There had been rather a long sitting at Lodge “Faith and Works,” 5837
E. C., that warm April night. Three initiations and two raisings, each
conducted with the spaciousness and particularity that our Lodge prides
itself upon, made the Brethren a little silent and the strains of
certain music had not yet lifted from them.
“There are two pieces that ought to be barred for ever,” said a Brother
as we were sitting down to the “banquet.” “‘Last Post’ is the other.”
“I can just stand ‘Last Post.’ It’s ‘Tipperary’ breaks me,” another
replied. “But I expect every one carries his own firing-irons inside
him.”
I turned to look. It was a sponsor for one of our newly raised
Brethren--a fat man with a fish-like and vacant face, but evidently
prosperous. We introduced ourselves as we took our places. His name was
Bevin, and he had a chicken farm near Chalfont-St.-Giles, whence he
supplied, on yearly contract, two or three high-class London hotels. He
was also, he said, on the edge of launching out into herb-growing.
“There’s a demand for herbs,” said he; “but it all depends upon your
connections with the wholesale dealers. _We_ ain’t systematic enough.
The French do it much better, especially in those mountains on the
Swiss an’ Italian sides. They use more herbal remedies than we do. Our
patent-medicine business has killed that with us. But there’s a demand
still, if your connections are sound. I’m going in for it.”
A large, well-groomed Brother across the table (his name was Pole, and
he seemed some sort of professional man) struck in with a detailed
account of a hollow behind a destroyed village near Thiepval, where,
for no ascertainable reason, a certain rather scarce herb had sprung up
by the acre, he said, out of the overturned earth.
“Only you’ve got to poke among the weeds to find it, and there’s any
quantity of bombs an’ stuff knockin’ about there still. They haven’t
cleaned it up yet.”
“Last time _I_ saw the place,” said Bevin, “I thought it ’ud be that
way till Judgment Day. You know how it lay in that dip under that
beet-factory. I saw it bombed up level in two days--into brick-dust
mainly. They were huntin’ for St. Firmin Dump.” He took a sandwich and
munched slowly, wiping his face, for the night was close.
“Ye-es,” said Pole. “The trouble is there hasn’t been any judgment
taken or executed. That’s why the world is where it is now. We didn’t
need anything but justice--afterwards. Not gettin’ that, the bottom
fell out of things, naturally.”
“That’s how I look at it too,” Bevin replied. “We didn’t want all
that talk afterwards--we only wanted justice. What _I_ say is,
there _must_ be a right and a wrong to things. It can’t all be
kiss-an’-make-friends, no matter what you do.”
A thin, dark brother on my left, who had been attending to a cold
pork pie (there are no pork pies to equal ours, which are home-made),
suddenly lifted his long head, in which a pale blue glass eye swivelled
insanely.
“Well,” he said slowly. “_My_ motto is ‘Never again.’ Ne-ver again for
me.”
“Same here--till next time,” said Pole, across the table. “You’re from
Sidney, ain’t you?”
“How d’you know!” was the short answer.
“You spoke.” The other smiled. So did Bevin, who added: “_I_ know how
your push talk, well enough. Have you started that Republic of yours
down under yet?”
“No. But we’re goin’ to. _Then_ you’ll see.”
“Carry on. No one’s hindering,” Bevin pursued.
The Australian scowled. “No. We know they ain’t. And--and--that’s
what makes us all so crazy angry with you.” He threw back his head
and laughed the spleen out of him. “What _can_ you do with an Empire
that--that don’t care what you do?”
“I’ve heard that before,” Bevin laughed, and his fat sides shook. “Oh,
I know _your_ push inside-out.”
“When did you come across us? My name’s Orton--no relation to the
Tichborne one.”
“Gallip’li--dead mostly. My battalion began there. We only lost half.”
“Lucky! They gambled _us_ away in two days. ’Member the hospital on the
beach?” asked Orton.
“Yes. An’ the man without the face--preaching,” said Bevin, sitting up
a little.
“Till he died,” said the Australian, his voice lowered.
“_And_ afterwards,” Bevin added, lower still.
“Christ! Were you there that night?”
Bevin nodded. The Australian choked off something he was going to say,
as a brother on his left claimed him. I heard them talk horses, while
Bevin developed his herb-growing projects with the well-groomed brother
opposite.
