ENLIGHTENMENT, AND RECRUITING.
"Was there ever a woman on this earth so tried?" demanded Mrs
Penhaligon, lifting her eyes to two hams and a flitch of bacon she
had just suspended from the rafters, and invoking them as Cleopatra
the injurious gods. "As if 'twasn' enough to change the best kitchen
in all Polpier for quarters where you can't swing a cat, but on top
of it I must be afflicted with a child that's taken wi' the indoors
habit; and in the middle of August month, too, when every one as
means to grow up a comfort to all concerned is out stretchin' his
legs an' makin' himself scarce an' gettin' a breath o' nice fresh air
into his little lungs."
"What's lungs?" asked 'Biades.
"There was a boy in the south of Ireland somewhere," his mother
answered, collecting a few wash-cloths she had hung to dry on the
door of the cooking apparatus, "as took to his bed with nothing the
matter at the age o' fourteen. Next day, when his mother called him
to get up, he said he wasn't took very well. An' this went on, day
after day, until now he's forty years old an' the use of his limbs
completely gone from him. That's a fact, for I read it on the
newspaper with names an' dates, and only three nights ago I woke up
dreamin' upon that poor woman, workin' her fingers to the bone an'
saddled with a bed-riding son. Little did I think at the time--"
Mrs Penhaligon broke off and sighed between desperation and
absent-mindedness.
"I like this stove," answered 'Biades. "It's got a shiny knob on the
door, 'stead of a latch."
"How the child does take notice! . . . Yes, a nice shiny knob it is,
and if you won't come out to the back-yard an' watch while I pin
these things on the clothes-line, you must stay here an' study your
disobedient face in it. The fire's out, so you can't tumble in an'
be burnt to a coal like the wicked children in Nebuchadnezzar: which
is a comfort, so far as it goes. Nor I can't send you out to s'arch
for your sister, wi' the knowledge that it'll surely end in her
warmin' your little sit-upon. . . . I'd do it myself, this moment,"--
the mother grew wrathful only to relent,--"if I could be sure you
weren't sickenin' for something. You're behavin' so unnatural."
She eyed him anxiously. "If it should turn out to be a case o'
suppressed measles, now, I'd hate to go to my grave wi' the thought
that I'd banged 'em in."
So Mrs Penhaligon, having picked up her clothes, issued forth into
the sunlight of the back-yard. 'Biades watched her through the
narrow kitchen window. He watched her cunningly.
As soon as he saw her busy with the clothes-pegs, Master 'Biades
crept to a small iron door in the wall, a foot or two from the range,
and stealthily lifted the latch. The door opened on a deep,
old-fashioned oven, disused since the day when the late Mrs Bunney
(misguided woman) had blocked up her open hearth with a fire-new
apparatus.
The child peered ("peeked" as they say in Polpier) into the long
narrow chamber, so awesomely dark at its far end, and snatched a
fearful joy. In that cavity lay the treasure. Gold--untold gold!
He thrust his head into the aperture, and gloated. But it was so
deep that even when his eyes became used to the darkness he could see
nothing of the hoard. He wanted to gloat more.
Tingling premonitions ran down his small spine; thrills that,
reaching the region of the lower vertebrae, developed an almost
painful activity. . . . None the less, 'Biades could never tell just
how or at what moment his shoulders, hips, legs, found themselves
inside the oven; but in they successively went, and he was crawling
forward into the pitch-gloom on hands and knees, regretting
desperately (and too late) that he had forgotten to sneak a box of
matches, when afar behind him he heard a sound that raised every hair
on the nape of his young neck--the lifting of the back-door latch and
the letting-in of voices.
"You never _did!_" said the voice of 'Bert.
"Leave me to tell her," said the voice of 'Beida. "The way you're
goin', she'll have the palpitations afore you begin. . . . Mother,
dear--if you'll but take a seat. Is't for the tenth or the twelfth
time we'm tellin' 'ee that father's neither killed nor wounded?"
"Then what is it, on earth?" demanded the voice of Mrs Penhaligon.
"An' why should Mr Nanjivell be followin' you, of all people?
An' where's my blessed latest, that has been a handful ever since you
two left me, well knowin' the straits I'm put to?"
"If I'm introodin', ma'am--" said the voice of Nicky-Nan.
"Oh, no . . . not at all, Mr Nanjivell!--so long as you realise how
I'm situated. . . . An' whoever left that oven door open, I'll swear
I didn't."
