“You haven’t, George!”
“Yes, I have. I’ve just come back.”
“Well?”
He replied with his damnable affected casualness: “I’m in the Army. Royal Field Artillery. And so that’s that.”
“But where’s your uniform?”
“I knew you’d say that. I’m in mufti, you see.”
II
He promptly received his papers and returned them. His medical examination was quite satisfactory. Then there was no further sign from the Army. The Army might have completely forgotten him; his enrolment in the Army might have been an illusion. Every day and every hour he expected a telegram of command. It was in anticipation of the telegram, curt and inexorable, that he kept harrying his tradesmen. To be caught unprepared by the telegram would be a disaster. But the tradesmen had lessons to teach him, and by the time the kit was approximately completed he had learnt the lessons. Whether the transaction concerned his tunic, breeches, spurs, leggings, cane, sword, socks, shirts, cap, camp field-kit, or any of the numerous other articles without which an officer might not respectably enter the British Army, the chief lesson was the same, namely, that the tradesmen were bearing the brunt of the war. Those who had enrolled and made spectacular sacrifices of homes and careers and limbs and lives were enjoying a glorious game amid the laudations of an ecstatic populace, but the real work was being done in the shops and in the workrooms. The mere aspect of tradesmen was enough to restore the lost modesty of officers. Useless to argue with the tradesmen, to expostulate, to vituperate. The facts were in their favour; the sublime law of supply and demand was in their favour. If the suddenly unloosed military ardour had not been kept down it might have submerged the Island. The tradesmen kept it down, and the Island was saved by them from militarization. Majors and colonels and even generals had to flatter and cajole tradesmen. As for lieutenants, they cringed. And all officers were obliged to be grateful for the opportunity to acquire goods at prices fifty per cent higher than would have been charged to civilians. Within a few days George, who had need of every obtainable sovereign for family purposes, had disbursed some forty pounds out of his own pocket in order to exercise the privilege of defending, at the risk of ruin and death, the ideals of his country.
At the end of the week what, as a civilian, he would have described as his first ‘suit’ had not been delivered, and he spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday in most uncomfortable apprehension of the telegraph-boy and in studying an artillery manual now known to hundreds of thousands as ‘F.A.T.’ On the Monday morning he collected such portions of his kit as had to be worn with the ‘suit’ (leggings, boots, spurs, cap, shirt, collar, etc.), and took them in a taxi to the tailor’s, intending to change there and emerge a soldier. The clothes were not ready, but the tailor, intimidated by real violence, promised them for three o’clock. At three o’clock they were still not ready, for buttons had to be altered on the breeches; another hour was needed.
George went to call at Lucas & Enwright’s. That office seemed to function as usual, for Everard Lucas alone had left it for the profession of arms. The factotum in the cubicle was a young man of the finest military age, and there were two other good ones in the clerks’ room, including a clerk just transferred from George’s own office. And George thought of his own office, already shut up, and his glance was sardonic. Mr. Enwright sat alone in the principals’ room, John Orgreave being abroad in London in pursuit of George’s two landlords–the landlord of his house and the landlord of his office–neither of whom had yet been brought to see that George’s caprice for a military career entitled him in the slightest degree to slip out of contracts remunerative to the sacred caste of landlords. Lucas & Enwright had behaved handsomely to George, having taken everything over, assumed all responsibilities, and allotted to George more than a fair share of percentages. And John Orgreave, who in his rough provincial way was an admirable negotiator, had voluntarily busied himself with the affair of the resilition of George’s leases.
“Not gone, then?” Mr. Enwright greeted him. “Well, you’d better be going, or I shan’t get my chance of being Vice-President.”
“What do you mean?”
“Orgreave was at a committee at the Institute this morning. It seems you might have been the next Vice, in spite of your tender years, if you’d stayed. You’re becoming the rage, you know.”
“Am I?” said George, startled.
He hungered for further details of this great and highly disturbing matter, but Enwright, jealous by nature and excusably jealous by reason of the fact that despite his immense artistic reputation he had never succeeded in being even Vice-President of the Institute, would say no more. Indeed he took a malicious pleasure in saying no more.
The ageing man, more hypochondriacal, thinner, and more wrinkled than ever, was full to the brim of one subject–India. Somebody at the India Office had flattered him by showing a knowledge of his work. The India Office had very graciously agreed to the transfer of the barracks enterprise to Lucas & Enwright, and now Mr. Enwright was for going to India himself. He had never been there. Indian scenery, Indian manners, Indian architecture boiled in his brain. The menace of German raiders would not prevent him from going to India. He had already revisited the photographs of Indian buildings at South Kensington Museum. Moreover, he had persuaded himself that the erection of the barracks formed an urgent and vital part of British war activity.
At the same time he was convinced that the war would soon end, and in favour of Germany. He assumed, as being beyond doubt, that a German army would occupy Paris, and when George, with a wave of the hand, pushed the enemy back and magically rendered Paris impregnable, he nearly lost his temper. This embittered Englishman would not hear a word against the miraculous efficiency of the Germans, whom he admired as much as he hated them. The German military reputation could not have been safer in Potsdam than it was in Russell Square. George, impatient of his master and inspirer, rose to depart, whereupon Mr. Enwright began to talk at large about the terrible derangement of his daily life caused by the sudden disappearance of his favourite barber, deemed now to have been a spy. “But the only barber who ever really understood my chin,” said Mr. Enwright. George went, shaking hands perfunctorily. Mr. Enwright was too preoccupied to wish him luck.
The clothes were ready at the tailor’s, and they passed the tests. George stood up disguised as a second-lieutenant in the R.F.A., booted, spurred, gloved, nicely managing a cane. He examined himself in the great mirror and was well pleased with his military appearance. In particular, his dark moustache fitted the role excellently.
“Now you’ll send the overcoat and all my civilian things down this afternoon, without fail,” he said. “I’ll let you have an address for the other suit.”
And he walked manfully out of the shop. Before he could find himself, a superb serjeant-major strode up, saluted in the highest and strictest perfection, and passed. The encounter was unfortunate. George, taken aback, muddled his share of the rite. Further, the self-consciousness of the potential Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects was so extreme in uniform that it could scarcely have been more extreme had he been thrust by destiny into Oxford Street naked. He returned to the shop and said:
“I think I’ll take everything home myself, to make sure. You might get me a taxi.”
He crept into his own house furtively with his parcels, like a criminal, though he well knew that the servants would be ready to worship him as a new god. The children were evidently out. Lois was not in the drawing-room. He ran to the bedroom. She lay on the sofa.
“Here I am!” he announced, posing bravely for her inspection.
She did not move for a few seconds. Her eyes were hard-set. Then she gave a tremendous shattering sob, and burst into wild tears. George stooped to pick up a telegram which was lying on the floor. It read:
“You are to report to Adjutant Headquarters Second First West Midland R.F.A. Wimbledon to-morrow Tuesday before noon.”
The Army had not forgotten him. Throughout the week his name upon various forms had been under the eye of authority, and at last the order had gone forth.
III
The next morning, after a disturbed night, Lois was taken ill. George telephoned for the doctor, and as soon as he had seen the patient the doctor telephoned for the nurse, and as soon as the doctor had telephoned for the nurse George telephoned for Laurencine. What with George’s uniform and approaching departure, and the premature seizure of Lois, the household had, in an exceedingly short time, reached a state of intense excitement and inefficiency. Nurse was with Lois; the children were with cook in the kitchen; the other two servants were noisily and vaguely active on the stairs and the landings. The breakfast had been very badly cooked; the newspapers, with a detailed description of the retreat from Mons, were not glanced at. George was expecting a letter from his mother concerning the arrangements for the visit of Lois and the children to Ladderedge, already decided upon, and no letter had come.