At the end of the banquet, when pipes were drawn, the Australian
addressed himself to Bevin, across me, and as the company re-arranged
itself, we three came to anchor in the big ante-room where the best
prints are hung. Here our brother across the table joined us, and
moored alongside.
The Australian was full of racial grievances, as must be in a young
country; alternating between complaints that his people had not been
appreciated enough in England, or too fulsomely complimented by an
hysterical Press.
“No-o,” Pole drawled, after awhile. “You’re altogether wrong. We hadn’t
time to notice anything--we were all too busy fightin’ for our lives.
What _your_ crowd down under are suffering from is growing-pains.
You’ll get over ’em in three hundred years or so--if you’re allowed to
last so long.”
“Who’s going to stoush us?” Orton asked fiercely.
This turned the talk again to larger issues and
possibilities--delivered on both sides straight from the shoulder
without malice or heat, between bursts of song from round the piano at
the far end. Bevin and I sat out, watching.
“Well, _I_ don’t understand these matters,” said Bevin at last. “But
I’d hate to have one of your crowd have it in for me for anything.”
“Would you? Why?” Orton pierced him with his pale, artificial eye.
“Well, you’re a trifle--what’s the word?--vindictive?--spiteful? At
least, that’s what _I_’ve found. I expect it comes from drinking stewed
tea with your meat four times a day,” said Bevin. “No! I’d hate to have
an Australian after me for anything in particular.”
Out of this came his tale--somewhat in this shape:
It opened with an Australian of the name of Hickmot or Hickmer--Bevin
called him both--who, finding his battalion completely expended at
Gallipoli, had joined up with what stood of Bevin’s battalion, and had
there remained, unrebuked and unnoticed. The point that Bevin laboured
was that his man had never seen a table-cloth, a china plate, or a
dozen white people together till, in his thirtieth year, he had walked
for two months to Brisbane to join up. Pole found this hard to believe.
“But it’s true,” Bevin insisted. “This chap was born an’ bred among the
black fellers, as they call ’em, two hundred miles from the nearest
town, four hundred miles from a railway, an’ ten thousand from the
grace o’ God--out in Queensland near some desert.”
“Why, of course. We come out of everywhere,” said Orton. “What’s wrong
with that?”
“Yes--but----Look here! From the time that this man Hickmot was twelve
years old he’d ridden, driven--what’s the word?--conducted sheep for
his father for thousands of miles on end, an’ months at a time, alone
with these black fellers that you daren’t show the back of your neck
to--else they knock your head in. That was all that he’d ever done till
he joined up. He--he--didn’t _belong_ to anything in the world, you
understand. And he didn’t strike other men as being a--a human being.”
“Why? He was a Queensland drover. They’re all right,” Orton explained.
“I dare say; but--well, a man notices another man, don’t he? You’d
notice if there was a man standing or sitting or lyin’ near you,
wouldn’t you? So’d any one. But you’d never notice Hickmot. His
bein’ anywhere about wouldn’t stay in your mind. He just didn’t draw
attention any more than anything else that happened to be about. Have
you got it?”
“Wasn’t he any use at his job?” Pole inquired.
“I’ve nothing against him that way, an’ I’m--I was his platoon
sergeant. He wouldn’t volunteer specially for any doings, but he’d slip
out with the party and he’d slip back with what was left of ’em. No
one noticed him, and he never opened his mouth about any doings. You’d
think a man who had lived the way he’d lived among black fellers an’
sheep would be noticeable enough in an English battalion, wouldn’t you?”
“It teaches ’em to lie close; but _you_ seem to have noticed him,”
Orton interposed, with a little suspicion.
“Not at the time--but afterwards. If he was noticeable it was on
account of his _un_noticeability--same way you’d notice there not being
an extra step at the bottom of the staircase when you thought there
was.”
“Ye-es,” Pole said suddenly. “It’s the eternal mystery of personality.
‘God before Whom ever lie bare----’ Some people can occlude their
personality like turning off a tap. I beg your pardon. Carry on!”
“Granted,” said Bevin. “I think I catch your drift. I used to think I
was a student of human nature before I joined up.”
“What was your job--before?” Orton asked.
