ISOBEL'S "DREAM"
For the next day or two Alf found life very hard. Bill's appetite for
beer increased by geometrical progression; and Eustace's possible
indignation at being constantly summoned merely to supply Private Grant
with large bitters filled Alf with the liveliest apprehension. He felt
that Bill--who, under the influence of unlimited liquor, was losing his
moral sense--was not playing the game. He even descended to the level
of intimidating Higgins, when he declared himself unprepared to risk
the djinn's displeasure any longer, by the use of threats.
"Stop me beer, will yer?" said Grant. "Very well, then. We'll just see
what the R.S.M. 'as to say about yer goin's on. 'E won't 'arf tell yer
orf, I don't think!"
The regimental sergeant-major is _ex officio_ the most terrible
individual of a battalion from the point of view of the private
soldier. True, the colonel is greater than he, in that from that
officer the R.S.M. takes his orders; but the colonel--so far as Higgins
and his peers were concerned--was a mere abstraction. The R.S.M.
overshadowed him much as, in the eyes of unimaginative heathens, the
priest overshadows the deity whose minister he is.
The R.S.M. of the 5th Middlesex Fusiliers, too, was a martinet of the
most approved Regular Army type. His horizon was bounded on the one
side by King's Regulations and on the other by the Manual of Military
Law; and if he should become aware that a private of his battalion
was so lost to the meaning of military discipline as to keep an
unauthorized familiar spirit, the only possible result would be an
explosion of wrath too terrible even to contemplate. Of this threat,
therefore, Bill Grant made shameless use; and day by day he became more
bibulous, Eustace more displeased, and Alf more miserable.
Alf racked his rather inadequate brains in the hope that Necessity
would acknowledge her reputed offspring, Invention, and find him a way
out of his troubles. But in the end Bill brought about his own undoing.
He had a lively and, in his cups, a lurid imagination; and by giving it
too free rein, he suggested to Alf a counter-threat.
"'Ow'd it be, ole f'ler," said Bill thickly, on the second day, after
having kept Eustace almost continuously employed for several hours,
"to 'ave old Eustish up again 'n tell 'im to turn the R.Esh.M. into a
rhinosherush?"
To Alf this remark seemed not so much humorous as blasphemous; but it
was also most illuminating. It opened his eyes to an aspect of his new
powers which, left to himself, he would never have thought of.
"Look 'ere, Bill Grant!" he said, in suddenly confident tones. "That'll
be about enough from you, see? Not another drop o' beer do you get till
I says so. 'E's _my_ spook, Eustace is; an' if I 'as any more o' yer
nonsense I'll take an' tell 'im to change _you_ into something. 'Ow'd
yer like to be a--a transport mule, eh?"
Bill, suddenly smitten into something approaching sobriety, had no word
to say. Alf, following up his advantage, continued his harangue.
"Not one drop more do yer get," he reiterated. "Eustace 'as been
gettin' that fed up, I've been expectin' 'im to give me a month's
notice any minute. An' nice we'd look if 'e started playin' monkey
tricks on 'is own. All this beer business, you know; it ain't what 'e's
been brought up to."
"'E can't do nothin', not without you tells 'im," said Bill, with a
certainty he was far from feeling.
"Ah, an' 'ow do we know that? 'E might break loose an' then where'd we
be? I've fair got the wind up, I tell yer. What we wanted to do is to
'umor the blighter."
"'Ow?"
"I dunno. 'Ow'd it be to give 'im something to do as 'e'd really
enjoy--a decent job just to put 'im in a good temper again?"
"Buildin' palaces was 'is old line," mused Bill.
"Aye, but buildin' palaces 'ere would be just a blighted waste o'
time," replied Alf, with strong common sense. "Can't you think o'
nothin' else?"
Bill pondered deeply.
"Tell 'im," he suggested at last, "to bring us a girl. I'm fair sick
for the sight of a pretty face."
"Dunno if that's much good. 'E mayn't care for females."
"Well, it is part of 'is peace-time job, anyway. Don't I tell yer 'e
brought Aladdin a princess?"
"I'll try it. Any'ow, it'll be a change for 'im arter all that beer."
Eustace, it was obvious, approved of the idea. This new command was
completely in accord with his ancient tradition.
