Mrs. Boyce was shown into my study, her comely Dresden china face very
white and her hands shaking. She held a telegram. I had seen faces like
that before. Every day in England there are hundreds thus stricken. I
feared the worst. It was a relief to read the telegram and find that
Boyce was only wounded. The message said seriously wounded, but gave
consolation by adding that his life was not in immediate danger. Mrs.
Boyce was for setting out for France forthwith. I dissuaded her from a
project so embarrassing to the hospital authorities and so fatiguing to
herself. In spite of the chivalry and humanity of our medical staff,
old ladies of seventy are not welcome at a busy base hospital. As soon
as he was fit to be moved, I assured her, he would be sent home, before
she could even obtain her permits and passes and passport and make
other general arrangements for her journey. There was nothing for it
but her Englishwoman's courage. She held up her hand at that, and went
away to live, like many another, patiently through the long hours of
suspense.
For two or three days no news came. I spent as much time as I could
with my old friend, seeking to comfort her.
On the third morning it was announced in the papers that the King had
been graciously pleased to confer the Victoria Cross on Lt. Colonel
Leonard Boyce for conspicuous gallantry in action. It did not occur in
a list of honours. It had a special paragraph all to itself. Such
isolated announcements generally indicate immediate recognition of some
splendid feat. I was thrilled by the news. It was a grand achievement
to win through death to the greatest of all military rewards
deliberately coveted. Here, as I had strange reason for knowing, was no
sudden act of sublime valour. The final achievement was the result of
months of heroic, almost suicidal daring. And it was repayment of a
terrible debt, the whole extent of which I knew not, owed by the man to
his tormented soul.
I rang up Mrs. Boyce, who replied tremulously to my congratulations.
Would I come over and lunch?
I found a very proud and tearful old lady. She may not have known the
difference between a platoon and a howitzer, and have conceived the
woolliest notions of the nature of her son's command, but the Victoria
Cross was a matter on which her ideas were both definite and correct.
She had spent the morning at the telephone receiving calls of
congratulation. A great sheaf of telegrams had arrived. Two or three of
them were from the High and Mighty of the Military Hierarchy. She was
in such a twitter of joy that she almost forgot her anxiety as to his
wounds.
"Do you think he knows? I telegraphed to him at once."
"So did I."
She glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece.
"How long would it take for a telegram to reach him?"
"You may be sure he has it by now," said I, "and it has given him a
prodigious appetite for lunch."
Her face clouded over. "That horrid tinned stuff. It's so dangerous. I
remember once Mary's aunt--or was it Cook's aunt--one of them any
way--nearly died of eating tinned lobster--ptomaine poisoning. I've
always told Leonard not to touch it.
"They don't give Colonels and V.C.s tinned lobster at Boulogne," I
answered cheerfully. "He's living now on the fat of the land."
"Let us hope so," she sighed dubiously. "It's no use my sending out
things for him, as they always go wrong. Some time ago I sent him three
brace of grouse and three brace of partridges. He didn't acknowledge
them for weeks, and then he said they were most handy things to kill
Germans with, but were an expensive form of ammunition. I don't quite
know what he meant--but at any rate they were not eatable when they
arrived. Poor fellow!" She sighed again. "If only I knew what was the
matter with him."
"It can't be much," I reassured her, "or you would have heard again.
And this news will act like a sovereign remedy."
She patted the back of my hand with her plump palm. "You're always so
sympathetic and comforting."
"I'm an old soldier, like Leonard," said I, "and never meet trouble
halfway."
At lunch, the old lady insisted on opening a bottle of champagne, a
Veuve Clicquot which Leonard loved, in honour of the glorious occasion.
We could not drink to the hero's health in any meaner vintage, although
she swore that a teaspoonful meant death to her, and I protested that a
confession of champagne to my medical adviser meant a dog's rating. We
each, conscience-bound, put up the tips of our fingers to the glasses
as soon as Mary had filled them with froth, and solemnly drank the
toast in the eighth of an inch residuum. But by some freakish chance or
the other, there was nothing left in that quart bottle by the time Mary
cleared the table for dessert. And to tell the honest truth, I don't
think the health of either my hostess or myself was a penny the worse.