“Oh, I was _the_ young blood of the village. Goal-keeper in our soccer
team, secretary of the local cricket and rifle--oh, lor’!--clubs. Yes,
an’ village theatricals. My father was the chemist in the village.
_How_ I did talk! _What_ I did know!” He beamed upon us all.
“_I_ don’t mind hearing you talk,” said Orton, lying back in his chair.
“You’re a little different from some of ’em. What happened to this dam’
drover of yours?”
“He was with our push for the rest of the war--an’ I don’t think he
ever sprung a dozen words at one time. With his upbringing, you see,
there wasn’t any subject that any man knew about he _could_ open up on.
He kept quiet, and mixed with his backgrounds. If there was a lump of
dirt, or a hole in the ground, or what was--was left after anythin’ had
happened, it would be Hickmot. That was all he wanted to be.”
“A camouflager?” Orton suggested.
“You have it! He was the complete camouflager all through. That’s him
to a dot. Look here! He hadn’t even a nickname in his platoon! And then
a friend of mine from our village, of the name of Vigors, came out with
a draft. Bert Vigors. As a matter of fact, I was engaged to his sister.
And Bert hadn’t been with us a week before they called him ‘The Grief.’
His father was an oldish man, a market-gardener--high-class vegetables,
bit o’ glass, an’--an’ all the rest of it. Do you know anything about
that particular business?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Pole, “except that glass is expensive, and
one’s man always sells the cut flowers.”
“Then you _do_ know something about it. It is. Bert was the old man’s
only son, an’--_I_ don’t blame him--he’d done his damnedest to get
exempted--for the sake of the business, you understand. But he caught
it all right. The tribunal wasn’t takin’ any the day he went up. Bert
was for it, with a few remarks from the patriotic old was-sers on the
bench. Our county paper had ’em all.”
“That’s the thing that made one really want the Hun in England for a
week or two,” said Pole.
“_Mwor osee!_ The same tribunal, havin’ copped Bert, gave unconditional
exemption to the opposition shop--a man called Margetts, in the
market-garden business, which he’d established _since_ the war, with
his two sons who, every one in the village knew, had been pushed into
the business to save their damned hides. But Margetts had a good
lawyer to advise him. The whole case was frank and above-board to a
degree--our county paper had it all in too. Agricultural produce--vital
necessity; the plough mightier than the sword; an’ those ducks on the
bench, who had turned down Bert, noddin’ and smilin’ at Margetts all
full of his cabbage and green peas. What happened? The usual. Vigors’
business--he’s sixty-eight, with asthma--goes smash, and Margetts and
Co. double theirs. So, then, that was Bert’s grievance, an’ he joined
us full of it. That’s why they called him ‘The Grief.’ Knowing the
facts, I was with him; but being his sergeant, I had to check him,
because grievances are catchin’, and three or four men with ’em make
Companies--er--sticky. Luckily Bert wasn’t handy with his pen. He had
to cork up his grievance mostly till he came across Hickmot, an’ Gord
in Heaven knows what brought those two together. No! _As_ y’were. I’m
wrong about God! I always am. It was Sheep. Bert knew’s much about
sheep as I do--an’ that’s Canterbury lamb--but he’d let Hickmot talk
about ’em for hours, in return for Hickmot listenin’ to his grievance.
Hickmot ’ud talk sheep--the one created thing he’d ever open up on--an’
Bert ’ud talk his grievance while they was waiting to go over the top.
I’ve heard ’em again an’ again, and, of course, I encouraged ’em. Now,
look here! Hickmot hadn’t seen an English house or a field or a road
or--or anything any civ’lised man is used to in all his life! Sheep an’
blacks! Market-gardens an’ glass an’ exemption-tribunals! An’ the men’s
teeth chatterin’ behind their masks between rum-issue an’ zero. Oh,
there was fun in Hell those days, wasn’t there, boys?”
“Sure! Oh, sure!” Orton chuckled, and Pole echoed him.
