MY DEAR CHARLES,--The weather is very seasonable for the time of year, is
it not? A nice nip in the air, as you might say; thoroughly healthy for
those at liberty to enjoy it _al fresco_. I assure you the opportunity is
not being wasted out here; all the best people are out-of-doors all the
time. For myself, with thirty degrees of frost about, it seemed to be the
exact moment to slip over to England and help keep the home fires burning.
Accordingly I repaired to a neighbouring port, and when I got there an
officer, who appeared to be looking for something, asked me what my rank
was. In peace times I should have loved a little unexpected sympathy like
this; as a soldier, quite an old soldier now, I dislike people who take an
interest in me, especially if they have blue on their hats. I thanked him
very much for his kind inquiry, but indicated that my lips were sealed. His
curiosity thereupon became positively acute; he was, he said, a man from
whom it was impossible to keep a secret. He still wished to know what my
rank was. I said it all depended which of them he was referring to, since
there are three in all, the "Acting," the "Temporary" and the Rock-bottom
one. In any case, at heart I was and always should remain a plain civilian
mister. Should we leave it at that, and let bygones be bygones? He was
meditating his answer, when I asked him if he realised how close he was
standing to the edge of the quay, and when he turned round and looked I
also turned round and went....
The fellow who was standing next to me all this time was either too young
or too proud to conceal his stars beneath an ordinary waterproof. Blue-hat
didn't need to ask him what his rank was; he recognized at a glance just
the very type of officer he was looking for. So he led off the poor fellow
to the slaughter, and put him in charge of two hundred N.C.O.s and men
proceeding on leave to the U.K. I've no doubt the fellow spent the best
part of his days on the other side trying to get rid of his party. I have
not been two years in France without discovering that you simply cannot be
too careful when you are attempting to get out of it.
When I reached England my feelings with regard to myself changed. I was no
longer reticent about my rank. I displayed my uniform in a public
restaurant, without any reserve. In consequence they'd only let me eat
three-and-sixpence worth for my first meal. This time I was not so clever,
it appeared, as I thought. I had erroneously supposed that by not being a
civilian I should get more than two courses. As it was I got less, and so
it was with a full heart and an empty stomach that I fell in for home. If
I'd known I should have kept my waterproof on for luncheon.
Do you realise how dismal a thing it is for us to be separated from our own
by a High Sea all these months and years? It ain't fair, Sir, it simply
ain't fair. In my case there is not only a wife amongst wives, but also a
son amongst sons. Now, Charles, I am the very last person to call a thing
good merely because it is my own, nor am I that kind of fool who thinks all
his geese are swans. If my son had a fault I should be the very first to
notice and call attention to it. But he has not; dispassionately and from
an entirely detached and impersonal view, I am bound to say that there is
about him an outstanding merit which at once puts him on a different level
from all others. It isn't so much his four and a half teeth I'm thinking
of, nor is it the twenty-seven overgrown and badly managed hairs which
wander about at the back of his bald head and give him the look of a
dissipated monk. It is just his intrinsic worth, clearly evidenced in
everything about him. Obviously a man of parts, he has brains, a stout
heart and an unfailing humour. Blessed with a keen perception, he delights
those who can understand him with his singularly happy and apt turn of
speech. You will, I think, accept my word as an officer and a gentleman
that he _is_ unique.
Anticipating the welcome greeting of my wife and many pleasant hours to be
spent in discussing with my son the things which matter, I put on all my
waterproofs, gave the porter a twenty-five centime piece, which he mistook
for a shilling, even as earlier on I had myself been led to mistake it for
a franc, and hastened home.
The welcome greeting seemed all right, but I had not been long in the
company of my wife before I discovered that Another had come between us. I
had not been long with my son before I discovered who that Other was.... I
determined to have it out with him at once. Feeling that the situation was
one for tactics, I manoeuvred for position and, to get him entirely at a
disadvantage, I surprised him in his bath and taxed him with his infamy. I
addressed him more in sorrow than in anger. I told him I was well aware of
his personal charm, but in this instance I was bound to comment
unfavourably on the use he had made of it. The very last thing I had
expected of him was that at, or indeed before, the early age of one he
would be stealing the affections of another man's wife.
He was not ashamed or nonplussed; he was not even embarrassed by his
immediate environment. In fact he turned it to his own advantage, for his
hairs, duly watered and soaped down on to his cranium, lost their rakish
look and gave him the appearance of a gentleman of perfect integrity, great
intellect and no little financial stability. As between one man and
another, he did not attempt to deny the truth of my assertion, gave me to
understand, with a jovial smile, that such little incidents must always be
expected as long as humanity remains human, and repudiated all personal
responsibility in this instance. He even went so far as to suggest that it
was the woman's fault; it was always she who was running after him, and his
only offence had been that of being too chivalrous abruptly to repel her
advances. I confess I was painfully surprised at the attitude he adopted;
it consisted in putting his foot in one half of his mouth and breathing
stentorously through the other moiety. And when he started making eyes at
the nurse I was too shocked to stay any longer.
Never a man to take a thing sitting down, I waited till the next morning
for my revenge. As the trustee of his future wealth I had him in my power.
Stepping across to the nearest bank I borrowed an immense sum of money in
his name and passed it all on to the Government, then and there, to be
spent, _inter alia_, on the B.E.F. And what's more, I told him to his face
that I'd done it. What reply do you suppose he made? He merely called for a
drink.
However, my revenge did not end there. On my way back to France I seized
the opportunity of looking in at Cox's and there took back from the
Government for my own sole and absolute use some of those very pounds my
son had borrowed from the bank to give it. But I lost in the end, for my
wife, whom I had taken with me to witness her and his discomfiture, had all
the money off me again, in order, I gather, to put it in my son's
money-box, for him to rattle now and spend later. The only result of my
efforts therefore was to land me in a financial transaction so complicated
that I cannot even follow it myself.
Yours ever,