Let no man despise generous wine. Treated with due reverence it is a
great loosener of human sympathy.
Generous ale similarly treated produces the same effect. Marigold,
driving me home, cocked a luminous eye on me and said:
"Begging your pardon, sir, would you mind very much if I broke the neck
of that there Gedge?"
"You would be aiding the good cause," said I, "but I should deplore the
hanging of an old friend. What has Gedge been doing?"
Marigold sounded his horn and slowed down round a bend, and, as soon as
he got into a straight road, he replied.
"I'm not going to say, sir, if I may take the liberty, that I was ever
sweet on Colonel Boyce. People affect you in different ways. You either
like 'em or you don't like 'em. You can't tell why. And a Sergeant,
being, as you may say, a human being, has as much right to his private
feelings regarding a Colonel as any officer."
"Undoubtedly," said I.
"Well, sir, I never thought Colonel Boyce was true metal. But I take it
all back--every bit of it."
"For God's sake," I cried, stretching out a foolish but instinctive
hand to the wheel, "for God's sake, control your emotions, or you'll be
landing us in the ditch."
"That's all right, sir," he replied, steering a straight course. "She's
a bit skittish at times. I was saying as how I did the Colonel an
injustice. I'm very sorry. No man who wasn't steel all through ever got
the V.C. They don't chuck it around on blighters."
"That's all very interesting and commendable," said I, "but what has it
to do with Gedge?"
"He has been slandering the Colonel something dreadful the last few
months, sneering at him, saying nothing definite, but insinuatingly
taking away his character."
"In what way?" I asked.
"Well, he tells one man that the Colonel's a drunkard, another that
it's women, another that he gambles and doesn't pay, another that he
pays the newspapers to put in all these things about him, while all the
time in France he's in a blue funk hiding in his dugout."
"That's moonshine," said I. And as regards the drinking, drabbing, and
gaming of course it was. But the suggestion of cowardice gave me a
sharp stab of surprise and dismay.
"I know it is," said Marigold. "But the people hereabouts are so
ignorant, you can make them believe anything." Marigold was a man of
Kent and had a poor opinion of those born and bred in other counties.
"I met Gedge this morning," he continued, and thereupon gave me the
substance of the conversation. I hardly think the adjectives of the
report were those that were really used.
"So your precious Colonel has got the V.C.," sneered Gedge.
"He has," said Marigold. "And it's too great an honour for your
inconsiderable town."
"If this inconsiderable town knew as much about him as I do, it would
give him the order of the precious boot."
"And what do you know?" asked Marigold.
"That's what all you downtrodden slaves of militarism would like to
find out," replied Gedge. "The time will come when I, and such as I,
will tear the veils away and expose them, and say 'These be thy gods, O
Israel.'"
"The time will come," retorted Marigold, "when if you don't hold your
precious jaw, I and such as I will smash it into a thousand pieces. For
twopence I'd knock your ugly head off this present minute."
Whereupon Gedge apparently wilted before the indignant eye of Sergeant
Marigold and faded away down the High Street.
All this in itself seemed very trivial, but for the past year the
attitude of Gedge had been mysterious. Could it be possible that Gedge
thought himself the sole repository of the secret which Boyce had so
desperately confided to me? But when had the life of Gedge and the
military life of Leonard Boyce crossed? It was puzzling.
Well, to tell the truth, I thought no more about the matter. The glow
of Mrs. Boyce's happiness remained with me all the evening. Rarely had
I seen her so animated, so forgetful of her own ailments. She had taken
the rosiest view of Leonard's physical condition and sunned herself in
the honour conferred on him by the King. I had never spent a pleasanter
afternoon at her house. We had comfortably criticised our neighbours,
and, laudatores temporis acti, had extolled the days of our youth. I
went to bed as well pleased with life as a man can be in this
convulsion of the world.