“Look here! When we were lying up somewhere among those forsaken
chicken-camps back o’ Doullens, I found Hickmot making mud-pies in
a farmyard an’ Bert lookin’ on. He’d made a model of our village
according to Bert’s description of it. He’d preserved it in his head
through all those weeks an’ weeks o’ Bert’s yap; an’ he’d coughed it
all up--Margetts’ house and gardens, old Mr. Vigors’ ditto; both pubs;
my father’s shop, everything that he’d been told by Bert done out to
scale in mud, with bits o’ brick and stick. Haig ought to have seen it;
but as his sergeant I had to check him for misusin’ his winkle-pin on
dirt. ’Come to think of it, a man who runs about uninhabited countries,
with sheep, for a livin’ must have gifts for mappin’ and scalin’
things somehow or other, or he’d be dead. _I_ never saw anything like
it--_all_ out o’ what Bert had told him by word of mouth. An’ the next
time we went up the line Hickmot copped it in the leg just in front of
me.”
“Finish?” I asked.
“Oh, no. Only beginnin’. That was in December, somethin’ or other,
’16. In Jan’ry Vigors copped it for keeps. I buried him--snowin’ blind
it was--an’ before we’d got him under the whole show was crumped. I
wanted to bury him again just to spite ’em (I’m a spiteful man by
nature), but the party wasn’t takin’ any more--even if they could have
found it. But, you see, we had buried him all right, which is what
they want at home, and I wrote the usual trimmin’s about the chaplain
an’ the full service, an’ what his captain had said about Bert bein’
recommended for a pip, an’ the irreparable loss an’ so on. That was in
Jan’ry ’17. In Feb’ry some time or other I got saved. My speciality
had come to be bombin’s and night-doings. Very pleasant for a young
free man, but--there’s a limit to what you can stand. It takes all men
differently. Noise was what started me, at last. I’d got just up to the
edge--wonderin’ when I’d crack an’ how many of our men I’d do in if it
came on me while we were busy. I had that nice taste in the mouth and
the nice temperature they call trench-fever, an’--I had to feel inside
my head for the meanin’ of every order I gave or was responsible for
executin’. _You_ know!”
“We do. Go on!” said Pole in a tone that made Orton look at him.
“So, you see, the bettin’ was even on my drawin’ a V. C. or getting
Number Umpty rest-camp or--a firing party before breakfast. But Gord
saved me. (I made friends with Him the last two years of the war. The
others went off too quick.) They wanted a bombin’-instructor for the
training-battalion at home, an’ He put it into their silly hearts to
indent for me. It took ’em five minutes to make me understand I was
saved. Then I vomited, an’ then I cried. _You_ know!” The fat face of
Bevin had changed and grown drawn, even as he spoke; and his hands
tugged as though to tighten an imaginary belt.
“I was never keen on bombin’ myself,” said Pole. “But
bombin’-instruction’s murder!”
“I don’t deny it’s a shade risky, specially when they take the pin
out an’ start shakin’ it, same as the Chinks used to do in the woods
at Beauty, when they were cuttin’ ’em down. But you live like a home
defence Brigadier, besides week-end leaf. As a matter o’ fact, I
married Bert’s sister soon’s I could after I got the billet, an’ I used
to lie in our bed thinkin’ of the old crowd on the Somme an’--feelin’
what a swine I was. Of course, I earned two V. C.’s a week behind the
traverse in the exercise of my ord’nary duties, but that isn’t the
same thing. An’ yet I’d only joined up because--because I couldn’t dam’
well help it.”
“An’ what about your Queenslander?” the Australian asked.
“_Too de sweet! Pronto!_ We got a letter in May from a Brighton
hospital matron, sayin’ that one of the name of Hickmer was anxious for
news o’ me, previous to proceedin’ to Roehampton for initiation into
his new leg. Of course, we applied for him by return. Bert had written
about him to his sister--my missus--every time he wrote at all; an’
any pal o’ Bert’s--well, _you_ know what the ladies are like. I warned
her about his peculiarities. She wouldn’t believe till she saw him. He
was just the same. You’d ha’ thought he’d show up in England like a
fresh stiff on snow--but you never noticed him. You never heard him;
and if he didn’t want to be seen he wasn’t there. He just joined up
with his background. I knew he could do that with men; but how in Hell,
seein’ how curious women are, he could camouflage with the ladies--my
wife an’ my mother to wit--beats _me_! He’d feed the chickens for us;
he’d stand on his one leg--it was off above the knee--and saw wood for
us. He’d run--I mean he’d hop--errands for Mrs. B. or mother; our dog
worshipped him from the start, though I never saw him throw a word
to him; and--_yet_ he didn’t take any place anywhere. You’ve seen a
rabbit--you’ve seen a pheasant--hidin’ in a ditch? ’Put your hand on it
sometimes before it moved, haven’t you? Well, that was Hickmot--with
two women in the house crazy to find out--find out--anything about him
that made him human. _You_ know what women are! He stayed with us a
fortnight. He left us on a Sat’day to go to Roehampton to try his leg.
