’ sivin,” he sez grinnin’. I knew by the turn av his spache when he was not takin’ care to talk rough-shod that he was a gentleman-ranker.

‘“I do not undherstan’ ut at all,” I sez; “but I know,” sez I, “that the divil looks out av your eyes, an’ I’ll have no share wid you. A little fun by way av amusemint where ’twill do no harm, Larry, is right and fair, but I am mistook if ’tis any amusemint to you;” I sez.

‘“You are much mistook,” he sez. “An’ I counsel you not to judge your betters.”

‘“My betthers!” I sez. “God help you, Larry. There’s no betther in this; ’tis all bad, as ye will find for yoursilf.”

‘“You’re not like me,” he says, tossin’ his head.

‘“Praise the Saints, I am not,” I sez. “Fwhat I have done I have done an’ been crool sorry for. Fwhin your time comes,” sez I, “ye’ll remimber fwhat I say.”

‘“An’ whin that time comes,” sez he, “I’ll come to you for ghostly consolation, Father Terence,” an’ at that he wint off afther some more divil’s business—for to get expayrience, he tould me. He was wicked—rank wicked—wicked as all Hell! I’m not construct by nature to go in fear av any man, but, begad, I was afraid av Larry. He’d come in to barricks wid his cap on three hairs; an’ lie on his cot and stare at the ceilin’, and now an’ again he’d fetch a little laugh, the like av a splash in the bottom av a well, an’ by that I knew he was schamin’ new wickedness, an’ I’d be afraid. All this was long an’ long ago, but ut hild me straight—for a while.

‘I tould you, did I not, sorr, that I was caressed an’ pershuaded to lave the Tyrone on account av a throuble?’

‘Something to do with a belt and a man’s head wasn’t it?’ Terence had never given the tale in full.

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‘It was. Faith, ivry time I go on prisoner’s gyard in coort I wondher fwhy I was not where the pris’ner is. But the man I struk tuk it in fair fight, an’ he had the good sinse not to die. Considher now, fwhat wud ha’ come to the Arrmy if he had! I was enthreated to exchange, an’, my Commandin’ Orf’cer pled wid me. I wint, not to be disobligin’, an’ Larry tould me he was powerful sorry to lose me, though fwhat I’d done to make him sorry I do not know. So to the Ould Reg’mint I came, lavin’ Larry to go to the divil his own way, an’ niver expectin’ to see him again excipt as a shootin’-case in barracks . . . . Who’s that quittin’ the compound?’ Terence’s quick eye had caught sight of a white uniform skulking behind the hedge.

‘The Sergeant’s gone visiting,’ said a voice.

‘Thin I command here, an’ I will have no sneakin’ away to the bazar, an’ huntin’ for you wid a pathrol at midnight. Nalson; for I know ut’s you, come back to the verandah.’

Nalson, detected, slunk back to his fellows. There was a grumble that died away in a minute or two, and Terence turning on the other side went on:—

‘That was the last I saw av Larry for a while. Exchange is the same as death for not thinkin’, an’ by token I married Dinah, an’ that kept me from remimberin’ ould times. Thin we went up to the Front, an’ ut tore my heart in tu to lave Dinah at the Depôt in Pindi. Consequint, whin I was at the Front I fought circumspectuous till I warrmed up, an’ thin I fought double tides. You remember fwhat I tould you in the gyard-gate av the fight at Silver’s Theatre?’

‘Wot’s that about Silver’s Theayter?’ said Ortheris quickly, over his shoulder.

‘Nothin’, little man. A tale that ye know. As I was sayin’, afther that fight, us av the Ould Rig’mint an’ the Tyrone was all mixed together taken’ shtock av the dead, an’ av coorse I went about to find if there was any man that remembered me. The second man I came acrost—an’ how I’d missed him in the fight I do not know—was Larry, an’ a fine man he looked, but oulder, by reason that he had fair call to be. “Larry,” sez I, “how is ut wed you?””

‘“Ye’re callin’ the wrong man,” he sez, wed his gentleman’s smile, “Larry has been dead these three years. They call him ‘ Love-o’-Women’ now,” he sez. By that I knew the ould divil was in him yet, but the end av a fight is no time for the beginnin’ av confession, so we sat down an’ talked av times.

‘“They tell me you’re a married man,” he sez, puffin’ slow at his poipe. “Are ye happy?”

‘“I will be whin I get back to Depot,” I sez, “’Tis a reconnaissance-honeymoon now.”

‘“I’m married too,” he sez, puffin’ slow an’ more slow, an’ stopperin’ wed his forefinger.

‘“Send you happiness,” I sez. “That’s the best hearin’ for a long time.”

‘“Are ye av that opinion?” he sez; an’ thin he began talkin’ av the campaign. The sweat av Silver’s Theatre was not dhry upon him an’ he was prayin’ for more work. I was well contint to lie and listen to the cook-pot lids.

Whin he got up off the ground he shtaggered a little, an’ laned over all twisted.

‘“Ye’ve got more than ye bargained for,” I sez. “Take an inventory, Larry. ’Tis like you’re hurt.”

‘He turned round stiff as a ramrod an’ damned the eyes av me up an’ down for an impartinent Irish-faced ape. If that had been in barracks, I’d ha’ stretched him an’ no more said; but ’twas at the Front, an’ afther such a fight as Silver’s Theatre I knew there was no callin’ a man to account for his tempers. He might as well ha’ kissed me. Aftherwards I was well pleased I kept my fists home. Thin our Captain Crook—Cruik-na-bulleen—came up. He’d been talkin’ to the little orf’cer bhoy av the Tyrone. “We’re all cut to windystraws,” he sez, “but the Tyrone are damned short for noncoms. Go you over there, Mulvaney, an’ be Deputy-Sergeant, Corp’ral, Lance, an’ everything else ye can lay hands on till I bid you stop.”

‘I wint over an’ tuk hould. There was wan sergeant left standin’, an’ they’d pay no heed to him. The remnint was me, an’ ’twas full time I came. Some I talked to, an’ some I did not, but before night the bhoys av the Tyrone stud to attention, begad, if I sucked on my poipe above a whishper. Betune you an’ me an’ Bobbs I was commandin’ the Company, an’ that was what Crook had thransferred me for; an’ the little orf’cer bhoy knew ut; and. I knew ut, but the Comp’ny did not. And there, mark you, is the vartue that no money an’ no dhrill can buy—the vartue av the ould soldier that knows his orf’cer’s work an’ does ut for him at the salute!

‘Thin the Tyrone, wid the Ould Rig’mint in touch, was sint maraudin’ an’ prowlin’ acrost the hills promishcuous an’ onsatisfactory. ’Tis my privit opinion that a gin’ral does not know half his time fwhat to do wid three-quarthers his command. So he shquats on his hunkers an’ bids them run round an’ round forninst him while he considhers on it. Whin by the process av nature they get sejuced into a big fight that was none av their seekin’, he sez: “Obsarve my shuperior janius. I meant ut to come so.” We ran round an’ about, an’ all we got was shootin’ into the camp at night, an’ rushin’ empty sungars wid the long bradawl, an’ bein’ hit from behind rocks till we was wore out—all excipt Love-o’-Women. That puppy-dog business was mate an’ dhrink to him. Begad he cud niver get enough av ut. Me well knowin’ that it is just this desultorial campaignin’ that kills the best men, an’ suspicionin’ that if I was cut, the little orf’cer bhoy wud expind all his men in thryin.’ to get out, I wud lie most powerful doggo whin I heard a shot, an’ curl my long legs behind a bowlder, an’ run like blazes whin the ground was clear. Faith, if I led the Tyrone in rethreat wanst I led thim forty times! Love-o’-Women wud stay pottin’ an’ pottin’ from behind a rock, and wait till the fire was heaviest, an’ thin stand up an’ fire man-height clear. He wud lie out in camp too at night, snipin’ at the shadows, for he never tuk a mouthful av slape. My commandin’ orf’cer—save his little soul!—cud not see the beauty av my strategims, an’ whin the Ould Rig’mint crossed us, an’ that was wanst a week, he’d throt off to Crook, wid his big blue eyes as round as saucers, an’ lay an information against me. I heard thim wanst talkin’ through the tent-wall, an’ I nearly laughed.

‘“He runs—runs like a hare,” sez the little orf’cer bhoy. “’Tis demoralisin’ my men.”

‘“Ye damned little fool,” sez Crook, laughin’, “he’s larnin’ you your business. Have ye been rushed at night yet?”

‘“No,” sez that child; wishful he had been.

‘“Have you any wounded?” sez Crook.

‘“No,” he sez. “There was no chanst for that. They follow Mulvaney too quick,” he sez.

‘“Fwhat more do you want, thin?” sez Crook. “Terence is bloodin’ you neat an’ handy,” he sez. “He knows fwhat you do not, an’ that’s that there’s a time for ivrything. He’ll not lead you wrong,” he sez, “but I’d give a month’s pay to larn fwhat he thinks av you.”

‘That kept the babe quiet, but Love-o’-Women was pokin’ at me for ivrything I did, an’ specially my manoeuvres.

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‘“Mr. Mulvaney,” he sez wan evenin’, very contempshus, “you’re growin’ very jeldy on your feet. Among gentlemen,” he sez, “among gentlemen that’s called no pretty name.”

‘“Among privits ’Tis different,” I sez. “Get back to your tent. I’m sergeant here,” I sez.

‘There was just enough in the voice av me to tell him he was playin’ wid his life betune his teeth. He wint off, an’ I noticed that this man that was contempshus set off from the halt wid a shunt as tho’ he was bein’ kicked behind. That same night there was a Paythan picnic in the hills about, an’ firin’ into our tents fit to wake the livin’ dead. “Lie down all,” I sez. “Lie down an’ kape still. They’ll no more than waste ammunition.”

‘I heard a man’s feet on the ground, an’ thin a ’Tini joinin’ in the chorus. I’d been lyin’ warm, thinkin’ av Dinah an’ all, but I crup out wid the bugle for to look round in case there was a rush; an’ the ’Tini was flashin’ at the fore-ind av the camp, an’ the hill near by was fair flickerin’ wid long-range fire. Undher the starlight I behild Love-o’-Women settin’ on a rock wid his belt and helmet off. He shouted wanst or twice, an’ thin I heard him say: “They shud ha’ got the range long ago. Maybe they’ll fire at the flash.” Thin he fired again, an’ that dhrew a fresh volley, and the long slugs that they chew in their teeth came floppin’ among the rocks like tree-toads av a hot night. “That’s better,” sez Love-o’-Women. “Oh Lord, how long, how long!” he sez, an’ at that he lit a match an’ held ut above his head.

‘“Mad,” thinks I, “mad as a coot,” an’ I tuk wan stip forward, an’ the nixt I knew was the sole av my boot flappin’ like a cavalry gydon an’ the funny-bone av my toes tinglin’. ’Twas a clane-cut shot—a slug—that niver touched sock or hide, but set me barefut on the rocks. At that I tuk Love-o’-Women by the scruff an’ threw him under a
bowlder, an’ whin I sat down I heard the bullets patterin’ on that same good stone.

‘“Ye may dhraw your own wicked fire,” I sez, shakin’ him, “but I’m not goin’ to be kilt too.”

‘“Ye’ve come too soon,” he sez. “Ye’ve come too soon. In another minute they cudn’t ha’ missed me. Mother av’ God,” he sez, “fwhy did ye not lave me be? Now ’tis all to do again,” an’ he hides his face in his hands.

‘“So that’s it,” I sez, shakin’ him again. “That’s the manin’ av your disobeyin’ ordhers.”

‘“I dare not kill meself,” he sez, rockin’ to and fro. “My own hand wud not let me die, and there’s not a bullet this month past wud touch me. I’m to die slow,” he sez. “I’m to die slow. But I’m in hell now,” he sez, shriekin’ like a woman. “I’m in hell now!”

‘“God be good to us all,” I sez, for I saw his face. “Will ye tell a man the throuble? If ’tis not murder, maybe we’ll mend it yet.”

‘At that he laughed. “D’you remember fwhat I said in the Tyrone barricks about comin’ to you for ghostly consolation. I have not forgot,” he sez. “That came back, and the rest av my time is on me now, Terence. I’ve fought ut off for months an’ months, but the liquor will not bite any more. Terence,” he sez, “I can’t get dhrunk!”

‘Thin I knew he spoke the truth about bein’ in hell, for whin liquor does not take hould the sowl av a man is rotten in him. But me bein’ such as I was, fwhat could I say to him?

‘“Di’monds an’ pearls,” he begins again. “Di’monds an’ peals I have thrown away wid both hands—an’ fwhat have I left? Oh, fwhat have I left?”

‘He was shakin’ an’ tremblin’ up against my shouldher, an’ the slugs were singin’ overhead, an’ I was wonderin’ whether my little bhoy wud have sinse enough to kape his men quiet through all this firin’.

‘“So long as I did not think,” sez Love-o’-Women, “so long I did not see—I wud not see, but I can now, what I’ve lost. The time an’ the place,” he sez, “an’ the very words I said whin ut pleased me to go off alone to hell. But thin, even thin,” he, sez, wrigglin’ tremenjous, “I wud not ha’ been happy. There was too much behind av one. How cud I ha’ believed her sworn oath—me that have bruk mine again an’ again for the sport av seein’ thim cry? An’ there are the others,” he sez. “Oh, what will I do—what will I do?” He rocked back an’ forward again, an’ I think he was cryin’ like wan av the women he talked av.

‘The full half of fwhat he said was Brigade Ordhers to me, but from the rest an’ the remnint I suspicioned somethin’ av his throuble. ’Twas, the judgmint av God had grup the heel av him; as I tould him ’twould in the Tyrone barricks. The slugs was singin’ over our rock more an’ more, an’ I sez for to divart him: “Let bad alone,” I sez. “They’ll be tryin’ to rush the camp in a minut’.”

‘I had no more than said that whin a Paythan man crep’ up on his belly wid his knife betune his teeth, not twinty yards from us. Love-o’-Womenjumped up an’ fetched a yell, an’ the man saw him an’ ran at him (he’d left his rifle under the rock) wid the knife. Love-o’-Women niver turned a hair, but by the Living Power, for I saw ut, a stone twisted under the Paythan man’s feet an’ he came down full sprawl, an’ his knife wint tinkling acrost the rocks! “I tould you I was Cain,” sez Love-o’-Women. “Fwhat’s the use av killin’ him? He’s an honust man—by compare.”

‘I was not dishputin’ about the morils av Paythans that tide, so I dhropped Love-o’-Women’s butt acrost the man’s face, an’ “Hurry into camp,” I sez, “for this may be the first av a rush.”

‘There was no rush after all, though we waited undher arms to give them a chanst. The Paythan man must ha’ come alone for the mischief, an’ afther a while Love-o’-Women wint back to his tint wid that quare lurchin’ sind-off in his walk that I cud niver understand. Begad, I pitied him, an’ the more bekaze he made me think for the rest av the night av the day whin I was confirmed Corp’ril, not actin’ Lef’tinant, an’ my thoughts was not good to me.’

‘Ye can ondersthand that afther that night we came to talkin’ a dale together, an’ bit by bit ut came out fwhat I’d suspicioned. The whole av his carr’in’s on an’ divilments had come back on him hard, as liquor comes back whin you’ve been on the dhrink for a wake. All he’d said an’ all he’d done, an’ only he cud tell how much that was, come back, and there was niver a minut’s peace in his sowl. ’Twas the Horrors widout any cause to see, an’ yet, an’ yet—fwhat am I talkin’ av? He’d ha’ taken the Horrors wid thankfulness. Beyon’ the repentince av the man, an’ that was beyon’ the nature av man—awful, awful, to behould!—there was more that was worst than any repentince. Av the scores an’ scores that he called over in his mind (an’ they were drivin’ him mad), there was, mark you, wan woman av all, an’ she was not his wife, that cut him to the quick av his marrow. ’Twas there he said that he’d thrown away di’monds an’ pearls past count, an’ thin he’d begin again like a blind byle in an oil-mill, walkin’ round and round, to considher (him that was beyond all touch av bein’ happy this side hell!) how happy he wud ha’ been wid her. The more he considhered, the more he’d consate himself that he’d lost mighty happiness, an’ thin he wud work ut all backwards, an’ cry that he niver cud ha’ been happy anyway.

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‘Time an’ time an’ again in camp, on p’rade, ay, an’ in action, I’ve seen that man shut his eyes an’ duck his head as ye wud duck to the flicker av a bay’nit. For ’twas thin, he tould me, that the thought av all he’d missed came an’ stud forninst him like red-hot irons. For what he’d done wid the others he was sorry, but he did not care; but this wan woman that I’ve tould of, by the Hilts av God, she made him pay for all the others twice over! Niver did I know that a man cud enjure such tormint widout his heart crackin’ in his ribs, an’ I have been ‘-Terence turned the pipe-stem slowly between his teeth-, I have been in some black cells. All I iver suffered tho’ was not to be talked of alongside av him . . . an’ what could I do? Paternosters was no more than peas on plates for his sorrows.

‘Evenshually we finished our prom’nade acrost the hills, and, thanks to me for the same, there was no casualties an’ no glory. The campaign was comin’ to an ind, an’ all the rig’mints was being drawn together for to be sint back home. Love-o’-Women was mighty sorry bekaze he had no work to do, an’ all his time to think in. I’ve heard that man talkin’ to his belt-plate an’ his sidearms while he was soldierin’ thim, all to prevent himself from thinkin’, an’ ivry time he got up afther he had been settin’ down or wint on from the halt, he’d start wid that kick an’ traverse that I tould you of—his legs sprawlin’ all ways to wanst. He wud niver go see the docthor, tho’ I tould him to be wise. He’d curse me up an’ down for my advice; but I knew he was no more a man to be reckoned wid than the little bhoy was a commandin’ orf’cer, so I let his tongue run if it aised him.

‘Wan day—’twas on the way back—I was walkin’ round camp wid him, an’ he stopped an’ struck ground wid his right fut three or four times doubtful. “Fwhat is ut?” I sez. “Is that ground?” sez he; an’ while I was thinkin’ his mind was goin’, up comes the docthor, who’d been anatomisin’ a dead bullock. Love-o’-Women starts to go on quick, an’ lands me a kick on the knee while his legs was gettin’ into marchin’ ordher.

‘“Hould on there,” sez the docthor; an’ Love-o’-Women’s face, that was lined like a gridiron, turns red as brick.

‘“Tention,” says the docthor; an’ Love-o’-Women stud so. “Now shut your eyes,” sez the docthor. “No, ye must not hould by your comrade.”

‘“’Tis all up,” sez Love-o’-Women, thrying to smile. “I’d fall, docthor, an’ you know ut:”

‘“Fall?’ I sez. “Fall at attention wid your eyes shut! Fwhat do you mane?”

‘“The docthor knows,” he sez. “I’ve hild up as long as I can, but begad I’m glad ’tis all done. But I will die slow,” he sez, “I will die very slow.”

’I cud see by the docthor’s face that he was mortial sorry for the man, an’ he ordered him to hospital. We wint back together, an’ I was dumb-struck. Love-o’-Women was cripplin’ and crumblin’ at ivry step. He walked wid a hand on my shoulder all slued sideways, an’ his right leg swingin’ like a lame camel. Me not knowin’ more than the dead fwhat ailed him, ’twas just as though the docthor’s word had done ut all—as if Love-o’-Women had but been waitin’ for the word to let go.

‘In hospital he sez somethin’ to the docthor that I could not catch.

‘“Holy Shmoke!” sez the docthor, “an’ who are you to be givin’ names to your diseases? ’Tis agin all the reg’lations.”

‘“I’ll not be a privit much longer,” sez Love-o’-Women in his gentleman’s voice, an’ the docthor jumped.

‘“Thrate me as a study, Doctor Lowndes,” he sez; an’ that was the first time I’d iver heard a docthor called his name.

‘“Good-bye, Terence,” sez Love-o’-Women. “Tis a dead man I am widout the pleasure av dyin’. You’ll come an’ set wid me sometimes for the peace av my sowl.”

‘Now I had been minded for to ask Crook to take me back to the Ould Rig’mint; the fightin’ was over, an’ I was wore out wid the ways av the bhoys in the Tyrone; but I shifted my will, an’ hild on, and wint to set wid Love-o’-Women in the hospital. As I have said, sorr, the man bruk all to little pieces under my hand. How long he had hild up an’ forced himself fit to march I cannot tell, but in hospital but two days later he was such as I hardly knew. I shuk hands wid him, an’ his grip was fair strong, but his hands wint all ways to wanst, an’ he cud not button his tunic.

‘“I’ll take long an’ long to die yet,” he sez, “for the wages av sin they’re like interest in the rig’mintal savin’s-banks—sure, but a damned long time bein’ paid.”

‘The docthor sez to me, quiet one day, “Has Tighe there anythin’ on his mind?” he sez. “He’s burnin’ himself out.”

‘“How shud I know, sorr?” I sez, as innocint as putty.

‘“They call him Love-o’-Women in the Tyrone, do they not?” he sez. “I was a fool to ask. Be wid him all you can. He’s houldin’ on to your strength.”

‘“But fwhat ails him, docthor?” I sez.

‘“They call ut Locomotus attacks us,” he sez, “bekaze,” sez he, “ut attacks us like a locomotive, if ye know fwhat that manes. An’ ut comes,” sez he, lookin’ at me, “ ut comes from bein’ called Love-o’-Women.”

‘“You’re jokin’, docthor,” I sez.

‘“Jokin’!” sez he. “If iver you feel that you’ve got a felt sole in your boot instid av a Government bull’s-wool, come to me,” he sez, “an’ I’ll show you whether ’tis a joke.”

‘You would not belave ut, sorr, but that, an’ seein’ Love-o’-Women overtuk widout warnin’, put the cowld fear av Attacks us on me so strong that for a week an’ more I was kickin’ my toes against stones an’ stumps for the pleasure av feelin’ thim hurt.

‘An’ Love-o’-Women lay in the cot (he might have gone down wid the wounded before an’ before, but he asked to stay wid me), and fwhat there was in his mind had full swing at him night an’ day an’ ivry hour ay the day an’ the night, and he shrivelled like beef-rations in a hot sun, an’ his eyes was like owls’ eyes, an’ his hands was mut’nous.

‘They was gettin’ the rig’mints away wan by wan, the campaign bein’ inded, but as ushuil they was behavin’ as if niver a rig’mint had been moved before in the mem’ry av man. Now, fwhy is that, sorr? There’s fightin’, in an’ out, nine months av the twelve somewhere in the army. There has been—for years an’ years an’ years; an’ I wud ha’ thought they’d begin to get the hang av providin’ for throops. But no! Ivry time ’Tis like a girls’ school meetin’ a big red bull whin they’re goin’ to church; an’ “Mother av God,” sez the Commissariat an’ the Railways an’ the Barrick-masters, “fwhat will we do now?” The ordhers came to us av the Tyrone an’ the Ould Rig’mint an’ half a dozen more to go down, an’ there the ordhers stopped dumb. We wint down, by the special grace av God—down the Khaiber anyways. There was sick wid us, an’ I’m thinkin’ that some av thim was jolted to death in the doolies, but they was anxious to be kilt so if they cud get to Peshawur alive the sooner. I walked by Love-o’-Women—there was no marchin’, an’ Love-o’-Women was not in a stew to get on. “If I’d only ha’ died up there,” sez he through the dooli-curtains, an’ thin he’d twist up his eyes an’ duck his head for the thoughts that come an’ raked him.

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‘Dinah was in Depôt at Pindi, but I wint circumspectuous, for well I knew ’tis just at the rump-ind av all things that his luck turns on a man. By token I had seen a dhriver of a batthery goin’ by at a trot singin’ “Home, swate home” at the top av his shout, and takin’ no heed to his bridle-hand—I had seen that man dhrop under the gun in the middle of a word, and come out by the limber like—like a frog on a pavestone. No. I wud not hurry, though, God knows, my heart was all in Pindi. Love-o’-Women saw fwhat was in my mind, an’ “Go on, Terence,” he sez, “I know fwhat’s waitin’ for you.” “I will not,” I sez. “’Twill kape a little yet.”

‘Ye know the turn of the pass forninst Jumrood and the nine-mile road on the flat to Peshawur? All Peshawur was along that road day and night waitin’ for frinds—men, women, childer, and bands. Some av the throops was camped round Jumrood, an’ some wint on to Peshawur to get away down to their cantonmints. We came through in the early mornin’ havin’ been awake the night through, and we dhruv sheer into the middle av the mess. Mother av Glory, will I iver forget that comin’ back? The light was not fair lifted, and the, first we heard was “For ’tis my delight av a shiny night,” frum a band that thought we was the second four comp’nies av the Lincolnshire. At that we was forced to sind them a yell to say who we was, an’ thin up wint “The wearin’ av the Green.” It made me crawl all up my backbone, not havin’ taken my brequist. Then right smash into our rear came fwhat was left av the Jock Elliott’s—wid four pipers an’ not half a kilt among thim, playin’ for the dear life, an’ swingin’ their rumps like buck-rabbits, an’ a native rig’mint shriekin’ blue murther. Ye niver heard the like! There was men cryin’ like women that did—an’ faith I do not blame them! Fwhat bruk me down was the Lancers’ Band—shinin’ an’ spick like angils, wid the ould dhrum-horse at the head an’ the silver kettle-dhrums an’ all an’ all, waitin’ for their men that was behind us. They shtruck up the Cavalry Canter; an’ begad those poor ghosts that had not a sound fut in a throop they answered to ut; the men rockin’ in their saddles. We thried to cheer them as they wint by, but ut came out like a big gruntin’ cough, so there must have been many that was feelin’ like me. Oh, but I’m forgettin’! The Fly-by-Nights was waitin’ for their second battalion, an’ whin ut came out, there was the Colonel’s horse led at the head—saddle-empty. The, men fair worshipped him, an’ he’d died at Ali Musjid on the road down. They waited till the remnint av the battalion was up, and thin—clane against ordhers, for who wanted that chune that day?—they wint back to Peshawur slowtime an’ tearin’ the bowils out av ivry man that heard, wid “The Dead March.” Right acrost our line they wint, an’ ye know their uniforms are as black as the Sweeps, crawlin’ past like the dead, an’ the other bands damnin’ them to let be.

‘Little they cared. The carpse was wid them, an’ they’d ha taken ut so through a Coronation. Our ordhers was to go into Peshawur, an’ we wint hot-fut past The Fly-by-Nights, not singin’, to lave that chune behind us. That was how we tuk the road of the other corps.

‘’Twas ringin’ in my ears still whin I felt in the bones of me that Dinah was comin’, an’ I heard a shout, an’ thin I saw a horse an’ a tattoo latherin’ down the road, hell-to-shplit, under women. I knew—I knew! Wan was the Tyrone Colonel’s wife—ould Beeker’s lady—her gray hair flyin’ an’ her fat round carkiss rowlin’ in the saddle, an’ the other was Dinah, that shud ha’ been at Pindi. The Colonel’s lady she charged the head av our column like a stone wall, an’ she’ all but knocked Beeker off his horse, throwin’ her arms round his neck an’ blubberin’, “Me bhoy! me bhoy!” an’ Dinah wheeled left an’ came down our flank, an’ I let a yell that had suffered inside av me for months and—Dinah came! Will I iver forget that while I live! She’d come on pass from Pindi, an’ the Colonel’s lady had lint her the tattoo. They’d been huggin’ an’ cryin’ in each other’s arms all the long night.

‘So she walked along wid her hand in mine, asking forty questions to wanst, an’ beggin’ me on the Virgin to make oath that there was not a bullet consaled in me, unbeknownst somewhere, an’ thin I remembered Love-o’-Women. He was watchin’ us, an’ his face was like the face av a divil that has been cooked too long. I did not wish Dinah to see ut, for whin a woman’s runnin’ over with happiness she’s like to be touched, for harm afterwards, by the laste little thing in life. So I dhrew the curtain, an’ Love-o’-Women lay back and groaned.

‘Whin we marched into Peshawur Dinah wint to barracks to wait for me, an’, me feelin’ so rich that tide, I wint on to take Love-o’-Women to hospital. It was the last I cud do, an’ to save him the dust an’ the smother I turned the doolimen down a road well clear av the rest av the throops, an’ we wint along, me talkin’ through the curtains. Av a sudden I heard him say:

‘“Let me look. For the mercy av Hiven, let me look.” I had been so tuk up wid gettin’ him out av the dust an’ thinkin’ av Dinah that I had not kept my eyes about me. There was a woman ridin’ a little behind av us; an’, talkin’ ut over wid Dinah afterwards, that same woman must ha’ rid out far on the jumrood road. Dinah said that she had been hoverin’ like a kite on the left flank av the columns.

‘I halted the dooli to set the curtains, an’ she rode by, walkin’ pace, an’ Love-o’-Women’s eyes wint afther her as if he wud fair haul her down from the saddle.

‘“Follow there,” was all he sez, but I niver heard a man speak in that voice before or since; an’ I knew by those two wan words an’ the look in his face that she was Di’monds-an’-Pearls that he’d talked av in his disthresses.

