“Shell holes, and splintered tree trunks,” I said. “Machine-guns
enfilading you, and H.E. bursting promiscuous. I know.”
“Well, Sirmcox’ fellows went in all right, and stayed there for a while.
Simcox says he remembers noticing that the ground was strewed with
débris left by the Germans when they cleared out, and by our fellows
afterwards. Equipment, rifles and all the rest of it lying about, as
well as other things--pretty ghastly things.”
“You needn’t go into details,” I said. “I can guess.”
“I’m only telling you this,” said Daintree, “because all the stuff lying
about seems to have interested Simcox. It’s odd the feelings men have at
these times. Simcox says the thing he chiefly wanted to do was to tidy
up. He had a kind of strong desire to pick things up and put them
away somewhere. Of course he couldn’t; but he did pick up one thing,
a cigarette case. He showed it to me. It was one of those long-shaped,
flat white metal cases which fellows carry because they hold about
thirty cigarettes. Simcox says he doesn’t know why he picked it up. He
didn’t want it in the least. He just saw it lying there on the ground
and stuffed it into his pocket. Almost immediately after that he was hit.
Bit of shrapnel under the knee.”
“I remember hearing about that business,” I said. “We were driven out
again, weren’t we?”
“Exactly. And Simcox was left behind. He couldn’t walk, of course. But
he crawled into a shell hole, and there he lay. Well, for the next two
days that wood wasn’t healthy for either side. The Germans couldn’t
get back, because we were sprinkling the whole place with shrapnel. We
couldn’t advance for similar reasons. Simcox just lay in his shell hole.
He tied up his leg somehow. He had some brandy in a flask as well as his
iron rations. But he hadn’t much tobacco. There were only two cigarettes
in his own case. However, he had the other case, the one he picked up.
There were nearly twenty in it Also there was--I say, at this point the
story gets sloppy.”
“Never mind,” I said. “Go on. What else was in the cigarette case? A
farewell letter to a loving wife? Love to little Willie and a text of
Scripture?”
“Not so bad as that. A photo of a girl. He showed it to me when he told
me the story.”
“Good looking girl?”
“Very. Large eyes--sort of tender, you know, and appealing; and a
gentle, innocent face, and a mouth----”
“I suppose,” I said, “that these raptures are necessary if I’m to
understand the story. Otherwise, you may skip them.”
“Can’t possibly skip them,” said Daintree. “The whole point of
the story depends on your realizing the sort of girl she was.
Pathetic--that’s the word I want. Looked at you out of the photo as if
she was a poor, lonely, but uncommonly fetching little thing, who wanted
a strong, true man to shelter her from the evil world. She was got up
in some sort of fancy dress which kind of heightened the effect. I don’t
altogether profess to understand what happened, though my wife says she
does. But Simcox in a sort of way fell in love with her. That’s not the
way he put it. He didn’t feel that she was just an ordinary girl--the
sort one falls in love with. She was--well, he didn’t think of her as
flesh and blood--more a kind of vision--spiritual, you know.”
“Angel?” I said.
“That sort of thing. You know. That was the idea that gripped Simcox
while he lay there in the shell hole. Stars came out at night and Simcox
felt that she was looking down at him. In the day he used to lie and
gaze at her. When he thought it was all up with him and that he couldn’t
live, he seemed to hear her voice--I say, you ought to hear my
wife telling this part of the story. Simcox wouldn’t tell it to me,
naturally; but he seems to have enlarged on it a good deal to her.
He says that only for that photo he’d have given in and just died. I
daresay he wouldn’t really, but he thinks he would. Anyhow, he didn’t. He
stuck it out and his leg didn’t hurt nearly as much as he expected. He
attributes that to the influence of this--this----”
“Angel visitant?” I said.
“You can call her an angel if you like,” said Daintree.
“This,” I said, “seems to me a pure sob story. If there’s any other part
less harrowing, I wish you’d hurry up and get to it.”
“All right,” said Daintree. “I’ll cut out the rest of his experiences
in that shell hole, though, mind you, they’re rather interesting and
frightfully poetic the way my wife tells them. After two days our
fellows got back into the wood and kept it. The stretcher-bearers found
Simcox in his hole and they lugged him down to a Casualty Clearing
Station. From that he went to a hospital--the usual round. He had a
pretty bad time, first over there, and then, when they could move him,
in London. By degrees he got more sane about the photo. He stopped
thinking she was any kind of spirit and took to regarding her just as
a girl, though a very exceptional kind of girl, of course. He was
hopelessly in love with her. Do you think a man really could fall in
love with a photo?”