'Beida stepped swiftly to the oven, swung the door wide enough to
allow a moment's glance within, and shut with a merciless clang.
She lifted her voice. "Mebbe," she announced, "'twas I that left it
on the hasp before runnin' out. I was thinkin' what a nice oven
'twas, an' how much better if you wanted to make heavy-cake in a
hurry, to celebrate our movin'-in. 'Bert agreed with me when I told
him," she continued, still lifting her voice, "and unbeknown to you
we cut an' fetched in a furze-bush, there bein' nothin' to give such
a savour to bread, cake, or pie. So if you're willin', Mother, we'll
fire it up while Mr Nanjivell tells his business."
"What's _that?_" asked Mrs Penhaligon, sitting erect, as her ears
caught the sound of a howl, muffled but prolonged.
'Beida set her back firmly against the oven. "Bread takes longer
than cakes," she announced, making her voice carry. "Cakes is
soonest over. We might try the old place first with a heavy cake, if
Mr Nanjivell don't mind waitin' for a chat, an' will excuse the
flavour whatever it turns out."
"We're bewitched!" cried Mrs Penhaligon starting to her feet as the
wailing was renewed, with a faint tunding on the iron door.
'Beida flung it open. "Which I hope it has been a lesson to you,"
she began, thrusting herself quickly in front of the aperture, and
heading off the culprit before he could clamber out and run to his
mother's lap. "No, you don't! The first thing _you_ have to do, to
show you're sorry, is to creep back all the way you can go, an' fetch
forth what you can find at the very end."
"You won't shut the door on me again?" pleaded 'Biades.
"That depends on how slippy you look. I make no promises," answered
'Beida sternly. "'Twas you that first stole Mr Nanjivell's money,
and if you ben't doin' it again, well I can only say as appearances
be against him--eh, 'Bert?"
"Fetch it out, you varmint!" 'Bert commanded.
"But I don't understand a word of this!" protested the mother.
"My precious worm! What for be you two commandin' him to wriggle up
an' down an oven on his tender little belly like a Satan in Genesis,
when all the time I thought he'd taken hisself off like a good boy,
to run along an' mess his clothes 'pon the Quay. . . . Come 'ee
forth, my cherub, an' tell your mother what they've a-been doin' to
'ee? . . . Eh? Why, what's that you've a-got clinched in your hand?"
"Sufferin's!" sobbed 'Biades, still shaken by an after-gust of
fright.
"_What?_"
"Sufferin's!" echoed 'Beida excitedly. "Real coined an' golden
sufferin's! Unclinch your hand, 'Biades, an' show the company!"
As the child opened his palm, Mrs Penhaligon fell back, and put out a
hand against the kitchen table for support.
"The good Lord in Heaven behear us! . . . Whose money be this, an'
where dropped from?"
"There piles of it--" panted 'Beida.
"Lashin's of it--" echoed 'Bert.
"An' it all belongs to Mr Nanjivell, that we used to call Nicky-Nan,
an' wonder if we could get a pair o' father's old trousers on to him
with a little tact--an' him all the while as rich as Squire
Tresawna!"
"--Rich as Squire Tresawna an' holy Solomon rolled into one,"
corroborated 'Bert, nodding vigorously. "Pinch it 'tween your
fingers, mother, if you won't believe."
But to her children's consternation Mrs Penhaligon, after a swift
glance at the gold, turned about on Nicky-Nan as he backed
shamefacedly to the doorway, and opened on him the vials of
unintelligible fury.
"What d'ee mean by it?" she demanded. "As if I hadn' suffered enough
in mind a'ready, but you must come pokin' money into my oven and
atween me an' my children! Be you mad, or only wicked? Or is it
witchcraft you'd be layin' on us? . . . Take up your gold, however
you came by it, an' fetch your shadow off my doorstep, or I'll--"
She advanced on poor Nicky-Nan, who backed out to the side gate and
into the lane before her wrath, and found himself of a sudden taken
on both flanks: on the one by Mrs Climoe, who had spied upon his
visit and found her malicious curiosity too much for her; on the
other by gentle old Mr Hambly returning from a stroll along the
cliffs.
"Hullo! Tut--tut--what is this?" exclaimed Mr Hambly.
"A neighbours' quarrel, and between folks I know to be so
respectworthy? . . . Oh, come now--come, good souls!"
"A little nigher than naybours, Minister," put in Mrs Climoe.
"That is if you had eyes an' ears in your head."
Nicky-Nan swung about on her: but she rested a hand on either hip and
was continuing. "'Naybours,' you said, sir? 'Naybours'?