"A maid fair as the dawn, great Master! It shall be so!" he said.
"Yes, and"--Alf suddenly remembered a recent abortive attempt to dally
with a pretty French girl in an estaminet, and determined to run no
further risks--"a English one."
"'Ere," put in Bill. "Make it two."
But the djinn had vanished.
"All right, Bill," Higgins said soothingly. "We'll send 'im back for
one for you. Wonder what 'e'll bring for me--one of the 'Ippodrome
chorus, I 'ope."
* * * * * * *
Lady Margaret Clowes and Isobel FitzPeter were walking together
along the edge of the Row in Hyde Park. Margaret was wearing the
workman-like, if unbeautiful, Red Cross uniform, for she was a
hard-working V.A.D. at a private hospital. Isobel was a dainty vision,
rivaling the lilies of the field.
"Did I tell you I'd had another letter from my cousin at the front?"
asked Margaret.
"Which one?"
"Denis. Denis Allen. He sent you his kind regards. He's a nice boy. Do
you remember him?"
"Hardly at all. He played cricket at Dunwater once or twice when I
was a child. Really, Peggy, I'm getting fed up with men. Since those
ridiculous papers took to publishing my photograph, every silly boy
I've ever spoken to seems to want me to write to him."
"Why do you let them do it?" asked Margaret.
"I can't stop them writing to me, if they know my address."
"The papers, I mean. It's all very well calling them ridiculous, but
you know that you give them every assistance."
"Rubbish!" Isobel's voice sounded scornful, but a sudden blush gave her
away. Margaret, who had just come off duty after an unusually exacting
spell, was rather out of patience with field-lilies. She returned to
the attack.
"It isn't rubbish. And I don't think you ought to talk about the boys
who write to you as you do. You make me very angry. After all, they are
risking their lives, which is more than you can say."
"Well, how can I? I've often told you I'd love to go to the front,"
Isobel protested.
"Yes--in a spirit of vulgar curiosity, I suppose, just to have a look
round. Iso, I could shake you, you're so self-satisfied, and so futile."
"Well, I think you're horribly rude. If you can't be more amusing, I'm
going home. I've my part to learn for...."
"Oh--look! there's a horse bolting!" interrupted Margaret. She ran to
the railings and watched breathlessly, while the mounted policeman
on duty, who seemed to regard the whole affair as being in the day's
work, caught the runaway and averted what might have been a very nasty
accident. When she turned to speak to her companion, Isobel was no
longer there.
"Temper!" thought Margaret to herself. "I suppose I was rather
cross--but really Isobel's enough to try a saint sometimes. She must
have gone off pretty quickly, too. However...."
Margaret was quite undisturbed--even a little amused at her friend's
departure. She and Isobel often had fierce little quarrels, but these
never had any lasting effect on their friendship. She would see Isobel
to-morrow, and the whole thing would be forgotten. For the present, she
continued her walk alone.
An old gentleman sitting on a seat near by, who had chanced to be
looking at Isobel at the moment when Eustace (having awarded her the
prize in his private beauty competition) swooped down and carried her
off, was the only actual spectator of her disappearance. Doubting the
evidence of his senses, he waited anxiously until Margaret should find
out what had happened; he looked for her to scream or faint, or show
her horror by some emotional upheaval; when she simply walked on as if
nothing out of the ordinary had happened, he was smitten with panic. He
dashed home and went straight to bed.
* * * * * * *
Isobel's surprise and alarm when she found herself unexpectedly face to
face with two tinhatted and unwashed Tommies in a subterranean cavern,
lit only by a feeble gleam of daylight from the roof, was obvious;
but she was too well bred to allow her emotions to master her. For a
moment, conscious thought seemed to be suspended in her. Then, as the
objects about her took shape, she decided that she must be dreaming.
At once all sense of fear left her. If it was only a dream, she argued
to herself, it could not matter what happened to her. She waited with a
kind of amused expectancy to see what turn events would take.
Alf and Bill, on the other hand, were not a little disturbed. They
had realized at once that Eustace, in his ignorance, had committed an
awful social solecism. Even the resourceful Bill's imagination boggled
at the idea of explaining to this dainty vision how she came to be
in her present surroundings. They stood before her, embarrassed and
tongue-tied. Alf thought of recalling the djinn and telling him to take
her straight back; but his very real and increasing fear of offending
his familiar forbade. Besides, his visitor was very lovely, and filled
his jaded masculine eye with a lively sense of satisfaction.
