Tell England Part 61

The memories made my breath come fast and jerkily. With madly exalted words I addressed that slight fair-haired figure, which must now for ever be only a memory. "_My_ friend," I said to it; "_mine, mine!_" In the freshness of my loss, I thought no lover had ever loved as I did. "I loved you--I loved you--I loved you," I repeated. And I even worked myself up into a weary longing to die.

Pennybet had led the way, and Doe now was following him. And why should not I complete the story? Why not? Why not?

My brain was pulsing thus tempestuously when Monty drew near me. I affected not to notice his coming, but when he sat down beside me I decided to speak first. I felt it would be a supreme relief to hurt him with the news that I had abandoned his ideal, and let my spiritual life collapse. So, without looking at him, I said angrily:

"There's no beauty in it."

"Rupert, you're wrong," he answered, "and you'll see it when you are less unhappy." He paused. "Doe--Edgar used to worry himself because he thought that any really good thing that he did was spoiled by a desire for glory. He often said that he wanted to do a really perfect thing. And, Rupert, this afternoon he told me that, when he went forward to put out that gun, he felt quite alone. He seemed surrounded with smoke and flying dust. And he thought he would do one big deed unseen.... He did his perfect thing at the last."

"There's no beauty," I repeated dully.

"Rupert, Edgar is dead.... And there's only one unbeautiful thing about his death, and that is the way his friend is taking it."

Monty stopped, and both of us watched the sun go down behind Imbros.

It was throwing out golden rays like the spokes of a wheel. These rays caught the flaky clouds above Samothrace, and just pencilled their outline with a tiny rim of gold and fire. And the hills of Imbros, as always in the aegean Sea, turned purple.

"There's no beauty in death and burial and corruption," I said.

"Yes, there is, even in them. There's beauty in thinking that the same material which goes to make these earthly hills and that still water should have been shaped into a graceful body, and lit with the divine spark which was Edgar Doe. There's beauty in thinking that, when the unconquerable spark has escaped away, the material is returned to the earth, where it urges its life, also an unconquerable thing, into gra.s.s and flowers. It's harmonious--it's beautiful."

This time I forbore to repeat my obstinate denial.

"And your friendship is a more beautiful whole, as things are. Had there been no war, you'd have left school and gone your different roads, till each lost trace of the other. It's always the same. But, as it is, the war has held you in a deepening intimacy till--till the end. It's--it's perfect."

"It'll be more perfect," I answered, in a low, hollow voice, "if the war ends us both. Perhaps it will. There is time yet."

At so bitter a sentence Monty gave me a look, and broke through all barriers with a single generous remark.

"Rupert, old chap, the loss of Edgar leaves _me_ numb with pain, but I know I'm not suffering like you."

A dry sob tore up my frame.

"Oh, I don't know what I feel," I gulped, "or what I've said. I think I've been a self-centred cad. I'm--I'm sorry."

Monty muttered something gentle, and left me reclining on the Bluff and looking out to sea. I didn't turn my head to watch him go. But I was thinking now less stormily.

Yes, I had been behaving like a fool: but I had been mad, as though everything had snapped. To-morrow I would recover my mental balance and resume moral effort. My last loyalty to Doe should be this: that I would not let his death destroy his friend's ideals. That, as Monty said, would spoil the beauty of it all. And I, least of any, should spoil it! But to-night--just for to-night--my fretful, contrary mood must play itself out. To-morrow I would begin again.

So I lay watching the changing lights. Darkness came close behind the sunset, and there, yonder, Orion hung low in the sky. I tossed a few stones down the Bluff, but soon it was too dark to see them after they had travelled a little distance. Overhead the sky deepened to the last blue of night, but along the western horizon it remained a luminous sea-green. Against this bright afterglow the hills of Imbros stood almost black. I stared at them. Then the luminous green turned to the blue of the zenith, and the hills were lost. And the cold of the Gallipoli night chilled me, as I lay there, too indolent and despairing to seek warmth.

CHAPTER XVI

THE HOURS BEFORE THE END

--1

On the following day we buried Doe at sundown. In a grave on Hunter Weston Hill, which slopes down to W Beach, he lies with his feet toward the sea.

The same evening the medical orderly abused my confidence and informed the doctor that I was running a high temperature; and the doctor told me to pack up, as he was sending me to hospital. I refused.

