The next morning he strode in while I was at breakfast, handsome,
erect, deep-chested, the incarnation of physical strength, with a glad
light in his eyes.
"Congratulate me, old man," he cried, gripping my frail shoulder. "I've
three days' extra leave. And more than that, I go out in command of the
regiment. No temporary business but permanent rank. Gazetted in due
course. Bannatyne--that's our colonel--damned good soldier!--has got a
staff appointment. I take his place. I promise you the Fourth King's
Rifles are going to make history. Either history or manure. History for
choice. As I say, Bannatyne's a damned good soldier, and personally as
brave as a lion, but when it comes to the regiment, he's too much on
the cautious side. The regiment's only longing to make things hum, and
I'm going to let 'em do it."
I congratulated him in politely appropriate terms and went on with my
bacon and eggs. He sat on the window-seat and tapped his gaiters with
his cane life-preserver. He wore his cap.
"I thought you'd like to know," said he. "You've been so good to the
old mother while I've been away and been so charitable, listening to my
yarns, while I've been here, that I couldn't resist coming round and
telling you."
"I suppose your mother's delighted," said I.
He threw back his head and laughed, as though he had never a black
thought or memory in the world.
"Dear old mater! She has the impression that I'm going out to take
charge of the blessed campaign. So if she talks about 'my dear son's
army,' don't let her down, like a good chap--for she'll think either me
a fraud or you a liar."
He rose suddenly, with a change of expression.
"You're the only man in the world I could talk to like this about my
mother. You know the sterling goodness and loyalty that lies beneath
her funny little ways."
He strode to the window which looks out on to the garden, his back
turned on me. And there he stood silent for a considerable time. I
helped myself to marmalade and poured out a second cup of tea. There
was no call for me to speak. I had long realized that, whatever may
have been the man's sins and weaknesses, he had a very deep and tender
love for the Dresden china old lady that was his mother. There was
London of the clubs and the theatres and the restaurants and the
night-clubs, a war London full and alive, not dead as in Augusts of
far-off tradition, all ready to give him talk and gaiety and the things
that matter to the man who escapes for a brief season from the
never-ending hell of the battlefield; ready, too, to pour flattery into
his ear, to touch his scars with the softest of its fingers. Yet he
chose to stay, a recluse, in our dull little town, avoiding even the
kindly folk round about, in order to devote himself to one dear but
entirely uninteresting old woman. It is not that he despised London,
preferring the life of the country gentleman. On the contrary, before
the war Leonard Boyce was very much the man about town. He loved the
glitter and the chatter of it. From chance words during this spell of
leave, I had divined hankering after its various fleshpots. For the
sake of one old woman he made reckless and gallant sacrifice. When he
was bored to misery he came round to me. I learned later that in
visiting Wellingsford he faced more than boredom. All of this you must
put to the credit side of his ledger.
There he stood, his great broad shoulders and bull-neck silhouetted
against the window. That broad expanse, a bit fleshy, below the base of
the skull indicates brutality. Never before, to my eyes, had the sign
asserted itself with so much aggression. I had often wondered why,
apart from the Vilboek Farm legend, I had always disliked and
distrusted him. Now I seemed to know. It was the neck not of a man, but
of a brute. The curious repulsion of the previous evening, when he had
carried me into the house, came over me again. From junction of arm and
body protruded six inches of the steel-covered life-preserver, the
washleather that hid its ghastly knob staring at me blankly. I hated
the thing. The gallant English officer--and in my time I have known and
loved a many of the most gallant--does not go about in private life
fondling a trophy reeking with the blood of his enemies. It is the
trait of a savage. That truculent knob and that truculent bull-neck
correlated themselves most horribly in my mind. And again, with a
shiver, I had the haunting flash of a vision of him, out of the tail of
my eye, standing rigid and gaping between the two cars, while my rugged
old Marigold, in a businesslike, old-soldier sort of way, without
thought of danger or death, was swaying at the head of the runaway
horse.
Presently he turned, and his brows were set above unfathomable hard
eyes. The short-cropped moustache could not hide the curious twitch of
the lips which I had seen once before. It was obvious that these few
minutes of silence had been spent in deep thought and had resulted in a
decision. A different being from the gay, successful soldier who had
come in to announce his honours confronted me. He threw down cap and
stick and passed his hand over his crisp brown hair.
