THE SMUGGLER BREED.
I.
On an April evening, fifteen months later, a certain liveliness could
have been noted in the vicinity of Drury Lane Theatre. The occasion
was another season of opera in English, and as the offering for the
night was _Madam Butterfly_, the usual heterogeneous fraternity of
Puccini-worshippers were gathering in large numbers.
Although the splendour of Covent Garden (which had been closed for the
war) was missing, the boxes held their modicum of brilliantly dressed
women; and through the audience there was a considerable sprinkling of
soldiers, mostly from the British Dominions and America, grasping
hungrily at one of the few war-time London theatrical productions that
did not engender a deep and lasting melancholy--to say nothing of a
deep and lasting doubt of English humour and English delicacy.
In one of the upper boxes Lady Erskin had a small unescorted party.
Lady Erskin herself was a plump little miniature who was rather
exercised over the dilemma of whether to display a huge feathery fan
and obliterate herself, or to sacrifice the fan to the glory of being
stared at by common people. With her was her sister, the wife of a
country rector, who assumed such an elaborate air of _ennui_ that any
one could have told it was her first time in a box. Between them was
Lady Erskin's rather pretty daughter, and behind her, with all her
vivid personality made glorious in its setting of velvety cloak and
creamy gown, was Elise Durwent, enjoying a three days' respite from her
long tour of duty.
The lights went out, and with the rising of the curtain the little
drama of tenderness and cruelty held the stage. From the distance,
Butterfly could be heard approaching, her voice coming nearer as the
typical Puccini progressions followed her ascent. There was the
marriage, the cursing of Butterfly by the Bonze, and the exquisite love
duet, so full of passionate _abandon_, and yet shaded with such
delicacy. At the conclusion of the act, where the orchestra adds its
overpowering _tour de force_ to the singers', the audience burst into
applause that lasted for several minutes. It was the spontaneous
gratitude of hundreds of war-tired souls whose bonds had been relaxed
for an hour by the magic touch of music.
'Do you think the tenor is good-looking?' asked Lady Erskin of no one
in particular.
'Who is that in the opposite box, with the leopard's skin on her
shoulders?' queried the rector's wife.
'I think Butterfly is topping,' said Lady Erskin's daughter. 'I always
weep buckets in the second act.'
'I should like to die to music like that,' said Elise, almost to
herself.
II.
Close by a communication-trench, Dick Durwent stood shivering in the
cool night-air. He was waiting to go forward on sentry-duty, the
remainder of the relief having gathered at the other end of the
reserve-trench in which he was standing; but though it was spring,
there was a chill and a dampness in the air that seemed to breathe from
the pores of the mutilated earth. A desultory shelling was going on,
but for a week past a comparative calm had succeeded the hideous
nightmare of March and early April, when Germany had so nearly swept
the board clean of stakes.
He heard the voices of a carrying-party coming up, and suddenly he
crouched low. There was a horrible whine, growing to a shriek--and a
shell burst a few yards away. Shaken and almost deafened, Durwent
remained where he was until he saw an object roll nearly to his feet.
It was a jar of rum that was being brought up for issue. He lifted the
thing up, and again he shivered in the raw air like one sickening of
the ague. Quick as the thought itself, he put the jar down, and
seizing his water-bottle, emptied its contents on the ground. Kneeling
down, he filled it with rum, and leaving the jar lying at such an angle
that it would appear to have spilled a certain amount, he hurriedly
joined the rest of the relief warned for duty.
Dick had been on guard in the front line for an hour, when he received
word that a patrol was going out. A moment later they passed him, an
officer and two men, and he saw them quietly climb over the parapet
which had been hastily improvised when the battalion took over the
position. They had been gone only a couple of minutes when
pistol-shots rang out, and the flares thrown up revealed a shadowy
fight between two patrols that had met in the dark. The firing
stopped, and Durwent's eyes, staring into the blackness, saw two men
crouching low and dragging something after them. He challenged, to
find that it was the patrol returning, and that the one they were
bringing back was the officer, killed.
The trench was so narrow that they could not carry him back, and they
left the body lying on the parapet until a stretcher could be fetched.
