Three weeks at a Soldier's Seaside Convalescent Home on the outskirts
of a West Coast Winter resort, intervened before John's return to
Campden Hill Terrace.
It had been strange to recognise upon his mother's cheerful,
well-preserved comeliness the strained and sharpened look that is the
stamp of War upon the human countenance. Maurice--who was later on
to develop into a mechanic-private in what was then the Royal Flying
Corps--the chrysalis or pupa-stage of ultimate transformation into a
Lieutenant-Pilot--was Overseas at an Advance Depot of the A.S.C. and
didn't write punctually. And the double-fronted millinery and
florist's business in Dove Street was languishing. Fruit and flowers
were only bought to be sent on to the Wounded in the Hospitals.
Nobody wanted ravishing hats when the men the hats were meant to slay
were being killed in the trenches; besides, British women were all
agreed by now that in War-time some kind of uniform was the only
possible wear. So Lady Delphinia had departed to France to open a
Hostel for Officers at one of the Allied Bases, and the huge
benevolent octopus of Organised Activity had enveloped within its
tentacles Mrs. Hazel and her set. They spent their days strenuously
at various West End Centres, in making every imaginable aid,--from
list slippers to body belts, from artificial legs and arms to
life-saving waistcoats--for the Fleet and the Forces; and if they
took comfort from the knowledge that their neighbours at the
trestle-tables in the crowded work-rooms were occasionally Duchesses,
who shall grudge John's mother and her intimates the gratification
they derived from this fact!
Of the visit of Mendel Bartoth to the Hospital at Colthill, John said
nothing to his mother. After all, it was his affair. His and
Maurice's--because it was provided under the conditions of the Will
of Eli Hazaël that, should the elder of the two surviving male
representatives of his House decline to adopt the Judaism of his
forefathers (and incidentally forfeit a sum of £380,000), the younger
should be offered the fortune thus foregone.
Justice and wisdom went to the making of the Will, with consideration
and magnanimity. John was to have two years clear in which to make
up his mind. In the meanwhile, there was the acceptable sum of £500
to be earned by taking a run up North as soon as his health was
sufficiently restored.
Consequently upon a bitter grey-white morning in the February of
1916, Private John Hazel found himself seated in a grimy third-class
compartment of the Kelso Express, steaming out of a vast and murky
London terminus, upon the strangest errand of his life.
The thing was real. He might have dreamed old Mendel: but that there
could be no doubt in face of all those proofs. The typewritten
papers and the queer crumbly parchments were in the brown calfskin
bag beside him. And, queerest of all, the ring: the intaglio of the
bust of Hercules in black onyx in its ancient setting of pale
greenish gold, incredibly battered, was on the third finger of his
big left hand....
He squeezed the back sheet of his _Pall Mall Gazette_ into a ball,
observant of the inferior quality of the paper--cleared away the
clammy fog and grime that obscured the window next him--and settled
down to read the News.
Front after front had burst into roaring flame; the brown shuttle of
the Army and the dark blue shuttle of the Navy, driven back and forth
with dizzying rapidity, wove the bloody web of War upon the loom of
Fate daily, hourly, momentarily....
Sir Douglas Haig had succeeded Sir John French in command of our
Forces in France in the previous December. De Wet and other South
Africans had been pardoned. General Smuts had been appointed to
command in East Africa; the Germans had been repulsed at Loos, a
Zeppelin raid on Paris had twice been unsuccessfully attempted; the
Senussi Arabs had been beaten in West Egypt, the Kut Relief Force
were at grips with the Turkish forces;--France was fighting superbly
to hold Vimy Ridge her own. And the Military Service Bill was
effective in Great Britain; and the final act of the Evacuation,
ringing down the curtain on the unsuccessful tragedy of the Gallipoli
Peninsula was fading from the minds of men.... A bad, bad business!
John commented mentally. He wished the Blooming Bungler who was
responsible for all that waste of blood and prestige and money could
be jammed into a British trench-mortar of the old-fashioned,
big-bellied, Jumbo pattern--and biffed--say 450 yards--into the
Turkish lines! And then he fell to staring at the women in blue
overalls not innocent of grease, with the initials of the Railway
Company in braid that was no longer white--and blue caps with shiny
peaks and white braid badges. And the other women who tapped and
greased wheels, and rattled along luggage trucks, and trolleys of
lamps and foot-warmers;--not forgetting yet other women in dark blue
serge uniforms with bright steel buttons, who had clipped his ticket
for Scotland when he passed the Barrier.