"I don't know whether you're a friend of mine or not," he said, hands
on hips and gaitered legs slightly apart. "I've never been able to make
out. All through our intercourse, in spite of your courtesy and
hospitality, there has been some sort of reservation on your part."
"If that is so," said I, diplomatically, "it is because of the defects
of my national quality."
"That's possibly what I've felt," said he. "But it doesn't matter a
damn with regard to what I want to say. It's a question not of your
feelings towards me, but my feelings towards you. I don't want to make
polite speeches--but you're a man whom I have every reason to honour
and trust. And unlike all my other brother-officers, you have no reason
to be jealous--"
"My dear fellow," I interrupted, "what's all this about? Why jealousy?"
"You know what a pot-hunter is in athletics? A chap that is simply out
for prizes? Well, that's what a lot of them think of me. That I'm just
out to get orders and medals and distinctions and so forth."
"That's nonsense," said I. "I happen to know. Your reputation in the
brigade is unassailable."
"In the way of my having done what I'm credited with, it is," he
answered. "But all the same, they're right."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"What I say. They're right. I'm out for everything I can get. Now I'm
out for a V.C. I see you think it abominable. That's because you don't
understand. No one but I myself could understand. I feel I owe it to
myself." He looked at me for a second or two and then broke into a
sardonic sort of laugh. "I suppose you think me a conceited ass," he
continued. "Why should Leonard Boyce be such a vastly important person?
It isn't that, I assure you."
I lit a cigarette, having waved an invitation to join me, which with a
nod he refused.
"What is it, then?"
"Has it ever struck you that often a man's most merciless creditor is
himself?"
Here was a casuistical proposition thrown at my head by the last person
I should have suspected of doing so. It was immensely interesting, in
view of my long puzzledom. I spoke warily.
"That depends on the man--on the nice balance of his dual nature. On
the one side is the power to demand mercilessly; on the other, the
instinct to respond. Of course, the criminal--"
"What are you dragging in criminals for?" he said sharply. "I'm talking
about honourable men with consciences. Criminals haven't consciences.
The devil who has just been hung for murdering three women in their
baths hadn't any dual nature, as you call it. Those murders didn't
represent to him a mountain of debt to God which his soul was summoned
to discharge. He went to his death thinking himself a most unlucky and
hardly used fellow."
His fingers went instinctively into the cigarette-box. I passed him the
matches.
"Precisely," said I. "That was the point I was about to make."
He puffed at his cigarette and looked rather foolish, as though
regretting his outburst.
"We've got away," he said, after a pause, "from what I was meaning to
tell you. And I want to tell you because I mayn't have another chance."
He turned to the window-seat and picked up his life-preserver. "I'm out
for two things. One is to kill Germans--" He patted the covered
knob--and there flashed across my mind a boyhood's memory of
Martin--wasn't it Martin?--in "Hereward the Wake," who had a
deliciously blood-curdling habit of patting his revengeful axe.--"I've
done in eighty-five with this and my revolver. That, I consider, is my
duty to my country. The other is to get the V.C. That's for payment to
my creditor self."
"In full, or on account?" said I.
"There's only one payment in full," he answered grimly, "and that I've
been offering for the past twelve months. And it's a thousand chances
to one it will be accepted before the end of this year. And that, after
all this palaver, is what I've just made up my mind to talk to you
about."
"You mean your death?"
"Just that," said he. "A man pot-hunting for Victoria Crosses takes a
thousand to one chance." He paused abruptly and shot an eager and
curiously wavering glance at me. "Am I boring you with all this?"
"Good Heavens, no." And then as the insistence of his great figure
towering over me had begun to fret my nerves--"Sit down, man," said I,
with an impatient gesture, "and put that sickening toy away and come to
the point."
He tossed the cane on the window-seat and sat near me on a
straight-backed chair.
"All right," he said. "I'll come to the point. I shan't see you again.
