No Man's Land Part 25

No bad end, my lord; what say you? I will show you the exact spot some day, and your son's grave near by. I'd have his picture in the gallery if I were you. . . . I've got a snapshot I can let you have, taken in France. But I treasure it; and unless you hang it in the place of honour, amongst the Raeburns--I keep it. Mark you, he deserves that place of honour. . . .

"Captain Johnson's compliments, sir, and are you coming over to have a liqueur at his table?"

The waiter's voice cut in on my thoughts. The band was. .h.i.tting a ragtime stunt; London had dined and was pleased with itself; d.i.c.k and his lady were beckoning. For the moment it felt like coming to from an anaesthetic.

I shook myself and got up. Of course I was drinking a liqueur with them: another gla.s.s of brandy--Jimmy O'Shea's brandy.

"Are you in love?" queried the girl anxiously as I sat down. "You've been muttering to yourself and squinting and d.i.c.kie got worried about you."

"Not more than usual--though I'm glad to learn the symptoms." Then I looked at her, and the wonder of a girl in love hit me almost like a blow. In it lay the answer to my thoughts. No longer a cynical amus.e.m.e.nt in their failure to realise the contrast, but rather a mighty thankfulness. For it is they, in their blessed ignorance, who keep us sane.

I raised my gla.s.s. "To things as they are, my lady," I murmured. And from the land of shadows Jimmy drank with me.

PART III

SEED TIME

I. THE SEED II. THE FIRST LESSON III. AN IMPERSONAL DEMONSTRATION IV. SOMEWHAT MORE PERSONAL V. A PROJECT AND SOME SIDE ISSUES VI. THE SECOND LESSON, AND SOME FURTHER SIDE ISSUES VII. THE THIRD LESSON, AND A DIGRESSION VIII. THE THIRD LESSON IS LEARNED IX. "AND OTHER FELL ON GOOD GROUND"

SEED TIME

I

THE SEED

I have in my mind the tale of a superior young man--a very superior young man, genteel, and thoroughly versed in the intricacies of etiquette. The majority of the human race was, without any loss to itself, unaware that he existed; but the "ladies" and "gentlemen" on the staff of Mogg's Mammoth Emporium viewed him as the supreme arbiter of elegance. And just because the average human being would have a.s.serted--and a.s.serted correctly--that for such as him there is no hope save drowning in puppyhood, I would tell his story. It is the exception which proves the rule. It is the proof that we are the slaves of custom and environment; and that, given something as the bed-rock, much may be done by a good teacher. There was something in this very superior young man as it turned out, though few would have suspected it, had they seen him before the war. But then, no one can ever listen to a person of the male s.e.x proffering a good line of stockings in Lisle thread at one and eleven-three without experiencing a strong desire to be sick. Which goes back to what I said before: the whole thing is one of environment. The stocking vendors knew no better; for want of the necessary teaching they took to their nauseating trade. It's all in the Old Book--how shall they learn, unless they be taught? Had they had the teaching--well, listen to the story of this very superior young "gentleman," one time deputy chief stomach bender of Mogg's Mammoth Millinery Emporium--terms. Strictly Cash. What the sub deputy chief waistcoat creaser will say if he reads these words I shudder to think. You see, the very superior young "gentleman" was _so_ genteel.

A hot morning sun shone down on the outskirts of the town. Nothing moved, nothing stirred; utter silence brooded over the houses that once had been buzzing with people--the people of Arras. Now their only occupants were rats. The little gardens at the back were dank with unchecked weeds, save where a great conical hole showed the clean brown earth. And at the bottom of each of these holes lay a pool of foetid green water. The walls were crumbling, decay was rampant, the place breathed corruption. Occasionally the silence would be broken by a crash, and a little heap of brick rubble would subside into the road, raising a cloud of thick choking dust. Occasionally there would be another sound, like the drone of a great beetle, followed by a dull echoing roar and a bigger cloud of dust. Occasionally would come the ping-phut of a stray bullet; but of human life there was no sign.

Not, that is to say, to the casual observer; but to the man who looked out of the aeroplane circling above much was visible which you or I would not see. To him there came the vision of an occasional move behind some mouldering wall: sometimes an upturned face, sometimes the glint of steel. In one garden by a broken cuc.u.mber frame a man was polishing his bayonet, and the flash from it caught the observer's eye.

Just opposite--thirty yards away--two or three men were sitting round a fire from which the smoke curled slowly up. And the bayonet cleaner was clothed in khaki, while the cookers had on a dirty field grey; between them lay No Man's Land. But to the casual observer--silence: silence and death and the dreadful stink of corruption. Many others had cleaned bayonets and cooked stews under these same conditions, and many in the doing thereof had gone suddenly, and without warning, into the great Silence. For it was a sniper's paradise, as the victims--could they have spoken--would have testified. As it was they lay there lightly buried, and the same fool men made the same fool mistakes and came and joined them. As I say, it was a sniper's paradise. . . .

Into this abode of joy, then, came the very superior young "gentleman."

It was princ.i.p.ally owing to the fact that Miss Belsize--the "lady" who dispensed camisoles, or some equally seductive garments--had flatly refused to accompany him any longer to the High Street Picture Palace if he remained in his frock coat, that our friend had donned khaki.

