War and the Weird Part 7

A howl of joy went up from the small fry who had been "ragging" Tim all the time.

Tim sat up and looked about him. He had not fainted, but he felt very sick and dizzy, and n.o.body sympathised with him. A small freckle-faced boy was standing over him.

"The ground _is_ slippery to-day," he grinned, extending a hand to the unfortunate Tim, who lay on the sludgy, squdgy mud gasping like a recently-landed trout.

Tim accepted, and scrambled painfully to his feet. The pomp of battle had departed from him.

A few weeks afterwards, as Tim was walking across the water meadows, he saw a youth of serious and agricultural appearance throwing a poor, defenceless little terrier into the mill stream. Every time the miserable little animal crawled up on to the river bank the youth hurled it into the deep water again. Now, that was the kind of thing that Victor was very down on. In every chapter Victor punished people for cruelty to animals. Victor's blood always boiled at such a sight--moreover, his strong arm always shot out, his eyes always flashed, and the great hulking coward _always_ lay p.r.o.ne at his feet begging for mercy with clasped hands. So Tim gathered together his recollections of Victor's stock phrases, and advanced on the stolid youth:

"You cowardly ruffian! Have you no feelings that you ill-treat a man's best friend in that way?"

The stolid-looking youth seemed slightly astonished. He thrust his face forward and shook his fist under Tim's nose. "Not your blooming business," he said. "You shift."

"You've got no right," began Tim.

"Right!" The youth's note was fierce. Then he took poor Tim by the scruff of his neck, and observed that he had been teaching the pup to swim because he was water-shy, and that it was good for all kinds of pups to know how to swim. Then he pushed Tim into the water after the pup in order to teach him to keep his mouth shut and mind his own business.

Tim went away with the idea (perfectly correct) that the stolid-looking youth's hands that had gripped his neck and the seat of his knickers were very strong, and another impression that even Victor would not have stood an earthly chance against such a fellow. And it was just then that he was aware of a little grey idea floating in the background of his mind that Victor was a bit of a prig--also a fraud. It annoyed him that any such notion should occur to him that the glory of his hero was an illusion, and he shook his head to get rid of it. Then his brain sent a "wireless" that Victor might be all right in a little toy world of his own, peopled entirely by heroes and scoundrels, and with all the scoundrels physically contemptible; but that he would have done less brilliantly in the mixed-up old world that we have got at present.

Suddenly, as from a clear sky, came a bolt of common-sense to Tim, and he realized he had been a fond and foolish jay. And that was why, when he had finished prep that evening, he exchanged a copy, bound in calf, of _Victor the Valiant_ for two oranges and a catapult.

Of course, the reaction set in. Tim was sent up to the station to bring home a new bicycle for the head master, and he was especially warned _not_ to ride it--just to walk it. Of course he tried to ride it down Castle Hill, and collided violently with a milk cart. He returned with what had been a new machine. So the Head made him write out one hundred times:

And since he cannot spend or use aright The little time here given in his trust; But wasteth it in weary underlight Of foolish toil and trouble, strife and l.u.s.t, He naturally clamours to inherit The Everlasting Future that his merit May have full scope--as surely is most just.

And Tim muttered, "All right, keep your hair on, Ben!"

"H'm;" said the Head, overhearing Tim. "Write it out _two_ hundred times for your insolent conduct."

That was the start of his demoralisation. According to the laws of the Medes and Persians, and the laws of Victor the Valiant, disaster and dishonour would be the end of _this_! It was not at all the way Victor would have behaved. As a matter of fact on one occasion when a master had been idiotic enough to give Victor a hundred lines, the valiant one had replied: "Pardon me, sir, but if I may be so presumptuous I think I can call your attention to the fact that you--unintentionally, of course--are treating me too severely." And the master had at once seen the error of his ways and relieved Victor of the imposition.

Tim failed to get the verse written out in the stipulated time and the imposition was trebled. Also he gathered up another hundred lines for "failure to attend prayers" and this placed him in a state of hopeless bankruptcy.

When he wrote home to his mother. Here is what he said:

"DEAREST MOTHER:

"I got two hundred lines for breaking the Head's bicycle yesterday.

Give my love to Dad. I got another hundred lines to-day for not being present at prayers. But don't you worry--I am not really bad--G.o.d has forgotten me, that is all.

"Your loving Son, "TIM."

