I'd been sketching in a hay-field, and was just making back along the
top hedge to the lane when I heard a sound from the other side like a
man's crying. I put my eye to a gap, and there, about three yards in,
was a grey-haired bloke in a Norfolk jacket and flannel trousers,
digging like a fiend, and crying like a baby--blowing, and gasping and
sobbing, tears and sweat rolling down into his beard like rivers. He'd
plunge his pick in, scratch, and shovel, and hack at the roots as if for
dear life--he was making the hole too close to the hedge, of
course--and all the time carrying on like that. I thought he must be
digging his own grave at least. Suddenly he put his pick down, and there
just under the hedge I saw a dead brown dog, lying on its side, all
limp. I never see a dead animal myself, you know, without a bit of a
choke; they're so soft, and lissom; the peace, and the pity--a sort of
look of: "Why--why--when I was so alive?" Well, this elderly Johnny took
a good squint at it, to see if the hole was big enough, then off he went
again, sobbing and digging like a fiend. It was really a bit too weird,
and I mouched off. But when I'd gone about half a mile, I got an attack
of the want-to-knows, came back, and sneaked along the hedge. There he
was still, but he had finished, and was having a mop round, and putting
the last touches to a heap of stones. I strolled up, and said:
'Hot work, Sir, digging, this weather!'
He was a good-looking old grey-beard, with an intellectual face, high
forehead and all that.
'I'm not used to it,' he said, looking at his blisters.
'Been burying a dog? Horrid job that!--favourite, I'm afraid.'
He seemed in two minds whether to shut me up and move off, but he
didn't.
'Yes,' he said; 'it's cut me up horribly. I never condemned a creature
to death before. And dogs seem to know.'
'Ah! They're pretty uncanny,' I said, for I wasn't going to let on, of
course, that I had seen him.
'I wouldn't have done it but for the War,' he muttered; 'but she stole
eggs, poor thing; you couldn't break her of it. She ate three times as
much as any other dog, too, and in spite of it was always a perfect
skeleton--something wrong inside. The sort of dog, you know, no one
would take, or treat decently if they did. Bad habits of every kind,
poor dear. I bought her because she was being starved. But she trusted
me, that's why I feel so like a murderer. When the Vet and I were in the
yard discussing her, she knew there was something wrong--she kept
looking at my face. I very nearly went back on it; only, having got him
out on purpose, I was ashamed to. We brought her down here, and on the
way she found the remains of a rabbit about a week old--that was one of
her accomplishments--bringing me the most fearful offal. She brought it
up wagging her tail--as much as to say: 'See--I _am_ some use!' The Vet
tied her up here and took his gun; she wagged her tail at that, too; and
I ran away. When the shot came, my own little spaniel fawned on
me--they _are_ uncanny--licked me all over, never was so gushing,
seemed saying: 'What awful power you have! I do love you! You wouldn't
do that to me, would you? We've got rid of that other one, though!' When
I came back here to bury the poor thing, and saw her lying on her side
so still, I made a real fool of myself. I was patting her an hour ago,
talking to her as if she were a human being. Judas!'"
Mallinson put his pipe back into his mouth. "Just think of it!" he said:
"The same creatures who are blowing each other to little bits all the
time, bombing babies, roasting fellow creatures in the air and cheering
while they roast, working day and night to inflict every imaginable kind
of horror on other men exactly like themselves--these same chaps are
capable of feeling like that about shooting a wretched ill cur of a dog,
no good to anybody. There are more things in Heaven and Earth--!" And he
relit his pipe, which had gone out.
His yarn took the prize.
1917.
XI
THE MOTHER STONE
It was after dinner, and five elderly Englishmen were discussing the
causes of the war.
"Well," said Travers, a big, fresh-coloured grey-beard, with little
twinkling eyes and very slow speech, "you gentlemen know more about it
than I do, but I bet you I can lay my finger on the cause of the war at
any minute."
There was an instant clamour of jeering. But a man called Askew, who
knew Travers well, laughed and said: "Come, let's have it!" Travers
turned those twinkling little eyes of his slowly round the circle, and
with heavy, hesitating modesty began:
"Well, Mr. Askew, it was in '67 or '68 that this happened to a great big
feller of my acquaintance named Ray--one of those fellers, you know,
that are always on the look-out to make their fortunes and never do.
