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The Blower of Bubbles

by Beverley Baxter · English · Gutenberg #40501 · 370,526 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Blower of Bubbles

Author: Beverley Baxter


        
Release date: August 14, 2012 [eBook #40501]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLOWER OF BUBBLES ***

_The_ BLOWER _of_ BUBBLES


BY

ARTHUR BEVERLEY BAXTER


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
1920

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


  TO
  MY MOTHER




PREFACE


It was one of Dumas' characters, I believe, who said: "I do not
apologize--I explain." The purpose of this brief preface is to explain
the many imperfections which of necessity appear in this volume.

It was at a dance after Armistice, given by American officers in the
Palace Hotel, London, that I met a young lady who had landed from New
York two days previously.

"My goodness!" she said, "they don't have any furnaces in their houses
here; and I've been trying all day to buy some rubbers, and no one knew
what I meant. My goodness! but they're backward over here."

I looked at her face and recognized the joyful mania of the explorer.
She was "discovering" England.

Before the war, England was "discovered" fairly often--but during the
war it became the passion of hundreds of thousands, Americans,
Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians, Newfoundlanders, South
Africans--we all brought our particular national viewpoint and centered
it on the "tight little Island," nor were we backward about telling the
English of their faults. Each one of us stated (or implied) that his
own country was the special acreage of God, and that the Kaiser ought
to be made to live in foggy London as a punishment.

And for more than four years the Old Country listened patiently as the
throngs of adventurers poured in from the world's outskirts. The
stately homes of England were opened in their stately, hospitable way;
English taxicab drivers insulted and robbed us just as cheerfully as
they did their own countrymen; English girls proved the best of
comrades; and the Englishman proper continued to be the world's
greatest enigma.

So, in claiming admittance to that vast throng that has already
discovered England, I do so with a certain humility but a hope that,
when my words are sifted, some little ore of truth may be discovered at
the bottom.

In three of the five stories of this collection, I have usurped the
power of the Wizard of Oz, and have looked through three pairs of
glasses. In "The Blower of Bubbles" an Englishman subjects his own
country to analysis; in "Mr. Craighouse of New York, Satirist," the
glasses used are American and the medium is a New Yorker; in "The Airy
Prince" (the last and favorite child) a girl of sixteen from Picardy is
transplanted by aeroplane for one full day in wartime London.

In the remaining two stories I have endeavored to paint something of
city life in Canada in the one, and in the other to do some little
justice to that least understood type--the French Canadian.

During an interesting but undistinguished career of nearly four years
with the Canadian Forces, I realized that, although the army gives one
plenty of food for thought, it sometimes fails to supply facilities for
assimilation. _Par exemple_: "Mr. Craighouse of New York, Satirist,"
was started in hospital at Abbéville, France, where my fellow-patients
assumed me to be a lovelorn swain, writing a love-letter that never
left off. Later, "Mr. Craighouse" developed a couple of thousand words
in a charming home of Scotland. The last part of the story was finished
at a table in the Turkish baths of the Royal Automobile Club, London,
where the attendants were good enough to consider me eccentric, but
apparently not violent.

Under the robust companionship of several normal and talkative
subalterns, "The Blower of Bubbles" was written in a hut at Seaford
Camp during the month of November, 1918. As my stove was a consistent
performer, nearly every evening a few choice souls gathered for cocoa
and refreshments from home; and if their host persisted in writing at
his improvised table it did not disturb their good-fellowship in the
least, providing the author did not threaten to read his "stuff" aloud.

It was in that hut in the mud of Seaford that, one November morning, a
little before eleven o'clock, we heard the sound of ships' sirens in
Newhaven Harbor some miles away; then a distant shouting, that grew in
a great crescendo, as it rode across the downs on the throats of
thousands of soldiers, and passed us in one great prolonged roar, "The
Germans have signed!"

We missed Armistice Day in London, but I like to think of the thirty
Canadian officers, most of them veterans of many battles, gathered in
the mess of that bleakest of camps, while one chap at the piano played
the national anthems of the nations who had fought ... and in voices
that were not too steady we echoed the toast: "To the Allies and
America."

And so "I do not apologize--I explain."

In avoiding the "war-story" type, I have followed my own inclinations,
and have taken rather the inconspicuous parts played by ordinary people
who had never dreamed of being actors in the world's greatest drama. To
avoid the background of war would be utterly impossible, for war has
been a fever in our blood these last four years, and not in one or two
generations will our veins be free of it.

If it seems in these stories that there is a recurrent note on the
necessity of artistic expression for the Old Country, the reason for it
is that we came from the Dominions to a land we all knew, because
English literature had made England our Mother-Country in the real
sense of the word. It is the hope of many of us that the artists of
Britain--whether they be writers, painters, or composers--will yet
realize that the Empire looks to them, as well as to the knights of the
air, to bridge the seas, and by their art make us feel as great a
kinship in peace as we did in war. Dickens and Burns were more than
writers; they were literature's ambassadors, and played no
inconsiderable part in empire-building.

Perhaps, as the study of ordinary people gripped by emotions which left
no one ordinary, this volume of stories may be of some little interest.
They filled many dull hours in the writing.... It would be a rich
reward for the author if he could think that they do away with a few
dull hours in the reading.