‘We followed till she turned into the gate av a little house that stud near the Edwardes’ Gate. There was two girls in the verandah, an’ they ran in whin they saw us. Faith, at long eye-range it did not take me a wink to see fwhat kind av house ut was. The throops bein’ there an’ all, there was three or four such; but aftherwards the polis bade thim go. At the verandah Love-o’-Women sez, catchin’ his breath, “Stop here,” an’ thin, an’ thin, wid a grunt that must ha’ tore the heart up from his stomick, he swung himself out av the dooli, an’ my troth he stud up on his feet wid the sweat pourin’ down his face! If Mackie was to walk in here now I’d be less tuk back than I was thin. Where he’d dhrawn his power from, God knows—or the Divil—but ’twas a dead man walkin’ in the sun, wid the face av a dead man and the breath av a dead man, hild up by the Power, an’ the legs an’ the arms av the carpse obeyin’ ordhers.

‘The woman stud in the verandah. She’d been a beauty too, though her eyes was sunk in her head, an’ she looked Love-o’-Women up an’ down terrible. “An’,” she sez, kicking back the tail av her habit,—“An’,” she sez, “fwhat are you doin’ here, married man?”

‘Love-o’-Women said nothin’, but a little froth came to his lips, an’ he wiped ut off wid his hand an’ looked at her an’ the paint on her, an’ looked, an’ looked, an’ looked.

‘“An’ yet,” she sez, wid a laugh. (Did you hear Raines’s wife laugh whin Mackie died? Ye did not? Well for you.) “An’ yet,” she sez, “who but you have betther right,” sez she. “You taught me the road. You showed me the way,” she sez. “Ay, look,” she sez, “for ’tis your work; you that tould me—d’you remimber it?—that a woman who was false to wan man cud be false to two. I have been that,” she sez, “that an’ more, for you always said I was a quick learner, Ellis. Look well,” she sez, “for it is me that you called your wife in the sight av God long since.” An’ she laughed.

‘Love-o’-Women stud still in the sun widout answerin’. Thin he groaned an coughed to wanst, an’ I thought ’twas the death-rattle, but he niver tuk his eyes off her face, not for a blink. Ye cud ha’ put her eyelashes through the flies av an E.P. tent, they were so long.

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‘“Fwhat do you do, here?” she sez, word by word, “that have taken away my joy in my man this, five years gone—that have broken my rest an’ killed my body an’ damned my soul for the sake av seein’ how ’twas done. Did your expayrience aftherwards bring you acrost any woman that give you more than I did? Wud I not ha’ died for you, an’ wid you, Ellis? Ye know that, man! If iver your, lyin’ sowl saw truth in uts life ye know that.”

‘An’ Love-o’-Women lifted up his head and said, “I knew,” an’ that was all. While she was spakin’ the Power hild him up parade-set in the sun, an’ the sweat dhripped undher his helmet. ’Twas more an’ more throuble for him to talk, an’ his mouth was running twistways.

‘“Fwhat do you do here?” she sez, an’ her voice wint up. ’Twas like bells tollin’ before. “Time was when you were quick enough wid your words,—you that talked me down to hell. Are ye dumb now?” An’ Love-o’-Women got his tongue, an’ sez simple, like a little child, “May I come in?” he sez.

‘“The house is open day an’ night,” she sez, wid a laugh; an’ Love-o’-Women ducked his head an’ hild up his hand as tho’ he was gyardin’. The Power was on him still—it hild him up still, for, by my sowl, as I’ll never save ut, he walked up the verandah steps that had been a livin’ carpse in hospital for a month!

‘“An’ now?” she sez, lookin’ at him; an’ the red paint stud lone on the white av her face like a bull’s-eye on a target.

‘He lifted up his eyes, slow an’ very slow, an’ he looked at her long an’ very long, an’ he tuk his spache betune his teeth wid a wrench that shuk him.

‘“I’m dyin’, Aigypt—dyin’,” he sez. Ay, those were his words, for I remimber the name he called her. He was turnin’ the death-colour, but his eyes niver rowled. They were set—set on her. Widout word or warnin’ she opened her arms full stretch, an’ “Here!” she sez. (Oh, fwhat a golden mericle av a voice ut was!) “Die here!” she sez an’ Love-o’-Women dhropped forward, an’ she hild him up, for she was a fine big woman.

‘I had no time to turn, bekaze that minut I heard the sowl quit him—tore out in the death-rattle—an’ she laid him back in a long chair, an she sez to me, “Misther soldier,” she sez, “will ye not wait an’ talk to wan av the girls? This sun’s too much for him.”

‘Well I knew there was no sun he’d iver see, but I cud not spake, so I wint away wid the empty dooli to find the docthor. He’d been breakfastin’ an’ lunchin’ iver since we’d come in, an’ he was full as a tick.

‘“Faith, ye’ve got dhrunk mighty soon,” he sez, whin I’d tould him, “to see that man walk. Barrin’ a puff or two av life, he was a carpse before we left Jumrood. I’ve a great mind,” he sez, “to confine you.”

‘“There’s a dale av liquor runnin’ about, docthor,” I sez, solemn as a hard-boiled egg. “Maybe ’tis so; but will ye not come an’ see the carpse at the house?”

‘“’Tis dishgraceful,” he sez, “that I would be expected to go to a place like that. Was she a pretty woman?” he sez, an’ at that he set off double-quick.

‘I cud see that the two was in the verandah where I’d left them, an’ I knew by the hang av her head an’ the noise av the crows fwhat had happened. ’Twas the first and the last time that I’d iver known woman to use the pistol. They fear the shot as a rule, but Di’monds-an’-Pearls she did not—she did not.

‘The docthor touched the long black hair av her head (’twas all loose upon Love-o’-Women’s tunic), an’ that cleared the liquor out av him. He stud considherin’ a long time, his hands in his pockets, an’ at last he sez to me, “Here’s a double death from naturil causes, most naturil causes; an’ in the present state av affairs the rig’mint will be thankful for wan grave the less to dig. Issiwasti,” he sez. “Issiwasti, Privit Mulvaney, these two will be buried together in the Civil Cemet’ry at my expinse; an’ may the good God,” he sez, “make it so much for me whin my time comes. Go you to your wife,” he sez. “Go an’ be happy. I’ll see to this all.”

‘I left him still considherin’. They was buried in the Civil Cemet’ry together, wid a Church av England service. There was too many buryin’s thin to ask questions, an’ the docthor—he ran away wid Major—Major Van Dyce’s lady that year—he saw to ut all. Fwhat the right an’ the wrong av Love-o’-Women an’ Di’monds-an’-Pearls was I niver knew, an’ I will niver know; but I’ve tould ut as I came acrost ut—here an’ there in little pieces. So, being fwhat I am, an’ knowin’ fwhat I knew, that’s fwhy I say in this shootin’case here, Mackie that’s dead an’ in hell is the lucky man. There are times, sorr, whin ’tis better for the man to die than to live, an’ by consequince forty million times betther for the woman.’

‘H’up there.!’ said Ortheris. ‘It’s time to go.’

The witnesses and guard formed up in the thick white dust of the parched twilight and swung off, marching easy and whistling. Down the road to the green by the church I could hear Ortheris, the black Book-lie still uncleansed on his lips, setting, with a fine sense of the fitness of things, the shrill quickstep that runs—

‘Oh, do not despise the advice of the wise,
Learn wisdom from those that are older,
And don’t try for things that are out of your reach—
An’ that’s what the Girl told the Soldier!
Soldier! soldier!
Oh, that’s what the Girl told the Soldier!’

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WHEN the first waves of feverish cold stole over Frau Ebermann she very wisely telephoned for the doctor and went to bed. He diagnosed the attack as mild influenza, prescribed the appropriate remedies, and left her to the care of her one servant in her comfortable Berlin flat. Frau Ebermann, beneath the thick coverlet, curled up with what patience she could until the aspirin should begin to act, and Anna should come back from the chemist with the formamint, the ammoniated quinine, the eucalyptus, and the little tin steam-inhaler. Meantime, every bone in her body ached; her head throbbed; her hot, dry hands would not stay the same size for a minute together; and her body, tucked into the smallest possible compass, shrank from the chill of the well-warmed sheets.

Of a sudden she noticed that an imitation-lace cover which should have lain mathematically square with the imitation-marble top of the radiator behind the green plush sofa had slipped away so that one corner hung over the bronze-painted steam pipes. She recalled that she must have rested her poor head against the radiator-top while she was taking off her boots. She tried to get up and set the thing straight, but the radiator at once receded toward the horizon, which, unlike true horizons, slanted diagonally, exactly parallel with the dropped lace edge of the cover. Frau Ebermann groaned through sticky lips and lay still.

‘Certainly, I have a temperature,’ she said. ‘Certainly, I have a grave temperature. I should have been warned by that chill after dinner.’

She resolved to shut her hot-lidded eyes, but opened them in a little while to torture herself with the knowledge of that ungeometrical thing against the far wall. Then she saw a child—an untidy, thin-faced little girl of about ten, who must have strayed in from the adjoining flat. This proved—Frau Ebermann groaned again at the way the world falls to bits when one is sick—proved that Anna had forgotten to shut the outer door of the flat when she went to the chemist. Frau Ebermann had had children of her own, but they were all grown up now, and she had never been a child-lover in any sense. Yet the intruder might be made to serve her scheme of things.

‘Make—put,’ she muttered thickly, ‘that white thing straight on the top of that yellow thing.’

The child paid no attention, but moved about the room, investigating everything that came in her way—the yellow cut-glass handles of the chest of drawers, the stamped bronze hook to hold back the heavy puce curtains, and the mauve enamel, New Art finger-plates on the door. Frau Ebermann watched indignantly.

‘Aie! That is bad and rude. Go away!’ she cried, though it hurt her to raise her voice. ‘Go away by the road you came!’ The child passed behind the bed-foot, where she could not see her. ‘Shut the door as you go. I will speak to Anna, but—first, put that white thing straight.’

She closed her eyes in misery of body and soul. The outer door clicked, and Anna entered, very penitent that she had stayed so long at the chemist’s. But it had been difficult to find the proper type of inhaler, and——

‘Where did the child go?’ moaned Frau Ebermann—‘the child that was here?’

‘There was no child,’ said startled Anna. ‘How should any child come in when I shut the door behind me after I go out? All the keys of the flats are different.’

‘No, no! You forgot this time. But my back is aching, and up my legs also. Besides, who knows what it may have fingered and upset? Look and see.’

‘Nothing is fingered, nothing is upset,’ Anna replied, as she took the inhaler from its paper box.

‘Yes, there is. Now I remember all about it. Put—put that white thing, with the open edge—the lace, I mean—quite straight on that—’ she pointed. Anna, accustomed to her ways, understood and went to it.

‘Now, is it quite straight?’ Frau Ebermann demanded.

‘Perfectly,’ said Anna. ‘In fact, in the very centre of the radiator.’ Anna measured the equal margins with her knuckle, as she had been told to do when she first took service.

‘And my tortoise-shell hair brushes?’ Fran Ebermann could not command her dressing-table from where she lay.

‘Perfectly straight, side by side in the big tray, and the comb laid across them. Your watch also in the coralline watch-holder. Everything’—she moved round the room to make sure—‘everything is as you have it when you are well.’ Frau Ebermann sighed with relief. It seemed to her that the room and her head had suddenly grown cooler.

‘Good! ‘said she. ‘Now warm my nightgown in the kitchen, so it will be ready when I have perspired. And the towels also. Make the inhaler steam, and put in the eucalyptus; that is good for the larynx. Then sit you in the kitchen, and come when I ring. But, first, my hot-water bottle.’

It was brought and scientifically tucked in.

‘What news?’ said Frau Ebermann drowsily. She had not been out that day.

‘Another victory,’ said Anna. ‘Many more prisoners and guns.’

Frau Ebermann purred, one might almost say grunted, contentedly.

‘That is good too,’ she said; and Anna, after lighting the inhaler-lamp, went out.

Frau Ebermann reflected that in an hour or so the aspirin would begin to work, and all would be well. To-morrow—no, the day after—she would take up life with something to talk over with her friends at coffee. It was rare—every one knew it—that she should be overcome by any ailment. Yet in all her distresses she had not allowed the minutest deviation from daily routine and ritual. She would tell her friends—she ran over their names one by one—exactly what measures she had taken against the lace cover on the radiatortop and in regard to her two tortoise-shell hairbrushes and the comb at right angles. How she had set everything in order—everything in order. She roved further afield as she wriggled her toes luxuriously on the hot-water bottle. If it pleased our dear God to take her to Himself, and she was not so young as she had been—there was that plate of the four lower ones in the blue tooth-glass, for instance—He should find all her belongings fit to meet His eye. ‘Swept and garnished’ were the words that shaped themselves in her intent brain. ‘Swept and garnished for——’

No, it was certainly not for the dear Lord that she had swept; she would have her room swept out to-morrow or the day after, and garnished. Her hands began to swell again into huge pillows of nothingness. Then they shrank, and so did her head, to minute dots. It occurred to her that she was waiting for some event, some tremendously important event, to come to pass. She lay with shut eyes for a long time till her head and hands should return to their proper size.

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She opened her eyes with a jerk.

‘How stupid of me,’ she said aloud, ‘to set the room in order for a parcel of dirty little children!’

They were there—five of them, two little boys and three girls—headed by the anxious-eyed ten-year-old whom she had seen before. They must have entered by the outer door, which Anna had neglected to shut behind her when she returned with the inhaler. She counted them backward and forward as one counts scales—one, two, three, four, five.

They took no notice of her, but hung about, first on one foot then on the other, like strayed chickens, the smaller ones holding by the larger. They had the air of utterly wearied passengers in a railway waiting-room, and their clothes were disgracefully dirty.

‘Go away!’ cried Frau Ebermann at last, after she had struggled, it seemed to her, for years to shape the words.

‘You called?’ said Anna at the living-room door.

‘No,’ said her mistress. ‘Did you shut the flat door when you came in?’

‘Assuredly,’ said Anna. ‘Besides, it is made to catch shut of itself.’

‘Then go away,’ said she, very little above a whisper. If Anna pretended not to see the children, she would speak to Anna later on.

‘And now,’ she said, turning toward them as soon as the door closed. The smallest of the crowd smiled at her, and shook his head before he buried it in his sister’s skirts.

‘Why—don’t—you—go—away?’ she whispered earnestly.

Again they took no notice, but, guided by the elder girl, set themselves to climb, boots and all, on to the green plush sofa in front of the radiator. The little boys had to be pushed, as they could not compass the stretch unaided. They settled themselves in a row, with small gasps of relief, and pawed the plush approvingly.

‘I ask you—I ask you why do you not go away—why do you not go away?’ Frau Ebermann found herself repeating the question twenty times. It seemed to her that everything in the world hung on the answer. ‘You know you should not come into houses and rooms unless you are invited. Not houses and bedrooms, you know.’

‘No,’ a solemn little six-year-old repeated, ‘not houses nor bedrooms, nor dining-rooms, nor churches, nor all those places. Shouldn’t come in. It’s rude.’

‘Yes, he said so,’ the younger girl put in proudly. ‘He said it. He told them only pigs would do that.’ The line nodded and dimpled one to another with little explosive giggles, such as children use when they tell deeds of great daring against their elders.

‘If you know it is wrong, that makes it much worse,’ said Frau Ebermann.

‘Oh yes; much worse,’ they assented cheerfully, till the smallest boy changed his smile to a baby wail of weariness.

‘When will they come for us?’ he asked, and the girl at the head of the row hauled him bodily into her square little capable lap.

‘He’s tired,’ she explained. ‘He is only four. He only had his first breeches this spring.’ They came almost under his armpits, and were held up by broad linen braces, which, his sorrow diverted for the moment, he patted proudly.

‘Yes, beautiful, dear,’ said both girls.

‘Go away!’ said Frau Ebermann. ‘Go home to your father and mother! ‘

Their faces grew grave at once.

‘H’sh! We can’t,’ whispered the eldest ‘There isn’t anything left.’

‘All gone,’ a boy echoed, and he puffed through pursed lips. ‘Like that, uncle told me. Both cows too.’

‘And my own three ducks,’ the boy on the girl’s lap said sleepily.

‘So, you see, we came here.’ The elder girl leaned forward a little, caressing the child she rocked.

‘I—I don’t understand,’ said Frau Ebermann. ‘Are you lost, then? You must tell our police.’

‘Oh no; we are only waiting.’

‘But what are you waiting for?’

‘We are waiting for our people to come for us. They told us to come here and wait for them. So we are waiting till they come,’ the eldest girl replied.

‘Yes. We are waiting till our people come for us,’ said all the others in chorus.

‘But,’ said Frau Ebermann very patiently—‘but now tell me, for I tell you that I am not in the least angry, where do you come from? Where do you come from?’

The five gave the names of two villages of which she had read in the papers.

‘That is silly,’ said Frau Ebermann. ‘The people fired on us, and they were punished. Those places are wiped out, stamped flat.’

‘Yes, yes, wiped out, stamped flat. That is why and—I have lost the ribbon off my pigtail,’ said the younger girl. She looked behind her over the sofa-back.

‘It is not here,’ said the elder. ‘It was lost before. Don’t you remember?’

‘Now, if you are lost, you must go and tell our police. They will take care of you and give you food,’ said Frau Ebermann. ‘Anna will show you the way there.’

‘No,’—this was the six-year-old with the smile,—‘we must wait here till our people come for us. Mustn’t we, sister?’

‘Of course. We wait here till our people come for us. All the world knows that,’ said the eldest girl.

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‘Yes.’ The boy in her lap had waked again. ‘Little children, too—as little as Henri, and he doesn’t wear trousers yet. As little as all that.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Frau Ebermann, shivering. In spite of the heat of the room and the damp breath of the steam-inhaler, the aspirin was not doing its duty.

The girl raised her blue eyes and looked at the woman for an instant.

‘You see,’ she said, emphasising her statements with her fingers, ‘they told us to wait here till our people came for us. So we came. We wait till our people come for us.’

‘That is silly again,’ said Frau Ebermann. ‘It is no good for you to wait here. Do you know what this place is? You have been to school? It is Berlin, the capital of Germany.’

‘Yes, yes,’ they all cried; ‘Berlin, capital of Germany. We know that. That is why we came.’

‘So, you see, it is no good,’ she said triumphantly, ‘because your people can never come for you here.’

‘They told us to come here and wait till our people came for us.’ They delivered this as if it were a lesson in school. Then they sat still, their hands orderly folded on their laps, smiling as sweetly as ever.

‘Go away! Go away!’Frau Ebermann shrieked.

‘You called?’ said Anna, entering.

‘No. Go away! Go away!’

‘Very good, old cat,’ said the maid under her breath. ‘Next time you may call,’ and she returned to her friend in the kitchen.

‘I ask you—ask you, please to go away,’ Frau Ebermann pleaded. ‘Go to my Anna through that door, and she will give you cakes and sweeties. It is not kind of you to come into my room and behave so badly.’

‘Where else shall we go now?’ the elder girl demanded, turning to her little company. They fell into discussion. One preferred the broad street with trees, another the railway station; but when she suggested an Emperor’s palace, they agreed with her.

‘We will go then,’ she said, and added half apologetically to Frau Ebermann, ‘You see, they are so little they like to meet all the others.’

‘What others?’ said Frau Ebermann.

‘The others—hundreds and hundreds and thousands and thousands of the others.’

‘That is a lie. There cannot be a hundred even, much less a thousand,’ cried Frau Ebermann.

‘So?’ said the girl politely.

‘Yes. I tell you; and I have very good information. I know how it happened. You should have been more careful. You should not have run out to see the horses and guns passing. That is how it is done when our troops pass through. My son has written me so.’

They had clambered down from the sofa, and gathered round the bed with eager, interested eyes.

‘Horses and guns going by—how fine!’ some one whispered.

‘Yes, yes; believe me, that is how the accidents to the children happen. You must know yourself that it is true. One runs out to look——’

‘But I never saw any at all,’ a boy cried sorrowfully. ‘Only one noise I heard. That was when Aunt Emmeline’s house fell down.’

‘But listen to me. I am telling you! One runs out to look, because one is little and cannot see well. So one peeps between the man’s legs, and then—you know how close those big horses and guns turn the corners—then one’s foot slips and one gets run over. That’s how it happens. Several times it had happened, but not many times; certainly not a hundred, perhaps not twenty. So, you see, you must be all. Tell me now that you are all that there are, and Anna shall give you the cakes.’

‘Thousands,’ a boy repeated monotonously. ‘Then we all come here to wait till our people come for us.’

‘But now we will go away from here. The poor lady is tired,’ said the elder girl, plucking his sleeve.

‘Oh, you hurt, you hurt!’ he cried, and burst into tears.

‘What is that for?’ said Frau Ebermann. ‘To cry in a room where a poor lady is sick is very inconsiderate.’

‘Oh, but look, lady!’ said the elder girl.

Frau Ebermann looked and saw.

‘Au revoir, lady.’ They made their little smiling bows and curtseys undisturbed by her loud cries. ‘Au revoir, lady. We will wait till our people come for us.’

When Anna at last ran in, she found her mistress on her knees, busily cleaning the floor with the lace cover from the radiator, because, she explained, it was all spotted with the blood of five children—she was perfectly certain there could not be more than five in the whole world—who had gone away for the moment, but were now waiting round the corner, and Anna was to find them and give them cakes to stop the bleeding, while her mistress swept and garnished that Our dear Lord when He came might find everything as it should be.

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I SAT down in the Club smoking-room to fill a pipe.

It was entirely natural that I should be talking to ‘Boy’ Bayley. We had met first, twenty odd years ago, at the Indian mess of the Tyneside Tail-twisters. Our last meeting, I remembered, had been at the Mount Nelson Hotel, which was by no means India, and there we had talked half the night. Boy Bayley had gone up that week to the front, where I think he stayed a long, long time.

But now he had come back.

‘Are you still a Tynesider?’ I asked.

‘I command the Imperial Guard Battalion of the old regiment, my son,’ he replied.

‘Guard which? They’ve been Fusiliers since Fontenoy. Don’t pull my leg, Boy.’

‘I said Guard, not Guard-s. The I.G. Battalion of the Tail-twisters. Does that make it any clearer?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Then come over to mess and see for yourself. We aren’t a step from barracks. Keep on my right side. I’m—I’m a bit deaf on the near.’

We left the Club together and crossed the street to a vast four-storied pile, which more resembled a Rowton lodging-house than a barrack. I could see no sentry at the gates.

‘There ain’t any,’ said the Boy lightly. He led me into a many-tabled restaurant full of civilians and grey-green uniforms. At one end of the room, on a slightly raised dais, stood a big table.

‘Here we are! We usually lunch here and dine in mess by ourselves. These are our chaps—but what am I thinking of? You must know most of ’em. Devine’s my second in command now. There’s old Luttrell—remember him at Cherat?—Burgard, Verschoyle (you were at school with him), Harrison, Pigeon, and Kyd.’

With the exception of the last I knew them all, but I could not remember that they had all been Tynesiders.

‘I’ve never seen this sort of place,’ I said, looking round. ‘Half the men here are in plain clothes, and what are those women and children doing?’

‘Eating, I hope,’ Boy Bayley answered. ‘Our canteens would never pay if it wasn’t for the Line and Militia trade. When they were first started people looked on ’em rather as catsmeat-shops; but we got a duchess or two to lunch in ’em, and they’ve been grossly fashionable since.’

‘So I see,’ I answered. A woman of the type that shops at the Stores came up the room looking about her. A man in the dull-grey uniform of the corps rose up to meet her, piloted her to a place between three other uniforms, and there began a very merry little meal.

‘I give it up,’ I said. ‘This is guilty splendour that I don’t understand.’

‘Quite simple,’ said Burgard across the table. ‘The barrack supplies breakfast, dinner, and tea on the Army scale to the Imperial Guard (which we call I.G.) when it’s in barracks as well as to the Line and Militia. They can all invite their friends if they choose to pay for them. That’s where we make our profits. Look!’

Near one of the doors were four or five tables crowded with workmen in the raiment of their callings. They ate steadily, but found time to jest with the uniforms about them; and when one o’clock clanged from a big half-built block of flats across the street, filed out.

‘Those,’ Devine explained, ‘are either our Line or Militia men, as such entitled to the regulation whack at regulation cost. It’s cheaper than they could buy it; an’ they meet their friends too. A man’ll walk a mile in his dinner-hour to mess with his own lot.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I pleaded. ‘Will you tell me what those plumbers and plasterers and bricklayers, that I saw go out just now, have to do with what I was taught to call the Line?’

‘Tell him,’ said the Boy over his shoulder to Burgard. He was busy talking with the large Verschoyle, my old schoolmate.

‘The Line comes next to the Guard. The Linesman’s generally a town-bird who can’t afford to be a Volunteer. He has to go into camp in an Area for two months his first year, six weeks his second, and a month the third. He gets about five bob a week the year round for that and for being on duty two days of the week, and for being liable to be ordered out to help the Guard in a row. He needn’t live in barracks unless he wants to, and he and his family can feed at the regimental canteen at usual rates. The women like it.’

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‘All this,’ I said politely, but intensely, ‘is the raving of delirium. Where may your precious recruit who needn’t live in barracks learn his drill?’

‘At his precious school, my child, like the rest of us. The notion of allowing a human being to reach his twentieth year before asking him to put his feet in the first position was raving lunacy if you like!’ Boy Bayley dived back into the conversation.

‘Very good,’ I said meekly. ‘I accept the virtuous plumber who puts in two months of his valuable time at Aldershot——’

‘Aldershot!’ The table exploded. I felt a little annoyed.

‘A camp in an Area is not exactly Aldershot,’ said Burgard. ‘The Line isn’t exactly what you fancy. Some of them even come to us!’

‘You recruit from ’em?’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Devine with mock solemnity. ‘The Guard doesn’t recruit. It selects.’

‘It would,’ I said, ‘with a Spiers and Pond restaurant; pretty girls to play with; and——’

‘A room apiece, four bob a day and all found,’ said Verschoyle. ‘Don’t forget that.’

‘Of course!’ I said. ‘It probably beats off recruits with a club.’

‘No, with the ballot-box,’ said Verschoyle, laughing. ‘At least in all R.C. companies.’

‘I didn’t know Roman Catholics were so particular,’ I ventured.

They grinned. ‘R.C. companies,’ said the Boy, ‘mean Right of Choice. When a company has been very good and pious for a long time it may, if the C.O. thinks fit, choose its own men—all same one-piecee Club. All our companies are R.C.’s, and, as the battalion is making up a few vacancies ere starting once more on the wild and trackless “heef” into the Areas, the Linesman is here in force to-day sucking up to our non-coms.’

‘Would some one mind explaining to me the meaning of every other word you’ve used,’ I said. ‘What’s a trackless “heef”? What’s an Area? What’s everything generally?’ I asked.

‘Oh, “heef’s” part of the British Constitution,’ said the Boy. ‘It began long ago when they first mapped out the big military manoeuvring grounds—we call ’em Areas for short—where the I.G. spend two-thirds of their time and the other regiments get their training. It was slang originally for beef on the hoof, because in the Military Areas two-thirds of your meat-rations at least are handed over to you on the hoof, and you make your own arrangements. The word “heef” became a parable for camping in the Military Areas and all its miseries. There are two Areas in Ireland, one in Wales for hill-work, a couple in Scotland, and a sort of parade-ground in the Lake District; but the real working Areas are in India, Africa, and Australia, and so on.’

‘And what do you do there?’

‘We “heef” under service conditions, which are rather like hard work. We “heef” in an English Area for about a year, coming into barracks for one month to make up wastage. Then we may “heef” foreign for another year or eighteen months. Then we do sea-time in the war boats——’

‘What-t?’ I said.

‘Sea-time,’ Bayley repeated. ‘Just like Marines, to learn about the big guns and how to embark and disembark quick. Then we come back to our territorial headquarters for six months, to educate the Line and Volunteer camps, to go to Hythe, to keep abreast of any new ideas, and then we fill up vacancies. We call those six months “Schools.” Then we begin all over again, thus: Home “heef,” foreign “heef,” sea-time, schools. “Heefing” isn’t precisely luxurious, but it’s on “heef” that we make our head-money.’

‘Or lose it,’ said the sallow Pigeon, and all laughed, as men will, at regimental jokes.

‘The Dove never lets me forget that,’ said Boy Bayley. ‘It happened last March. We were out in the Second Northern Area at the top end of Scotland where a lot of those silly deer-forests used to be. I’d sooner “heef” in the middle of Australia myself—or Athabasca, with all respect to The Dove; he’s a native of those parts. We were camped somewhere near Caithness, and the Armity (that’s the combined Navy and Army Board which runs our show) sent us about eight hundred raw remounts to break in to keep us warm.?’

‘Why horses for a foot regiment?’