And Tim--such was his natural depravity--did not much care. So callous and indifferent did he become that he ceased to be hurt when the boys called him "Carrots." In fact he laughed. And as he no longer objected when he was called "Carrots" the boys dropped that name, and the shortest one survived. The boys started to call him "Tims" and in a few months he had won their affection from the lowest f.a.g to the highest lad in the school.

Two years afterwards, by dint of practice and pluck he had so far advanced that he ran second in the quarter-mile at the Sports. Of course this was not very heroic. He was rewarded for this feat of strength with a patent egg-boiler, which was of no sort of use to him, and, as he discovered afterwards, of no use to anybody else. But he was exceedingly proud of the thing and also exceedingly careful to conceal this fact from the other boys.

He became, to sum up his att.i.tude, less and less like Victor. But it is not to be presumed that he was sinking into mental nothingness. He was not perhaps quite so refined in his language as he might have been, he used slang, and sometimes was inclined to hang his hat on the floor and talk back. He was rather untidy in his dress. But certain compensating qualities of the highest value were appearing in Tim. He had gathered to himself a plentiful supply of gumption--genius is all right, but if it comes to a slow-down gumption is better. His hatred of "sw.a.n.k" reached the point of unreasoning prejudice. He made many mistakes; but depend upon this: the man who has never made a mistake has never made anything else worth having.

And Tim never became a great soldier, or a great sailor, or anything great. But he had good spirits, and he concealed about his person a heart of gold; and after he left Thetford Grammar School, boys found that somehow the games in the old playground seemed flat and spiritless.

They said that things weren't as they used to be in Tim's time.

I have told the reader that Tim Gamelyn's father was a retired non-commissioned officer who lived near Dublin on a small private income and a pension. It will be seen that Tim's people did not roll in wealth any to speak of. They owned a small farm with five cows, twenty pigs and a flock of hens. There was beer always in the cellar, bacon hanging up in the kitchen and a bucket of soft soap in the out-house. In the top lean-to room where Tim slept, in the winter time the rain and sleet drifted cheerily in through the cracks and covered the army blankets which covered him. But he didn't lie awake thinking about it--boys like Tim who help on farms start playing shut-eye as soon as they hit the pillow.

Old Sergeant Gamelyn came of an ancestry which, somebody or other of distinction once said--and very truly--is the backbone of the British Army. To put it briefly, if not gracefully, "what old Gamelyn didn't know about soldiering weren't worth knowin'!" He had the ten thousand and ten commandments of the King's Regulations always at his finger tips, and he and his people had served in the same battalion, under the same officers or descendants for generations. There was Michael Gamelyn who fell at Malplaquet; there was another Gamelyn who had served at Minden; four Gamelyns served through the Peninsular. But only one came through to Waterloo. Balaclava, the Indian Mutiny and Spion Kop each claimed a Gamelyn, and when the British troops returned from Lhasa in 1904 they left one Sergeant Royden Gamelyn--resting in peace ten paces to the rear of the Pargo Keeling Gate. Of course Tim Gamelyn grew up in the shadow of these things. There was an old book in his father's oak kit box which Tim loved. In it he read about forgotten drill and manual exercises, the uncomfortable and graceless man[oe]uvres of the rigid but redoubtable men who fought at Waterloo. Also there were pictures in colour of warriors in three-cornered hats, high stocks and powdered wigs. These men Tim worshipped. He had by heart the quaint words of command in which Wellington's men were told to charge a musket with powder and ball. And I doubt not that he could have taken a brigade and marched them to the attack with the best of the old-time sergeants.

Then in August 1914 came the great war, and when Tim suggested going into Dublin to see Colonel Arbuthnot about joining up to that battalion through which all the best of the Gamelyn men had pa.s.sed, his mother tried to laugh. But Tim saw the tears running down her cheeks, as she threw her ap.r.o.n over her head and went out to bring the clothes in off the line. His father then flung out his hand to him and said:

"Good boy, I thought 'twas in you. Good luck."

But when Tim joined his regiment soldiering had taken many new turns.

The modern rifle would not allow men to march into battle with colours flying and bands playing: the old brave way was impossible in the face of machine guns. The pomp and pageantry of battle had departed and there was nothing left but for the attacking party to crawl in a most inelegant fashion upon the ground.

