Colonel Lavington was discussing the art of the sonnet, and the
influence of Italian culture in Elizabethan England. From that subject
he travelled to the psychology of courage, which in his opinion, for
the moment, was founded on vanity.
“Courage,” he said with that gallant look of his which I had seen with
admiration when he walked up the old duckboards beyond Ypres, with
a whimsical smile at “crumps” bursting abominably near--he had done
bravely in the old days, as a battalion commander--“Courage is merely
a pose before the mirror of one’s own soul and one’s neighbours. We
are all horribly afraid in moments of danger, but some of us have the
gift of pretending that we don’t mind. That is vanity. We like to look
heroes, even to ourselves. It is good to die with a _beau geste_,
though death is damnably unpleasant.”
“I agree, Colonel,” said Charles Fortune. “Always the right face for
the proper occasion. But it wants a lot of practice.”
He put on his gallant, devil-may-care face, and there was appreciative
laughter from his fellow-officers.
Harding, the young landowner, was of opinion that courage depended
entirely on the liver.
“It is a matter of physical health,” he said. “If I am out-of-sorts,
my _moral_ goes down to zero. Not that I’m ever really brave. Anyhow I
hate things that go off. Those loud noises of bursting shells are very
objectionable. I shall protest against Christmas crackers after the
war.”
Young Clatworthy was in the sulks, and sat very silent during all this
badinage.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, and he confided to me his conviction,
while he passed the salt, that “life was a rummy game.”
“Hipped?” I said, and his answer was, “Fed up to the back teeth!”
That seemed to me curious, after the glimpse I had had of him with a
little lady of Lille. The boy explained himself somewhat, under cover
of the Colonel’s conversation, which was holding the interest of the
mess.
“We’re living unnaturally,” he said. “It’s all an abnormal show, and we
pretend to be natural and normal, when everything that happens round us
is fantastic and disorderly.”
“What’s your idea?” I enquired. It was the first time I had heard the
boy talk seriously, or with any touch of gravity.
“Hard to explain,” he said. “But take my case to-day. This morning I
went up the line to interrogate the latest batch of P.O.W’s.” (He meant
prisoners of war). “A five-point-nine burst within ten yards of my car,
the other side of Courtrai, killed my driver and missed me by a couple
of inches. I felt as sick as a dog when I saw Saunders crumpled over
his steering-wheel, with blood pouring down his neck. Not that it’s the
first time I’ve seen blood!”
He laughed as he gave a glance at his wound-stripe, and I remembered
the way in which he had gained his M.C. at Gommecourt--one of three
left alive in his company.
“We had been talking, three minutes before, about his next leave. He
had been married in ’16, after the Somme, and hadn’t seen his wife
since. Said her letters made him ‘uneasy.’ Thought she was drinking,
because of the loneliness. Well, there he was--finished--and a nasty
sight. I went off to the P.O.W. cage, and examined the beggars--one
of them, as usual, had been a waiter at the Cecil, and said ‘How’s
dear old London?’--and passed the time of day with Bob Mellett. You
know--the one-armed lad. He laughed no end when he heard of my narrow
squeak. So did I--though it’s hard to see the joke. He lent me his car
on the way back, and somewhere outside Courtrai we bumped over a dead
body, with a queer soft squelch. It was a German--a young ’un--and Bob
Mellett said, ‘_He_ won’t be home for Christmas!’ Do you know Bob?--he
used to cry at school when a rat was caught. Queer, isn’t it? Now here
I am, sitting at a white table-cloth, listening to the Colonel’s talk,
and pretending to be interested. I’m not a bit, really. I’m wondering
why that bit of shell hit Saunders and not me. Or why I’m not lying
in a muddy road as a bit of soft squelch for staff-cars to bump over.
And on top of that I’m wondering how it will feel to hang up a bowler
hat again in a house at Wimbledon, and say ‘Cheerio, Mother!’ to the
mater (who will be knitting in the same arm-chair--chintz-covered--by
the piano) and read the evening paper until dinner’s ready, take Ethel
to a local dance, and get back into the old rut of home life in a nice
family, don’t you know? With all my memories. With the ghosts of _this_
life crowding up. Ugly ghosts, some of ’em! Dirty ghosts!... It’s
inconceivable that we can ever go back to the funny old humdrum! I’m
not sure that I want to.”
“You’re hipped,” I told him. “You’ll be glad to get back all right.
Wimbledon will be Paradise after what you’ve been through.”
“Oh, Lord, _I’ve_ done nothing,” said the boy. “Fact is, I’ve been
talking tripe. Forget it.”
But I did not forget, and remembered every word later, when I heard his
laughter, on Armistice night.
A despatch-rider stood outside the door in his muddy overalls, and
Brand went to get his message. It was from Pierre Nesle.
“I am mad with joy that you have found Marthe! Alas, I cannot get back
for a week. Tell her that I am still her devoted comrade and loving
brother. Pierre.”
Brand handed me the slip and said, “Poor devil!” I went back to my
billet in Madame Chéri’s house, and she made no allusion to our
conversation in the afternoon, but was anxious, I thought, to assure
me of her friendship by special little courtesies, as when she lighted
my candle and carried it upstairs before saying Good night. Hélène
was learning English fast and furiously, and with her arms round her
mother’s waist, said, “Sleep well, sir, and very good dreams to you!”
which I imagine was a sentence out of her text-book.