As 'the true love-story commences at the altar,' so the real work of a
hut only begins at the counter. You may turn out to be the disguised
prince of salesmen, and yet fail to deliver the goods that really
matter. I am not thinking of 'goody' goods at all, but of the worker's
personality such as it may be. It is not more essential for an actor to
'get across the footlights' than it is for the Y.M.C.A. counter-jumper
to start by clearing that obstacle, and mixing with the men for all he
can show himself to be worth.
The Ark was such a busy canteen that all this is easier said than it was
done. Every morning we were kept at it as continuously from eleven to
one as ever we were from four-thirty to eight-thirty. Those were our
business hours; and though it was never quite such fierce shopping in
the forenoon, it was then that the leader would go off in quest of fresh
supplies and I was apt to be left in charge. This happened my very first
morning. Shall I ever forget the intimidating multitude of Army boots
seen under the door before we opened! And there was another of the early
days, when the Somersets stormed our parapet in full fighting
paraphernalia, with only me to stand up to them. Not much chance of
foregathering then; but never an hour, seldom a single transaction
within the hour, but brought me from the other side some quaint remark,
some adorable display of patience, courtesy, or homely fun. The change
difficulty was chronic, and mutually most exasperating; it was over that
stile the men were always helping each other or helping me, with never a
trace of the irritation I felt myself. They were the most delightful
customers one could wish to serve. But that made it the more tantalising
to have but a word with them on business. My young chief was once more
my better here; he had only to be behind the counter to 'get across' as
much as he liked, and in as few words. But I required a slack half-hour
when I could take my pipe down the hut and seek out some solitary, or
make overtures to the man at the piano.
It was generally the man's chum who responded in the first instance; for
every AEneas in the new legions has his staunch Achates, who collects the
praise as for the firm, adding his own mite in a beaming whisper. 'He
has his own choir in Edinburgh,' said one Jock of another who was
playing and singing the Scottish songs with urgent power. The piano is
the surest touchstone in a hut. It brings out the man of talent--but
also the bore who hammers with one thick-skinned finger--but also the
prevailing lenience that puts up with the bore. I _have_ been entreated
to keep my piano locked and the key in the till; and once on the counter
I found an anonymous notice, with a line requesting me to affix it to
the instrument without delay: 'If you do play, do play--If you don't
play, don't!' But a pianist of any pretensions has a crowd round him in
a minute; and a splendid little audience it always is. The set concert,
as I heard it, was not a patch on these unpremeditated recitals.
One night the hut was full of Riflemen, one of whom was strumming away
to his own contentment, but with only the usual trusty chum for
audience. I brought my pipe to the other side of the piano, and the
performer got up and talked across to me for nearly an hour. He was a
dark little garrulous fellow of no distinction, and he talked best with
his eyes upon the keyboard, but the chum's broad grin of eager
admiration never ceased to ply between us. The little Rifleman had borne
a charmed life indeed, especially on Passchendaele Ridge, the scene of
his latest misadventures. He was as idiomatic as Ortheris in his
generation, but I only remember: 'I looked a fair Bairnsfather, not
'alf!' He was the nearest approach to a 'Bairnsfather' I ever
encountered in the flesh, but the compliment to the draughtsman is no
smaller for that. A third Rifleman, less demonstratively uncritical than
the chum, joined the party; and at the end I ventured to ask all three
in turn what they had been doing before the war.
'I,' said the little man, 'was a house-painter at Crewe.'
'And I,' said the grinning chum, 'was conductor of a 28 motor-'bus. I
expect we've often dropped you at the Y.M.C.A. in Tottenham Court Road,
sir.'
'And you?'--I turned to the last comer--'if it isn't a rude question?'
'Oh, I,' said he, with the pride that would conceal itself, 'I'm in the
building line. But I operate a bioscope at night!'
The historic present put his attitude in a nutshell. He might have been
operating that bioscope the night before, be due back the next, and just
having a look at things in France on his night off. His expert eye was
not perceptibly impressed with the spectacle of war as he was seeing it
off the films; but the house-painter seemed to be making the most of his
long holiday from house-painting, and my old friend the conductor did
not sigh in my hearing for his 28.
I took the party back with me to the counter, where they honoured me by
partaking of cocoa and biscuits as my guests. It was all there was to
do for three such hardy and mature philosophers; and I never saw or
heard of them again, long as their cap-badge set me looking for one or
other of their pleasant faces underneath. It was always rather sad when
we had made friends with a man who never came near us again. In times of
heavy fighting it was no wonder, but in the winter it seemed in the
nature of a black mark against the hut.