ARTHUR BEVERLEY BAXTER




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                PAGE

  I. THE BLOWER OF BUBBLES                                1

 II. PETITE SIMUNDE                                      97

III. THE MAN WHO SCOFFED                                141

 IV. THE AIRY PRINCE                                    191

  V. MR. CRAIGHOUSE OF NEW YORK, SATIRIST               287




_The_ BLOWER _of_ BUBBLES

I


Snow was falling in Sloane Square, quarreling with rain as it fell.
Lamps were gleaming sulkily in Sloane Square, as though they resented
being made to work on such a night, and had more than a notion to down
tools and go out of business altogether. Motor-cars were passing
through Sloane Square, with glaring lights, sliding and skidding like
inebriated dragons; and the clattering hoofs of horses drawing vagabond
cabs sounded annoyingly loud in the damp-charged air of Sloane Square.

It was Christmas Eve in Sloane Square, and the match-woman, the vender
of newspapers, and the impossible road-sweeper were all exacting the
largesse of passers-by, who felt that the six-penny generosity of a
single night atoned for a year's indifference to their lot. People were
wishing each other a merry Christmas in Sloane Square, as they
struggled along under ungainly parcels. The muffin-man was doing an
enormous trade.

And I looked from my window and prayed for Aladdin's Lamp or the Magic
Carpet, that I might place a thousand miles between myself and Sloane
Square.

There was a knock at the door.

"Enter the Slave of the Lamp," said I, and the door opened to admit--my
landlady, Mrs. Mulvaney.

"Will you be dining in?" she said. Her Irish accent hardly helped the
illusion of the all-potent slave.

"And why not?" I asked.

"Ach, nothing, sor. I only thought----"

"An unwomanly thing to do, Mrs. Mulvaney."

"You're afther being a strange one, dining alone on Christmas Eve."

"Then join me, Mrs. Mulvaney."

I swear she blushed, and I felt more than a little envious of the
nature which could convert such a vinegary attempt at condescension
into a gallantry.

"F'what would I be doing, taking dinner wid a child like you?"

I was twenty-five, but Mrs. Mulvaney looked on all men as equally
immature.

"And have you not got no friends?" she went on, but I stopped her with
a gesture.

"Thank Heaven--no!" I said. "I am one of intellectuality's hermits. An
educated man in London is like the bell-cow of the herd--a thing
apart."

"You're a great fool, I'm afther thinking."

"The foolish always damn the wise," I answered, with an attempt at
epigrammatic misquotation.

Mrs. Mulvaney heaved a sigh. Its very forcefulness recalled the
nautical meaning of the verb.

"You'd be a sight happier outside," she said. "Holy Mary knows I
wouldn't be driving you into the streets, but I'm worried you'd get
cross wid yourself at home."

To get rid of her, I put on my coat and went out. Perhaps she was
right; things would have been intolerable at home. Home! Such a
travesty of the word! The sickly lamplight of Sloane Square was
preferable.

"Merry Christmas, guv'nor!" said the road-sweeper.

"Merry fiddlesticks!" I growled, and gave him sixpence. I tried to
avoid the vender of newspapers, but he spotted my fur collar with the
instinct of a mendicant, handing me a paper and his blessing.

"'Appy Christmas, milord!" said he.

I paid him a shilling for his diplomacy.

Thinking to escape the match-woman, I altered my course, but with the
intuition of her sex she contrived to put herself directly in my path.

"It's a cauld nicht," she moaned in a rickety, quavering Scottish
voice--"a cauld, wintry nicht. Ye'll be haein' a wee box o' matches,
aw'm thinkin'!"

I gave her twopence for them, and she shivered with cold as her skinny
fingers clutched the coins. I can think of no excuse for my parsimony
except the fact that I didn't need the wretched box--matches were not
yet a luxury of the very exclusive.

Yes--in all Sloane Square, on that damp and foggy Christmas Eve in the
year 1913, I doubt if a more morose, self-satisfied, cynical human
being plunged into the mists than I. I was unhappy, and reveled in my
very unhappiness. If it had been in my power, I would have sent a cloud
of gloom into every home and over every hearth in London. There was
something splendid, something classical, in my melancholy; it was like
Hamlet's, but greater than Hamlet's, for he knew the reason of his
mood, while mine was born of an intangible superiority to my day!

It is not easy, even now, to write of those days. The figure that
crosses the screen of memory reminds me of Chevy Slyme--a debt-paying,
respectable Chevy Slyme, forsooth!--but just as sulkily swaggering,
just as superior, and not quite so human; for Chevy, at least, inspired
the friendship of Mr. Tigg.


II

Unconsciously following the bus route, I emerged eventually on
Piccadilly, and was jostled and ogled and blessed and cursed with the
greatest heartiness. Somewhere near Bond Street I collided heavily with
a young man who was trying to negotiate the crowd and at the same time
lose nothing of the shop windows' display.

"A thousand devils!" I muttered, recoiling from the impact.

"A thousand pardons!" he said, raising his hat. The graceful lilt of
his voice was peculiarly reminiscent; his smooth brow and silky fair
hair were both familiar and elusive.

"One moment----" He gazed into my face with a searching look, keeping
his hat poised in the air as if the better to concentrate his thoughts.
"Not the Pest?" he said.

I nodded, and, if the truth be told, felt not a little pleased at the
sound of the old _nom d'école_ earned when I was at Westminster.

"And how," I said, "is the Blower of Bubbles?"