I'm going out in command. Thank God we're in the thick of it. Round
about Loos. It's a thousand to one I'll be killed. Life doesn't matter
much to me, in spite of what you may think. There are only two people
on God's earth I care for. One, of course, is my old mother. The other
is Betty Fairfax--I mean Betty Connor. I spoke to you once about
her--after I had met her here--and I gave you to understand that I had
broken off our engagement from conscientious motives. It was an awkward
position and I had to say something. As a matter of fact I acted
abominably. But I couldn't help it." The corners of his lips suddenly
worked in the odd little twitch. "Sometimes circumstances, especially
if a man's own damn foolishness has contrived them, tie him hand and
foot. Sometimes physical instincts that he can't control." He narrowed
his eyes and bent forward, looking at me intently, and he repeated the
phrase slowly--"Physical instincts that he can't control-"
Was he referring to the incident of yesterday? I thought so. I also
believed it was the motive power of this strangely intimate
conversation.
He rose again as though restless, and once more went to the window and
seemed to seek inspiration or decision from the sight of my roses.
After a short while he turned and dragged up from his neck a slim chain
at the end of which hung a round object in a talc case. This he
unfastened and threw on the table in front of me.
"Do you know what that is?"
"Yes," said I. "Your identification disc."
"Look on the other side."
I took it up and found that the reverse contained the head cut out from
some photograph of Betty. After I had handed back the locket, he
slipped it on the chain and dropped it beneath his collar.
"I'm not a damned fool," said he.
I nodded understandingly. No one would have accused him of mawkish
sentiment. The woman whose portrait he wore night and day next his skin
was the woman he loved. He had no other way of proving his sincerity
than by exhibiting the token.
"I see," said I. "What do you propose to do?"
"I've told you. The V.C. or--" He snapped his fingers.
"But if it's the V.C. and a Brigade, and perhaps a Division--if it's
everything else imaginable except--" I snapped my fingers in
imitation--"What then?"
Again the hateful twitch of the lips, which he quickly dissimulated in
a smile.
"I'll begin to try to be a brave man." He lit another cigarette. "But
all that, my dear Meredyth," he continued, "is away from the point. If
I live, I'll ask you to forget this rotten palaver. But I have a
feeling that I shan't come back. Something tells me that my particular
form of extermination will be a head knocked into slush. I'm absolutely
certain that I shall never see you again. Oh, I'm not morbid," he said,
as I raised a protesting hand. "You're an old soldier and know what
these premonitions are. When I came in--before I had finally made up my
mind to pan out to you like this--I felt like a boy who has been made
captain of the school. But all the same, I know I shan't see you again.
So I want you to promise me two things--quite honourable and easy."
"Of course, my dear fellow," said I rather tartly, for I did not like
the wind-up of his sentence. It was unthinkable that an officer and a
gentleman should inveigle a brother-officer into a solemn promise to do
anything dishonourable. "Of course. Anything you like."
"One is to look after the old mother--"
"That goes without promising," said I.
"The other is to--what shall I say?--to rehabilitate my memory in the
eyes of Betty Connor. She may hear all kinds of things about me--some
true, others false--I have my enemies. She has heard things already. I
didn't know it till our last meeting here. There's no one else on God's
earth can do what I want but you. Do you think I'm putting you into an
impossible position?"
"I don't think so," said I. "Go on."
"Well--there's not much more to be said. Try to make her realise that,
whatever may be my faults--my crimes, if it comes to that--I've done my
damndest out there to make reparation. By God! I have," he cried, in a
sudden flash of passion. "See that she realises it. And--" he thumped
the hidden identification disc, "tell her that she is the only woman
that has ever really mattered in the whole of my blasted life."
He threw his half-smoked cigarette into the fire-place and walked over
to the sideboard, where stood decanters and syphon.
"May I help myself to a drink?"
"Certainly," said I.
He gulped down half a whisky and soda and turned on me.
"You promise?"
"Of course," said I.
"She may have reasons to think the worst of me. But whatever I am there
is some good in me. I'm not altogether a worthless hound. If you
promise to make her think the best of me, I'll go away happy. I don't
care a damn whether I die or live. That's the truth. As long as I'm
alive I can take care of myself. I'm not dreaming of asking you to say
a word to win her favour. That would be outrageous impudence. You
clearly understand. I don't want you ever to mention my name unless I'm
dead. If I feel that I've an advocate in you--advocatus diaboli, if you
like--I'll go away happy. You've got your brief. You know my life at
home. You know my record."