‘I.G.’s don’t foot it unless they’re obliged to. No have gee-gee how can move? I’ll show you later. Well, as I was saying, we broke those beasts in on compressed forage and small boxspurs, and then we started across Scotland to Applecross to hand ’em over to a horse-depot there. It was snowing cruel, and we didn’t know the country overmuch. You remember the 30th—the old East Lancashire—at Mian Mir? Their Guard Battalion had been “heefing” round those parts for six months. We thought they’d be snowed up all quiet and comfy, but Burden, their C.O., got wind of our coming, and sent spies in to Eshcol.’

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‘Confound him!’ said Luttrell, who was fat and well-liking. ‘I entertained one of ’em—in a red worsted comforter—under Bean Derig. He said he was a crofter. ’Gave him a drink too.’

‘I don’t mind admitting,’ said the Boy, ‘that, what with the cold and the remounts, we were moving rather base-over-apex. Burden bottled us under Sghurr Mhor in a snowstorm. He stampeded half the horses, cut off a lot of us in a snowbank, and generally rubbed our noses in the dirt.’

‘Was he allowed to do that?’ I said.

‘There is no peace in a Military Area. If we’d beaten him off or got away without losing anyone, we’d have been entitled to a day’s pay from every man engaged against us. But we didn’t. He cut off fifty of ours, held ’em as prisoners for the regulation three days, and then sent in his bill – three days’ pay for each man taken. Fifty men at twelve bob a head, plus five pounds for the Dove as a captured officer, and Kyd here, his junior, three, made about forty quid to Burden and Co. They crowed over us horrid.’

‘Couldn’t you have appealed to an umpire or—or something?’

‘We could, but we talked it over with the men and decided to pay and look happy. We were fairly had. The 30th knew every foot of Sghurr Mhor. I spent three days huntin’ ’em in the snow, but they went off on our remounts about twenty mile that night.’

‘Do you always do this sham-fight business?’ I asked.

‘Once inside an Area you must look after yourself; but I tell you that a fight which means that every man-Jack of us may lose a week’s pay isn’t so dam-sham after all. It keeps the men nippy. Still, in the long run, it’s like whist on a P. and O. It comes out fairly level if you play long enough. Now and again, though, one gets a present—say, when a Line regiment’s out on the “heef,” and signifies that it’s ready to abide by the rules of the game. You mustn’t take head-money from a Line regiment in an Area unless it says that it’ll play you; but, after a week or two, those clever Linesmen always think they see a chance of making a pot, and send in their compliments to the nearest I.G. Then the fun begins. We caught a Line regiment single-handed about two years ago in Ireland—caught it on the hop between a bog and a beach. It had just moved in to join its brigade, and we made a forty-two-mile march in fourteen hours, and cut it off, lock, stock, and barrel. It went to ground like a badger—I will say those Line regiments can dig—but we got out privily by night and broke up the only road it could expect to get its baggage and company-guns along. Then we blew up a bridge that some Sappers had made for experimental purposes (they were rather stuffy about it) on its line of retreat, while we lay up in the mountains and signalled for the A.C. of those parts.’

‘Who’s an A.C.?’ I asked.

‘The Adjustment Committee—the umpires of the Military Areas. They’re a set of superannuated old aunts of colonels kept for the purpose, but they occasionally combine to do justice. Our A.C. came, saw our dispositions, and said it was a sanguinary massacree for the Line, and that we were entitled to our full pound of flesh—head-money for one whole regiment, with equipment, four company-guns, and all kit! At Line rates this worked out as one fat cheque for two hundred and fifty. Not bad!’

‘But we had to pay the Sappers seventy-four quid for blowing their patent bridge to pieces,’ Devine interpolated. ‘That was a swindle.’

‘That’s true,’ the Boy went on, ‘but the Adjustment Committee gave our helpless victims a talking-to that was worth another hundred to hear.’

‘But isn’t there a lot of unfairness in this head-money system?’ I asked.

‘’Can’t have everything perfect,’ said the Boy. ‘Head-money is an attempt at payment by results, and it gives the men a direct interest in their job. Three times out of five, of course, the A.C. will disallow both sides’ claim, but there’s always the chance of bringing off a coup.’

‘Do all regiments do it?’

‘Heavily. The Line pays a bob per prisoner and the Militia ninepence, not to mention side-bets which are what really keep the men keen. It isn’t supposed to be done by the Volunteers, but they gamble worse than anyone. Why, the very kids do it when they go to First Camp at Aldershot or Salisbury.’

‘Head-money’s a national institution—like betting,’ said Burgard.

‘I should say it was,’ said Pigeon suddenly. ‘I was roped in the other day as an Adjustment Committee by the Kemptown Board School. I was riding under the Brighton racecourse, and I heard the whistle goin’ for umpire—the regulation, two longs and two shorts. I didn’t take any notice till an infant about a yard high jumped up from a furze-patch and shouted: “Guard! Guard! Come ’ere! I want you per-fessionally. Alf says ’e ain’t outflanked. Ain’t ’e a liar? Come an’ look ’ow I’ve posted my men.” You bet I looked! The young demon trotted by my stirrup and showed me his whole army

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(twenty of ’em) laid out under cover as nicely as you please round a cowhouse in a hollow. He kept on shouting: “I’ve drew Alf into there. ’Is persition ain’t tenable. Say it ain’t tenable, Guard!” I rode round the position, and Alf with his army came out of his cowhouse an’ sat on the roof and protested like a—like a Militia Colonel; but the facts were in favour of my friend and I umpired according. Well, Alf abode by my decision. I explained it to him at length, and he solemnly paid up his head-money—farthing points if you please!’

‘Did they pay you umpire’s fee?’ said Kyd. ‘I umpired a whole afternoon once for a village school at home, and they stood me a bottle of hot ginger beer.’

‘I compromised on a halfpenny—a sticky one—or I’d have hurt their feelings,’ said Pigeon gravely. ‘But I gave ’em sixpence back.’

‘How were they manœuvring and what with?’ I asked.

‘Oh, by whistle and hand-signal. They had the dummy Board School guns and flags for positions, but they were rushing their attack much too quick for that open country. I told ’em so, and they admitted it.’

‘But who taught ’em?’ I said.

‘They had learned in their schools, of course, like the rest of us. They were all of ’em over ten; and squad-drill begins when they’re eight. They knew their company-drill a heap better than they knew their King’s English.’

‘How much drill do the boys put in?’ I asked.

‘All boys begin physical drill to music in the Board Schools when they’re six; squad-drill, one hour a week, when they’re eight; company-drill when they’re ten, for an hour and a half a week. Between ten and twelve they get battalion-drill of a sort. They take the rifle at twelve and record their first target-score at thirteen. That’s what the Code lays down. But it’s worked very loosely so long as a boy comes up to the standard of his age.’

‘In Canada we don’t need your physical-drill. We’re born fit,’ said Pigeon, ‘and our ten-year-olds could knock spots out of your twelve-year-olds.’

‘I may as well explain,’ said the Boy, ‘that The Dove is our “swop” officer. He’s an untamed Huskie from Nootka Sound when he’s at home. An I.G. Corps exchanges one officer every two years with a Canadian or Australian or African Guard Corps. We’ve had a year of our Dove, an’ we shall be sorry to lose him. He humbles our insular pride. Meantime, Morten, our “swop” in Canada, keeps the ferocious Canuck humble. When Pij goes we shall swop Kyd, who’s next on the roster, for a Cornstalk or a Maori. But about the education-drill. A boy can’t attend First Camp, as we call it, till he is a trained boy and holds his First Musketry certificate. The Education Code says he must be fourteen, and the boys usually go to First Camp at about that age. Of course, they’ve been to their little private camps and Boys’ Fresh Air Camps and public-school picnics while they were at school, but First Camp is where the young drafts all meet—generally at Aldershot in this part of the world. First Camp lasts a week or ten days, and the boys are looked over for vaccination and worked lightly in brigades with lots of blank cartridge. Second Camp—that’s for the fifteen to eighteen-year-olds—lasts ten days or a fortnight, and that includes a final medical examination. Men don’t like to be chucked out on medical certificate much—nowadays. I assure you Second Camp, at Salisbury, say, is an experience for a young I.G. Officer. We’re told off to ’em in rotation. A wilderness of monkeys isn’t in it. The kids are apt to think ’emselves soldiers, and we have to take the edge off ’em with lots of picquet-work and night attacks.’

‘And what happens after Second Camp?’

‘It’s hard to explain. Our system is so illogical. Theoretically, the boys needn’t show up for the next three or four years after Second Camp. They are supposed to be making their way in life. Actually, the young doctor or lawyer or engineer joins a Volunteer battalion that sticks to the minimum of camp—ten days per annum. That gives him a holiday in the open air, and now that men have taken to endowing their Volunteer drill-halls with baths and libraries he finds, if he can’t run to a Club, that his own drill-hall is an efficient substitute. He meets men there who’ll be useful to him later, and he keeps himself in touch with what’s going on while he’s studying for his profession. The town-birds—such as the chemist’s assistant, clerk, plumber, mechanic, electrician, and so forth—generally put in for their town Volunteer corps as soon as they begin to walk out with the girls. They like takin’ their true-loves to our restaurants. Look yonder!’ I followed his gaze, and saw across the room a man and a maid at a far table, forgetting in each other’s eyes the good food on their plates.

‘So it is,’ said I. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Then, too, we have some town Volunteer corps that lay themselves out to attract promising youths of nineteen or twenty, and make much of ’em on condition that they join their Line battalion and play for their county. Under the new county qualifications—birth or three years’ residence—that means a great deal in League matches, and the same in County cricket.’

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‘By Jove, that’s a good notion,’ I cried. ‘Who invented it?’

‘C.B. Fry—long ago. He said, in his paper, that County cricket and County volunteering ought to be on the same footing—unpaid and genuine. “No cricketer no corps. No corps no cricketer” was his watchword. There was a row among the pro’s at first, but C.B. won, and later the League had to come in. They said at first it would ruin the gate; but when County matches began to be pukka county, plus inter-regimental affairs, the gate trebled, and as two-thirds of the gate goes to the regiments supplying the teams some Volunteer corps fairly wallow in cash. It’s all unofficial, of course, but League Corps, as they call ’em, can take their pick of the Second Camper. Some corps ask ten guineas entrance-fee, and get it too, from the young bloods that want to shine in the arena. I told you we catered for all tastes. Now, as regards the Line proper, I believe the young artisan and mechanic puts in for that before he marries. He likes the two months’ “heef” in his first year, and five bob a week is something to go on with between times.’

‘Do they follow their trade while they’re in the Line?’ I demanded.

‘Why not? How many well-paid artisans work more than four days a week anyhow? Remember a Linesman hasn’t to be drilled in your sense of the word. He must have had at least eight years’ grounding in that, as well as two or three years in his Volunteer battalion. He can sleep where he pleases. He can’t leave town-limits without reporting himself, of course, but he can get leave if he wants it. He’s on duty two days in the week as a rule, and he’s liable to be invited out for garrison duty down the Mediterranean, but his benefit societies will insure him against that. I’ll tell you about that later. If it’s a hard winter and trade’s slack, a lot of the bachelors are taken into the I.G. barracks (while the I.G.) is out on the “heef”) for theoretical instruction. Oh, I assure you the Line hasn’t half a bad time of it.’

‘Amazing!’ I murmured. ‘And what about the others?’

‘The Volunteers? Observe the beauty of our system. We’re a free people. We get up and slay the man who says we aren’t. But as a little detail we never mention, if we don’t volunteer in some corps or another—as combatants if we’re fit, as non-combatants if we ain’t—till we’re thirty-five—we don’t vote, and we don’t get poor-relief, and the women don’t love us.’

‘Oh, that’s the compulsion of it?’ said I.

Bayley inclined his head gravely. ‘That, Sir, is the compulsion. We voted the legal part of it ourselves in a fit of panic, and we have not yet rescinded our resolution! The women attend to the unofficial penalties. But being free British citizens——’

‘And snobs,’ put in Pigeon.

‘The point is well taken, Pij—we have supplied ourselves with every sort and shape and make of Volunteer corps that you can imagine, and we’ve mixed the whole show up with our Oddfellows and our I.O.G.T.’s and our Buffaloes, and our Burkes and our Debretts, not to mention Leagues and Athletic Clubs, till you can’t tell t’other from which. You remember the young pup who used to look on soldiering as a favour done to his ungrateful country—the gun-poking, ferret-pettin’, landed gentleman’s offspring—the suckin’ Facey Romford? Well, he generally joins a Foreign Service Corps when he leaves college.’

‘Can Volunteers go foreign then?’

‘Can’t they just, if their C.O. or his wife has influence! The Armity will always send a well-connected F.S. corps out to help a Guard battalion in a small campaign. Otherwise F.S. corps make their own arrangements about camps. You see, the Military Areas are always open. They can “heef” there (and gamble on head-money) as long as their finances run to it; or they can apply to do sea-time in the ships. It’s a cheap way for a young man to see the world, and if he’s any good he can try to get into the Guard later.’

‘The main point,’ said Pigeon, ‘is that F.S. corps are “swagger”—the correct thing. It ’ud never do to be drawn for the Militia, don’t you know,’ he drawled, trying to render the English voice.

‘That’s what happens to a chap who doesn’t volunteer,’ said Bayley. ‘Well, after the F.S. corps (we’ve about forty of ’em) come our territorial Volunteer battalions, and a man who can’t suit himself somewhere among ’em must be a shade difficult. We’ve got those “League” corps I was talking about; and those studious corps that just scrape through their ten days’ camp; and we’ve crack corps of highly-paid mechanics who can afford a two months’ “heef” in an interesting Area every other year; and we’ve senior and junior scientific corps of earnest boilermakers and fitters and engineers who read papers on high explosives, and do their “heefing” in a wet picket-boat—mine-droppin’—at the ports. Then we’ve heavy artillery—recruited from the big manufacturing towns and ship-building yards—and ferocious hard-ridin’ Yeomanry (they can ride—now), genteel, semi-genteel, and Hooligan corps, and so on and so forth till you come to the Home Defence Establishment—the young chaps knocked out under medical certificate at the Second Camp, but good enough to sit behind hedges or clean up camp, and the old was-birds who’ve served their time but don’t care to drop out

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of the fun of the yearly camps and the halls. They call ’emselves veterans and do fancy shooting at Bisley, but, between you and me, they’re mostly Fresh Air Benefit Clubs. They contribute to the Volunteer journals and tell the Guard that it’s no good. But I like ’em. I shall be one of ’em some day—a copper-nosed was-bird . . . So you see we’re mixed to a degree on the Volunteer side.’

‘It sounds that way,’ I ventured.

‘You’ve overdone it, Bayley,’ said Devine. ‘You’ve missed our one strong point.’ He turned to me and continued: ‘It’s embarkation. The Volunteers may be as mixed as the Colonel says, but they are trained to go down to the sea in ships. You ought to see a big Bank Holiday roll-out! We suspend most of the usual railway traffic and turn on the military time-table—say on Friday at midnight. By 4 a.m. the trains are running from every big centre in England to the nearest port at two-minute intervals. As a rule, the Armity meets us at the other end with shipping of sorts—Fleet Reserves or regular men-of-war or hulks—anything you can stick a gang-plank to. We pile the men on to the troop-decks, stack the rifles in the racks, send down the sea-kit, steam about for a few hours, and land ’em somewhere. It’s a good notion, because our army to be any use must be an army of embarkation. Why, last Whit Monday we had—how many were down at the dock-edge in the first eight hours? Kyd, you’re the Volunteer enthusiast last from school.’

‘In the first ten hours over a hundred and eighteen thousand,’ said Kyd across the table, ‘with thirty-six thousand actually put in and taken out of ship. In the whole thirty-six hours we had close on ninety thousand men on the water and a hundred and thirty-three thousand on the quays fallen in with their sea-kit.’

‘That must have been a sight,’ I said.

‘One didn’t notice it much. It was scattered between Chatham, Dover, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, Liverpool, and so on, merely to give the inland men a chance to get rid of their breakfasts. We don’t like to concentrate and try a big embarkation at any one point. It makes the Continent jumpy. Otherwise,’ said Kyd, ‘I believe we could get two hundred thousand men, with their kits, away on one tide.’

‘What d’you want with so many?’ I asked.

‘We don’t want one of ’em; but the Continent used to point out, every time relations were strained, that nothing would be easier than to raid England if they got command of the sea for a week. After a few years some genius discovered that it cut both ways, an’ there was no reason why we, who are supposed to command the sea and own a few ships, should not organise our little raids in case of need. The notion caught on among the Volunteers—they were getting rather sick of manœuvres on dry land—and since then we haven’t heard so much about raids from the Continent,’ said Bayley.

‘It’s the offensive-defensive,’ said Verschoyle, ‘that they talk so much about. We learned it all from the Continent—bless ’em! They insisted on it so.’

‘No, we learned it from the Fleet,’ said Devine. ‘The Mediterranean Fleet landed ten thousand marines and sailors, with guns, in twenty minutes once at manœuvres. That was long ago. I’ve seen the Fleet Reserve, and a few paddle-steamers hired for the day, land twenty-five thousand Volunteers at Bantry in four hours—half the men sea-sick too. You’ve no notion what a difference that sort of manœuvre makes in the calculations of our friends on the mainland. The Continent knows what invasion means. It’s like dealing with a man whose nerve has been shaken. It doesn’t cost much after all, and it makes us better friends with the great European family. We’re as thick as thieves now.’

‘Where does the Imperial Guard come in, in all this gorgeousness?’ I asked. ‘You’re unusual modest about yourselves.’

‘As a matter of fact, we’re supposed to go out and stay out. We’re the permanently mobilised lot. I don’t think there are more than eight I.G. battalions in England now. We’re a hundred battalions all told. Mostly on the “heef” in India, Africa, and so forth.’

‘A hundred thousand. Isn’t that small allowance?’ I suggested.

‘You think so? One hundred thousand men, without a single case of venereal, and an average sick list of two per cent, permanently on a war footing? Well, perhaps you’re right, but it’s a useful little force to begin with while the others are getting ready. There’s the native Indian Army also, which isn’t a broken reed, and, since “no Volunteer no Vote” is the rule throughout the Empire, you will find a few men in Canada, Australia, and elsewhere, that are fairly hefty in their class.’

‘But a hundred thousand isn’t enough for garrison duty,’ I persisted.

‘A hundred thousand sound men, not sick boys, go quite a way,’ said Pigeon.

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‘We expect the Line to garrison the Mediterranean Ports and thereabouts,’ said Bayley. ‘Don’t sneer at the mechanic. He’s deuced good stuff. He isn’t rudely ordered out, because this ain’t a military despotism, and we have to consider people’s feelings. The Armity usually brackets three Line regiments together, and calls for men for six months or a year for Malta, Gib, or elsewhere, at a bob a day. Three battalions will give you nearly a whole battalion of bachelors between ’em. You fill up deficiencies with a call on the territorial Volunteer battalion, and away you go with what we call a Ports battalion. What’s astonishing in that? Remember that in this country, where fifty per cent of the able-bodied males have got a pretty fair notion of soldiering, and, which is more, have all camped out in the open, you wake up the spirit of adventure in the young.’

‘Not much adventure at Malta, Gib, or Cyprus,’ I retorted. ‘Don’t they get sick of it?’

‘But you don’t realise that we treat ’em rather differently from the soldier of the past. You ought to go and see a Ports battalion drawn from a manufacturing centre, growin’ vines in Cyprus in its shirt sleeves; and at Gib, and Malta, of course, the battalions are working with the Fleet half the time.’

‘It seems to me,’ I said angrily, ‘you are knocking esprit de corps on the head with all this Army-Navy fumble. It’s as bad as——’

‘I know what you’re going to say. As bad as what Kitchener used to do when he believed that a thousand details picked up on the veldt were as good as a column of two regiments. In the old days, when drill was a sort of holy sacred art learned in old age, you’d be quite right. But remember our chaps are broke to drill from childhood, and the theory we work on is that a thousand trained Englishmen ought to be about as good as another thousand trained Englishmen. We’ve enlarged our horizon, that’s all. Some day the Army and the Navy will be interchangeable.’

‘You’ve enlarged it enough to fall out of, I think. Now where in all this mess of compulsory Volunteers——?’

‘My dear boy, there’s no compulsion. You’ve got to be drilled when you’re a child, same as you’ve got to learn to read; and if you don’t pretend to serve in some corps or other till you’re thirty-five or medically chucked, you rank with lunatics, women, and minors. That’s fair enough.’

‘Compulsory conscripts,’ I continued. ‘Where, as I was going to say, does the Militia come in?’

‘As I have said—for the men who can’t afford volunteering. The Militia is recruited by ballot—pretty comprehensively too. Volunteers are exempt, but most men not otherwise accounted for are bagged by the Militia. They have to put in a minimum three weeks’ camp every other year, and they get fifteen bob a week and their keep when they’re at it, and some sort of a yearly fee, I’ve forgotten how much. ’Tisn’t a showy service, but it’s very useful. It keeps the mass of the men between twenty-five, say, and thirty-five moderately fit, and gives the Armity an excuse for having more equipment ready—in case of emergencies.’

‘I don’t think you’re quite fair on the Militia,’ drawled Verschoyle. ‘They’re better than we give ’em credit for. Don’t you remember the Middle Moor Collieries strike?’

‘Tell me,’ I said quickly. Evidently the others knew.

‘We-ell, it was no end of a pitmen’s strike about eight years ago. There were twenty-five thousand men involved—Militia, of course. At the end of the first month—October—when things were looking rather blue, one of those clever Labour leaders got hold of the Militia Act and discovered that any Militia regiment could, by a two-thirds vote, go on “heef” in a Military Area in addition to its usual biennial camp. Two-and-twenty battalions of Geordies solemnly applied, and they were turned loose into the Irish and Scotch Areas under an I.G. Brigadier who had private instructions to knock clinkers out of ’em. But the pitman is a strong and agile bird. He throve on snowdrifts and entrenching and draggin’ guns through heather. He was being fed and clothed for nothing, besides having a chance of making head-money, and his strike-pay was going clear to his wife and family. You see? Wily man. But wachtabittje! When that “heef” finished in December the strike was still on. Then that same Labour leader found out, from the same Act, that if at any time more than thirty or forty men of a Militia regiment wished to volunteer to do sea-time and study big guns in the Fleet they were in no wise to be discouraged, but were to be taken on as opportunity offered and paid a bob a day. Accordingly, about January, Geordie began volunteering for sea-time—seven and eight hundred men out of each regiment. Anyhow it made up seventeen thousand men! It was a splendid chance and the Armity jumped at it. The Home and Channel Fleets and the North Sea and Cruiser Squadrons were strengthened with lame ducks from the Fleet Reserve, and between ’em with a little stretching and pushing they accommodated all of that young division.’

‘Yes, but you’ve forgotten how we lied to the Continent about it. All Europe wanted to know what the dooce we were at,’ said Boy Bayley, ‘and the wretched Cabinet had to stump the country in the depths of winter explaining our new system of poor-relief. I beg your pardon, Verschoyle.’

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‘The Armity improvised naval manœuvres between Gib and Land’s End, with frequent coalings and landings; ending in a cruise round England that fairly paralysed the pitmen. The first day out they wanted the Fleet stopped while they went ashore and killed their Labour leader, but they couldn’t be obliged. Then they wanted to mutiny over the coaling—it was too like their own job. Oh, they had a lordly time! They came back—the combined Fleets anchored off Hull—with a nautical hitch to their breeches. They’d had a free fight at Gib with the Ports battalion there; they cleared out the town of Lagos; and they’d fought a pitched battle with the dockyard-mateys at Devonport. So they’d done ’emselves well, but they didn’t want any more military life for a bit.’

‘And the strike?’

‘That ended, all right enough, when the strike-money came to an end. The pit-owners were furious. They said the Armity had wilfully prolonged the strike, and asked questions in the House. The Armity said that they had taken advantage of the crisis to put a six months’ polish on fifteen thousand fine young men, and if the masters cared to come out on the same terms they’d be happy to do the same by them.’

‘And then?’

‘Palaver done set,’ said Bayley. ‘Everybody laughed.’

‘I don’t quite understand about this sea-time business,’ I said. ‘Is the Fleet open to take any regiment aboard?’

‘Rather. The I.G. must, the Line can, the Militia may, and the Volunteers do put in sea-time. The Coast Volunteers began it, and the fashion is spreading inland. Under certain circumstances, as Verschoyle told you, a Volunteer or Militia regiment can vote whether it “heefs” wet or dry. If it votes wet and has influence (like some F.S. corps), it can sneak into the Channel or the Home Fleet and do a cruise round England or to Madeira or the North Sea. The regiment, of course, is distributed among the ships, and the Fleet dry-nurse ’em. It rather breaks up shore discipline, but it gives the inland men a bit of experience and, of course, it gives us a fairish supply of men behind the gun, in event of any strain on the Fleet. Some coast corps make a speciality of it, and compete for embarking and disembarking records. I believe some of the Tyneside engineerin’ corps put ten per cent of their men through the Fleet engine-rooms. But there’s no need to stay talking here all the afternoon. Come and see the I.G. in his lair—the miserable conscript driven up to the colours at the point of the bayonet.’

part 2

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THE great hall was emptying apace as the clocks struck two, and we passed out through double doors into a huge reading and smoking room, blue with tobacco and buzzing with voices. ‘We’re quieter as a rule,’ said the Boy. ‘But we’re filling up vacancies to-day. Hence the anxious faces of the Line and Militia. Look!’ There were four tables against the walls, and at each stood a crowd of uniforms. The centres of disturbance were non-commissioned officers who, seated, growled and wrote down names.

‘Come to my table,’ said Burgard. ‘Well, Purvis, have you ear-marked our little lot?’

‘I’ve been tellin’ ’em for the last hour we’ve only twenty-three vacancies,’ was the sergeant’s answer. ‘I’ve taken nearly fifty for Trials, and this is what’s left.’ Burgard smiled.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he said to the crowd, ‘but C Company’s full.’

‘Excuse me, Sir,’ said a man, ‘but wouldn’t sea-time count in my favour? I’ve put in three months with the Fleet. Small quick-firers, Sir? Company guns? Any sort of light machinery?’

‘Come away,’ said a voice behind. ‘They’ve chucked the best farrier between Hull and Dewsbury. ’Think they’ll take you an’ your potty quick-firers?’

The speaker turned on his heel and swore.

‘Oh, damn the Guard, by all means,’ said Sergeant Purvis, collecting his papers. ‘D’you suppose it’s any pleasure to me to reject chaps of your build and make? Vote us a second Guard battalion and we’ll accommodate you. Now, you can come into Schools and watch Trials if you like.’

Most of the men accepted his invitation, but a few walked away angrily. I followed from the smoking-room across a wide corridor into a riding-school, under whose roof the voices of the few hundred assembled wandered in lost echoes.

‘I’ll leave you, if you don’t mind,’ said Burgard. ‘Company officers aren’t supposed to assist at these games. Here, Matthews!’ He called to a private and put me in his charge.

In the centre of the vast floor my astonished eyes beheld a group of stripped men; the pink of their bodies startling the tan.

‘These are our crowd,’ said Matthews. ‘They’ve been vetted, an’ we’re putting ’em through their paces.’

‘They don’t look a bit like raw material,’ I said.

‘No, we don’t use either raw men or raw meat for that matter in the Guard,’ Matthews replied. ‘Life’s too short.’

Purvis stepped forward and barked in the professional manner. It was physical drill of the most searching, checked only when he laid his hand over some man’s heart.

Six or seven, I noticed, were sent back at this stage of the game. Then a cry went up from a group of privates standing near the line of contorted figures. ‘White, Purvis, white! Number Nine is spitting white!’

‘I know it,’ said Purvis. ‘Don’t you worry.’

‘Unfair!’ murmured the man who understood quick-firers. ‘If I couldn’t shape better than that I’d hire myself out to wheel a perambulator. He’s cooked.’

‘Nah,’ said the intent Matthews. ‘He’ll answer to a month’s training like a horse. It’s only suet. You’ve been training for this, haven’t you?’

‘Look at me,’ said the man simply.

‘Yes. You’re overtrained,’ was Matthews’ comment. ‘The Guard isn’t a circus.’

‘Guns!’ roared Purvis, as the men broke off and panted. ‘Number off from the right. Fourteen is one, three is two, eleven’s three, twenty and thirty-nine are four and five, and five is six.’ He was giving them their numbers at the guns as they struggled into their uniforms. In like manner he told off three other gun-crews, and the remainder left at the double, to return through the farther doors with four light quick-firers jerking at the end of man-ropes.

‘Knock down and assemble against time.’ Purvis called.

The audience closed in a little as the crews flung themselves on the guns, which melted, wheel by wheel, beneath their touch.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this,’ I whispered.

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‘Huh!’ said Matthews scornfully. ‘They’re always doin’ it in the Line and Militia drill-halls. It’s only circus-work.’

The guns were assembled again and some one called the time. Then followed ten minutes of the quickest feeding and firing with dummy cartridges that was ever given man to behold.

‘They look as if they might amount to something—this draft,’ said Matthews softly.

‘What might you teach ’em after this, then?’ I asked.

‘To be Guard,’ said Matthews.

