E-text prepared by Al Haines
MUFTI
by
HERMAN CYRIL McNEILE
("Sapper")
Author of
"No Man's Land," "Men, Women and Guns,"
"The Human Touch," "The Lieutenant and Others,"
"Sergeant Michael Cassidy," etc.
Hodder and Stoughton
London -- New York -- Toronto
MCMXIX
To P. B. D.
MUFTI
PROLOGUE
I
The officer lying back in the home-made chair tilted the peak of his
cap over his eyes and let his book slip gently to the ground. A few
moments later, after various unavailing waves of the hand, he pulled
out a handkerchief of striking design and carefully adjusted it over
his face. Then, with his hands dug deep in his pockets to remove even
a square inch of skin from the ubiquitous fly, he prepared to slumber.
And shortly afterwards a gentle rise and fall of the centre bulldog, so
wonderfully portrayed on the bandana, announced that he had succeeded.
To anyone fresh from England who desired to see War the scene would
have been disappointing. There were no signs of troops swinging down a
road, singing blithely, with a cheery smile of confidence on their
faces and demanding to be led back forthwith to battle with the Huns.
There were no guns belching forth: the grim Panoply of War, whatever it
may mean, was conspicuous by its absence. Only a very fat
quartermaster-sergeant lay asleep in the sun and snored, while an
ancient and dissolute old warrior, near by, was engaged in clearing out
a drain as part of his Field Punishment, and had just discovered a dead
dog in it. He was not singing blithely: he had no cheery smile of
confidence on his face: he was just talking--gently to himself.
The field was on a slight ridge. Above the camp there floated one of a
line of sausage balloons, and the cable to which it was attached
stretched up taut from some point near the farmhouse behind. A
triangular flag, like a burgee, flew straight out in the breeze from
half-way up the cable, and the basket, looking absurdly small, hung
down like a black dot below the balloon.
Peace was the keynote of the whole situation. In front the country lay
stretched out, with its hedges and trees, its fields and farmhouses.
In certain places there ran long rows of poles with strips of brown
material stretched between them, which a spectator would rightly
conclude was camouflage erected to screen the roads. Only from what?
Where was the Boche in this atmosphere of sleep and quiet?
Beyond the silent countryside rose a line of hills. They seemed to
start and finish abruptly--an excrescence in the all-pervading
flatness. On the top of the near end of the line, clear cut against
the sky, the tower and spires of a great building; at the far end, on a
hill separated--almost isolated--from the main ridge, a line of stumps,
gaunt tooth-pick stumps standing stiffly in a row. There was no sign
of life on the hills, no sign of movement. They were dead and cold
even in the warm glow of the afternoon sun. Especially the isolated
one at the far end with its row of sentinel trees. There was something
ghostly about it--something furtive.
And then suddenly a great column of yellow smoke rose slowly from its
centre and spread like a giant mushroom. Another and another appeared,
and the yellow pall rolled down the side twisting and turning, drifting
into the air and eddying over the dark, grim slope. Gradually it
blotted out that isolated hill, like fog reeking round a mountain top,
and as one watched it, fascinated, a series of dull booms came lazily
through the air.
"Jerry gettin' it in the neck on Kemmel." Two men passing by were
regarding the performance with perfunctory interest, while the purple
bulldog still rose and fell, and the dissolute old warrior did not
cease talking to himself.
"Derek scooped the bally lot as usual." An officer appeared at the
entrance of a tin structure in one corner of the field with a bundle of
letters in his hand. "Look at the dirty dog there--sleeping like a
hog--in the only decent chair."
He disappeared inside to emerge again in a moment with a badminton
racket and a shuttlecock. "On the bulldog--one round rapid fire." He
fired and with a loud snort the sleeper awoke.
"You are charged with conduct to the prejudice, etc.," said the
marksman severely, "in that you did spread alarm and despondency
amongst the troops by disguising yourself as a disease and making
noises indicative of pain."
Derek Vane stretched himself and stood up. "We are feeling well, thank
you--and require nourishment. Does tea await me, and if not--why not?"
He took his mail and glanced through it. "How they love me, dear old
boy! What it is to be young and good looking, and charm. . . ."