At half-past ten he sent the parlourmaid to get a taxi. Having inspected his luggage in the hall, he went to the telephone again and ascertained that Laurencine had actually started from home. Almost at the same moment a taxi stopped in front of the house. “She’s been jolly quick,” thought George, meaning the parlourmaid; but going to the window he saw that his stepfather and his mother were in the taxi. He did not rush out to them. He did not move. The comfortable sense of the perfect reliability and benevolence of his ‘people’ filled and warmed him. They had not written again; they had just come themselves.
He affectionately and critically watched them as they got out of the taxi. Alderman Edwin Clayhanger, undeniably stout, with grey hair and beard, was passing from middle-age into the shadow of the sixties. He dressed well, but the flat crown of his felt hat, and the artificial, exaggerated squareness of the broad shoulders, gave him a provincial appearance. His gesture as he paid the driver was absolutely characteristic–a mixture of the dignified and the boyish, the impressive and the timid. He had descended from the vehicle with precautions, but Mrs. Clayhanger jumped down lightly, though she was about as old and as grey as her husband. Her costume was not successful; she did not understand and never had understood how to dress herself. But she had kept her figure; she was as slim as a girl, and as restless.
George ran to the door, which the feverish parlourmaid had neglected to shut. His mother, mounting the steps, was struck full in the face by the apparition of her son in uniform. The Alderman, behind her, cried mockingly to cover his emotion: “Hal_lo_! Hal_lo_!”
“When did you come up?” asked George quietly, taking his mother’s hand and kissing her. She slid past him into the house. Her eyes were moist.
“Last night,” the Alderman answered. “Last train. Your mother’s idea. All of a sudden. Thought you might be leaving.”
“Well, I am,” said George. “I have to report at Headquarters at Wimbledon by twelve o’clock. It’s rather a good thing you’ve come. Lois is ill. Oh! Here’s _my_ taxi.” The parlourmaid had driven up.
“Ill!” exclaimed Mrs. Clayhanger.
“Yes. I’ve sent for the doctor, and he’s sent for the nurse. I’m expecting the nurse every minute.”
“You don’t mean to say–” Mrs. Clayhanger began.
George nodded.
“She _must_ have had a shock. I knew what it would be for her. It’s all very well, but–” Mrs. Clayhanger again left a sentence unfinished.
“I’ve sent for Laurencine too,” said George. “She also may be here any minute.”
“Oh!” said the old lady tartly. “I can stay as long as you like, you know. Lois and I get on splendidly.”
It was true. They had had one enormous quarrel, which had mysteriously ended by both of them denying superiorly to all males that any quarrel had ever occurred.
“Well, come into the dining-room.”
“I think I’ll go up and see Lois at once,” said Mrs. Clayhanger.
“The doctor’s there.”
“What if he is?”
The Alderman put in:
“Now look here, missis. Don’t startle her.”
Mrs. Clayhanger exhaled impatient scorn and went upstairs.
“This your stuff?” the Alderman questioned, pointing with his stick to the kit-bag and strange packages on the hall floor.
“Yes,” said George, and to the parlourmaid: “You can put it all in the taxi, May. Come along in, uncle.”
“Don’t hurry me, boy. Don’t hurry me.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Russell … Bit awkward, this about Lois!”
They were now within the dining-room.
“Yes.” In the presence and under the influence of his people George at once ceased to be an expansive Londoner, and reverted to the character of the Five Towns.
“I suppose she’ll be all _right_?”
“Doctor seems to think so.”
“Yes. They generally are.” The Alderman sighed pleasantly and dropped rather heavily into a chair.
“Have a cigarette?”
“No!” The Alderman refused regretfully. “I’ve got a new rule now. I don’t smoke till after dinner.”
There was a pause.
“I’m glad we came.”
“So’m I.”
“You needn’t worry about anything. Your mother and I will see to everything. I’ll go up and have a talk with Johnnie about the leases.”
“Thanks.”
“What about money?”
“I’ll write you. No hurry.”
“What sort of a woman is Laurencine? I’ve scarcely set eyes on her.”
“She’s fine.”
“She is?”
“Yes.”
“Will she hit it off with your mother?”
“Trust her.”
“Well, then, I think I’ll have one o’ them cigarettes.”
They smoked in taciturnity, nervous but relieved. They had said what they had to say to each other. After a time George remarked:
“I heard last night there was a chance of me being Vice-President of the Institute this year if I hadn’t gone into the Army.”
Mr. Clayhanger raised his eyebrows.
“That’ll keep all right for later.”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Clayhanger hurried into the dining-room. She had removed her hat and gloves.
“Lois wants to see you.”
“I was just coming up. I’ve got to go now.” He glanced at his watch.
“Go where?” It was like Mrs. Clayhanger to ask a question to which she knew the answer. Her ardent eyes, set a little too close together in the thin, lined, nervous face, burned upon him challengingly.
“I told you! I have to report at Headquarters before noon.”
“But you don’t mean to say you’re going to leave your wife like this! She’s very ill.”
“I’m bound to leave her.”
“But you can’t leave her.”
The Alderman said:
“The boy’s quite right. If he’s got to report he’s got to report.”
“And supposing she was dying?”
“Now, missis, we needn’t suppose that. She isn’t.”
“It would be just the same if she was,” Mrs. Clayhanger retorted bitterly. “I don’t know what men are coming to. But I know this–all husbands are selfish. They probably don’t know it, but they are.”
She wept angrily.
“Don’t you understand I’m in the machine now, mater?” said George resentfully as he left the room.
In the bedroom Lois lay on her back, pale, perspiring, moaning. He kissed her, glanced at the doctor for instructions, and departed. Lois was not in a condition to talk, and the doctor wished her not to speak. Then George went to the kitchen and took leave of the children, and incidentally of the servants. The nurse was arriving as he re-entered the dining-room; he had seized his cap in the hall and put it on.
“Better give me an address,” said the Alderman.
“You might wire during the day,” George said, scribbling on a loose leaf from his pocket-book, which he had to search for in unfamiliar pockets.
“The idea had occurred to me,” the Alderman smiled.
“Au revoir, mater.”
“But you’ve got plenty of time!” she protested.
“I know,” said he. “I’m not going to be late. I haven’t the slightest notion where Headquarters are, and supposing the taxi had a break-down!”
He divined from the way in which she kissed him good-bye that she was excessively proud of him.
“Mater,” he said, “I see you’re still a girl.”
As he was leaving, Mr. Clayhanger halted him.
“You said something in your last letter about storing the furniture, didn’t you? Have ye made any inquiries?”
“No. But I’ve told Orgreave. You might look into that, because–well, you’ll see.”
From the hall he glanced into the dining-room and up the stairs. The furniture that filled the house had been new ten years earlier; it had been anybody’s furniture. The passage of ten years, marvellously swift, had given character to the furniture, charged it with associations, scarred it with the history of a family–his family, individualized it, humanized it. It was no longer anybody’s furniture. With a pang he pictured it numbered and crowded into a warehouse, forlorn, thick with dust, tragic, exiled from men and women.
He drove off, waving. His stepfather waved from the door, his mother waved from the dining-room; the cook had taken the children into the drawing-room, where they shook their short, chubby arms at him, smiling. On the second floor the back of the large rectangular mirror on the dressing-table presented a flat and wooden negative to his anxious curiosity.