For answer he replaced his hat at a rakish angle and shook my hand with
both his for what seemed a full minute, the crowd parting
good-naturedly like a wave encircling a rock.

"My dear old Pest," he said, "we shall dine together."

"I'm sorry, but----"

"There is a perfectly vile restaurant half-a-mile from here, that has
the best violinist and the worst cook in London."

"My dear chap----"

"Of all the luck! Think of my running into you on Christmas Eve!"

And just then I noticed that we were no longer standing still, but
proceeding up a side street, arm-in-arm, while his disengaged hand
indicated the passing scene as if it were the most gorgeous bazaar of
the Orient. He spoke with extraordinary rapidity, except in uttering
certain words, when he would make a slurring pause, as a singer will
let a note melt into a pianissimo, then race on again with renewed
vigor. It was a fascinating trick of speech, and, added to the subtle
inflections of his voice, never failed to startle one into the closest
attention.

I turned to him once with some remark on my lips, and noticed that his
eyes were dancing with merriment.

"What is it, Pest?" he cried. "Out with it!"

I smiled gloomily; but still it was a smile.

"Why," I said, "aren't the lamps in Sloane Square bright like these?"

He didn't answer. Probably he knew the truth would have hurt.


III

What a hole to dine in on Christmas Eve! Such waiters--such
guests--such food--such wine!

I believe the proprietor owned three such establishments, each, in a
triumph of irony, called "Arcadia." The very linen of the waiters
drooped disconsolately, and the whole place reeked of cabbage and wet
umbrellas. My spirits, which had risen momentarily from their classic
depths, sank like the sands of an egg-timer.

"My dear fellow," I said, "you can't mean to dine here?"

An oily waiter ambled up to us and wrung his hands in a paroxysm of
welcome.

"Your tabil, Meester Norman," he said in some nondescript foreign
dialect, "iss ready."

Good heavens! The Blower of Bubbles had even ordered dinner in advance!
With the feelings of an unwilling martyr, I followed my friend and his
escort past tawdry millinery saleswomen, dining in state with their
knights-errant of the haberdashery stores; by a table where a woman was
gazing admiringly at a man with a face as expressionless as a pumpkin;
through a lane of chattering, laughing, rasping denizens of the London
that is neither West End nor East End--of people whose clothes, faces,
and voices merged into a positive debauch of mediocrity.

When we were seated and had ordered something from the waiter, I turned
to Basil Norman for an explanation.

"What is it?" I asked. "An affair with a seamstress, or are you just
looking for 'copy'?"

He laughed and lit a cigarette.

"Pest," he said, "this is a caprice of mine, a tit-bit for my vanity.
You would have chosen the 'Trocadero' or the 'Ritz,' with all the
tyranny of Olympian and largessed waiters with whom it is impossible to
attain the least pretence of equality. I prefer 'Arcadia,' where I am
something of a patron saint, and am even consulted by the proprietor."

"You play to humble audiences."

"Quietly, Pest--the proprietor might hear you. He is a very Magog for
dignity, I assure you, in spite of his asthma."

"I gather, then, that you are a regular diner here?"

"Hardly that. But I am a little more consistent than most of his
patrons. To be candid"--he leaned towards me as if it were a secret of
the first magnitude--"it's his cook."

"His what?"

"His cook. Really, I'm afraid he's hardly first class."

"I am certain of it."

"He would have made an admirable medieval Jesuit, but, as a matter of
fact, I wonder Steinburg----"

"The proprietor?"

"Yes. I don't know why he keeps him on. He says the fellow has a couple
of blind children, and if he were dismissed under a cloud he would have
trouble in securing employment. But that's not business. The fellow's
an ass, isn't he?"

Whereupon his face beamed with delight, and his gray eyes twinkled like
diamonds. My comment on the matter was stifled by the arrival of
_hors-d'oeuvre_. I had no idea that one tray could hold such a variety
of unpalatable things. At the table next to us a woman laughed
boisterously, her shoulders, which were fat and formless, vibrating
like blanc-mange.

"Ah!" said Basil Norman; "Klotz has arrived."

He indicated a low platform, where a dingy pianist, pimply of
countenance and long of hair, was strumming the barbaric discords that
always accompany the tuning of stringed instruments. A violinist, with
his back towards us, was strangling his instrument into submission;
while a cellist, possessed of enormous eyebrows and a superb immobility
of pasty-facial expressionlessness, sat by his cello as though he had
been lured there under false pretenses, and had no intention of taking
any part in the proceedings--unless forced to do so by a writ of
habeas-corpus. A fourth musician, who seemed all shirt and collar, blew
fitfully into a flute, as if he realized it was an irrelevant thing,
and was trying to rouse it to a sense of responsibility.

"Which," I asked, "is Klotz?"

As I spoke the violinist turned about and caught my host's eye. They
both bowed--Norman cordially; the musician, I thought, with restraint.
The fellow stood out as a man apart from his accomplices; his high
forehead and dreamy eyes were those of an artist, though a receding
chin robbed his face of strength. He was the type one sees so
often--able to touch, but never grasp, the cup of success.

"Klotz," said Norman, "is superb. He has the touch of the artist about
him. His tone is not always good, and sometimes he scratches; but when
he is at his best he does big things. So many people can perform at
music--just as so many write at words--but Klotz plays with color. His
art has all the charm of a day in April. He will caress a phrase
according to his mood, like a mother crooning to her child. To know how
to hesitate before a note in a melody, as a worshiper hesitates at the
entrance to a shrine, is Art, and an Art that cannot be taught.