For London was astonishingly altered by the War. Not only by the
temporary War Constructions, the Specials, and the sand-bagging and
wire-netting of public and private buildings: not only by glassless
windows--shattered walls and holes in the concrete pavement,--wounds
torn by High Explosive bombs dropped by Zeppelins and Gothas on the
grey breast of the City, that in John Hazel's estimation was built
about the hub of the world. The most remarkable of all the
War-changes was in the women. In Belgium and France the women young
and old had done men's work, and sometimes looked as though they
enjoyed doing it. Somehow one expected it of Continental womanhood.
But that British womanhood should conduct trams and omnibuses in dark
grey jackets with black leather buttons and belts, short skirts to
suit, and black leather gaiters, slouch hats or shiny-peaked
caps,--intrigued John Hazel wonderfully. A young woman had driven
him to King's Cross from Campden Hill, smart and business-like in a
yellow oilskin coat, peaked yellow oilskin cap--_toujours_ the peaked
cap--big leathern gauntlet-gloves, strap-satchel and general air of
confident competency.... She had not overcharged: and had thrust
back John's proffered _douceur_ with the succinct statement: "We
don't take tips from soldiers, _these_ days!"
And whizzed smoothly out of John Hazel's ken, leaving the young man
standing staring after her, with the calfskin bag in one hand and a
suit-case in the other; amidst the very audible smiles of the
lady-porters and luggage-clerks.
The door of the compartment opened at this juncture, admitting a
drab-faced elderly woman in greasy blue overalls. With a grimy
duster she flapped the seats of the comfortless third-class, raising
a cloud of cindery dust that made the sole passenger sneeze; whisked
a collection of orange-peel, nut-shells, toffee-papers and
"Puss-Puss!" and "Woodbine" cigarette wrappers under the opposite
seat, and fell out again over John Hazel's boots, leaving the
atmosphere murkier than ever.
Fear--the acquired fear of encountering the glare of a Sergeant, or
the chilly stare of the wearer of a Sam Browne, had hitherto arrested
the hand of the Junior Partner in the thriving Cornhill firm of
Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, Insurance-brokers,--when it would
fain have placed on the rubber pad of the Booking Office pigeon-hole,
the fare for a First Class Return.
But now, the prospect of a run of some three hundred and fifty odd
miles North in captivity so grim, chilly and unsavoury, prompted a
young man with muscles still soft from confinement to a Hospital bed,
and the kindly coddling of Hospital Sisters,--and with the warning of
the C.M.O. with regard to avoidance of bronchitis still fresh in
mind,--to extract a soiled ten-shilling note or "pinky" from a
pigskin wallet; to project the upper half of his big body from the
carriage-window, and endeavour, not unsuccessfully, to catch the eye
of the guard.
"Na, na, nae Second Class. Ye'll have hearrd that ava' at the
Booking Office!"
The silver-braided functionary, checked momentarily in his stride by
the appeal of an agitated old lady, presented his highly-dried and
sandily-bearded countenance upon a level with the buttons of John's
front tunic-pockets, and inclined a freckled ear to the young man's
appeal. The answer came in the droning chant of Berwick:
"Ye can pay the differ between the firr'st an' third-class--I'm no'
for stopping ye. Though, ye ken, wi' ilka officer that gets in,
ye'll rin the same risk!"
"Of being turned out with a flea in my ear, you mean," returned John
Hazel, not unobservant of the mahogany _reflet_ of certain Sam
Brownes, isolated or in knots, upon the platform, in juxtaposition
with open carriage-doors, or mingling with the scanty groups of
would-be passengers under the arc-lights (camouflaged with blue
paint) that cast false pallor on the freshest cheek, and made sickly
faces masks of Death; and threw long purplish shadows of people and
things (at angles suggestive of Futurist Art) upon the greasy
asphalte of the Northern terminus....
"O, ay! If ye're willin' to tak the risk...."
