Meantime, out in the road, could they but know it, their successors on

these summer mornings are taking part in a strange, rather pathetic

mimicry of those greater pageants which have no place in war-time.

For the Cream Colours of to-day cannot be allowed to idle like their

parents. Much may yet, we hope, be expected of them, and they must

not forget the manner of that service to which alone they owe their

existence. So in the early morning, when trams are few and other

traffic is non-existent, they may be met, eight of them, stepping

proudly along, with arched necks and haughty expressions, quite unaware

that the grooms holding to their bridles are in mufti, that their

trappings are of plain wood, and that the royal coach they imagine to

be rumbling behind them resembles nothing so much as an empty jail van!

The King in the fairy tale was not better pleased with his imaginary

fine raiment than the Cream Colours with their phantom state. But

nobody troubles to undeceive them; the rooks flap cawing overhead in

pursuit of their breakfasts, and the cuckoo monotonously calling from

the Home Park is entirely absorbed in his own business. All is vanity,

and in another few years they also will be cropping buttercups, with no

higher aspiration.

For the next generation is already knocking at the door. On the further

side of the road from his forebears, a little dusky foal who will some

day be of a correct highly polished cream colour is kicking up his

heels in a paddock, a truly royal nursery with a golden floor. He is

separated even at this early age from his black and bay contemporaries,

whose lot, however, will certainly be more varied and interesting than

any which he can look for. Let us hope that he may still be in the

nursery when his sleek elders, now disappearing in their own dust along

the road, will draw their sovereign in state to return thanks for the

greatest of all victories, and the establishment of a righteous peace

throughout the world.

ROSE M. BRADLEY.

_ARMY UNIFORMS, PAST AND PRESENT._

BY THE RT. HON. SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, BT.

In the early ’seventies of last century there was staged in London

a very amusing musical comedy called _The Happy Land_, the scene

being laid in Paradise. Among the principal characters were extremely

skilful and poignant burlesques of Mr. Gladstone, Prime Minister at

the time, Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Ayrton, First

Commissioner of Works. The piece had but a short, though brilliant,

run in the metropolis; for the Lord Chamberlain ordered it off the

stage, not on the grounds of what is usually implied by immorality, but

because it brought Her Majesty’s Ministers into contempt by mordant

caricature of their features and action.[3] It is not known--to me,

at least--which of the three victims set the censorship in motion.

Certainly it was not ‘Bob’ Lowe, who was gifted with a fine strain

of humour. Probably it was done at Mr. Ayrton’s instance, he being

destitute of that saving grace, and, besides, having been more

mercilessly satirised in the play than his colleagues. He had outraged

public feeling, if not public taste, by some acts of his administration

as ædile, notably by painting grey some of the fine stone-work in the

lobbies of the Houses of Parliament. I forget the libretto of _The

Happy Land_; but this much I remember, that, whereas in the first act

the scenery of Paradise appeared glowing with rainbow radiance and

shimmering with gems, in the second act it represented the effect of

Ayrton’s régime--everything had been painted ‘government grey.’

All this was brought to mind by the change wrought upon the appearance

of the British Army after the outbreak of the South African war in

1899. By a wave of his wand or a scratch of his quill the Secretary of

State for War, Mr. St. John Brodrick (now Viscount Midleton) quenched

all gaiety of colour in the fighting dress of our troops; the historic

thin red line was to be seen no more; the glittering squadrons were

doomed to ride in raiment as sombre as the dust of their own raising;

henceforward standards and regimental colours were to be returned to

store before the troops went on active service.

Had that been all, it would have sufficed to mark a notable era in the

operations of war--a wise measure, imposed upon the Army Council by the

vast improvement in the range, trajectory, and precision of artillery

and small arms. Hitherto it had been the object of the military

authorities of all nations to make their fighting men as conspicuous as

possible, exaggerating their stature by fantastic headgear and setting

them in strong relief to every variety of natural background by means

of bright colours and pipeclay. The Brigade of Guards landed in the

Crimea without their knapsacks, which followed in another ship. The

men had to do without them for some weeks; but the cumbrous bearskin

caps were considered indispensable, and offered a fine target for the

Russian defenders of the slopes of the Alma. The hint was thrown away

upon our military authorities. It required a sharper lesson to convince

them of the cruel absurdity of figging out men for battle in a dress

that hampered the limbs and obscured the eyesight. The Guards were not

more absurdly dressed on that occasion than the rest of the British

troops. The late Sir William Flower described to me his feelings when,

as surgeon of an infantry regiment, he stepped out from a boat on the

wet sands at the mouth of the Alma, dressed in a skin-tight scarlet

coatee with swallow tails, a high collar enclosing a black stock,

close-fitting trousers tightly strapped over Wellington boots, and a

cocked hat!

Two years before that--in 1852--Colonel Luard published his _History of

the Dress of the British Soldier_. Having served as a heavy dragoon in

the Peninsula, as a light dragoon at Waterloo, as a lancer in India,

and as a staff officer both in India and at home, he had practical

experience of the variety of torment inflicted by different kinds of

uniform. He advocated many reforms in the soldier’s dress, tending

as much to increased efficiency as to comfort, and he supported his

argument by extracts from his correspondence with regimental officers.

One of these wrote--‘If an infantry soldier has to step over a drain

two feet broad, he has to put one hand to his cap to keep it on his

head, and his other to his pouch, and what becomes of his musket?’ And

this, be it remembered, was the fighting-kit; for no general in those

days ever dreamed of taking troops into action except in full review

order.

James I. was not a warlike king, but he was a pretty shrewd observer

of men and matters. He was not far wrong when he observed that plate

armour was a fine thing, for it not only protected the life of the

wearer, but hindered him from hurting anybody else! The remark might

have been applied with equal justice to the costume of British soldiers

in the Crimean campaign, except that it afforded no protection to the

wearer’s life or limb. It required nearly one hundred years of painful

experience to convince the War Office that it was cruel stupidity to

put men in the field in clothing so tight as to fetter the limbs and

compress the chest. That was the legacy of George IV. to the British

Army.

Although, to one looking back over the history of what is now the

United Kingdom, the most salient features seem to be campaigns and

battles, invasion and counter-invasion, it was not until the Civil

War that any attempt was made towards a uniform dress for any army.

It is true that both the English and Scottish Parliaments from time

to time prescribed with the utmost care the offensive and defensive

armour with which every able-bodied subject was to provide himself or

be provided by his feudal chief, and if that chief were a wealthy baron

his following would be clothed in his liveries. Thus, in describing the

famous scene at Lauder when Archibald Douglas, fifth Earl of Angus,

won his sobriquet of Bell-the-Cat, Pitscottie tells us in deliciously

quaint phrase how luckless Thomas Cochrane, newly created Earl of Mar,

rode down to the kirk where the disaffected lords were in conference,

at the head of three hundred men all dressed in his liveries of white

doublets with black bands. Cromwell was the first ruler of England

who succeeded in what several of his predecessors had failed--in

maintaining a standing army. At one time he had 80,000 men under

arms. There was a degree of uniformity in the dress of his cavalry

and infantry. It consisted mainly of buff coats, with the addition of

breast and back pieces, iron caps, and other defensive armour. But that

army was disbanded after the Restoration, and it was not until the

reign of William III. that a standing army was finally constituted,

and colonels commanding regiments, being allowed a sufficient sum for

clothing the men, were required to do so according to sealed pattern.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the British soldier’s dress was,

on the whole, both picturesque and comfortable. In cut, it conformed

pretty faithfully to the fashion prevailing in civilian attire,

though there occurred an interval when George II. inflicted upon his

Guards regiments the preposterous conical head-dress, copied from the

Prussian Guards of Frederick the Great. This disfiguring headgear did

not last very long, and gave place before the end of the century to

the three-cocked hat of the style called, I believe, Nivernois or

Kevenhüller.

The easy grace of the full-dress uniform of an officer of the Guards

towards the close of the eighteenth century is admirably shown in

Romney’s portrait of John, tenth Earl of Westmorland, now at Osterley

Park. It shows a long-skirted scarlet frock, lined with white, faced

with blue, with ruffles at the wrists, and without any ornament save

a pair of gilt epaulets of moderate size and soft material, very

different from the cumbrous, unyielding things now prescribed for

naval officers and lords-lieutenant. The frock is worn open over a

Ramillies cravat and waistcoat and breeches of white kersey. It would

be difficult to devise a dress for a soldier so well combining comfort

and dignified distinction. To one feature only can objection be taken.

The powdered and curled hair, clubbed in a pigtail, looks charming on

Romney’s canvas, but must have proved an intolerable nuisance both to

officers and men.

‘During the command of the late Duke of Kent at Gibraltar

[1802-3], when a field-day was ordered, there not being

sufficient barbers in the town to attend to all the

officers in the morning, the seniors claimed the privilege

of their rank; the juniors consequently were obliged to

have their heads dressed the night before; and to preserve

the beauty of this artistic arrangement--pomatumed,

powdered, curled and clubbed--these poor fellows were

obliged to sleep on their faces! It is said that in the

adjutant’s office of each regiment there was kept a pattern

of the correct curls, to which the barbers could refer.’[4]

The men wore tunics of a cut similar to those of the officers, but of

coarser cloth. They were buttoned up on duty, the skirts being looped

back. It was a thoroughly sensible and workmanlike dress, giving

perfect freedom to breathing and circulation, together with protection

to loins and thighs. The Chelsea pensioners wear a coat of the old

infantry pattern to this day.

With the Regency came a vicious change. The Prince Regent paid

incessant attention to dress--both to his own and that of others. He

was proud of his figure, which, indeed, was a fine one till it was

ruined by excess, and he loved to display it in closely fitting dress.

Nor was he content until he got his father’s army buttoned up to the

limit of endurance and disfigured by headgear of appalling dimensions.

The easy open collar and Ramillies tie were replaced by an upright

fence of buckram and a leather stock. It would be hardly credible,

were there not abundant evidence in the correspondence of the Horse

Guards to prove it, that while Wellington was absorbed in manœuvring

against immensely superior forces in Spain, he had to give attention

to correspondence about changes in the dress of the army, not with a

view to making it more comfortable and workmanlike, but in order to

gratify the caprice of the Prince Regent. No man ever gave less thought

to niceties of tailoring than Lord Wellington (as he was at that time).

His views are set forth in a letter to the Military Secretary who had

consulted him about the uniform to be prescribed for those regiments

of Light Dragoons which the Prince Regent had desired the Duke of York

(recently reinstated as Commander-in-Chief) to convert into Hussars.

‘FRENEDA, _6th November, 1811_.

‘... There is no subject of which I understand so little

[as military uniforms], and, abstractedly speaking, I think

it indifferent how a soldier is clothed, provided it is in

an uniform manner, and that he is forced to keep himself

clean and smart, as a soldier ought to be. But there is one

thing I deprecate, and that is any imitation of the French

in any manner. It is impossible to form an idea of the

inconvenience and injury which result from having anything

like them, either on horseback or on foot.[5] Lutyens and

his piquet were taken in June because the 3rd Hussars had

the same caps as the French _Chasseurs-à-cheval_ and some

of their Hussars, and I was near being taken on September

25 from the same cause. At a distance or in action colours

are nothing; the profile and shape of a man’s cap, and his

general appearance, are what guide us; and why should we

make our people look like the French?... I only beg that

we may be as different as possible from the French in

everything. The narrow tops of our infantry, as opposed to

their broad top caps, are a great advantage to those who

are to look at long lines of posts opposed to each other.’

Two years later, at the battle of Vitoria, the justice of Wellington’s

views about the soldier’s uniform received apt illustration.

Wellington on that day kept the Light Division and 4th Division under

his immediate command. The 3rd and 7th Divisions, under Picton and

Lord Dalhousie, were to join him in order to complete the centre of

the line, but they had difficult ground to traverse, and were late.