There was a loud shout and the deck chair became the centre of a
struggling mob. Shortly afterwards a noise of ripping canvas announced
that it had acted as deck chairs have acted before when five people sit
on them at the same moment.
"Look out, you mugs, you've broken it." Vane's voice came dimly from
the ground. "And my face is in an ants' nest."
"Are you good looking and charming?" demanded an inexorable voice.
"No. Get off, Beetle; you've got bones on you like the human skeleton
at Barnum's."
"What are you like?" pursued the same inexorable voice.
"Horrible," spluttered Vane. "A walking nightmare; a loathly dream."
"It is well--you may arise."
The mass disintegrated, and having plucked the frame of the chair from
the body of an officer known to all and sundry as the Tank--for obvious
reasons--they moved slowly towards the mess for tea.
In all respects an unwarlike scene, and one which would disappoint the
searcher after sensation. Save for the lorries which bumped
ceaselessly up and down the long straight road below, and the
all-pervading khaki it might have been a scene at home before the war.
The yellow fog had cleared away from Kemmel, and over the flat country
the heat haze rose, shimmering and dancing in the afternoon sun. In
the field next to the camp an ancient Belgian was ploughing, his two
big Walloon horses guided by a single cord, while from behind the farm
there came the soft thud-thud of a football.
And then it came. In a few seconds the air was filled with the
thumping of Archie and the distant crackle of machine-guns.
"By Jove! there he is," cried the Tank. "He's got him too."
The officers halted and stared over the dead town of Poperinghe, where
flash after flash of bursting shrapnel proclaimed a Boche aeroplane.
They saw him dive at a balloon--falling like a hawk; then suddenly he
righted and came on towards the next. From the first sausage two black
streaks shot out, to steady after a hundred feet or so, and float down,
supported by their white parachutes. But the balloon itself was
finished. From one end there glowed for an instant a yellow furnace of
fire. Then a flame shot up, followed by clouds of black smoke. Like a
stone, the basket crashed down, passing the two white, drifting specks
on the way, and leaving behind it a long streak of black.
Rolling from side to side like a drunken man, the aeroplane was coming
towards its next quarry. Lewis guns, machine-guns, Archies were now
all firing full blast, but the pilot continued on his course. Tracer
bullets shot up like lines of light, but so far he had come through
untouched. From the balloons the observers dived out until at one
moment there were ten in the air. And each balloon in turn followed
its owners, a flaming, smoking remnant . . .
Then came the end--as suddenly as it had begun. A tracer bullet seemed
to pass right through the aeroplane. Like a tiny ball of fire the
bullet struck it, and then went out. The plane swerved violently,
righted and swerved again. Then it spun down, rocking from side to
side, while a burst of white flame roared all round it. And, falling a
little faster than the plane, two black spots, which did not steady
after a hundred feet. They crashed fifty yards from the tin hut, and
almost before they reached the ground the officers were on the spot. A
little distance away the aeroplane was blazing, and they could feel the
heat as they bent over the pilot and his observer. They were both
dead, and the pilot was unrecognisable; a bullet had entered the base
of his skull from behind. But the observer was not much damaged
outwardly. He lay--arms outstretched--looking up at the sky, on the
ground that the farmer had just ploughed. He seemed to smile cynically
at the hoarse cheering now spreading from field to field, from camp to
camp. Perhaps even then he had realised the futility of it all . . .
For a few seconds Derek Vane looked at him gravely, while close by two
excited men from different units argued raucously as to which battalion
had brought the aeroplane down.
"I tell yer I saw the ruddy bullet hit the perisher right in the
middle," cried one claimant. "It were old Ginger's gun, I tell yer.
E's a fair corker is Ginger with a Lewis."
The smile spread till it was almost a grin on the dead man's face.
Muscular contraction, of course, but. . . . With a sudden movement
Vane stooped down and covered the face.
"Sergeant-Major." He turned to the N.C.O. beside him. "Armed guard
round the plane at once till the Flying Corps arrive. Bring these two
bodies into the camp on stretchers."