"My dear fellow," said I, "I promise to do everything in my power to
carry out your wishes. But as to your record--are you quite certain
that I know it?"
You must realise that there was a curious tension in the situation, at
any rate as far as it affected myself. Here was a man with whom, for
reasons you know, I had studiously cultivated the most formal social
relations, claiming my active participation in the secret motives of
his heart. Since his first return from the front a bluff friendliness
had been the keynote of our intercourse. Nothing more. Now he came and
without warning enmeshed me in this intimate net of love and death. I
promised to do his bidding--I could not do otherwise. I was in the
position of an executor according to the terms of a last will and
testament. Our comradeship in arms--those of our old Army who survive
will understand--forbade refusal. Besides, his intensity of purpose won
my sympathy and admiration. But I loved him none the more. To my
cripple's detested sensitiveness, as he stood over me, he loomed more
than ever the hulking brute. His semi-confessions and innuendoes
exacerbated my feelings of distrust and repulsion. And yet, at the same
tune, I could not--nor did I try to--repress an immense pity for the
man; perhaps less for the man than for the soul in pain. At the back of
his words some torment burned at red heat, remorselessly. He sought
relief. Perhaps he sought it from me because I was as apart as a woman
from his physical splendour, a kind of bodiless creature with just a
brain and a human heart, the ghost of an old soldier, far away from the
sphere of poor passions and little jealousies.
I felt the tentacles of the man's nature blindly and convulsively
groping after something within me that eluded them. That is the best
way in which I can describe the psychology of these strange moments.
The morning sun streamed into my little oak-panelled dining-room and
caught the silver and fruit on the breakfast table and made my frieze
of old Delft glow blue like the responsive western sky. With his back
to the vivid window, Leonard Boyce stood cut out black like a
silhouette. That he, too, felt the tension, I know; for a wasp crawled
over his face, from cheek-bone, across his temples, to his hair, and he
did not notice it.
Instinctively I said the words: "Your record. Are you quite certain
that I know it?"
With what intensity, with what significance in my eyes, I may have said
them, I know not. I repeat that I had a subconsciousness, almost
uncanny, that we were souls rather than men, talking to each other. He
sat down once more, drawing the chair to the table and resting his
elbow on it.
"My record," said he. "What about it?"
Again please understand that I felt I had the man's soul naked before
me. An imponderable hand plucked away my garments of convention.
"Some time ago," said I, "you spoke of my attitude towards you being
marked by a certain reserve. That is quite true. It dates back many
years. It dates back from the South African War. From an affair at
Vilboek's Farm."
Again his lips twitched; but otherwise he did not move.
"I remember," he answered. "My men saw me run away. I came out of it
quite clean."
I said: "I saw the man afterwards in hospital at Cape Town. His name
was Somers. He told me quite a different story."
His face grew grey. He glanced at me for a fraction of a second. "What
did he tell you?" he asked quietly.
In the fewest possible words I repeated what I have set down already in
this book. When I had ended, he said in the same toneless way:
"You have believed that all these years?"
"I have done my best not to believe it. The last twelve months have
disproved it."
He shook his head. "They haven't. Nothing I can do in this world can
disprove it. What that man said was true."
"True?"
I drew a deep breath and stared at him hard. His eyes met mine. They
were very sad and behind them lay great pain. Although I expressed
astonishment, it proceeded rather from some reflex action than from any
realised shock to my consciousness. I say the whole thing was uncanny.
I knew, as soon as he sat down by the table, that he would confess to
the Vilboek story. And yet, at last, when he did confess and there were
no doubts lingering in my mind, I gasped and stared at him.
"I was a bloody coward," he said. "That's frank enough. When they rode
away and left me, I tried to shoot myself--and I couldn't. If the man
Somers hadn't returned, I think I should have waited until they sent to
arrest me. But he did come back and the instinct of self-preservation
was too strong. I know my story about the men's desertion and my
forcing him to back me up was vile and despicable. But I clung to life
and it was my only chance. Afterwards, with the horror of the thing
hanging over me, I didn't care so much about life. In the little
fighting that was left for me I deliberately tried to throw it away. I
ask you to believe that."