This Ray was coming back south one day after a huntin' trip he'd been in
what's now called Bechuanaland, and he was in a pretty bad way when he
walked one evenin' into the camp of one of those wanderin' Boers. That
class of Boer has disappeared now. They had no farms of their own, but
just moved on with their stock and their boys; and when they came to
good pasture they'd outspan and stay there till they'd cleared it
out--and then trek on again. Well, this old Boer told Ray to come right
in, and take a meal; and heaven knows what it was made of, for those old
Boers, they'd eat the devil himself without onion sauce, and relish him.
After the meal the old Boer and Ray sat smokin' and yarnin' in the door
of the tent, because in those days these wanderin' Boers used tents.
Right close by in the front, the children were playin' in the dust, a
game like marbles, with three or four round stones, and they'd pitch 'em
up to another stone they called the Moer-Klip, or Mother-stone--one,
two, and pick up--two, three, and pick up--you know the game of marbles.
Well, the sun was settin' and presently Ray noticed this Moer-Klip that
they were pitchin' 'em up to, shinin'; and he looked at it, and he said
to the old Boer: 'What's that stone the children are playin' with?' And
the old Boer looked at him and looked at the stone, and said: 'It's just
a stone,' and went on smokin'.
"Well, Ray went down on his knees and picked up the stone, and weighed
it in his hand. About the size of a hazel-nut it was, and looked--well,
it looked like a piece of alum; but the more he looked at it, the more
he thought: 'By Jove, I believe it's a diamond!'
"So he said to the old Boer: 'Where did the children get this stone?'
And the old Boer said: 'Oh! the shepherd picked it up somewhere.' And
Ray said: '_Where_ did he pick it up?' And the old Boer waved his hand,
and said: 'Over the Kopje, there, beyond the river. How should I know,
brother?--a stone is a stone!' So Ray said: 'You let me take this stone
away with me!' And the old Boer went on smokin', and he said: 'One
stone's the same as another. Take it, brother!' And Ray said: 'If it's
what I think, I'll give you half the price I get for it.'
"The old Boer smiled, and said: 'That's all right, brother; take it,
take it!'
"The next morning Ray left this old Boer, and, when he was going, he
said to him: 'Well,' he said, 'I believe this is a valuable stone!' and
the old Boer smiled because he knew one stone was the same as another.
"The first place Ray came to was C--, and he went to the hotel; and in
the evenin' he began talkin' about the stone, and they all laughed at
him, because in those days nobody had heard of diamonds in South Africa.
So presently he lost his temper, and pulled out the stone and showed it
round; but nobody thought it was a diamond, and they all laughed at him
the more. Then one of the fellers said: 'If it's a diamond, it ought to
cut glass.'
"Ray took the stone, and, by Jove, he cut his name on the window, and
there it is--I've seen it--on the bar window of that hotel. Well, next
day, you bet, he travelled straight back to where the old Boer told him
the shepherd had picked up the stone, and he went to a native chief
called Jointje, and said to him: 'Jointje,' he said, 'I go a journey.
While I go, you go about and send all your "boys" about, and look for
all the stones that shine like this one; and when I come back, if you
find me plenty, I give you gun.' And Jointje said: 'That all right,
Boss.'
"And Ray went down to Cape Town, and took the stone to a jeweller, and
the jeweller told him it was a diamond of about 30 or 40 carats, and
gave him five hundred pound for it. So he bought a waggon and a span of
oxen to give to the old Boer, and went back to Jointje. The niggers had
collected skinfuls of stones of all kinds, and out of all the skinfuls
Ray found three or four diamonds. So he went to work and got another
feller to back him, and between them they made the Government move. The
rush began, and they found that place near Kimberley; and after that
they found De Beers, and after that Kimberley itself."
Travers stopped, and looked around him.
"Ray made his fortune, I suppose?"
"No, Mr. Askew; the unfortunate feller made next to nothin'. He was one
of those fellers that never do any good for themselves."
"But what has all this to do with the war?"
Again Travers looked round, and more slowly than ever, said:
"Without that game of marbles, would there have been a
Moer-Klip--without the Moer-Klip, would there have been a
Kimberley--without Kimberley, would there have been a Rhodes--without a
Rhodes, would there have been a Raid--without a Raid, would the Boers
have started armin'--if the Boers hadn't armed, would there have been a
Transvaal War? And if there hadn't been the Transvaal War, would there
have been the incident of those two German ships we held up; and all the
general feelin' in Germany that gave the Kaiser the chance to start his
Navy programme in 1900? And if the Germans hadn't built their Navy,
would their heads have swelled till they challenged the world, and
should we have had this war?"