After a while the silence became oppressive and Isobel spoke.
"Where am I?" she asked. "Who are you?"
Bill, who had been making a surreptitious and feline toilet in the
gloomy recesses of the dug-out, stepped forward and saluted.
"Don't be frightened, miss," he said soothingly, "but this 'ere's a
dug-out in France, on the Western Front."
"That proves it," said Isobel to herself, with a certain satisfaction.
"It _is_ just a vivid dream. Perhaps it's telepathy or levitation or
something. Anyway, the great point to remember is that I'm not really
here at all."
The two men watched her anxiously. Both had expected her to be
terrified at the news. Her air of unruffled serenity alarmed them,
because neither could understand it.
"Now let me see," she continued her train of thought--"a few minutes
ago, I was in the Park with Peggy--but perhaps I dreamt that, too.
In fact I must have.... I don't remember going to bed, though....
Oh, well, it's no good worrying, it'll be all right when I wake up. A
dug-out?" She echoed Bill's words uncertainly.
"Yes, miss. I'm very sorry, miss. If you please, it's all a mistake. We
didn't mean no 'arm. If you'll just wait a minute, we'll send you back
again to London quite all...."
But Isobel's usual spirit returned to her at this point. Whether this
was dream or miracle, she determined to see it through.
"Send me back?" she said. "No, indeed you shan't! I've always longed to
see the front. They won't let me in real life, and now you're trying to
spoil it in a dream. If you only knew how I've tried to get leave to
come over! It's too absolutely divine for anything--I wouldn't miss it
for worlds. And I'm sure you'll be very kind and show me round, Mr...."
"'Iggins--Private Alfred 'Iggins, 5th Middlesex Fusiliers. An' this is
me pal, Private Grant."
"Pleasetermeacher!" mumbled Bill, saluting.
"Well, you will, won't you?" Isobel smiled at them suddenly and
beseechingly. Alf capitulated.
"'Appy to, miss," replied the infatuated youth. "What is it you wants
to see?"
"Everything. I want to see just how you live and what you do. I want to
see a shell burst, and--oh, everything."
"Better not bother with shells, miss," said Bill grimly; "one might 'it
you."
"Oh, but that doesn't matter in a dream! Is this the way up?"
She climbed up the steep and difficult staircase, gallantly assisted by
Alf. Bill followed gloomily, his mind busy with wondering first what
would happen if a stray long-distance shell did injure Isobel, and
second what Sergeant Lees or any of his superiors would say if he saw
them.
The same thought struck Alf as they reached the trench above.
"Company 'Edquarters is up there," he said, with a jerk of the thumb.
"We'd best go the other way."
Isobel, making shameless play with her eyes, laid a hand for one moment
on Alf's arm.
"What _is_ a Company Headquarters?" she asked. "I want to see it."
A subtle, faint perfume reached Alf's nostrils and thrilled him all
through. Now that she was in the full light of day, he could take
in her exquisite quality. Her clothes, though obviously expensive,
were too plain to suit Bill's untutored eye, but Alf, possessing by
some queer freak of nature an unexpectedly true taste, saw in her the
apotheosis of all that was most admirable in women. By all the laws of
probability his tastes should have been for bright colors and nodding
feathers, but such decorations left him cold, while this girl struck
him dumb. She was simply the embodiment of his ideal.
"Now I'm here," she went on, "I want to see for myself just what you
poor men have to put up with. How awful it must be to live in a trench
like this. And can't you show me a German?"
She smiled up into Alf's face.
That smile galvanized him as before, into a display of rash gallantry.
"So you shall, miss," he said. "Just step along the trench 'ere, and
we'll show you all we can."
Isobel surveyed the trench doubtfully and then looked down at her
delicately shod feet.
"Couldn't we walk along the top?" she asked. "It all seems so quiet and
peaceful--surely there'd be no danger. We must be a long way from the
Germans, aren't we?"
"It's not Fritz, miss," interposed Bill earnestly. "It's our sergeant.
'E mustn't see us with you. A fair terror, 'e is."