"It is so with painters, writers, musicians--they must have that sense
of color, that instinct that brings each subtle nuance of expression
into being."

I began to feel bored.

Suddenly the orchestra became animated and burst into a waltz, one of
those ageless, rhythmic compositions that might have been the very
first or the very last waltz ever written. Supported by wailing strings
and the irrelevant flute, the enjoyment of the diners took on fresh
impetus. The lady with the shoulders became a vibrating obbligato. The
pumpkin-faced man beamed fatuous delight, an electric light behind him
giving the odd effect that he was illuminated inside like a Hallow-e'en
figure. A girl, who might have been pretty if she hadn't rouged, took a
puff from her toilet-case and powdered her nose. She felt that the
evening was commencing. Over the whole scene my melancholy brooded as a
ghostly presence. To me it seemed like the dominant seventh in a chord
of surfeiting commonplaceness; once it was heard, the whole pitch of
the evening would alter to another key.

Fortunately the dominant seventh remained unheard.

The waltz stopped, and we turned our undivided attention to dinner.

"Klotz," said my host, pouring me a glass of wine, "should have made a
mark, but----"

"Damn Klotz!"

"That has been done, Pest. The Bricklayers' Union, or something equally
esthetic, took exception to him for one reason or another, and
prevailed upon its sister-cabal to debar him from the big orchestras.
To offend your Union, dear boy, is to accomplish the total eclipse of
your future. Even genius to-day is subject to regulations. Klotz is in
a worse position than a clerk with a Board School education trying to
secure employment in a London bank."

"Confound it!" I said, "there must be some spheres reserved for
gentlemen."

His twinkling eyes steadied, and a dreamy look crept into them. "Pest,"
he murmured, "some day England is going to thank God for the
gentlemen--who were educated at Board Schools. Listen!--the cellist is
playing Saint-Saëns."

Dinner--or the mess of foodstuffs dignified by the name--was almost
finished when Klotz, the violinist, started one of the rare melodies
which Wagner permitted himself--the Song to the Evening Star.

It was being beautifully played--even I would have admitted that--but I
could not account for the troubled look that crept into my companion's
face, driving the gayety and the whimsicality from it as a cloud
obscures the sunlight.

"Klotz," he said anxiously, "is in great sorrow."

"How the deuce," I muttered, with a feeling of creepiness stealing over
me, "can you tell that? Do you read it in his face?"

He shook his head. "Listen!" he said; "can't you hear it? Can't you
feel the tears in it?"

And in spite of myself I remained silent, held irresistibly by the
double fascination of the German's artistry and the sense of mystery
engendered by Norman. The last sob of the G string quivered to its
finish. The crowd applauded perfunctorily, then applied themselves to
the more essential things of life--food, wine and noise.

Rousing myself from the reverie into which I had fallen, I turned to
Norman, and found his chair vacated. I started. He had reached the
platform, and was talking earnestly to the violinist. Half-contemptuous
and half-interested, I watched the pantomime as they talked. Norman's
hands were emphasizing some point, and every gesture was a pleasure to
the eye; the musician was protesting, but with steadily abating
determination. Then the scene came to a climax, and the German
disappeared.

Holding the violin in his arms, Basil Norman mounted the platform, the
fingers of his left hand picking quiet, pizzicato notes from the
strings.

"My friends----" His voice traveled like sound on the ocean at
twilight; the room subsided into silence, and diners craned their necks
to see him. The woman with the shoulders brought them to a standstill,
like an electric fan that had lost its current.

"My friends"--what a charming voice the fellow had!--"I do not want to
bring a note of sorrow into your happiness. You are here, like my
companion and myself, for enjoyment; but Herr Klotz ... his wife is
very ill; she is perhaps dying; and, my friends, it is very hard that
he should play while his wife is dying ... on Christmas Eve ... in a
strange country. You are English, and I know you are kind. I have sent
him home, and I promised that I would take his place, as well as I can
take the place of such an artist. For you who work so hard, it is not
fair to spoil your happiness on this of all nights--but you will
forgive me? Good!"

And his face had a whimsical, tender look.

A murmur of sympathy rose from the crowd, but died away as he raised
the violin in his hands and brought from it a tone that breathed over
them like a benediction. It was Gounod's "_Ave Maria_," and the
pianist's fingers were mothering the keys as they had not done since
his ambition evaporated like a cloud on a summer day.

It was exquisite--haunting. It was a prayer to Mary, but a prayer sung
in a field of daisies and violets. There was sorrow in it, but it was
the grief of a girl over a shattered dream. It was mature artistry, yet
was born of sunshine and throbbed with the primrose sweetness of youth.
It touched one like the face of a beautiful child.

Still caressing the violin, he repeated the "_Ave Maria_," whistling a
unison. With almost any one else it would have been commonplace; with
him it was a sound more pleasing than any flute, and only accentuated
his sense of emancipation from the thrall of years. He played "_Still
wie die Nacht_," "_Old King Wenceslaus_," "_Meditation_" from Thaïs,
"_Intermezzo_" of Mascagni; and whatever he did, or however hackneyed
the piece, he surrounded it with a joyousness that trembled on the
brink of tears.