“Simcox did,” I said, “so we needn’t discuss that point.”
“The chances were, of course,” said Daintree, “that she was some other
fellow’s girl, possibly some other fellow’s wife. But Simcox didn’t
care. He was too far gone to care for anything except to get that girl.
Those morose, shy men are frightfully hard hit in that sort of way, I’m
told. That’s what my wife says, anyhow. They get it much worse than we
do when they do get it. Simcox would have dragged that girl out of
the arms of an archbishop if that was where he found her. Of course he
couldn’t go hunting her over England while he was in hospital with a bad
leg; but he made up his mind to find out who she was and where she
lived as soon as he was well enough to go about. He’d very little to go
on--practically nothing. The photo had been cut down so as to fit into
the cigarette case, so that there wasn’t even a photographer’s name on
it.”
“He might have advertised,” I said. “There are papers which go in for
that sort of thing, publish rows of reproductions of photographs ‘Found
on the battle-field,’ with requests for identification.”
“My wife thought of that,” said Daintree, “but Simcox didn’t seem
to take to the idea. He said the photo was too sacred a thing to be
reproduced in a paper. My own idea is that he was afraid of any kind
of publicity. You see, the other fellow might turn up--the fellow who
really had a right to the girl.”
“How the deuce did he propose to find her?”
“I don’t know. He told my wife some rotten yarn about instinct guiding
him to her; said he felt sure that the strength of his great love would
somehow lead him to her side. He didn’t say that to me, couldn’t, you
know. But it’s wonderful what a fellow will say to a woman, if she’s
sympathetic, and my wife is. Still, even so, he must be more or less
mad to think a thing like that. Mad about the girl. He’s sane enough in
every other way.”
“He can’t be so mad as that,” I said. “Just fancy going out into a
field--I suppose that’s the way you’d do it--and hanging about until
your great love set you strolling off either to the right or to the
left. No man, however mad, could expect to come on a girl that way--no
one particular girl, I mean. Of course you’d meet several girls
whichever way you went. Couldn’t help it. The world’s full of girls.”
“I don’t know what he meant,” said Daintree, “but my wife sympathized
with him and seemed to think he’d pull it off in the end. At first he
was a bit shy of letting her see the photo; but when he saw she was as
sympathetic as all that he showed it to her. Well, the moment she saw
it, she felt that she knew the face.”
“That was a stroke of luck for Simcox.”
“No it wasn’t,” said Daintree, “for my wife couldn’t put a name to the
girl. She was sure she had seen her somewhere, knew her quite well, in
fact, but simply couldn’t fix her. Funny thing, but it was exactly the
same when they showed me the photo. At the first glance I said right
away that I knew her. Then I found I couldn’t say exactly who she was.
The more I looked the more certain I was that I’d seen her somewhere,
her or someone very like her. And it wasn’t a commonplace face by any
means. Poor Simcox kept begging us to think. My wife went over our
visitors’ book--we’ve kept one of those silly things for years--but
there wasn’t a name in it which we couldn’t account for. I got out all
the old albums of snapshots and amateur photos in the house. You know
the way those things accumulate; groups of all sorts. But we couldn’t
find the girl. And yet both my wife and I were sure we’d met her. Then
one morning Simcox burst into my wife’s little sitting-room--a place
none of the convalescents have any right to go. He was in a fierce state
of excitement. Said that an officer who’d arrived the night before was
exactly like the photo and that the girl must be his sister or cousin,
or something. The only officer who came that night was--you’d never
guess!--Pat Singleton.”
“Pat,” I said, “though a young devil, is cheerful, and I never saw him
anything but self-confident. I can’t imagine a girl such as you described
bearing the faintest resemblance to that boy. You said that she was a
kind of die-away, pathetic, appealing angel. Now Pat----”
“I know,” said Daintree. “All the same, the likeness was there. The
moment I looked at the photo with Pat in my mind I knew why I thought I
recognized it My wife said the same thing.”
