My gentle readers have been good enough to ask me what some of the folk
whose adventures I have from time to time described have done in the
Great War. It is a large question, for they are so many. Most of them
have done things they never dreamed they would be called upon to do.
Those that survived till 1914 have worked, like the rest of the
community in England and France, according to their several capacities,
in the Holiest Crusade in the history of mankind.
Well, let me plunge at once into the midst of things.
About a year ago the great voice of Jaffery came booming across my
lawn. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel, and a D.S.O., and his great red
beard had gone. The same, but yet a subtly different Jaffery. Liosha
was driving a motor-lorry in France. He told me she was having the
time of her life.
I have heard, too, of my old friend Sir Marcus, leaner than ever and
clad in ill-fitting khaki, and sitting in a dreary office in Havre with
piles of browny-yellow army forms before him, on which he had checked
packing-cases of bully-beef ever since the war began. And if you visit
a certain hospital--in Manchester of all places, so dislocating has
been the war--there you will still see Lady Ordeyne (it always gives me
a shock to think of Carlotta as Lady Ordeyne) matronly and inefficient,
but the joy and delight of every wounded man.
And Septimus? Did you not know that the Dix gun was used at the front?
His great new invention, the aero-tank, I regret to say, was looked on
coldly by the War Office. Now that Peace has come he is trying, so
Brigadier-General Sir Clem Sypher tells me, to adapt it to the
intensive cultivation of whitebait.
And I have heard a few stories of others. Here is one told me by a
French officer, one Colonel Girault. The scene was a road bridge on
the outskirts of the zone of the armies. His car had broken down
hopelessly, and with much profane language he swung to the bridge-head.
The sentry saluted. He was an elderly Territorial with a ragged pair
of canvas trousers and a ragged old blue uniform coat and a battered
kepi and an ancient rifle. A scarecrow of a sentry, such as were seen
on all the roads of France.
"How far is it to the village?"
"Two kilometres, _mon Colonel_."
There was something familiar in the voice and in the dark, humorous
eyes.
"Say, _mon vieux_, what is your name?" asked Colonel Girault.
"Gaston de Nérac, _mon Colonel_."
"_Connais pas_," murmured the Colonel, turning away.
"Exalted rank makes Gigi Girault forget the lessons of humility he
learned in the Café Delphine."
Colonel Girault stood with mouth agape. Then he laughed and threw
himself into the arms of the dilapidated sentry.
"_Mon Dieu_! It is true. It is Paragot!"