‘Spurs!’ cried Purvis, as the guns disappeared through the doors into the stables. Each man plucked at his sleeve, and drew up first one heel and then the other.

‘What the deuce are they doing?’ I said.

‘This,’ said Matthews. He put his hand to a ticket-pocket inside his regulation cuff, showed me two very small black boxspurs: drawing up a gaitered foot he snapped them into the box in the heel, and when I had inspected snapped them out again.

‘That’s all the spur you really need,’ he said.

Then horses were trotted out into the school barebacked, and the neophytes were told to ride.

Evidently the beasts knew the game and enjoyed it, for they would not make it easy for the men.

A heap of saddlery was thrown in a corner, and from this each man, as he captured his mount, made shift to draw proper equipment, while the audience laughed, derided, or called the horses towards them.

It was, most literally, wild horseplay, and by the time it was finished the recruits and the company were weak with fatigue and laughter.

‘That’ll do,’ said Purvis, while the men rocked in their saddles. ‘I don’t see any particular odds between any of you. C Company! Does anybody here know anything against any of these men?’

‘That’s a bit of the Regulations,’ Matthews whispered. ‘Just like forbiddin’ the banns in church. Really it was all settled long ago when the names first came up.’

There was no answer.

‘You’ll take ’em as they stand,’’

There was a grunt of assent.

‘Very good. There’s forty men for twenty-three billets.’ He turned to the sweating horsemen. ‘I must put you into the Hat.’

With great ceremony and a shower of company jokes that I did not follow, an enormous Ally Sloper top-hat was produced, into which numbers and blanks were dropped, and the whole was handed round to the riders by a private, evidently the joker of C Company.

Matthews gave me to understand that each company owned a cherished receptacle (sometimes not a respectable one) for the papers of the final drawing. He was telling me how his company had once stolen the Sacred Article used by D Company for this purpose and of the riot that followed, when through the west door of the schools entered a fresh detachment of stripped men, and the arena was flooded with another company.

Said Matthews as we withdrew, ‘Each company does Trials its own way. B Company is all for teaching men how to cook and camp. D Company keeps ’em to horse-work mostly. We call D the circus-riders and B the cooks. They call us the gunners.’

‘An’ you’ve rejected me,’ said the man who had done sea-time, pushing out before us. ‘The Army’s goin’ to the dogs!’

I stood in the corridor looking for Burgard.

‘Come up to my room and have a smoke,’ said Matthews, Private of the Imperial Guard.

We climbed two flights of stone stairs ere we reached an immense landing flanked with numbered doors. Matthews pressed a spring-latch and led me into a little cabin-like room. The cot was a standing bunk, with drawers beneath. On the bed lay a brilliant blanket; by the bed-head was an electric light and a shelf of books: a writing table stood in the window, and I dropped into a low wicker chair.

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‘This is a cut above subaltern’s quarters,’ I said, surveying the photos, the dhurri on the floor, the rifle in its rack, the field-kit hung up behind the door, and the knicknacks on the walls.

‘The Line bachelors use ’em while we’re away; but they’re nice to come back to after “heef.”’ Matthews passed me his cigarette-case.

‘Where have you “heefed”?’ I said.

‘In Scotland, Central Australia, and North Eastern Rhodesia and the North-West Indian front.’

‘What’s your service?’

‘Four years. I’ll have to go in a year. I got in when I was twenty-two—by a fluke—from the Militia direct—on Trials.’

‘Trials like those we just saw?’

‘Not so severe. There was less competition then. I hoped to get my stripes, but there’s no chance.’

‘Why?’

‘I haven’t the knack of handling men. Purvis let me have a half-company for a month in Rhodesia—over towards Lake Ngami. I couldn’t work ’em properly. It’s a gift.’

‘Do colour-sergeants handle half-companies with you?’

‘They can command ’em on the “heef.” We’ve only four company officers—Burgard, Luttrell, Kyd, and Harrison. Pigeon’s our swop, and he’s in charge of the ponies. Burgard got his company on the “heef.” You see, Burgard had been a lieutenant in the Line, but he came into the Guard on Trials like the men. He could command. They tried him in India with a wing of the battalion for three months. He did well, so he got his company. That’s what made me hopeful. But it’s a gift, you see—managing men—and so I’m only a senior private. They let ten per cent of us stay on for two years extra after our three are finished—to polish the others.’

‘Aren’t you even a corporal?’

‘We haven’t corporals, or lances for that matter, in the Guard. As a senior private I’d take twenty men into action; but one Guard don’t tell another how to clean himself. You’ve learned that before you apply . . . . Come in!’

There was a knock at the door, and Burgard entered, removing his cap.

‘I thought you’d be here,’ he said, as Matthews vacated the other chair and sat on the bed. ‘Well, has Matthews told you all about it? How did our Trials go, Matthews?’

‘Forty names in the Hat, Sir, at the finish. They’ll make a fairish lot. Their gun-tricks weren’t bad; but D Company has taken the best horsemen—as usual.’

‘Oh, I’ll attend to that on “heef.” Give me a man who can handle company-guns and I’ll engage to make him a horsemaster. D Company will end by thinkin’ ’emselves Captain Pigeon’s private cavalry some day.’

I had never heard a private and a captain talking after this fashion, and my face must have betrayed my astonishment, for Burgard said:

‘These are not our parade manners. In our rooms, as we say in the Guard, all men are men. Outside we are officers and men.’

‘I begin to see,’ I stammered. ‘Matthews was telling me that sergeants handled half-companies and rose from the ranks—and I don’t see that there are any lieutenants—and your companies appear to be two hundred and fifty strong. It’s a shade confusing to the layman.’

Burgard leaned forward didactically. ‘The Regulations lay down that every man’s capacity for command must be tested to the uttermost. We construe that very literally when we’re on the “heef.” F’r instance, any man can apply to take the command next above him, and if a man’s too shy to ask, his company officer must see that he gets his chance. A sergeant is given a wing of the battalion to play with for three weeks, a month, or six weeks—according to his capacity, and turned adrift in an Area to make his own arrangements. That’s what Areas are for—and to experiment in. A good gunner—a private very often—has all four company-guns to handle through a week’s fight, acting for the time as the major. Majors of Guard battalions (Verschoyle’s our major) are supposed to be responsible for the guns, by the way. There’s nothing to prevent any man who has the gift working his way up to the experimental command of the battalion on “heef.” Purvis, my colour-sergeant, commanded the battalion for three months at the back of Coolgardie, an’ very well he did it. Bayley ’verted to company officer for the time being an’ took Harrison’s company, and Harrison came over to me as my colour-sergeant. D’you see? Well, Purvis is down for a commission when there’s a

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vacancy. He’s been thoroughly tested, and we all like him. Two other sergeants have passed that three months’ trial in the same way (just as second mates go up for extra master’s certificate). They have E.C. after their names in the Army List. That shows they’re capable of taking command in event of war. The result of our system is that you could knock out every single officer of a Guard battalion early in the day, and the wheels ’ud still go forward, not merely round. We’re allowed to fill up half our commissioned list from the ranks direct. Now d’you see why there’s such a rush to get into a Guard battalion?’

‘Indeed I do. Have you commanded the regiment experimentally?’

‘Oh, time and again,’ Burgard laughed. ‘We’ve all had our E.C. turn.’

‘Doesn’t the chopping and changing upset the men?’

‘It takes something to upset the Guard. Besides, they’re all in the game together. They give each other a fair show, you may be sure.’

‘That’s true,’ said Matthews. ‘When I went to Ngami with my—with the half-company,’ he sighed, ‘they helped me all they knew. But it’s a gift—handling men. I found that out.’

‘I know you did,’ said Burgard softly. ‘But you found it out in time, which is the great thing. You see,’ he turned to me, ‘with our limited strength we can’t afford to have a single man who isn’t more than up to any duty—in reason. Don’t you be led away by what you saw at Trials just now. The Volunteers and the Militia have all the monkey-tricks of the trade—such as mounting and dismounting guns, and making fancy scores and doing record marches; but they need a lot of working up before they can pull their weight in the boat.’

There was a knock at the door. A note was handed in. Burgard read it and smiled.

‘Bayley wants to know if you’d care to come with us to the Park and see the kids. It’s only a Saturday afternoon walk-round before the taxpayer …. Very good. If you’ll press the button we’ll try to do the rest.’

He led me by two flights of stairs up an iron stairway that gave on a platform, not unlike a ship’s bridge, immediately above the barrelled glass roof of the riding-school. Through a ribbed ventilator I could see B Company far below watching some men who chased sheep. Burgard unlocked a glass-fronted fire-alarm arrangement flanked with dials and speaking-tubes, and bade me press the centre button.

Next moment I should have fallen through the riding-school roof if he had not caught me; for the huge building below my feet thrilled to the multiplied purring of electric bells. The men in the school vanished like minnows before a shadow, and above the stamp of booted feet on staircases I heard the neighing of many horses.

‘What in the world have I done ?’ I gasped.

‘Turned out the Guard—horse, foot, and guns!’

A telephone bell rang imperiously. Burgard snatched up the receiver.

‘Yes, Sir. . . What, Sir? . . . I never heard they said that,’ he laughed, ‘but it would be just like ’em. In an hour and a half? Yes, Sir. Opposite the Statue? Yes, Sir.’

He turned to me with a wink as he hung up.

‘Bayley’s playing up for you. Now you’ll see some fun.’

‘Who’s going to catch it?’ I demanded.

‘Only our local Foreign Service Corps. Its C.O. has been boasting that it’s en état de partir, and Bayley’s going to take him at his word and have a kit-inspection this afternoon in the Park. I must tell their drill-hall. Look over yonder between that brewery chimney and the mansard roof!’

He readdressed himself to the telephone, and I kept my eye on the building to the southward. A Blue Peter climbed up to the top of the flagstaff that crowned it and blew out in the summer breeze. A black storm-cone followed.

‘Inspection for F.S. corps acknowledged, Sir,’ said Burgard down the telephone. ‘Now we’d better go to the riding-school. The battalion falls in there. I have to change, but you’re free of the corps. Go anywhere. Ask anything. In another ten minutes we’re off.’

I lingered for a little looking over the great city, its huddle of houses and the great fringe of the Park, all framed between the open windows of this dial-dotted eyrie.

page 5

When I descended, the halls and corridors were as hushed as they had been noisy, and my feet echoed down the broad tiled staircases. On the third floor, Matthews, gaitered and armed, overtook me smiling.

‘I thought you might want a guide,’ said he. ‘We’ve five minutes yet,’ and piloted me to the sun-splashed gloom of the riding-school. Three companies were in close order on the tan. They moved out at a whistle, and as I followed in their rear I was overtaken by Pigeon on a rough black mare.

‘Wait a bit,’ he said, ‘till the horses are all out of stables, and come with us. D Company is the only mounted one just now. We do it to amuse the taxpayer,’ he explained, above the noise of horses on the tan.

‘Where are the guns?’ I asked, as the mare lipped my coat-collar.

‘Gone ahead long ago. They come out of their own door at the back of barracks. We don’t haul guns through traffic more than we can help . . . . If Belinda breathes down your neck smack her. She’ll be quiet in the streets. She loves lookin’ into the shop-windows.’

The mounted company clattered through vaulted concrete corridors in the wake of the main body, and filed out into the crowded streets.

When I looked at the townsfolk on the pavement, or in the double-decked trams, I saw that the bulk of them saluted, not grudgingly or of necessity, but in a light-hearted, even flippant fashion.

‘Those are Line and Militia men,’ said Pigeon. ‘That old chap in the top-hat by the lamp-post is an ex-Guardee. That’s why he’s saluting in slow time. No, there’s no regulation governing these things, but we’ve all fallen into the way of it somehow. Steady, mare!’

‘I don’t know whether I care about this aggressive militarism,’ I began, when the company halted, and Belinda almost knocked me down. Looking forward I saw the badged cuff of a policeman upraised at a crossing, his back towards us.

‘Horrid aggressive, ain’t we?’ said Pigeon with a chuckle when we moved on again and overtook the main body. Here I caught the strains of the band, which Pigeon told me did not accompany the battalion on “heef,” but lived in barracks and made much money by playing at parties in town.

‘If we want anything more than drums and fifes on “heef” we sing,’ said Pigeon. ‘Singin’ helps the wind.’

I rejoiced to the marrow of my bones thus to be borne along on billows of surging music among magnificent men, in sunlight, through a crowded town whose people, I could feel, regarded us with comradeship, affection—and more.

‘By Jove,’ I said at last, watching the eyes about us, ‘these people are looking us over as if we were horses.’

‘Why not? They know the game.’

The eyes on the pavement, in the trams, the cabs, at the upper windows, swept our lines back and forth with a weighed intensity of regard which at first seemed altogether new to me, till I recalled just such eyes, a thousand of them, at manœuvres in the Channel when one crowded battleship drew past its sister at biscuit-toss range. Then I stared at the ground overborne by those considering eyes.

Suddenly the music changed to the wail of the Dead March in Saul, and once more—we were crossing a large square—the regiment halted.

‘Damn!’ said Pigeon, glancing behind him at the mounted company. ‘I believe they save up their Saturday corpses on purpose.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘A dead Volunteer. We must play him through.’

Again I looked forward and saw the top of a hearse, followed by two mourning-coaches, boring directly up the halted regiment, which opened out company by company to let it through.

‘But they’ve got the whole blessed square to funeralise in!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why don’t they go round?’

‘Not so,’ Pigeon replied. ‘In this city it’s the Volunteer’s perquisite to be played through by any corps he happens to meet on his way to the cemetery. And they make the most of it. You’ll see.’

I heard the order, ‘Rest on your arms,’ run before the poor little procession as the men opened out. The driver pulled the black Flanders beasts into a more than funeral crawl, and in the first mourning-coach I saw the tearful face of a fat woman (his mother, doubtless), a handkerchief pressed to one eye, but the other rolling vigilantly, alight with proper pride. Last came a knot of uniformed men—privates, I took it—of the dead one’s corps.

page 6

Said a man in the crowd beside us to the girl on his arm, ‘There, Jenny! That’s what I’ll get if I have the luck to meet ’em when my time comes.’

‘You an’ your luck,’ she snapped. ‘’Ow can you talk such silly nonsense?’

‘Played through by the Guard,’ he repeated slowly. ‘The undertaker ’oo could guarantee that, mark you, for all his customers—well, ’e’d monopolise the trade, is all I can say. See the horses passagin’ sideways!’

‘She done it a purpose,’ said the woman with a sniff.

‘An’ I only hope you’ll follow her example. Just as long as you think I’ll keep, too.

We reclosed when the funeral had left us twenty paces behind. A small boy stuck his head out of a carriage and watched us jealously.

‘Amazing! amazing!’ I murmured. ‘Is it regulation?’

‘No. Town-custom. It varies a little in different cities, but the people value being played through more than most things, I imagine. Duddell, the big Ipswich manufacturer—he’s a Quaker—tried to bring in a bill to suppress it as unchristian.’ Pigeon laughed.

‘And?’

‘It cost him his seat next election. You see, we’re all in the game.’

We reached the Park without further adventure, and found the four company-guns with their spike teams and single drivers waiting for us. Many people were gathered here, and we were halted, so far as I could see, that they might talk with the men in the ranks. The officers broke into groups.

‘Why on earth didn’t you come along with me ?’ said Boy Bayley at my side. ‘I was expecting you.’

‘Well, I had a delicacy about brigading myself with a colonel at the head of his regiment, so I stayed with the rear company and the horses. It’s all too wonderful for any words. What’s going to happen next?’

‘I’ve handed over to Verschoyle, who will amuse and edify the school-children while I take you round our kindergarten. Don’t kill any one, Vee. Are you goin’ to charge ’em?’

Old Verschoyle hitched his big shoulder and nodded precisely as he used to do at school. He was a boy of few words grown into a kindly taciturn man.

‘Now!’ Bayley slid his arm through mine and led me across a riding-road towards a stretch of rough common (singularly out of place in a park) perhaps three-quarters of a mile long and half as wide. On the encircling rails leaned an almost unbroken line of men and women—the women outnumbering the men. I saw the Guard battalion move up the road flanking the common and disappear behind the trees.

As far as the eye could range through the mellow English haze the ground inside the railings was dotted with boys in and out of uniform, armed and unarmed. I saw squads here, half-companies there; then three companies in an open space, wheeling with stately steps; a knot of drums and fifes near the railings unconcernedly slashing its way across popular airs, and a batch of gamins labouring through some extended attack destined to be swept aside by a corps crossing the ground at the double. They broke out of furze bushes, ducked over hollows and bunkers, held or fell away from hillocks and rough sandbanks till the eye wearied of their busy legs.

Bayley took me through the railings, and gravely returned the salute of a freckled twelve-year-old near by.

‘What’s your corps?’ said the Colonel of that Imperial Guard battalion to that child.

‘Eighth District Board School, Fourth Standard, Sir. We aren’t out to-day.’ Then, with a twinkle, ‘I go to First Camp next year.’

‘What are those boys yonder—that squad at the double? ‘

‘Jew-boys, sir. Jewish Voluntary Schools, Sir.’

‘And that full company extending behind the three elms to the south-west?’

‘Private day-schools, Sir, I think. Judging distance, Sir.’

‘Can you come with us?’

‘Certainly, Sir.’

‘Here’s the raw material at the beginning of the process,’ said Bayley to me.

page 7

We strolled on towards the strains of ‘A Bicycle Built for Two,’ breathed jerkily into a mouth-organ by a slim maid of fourteen. Some dozen infants with clenched fists and earnest legs were swinging through the extension movements which that tune calls for. A stunted hawthorn overhung the little group, and from a branch a dirty white handkerchief flapped in the breeze. The girl blushed, scowled, and wiped the mouthorgan on her sleeve as we came up.

‘We’re all waiting for our big bruvvers,’ piped up one bold person in blue breeches—seven if he was a day.

‘It keeps ’em quieter, Sir,’ the maiden lisped. ‘The others are with the regiments.’

‘Yeth, and they’ve all lots of blank for you,’ said the gentleman in blue breeches ferociously.

‘Oh, Artie! ’Ush!’ the girl cried.

‘But why have they lots of blank for us?’ Bayley asked. Blue Breeches stood firm.

‘’Cause—’cause the Guard’s goin’ to fight the Schools this afternoon; but my big bruvver says they’ll be dam-well surprised.’

‘Artie!’ The girl leaped towards him. ‘You know your ma said I was to smack——’

‘Don’t, please don’t,’ said Bayley, pink with suppressed mirth. ‘It was all my fault. I must tell old Verschoyle this. I’ve surprised his plan out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.’

‘What plan?’ I asked.

‘Old Vee has taken the battalion up to the top of the common, and he told me he meant to charge down through the kids; but they’re on to him already. He’ll be scuppered. The Guard will be scuppered.’

Here Blue Breeches, overcome by the reproof of his fellows, began to weep.

‘I didn’t tell,’ he roared. ‘My big bruvver he knew when he saw them go up the road . . . .’

‘Never mind! Never mind, old man,’ said Bayley soothingly. ‘I’m not fighting to-day. It’s all right.’

He rightened it yet further with sixpence, and left that band loudly at feud over the spoil.

‘Oh, Vee! Vee the strategist,’ he chuckled. ‘We’ll pull Vee’s leg to-night.’

Our freckled friend of the barriers doubled up behind us.

‘So you know that my battalion is charging down the ground?’ Bayley demanded.

‘Not for certain, Sir, but we’re preparin’ for the worst,’ he answered with a cheerful grin. ‘They allow the Schools a little blank ammunition after we’ve passed the Third Standard; and we nearly always bring it on to the ground of Saturdays.’

‘The deuce you do! Why?’

‘On account of those amateur Volunteer corps, Sir. They’re always experimentin’ upon us, Sir, comin’ over from their ground an’ developin’ attacks on our flanks. Oh, it’s chronic ’ere of a Saturday sometimes, unless you flag yourself’

I followed his eye and saw white flags fluttering before a drum and fife band and a knot of youths in sweaters gathered round the dummy breech of a four-inch gun which they were feeding at express rates.

‘The attacks don’t interfere with you if you flag yourself, Sir,’ the boy explained. ‘That’s a Second Camp team from the Technical Schools loading against time for a bet.’

We picked our way deviously through the busy groups. Apparently it was not etiquette to notice a Guard officer, and the youths at the twenty-five-pounder were far too busy to look up. I watched the cleanly finished hoist and shove-home of the full-weight shell from a safe distance, when I became aware of a change among the scattered boys on the common, who disappeared behind the hillocks to an accompaniment of querulous whistles. A boy or two on bicycles dashed from corps to corps, and on their arrival each corps seemed to fade away.

The youths at loading practice did not pause for the growing hush round them, nor did the drum and fife band drop a single note. Bayley exploded afresh. ‘The Schools are preparing for our attack, by Jove! I wonder who’s directin’ ’em. Do you know?’

The warrior of the Eighth District looked up shrewdly.

‘I saw Mr. Cameron speaking to Mr. Levitt just as the Guard went up the road. ’E’s our ’ead-master, Mr. Cameron, but Mr. Levitt, of the Sixth District, is actin’ as senior officer on the ground this Saturday. Most likely Mr. Levitt is commandin’.’

page 8

‘How many corps are there here?’ I asked.

‘Oh, bits of lots of ’em—thirty or forty p’r’aps, Sir. But the whistles says they’ve all got to rally on the Board Schools. ’Ark! There’s the whistle for the Private Schools! They’ve been called up the ground at the double.’

‘Stop!’ cried a bearded man with a watch, and the crews dropped beside the breech wiping their brows and panting.

‘Hullo! there’s some attack on the Schools,’ said one. ‘Well, Marden, you owe me three halfcrowns. I’ve beaten your record. Pay up!’

The boy beside us tapped his foot fretfully as he eyed his companions melting among the hillocks, but the gun-team adjusted their bets without once looking up.

The ground rose a little to a furze-crowned ridge in the centre so that I could not see the full length of it, but I heard a faint bubble of blank in the distance.

‘The Saturday allowance,’ murmured Bayley. ‘War’s begun, but it wouldn’t be etiquette for us to interfere. What are you saying, my child?’

‘Nothin’, Sir, only—only I don’t think the Guard will be able to come through on so narrer a front, Sir. They’ll all be jammed up be’ind the ridge if we’ve got there in time. It’s awful sticky for guns at the end of our ground, Sir.’

‘I’m inclined to think you’re right, Moltke. The Guard is hung up: distinctly so. Old Vee will have to cut his way through. What a pernicious amount of blank the kids seem to have!’

It was quite a respectable roar of battle that rolled among the hillocks for ten minutes, always out of our sight. Then we heard the ‘Cease fire’ over the ridge.

‘They’ve sent for the Umpires,’ the Board School boy squeaked, dancing on one foot. ‘You’ve been hung up, Sir. I—I thought the sand-pits ’ud stop you.’

Said one of the jerseyed hobbledehoys at the gun, slipping on his coat: ‘Well, that’s enough for this afternoon. I’m off,’ and moved to the railings without even glancing towards the fray.

‘I anticipate the worst,’ said Bayley with gravity after a few minutes. ‘Hullo! Here comes my disgraced corps.’

The Guard was pouring over the ridge—a disorderly mob—horse, foot, and guns mixed, while from every hollow of the ground about rose small boys cheering shrilly. The outcry was taken up by the parents at the railings, and spread to a complete circle of cheers, handclappmgs, and waved handkerchiefs.

Our Eighth District private cast away restraint and openly capered. ‘We got ’em! We got ’em!’ he squealed.

The grey-green flood paused a fraction of a minute and drew itself into shape, coming to rest before Bayley. Verschoyle saluted.

‘Vee, Vee,’ said Bayley. ‘Give me back my legions! Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself.’

‘The little beasts were ready for us. Deuced well posted too,’ Verschoyle replied. ‘I wish you’d seen that first attack on our flank. Rather impressive. Who warned ’em?’

‘I don’t know. I got my information from a baby in blue plush breeches. Did they do well?’

‘Very decently indeed. I’ve complimented their C.O. and buttered the whole boiling.’ He lowered his voice. ‘As a matter o’ fact, I halted five good minutes to give ’em time to get into position.’

‘Well, now we can inspect our Foreign Service corps. We shan’t need the men for an hour, Vee.’

‘Very good, Sir. Colour-sergeants!’ cried Verschoyle, raising his voice, and the cry ran from company to company. Whereupon the officers left their men, people began to climb over the railings, and the regiment dissolved among the spectators and the school corps of the city.

‘No sense keeping men standing when you don’t need ’em,’ said Bayley. ‘Besides, the Schools learn more from our chaps in an afternoon than they can pick up in a month’s drill. Look at those Board-schoolmaster captains buttonholing old Purvis on the art of war!’

‘’Wonder what the evening papers’ll say about this,’ said Pigeon.

‘You’ll know in half an hour,’ Burgard laughed. ‘What possessed you to take your ponies across the sand-pits, Pij?’

page 9

‘Pride. Silly pride,’ said the Canadian.

We crossed the common to a very regulation parade-ground overlooked by a statue of Our Queen. Here were carriages, many and elegant, filled with pretty women, and the railings were lined with frockcoats and top-hats. ‘This is distinctly social,’ I suggested to Kyd.

‘Ra-ather. Our F.S. corps is nothing if not correct, but Bayley’ll sweat ’em all the same.’

I saw six companies drawn up for inspection behind lines of long sausage-shaped kit-bags. A band welcomed us with ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave.’

‘What cheek!’ muttered Verschoyle. ‘Give ’em beans, Bayley.’

‘I intend to,’ said the Colonel grimly. ‘Will each of you fellows take a company, please, and inspect ’em faithfully. En état de partir is their little boast, remember. When you’ve finished you can give ’em a little pillow-fighting.’

‘What does the single cannon on those men’s sleeves mean?’ I asked.

‘That they’re big-gun men, who’ve done time with the Fleet,’ Bayley returned. ‘Any F.S, corps that has over twenty per cent big-gun men thinks itself entitled to play “A Life on the Ocean Wave”—when it’s out of hearing of the Navy.’

‘What beautiful stuff they are! What’s their regimental average?’

‘It ought to be five eight, height, thirty-eight, chest, and twenty-four years, age. What is it?’ Bayley asked of a private.

‘Five nine and a half, Sir, thirty-nine, twenty-four and a half,’ was the reply, and he added insolently, ‘En état de partir.’ Evidently that F.S. corps was on its mettle ready for the worst.

‘What about their musketry average?’ I went on.

‘Not my pidgin,’ said Bayley. ‘But they wouldn’t be in the corps a day if they couldn’t shoot; I know that much. Now I’m going to go through ’em for socks and slippers.’

The kit-inspection exceeded anything I had ever dreamed. I drifted from company to company while the Guard officers oppressed them. Twenty per cent, at least, of the kits were shovelled out on the grass and gone through in detail.

‘What have they got jumpers and ducks for?’ I asked of Harrison.

‘For Fleet work, of course. En état de partir with an F.S. corps means they are amphibious.’

‘Who gives ’em their kit—Government?’

‘There is a Government allowance, but no C.O. sticks to it. It’s the same as paint and gold-leaf in the Navy. It comes out of some one’s pockets. How much does your kit cost you?’—this to the private in front of us.

‘About ten or fifteen quid every other year, I suppose,’ was the answer.

‘Very good. Pack your bag—quick.’

The man knelt, and with supremely deft hands returned all to the bag, lashed and tied it, and fell back,

‘Arms,’ said Harrison. ‘Strip and show ammunition.’

The man divested himself of his rolled greatcoat and haversack with one wriggle, as it seemed to me; a twist of a screw removed the side plate of the rifle breech (it was not a bolt action). He handed it to Harrison with one hand, and with the other loosed his clip-studded belt.

‘What baby cartridges!’ I exclaimed. ‘No bigger than bulleted breech-caps.’

‘They’re the regulation .256,’ said Harrison. ‘No one has complained of ’em yet. They expand a bit when they arrive . . . . Empty your bottle, please, and show your rations.’

The man poured out his water-bottle and showed a two-inch emergency tin.

Harrison passed on to the next, but I was fascinated by the way in which the man re-established himself amid his straps and buckles, asking no help from either side.

‘How long does it take you to prepare for inspection ?’ I asked him.

‘Well, I got ready this afternoon in twelve minutes,’ he smiled. ‘I didn’t see the storm-cone till half-past three. I was at the Club.’

page 10

‘Weren’t a good many of you out of town?’

‘Not this Saturday. We knew what was coming. You see, if we pull through the inspection we may move up one place on the roster for foreign service . . . . You’d better stand back. We’re going to pillow-fight.’

The companies stooped to the stuffed kitbags, doubled with them variously, piled them in squares and mounds, passed them from shoulder to shoulder like buckets at a fire, and repeated the evolution.

‘What’s the idea?’ I asked of Verschoyle, who, arms folded behind him, was controlling the display. Many women had descended from the carriages, and were pressing in about us admiringly.

‘For one thing, it’s a fair test of wind and muscle, and for another it saves time at the docks. We’ll suppose this first company to be drawn up on the dock-head and those five others still in the troop-train. How would you get their kit into the ship?’