I looked at my watch; it was nearly midnight, and the evening so
dreaded was almost at a close. He had put down his violin with a
gesture of finality, when the prolonged outburst of applause changed
his decision, and, with another of those rare smiles, he took the
instrument once more.

    Maxwellton's braes are bonnie
      Where early fa's the dew,
    And it's there that Annie Laurie
      Gi'ed me her promise true....

The violin seemed to speak the words; and I'll swear there wasn't a
woman in the place who wasn't recalling the sweet innocence of her
first love. He had hardly finished, when the man with the face like a
pumpkin jumped to his feet, and I rubbed my eyes.

The fellow had changed. His face had expression. Confound it! there was
something rather splendid about his features--a kindliness--a----

"Young feller, m'lad," he was saying, "I knows I speaks for hevery one
when I says we ain't 'eard music like that there since we was knee-'igh
to a grass'opper, and I knows you won't take it hamiss if we was to
pass the 'at and----"

I held my breath. What would the Blower of Bubbles say?

"You're a brick, sir!" His voice was a mellow contrast to the other's.
"My friends, this gentleman has suggested that we pass the hat for our
poor friend Klotz."

"I didn't neither," protested the benefactor. "Leastways----"

But the woman of the shoulders cut him short by placing two shillings
beside him. It was tactful of her, a kindly thing to do, and again I
was amazed. There was a womanly, motherly look about her as she turned
away, and her eyes were radiant like stars in a mist.

I think I gave ten bob--it must have been a considerable amount, for
the girl who would have been pretty if she hadn't rouged looked
straight into my eyes and said something that sounded like a blessing.
I hope it was; she made me think of a little sister I once had.

And then we were walking together again in the street, and the crowds
were thinner than before. I cannot remember what we talked of, but I
know I said to him, "Where did you learn to play like that?"

And he answered, "My dear old boy, music must be loved, not learned."

Then we were in Sloane Square, at my flat, and I was thanking him, or
he was thanking me--I forget which; and he promised to call at noon
next day to take me to Klotz's home.... And the lamps in Sloane Square
seemed duller than before.

Selfishness does not die in an hour, but the bachelor who looked from
his window that night was a different man from the one who had spoken
to Mrs. Mulvaney. He was thinking ... and much is accomplished in
itself when a man is made to think.

A distant clock struck one.


IV

I have never known any one to change so little with the cycle of years
as Basil Norman. When he came to Westminster, at the age of twelve, he
had an easy nonchalance, a delightful insouciance, that never left him.
He went from form to form, trod the stone-flagged passages as others
did; but the youth of seventeen that left Westminster bore the same
smiling, detached personality as when he entered. The atmosphere of
tradition interested but did not drug him; the Elizabethan pancake
impressed him less than did a contemporary Edwardian soap-bubble.

Conscientious form-masters recognized his extraordinary abilities, and
gave him the benefit of well-worded and impressive homilies on
achievement. Sometimes for effect they quoted Latin. Norman would
counter with a "Greek remark." He never studied, but more than one
scholar owed success to the eleventh-hour coaching of Basil Norman.
Learning, like everything else, came to him as a needle to a magnet.

With a curious air of detachment he watched the panorama of schoolboy
life, noticing with a discerning eye the various strata upon which
public-school morality is founded, assigning the relative importance of
scholarship and cricket, and nodding knowingly as the process of
standardization brought similarity of speech, accent, thought, and
vocabulary to all his fellows.

He was like a Puck who had never been really young, but who refused to
become a day older.

For a few weeks he played cricket, but without reverence. During a
match he kept up (_sotto voce_, of course) a running commentary of
philosophy which, according to our ethics, was vulgar. I shudder to
think what he would have done if Westminster had adopted baseball.

On one occasion the captain of the eleven took upon himself to point
out to Basil Norman the error of his ways. The worthy demigod deplored
Norman's habit of lying on the grass during practice and inventing
couplets on the various members of the team. The captain also said
that, providing he would take the game seriously, there was a future
for him as a cricketer. Whereupon Norman, from his recumbent position,
misquoted most of the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, unblushingly
attributing Hamlet's indecision towards living to his doubts of himself
as a cricketer. When he finished he rose to his feet, and our comments
were frozen at the sight of his face.

His cheeks had a ghastly pallor and his eyes were brilliant, but with a
fixed, glaring intensity. And as we looked his expression changed--the
color returned with a glow of warmth to his skin, and his eyes were
gray and humorous. Being boys, we forgot about it as quickly as it had
happened.

The next Saturday we played Charterhouse, and though the score was
heavily against us, Norman gave the finest exhibition of batting I have
seen in public-school cricket, scoring a century and winning the match
for us. He was frail but lithe, and with an air of aplomb batted the
offerings of Charterhouse to all points of the compass. At the finish
of the game we crowded around him, but he smiled a little wearily, and
shook his head.

"I am finished with cricket," he said.

Bewilderment, then anathema, broke like a thunder-shower upon the head
of Basil Norman. We pleaded; we argued; we threatened; then we used
language which possessed the merit of forcefulness and frankness. We
called him a swine, a rotter, a skunk, and an absolute cad. Some one
ventured the opinion that he was a perfect stink, and we all stood
about him like the Klu Klux Klan trying a negro malefactor.