The next morning she sent me a letter to read. It was written at
Boyce's dictation. It ran:
"Dear Mother:
"I'm sorry to say I am knocked out pro tem. I was fooling about where a
C.O. didn't ought to, and a Bosch bullet got me so that I can't write.
But don't worry at all about me. I'm too tough for anything the Bosches
can do. To show how little serious it is, they tell me that I'll be
conveyed to England in a day or two. So get hot-water bottles and bath
salts ready.
"Your ever loving Leonard."
This was good news. Over the telephone wire we agreed that the letter
was a justification of our yesterday's little merrymaking. Obviously, I
told her, he would live to fight another day. She was of opinion that
he had done enough fighting already. If he went on much longer, the
poor boy would get quite tired out, to say nothing of the danger of
being wounded again. The King ought to let him rest on his laurels and
make others who hadn't worked a quarter as hard do the remainder of the
war.
"Perhaps," I said light-heartedly, "Leonard will drop the hint when he
writes to thank the King for the nice cross."
She said that I was laughing at her, and rang off in the best of
spirits.
In the evening came Betty, inviting herself to dinner. She had been on
night duty at the hospital, and I had not seen her for some days. The
sight of her, bright-eyed and brave, fresh and young, always filled me
with happiness. I felt her presence like wine and the sea wind and the
sunshine. So greatly did her vitality enrich me, that sometimes I
called myself a horrid old vampire.
As soon as she had greeted me, she said in her downright way:
"So Leonard Boyce has got his V.C."
"Yes," said I. "What do you think of it?"
A spot of colour rose to her cheek. "I'm very glad. It's no use, Majy,
pretending that I ignore his existence. I don't and I can't. Because I
loved and married someone else doesn't alter the fact that I once cared
for him, does it?"
"Many people," said I, judicially, "find out that they have been
mistaken as to the extent and nature of their own sentiments."
"I wasn't mistaken," she replied, sitting down on the piano stool, her
hands on the leathern seat, her neatly shod feet stretched out in front
of her, just as she had sat on her wedding eve talking nonsense to
Willie Connor. "I wasn't mistaken. I was never addicted to silly
school-girl fancies. I know my own mind. I cared a lot for Leonard
Boyce."
"Eh bien?" said I.
"Well, don't you see what I'm driving at?"
"I don't a bit."
She sighed. "Oh, dear! How dull some people are! Don't you see that,
when an affair like that is over, a woman likes to get some evidence of
the man's fine qualities, in order to justify her for having once cared
for him?"
"Quite so. Yet--" I felt argumentative. The breach, as you know,
between Betty and Boyce was wrapped in exasperating obscurity. "Yet, on
the other hand," said I, "she might welcome evidence of his
worthlessness, so as to justify her for having thrown him over."
"If a woman isn't a dam-fool already," said Betty, "and I don't think
I'm one, she doesn't like to feel that she ever made a dam-fool of
herself. She is proud of her instincts and her judgments and the
sensitive, emotional intelligence that is hers. When all these seem to
have gone wrong, it's pleasing to realise that originally they went
right. It soothes one's self-respect, one's pride. I know now that all
these blind perceptions in me went straight to certain magnificent
essentials--those that make the great, strong, fearless fighting man.
That's attractive to a woman, you know. At any rate, to an independent
barbarian like myself--"
"My dear Betty," I interrupted with a laugh. "You a barbarian? You whom
I regard as the last word, the last charming and delightful word, in
modern womanhood?"