The glitter of a certain medal on the Private's breast, and the shine
of two parallel strips of gold braid upon his cuff, had caught the
sharp grey eyes of the guard. He thrust back the offered note on the
confounded John, leaped at his suitcase and tore it from the rack,
and shepherded his huge charge through the clank and rattle and roll
of luggage trucks, foot-warmer barrows, and lamp-trolleys, shouting:
"Come awa' wi' you, man!--there's a firr'st weel forward, wi' a
twa--three women-bodies that would gie guid skelps to the officer
that daured look crookit at ony Tommy--forbye a lang black lad wi'
the D.C.M.!"
Thus John Hazel, suffering for once from an acute attack of
bashfulness, found himself installed in a corner of a fairly-warmed
if faintly-lighted first-class compartment, containing in addition to
many cloaks, rugs, pillows, tea-baskets, and other cosy
accompaniments of travel,--three ladies of uncertain ages, but very
definite position in life,--also a Young Person of highly-coloured
exotic charms, clamorously perfumed; whose crimson hair was
surmounted by a French officer's tasselled _képi_, and who displayed,
below marvellously abbreviated skirts, silk stockings of open
trellis-work, ending in such boots of yellow leather with tinsel
cross-laces as are commonly associated with Principal Boys in
Pantomime....
Of the three ladies, two carried the dark blue uniform of a Voluntary
Aid Detachment of the British Red Cross Society and held officers'
rank of sorts, for both were pipped. While the third, an incredibly
tall, thin woman, with eyebrows arched and black as musical slurs,
pale greenish-gold hair, a white, triangular face, and a V-shaped
mouth as scarlet as a Pierrot's, wore upon her khaki sleeve the
brassard of the Liberal Ladies' War Service Legion, with the lapel,
shoulder and hat-badges distinctive of a Commandant.
All three displayed the roughened hands and damaged finger-nails
characteristic of British womanhood at this strenuous period. Theirs
was the unabashed and frank regard, born of the calm self-confidence
which springs--not from the conviction, but from the established fact
of being Somebody in Society. All three were loud of voice, long of
limb, easy if abrupt of movement: prone to discuss their own and
their friends' private affairs in the presence of strangers; as
though the man or woman in the corner, palpably an alien from Their
Set, must in consequence be deaf and dumb.
"Howling swells!" was John Hazel's pithy mental comment, recognising
upon three of his fellow-travellers the unmistakable cachet of Good
Society. "The Mums," he reflected, rather wistfully--one of the Nice
Things about John was his belief in his mother--"the Mums would be in
her element here!" And he leaned luxuriously back upon a plump
cushion that one of the V.A.D. ladies had deftly thrust behind him,
in the corner that had been unostentatiously vacated when the big
young man, with hollow black eyes and prominent cheek-bones, and
khaki baggily hanging upon a huge frame wasted by hæmorrhage and
strict dietary, had heaved in sight. And the Commandant handed him
the day's issue of an expensive _Illustrated Society_; saying, with a
characteristic emphasis suggestive of large capitals:
"Of course, I really don't believe you'll Cotton Much to this, but it
may get you over an hour! Pass it on to somebody else when you've
done--I Don't want it back!"
She nodded smilingly in acknowledgment of Hazel's gratitude, and the
young person in the gilt-tasselled French _képi_ followed suit by
giving John the current number of "_Frillies_," a purely feminine
publication--devoted to the puffing of silk pyjamas and embroidered
underwear, with Piffel Pearls (warranted to outshine real ones) and
Face Creams guaranteed to remove Complexion Blemishes contracted at
Munition Factories, or in Labour on the Land....
Then she suddenly saw a friend, seized her handbag and suit-case, and
departed on the corridor-side of the compartment in a gale of violent
perfume. John opened the sliding-door, shut the same on her
departure; pulled up his rug and began to sip the honeyed sweetness
of "Loveliness in Lingerie," and the three ladies, as the savage tang
of verbena died upon the air, unleashed their loud, high voices
apparently upon the trail of some subject mooted before.
"You have heard that Evelyn Graynger has consoled herself?" asked the
startlingly thin woman in khaki, lifting her musical slurs of
eyebrows towards the peak of her badged cap, from the back of which a
short square veil depended, and momentarily glancing as she did this,
at a three-inch band of black crape upon her left arm. "Though I am
quite sure that the poor child _really_ did care for my poor Wastwood
and my poor Jerry--you know she became engaged to Jerry not long
after Wastwood--" She blinked and broke off.