Dulled as he had become to terrible sights, the horror of that silent,
grotesque figure began to freeze Dick Durwent's blood. A few minutes
before it had been a thing of life. It had loved and hated and
laughed; its veins had coursed with the warm blood of youth; and there
it sprawled, a ghastly jumble of arms and legs--motionless, silent,
_dead_. He tried to keep his eyes turned away, but it haunted him.
When he stared straight ahead into the dark it beckoned to him--he
could see the fingers twitching! And not till he crept near could he
be satisfied that, after all, it had not moved.
'Sherwood!' He heard a quivering voice to his right. It was the
nearest sentry, an eighteen-year-old boy, who had called him by the
name given him by Austin Selwyn, the name under which he had enlisted.
'What's the matter?' called Durwent.
Without his rifle, the little chap stumbled towards him, and, dark as
it was, Dick could see that his face was livid and his eyes were wide
with terror.
'Sherwood,' whimpered the boy, 'I can't stand it--I've lost my
nerve. . . . That thing there--there. . . . It moves. It's dead, and
it moves. . . . Look, it's grinning at me now! I'm going back. I
can't stay here--I can't.'
'Steady, steady,' said Durwent, gripping the boy by the shoulder and
shaking him roughly. 'Pull yourself together. Don't be a kid. You've
seen far worse than this and never turned a hair.'
'I can't help it,' whined the boy. 'There's dead men walking out there
all over. Can't you see them? They whisper in the dark--I can hear
them all the time. I'm going back.'
'You can't, you little idiot. They'll shoot you.'
'I don't care. Let them shoot.'
'Where's your rifle? Get back to your post. If you're caught like
this, there'll be a firing-party at daybreak for you.'
'I don't care,' cried the lad hysterically. 'They can't keep me here.
I'm going'----
'Here'---- Throwing the young fellow against the parapet and holding
him there by leaning heavily against him, Durwent felt for his
water-bottle and withdrew the stopper. 'Drink this,' he said, forcing
the mouth of the flask between the boy's lips. 'Take a shot of rum.
It will put the guts back into you.'
The young soldier choked with the burning liquid, and tears oozed from
his eyes, but the chill of the body passed, and with it the chill of
cowardice. With a half-whimper, half-laugh, he forced a silly, coarse
jest from his lips. 'Where did you get it, Sherwood?'
'Never mind,' said Dick. 'Come on now. Back you go--and stick it out.'
III.
The second act of _Madam Butterfly_ was in progress.
With the sure touch of high artistry, both composer and librettist had
delineated the result of Pinkerton's faithlessness--a faithlessness
that was obvious to every one but Cho-cho-san, who still believed that
her husband would return with the roses. Firm in her trust, she
pictured to Sazuki the day when he would come, 'a little speck in the
distance, climbing the hillock'--how she would wait 'a bit to tease him
and a bit so as not to die at our first meeting'--ending with the
triumphant assurance (born of her woman's intuition, which, alas!
proves so frequently unreliable) that it would all come to pass as she
told. She _knew_ it.
And so to the visit of the American consul, who tries to tell her that
her husband has written that he has tired of her--she, poor soul,
reading in his words the message that he still loves her. Then the
final tableau of the act with Butterfly, her baby and Sazuki standing
at the Shosi facing the distant harbour where his ship has just been
signalled. Softly the humming of the priests at worship ceases, and
the curtain descends on what must always remain a masterpiece of
delicate pathos--a story that will never lose its appeal while woman's
trust in man lends its charm to drab existence.
'The tenor didn't come in at all in that act,' said Lady Erskin.
'Really,' said the rector's wife, fixing her lorgnette on the opposite
box, 'that person with the leopard's skin looks absolutely like a
cannibal.'
'I'm just swimming in tears,' was the comment of Lady Erskin's daughter.
Elise said nothing; nor did she hear them speak. Her heart was
fluttering wildly, and her hands were clasped tightly together. She
had heard a far-away cry--and the voice was Dick's.
IV.
The raw air of the night, the dread of that loathsome, silent thing,
the haunting terror of the boy's eyes a few minutes before, the whine
of shells, all bored their way into Dick Durwent's brain. He began to
tremble. With every bit of will-power he fought it off, but he felt
the fumes of madness coming over him.