"Of course I'm the child of my century," she cried, flushing. "I want
votes, freedom, opportunity for expansion, power--everything that can
develop Betty Connor into a human product worthy of the God who made
her. But how she could fulfil herself without the collaboration of a
man, has baffled her ever since she was a girl of sixteen, when she
began to awake to the modern movement. On one side I saw women
perfectly happy in the mere savage state of wifehood and motherhood,
and not caring a hang for anything else, and on the other side women
who threw babies back into limbo and preached of nothing but
intellectual and political and economic independence. Oh, I worried
terribly about it, Majy, when I was a girl. Each side seemed to have
such a lot to say for itself. Then it dawned upon me that the only way
out of the dilemma was to combine both ideals--that of the savage woman
in skins and the lady professor in spectacles. That is what, allowing
for the difference of sex, a man does. Why shouldn't a woman? The
woman, of course, has to droop a bit more to the savage, because she
has to produce the babies and suckle them, and so forth, and a man
hasn't. That was my philosophy of life when I entered the world as a
young woman. Love came into it, of course. It was a sanctification of
the savagery. I've gone on like this," she laughed, "because I don't
want you to protest in your dear old-fashioned way against my calling
myself an independent barbarian. I am, and I glory in it. That's why,
as I was saying, I'm deeply glad that Leonard Boyce has made good. His
honour means a good deal to me--to my self-esteem. I hope," she added,
rising and coming to me with a caressing touch. "I hope you've got the
hang of the thing now."
Within myself I sincerely hoped I had. If her sentiments were just as
she analysed them, all was well. If, on the other hand, the little
demon of love for Boyce still lurked in her heart, in spite of the
marriage and widowhood, there might be trouble ahead. I remembered how
once she had called him a devil. I remembered, too, uncomfortably, the
scrap of conversation I had overheard between Boyce and herself in the
hall. She had lashed him with her scorn, and he had taken his whipping
without much show of fight. Still, a woman's love, especially that of a
lady barbarian, was a curiously complex affair, and had been known to
impel her to trample on a man one minute and the next to fall at his
feet. Now the worm she had trampled on had turned; stood erect as a
properly authenticated hero. I felt dubious as to the ensuing situation.
"I wrote to old Mrs. Boyce," she added after a while. "I thought it
only decent. I wrote yesterday, but only posted the letter to-day, so
as to be sure I wasn't acting on impulse."
The latter part of the remark was by way of apology. The breach of the
engagement had occasioned a cessation of social relations between Betty
and Mrs. Boyce. Betty's aunts had ceased calling on Mrs. Boyce and Mrs.
Boyce had ceased calling on Betty's aunts. Whenever the estranged
parties met, which now and then was inevitable in a little town, they
bowed with distant politeness, but exchanged no words. Everything was
conducted with complete propriety. The old lady, knowing how beloved an
intimate of mine was Betty, alluded but once to the broken engagement.
That was when Betty got married.
"It has been a great unhappiness to me, Major," she said. "In spite of
her daring ways, which an old woman like myself can't quite understand,
I was very fond of her. She was just the girl for Leonard. They made
such a handsome couple. I have never known why it was broken off.
Leonard won't tell me. It's out of the question that it could be his
fault, and I can't believe it is all Betty Fairfax's. She's a girl of
too much character to be a mere jilt."
I remember that I couldn't help smiling at the application of the
old-fashioned word to my Betty.
"You may be quite certain she isn't that," said I.
"Then what was the reason? Do you know?"
I didn't. I was as mystified as herself. I told her so. I didn't
mention that a few days before she had implied that Leonard was a devil
and she wished that he was dead, thereby proving to me, who knew
Betty's uprightness, that Boyce and Boyce only was to blame in the
matter. It would have been a breach of confidence, and it would not
have made my old friend any the happier. It would have fired her with
flaming indignation against Betty.
"Young people," said I, "must arrange their own lives." And we left it
at that. Now and then, afterwards, she enquired politely after Betty's
health, and when Willie Connor was killed, she spoke to me very
feelingly and begged me to convey to Betty the expression of her deep
sympathy. In the unhappy circumstances, she explained, she was
naturally precluded from writing.
So Betty's letter was the first direct communication that had passed
between them for nearly two years. That is why to my meddlesome-minded
self it appeared to have some significance.
"You did, did you?" said I. Then I looked at her quickly, with an idea
in my head. "What did Mrs. Boyce say in reply?"
"She has had no time to answer. Didn't I tell you I only posted the
letter to-day?"
"Then you've heard nothing more about Leonard Boyce except that he has
got the V.C.?"
"No. What more is there to hear?"
Even Bettys are sly folk. It behooved me to counter with equal slyness.