"Oh," said Isobel easily, feeling that she could deal with these
dream-people of hers as she pleased. "I'll see you don't get into
trouble. This is _such_ an opportunity--I mustn't waste it ... here's a
flight of steps, if you'll give me your hand again and...."
She reached the top and her voice ceased as suddenly and uncannily
as a voice ceases when it is cut off in the middle of a word on the
telephone. She stood staring dumbly across the old No-Man's-Land,
making in her dainty furs the strangest picture that battle-scarred
strip of land had seen. Alf and Bill, one on each side of her, gazed,
too.
"There ain't much to see 'ere, I'm afraid, miss," said the latter
apologetically. According to his lights, Bill spoke the truth. To his
accustomed eyes there was nothing to be seen worthy of special mention;
but to Isobel--pitch-forked straight from her sheltered, mindless life
into the very heart of the battle area--it was far otherwise.
Her first feeling was that her dream had suddenly turned to horrible
nightmare. Surely nothing but distorted fancy could have produced
the scene before her eyes! It was as though the earth had been
some stricken monster, which had stiffened into death in the very
midst of the maddened writhings of its last agony. For the most
part it was a land without landmarks--a land featureless, but torn
and tortured, poisoned and pulverized, where the eye could find no
certain resting-place and the mind no relief. On every side lay the
same desolate waste, pockmarked with shell-holes, each of which was
half filled with stagnant and stinking water, on the surface of which
was an oozing and fetid scum. Here and there the ragged remains of a
barbed-wire entanglement stood out above the general welter; here and
there--but very rarely--a few scattered stones indicated where once
had stood a cottage; here and there fluttered decayed rags of blue or
khaki or field-gray.... Cartridge-cases, bits of equipment, bully-beef
tins--all kinds of abandoned rubbish were scattered about.
On the right ran the main road--the one feature of the whole pitiful
panorama which still retained some individuality. Once it had been
famous for its avenue of tall trees. Those trees still flanked the
roadway, but now the tallest of them was a ravaged stump standing a
bare four feet above the ground, and the same gun-fire that had smitten
them down had smashed the road itself into a sickly yellow pulp.
Once, no doubt, the road had run between fields green with grass or
young corn; but now it seemed to Isobel beyond imagining that life
could ever again come near to it. Even the vilest weed might shudder
to grow on earth's dead body, mangled and corrupted and shamefully
exposed....
Alf's voice broke the silence.
"It's a bit dull 'ere, miss," he said, with cheerful bathos. "There
ain't much to show yer. But see yon mound over there on the left? That
was a church once, that was. But you can 'unt all day and never find
nothing of the buildin', all except the church bell;--on'y it's too far
to walk in them boots. One of our C.T.'s--communication trenches, I
should say--runs right underneath it."
Isobel gave no answer, unless a sound something between a gulp and a
sob can be so described. Depths seemed to be stirring in her nature
that she had not hitherto been conscious of possessing. She felt
mean and small and bitterly humbled. She had desired to see the
front out of mere heedless curiosity, as a child might wish to visit
a slaughter-house. She had had her desire, and her eyes had seen
unimaginable horrors--horrors which had become so much a commonplace to
the men who passed their lives in this shambles that they apologized
for its lack of greater horrors. Compared with what they had seen,
there was "nothing much" here for her curious eye. Only a strip of
ground fought over a month before--its dead buried, its wounded carried
away to a smiling land where such as she were flattered and praised in
the public press because out of their useless lives they deigned to
devote an occasional hour to those same wounded.
A sudden horror came over her lest she should see a dead man. She
covered her eyes with her hands and gave a convulsive shudder.
"Don't--don't take me over there!" she said, and climbed down the steps
again into the trench.
Bill and Alf, much concerned to understand what could possibly have
upset their visitor, were on the point of following, when there was a
sound of squelching mud, and a figure appeared round the angle of the
trench.
"Lumme!" said Bill's voice in an appalled whisper. "The orficer!" With
one accord the two Tommies turned and fled as their platoon commander
approached.
Lieutenant Allen had been tramping about all the afternoon,
reconnoitering the approaches to the front line in case of trouble.