‘Fall ’em all in on the platform, march ’em to the gangways,’ I answered, ‘and trust to Heaven and a fatigue party to gather the baggage and drunks in later.’

‘Ye-es, and have half of it sent by the wrong trooper. I know that game,’ Verschoyle drawled. ‘We don’t play it any more. Look!’

He raised his voice, and five companies, glistening a little and breathing hard, formed at right angles to the sixth, each man embracing his sixty-pound bag.

‘Pack away!’ cried Verschoyle, and the great bean-bag game (I can compare it to nothing else) began. In five minutes every bag was passed along either arm of the T and forward down the sixth company, who passed, stacked, and piled them in a great heap. These were followed by the rifles, belts, greatcoats, and knapsacks, so that in another five minutes the regiment stood, as it were, stripped clean.

‘Of course on a trooper there’d be a company below stacking the kit away,’ said Verschoyle, ‘but that wasn’t so bad.’

‘Bad!’ I cried. ‘It was miraculous!’

‘Circus-work—all circus-work!’ said Pigeon. ‘It won’t prevent ’em bein’ as sick as dogs when the ship rolls.’ The crowd round us applauded, while the men looked meekly down their self-conscious noses.

A little grey-whiskered man trotted up to the Boy.

‘Have we made good, Bayley?’ he said. ‘Are we en état de partir?’

‘That’s what I shall report,’ said Bayley, smiling.

‘I thought my bit o’ French ’ud draw you,’ said the little man, rubbing his hands.

‘Who is he?’ I whispered to Pigeon.

‘Ramsay, their C.O. An old Guard captain. A keen little devil. They say he spends six hundred a year on the show. He used to be in the Lincolns till he came into his property.’

‘Take ’em home an’ make ’em drunk,’ I heard Bayley say. ‘I suppose you’ll have a dinner to celebrate. But you may as well tell the officers of E Company that I don’t think much of them. I shan’t report it, but their men were all over the shop.’

‘Well, they’re young, you see,’ Colonel Ramsay began.

‘You’re quite right. Send ’em to me and I’ll talk to ’em. Youth is the time to learn.’

‘Six hundred a year?’ I repeated to Pigeon. ‘That must be an awful tax on a man. Worse than in the old Volunteering days.’

‘That’s where you make your mistake,’ said Verschoyle. ‘In the old days a man had to spend his money to coax his men to drill because they weren’t the genuine article. You know what I mean. They made a favour of putting in drills, didn’t they? And they were, most of ’em, the children we have to take over at Second Camp, weren’t they? Well, now that a C.O. is sure of his men, now that he hasn’t to waste himself in conciliatin’, an’ bribin’, an’ beerin’ kids, he doesn’t care what he spends on his corps, because every pound tells. Do you understand?’

‘I see what you mean, Vee. Having the male material guaranteed——’

‘And trained material at that,’ Pigeon put in. ‘Eight years in the schools, remember, as well as——’

‘Precisely. A man rejoices in working them up. That’s as it should be,’ I said.

‘Bayley’s saying the very same to those F.S. pups,’ said Verschoyle.

page 11

The Boy was behind us, between two young F.S. officers, a hand on the shoulder of each.

‘Yes, that’s all doocid interesting,’ he growled paternally. ‘But you forget, my sons, now that your men are bound to serve, you’re trebly bound to put a polish on ’em. You’ve let your company simply go to seed. Don’t try and explain. I’ve told all those lies myself in my time. It’s only idleness. I know. Come and lunch with me to-morrow and I’ll give you a wrinkle or two in barracks.’ He turned to me.

‘Suppose we pick up Vee’s defeated legion and go home. You’ll dine with us to-night. Goodbye, Ramsay. Yes, you’re en état de partir, right enough. You’d better get Lady Gertrude to talk to the Armity if you want the corps sent foreign. I’m no politician.’

We strolled away from the great white statue of The Widow, with sceptre, orb, and crown, that looked toward the city, and regained the common, where the Guard battalion walked with the female of its species and the children of all its relatives. At sight of the officers the uniforms began to detach themselves and gather in companies. A Board School corps was moving off the ground, headed by its drums and fifes, which it assisted with song. As we drew nearer we caught the words, for they were launched with intention:—

’Oo is it mashes the country nurse?
The Guardsman!
’Oo is it takes the lydy’s purse?
The Guardsman!
Calls for a drink, and a mild cigar,
Batters a sovereign down on the bar,
Collars the change and says ‘Ta-ta!’
The Guardsman!

‘Why, that’s one of old Jemmy Fawne’s songs. I haven’t heard it in ages,’ I began.

‘Little devils!’ said Pigeon.

‘Speshul! Extra Speshul! Sports Edition!’ a newsboy cried. ‘’Ere y’are, Captain. Defeat o’ the Guard!’

‘I’ll buy a copy,’ said the Boy, as Pigeon blushed wrathfully. ‘I must, to see how The Dove lost his mounted company.’ He unfolded the flapping sheet and we crowded round it.

‘“Complete Rout of the Guard,”’ he read. ‘“Too Narrow a Front.” That’s one for you, Vee! “attack anticipated by Mr. Levitt, B.A.” Aha! “The Schools Stand Fast.”’

‘Here’s another version,’ said Kyd, waving a tinted sheet. ‘“To your tents, O Israel! The Hebrew Schools stop the Mounted Troops.” Pij, were you scuppered by Jew-boys?’

‘“Umpires Decide all Four Guns Lost,”’ Bayley went on. ‘By Jove, there’ll have to be an inquiry into this regrettable incident, Vee!’

‘I’ll never try to amuse the kids again,’ said the baited Verschoyle. ‘Children and newspapers are low things . . . . And I was hit on the nose by a wad, too. They oughtn’t to be allowed blank ammunition.’

So we leaned against the railings in the warm twilight haze while the battalion, silently as a shadow, formed up behind us ready to be taken over. The heat, the hum of the great city, as it might have been the hum of a camped army, the creaking of the belts, and the well-known faces bent above them, brought back to me the memory of another evening, years ago, when Verschoyle and I waited for news of guns missing in no sham fight.

‘A regular Sanna’s Post, isn’t it?’ I said at last. ‘D’you remember, Vee—by the market-square—that night when the wagons went out?’

Then it came upon me, with no horror, but a certain mild wonder, that we had waited, Vee and I, that night for the body of Boy Bayley; and that Vee himself had died of typhoid in the spring of 1902. The rustling of the papers continued, but Bayley, shifting slightly, revealed to me the three-day-old wound on his left side that had soaked the ground about him. I saw Pigeon fling up a helpless arm as to guard himself against a spatter of shrapnel, and Luttrell with a foolish tight-lipped smile lurched over all in one jointless piece. Only old Vee’s honest face held steady for a while against the darkness that had swallowed up the battalion behind us. Then his jaw dropped and the face stiffened, so that a fly made bold to explore the puffed and scornful nostril.

I waked brushing a fly from my nose, and saw the Club waiter lay out the evening papers on the table.

A CHILD of three sat up in his crib and screamed at the top of his voice, his fists clinched and his eyes full of terror. At first no one heard, for his nursery lay in the west wing, and the nurse was talking to a gardener among the laurels. Then the housekeeper passed that way, and hurried to soothe him. He was her special pet, and she disapproved of the nurse.

‘What was it, then? What was it, then? There’s nothing to frighten him, Georgie dear.’

‘It was—it was a policeman! He was on the Down—I, saw him! He came in. Jane said he would.’

‘Policemen don’t come into houses; dearie. Turn over, and take my hand.’

‘I saw him—on the Down. He came here. Where is your hand, Harper?’

The housekeeper waited till the sobs changed to the regular breathing of sleep before she stole out.

‘Jane, what nonsense have you been telling Master Georgie about policemen?’

‘I haven’t told him anything.’

‘You have. He’s been dreaming about them.’

‘We met Tisdall on Dowhead when we were in the donkey-cart this morning. P’raps that’s what put it into his head.’

‘Oh! Now you aren’t going to frighten the child into fits with your silly tales, and the master know nothing about it. If ever I catch you again,’ etc.

A child of six was telling himself stories as he lay in bed. It was a new power, and he kept it a secret. A month before it had occurred to him to carry on a nursery tale left unfinished by his mother, and he was delighted to find the tale as it came out of his own head just as surprising as though he were listening to it ‘all new from the beginning.’ There was a prince in that tale, and he killed dragons, but only for one night. Ever afterwards Georgie dubbed himself prince, pasha, giant-killer, and all the rest (you see, he could not tell any one, for fear of being laughed at), and his tales faded gradually into dreamland, where adventures were so many that he could not recall the half of them. They all began in the same way, or, as Georgie explained to the shadows of the night-light, there was ‘the same starting-off place’—a pile of brushwood stacked somewhere near a beach and round this pile Georgie found himself running races with little boys and girls. These ended, ships ran high up the dry land and opened into cardboard boxes; or gilt-and-green iron railings that surrounded beautiful gardens turned all soft, and could be walked through and overthrown so long as he remembered it was only a dream. He could never hold that knowledge more than a few seconds ere things became real, and instead of pushing down houses full of grown-up people (a just revenge), he sat miserably upon gigantic door-steps trying to sing the multiplication-table up to four times six.

The princess of his tales was a person of wonderful beauty (she came from the old illustrated edition of Grimm, now out of print), and as she always applauded Georgie’s valour among the dragons and buffaloes, he gave her the two finest names he had ever heard in his life—Annie and Louise, pronounced ‘Annieanlouise.’ When the dreams swamped the stories, she would change into one of the little girls round the brushwood-pile, still keeping her title and crown. She saw Georgie drown once in a dream-sea by the beach (it was the day after he had been taken to bathe in a real sea by his nurse); and he said as he sank ‘Poor Annieanlouise! She’ll be sorry for me now!’ But ‘Annieanlouise,’ walking slowly on the beach, called, ‘“Ha! ha!” said the duck, laughing,’ which to a waking mind might not seem to bear on the situation. It consoled Georgie at once, and must have been some kind of spell, for it raised the bottom of the deep, and he waded out with a twelve-inch flower-pot on each foot. As he was strictly forbidden to meddle with flower-pots in real life, he felt triumphantly wicked.

*     *     *     *     *

The movements of the grown-ups, whom Georgie tolerated, but did not pretend to understand, removed his world, when he was seven years old, to a place called ‘Oxford-on-a-visit.’ Here were huge buildings surrounded by vast prairies, with streets of infinite length, and, above all, something called the ‘buttery,’ which Georgie was dying to see, because he knew it must be greasy, and therefore delightful. He perceived how correct were his judgments when his nurse led him through a stone arch into the presence of an enormously fat man, who asked him if he would like some bread and cheese. Georgie was used to eating all round the clock, so he took what ‘buttery’ gave him, and would have taken some brown liquid called ‘auditale,’ but that his nurse led him away to an afternoon performance of a thing called ‘Pepper’s Ghost.’ This was intensely thrilling. People’s heads came off and flew all over the stage, and skeletons danced bone by bone, while Mr. Pepper himself, beyond question a man of the worst, waved his arms and flapped a long gown, and in a deep bass voice (Georgie had never heard a man sing before) told of his sorrows unspeakable. Some grown-up or other tried to explain that the illusion was made with mirrors, and that there was no need to be frightened. Georgie did not know what illusions were, but he did know that a mirror was the looking-glass with the ivory handle on his mother’s dressing-table. Therefore the ‘grown-up’ was ‘just saying things’ after the distressing custom of ‘grown-ups,’ and Georgie cast about for amusement between scenes. Next to him sat a little girl dressed all in black, her hair combed off her forehead exactly like the girl in the book called ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ which had been given him on his last birthday. The little girl looked at Georgie, and Georgie looked at her. There seemed to be no need of any further introduction.

‘I’ve got a cut on my thumb,’ said he. It was the first work of his first real knife, a savage triangular hack, and he esteemed it a most valuable possession.

‘I’m tho thorry!’ she lisped. ‘Let me look—pleathe.’

‘There’s a di-ack-lum plaster on, but it’s all raw under,’ Georgie answered, complying.

‘Dothent it hurt?’—her gray eyes were full of pity and interest.

‘Awf’ly. Perhaps it will give me lockjaw.’

‘It lookth very horrid. I’m tho thorry!’ She put a forefinger to his hand, and held her head sidewise for a better view.

Here the nurse turned and shook him severely. ‘You mustn’t talk to strange little girls, Master Georgie.’

‘She isn’t strange. She’s very nice. I like her, an’ I’ve showed her my new cut.’

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‘The idea! You change places with me.’

She moved him over, and shut out the little girl from his view, while the grown-up behind renewed the futile explanations.

‘I am not afraid, truly,’ said the boy, wriggling in despair; ‘but why don’t you go to sleep in the afternoons, same as Provostoforiel?’

Georgie had been introduced to a grown-up of that name, who slept in his presence without apology. Georgie understood that he was the most important grown-up in Oxford; hence he strove to gild his rebuke with flatteries. This grown-up did not seem to like it, but he collapsed, and Georgie lay back in his seat, silent and enraptured. Mr. Pepper was singing again, and the deep, ringing voice, the red fire, and the misty, waving gown all seemed to be mixed up with the little girl who had been so kind about his cut. When the performance was ended she nodded to Georgie, and Georgie nodded in return. He spoke no more than was necessary till bedtime, but meditated on new colours, and sounds, and lights, and music, and things as far as he understood them; the deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper mingling with the little girl’s lisp. That night he made a new tale, from which he shamelessly removed the Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair princess, gold crown, Grimm edition, and all, and put a new Annieanlouise in her place. So it was perfectly right and natural that when he came to the brushwood-pile he should find her waiting for him, her hair combed off her forehead, more like Alice in Wonderland than ever, and the races and adventures began.

*     *     *     *     *

Ten years at an English public school do not encourage dreaming. Georgie won his growth and chest measurement, and a few other things which did not appear in the bills, under a system of cricket, football, and paper-chases, from four to five days a week, which provided for three lawful cuts of a ground-ash if any boy absented himself from these entertainments. He became a rumple-collared, dusty-hatted fag of the Lower Third, and a light half-back at Little Side football; was pushed and prodded through the slack back-waters of the Lower Fourth, where the raffle of a school generally accumulates; won his ‘second fifteen’ cap at football, enjoyed the dignity of a study with two companions in it, and began to look forward to office as a sub-prefect. At last he blossomed into full glory as head of the school, ex-officio captain of the games; head of his house, where he and his lieutenants preserved discipline and decency among seventy boys from twelve to seventeen; general arbiter in the quarrels that spring up among the touchy Sixth—and intimate friend and ally of the Head himself. When he stepped forth in the black jersey, white knickers, and black stockings of the First Fifteen, the new match-ball under his arm, and his old and frayed cap at the back of his head, the small fry of the lower forms stood apart and worshipped, and the ‘new caps’ of the team talked to him ostentatiously, that the world might see. And so, in summer, when he came back to the pavilion after a slow but eminently safe game, it mattered not whether he had made nothing or, as once happened, a hundred and three, the school shouted just the same, and women-folk who had come to look at the match looked at Cottar—Cottar major; ‘that’s Cottar!’ Above all, he was responsible for that thing called the tone of the school, and few realise with what passionate devotion a certain type of boy throws himself into this work. Home was a far-away country, full of ponies and fishing, and shooting, and men-visitors who interfered with one’s plans; but school was his real world, where things of vital importance happened, and crises arose that must be dealt with promptly and quietly. Not for nothing was it written, ‘Let the Consuls look to it that the Republic takes no harm,’ and Georgie was glad to be back in authority when the holidays ended. Behind him, but not too near, was the wise and temperate Head, now suggesting the wisdom of the serpent, now counselling the mildness of the dove; leading him on to see, more by half-hints than by any direct word, how boys and men are all of a piece, and how he who can handle the one will assuredly in time control the other.

For the rest, the school was not encouraged to dwell on its emotions, but rather to keep in hard condition, to avoid false quantities, and to enter the army direct, without the help of the expensive London crammer, under whose roof young blood learns too much. Cottar major went the way of hundreds before him. The Head gave him six months’ final polish, taught him what kind of answers best please a certain kind of examiner, and handed him over to the properly constituted authorities, who passed him into Sandhurst. Here he had sense enough to see that he was in the Lower Third once more, and behaved with respect towards his seniors, till they in turn respected him, and he was promoted to the rank of corporal, and sat in authority over mixed peoples with all the vices of men and boys combined. His reward was another string of athletic cups, a good-conduct sword, and, at last, Her Majesty’s Commission as a subaltern in a first-class line regiment. He did not know that he bore with him from school and college a character worth much fine gold, but was pleased to find his mess so kindly. He had plenty of money of his own; his training had set the public-school mask upon his face, and had taught him how many were the ‘things no fellow can do.’ By virtue of the same training he kept his pores open and his mouth shut.

The regular working of the Empire shifted his world to India, where he tasted utter loneliness in subaltern’s quarters—one room and one bullock-trunk—and, with his mess, learned the new life from the beginning. But there were horses in the land—ponies at reasonable price; there was polo for such as could afford it; there were the disreputable remnants of a pack of hounds, and Cottar worried his way along without too much despair. It dawned on him that a regiment in India was nearer the chance of active service than he had conceived, and that a man might as well study his profession. A major of the new school backed this idea with enthusiasm, and he and Cottar accumulated a library of military works, and read and argued and disputed far into the nights. But the adjutant said the old thing: ‘Get to know your men, young ’un, and they’ll follow you anywhere. That’s all you want—know your men.’ Cottar thought he knew them fairly well at cricket and the regimental sports, but he never realised the true inwardness of them till he was sent off with a detachment of twenty to sit down in a mud fort near a rushing river which was spanned by a bridge of boats. When the floods came they went forth and hunted strayed pontoons along the banks. Otherwise there was nothing to do, and the men got drunk, gambled, and quarrelled. They were a sickly crew, for a junior subaltern is by custom saddled with the worst men. Cottar endured their rioting as long as he could, and then sent down-country for a dozen pairs of boxing-gloves.

‘I wouldn’t blame you for fightin’,’ said he, ‘if you only knew how to use your hands; but you don’t. Take these things and I’ll show you.’ The men appreciated his efforts. Now, instead of blaspheming and swearing at a comrade, and threatening to shoot him, they could take him apart and soothe themselves to exhaustion. As one explained whom Cottar found with a shut eye and a diamond-shaped mouth spitting blood through an embrasure: ‘We tried it with the gloves, sir, for twenty minutes, and that done us no good, sir. Then we took off the gloves and tried it that way for another twenty minutes, same as you showed us, sir, an’ that done us a world o’ good. ’Twasn’t fightin’, sir; there was a bet on.’

Cottar dared not laugh, but he invited his men to other sports, such as racing across country in shirt and trousers after a trail of torn paper, and to single-stick in the evenings, till the native population, who had a lust for sport in every form, wished to know whether the white men understood wrestling. They sent in an ambassador, who took the soldiers by the neck and threw them about the dust; and the entire command were all for this new game. They spent money on learning new falls and holds, which was better than buying other doubtful commodities; and the peasantry grinned five deep round the tournaments.

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That detachment, who had gone up in bullock-carts, returned to headquarters at an average rate of thirty miles a day, fair heel-and-toe; no sick, no prisoners, and no court-martials pending. They scattered themselves among their friends, singing the praises of their lieutenant and looking for causes of offence.

‘How did you do it, young ’un?’ the adjutant asked.

‘Oh, I sweated the beef off ’em, and then I sweated some muscle on to ’em. It was rather a lark.’

‘If that’s your way of lookin’ at it, we can give you all the larks you want. Young Davies isn’t feelin’ quite fit, and he’s next for detachment duty. Care to go, for him?’

‘Sure he wouldn’t mind? I don’t want to shove myself forward, you know.’

‘You needn’t bother on Davies’s account. We’ll give you the sweepin’s of the corps, and you can see what you can make of ’em.’

‘All right,’ said Cottar. ‘It’s better fun than loafin’ about cantonments.’

‘Rummy thing,’ said the adjutant, after Cottar had returned to his wilderness with twenty other devils worse than the first. ‘If Cottar only knew it, half the women in the station would give their eyes—confound ’em!—to have the young ’un in tow.’

‘That accounts for Mrs. Elery sayin’ I was workin’ my nice new boy too hard,’ said a wing commander.

‘Oh yes; and “Why doesn’t he come to the band-stand in the evenings?” and “Can’t I get him to make up a four at tennis with the Hammon girls?”’ the adjutant snorted. ‘Look at young Davies makin’ an ass of himself over mutton-dressed-as-lamb old enough to be his mother!’

‘No one can accuse young Cottar of runnin’ after women, white or black,’ the major replied thoughtfully. ‘But, then, that’s the kind that generally goes the worst mucker in the end.’

‘Not Cottar. I’ve only run across one of his muster before—a fellow called Ingles, in South Africa. He was just the same hard-trained, athletic-sports build of animal. Always kept himself in the pink of condition. Didn’t do him much good, though. Shot at Wesselstroom the week before Majuba. Wonder how the young ’un will lick his detachment into shape.’

Cottar turned up six weeks later, on foot, with his pupils. He never told his experiences, but the men spoke enthusiastically, and fragments of it leaked back to the colonel through sergeants, batmen, and the like.

There was great jealousy between the first and second detachments, but the men united in adoring Cottar, and their way of showing it was by sparing him all the trouble that men know how to make for an unloved officer. He sought popularity as little as he had sought it at school, and therefore it came to him. He favoured no one—not even when the company sloven pulled the company cricket-match out of the fire with an unexpected forty-three at the last moment. There was very little getting round him, for he seemed to know by instinct exactly when and where to head off a malingerer, but he did not forget that the difference between a dazed and sulky junior of the upper school and a bewildered, browbeaten lump of a private fresh from the depot was very small indeed. The sergeants, seeing these things, told him secrets generally hid from young officers. His words were quoted as barrack authority on bets in canteen and at tea; and the veriest shrew of the corps, bursting with charges against other women who had used the cooking-ranges out of turn, forebore to speak when Cottar, as the regulations ordained, asked of a morning if there were ‘any complaints.’

‘I’m full o’ complaints,’ said Mrs. Corporal Morrison, ‘an’ I’d kill O’Halloran’s fat cow of a wife any day, but ye know how it is. ’E puts ’is head just inside the door, an’ looks down ’is blessed nose so bashful, an’ ’e whispers, “Any complaints?” Ye can’t complain after that. I want to kiss him. Some day I think I will. Heigh-ho! She’ll be a lucky woman that gets Young Innocence. See ’im now, girls. Do yer blame me?’

Cottar was cantering across to polo, and he looked a very satisfactory figure of a man as he gave easily to the first excited bucks of his pony, and slipped over a low mud wall to the practice ground. There were more than Mrs. Corporal Morrison who felt as she did. But Cottar was busy for eleven hours of the day. He did not care to have his tennis spoiled by petticoats in the court; and after one long afternoon at a garden party, he explained to his major that this sort of thing was ‘futile piffle,’ and the major laughed. Theirs was not a married mess, except for the colonel’s wife, and Cottar stood in awe of the good lady. She said ‘my regiment,’ and the world knows what that means. None the less, when they wanted her to give away the prizes after a shooting-match, and she refused because one of the prize-winners was married to a girl who had made a jest of her behind her broad back, the mess ordered Cottar to ‘tackle her,’ in his best calling-kit. This he did, simply and laboriously, and she gave way altogether.

‘She only wanted to know the facts of the case,’ he explained. ‘I just told her, and she saw at once.’

‘Ye-es,’ said the adjutant. ‘I expect that’s what she did. ’Comin’ to the Fusiliers’ dance to-night, Galahad?’

‘No, thanks. I’ve got a fight on with the major.’ The virtuous apprentice sat up till midnight in the major’s quarters, with a stop-watch and a pair of compasses, shifting little painted lead blocks about a four-inch map.

Then he turned in and slept the sleep of innocence, which is full of healthy dreams. One peculiarity of his dreams he noticed at the beginning of his second hot weather. Two or three times a month they duplicated or ran in series. He would find himself sliding into dreamland by the same road—a road that ran along a beach near a pile of brushwood. To the right lay the sea, sometimes at full tide, sometimes withdrawn to the very horizon; but he knew it for the same sea. By that road he would travel over a swell of rising ground covered with short, withered grass, into valleys of wonder and unreason. Beyond the ridge, which was crowned with some sort of street-lamp, anything was possible; but up to the lamp it seemed to him that he knew the road as well as he knew the parade-ground. He learned to look forward to the place; for, once there, he was sure of a good night’s rest, and Indian hot weather can be rather trying. First, shadowy under closing eyelids, would come the outline of the brushwood-pile; next the white sand of the beach road, almost overhanging the black, changeful sea; then the turn inland and uphill to the single light. When he was unrestful for any reason, he would tell himself how he was sure to get there—sure to get there—if he shut his eyes and surrendered to the drift of things. But one night after a foolishly hard hour’s polo (the thermometer was 94º in his quarters at ten o’clock), sleep stood away from him altogether, though he did his best to find the well-known road, the point where true sleep began. At last he saw the brushwood-pile, and hurried along to the ridge, for behind him he felt was the wide-awake, sultry world. He reached the lamp in safety, tingling with drowsiness, when a policeman—a common country policeman—sprang up before him and touched him on the shoulder ere he could dive into the dim valley below. He was filled with terror,—the hopeless terror of dreams,—for the policeman said, in the awful, distinct voice of the dream-people, ‘I am Policeman Day coming back from the City of Sleep. You come with me.’ Georgie knew it was true—that just beyond him in the valley lay the lights of the City of Sleep, where he would have been sheltered, and that this Policeman Thing had full power and authority to head him back to miserable wakefulness. He found himself looking at the moonlight on the wall, dripping with fright; and he never overcame that horror, though he met the policeman several times that hot weather, and his coming was the forerunner of a bad night.

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But other dreams—perfectly absurd ones—filled him with an incommunicable delight. All those that he remembered began by the brushwood-pile. For instance, he found a small clockwork steamer (he had noticed it many nights before) lying by the sea-road, and stepped into it, whereupon it moved with surpassing swiftness over an absolutely level sea. This was glorious, for he felt he was exploring great matters; and it stopped by a lily carved in stone, which, most naturally, floated on the water. Seeing the lily was labelled ‘HongKong,’ Georgie said: ‘Of course. This is precisely what I expected Hong-Kong would be like. How magnificent!’ Thousands of miles farther on it halted at yet another stone lily, labelled ‘Java’; and this again delighted him hugely, because he knew that now he was at the world’s end. But the little boat ran on and on till it stopped in a deep fresh-water lock, the sides of which were carven marble, green with moss. Lilypads lay on the water, and reeds arched above. Some one moved among the reeds—some one whom Georgie knew he had travelled to this worlds end to reach. Therefore everything was entirely well with him. He was unspeakably happy, and vaulted over the ship’s side to find this person. When his feet touched that still water, it changed, with the rustle of unrolling maps, to nothing less than a sixth quarter of the globe, beyond the most remote imaginings of man—a place where islands were coloured yellow and blue, their lettering strung across their faces. They gave on unknown seas, and Georgie’s urgent desire was to return swiftly across this floating atlas to known bearings. He told himself repeatedly that it was no good to hurry; but still he hurried desperately, and the islands slipped and slid under his feet, the straits yawned and widened, till he found himself utterly lost in the world’s fourth dimension, with no hope of return. Yet only a little distance away he could see the old world with the rivers and mountain-chains marked according to the Sandhurst rules of map-making. Then that person for whom he had come to the Lily Lock (that was its name) ran up across unexplored territories, and showed him a way. They fled hand in hand till they reached a road that spanned ravines, and ran along the edge of precipices, and was tunnelled through mountains. ‘This goes to our brushwood-pile,’ said his companion; and all his trouble was at an end. He took a pony, because he understood that this was the Thirty-Mile-Ride, and he must ride swiftly; and raced through the clattering tunnels and round the curves, always downhill, till he heard the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a full moon against sandy cliffs. It was heavy going, but he recognised the nature of the country, the dark purple downs inland, and the bents that whistled in the wind. The road was eaten away in places, and the sea lashed at him—black, foamless tongues of smooth and glossy rollers; but he was sure that there was less danger from the sea than from ‘Them,’ whoever ‘They’ were, inland to his right. He knew, too, that he would be safe if he could reach the down with the lamp on it. This came as he expected: he saw the one light a mile ahead along the beach, dismounted, turned to the right, walked quietly over to the brushwood-pile, found the little steamer had returned to the beach whence he had unmoored it, and—must have fallen asleep, for he could remember no more. ‘I’m gettin’ the hang of the geography of that place,’ he said to himself, as he shaved next morning. ‘I must have made some sort of circle. Let’s see. The Thirty-Mile-Ride (now how the deuce did I know it was called the Thirty-Mile-Ride?) joins the sea-road beyond the first down where the lamp is. And that atlas-country lies at the back of the Thirty-Mile-Ride, somewhere out to the right beyond the hills and tunnels. Rummy thing, dreams. ’Wonder what makes mine fit into each other so?’