The Zadora flowed swift and deep in front of the French position. A

countryman having informed Wellington that the bridge of Tres Puentes

was unguarded, Kempt’s riflemen were sent forward to seize it, which

they did, and went so far up the heights on the farther side that they

were able to establish themselves in shelter of a crest well in rear

of a French advanced post. There they lay, until Wellington’s line was

completed by the arrival of ‘old Picton, riding at the head of the 3rd

Division, dressed in a blue coat and a round hat, swearing as loudly

all the way as if he wore two cocked ones.’[6] The 7th Division came up

at the same time, and while they were deploying the enemy opened fire

upon them. Kempt immediately drew his riflemen from their shelter and

took the French batteries in flank, thereby enabling the 3rd Division

to cross the bridge of Mendoza without loss. But the dark uniforms of

the Rifles deceived the British on the other side of the river into the

belief that they were French. A battery opened upon them and continued

pounding them with round shot and shrapnel till the advance of Picton’s

Division revealed the blunder.

Wellington’s warning against copying the uniforms of other nations

received little attention. After 1815, when he was in command of the

Army of Occupation in Paris, it was decided to arm four regiments

of cavalry with lances, a most effective weapon which had not been

carried by British troops since the seventeenth century. One would

have supposed that the lance might be wielded as effectively by a man

dressed as a light dragoon or a hussar as in any other rig; but the

Prince Regent hailed the innovation as an opportunity for an entirely

new costume. Consequently the 9th, 12th, 16th and 23rd Light Dragoons

were put into a Polish dress, modified in such manner as to agree with

his Royal Highness’s sartorial taste.

‘An officer of rank commanding one of the Lancer regiments

was ordered to attend the Prince Regent to fit the new

jacket on him. The tailor, with a pair of scissors, was

ordered to cut smooth every wrinkle and fine-draw the

seams. The consequence was that the coats of the private

soldiers, as well as those of the officers, were made so

tight they could hardly get into them; the freedom of

action was so restricted that the infantry with difficulty

handled their muskets, and the cavalry could scarcely do

the sword exercise.’

The cuirass had been discontinued in the British cavalry since 1794,

when it had been found most unsuitable for active service in the

Netherlands. But it was far too showy a piece of goods to escape the

Prince Regent’s attention. Accordingly the three regiments of Household

Cavalry were made to appear at his coronation in 1820 in steel

cuirasses and burnished helmets, with enormous combs of bearskin; the

latter, as Colonel Luard caustically observes, rendering it impossible

for a man to deliver the sixth cut in the sword exercise of that day.

The cuirass and helmet remain, with the unwieldy jack-boots and leather

breeches, an effective, if archaic, part of a theatrical pageant which

Londoners have learnt to love; but as the equipment of a modern soldier

the costume is ludicrously inapt and very costly. In an era when war

has become more terrible and more intensely destructive than in any

previous age, and at a time when the whole resources of the nation

are strained for the country to hold its own, it may well be asked

whether money might not be more profitably employed than in causing the

splendid men of the Household Cavalry to masquerade in such attire as

would be grotesque to imagine them wearing in modern warfare.

About the same time that the cuirass was inflicted upon the Household

Cavalry, the sentry boxes in London and at Windsor Castle had to be

increased in height in order to accommodate a new pattern of bearskin

cap which had been approved for the Foot Guards. The old pattern,

which had superseded the three-cocked hat at the end of the previous

century, was a sensible affair of reasonable dimensions; but the army

tailors, encouraged by the new King, were indefatigable in devising

extravagance in uniforms, and the bearskin was made to shoot up several

inches in height. ‘Ridicule,’ observed Colonel Luard, ‘subsides when

the eye is no longer a stranger to the object of excitement; otherwise

the little boys would run after the guardsmen when they appear in the

streets of London, and shout at the overwhelming, preposterous, hideous

bearskin caps.’ It is rumoured that the supply of the right sort of

bear is now running short. It may not be too much to hope that, when

our armies return victorious at the end of the war, the occasion may

be marked by the invention of some uniform for the Brigade of Guards

more comfortable and workmanlike than a skin-tight tunic and a grossly

exaggerated fur-cap. Londoners, laudably conservative in what they have

become used with, would be the less likely to murmur at the change,

inasmuch as they have grown accustomed to see guard-mounting performed

in forage-caps.

Among all the variety of uniforms of the British infantry, none has

undergone so little change in the last hundred and fifty years as

that of the Highland regiments. Well that it is so, for there is

none other that so admirably sets off a soldier-like figure, none

that stirs so much enthusiasm among the spectators at a field-day.

So fully has this been recognised that a society has recently been

formed to protest against and endeavour to remedy what is deemed the

unmerited neglect of Lowland Scottish regiments, whereof the records

certainly are no whit inferior in lustre to those of the Highland

corps. It is complained that the Lowland regiments are always kept in

the background; that Edinburgh, though a Lowland city, is invariably

garrisoned by a Highland regiment, and that facilities for recruiting

in Edinburgh and Glasgow are accorded to Highland regiments and refused

to Lowland regiments. Much of this is unfortunately true; but the real

reason for it exists in the greater popularity of the Highland uniform.

No amount of protest or persuasion will prevail to make the general

public take the same interest in a trousered regiment as in a kilted

one. Might not the surest remedy be to put the Lowland regiments also

into kilts? Purists will object that Lowlanders have no business to

don the philabeg; but, for that matter, neither have they any business

to wear tartan trews, _which all the Lowland regiments do at the

present time, besides being furnished with kilted pipers_.[7] Then

all Scottish regiments would be on an equal footing, and no material

would remain for the present irritation. It is difficult to understand,

impossible to explain, the emotion--involuntary, as all true emotion

must be--roused, even in Saisneach breasts, by the sight of a Highland

regiment marching to the skirl of the pipes. In order to illustrate it,

let me lapse for a moment into the first person singular.

During Queen Victoria’s memorable progress through her metropolis in

the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, I was seated with two ladies of my family

in the stand set up for members of Parliament in Palace Yard. The

long hours of waiting on that shining summer forenoon were enlivened

by the march of many regiments, headed by their bands, passing to

their appointed places in the route. It was a shifting pageant of

stirring sight and sound. Presently, over Westminster Bridge came the

Seaforth Highlanders stepping to the lively strains of _The Muckin’ o’

Geordie’s Byre_.[8] The effect was indescribable--the swing of kilts

and sporrans, the dark waving plumes, the gallant but simple melody,

thrilled all spectators. As for myself, I felt a big lump in my throat,

and I was ashamed to feel something trickle down both cheeks. Yet am

I a Lowland Scot, if anybody is; so far as I am aware, I can lay no

claim to any strain of Celtic blood. If such an one was so deeply moved

by the passing of a single Highland regiment, why should not all the

Scottish regiments be clothed in the romantic garb of Old Gaul, with

the desirable result of rendering the Lowland corps as well-beloved

by the people as the Highlanders? If this were carried out, it would

be esteemed a privilege by the former and a compliment by the latter.

Objection on the score of economy would be raised because of the cost

of the full-dress feather-bonnet, which, though picturesque, is but a

tailor’s parody of the bonnet of the _duine uasail_. Let the Lowland

regiments be content, then, with the Glengarry. Nobody who has seen

a battalion of the London Scottish marching through Pall Mall, and

listened to the comments of those who crowd to the club windows at

the sound of the pibroch, will tell you that that fine corps would

gain anything in soldierly appearance by wearing feather-bonnets.

That head-dress was condemned in 1882, but in deference to Queen

Victoria’s wishes it was restored. Its abolition had previously been

hotly challenged in the House of Commons by certain perfervid Scots,

one of whom volunteered a quaint explanation to an honourable member

who had ventured to express some doubt about ostrich feathers being

an appropriate ornament for a Scottish soldier. He gravely assured

the House that the costume had its origin in Sir Ralph Abercromby’s

Egyptian campaign in 1801, when the Highland soldiers picked up ostrich

feathers in the desert and stuck them in their bonnets as a protection

from the sun!

The fact is that the feather-bonnet, and all other exaggerated and

expensive head-dresses, should be as resolutely relegated to limbo as

the hideous masks worn by the fighting men of Old Japan. Both were

designed to overawe the enemy; but, as modern fighting is done in

forage-caps, that naïve purpose cannot be carried into effect, and the

object should be to provide such clothing as will best enable a man to

keep himself, in the Duke of Wellington’s words, ‘clean and smart, as a

soldier ought to be.’ And no headgear is smarter, none more easily kept

clean, than the Glengarry bonnet.

While it is hardly possible to imagine any dress better calculated

to impede a soldier’s movements than the uniforms inflicted upon all

arms in the service during the early years of the nineteenth century,

one should not overlook the relief that was ordained in a detail that

was a source of constant unnecessary trouble to the soldier. Clubbed

pigtails had been transmitted as an irksome legacy from Marlborough’s

army, until in 1808 the Horse Guards decreed their abolition. When Sir

Arthur Wellesley landed in Mondego Bay on August 1-5 in that year, one

of his first orders was that these senseless, dirty appendages were

to be cut off. Never, one may believe, was an order more cheerfully

obeyed. A counter-order was issued shortly after from the Horse Guards,

requiring the retention of pigtails, but it was beyond the power of man

to comply with it. It was easy to cut off pigtails, but they could not

be replaced; and now the only vestige of a barbarous fashion in the

army remains in the bow of black ribbon worn by the Welsh Fusiliers at

the back of the collar of the tunic.

Unfortunately, the irrational fashion of tight clothing for the army

instituted by the Prince Regent endures to this day. It is true that

a sensible field-dress of khaki was devised and worn during the South

African War, and is now the service dress of the army; but the full

dress for officers and the ‘walking-out’ uniform for men is still

cut and fitted on the old excruciating lines. I think it took three

weeks to fit a young friend of mine, joining a battalion of Guards a

few years ago, before the adjutant of that _corps d’élite_ passed the

tunic as satisfactory. Every crease and wrinkle had to be obliterated,

at such cost to freedom of limbs and lungs as may be imagined. It may

not be an extravagant hope that, when our army returns once more to

a peace footing, the full dress may be designed with more regard to

health and comfort than hitherto. Our eyes have grown accustomed during

the present war to seeing soldiers in a costume, far from beautiful,

indeed, but easy and respectable. There is no reason why a scarlet coat

should be less comfortable than a dust-coloured one, and it will be a

sad thing if the historic red of the English infantry is not preserved

for full dress. But even if it were not, the khaki uniform might be

rendered very becoming by the addition of a little modest ornament,

especially by the restoration of the old regimental facings. These

would not make troops one whit more conspicuous in the field; on the

contrary, it is a commonplace of optics that parti-coloured objects are

less easily detected in a landscape than those of one uniform colour.

One desirable result of making uniform more comfortable wear might be

expected to follow; officers might not be so scrupulous to exchange

it for mufti the moment they are released from duty. Alone among the

nationalities of Europe has the British officer hitherto treated his

uniform as if it were something to be ashamed of in private life. It is

an unseemly, even an unhandsome practice, seeing that non-commissioned

officers and privates are not allowed to disport themselves in what

they call ‘private clothes.’ Nor was it the custom among officers in

the eighteenth century, when uniform was as easy and becoming as any

other dress. The usual dress of an officer, even when on leave, was

then his undress uniform, just as it is now in Continental armies.

The change in the British Army was the direct outcome of the Prince

Regent’s tyranny in buttoning up soldiers to the throat in clothes

which it was a torment to wear.

It must be owned that the Duke of Wellington was in large measure

responsible, inasmuch as he set the example of preferring easy clothes

to uneasy ones. A plain blue frock opening at the throat to a white

cravat was his invariable dress throughout his campaigns. He had for

his own wear a cocked hat one third the size of the huge one prescribed

for general officers. There was a famous occasion in 1814, after the

restoration of Louis XVIII., when the King and the Royal Princes, with

a brilliant suite, attended a state performance in the Odéon Theatre.

The house was ablaze with uniforms of many nations and the gay dresses

of ladies of the Court. In a box immediately opposite the royal one

sat the Duke--in plain clothes! ‘The pride that apes humility’? Not a

bit. _Le vainqueur des vainqueurs_ could scarcely be suspected of that.

Simply, as he had to sit through a long performance, he chose to do so

in clothes that enabled him to sit in comfort.