Him accused by public talk for a German spy--"
"Hush, Mrs Climoe! Of all the Commandments, ma'am, the one most in
lack of observance hereabouts, to my observation, is that which
forbids bearing false witness against a neighbour. To a charitable
mind that includes hasty witness."
"There's another, unless I disremember," snapped Mrs Climoe, "that
forbids 'ee to covet your naybour's wife."
While Mr Hambly sought for a gentle reproof for this, Mrs Penhaligon,
pale of face, rested a hand against her gate-post, and said she very
gently but in a white scorn--
"What is this talk of naybours, quarrelin' or comfortin' or
succourin' or bearin' witness? There be naybours, an'"--she pointed
a finger at Mrs Climoe--"there be livers-by. Now stroll along, the
lot of 'ee, and annoy somebody else that lives unprotected!"
She said it so quietly and decisively, standing motionless, that
Lippity-Libby, coming around the corner of the lane with paste-pot
and brush, and with a roll of bills tucked in his armpit, mistook the
group for a chance collection of cheerful gossips. He drew up,
lowered his pail, and began in a business-like way to slap paste upon
the upper flap of a loft-door across the way, chatting the while over
his shoulder.
"Good evenin', naybours! Now what (says you to yourselves) might I
be carryin' here under my arm in the cool o' the day. Is it a
Bye-Law? No, it is not a Bye-Law. Or is it a Tender? No, it is not
a Tender. Or is it a Bankrup' Stock, or a Primrose Feet, or at the
worst a Wesleyan Anniversary? Or peradventure is it a Circus? . . .
Sold again! 'Tis a Recruitin' Meetin', an' for Saturday."
Having slapped on the paste, he unfolded a bill and eyed it
critically.
"'YOUR KING AND COUNTRY WANT YOU.'--That's pretty good for Polpier,
eh? Flatterin', one might almost say."
His cheerfulness held the group with their passions arrested.
Nicky-Nan turned about and stared at the placard as Lippity-Libby
smoothed it over the paste, whistling.
At that moment Un' Benny Rowett, hands in trouser-pockets, came
dandering along. He, too, taking the geniality of every one for
granted, halted, spread his legs wide and conned the announcement.
"Oh!" said he after a pause, wheeling about. "Still harpin' on they
Germans? Well, Mr Hambly, sir, I don't know how it strikes you, but
I'm sick an' tired of them dismal blackguards."
"I can't bear it," said Mrs Steele, walking to and fro in her
drawing-room. She ceased wringing her handkerchief, and came to a
halt confronting the Vicar, who stood moodily leaning an arm on the
mantelshelf.
"I believe," he answered after a pause, "you would find it worse to
bear in a month or so if I hadn't offered."
"Why didn't you consult me?"
"I wrote to the Bishop--"
"The 'Bishop!' Well . . . what did _he_ advise?"
"Oh, of course he temporised. . . . Yes, I know what you are going to
say. My consulting him was a momentary throw-back of loyalty.
The official Churches--Roman Catholic, Greek, Anglican, the so-called
Free--are alike out of it in this business. Men in England, France,
Russia--Germany and Austria, too--are up against something that
really matters."
"What can matter comparable with the saving of a soul?"
"Losing it, sweetheart; or, better still, forgetting it--just seeing
your job and sticking it out. It is a long, long way to Tipperary,
every Tommy knows; and what (bless him!) he neither knows nor recks
about is its being a short cut to Heaven."
"Robert, will you tell me that our Faith is going down in this
horrible business?"
"Certainly not, my dear. But I seem to see that the Churches are
going down. After all, every Church--even the Church Catholic--is a
means to an end, not an end in itself. Where I've differed from four
out of five of my clerical brethren (oh, drat the professional
lingo!)--from the majority of the clergy hereabouts, is that while
they look on the Church and its formularies as something even more
sacred than the Cross itself, I have believed in it as the most
effective instrument for teaching the Cross." Mr Steele pulled a wry
mouth. "At this moment I seem to be the bigger fool. They _may_ be
right: the Church _may_ be worth a disinterested idolatry: but as a
means to teach mankind the lesson of Christ it has rather patently
failed to do its business. Men are not fools: or rather they _are_
fools, but not fools enough in the long-run to pay for being taught
to be foolish. They pay us ministers of religion, Agatha, a tidy lot
of money, if you take all Europe over: and we are not delivering the
goods. In their present frame of mind they will soon be discovering
that, for any use we are, they had better have saved the cash and put
it into heavy artillery."