He continued on his solid way through the recurring duties of the seasons. The regiment was shifted to another station, and he enjoyed road marching for two months, with a good deal of mixed shooting thrown in; and when they reached their new cantonments he became a member of the local Tent Club, and chased the mighty boar on horseback with a short stabbing-spear. There he met the mahseer of the Poonch, beside whom the tarpon is as a herring, and he who lands him can say that he is a fisherman. This was as new and as fascinating as the big game shooting that fell to his portion, when he had himself photographed for the mother’s benefit, sitting on the flank of his first tiger.

Then the adjutant was promoted, and Cottar rejoiced with him, for he admired the adjutant greatly, and marvelled who might be big enough to fill his place; so that he nearly collapsed when the mantle fell on his own shoulders, and the colonel said a few sweet things that made him blush. An adjutant’s position does not differ materially from that of head of the school, and Cottar stood in the same relation to the colonel as he had to his old Head in England. Only, tempers wear out in hot weather, and things were said and done that tried him sorely, and he made glorious blunders, from which the regimental sergeant-major pulled him with a loyal soul and a shut mouth. Slovens and incompetents raged against him; the weak-minded strove to lure him from the ways of justice; the small-minded—yea, men who Cottar believed would never do ‘things no fellow can do’—imputed motives mean and circuitous to actions that he had not spent a thought upon; and he tasted injustice, and it made him very sick. But his consolation came on parade, when he looked down the full companies, and reflected how few were in hospital or cells, and wondered when the time would come to try the machine of his love and labour. But they needed and expected the whole of a man’s working day, and maybe three or four hours of the night. Curiously enough, he never dreamed about the regiment as he was popularly supposed to. The mind, set free from the day’s doings, generally ceased working altogether, or, if it moved at all, carried him along the old beach road to the downs, the lamp-post, and, once in a while, to terrible Policeman Day. The second time that he returned to the world’s lost continent (this was a dream that repeated itself again and again, with variations, on the same ground) he knew that if he only sat still the person from the Lily Lock would help him; and he was not disappointed. Sometimes he was trapped in mines of vast depth hollowed out of the heart of the world, where men in torment chanted echoing songs; and he heard this person coming along through the galleries, and everything was made safe and delightful. They met again in low-roofed Indian railway carriages that halted in a garden surrounded by gilt and green railings, where a mob of stony white people, all unfriendly, sat at breakfast-tables covered with roses, and separated Georgie from his companion, while underground voices sang deep-voiced songs. Georgie was filled with enormous despair till they two met again. They forgathered in the middle of an endless hot tropic night, and crept into a huge house that stood, he knew, somewhere north of the railway station where the people ate among the roses. It was surrounded with gardens, all moist and dripping; and in one room, reached through leagues of whitewashed passages, a Sick Thing lay in bed. Now the least noise, Georgie knew, would unchain some waiting horror, and his companion knew it too; but when their eyes met across the bed, Georgie was disgusted to see that she was a child—a little girl in strapped shoes, with her black hair combed back from her forehead.

‘What disgraceful folly!’ he thought. ‘Now she could do nothing whatever if Its head came off.’

Then the thing coughed, and the ceiling shattered down in plaster on the mosquito-netting, and ‘They’ rushed in from all quarters. He dragged the child through the stifling garden, voices chanting behind them, and they rode the Thirty-Mile-Ride under whip and spur along the sandy beach by the booming sea, till they came to the downs, the lamp-post, and the brushwood-pile, which was safety. Very often dreams would break up about them in this fashion, and they would be separated, to endure awful adventures alone. But the most amusing times were when he and she had a clear understanding that it was all make-believe, and walked through mile-wide roaring rivers without even taking off their shoes, or set light to populous cities to see how they would burn, and were rude as any children to the vague shadows met in their rambles. Later in the night they were sure to suffer for this, either at the hands of the Railway People eating among the roses, or in the tropic uplands at the far end of the Thirty-Mile-Ride. Together, this did not much affright them; but often Georgie would hear her shrill cry of ‘Boy! Boy!’ half a world away, and hurry to her rescue before ‘They’ maltreated her.

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He and she explored the dark purple downs as far inland from the brushwood-pile as they dared, but that was always a dangerous matter. The interior was filled with ‘Them,’ and ‘They’ went about singing in the hollows, and Georgie and she felt safer on or near the seaboard. So thoroughly had he come to know the place of his dreams that even waking he accepted it as a real country, and made a rough sketch of it. He kept his own counsel, of course; but the permanence of the land puzzled him. His ordinary dreams were as formless and as fleeting as any healthy dreams could be, but once at the brushwood-pile he moved within known limits and could see where he was going. There were months at a time when nothing notable crossed his sleep. Then the dreams would come in a batch of five or six, and next morning the map that he kept in his writing-case would be written up to date, for Georgie was a most methodical person. There was, indeed, a danger—his seniors said so—of his developing into a regular ‘Auntie Fuss’ of an adjutant, and when an officer once takes to old-maidism there is more hope for the virgin of seventy than for him.

But fate sent the change that was needed, in the shape of a little winter campaign on the border, which, after the manner of little campaigns, flashed out into a very ugly war; and Cottar’s regiment was chosen among the first.

‘Now,’ said a major, ‘this’ll shake the cobwebs out of us all—especially you, Galahad; and we can see what your hen-with-one-chick attitude has done for the regiment.’

Cottar nearly wept with joy as the campaign went forward. They were fit—physically fit beyond the other troops; they were good children in camp, wet or dry, fed or unfed; and they followed their officers with the quick suppleness and trained obedience of a first-class football fifteen. They were cut off from their apology for a base, and cheerfully cut their way back to it again; they crowned and cleaned out hills full of the enemy with the precision of well-broken dogs of chase; and in the hour of retreat, when, hampered with the sick and wounded of the column, they were persecuted down eleven miles of waterless valley, they, serving as rearguard, covered themselves with a great glory in the eyes of fellow-professionals. Any regiment can advance, but few know how to retreat with a sting in the tail. Then they turned to and made roads, most often under fire, and dismantled some inconvenient mud redoubts. They were the last corps to be withdrawn when the rubbish of the campaign was all swept up; and after a month in standing camp, which tries morals severely, they departed to their own place singing—

There came out a Gazette, in which Cottar found that he had been behaving with ‘courage and coolness and discretion’ in all his capacities; that he had assisted the wounded under fire, and blown in a gate, also under fire. Net result, his captaincy and a brevet majority, coupled with the Distinguished Service Order.

As to his wounded, he explained that they were both heavy men, whom he could lift more easily than any one else. ‘Otherwise, of course, I should have sent out one of my chaps; and, of course, about that gate business, we were safe the minute we were well under the walls.’ But this did not prevent his men from cheering him furiously whenever they saw him, or the mess from giving him a dinner on the eve of his departure to England. (A year’s leave was among the things he had ‘snaffled out of the campaign,’ to use his own words.) The doctor, who had taken quite as much as was good for him, quoted poetry about ‘a good blade carving the casques of men,’ and so on, and everybody told Cottar that he was an excellent person; but when he rose to make his maiden speech they shouted so that he was understood to say, ‘It isn’t any use tryin’ to speak with you chaps rottin’ me like this. Let’s have some pool.’

*     *     *     *     *

It is not unpleasant to spend eight-and-twenty days in an easy-going steamer on warm waters, in the company of a woman who lets you see that you are head and shoulders superior to the rest of the world, even though that woman may be, and most often is, ten counted years your senior. P.O. boats are not lighted with the disgustful particularity of Atlantic liners. There is more phosphorescence at the bows, and greater silence and darkness by the hand-steering gear aft.

Awful things might have happened to Georgie, but for the little fact that he had never studied the first principles of the game he was expected to play. So when Mrs. Zuleika, at Aden, told him how motherly an interest she felt in his welfare, medals, brevet, and all, Georgie took her at the foot of the letter, and promptly talked of his own mother, three hundred miles nearer each day, of his home, and so forth, all the way up the Red Sea. It was much easier than he had supposed to converse with a woman for an hour at a time. Then Mrs. Zuleika, turning from parental affection spoke of love in the abstract as a thing not unworthy of study, and in discreet twilights after dinner demanded confidences. Georgie would have been delighted to supply them, but he had none, and did not know it was his duty to manufacture them. Mrs. Zuleika expressed surprise and unbelief, and asked those questions which deep asks of deep. She learned all that was necessary to conviction, and, being very much a woman, resumed (Georgie never knew that she had abandoned) the motherly attitude.

‘Do you know,’ she said, somewhere in the Mediterranean, ‘I think you’re the very dearest boy I have ever met in my life, and I’d like you to remember me a little. You will when you are older, but I want you to remember me now. You’ll make some girl very happy.’

‘Oh! ’Hope so,’ said Georgie, gravely; ‘but there’s heaps of time for marryin’, an’ all that sort of thing, ain’t there?’

‘That depends. Here are your bean-bags for the Ladies’ Competition. I think I’m growing too old to care for these tamashas.’

They were getting up sports, and Georgie was on the committee. He never noticed how perfectly the bags were sewn, but another woman did, and smiled—once. He liked Mrs. Zuleika greatly. She was a bit old, of course, but uncommonly nice. There was no nonsense about her.

page 6

A few nights after they passed Gibraltar his dream returned to him. She who waited by the brushwood-pile was no longer a little girl, but a woman with black hair that grew into a ‘widow’s peak,’ combed back from her forehead. He knew her for the child in black, the companion of the last six years, and, as it had been in the time of the meetings on the Lost Continent, he was filled with delight unspeakable. ‘They,’ for some dreamland reason, were friendly or had gone away that night, and the two flitted together over all their country, from the brushwood-pile up the Thirty-Mile-Ride, till they saw the House of the Sick Thing, a pinpoint in the distance to the left; stamped through the Railway Waiting-room where the roses lay on the spread breakfast-tables; and returned, by the ford and the city they had once burned for sport, to the great swells of the downs under the lamp post. Wherever they moved a strong singing followed them underground, but this night there was no panic. All the land was empty except for themselves, and at the last (they were sitting by the lamp-post hand in hand) she turned and kissed him. He woke with a start, staring at the waving curtain of the cabin door; he could almost have sworn that the kiss was real.

Next morning the ship was rolling in a Biscay sea, and people were not happy; but as Georgie came to breakfast, shaven, tubbed, and smelling of soap, several turned to look at him because of the light in his eyes and the splendour of his countenance.

‘Well, you look beastly fit,’ snapped a neighbour. ‘Any one left you a legacy in the middle of the Bay?’

Georgie reached for the curry, with a seraphic grin. ‘I suppose it’s the gettin’ so near home, and all that. I do feel rather festive this mornin’. ’Rolls a bit, doesn’t she?’

Mrs. Zuleika stayed in her cabin till the end of the voyage, when she left without bidding him farewell, and wept passionately on the dock-head for pure joy of meeting her children, who, she had often said, were so like their father.

Georgie headed for his own county, wild with delight of first long furlough after the lean seasons. Nothing was changed in that orderly life, from the coachman who met him at the station to the white peacock that stormed at the carriage from the stone wall above the shaven lawns. The house took toll of him with due regard to precedence—first the mother; then the father; then the housekeeper, who wept and praised God; then the butler; and so on down to the under-keeper, who had been dog-boy in George’s youth, and called him ‘Master Georgie,’ and was reproved by the groom who had taught Georgie to ride.

‘Not a thing changed,’ he sighed contentedly, when the three of them sat down to dinner in the late sunlight, while the rabbits crept out upon the lawn below the cedars, and the big trout in the ponds by the home paddock rose for their evening meal.

‘Our changes are all over, dear,’ cooed the mother; ‘and now I am getting used to your size and your tan (you’re very brown, Georgie), I see you haven’t changed in the least. You’re exactly like the pater.’

The father beamed on this man after his own heart,—‘Youngest major in the army, and should have had the V.C., sir,’—and the butler listened with his professional mask off when Master Georgie spoke of war as it is waged to-day, and his father cross-questioned.

They went out on the terrace to smoke among the roses, and the shadow of the old house lay long across the wonderful English foliage, which is the only living green in the world.

‘Perfect! By Jove, it’s perfect!’ Georgie was looking at the round-bosomed woods beyond the home paddock, where the white pheasant-boxes were ranged; and the golden air was full of a hundred sacred scents and sounds. Georgie felt his father’s arm tighten in his.

‘It’s not half bad—but hodie mihi, cras tibi, isn’t it? I suppose you’ll be turning up some fine day with a girl under your arm, if you haven’t one now, eh?’

‘You can make your mind easy, sir. I haven’t one.’

‘Not in all these years?’ said the mother.

‘I hadn’t time, mummy. They keep a man pretty busy, these days, in the service, and most of our mess are unmarried, too.’

‘But you must have met hundreds in society—at balls, and so on?’

‘I’m like the Tenth, mummy: I don’t dance.’

‘Don’t dance! What have you been doing with yourself, then—backing other men’s bills?’ said the father.

‘Oh yes; I’ve done a little of that too; but you see, as things are now, a man has all his work cut out for him to keep abreast of his profession, and my days were always too full to let me lark about half the night.’

‘Hmm!’—suspiciously.

‘It’s never too late to learn. We ought to give some kind of housewarming for the people about, now you’ve come back. Unless you want to go straight up to town, dear?’

‘No. I don’t want anything better than this. Let’s sit still and enjoy ourselves. I suppose there will be something for me to ride if I look for it?’

‘Seeing I’ve been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six weeks because all the others were being got ready for Master Georgie, I should say there might be,’ the father chuckled. ‘They’re reminding me in a hundred ways that I must take the second place now.’

‘Brutes!’

‘The pater doesn’t mean it, dear; but every one has been trying to make your home-coming a success; and you do like it, don’t you?’

‘Perfect! Perfect! There’s no place like England—when you’ve done your work.’

‘That’s the proper way to look at it, my son’

page 7

And so up and down the flagged walk till their shadows grew long in the moonlight, and the mother went indoors and played such songs as a small boy once clamoured for, and the squat silver candlesticks were brought in, and Georgie climbed to the two rooms in the west wing that had been his nursery and his play-room in the beginning. Then who should come to tuck him up for the night but the mother? And she sat down on the bed, and they talked for a long hour, as mother and son should, if there is to be any future for our Empire. With a simple woman’s deep guile she asked questions and suggested answers that should have waked some sign in the face on the pillow, but there was neither quiver of eyelid nor quickening of breath, neither evasion nor delay in reply. So she blessed him and kissed him on the mouth, which is not always a mother’s property, and said something to her husband later, at which he laughed profane and incredulous laughs.

All the establishment waited on Georgie next morning, from the tallest six-year-old, ‘with a mouth like a kid glove, Master Georgie,’ to the under-keeper strolling carelessly along the horizon, Georgie’s pet rod in his hand, and ‘There’s a four-pounder resin’ below the lasher. You don’t ’ave ’em in Injia, Mast—Major Georgie.’ It was all beautiful beyond telling, even though the mother insisted on taking him out in the landau (the leather had the hot Sunday smell of his youth), and showing him off to her friends at all the houses for six miles round; and the pater bore him up to town and a lunch at the club, where he introduced him, quite carelessly, to not less than thirty ancient warriors whose sons were not the youngest majors in the army, and had not the D.S.O. After that it was Georgie’s turn; and remembering his friends, he filled up the house with that kind of officer who lived in cheap lodgings at Southsea or Montpelier Square, Brompton—good men all, but not well off. The mother perceived that they needed girls to play with; and as there was no scarcity of girls, the house hummed like a dovecote in spring. They tore up the place for amateur theatricals; they disappeared in the gardens when they ought to have been rehearsing; they swept off every available horse and vehicle, especially the governess-cart and the fat pony; they fell into the trout-pond; they picnicked and they tennised; and they sat on gates in the twilight, two by two, and Georgie found that he was not in the least necessary to their entertainment.

‘My word!’ said he, when he saw the last of their dear backs. ‘They told me they’d enjoyed ’emselves, but they haven’t done half the things they said they would.’

‘I know they’ve enjoyed themselves—immensely,’ said the mother. ‘You’re a public benefactor, dear.’

‘Now we can be quiet again, can’t we?’

‘Oh, quite. I’ve a very dear friend of mine that I want you to know. She couldn’t come with the house so full, because she’s an invalid, and she was away when you first came. She’s a Mrs. Lacy.’

‘Lacy! I don’t remember the name about here.’

‘No; they came after you went to India—from Oxford. Her husband died there, and she lost some money, I believe. They bought The Firs on the Bassett Road. She’s a very sweet woman, and we’re very fond of them both.’

‘She’s a widow, didn’t you say?’

‘She has a daughter. Surely I said so, dear?’

‘Does she fall into trout-ponds, and gas and giggle, and “Oh, Major Cottah!” and all that sort of thing?’

‘No, indeed. She’s a very quiet girl, and very musical. She always came over here with her music-books—composing, you know; and she generally works all day, so you won’t—’

‘‘Talking about Miriam?’ said the pater, coming up. The mother edged toward him within elbow reach. There was no finesse about Georgie’s father. ‘Oh, Miriam’s a dear girl. Plays beautifully. Rides beautifully, too. She’s a regular pet of the household. ’Used to call me—’ The elbow went home, and ignorant, but obedient always, the pater shut himself off.

‘What used she to call you, sir?’

‘All sorts of pet names. I’m very fond of Miriam.’

‘Sounds Jewish—Miriam.’

‘Jew! You’ll be calling yourself a Jew next. She’s one of the Herefordshire Lacys. When her aunt dies—’ Again the elbow.

‘Oh, you won’t see anything of her, Georgie. She’s busy with her music or her mother all day. Besides, you’re going up to town to-morrow, aren’t you? I thought you said something about an Institute meeting?’ The mother spoke.

‘Going up to town now? What nonsense!’ Once more the pater was silenced.

‘I had some idea of it, but I’m not quite sure,’ said the son of the house. Why did the mother try to get him away because a musical girl and her invalid parent were expected? He did not approve of unknown females calling his father pet names. He would observe these pushing persons who had been only seven years in the county.

All of which the delighted mother read in his countenance, herself keeping an air of sweet disinterestedness.

‘They’ll be here this evening for dinner. I’m sending the carriage over for them, and they won’t stay more than a week.’

‘Perhaps I shall go up to town. I don’t quite know yet.’ George moved away irresolutely. There was a lecture at the United Services Institute on the supply of ammunition in the field, and the one man whose theories most irritated Major Cottar would deliver it. A heated discussion was sure to follow, and perhaps he might find himself moved to speak. He took his rod that afternoon and went down to thrash it out among the trout.

‘Good sport, dear!’ said the mother, from the terrace.

‘’Fraid it won’t be, mummy. All those men from town, and the girls particularly, have put every trout off his feed for weeks. There isn’t one of ’em that cares for fishin’—really. Fancy stampin’ and shoutin’ on the bank, and tellin’ every fish for half a mile exactly what you’re goin’ to do, and then chuckin’ a brute of a fly at him! By Jove, it would scare me if I was a trout!’

page 8

But things were not as bad as he had expected. The black gnat was on the water, and the water was strictly preserved. A three-quarter-pounder at the second cast set him for the campaign, and he worked down-stream, crouching behind the reed and meadow-sweet; creeping between a hornbeam hedge and a foot-wide strip of bank, where he could see the trout, but where they could not distinguish him from the background; lying on his stomach to switch the blue-upright sidewise through the checkered shadows of a gravelly ripple under overarching trees. But he had known every inch of the water since he was four feet high. The aged and astute between sunk roots, with the large and fat that lay in the frothy scum below some strong rush of water, sucking lazily as carp, came to trouble in their turn, at the hand that imitated so delicately the flicker and wimple of an eggdropping fly. Consequently, Georgie found himself five miles from home when he ought to have been dressing for dinner. The housekeeper had taken good care that her boy should not go empty; and before he changed to the white moth he sat down to excellent claret with sandwiches of potted egg and things that adoring women make and men never notice. Then back, to surprise the otter grubbing for fresh-water mussels, the rabbits on the edge of the beechwoods foraging in the clover, and the policeman-like white owl stooping to the little field-mice, till the moon was strong, and he took his rod apart, and went home through well-remembered gaps in the hedges. He fetched a compass round the house, for, though he might have broken every law of the establishment every hour, the law of his boyhood was unbreakable after fishing you went in by the south garden back-door, cleaned up in the outer scullery, and did not present yourself to your elders and your betters till you had washed and changed.

‘Half-past ten, by Jove! Well, we’ll make the sport an excuse. They wouldn’t want to see me the first evening, at any rate. Gone to bed, probably.’ He skirted by the open French windows of the drawing-room. ‘No, they haven’t. They look very comfy in there.’

He could see his father in his own particular chair, the mother in hers, and the back of a girl at the piano by the big potpourri-jar. The garden showed half divine in the moonlight, and he turned down through the roses to finish his pipe.

A prelude ended, and there floated out a voice of the kind that in his childhood he used to call ‘creamy’—a full, true contralto; and this is the song that he heard, every syllable of it:

At the last echo he was aware that his mouth was dry and unknown pulses were beating in the roof of it. The housekeeper, who would have it that he must have fallen in and caught a chill, was waiting to advise him on the stairs, and, since he neither saw nor answered her, carried a wild tale abroad that brought his mother knocking at the door.

‘Anything happened, dear? Harper said she thought you weren’t—’

‘No; it’s nothing. I’m all right, mummy. Please don’t bother.’

He did not recognise his own voice, but that was a small matter beside what he was considering. Obviously, most obviously, the whole coincidence was crazy lunacy. He proved it to the satisfaction of Major George Cottar, who was going up to town to-morrow to hear a lecture on the supply of ammunition in the field; and having so proved it, the soul, and brain and heart and body of Georgie cried joyously: ‘That’s the Lily Lock girl—the Lost Continent girl—the Thirty-Mile-Ride girl—the Brushwood girl! I know her!’

He waked, stiff and cramped in his chair, to reconsider the situation by sunlight, when it did not appear normal. But a man must eat, and he went to breakfast, his heart between his teeth, holding himself severely in hand.

‘Late, as usual,’ said the mother. ‘My boy, Miriam.’

A tall girl in black raised her eyes to his, and Georgie’s life training deserted him just as soon as he realised that she did not know. He stared coolly and critically. There was the abundant black hair, growing in a widow’s peak, turned back from the forehead, with that peculiar ripple over the right ear; there were the gray eyes set a little close together; the short upper lip, resolute chin, and the known poise of the head. There was also the small, well-cut mouth that had kissed him.

‘Georgie—dear!’ said the mother, amazedly, for Miriam was flushing under the stare.

page 9

‘I—I beg your pardon!’ he gulped. ‘I don’t know whether the mother has told you, but I’m rather an idiot at times, specially before I’ve had my breakfast. It’s—it’s a family failing.’ He turned to explore among the hot-water dishes on the sideboard, rejoicing that she did not know—she did not know.

His conversation for the rest of the meal was mildly insane, though the mother thought she had never seen her boy look half so handsome. How could any girl, least of all one of Miriam’s discernment, forbear to fall down and worship? But deeply Miriam was displeased. She had never been stared at in that fashion before, and promptly retired into her shell when Georgie announced that he had changed his mind about going to town, and would stay to play with Miss Lacy if she had nothing better to do.

‘Oh, but don’t let me throw you out. I’m at work. I’ve things to do all the morning.’

‘What possessed Georgie to behave so oddly?’ the mother sighed to herself. ‘Miriam’s a bundle of feelings—like her mother.’

‘You compose, don’t you? Must be a fine thing to be able to do that. [‘Pig—oh, pig!’ thought Miriam.] I think I heard you singin’ when I came in last night after fishin’. All about a Sea of Dreams, wasn’t it? [Miriam shuddered to the core of the soul that afflicted her.] Awfully pretty song. How d’you think of such things?’

‘You only composed the music, dear, didn’t you?’

‘The words too, mummy. I’m sure of it,’ said Georgie, with a sparkling eye. No; she did not know.

‘Yeth; I wrote the words too.’ Miriam spoke slowly, for she knew she lisped when she was nervous.

‘Now how could you tell, Georgie?’ said the mother, as delighted as though the youngest major in the army were ten years old, showing off before company.

‘I was sure of it, somehow. Oh, there are heaps of things about me, mummy, that you don’t understand. Look as if it were goin’ to be a hot day—for England. Would you care for a ride this afternoon, Miss Lacy? We can start out after tea, if you’d like it.’

Miriam could not in decency refuse, but any woman might see she was not filled with delight.

‘That will be very nice, if you take the Bassett Road. It will save me sending Martin down to the village,’ said the mother, filling in gaps.

Like all good managers, the mother had her one weakness—a mania for little strategies that should economise horses and vehicles. Her men folk complained that she turned them into common carriers, and there was a legend in the family that she had once said to the pater on the morning of a meet: ‘If you should kill near Bassett, dear, and if it isn’t too late, would you mind just popping over and matching me this?’

‘I knew that was coming. You’d never miss a chance, mother. If it’s fish or a trunk, I won’t.’ Georgie laughed.

‘It’s only a duck. They can do it up very neatly at Mallett’s,’ said the mother simply. ‘You won’t mind, will you? We’ll have a scratch dinner at nine, because it’s so hot.’

The long summer day dragged itself out for centuries; but at last there was tea on the lawn, and Miriam appeared.

She was in the saddle before he could offer to help, with the clean spring of the child who mounted the pony for the Thirty-Mile-Ride. The day held mercilessly, though Georgie got down thrice to look for imaginary stones in Rufus’s foot. One cannot say even simple things in broad light, and this that Georgie meditated was not simple. So he spoke seldom, and Miriam was divided between relief and scorn. It annoyed her that the great hulking thing should know she had written the words of the over-night song; for though a maiden may sing her most secret fancies aloud, she does not care to have them trampled over by the male Philistine. They rode into the little red-brick street of Bassett, and Georgie made untold fuss over the disposition of that duck. It must go in just such a package, and be fastened to the saddle in just such a manner, though eight o’clock had passed and they were miles, from dinner.

‘We must be quick!’ said Miriam, bored and angry.

‘There’s no great hurry; but we can cut over Dowhead Down, and let ’em out on the grass. That will save us half an hour.’

The horses capered on the short, sweet-smelling turf, and the delaying shadows gathered in the valley as they cantered over the great dun down that overhangs Bassett and the Western coaching-road. Insensibly the pace quickened without thought of mole-hills; Rufus, gentleman that he was, waiting on Miriam’s Dandy till they should have cleared the rise. Then down the two-mile slope they raced together, the wind whistling in their ears, to the steady throb of eight hoofs and the light click-click of the shifting bits.

‘Oh, that was glorious!’ Miriam cried, reining in. ‘Dandy and I are old friends, but I don’t think we’ve ever gone better together.’

‘No; but you’ve gone quicker, once or twice.’

‘Really? When?’

Georgie moistened his lips. ‘Don’t you remember the Thirty-Mile-Ride—with me—when “They” were after us—on the beach road, with the sea to the left—going toward the Lamp-post on the Downs?’

The girl gasped. ‘What—what do you mean?’ she said hysterically.

‘The Thirty-Mile-Ride, and—and all the rest of it.’

‘You mean—? I didn’t sing anything about the Thirty-Mile-Ride. I know I didn’t. I have never told a living soul.’

‘You told about Policeman Day, and the lamp at the top of the downs, and the City of Sleep. It all joins on, you know—it’s the same country—and it was easy enough to see where you had been.’

‘Good God!—It joins on—of course it does; but—I have been—you have been— Oh, let’s walk, please, or I shall fall off!’

Georgie ranged alongside, and laid a hand that shook below her bridle-hand, pulling Dandy into a walk. Miriam was sobbing as he had seen a man sob under the touch of the bullet.

‘It’s all right—it’s all right,’ he whispered feebly. ‘Only—only it’s true, you know.’

page 10

‘True! Am I mad?’

‘Not unless I’m mad as well. Do try to think a minute quietly. How could any one conceivably know anything about the Thirty-Mile-Ride having anything to do with you, unless he had been there?’

‘But where? But where? Tell me!’

‘There—wherever it may be—in our country, I suppose. Do you remember the first time you rode it—the Thirty-Mile-Ride, I mean? You must.’

‘It was all dreams—all dreams!’

‘Yes, but tell, please; because I know.’

‘Let me think. I—we were on no account to make any noise—on no account to make any noise.’

She was staring between Dandy’s ears with eyes that did not see, and suffocating heart.

‘Because “It” was dying in the big house?’ Georgie went on, reining in again.

‘There was a garden with green-and-gilt railings—all hot. Do you remember?’

‘I ought to. I was sitting on the other side of the bed before “It” coughed and “They” came in.’

‘You!’—the deep voice was unnaturally full and strong, and the girl’s wide, opened eyes burned in the dusk as she stared him through and through. ‘Then you’re the Boy—my Brushwood Boy, and I’ve known you all my life!’

She fell forward on Dandy’s neck. Georgie forced himself out of the weakness that was overmastering his limbs, and slid an arm round her waist. The head dropped on his shoulder, and he found himself with parched lips saying things that up till then he believed existed only in printed works of fiction. Mercifully the horses were quiet. She made no attempt to draw herself away when she recovered, but lay still, whispering, ‘Of course you’re the Boy, and I didn’t know—I didn’t know.’