Five minutes later they sat down to tea and an unopened mail. The
farmer had resumed his ploughing--the football enthusiasts their game.
Twenty-five Lewis guns and twelve Vickers sections were all composing
reports stating that their particular weapon had done the deed, and
somebody was putting another fog cloud on Kemmel.
In fact, the only real difference in the scene after those ten short
minutes was that by the ruins of a deck chair two German airmen with
their faces covered lay very still on stretchers. . . .
II
Two hours later. Vane handed his steel helmet to his batman and swung
himself into the saddle on his old grey mare. There was touch of Arab
in her, and she had most enormous feet. But she fulfilled most of the
requirements a man looks for in a war horse, which are not of necessity
those he requires in a mount with the Grafton. She scorned guns--she
repudiated lorries, and he could lay the reins on her neck without her
ceasing to function. She frequently fell down when he did so;
but--_c'est la guerre_. The shadows were beginning to lengthen as he
hacked out of the camp, waving a farewell hand at a badminton four, and
headed for Poperinghe.
Poperinghe lay about a mile up the road towards his destination, and
Vane had known it at intervals for over three years. He remembered it
when it had been shelled in April '15 at the time of the first gas
attack, and the inhabitants had fled in all directions. Then gradually
it had become normal again, until, after the Passchendaele fighting of
1917, it had excelled itself in gaiety. And now in May 1918 it was
dead once more, with every house boarded up and every window shuttered.
The big cobbled square; the brooding, silent churches, the single
military policeman standing near his sand-bagged sentry-box--and in the
distance the rumble of a wagon going past the station--such was
Poperinghe as Vane saw it that evening.
A city of ghosts--deserted and empty, and as the old grey mare walked
sedately through the square. Vane felt that he understood the dead
airman's smile.
Sometimes a random shot would take effect, but the bag was soon
removed. That very afternoon a driver with his two horses had been hit
direct. The man, or what was left of him, had been removed--only the
horses remained, and a red pool coated with grey dust. The mare edged
warily around them, and a swarm of flies, bloated, loathsome
brutes--buzzed angrily up as she passed.
"It's not fair, old girl," said Vane bending over and patting her neck;
"but I s'pose it's only in keeping with everything else these
days--it's not fairness that counts; it's just luck--fatuous idiotic
luck. It's not even a game; it's a wild-cat gamble all over the world.
And may Heaven help us all when the bottom does drop out of the market."
The grey mare ambled placidly on up the main Ypres road undisturbed by
his philosophy. The dead of her kind were already forgotten, and the
nose-bag on the saddle would be all the better for emptying. On each
side of the road were gun positions, and Vane kept a sharp look out as
he trotted on. If there was one thing he loathed above all others it
was the gunner humorist who, with malice aforethought, deliberately
waited to fire his gun until some helpless passer by was about a yard
from the muzzle. But at the moment everything seemed quiet. The
evening hate was not due yet; and Vane reached Brandhoek cross roads
without having his eardrums burst.
On the Decauville track close by stood eight trains, stacked with rows
and rows of cylinders, and he contemplated them grimly. Each train was
drawn by an ugly-looking petrol electric engine. The whole eight would
shortly run at close intervals to the nearest point to the front line.
Then Vane, with a large pushing party, could man-handle the trains into
the position decided on--a few hundred yards behind the outpost line.
And as a method of fighting it struck him as poor.
Whatever may be said about Might and Right, there is an element which
must appeal to every normal being in the triumph of strength and
hardihood over weakness. It may be wrong; it happens, however, to be
natural. But there is nothing whatever to appeal to the average man in
the ability of some professor of science, working in his laboratory
miles away, to produce a weapon which strikes down alike the strong and
the weakling with an agony which makes death a blessed relief.
Gas--just a refinement of modern war introduced by the brains of many
eminent gentlemen. And it must be in the nature of a personal triumph
for them to realise that their exhaustive experiments with guinea pigs
and rabbits have caused thousands to fear at first they were going to
die, and later to fear still more that they were not. . . .
Vane nodded to the gas officer and got on board the little tractor
which was to take him to the front trenches.