"Gentlemen," he said--and there was a delightful touch of irony in the
word--"you have come to bury, not to praise, me; yet, unlike Cæsar, I
am not ambitious."

"Swine!" said Smith tertius (or was it quartus?).

"In spite of the witty comment of me learned friend," said Norman,
after the manner of the leading counsel of the day, "I have always held
the opinion that life is a thing to be sipped, not drunk. I have played
cricket--_veni, vidi_, I scored a century! I would not spoil me
appetite, milords, by overgorging."

"Your conduct," said Grubbs, the captain, "is rotten. It shows that you
don't give a fig for the honor of the school. If you want to be a pig,
you can wear the cap of one." (We all knew what he meant, and admired
him frightfully for his venture into the quagmire of metaphor.) "We
will send you to Coventry until you come to your senses."

The culprit bowed airily.

"You will lose much more by my silence than I by yours," he said--and
it takes considerable courage to make such a statement to a tribunal of
schoolboys.

If Norman suffered from our aloofness, he took it with the same
nonchalance as he had taken our plaudits. Oddly enough, he had no
intimate friends, and all of us, partly out of resentment against his
pose of onlooker, and more from the love of torture which links the
schoolboy to the savage, performed our duty of silent punishment with a
zeal which deserved a better inspiration. We forgot how he had made
friends with the misfits whose square personalities were being drawn
through the round hole of public-school life. Little chaps he had taken
in hand on arrival when they wanted to weep for loneliness turned from
him as if he held contagion. All the sensitive, shrinking ones about
whom he had thrown his cloak of vivacity, and who were now grown bold
and self-reliant, let him pass from the Little Dean's Yard to his house
and through the ancient passages, a lonely debonair figure that always
smiled.... And no one spoke to him. I, whom he had named "The Pest,"
thus turning my naturally perverse sulkiness into a subject of jest and
good-humor, took a special delight in watching the man who had been
sentenced by his peers to solitude in the midst of a crowd.

His peers?... Was it Smith tertius (or quartus) who used the word
"swine"?

Two weeks had passed, and we were to play Winchester a decisive match
on our grounds, which, as land near the cathedral is rather difficult
to obtain, are almost a mile from the school.

The stage was set. Youthful scholars of ten and twelve walked in their
gowns, their brows knit with thought, their eyes blinking from
over-study. Little chaps struggled under the responsibility of silk
toppers, and conversed solemnly on the deterioration of the tuck-shop;
and the Olympian creature who was the head-boy of the school lounged
outside the scoring-booth as if he were "fed up" with nectar, and would
like some brown October ale for a change--a pose much favored by the
best people in England. There was an excellent audience of the
secondary sex, composed of proud mothers and apologetic sisters, whose
presence was necessitating a sort of Jekyll and Hyde attitude on the
part of their schoolboy relatives, who were endeavoring to be polite to
their "people" and at the same time give the impression to their
_confrères_ that the women were mere acquaintances--accidental dinner
partners, as it were.

No schoolboy of twelve likes to admit to a mother.

Surrounding the field there is a high iron fence, through the railings
of which, or on top, a motley collection of gamins cheer on their
wealthier brethren of the silk hats. Naturally no notice is taken of
these uninvited guests. It is quite all right for them to shout for
Westminster if it gives them any pleasure, but what has a silk hat in
common with a red kerchief and a slouch-cap?

On the day of the match they seemed in larger numbers than usual, and
the top of the fence was covered with urchins, who retained their
position of vantage as though the law of gravitation were no concern of
theirs, keeping up a shrill chorus as Winchester went out for a
moderate score.

With the odds all in our favor we went in to bat, Grubbs, the captain,
and I leading off. The first ball was wide, but to feel the play of my
muscles I took a perfunctory swing at it with my bat. The effect was
extraordinary.... The crowd of Cockney youngsters raised a volume of
sound as if my bat had been a baton and they a chorus.

"Gow it, Pest!" "That's the style, Gloomy!" "Troy t' other hend,
Bluntnose!" "Gee, he's got odd socks on!" "Nah then, Spiderlegs!" (The
blunt nose and the legs I admit to, but the accusation of odd socks was
pure malice.)

The next ball, with no twist at all, bowled me clean, and I walked off
the field to the tune of high-pitched shrieks of delight, and with a
face that flushed a dark red. My place was taken by Smith tertius (or
quartus), whose appearance caused an even greater furore than mine.

"'Ooray for Bones!" greeted the lanky youth as he emerged--"'im as his
the loife of the school!" (He was the most morose of boys.) "'I, Bones,
'oo did you crib from this time, eh?" (A subtle allusion to an ancient
offense which had almost earned him expulsion.)

The first ball came for Smith with an inviting hop. He watched it--went
to strike at it--changed his mind--reconsidered his decision, and swung
at the air as the ball passed over the bails by an inch, a feat which
seemed to gratify our enemies on the fence immensely.

"Nah then, Bones, non o' that there contortionizing!" "'It the ball,
Bones; don't miss it!"

And he did--a miserable little pop into the air; the chap in the slips
didn't have to move a foot to gather it in.

Mr. Smith then added his proof that Shakespeare was right when he said
in this world we have our exits and our entrances.

The next six batters went out for a score of eleven, bowled clean by
the most intimate volume of abusive chaff ever endured by a cricket
team. Skeletons were not only being taken from their closets, but
paraded brazenly before the eyes of the world. The secret history of
Westminster was screamed from the fence-tops.