"Down!" cried the sergeant-instructor to poor Tim, who started his lessons in field training with some vague idea about marching on the foe with "head and eyes erect" and with "pace unfaltering and slow." "When you get out to Flanders you will have to get right down on your belly if you want to _live_ a little longer than ten minutes. Extend to five-six-ten paces and get as close to old mother earth as possible and hide your bloomin' selves!"

"Hide yourselves!" thought Tim. "Not thus is it written in my father's book of drill! It plainly said therein that the duty of a soldier was to learn how to die, not to hide from death."

Crushed and dejected he returned that morning to breakfast to wolf a chunk of bread and b.u.t.ter, washed down by dishwater, misnamed tea.

After breakfast he retired to a corner and thought it all out. The words of the Sergeant came back to him: "_Hide yourself if yer want to live!_"

These words stuck in his memory, as words which bring a new light on an outlook will. That was the start of his demoralisation. He was the first of all his line who had been told to hide himself from death. No more the worsted bravery, the pipeclay, lace and scarlet. No more the old military swagger. No more the drummer boy with a waist like a French dancing girl, wrists like Bombardier Wells, and shoulders like a wooden man out of a Noah's Ark. No more the throbbing and growling of the drums; the staccato detonations and the insolent crescendoes of the drums. No more the wild music that the bands played to the men who fought at Minden, Malplaquet and Wynendael. No more the brushing of a comrade's arm one's own, inspiring boldness; no more a thousand red coats marching on the enemy with slow and unfaltering pace. Tim could see the men of his dreams now, in his mind's eye, marching with heads and eyes erect ... see, too, the smoke of continuous volleys bursting out along the steady lines as they fired by sections and companies on their foes. Well, it was all a thing of the past now. It was plainly his duty not to be reckless. "Do not be dashing, do not expose yourself, do not cheer and make a noise," they said; "creep along like a worm in the gra.s.s; be crafty, be wary--and fall down on the face before death."

It did not stop there. Lastly and worst they took away the officers of his dreams. They even dressed them like privates and some were armed with rifles. There were no flashing swords to follow. Not once did he see an officer anything like his father's picture of the Duke of Wellington on the white horse pointing a curly sword to the skies and waving a c.o.c.ked hat. Then there came the day when Tim made his first acquaintance with field training, and beheld a loose and disorderly scramble which men called an advance. To him it seemed just a mob of masterless men, crawling and crouching on the gra.s.s, firing as they pa.s.sed, and bowing cringingly before death. It was a sight he could hardly endure--an exhibition offensive to any soldier whose forbears had learnt to achieve the impossible as a matter of routine and had held firm for half a day at Quatre Bras with never so much as the flicker of an eye-lid. Gad! there could only be one end to this kow-towing to death, and that would be disaster and disgrace.

The long dull plains of northern Europe stretched before Tim's gaze--great undulations of hard, hot earth and waving gra.s.s. He'd been marching all day, and it was hot. Hot!... ye G.o.ds!... On those plains it was like a Turkish bath. Then "down" came the order, and the battalion flung itself to the ground. Oh, but it was good to rest! Towards sunset the clouds piled up blacker and blacker, and some hung frothy over the ridge in the distance. As the sun dropped, the west turned red--all blood red--and he heard the order to march. He heard the word pa.s.sed down the line in half whispers, and the impressive sound of regiments getting under arms came to his ears. Another five miles they marched and halted for tea. Then all the men became very silent--and while they rested they talked in whispers as they watched the awful sky. When it grew dark the flick-flack of lightening played across the sky and it showed the men's faces white and drawn. Presently Tim's Company lieutenant came up with the news that they would not be able to rest until morning as they had antic.i.p.ated. There could be no stopping, for the regiment had to reach the rendezvous at daybreak. As the storm rolled nearer, the wind got up, in puffs--first warm and then cold, and a few drops of rain fell--great drops that fell flop-flop-flop--on Tim's face. With a flash that leapt crackling over the plain, the storm loosed itself. The lightning turned the rain into sheets of glittering silver, and the hot ground fairly boiled. Tim, with a thousand others drenched, and blinded, struggled over the slippery turf. That was a storm. Tim could have seen to read; and the thunder wrestled in the low churning clouds like a million devils, and through it all ran the chorus of wind and lashing rain. Presently the storm lessened and died away, and the rain settled to pour down on them for an hour or so. The squelch-squelch of soaking boots and the creaking of leather equipment was all he heard.

They halted for breakfast, and Tim chewed his rations sitting on the sodden ground in sodden clothes; and as he sipped his lukewarm coffee, he shivered in the coming dawn.