Chugging along through screen after screen of brown camouflage which
hid the little railway line from the watchful gaze of Kemmel, he seemed
to be passing through some mysterious land. By day it was hideous
enough; but in the dusk the flat dullness of it was transfigured. Each
pond with the shadows lying black on its unruffled surface seemed a
fairy lake; each gaunt and stunted tree seemed to clothe itself again
with rustling leaves. The night was silent; only the rattle of the
little train, as it rumbled over bridges which spanned some sluggish
brook or with a warning hoot crossed a road--broke the stillness.
Great shell-holes filled with rotting debris flashed by, the mouldering
ruins of an old château frowned down as they twisted and turned through
the grounds where once men had flirted and women had sighed. Now the
rose garden was used as a rubbish heap for tins; and by the over-grown
sundial, chipped and scarred by a stray shell, two wooden crosses stuck
out of the long rank grass. At last they reached the Canal, and the
engine stopped near the Lille road.
Close by, the flares lobbed up, green against the night; and a white
mist covered the low-lying ground. Across the road lay trees in all
directions, while, through the few that remained standing, a cold
bright moon threw fantastic shadows. On each side of the road,
screened by the embankment from machine-gun fire, sat groups of men
waiting for the trains.
At last Vane heard the first one--faintly in the distance. It loomed
up suddenly out of the mist and crept across the road. Without a word
the men detailed to push it seemed to rise out of the ground. Silently
they disappeared with it, like ghouls at some mysterious ceremony.
With muffled couplings it made no sound; and in a few minutes it was
ready in position, with its leading truck where once the owner of a
farm had sat before the fire, after the day's work.
And so they came--eight in all. Any noise--any suspicion on the part
of the Boche, a bare quarter of a mile away, and a machine-gun would
have swept the ground. But the night was silent, the flares still went
peacefully up, and the wind had not changed. It blew gently and
steadily towards the German lines. Only there was now just a faint
smell of pineapple in the air; one of the cylinders was leaking. . . .
Figures loomed up unexpectedly out of the mist; occasionally a low
curse could be heard as a man stumbled into a shell hole. . . .
"Everything all right; everybody clear?" The gas expert peered at Vane
in the darkness. "Right! well, let her go."
A series of reports sounded deafeningly loud, as the detonators of the
cylinders were fired by electricity; a steady, hissing noise as a great
wall of white vapour mingled with the mist and rolled forward towards
the Germans. The gas attack had begun. To an airman returning from a
bombing raid, who circled for a moment above, it looked like a sheet
being slowly spread over the country below; a beautiful--an
eerie--picture. To those on the ground who watched it, it seemed as a
solid wall of dense fog moving relentlessly forward--like the mist that
comes creeping over the Downs till those caught in it can scarce see
their hand in front of their face. To the Boche it was death. . . .
Patrols going out the next night found men twisted and blackened with
the smell of pineapple still on their swollen lips; in the hospitals
behind, men writhed and muttered hoarsely, struggling for breath and
struggling in vain. The attack had been successful--and all was as it
should be. Undoubtedly the Germans started gas in a country where the
prevalent wind was south-west--and it doesn't pay in war to be a fool.
. . .
Vane wished that one or two German men of science had been occupying
the Boche outpost line instead of. . . . War--modern war!
"It will go clean through their helmets," said the gas expert. "One
hour in most cases, and when it gets weaker, twenty-four--or even more.
That's the stuff to give 'em."
At last the performance was over, and the trains having delivered the
goods returned to their own place.
"Most successful." The gas expert, rubbing his hands together, came up
to Vane as he stood on the Lille road. "I think we've got quite a
number of the blighters. And not a single casualty!"
"Good," said Vane. "But what a filthy method of fighting."
"The Germans started it," returned the other.
"I know they did," laughed Vane. "That's probably why it's so filthy."
The gas officer looked thoughtful. "I'm not certain that I agree with
you, Vane. War is such a filthy business, however you look at it, that
one would be a fool not to harness science in every possible way . . ."
"Don't you believe it," scoffed Vane. "Science has harnessed us.
We've started the bally motor with the gear in, and now we're running
after it trying to catch up. Can I give you a lift back on my private
stink machine? . . ."