It was after the loss of our eighth wicket that Grubbs and I, who had
stolen round by the street, stalked and discovered their ringleader.

"That's him," said the captain hoarsely--the situation was too tense to
permit of the niceties of grammar. I followed the line of his accusing
finger--and gasped. There was no mistaking those gray twinkling eyes,
although they were almost hidden behind a huge bandage, presumably for
mumps. He was dressed in a rough coster suit, with a villainous cap on
one side of his head and a bandit's red kerchief about his neck.

"It _is_ him," I said dramatically.

"I thought so," said Grubbs, and cleared his throat. "Norman," he
cried. "Kid--Norman."

The young rascal, who was sitting on top of a post, more like a Puck
than ever, swiveled about and solemnly winked one eye. "Do I understand
that the ban of silence is lifted?" he said from behind the mumps
bandage.

Grubbs considered, and then made a tactful and instantaneous decision.
(Small wonder that a few years later he was entrusted with a war
mission to Washington, of the utmost delicacy.)

"You've had your revenge," he said, "and the joke is on us. Call your
mob off, will you?"

"You're quite sure you wouldn't like us to encourage the remainder for
a change?"

"Quite sure."

"So be it, my captain."

He blew a whistle through his fingers, and in a moment the fence was
denuded of mortals like a tree smitten by an autumn gale. The Blower of
Bubbles removed his bandage, and presented a stocky youth with three
shillings.

"Buy sweets for the crowd," he said, "and mind--play fair."

"Right you har', guv'nor"; and the mob disappeared. And thus ended the
riot of the slouch-cap against the silk hat. To-day, if you are passing
the field during a match, you will see that the gamins are still there,
but they shout only for Westminster.

We were just turning away, when Basil Norman laid his hand on Grubbs's
forearm, as a girl might do, and his eyes had a wistful look.

"Before I change into more fitting garb," he said airily, then
paused.... My breathing seemed to stop at the sight--his face had gone
suddenly white, and his eyes were glazed.

"Grubbs!" he cried, and his voice sounded hollow. "Don't you
understand?... Oh, _you damned fool_, can't you see it's my heart?"


V

After Westminster I went to Cambridge, and succeeded in cultivating the
Oxford manner, by which all Cambridge men are known. When I emerged
from there I offered myself to the highest bidder (a sudden bankruptcy
of my father having made an occupation essential).

A London newspaper was the fortunate winner in the mad race for my
services, though it would have been difficult for it to lose, as there
was but one entry.

I became a writer of power--not quite so much so as the gentleman
to-day who wields his pen as he would a bludgeon, and succeeds in
writing a powerful article each week; but still I was a writer of
strength. I damned the present, doubted the future, and deplored the
past. I became an honored member of the group of London writers whose
entire genius is exhausted in criticism. I secured a bowing
acquaintance with Bernard Shaw, and always spoke of H. G. Wells as Mr.
Wells. It was obvious to me that to achieve literary success in England
one must abuse England--but especially any one who tried to change her.

Some of my _confrères_ sided with Bernard Shaw and attacked
middle-class morality and patriotism. Mr. Arnold Bennett had a certain
following, though we agreed that his Five Towns stories were not really
critical, but merely observant. We did not know at the time that he had
it in him to write _The Pretty Lady_, which was to be neither. For
myself, I was drawn towards Mr. Wells, and hit at everything like a
blindfolded pugilist.

We agreed with Granville Barker that Irving had reduced the value of
Shakespeare by over-staging; and we endorsed the opinion of a dramatic
critic, known to the public as "Jingle," who said that Shakespeare's
lines were often worthy of an Oxford undergraduate.

For pastime we abused Lord Roberts as a monomaniac, and Winston
Churchill as a kleptomaniac with a passion for stealing the thunder of
others. We even argued that the Church had lost its grip, and wrote
eloquently on the value of doubt. With admirable _esprit de corps_
we refrained from attacking the public-school system, though we
realized that one could always get a hearing by so doing.

And every year those schools were turning out their thousands and the
universities their hundreds; every year our number was strengthened by
well-routined brains that took to destructive criticism like a German
to barbarity.

Somebody was writing our puerile dramas; some one was producing the
trash which flooded our book-stalls; some brain was conceiving the
tawdry stuff which was educating the millions in the cinemas.... But we
thanked Heaven that we were not as other men. We were England's
educated class. For the education of England fails to teach one that a
country's art and literature are as vital to the nation as speech to
the individual.

I took a flat in Sloane Square and read Russian novels. Whenever I
discovered a new Russian author, I quoted him as if I had known him all
my life; it used to pain me to find how unrecognized he was by my
fellows. I attended the opera only on Russian nights, and I became a
devotee of the Russian dancers. I used to quote Russian in my paper,
and brought down the curse of a hundred typesetters upon my head.

I think every writer has his Russian period.

Once or twice I heard of Basil Norman, though our paths did not cross.
Some one claimed that Norman could have been a great violinist, if----
Another told me that _Punch_ had published a delicate little sonnet of
his that had the quality of tears about it. There was no question (he
said), if---- An artist I met had painted one landscape that defied
criticism--even ours--and I spoke of the exquisite coloring and detail
of the foreground.