I pointed out to him that if I, as a Company Commander, were to go sick at this juncture of the Gallipoli campaign, I could never again look the men of my company in the face. I tried to be funny about it. I asked him if he knew that Suvla had been evacuated; and that the Turks had therefore their whole Suvla army released to attack us on h.e.l.les--to say nothing of unlimited reinforcements pouring through Servia from Germany. I offered him an even bet that a few days hence we should either be lying dead in the scrub at h.e.l.les, or marching wearily to our prison at Constantinople. How, then, could I desert my men at this perilous moment? "The Germans are coming, oh dear, oh dear," I summed up; and then shivered, as I remembered whose merry voice had first chanted those words.

All this I explained to the doctor, but I did not tell him that, when I discovered my abnormal temperature, I had felt a quick spring of joy bubbling up, for here was an excuse for getting out of this Gallipoli, of which I was so sick and tired; and then I had remembered how, in loyalty to Doe, I had replaced my old ideals, and by their light I must stay. I must only leave the Peninsula when I could leave it with honour of holding h.e.l.les for the Empire.

In the end the doctor and I compromised. He said he would not send me to hospital, but that I must go down to the dump, and take things easy for a few days. From there I could be summoned, since I took myself so devilish seriously, to die with my men when the ma.s.sacre began. I told him that the dump was too far back, but that, if he liked, I would go and live with Padre Monty in the Eski Line.

So a few days before Christmas I arrived with my batman and my kit at Monty's tiny sand-bag dug-out. He gave me a joyous welcome, stating that he would order the maids to light the fire in the best bedroom and air the sheets. Meanwhile, would I step into his study?

--2

"I'm glad," said I to Monty at breakfast the next morning, "that I shall spend Christmas alone with you here. I couldn't have stood just now a riotous celebration with the regiment."

"Of course not," he agreed, and we both kept a silence in honour of the dead.

"Though I doubt if it'll be a riotous Christmas for anyone," I resumed. "Probably the last most of us will ever know."

"Stuff!" murmured Monty.

"'Tisn't stuff. Have you seen the Special Order of the Day that has been printed and stuck up everywhere, congratulating us on our attack of December 19, which, it says, 'contributed largely to the successful evacuation of Suvla,' and telling us that to our Army Corps 'has been entrusted the honour of holding h.e.l.les for the Empire'?"

"Heavens!" he muttered. "We can't do it."

"Of course we can't; and we can't quit."

"Not without being wiped out," he agreed.

"Exactly. I wonder what it'll feel like, having a Turco bayonet in one's stomach."

"Rupert," said Monty suddenly, "we've had a bad jar, and we're getting morbid. Cheer up. Muddly old Britain will get us out of this mess. And now we're jolly well going to make all we can out of this Christmas. It'll certainly be the most _piquant_ of our lives.

_Adams!_"

"Sir?" Monty's batman appeared at the dug-out door in answer to the call.

"Get your entrenching tool. We're going to dig up a little fir for a Christmas tree."

So we spent the next days making our Christmas preparations, determined to keep the feast. We decorated the sand-bag cabin--oh, yes! Over the pictures of our people, pinned to the sand-bag walls, we placed sprigs of a small-leaf holly that grew on the Peninsula.

We planted the little fir in a disused petrol-tin, and, after a visit to the canteen, decorated it with boxes of Turkish delight, sticks of chocolate, packets of chewing-gum, oranges, lemons, soap, and bits of Government candles. It was a Christmas tree of some distinction. And mistletoe? No, we couldn't find any mistletoe, but then, as Monty said, it would have no point on Gallipoli, there being no--just so; when we should be home again for Christmas of next year, we would claim an extra kiss for 1915.

"Pest! Rupert," exclaimed Monty, "we've forgotten to send any Christmas cards. To work at once!"

We sat down at the tiny table and cut notepaper into elegant shapes, sticking on it little bits of Turkish heather, and printing beneath: "A Slice of Turkey" (which we thought a very happy jest); "Heather from Invaded Enemy Territory. Are we downhearted? NO! Are we going to win? YES!"

And by luck there arrived a parcel from Mother with a cake. Of plum pudding we despaired, till one fine morning there came a present (half a pound per man) of that excellent comestible from the _Daily News_ (whom the G.o.ds preserve and prosper).

"All is now ready," proclaimed Monty.