"He was a private once," he explained, "in the Loyals; then he got his
commission and was gazetted to the Covenanters; but he never got himself
issued with a new identity disc. Economical that's what he was. Real
Scotch, I expect! Well, if he's an officer, we needn't worry with his
regimental number; that goes out." The blunt pencil thudded. "I'll
just put him down as _Captain Birnie, Royal Covenanters--Presbyterian_;
that's enough. Carry on, boys!"
The heavy-footed procession filed away through the mud, round the
traverse, and out of this narrative.
And that was how it came to pass that Sir Thomas Birnie, Baronet, of
Baronrigg, who in the humility of his heart had enlisted as a private
and died as a corporal, was buried next day, with absolute justice, as
the officer and gentleman that he really was.
*II*
Meanwhile Roy, with his stout young skull almost riven by a glancing
Boche nose-cap, lay tossing and muttering in a Base Hospital.
One dream beset and obsessed him for weeks. He, Roy Birnie--the
soldierly, the punctilious, the immaculate--had been haled by an escort
of overwhelming numbers and terrifying appearance before his commanding
officer--Uncle Alan, swollen to enormous size and invested with
Mephistophelean eyebrows--upon the charge of coming upon parade
improperly dressed. It was not merely a question of an unbuttoned
pocket, or a pair of badly-wound puttees; he had paraded in his
shirt-sleeves--minus his tunic! And in his dream, try as he might, poor
Roy could not for the life of him recall, in response to the nightmare
cross-examination of his satanic superior and relative, what he had done
with it.
All he could recollect was that he had wrapped it round someone--someone
who appeared to have lost his own and to be badly in need of another;
because he was lying on the ground in the mud. Roy had fitful glimpses
of the face--the face of a man dying in great pain, but in great
peace--a strangely familiar face. Roy had tried to converse with its
owner; but in his dreams their intercourse was limited chiefly to
intensely affectionate smiles. Then, suddenly, he had recognised the
face, and was stooping, in an awkward, boyish fashion, to kiss it, when
something happened, and he remembered no more.
*III*
Gradually these troubled visions faded, and with the steady healing of
his wound came healthy sleep and tranquillity of mind. Finally he came
to himself; and one bright morning in May was carried on board a
hospital ship and transferred, across the most efficiently guarded strip
of water in the world, to a convalescent hospital in a great country
house in Kent.
That night he slept in a little room in a long passage full of doors,
behind each of which lay a boy, seldom older than himself, who had
squandered his youth, mayhap a limb, too often his whole constitution,
in the service of his country.
Next morning, when he awoke, the sun was streaming down the passage.
All the doors stood wide open, and the air was rent by a raucous and
irregular chorus, proceeding from the doorways and beginning:
Nurse, Nurse, I'm feeling rather worse;
Come and kiss me on my little brow!
Words of rebuke were audible, and the riot died down. A majestic young
woman, admirably composed, presented herself at Roy's door.
"Good morning, Captain Birnie. I hope you slept well."
"Thank you, I did," replied Roy. "Are you the Sister?"
Across the passage came a voice:
"Let me present you, sir, to Little Lily, our Cross Red nurse! She--"
The lady indicated whirled round upon the offender, whose grinning face,
partially obscured by a patch over one eye, could be discerned upon the
pillow of the bed in the room opposite.
"Mr. Abercrombie," she announced, "if you can't behave I shall report
you to the Matron."
Mr. Abercrombie was all contrition at once.
"All right, Nurse!" he announced. "I apologise! I only want to warn
you, sir," he added to Roy, "that she's married! But she never tells us
that until it's too late! _Do_ be careful!"
Little Lily, the Cross Red nurse--otherwise the Lady Hermione
Mulready--turned an unruffled countenance to Roy. It was true that she
was married; she possessed what Mr. Abercrombie would have called "a
perfectly good husband of her own" in the Irish Guards. She had once
possessed two brothers also, somewhat akin in appearance and disposition
to the effervescent Abercrombie. Perhaps that was why she suffered his
impertinences so readily.
"Here is your breakfast, Captain Birnie," she continued. "The Matron
says you can't have bacon yet; but if you are good you may reach an
ordinary diet next week."
Roy thanked her.
"After breakfast," he asked politely, "may I write a letter--just one?
And see a paper? I'm a bit behind with the war, and--"
"You can have anything you want, in reason, so long as you lie still and
don't fidget. We have enough babies in this place already!" announced
Little Lily, with a withering glance in the direction of the room
opposite where Master Abercrombie was acting foolishly.
"It's all right," Roy assured her. "You will have no trouble with me.