In the neighbourhood of Wimbledon the taxi-driver ascertained his destination at the first inquiry from a strolling soldier. It was the Blue Lion public-house. The taxi skirted the Common, parts of which were covered with horse-lines and tents. Farther on, in vague suburban streets, the taxi stopped at a corner building with a blatant, curved gilt sign and a very big lamp. A sentry did something with his rifle as George got out, and another soldier obligingly took the luggage. A clumsy painted board stuck on a pole at the entrance to a side-passage indicated that George had indeed arrived at his Headquarters. He was directed to a small, frowzy apartment, which apparently had once been the land-lord’s sitting-room. Two officers, Colonel Hullocher and his Adjutant, both with ribbons, were seated close together at a littered deal table, behind a telephone whose cord, instead of descending modestly to the floor, went up in sight of all men to the ceiling. In a corner a soldier, the Colonel’s confidential clerk, was writing at another table. Everything was dirty and untidy. Neither of the officers looked at George. The Adjutant was excitedly reading to the Colonel and the Colonel was excitedly listening and muttering. The clerk too was in a state of excitement. George advanced towards the table, and saluted and stood at attention. The Adjutant continued to read and the Colonel to murmur, but the Adjutant did manage to give a momentary surreptitious glance at George. After some time the Colonel, who was a short, stout, bald, restless man, interrupted the reading, and, still without having looked at George, growled impatiently to the Adjutant:
“Who’s this fellow?”
The Adjutant replied smoothly:
“Mr. Cannon, sir.”
The Colonel said:
“He’s got a devilish odd way of saluting. I must go now.” And jumped up and went cyclonically as far as the door. At the door he paused and looked George full in the face, glaring.
“You came to me with a special recommendation?” he demanded loudly.
“Colonel Rannion kindly recommended me, sir.”
“General Rannion, sir. Haven’t you seen this morning’s _Times_? You should read your Gazette.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re the celebrated architect?”
“I’m an architect, sir.”
“I wish you would condescend to answer, yes or no, sir. That’s the second time. I say–you’re the celebrated architect?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, remember this. When you come into the Army what you were before you came into the Army has not the slightest importance.”
“Yes, sir.”
Colonel Hullocher glared in silence for a moment, and was gone. The clerk slipped out after him.
The Adjutant rose:
“Now, Cannon, we’re all very busy.”
And shook hands.
IV
The same afternoon, indeed within about two hours of his entrance into the Army, George found himself driving back from Wimbledon to London in a motor-bus.
Colonel Hullocher had vanished out of his world, and he had been sent to another and still more frowzy public-house which was the Headquarters of No. 2 Battery of the Second Brigade. He was allotted to No. 2 Battery, subject to the approval of Major Craim, the commanding officer. Major Craim was young and fair and benevolent, and at once approvingly welcomed George, who thereupon became the junior subaltern of the Battery. The other half-dozen officers, to whom he was introduced one by one as they came in, seemed amiable and very well-mannered, if unduly excited. When, immediately before lunch, the Major was called away to lunch with Colonel Hullocher, the excitement of the mess seemed to boil over. The enormous fact was that the whole Division–yeomanry, infantry, and artillery–had been ordered to trek southward the next morning. The Division was not ready to trek; in particular the Second Brigade of its artillery, and quite specially Battery No. 2 of the Second Brigade, was not ready to trek. Nevertheless it would trek. It might even trek to France. Southward was Franceward, and there were those who joyously believed that this First Line Territorial Division was destined to lead the Territorial Army in France.
All the officers had a schoolboyish demeanour; all of them called one another by diminutives ending in ‘y’; all of them were pretty young. But George soon divided them into two distinct groups–those who worried about the smooth working of the great trek, and those who did not. Among the former was Captain Resmith, the second in command, a dark man with a positive, strong voice, somewhat similar to George in appearance. Captain Resmith took George very seriously, and promised to initiate him personally into as many technical mysteries as could be compressed into one afternoon. Then a Major Tumulty, middle-aged and pale, came hurriedly into the stuffy room and said without any prologue:
“Now I must have one of you chaps this afternoon. Otherwise I promise you you won’t get all the things you want.”
Silence fell on the mess.
“The C.O. isn’t here, sir,” said Captain Resmith.
“I can’t help that. I’m not going alone.”
“Cannon, you’d better go with Major Tumulty. Major, this is Mr. Cannon, our latest addition.”
George only knew about Major Tumulty that he was Major Tumulty and that he did not belong to No. 2 Battery. So far as George was concerned he was a major in the air. After drinking a glass of port with the mess, Major Tumulty suddenly remembered that he was in a hurry, and took George off and put him into a scarlet London-General motor-bus that was throbbing at the door of the public-house, with an ordinary civilian driver at the steering-wheel and a soldier on the step. George felt like a parcel; he had no choice of movement, no responsibility, no knowledge. The mentality of a parcel was not disagreeable to him. But at times, vaguely uneasy, he would start out of it, and ask himself: “What is wrong?” And then the vision of a distant, half-forgotten street called Elm Park Road would rise in his mind and he would remember: “My wife is very ill, and everything is upset at home.”
The motor-bus travelled a few yards and stopped; and out of yet another office a soldier carried, staggering, a heavy bag with a brass lock, and dropped it on the floor of the bus between the Major and George; and the bus, after a good imitation by the soldier-conductor of a professional double ting on the bell, went away afresh.
“That’s money,” said the Major, in his mild, veiled voice, pointing to the bag.
Little by little George learnt that the Major had ‘won’ the bus ‘out of’ the War Office, and had been using it daily for several days for the purpose of buying and collecting urgent stores and equipment. The bus had become celebrated within the Division in an astoundingly short time, and on this, the last day preceding the trek, the various units had burdened the good-natured Major with a multitude of commissions.
“I try to keep accounts,” said the Major. “But I know I’ve made a loss every day. I’ve been in the T.F. ever since there was one, and it has always cost me money. Now, I shall put you in charge of this little book.”
The little book was a penny account-book, with pages lettered in pencil A, B, C, D, etc., and items scribbled on each page.
“The letters show the batteries,” the Major explained. “I’ve got a key to the batteries somewhere in my pocket. And here’s what I call my grand list.” He produced a roll of foolscap. “I like everything orderly. It saves so much trouble, doesn’t it? I mean in the end. Now, as I buy things I shall strike them off here, and I want you to strike them off in your book and put down the price from the bill. I always insist on a receipted bill. It saves so much trouble in the end. I meant to bring a file or a clip for the bills, but I forgot. You understand, don’t you?”
George answered solemnly and sharply:
“Yes, sir.”
The Major weakly cried:
“Hall!”
“Yessir!” The soldier-conductor came to attention.
“Did you tell him to go to Harrods first?”
“Yessir!”
“I think we might go and sit on the top,” said the Major. “It’s a nice afternoon.”
So the two officers went and sat on the top of the motor-bus. The Major gossiped with soothing tranquillity. He said that he was a pianoforte manufacturer; his father, from whom he had inherited, had traded under a German name because people preferred German pianos to English; he now regretted this piece of astuteness on the part of his father; he was trying to sell his business–he had had enough of it.
“Hi! You!” he called, standing up quite unexpectedly and leaning over the front of the bus to hail the driver. “Hi! You!” But the driver did not hear, and the bus drove forward like fate. The Major, who had hitherto seemed to be exempt from the general perturbation of Wimbledon troops, suddenly showed excitement. “We must stop this bus somehow! Why the devil doesn’t he stop? I’ve forgotten the rope-shop.”
“I’ll stop it, sir,” said George, maintaining an admirable presence of mind in the crisis, and he rose and pushed down the knob of the signal-rod at the back of the bus. The bus did actually stop.
“Ah!” murmured the Major, calmed.
The soldier raced upstairs.
“Hall!”
“Yessir.”
“Do you know a rope and string shop near the Granville Theatre of Varieties at Walham Green?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, there is one. Tell him to stop at the Granville.”
“Yessir.”
The Major resumed his bland conversation. At Putney they saw the first contents-bill of the afternoon papers.
“How do you think things are going, sir?” George asked.
“It’s very difficult to say,” answered the Major. “This Mons business is serious.”
“Yes, sir.”
The discovery of the rope-shop involved a policeman’s aid. When the rope had been purchased and new silver brought forth from the bag, and the receipt made out, and the item struck off and the amount entered, and the bus had started again, George perceived that he would soon be passing the end of Elm Park Gardens. Dared he ask the Major to deflect the bus into Elm Park Road so that he might obtain news of Lois? He dared not. The scheme, simple and feasible enough, was nevertheless unthinkable. The bus, with ‘Liverpool Street’ inscribed on its forehead, rolled its straight inevitable course along Fulham Road, pursued by the disappointed glances of gesturing wayfarers who wanted it to take them to Liverpool Street.
After about two hours of fine confused shopping the Major stopped his bus at a Tube station in the north of London.
“I mustn’t forget my pens,” said he. “I have to spend three-quarters of my time mewed up in the office, and I don’t grumble; but I’m very particular about nibs, and if I don’t have my own I cannot work. It’s useless to expect it.”
Then to the soldier:
“Hall! You go down to Partridge & Cooper’s, at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, and buy a sixpenny box of their ‘No. 6 Velvet’ pen-nibs. You understand: ‘No. 6 Velvet.'”
“Yessir. With the bus, sir?”
“With the bus. Here’s sixpence.” He took a coin out of the bag, locked it, and gave the key to George. “And keep an eye on this bag, my boy. You will then come back and wait for us–let me see–outside Piccadilly Tube Station in Jermyn Street.”
“Yessir.”
The Major and George entered the North London station and proceeded to the lift.
“Tickets!” demanded the lift-man.
The Major halted and gazed at him.
“On service!” said the Major, with resentment and disdain. “A fortnight ago you civilians were raising your hats to us. Now you ask us for tickets! Haven’t you grasped yet that there’s a war on? Don’t you think you’d look better in khaki?” He showed excitement, as at every personal encounter.
The lift-man bowed his head, inarticulately muttering, and the officers passed into the lift, having created a certain amount of interest among the other passengers. The Major was tranquillized in a moment. They came to the surface again at Piccadilly Circus, where at the lift a similar scene occurred.
“Do you know anything about pyjamas?” said the Major.
“Well, sir–“
“I never wear them myself. I’m rather old-fashioned. But I have to buy three pairs–suits for Colonel Hullocher–at Swan & Edgar’s. Oh! Bother it! Have you any money? I forgot to take some out of the bag.”
The Major purchased the pyjamas with George’s money, and his attitude towards the shopman during the transaction was defiant, indicating to the shopman that, though personally he, the Major, never wore pyjamas, he was an expert in pyjamas and not to be gulled. George took the resulting parcel and the receipted bill, and they walked across to Jermyn Street, where surely the bus, with the sixpenny box of pens, was waiting for them. It was perfectly magical. As the vehicle swung with them into the Circus the Major exclaimed:
“We’re getting on very well. What do you say to some tea?”
“Certainly, sir.”
The bus, having stopped by order at the second tea-house on the left in Piccadilly, was immediately assaulted, without success, by several would-be passengers. A policeman, outraged by the spectacle of a bus stationary at a spot where buses are absolutely forbidden to be stationary, hurried forward in fury. But the Major, instantly excited, was ready for him.
“This motor-bus is a military vehicle on service, and I’ll thank you to mind your own business. If you’ve any complaints to make, you’d better make them to Lord Kitchener.”
The policeman touched his hat.
“They have music here,” said the Major mildly, entering the tea-house. “I always like music. Makes things so much jollier, doesn’t it?”
During tea the Major inquired about George’s individual circumstances, and George said that he was an architect.
“Student of bricks and mortar, eh?” said the Major benevolently. “How long have you been in the Army?”
“Rather less than half a day, sir.”
The Major, raising his eyebrows, was very interested and kind. Perceiving that he had virgin material under his hands, he began to shape the material, and talked much about the niceties of the etiquette of saluting. George listened, yet at intervals his attention would wander, and he would be in Elm Park Road. But the illusion of home was very faint. His wife and family seemed to be slipping away from him. “How is it,” he thought, “that I am not more upset about Lois than I am?” The various professional and family matters which in his haste he had left unsettled were diminishing hourly in their apparent importance. He came back to the tea-house with a start, hearing the Major praise his business capacity as displayed during the afternoon. The friendly aspect of the thin, pallid face inspired him with a sort of emotional audacity, and in ten words he suddenly informed the Major of his domestic situation.
“H’m!” said the Major. “I’m a bachelor myself.”
There was a pause.
“I’ll give you a tip,” said the Major, resuming the interrupted topic. “War is a business. The more business capacity you have, the more likely you are to succeed. I’m a business man myself.”
On leaving the tea-house they discovered the military vehicle surrounded by an enchanted multitude who were staring through its windows at the merchandise–blankets, pans, kettles, saddles, ropes, parcels, stoves, baskets, and box of nibs–within, while the policeman strove in vain to keep both the road and the pavement clear. George preceded the Major, pushing aside with haughty military impatience the civilians so reluctant to move. He felt as though he had been in the Army for years. No longer did his uniform cause him the slightest self-consciousness.
At Wimbledon in the dusk the bus was met by several military wagons each from a different unit, and each anxious to obtain goods. This piece of organization rather impressed George.
“Well, my boy,” said the Major, “you’d better go and report yourself. You’ve been a great help to me.”
George saluted according to the Major’s own doctrine, and departed. At Battery Headquarters he met Captain Resmith.
“How did you get on with Auntie?” asked Resmith in his loud, firm voice.
George winked.
Resmith gave a scarcely perceptible smile.
“Look here,” he said. “I’m just going round the horse-lines. If you’ll come with me I’ll show you a thing or two, and we can choose a mount for you. Then after dinner if you like I’ll take you through the orders for to-morrow. By the way, there’s a telegram for you.”
The telegram read:
“Girl. Everything fairly satisfactory. Don’t worry too much. Laurencine sleeps here.–NUNKS”
The telegram was entirely characteristic of his stepfather–curt, exact, realistic, kind.
He thought:
“Three girls, by Jove!”
V
The early sun, carrying into autumn the tradition of a magnificent summer, shone on the artillery camps. The four guns of the No. 2 Battery of the Second Brigade were ranged side by side in the vast vague space in front of the officers’ hutments. Each gun had six horses in three pairs, and a rider for each pair. On the guns and the gun-teams everything glittered that could glitter–leather, metal, coats of horses, faces of men. Captain Resmith rode round, examining harness and equipment with a microscope that he called his eye. George rode round after him. Sometimes Captain Resmith spoke to a N.C.O., sometimes even to a man, but for the most part the men stared straight in front of them into eternity. Major Craim trotted up. Captain Resmith approached the Major and saluted, saying in his best military voice:
“The Battery is all correct and ready to move off, sir.”
The Major in his drawing-room voice replied:
“Thank you, Captain Resmith.”
Silence reigned in No. 2 Battery, except for the faint jingling restlessness of the horses.
Then Colonel Hullocher and his Adjutant pranced into sight. The Adjutant saluted the Major and made an inquiry. The Major saluted, and all three chatted a little.
George, who had accompanied Captain Resmith into the background, murmured to him, as cautiously as a convict talking at exercise:
“He’s got his knife into me.”
“Who?”
“The Colonel.”
“Don’t you know why?”
“No. I was specially recommended to him.”
“Well, that’s one reason, isn’t it? But there was a difficulty between him and the Major as to when you should come. The old man got the better of him–always does. But he’s a good officer.”
“Who?”
“Hullocher. Shut up.”
These two had reached familiarity with the swiftness characteristic of martial life.
During the brief colloquy Resmith had sat very upright on his horse, the chin slightly lifted, the head quite still, even the lips scarcely moving to articulate. Colonel Hullocher seemed now to be approaching. It was a false alarm. The Colonel and his Adjutant pranced off. After a long time, and at a considerable distance, could just be heard the voice of the Colonel ordering the Brigade to move. But No. 2 Battery did not stir for another long period. Suddenly, amid a devolution of orders, No. 2 Battery moved. The Major, attended by his trumpeter, and followed by the Battery staff of range-takers, director-men, telephonists, and the serjeant-major, inaugurated a sinuous procession into the uneven, rutted track leading to the side-road. Then the guns one by one wheeled to the right, the horses’ hoofs stamping into the damp ground as they turned, and became part of the procession. Then the quartermaster and other N.C.O.’s and men joined; and last were Captain Resmith, attended by _his_ trumpeter, and George. Resmith looked over his shoulder at the Third Battery which surged behind. There were nearly two hundred men and over a hundred and fifty horses and many vehicles in the Battery. The Major was far out of sight, and the tail of the column was equally out of sight in the rear, for the total length of Major Craim’s cavalcade exceeded a mile; and of the Brigade three miles, and two other similar Brigades somewhere in the region of Wimbledon were participating in the grand Divisional trek.
Captain Resmith cantered ahead to a bend in the track, and anxiously watched a gun-team take the sharp curve, which was also a sharp slope. The impression of superb, dangerous physical power was tremendous. The distended nostrils of horses, the gliding of their muscles under the glossy skin, the muffled thud of their hoofs in the loose soil, the grimacing of the men as they used spur and thong, the fierce straining of straps and chains, the creaking, the grinding, and finally the swaying of the 90-millimetre gun, coddled and polished, as it swung helplessly forward, stern first, and its long nose describing an arc in the air behind–these things marvellously quickened the blood.
“Good men!” said Captain Resmith, enthusiastic. “It’s great, isn’t it? You know, there’s nothing so fine as a battery–nothing in the whole world.”
George heartily agreed with him.
“This is the best Battery in the Division,” said Resmith religiously.
And George was religiously convinced that it was.
He was astoundingly happy. He thought, amazed, that he had never been so happy, or at any rate so uplifted, in all his life. He simply could not comprehend his state of bliss, which had begun that morning at 6.30 when the grey-headed, simple-minded servant allotted to him had wakened him, according to instructions, with a mug of tea. Perhaps it was the far, thin sound of bugles that produced the rapturous effect, or the fresh air blowing in through the broken pane of the hut, or the slanting sunlight, or the feeling that he had no responsibility and nothing to do but blindly obey orders.
He had gone to sleep as depressed as he was tired. A sense of futility had got the better of him. The excursion of the afternoon had certainly been ridiculous in a high degree. He had hoped for a more useful evening. Captain Resmith had indeed taken him to the horse-lines, and he had tried a mount which was very suitable, and Captain Resmith had said that he possessed a naturally good seat and hands, and had given him a few sagacious tips. It was plain to him that Resmith had the Major’s orders to take him in tutelage and make an officer of him. But the satisfactoriness of the evening had suddenly ceased. Scarcely had Resmith begun to expound the orders, and George to read the thrilling words, ‘Second Lieutenant G.E. Cannon to ride with Captain Resmith,’ when the mess had impulsively decided to celebrate the last night in camp by a dinner at the hotel near the station, and George, fit for nothing more important, had been detailed to run off and arrange for the rich repast. The bulk of the mess was late to arrive, and George spent the time in writing a descriptive and falsely gay letter on slips of yellow Army paper to Lois. The dinner, with its facile laughter and equally facile cynicism, had bored him; for he had joined the Army in order to save an Empire and a world from being enslaved. He had lain down in his truckle-bed and listened to the last echoing sounds in the too-resonant corridor of the hutments, and thought of the wisdom of Sir Isaac Davids, and of the peril to his wife, and of the peril to the earth, and of his own irremediable bondage to the military machine. He, with all his consciousness of power, had been put to school again; deprived of the right to answer back, to argue, even to think. If one set in authority said that black was white, his most sacred duty was to concur and believe. And there was no escape….
And then, no sooner had he gone to sleep than it was bright day, and the faint, clear call of bugles had pierced the clouds of his depression and they had vanished! Every moment of the early morning had been exquisite. Although he had not been across a horse for months, he rode comfortably, and the animal was reliable. Resmith in fact had had to warn him against fatiguing himself. But he knew that he was incapable of fatigue. The day’s trek was naught–fifteen miles or less–to Epsom Downs, at a walk!… Lois? He had expected a letter from ‘Nunks’ or his mother, but there was no letter, and no news was good news, at any rate with ‘Nunks’ in charge of communications. Lois could not fail to be all right. He recalled the wise generalization of ‘Nunks’ on that point … Breakfast was a paradisiacal meal. He had never ‘fancied’ a meal so much. And Resmith had greatly enheartened him by saying sternly: “You’ve got exactly the right tone with the men. Don’t you go trying to alter it.” The general excitement was intense, and the solemn synchronizing of watches increased it further. An orderly brought a newspaper, and nobody would do more than disdainfully glance at it. The usual daily stuff about the war!… Whereas Epsom Downs glittered in the imagination like a Canaan. And it lay southward. Probably they were not going to France, but probably they would have the honour of defending the coast against invasion. George desired to master gunnery instantly, and Resmith soothed him with the assurance that he would soon be sent away on a gunnery course, which would give him beans. And in the meantime George might whet his teeth on the detailed arrangements for feeding and camping the Battery on Epsom Downs. This organization gave George pause, especially when he remembered that the Battery was a very trifling item in the Division, and when Resmith casually informed him that a Division on the trek occupied fifteen miles of road. He began to perceive the difference between the Army and a circus, and to figure the Staff as something other than a club of haughty, aristocratic idlers in red hats. And when the Battery was fairly under way in the side-road, with another Battery in front and another Battery behind, and more Artillery Brigades and uncounted Infantry Brigades and a screen of Yeomanry all invisibly marching over the map in the direction of Epsom, and bound to reach a certain lettered square on the map at a certain minute–when this dynamic situation presented itself to the tentacles of his grasping mind, he really did feel that there could be no game equal to war.
The Battery ‘rode easy,’ the men were smoking, talking, and singing in snatches, when suddenly all sounds were silenced. Captain Resmith, who had been summoned to the Major, reined in his horse, and George did likewise, and the Battery passed by them on the left. The Major’s voice was heard:
“No. 2 Battery. Eyes–_right_!”
George asked:
“What’s this?”
“C.R.A.’s ahead,” murmured Resmith.
Then another officer cried:
“Right section. Eyes–_right_.”
And then an N.C.O. bawled:
“A sub-section. Eyes–_right_.”
Then only did George, from the rear, see the drivers, with a simultaneous gesture, twist their heads very sharply to the right, raise their whips, and fling the thongs over the withers of the hand-horses, while the section-officer saluted.
Another N.C.O. bawled:
“B sub-section. Eyes–_right_.”
And the same action followed.
Then another officer cried:
“Left section. Eyes–_right_.”
So the rite proceeded.
Resmith and George had now gone back to their proper places. George could see the drivers of the last gun gathering up the whip thongs into their hands preparatory to the salute. C sub-section received the command.
And then, not many yards ahead, the voice of an N.C.O.:
“D sub-section. Eyes–_right_.”
Heads turned; whips were raised and flung outwards; horses swerved slightly.
“Get ready,” muttered Resmith to George.
The figure of the C.R.A., Brigadier-General Rannion, motionless on a charger, came into view. George’s heart was beating high. Resmith and he saluted. The General gazed hard at him and never moved. They passed ahead.
The officer commanding the Third Battery had already called:
“Battery. _Eyes–right.”_
The marvellous ceremonial slipped rearwards. George was aware of tears in his eyes. He was aware of the sentiment of worship. He felt that he would have done anything, accomplished any deed, died, at the bidding of the motionless figure on the charger. It was most curious.
There was a terrific crash of wood far behind. Resmith chuckled.
“One of those G.S. wagons has knocked down the Automobile Club ‘Cross-Roads’ sign,” he said. “Good thing it wasn’t a lamp-post! You see, with their eyes right, they can’t look where they’re going, and the whip touches up the horses, and before you can say knife they’re into something. Jolly glad it’s only the Am. Col. Jones will hear of this.” He chuckled again. Jones was the Captain commanding the Ammunition Column.
The order ran down the line:
“Eyes–_front_.”
Soon afterwards they came to some policemen, and two girls in very gay frocks with bicycles, and the cross-roads. The Battery swung into the great high road whose sign-post said, ‘To Ewell and Epsom.’ Another unit had been halted to let the Artillery pass into its definitive place in the vast trek. It was about this time that George began to notice the dust. Rain had fallen before dawn and made the roads perfect; but now either all the moisture had evaporated in the blazing sun, or the Battery had reached a zone where rain had not fallen. At first the dust rose only in a shallow sea to the height of fetlocks; but gradually it ascended and made clouds, and deposited a layer on the face and on the tongue and in the throat. And the surface itself of the road, exasperated by innumerable hoofs and wheels, seemed to be in a kind of crawling fermentation. The smell of humanity and horses was strong. The men were less inclined to sing.
“Left!” yelled a voice.
And another:
“_Left_!”
And still another, very close on the second one:
“LEFT!”
“Keep your distances there!” Resmith shouted violently.
A horn sounded, and the next moment a motor-car, apparently full of red-hats, rushed past the Battery, overtaking it, in a blinding storm of dust. It was gone, like a ghost.
“That’s the Almighty himself,” Resmith explained, with unconscious awe and devotion in his powerful voice. “Gramstone, Major-General.”
George, profoundly impressed (he knew not why), noticed in his brain a tiny embryo of a thought that it might be agreeable to ride in a car.
A hand went up, and the Battery stopped. It was the first halt.
“Look at your watch,” said Resmith, smiling.
“Ten to, exactly.”
“That’s right. We have ten minutes in each hour.”
All dismounted, examined horses for galls, and looked at their shoes, took pulls at water-bottles, lit cigarettes, expectorated, coughed, flicked at flies with handkerchiefs. The party also went past, and shortly afterwards returned with the stretcher laden.
VI
It was after the long halt at midday that the weather changed. The horses, martyrized by insects, had been elaborately watered and fed with immense labour; officers and men had eaten rations and dust from their haversacks, and for the most part emptied their water-bottles; and the march had been resumed in a temper captious and somewhat exacerbated.
“Get your horse away; he’s kicking mine!” said Captain Resmith impatiently to George, reflecting the general mood. And George, who was beginning to experience fatigue in the region of the knees, visited on his horse the resentment he felt at Resmith’s tone.
At precisely that moment some drops of rain fell. Nobody could believe at first that the drops were raindrops for the whole landscape was quivering in hot sunshine. However, an examination of the firmament showed a cloud perpendicularly overhead; the drops multiplied; the cloud slowly obscured the sun. An almost audible sigh of relief passed down the line. Everybody was freshened and elated. Some men with an instinct for the apposite started to sing:
“Shall we gather at the river?”
And nearly the whole Battery joined in the tune. The rain persevered, thickening. The sun accepted defeat. The sky lost all its blue. Orders were given as to clothing. George had the sensation that something was lacking to him, and found that it was an umbrella. On the outskirts of Ewell the Battery was splashing through puddles of water; the coats of horses and of men had darkened; guns, poles, and caps carried chaplets of raindrops; and all those stern riders, so proud and scornful, with chins hidden in high, upturned collars, and long garments disposed majestically over their legs and the flanks of the horses, nevertheless knew in secret that the conquering rain had got down the backs of their necks, and into their boots and into their very knees but they were still nobly maintaining the illusion of impermeability against it. The Battery, riding now stiffly ‘eyes front,’ was halted unexpectedly in Ewell, filling the whole of the village, to the village’s extreme content. Many minutes elapsed. Rumour floated down that something, was wrong in front. Captain Resmith had much inspectorial cantering to do, and George faithfully followed him for some time. At one end of the village a woman was selling fruit and ginger-beer to the soldiers at siege prices; at the other, men and women out of the little gardened houses were eagerly distributing hot tea and hot coffee free of charge. The two girls from the crossroads entered the village, pushing their bicycles, one of which had apparently lost a pedal. They wore mackintoshes, and were still laughing.
At length George said:
“If you don’t mind I’ll stick where I am for a bit.”
“Tired, eh?” Resmith asked callously.
“Well! I shall be if I keep on.”
“Dismount, my canny boy. Didn’t I tell you what would happen to you? At your age–“
“Why! How old d’you think I am?”
“Well, my canny boy, you’ll never see thirty again, I suppose.”
“No, I shan’t. Nor you either.”
Captain Resmith said:
“I’m twenty-four.”
George was thunder-struck. The fellow was a boy, and George had been treating him as an equal! But then the fellow was also George’s superior officer, and immeasurably his superior in physique. Do what he would, harden himself as he might, George at thirty-three could never hope to rival the sinews of the boy of twenty-four, who incidentally could instruct him on every conceivable military subject. George, standing by his sodden horse, felt humiliated and annoyed as Resmith cantered off to speak to the officer commanding the Ammunition Column. But on the trek there was no outlet for such a sentiment as annoyance. He was Resmith’s junior and Resmith’s inferior, and must behave, and expect to be behaved to, as such.
“Never mind!” he said to himself. His determination to learn the art and craft of war was almost savage in ferocity.
When the Battery at length departed from Ewell the rain had completed its victory but at the same time had lost much of its prestige. The riders, abandoning illusion, admitting frankly that they were wet to the skin, knowing that all their clothing was soaked, and satisfied that they could not be wetter than they were if the bottom fell out of the sky, simply derided the rain and plodded forward. Groups of them even disdained the weather in lusty song. But not George. George was exhausted. He was ready to fall off his horse. The sensation of fatigue about the knees and in the small of his back was absolute torture. Resmith told him to ride without stirrups and dangle his legs. The relief was real, but only temporary. And the Battery moved on at the horribly monotonous, tiring walk. Epsom was incredibly distant. George gave up hope of Epsom; and he was right to do so, for Epsom never came. The Battery had taken a secondary road to the left which climbed slowly to the Downs. At the top of this road, under the railway bridge, just before fields ceased to be enclosed, stood the two girls. Their bicycles leaned against the brick wall. They had taken off their mackintoshes, and it was plain from their clinging coloured garments that they too were utterly drenched. They laughed no more. Over the open Downs the wind was sweeping the rain in front of it; and the wind was the night wind, for the sky had begun to darken into dusk. The Battery debouched into a main road which seemed full of promise, but left it again within a couple of hundred yards, and was once more on the menacing, high, naked Downs, with a wide and desolate view of unfeatured plains to the north. The bugles sounded sharply in the wet air, and the Battery, now apparently alone in the world, came to a halt. George dropped off his horse. A multiplicity of orders followed. Amorphous confusion was produced out of a straight line. This was the bivouacking ground. And there was nothing–nothing but the track by which they had arrived, and the Downs, and a distant blur to the west in the shape of the Epsom Grand Stand, and the heavy, ceaseless rain, and the threat of the fast-descending night. According to the theory of the Divisional Staff a dump furnished by the Army Service Corps ought to have existed at a spot corresponding to the final letter in the words ‘Burgh Heath’ on the map, but the information quickly became general that no such dump did in practice exist. To George the situation was merely incredible. He knew that for himself there was only one reasonable course of conduct. He ought to have a boiling bath, go to bed with his dressing-gown over his pyjamas, and take a full basin of hot bread-and-milk adulterated by the addition of brandy–and sleep. Horses and men surged perilously around him. The anarchical disorder, however, must have been less acute than he imagined, for a soldier appeared and took away his horse; he let the reins slip from his dazed hand. The track had been transformed into a morass of viscous mud.
VII
It was night. The heavy rain drove out of the dark void from every direction at once, and baptized the chilled faces of men as though it had been discharged from the hundred-holed rose of a full watering-can. The right and the left sections of the Battery were disposed on either side of the track. Fires were burning. Horse-lines had been laid down, and by the light of flickering flames the dim forms of tethered animals could be seen with their noses to the ground pessimistically pretending to munch what green turf had survived in the mud. Lanterns moved mysteriously to and fro. In the distance to the west more illuminations showed that another unit had camped along the track. The quartermaster of No. 2, had produced meagre tinned meats and biscuits from his emergency stores, and had made a certain quantity of tea in dixies; he had even found a half-feed of oats for the horses; so that both horses and men were somewhat appeased. But the officers had had nothing, and the Army Service Corps detachment was still undiscoverable.
George sat on an empty box at the edge of the track, submissive to the rain. Resmith had sent him to overlook men cutting straight branches in a wood on Park Downs, and then he had overlooked them as, with the said branches and with waterproofs laced together in pairs, they had erected sleeping shelters for the officers under the imperfect shelter of the sole tree within the precincts of the camp. From these purely ornamental occupations he had returned in a condition approximating to collapse, without desire and without hope. The invincible cheerfulness of unseen men chanting music-hall songs in the drenched night made no impression on him, nor the terrible staccato curtness of a N.C.O. mounting guard. Volition had gone out of him; his heart was as empty as his stomach.
Then a group of officers approached, with a mounted officer in the middle of them, and a lantern swinging. The group was not proceeding in any particular direction, but following the restless motions of the uneasy horse. George, suddenly startled, recognized the voice of the rider; it was Colonel Hullocher’s voice. The Brigade-Commander had come in person to investigate the melancholy inexcusable case of No. 2 Battery, and he was cursing all men and all things, and especially the Divisional Staff. It appeared that the Staff was responsible for the hitch of organization. During the day the Staff had altered its arrangements for No. 2 Battery of the Second Brigade, and had sent an incomplete message to the Army Service Corps Headquarters. The A.S.C. had waited in vain for the completion of the message, and had then, at dark, dispatched a convoy with provender for No. 2 with instructions to find No. 2. This convoy had not merely not found No. 2–it had lost itself, vanished in the dark universe of rain. But let not No. 2 imagine that No. 2 was blameless! No. 2 ought to have found the convoy. By some means, human or divine, by the exercise of second sight or the vision of cats or the scent of hounds, it ought to have found the convoy, and there was no excuse for it not having done so. Such was the expressed opinion of Colonel Hullocher, and a recital by Major Craim of the measures taken by him did nothing to shake that opinion.
“How exactly do you stand now?” the Colonel fiercely demanded.
“The men and the horses will manage fairly well with what they’ve had, sir,” said the Major; and he incautiously added: “But my officers haven’t had anything at all.”
The Colonel seized the opening with fury.
“What the devil do I care for your officers? It’s your horses and your men that I’m thinking about. It’s to-morrow morning that I’m thinking about. I–“
The horse, revolving, cut short his harangue.
“Keep that d–d lantern out of his eyes!” cried the Colonel.
George jumped up, and as he did so the water swished in his boots, and a stream poured off his cap. The horse was being fatally attracted towards him. The beam of the lantern fell on him, illuminating before his face the long slants of rain.
“Ha! Who’s this?” the Colonel demanded, steadying the horse.
George smartly saluted, forgetting his fatigue.
“You, is it? And what are _you_ supposed to be doing? Look here–” Colonel Hullocher stopped in full career of invective, remembering military etiquette. “Major, I suggest you send Mr. Cannon with some men to find the convoy.” The Major having eagerly concurred, the Colonel went on: “Take a few men and search every road and track between here and Kingswood Station–systematically. Kingswood’s the rail-head, and somewhere between here and there that convoy is bound to be. Systematically, mind! It’s not a technical job. All that’s wanted is common sense and thoroughness.”
The Colonel’s gaze was ruthlessly challenging. George met it stiffly. He knew that the roads, if not the tracks, had already been searched. He knew that he was being victimized by a chance impulse of the Colonel’s. But he ignored all that. He was coldly angry and resentful. Utterly forgetting his fatigue, he inimically surveyed the Colonel’s squat, shining figure in the cavalry coat, a pyramid of which the apex was a round head surmounted by a dripping cap.
“Yes, sir,” he snapped.
By rights the tyrant ought to have rolled off his horse dead. But Colonel Hullocher was not thus vulnerable. He could give glance for glance with perhaps any human being on earth, and indeed thought little more of subalterns than of rabbits.
He finished, after a pause:
“You will be good enough, Major, to let this officer report to me personally when he has found the convoy.”
“Certainly, sir.”
The horse bounded away, scattering the group.
Rather less than half an hour later George had five men (including his own servant and Resmith’s) and six lanterns round a cask, on the top of which was his map. There were six possible variations of route to Kingswood Station, and he explained them all, allotting one to each man and keeping one for himself. He could detect the men exchanging looks, but what the looks signified he could not tell. He gave instructions that everybody should go forward until either discovering the convoy or reaching Kingswood. He said with a positive air of conviction that by this means the convoy could not fail to be discovered. The men received the statement with strict agnosticism; they could not see things with the eye of faith, fortified though they were with tea and tinned meats. An offered reward of ten shillings to the man who should hit on the convoy did not appreciably inspirit them. George himself was of course not a bit convinced by his own argument, and had not the slightest expectation that the convoy would be found. The map, which the breeze lifted and upon which the rain drummed, seemed to be entirely unconnected with the actual facts of the earth’s surface. The party mounted tired, unwilling horses and filed off. Some soldiers in the darkness, watching the string of lanterns, gave a half-ironical ‘Hurrah.’ One by one, as the tracks bifurcated, George dispatched his men, with renewed insistent advice, and at last he and his horse were alone on the Downs.
His clothes were exceedingly heavy with all the moisture they had imbibed. Repose had mitigated his fatigue, but every slow, slouching step of the horse intensified it again–and at a tremendous rate. Still, he did not care, having mastered the great truth that he would either tall off the horse in exhaustion or arrive at Kingswood–and which of the alternatives happened did not appear to him to matter seriously. The whole affair was fantastic; it was unreal, in addition to being silly. But, real or unreal, he would finish it. If he was a phantom and Kingswood a mirage, the phantom would reach the mirage or sink senseless into astral mud. He had Colonel Hullocher in mind, and, quite illogically, he envisaged the Colonel as a reality. Often he had heard of the ways of the Army, and had scarcely credited the tales told and printed. Well, he now credited them. Was it conceivable that that madman of a Colonel had packed him, George, off on such a wild and idiotic errand in the middle of the night, merely out of caprice? Were such doings–
He faintly heard voices through the rain, and the horse started at this sign of life from the black, unknown world beyond the circle of lantern-light. George was both frightened and puzzled. He thought of ghosts and haunted moors. Then he noticed a penumbra round about the form of what might be a small hillock to the left of the track. He quitted the track, and cautiously edged his horse forward, having commendably obscured the lantern beneath his overcoat. The farther side of the hillock had been tunnelled to a depth of perhaps three feet; a lantern suspended somehow in the roof showed the spade which had done the work; it also showed, within the cavity, the two girls who had accompanied the Brigade from Wimbledon, together with two soldiers. The soldiers were rankers, but one of the girls talked with perfect correctness in a very refined voice; the other was silently eating. Both were obviously tired to the limit of endurance, and very dirty and draggled. The gay colours of their smart frocks had, however, survived the hardships of the day. George was absolutely amazed by the spectacle. The vagaries of autocratic Colonels were nothing when compared to this extravagance of human nature, this glimpse of the subterranean life of regiments, this triumphant and forlorn love-folly in the midst of the inclement, pitiless night. And he was touched, too. The glimmer of the lantern on the green and yellow of the short skirts half disclosed under the mackintoshes was at once pathetic and exciting. The girl who had been eating gave a terrible scream; she had caught sight of the figure on horseback. The horse shied violently and stood still. George persuaded him back into the track and rode on, guessing that already he had become a genuine phantom for the self-absorbed group awakened out of its ecstasy by the mysterious vision of a nightrider.
Half a mile farther on he saw the red end of a cigarette swimming on the sea of darkness; his lantern had expired, and he had not yet tried to relight it.
“Hi there!” he cried. “Who are you?”
The cigarette approached him, in a wavy movement, and a man’s figure was vaguely discerned.
“A.S.C. convoy, sir.”
“Where are you supposed to be going to?”
“No. 2 Battery, Second Brigade, sir. Can’t find it, sir. And we’ve got off the road. The G.S. wagon fell into a hole and broke an axle, sir.”
“And what do you think you’re doing?”
“Waiting for daylight, sir.”
The man’s youthful voice was quite cheerful.
“D’you know what time it is?”
“No, sir.”
“How many other vehicles have you got?”
“Three altogether, sir. Six horses.”
“Well, I’m from No. 2 Battery, and I’m looking for you. You’ve unharnessed, I suppose.”
“Oh yes, sir, and fed.”
“Well, you’d better harness up your other two carts like lightning and come along with me. Show me the way. We’ll see about the G.S. wagon later on.”
“It’s about a hundred yards from here, sir.”
For the second time that evening George forgot fatigue. Exultation, though carefully hidden, warmed and thrilled every part of his body. Tying his horse behind one of the vehicles, he rode comfortably on hard packages till within sight of the Battery camp, when he took saddle again and went off alone to find a celebrated inn near the Epsom Grand Stand, where Colonel Hullocher and other grandees had billeted themselves. The Colonel was busy with his Adjutant, but apparently quite ready to eat George.
“Ah! You, is it? Found that convoy?”
George answered in a tone to imply that only one answer was conceivable:
“Yes, sir.”
“Brought it back?”
“Part of it, sir.”
He explained the circumstances.
The Colonel coughed, and said:
“Have a whisky-and-soda before you go?”
George reflected for an instant. The Colonel seemingly had a core of decency, but George said in his heart: “I’ve not done with you yet, my fat friend.” And aloud, grimly.
“Thank you very much, sir. But I shall ask you to excuse me.”
Both the Colonel and the Adjutant were pardonably shaken by this unparalleled response.
The Colonel barked:
“Why? Teetotaller?”
“No, sir. But I’ve eaten nothing since lunch, and a glass of whisky might make me drunk.”
Colonel Hullocher might have offered George some food to accompany the whisky, but he did not. He had already done a marvel; a miracle was not to be expected. He looked at George and George looked at him.
“No doubt you’re right. Good night.”
“Good night, sir.” George saluted and marched off.
VIII
He prepared to turn in. The process was the simplest in the world. He had only to wrap a pair of blankets round his soaked clothes, and, holding them in place with one hand, creep under the shelter. There were four shelters. The Major had a small one, nearest the trunk of the tree, and the others were double shelters, to hold two officers apiece. He glanced about. The invisible camp was silent and still, save for a couple of lieutenants who were walking to and fro like young ducks in the heavy rain. Faint fires here and there in the distance showed how the troops were spread over the Downs. Heaven and earth were equally mysterious and inscrutable. He inserted himself cautiously into the aperture of the shelter, where Resmith already lay asleep, and, having pushed back his cap, arranged his right arm for a pillow. The clammy ground had been covered with dry horse-litter. As soon as he was settled the noise of the rain ceaselessly pattering on the waterproof became important. He could feel the chill of the wind on his feet, which, with Resmith’s, projected beyond the shelter. The conditions were certainly astounding. Yet, despite extreme fatigue, he was not depressed. On the contrary he was well satisfied. He had accomplished something. He had been challenged, and had accepted the challenge, and had won. The demeanour of the mess when he got back to the camp clearly indicated that he had acquired prestige. He was the man who had organized an exhaustive search for the convoy and had found the convoy in the pitchy blackness. He was the man who had saved the unit from an undeserved shame. The mess had greeted him with warm food. Perhaps he had been lucky–the hazard of a lighted cigarette in the darkness! Yes, but luck was in everything. The credit was his, and men duly gave it to him, and he took it. He thought almost kindly of Colonel Hullocher, against whom he had measured himself. The result of the match was a draw, but he had provided the efficient bully with matter for reflection. After all, Hullocher was right. When you were moving a Division, jobs had to be done, possible or impossible; human beings had to be driven; the supernatural had to be achieved. And it had been! That which in the morning existed at Wimbledon now existed on the Downs. There it lay, safe and chiefly asleep, in defiance of the weather and of accidents and miscarriage! And the next day it would go on.
The vast ambitions of the civilian had sunk away. He thought, exalted as though by a wonderful discovery:
“_There is something in this Army business_!”
He ardently desired to pursue it further. He ardently desired sleep and renewal so that he might rise afresh and pursue it further. What he had done and been through was naught, less than naught. To worry about physical discomforts was babyish. Inviting vistas of knowledge, technical attainment, experience, and endurance stretched before him, illuminating the night. His mind dwelt on France, on Mons, on the idea of terror and cataclysm. And it had room too for his wife and children. He had had no news of them for over twenty-four hours; and he had broken his resolve to write to Lois every day; he had been compelled to break it. But in the morning, somehow, he would send a telegram and he would get one.
“If it’s true the French Government has left Paris–“
The nocturnal young ducks were passing the shelter.
“And who says it’s true? Who told you, I should like to know?”
“The Major has heard it.”
“Rats! I lay you a fiver the Allies are in Berlin before Christmas.”