Muddy and hungry and dog-tired, he was now plodding mechanically back
to his hole in the ground, while his thoughts wandered vaguely and
wistfully to home and his people--and Isobel. At the sound of Bill's
whisper he looked up and stopped dead. Clearly his nerves must be
beginning to give way, for he seemed to see the subject of his thoughts
standing before him in the trench.
"My God!" he exclaimed--"Isobel!"
She stared at the muddy figure before her for a long moment. Then
recognition dawned slowly in her eyes.
"You!" she said at last, and her voice seemed to Allen to hold in it
all that he most longed for in the world.
"Isobel! am I mad or dreaming?"
"Oh," she cried, with a sob--"it's a dream. It must be a dream. If it
isn't, I can't bear it. It's too awful."
The sight of a face she knew had added to the scene the last touch of
horror for her. She stood there, the tears glistening in her eyes,
passionately pitiful, passionately lovely. The pretty fool of _The
Tatler_ pictures had ceased to be, and this glorious woman had risen
like the phoenix from her ashes. Denis held his breath for fear his
vision would fade....
Meanwhile, the two Tommies had regained the shelter of their dug-out
with more speed than grace.
"Quick!" said Bill, in a trembling voice. "'Urry up, or she'll give us
away, for sure. What a mug you was to tell 'er our names."
With a feverish hand, Alf rubbed the Button....
Denis Allen started and rubbed his eyes.
"Isobel!" he said once more. But she was gone.
* * * * * * *
Denis leaned against the side of the trench for support. His heart
was thumping against his ribs, and his throat had a strained, parched
feeling. He was very badly scared.
Strange things do happen to men at the front; small hallucinations,
induced by the ceaseless strain on the nerves and senses, are of common
occurrence. The eyes play queer tricks sometimes on sentry-go, so that
a tuft of grass becomes a lurking sniper. Allen himself could remember
one occasion when he had actually seen German infantry advancing
stealthily to the attack, and had given the alarm; only to be severely
told off by an irate Company Commander for having interrupted his
evening meal for nothing.
But this was different. This way madness lay. He had not known that his
nerves had reached this state; he must pull himself together, get back
at once to his dug-out and sleep. If he climbed out of the trench and
went across the open, he would cut off a big corner; accordingly he did
so. Just at this moment a German battery saw fit to drop a long-range
shell at a venture into the British rear lines. It exploded only a few
yards from Denis. He felt a tremendous thump in the chest, and rolled
over, coughing and fighting for breath. Then a black curtain seemed to
shut down over his eyes, and for a few moments he lost consciousness.
Then he was hazily aware of voices, and a hand loosening his collar,
fiddling about with his shirt and finally applying a field-dressing to
a wound high up in his chest. He moved convulsively.
"Lie still, sir," said a voice. "It's Private 'Iggins, sir. Private
Grant's gone for stretcher-bearers. You'll be all right, sir--it's only
a little 'ole. Just lie still."
By the time the stretcher arrived he had more or less come to himself.
He could see once more, and he was conscious only of two things,
namely, that his feet were horribly, cruelly cold, and that he was done
with the front for a time. Slowly and gently he was carried across
the rough ground to the battalion aid-post, where the Battalion M.O.
received him.
"Hullo, Sniggles!" said Denis weakly.
"Well, young man," answered Sniggles, enthusiastically cutting all
Denis's expensive clothing to pieces with a large pair of shears.
"Let's see what they've done to you. Ah!"
He removed the bandage. Denis listened for his verdict, in dread lest
his wound should be serious enough to be fatal, or not serious enough
to give him his heart's desire.
"Shall I be all right?" he asked at last.
"Think so, old man."
"Good. Is it a Blighty one all right?"
"Sniggles" smiled at the eagerness in his tone.
"A Blighty one? I should think it is. A long holiday from the Army for
you, my lad."
Denis gave one grin of pure happiness, and then the haziness came over
him again. He lay for some time waiting for the ambulance. Occasionally
a dim form bent over him; once he heard the colonel's voice speaking
his name. For a second or two his brain cleared, and he understood a
word or two.
" ... sorry to lose him, but he's earned a rest...."
Next, he felt himself lifted and placed, still on his stretcher, in a
motor-ambulance. Most of the officers seemed to be standing about, to
see him off. There was a chorus of "Good-by, old man--and good luck!"
He gave a feeble smile in return, and then his journey began.