For days on end he had had no rest. In the Fifth Army _débâcle_ of
March his battalion had been one of the first to break, although
remnants had fought as few men had ever fought before; and when they
had been reorganised they were moved back into the line, undermanned,
ill-equipped, and branded with disgrace. It was the culmination of
three years' service at the front, and his nerves were at the
breaking-point. Mounds of earth ahead of him, and gnarled, dismembered
trees, began to take the ghostly shapes that the frightened boy had
told of.
Mumbling meaningless things, he reached for his water-bottle and poured
a mouthful of rum down his throat. It set his heart beating more
firmly, and his blood was no longer like ice in a sluggish river. He
replaced the stopper and resumed his watch, but every fibre of his body
was craving for more of the alcohol. With set teeth he struggled for
self-control, but every instinct was fighting against him. He took
another sip, then a long draught of the scorching liquid, and leaned
against the parapet. He pressed his hot face against the damp earth,
and burrowed his fingers into it in a frenzied effort for self-mastery.
Again he drank, and his mouth burned with the stuff. His head was
swimming, and he could hear surf breaking on a rocky coast. The dead
man was grinning at him, but death no longer held any terrors for him.
He raised the bottle in a mock toast and drank greedily of the rum
again.
The pounding of the waves puzzled him. He could not remember that they
were near any water. But more and more distinctly he could hear the
roll of surf dashed into spray against the shore. . . . It was
strange. . . . Once more he pressed the bottle to his lips, and it set
his very arteries on fire. Yes. Over to the left he could see the
glimmer of the ocean. There was a light; some one was beside it. It
was Elise! She was giving a signal. That was it--the smugglers were
landing their contraband, and she was signalling that all was clear.
He looked over to the dead man. The corpse was rising to its feet. It
had all been a hoax on its part--it was an excise officer. His eyes
were fixed on the light, too. His men would be near, and they would
capture Elise--and afterwards the smugglers, led by their
great-grandfather. He would have to warn her. He couldn't shout, for
that would give everything away. He would crawl near to her first.
He finished the rum, draining the bottle to the last drop, and started
to creep along the trench, his heavy, powerless limbs carrying him only
inches where his imagination made it yards. He looked back once. The
dead man was following him. It had become a race between himself and a
corpse. He kept his eye on the light. He could see Elise quite
plainly. She was looking out towards the sea.
Feeling his muscles growing weaker, and fearful that the dead man would
overtake him, he struggled to his feet and clapped his hands to his
mouth.
'_Elise_!' he yelled. '_Elise_!'
And with the roar of surf in his ears, he sank to the ground in a
drunken stupor.
V.
The last act of _Madam Butterfly_ was ending. The cruel little
story wound to a close with the return of Pinkerton and his
sympathy-uninspiring American wife, and then the suicide of
Butterfly--the logical, but comparatively unmoving, finale to the opera.
But Elise neither saw the actors nor heard the music. With her hands
covering her eyes, she had been listening for the voice of Dick. She
could hear it, distant and faint, growing nearer, as if he were coming
towards her through a forest. There was in it a despair she had never
heard before. He was in danger--where or how she could not fathom--but
over the surging music of the orchestra she could hear the voice of
Boy-blue crying through the infinity of space.
The opera was over, and there was a storm of applause that developed
into an ovation.
'The tenor isn't really handsome, after all,' said Lady Erskin.
'I think the women of to-day are shameless,' said the rector's wife,
casting a last indignant glance at the box across the theatre.
'I feel a perfect rag,' said Lady Erskin's daughter. 'Good heavens!
Elise, what's the matter?'
'Nothing. I--I don't know,' Elise answered, looking up with
terror-stricken eyes. 'I'm just overwrought. That's all.'
'You poor dear!' said Lady Erskin. 'You shouldn't take the opera so
seriously. After all, it didn't really happen--and I have no doubt in
real life the tenor is quite a model husband, with at least ten
children.'
VI.
'Drunk,' said the company commander, stooping over the prostrate body
of Dick Durwent. 'He was all right when he took over. Where did he
get the stuff?'
'Smell that, sir,' said the subaltern of the night, handing him a
water-bottle.
'Humph! This looks bad. Have him carried to the rear and placed under
arrest.'