They strolled up the road together to where the tractor was waiting.
"Man no longer the master of his destiny, you mean?" said his companion.
"Don't make me laugh too loud," returned Vane, "or the Boche might
hear; unless you've killed 'em all . . ."
"You're wrong, my friend--utterly wrong." They came to where the
railway track crossed the road and he halted to pull out his pipe,
before getting on to the little engine.
"I tell you, Vane . . ."
And at that moment a flight of cockchafers seemed to sweep down the
road. Vane felt the stinging pain in his right shoulder, and then he
looked foolishly at the gas expert . . .
"You were saying," he began . . .
But his late companion had taken a machine-gun bullet through his heart.
CHAPTER I
The beach at Paris Plage is associated in the minds of most people who
went there before the war with a certain amount of gaiety. There were
bands, and fair ladies, and various other delights generally connected
with popular French watering-places. Incidentally the beach is a
beach--not a collection of sharp boulders. There is real sand--lots of
it; the sort that gets hot and comforting in the sun, and invites
people who have eaten too much luncheon to sleep. And during the war,
though the bands and other delights have departed, the sand has
remained a source of pleasure to hundreds of people in need of a
temporary rest cure. They have come from the big hospitals at Etaples;
they have come from the officers' rest-house. Some have even come in
motor cars from the trenches just for the day, and one and all they
have lain on the beach and slept and then departed the better for it.
On a certain afternoon during the height of the German offensive in the
spring of 1918 a girl was sitting on the beach staring out to sea. On
the horizon a black smudge of smoke stood up against the vivid blue of
the sky; while, close in shore, a small sailing boat was barely making
headway in the faint breeze.
The girl was a V.A.D., and the large French family which had planted
itself close by cast little curious glances at her from time to time.
And she was worth looking at, with her fair hair, deep blue eyes and
that wonderful complexion which seems to be the exclusive property of
the British. Madame remarked on it to Monsieur, glancing at the white
faces of her own daughters three, and Monsieur grunted an assent.
Personally he was more occupied with the departed glories of Paris
Plage than with a mere skin of roses and milk; at least the worthy man
may have deemed it desirable to appear so.
"Pauvre petite," went on the kindly matron, "but she looks tired . . .
so tired." She heaved a deep sigh. "Mais que voulez-vous? c'est la
guerre." She watched her offspring preparing to paddle, and once again
she sighed. There was no band, no amusement--"Mon Dieu! but it was
triste. This accursed war--would it never end?"
Margaret Trent's looks did not lie; she was tired. The rush of work
just lately had almost broken her physical endurance, and there seemed
but little chance of any slackening in the near future. She felt that
all she wanted was rest--utter, complete rest, where such things as
bandages and iodine were unknown. And even as the longing came to her
she knew that a week of it would be all that she could stand. She
could see beyond the craving ache to stop--the well-nigh irresistible
cry of her body for rest. She could feel the call of spirit dominating
mere bodily weariness. And it drove her on--though every muscle cried
a halt.
Before the war she had been in that set which drifted pleasantly
through life, and yet she had not been of it. She danced perfectly;
she played tennis and golf and went to the proper places at the proper
times--but she was different. She had in her a certain idealistic
dreaminess, an intense love of the beautiful in life. Sordid things
filled her with a kind of horror, and when the war came she tried to
banish it from her mind like a dreadful nightmare. But there were
stories in the papers, and there were letters from friends telling of
losses and unspeakable sufferings. There was war all round her and one
day the great unrest got hold of her, and would not be put aside. She
felt she had to do something . . .
And so she became a V.A.D. and in the fulness of time arrived in
France. Her friends prophesied that she would last a month--that she
would never stand the sight of blood and wounds. Her answer had been
two years at Etaples. And to those who know, that is an answer
conducive of many things.
At times she tried to recall her outlook on life four years ago. She
had enjoyed herself up to a point, but all the time she had been
groping towards something she did not possess. She had read carefully
and with discrimination, and the reading had only filled her with an
added sense of her own futility. She felt that she wanted to do
something--but what was there for her to do?