"All we have lived, worked, hoped for in this parish--we two, almost
alone--"
"And now," said the Vicar ruefully, "I am leaving you quite alone.
Yes, you have a right to reproach me. . . . Old Pritchard, from St
Martin's, will take the duty. His Vicar will be only too glad to get
rid of him."
"Oh, don't let us talk of that silly old man!" said Mrs Steele
impatiently. "And as for reproaches, Robert, I have only one for
you--that you did this without consulting me."
"Yes, I know: but you see, Agatha--"
"No, I do not see." She faced him, her eyes swimming. "I might have
argued a little--have cried a little. But why--oh, why, Robert?--did
you deny me the pride to say in the end, 'Go, and God bless you'?"
The Recruiting Meeting was held in the Council Schoolroom, on
Saturday evening, at 7 o'clock. [Public meetings in Polpier are
invariably fixed for Saturday, that being the one week-night when the
boats keep home.] Schoolmaster Rounsell and his daughter (back from
her holiday) had decorated the room, declining outside assistance.
It was a rule of life with Schoolmaster Rounsell and his daughter to
be very stiff against all outside assistance. They took the line
that as State-employed teachers of the young,--that is to say, Civil
Servants,--they deserved more social respect than Polpier habitually
showed them. In this contention, to be sure, they were wholly right.
Their mistake lay in supposing that in this dear land of ours
prejudice can be removed by official decree, or otherwise than by the
slow possession of patience, tact, and address. Mr Rounsell,
however, was less stiff than usual, since the Vicar had asked him to
second a vote of thanks at the end of the meeting. He and his
daughter spent a great part of the afternoon in arranging the
platform and decorating the back wall with a Union Jack, two or three
strings of cardpaper-flags that had not seen the light since
Coronation Day, and a wall-map of Europe with a legend below it in
white calico letters upon red Turkey twill,--"DO GOOD AND FEAR NOT."
It had served to decorate many occasions and was as appropriate to
this as to any of them.
By 6.45 the room was crowded with an audience numbering two hundred
and more. They sat very quietly in the odour of the evil-smelling
oil lamps, expectant of oratory. For Squire Tresawna (who pleaded an
attack of gout as an excuse for not attending) had not only assured
the committee of his personal sympathy, but at his own cost had
engaged a speaker recommended by a political association (now turned
non-political) in London. There was promise of oratory, and every
Cornish audience loves oratory.
In the Squire's absence Farmer Best took the chair. Punctually at
seven o'clock he mounted the platform, followed by the orator from
London (a florid gentleman in a frock-coat and dingy white
waistcoat), the Vicar, Mr Hambly, Mr Pamphlett, Dr Mant, and Mr
Rounsell. As they entered, Miss Rounsell, seated at the piano at the
far end of the platform, struck the opening chords of "God Save the
King." It seemed to take the audience by surprise: but they shuffled
to their feet and, after a few bars, sang the anthem very creditably.
When they had settled themselves, Farmer Best opened the meeting.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Naybours all," he said,--"I don't suppose
these here proceedin's will conclude much afore ten o'clock: after
which it'll take me the best part of an hour to get home; an' what
with one thing and another I doubt it'll be far short o' midnight
afore my missus gets me to bed. Whereby, knowin' my habits, you'll
see that I reckon this to be summat more than an ord'nary occasion:
the reason bein', as you know, that pretty well the hull of Europe's
in a state o' War: which, when such a thing happens, it behoves us.
I'll say no more than that, as Britons, it behoves us. It was once
said by a competent observer that Britons never, never--if Miss
Rounsell will oblige?"
This was a rehearsed effect. Miss Rounsell, taking her cue, struck
the key-board, and as Miss Charity Oliver (in the front row)
testified next morning, "the effect was electric." All sprang to
their feet and sang the chorus of _Rule, Britannia!_ till the windows
shook.
"Thenk 'ee, friends," continued Farmer Best, as the tumult and the
singers subsided. "There's no more to say but that most of 'ee's
heard tell, in one way or another at some time of his life, of
Armygeddon. Well, this here's _of_ it; an' if you ask my opinion o'
that fellow they call the Kaiser, I say I wouldn' sleep in his bed
for a million o' money. And with these few remarks I will no longer
stand between 'ee and Mr Boult, who is a speaker all the way from
London, an' will no doubt give us a Treat an' persuade many of our
young friends in front to join up."