Almost immediately they went on again.

Right before them, at the head of a valley, rose a ridge. In the creepy light it looked miles high and a million spitting points of fire flashed from it. The British guns in the woods at the back then began, and they seemed to have no relation to the unvarying plumes of smoke bursting above the long lines of fresh-turned earth two thousand yards away--no connection with the screeching of the sh.e.l.ls overhead. "Extended order!"

came the command, and Tim with his regiment stumbled forward. His breath came and went in little painful gasps. From the right came a curious gasping choke, and looking, he saw the man next to him throw up his arms and pitch forward on his face. Suddenly he became aware of a peculiar wailing above him, as if the air itself was in torture. Again a long line of fire flashed out ahead of him and again came the wailing sound.

A Boche machine-gun loosed a few belts of cartridges in the spasmodic style of her kind. There was no mistake about it this time--ma.s.sed infantry were sweeping the plain with rifle fire, and the quick-firers were feeling for an opening.

Another man was. .h.i.t--close to Tim. He squealed like a girl; and a fellow near turned a dirty white, stumbled, with a clatter fell in a fainting fit. Tardily the men advanced, and any acute observer would have seen they had little heart in the business. Some hung behind almost unconsciously, and had to be hurried up by the sergeants. The bullets became more thick. A man started to blubber behind. "Gawd 'ave mercy! I ... I can't stand it! I won't go on!" he whined. It turned out to be a sergeant, who had broken down too. He'd had little rest, poor chap, through shepherding his company ... and now he had knocked under. The company swayed and hesitated. Some of them faced round. It was touch and go. "Steady there! Steady! Come on, men;" said Stansfield, the little company lieutenant, as the men wavered on the grey edge of collapse.

"Steady that company; what in h.e.l.l's the matter with 'em. Keep your men up and going, Sir!" shouted a captain rushing over. But the company had gone all to pieces. The fire of battle had departed from them, and it flung itself on the ground. And soon the whole battalion was taking cover in the same way. A captain called on Tim's company to advance. Two men obeyed and one of them was Tim. But the enemy's fire redoubled and the other man was shot, and so Tim at once took cover again. The saying of his sergeant-instructor in England came to his mind, that a man must lie down and hide if he wished to live, and he felt quite justified in hugging the earth. Tim ached in every inch of his body. Surely something was snapping in his brain, for those dusty khaki figures on the ground, the sky, the earth all seemed to be dancing madly about him.

It was not yet light and Tim strained his eyes to pierce the darkness.

Then he made a discovery. A dark ma.s.s, like some prehistoric monster, was gradually approaching. Tim spoke to a man next to him who was softly swearing and bandaging a shattered hand. He peered through the light and half-light of dawn, and then started to laugh in a nervous way. "h.e.l.l, mate;" he said, "the whole German race are advancing against us; it's all up with us. Look, they are coming on like a solid wall ... springing out of the earth just solid ... no end to 'em."

It was just about that time that Tim observed a light mist rising in front of him. It seemed to scintillate and sparkle as it rose, and curled in a sort of pillar or spiral. "Great Heaven!" he whispered to himself, "the thing is taking shape."

And true enough, in a very few moments he saw standing erect in front of him a tall man--and he was dressed in shining armour; that was the strange thing about him. A strange-looking fellow this! He was more like a Spaniard than an Englishman, with black eyes and olive complexion. His expression was lofty and n.o.ble, and his tall lithe figure was in strict accordance with British traditions. So were the bold features, which were rather marred by a white scar which stretched from his left nostril to the angle of his jaw. But the jet-black hair and the eyes--the deep, dark, challenging eyes--were those of Seville. A straight sword by his side and a painted long-bow at his shoulder proclaimed him a bowman. A white surcoat with the red lion of St. George upon it covered his broad chest, while a sprig of new-plucked furze at the side of his steel cap gave a touch of gaiety to his grim war-worn clothes.

No sooner had Tim looked up than a deep rich voice exclaimed:

"_Corpus Domini!_ do you need a leader?"

Tim was not a man to be easily startled, and with the bullets whining and ping-thudding all around him, it was no manner of a time to be easily startled. But the voice, on account of its unearthly sound, fairly made him jump. He picked up his rifle, and stood upright. "Come along! Come along!" the voice went on. "Why dost stand there, De Gamelyn?"