“But Pat Singleton hasn’t any sisters,” I said.
“No, he hasn’t. He hasn’t even a first cousin anything like the age of
the girl in the photo. I knew all the Singletons well, have for years.
But Simcox insisted his girl must be some relation of Pat’s, and in
the end I promised to ask the boy. In the first place, if she was a
relation, it seemed an impudent sort of thing to do, and if she wasn’t,
Pat would be sure to make up some infernal story about me and a girl and
tell it all over the place. However, my wife egged me on and poor Simcox
was so frightfully keen that I promised.
“Well, I sent for Pat Singleton next morning. He was a little subdued at
first, as much subdued as I’ve ever seen him. He thought I was going to
rag him about the spoof he’d played off on the nurse. He did that
before he was twelve hours in the house. Remind me to tell you about
it afterwards. I don’t wonder he looked piano. She’d been going for
him herself and that woman is a real terror. However, he cheered up
the moment I showed him the photo of the girl. He asked me first of all
where the devil I’d got it. Said he’d lost it somewhere before he was
wounded.”
“Oh, it was his, then?” I said.
“Yes,” said Daintree, grinning, “it was his. He was particularly anxious
to know how I came by it. I didn’t tell him, of course. Couldn’t give
Simcox away, you know. Then Pat began to cheek me. Asked if I’d fallen
in love with the girl and what my wife would say when he told her. Said
he carried the photo about with him and showed it to fellows just to
watch them falling in love with her. It seems that nine men out of ten
admired her greatly. He asked me if I didn’t think she was the prettiest
girl I’d ever seen, and that I wasn’t the first man by any means who
wanted her name and address. He grinned in a most offensive way and said
that he never gave away that girl’s name to anyone; that I ought to know
better than to go running after a nice, innocent little thing like that
who wouldn’t know how to take care of herself. I wasn’t going to stand
much of that sort of talk from Pat Singleton. I told him straight that
if he didn’t tell me that girl’s name and where she lived I’d make
things hot for him. I threatened to report the little game he’d had
with the nurse and that if I did he’d be court-martialled. I don’t know
whether a man could be court-martialled for cheeking a nurse, but the
threat had a good effect on Pat. He really was a bit afraid of that
woman. I don’t wonder, though it’s the first time I’ve ever known him
afraid of anyone.”
Daintree paused and chuckled horribly.
“Well,” I said, “who was the girl?”
“Haven’t you tumbled to it yet?” said Daintree.
“No. Do I know her?”
“I can’t say you exactly know her,” said Daintree. “You know _him_. It
was a photo of Pat himself dressed up as the Sleeping Beauty, or Fatima,
or some such person in a pantomime they did down at the base last
Christmas when he was there. The young devil carried the thing about
with him so as to play off his silly spoof on every fellow he met. I must
say he made a damned pretty girl.”
“Good Lord!” I said. “And how did Simcox take it?”
“Simcox hasn’t been told--yet,” said Daintree. “That’s just what my wife
wants your advice about. You see it’s an awkward situation.”
“Very,” I said.
“If we tell him,” said Daintree, “he’ll probably try to kill Pat
Singleton, and that would lead to a lot of trouble. On the other hand,
if we don’t tell him he’ll spend the rest of his life roaming about the
world looking for a girl who doesn’t exist, and never did. It seems a
pity to let that happen.”
“My idea,” I said, “would be to get another girl, not necessarily like
the photo, but the same type, appealing and pathetic and all that. He’d
probably take to her after a time.”
“I suggested that,” said Daintree, “but my wife simply won’t hear of it.
She says the story as it stands is a great romance and that it would be
utterly spoiled if Simcox switched off after another girl. I can’t see
that, can you?”
“In a case like this,” I said, “when the original girl wasn’t a girl at
all----”
“Exactly,” said Daintree, “but when I say that my wife brings up the
Angel in the Shell Hole part of the story and says that a great romance
is its own reward.”
“I don’t know what to advise,” I said.
“I didn’t think you would,” said Daintree, “though my wife insisted that
you’d be able to suggest something. But you can tell me what you think
of the story. That’s what I really want to get out of you. Is it a Sob
Story or just a rather unusual spoof?”
“That,” I said, “depends entirely whether you look at it from Simcox’
point of view or Pat Singleton’s.”