Marriage, naturally, had come into her mental horizon. But there had
only been one man who had ever attracted her sufficiently to make it
anything but an idle speculation. There had been a time, one season in
London, when this man had been her constant companion, and she had been
far from disliking it. At times he had seemed to be serious, and as a
matter of fact the subtle difference between her and the stock pattern
crowd had interested him more than he admitted even to himself. Then
one day she discovered that a certain flat and its occupant were very
closely connected with his bank account. It was by pure accident that
she found it out. A chance remark which she overheard at a dinner
party. . . . And the night before at the Grafton Galleries she had
allowed him to kiss her as she had never before allowed a man . . .
It revolted her; and the man, astonished at first at her sudden change
of manner, finally became annoyed, and the episode ceased. They still
met; there was no quarrel--but they met only as casual acquaintances.
It was at that stage of her reflections that a shadow fell across her
and she looked up. For a moment the coincidence failed to strike her,
and then with a surprised little laugh she held out her hand.
"Why, Derek," she said, "I was just thinking of you."
Vane, his right arm tightly bound in a sling, sat down beside her.
"I thought you looked pretty weary," he laughed. "Jove! but it's great
seeing you again, Margaret . . .! And the peace of it all." He waved
his left hand round the deserted beach. "Why, it's like old
times--before the world went mad" . . . He fumbled with his cigarette
case, until she took it out of his hand, and struck a match for him.
"What ward are you in?" she asked, when he had made himself comfortable.
"Number 13; got here yesterday."
"I come on night duty there to-night. What's your trouble?"
"Machine-gun," he answered briefly. "A nice clean one through the
shoulder. And the man beside me took the next bullet through his
heart." He laughed shortly. "What a gamble--what a dam silly gamble,
isn't it?"
She looked thoughtfully out to sea. The train of ideas his sudden
appearance had interrupted was still half consciously occupying her
mind.
"Four years, isn't it, since we met?" she said after a while.
"Four centuries, you mean. Four wasted centuries. Nothing will ever
be the same again."
"Of course it won't. But don't you think it's just as well?" She
faced him smilingly. "There was so much that was all wrong, Derek; so
much that was rotten."
"And do you think that four years' insanity is going to prove the
remedy?" Vane laughed cynically. "Except that there are a few million
less men to carry on the rottenness"--
Margaret shook her head. "We wanted something to wake us up; it's been
drastic, but we're awake."
"And what most of us want is to go to sleep again. Don't you feel
tired, Margaret, sometimes?"
"Yes--I suppose I do. But it's the tiredness that comes with
doing--not drifting. . . . It's we who have got to make the new Heaven
and the new Earth, Derek . . ."
Again Vane laughed. "Still as idealistic as ever, I see. Six months
after peace we shall be scrambling and fighting and snarling
again--after jobs and money and work."
Margaret Trent was silent, tracing a pattern in the sand with her
finger. "The worry of scrambling after a job is not likely to hit you
very hard," she said at length.
"Which is perhaps as well," he returned lightly; "for I'm certainly too
weary to take the trouble. I shall go away, if I'm alive to do it, to
the South Sea Islands and live on fruit. The only proviso is that it
should be sufficiently ripe to drop into my mouth, and save me the
trouble of picking it."
The girl turned and looked at him suddenly. "You've got it rather bad,
old boy, haven't you?"
"Got what?" he asked slowly.
"Mental jaundice," she answered. "Your world askew."
"Do you wonder?" he returned grimly. "Isn't the world askew?"
"And if it is, someone has got to put it back."
"That's what the little boy said when he pulled the chest of drawers
over on top of him and lay struggling under it. But he couldn't do it
himself. It's got beyond us, Margaret--and God seems to have
forgotten. There is just a blind, malignant Fate running the show."
She looked at him gravely. "You're wrong, Derek--utterly wrong. The
game is still in our hands, and we've got to keep it there. What are
you smiling at?"
"I was wondering," he answered, "whether the last time I was told I was
wrong, the sentence would have been concluded similarly.
Unfortunately, the speaker died in the middle, thereby proving his
contention."
"Oh! but you're little," she cried, striking her hands together.
"Don't you see that you've got to look beyond the individual--that
you've got to think Big?"