I wondered whether she had known all along of Boyce's mishap, or had
been informed of it by his mother. Knowledge might explain her unwonted
outburst. I looked at her fixedly.
"What's the matter?" she asked, bending slightly down to me.
"You haven't heard that he is wounded?"
She straightened herself. "No. When?"
"Five days ago."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I haven't seen you."
"I mean--this evening."
I reached for her hand. "Will you forgive me, my dear Betty, for
remarking that for the last twenty minutes you have done all the
talking?"
"Is he badly hurt?"
She ignored my playful rejoinder. I noted the fact. Usually she was
quick to play Beatrice to my Benedick. Had I caught her off her guard?
I told her all that I knew. She seated herself again on the piano-stool.
"I hope Mrs. Boyce did not think me unfeeling for not referring to it,"
she said calmly. "You will explain, won't you?"
Marigold entered, announcing dinner. We went into the dining-room. All
through the meal Bella, my parlour-maid, flitted about with dishes and
plates, and Marigold, when he was not solemnly pouring claret, stood
grim behind my chair, roasting, as usual, his posterior before a
blazing fire, with soldierly devotion to duty. Conversation fell a
little flat. The arrival of the evening newspapers, half an hour
belated, created a diversion. The war is sometimes subversive of nice
table decorum. I read out the cream of the news. Discussion thereon
lasted us until coffee and cigarettes were brought in and the servants
left us to ourselves.
One of the curious little phenomena of human intercourse is the fact
that now and again the outer personality of one with whom you are daily
familiar suddenly strikes you afresh, thus printing, as it were, a new
portrait on your mind. At varying intervals I had received such
portrait impressions of Betty, and I had stored them in my memory.
Another I received at this moment, and it is among the most delectable.
She was sitting with both elbows on the table, her palms clasped and
her cheek resting on the back of the left hand. Her face was turned
towards me. She wore a low-cut black chiffon evening dress--the thing
had mere straps over the shoulders--an all but discarded vanity of
pre-war days. I had never before noticed what beautiful arms she had.
Perhaps in her girlhood, when I had often seen her in such exiguous
finery, they had not been so shapely. I have told you already of the
softening touch of her womanhood. An exquisite curve from arm to neck
faded into the shadow of her hair. She had a single string of pearls
round her neck. The fatigue of last week's night duty had cast an added
spirituality over her frank, sensitive face.
We had not spoken for a while. She smiled at me.
"What are you thinking of?"
"I wasn't thinking at all," said I. "I was only gratefully admiring
you."
"Why gratefully?"
"Oughtn't one to be grateful to God for the beautiful things He gives
us?"
She flushed and averted her eyes. "You are very good to me, Majy."
"What made you attire yourself in all this splendour?" I asked,
laughing. The wise man does not carry sentiment too far. He keeps it
like a little precious nugget of pure gold; the less wise beats it out
into a flabby film.
"I don't know," she said, shifting her position and casting a critical
glance at her bodice. "All kinds of funny little feminine vanities.
Perhaps I wanted to see whether I hadn't gone off. Perhaps I wanted to
try to feel good-looking even if I wasn't. Perhaps I thought my dear
old Majy was sick to death of the hospital uniform perfumed with
disinfectant. Perhaps it was just a catlike longing for comfort.
Anyhow, I'm glad you like me."
"My dear Betty," said I, "I adore you."
"And I you," she laughed. "So there's a pair of us."
She lit a cigarette and sipped her coffee. Then, breaking a short
silence:
"I hope you quite understand, dear, what I said about Leonard Boyce. I
shouldn't like to leave you with the smallest little bit of a wrong
impression."
"What wrong impression could I possibly have?" I asked disingenuously.
"You might think that I was still in love with him."
"That would be absurd," said I.
"Utterly absurd. I should feel it to be almost an insult if you thought
anything of the kind. Long before my marriage things that had happened
had killed all such feelings outright." She paused for a few seconds
and her brow darkened, just as it had done when she had spoken of him
in the days immediately preceding her marriage with Willie Connor.
