Private Elijah Tiddy looked at his watch. There was still half-an-hour
to the great moment for which the battalion had waited so long. Most
of the men had decided to fill up the time by eating, drinking or
sleeping, but Private Tiddy had two other passions in life--one was
his wife, and the other the gentle art of letter-writing. At all
possible and impossible moments Private Tiddy wrote letters home. To
some men this would have been an impossible moment--not so to Tiddy,
who, if he hadn't been first a plumber and then a soldier, would have
made an inimitable journalist.
So he sat down as best he could with all that he carried, and
extracted a letter-case from an inside pocket. It was a recent gift
from the minister of his parish, who knew and shared Tiddy's weakness
for the pen, and it filled his soul with joy. He fingered the thin
sheets of writing-paper lovingly, as a musician touches the strings,
and thoughtfully sucked the indelible pencil which Mrs. Tiddy had
bought for him as a parting present when she said good-bye to him at
the bookstall.
"Dearest Wife," he began. Then at a shout he hastily drew in his feet
as a man dashed past him with a heavy burden. "I nearly got it in the
neck a minute ago," he wrote, "but I'm all right, and this is a fine
place if it wasn't for the noise. They never seem to stop screeching
and the smoke is fair awful, and as soon as you think everything is
quiet another comes. I am quite alone at this minute, but don't you
go for to worry; they'll be back soon and then perhaps I'll get a bit
of something. It's pretty hard where I am sitting and I can't write
you much of a letter, what with the cramp in my legs and the noise
and wondering how soon the Sergeant will come and tell us to move up
nearer our part of the line. I can see some of the line, not our bit,
from where I am sitting. It's shining just lovely in the sun.
"Dear wife, this isn't a bit like home, but it still makes me think
of you at our station buying me that pencil and all, just as the train
come in. I think of you all the time wherever I am, but the noise is
something cruel, and here comes the Sergeant to tell us to prepare. I
shan't have time to get a drink first; but it don't matter; I'd rather
write to you than anything; and this pad what the minister gave me is
fine. I keep it in my left breast pocket. Please tell him it hasn't
stopped a bit of stuff yet, but I am sure it will soon. Remember me
to everybody. Love and kisses from your Elijah."
Mrs. Tiddy duly received the letter and shed proud tears at the
thought of her husband, obviously on the eve of a great advance,
or even lying out hungry and wounded in No Man's Land (she hovered
between the alternatives), but still cheery and finding time and
energy to write to his wife.
It was only a too observant neighbour who discovered that the postmark
was London, S.E. But even she has not yet decided whether Elijah Tiddy
is of intention the biggest liar in the East Mudshires, or whether he
only saw Waterloo Station with the eye of the literary man.
* * * * *