"We leave that to the newspaper men," he retorted cynically. "Our
smiling heroes; our undaunted soldiers! They are heroes, those
Tommies; they are undaunted, but it's because they've got to be.
They're up against it--and the Juggernaut of Fate knows he's got 'em.
And they know he's got 'em. They just eat and drink and are merry for
to-morrow they. . . . Ah! no; that's wrong. We never die out here,
Margaret; only the other fellow does that. And if we become the other
fellow, it's so deuced unexpected I don't suppose it matters much."
"But, we've got to go through with it, haven't we?" she said quietly.
"Of course we have," he answered with a laugh; "and the knowledge of
that fact cuts about as much ice with the men in the mud holes up there
as brave little Belgium or suffering little Serbia. I tell you we're
all dazed, Margaret--just living in a dream. Some of us take it worse
than others, that's all. You want the constitution of an elephant
combined with the intelligence of a cow to fight these days."
"And yet," she said with a grave little smile, "under-lying it all,
there's the big ideal surely. . . . If I didn't think that, if I
didn't know that, I . . . I couldn't go on."
"To which particular ideal do you allude?" he asked cynically. "The
League of Nations; or the triumph of Democracy, or the War to end War.
They all sound so topping, don't they? received with howls of applause
by the men who haven't had their boots off for a week." He thumped the
sand savagely. "Cut the cackle, my dear girl; cut the cackle. This
little performance was started by a few of the puppets who thought they
had a winning hand, and the other puppets called a show down. And then
the game passed out of their hands. They write books about it, and
discover new Gods, and pass new Acts of Parliament--but the thing takes
no notice. It just goes on--inexorably. Man has been dabbling with
stakes that are too big for him, Margaret. And the trouble is that the
cards up in the trenches are getting mighty tattered."
She looked at him curiously. "I'd never have thought it would have
taken you like that, Derek . . . Not quite as badly."
"You formed your opinion in the bad old days, didn't you?" he said
lightly. "When we danced and made love at the Grafton Galleries." She
flushed a little, but did not lower her eyes. "Such a serious girl you
were too, Margaret; I wonder how you ever put up with a brainless sort
of ass like me."
"Because I liked you," she answered quietly, and suddenly it struck
Vane, almost with a feeling of surprise, that the girl sitting beside
him was more than attractive. He wondered why he had let her slip so
easily out of his life. And the train of thought once started seemed a
not unpleasant one. . . . "You'll get it back soon, Derek--your sense
of proportion. You've got to."
"So that I can help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," he laughed.
"So that you may help build the new Heaven and the new Earth," she
repeated gravely rising to her feet. "I must go back or I'll miss my
tea."
"Have a cup with me in the village." Vane scrambled up and fell into
step beside her. They passed Monsieur still snoring, and Madame
nodding peacefully over her knitting, and crossed the deserted
promenade. Then in silence they walked up into the main street of the
little town in search of a tea shop.
"Do you realise, Margaret," he remarked as they sat down at a small
marble-topped table, "that I haven't seen or spoken to a woman for six
months? . . . Heaven help us! Aren't there any cakes?"
"Of course not," laughed Margaret, "nor milk, nor sugar. There's a war
on up the road. You want about ten drops of that liquid saccharine."
In the sunny street outside, soldiers in various stages of
convalescence, strolled aimlessly about. An occasional motor car,
containing officers--on duty, of course--slowed down at the corner
opposite and disgorged its load. A closer inspection of one of them
might have revealed a few suspicious looking gashes in the upholstery
and holes in the mud-guards. Of course--shrapnel--but, then shrapnel
did not occur by the sea. And on what duty could officers from the
shrapnel area be engaged on at Paris Plage? . . . However, let us be
discreet in all things.
In a few hours that shrapnel scarred car would be carrying its freight
back to Boulogne, where a table at the restaurant Mony had already been
secured for dinner. Then back through the night, to call at various
dilapidated farms and holes in the ground, in the area where shrapnel
and crumps are not unknown. . . . But just for a few brief hours the
occupants of the car were going to soak themselves in the Waters of
Forgetfulness; they were going to live--even as the tripper from the
slums lives his little span at Margate. And they were no whit less
excited at the thought . . .