On Friday he came over to the bombin’ ground--not sayin’ anything,
_as_ usual--to watch me instruct my Suicide Club, which was only half
an hour’s run by rail from our village. He had his overcoat on, an’
as soon as he reached the place it was _mafeesh_ with him, as usual.
Rabbit-trick again! You never noticed him. He sat in the bomb-proof
behind the pit where the duds accumulate till it’s time to explode ’em.
Naturally, that’s strictly forbidden to the public. So he went there,
an’ no one noticed him. When he’d had enough of watchin’, he hopped off
home to feed our chickens for the last time.”
“Then how did _you_ know all about it?” Orton said.
“Because I saw him come into the place just as I was goin’ down into
the trench. Then he slipped my memory till my train went back. But it
would have made no difference what our arrangements were. If Hickmer
didn’t choose to be noticed, he _wasn’t_ noticed. Just for curiosity’s
sake I asked some o’ the Staff Sergeants whether they’d seen him on
the ground. Not one--not one single one had--or could tell me what
he was like. An’ Sat’day noon he went off to Roehampton. We saw him
into the train ourselves, with the lunch Mrs. B. had put up for him--a
one-legged man an’ his crutch, in regulation blue, khaki warm an’
kit-bag. Takin’ everything together, per’aps he’d spoken as many as
twenty times in the thirteen days he’d been with us. I’m givin’ it you
straight as it happened. An’ now--look here!--this is what _did_ happen.
“Between two and three that Sunday morning--dark an’ blowin’ from the
north--I was woke up by an explosion an’ people shoutin’ ‘Raid!’ The
first bang fetched ’em out like worms after rain. There was another
some minutes afterwards, an’ me an’ a Sergeant in the Shropshires on
leaf told ’em all to take cover. They did. There was a devil of a
long wait an’ there was a third pop. Everybody, includin’ me, heard
aeroplanes. I didn’t notice till afterwards that----”
Bevin paused.
“What?” said Orton.
“Oh, I noticed a heap of things afterwards. What we noticed first--the
Shropshire Sergeant an’ me--was a rick well alight back o’ Margetts’
house, an’, with that north wind, blowin’ straight on to another
rick o’ Margetts’. It went up all of a whoosh. The next thing we saw
by the light of it was Margetts’ house with a bomb-hole in the roof
and the rafters leanin’ sideways like--like they always lean on such
occasions. So we ran there, and the first thing we met was Margetts in
his split-tailed nightie callin’ on his mother an’ damnin’ his wife. A
man always does that when he’s cross. Have you noticed? Mrs. Margetts
was in her nightie too, remindin’ Margetts that he hadn’t completed
his rick insurance. An’ that’s a woman’s lovin’ care all over. Behind
them was their eldest son, in trousers an’ slippers, nursin’ his
arm an’ callin’ for the doctor. They went through us howlin’ like
_flammenwerfer_ casualties--right up the street to the surgery.
“Well, there wasn’t anything to do except let the show burn out. We
hadn’t any means of extinguishing conflagrations. Some of ’em fiddled
with buckets, an’ some of ’em tried to get out some o’ Margetts’
sticks, but his younger son kept shoutin’, ‘Don’t! Don’t! It’ll be
stole! It’ll be stole!’ So it burned instead, till the roof came down
top of all--a little, cheap, dirty villa. In _reel_ life one whizbang
would have shifted it; but in our civil village it looked that damned
important and particular you wouldn’t believe. We couldn’t get round
to Margetts’ stable because of the two ricks alight, but we found
some one had opened the door early an’ the horses was in Margetts’
new vegetable piece down the hill which he’d hired off old Vigors
to extend his business with. I love the way a horse always looks
after his own belly--same as a Gunner. They went to grazin’ down the
carrots and onions till young Margetts ran to turn ’em out, an’ then
they got in among the glass frames an’ cut themselves. Oh, we had a
regular Russian night of it, everybody givin’ advice an’ fallin’ over
each other. When it got light we saw the damage. House, two ricks an’
stable _mafeesh_; the big glasshouse with every pane smashed and the
furnace-end of it blown clean out. All the horses an’ about fifteen
head o’ cattle--butcher’s stores from the next field--feeding in the
new vegetable piece. It was a fair clean-up from end to end--house,
furniture, fittin’s, plant, an’ all the early crops.”