‘I knew last night; and when I saw you at breakfast—’

‘Oh, that was why! I wondered at the time. You would, of course.’

‘I couldn’t speak before this. Keep your head where it is, dear. It’s all right now—all right now, isn’t it?’

‘But how was it I didn’t know—after all these years and years? I remember—oh, what lots of things I remember!’

‘Tell me some. I’ll look after the horses.’

‘I remember waiting for you when the steamer came in. Do you?’

‘At the Lily Lock, beyond Hong-Kong and Java?’

‘Do you call it that, too?’

‘You told me it was when I was lost in the continent. That was you that showed me the way through the mountains?’

‘When the islands slid? It must have been, because you’re the only one I remember. All the others were “Them.”’

‘Awful brutes they were, too.’

‘Yes, I remember showing you the Thirty-Mile-Ride the first time. You ride just as you used to—then. You are you!’

‘That’s odd. I thought that of you this afternoon. Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘What does it all mean? Why should you and I of the millions of people in the world have this—this thing between us? What does it mean? I’m frightened.’

‘This!’ said Georgie. The horses quickened their pace. They thought they had heard an order. ‘Perhaps when we die we may find out more, but it means this now.’

There was no answer. What could she say? As the world went, they had known each other rather less than eight and a half hours, but the matter was one that did not concern the world. There was a very long silence, while the breath in their nostrils drew cold and sharp as it might have been fumes of ether.

‘That’s the second,’ Georgie whispered. ‘You remember, don’t you?’

‘It’s not!’—furiously. ‘It’s not!’

‘On the downs the other night—months ago. You were just as you are now, and we went over the country for miles and miles.’

‘It was all empty, too. They had gone away. Nobody frightened us. I wonder why, Boy?’

‘Oh, if you remember that, you must remember the rest. Confess!’

‘I remember lots of things, but I know I didn’t. I never have—till just now.’

‘You did, dear.’

‘I know I didn’t, because—oh, it’s no use keeping anything back!—because I truthfully meant to.’

‘And truthfully did.’

‘No; meant to; but some one else came by.’

‘There wasn’t any one else. There never has been.’

‘There was—there always is. It was another woman—out there on the sea. I saw her. It was the 26th of May. I’ve got it written down somewhere.’

page 11

‘Oh, you’ve kept a record of your dreams, too? That’s odd about the other woman, because I happened to be on the sea just then.’

‘I was right. How do I know what you’ve done—when you were awake. And I thought it was only you!’

‘You never were more wrong in your life. What a little, temper you’ve got! Listen to me a minute, dear.’ And Georgie, though he knew it not, committed black perjury. ‘It—it isn’t the kind of thing one says to any one, because they’d laugh; but on my word and honour, darling, I’ve never been kissed by a living soul outside my own people in all my life. Don’t laugh, dear. I wouldn’t tell any one but you, but it’s the solemn truth.’

‘I knew! You are you. Oh, I knew you’d come some day; but I didn’t know you were you in the least till you spoke.’

‘Then give me another.’

‘And you never cared or looked anywhere? Why, all the round world must have loved you from the very minute they saw you, Boy.’

‘They kept it to themselves if they did. No; I never cared.’

‘And we shall be late for dinner—horribly late. Oh, how can I look at you in the light before your mother—and mine!’

‘We’ll play you’re Miss Lacy till the proper time comes. What’s the shortest limit for people to get engaged? S’pose we have got to go through all the fuss of an engagement, haven’t we?’

‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about that. It’s so commonplace. I’ve thought of something that you don’t know. I’m sure of it. What’s my name?’

‘Miri—no, it isn’t, by Jove! Wait half a second, and it’ll come back to me. You aren’t—you can’t Why, those old tales—before I went to school I–I’ve never thought of ’em from that day to this. Are you the original, only Annieanlouise?’

‘It was what you always called me ever since the beginning. Oh! We’ve turned into the avenue, and we must be an hour late.’

‘What does it matter? The chain goes as far back as those days? It must, of course—of course it must. I’ve got to ride round with this pestilent old bird—confound him!’

‘“Ha! ha!” said the duck, laughing. Do you remember that?’

‘Yes, I do—flower-pots on my feet, and all. We’ve been together all this while; and I’ve got to say good-bye to you till dinner. Sure I’ll see you at dinner-time? Sure you won’t sneak up to your room, darling, and leave me all the evening? Good-bye, dear—good-bye.’

‘Good-bye, Boy, good-bye. Mind the arch! Don’t let Rufus bolt into his stable. Good-bye. Yes, I’ll come down to dinner; but what shall I do when I see you in the light!’

[a short tale]

LIKE Mr. Bunyan of old, I, Duncan Parrenness, Writer to the Most Honourable the East India Company, in this God-forgotten city of Calcutta, have dreamed a dream, and never since that Kitty my mare fell lame have I been so troubled. Therefore, lest I should forget my dream, I have made shift to set it down here. Though Heaven knows how unhandy the pen is to me who was always readier with sword than ink-horn when I left London two long years since.When the Governor-General’s great dance (that he gives yearly at the latter end of November) was finisht, I had gone to mine own room which looks over that sullen, un-English stream, the Hoogly, scarce so sober as I might have been. Now, roaring drunk in the West is but fuddled in the East, and I was drunk Nor’-Nor’ Easterly as Mr. Shakespeare might have said. Yet, in spite of my liquor, the cool night winds (though I have heard that they breed chills and fluxes innumerable) sobered me somewhat; and I remembered that I had been but a little wrung and wasted by all the sicknesses of the past four months, whereas those young bloods that came eastward with me in the same ship had been all, a month back, planted to Eternity in the foul soil north of Writers’ Buildings. So then, I thanked God mistily (though, to my shame, I never kneeled down to do so) for license to live, at least till March should be upon us again. Indeed, we that were alive (and our number was less by far than those who had gone to their last account in the hot weather late past) had made very merry that evening, by the ramparts of the Fort, over this kindness of Providence; though our jests were neither witty nor such as I should have liked my Mother to hear.

When I had lain down (or rather thrown me on my bed) and the fumes of my drink had a little cleared away, I found that I could get no sleep for thinking of a thousand things that were better left alone. First, and it was a long time since I had thought of her, the sweet face of Kitty Somerset, drifted as it might have been drawn in a picture, across the foot of my bed, so plainly, that I almost thought she had been present in the body. Then I remembered how she drove me to this accursed country to get rich, that I might the more quickly marry her, our parents on both sides giving their consent; and then how she thought better (or worse may be) of her troth, and wed Tom Sanderson but a short three months after I had sailed. From Kitty I fell a musing on Mrs. Vansuythen, a tall pale woman with violet eyes that had come to Calcutta from the Dutch Factory at Chinsura, and had set all our young men, and not a few of the factors, by the ears. Some of our ladies, it is true, said that she had never a husband or marriage-lines at all; but women, and specially those who have led only indifferent good lives themselves, are cruel hard one on another. Besides, Mrs. Vansuythen was far prettier than them all. She had been most gracious to me at the Governor-General’s rout, and indeed I was looked upon by all as her preux chevalier—which is French for a much worse word. Now, whether I cared so much as the scratch of a pin for this same Mrs. Vansuythen (albeit I had vowed eternal love three days after we met) I knew not then nor did till later on; but mine own pride, and a skill in the small sword that no man in Calcutta could equal, kept me in her affections. So that I believed I worshipt her.

When I had dismist her violet eyes from my thoughts, my reason reproacht me for ever having followed her at all; and I saw how the one year that I had lived in this land had so burnt and seared my mind with the flames of a thousand bad passions and desires, that I had aged ten months for each one in the Devil’s school. Whereat I thought of my Mother for a while, and was very penitent: making in my sinful tipsy mood a thousand vows of reformation—all since broken, I fear me, again and again. To-morrow, says I to myself, I will live cleanly for ever. And I smiled dizzily (the liquor being still strong in me) to think of the dangers I had escaped; and built all manner of fine Castles in Spain, whereof a shadowy Kitty Somerset that had the violet eyes and the sweet slow speech of Mrs. Vansuythen, was always Queen.

Lastly, a very fine and magnificent courage (that doubtless had its birth in Mr. Hastings’ Madeira) grew upon me, till it seemed that I could become Governor-General, Nawab, Prince, ay, even the Great Mogul himself, by the mere wishing of it. Wherefore, taking my first steps, random and unstable enough, towards my new kingdom, I kickt my servants sleeping without till they howled and ran from me, and called Heaven and Earth to witness that I, Duncan Parrenness, was a Writer in the service of the Company and afraid of no man. Then, seeing that neither the Moon nor the Great Bear were minded to accept my challenge, I lay down again and must have fallen asleep.

I was waked presently by my last words repeated two or three times, and I saw that there had come into the room a drunken man, as I thought, from Mr. Hastings’ rout. He sate down at the foot of my bed in all the world as it belonged to him, and I took note, as well as I could, that his face was somewhat like mine own grown older, save when it changed to the face of the Governor-General or my father, dead these six months. But this seemed to me only natural, and the due result of too much wine; and I was so angered at his entry all unannounced, that I told him, not over civilly, to go. To all my words he made no answer whatever, only saying slowly, as though it were some sweet morsel: ‘Writer in the Company’s service and afraid of no man.’ Then he stops short, and turning round sharp upon me, says that one of my kidney need fear neither man nor devil; that I was a brave young man, and like enough, should I live so long, to be Governor-General. But for all these things (and I supposed that he meant thereby the changes and chances of our shifty life in these parts) I must pay my price. By this time I had sobered somewhat, and being well waked out of my first sleep, was disposed to look upon the matter as a tipsy man’s jest. So, says I merrily: ‘And what price shall I pay for this palace of mine, which is but twelve feet square, and my five poor pagodas a month? The devil take you and your jesting: I have paid my price twice over in sickness.’ At that moment my man turns full toward me: so that by the moonlight I could see every line and wrinkle of his face. Then my drunken mirth died out of me, as I have seen the waters of our great rivers die away in one night; and I, Duncan Parrenness, who was afraid of no man, was taken with a more deadly terror than I hold it has ever been the lot of mortal man to know. For I saw that his face was my very own, but marked and lined and scarred with the furrows of disease and much evil living—as I once, when I was (Lord help me) very drunk indeed, have seen mine own face, all white and drawn and grown old, in a mirror. I take it that any man would have been even more greatly feared than I; for I am in no way wanting in courage.

After I had lain still for a little, sweating in my agony, and waiting until I should awake from this terrible dream (for dream I knew it to be), he says again that I must pay my price; and a little after, as though it were to be given in pagodas and sicca rupees: ‘What price will you pay?’ Says I, very softly: ‘For God’s sake let me be, whoever you are, and I will mend my ways from to-night.’ Says he, laughing a little at my words, but otherwise making no motion of having heard them: ‘Nay, I would only rid so brave a young ruffler as yourself of much that will be a great hindrance to you on your way through life in the Indies; for believe me,’ and here he looks full on me once more, ‘there is no return.’ At all this rigmarole, which I could not then understand, I was a good deal put aback and waited for what should come next. Says he very calmly: ‘Give me your trust in man.’ At that I saw how heavy would be my price, for I never doubted but that he could take from me all that he asked, and my head was, through terror and wakefulness, altogether cleared of the wine I had drunk. So I takes him up very short, crying that I was not so wholly bad as he would make believe, and that I trusted my fellows to the full as much as they were worthy of it. ‘It was none of my fault,’ says I, ‘if one-half of them were liars and the other half deserved to be burnt in the hand, and I would once more ask him to have done with his questions.’ Then I stopped, a little afraid, it is true, to have let my tongue so run away with me, but he took no notice of this, and only laid his hand lightly on my left breast and I felt very cold there for a while. Then he says, laughing more: ‘Give me your faith in women.’ At that I started in my bed as though I had been stung, for I thought of my sweet mother in England, and for a while fancied that my faith in God’s best creatures could neither be shaken nor stolen from me. But later, Myself’s hard eyes being upon me, I fell to thinking, for the second time that night, of Kitty (she that jilted me and married Tom Sanderson) and of Mistress Vansuythen, whom only my devilish pride made me follow, and how she was even worse than Kitty, and I worst of them all—seeing that with my life’s work to be done, I must needs go dancing down the Devil’s swept and garnished causeway, because, forsooth, there was a light woman’s smile at the end of it. And I thought that all women in the world were either like Kitty or Mistress Vansuythen (as indeed they have ever since been to me), and this put me to such an extremity of rage and sorrow, that I was beyond word glad when Myself’s hand fell again on my left breast, and I was no more troubled by these follies.

After this he was silent for a little, and I made sure that he must go or I awake ere long; but presently he speaks again (and very softly) that I was a fool to care for such follies as those he had taken from me, and that ere he went he would only ask me for a few other trifles such as no man, or for matter of that boy either, would keep about him in this country. And so it happened that he took from out of my very heart as it were, looking all the time into my face with my own eyes, as much as remained to me of my boy’s soul and conscience. This was to me a far more terrible loss than the two that I had suffered before. For though, Lord help me, I had travelled far enough from all paths of decent or godly living, yet there was in me, though I myself write it, a certain goodness of heart which, when I was sober (or sick) made me very sorry of all that I had done before the fit came on me. And this I lost wholly: having in place thereof another deadly coldness at the heart. I am not, as I have before said, ready with my pen, so I fear that what I have just written may not be readily understood. Yet there be certain times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood: as our staring Indian day changes into night with never so much as the gray of twilight to temper the two extremes. This shall perhaps make my state more clear, if it be remembered that my torment was ten times as great as comes in the natural course of nature to any man. At that time I dared not think of the change that had come over me, and all in one night: though I have often thought of it since. ‘I have paid the price,’ says I, my teeth chattering, for I was deadly cold, ‘and what is my return?’ At this time it was nearly dawn, and Myself had begun to grow pale and thin against the white light in the east, as my mother used to tell me is the custom of ghosts and devils and the like. He made as if he would go, but my words stopt him and he laughed—as I remember that I laughed when I ran Angus Macalister through the sword-arm last August, because he said that Mrs. Vansuythen was no better than she should be. ‘What return?’—says he, catching up my last words—‘Why, strength to live as long as God or the Devil pleases, and so long as you live my young master, my gift.’ With that he puts something into my hand, though it was still too dark to see what it was, and when next I lookt up he was gone.

When the light came I made shift to behold his gift, and saw that it was a little piece of dry bread.

page 1 of 10

HIS name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother, who was a widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City every day to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and was full of aspirations. I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker called him by his first name, and he called the marker ‘Bullseye.’ Charlie explained, a little nervously, that he had only come to the place to look on, and since looking on at games of skill is not a cheap amusement for the young, I suggested that Charlie should go back to his mother. That was our first step towards better acquaintance. He would call on me sometimes in the evenings instead of running about London with his fellow-clerks; and before long, speaking of himself as a young man must, he told me of his aspirations, which were all literary. He desired to make himself an undying name chiefly through verse, though he was not above sending stories of love and death to the penny-in-the-slot journals. It was my fate to sit still while Charlie read me poems of many hundred lines, and bulky fragments of plays that would surely shake the world. My reward was his unreserved confidence, and the self-revelations and troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those of a maiden. Charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the first opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things honourable, but at the same time, was curiously careful to let me see that he knew his way about the world as befitted a bank-clerk on twenty-five shillings a week. He rhymed ‘dove’ with ‘love’ and ‘moon’ with ‘June,’ and devoutly believed that they had never so been rhymed before. The long lame gaps in his plays he filled up with hasty words of apology and description, and swept on, seeing all that he intended to do so clearly that he esteemed it already done, and turned to me for applause.

I fancy that his mother did not encourage his aspirations; and I know that his writing-table at home was the edge of his washstand. This he told me almost at the outset of our acquaintance—when he was ravaging my bookshelves, and a little before I was implored to speak the truth as to his chances of ‘writing something really great, you know.’ Maybe I encouraged him too much, for, one night, he called on me, his eyes flaming with excitement; and said breathlessly ‘Do you mind—can you let me stay here and write all this evening? I won’t interrupt you, I won’t really. There’s no place for me to write in at my mother’s.’

‘What’s the trouble?’ I said, knowing well what that trouble was.

‘I’ve a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that was ever written. Do let me write it out here. It’s such a notion!’

There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly thanked me, but plunged into his work at once. For half an hour the pen scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased. The finest story in the world would not come forth.

‘It looks such awful rot now,’ he said mournfully. ‘And yet it seemed so good when I was thinking about it. What’s wrong?’

I could not dishearten him by saying the truth. So I answered: ‘Perhaps you don’t feel in the mood for writing.’

‘Yes I do—except when I look at this stuff. Ugh!’

‘Read me what you’ve done,’ I said.

He read, and it was wondrous bad, and he paused at all the specially turgid sentences, expecting a little approval; for he was proud of those sentences, as I knew he would be.

‘It needs compression,’ I suggested cautiously.

‘I hate cutting my things down. I don’t think you could alter a word here without spoiling the sense. It reads better aloud than when I was writing it.’

‘Charlie, you’re suffering from an alarming disease afflicting a numerous class. Put the thing by, and tackle it again in a week.’

‘I want to do it at once. What do you think of it?’

‘How can I judge from a half-written tale? Tell me the story as it lies in your head.’

Charlie told, and in the telling there was everything that his ignorance had so carefully prevented from escaping into the written word. I looked at him, wondering whether it were possible that he did not know the originality, the power of the notion that had come in his way? It was distinctly a Notion among notions. Men had been puffed up with pride by ideas not a tithe as excellent and practicable. But Charlie babbled on serenely, interrupting the current of pure fancy with samples of horrible sentences that he purposed to use. I heard him out to the end. It would be folly to allow his thought to remain in his own inept hands, when I could do so much with it. Not all that could be done indeed; but, oh so much!

‘What do you think?’ he said at last. ‘I fancy I shall call it “The Story of a Ship.”’

‘I think the idea’s pretty good; but you won’t be able to handle it for ever so long. Now I——’

‘Would it be of any use to you? Would you care to take it? I should be proud,’ said Charlie promptly.

There are few things sweeter in this world than the guileless, hot-headed, intemperate, open admiration of a junior. Even a woman in her blindest devotion does not fall into the gait of the man she adores, tilt her bonnet to the angle at which he wears his hat, or interlard her speech with his pet oaths. And Charlie did all these things. Still it was necessary to salve my conscience before I possessed myself of Charlie’s thoughts.

‘Let’s make a bargain. I’ll give you a fiver for the notion,’ I said.
Charlie became a bank-clerk at once.

‘Oh, that’s impossible. Between two pals, you know, if I may call you so, and speaking as a man of the world, I couldn’t. Take the notion if it’s any use to you. I’ve heaps more.’

He had—none knew this better than I—but they were the notions of other men.

‘Look at it as a matter of business between men of the world,’ I returned. ‘Five pounds will buy you any number of poetry-books. Business is business, and you may be sure I shouldn’t give that price unless——’

‘Oh, if you put it that way,’ said Charlie, visibly moved by the thought of the books. The bargain was clinched with an agreement that he should at unstated intervals come to me with all the notions that he possessed, should have a table of his own to write at, and unquestioned right to inflict upon me all his poems and fragments of poems. Then I said, ‘Now tell me how you came by this idea.’

page 2

‘It came by itself.’ Charlie’s eyes opened a little.

‘Yes, but you told me a great deal about the hero that you must have read before somewhere.’

‘I haven’t any time for reading, except when you let me sit here, and on Sundays I’m on my bicycle or down the river all day. There’s nothing wrong about the hero, is there?’

‘Tell me again and I shall understand clearly. You say that your hero went pirating. How did he live?’

‘He was on the lower deck of this ship-thing that I was telling you about.’

‘What sort of ship?’

‘It was the kind rowed with oars, and the sea spurts through the oar-holes, and the men row sitting up to their knees in water. Then there’s a bench running down between the two lines of oars, and an overseer with a whip walks up and down the bench to make the men work.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It’s in the tale. There’s a rope running overhead, looped to the upper-deck, for the overseer to catch hold of when the ship rolls. When the overseer misses the rope once and falls among the rowers, remember the hero laughs at him and gets licked for it. He’s chained to his oar of course—the hero.’

‘How is he chained?’

‘With an iron band round his waist fixed to the bench he sits on, and a sort of handcuff on his left wrist chaining him to the oar. He’s on the lower deck where the worst men are sent, and the only light comes from the hatchways and through the oar-holes. Can’t you imagine the sunlight just squeezing through between the handle and the hole and wobbling about as the ship moves?’

‘I can, but I can’t imagine your imagining it.’

‘How could it be any other way? Now you listen to me. The long oars on the upper deck are managed by four men to each bench, the lower ones by three, and the lowest of all by two. Remember it’s quite dark on the lowest deck and all the men there go mad. When a man dies at his oar on that deck he isn’t thrown overboard, but cut up in his chains and stuffed through the oar-hole in little pieces.’

‘Why?’ I demanded amazed, not so much at the information as the tone of command in which it was flung out.

‘To save trouble and to frighten the others. It needs two overseers to drag a man’s body up to the top deck; and if the men at the lower deck oars were left alone, of course they’d stop rowing and try to pull up the benches by all standing up together in their chains.’

‘You’ve a most provident imagination. Where have you been reading about galleys and galley-slaves?’

‘Nowhere that I remember. I row a little when I get the chance. But, perhaps, if you say so, I may have read something.’

He went away shortly afterwards to deal with booksellers, and I wondered how a bank-clerk aged twenty could put into my hands with a profligate abundance of detail, all given with absolute assurance, the story of extravagant and bloodthirsty adventure, riot, piracy, and death in unnamed seas. He had led his hero a desperate dance through revolt against the overseers, to command of a ship of his own, and at last to the establishment of a kingdom on an island ‘somewhere in the sea, you know;’ and, delighted with my paltry five pounds, had gone out to buy the notions of other men, that these might teach him how to write. I had the, consolation of knowing that this notion was mine by right of purchase, and I thought that I could make something of it.

When next he came to me he was drunk—royally drunk on many poets for the first time revealed to him. His pupils were dilated, his words tumbled over each other, and he wrapped himself in quotations—as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors. Most of all was he drunk with Longfellow.

‘Isn’t it splendid? Isn’t it superb?’ he cried, after hasty greetings. ‘Listen to this—

‘“Wouldst thou,”—so the helmsman answered,
“Know the secret of the sea?
Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery.”

By gum!

‘“Only those who brave its dangers
Comprehend its mystery,”’

he repeated twenty times, walking up and down the room and forgetting me. ‘But I can understand it too,’ he said to himself. ‘I don’t know how to thank you for that fiver. And this; listen—

‘“I remember the black wharves and the slips
And the sea-tides tossing free;
And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.”

I haven’t braved any dangers, but I feel as if I knew all about it.’

‘You certainly seem to have a grip of the sea. Have you ever seen it?’

‘When I was a little chap I went to Brighton once; we used to live in Coventry, though, before we came to London. I never saw it.

‘“When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox.”’

page 3

He shook me by the shoulder to make me understand the passion that was shaking himself.

‘When that storm comes,’ he continued, ‘I think that all the oars in the ship that I was talking about get broken, and the rowers have their chests smashed in by the oar-heads bucking. By the way, have you done anything with that notion of mine yet?’

‘No. I was waiting to hear more of it from you. Tell me how in the world you’re so certain about the fittings of the ship. You know nothing of ships.’

‘I don’t know. It’s as real as anything to me until I try to write it down. I was thinking about it only last night in bed, after you had lent me Treasure Island; and I made up a whole lot of new things to go into the story.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘About the food the men ate; rotten figs and black beans and wine in a skin bag, passed from bench to bench.’

‘Was the ship built so long ago as that?’

‘As what? I don’t know whether it was long ago or not. It’s only a notion, but sometimes it seems just as real as if it was true. Do I bother you with talking about it?’

‘Not in the least. Did you make up anything else?’

‘Yes, but it’s nonsense.’ Charlie flushed a little.

‘Never mind; let’s hear about it.’

‘Well, I was thinking over the story, and after awhile I got out of bed and wrote down on a piece of paper the sort of stuff the men might be supposed to scratch on their oars with the edges of their handcuffs. It seemed to make the thing more life-like. It is so real to me, y’know.’

‘Have you the paper on you?’

‘Ye—es, but what’s the use of showing it? It’s only a lot of scratches. All the same, we might have ’em reproduced in the book on the front page.’

‘I’ll attend to those details. Show me what your men wrote.’

He pulled out of his pocket a sheet of notepaper, with a single line of scratches upon it, and I put this carefully away.

‘What is it supposed to mean in English?’ I said.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean it to mean “I’m beastly tired.” It’s great nonsense,’ he repeated, ‘but all those men in the ship seem as real as real people to me. Do do something to the notion soon; I should like to see it written and printed.’

‘But all you’ve told me would make a long book.’

‘Make it then. You’ve only to sit down and write it out.’

‘Give me a little time. Have you any more notions?’

‘Not just now. I’m reading all the books I’ve bought. They’re splendid.’

When he had left I looked at the sheet of notepaper with the inscription upon it. Then I took my head tenderly between both hands, to make certain that it was not coming off or turning round. Then . . . but there seemed to be no interval between quitting my rooms and finding myself arguing with a policeman outside a door marked Private in a corridor of the British Museum. All I demanded, as politely as possible, was ‘the Greek antiquity man.’ The policeman knew nothing except the rules of the Museum, and it became necessary to forage through all the houses and offices inside the gates. An elderly gentleman called away from his lunch put an end to my search by holding the notepaper between finger and thumb and sniffing at it scornfully.

‘What does this mean? H’mm,’ said he. ‘So far as I can ascertain it is an attempt to write extremely corrupt Greek on the part’—here he glared at me with intention—‘of an extremely illiterate—ah—person.’ He read slowly from the paper, ‘Pollock, Erckmann, Tauchnitz, Henniker’—four names familiar to me.

‘Can you tell me what the corruption is supposed to mean—the gist of the thing?’ I asked.

‘I have been—many times—overcome with weariness in this particular employment. That is the meaning.’ He returned me the paper, and I fled without a word of thanks, explanation, or apology.

I might have been excused for forgetting much. To me of all men had been given the chance to write the most marvellous tale in the world, nothing less than the story of a Greek galley-slave, as told by himself. Small wonder that his dreaming had seemed real to Charlie. The Fates that are so careful to shut the doors of each successive life behind us had, in this case, been neglectful, and Charlie was looking, though that he did not know, where never man had been permitted to look with full knowledge since Time began. Above all, he was absolutely ignorant of the knowledge sold to me for five pounds; and he would retain that ignorance, for bank-clerks do not understand metempsychosis, and a sound commercial education does not include Greek. He would supply me—here I capered among the dumb gods of Egypt and laughed in their battered faces—with material to make my tale sure—so sure that the world would hail it as an impudent and vamped fiction: And I—I alone would know that it was absolutely and literally true. I—I alone held this jewel to my hand for the cutting and polishing! Therefore I danced again among the gods of the Egyptian court till a policeman saw me and took steps in my direction.

It remained now only to encourage Charlie to talk, and here there was no difficulty. But I had forgotten those accursed books of poetry. He came to me time after time, as useless as a surcharged phonograph—drunk on Byron, Shelley, or Keats. Knowing now what the boy had been in his past lives; and desperately anxious not to lose one word of his babble, I could not hide from him my respect and interest. He misconstrued both into respect for the present soul of Charlie Mears, to whom life was as new as it was to Adam, and interest in his readings; and stretched my patience to breaking point by reciting poetry—not his own now, but that of others. I wished every English poet blotted out of the memory of mankind. I blasphemed the mightiest names of song because they had drawn Charlie from the path of direct narrative, and would, later, spur him to imitate them; but I choked down my impatience until the first flood of enthusiasm should have spent itself and the boy returned to his dreams.

page 4

‘What’s the use of my telling you what I think, when these chaps wrote things for the angels to read?’ he growled, one evening. ‘Why don’t you write something like theirs?’

‘I don’t think you’re treating me quite fairly,’ I said, speaking under strong restraint.

‘I’ve given you the story,’ he said shortly, replunging into ‘Lara.’

‘But I want the details.’

‘The things I make up about that damned ship that you call a galley? They’re quite easy. You can just make ’em up for yourself. Turn up the gas a little, I want to go on reading.’

I could have broken the gas globe over his head for his amazing stupidity. I could indeed make up things for myself did I only know what Charlie did not know that he knew. But since the doors were shut behind me I could only wait his youthful pleasure and strive to keep him in good temper. One minute’s want of guard might spoil a priceless revelation: now and again he would toss his books aside—he kept them in my rooms, for his mother would have been shocked at the waste of good money had she seen them—and launched into his sea-dreams. Again I cursed all the poets of England. The plastic mind of the bank-clerk had been overlaid, coloured, and distorted by that which he had read, and the result as delivered was a confused tangle of other voices most like the mutter and hum through a City telephone in the busiest part of the day.