"I do," I said. "You were mentioned in dispatches for gallantry in
action."
He passed his hand over his eyes. Looking up, he said:
"It is strange that you of all men, my neighbour here, should have
heard of this. Not a whisper of its being known has ever reached me.
How many people do you think have any idea of it?"
I told him all that I knew and concluded by showing him Reggie Dacre's
letter, which I had kept in the letter-case in my pocket. He returned
it to me without a word. Presently he broke a spell of silence. All
this time he had sat fixed in the one attitude--only shifted once, when
Marigold entered to clear away the breakfast things and was dismissed
by me with a glance and a gesture.
"Do you remember," he said, "a talk we had about fear, in April, the
first time I was over? I described what I knew. The paralysis of fear.
Since we are talking as I never thought to talk with a human being, I
may as well make my confession. I'm a man of strong animal passions.
When I see red, I daresay I'm just a brute beast. But I'm a physical
coward. Owing to this paralysis of fear, this ghastly inhibition of
muscular or nervous action, I have gone through things even worse than
that South-African business. I go about like a man under a curse. Even
out there, when I don't care a damn whether I live or die, the blasted
thing gets hold of me." He swung himself away from the table and shook
his great clenched firsts. "By the grace of God, no one yet has seemed
to notice it. I suppose I have a swift brain and as soon as the thing
is over I can cover it up. It's my awful terror that one day I shall be
found out and everything I've gained shall be stripped away from me."
"But what about a thing like this?" said I, tapping Colonel Dacre's
letter.
"That's all right," he answered grimly. "That's when I know what I'm
facing. That's deliberate pot-hunting. It's saving face as the Chinese
say. It's doing any damned thing that will put me right with myself."
He got up and swung about the room. I envied him, I would have given a
thousand pounds to do the same just for a few moments. But I was stuck
in my confounded chair, deprived of physical outlet. Suddenly he came
to a halt and stood once more over me.
"Now you know what kind of a fellow I am, what do you think of me?"
It was a brutal question to fling at my head. It gave me no time to
co-ordinate my ideas. What was one to make of a man avowedly subject to
fits of the most despicable cowardice from the consequences of which he
used any unscrupulous craftiness to extricate himself, and yet was
notorious in his achievement of deeds of the most reckless courage? It
is a problem to which I have devoted all the months occupied in writing
this book. How the dickens could I solve it at a minute's notice? The
situation was too blatant, too raw, too near bedrock, too naked and
unashamed, for me to take refuge in platitudinous generalities of
excuse. The bravest of men know Fear. They know him pretty intimately.
But they manage to kick him to Hades by the very reason of their being
brave men. I had to take Leonard Boyce as I found him. And I must admit
that I found him a tragically miserable man. That is how I answered his
question--in so many words.
"You're not far wrong," said he.
He picked up cap and stick.
"When I get up to town I shall make my will. I've never worried about
it before. Can I appoint you my executor?"
"Certainly," said I.
"I'm very grateful. I'll assure you a fireworks sort of finish, so that
you shan't be ashamed. And--I don't ask impossibilities--I can't hold
you to your previous promise--but what about Betty Connor?"
"You may count," said I, "on my acting like an officer and a gentleman,
and, if I may say so, like a Christian."
He said: "Thank you, Meredyth. Good-bye." Then he stuck on his cap,
brought his fingers to the peak in salute and marched to the door.
"Boyce!" I cried sharply.
He turned. "Yes?"
"Aren't you going to shake hands with me?"
He retraced the few steps to my chair.
"I didn't know whether it would be--" he paused, seeking for a
word--"whether it would be agreeable."
Then I broke down. The strain had been too great for my sick man's
nerves. I forgot all about the brutality of his bull-neck, for he faced
me in all his gallant manhood and there was a damnable expression in
his eyes like that of a rated dog. I stretched out my hand.
"My dear good fellow," I cried, "what the hell are you talking about?"