They did not show it by an excessive consumption of indigestible fruit,
or by bursting into unmelodious song. True, the greatest of all the
"Q" men, who had come officially from a Nissen hut near Poperinghe to
study the question of salvaged materials at the base, had waved a
friendly hand at all the ladies--beautiful and otherwise--whom they
met. But then save for salvage he was much as other men. And with
that exception they just lay back in the car and thought; while the
trees that were green rushed past them, and war was not.
Thus had they come to the sea. To-morrow once more the flat, dusty
country with the heat haze shimmering over it and every now and then
the dull drone of some bursting crump, or the vicious crack of high
explosive. Behind, the same old row of balloons; in front, the same
old holes in the ground. . . . But to-day--peace. . . .
Vane thoughtfully stirred the pale straw-coloured concoction reputed to
be tea on the table in front of him. The remark Margaret had made to
him on the beach was running through his mind--"The new Heaven and the
new Earth." Yes, but on what foundations? And would they be allowed
to anyway? Reconstruction is work for the politician--not for the
soldier. . . . Most certainly not. . . . The soldier's ignorance on
every subject in the world except fighting is complete. And even over
that he's not all he might be: he requires quite a lot of help from
lawyers, doctors, and successful grocers. . . . In fact, the only
thing he is allowed to do quite on his own is to die . . .
Vane smiled a little bitterly, and Margaret leaned across the table
towards him. "You'll get it back soon, Derek--believe me, old boy."
"That's very possible. But will the people at home? I'm jangled,
Margaret, I know it--just for the time. . . . However, don't let's
talk about me. Tell me about yourself. . . ."
The girl shrugged her shoulders slightly. "I don't know that there's
much to tell. I've never been so happy in my life as I am at
present . . ."
"In spite of all that?" He pointed out of the window to two soldiers
limping painfully by on sticks.
"Yes--in spite of all that. One gets accustomed to that--and one's
doing something. After all, Derek, you get accustomed to death and
mutilation up there in front. It doesn't affect you. . . ."
"No, not to the same extent as it did. In a way, I suppose not at all.
But you--you were so different." He thoughtfully drained his tea cup,
and set it down again, and for a space neither of them spoke.
"I can't help laughing at the comparison," said Margaret suddenly.
"Five years ago you and I were sitting in Rumpolmayer's, surrounded by
sugar cakes, being smart."
"They're doing that now in London except for the sugar cakes."
"We shouldn't have been silent for a moment, and we should have enjoyed
ourselves thoroughly . . . I wonder--"
"It was our only standard, wasn't it?"
"And now we can sit over a cup of weak and nasty tea--without milk and
not talk for effect. . . . What's going to happen, Derek, to you and
me afterwards? We can never go back to it?"
"No--you can't put back the clock--and we've grown, Margaret, years and
years older. So have thousands of others--the boys up yonder, their
people at home. But what about the business train to Brighton, and the
occupants thereof? . . . Have they felt this war, except to make a bit
more boodle out of it?"
"They're only a small minority."
"Are they? They're a damned powerful one." He laughed a little
bitterly. "And they're artificial--just like we were before the war."
"That's why it's we who have got to do the rebuilding. Even if it's
only the rebuilding the house in our own little tiny circle, with
simplicity and reality as the keystones. . . . You see, if you get
enough tiny circles sound and good, in time the others may
follow. . . ."
"Dear lady, you've become very optimistic." Vane's eyes smiled at her.
"Let's hope you're right." He paused and looked at her quietly.
"Margaret. I've never asked you before--but you're different now--so
different. Incidentally so am I. What was it, that made you alter so
suddenly?"
Margaret rose to her feet, and shook her head. "I'll tell you some
day, Derek, perhaps. Not just now. I must be getting back to the
hospital."
"Will you come out and have tea with me to-morrow?" For a few moments
she looked at him as if undecided, and then suddenly she seemed to make
up her mind.
"All right," she said with a smile. "I'll come, I want to deal with
this jaundice of yours. One must live up to a professional reputation."