Much praiseworthy attention is now given to the equipment and clothing

of British troops serving in hot climates, but it was otherwise

throughout most of the nineteenth century, and it is incalculable

how much suffering, disease, and death was caused by neglect of any

such provision. When Colonel Luard was preparing his book in 1850-52

he received letters from many officers calling his attention to this

matter. One of these writes:

‘I shall be very glad if you dedicate a portion of your

work to the dress of our soldiers in the colonies.... I

have myself seen the Spanish, French, and Danish troops in

the West Indies much more healthy than our own, from great

attention to their comfort in their dress.... The whole

body of civilians in the tropics appear in loose white

jackets and trousers and a skull-cap ... the shakoes and

red coats of our troops were not altered in our West India

colonies.’

* * * * *

A cavalry officer remarks: ‘I hope you will dwell on the madness of

our soldiers wearing leather caps under a tropical sun’; while another

observes that ‘a brass helmet was not found serviceable in Africa by

the 7th Dragoon Guards when that regiment was at the Cape.’

Our troops suffered horribly during the first Kaffir war, 1846-48, from

being clothed exactly as they had been at home--leather stocks, tight

coatees, heavy shakoes, and all the rest of it. Some consideration was

shown for the soldier in the second Kaffir war, 1851-52. Captain King,

of the 74th Highlanders, describes how his regiment landed at Cape Town

(after a voyage from England of two months!) wearing their ordinary

clothing, and it was not until they had marched far into the interior

that ‘our bonnets and plaids were replaced by a costume more suitable

for the bush--viz., a short dark canvas blouse; in addition to which

feldt-schoen and lighter pouches, made of untanned leather, were issued

to the men, and broad leather peaks affixed to their forage-caps.’[9]

Captain King’s narrative is illustrated by lithographs from his own

excellent drawings, which show his men, heavily accoutred with pack and

pouch, and with no protection against the sun except the aforesaid peak

to the forage-cap, severely handicapped in fighting nearly naked blacks

armed with rifles. No wonder the 74th lost heavily, their commander,

Colonel Fordyce, falling at their head in a bush fight, together with

some of his best officers.

It is not only in matters of dress and equipment that we have learnt

consideration for our troops on foreign service. The splendid

organisation of the Royal Army Medical Corps has been severely tested

in coping with the requirements of such a force as it was never

contemplated Great Britain would or could put in the field; but the

test has been nobly met; the latest discoveries in science have been

employed to avert disease and mortality from wounds, thereby saving

soldiers and their families and friends from an incalculable amount of

misery. The Transport Service has not only met the extraordinary demand

upon its resources in the conveyance of necessary supplies--food,

munitions, &c.--but has proved equal to the punctual deliverance of

the vast stores of comforts and even luxuries consigned from voluntary

sources at home.

Among the said luxuries is one whereon the Iron Duke would have turned

no favouring eye. The tobacco which has been supplied to our troops at

the front--aye, and in hospital at home--must amount to a prodigious

figure. When the Duke was Commander-in-Chief in 1845 he issued the

following counterblast:

‘G.O. No. 577.--The Commander-in-Chief has been informed

that the practice of smoking, by the use of pipes, cigars

and cheroots, has become prevalent among the Officers

of the Army, which is not only in itself a species of

intoxication occasioned by the fumes of tobacco, but,

undoubtedly, occasions drinking and tippling by those who

acquire the habit; and he intreats the Officers commanding

Regiments to prevent smoking in the Mess Rooms of their

several Regiments, and in the adjoining apartments, and to

discourage the practice among the Officers of Junior Rank

in their Regiments.’

There was no Press Censor in those days, and _Punch_, which was then

a vigorous stripling in its fourth year, was allowed to make merry

over this fulmination, declaring that officers of the Army were

greatly perturbed, ‘dreading the possibility of being thrown upon

their conversational resources, which must have a most dreary effect.’

Tobacconists drove a brisk trade in pipe-stoppers carved in the

likeness of the Duke’s head. These might now be a fitting object of

pursuit on the part of collectors.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The piece continued to be given in the provinces, where

the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship does not take effect.

[4] _A History of the Dress of the British Soldier_, by

Lieut.-Col. John Luard, 1852, p. 99.

[5] Of course because the French were the enemy in that

campaign.

[6] Kincaid’s _Adventures in the Rifle Brigade_, 2nd

edition, 1838, p. 222.

[7] See report of meeting of the Lowland Scots Society,

held in Edinburgh on November 25, 1915.

[8] An old air, subsequently set to the song _My Tocher’s

the Jewel_.

[9] _Campaigning in Kaffirland_, by Capt. W. R. King, 1853,

p. 27.

_THE NEW UBIQUE: SPIT AND POLISH._

BY JEFFERY E. JEFFERY.

‘Per_son_ally myself,’ said the Child, tilting back his chair until his

head touched the wall behind him, and stretching out a lazy arm towards

the cigarette-box--‘per_son_ally myself, I’ve enjoyed this trip no

end--haven’t you?’

‘I have,’ I answered; ‘so much so, Child, that the thought of going

back to gun-pits and trenches and O.P.s again fills me with gloom.’

It was our last night in a most comfortable billet near ----, where, on

and off, we had spent rather more than a month of ease: on the morrow

we were going into the line again. The trip to which the Child was

referring, however, was an eight days’ course at a place vaguely known

as ‘the --th Army Mobile Artillery Training School,’ from which our

battery had but lately returned.

The circumstances were these. When, five weeks ago, the division moved

(for the _n_th time!) to a different part of the line, it transpired

that three batteries would be ‘out at rest,’ as there would be no

room for them in action. It also so chanced that it was our colonel’s

turn to be left without a ‘group’[10] to command. This being so, he

suggested to higher authorities that the three batteries ‘out’ should

be those of his own brigade, in order that he might have a chance

‘to tidy them up a bit,’ as he phrased it. Thus it was that we found

ourselves, as I have said, in extremely comfortable billets--places,

I mean, where they have sheets on the beds and china jugs and gas and

drains--with every prospect of a pleasant loaf. But in this we were

somewhat sanguine.

The colonel’s idea in having us ‘out’ for a while was not so much to

rest us as to give us a variation of work. Being essentially a thorough

man, he started--or rather ordered me to start--at the very beginning.

The gunners paraded daily for marching drill, physical exercises, and

‘elementary standing gun drill by numbers.’ N.C.O.s and drivers were

taken out and given hours of riding drill under the supervision of

subalterns bursting with knowledge crammed up from the book the night

before and under the personal direction of a brazen-voiced sergeant

who, having passed through the ‘riding troop’ at Woolwich in his

youth, knew his business. The strangest sight of all was the class

of signallers--men who had spent months in the fœtid atmosphere of

cellars and dug-outs, or creeping along telephone wires in ‘unhealthy’

spots--now waving flags at a word of command and going solemnly through

the Morse alphabet letter by letter. Of the whole community this was

perhaps the most scandalised portion. But in a few days, when everybody

(not excluding myself and the other officers) had discovered how much

had been forgotten during our long spell in action, a great spirit of

emulation began to be displayed. Subsections vied with one another to

produce the smartest gun detachment, the sleekest horses, the best

turned-out ride, the cleanest harness, guns, and wagons.

The colonel, after the manner of his kind, came at the end of a week

or so to inspect things. He is not the sort of man upon whom one can

easily impose. A dozen of the shiniest saddles or bits in the battery

placed so as to catch the light (and the eye) near the doorway of the

harness-room do not necessarily satisfy him: nor is he content with

the mere general and symmetrical effect of rows of superficially clean

breast-collars, traces, and breechings. On the contrary, he is quite

prepared to spend an hour or more over his inspection, examining every

set of harness in minute detail, even down to the backs of the buckle

tongues, the inside of the double-folded breast collars, and the

oft-neglected underside of saddle flaps. It is the same thing with the

guns and wagons. Burnished breech-rings and polished brasswork look

very nice, and he approves of them, but he does not on that account

omit to look closely at every oil-hole or to check the lists of ‘small

stores’ and ‘spare parts.’

For the next week or so we were kept very busy on ‘the many small

points which required attention,’ to quote the colonel’s phrase.

Nevertheless, as a variation from the monotony of siege warfare, the

time was regarded by most of us as a holiday. Many things combined to

enhance our pleasure. The sun shone and the country became gorgeously

green again; the horses began to get their summer coats and to lose

their unkempt winter’s appearance; there was a fair-sized town near at

hand, and passes to visit it were freely granted to N.C.O.s and men;

at the back of the officers’ billet was a garden with real flower-beds

in it and a bit of lawn on which one could have tea. Occasionally we

could hear the distant muttering of the guns, and at night we could see

the ‘flares’ darting up from the black horizon--just to remind us, I

suppose, that the war was only in the next parish....

But it was not to be supposed that a man of such energy as our

colonel would be content just to ride round daily and watch three of

his batteries doing rides and gun drill. It occurred to him at once

that this was the time to practise the legitimate business--that is,

open, moving warfare. Wherefore he made representations to various

quite superior authorities. In three days, by dint of considerable

personal exertion, he had secured the following concessions: two large

tracts of ground suitable for driving drill and battery manœuvre,

good billets, an area of some six square miles (part of the --th Army

Training area) for the purpose of tactical schemes, the appointment of

himself as commandant of the ‘school,’ a Ford ambulance for his private

use, three motor lorries for the supply of the units under training,

and a magnificent château for his own headquarters. And all this he

accomplished without causing any serious friction between the various

‘offices’ and departments concerned--no mean feat.

Each course was to last eight days, and there were to be four

batteries, taken from different divisions, undergoing it

simultaneously. It fell to us to go with the second batch, and we

spent a strenuous week of preparation: it was four months since we

had done any work ‘in the open,’ and we knew, inwardly, that we were

distinctly rusty. We packed up, and at full war strength, transport,

spare horses and all, we marched our sixteen miles to the selected

area. At the half-way halt we met the commander of a battery of our own

brigade returning. He stopped to pass the time of day and volunteered

the information that he was going on leave that night. ‘And, by Jove!’

he added significantly, ‘I deserve a bit of rest. Réveillé at 4 A.M.

every morning, out all day wet or fine, gun drill at every odd moment,

schemes, tactical exercises, everybody at high pressure all the time.

The colonel’s fairly in his element, revels in it, and “strafes”

everybody indiscriminately. But it’s done us all a world of good

though. Cheeriho! wish you luck.’ And he rode on, leaving us rather

flabbergasted.

We discovered quite early (on the following morning about dawn, to be

precise) that there had been no exaggeration. We began with elementary

driving drill, and we did four and a half hours of it straight on end,

except for occasional ten-minute halts to rest the astonished teams. It

was wonderful how much we had forgotten and yet how much came back to

us after the first hour or so.

‘I want all your officers to drill the battery in turn,’ said the

colonel. ‘I shall just ride round and correct mistakes.’

He did--with an energy, a power of observation, and a command of

language which I have seldom seen or heard surpassed. But the ultimate

result by mid-day, when all the officers and N.C.O.s were hoarse, the

teams sweating and the carriages caked in oily dust--the ultimate

result was, as the Child politely says, ‘not too stinkin’ awful.’ And

it had been good to hear once again the rattle and bump of the guns and

wagons over hard ground, the jingle of harness and the thud of many

hoofs; good to see the teams swing round together as they wheeled into

line or column at a spanking trot; good above all to remember that

_this_ was our job and that the months spent in concrete gun-pits and

double-bricked O.P.s were but a lengthy prelude to our resumption of

it--some day.

In the evening, when the day’s work was over and ‘stables’ finished, we

left the tired horses picking over the remains of their hay and walked

down the _pavé_ village street, Angelo and I, to look at the church.

Angelo is my eldest but not, as it so happens, my senior subaltern.

Before the war he was a budding architect, with a taste for painting:

hence the nickname, coined by the Child in one of his more erudite

moods.

The church at L---- is very fine. Its square tower is thirteenth

century, its interior is pure Gothic, and its vaulted roof a marvel.

For its size the building is well-nigh perfect. We spent some time

examining the nave and chancel--Angelo, his professional as well as

his artistic enthusiasm aroused, explaining technicalities to me and

making me envious of his knowledge. It was with regret that we turned

away at last, for in spite of the tattered colours of some French

regiment which hung on the north side of the chancel, we had forgotten

the war in the quiet peacefulness of that exquisite interior. But we

were quickly reminded. At the end of the church, kneeling on one of

the rough chairs, was an old peasant woman: her head was bowed, and

the beads dropped slowly through her twisted fingers. As we crept

down the aisle she raised her eyes--not to look at us, for I think

she was unconscious of our presence--but to gaze earnestly at the

altar. Her lips moved in prayer, but no tear damped her yellow cheek.

And, passing out into the sunlight again, I wondered for whom she was

praying--husband, brother, sons?--whether, still hoping, she prayed for

the living, or, faithfully, for the souls of those lost to her. They

are brave, the peasant women of France....

Madame our hostess, besides being one of the fattest, was also one of

the most agreeable ladies it has ever been our lot to be billeted upon.

Before we had been in her house ten minutes she had given us (at an

amazing speed) the following information:

Her only remaining son had been wounded and was now a prisoner in

Germany.

She had played hostess continuously since August 1914 to every kind of

soldier, including French motor-bus drivers, Indian chiefs (_sic_), and

generals.

English officers arriving after the battle of Loos slept in her hall

for twenty-four hours, woke to have a bath and to eat an omelette, and

then slept the clock round again.

She remembered 1870, in which war her husband had fought.

The Boches were barbarians, but they would never advance now, though at

one time they had been within a few kilometres of her house.

The lettuce and cabbages in her garden were at our disposal.

She took an enormous interest in the Infant, who is even younger than

the Child and is our latest acquisition.

‘Regardez donc le petit, comme il est fatigué!’ she exclaimed to me in

the tones of an anxious mother--and then added in an excited whisper,

‘A-t-il vu les Boches, ce petit sous-lieutenant?’

When I assured her not only that he had seen them, but had fired his

guns at them, she was delighted and declared that he could not be more

than sixteen. But here the Infant, considering that the conversation

was becoming personal, intervened, and the old lady left us to our

dinner.

Towards the end of our week we packed up essentials and marched out

to bivouac two nights and fight a two days’ running battle--directed,

of course, by our indefatigable colonel. After the dead flat ugliness

where we had been in action all the winter and early spring it was a

delight to find ourselves in this spacious undulating country, with

its trees and church spires and red-tiled villages. We fought all day

against an imaginary foe, made innumerable mistakes, all forcibly

pointed out by the colonel (who rode both his horses to a standstill

in endeavouring to direct operations and at the same time watch the

procedure of four widely separated batteries); our imaginary infantry

captured ridge after ridge, and we advanced from position to position

‘in close support,’ until finally, the rout of the foe being complete,

we moved to our appointed bivouacs.

In peace time it would have been regarded as a quite ordinary day,

boring because of its resemblance to so many others. Now it was

different. True, it was make-believe from start to finish, without

even blank cartridge to give the vaguest hint of reality. But there

was this: at the back of all our minds was the knowledge that this

was a preparation--possibly our last preparation--not for something

in the indefinite future (as in peace time), but for an occasion that

assuredly _is_ coming, perhaps in a few months, perhaps even in a few

weeks. The colonel spoke truly when, at his first conference, he said:

‘During these schemes you must all of you force yourselves to imagine

that there is a real enemy opposed to you. The Boche is no fool:

he’s got guns, and he knows how to use them. If you show up on crest

lines with a whole battery staff at your heels, he’ll have the place

“registered,” and he’ll smash your show to bits before you ever get

your guns into action at all. _Think_ where he is likely to be, _think_

what he’s likely to be doing, don’t expose yourselves unless you must,

and above all, _get a move on_.’

It was a delightful bivouac. We were on the sheltered side of a little

hill, looking south into a wooded valley. Nightingales sang to us as we

lay smoking on our valises after a picnic dinner and stared dreamily at

the stars above us.

‘Jolly, isn’t it?’ said the Child, ‘but I s’pose we wouldn’t be feeling

quite so comfy if it was the real business.’

‘Don’t,’ said Angelo quietly. ‘I was pretending to myself that we were

just a merry camping party, here for pleasure only. I’d forgotten the

war.’

But I had not. I was thinking of the last time I had

bivouacked--amongst the corn sheaves of a harvest that was never

gathered, side by side with friends who were soon to fall, on the night

before the first day of Mons, nearly two years ago.

The following day was more or less a repetition of the first, except

that we made fewer mistakes and ‘dropped into action’ with more style

and finish. We were now becoming fully aware of the almost-forgotten

fact that a field battery is designed to be a mobile unit, and we

were just beginning to take shape as such when our time was over. A

day’s rest for the horses and then we returned to our comfortable

rest billets. It had been a strenuous week, but I think everyone had

thoroughly enjoyed it....

We have had two days in which to ‘clean up,’ and now to-morrow we are

to relieve another battery and take our place in the line again. Our

holiday is definitely over. It will take a little time to settle down

to the old conditions: our week’s practice of open warfare has spoilt

us for this other kind. We who have climbed hills and looked over

miles of rolling country will find an increased ugliness in our old

flat surroundings. It will seem ludicrous to put our guns into pits

again--the guns that we have seen bounding over rough ground behind the

straining teams. To be cooped up in a brick O.P. staring at a strip

of desolation will be odious after our bivouacs under the stars and

our dashes into action under a blazing sun. Worst of all, perhaps, is

the thought that the battery will be split up again into ‘gun line’

and ‘wagon line,’ with three miles or more separating its two halves,

instead of its being, as it has been all these weeks, one complete

cohesive unit. But what must be, must be; and it is absurd to grumble.

Moreover--the end is not yet.

* * * * *

‘Let’s toss up for who takes first turn at the O.P. when the relief is

completed,’ suggested the Child.

‘Wait a minute,’ I said, remembering something suddenly. ‘Do you know

what to-day is?’

‘Friday,’ he volunteered, ‘and to-morrow ought to be a half-holiday,

but it won’t be, ’cos we’re going into action.’

I passed the port round again. ‘It’s only a fortnight since we

celebrated the battery’s first birthday,’ I said, ‘but to-day the Royal

Regiment of Artillery is two hundred years old. Let’s drink its health.’

And we did.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] A certain number of batteries.

_THE REHABILITATION OF PRIVATE HAGAN._

BY ‘MAJOR, R.A.M.C.’

Private Timothy Hagan, of ‘D’ Company, extracted a box of matches from

his pocket, mechanically lighted a seasoned briar pipe, and sought

inspiration from the log roof of the dugout.

The last of the enemy’s usual evening salvo of shells screamed above

the tree-tops and burst harmlessly in a stubble field. Hagan did not

move. The announcement that the evening meal was ready equally failed

to interest him.

The dugout, efficiently constructed of sand-bags, logs, and earth, was

just large enough for the accommodation of two improvised beds and

blankets. Private Sawyer, the normal occupant of the other half, was

at the moment busy in the kitchen outside beneath the trees. It was

seclusion that Hagan courted, not protection.

Presently, Sawyer, his face smoke-begrimed and heated, thrust his head

over a sand-bag parapet.

‘Tea ready, cooky,’ he cried.

‘Phwat’s the good ov thay?’ grunted Hagan, dropping his pipe

listlessly. ‘Fed up!’

Sawyer’s eyes dilated in speechless surprise. His rapid scrutiny of his

pal’s downcast features failed to help.

‘’Ullo, what’s wrong, hey?’ he asked, wiping his face with the back of

his hand and dropping into the trench. ‘Can’t yer high-class stomach

relish bully-beef no more? What’s wrong with it?’

Without answering in words Timothy slipped his hand into the breast

pocket of his tunic, produced a much-thumbed envelope, and slowly

unfolded a letter. The sight of the irregular writing seemed to have

an immediate tonic effect upon his demeanour. His eyes suddenly became

suffused with red-blood anger. (He had learned the habit in more than

one barbed-wire scrimmage against the enemy.) Clenching his fists, he

cursed beneath his breath, thoughtfully, with intent.

‘H’m!’ grunted Sawyer sympathetically.

‘There’s a blighter at home,’ stammered Hagan, ‘phwat is afeared to do

his bit out here’--he hesitated as if to swallow pent-up gorge--‘of the

name of O’Shea--a damned thaivin’ grocer. The letter says as how he’s

afther walking out wid Kitty Murphy, as is promised to mesilf.’

‘Ugh, a woman is it?’ breathed Sawyer.

‘And me not able to get me hands on him,’ groaned Hagan. ‘’Tis

perishin’ hard.’

The sharp explosions of anti-aircraft shells in rapid succession

overhead caused Sawyer to glance upwards. Shading his eyes with

his hand, he shook his head in disappointment at the marksmanship

displayed, and slipped back again into a sitting posture.

‘What abhart leave ’ome?’ he inquired. ‘The captain says as ’ow each of

us is to ’ave a turn--in doo course.’

‘Bah!’ ejaculated Hagan contemptuously. ‘We all knows phwat in doo

course mains.’ Meditatively refolding his letter, he consigned it

again to its inner pocket. ‘There ain’t no proper foighting now

naither--nothin’ but scrappin’ phwat doesn’t even kape the blood wharm

in yez veins.’ Striking a match on the heel of his boot, he stared into

space and forgot to use it. ‘I be afther thinkin’, Jock, it is now that

I could be sphared, or not at all.’

‘Wot’s wimmin to you now, anyway? ’Tis different with the married

blokes,’ murmured Sawyer. ‘Won’t we both be killed in doo course?’

‘We will that,’ agreed Hagan. ‘But, all the same, I could not lie happy

loike widout I be afther settlin’ first wid the grocer.’

For some seconds Sawyer did not speak. In the cool calm of the autumn

evening there arose before him the memory of a dozen little wayside

cemeteries marked by stereotyped plain wooden crosses--the British

soldier’s humble badge of honour won. With a whimsical smile upon his

lips he wondered vaguely where his own resting-place would lie.

‘Ye see, Jock,’ persisted Hagan, ‘’tisn’t as if I was much wanted here

just now.’

Sawyer, turning suddenly, stared hard at his friend’s bronzed

countenance, noted the stern-set jaw, and ceased sucking his pipe.

He had learned to read Tim Hagan’s moods with the accuracy of much

practice in the course of many devious wanderings.

‘Humph! Wot’s the bloomin’ plan of campaign?’ he demanded. ‘Sneakin’

be’ind mud’eaps, or fightin’ in the open?’

Hagan mechanically refilled his pipe and rammed down the tobacco with

mature deliberation. An indefinite hum of voices near the company

cooking-pots and the sharp bark of a French 75-gun in the near distance

accentuated the seclusion of the dugout. A dull crimson glow of sunset

irradiated a cloudless skyline. To the rear of the wood the lowing of

a cow sounded strangely out of place. On the left, cutting the winding

line of trenches, lay the long, straight, deserted, _pavé_ road leading

to the German lines. The scene, through many days of comparative

stagnation, had grown contemptuously familiar.

‘I’m sick,’ said Hagan, ‘to-morrow morning as iver is.’

Sawyer, gurgling in a characteristic manner meant to denote mirth,

shook his head.

‘Sick is it?’ he commented. ‘Wot’s the complaint, matey? Some ’as fits;

others injures their trigger fingers; some ’as lost their glasses and

carn’t see nothink; some breaks their false teeth and gets shockin’

pains from the hard biscuits; some ’as pains in the kidneys; some ’as

a narsty corph. ’Tain’t the season for corphs.’ Rubbing his nose with

the back of a begrimed finger, he relapsed into thought. ‘Some ’as a

buzzin’ in the ’ead wot nothink can cure. Some’--looking serious, he

suddenly ended in a grunt--‘’Tain’t good enough, Tim, me lad, even for

the pleasure of punchin’ the ’ead of a stinkin’ grocer. You see, if

you only get a few days in ’orspital, back you come again. If you’re

took serious, ’ome you goes and stays there for a long time and misses

everythink ’ere.’ Gripping Hagan’s arm with highly strung fingers, he

leaned nearer. ‘You ain’t goin’ to schrimshank at ’ome if a big push

comes, old pal, are you?’

Hagan’s jaw clenched and his lips moved speechlessly. Then once more he

drew the letter from his pocket and handed it to his friend.

‘Read that!’ he said. ‘I’m goin’ home.’

Sawyer’s face assumed a sphinx-like gravity. He knew the proverbial

strength of obstinacy, also the amount of that commodity possessed by

Tim Hagan. He smoothed out the paper and sniffed violently. A faint

perfume of cheap scent permeated the immediate atmosphere. With a

grunt, he proceeded to master the contents of the epistle. So slowly

did he progress, however, that presently even Hagan began to show signs

of impatience. Sawyer was, in truth, merely gaining time for thought.

‘If you’re caught out malingerin’ on active service, Tim,’ he whispered

at length, ‘it won’t be only seven days “confined to barracks” you will

be gettin’ off with.’

With eyes bent upon the crimson skyline, Hagan sighed wearily.

‘’Tis goin’ home I be, Jock,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll be afther marryin’

Kitty Murphy, and thin me sickness will all go and back it is I’ll

come.’

With a groan of despair Sawyer crawled to his feet and, without another

word, walked off in the direction of a ruined château. He knew there

was no immediate urgency. For ordinary cases of illness the ambulance

wagon would not arrive until the morning. He, therefore, still had all

night in which to formulate a plan of operations. It was, of course,

open to him to drop a hint to the R.A.M.C. orderly, but that would have

to be a _dernier ressort_ indeed.

Left to himself, Hagan brooded more sombrely than before. The

regulations regarding reporting sick were perfectly familiar to him.

For a serious case the medical officer could be summoned within a few

minutes. The Field Ambulance advanced dressing-station, located in a

school-house in the nearest village, was not more than a mile away.

Weighing the matter in all its visible points, he suddenly decided that

the rôle of an emergency case would better fit his purpose than that of

the ordinary sick soldier reporting at the sealed-pattern hour.

To determine was to act. Smearing the perspiration of undue thought

from his forehead, he buttoned his tunic, looked hastily about

the interstices of the sand-bags of the dugout for small valued

possessions, and slipped out beneath the shelter of the trees.

The area lying between the wood and the village where the Field

Ambulance had located its post was alive with troops. The pavé of the

road, upheaved by continuous traffic and an occasional shell, was not

a healthy place for evening exercise, but there was no order against

it. The danger of being shot during the journey had long become a

negligible quantity. A church tower, shell-riddled and tottering, was

the landmark. Behind it Hagan knew he should find the red-cross flag

hanging limply from its pole.

Women, with a horse and cart gathering the wheat in a field on his

left, glanced up with pleasant smile of greeting as he passed. The

orderlies filling a regimental water-cart at the village pump took no

notice of him whatever. Presently, reaching the shadows of the church,

he began to walk slower, then halted. He felt as if he needed a moment

in which to pull himself together. So far in his life his histrionic

sense had never been tested. It is notorious that even experienced

actors occasionally suffer from stage fright.

A couple of R.A.M.C. orderlies, leaning against the door-post beneath

the red-cross flag, presently noticed a soldier staggering towards

them and blindly clutching at the empty air. In normal times their

unanimous diagnosis woud have been ‘beer.’ They knew, however, that in

the firing line such could not be.

Hagan, squinting between half-closed eyelashes, staggered another ten

yards, embraced one of the orderlies round the neck, slid limply to the

ground, and, breathing heavily, lay quite still.

In a moment a stretcher was at hand; within a minute the patient was

inside the building. There were only half a dozen other men to share it

with him, as the evening evacuation of sick and wounded to the Clearing

Hospital had already taken place.

‘What’s wrong, matey?’ questioned one of the orderlies, holding a

pannikin of soup to the patient’s lips. ‘Here, drink this. Wake up! Can

you hear me?’

With a shudder Hagan opened his eyes, and, half-rising to his feet,

glared about him. Rolls of wool and bandages, trays of surgical

instruments, splints, buckets, and basins surrounded him upon all sides.

‘Ah--the hospital!’ he muttered. ‘I remimber now. It is afther faintin’

I be.’

‘H’m--lie down!’ advised the orderly, pushing him back on the

stretcher. ‘I will call the medical officer. Perhaps he’ll give you a

tot of brandy.’

‘Begob, and I’m all roight, me bhoy,’ asserted Hagan, with well-assumed

eagerness to depart. ‘Give me only foive--or maybe tin--minutes’ rest

and a sip av whater.’

The orderly gave the water, but, none the less, called his officer.

Meanwhile Hagan, with shut eyes, summoned to his aid all medical

knowledge, real and spurious, that had ever crossed his path of

life. The rôle he had assigned to himself was extremely difficult.

Whatever else might be imaginary, the beads of perspiration bedewing

his forehead were certainly genuine enough. In order to fool a man

successfully one requires to know something of his mental attitude

towards the subject in hand. What a medico’s mind might contain, or

what pitfalls it was necessary to beware of in dealing with him, were

points that suddenly assailed the wretched Tim with terrifying force.

In fact, had the R.A.M.C. officer not arrived within a few moments, it

is probable that fear of superior wisdom would have driven the schemer

forth from the building.

‘Well, my man, what is the matter?’ asked the officer, feeling his

patient’s pulse. ‘Fainted, hey?’

‘Yes, sir,’ asserted the orderly. ‘Fell into my arms.’

Hagan, opening his eyes slowly, shook his head from side to side,

noisily blew out his cheeks, and ‘marked time.’ Adjusting a

stethoscope, the officer examined his chest, grunted, and ordered his

temperature to be taken. That the result would be negative Hagan knew

only too well. Consequently, it seemed obvious that it behoved him to

make the next move.

‘Terrible buzzin’ in me head, sor,’ he breathed.

‘Ah--quite so. Rest and light diet. Overstrain. Perhaps you will be all

right again by morning.’

Emboldened by an initiatory success, Hagan ventured upon driving the

nail still deeper.

‘Lost all feelin’s in me legs, sor,’ he added, with a groan.

‘It--er--has been comin’ on, sor, for a week; but it wasn’t loikin’ to

go sick I was.’

The medico, with newly awakened interest, bent his eyes upon the man’s

face and silently observed the movements of his rolling head and eyes.

Hagan, gradually ceasing his gyrations, at length opened his eyes and

met the doctor’s absorbed gaze. It was at that moment--had he but known

it--that he sorely needed all the knowledge available regarding his

interrogator. The latter was by nature a silent man, but that did not

interfere with his power of absorbing details and piecing them together

with uncanny accuracy.

‘A pin, sir?’ suggested the orderly.

‘What for?’ asked the officer blandly.

‘Thought, perhaps, you wanted to test his feelings, sir,’ explained the

zealot.

‘No--er--that is, not to-night,’ answered the officer, suppressing a

half-smile beneath his moustache. ‘We will see what a night’s rest can

do.’

As he watched the tall figure of the doctor sauntering out of the room,

Hagan experienced a sensation of acute alarm. In the presence of the

calm assurance of this man of few words he felt that he had slipped

up somewhere. But where? Loss of all feeling in the legs was surely a

good effort! Glancing at the orderly, he noticed the man smiling in a

peculiar manner as his officer disappeared from sight. An orderly’s

knowledge has its limitations, even if a doctor’s has not. The more

thought he gave to it the more suspicious did he feel, and a guilty

conscience did not assist matters.

Soup and biscuits were served out for supper. Tim Hagan could have

absorbed both with relish. He felt, however, that such diet might

not be good for buzzing in the head--and said so. The night orderly,

indifferent to arguments, deposited the food on a box by his side

and departed. The fact, however, that all the articles of diet had

disappeared by morning was by no means lost upon the day orderly when

he returned to duty at the hour of breakfast.

During the silent watches of the night Hagan had time to think of

many things. He decided that he did not like the look of the medical

officer, nor, indeed, did he know what to make of the orderly. Could

he have fought them hand to hand, he would have known exactly where

he was. In this subtle, silent contest of brains he was beginning to

writhe against an invisible foe which seemed to be closing in upon him

more surely with every tick of his watch. A change of diagnosis seemed

advisable. But, with his scanty repertoire of diseases, the point was

none too easy. In fact, when the officer unexpectedly stood by his

side, he was still so undecided, that closed eyes and immobility seemed

the path of least resistance.

‘Well, Private Hagan, how are you this morning?’ inquired the officer,

shaking him by the shoulder.

What the answer to the question was Timothy did not know. He conceded a

point, however, by opening his eyes.

The question being repeated with emphasis, an inspiration gripped him.

In a flash his line of country seemed to open out before him. The

dizziness in the head had led to complications.

‘Carn’t hear,’ he blurted.

‘Ah!’ commented the persecutor, raising his eyebrows. ‘Deaf, are you?

That’s bad.’ Perceptibly dropping his voice, he studied his victim’s

face. ‘H’m--I wonder what degree of deafness. Which is the worst ear?’

With praiseworthy presence of mind, Hagan resisted the impulse to

answer. Staring blankly at the ceiling, he made no sign.

Stepping a pace nearer, the officer spoke louder. Hagan still made no

voluntary response, but the perspiration upon his face attested to the

physical effort.

From the psychological standpoint the doctor was intensely amused.

That Private Timothy Hagan was a clumsy malingerer, pure and simple,

he had no doubt. To prove such a negative condition however is quite

another matter. If proved, the offence meant a court-martial. As an

officer it was his duty to conceal no crime which could be proved. He

was interested, but had little time just then for fancy cases. Hagan’s

facial expression of struggling conjecture condemned him, morally,

beyond a doubt, but the production of the self-same expression before

the members of a court-martial could hardly be guaranteed.

It was a six-inch German shell that solved the situation for the

moment. Dropping three hundred yards from the dressing-station in the

middle of the village street it exploded with a roar which smashed

every pane of glass in the building. A second quickly followed. The

R.A.M.C. staff, expectant of they knew not what, stood listening.

Hagan, feeling the eyes of the medical officer upon him, did not move a

muscle.

‘One to you,’ murmured the officer to himself. ‘I don’t believe a word

of it all the same.’ Turning on his heel, he winked to the orderly and

with well-assumed indifference strode to the far end of the room.

The orderly, quickly stepping round to the head of Hagan’s stretcher,

needed no further instructions. With book and pencil in hand, he

appeared to be engaged upon his ordinary duty of taking names for the

Clearing Hospital.

‘What’s your number, matey?’ he asked quickly.

The wretched competitor, breathing heavily after his recent mental

tension, had dropped his guard.

‘4179,’ he answered promptly.

‘_Thank you!_’ remarked a bland voice from the doorway.

To state that Hagan could have kicked himself for his stupidity, is

to put the case mildly. Conscious that no words of his could possibly

regain lost ground, he stared blankly at the accusing face of the

officer.

‘It’s all UP, matey,’ whispered the orderly, indulging in an open

guffaw.

‘Thin I may as well be afther gettin’ on me bhoots,’ remarked the

culprit quietly, rising to his feet. ‘You’ve bin done down, Tim, me

bhoy, and there ain’t no manner av use in kickin’.’

What happened next in that little school-house, as regards points of

detail, has never been actually recorded. That a deafening explosion

resembling the noise of the end of all things earthly, accompanied by

the caving in of the brickwork of the side of the room, and followed by

the collapse of most of the roof, took place at that moment are facts

of history.

‘It has come at last,’ groaned the doctor. ‘Thank God, there are only a

few men in the building.’

A second later, a tottering rafter, swaying beneath its weight of

tiles, fell with a sickening crash and buried him beneath its ruins.

In an instant all had become chaos.

Whatever the damage done, it was probably at an end. Hagan appreciated

that much immediately. That he himself remained unhurt was a miracle.

The orderly, holding both hands to his head, lay like a log on the

floor. Several stretchers, with their occupants, lay buried beneath the

débris of brick and plaster.

‘A fifteen-inch, begob!’ exclaimed Hagan, seizing the orderly by the

shoulders and dragging him into the open air.

The atmosphere outside was still reeking with heavy black smoke and

dust. A cavern in the road, large enough to conceal a motor-bus,

yawned in his path. The heat of action was upon him. Handing over the

orderly to other hands, he did not hesitate. There were wounded men to

be rescued. At any moment a second shell might follow the first, or

more walls might fall. A feeble, muffled call for help, emanating from

the very centre of the wreckage, arrested his attention. He knew that

bland, cool voice only too well. The available orderlies were already

struggling to remove the wounded and unearth their officer.

Hagan dashed forward. He was a strong man, and in the best of

condition. Without argument, he took command.

To remove the smaller masses of mortared brick was the work of but a

few moments. The men worked at fever heat. The cries from beneath grew

feebler, almost ceased. It was the weight of long rafters which formed

the main obstruction. Without axes or saws, its removal might be a

matter of hours.

Wiping the sweat from his face, Hagan set his teeth and urged on his

party to final effort. But their combined strength was without avail to

clear the rafters. The victim beneath seemed nearing suffocation with

every breath he drew.

Hagan could see only one way, and he took it.

Throwing himself on his face, he insinuated his head beneath the

rafters, and by herculean efforts forced his shoulders to follow.

Tearing away the loose stuff with his hands, whilst the orderlies

endeavoured to ease the weight above him, he at length was able to

gauge the situation accurately. A great beam lay across the chest of

the officer, whose body supported it.

Tim Hagan sweated in an agony as he looked. He had seen hundreds of men

killed in action, but to see his late persecutor being slowly crushed

to death before his eyes was more than he could bear.

From outside the cries of men with axes reached him. Immediate action,

however, was what was wanted. An instant’s thought, a whispered,

guttural prayer, and he proceeded with his task.

Rolling with difficulty upon his back, he wriggled himself, inch by

inch, close up beside his now silent antagonist, and with all the

strength in his body pressed upwards until he managed to relieve the

pressure on the other’s chest. Inch by inch he shoved the unconscious

man aside and replaced the latter’s body by his own. Then, with ears at

acutest tension, he listened to the crash of the axes and wondered how

long he could last--how long it would take him to die.

* * * * *

Two weeks later, Private Timothy Hagan, propped up in bed, lay in a

hospital at the base. Presently an R.A.M.C. officer, obviously also

more or less convalescent, entered the ward by means of a wheeled

chair and looked about him. Hagan, catching the visitor’s eye, flushed

deeply, laboriously drew a long breath, and turned away his head. The

next minute, the officer, having given an order to the orderly pushing

his chair, was at Hagan’s side. A word to the orderly, and the two

wounded men were alone.

‘I have come, Hagan, to thank you for my life,’ said the officer.

Hagan nervously rubbed his forehead with his hand, moved his lips as if

framing unspoken words, and drew a deep inspiration.

‘’Twasn’t cowardice, sor,’ he breathed at last. ‘’Twas nought but a

litle gurl at home phwat drew me.’

‘Cowardice! You! You’re one of the pluckiest men I have ever seen. What

do you mean?’

‘I main, sor, whin I was schrimshankin’.’

‘Sh--sh, my man! That little matter is all forgotten.’

‘Yez did have me beat, sor,’ persisted Hagan, with a flash of humour in

his eyes. ‘’Twas too cliver for me you was, sor. ’Twas the orderly hit

me below the belt. He took me unbeknownst, sor.’

With a light laugh, the medical officer placed his hand upon the brawny

fist of the man beside him.

‘You will get home to see your girl after all, Hagan--in your own

way--and I am glad,’ he said.

‘Is it to be quits then, sor?’

‘Yes--we will call it that,’ agreed the officer. ‘For the time being,

we are quits. Later, I will repay you what is over--if I ever can.’

_DURING MUSIC: FANTASY AND FUGUE._

BY J. B. TREND.

I.

That low-breathed air and inwoven melody,

Twined marvellously together, swift to run

To the farthest bound of song, or knit in one

To melt and glow in o’erwhelming harmony,

You played. And I, startled to fantasy,

Beheld a land of dishevelled wood and stream,

A desperate rally of men, a flash, a scream--

And a friend riven beyond all agony.

Yet did you play. Each delicate, rival thread

Of sound was knotted at last and the music ended.

Forest, colour, and mountain, earth held none

But stunted woods with no companion tread,

Greyness, and little hills, in a life unfriended;

For all joy in things and love of them were gone.

II.

I heard those echoing tones your touch unpenned,

Now hammer-notes that rivetted life with love,

Now light as sou’west wind blown softly above;

But all you played only to him could tend.

So let it be, I said, until life’s end;

In the tinkling wash at the bows, or water lapping

All night upon the dinghy’s side, or tapping

Of light wind in the halyards; there is my friend.

So did your unrelenting notes flit by,

While death and music in my thought were welded

To swing me lonely down to the loveless night.

I am a sail that wind takes wantonly

Because the sheet has carried away that held it--

Then let your fugue pursue its scornful flight!

_LADY CONNIE._[11]

BY MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.

CHAPTER XVII.

Falloden had just finished a solitary luncheon, in the little

dining-room of the Boar’s Hill cottage. There was a garden door in the

room, and lighting a cigarette, he passed out through it to the terrace

outside. A landscape lay before him, which has often been compared to

that of the Val d’Arno seen from Fiesole, and has indeed some common

points with that incomparable mingling of man’s best with the best of

mountain and river. It was the last week of October, and the autumn was

still warm and windless, as though there were no shrieking November

to come. Oxford, the beautiful city, with its domes and spires, lay

in the hollow beneath the spectator, wreathed in thin mists of sunlit

amethyst. Behind that ridge in the middle distance ran the river and

the Nuneham woods; beyond rose the long blue line of the Chilterns.

In front of the cottage the ground sank through copse and field to

the river level, the hedge lines all held by sentinel trees, to which

the advancing autumn had given that significance the indiscriminate

summer green denies. The gravely rounded elms with their golden caps,

the scarlet of the beeches, the pale lemon-yellow of the nearly naked

limes, the splendid blacks of yew and fir--they were all there, mingled

in the autumn cup of misty sunshine, like melting jewels. And among

them, the enchanted city shone, fair and insubstantial, from the depth

below; as it were, the spiritual word and voice of all the scene.

Falloden paced up and down the terrace, smoking and thinking. That was

Otto’s open window. But Radowitz had not yet appeared that morning, and

the ex-scout, who acted butler and valet to the two men, had brought

word that he would come down in the afternoon, but was not to be

disturbed till then.

‘What lunacy made me do it?’ thought Falloden, standing still at the

end of the terrace which fronted the view.

He and Radowitz had been three weeks together. Had he been of the

slightest service or consolation to Radowitz during that time? He

doubted it. That incalculable impulse which had made him propose

himself as Otto’s companion for the winter still persisted indeed. He

was haunted still by a sense of being ‘under command’--directed--by a

force which could not be repelled. Ill at ease, unhappy, as he was, and

conscious of being quite ineffective, whether as nurse or companion,

unless Radowitz proposed to ‘throw up,’ he knew that he himself should

hold on; though why, he could scarcely have explained.

But the divergences between them were great; the possibilities of

friction many. Falloden was astonished to find that he disliked Otto’s

little fopperies and eccentricities quite as much as he had ever done

in college days; his finicking dress, his foreign ways in eating, his

tendency to boast about his music, his country, and his forebears, on

his good days, balanced by a brooding irritability on his bad days. And

he was conscious that his own ways and customs were no less teasing

to Radowitz; his Tory habits of thought, his British contempt for

vague sentimentalisms and heroics, for all that _panache_ means to the

Frenchman, or ‘glory’ to the Slav.

‘Then why, in the name of common sense, are we living together?’

He could really give no answer but the answer of ‘necessity’--of

a spiritual ἀνάγκη[ananki]--issuing from a strange tangle of

circumstance. The helpless form, the upturned face of his dying

father, seemed to make the centre of it, and those faint last words,

so sharply, and as it were, dynamically connected with the hateful

memory of Otto’s fall and cry in the Marmion Quad, and the hateful

ever-present fact of his maimed life. Constance too--his scene with

her on the river bank--her letter breaking with him--and then the soft

mysterious change in her--and that passionate involuntary promise in

her eyes and voice, as they stood together in her aunts’ garden--all

these various elements, bitter and sweet, were mingled in the influence

which was shaping his own life. He wanted to forgive himself; and he

wanted Constance to forgive him, whether she married him or no. A kind

of sublimated egotism, he said to himself, after all!

But Otto? What had really made him consent to take up daily life with

the man to whom he owed his disaster? Falloden seemed occasionally to

be on the track of an explanation, which would then vanish and evade

him. He was conscious, however, that here also, Constance Bledlow

was somehow concerned; and, perhaps, the Pole’s mystical religion.

He asked himself, indeed, as Constance had already done, whether

some presentiment of doom, together with the Christian doctrines of

forgiveness and vicarious suffering, were not at the root of it? There

had been certain symptoms apparent during Otto’s last weeks at Penfold

known only to the old vicar, to himself and Sorell. The doctors were

not convinced yet of the presence of phthisis; but from various signs,

Falloden was inclined to think that the boy believed himself sentenced

to the same death which had carried off his mother. Was there then a

kind of calculated charity in his act also--but aiming in his case at

an eternal reward?

‘He wants to please God--and comfort Constance--by forgiving me. I want

to please her--and relieve myself, by doing something to make up to

him. He has the best of it! But we are neither of us disinterested.’

* * * * *

The manservant came out with a cup of coffee.

‘How is he?’ said Falloden, as he took it, glancing up at a still

curtained window.

The man hesitated.

‘Well, I don’t know, sir, I’m sure. He saw the doctor this morning, and

told me afterwards not to disturb him till three o’clock. But he rang

just now, and said I was to tell you that two ladies were coming to

tea.’

‘Did he mention their names?’

‘Not as I’m aware of, sir.’

Falloden pondered a moment.

‘Tell Mr. Radowitz, when he rings again, that I have gone down to the

college ground for some football, and I shan’t be back till after six.

You’re sure he doesn’t want to see me?’

‘No, sir, I think not. He told me to leave the blind down, and not to

come in again till he rang.’

Falloden put on flannels, and ran down the field paths towards Oxford,

and the Marmion ground, which lay on the hither side of the river. Here

he took hard exercise for a couple of hours, walking on afterwards to

his club in the High Street, where he kept a change of clothes. He

found some old Marmion friends there, including Robertson and Meyrick,

who asked him eagerly after Radowitz.

‘Better come and see,’ said Falloden. ‘Give you a bread and cheese

luncheon any day.’

They got no more out of him. But his reticence made them visibly

uneasy, and they both declared their intention of coming up the

following day. In both men there was a certain indefinable change

which Falloden soon perceived. Both seemed, at times, to be dragging a

weight too heavy for their youth. At other times, they were just like

other men of their age; but Falloden, who knew them well, realised

that they were both hag-ridden by remorse for what had happened in the

summer. And indeed the attitude of a large part of the college towards

them, and towards Falloden, when at rare intervals he shewed himself

there, could hardly have been colder or more hostile. The ‘bloods’

were broken up; the dons had set their faces steadily against any form

of ‘ragging’; and the story of the maimed hand, of the wrecking of

Radowitz’s career, together with sinister rumours as to his general

health, had spread through Oxford, magnifying as they went. Falloden

met it all with a haughty silence; and was but seldom seen in his old

haunts.

And presently it had become known, to the stupefaction of those who

were aware of the earlier facts, that victim and tormentor, the injured

and the offender, were living together in the Boar’s Hill cottage where

Radowitz was finishing the composition required for his second musical

examination, and Falloden--having lost his father, his money and his

prospects--was reading for a prize Fellowship to be given by Merton in

December.

* * * * *

It was already moonlight when Falloden began to climb the long hill

again, which leads up from Folly Bridge to the height on which stood

the cottage. But the autumn sunset was not long over, and in the

mingled light, all the rich colours of the fading woodland seemed to

be suspended in, or fused with, the evening air. Forms and distances,

hedges, trees, moving figures, and distant buildings were marvellously

though dimly glorified; and above the golds and reds and purples of the

misty earth, shone broad and large--an Achilles shield in heaven--the

autumn moon, with one bright star beside it.

Suddenly, out of the twilight, Falloden became aware of a pony-carriage

descending the hill, and two ladies in it. His blood leapt. He

recognised Constance Bledlow, and he supposed the other lady was Mrs.

Mulholland.

Constance on her side knew in a moment from the bearing of his head and

shoulders who was the tall man approaching them. She spoke hurriedly to

Mrs. Mulholland.

‘Do you mind if I stop and speak to Mr. Falloden?’

Mrs. Mulholland shrugged her shoulders--

‘Do as you like, my dear. Only don’t expect me to be very forthcoming!’

Constance stopped the carriage, and bent forward.

‘Mr. Falloden!’

He came up to her. Connie introduced him to Mrs. Mulholland, who bowed

coldly.

‘We have just been to see Otto Radowitz,’ said Constance. ‘We found

him--very sadly, to-day.’ Her hesitating voice, with the note of

wistful appeal in it, affected him strangely.

‘Yes, it has been a bad day. I haven’t seen him at all.’

‘He gave us tea, and talked a great deal. He was rather excited. But he

looked wretched. And why has he turned against his doctor?’

‘Has he turned against his doctor?’ Falloden’s tone was one of

surprise. ‘I thought he liked him.’

‘He said he was a croaker, and he wasn’t going to let himself be

depressed by anybody--doctor or no.’

Falloden was silent. Mrs. Mulholland interposed.

‘Perhaps you would like to walk a little way with Mr. Falloden? I can

manage the pony.’

Constance descended. Falloden turned back with her towards Oxford. The

pony-carriage followed at some distance behind.

Then Falloden talked freely. The presence of the light figure beside

him, in its dark dress and close-fitting cap, seemed to thaw the chill

of life. He began rapidly to pour out his own anxieties, his own sense

of failure.

‘I am the last man in the world who ought to be looking after him; I

know that as well as anybody,’ he said, with emphasis. ‘But what’s to

be done? Sorell can’t get away from college. And Radowitz knows very

few men intimately. Neither Meyrick nor Robertson would be any better

than me.’

‘Oh, not so good--not nearly so good!’ exclaimed Constance eagerly.

‘You don’t know! He counts on you.’

Falloden shook his head.

‘Then he counts on a broken reed. I irritate and annoy him a hundred

times a day.’

‘Oh, no, no--he _does_ count on you,’ repeated Connie in her soft,

determined voice. ‘If you give up, he will be much--much worse off!’

Then she added after a moment--‘Don’t give up! I--I ask you!’

‘Then I shall stay.’

They moved on a few steps in silence, till Connie said eagerly--

‘Have you any news from Paris?’

‘Yes, I am going over next week. We wrote in the nick of time. The

whole thing was just being given up--for lack of funds. Now I have told

him he may spend what he pleases, so long as he does the thing.’

‘Please--mayn’t I help?’

‘Thank you. It’s my affair.’

‘It’ll be very--very expensive.’

‘I shall manage it.’

‘It would be kinder’--her voice shook a little--‘if I might help.’

He considered it--then said doubtfully--

‘Suppose you provide the records?--the things it plays? I don’t know

anything about music--and I have been racking my brains to think of

somebody in Paris who could look after that part of it.’

Constance exclaimed. Why, she had several friends in Paris, in the very

thick of the musical world there! She had herself had lessons all one

winter in Paris at the Conservatoire from a dear old fellow--a Pole, a

pupil of Chopin in his youth, and in touch with the whole Polish colony

in Paris, which was steeped in music.

‘He made love to me a little’--she said laughing--‘I’m sure he’d do

anything for us. I’ll write _at once_! And there is somebody at the

Embassy--why, of course, I can set all kinds of people to work!’

And her feet began to dance along the road beside him.

‘We must get some Polish music’--she went on--‘There’s that marvellous

young pianist they rave about in Paris--Paderewski. I’m sure he’d help!

Otto has often talked to me about him. We must have lots of Chopin--and

Liszt--though of course he wasn’t a Pole!--And Polish national

songs!--Otto was only telling me to-day how Chopin loved them--how he

and Liszt used to go about the villages and farms and note them down.

Oh we’ll have a _wonderful_ collection!’

Her eyes shone in her small, flushed face. They walked on fast, talking

and dreaming, till there was Folly Bridge in front of them, and the

beginnings of Oxford. Falloden pulled up sharply.

‘I must run back. We have supper early. Will you come again?’

She held out her hand. His face beside her, as the moonlight caught it,

stirred in her a sudden, acute sense of delight.

‘Oh yes--we’ll come again. But don’t leave him!--don’t, please, think

of it! He trusts you--he leans on you.’

‘It is kind of you to believe it. But I am no use!’

He put her back into the carriage, bowed formally, and was gone,

running up the hill at an athlete’s pace.

The two ladies drove silently on, and were soon amongst the movement

and traffic of the Oxford streets. Connie’s mind was steeped in

passionate feeling. Till now Falloden had touched first her senses,

then her pity. Now in these painful and despondent attempts of his to

adjust himself to Otto’s weakness and irritability, he was stirring

sympathies and enthusiasms in her which belonged to that deepest soul

in Connie which was just becoming conscious of itself. And all the

more, perhaps, because in Falloden’s manner towards her there was

nothing left of the lover. For the moment at any rate she preferred it

so. Life was all doubt, expectation, thrill--its colour heightened, its

meanings underlined. And in her complete uncertainty as to what turn

it would take, and how the doubt would end, lay the spell--the potent

tormenting charm--of the situation.

She was sorry, bitterly sorry for Radowitz--the victim. But she loved

Falloden--the offender! It was the perennial injustice of passion, the

eternal injustice of human things.

When Falloden was half-way up the hill, he left the road, and took

a short cut through fields, by a path which led him to the back of

the cottage, where its sitting-room window opened on the garden and

the view. As he approached the house, he saw that the sitting-room

blinds had not been drawn, and some of the windows were still open.

The whole room was brilliantly lit by fire and lamp. Otto was there

alone, sitting at the piano, with his back to the approaching spectator

and the moonlit night outside. He was playing something with his left

hand; Falloden could see him plainly. Suddenly, he saw the boy’s figure

collapse. He was still sitting, but his face was buried in his arms

which were lying on the piano; and through the open window, Falloden

heard a sound which, muffled as it was, produced upon him a strange and

horrible impression. It was a low cry, or groan--the voice of despair

itself.

Falloden stood motionless. All he knew was that he would have given

anything in the world to recall the past; to undo the events of that

June evening in the Marmion quadrangle.

Then, before Otto could discover his presence, he went noiselessly

round the corner of the house, and entered it by the front door. In the

hall, he called loudly to the ex-scout, as he went upstairs, so that

Radowitz might know he had come back. When he returned, Radowitz was

sitting over the fire with sheets of scribbled music paper on a small

table before him. His eyes shone, his cheeks were feverishly bright. He

turned with forced gaiety at the sight of Falloden--

‘Well, did you meet them on the road?’

‘Lady Constance, and her friend? Yes. I had a few words with them. How

are you now? What did the doctor say to you?’

‘What on earth does it matter!’ said Radowitz impatiently. ‘He was just

a fool--a young one--the worst sort--I can put up with the old ones. I

know my own case a great deal better than he does.’

‘Does he want you to stop working?’ Falloden stood on the hearth,

looking down on the huddled figure in the chair; himself broad and tall

and curly-haired, like the divine Odysseus, when Athene had breathed

ambrosial youth upon him. But he was pale, and his eyes frowned

perpetually under his splendid brows.

‘Some nonsense of that sort!’ said Radowitz. ‘Don’t let’s talk about

it.’

They went in to dinner, and Radowitz sent for champagne.

‘That’s the only sensible thing the idiot said--that I might have that

stuff whenever I liked.’

His spirits rose with the wine; and presently Falloden could have

thought what he had seen from the dark had been a mere illusion. A

review in _The Times_ of a book of Polish memoirs served to let loose

a flood of boastful talk, which jarred abominably on the Englishman.

Under the Oxford code, to boast in plain language of your ancestors, or

your own performances, meant simply that you were an outsider, not sure

of your footing. If a man really had ancestors, or more brains than

other people, his neighbours saved him the trouble of talking about

them. Only the fools and the _parvenus_ trumpeted themselves; a process

in any case not worth while, since it defeated its own ends. You might

of course be as insolent or arrogant as you pleased; but only an idiot

tried to explain why.

In Otto, however, there was the characteristic Slav mingling of quick

wits with streaks of childish vanity. He wanted passionately to make

this tough Englishman feel what a great country Poland had been and

would be again; what great people his ancestors had been; and what a

leading part they had played in the national movements. And the more he

hit against an answering stubbornness--or coolness--in Falloden, the

more he held forth. So that it was an uncomfortable dinner. And again

Falloden said to himself--‘Why did I do it? I am only in his way. I

shall bore and chill him; and I don’t seem to be able to help it.’

But after dinner, as the night frost grew sharper, and as Otto sat over

the fire, piling on the coal, Falloden suddenly went and fetched a warm

Scotch plaid of his own. When he offered it, Radowitz received it with

surprise, and a little annoyance.

‘I am not the least cold--thank you!’

But, presently, he had wrapped it round his knees; and some restraint

had broken down in Falloden.

‘Isn’t there a splendid church in Cracow?’ he asked casually,

stretching himself, with his pipe, in a long chair on the opposite side

of the fire.

‘One!--five or six!’ cried Otto, indignantly. ‘But I expect you’re

thinking of Panna Marya. Panna means Lady. I tell you, you English

haven’t got anything to touch it!’

‘What’s it like?--what date?’--said Falloden, laughing.

‘I don’t know--I don’t know anything about architecture. But it’s

glorious. It’s all colour and stained glass--and magnificent

tombs--like the gate of Heaven,’ said the boy with ardour. ‘It’s the

church that every Pole loves. Some of my ancestors are buried there.

And it’s the church where, instead of a clock striking, the hours are

given out by a watchman who plays a horn. He plays an old air--ever so

old--we call it the “Heynal,” on the top of one of the towers. The only

time I was ever in Cracow I heard a man at a concert--a magnificent

player--improvise on it. And it comes into one of Chopin’s sonatas.’

He began to hum under his breath a sweet wandering melody. And suddenly

he sprang up, and ran to the piano. He played the air with his left

hand, embroidering it with delicate arabesques and variations, catching

a bass here and there with a flying touch, suggesting marvellously

what had once been a rich and complete whole. The injured hand, which

had that day been very painful, lay helpless in its sling; the other

flashed over the piano, while the boy’s blue eyes shone beneath his

vivid frieze of hair. Falloden, lying back in his chair, noticed the

emaciation of the face, the hollow eyes, the contracted shoulders; and

as he did so, he thought of the scene in the Magdalen ballroom--the

slender girl, wreathed in pearls, and the brilliant foreign

youth--dancing, dancing, with all the eyes of the room upon them.

Presently, with a sound of impatience, Radowitz left the piano. He

could do nothing that he wanted to do. He stood at the window for some

minutes looking out at the autumn moon, with his back to Falloden.

Falloden took up one of the books he was at work on for his Fellowship

exam. When Radowitz came back to the fire, however, white and

shivering, he laid it down again, and once more made conversation.

Radowitz was at first unwilling to respond. But he was by nature

_bavard_, and Falloden played him with some skill.

Very soon he was talking fast and brilliantly again, about his

artistic life in Paris, his friends at the Conservatoire or in the

Quartier Latin; and so back to his childish days in Poland, and the

rising of ’63, in which the family estates near Warsaw had been

forfeited. Falloden found it all very strange. The seething, artistic,

revolutionary world which had produced Otto was wholly foreign to him;

and this patriotic passion for a dead country seemed to his English

common sense a waste of force. But in Otto’s eyes Poland was not dead;

the white eagle, torn and bloodstained though she was, would mount the

heavens again; and in those dark skies the stars were already rising!

At eleven, Falloden got up--

‘I must go and swat. It was awfully jolly, what you’ve been telling me.

I know a lot I didn’t know before.’

A gleam of pleasure shewed in the boy’s sunken eyes.