For a long while he had stoutly affirmed that he was indispensable; then the transfer of affection on the part of camisoles to a dangerous-looking corporal from the wild and woolly West decided him.

He did not like that corporal. No man who, meeting a comparative stranger, beat him on the back painfully, and, having looked his latest glad rags up and down, remarked with painful distinctness, "Lumme! is it real?" could possibly be considered a gentleman. But Miss Belsize had laughed long and laughed loud; and--well, I will not labour the point. In due course our superior one found himself in the haunt of death I have briefly described above, still full of self-importance and as inconceivably ignorant as the majority are who come for the first time to the game across the water.

Recently arrived with a draft it was his initial experience of war in France, in contrast with training in England; in fact, the morning in question was his first visit to the trenches. And because many better men than he have endeavoured to conceal a peculiar sinking of the stomach by an a.s.sumed bravado, let us not blame him for the att.i.tude he endeavoured to take up.

"Pretty quiet, isn't it, corporal?" he remarked airily, as his section came to rest in a trench behind a ma.s.s of broken brick and cobble stones. "Lor', look at that gla.s.s up there, hidden in the stones."

For a moment curiosity mastered him, and he reached up towards it with his hand. The next instant he gave a cry of anger, as a jolt in his ribs with a rifle doubled him up. "What the deuce----" he began angrily.

"Don't you deuce me, my lad," said the corporal dispa.s.sionately, "or you and me will quarrel. Just you do what you're told, and I'll write and tell your ma you're a good little boy." The corporal--a man of few words--went on his way, leaving our hero--whose name by the way was Reginald Simpkins--fuming.

"If that blighter hits me again," he remarked when the N.C.O. was out of hearing, "I'll----"

"You'll what?" An old soldier looked at him scornfully. "He goes an'

saves yer mouldy life and then yer bleats. Got yer bib, Reggie darling?"

"Not so much of your row." The corporal had come back again. "This ain't a ruddy colony of rooks in the nesting season. Now, Simpkins, you and Ginger--first relief. There's your periscope--you can relieve them other two."

"Where's the periscope?" asked Reginald of his companion in a whisper.

"The gla.s.s up there, you flat-faced perisher--hidden in the stones.

Wot d'you think it is? A noyster laying eggs!"

The trench settled down to silence as the company relief was completed, and Reginald morosely nursed his grievance. Much of the gentle flattery to which he had been accustomed at Mogg's Mammoth Emporium seemed conspicuous by its absence in this new sphere in which he found himself. Not to put too fine a point on it, people seemed positively rude at times, even ruder than they had been at home. He confided as much in an aggrieved whisper to the unsympathetic Ginger.

"Rude!" That worthy spat with violence and accuracy. "You wait till you b.u.mp into Shorty Bill. Rude! Gawd! 'E's a 'oly terror."

"Who is Shorty Bill?" queried Reggie, his eyes fixed on the gla.s.s whose mysteries he was beginning to understand.

But Ginger was in no mood for further confidences. "You'll find out fast enough 'oo Shorty is. 'E's down 'ere to-day. You watch that there periscope. This ain't no rest cure--this bit 'ere. It's 'ell."

"It seems pretty quiet," ventured the watcher after a short silence.

"Yus! That's wot the last man said wot I was with behind this wall.

There's 'is brains on that stone behind you."

With an involuntary shudder Reginald looked round at the stone, on which the grim stains still remained. "What did it?" he asked, barely above a whisper.

"Black Fritz," answered the other. "'E's a sniper, what lives opposite; and 'e's paid for 'is keep that swine 'as--paid for 'is keep.

Charlie Turner, an' 'Arry, an' Ginger Woodward, an' n.o.bby Clark, an'

the sergeant-major, an' two orficers. Yus--'e's paid for 'is keep, 'e 'as--'as Master Black Fritz."

"And he's over there," said Reggie, a little breathlessly.

"Yus. Where the 'ell do you think 'e is? In an aeryplane?" Once again Ginger spat dispa.s.sionately, and then relapsed into a silence from which he refused to be drawn until the presence of two more men beside him indicated that the hour of relief had come.

"Now look here, Simpkins," said the corporal when the relief was completed, "this is your first visit to the trenches, isn't it? Well, you can sit down now and have a sleep, or you can write or read if you like. But, whatever you do, don't go showing your ugly face over the top; because this place ain't healthy." He turned away, and Reggie was left to his own resources.

"Come round the corner," said Ginger in his ear. "I'll show you a spot to sleep. I know this 'ere bit like me own back parlour."

And so--had any one been sufficiently interested in his doings to report the fact--it might have been noted that ten minutes later our friend was sitting on the fire step writing a lurid epistle to Miss Belsize, while Ginger lay peacefully asleep beside him, breaking the complete silence with his snores.

At last the letter was finished, and Reggie gave way to meditation.

Everything was so utterly different to what he had antic.i.p.ated that he could hardly believe he was actually in that mystic place the trenches.

To his left a crumbling wall ran along until it bent out of sight, a wall which in most places was three or four feet high, but which at one spot had been broken down until it was almost flush with the ground, and the bricks and rubble littered the weeds. In front of him lay the town, desolate, appalling, with a few rooks cawing discordantly round the windowless houses. And over everything brooded an oppressive hot stinking stillness that almost terrified him. . . .