I'm quite an old man, really: a kind husband, and an indulgent father,
and all that," he added, with a curious little air of pomposity.
His nurse looked down upon him with quickened interest.
"Are you a father?" she asked.
"Yes. Only just, though! I--I--haven't seen It yet!" His voice
quivered suddenly, to think how near he had gone to not seeing It at
all.
"I am glad you came through," said Little Lily quietly; and handed him
_The Times_ to read with his breakfast.
Roy poured out his tea, stretched back luxuriously, and unfolded the
paper. Like most of us in those days, he turned first to the casualty
list. The names of the officers alone filled two columns.
"I wonder if my old cracked cranium has figured here yet," he ruminated.
"What a nice little thrill if it's in to-day!"
He glanced down the long list of wounded.
"No, nothing doing! It has probably been in already." He turned in
more leisurely fashion to the previous column, and began to read the
names of the killed. But his eye got no further than the first name.
There were no A's to-day: this began with B.
He laid the paper down, and grinned to himself.
"I'd rather read it than be it!" he reflected.
Then, suddenly, a blinding thought smote him.
Marjorie! What if she had seen it? He sat up excitedly, as a further
probability occurred to him.
"She must have been notified privately by the War Office long ago.
Then, of all times!" He was talking to himself now, in a low, agitated
voice. "My God! I wonder where she is! The old man never told me when
he wired; but he'll know." His voice rose. "Nurse! Nurse! Nurse!"
"Great Scott!" announced Mr. Abercrombie from the opposite room: "The
lad has succumbed already! And I _warned_ him!"
But already Lady Hermione's tall figure was framed in Roy's doorway.
"Here I am," she said. "Don't shout, please. You will find a bell-push
under your pillow, if you look.... Why, my _dear_, what is it?"
Roy handed her the paper, pointing dumbly.
"My wife!" he whispered. "She'll think I'm-- And I don't even know
where she is--to contradict it! Have you a telephone here? Could you
ring up Lord Eskerley's house in London? He'll know! He knows
everything! He knows--"
Lady Hermione laid a cool hand upon his bandaged forehead.
"Don't get flustered!" she said. "Get up, and put on your
dressing-gown. I will show you where the telephone is."
Next moment, with Roy swaying on her arm, she was sailing down the
passage in the direction of the office in the front hall.
"They're keeping company already! Quick work! Quick work!" commented
Master Abercrombie, admiringly.
*CHAPTER XXII*
*THE MILLS OF GOD*
"He must have left a will of some kind," said Lord Eskerley.
"He made one before he went to France," I replied; "but that has been
invalidated by his marriage. It doesn't really matter; because
everything--the baronetcy, Baronrigg, and so on--will pass automatically
to the child."
"Still, you know what lawyers are when a man dies intestate! There will
be nothing left worth scraping up if we don't provide something of a
documentary nature for them to bite on. Didn't they find anything in
his pockets, when they--found him?"
"Nothing but his cigarette-case, and Marjorie's last letter."
We were standing in the outer library of Lord Eskerley's great house in
Curzon Street. It was a bright morning in May, and the sun, streaming
between the heavy window-curtains, made the rest of the room look more
than usually funereal by comparison. At one end, double doors opened
into his lordship's _sanctum sanctorum_, where few but the faithful
Meadows ever presumed to track him. At the other yawned a great empty
fireplace, with a curiously carved mantelpiece, over which hung Millais'
radiant portrait of Lady Eskerley as a bride.
Beside the fire-place stood the secretary's own particular
writing-table. To the wall just above it was fixed an incongruously
modern-looking telephone switch-board. Lord Eskerley's eye fell on
this; and he was off in a moment down one of his usual by-paths.
"Private wire, and so on!" he explained. "Meadows had it put in. He
just pushes a few buttons, and puts a plug in a hole; and I can
telephone not only to the outside world but direct to the office, or the
War Cabinet, or to my own bathroom. Wonderful invention! Wonderful
fellow! It's the devil, though, when he goes out for a walk: I'm no
good at it myself. I tried to ring up the P.M. the other day, and found
myself breathing private and confidential war secrets to my own
laundry-maid. By the way, have you looked through those things yet?
You may find what you want there."
He pointed to the corner of the room, where a mud-stained, sun-bleached
Wolseley valise of green Willesden canvas lay rolled and strapped. It
had once been Roy's, and had arrived the previous day, forwarded to me
as next-of-kin, bearing that pitiful designation: "_Deceased Officers
Effects_."
"I will go through it this morning," I said, "and report. Eric is
coming along; he'll help me. By the way, how is Marjorie to-day? Eric
is sure to want to know."