There were two other Riflemen who were in that night, and hit me harder
in a softer spot. They were both tragically young, one of them a pretty
boy in a muffler that might have been knitted by any mother in the land.
They were not enjoying their war, these two, but they smiled none the
less as they let it out; they had come in of their own free will, as
soon as ever their tender years allowed, and survived all the carnage of
the Somme and of Passchendaele. They could afford to smile; but they had
also outlived their romantic notions of a war, and were too young to
bear it willingly in any other spirit. They had honest shudders for the
horrors they had seen, and they frankly loathed going back into the mud
or ice of the December trenches.
'Every time,' said the pretty boy, as they took cocoa with me, 'it seems
worse.'
'But for the Y.M.C.A.,' said the other, with simple feeling, 'I believe
I should have gone mad.'
That was something to hear. But what was there to say to such a pair?
One had been a clerk in Huddersfield; the other, a shade less gentle,
but, to equalise the appeal, an only child, foreman of some works in
Derbyshire. Indubitably they were both wishing themselves back in their
old situations; but equally without a doubt they were both still proud
of the act of sacrifice which had brought them to this. The last was the
frame of mind to recall by hook or crook. One can be proud of such boys,
even if their spirit is not all it was, and so perhaps make them prouder
of themselves; the hard case is the man who waited for compulsion, who
has no old embers of loyalty or enterprise to coax into a modest flame.
This type takes a lot of waking up, and yet, like other heavy sleepers,
once awake may do as well as any.
At the foot of our hut, beyond piano, billiard-table, and platform (only
the case the billiard-table had come in), was the Quiet Room in which
the men were entitled to read and write without interruption. One of
those first nights I peeped in there with my pipe, at a moment of
fourfold psychology.
In one corner two men were engaged in some form of violent prayer or
intercession; not on their knees, but seated side by side. One, and he
much the younger of the two, appeared to be wrestling for the other's
soul, to be at all but physical grips with some concrete devil of his
inner vision; at any rate he was making a noise that entirely destroyed
the character of our Quiet Room. But the other occupants, so far from
complaining, seemed equally wrapped up in their own affairs, and
oblivious to the pother. The third man was writing a tremendous letter,
at great speed, face and hands and flying pencil strongly lighted by a
candle-end almost under his nose, more shame for our poor lamplight! The
fourth and last of the party, a good-looking Guardsman with a puzzled
frown, poising the pencil of an unready scribe, at once invoked my aid
in another form of literary enterprise. He was making his will in his
field pocket-book; could I tell him how to spell the pretty name of one
of his little daughters? Would I mind looking it all over, and seeing if
it would do?
'Going up the Line for the first time on Tuesday,' he explained, 'and
it's as well to be prepared.'
He was perfectly calm about it. He had thought of everything; his wife,
I remember, was to have 'the float and the two horses, to do the best
she can with'; but the little girls were specifically remembered, and
the identity of each clinched by their surname after the one that took
more spelling. A dairyman, I imagined from his mild phlegmatic face;
but it seemed he was the village butcher somewhere in Leicestershire.
His date of enrolment bespoke either the conscript or the eleventh-hour
volunteer, and his sad air made me decide which in my own mind. He had
obviously no stomach for the trenches, but on the other hand he showed
no fear. It was the kind of passive courage I longed to fan into
enthusiasm, but knew I never could. I am glad I had not the impertinence
to try. Two or three weeks later, I found myself serving a delightfully
gay and jaunty Guardsman, in whom I suddenly recognised my friend.
'Come back all right, then?' I could only say.
'Rather!' said he, with schoolboy gusto. He was another being; the
trenches themselves had wrought the change. I would not put a V.C. past
that butcher if he is still alive, or past any other tardy patriot for
that matter. Patriotism is a ray of inner light, and may never even come
to a glow of carnal courage; on the other hand, it is the greatest
mistake to impute cowardice to the shirker. Selfishness is oftener the
restraining power, insensibility oftener still. After all, even in the
officer class, it was not everybody who could see that personal
considerations ceased to exist on the day war broke out. This busy
butcher had been a fine man all the time, and not unnaturally taken up
with the price of sheep, the tricks of the weather, the wife and the
little girls. May the float and the two horses yet be his to drive more
furiously than of old!
A few nights later still, and the pretty ex-clerk was smiling through
his collar of soft muffler across the counter. He, too, had made his
tour without disaster, or as much discomfort as he feared, and so had
his chum the whilom foreman. These reunions were always a delight to me,
sometimes a profound reassurance and relief. But those first three jolly
Riflemen had vanished from my ken, and I wish I knew their fate.