He talked of the galley—his own galley had he but known it—with illustrations borrowed from the ‘Bride of Abydos.’ He pointed the experiences of his hero with quotations from ‘The Corsair,’ and threw in deep and desperate moral reflections from ‘Cain’ and ‘Manfred,’ expecting me to use them all. Only when the talk turned on Longfellow were the jarring cross-currents dumb, and I knew that Charlie was speaking the truth as he remembered it.

‘What do you think of this?’ I said one evening, as soon as I understood the medium in which his memory worked best, and, before he could expostulate, read him nearly the whole of ‘The Saga of King Olaf!’

He listened open-mouthed, flushed, his hands drumming on the back of the sofa where he lay, till I came to the Song of Einar Tamberskelver and the verse:—

‘Einar then, the arrow taking
From the loosened string,
Answered, “That was Norway breaking
‘Neath thy hand, O King.”’

He gasped with pure delight of sound.

‘That’s better than Byron, a little?’ I ventured.

‘Better! Why it’s true! How could he have known?’

I went back and repeated:—

‘“What was that?” said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck,
“Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck.”’

‘How could he have known how the ships crash and the oars rip out and go z-zzp all along the line? Why only the other night . . . But go back, please, and read “The Skerry of Shrieks” again.’

‘No, I’m tired. Let’s talk. What happened the other night?’

‘I had an awful dream about that galley of ours. I dreamed I was drowned in a fight. You see we ran alongside another ship in harbour. The water was dead still except where our oars whipped it up. You know where I always sit in the galley?’ He spoke haltingly at first, under a fine English fear of being laughed at.

‘No. That’s news to me,’ I answered meekly, my heart beginning to beat.

‘On the fourth oar from the bow on the right side on the upper deck. There were four of us at that oar, all chained. I remember watching the water and trying to get my handcuffs off before the row began. Then we closed up on the other ship, and all their fighting men jumped over our bulwarks, and my bench broke and I was pinned down with the three other fellows on top of me, and the big oar jammed across our backs.’

‘Well?’ Charlie’s eyes were alive and alight. He was looking at the wall behind my chair.

‘I don’t know how we fought. The men were trampling all over my back, and I lay low. Then our rowers on the left side—tied to their oars, you know—began to yell and back water. I could hear the water sizzle, and we spun round like a cockchafer, and I knew, lying where I was, that there was a galley coming up bow-on to ram us on the left side. I could just lift up my head and see her sail over the bulwarks. We wanted to meet her bow to bow, but it was too late. We could only turn a little bit because the galley on our right had hooked herself on to us and stopped our moving. Then, by gum! there was a crash! Our left oars began to break as the other galley, the moving one y’know, stuck her nose into them. Then the lower-deck oars shot up through the deck planking, butt first, and one of them jumped clear up into the air and came down again close at my head.’

‘How was that managed?’

‘The moving galley’s bow was plunking them back through their own oar-holes, and I could hear no end of a shindy in the decks below. Then her nose caught us nearly in the middle, and we tilted sideways, and the fellows in the right-hand galley unhitched their hooks and ropes, and threw things on to our upper deck—arrows, and hot pitch or something that stung, and we went up and up and up on the left side, and the right side dipped, and I twisted my head round and saw the water stand still as it topped the right bulwarks, and then it curled over and crashed down on the whole lot of us on the right side, and I felt it hit my back, and I woke.’

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‘One minute, Charlie. When the sea topped the bulwarks, what did it look like?’ I had my reasons for asking. A man of my acquaintance had once gone down with a leaking ship in a still sea, and had seen the water-level pause for an instant ere it fell on the deck.

‘It looked just like a banjo-string drawn tight, and it seemed to stay there for years,’ said Charlie.

‘Exactly! The other man had said: ‘It looked like a silver wire laid down along the bulwarks, and I thought it was never going to break.’ He had paid everything except the bare life for this little valueless piece of knowledge, and I had travelled ten thousand weary miles to meet him and take his knowledge at second hand. But Charlie, the bank-clerk on twenty-five shillings a week, who had never been out of sight of a made road, knew it all. It was no consolation to me that once in his lives he had been forced to die for his gains. I also must have died scores of times, but behind me, because I could have used my knowledge, the doors were shut.

‘And then?’ I said, trying to put away the devil of envy.

‘The funny thing was, though, in all the row I didn’t feel a bit astonished or frightened. It seemed as if I’d been in a good many fights, because I told my next man so when the row began. But that cad of an overseer on my deck wouldn’t unloose our chains and give us a chance. He always said that we’d all be set free after a battle, but we never were; we never were.’ Charlie shook his head mournfully.

‘What a scoundrel!’

‘I should say he was. He never gave us enough to eat, and sometimes we were so thirsty that we used to drink saltwater. I can taste that saltwater still.’

‘Now tell me something about the harbour where the fight was fought.’

‘I didn’t dream about that. I know it was a harbour, though; because we were tied up to a ring on a white wall and all the face of the stone under water was covered with wood to prevent our ram getting chipped when the tide made us rock.’

‘That’s curious. Our hero commanded the galley, didn’t he?’

‘Didn’t he just! He stood by the bows and shouted like a good ’un. He was the man who killed the overseer.’

‘But you were all drowned together, Charlie, weren’t you?’

‘I can’t make that fit quite,’ he said, with a puzzled look. ‘The galley must have gone down with all hands, and yet I fancy that the hero went on living afterwards. Perhaps he climbed into the attacking ship. I wouldn’t see that, of course. I was dead, you know.’

He shivered slightly and protested that he could remember no more.

I did not press him further, but to satisfy myself that he lay in ignorance of the workings of his own mind, deliberately introduced him to Mortimer Collins’s Transmigration, and gave him a sketch of the plot before he opened the pages.

‘What rot it all is!’ he said frankly, at the end of an hour. ‘I don’t understand his nonsense about the Red Planet Mars and the King, and the rest of it. Chuck me the Longfellow again.’

I handed him the book and wrote out as much as I could remember of his description of the seafight, appealing to him from time to time for confirmation of fact or detail. He would answer without raising his eyes from the book, as assuredly as though all his knowledge lay before him on the printed page. I spoke under the normal key of my voice that the current might not be broken, and I knew that he was not aware of what he was saying, for his thoughts were out on the sea with Longfellow.

‘Charlie,’ I asked, ‘when the rowers on the galleys mutinied how did they kill their overseers?’

‘Tore up the benches and brained ’em. That happened when a heavy sea was running. An overseer on the lower deck slipped from the centre plank and fell among the rowers. They choked him to death against the side of the ship with their chained hands quite quietly, and it was too dark for the other overseer to see what had happened. When he asked, he was pulled down too and choked, and the lower deck fought their way up deck by deck, with the pieces of the broken benches banging behind ’em. How they howled!’

‘And what happened after that?’

‘I don’t know. The hero went away—red hair and red beard and all. That was after he had captured our galley, I think.’

The sound of my voice irritated him, and he motioned slightly with his left hand as a man does when interruption jars.

‘You never told me he was red-headed before, or that he captured your galley,’ I said, after a discreet interval.

Charlie did not raise his eyes.

‘He was as red as a red bear,’ said he abstractedly. ‘He came from the north; they said so in the galley when he looked for rowers—not slaves, but free men. Afterwards—years and years afterwards—news came from another ship, or else he came back——’

His lips moved in silence. He was rapturously retasting some poem before him.

‘Where had he been, then?’ I was almost whispering that the sentence might come gently to whichever section of Charlie’s brain was working on my behalf.

‘To the Beaches—the Long and Wonderful Beaches!‘ was the reply after a minute of silence.

‘To Furdurstrandi?’ I asked, tingling from head to foot.

‘Yes, to Furdurstrandi,’ he pronounced the word in a new fashion. ‘And I too saw——’ The voice failed.

‘Do you know what you have said?’ I shouted incautiously.

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He lifted his eyes, fully roused now. ‘No!’ he snapped. ‘I wish you’d let a chap go on reading. Hark to this:—

‘“But Othere, the old sea captain,
He neither paused nor stirred
Till the king listened, and then
Once more took up his pen
And wrote down every word.

‘“And to the King of the Saxons
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand and said,
‘Behold this walrus tooth.’”

By Jove, what chaps those must have been, to go sailing all over the shop never knowing where they’d fetch the land! Hah!’

‘Charlie,’ I pleaded, ‘if you’ll only be sensible for a minute or two I’ll make our hero in our tale every inch as good as Othere.’

‘Umph! Longfellow wrote that poem. I don’t care about writing things any more. I want to read.’ He was thoroughly out of tune now, and raging over my own ill-luck, I left him.

Conceive yourself at the door of the world’s treasure-house guarded by a child—an idle, irresponsible child playing knuckle-bones—on whose favour depends the gift of the key, and you will imagine one-half my torment. Till that evening Charlie had spoken nothing that might not lie within the experiences of a Greek galley-slave. But now, or there was no virtue in books, he had talked of some desperate adventure of the Vikings, of Thorfin Karlsefne’s sailing to Wineland, which is America, in the ninth or tenth century. The battle in the harbour he had seen; and his own death he had described. But this was a much more startling plunge into the past. Was it possible that he had skipped half a dozen lives, and was then dimly remembering some episode of a thousand years later? It was a maddening jumble, and the worst of it was that Charlie Mears in his normal condition was the last person in the world to clear it up. I could only wait and watch, but I went to bed that night full of the wildest imaginings. There was nothing that was not possible if Charlie’s detestable memory only held good.

I might rewrite the Saga of Thorfin Karlsefne as it had never been written before, might tell the story of the first discovery of America, myself the discoverer. But I was entirely at Charlie’s mercy, and so long as there was a three-and-sixpenny Bohn volume within his reach Charlie would not tell. I dared not curse him openly; I hardly dared jog his memory, for I was dealing with the experiences of a thousand years ago, told through the mouth of a boy of to-day; and a boy of to-day is affected by every change of tone and gust of opinion, so that he must lie even when he most desires to speak the truth.

I saw no more of Charlie for nearly a week. When next I met him it was in Gracechurch Street with a bill-book chained to his waist. Business took him over London Bridge, and I accompanied him. He was very full of the importance of that book and magnified it. As we passed over the Thames we paused to look at a steamer unloading great slabs of white and brown marble. A barge drifted under the steamer’s stern and a lonely ship’s cow in that barge bellowed. Charlie’s face changed from the face of the bank-clerk to that of an unknown and—though he would not have believed this—a much shrewder man. He flung out his arm across the parapet of the bridge and laughing very loudly, said:—

‘When they heard our bulls bellow the Skroelings ran away!’

I waited only for an instant, but the barge and the cow had disappeared under the bows of the steamer before I answered.

‘Charlie, what do you suppose are Skroelings?’

‘Never heard of ’em before. They sound like a new kind of sea-gull. What a chap you are for asking questions?’ he replied. ‘I have to go to the cashier of the Omnibus Company yonder. Will you wait for me and we can lunch somewhere together? I’ve a notion for a poem.’

‘No, thanks. I’m off. You’re sure you know nothing about Skroelings?’

‘Not unless he’s been entered for the Liverpool Handicap.’ He nodded and disappeared in the crowd.

Now it is written in the Saga of Eric the Red or that of Thorfin Karlsefne, that nine hundred years ago when Karlsefne’s galleys came to Leif’s booths, which Leif had erected in the unknown land called Markland, which may or may not have been Rhode Island, the Skroelings—and the Lord He knows who these may or may not have been—came to trade with the Vikings, and ran away because they were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain, and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears’s body, but half a dozen–half a dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water in the morning of the world!

Then I reviewed the situation.

Obviously if I used my knowledge I should stand alone and unapproachable until all men were as wise as myself. That would be something, but, manlike, I was ungrateful. It seemed bitterly unfair that Charlie’s memory should fail me when I needed it most. Great Powers Above—I looked up at them through the fog-smoke—did the Lords of Life and Death know what this meant to me? Nothing less than eternal fame of the best kind, that comes from one, and is shared by one alone. I would be content—remembering Clive, I stood astounded at my own moderation—with the mere right to tell one story, to work out one little contribution to the light literature of the day. If Charlie were permitted full recollection for one hour—for sixty short minutes—of existences that had extended over a thousand years—I would forego all profit and honour from all that I should make of his speech. I would take no share in the commotion that would follow throughout the particular corner of the earth that calls itself ‘the world.’ The thing should be put forth anonymously. Nay, I would make other men believe that they had written it. They would hire bull-hided self-advertising Englishmen to bellow it abroad. Preachers would found a fresh conduct of life upon it, swearing that it was new and that they had lifted the fear of death from all mankind. Every Orientalist in Europe would patronise it discursively with Sanskrit and Pall texts. Terrible women would invent unclean variants of the men’s belief for the elevation of their sisters. Churches and religions would war over it. Between the hailing and restarting of an omnibus I foresaw the scuffles that would arise among half a dozen denominations all professing ‘the doctrine of the True Metempsychosis as applied to the world and the New Era’; and saw, too, the respectable English newspapers shying, like frightened kine, over the beautiful simplicity of the tale. The mind leaped forward a hundred—two hundred—a thousand years. I saw with sorrow that men would mutilate and garble the story; that rival screeds would turn it upside down till, at last, the western world which clings to the dread of death more closely than the hope of life, would set it aside as an interesting superstition and stampede after some faith so long forgotten that it seemed altogether new. Upon this I changed the terms of the bargain that I would make with the Lords of Life and Death. Only let me know, let me write, the story with sure knowledge that I wrote the truth, and I would burn the manuscript as a solemn sacrifice. Five minutes after the last line was written I would destroy it all. But I must be allowed to write it with absolute certainty.

page 7

There was no answer. The flaming colours of an Aquarium poster caught my eye, and I wondered whether it would be wise or prudent to lure Charlie into the hands of the professional mesmerist then, and whether, if he were under his power, he would speak of his past lives. If he did, and if people believed him . . . but Charlie would be frightened and flustered, or made conceited by the interviews. In either case he would begin to lie through fear or vanity. He was safest in my own hands.

‘They are very funny fools, your English,’ said a voice at my elbow, and turning round I recognised a casual acquaintance, a young Bengali law student, called Grish Chunder, whose father had sent him to England to become civilised. The old man was a retired native official, and on an income of five pounds a month contrived to allow his son two hundred pounds a year, and the run of his teeth in a city where he could pretend to be the cadet of a royal house, and tell stories of the brutal Indian bureaucrats who ground the faces of the poor.

Grish Chunder was a young, fat, full-bodied Bengali, dressed with scrupulous care in frock coat, tall hat, light trousers, and tan gloves. But I had known him in the days when the brutal Indian Government paid for his university education, and he contributed cheap sedition to the Sachi Durpan, and intrigued with the wives of his fourteen-year-old schoolmates.

‘That is very funny and very foolish,’ he said, nodding at the poster. ‘I am going down to the Northbrook Club. Will you come too?’

I walked with him for some time. ‘You are not well,’ he said. ‘What is there on your mind? You do not talk.’

‘Grish Chunder, you’ve been too well educated to believe in a God, haven’t you?’

‘Oah, yes, here! But when I go home I must conciliate popular superstition, and make ceremonies of purification, and my women will anoint idols.’

‘And hang up tulsi and feast the purohit, and take you back into caste again, and make a good khuttri of you again, you advanced Freethinker. And you’ll eat desi food, and like it all, from the smell in the courtyard to the mustard oil over you.’

‘I shall very much like it, said Grish Chunder unguardedly. ‘Once a Hindu—always a Hindu. But I like to know what the English think they know.’

‘I’ll tell you something that one Englishman knows. It’s an old tale to you.’

I began to tell the story of Charlie in English; but Grish Chunder put a question in the vernacular, and the history went forward naturally in the tongue best suited for its telling. After all, it could never have been told in English. Grish Chunder heard me, nodding from time to time, and then came up to my rooms, where I finished the tale.

‘Beshak,’ he said philosophically. ‘Lekin darwaza band hai. (Without doubt; but the door is shut.) I have heard of this remembering of previous existences among my people. It is of course an old tale with us, but, to happen to an Englishman—a cow-fed Mlechh—an outcast. By Jove, that is most peculiar!’

‘Outcast yourself, Grish Chunder! You eat cow-beef every day. Let’s think the thing over. The boy remembers his incarnations.’

‘Does he know that?’ said Grish Chunder quietly, swinging his legs as he sat on my table. He was speaking in his English now.

‘He does not know anything. Would I speak to you if he did? Go on!’

‘There is no going on at all. If you tell that to your friends they will say you are mad and put it in the papers. Suppose, now, you prosecute for libel.’

‘Let’s leave that out of the question entirely. Is there any chance of his being made to speak?’

‘There is a chance. Oah, yess! But if he spoke it would mean that all this world would end now—instanto—fall down on your head. These things are not allowed, you know. As I said, the door is shut.’

‘Not a ghost of a chance?’

‘How can there be? You are a Christi-án, and it is forbidden to eat, in your books, of the Tree of Life, or else you would never die. How shall you all fear death if you all know what your friend does not know that he knows? I am afraid to be kicked, but I am not afraid to die, because I know what I know. You are not afraid to be kicked, but you are afraid to die. If you were not, by God! you English would be all over the shop in an hour, upsetting the balances of power, and making commotions. It would not be good. But no fear. He will remember a little and a little less, and he will call it dreams. Then he will forget altogether. When I passed my First Arts Examination in Calcutta that was all in the cram-book on Wordsworth. “Trailing clouds of glory,” you know.’

‘This seems to be an exception to the rule.’

‘There are no exceptions to rules. Some are not so hard-looking as others, but they are all the same when you touch. If this friend of yours said so-and-so and so-and-so, indicating that he remembered all his lost lives, or one piece of a lost life, he would not be in the bank another hour. He would be what you called sack because he was mad, and they would send him to an asylum for lunatics. You can see that, my friend.’

‘Of course I can, but I wasn’t thinking of him. His name need never appear in the story.’

‘Ah! I see. That story will never be written. You can try.’

‘I am going to.’

‘For your own credit and for the sake of money, of course?’

‘No. For the sake of writing the story. On my honour that will be all.’

‘Even then there is no chance. You cannot play with the gods. It is a very pretty story now. As they say. Let it go on that—I mean at that. Be quick; he will not last long.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘What I say. He has never, so far, thought about a woman.’

‘Hasn’t he, though!’ I remembered some of Charlie’s confidences.

page 8

‘I mean no woman has thought about him. When that comes; bus—hogya—all up! I know. There are millions of women here. Housemaids, for instance. They kiss you behind doors.’

I winced at the thought of my story being ruined by a housemaid. And yet nothing was more probable.

Grish Chunder grinned.

‘Yes—also pretty girls—cousins of his house, and perhaps not of his house. One kiss that he gives back again and remembers will cure all this nonsense, or else——’

‘Or else what? Remember he does not know that he knows.’

‘I know that. Or else, if nothing happens he will become immersed in the trade and the financial speculation like the rest. It must be so. You can see that it must be so. But the woman will come first, I think.’

There was a rap at the door, and Charlie charged in impetuously. He had been released from office, and by the look in his eyes I could see that he had come over for a long talk; most probably with poems in his pockets. Charlie’s poems were very wearying, but sometimes they led him to speak about the galley.

Grish Chunder looked at him keenly for a minute.

‘I beg your pardon,’ Charlie said uneasily; ‘I didn’t know you had any one with you.’

‘I am going,’ said Grish Chunder.

He drew me into the lobby as he departed.

‘That is your man,’ he said quickly. ‘I tell you he will never speak all you wish. That is rot—bosh. But he would be most good to make to see things. Suppose now we pretend that it was only play’—I had never seen Grish Chunder so excited—‘and pour the ink-pool into his hand. Eh, what do you think? I tell you that he could see anything that a man could see. Let me get the ink and the camphor. He is a seer and he will tell us very many things.’

‘He may be all you say, but I’m not going to trust him to your gods and devils.’

‘It will not hurt him. He will only feel a little stupid and dull when he wakes up. You have seen boys look into the ink-pool before.’

‘That is the reason why I am not going to see it any more. You’d better go, Grish Chunder.’

He went, insisting far down the staircase that it was throwing away my only chance of looking into the future.

This left me unmoved, for I was concerned for the past, and no peering of hypnotised boys into mirrors and ink-pools would help me to that. But I recognised Grish Chunder’s point of view and sympathised with it.

‘What a big black brute that was!’ said Charlie, when I returned to him. ‘Well, look here, I’ve just done a poem; did it instead of playing dominoes after lunch. May I read it?’

‘Let me read it to myself.’

‘Then you miss the proper expression. Besides, you always make my things sound as if the rhymes were all wrong.’

‘Read it aloud, then. You’re like the rest of em.’

Charlie mouthed me his poem, and it was not much worse than the average of his verses. He had been reading his books faithfully, but he was not pleased when I told him that I preferred my Longfellow undiluted with Charlie.

Then we began to go through the MS. line by line, Charlie parrying every objection and correction with: ‘Yes, that may be better, but you don’t catch what I’m driving at.’

Charlie was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.

There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper, and ‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘Oh, that’s not poetry at all. It’s some rot I wrote last night before I went to bed, and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I made it a sort of blank verse instead.

Here is Charlie’s ‘blank verse’—

‘We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.
Will you never let us go?
We ate bread and onions when you took towns, or ran aboard quickly when you were beaten back by the foe,
The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs, but we were below.
We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were idle for we still swung to and fro.
Will you never let us go?
The salt made the oar-handles like shark-skin; our knees were cut to the bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips were cut to our gums, and you whipped us because we could not row.
Will you never let us go?
But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs along the oar-blade, and though you tell the others to row after us you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in the belly of the sail. Aho!
Will you never let us go?’

‘H’m. What’s oar-thresh, Charlie?’

‘The water washed up by the oars. That’s the sort of song they might sing in the galley y’ know. Aren’t you ever going to finish that story and give me some of the profits?’

‘It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in the first instance it might have been finished by now. You’re so hazy in your notions.’

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‘I only want to give you the general notion of it—the knocking about from place to place and the fighting and all that. Can’t you fill in the rest yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry her or do something.’

‘You’re a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through some few adventures before he married.’

‘Well then, make him a very artful card—a low sort of man—a sort of political man who went about making treaties and breaking them—a black-haired chap who hid behind the Mast when the fighting began.’

‘But you said the other day that he was redhaired.’

‘I couldn’t have. Make him black-haired of course. You’ve no imagination.’

Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to laugh, but forbore for the sake of the tale.

‘You’re right. You’re the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in a decked ship,’ I said.

‘No, an open ship—like a big boat.’

This was maddening.

‘Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said so yourself,’ I protested.

‘No, no, not that ship. That was open or half-decked because—By Jove, you’re right. You made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap. Of course if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted sails.’

Surely, I thought, he would remember now that he had served in two galleys at least—in a three-decked Greek one under the black-haired ‘political man,’ and again in a Viking’s open sea-serpent under the man ‘red as a red bear’ who went to Markland. The devil prompted me to speak.

‘Why, “of course,” Charlie?’ said I.

‘I don’t know. Are you making fun of me?’

The current was broken for the time being. I took up a note-book and pretended to make many entries in it.

‘It’s a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself,’ I said, after a pause. ‘The way that you’ve brought out the character of the hero is simply wonderful.’

‘Do you think so?’ he answered, with a pleased flush. ‘I often tell myself that there’s more in me than my mo—than people think.’

‘There’s an enormous amount in you.’

‘Then, won’t you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank-Clerks to Tit-Bits, and get the guinea prize?’

‘That wasn’t exactly what I meant, old fellow perhaps it would be better to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story.’

‘Ah, but I sha’n’t get the credit of that. Tit-Bits would publish my name and address if I win. What are you grinning at? They would.’

‘I know it. Suppose you go for a walk. I want to look through my notes about our story.’

Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back, might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the Argo—had been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was deeply interested in guinea competitions. Remembering what Grish Chunder had said I laughed aloud. The Lords of Life and Death would never allow Charlie Mears to speak with full knowledge of his pasts, and I must even piece out what he had told me with my own poor inventions while Charlie wrote of the ways of bank-clerks.

I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net result was not cheering. I read them a second time. There was nothing that might not have been compiled at second-hand from other people’s books—except, perhaps, the story of the fight in the harbour. The adventures of a Viking had been written many times before; the history of a Greek galley-slave was no new thing, and though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm the accuracy of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand years hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish Chunder had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that might trouble or make easy the minds of men. Though I was convinced of this, yet I could not leave the tale alone. Exaltation followed reaction, not once, but twenty times in the next few weeks. My moods varied with the March sunlight and flying clouds. By night or in the beauty of a spring morning I perceived that I could write that tale and shift continents thereby. In the wet windy afternoons, I saw that the tale might indeed be written, but would be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted piece of Wardour Street work in the end. Then I blessed Charlie in many ways—though it was no fault of his. He seemed to be busy with prize competitions, and I saw less and less of him as the weeks went by and the earth cracked and grew ripe to spring, and the buds swelled in their sheaths. He did not care to read or talk of what he had read, and there was a new ring of self-assertion in his voice. I hardly cared to remind him of the galley when we met; but Charlie alluded to it on every occasion, always as a story from which money was to be made.

‘I think I deserve twenty-five per cent, don’t I, at least?’ he said, with beautiful frankness. ‘I supplied all the ideas, didn’t I?’

This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. I assumed that it had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking up the curious nasal drawl of the underbred City man.

‘When the thing’s done we’ll talk about it. I can’t make anything of it at present. Red-haired or black-haired heroes are equally difficult.’

He was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. ‘I can’t understand what you find so difficult. It’s all as clear as mud to me,’ he replied. A jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took light, and whistled softly. ‘Suppose we take the red-haired hero’s adventures first, from the time that he came south to my galley and captured it and sailed to the Beaches.’

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I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie. I was out of reach of pen and paper, and dared not move to get them lest I should break the current. The gas jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie’s voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening after evening when the galley’s beak was notched into the centre of the sinking disc, and ‘we sailed by that for we had no other guide,’ quoth Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods, where the crew killed three men whom they found asleep under the pines. Their ghosts, Charlie said, followed the galley, swimming and choking in the water, and the crew cast lots and threw one of their number overboard as a sacrifice to the strange gods whom they had offended. Then they ate sea-weed when their provisions failed, and their legs swelled, and their leader, the red-haired man, killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a year spent among the woods they set sail for their own country, and a wind that never failed carried them back so safely that they all slept at night. This, and much more Charlie told. Sometimes the voice fell so low that I could not catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain. He spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God; for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that ‘tried to sail with us,’ said Charlie, ‘and we beat them back with the handles of the oars.’

The gas jet went out, a burnt coal gave way, and the fire settled with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. Charlie ceased speaking, and I said no word.

‘By Jove!’ he said at last, shaking his head. ‘I’ve been staring at the fire till I’m dizzy. What was I going to say?’

‘Something about the galley-book.’

‘I remember now. It’s twenty-five per cent of the profits, isn’t it?’

‘It’s anything you like when I’ve done the tale.’

‘I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now. I’ve—I’ve an appointment.’ And he left me.

Had not my eyes been held I might have known that that broken muttering over the fire was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords of Life and Death!

When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a little parted.

‘I’ve done a poem,’ he said; and then, quicklv: ‘It’s the best I’ve ever done. Read it.’ He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window.

I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to criticise—that is to say, praise—the poem sufficiently to please Charlie. Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favourite centipede metres had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:

‘The day is most fair, the cheery wind
Halloos behind the hill,
Where he bends the wood as seemeth good,
And the sapling to his will
Riot, O wind; there is that in my blood
That would not have thee still!

‘She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky;
Gray sea, she is mine alone!
Let the sullen boulders hear my cry,
And rejoice tho’ they be but stone!

‘Mine! I have won her, O good brown earth,
Make merry! ’Tis hard on Spring;
Make merry; my love is doubly worth
All worship your fields can bring!
Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth
At the early harrowing!’

‘Yes, it’s the early harrowing, past a doubt,’ I said, with a dread at my heart. Charlie smiled, but did not answer.

‘Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad;
I am victor. Greet me, O Sun,
Dominant master and absolute lord
Over the soul of one!’

‘Well?’ said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.

I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a photograph on the paper—the photograph of a girl with a curly head and a foolish slack mouth.

‘Isn’t it—isn’t it wonderful?’ he whispered, pink to the tips of his ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. ‘I didn’t know; I didn’t think—it came like a thunderclap.’

‘Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?’

‘My God—she—she loves me!’ He sat down repeating the last words to himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed by desk-work,’ and wondered when, where, and how he had loved in his past lives.

‘What will your mother say?’ I asked cheerfully.

‘I don’t care a damn what she says!’

At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told him this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the newly-named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve. Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist’s assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already that She had never been kissed by a man before.

Charlie spoke on and on, and on; while I, separated from him by thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is that we may not remember our first and most beautiful wooings. Were this not so, our world would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.

‘Now, about that galley-story,’ I said still more cheerfully, in a pause in the rush of the speech.

Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. The galley—what galley? Good heavens, don’t joke, man! This is serious! You don’t know how serious it is!’

Grish Chunder was right. Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written.