THE CONTRAST
The following afternoon Denver, strolling back from the town, was hailed
by a man in khaki, standing in the door of his house. He knew the man
well, Vane, by name--had dined with him often in the days when he was in
training himself. A quiet man, with a pleasant wife and two children.
Vane was a stockbroker by trade: and just before Jim went out he had
enlisted.
"Come in and have a gargle. I've just got back on short leave." Vane
came to the gate.
"Good," Jim answered. "Mrs. Vane must be pleased." They strolled up the
drive and in through the door. "You're looking very fit, old man.
Flanders seems to suit you."
"My dear fellow, it does. It's the goods. I never knew what living was
before. The thought of that cursed office makes me tired--and once"--he
shrugged his shoulders--"it filled my life. Say when."
"Cheer oh!" They clinked glasses. "I thought you were taking a
commission."
"I am--very shortly. The colonel has recommended me for one, and I
gather the powers that be approve. But in a way I'm sorry, you know.
I've got a great pal in my section--who kept a whelk stall down in
Whitechapel."
"They're the sort," laughed Jim. "The Cockney takes some beating."
"This bird's a flier. We had quite a cheery little show the other night,
just him and me. About a week ago we were up in the trenches--bored
stiff, and yet happy in a way, you know, when Master Boche started to
register.[1] I suppose it was a new battery or something, but they were
using crumps, not shrapnel. They weren't very big, but they were very
close--and they got closer. You know that nasty droning noise, then the
hell of an explosion--that great column of blackish yellow smoke, and
the bits pinging through the air overhead."
"I do," remarked Jim tersely.
Vane laughed. "Well, he got a bracket; the first one was fifty yards
short of the trench, and the second was a hundred yards over. Then he
started to come back--always in the same line; and the line passed
straight through our bit of the trench.
"''Ere, wot yer doing, you perishers? Sargint, go and stop 'em. Tell 'em
I've been appointed purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse of the 'Un
Emperor.' Our friend of the whelk stall was surveying the scene with
intense disfavour. A great mass of smoke belched up from the ground
twenty yards away, and he ducked instinctively. Then we waited--fifteen
seconds about was the interval between shots. The men were a bit white
about the gills--and, well the feeling in the pit of my tummy was what
is known as wobbly. You know that feeling too?"
"I do," remarked Jim even more tersely.
Vane finished his drink. "Then it came, and we cowered. There was a roar
like nothing on earth--the back of the trench collapsed, and the whole
lot of us were buried. If the shell had been five yards short, it would
have burst in the trench, and my whelk friend would have whelked no
more."
Vane laughed. "We emerged, plucking mud from our mouths, and cursed. The
Hun apparently was satisfied and stopped. The only person who wasn't
satisfied was the purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse. He brooded
through the day, but towards the evening he became more cheerful.
"'Look 'ere,' he said to me, ''ave you ever killed a 'Un?'
"'I think I did once,' I said. 'A fat man with a nasty face.'
"'Oh! you 'ave, 'ave you? Well, wot abaht killing one to-night. If they
thinks I'm going to stand that sort of thing, they're ---- ---- wrong.'
The language was the language of Whitechapel, but the sentiments were
the sentiments of even the most rabid purist of speech.
"To cut a long story short, we went. And we were very lucky."
"You bumped your face into 'em, did you?" asked Jim, interested.
"We did. Man, it was a grand little scrap while it lasted, and it was
the first one I'd had. It won't be the last."
"Did you kill your men?"
"Did we not? Welks brained his with the butt of his gun; and I did the
trick with a bayonet." Vane became a little apologetic. "You know it was
only my first, and I can't get it out of my mind." Then his eyes shone
again. "To feel that steel go in--Good God! man--it was IT: it was...."
Then came the interruption. "Dear," said a voice at the door, "the
children are in bed; will you go up and say good night."... Thus the
second incident....
* * * * *
As I said, taken separately the two incidents mean but little: taken
together--there is humour: the whole humour of war.
An itinerant fishmonger and a worthy stockbroker are inculcated with
wonderful ideals in order to fit them for sallying forth at night and
killing complete strangers. And they revel in it....
The highest form of emotionalism on one hand: a hole in the ground full
of bluebottles and smells on the other....
War ... war in the twentieth century.
But there is nothing incompatible in it: it is only strange when
analysed in cold blood. And Jim Denver, as I have said, was sane again:
while Vane, the stockbroker, was still mad.
In fact, it is quite possible that the peculiar significance of the
interruption in his story never struck him: that he never noticed the
Contrast.
And what is going to be the result of it all on the Vanes of England?
"Once the office filled my life." No man can go to the land of Topsy
Turvy and come back the same--for good or ill it will change him. Though
the madness leave him and sanity return, it will not be the same
sanity. Will he ever be content to settle down again after--the lawyer,
the stockbroker, the small clerk? Back to the old dull routine, the same
old train in the morning, the same deadly office, the same old home each
evening. It hardly applies to the Jim Denvers--the men of money: but
what of the others?
Will the scales have dropped from the eyes of the men who have really
been through it? Shall we ever get back to the same old way? Heaven
knows--but let us hope not. Anyway, it is all mere idle conjecture--and
a digression to boot.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 1: For the benefit of the uninitiated, let me explain that the
process of registering consists of finding the exact range to a certain
object from a particular gun or battery. To find this range it is
necessary to obtain what is known as a bracket: _i.e._ one burst beyond
the object, and one burst short. The range is then known to lie between
these two: and by a little adjustment the exact distance can be found.]