“Was there any other damage in the village?” I asked.
“I’m coming to it--the curious part--but I wouldn’t call it damage. I
was renting a field then for my chickens off the Merecroft Estate. It’s
accommodation-land, an’ there was a wet ditch at the bottom that I had
wanted for ever so long to dam up to make a swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s
ducks.”
“Ah!” said Orton, half turning in his chair, all in one piece.
“S’pose I was allowed? Not me. Their Agent came down on me for
tamperin’ with the Estate’s drainage arrangements. An’ all I wanted was
to bring the bank down where the ditch narrows--a couple of cartloads
of dirt would have held the water back for half a dozen yards--not more
than that, an’ I could have made a little spillway over the top with
three boards--same as in trenches. Well, the first bomb--the one that
woke me up--had done my work for me better than I could. It had dropped
just under the hollow of the bank an’ brought it all down in a fair
landslide. I’d got my swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks, an’ I didn’t
see how the Estate could kick at the Act o’ God, d’you?”
“And Hickmot?” said Orton, grinning.
“Hold on! There was a Parish Council meetin’ to demand reprisals, of
course, an’ there was the policeman an’ me pokin’ about among the ruins
till the Explosives Expert came down in his motor car at three P.M.
Monday, an’ he meets all the Margetts off their rockers, howlin’ in the
surgery, an’ he sees my swim-hole fillin’ up to the brim.”
“What did he say?” Pole inquired.
“He sized it up at once. (He had to get back to dine in town that
evening.) He said all the evidence proved that it was a lucky shot
on the part of one isolated Hun ’plane goin’ home, an’ we weren’t to
take it to heart. I don’t know that anybody but the Margetts did. He
said they must have used incendiary bombs of a new type--which he’d
suspected for a long time. I don’t think the man was any worse than
God intended him to be. I don’t _reelly_. But the Shropshire Sergeant
said----”
“And what did _you_ think?” I interrupted.
“I didn’t think. I knew by then. I’m not a Sherlock Holmes; but havin’
chucked ’em an’ chucked ’em back and kicked ’em out of the light an’
slept with ’em for two years, an’ makin’ my livin’ out of them at
that time, I could recognise the fuse of a Mills bomb when I found
it. I found all three of ’em. ’Curious about that second in Margetts’
glasshouse. Hickmot mus’ have raked the ashes out of the furnace,
popped it in, an’ shut the furnace door. It operated all right. Not
one livin’ pane left in the putty, and all the brickwork spread round
the yard in streaks. Just like that St. Firmin village we were talking
about.”
“But how d’you account for young what’s-his-name gettin’ his arm
broken?” said Pole.
“Crutch!” said Bevin. “If you or me had taken on that night’s doin’s,
with one leg, we’d have hopped and sweated from one flank to another
an’ been caught half-way between. Hickmot didn’t. I’m as sure as I’m
sittin’ here that he did his doings quiet and comfortable at his full
height--he was over six feet--and no one noticed him. This is the way
_I_ see it. He fixed the swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks first. We
used to talk over our own affairs in front of him, of course, and he
knew just what she wanted in the way of a pond. So he went and made
it at his leisure. Then he prob’ly went over to Margetts’ and lit the
first rick, knowin’ that the wind ’ud do the rest. When young Margetts
saw the light of it an’ came out to look, Hickmot would have taken post
at the back-door an’ dropped the young swine with his crutch, same as
we used to drop Huns comin’ out of a dug-out. _You_ know how they blink
at the light? Then he must have walked off an’ opened Margetts’ stable
door to save the horses. They’d be more to him than any man’s life.