"Really! ..." the dark blue ladies chorused; and the elder exclaimed
sympathetically.
"How awfully difficult it must have made their mother's position!
Didn't it, Trixie dear?"
"Now Evelyn is going, I hear, to marry the popular Anglican preacher,
Mr. Amice-Bellows," continued the khaki Commandant. "He likes to be
called 'Father,' don't you know!--and has still a great many wealthy
lady-penitents; never having felt any irresistible call to volunteer
as a Chaplain accompanying Forces to the Front. He opens Soldiers'
Refreshment Buffets with prayer, and figures on Red Cross Bazaar
Committees, and visits wounded Tommies in Hospital and all that, and
of course there must be people to do these things.... And they say
he has a consoling manner with his clients--I should say
Congregation--when they're knocked out by Bad News! Though I
remember when the second bomb dropped,--I mean in the shape of
another wire from the Casualty Department of the War Office--and I
was rather off colour in consequence--he advised me to drink a pint
of hot water regularly every morning with
Bi--something-of-something-or-other stirred in."
The two V.A.D. ladies shrieked. The triangular-faced Commandant in
khaki continued, all unconscious that the illustrated periodical
bestowed on John Hazel displayed her photograph, with the appended
description:
"Trixie, Lady Wastwood. Mother of the late, and aunt of the present
Earl. Who has been doing splendid service as a Commandant of the
Liberal Ladies' War Service Legion at one of our principal Bases in
France, in adherence to the well-known motto of the Legion: _Do
Anything, Go Anywhere, Stick at Nothing, and Never Grouse_!"
* * * * * * *
"Well-meant"--the elder of the two blue women was speaking through
her laughter, "but hardly tactful of Mr. Amice Bellows--to suggest
that biliousness and bereavement produce symptoms practically the
same!"
"Anyhow," the khaki woman's laugh rattled out as though a stick had
been drawn over the keys of a piano, "I took the parson's
counsel--vicariously. Went down every day to Waterloo Station and
poured tea and coffee into thirsty Tommies at a Soldiers' Free
Refreshment Buffet--instead of irrigating myself. Found it swamped
the blue devils quite as effectually. And"--she touched her khaki
lightly--"that's how this--began. Same with both of you--I rather
fancy?" ...
"I entered as Probationer at St. Francis and St. Clara's after the
Third Reserve Battalion of the Loyal North Linkshires got gassed at
Ypres last Spring," said the younger of the V.A.D. women, who had
also a mourning armlet, and could not have been older than twenty-two
or three. "And I found scrubbing floors and carrying buckets
better--oh!--miles better than all the veronal in all the chemists'
shops."
"I agree with Cynthia," said the other blue lady, "I think the V.A.D.
was meant to keep the women who have lost their all from lying down
and dying--or running _amok_. Hark! Was that a Take Cover?" ...
A detonation in the distance had been followed by a wailing hoot of
peculiar ugliness. Silence descended upon the Terminus. Most of the
faces that turned to each other in inquiry, seemed to have suddenly
been powdered white. The three women in John's carriage betrayed no
emotion. They waited in silence, but no second detonation followed.
And John Hazel said as his gaunt black eyes, met Lady Wastwood's,
that were green and singularly brilliant:
"I think the tyre of a motor-'bus burst--just before they sounded the
dinner-hooter at some near-by factory. I know Longmore's Locust Bean
chocolate used to be turned out at a place close here."
All three women nodded and smiled in recognition of the soldier's
civility. The hollows about his eyes, and under his cheek-bones, the
bagginess of his khaki--in favour of which he had gratefully
abandoned the suit of Reckitt's Blue flannel with white lapels, and
the scarlet cotton necktie of Hospital wear, had--in combination with
the medal and the wound-stripes, won him favour in their eyes....
Lady Wastwood gave him another paper, a _Morning Post_, and the
younger of the V.A.D.'s was following suit with a packet of
chocolate, when the first starting-gong clangalanged,--the
carriage-door was wrenched open, and a tall thin officer, followed by
a porter carrying a Gladstone bag and tartan rug, was in the very act
of entering when he encountered Lady Wastwood's glance....