"Why should he want to know--eh? Why this solicitude?"
"I don't know. He always does. Why shouldn't he take an interest in
her, like the rest of us?"
But plainly my old friend was not quite satisfied.
"To take an interest in a beautiful young widow is right and proper," he
said--"especially if you happen to be an eligible D.S.O. But not too
premature an interest, please! Bethune is a gallant soldier; but fine
feeling never was his _forte_." Suddenly the old man blazed up. "Good
God! Has he realised that the poor child doesn't even know she is a
widow?"
That Eric should be taking, or ever have taken, a more than fatherly
interest in Marjorie was news to me. I am not very perceptive in these
matters; but the possibility of such a thing explained a good deal to
me--Eric's persistent dislike of Roy, for instance. Still, I had no
desire to pursue the topic; and switched accordingly.
"I am afraid she will have to be told now," I said. "It's in the paper
this morning. People will be writing to condole, and so on."
"I know," said Lord Eskerley. "I shall tell her myself--this
afternoon." He shook his white head sorrowfully. "It will be pretty
awful, though: a woman ought to do it really." He glanced up at the
portrait of his long dead wife. "We will give her one more morning,
poor little soul! Hark!"
The door into the hall stood open; so, apparently, did the door of
Marjorie's room, on the first floor above us. As we stood, we could
hear her voice uplifted in a somewhat exaggerated apostrophe to her own
son; also that self-satisfied infant's gurgling reception of the same.
Mother and son, by the way, had been in the house for more than three
weeks, having been conveyed thither from a nursing home in Kensington,
where, thanks to the timely warning of a flamboyant but attractive young
person named Liss Lyle, we had been constrained to look for them. Miss
Lyle was now our constant visitor, and had completely enmeshed the
hitherto impregnable Meadows.
"Extraordinary gibberish, baby talk!" remarked Lord Eskerley.
"Primeval, of course, and quite unaltered through the ages." Then,
suddenly:
"Poor child, she's had a hard time! Three years of exhausting
self-imposed drudgery--then maternity! And now she has to be told that
she's a widow. My God, Alan, how I hate Wilhelm sometimes! And he once
dined in this house!"
"What is the news, by the way?" I asked.
"Good, decidedly good! I think we have the Boche cold at last.
Internally Germany is on her last legs. Only one thing could have
braced her up--a spectacular success last March. As things turned out,
that enterprise went off at half-cock--though it gave us a most salutary
scare. Now our morale is returning: Foch has the situation well in
hand. I fancy he will encourage the enemy to attack a little longer:
then, when he has blown a few more swollen salients in our line, come
right back at him and puncture them one by one. That and the arrival of
the Americans--they are splendid troops, I hear, and are being rushed
over at the rate of three hundred thousand a month now--should put the
last nail into the Teutonic coffin." The old man paused, and sighed.
"Not before it was time, though! Our casualties passed the three
million mark the other day, Alan! Still, our tribulations of the past
three months may have been worth while. They have taught us two things:
firstly, that this blundering, flat-footed old country of ours retains
its ancient staying-power; secondly, never to be too cocksure about
winning until you have won! What time is he coming?"
"Eleven o'clock," I replied, concluding that this lightning reference
was to Eric.
"Umph! I have to be at Downing Street at twelve. Meanwhile, I shall be
in my own inner chamber if you want me. Good-bye! There are cigarettes
in that box. Poor little girl!"
The double doors closed, and I was left alone.
I unstrapped Roy's valise without much difficulty--my comminuted
collar-bone was mending nicely, though I had been warned that I might
never be able to wield a salmon-rod again--and emptied out its jumbled
contents on to the floor. At the same moment Eric was announced.
"Come along," I said, "and get that new tin arm of yours to work. Sort
out everything in the shape of papers from that mess, and let us go
through them."
"Are we looking for anything in particular?" asked Eric, reluctantly
setting to work. He always hated drudgery.
"Roy's will."
Eric nodded; and laid a heap of documents on the table. There was a
tattered sheaf of battalion orders; an old field dispatch book, a number
of maps; and a bundle of letters.
"I fancy the letters are from Marjorie," I said. "We need not bother to
read them."
"How is she, by the way?" asked Eric, looking up.
"Getting along, I believe."
"One would like to show her any little kindness that is possible," Eric
continued. "One has sent her flowers, of course, and so on. Is there
anything else? I wonder if she would like to see me? It would probably
do her good."
It was the old touch. I smiled despite myself.
"I wouldn't suggest it at present, if I were you," I said. "She is to
have some news broken to her this afternoon."
"You mean--?"