Then he prob’ly chucked one bomb on top o’ Margetts’ roof, havin’ seen
that the first rick had caught the second and that the whole house was
bound to go. D’you get me?”
“Then why did he waste his bomb on the house?” said Orton. His glass
eye seemed as triumphant as his real one.
“For camouflage, of course. He was camouflagin’ an air-raid. When
the Margetts piled out of their place into the street, he prob’ly
attended to the glasshouse, because that would be Margetts’ chief means
o’ business. After that--I think so, because otherwise I don’t see
where all those extra cattle came from that we found in the vegetable
piece--he must have walked off an’ rounded up all the butcher’s beasts
in the next medder, an’ driven ’em there to help the horses. And when
he’d finished everything he’d set out to do, I’ll lay my life an’ kit
he curled up like a bloomin’ wombat not fifty yards away from the whole
flamin’ show--an’ let us run round him. An’ when he’d had his sleep
out, he went up to Roehampton Monday mornin’ by some train that he’d
decided upon in his own mind weeks an’ weeks before.”
“Did he know all the trains then?” said Pole.
“Ask me another. I only know that if he wanted to get from any place to
another without bein’ noticed, he did it.”
“And the bombs? He got ’em from you, of course,” Pole went on.
“What do _you_ think? He was an hour in the park watchin’ me instruct,
sittin’, as I remember, in the bomb-proof by the dud-hole, in his
overcoat. He got ’em all right. He took neither more nor less than he
wanted; an’ I’ve told you what he did with ’em--one--two--_an’_ three.”
“’Ever see him afterwards?” said Orton.
“Yes. ’Saw him at Brighton when I went down there with the missus, not
a month after he’d been broken in to his Roehampton leg. You know how
the boys used to sit all along Brighton front in their blues, an’ jump
every time the coal was bein’ delivered to the hotels behind them?
I barged into him opposite the Old Ship, an’ I told him about our
air-raid. I told him how Margetts had gone off his rocker an’ walked
about starin’ at the sky an’ holdin’ reprisal-meetin’s all by himself;
an’ how old Mr. Vigors had bought in what he’d left--tho’ of course I
said what _was_ left--o’ Margetts’ business; an’ how well my swim-hole
for the ducks was doin’. It didn’t interest him. He didn’t want to come
over to stay with us any more, either. We were a long, long way back in
his past. You could see that. He wanted to get back with his new leg,
to his own God-forsaken sheep-walk an’ his black fellers in Queensland.
I expect he’s done it now, an’ no one has noticed him. But, by Gord! He
_did_ leak a little at the end. He did that much! When we was waitin’
for the tram to the station, I said how grateful I was to Fritz for
moppin’ up Margetts an’ makin’ our swim-hole all in one night. Mrs. B.
seconded the motion. We couldn’t have done less. Well, then Hickmot
said, speakin’ in his queer way, as if English words were all new to
him: ‘Ah, go on an’ bail up in Hell,’ he says. ‘Bert was my friend.’
That was all. I’ve given it you just as it happened, word for word.
_I_’d hate to have an Australian have it in for _me_ for anything I’d
done to _his_ friend. Mark _you_, I don’t say there’s anything _wrong_
with you Australians, Brother Orton. I only say they ain’t like us or
any one else that I know.”
“Well, do you want us to be?” said Orton.
“No, no. It takes all sorts to make a world, as the sayin’ is. And
now”--Bevin pulled out his gold watch--“if I don’t make a move of it
I’ll miss my last train.”
“Let her go,” said Orton serenely. “You’ve done some lorry-hoppin’ in
your time, haven’t you--Sergeant?”
“When I was two an’ a half stone lighter, Digger,” Bevin smiled in
reply.
“Well, I’ll run you out home before sun-up. I’m a haulage-contractor
now--London and Oxford. There’s an empty of mine ordered to Oxford.
We can go round by your place as easy as not. She’s lyin’ out
Vauxhall-way.”
“My Gord! An’ see the sun rise again! ’Haven’t seen him since I can’t
remember when,” said Bevin, chuckling. “Oh, there was fun sometimes
in Hell, wasn’t there, Australia?”; and again his hands went down to
tighten the belt that was missing.