He slowly drew a hand from his pocket, and put it on the table. On the
little finger was blazing an enormous diamond.
"My father," he said, "bought it of the jeweller."
The mother-stone glittered and glowed, and the five Englishmen fixed
their eyes on it in silence. Some of them had been in the Boer War, and
three of them had sons in this. At last one of them said:
"Well, that's seeing God in a dew-drop with a vengeance. What about the
old Boer?"
Travers's little eyes twinkled.
"Well," he said, "Ray told me the old feller just looked at him as if he
thought he'd done a damn silly thing to give him a waggon; and he nodded
his old head, and said, laughin' in his beard: 'Wish you good luck,
brother, with your stone.' You couldn't humbug that old Boer; he knew
one stone was the same as another."
1914.
XII
POIROT AND BIDAN
A RECOLLECTION
Coming one dark December evening out of the hospital courtyard into the
corridor which led to my little workroom, I was conscious of two new
arrivals. There were several men round the stove, but these two were
sitting apart on a bench close to my door. We used to get men in all
stages of decrepitude, but I had never seen two who looked so completely
under the weather. They were the extremes--in age, in colouring, in
figure, in everything; and they sat there, not speaking, with every
appearance of apathy and exhaustion. The one was a boy, perhaps
nineteen, with a sunken, hairless, grey-white face under his peaked
cap--never surely was face so grey! He sat with his long grey-blue
overcoat open at the knees, and his long emaciated hands nervously
rubbing each other between them. Intensely forlorn he looked, and I
remember thinking: "That boy's dying!" This was Bidan.
The other's face, in just the glimpse I had of it, was as if carved out
of wood, except for that something you see behind the masks of driven
bullocks, deeply resentful. His cap was off, and one saw he was
grey-haired; his cheeks, stretched over cheekbones solid as
door-handles, were a purplish-red, his grey moustache was damp, his
light blue eyes stared like a codfish's. He reminded me queerly of those
Parisian _cochers_ one still sees under their shining hats, wearing an
expression of being your enemy. His short stocky figure was dumped
stolidly as if he meant never to move again; on his thick legs and feet
he wore mufflings of cloth boot, into which his patched and stained
grey-blue trousers were tucked. One of his gloved hands was stretched
out stiff on his knee. This was Poirot.
Two more dissimilar creatures were never blown together into our haven.
So far as I remember, they had both been in hospital about six months,
and their ailments were, roughly speaking, Youth and Age. Bidan had not
finished his training when his weak constitution gave way under it;
Poirot was a Territorial who had dug behind the Front till rheumatism
claimed him for its own. Bidan, who had fair hair and rather beautiful
brown eyes over which the lids could hardly keep up, came from
Aix-en-Provence, in the very south; Poirot from Nancy, in the
northeast. I made their acquaintance the next morning.
The cleaning of old Poirot took, literally speaking, days to accomplish.
Such an encrusted case we had never seen; nor was it possible to go,
otherwise than slowly, against his prejudices. One who, unless taken
exactly the right way, considered everyone leagued with Nature to get
the better of him, he had reached that state when the soul sticks its
toes in and refuses to budge. A coachman--in civil life--a socialist, a
freethinker, a wit, he was the apex of--shall we say?--determination.
His moral being was encrusted with perversity, as his poor hands and
feet with dirt. Oil was the only thing for him, and I, for one, used oil
on him morally and physically, for months. He was a "character!" His
left hand--which he was never tired of saying the "_majors_" had ruined
("_Ah! les cochons!_") by leaving it alone--was stiff in all its joints,
so that the fingers would not bend; and the little finger of the right
hand, "_le petit_," "_le coquin_," "_l'empereur_," as he would severally
call it, was embellished by chalky excrescences. The old fellow had that
peculiar artfulness which comes from life-long dealing with horses, and
he knew exactly how far and how quickly it was advisable for him to mend
in health. About the third day he made up his mind that he wished to
remain with us at least until the warm weather came. For that it would
be necessary--he concluded--to make a cheering amount of progress, but
not too much. And this he set himself to do. He was convinced, one could
see, that after Peace had been declared and compensation assured him, he
would recover the use of his hand, even if "_l'empereur_" remained stiff
and chalky. As a matter of fact, I think he was mistaken, and will never
have a supple left hand again. But his arms were so brawny, his
constitution so vigorous, and his legs improved so rapidly under the
necessity of taking him down into the little town for his glass, of an
afternoon, that one felt he might possibly be digging again sooner than
he intended.
"_Ah, les cochons!_" he would say; "while one finger does not move, they
shall pay me!" He was very bitter against all "_majors_" save one, who
it seemed had actually sympathised with him, and all _deputes_, who for
him constituted the powers of darkness, drawing their salaries, and
sitting in their chairs. ("_Ah! les chameaux!_")
Though he was several years younger than oneself, one always thought of
him as "Old Poirot" indeed, he was soon called "_le grand-pere_," though
no more confirmed bachelor ever inhabited the world. He was a regular
"Miller of Dee," caring for nobody; and yet he was likeable, that
humorous old stoic, who suffered from gall-stones, and bore horrible
bouts of pain like a hero. In spite of all his disabilities his health
and appearance soon became robust in our easy-going hospital, where no
one was harried, the food excellent, and the air good. He would tell you
that his father lived to eighty, and his grandfather to a hundred, both
"strong men" though not so strong as his old master, the squire, of
whose feats in the hunting-field he would give most staggering accounts
in an argot which could only be followed by instinct. A great narrator,
he would describe at length life in the town of Nancy, where, when the
War broke out, he was driving a market cart, and distributing
vegetables, which had made him an authority on municipal reform. Though
an incorrigible joker, his stockfish countenance would remain perfectly
grave, except for an occasional hoarse chuckle. You would have thought
he had no more power of compassion than a cat, no more sensibility than
a Chinese idol; but this was not so. In his wooden, shrewd, distrustful
way he responded to sympathy, and was even sorry for others. I used to
like very much his attitude to the young "stable-companion" who had
arrived with him; he had no contempt, such as he might easily have felt
for so weakly a creature, but rather a real indulgence towards his
feebleness. "Ah!" he would say at first; "he won't make old bones--that
one!" But he seemed extremely pleased when, in a fortnight or so, he had
to modify that view, for Bidan (Prosper) prospered more rapidly even
than himself. That grey look was out of the boy's face within three
weeks. It was wonderful to watch him come back to life, till at last he
could say, with his dreadful Provencal twang, that he felt "_tres
biang_." A most amiable youth, he had been a cook, and his chief
ambition was to travel till he had attained the summit of mortal hopes,
and was cooking at the Ritz in London. When he came to us his limbs
seemed almost to have lost their joints, they wambled so. He had no
muscle at all. Utter anaemia had hold of all his body, and all but a
corner of his French spirit. Round that unquenchable gleam of gaiety the
rest of him slowly rallied. With proper food and air and freedom, he
began to have a faint pink flush in his china-white cheeks; his lids no
longer drooped, his limbs seemed to regain their joints, his hands
ceased to swell, he complained less and less of the pains about his
heart. When, of a morning, he was finished with, and "_le grand-pere_"
was having his hands done, they would engage in lively repartee--oblivious
of one's presence. We began to feel that this grey ghost of a youth had
been well named, after all, when they called him Prosper, so lyrical
would he wax over the constitution and cooking of "_bouillabaisse_,"
over the South, and the buildings of his native Aix-en-Provence. In all
France you could not have found a greater contrast than those two who had
come to us so under the weather; nor in all France two better instances of
the way men can regain health of body and spirit in the right surroundings.
We had a tremendous fall of snow that winter, and had to dig ourselves
out of it. Poirot and Bidan were of those who dug. It was amusing to
watch them. Bidan dug easily, without afterthought. "_Le grand-pere_"
dug, with half an eye at least on his future; in spite of those stiff
fingers he shifted a lot of snow, but he rested on his shovel whenever
he thought you could see him--for he was full of human nature.
To see him and Bidan set off for town together! Bidan pale, and wambling
a little still, but gay, with a kind of birdlike detachment; "_le
grand-pere_" stocky, wooden, planting his huge feet rather wide apart
and regarding his companion, the frosted trees, and the whole wide
world, with his humorous stare.
Once, I regret to say, when spring was beginning to come, Bidan-Prosper
returned on "_le grand-pere's_" arm with the utmost difficulty, owing to
the presence within him of a liquid called Clairette de Die, no amount
of which could subdue "_le grand-pere's_" power of planting one foot
before the other. Bidan-Prosper arrived hilarious, revealing to the
world unsuspected passions; he awoke next morning sad, pale, penitent.
Poirot, _au contraire_, was morose the whole evening, and awoke next
morning exactly the same as usual. In such different ways does the gift
of the gods affect us.
They had their habits, so diverse, their constitutions, and their
dreams--alas! not yet realised. I know not where they may be now;
Bidan-Prosper cannot yet be cooking at the Ritz in London town; but
"_grand-pere_" Poirot may perchance be distributing again his vegetables
in the streets of Nancy, driving his two good little horses--_des
gaillards_--with the reins hooked round "_l'empereur_." Good
friends--good luck!
XIII
THE MUFFLED SHIP
It was cold and grey, but the band on shore was playing, and the flags
on shore were fluttering, and the long double-tiered wharf crowded with
welcomers in each of its open gaps, when our great ship slowly drew
alongside, packed with cheering, chattering crowds of khaki figures,
letting go all the pent-up excitement of getting home from the war. The
air was full of songs and laughter, of cheers, and shouted questions,
the hooting of the launches' sirens, the fluttering flags and hands and
handkerchiefs; and there were faces of old women, and of girls, intent,
expectant, and the white gulls were floating against the grey sky, when
our ship, listed slightly by those thousands of figures straining
towards the land which had bred them, gently slurred up against the high
wharf, and was made fast.
The landing went on till night had long fallen, and the band was gone.
At last the chatter, the words of command, the snatches of song, and
that most favourite chorus: "Me! and my girl!" died away, and the wharf
was silent and the ship silent, and a wonderful clear dark beauty
usurped the spaces of the sky. By the light of the stars and a half moon
the far harbour shores were just visible, the huddled buildings on the
near shore, the spiring masts and feathery appanage of ropes on the
moored ship, and one blood-red light above the black water. The night
had all that breathless beauty which steeps the soul in a quivering,
quiet rapture....
Then it was that clearly, as if I had been a welcomer standing on land
in one of the wharf gaps, I saw her come--slow, slow, creeping up the
narrow channel, in beside the wharf, a great grey silent ship. At first
I thought her utterly empty, deserted, possessed only by the thick
coiled cables forward, the huge rusty anchors, the piled-up machinery of
structure and funnel and mast, weird in the blue darkness. A lantern on
the wharf cast a bobbing golden gleam deep into the oily water at her
side. Gun-grey, perfectly mute, she ceased to move, coming to rest
against the wharf. And then, with a shiver, I saw that something clung
round her, a grey film or emanation, which shifted and hovered, like the
invisible wings of birds in a thick mist. Gradually to my straining eyes
that filmy emanation granulated, and became faces attached to grey filmy
forms, thousands on thousands, and every face bent towards the shore,
staring, as it seemed, through me, at all that was behind me. Slowly,
very slowly, I made them out--faces of helmeted soldiers, bulky with the
gear of battle, their arms outstretched, and the lips of every one
opened, so that I expected to hear the sound of cheering; but no sound
came. Now I could see their eyes. They seemed to beseech--like the eyes
of a little eager boy who asks his mother something she cannot tell him;
and their outstretched hands seemed trying to reach her, lovingly,
desperately trying to reach her! And those opened lips, how terribly
they seemed trying to speak! "Mother! Mother Canada!" As if I had heard,
I knew they were saying--those opened lips which could speak no more!
"Mother! Mother Canada! Home! Home!..."
And then away down the wharf some one chanted: "Me and my girl!" And,
silent as she had come, the muffled ship vanished in all her length,
with those grey forms and those mute faces; and I was standing again in
the bows beside a huge hawser; below me the golden gleam bobbing deep in
the oily water, and above me the cold start in beauty shining.
XIV
HERITAGE
(AN IMPRESSION)
From that garden seat one could see the old low house of pinkish brick,
with a path of queer-shaped flagstones running its length, and the tall
grey chapel from which came the humming and chanting and organ drone of
the Confirmation Service. But for that, and the voices of two gardeners
working below us among the fruits and flowers, the July hush was
complete. And suddenly one became aware of being watched.
That thin white windmill on the hill!
Away past the house, perhaps six hundred yards, it stood, ghostly, with
a face like that of a dark-eyed white owl, made by the crossing of its
narrow sails. With a black companion--a yew-tree cut to pyramid form, on
the central point of Sussex--it was watching us, for though one must
presume it built of old time by man, it looked up there against the sky,
with its owl's face and its cross, like a Christo-Pagan presence.