The Blower of Bubbles Part 19

"Oh, well, Mr. Montague"--the little woman looked frankly into his gray-blue, unreadable eyes--"the biby's a boy, and when he grows up I cawn't say to 'im, ''Arry, your father was a slacker!' Now, can I, Mr.

Montague?"

He made no answer, but a thoughtful look crept into the hard, unsmiling eyes.

"Come and have a bit of supper, pard?" Private Waller rubbed his hands together at the prospect.

"No--no, thanks," said Montague hastily. He was longing for privacy and the solace that comes with solitude. "Some other night, perhaps, when we have our uniforms."

"Good enough!" cried the cheery little man. "Then we'll do Queen Street together and show the girls--what ho--oh no!"

Montague raised his hat. "Good evening," he said.

"So long," said Private Waller. "See you in the morning."

When they were alone the husband turned to his young wife with an air of pride. "What do you think of my pal?" he asked, with an air of proprietorship.

"G'wan," said Emily disdainfully; "'e ain't your pal."

"He is, too."

"'E ain't!" She tossed her head. "Don't I know one when I sees one; me, the daughter of a footman in Lady Sw.a.n.kbourne's? 'E your pal! 'E blooming well ain't--'e's a _gentleman_!"

Far up the street Montague was striding towards his home, wondering if any one had seen him with the Wallers, or had heard the garrulous little c.o.c.kney call him pard. Good heavens! what would his friends say; or, for that matter, how could he face Sylvester if he had been seen by that polite scion of servitude? "But I'll see it through," he muttered savagely, biting his lip, "if only to prove that the under-dog, like all other dogs, is a thing without a soul!"

VIII

It was early in November about eighteen months later that Vera Dalton, returning from her self-imposed task at a Military Convalescent Home, found a letter awaiting her which bore the heading that will cast its unique spell over us and our children for generations to come--"Somewhere in France."

Sorrow had come into her home, as it had into so many hundreds of others, but it had mellowed, not marred her womanliness.

Into the vortex of the nations she had seen the young men of Canada flinging themselves with laughing voices and st.u.r.dy courage. With the other women of the city she had watched the endless stream of youth as though, across the seas, some Hamelin Piper were playing an irresistible, compelling melody.... And still the cry was for more--more sons, more brothers, more fathers! Month after month the ceaseless crusade went on--month after month new battalions sprang into being, trained a short time, and then made for the sea.... Always the sea, waiting with its foaming restlessness to carry its human cargo to the slaughter.

The sea ... the sea....

It became the symbol of sacrifice to her. Across its turbulent expanse, youth was forfeiting its life for the blindness of the past. The hungry fire of war was being fed with human hearts.... But such is the nature of fire that what lives through it is imperishable.

A year ago Montague had gone with his battalion--without even a good-bye. She had never heard of him, but the ordeal of the flames had left him stripped of his artificiality as a tree stricken by a sudden frost is robbed in a moment of its foliage. It is not only the best in men that lives through war--vile pa.s.sions vie with courage and great sacrifice.... But artificial things succ.u.mb and crumple with the scorching heat, and are blown into s.p.a.ce by the breath of pa.s.sions, base or n.o.ble--it matters not--they are _real_.

With trembling hands she opened the letter.

"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE.

"MY DEAR GIRL,--In a couple of hours we are going over the parapet to reach the German lines or gain oblivion--or worse. All around me the men I have worked with, slept with, fought with, are writing to, or thinking of, some loved one at home. I do not know whether the love you once felt for me has died or not, but it was once strong enough to hurt me as no one had ever done before--to tear my soul out to where I could see its rottenness with my own eyes. I could not live with myself after that, and as you must have heard, for I believe it was a drawing-room jest for some time, I joined a battalion composed almost entirely of men from the factories, the workshops, and the streets.

"It was partly a spirit of bravado made me do it, and partly a desire to wrestle with truth. I cannot say how hard it was at first to endure their company, their incessant, meaningless profanity. I hated every one of them. To salute an officer in the street caused me such humiliation that I thought of desertion a dozen times. From my contempt of my fellow-soldiers to an understanding of their n.o.bility has been a hard, cruel road to travel; but I have traveled it, and I think that somewhere on the road there is a cross whereon my pride was crucified. Vera, my prayer is no longer that of the Pharisee, but of the Publican. I was offered a commission; I was urged to join the signalers or the machine-gun section, because there I should find men more after my own stamp; but I refused--the memory of your words made me stick with the men I started with.

"I have found them crude, uneducated, unambitious, but true as steel, and asking no better reward for their heroism than that their 'missus and kids' will be looked after at home. I tell you, Vera, that when the war is over we shall have to realize that it is not only the consumptive and the imbecile that deserve care and thought. There is a grandeur, a manhood, in the ordinary, unlovely, unkempt man of the streets that our civilization has failed to bring out, but war has done it. So much has war given to us; so much has peace failed to give.

"Life has become a riddle to me, still fascinating, but fascinatingly puzzling. Perhaps I shall find the answer in No Man's Land.

"Good-bye, dear girl. Don't think from the tone of my letter that I have forgotten how to smile (this is where real humor is found, for humor was always a twin to tragedy). But I am forgetting how to scoff. I suppose, though, that I haven't changed beyond recognition, for I believe behind my back I am called 'The Duke.'

"Like my comrades, I have written to a loved one at home.

"I trust, Vera, that it is _au revoir_.

"DENNIS.

"D. O. Montague, Pte. No. 67,895, "Brindle's Battalion, C.E.F."

IX

"Four minutes!" A subaltern, who had reached the Brindle's Battalion only the night before, stood with his back to the parapet, his wrist turned so that he could study the face of his watch. Half-a-dozen rifles spat at the German trench opposite. The attack was to be a surprise, without preliminary artillery fire.

"Three minutes!" There was a slight catch in the lieutenant's voice as he watched the ominous course of the hand of his watch ticking off the seconds. Dennis Montague turned to look at him, wondering where he had seen him before, and idly conjecturing how he had earned that little splash of color on his breast.

A signaler looked up from his phone. "O.C. wants to know if everything is ready, sir."

"Two minutes! Has every man his gas-helmet, water-bottle, iron ration?

Right. Tell the O.C. everything's O.K."

There was a coa.r.s.e jest from a grizzled corporal; a few laughed nervously. A little chap, who had lied about his age, caught his breath in a sob he could not stifle. The young officer, who was beside him, reached out his hand and patted the lad's shoulder.

"One minute!" Every man crouched for the spring--there was a mumbled prayer--a curse--a laugh. Montague took a deep, quivering breath, and his trembling hand felt for the bayonet-stud to see that it was firm.

"Come on, Brindles! Give 'em h.e.l.l!" The subaltern leaped to the parapet, stood silhouetted a moment against the dull, cloudy sky, and, without a word, fell back into the trench--a corpse. And in that moment Montague remembered him. He was the "decent enough fellow"--"lacking in initiative."

Cursing, shouting, laughing, the men scrambled over the breastwork, and were met by a torrent of machine-gun fire that swept through their ranks with pitiless accuracy.

"Something's wrong!" yelled Major Watson from the center. "They knew we were coming;" and he whirled around twice and dropped in his tracks.

Montague leaped forward with a hoa.r.s.e, inarticulate shout, when he felt a blow on his arm as though it had been struck by a red-hot iron. He fell, but rose immediately, madly excited, muttering words that meant nothing. The charge had stopped halfway, and all about him his comrades stood irresolute, desperate, unable to advance, determined not to retreat.

"Come on," shrieked the adjutant, "for G.o.d's sake!" And he fell, choking, vomiting blood, with a bullet in his throat.

Without an officer left, the men looked wildly about, the bullets spitting around them and taking their steady, merciless toll. With a great feeling of ecstasy, Montague staggered to the front.

"Steady, the Brindles!" he yelled hoa.r.s.ely. "Shake out the line to the left--cold steel, Brindles! Come on!"

"Follow the Duke!" roared a dozen voices; and they hurled themselves forward.

They hacked their way into the trench, but their triumph was short-lived. Things had gone badly on the left, and the signal to retire flashed along the line. With horrible blaspheming, the Brindles gave up their trench and started back for their own line. When he was half-way across a bullet struck Montague in the shoulder, then another in the thigh, and he sank to the ground unconscious.

When he awoke the moonlight was streaming over the stricken field. He bit his lip to keep from crying out at the sudden spasm of pain in his shoulder, and then something he saw almost stopped the beating of his heart. A figure was slowly crawling towards him, inch by inch, but steadily, ominously coming nearer with every moment. His left arm was helpless, and he tried to reach for his bayonet by turning over.

"Pard, are you dead?"