The Human Boy and the War Part 11

Fourpence had gone on stamps for these four letters, and he was accordingly left with one and eightpence. Subtracting this from five shillings, you will find he still had to raise three shillings and fourpence.

It looked hopeless, and I pointed out there was the additional danger that he might be accused of getting money under false pretences if he didn't collect the lot; but he did not fear that, because, as he said, whatever he might get, he could send to some other charity which was open to take less than five shillings.

There were now seven days left, and he began to get very fidgetty and wretched. He said he was always seeing in his mind's eye a Tommy in the trenches waiting and watching and hoping, between his fights, that Percy minimus would send him one of those grand simultaneous packets. It got on his nerves after a bit, and twice he woke me in the dead of the night in our dormitory sniffing very loud.

I said:

"You're making a toil of a pleasure, Percy."

And he said:

"No, I'm not. Whenever I go to sleep, I dream of my Tommy in the trenches; and the parcels are being given out by Lord French, and my Tommy stretches up his hand eagerly and hopefully; but there's no parcel for him. And he shrugs his shoulders and just bears it, and goes back to his gun; but it's simply h.e.l.l for me."

"What's he like?" I asked, to get Percy minimus off the sad side of it.

"Huge and filthy," said Percy minimus. "He has a brown face and a big, black moustache and one of the new steel hats; and he's plastered with mud, and his eyes roll with craving for cigarettes and chocolates."

"You needn't worry," I said. "He'll get his parcel all right. Of course, they won't miss him."

"What a fool you are, Cornwallis!" he answered, still sniffing. "Can't you see that, if I don't send a parcel, there will be one parcel less; and so one man will go without who would otherwise have had a parcel; and that man will be this one I see in my dreadful dreams."

"If you put it like that," I said--"of course."

Then he had another beastly thought.

"I've got an idea the man is Peac.o.c.k's son," he said. "And I feel a regular traitor to Peac.o.c.k now every time I look at him."

"Then why don't you ask him for some money?" I naturally answered.

"I feel he hasn't got any," replied Percy. "But I can try."

"Besides," I said, "his son may be an officer, and, of course, they would be far above parcels."

"I hope he is," said Percy; "but I don't think he is. And n.o.body would be above a parcel at a time like that."

Anyway he asked Peac.o.c.k, and Peac.o.c.k gave him sixpence, and wished he could do better. This made two and twopence; and the same day Percy found a threepenny piece in the playground; and though, at another time, he would have mentioned this, with a view of returning it to the proper owner, now he didn't, but said it was a Providence, and added it to the rest.

And this gave him another hopeful idea, and he mentioned the parcel for his Tommy in his prayers, morning and evening, and asked me to do so too. I was fed up with the whole thing by now, because Percy was getting fairly tormented by it, and even said he saw the Tommy looking at him in broad daylight sometimes--over the playground wall, or through the window in the middle of a cla.s.s. Still I obliged him, and prayed four times for him to get his two and sevenpence; but there was no reply whatever; and in this way two days were wasted.

Then he had a desperate but brilliant idea, and told me. He said:

"After school on Friday, in the half-hour before tea, I'm going to break bounds and go down into Merivale and stand by the pavement and sing the solo from the anthem we did last Sunday! Many people who sing along by the pavement make money by doing so, and I might."

"If you're caught, Dunston will flog you," I reminded him.

But he was far past a thing like that. His eyes had glittered in rather a wild way for three days now, and he said the Tommy with the black moustache was always looking reproachfully at him, and if he shut his eyes he saw him more distinctly than ever. In fact, he was getting larger and more threatening every minute. He said:

"A mere flogging is nothing to what they endure in the trenches."

It was a sporting idea, and I would have risked it and gone with him; in fact, I offered, being his great chum, but he would not allow me.

"No," he said, "nothing is gained by your coming. This is entirely my affair. Besides, you wouldn't tempt people to subscribe."

So he went, and escaped in the darkness, and I waited at the limit of "bounds" with great anxiety to meet him when he came back. My last word to him was not to sing his bit out of an anthem, but something comic about the War. But he didn't know anything comic about the War, and he said, even if he did, that such a thing would only amuse common people, who could not be supposed to give more than halfpence, if they gave anything at all; whereas a solo from a fine anthem would attract a better cla.s.s, who understood more about music, and were more religious, and consequently had more money.

So he went, and in about twenty minutes, to my great horror, I saw him being brought back in the custody of Brown--our well known master!

The hateful Brown always loves to score off anybody not in his own cla.s.s, and so, seeing Percy warbling out of bounds in the middle of Merivale, and about ten people, mostly kids, listening to him, he pounced on the wretched Percy and dragged him away. He'd been singing about ten minutes when the blow fell, and he was fearfully upset about it, because everything had been going jolly well, and he had already made no less than sevenpence in coppers, all from oldish women. He had been told to go away from in front of a butcher's shop, but n.o.body else had interfered with him in the least, and he had sung the anthem solo through twice, and was just off again when the brutal Brown came along and saw the Merivale colours on his cap, recognized Percy minimus, and very nearly had a fit.