Mr Boult arose amid violent applause. He pulled the lappels of his
frock-coat together. He spoke, and from the first moment it was
clear that he held at command all the tricks of the hired orator.
He opened with an anecdote from the life of President Garfield, and a
sentimental application that made the Vicar wince. He went on to
point out, not unimpressively, that Armageddon ("as you, sir, have so
aptly and so strikingly termed it") had actually broken upon the
world. Farmer Best, flattered by this acknowledgment of copyright in
the word, smiled paternally.
"It has burst like a thunderstorm upon the fields of Belgium; but the
deluge it discharges is a deluge of blood intermingled with human
tears. And where, my friends, is Belgium? How far distant lie these
trodden and wasted fields, these smoking villages, these harvests
where men's bodies crush the corn and their blood pollutes the food
they planted to sustain it? Listen: those fields lie nearer London
than does your little village: men are dying--yes, and women and
little children are being massacred--far nearer London than you are
peacefully sitting at this moment."
"Come!" thought the Vicar, "this fellow is talking sense after all,
and talking it rather well." Mr Rounsell stood up and pointed out
the positions of Liege and Polpier on the wall-map, and their
relative distances from London. A moment later the Vicar frowned
again as Mr Boult launched into a violent--and as it turned out, a
lengthy--invective against the German Emperor; with the foulness of
whose character and designs he had, it seemed, been intimately
acquainted for a number of years. "Who made the War?" "Who had been
planning it and spying for the opportunity to gratify his unbridled
lust of power?" "Who would stand arraigned for it before the awful
tribunal of God?" &c. The answer was "the Kaiser," "the Kaiser,"
"the Kaiser Wilhelm"--Mr Boult pronounced the name in German and
threw scorn into it.
--"Which," mused the Vicar, "is an argument _ad invidiam_; and, when
one comes to think of it, rather a funny one. The man is still
talking sense, though: only I wish he'd talk it differently."
Then for a quarter of an hour Mr Boult traced the genesis of the War,
with some ability but in special-pleader style and without a particle
of fairness. He went on to say that he, personally, was not in
favour of Conscription. [As a matter of fact he had spoken both for
and against Compulsory Service on many public platforms.] He believed
in the Voluntary Principle: and looking on the many young men
gathered in the body of the hall, and more particularly at the back
["excellent material" he called them, too], he felt convinced there
would be no hanging back that night; but to-morrow, or, rather,
Monday, when he returned to London he would be able to report that
the heart of Polpier was sound and fired with a resolve to serve our
common country. Mr Boult proceeded to make the Vicar writhe in his
seat by a jocular appeal to "the young ladies in the audience" not to
walk-out with any young man until he had clothed himself in khaki.
He wound up with one of his most effective perorations, boldly
enlisting John Bright and the Angel of Death; and sat down amid
tumultous applause. It takes all sorts to make a world, and this
kind of speech.
Farmer Best called upon the Vicar.
"I wish," said Mr Steele, "to add just a word or two to emphasise one
particular point in Mr Boult's speech; or, rather, to put it in a
somewhat different light. And I shall be brief, lest I spoil the
general effect on your minds of his very powerful appeal.
"I address myself to the women in this room. . . . With _you_ the
last word lies, as it rightly should. It is to _you_ that husband,
son, brother, wooer, will turn for the deciding voice to say,
'Go, help to save England--and may God prosper and guard you';
because it is your heart that makes the sacrifice, as it is your
image the man will carry away with him; because the England he goes
to defend shapes itself in his mind as 'home,' as the one most sacred
spot, though it be but a cottage, in which his imagination or his
memory installs you as queen; in which your presence reigns, or is to
reign.
"Do you realise your strength, O ye women? . . . The age of chivalry
is not dead. Nothing so noble that has once so nobly taken hold of
men's minds can ever die, though the form of it may change. Now the
doctrine of chivalry was this, for the Man and the Woman--
"For the man, that every true soldier went forth as a knight:"
'And no quarrell a knight he ought to take
But for a Truth or for a Woman's sake.'
"And our soldiers to-day fight for both: for the truth that Right is
better than Might, and for the sake of every woman who reigns or
shall reign in an English home; that not only shall she be
safeguarded from the satyr and the violator, but that she shall be
secured in every inch of dignity she has known in our days; as queen
at the hearth where her children obey her, and in her doorway to
which the merchants of all the earth bring their wares.