‘I expect I’m a bore,’ he said, with a shrug; ‘and I’d better go to

bed.’

Falloden helped him carry up his plaid, his books and papers. In Otto’s

room, the windows were wide open, but there was a bright fire, and

Bateson the scout was waiting to help him undress. Falloden asked some

questions about the doctor’s orders. Various things were wanted from

Oxford. He undertook to get them in the morning.

When he came back to the sitting-room, he stood some time in a brown

study. He wondered again whether he had any qualifications at all as a

nurse. But he was inclined to think now that Radowitz might be worse

off without him; what Constance had said seemed less unreal; and his

effort of the evening, as he looked back on it, brought him a certain

bitter satisfaction.

* * * * *

The following day, Radowitz came downstairs with the course of the

second movement of his symphony clear before him. He worked feverishly

all day, now writing, now walking up and down, humming and thinking,

now getting out of his piano--a beautiful Erard hired for the

winter--all that his maimed state allowed him to get; and passing

hour after hour, between an ecstasy of happy creation, and a state of

impotent rage with his own helplessness. Towards sunset he was worn

out, and with tea beside him which he had been greedily drinking, he

was sitting huddled over the fire, when he heard someone ride up to the

front door.

In another minute the sitting-room door opened, and a girl’s figure in

a riding habit appeared.

‘May I come in?’ said Connie, flushing rather pink.

Otto sprang up, and drew her in. His fatigue disappeared as though by

magic. He seemed all gaiety and force.

‘Come in! Sit down and have some tea! I was so depressed five minutes

ago--I was fit to kill myself. And now you make the room shine--you

come in like a goddess!’

He busied himself excitedly in putting a chair for her, in relighting

the spirit kettle, in blowing up the fire.

Constance meanwhile stood in some embarrassment with one hand on the

back of a chair--a charming vision in her close fitting habit, and

the same black _tricorne_ that she had worn in the Lathom Woods, at

Falloden’s side.

‘I came to bring you a book, dear Mr. Otto, the book we talked of

yesterday.’ She held out a paper-covered volume. ‘But I mustn’t stay.’

‘Oh, do stay!’ he implored her. ‘Don’t bother about Mrs. Grundy. I’m

so tired and so bored. Anybody may visit an invalid. Think this is a

nursing home, and you’re my daily visitor. Falloden’s miles away on a

drag-hunt. Ah, that’s right!’ He waved his hand as he saw that she had

seated herself. ‘Now you shall have some tea!’

She let him provide her, watching him the while with slightly frowning

brows. How ill he looked--how ill! Her heart sank.

‘Dear Mr. Otto, how are you? You don’t seem so well to-day.’

‘I have been working myself to death. It won’t come right--this beastly

_Andante_. It’s too jerky--it wants _liaison_. And I can’t hear it--I

can’t _hear_ it!--that’s the devilish part of it.’

And taking his helpless hand out of the sling in which it had been

resting, he struck it bitterly against the arm of his chair. The tears

came to Connie’s eyes.

‘Don’t!--you’ll hurt yourself. It’ll be all right--it’ll be all right!

You’ll hear it in your mind.’ And bending forward under a sudden

impulse, she took the maimed hand in her two hands--so small and

soft--and lifting it tenderly she put her lips to it.

He looked at her in amazement.

‘You do that--for me?’

‘Yes. Because you are a great artist--and a brave man!’ she said,

gulping. ‘You are not to despair. Your music is in your soul--your

brain. Other people shall play it for you.’

He calmed down.

‘At least I am not deaf, like Beethoven,’ he said, trying to please

her. ‘That would have been worse.--Do you know last night, Falloden

and I had a glorious talk. He was awfully decent. He made me tell him

all about Poland, and my people. He never scoffed once. He makes me do

what the doctor says. And last night--when it was freezing cold--he

brought a rug and wrapped it round me. Think of that!’--he looked at

her--half-shamefaced, half-laughing--‘_Falloden!_’

Her eyes shone.

‘I’m glad!’ she said softly. ‘I’m glad!’

‘Yes, but do you know why he’s kind--why he’s here at all?’ he asked

her, abruptly.

‘What’s the good of silly questions?’ she said hastily. ‘Take it as it

comes.’

He laughed.

‘He does it--I’m going to say it!--yes, I _am_--and you are not to be

angry--he does it because--simply--he’s in love with _you_!’

Connie flushed again, more deeply, and he, already alarmed by his own

boldness, looked at her nervously.

‘You are quite wrong.’ Her tone was quiet, but decided. ‘He did it,

first of all, because of what you did for his father----’

‘I did nothing!’ interposed Radowitz.

She took no notice.

‘And secondly’--her voice shook a little--‘because--he was sorry.

Now--_now_--he is doing it’--suddenly her smile flashed out, with its

touch of humour--‘just simply because he likes it!’

It was a bold assertion. She knew it. But she straightened her slight

shoulders, prepared to stick to it.

Radowitz shook his head.

‘And what am I doing it for? Do you remember when I said to you I

loathed him?’

‘No--not him.’

‘Well, something in him--the chief thing, it seemed to me then. I felt

towards him really--as a man might feel towards his murderer--or the

murderer of someone else, some innocent, helpless person who had given

no offence. Hatred--loathing--_abhorrence!_--you couldn’t put it too

strongly. Well then,’--he began to fidget with the fire, tongs in

hand, building it up, while he went on thinking aloud--‘God brought us

together in that strange manner. By the way’--he turned to her--‘are

you a Christian?’

‘I--I don’t know. I suppose I am.’

‘I am,’ he said firmly. ‘I am a practising Catholic. Catholicism with

us Poles is partly religion, partly patriotism--do you understand? I

go to confession--I am a communicant. And for some time I couldn’t go

to Communion at all. I always felt Falloden’s hand on my shoulder, as

he was pushing me down the stairs; and I wanted _to kill him_!--just

that! You know our Polish blood runs hotter than yours. I didn’t want

the college to punish him. Not at all. It was my affair. After I saw

you in town, it grew worse--it was an obsession. When we first got

to Yorkshire, Sorell and I, and I knew that Falloden was only a few

miles away, I never could get quit of it--of the thought that some

day--somewhere--I should kill him. I never, if I could help it, crossed

a certain boundary line that I had made for myself, between our side of

the moor, and the side which belonged to the Fallodens. I couldn’t be

sure of myself if I had come upon him unawares. Oh, of course, he would

soon have got the better of me--but there would have been a struggle--I

should have attacked him--and I might have had a revolver. So for your

sake’--he turned to look at her with his hollow blue eyes--‘I kept

away. Then, one evening, I quite forgot all about it. I was thinking

of the theme for the slow movement in my symphony, and I didn’t notice

where I was going. I walked on and on over the hill--and at last I

heard a man groaning--and there was Sir Arthur--by the stream. I saw at

once that he was dying, and I took a card from his waistcoat pocket,

which told me who he was. There I sat, alone with him. He asked me not

to leave him. He said something about Douglas. “Poor Douglas!” And when

the horrible thing came back--the last time--he just whispered, “Pray!”

and I said our Catholic prayers--that our priest had said when my

mother died. Then Falloden came--just in time--and instead of wanting

to kill him, I waited there, a little way off--and prayed hard for

myself and him! Queer, wasn’t it? And afterwards--you know--I saw his

mother. Then the next day, I confessed to a dear old priest, who was

very kind to me, and on the Sunday he gave me Communion. He said God

had been very gracious to me; and I saw what he meant. That very week

I had a hæmorrhage, the first I ever had.’

Connie gave a sudden, startled cry. He turned again to smile at her.

‘Didn’t you know? No, I believe no one knew, but Sorell and the

doctors. It was nothing. It’s quite healed. But the strange thing was

how extraordinarily happy I felt that week. I didn’t hate Falloden

any more. It was as though a sharp thorn had gone from one’s mind.

It didn’t last long of course, the queer ecstatic feeling. There was

always my hand--and I got very low again. But _something_ lasted;

and when Falloden said that extraordinary thing--I don’t believe he

meant to say it at all!--suggesting we should settle together for the

winter--I knew that I must do it. It was a kind of miracle--one thing

after another--_driving_ us.’

His voice dropped. He remained gazing absently into the fire.

‘Dear Otto’--said Constance softly--‘you have forgiven him?’

He smiled.

‘What does that matter? _Have you?_’

His eager eyes searched her face. She faltered under them.

‘He doesn’t care whether I have or not.’

At that he laughed out.

‘Doesn’t he? I say, did you ask us both to come--on purpose--that

afternoon?--in the garden?’

She was silent.

‘It was bold of you!’ he said, in the same laughing tone. ‘But it’s

answered. Unless, of course, I bore him to death. I talk a lot of

nonsense--I can’t help it--and he bears it. And he says hard, horrid

things, sometimes--and my blood boils--and I bear it. And I expect he

wants to break off a hundred times a day--and so do I. Yet here we

stay. And it’s _you_’--he raised his head deliberately--‘it’s _you_

that are really at the bottom of it.’

Constance rose trembling from her chair.

‘Don’t say any more, dear Otto. I didn’t mean any harm. I--I was so

sorry for you both.’

He laughed again.

‘You’ve got to marry him!’ he said triumphantly. ‘There!--you may go

now--But you’ll come again soon. I know you will!’

She seemed to slip, to melt, out of the room. But he had a last vision

of flushed cheeks, and half-reproachful eyes.

(_To be continued._)

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Copyright, 1915, by Mrs. Humphry Ward in the United

States of America.

_TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘CORNHILL.’_

Dear Sir,--If it gives Mr. Russell any pleasure to accuse me of ‘living

in a happy remoteness from affairs,’ and of having ‘only just awakened

from a slumber which seems to have lasted longer than that of Rip Van

Winkle,’ it would be cruel of me to object. But the proof of my guilt,

it seems, is to be found in the article I wrote in the CORNHILL on

‘The Duke of Wellington and Miss J.’ That article, Mr. Russell thinks,

proves that I had only just discovered Miss J. and her correspondence

with the Duke. As a matter of fact I have been familiar with the volume

published by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin for more than twenty years, and it

must be fifteen years ago since I wrote an article on the subject in an

Australian magazine. But Mr. Russell himself thinks the letters of Miss

J. so little known, and so very interesting, that he himself expends

another article on them, three months later than mine, and taking

exactly the same view of them! It seems clear that there are two Rip

Van Winkles--one in England and one in Australia: and the English Van

Winkle is even drowsier, and wakes later, than his Australian kinsman.

I should not trouble you with this note, however, except for the

opportunity it gives me of apologising for an injustice to Sir Herbert

Maxwell which I committed in the article I wrote in the CORNHILL. I

represented him as saying the Duke ‘must have been inexpressibly bored

by the correspondence,’ and the words are in inverted commas, giving

the reader the impression these were the exact words Sir Herbert

Maxwell used. I apologise for those unfortunate inverted commas. The

words they seem to quote were not the precise words Sir Herbert Maxwell

used in his ‘Life of Wellington,’ and they do not accurately convey his

meaning. ‘The letters,’ he says, ‘_some might think_ were of the very

kind to bore the Duke, whose religion was of a somewhat conventional

kind.’ But Sir Herbert Maxwell does not say that that was his personal

opinion.

Yours truly,

W. H. FITCHETT.

NOTE.--In her article, ‘Dublin Days: the Rising,’ which appeared in

my July number, Mrs. Hamilton Norway, on page 51, repeats the current

story that Messrs. Jacob were ready to let the military blow up their

biscuit factory, for they would never make another biscuit in Ireland.

In justice to Messrs. Jacob, let me add that I have since learnt on the

one unimpeachable authority that this story, however picturesque, is

wholly apocryphal.

THE EDITOR.

Transcriber’s Note:

This book was written in a period when many words had not become

standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling

variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been

left unchanged unless indicated below. Misspelled words were not

corrected.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like

this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the

end of the chapter. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside

down, partially printed letters and punctuation or punctuation used as

letters, were corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences

and abbreviations were added. Duplicate letters at line endings or

page breaks and excess single quote marks were removed.

Missing word added: ... a devil [of] suspicion ...

Word changed: ... except that [if] it afforded ...