So there it was; and he got flogged, and Dr. Dunston said it showed low tastes, and would have been a source of great sorrow to his father. And he also said that to explode a sacred air in that way in hope of touching the charitable to fill his own pocket was about the limit, and a great disgrace to the school in general. All of which went off Percy like water off a duck's back, and the flogging didn't seem to hurt him either.

And there were four days still, and he said his Tommy grew larger and larger, until he was almost as big as a house. In fact, Percy minimus was rapidly growing dotty, and, as his great friend, I felt I must do something, or he would very likely get some other dangerous illness, or have a fit, or lose his mind for ever and become a maniac in real earnest. So I told Percy minor; but unfortunately he and my Percy had quarrelled rather bitterly for the moment, and Percy minor said he didn't care what happened to Percy minimus; and that if he went out of his mind he wouldn't have far to go; while, as to Percy major, I couldn't tell him, because he had left Merivale the term before.

The matron now discovered that Percy was queer, for she'd been making him take pills for two days, and then one night, hearing him sigh fearfully after he was in bed, she tried his temperature, and found it about three hundred degrees of warmth. So she lugged him off to the sick room, and Dr. Weston came in his motor, and said he couldn't see any reason for it, and gave Percy some muck to calm him down.

Next day he was kept in the sick room, though cooler, and when Dr.

Weston came on that day and questioned Percy in a kind tone of voice, he explained the whole thing to the doctor, and said that he was in fearful difficulties of mind. And Dr. Weston asked him what difficulties, and he said for two shillings, which, added to three, make five.

Then the doctor told him to go on, so he did, and showed the doctor the advertis.e.m.e.nt from the paper about the simultaneous parcels. He also said that his Tommy had now grown as big as a cloud in the sky, and was always looking at him by night and day hungrily, and urging him on to fresh efforts. And he also said that if he was only allowed to go into the streets and sing an anthem for an hour or two, the two shillings would be accomplished, and all would be well. And encouraged by the great interest of Dr. Weston, Percy minimus ventured to ask him if he thought he could ask Dr. Dunston to allow this to be done, seeing it meant great comfort and joy for a Tommy in the trenches on Christmas Day.

It made Percy much cooler and calmer explaining why his temperature had run up, and the doctor said it was undoubtedly not good for Percy to have the Tommy so much on his mind. He didn't approve of the idea of Percy singing either; but he put his hand into his waistcoat pocket and produced a two-shilling piece, as if it was nothing, and he said that if the matron or somebody, would get a postal order for five shillings and send it off at once, he had every reason to think that Percy would soon recover.

Which was done, and I was allowed to see Percy, and bring from his desk the cutting out of the newspaper, which he had already signed with his name and address, which were to go to the Front with his parcel. And Percy said that a great weight had now been lifted from his brain, which no doubt it had.

Anyhow, when Dr. Weston came next day he found Percy in a bath of perspiration, and was much pleased, and said he was practically cured.

And Percy told him that his Tommy had now shrunk to about the size of an ordinary Tommy, and only came when he was asleep, and was not in the least reproachful, but quite pleasant and nice. And one day later the Tommy disappeared altogether, and Percy minimus became perfectly well.

In fact, before the holidays arrived he seemed to have forgotten all about his Tommy, and I took jolly good care not to remind him.

He got fearfully keen about Dr. Weston then, and said that he was the best man he had ever seen or heard of; and he even hoped that next term he might run up to three hundred degrees again--just for the great pleasure of seeing and talking to this doctor once more.

But that wasn't all by any means--in fact, you might say that far the most remarkable part of the adventure of Percy minimus had yet to come.

He went home for the holidays, and when he came back, much to my astonishment, he was full of his blessed Tommy again. He actually said that he'd got a photograph of him!

I thought that coming back to school had made him queer once more, but he wasn't in the least queer, for I saw the photograph with my own eyes.

It was like this: the Tommy who had got the Christmas parcel which Percy's five shillings bought, found Percy's address in it, according to the splendid arrangement of the newspaper, and, though far too busy in the trenches to take any notice of it just then, he was not too busy to smoke the new pipe and the cigarettes and eat the various sweets--no doubt between intervals of fiery slaughter. But he kept Percy's address in his pocket, for he was a good and grateful man; and then, most unfortunately, he was. .h.i.t in the foot by a piece of shrapnel sh.e.l.l, and though far from killed, yet so much wounded that he had to retire from the Front. In fact, he was sent home to recover, and one day in hospital, about a week before the end of the holidays, he had found Percy minimus's name and address in the pocket of his coat, and had written Percy a most interesting letter of four pages, saying that the parcel had been a great comfort to him, and that he had sucked the last peppermint drop only an hour before being shrapnelled. And, having been photographed several times in the hospital by visitors, he sent Percy minimus one. And there he was!

I said it was a jolly interesting thing, and so on; but I couldn't for the moment see why Percy was so frightfully excited about it, because it was quite a possible thing to happen, though, of course, very good in its way, and a letter he would always keep.

And he said:

"You don't seem to see the point, Cornwallis. It's a miracle."

And I said:

"Why?"

And he said: