"How are you feeling, Trevor?"
"Nicely, thank you, Sister."
"Glad to be in Blighty again?"
Doggie smiled.
"Good old Blighty!"
"Leg hurting you?"
"A bit, Sister," he replied with a little grimace.
"It's bound to be stiff after the long journey, but we'll soon fix it
up for you."
"I'm sure you will," he said politely.
The nurse moved on. Doggie drew the cool clean sheet around his
shoulders and gave himself up to the luxury of bed--real bed. The
morning sunlight poured through the open windows, attended by a
delicious odour which after a while he recognized as the scent of the
sea. Where he was he had no notion. He had absorbed so much of Tommy's
philosophy as not to care. He had arrived with a convoy the night
before, after much travel in ambulances by land and sea. If he had
been a walking case, he might have taken more interest in things; but
the sniper's bullet in his thigh had touched the bone, and in spite of
being carried most tenderly about like a baby, he had suffered great
pain and longed for nothing and thought of nothing but a permanent
resting-place. Now, apparently, he had found one, and looking about
him he felt peculiarly content. He seemed to have seen no cleaner,
whiter, brighter place in the world than this airy ward, swept by the
sea-breeze. He counted seven beds besides his own. On a table running
down the ward stood a vase of sweet-peas and a bowl of roses. He
thought there was never in the world so clean and cool a figure as the
grey-clad nurse in her spotless white apron, cuffs and cap.
When she passed near him again, he summoned her. She came to his
bedside.
"What do you call this particular region of fairyland?"
She stared at him for a moment, adjusting things in her mind; for his
name and style were 35792 Private Trevor, J. M., but his voice and
phrase were those of her own social class. Then she smiled, and told
him. The corner of fairyland was a private auxiliary hospital in a
Lancashire seaside town.
"Lancashire," said Doggie, knitting his brow in a puzzled way, "but
why have they sent me to Lancashire? I belong to a West Country
regiment, and all my friends are in the South."
"What's he grousing about, Sister?" suddenly asked the occupant of the
next bed. "He's the sort of chap that doesn't know when he's in luck
and when he isn't. I'm in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, I am,
and when I was hit before, they sent me to a military hospital in
Inverness. That'd teach you, my lad. This for me every time. You ought
to have something to grouse at."
"I'm not grousing, you idiot!" said Doggie.
"'Ere--who's he calling an idjit?" cried the Duke of Cornwall's Light
Infantryman, raising himself on his elbow.
The nurse intervened; explained that no one could be said to grumble
at a hospital when he called it fairyland. Trevor's question was that
of one in search of information. He did not realize that in assigning
men to the various hospitals in the United Kingdom, the authorities
could not possibly take into account an individual man's local
association.
"Oh well, if it's only his blooming ignorance----"
"That's just it, mate," smiled Doggie, "my blooming ignorance."
"That's all right," said the nurse. "Now you're friends."
"He had no right to call me an idjit," said the Duke of Cornwall's
Light Infantryman. He was an aggressive, red-visaged man with bristly
black hair and stubbly black moustache.
"If you'll agree that he wasn't grousing, Penworthy, I'm sure Trevor
will apologize for calling you an idiot."
And into the nurse's eyes crept the queer smile of the woman learned
in the ways of children.
"Didn't I say he wasn't grousing? It was only his ignorance?"
Doggie responded. "I meant no offence, mate, in what I said."
The other growled an acceptance, whereupon the nurse smiled an ironic
benediction and moved away.
"Where did you get it?" asked Penworthy.
Doggie gave the information and, in his turn, made the polite
counter-inquiry.
Penworthy's bit of shrapnel, which had broken a rib or two, had been
acquired just north of Albert. When he left, he said, we were putting
it over in great quantities.
"That's where the great push is going to be in a few days."
"Aren't you sorry you're out of it?"
"Me?" The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantryman shook his head. "I take
things as I finds 'em, and I finds this quite good enough."
So they chatted and, in the soldier's way, became friends. Later, the
surgeon arrived and probed Doggie's wound and hurt him exquisitely, so
that the perspiration stood out on his forehead, and his jaws ached
afterwards from his clenching of them. While his leg was being dressed
he reflected that, a couple of years ago, if anyone had inflicted a
twentieth part of such torture on him he would have yelled the house
down. He remembered, with an inward grin, the anguished precautions on
which he had insisted whenever he sat down in the chair of his
expensive London dentist.
"It must have hurt like fun," said the nurse, busily engaged with the
gauze dressing.
"It's all in the day's work," replied Doggie.
The nurse pinned the bandage and settled him comfortably in bed.
"No one will worry you till dinner-time. You'd better try to have a
sleep."
So Doggie nodded and smiled and curled up as best he could and slept
the heavy sleep of the tired young animal. It was only when he awoke,
physically rested and comparatively free from pain, that his mind,
hitherto confused, began to work clearly, to straighten out the three
days' tangle. Yes, just three days. A fact almost impossible to
realize. Till now it had seemed an eternity.
He lay with his arms crossed under his head and stared at the blue
sky--a soft, comforting English sky. The ward was silent. Only two
beds were occupied, one by a man asleep, the other by a man reading a
novel. His other room-mates, including his neighbour Penworthy, were
so far convalescent as to be up and away, presumably by the
life-giving sea, whose rhythmic murmur he could hear. For the first
time since he awoke to find himself bandaged up in a strange dug-out,
and surrounded by strange faces, did the chaos of his ideas resolve
itself into anything like definite memories. Yet many of them were
still vague.
He had been out there, with the wiring party, in the dark. He had been
glad, he remembered, to escape from the prison of the trench into the
open air. He was having some difficulty with a recalcitrant bit of
wire that refused to come straight and jabbed him diabolically in
unexpected places, when a shot rang out and German flares went up and
everybody lay flat on the ground, while bullets spat about them. As he
lay on his stomach, a flare lit up the ruined well of the farm of La
Folette. And the well and his nose and his heels were in a bee-line.
The realization of the fact was the inception of a fascinating idea.
He remembered that quite clearly. Of course his discovery, two days
before, of the spot where Jeanne's fortune lay hidden, when Captain
Willoughby, with map and periscope, had called him into consultation,
had set his heart beating and his imagination working. But not till
that moment of stark opportunity had he dreamed of the mad adventure
which he undertook. There in front of him, at the very farthest three
hundred yards away, in bee-line with nose and heels--that was the
peculiar and particular arresting fact--lay Jeanne's fortune. In
thinking of it he lost count of shots and star-shells, and heard no
orders and saw no dim forms creeping back to the safety of the trench.
And then all was darkness and silence.
Doggie lay on his back and stared at the English sky and wondered how
he did it. His attitude was that of a man who cannot reconcile his
sober self with the idiot hero of a drunken freak. And yet, at the
time, the journey to the ruined well seemed the simplest thing in the
world. The thought of Jeanne's delight shone uppermost in his mind....
Oh! he was forgetting the star, which hung low beneath a canopy of
cloud, the extreme point of the famous feet, nose and well bee-line.
He made for it, now and then walking low, now and then crawling. He
did not mind his clothes and hands being torn by the unseen refuse of
No Man's Land. His chief sensation was one of utter loneliness,
mingled with exultance at freedom. He did not remember feeling afraid:
which was odd, because when the star-shells had gone up and the German
trenches had opened fire on the wiring party, his blood had turned to
water and his heart had sunk into his boots and he had been deucedly
frightened.
Heaven must have guided him straight to the well. He had known all
along that he merely would have to stick his hand down to find the
rope ... and he felt no surprise when the rope actually came in
contact with his groping fingers; no surprise when he pulled and
pulled and fished up the packet. It had all been preordained. That was
the funny part of the business which Doggie now could not understand.
But he remembered that when he had buttoned his tunic over the
precious packet, he had been possessed of an insane desire to sing and
dance. He repressed his desire to sing, but he leaped about and
started to run. Then the star in which he trusted must have betrayed
him. It must have shed upon him a ray just strong enough to make him a
visible object; for, suddenly, _ping!_ something hit him violently on
the leg and bowled him over like a rabbit into a providential
shell-hole. And there he lay quaking for a long time, while the lunacy
of his adventure coarsely and unsentimentally revealed itself.
As to the rest, he was in a state of befogged memory. Only one
incident in that endless, cruel crawl home remained as a landmark in
his mind. He had paused to take breath, almost ready to give up the
impossible flight--it seemed as though he were dragging behind him a
ton of red-hot iron--when he became conscious of a stench violent in
his nostrils. He put out a hand. It encountered a horrible, once human
face, and his fingers touched a round recognizable cap. Horror drove
him away from the dead German and inspired him with the strength of
despair.... Then all was fog and dark again until he recovered
consciousness in the strange dug-out.
There the doctor had said to him: "You must have a cast-iron
constitution, my lad."
The memory caused a flicker round his lips. It wasn't everybody who
could crawl on his belly for nearly a quarter of a mile with a bullet
through his leg, and come up smiling at the end of it. A cast-iron
constitution! If he had only known it fifteen, even ten years ago,
what a different life he might have led. The great disgrace would
never have come upon him.
And Jeanne? What of Jeanne? After he had told his story, they had
given him to understand that an officer would be sent to Frelus to
corroborate it, and, if he found it true, that Jeanne would enter into
possession of her packet. And that was all he knew, for they had
bundled him out of the front trenches as quickly as possible; and once
out he had become a case, a stretcher case, and although he had been
treated, as a case, with almost superhuman tenderness, not a soul
regarded him as a human being with a personality or a history--not
even with a military history. And this same military history had
vaguely worried him all the time, and now that he could think clearly,
worried him with a very definite worry. In leaving his firing-party he
had been guilty of a crime. Every misdemeanour in the Army is termed a
crime--from murder to appearing buttonless on parade. Was it
desertion? If so, he might be shot. He had not thought of that when he
started on his quest. It had seemed so simple to account for half an
hour's absence by saying that he had lost his way in the dark. But
now, that plausible excuse was invalid....
Doggie thought terribly hard that quiet, sea-scented morning. After
all, it did not very much matter what they did to him. Sticking him up
against a wall and shooting him was a remote possibility; he was in
the British and not the German Army. Field punishments of unpleasant
kinds were only inflicted on people convicted of unpleasant
delinquencies. If he were a sergeant or a corporal, he doubtless would
be broken. But such is the fortunate position of a private, that he
cannot be degraded to an inferior rank. At the worst they might give
him cells when he recovered. Well, he could stick it. It didn't
matter. What really mattered was Jeanne. Was she in undisputed
possession of her packet? When it was a question of practical warfare,
Doggie had blind faith in his officers--a faith perhaps even more
childlike than that of his fellow-privates, for officers were the men
who had come through the ordeal in which he had so lamentably failed;
but when it came to administrative affairs, he was more critical. He
had suffered during his military career from more than one subaltern
on whose arid consciousness the brain-wave never beat. He had never
met even a field officer before whom, in the realm of intellect, he
had stood in awe. If any one of those dimly envisaged and still more
dimly remembered officers of the Lancashire Fusiliers had ordered him
to stand on his head on top of the parapet, he would have obeyed in
cheerful confidence; but he was not at all certain that, in the effort
to deliver the packet to Jeanne, they would not make an unholy mess of
things. He saw stacks of dirty yellowish bits of paper, with A.F. No.
something or the other, floating between Frelus and the Lancashire
Battalion H.Q. and the Brigade H.Q. and the Divisional H.Q., and so on
through the majesty of G.H.Q. to the awful War Office itself. In
pessimistic mood he thought that if Jeanne recovered her property
within a year, she would be lucky.
What a wonderful creature was Jeanne! He shut his eyes to the blue sky
and pictured her as she stood in the light, on the ragged escarpment,
with her garments beaten by wind and rain. And he remembered the weary
thud, thud of railway and steamer, which had resolved itself, like the
rhythmic tramp of feet that night, into the ceaseless refrain: "Jeanne!
Jeanne!"
He opened his eyes again and frowned at the blue English sky. It had
no business to proclaim simple serenity when his mind was in such a
state of complex tangle. It was all very well to think of
Jeanne--Jeanne, whom it was unlikely that Fate would ever allow him to
see again, even supposing the war ended during his lifetime; but there
was Peggy--Peggy, his future wife, who had stuck to him loyally
through good and evil repute. Yes, there was Peggy--not the faintest
shadow of doubt about it. Doggie kept on frowning at the blue sky.
Blighty was a very desirable country, but in it you were compelled to
think. And enforced thought was an infernal nuisance. The beastly
trenches had their good points after all. There you were not called
upon to think of anything; the less you thought, the better for your
job; you just ate your bully-beef and drank your tea and cursed
whizz-bangs and killed a rat or two, and thanked God you were alive.
Now that he came to look at it in proper perspective, it wasn't at all
a bad life. When had he been worried to death, as he was now? And
there were his friends: the humorous, genial, deboshed, yet
ever-kindly Phineas; dear old Mo Shendish, whose material feet were
hankering after the vulgar pavement of Mare Street, Hackney, but whose
spiritual tread rang on golden floors dimly imagined by the Seer of
Patmos; Barrett, the D. C. M., the miniature Hercules, who, according
to legend, though, modestly, he would never own to it, seized two
Boches by the neck and knocked their heads together till they died,
and who, musically inclined, would sit at his, Doggie's, feet while he
played on his penny whistle all the sentimental tunes he had ever
heard of; Sergeant Ballinghall, a tower of a man, a champion amateur
heavy-weight boxer, with a voice compared with which a megaphone
sounded like a maiden's prayer, and a Bardolphian nose and an eagle
eye and the heart of a broody hen, who had not only given him boxing
lessons, but had pulled him through difficult places innumerable ...
and scores of others. He wondered what they were doing. He also was
foolish enough to wonder whether they missed him, forgetting for the
moment that if a regiment took seriously to missing their comrades
sent to Kingdom Come or Blighty, they would be more like weeping
willows than destroyers of Huns.
All the same, he knew that he would always live in the hearts of two
or three of them, and the knowledge brought him considerable comfort.
It was strange to realize how the tentacles of his being stretched out
gropingly towards these (from the old Durdlebury point of view)
impossible friends. They had grafted themselves on to his life. Or was
that a correct way of putting it? Had they not, rather, all grafted
themselves on to a common stock of life, so that the one common sap
ran through all their veins?
It took him a long time to get this idea formulated, fixed and
accepted. But Doggie was not one to boggle at the truth, as he saw it.
And this was the truth. He, James Marmaduke Trevor of Denby Hall, was
a Tommy of the Tommies. He had lived the Tommy life intensely. He was
living it now. And the extraordinary part of it was that he didn't
want to be anything else but a Tommy. From the social or gregarious
point of view his life for the past year had been one of unclouded
happiness. The realization of it, now that he was clearly sizing up
the ramshackle thing which he called his existence, hit him like the
butt-end of a rifle. Hardship, cold, hunger, fatigue, stench, rats,
the dread of inefficiency--all these had been factors of misery which
he could never eliminate from his soldier's equation; but such free,
joyous, intimate companionship with real human beings he had never
enjoyed since he was born. He longed to be back among them, doing the
same old weary, dreary, things, eating the same old Robinson Crusoe
kind of food, crouching with them in the same old beastly hole in the
ground, while the Boche let loose hell on the trench. Mo Shendish's
grin and his "'Ere, get in aht of the rain," and his grip on his
shoulder, dragging him a few inches farther into shelter, were a
spiritual compensation transcending physical discomfitures and perils.
"It's all dam funny," he said half aloud.
But this was England, and although he was hedged about, protected and
restricted by War Office Regulation Red Tape twisted round to the
strength of steel cables, yet he was in command of telegraphs, of
telephones, and, in a secondary degree, of the railway system of the
United Kingdom.
He found himself deprecating the compulsory facilities of
communication in the civilized world. The Deanery must be informed of
his home-coming.
As soon as he could secure the services of a nurse he wrote out three
telegrams: one addressed "Conover, The Deanery, Durdlebury"; one to
Peddle at Denby Hall, and one to Jeanne. The one to Jeanne was the
longest, and was "Reply paid."
"This is going to cost a small fortune, young man," said the nurse.
Doggie smiled as he drew out a L1 treasury note from his soldier's
pocket-book, the pathetic object containing a form of Will on the
right-hand flap and on the left the directions for the making of the
Will, concluding with the world-famous typical signature of Thomas
Atkins.
"It's a bust, Sister," said he. "I've been saving up for it for
months."
Then, duty accomplished, he reconciled himself to the corner of
fairyland in which he had awoke that morning. Things must take their
course, and while they were taking it, why worry? So long as they
didn't commit the outrage of giving him bully-beef for dinner, the
present coolness and comfort sufficed for his happiness.