Presently it cleared. "The whole beginning and end of my present
feelings," she continued, "is that I'm glad the man I once cared for
has won such high distinction, and I'm sorry that such a brave soldier
should be wounded."
I could do nothing else than assure her of my perfect understanding. I
upbraided myself as a monster of indelicacy for my touch of doubt
before dinner; also for a devilish and malicious suspicion that flitted
through my brain while she was cataloguing her possible reasons for
putting on the old evening dress. The thought of Betty's beautiful arm
and the man's bull-neck was a shivering offence. I craved purification.
"If you've finished your coffee," I said, "let us go into the
drawing-room and have some music."
She rose with the impulsiveness of a child told that it can be excused,
and responded startlingly to my thought.
"I think we need it," she said.
In the drawing-room I swung my chair so that I could watch her hands on
the keys. She was a good musician and had the well-taught executant's
certainty and grace of movement. It may be the fancy of an outer
Philistine, but I love to forget the existence of the instrument and to
feel the music coming from the human finger-tips. She found a volume of
Chopin's Nocturnes on the rest. In fact she had left it there a
fortnight before, the last time she had played for me. I am very fond
of Chopin. I am an uneducated fellow and the lyrical mostly appeals to
me both in poetry and in music. Besides, I have understood him better
since I have been a crock. And I loved Betty's sympathetic
interpretation. So I sat there, listening and watching, and I knew that
she was playing for the ease of both our souls. Once more I thanked God
for the great gift of Betty to my crippled life. Peace gathered round
my heart as Betty played.
The raucous buzz of the telephone in the corner of the room knocked the
music to shatters. I cried out impatiently. It was the fault of that
giant of ineptitude Marigold and his incompetent satellites, whose duty
it was to keep all upstairs extensions turned off and receive calls
below. Only two months before I had been the victim of their culpable
neglect, when I was forced to have an altercation with a man at
Harrod's Stores, who seemed pained because I declined to take an
interest in some idiotic remark he was making about fish.
"I'll strangle Marigold with my own hands," I cried.
Betty, unmoved by my ferocity, laughed and rose from the piano.
"Shall I take the call?"
To Betty I was all urbanity. "If you'll be so kind, dear," said I.
She crossed the room and stopped the abominable buzzing.
"Yes. Hold on for a minute. It's the post-office"--she turned to
me--"telephoning a telegram that has just come in. Shall I take it down
for you?"
More urbanity on my part. She found pencil and paper on an escritoire
near by, and went back to the instrument. For a while she listened and
wrote. At last she said:
"Are you sure there's no signature?"
She got the reply, waited until the message had been read over, and
hung up the receiver. When she came round to me--my back had been half
turned to her all the time--I was astonished to see her looking rather
shaken. She handed me the paper without a word.
The message ran:
"Thanks yesterday's telegram. Just got home. Queen Victoria Hospital,
Belton Square. Must have talk with you before I communicate with my
mother. Rely absolutely on your discretion. Come to-morrow. Forgive
inconvenience caused, but most urgent."
"It's from Boyce," I said, looking up at her.
"Naturally."
"I suppose he omitted the signature to avoid any possible leakage
through the post-office here."
She nodded. "What do you think is the matter?"
"God knows," said I. "Evidently something very serious."
She went back to the piano seat. "It's odd that I should have taken
down that message," she said, after a while.
"I'll sack Marigold for putting you in that abominable position," I
exclaimed wrathfully.
"No, you won't, dear. What does it signify? I'm not a silly child. I
suppose you're going to-morrow?"
"Of course--for Mrs. Boyce's sake alone I should have no alternative."
She turned round and began to take up the thread of the Nocturne from
the point where she had left off; but she only played half a page and
quitted the piano abruptly.
"The pretty little spell is broken, Majy. No matter how we try to
escape from the war, it is always shrieking in upon us. We're up
against naked facts all the time. If we can't face them we go under
either physically or spiritually. Anyhow--" she smiled with just a
little touch of weariness,--"we may as well face them in comfort."
She pushed my chair gently nearer to the fire and sat down by my side.
And there we remained in intimate silence until Marigold announced the
arrival of her car.