"For the Woman, chivalry taught that she, who cannot herself fight,
is always the Queen of Tournay, the president of the quarrel, the
arbitress between the righteous and the unrighteous cause, the
dispenser of reward to him who fights the good fight. . . . So, and
as each one of you is the braver to speak the word--'Go, though it
break my heart: and God bring you safely home to me!'--she shall with
the heavenlier right tender her true soldier his crown when he
returns and kneels for a blessing on his victory."
When the speeches were ended and Farmer Best arose to invite
intending recruits to step up to the platform, Mr Boult had an
unhappy inspiration. "If you'll excuse me, Mr Chairman," he
suggested, "there's a way that I tried this day week in Holloway with
great effect. . . . I take out my watch an' count ten, very slowly,
giving the young men the chance who shall rush up before the counting
is over. It acted famously at Holloway."
"Oh, very well," said Farmer Best doubtfully, taken off his guard.
"The gen'leman from London," he announced, "will count ten slowly,
an' we're to watch out what happens. He says it acted very well at
Holloway last week."
On the instant, as Mr Boult drew out his watch, the audience hushed
itself, as for a conjuring seance. Mr Hambly passed a hand over his
brow, and sighed.
"One--two--three--" counted Mr Boult, and a mortuary silence
descended on all.
"--four--five--six--seven--"
"Pray on, brother Boult! 'Tis workin', 'tis workin'," squeaked up a
mock-religious voice from the back.
Some one tittered audibly, and the strain broke in a general shout of
laughter. Old men, up to now profoundly serious, lay back and held
their sides. Old women leaned forward and searched for their
handkerchiefs, their bonnets nodding. Mr Boult pocketed his watch,
and under his breath used ferocious language.
"I don't wonder!" said Farmer Best with a forced attempt at sympathy.
Then he, too, broke down and cast himself back in his chair
haw-hawing.
There was a sudden stir in the crowd at the back, and young Obed
Pearce came thrusting his way through the press.
"Well--I don't care who laughs, but I'm _one!_" growled young Obed,
half defiantly, half sullenly, and tossed his cap on to the platform
like a challenger in a wrestling ring.
"And I'm another!" announced the clear quiet voice of Seth Minards,
thrilling the room as the hush fell.
"Aw, 'tis Seth!" "Seth's a beautiful speaker once he gets goin'."
"But what's the meanin'?" "Seth, of all the boys!" "Let Seth
speak!"
"Ha! What did I promise you?" proclaimed Mr Boult triumphantly,
reaching down a hand. "Here, clamber up to the platform, my lad,
an' give 'em a talk. . . . You can talk, they're saying.
Strike while the iron's hot."
Seth took his hand and vaulted to the platform; but dropped it on the
instant and turned to the meeting. "I come here, friends," he
announced, "because Mr Obed's offered himself, an' I don't see no way
but I must go too. . . . That's it: I don't agree wi' the ha'af
that's been said to-night, but I don't see no other way. We've got
to go, because--" his voice sank here, as though he were communing
with himself: it could scarcely be heard, "--because--" he swung
about upon the elders on the platform and swept them with an accusing
finger. "We've got to go because _you_'ve brought this thing about,
or have let it come about! It don't matter to _me_, much. . . .
But we've to wipe up the mess: an' if the young men must go an' wipe
it up, an' if for them there's never to be bride-ale nor children,
'tis your doin' an' the doin' o' your generation all over Europe.
A pretty tale, too, when up to a fortni't ago your talk was o' peace
an' righteousness! . . . Forgi'e me, Mr Best . . . I'll fight well
enough, maybe, when it comes to't. But _why_ were we brought up one
way, to be tortured turnin' our conscience to another?"
There were no other recruits. "A great disappointment," said Mr
Boult. "That earnest young fool spoilt it all."
"He made the best speech of the evening," answered the Vicar.
"Well, anyway he's enlisted. He'll find the Army a fine discipline
for the tongue."
"Indeed," said the Vicar viciously. "I did not know that you had
experience of the Service."
As Seth Minards thrust his way out of the insufferably stuffy room,
in the porchway he felt a hand laid on his shoulder; and, turning
about, recognised Nicky-Nan by the dim starlight.
"God bless 'ee, my son!" said Nicky heartily, to his utter surprise.
"I can't stay to talk now, havin' to force my way in an' catch Dr
Mant. But maybe we'll both be seein' this War from to-morrow; an'
maybe we'll meet in it, or maybe we will not. But you've let in
light 'pon an older skull than your own; an' I thank 'ee, an' I'll
pray th' Almighty every night on my knees that you may fight well an'
be preserved through it all, to come home an' testify."