"I could not have done that," he said, "but for Basil Norman, who
brooded over me like an inspiration. The work is mine, but the
conception his. If----"

Yet the world did not know of his existence. He remained a detached
personality, treading lightly where sorrow was, singing his song of the
sunlight wherever ears had become dulled with discouragement. A
fantastic, gentle, twinkling-eyed prince in a kingdom of butterflies
and violets. Try as I would, I could not refrain from contrasting my
life of literary vivisection with his primrose youth that seemed
eternal, springing from a genuine joy in living, a youth that was as
perfect as a melody of Chopin's.

"The happiest of Christmases, old Pest!"

The subject of my thoughts was standing before me, and the bells were
clamoring exultantly on the frosty air.

I gripped his hand, and something in his eyes told me the truth.... He
had come for me because I was lonely and needed him.

And the message of the bells took on a new meaning.


VI

We walked into the brisk, vibrating sunshine of a glorious Christmas
morning. He had taken my arm, and was chatting gayly on everything from
"cabbages to kings." Sometimes his nostrils dilated, and he would look
up as if he were actually drinking in the ozone of the air; and he
seemed younger than ever, with a joyousness born of sheer intoxication
with life. We walked for a mile, and all the time his mood was as happy
and stimulating as the sunshine sparkling in the December air.

Turning down a street, we passed a church from which the worshipers
were emerging, and a mother with two sons on the brink of manhood held
our attention for a moment. The lads had a gentleness of feature, an
unconscious grace that sometimes is the attribute of adolescence, and
their mother walked between them, proudly--they were her masterpieces.
For some time Norman chatted amiably, but I could see that a pensive
shadow was steadily creeping over the brilliancy of his spirits.

"They tell me," he said in subdued tones, breaking suddenly from the
topic in hand, "that both my parents hoped for a girl when I was born.
And sometimes I have thought that there is a little of the feminine in
my nature. I love the pretty things of life, and there are times when I
have an unmistakable sense of intuition."

I waited silently, but it was some moments before he resumed.

"Somewhere ahead," he said dreamily, "in months or years to come, I see
a vision of a woman in black, coming from church alone, and her head is
bowed with grief----" He passed his hand over his brow with a weary,
querulous movement, and shadows appeared beneath his eyes.
"Where--where are the two sons? Not dead?"

He smiled wistfully and replaced his hand in my arm.

"The picture we saw just now," he said, "is my conception of
England--the real England of noble mothers and noble sons. But
something tells me that the woman in black is England too, mourning for
her sons who will never--come back."

With an effort he squared his shoulders and forced a laugh from his
lips.

"Pest!" he cried, "I should be burned as a witch. Heigho! it's a pretty
go when one has to turn lugubrious on a Christmas morning. Cheer us up,
Pest. Tell me about yourself--whom you are in love with, and your
dreams for the days to come. Let's blow bubbles--shall we?--and see
what fresh beauties we can find in this charming adventure called
life!"

And I laughed with him, exchanging philosophies light as air; but the
chimes that rang out all about us had still another meaning. There was
a warning in the pealing discords that broke on the quiet air; there
was a requiem in the notes that lingered like an echo, then murmured
ominously to silence.

I shivered as though I had a chill, for something of Norman's spirit
had seized me, and I felt that both the warning and the requiem
were--for England.


VII

At the head of a stairway which one reached by going through a
tobacconist's, Herr Klotz greeted us with guttural cordiality. We asked
after his wife, and were told that she was a little better, though very
weak, and had insisted upon seeing her guests before they left, if they
would be so kind as to visit the sickroom.

On the contents of an enormous hamper sent from "Arcadia" (and, I am
certain, paid for by Norman) the German and the two of us lunched with
all the bonhomie of bohemians. Basil Norman was in the best of spirits,
so much so, in fact, that Klotz was constantly overcome with laughter,
and on three occasions was forced to rush away to acquaint his wife
"mit der amuzing veet of zee altogedderillustrious Herr Norman."

By no means least in importance, Klotz's little son of about four years
of age sat in a high chair and chuckled knowingly whenever he deemed
the humor had reached a necessary climax.

Though he was not unlike his father in the shape of his head, his chin
did not recede, and one could only assume the mother had supplied the
qualities lacking in the father. Never for a moment did the child lose
interest in the proceedings; he followed throughout the facial
expression and the play of conversation of his elders. His face
interested me so intensely that I found myself glancing at him whenever
his interest in the others gave me a chance; there was so much of
promise and heredity about him.

"And what," I said, during a momentary lull in the merriment, "is
Master Siegfried to become?" We had learned his name a moment before.

"Siegfried," said his father, "tell zee gentlemens vot you to be
already intend."

The little chap smiled, but without self-consciousness. "A
conducthtor," he lisped, "like Herr Nikith."

Klotz crossed his hands upon his ample waistcoat and beamed paternally.

"Your baton bring," he said, "und der score _Tristan_."

With profuse apologies for this display of juvenile precocity, the
violinist hurried after the boy, and reëntered a moment later with his
violin and a music-stand, which he proceeded to set up.

Siegfried followed close on his heels with the full orchestral score of
the last act of _Tristan and Isolde_, which almost obscured him from
sight. Placing it on the stand, he retired in a dignified manner; and
Herr Klotz, taking a chair, seated himself at the left of the stand,
and proceeded to tune his fiddle to pitch, varying the proceedings with
imitations of French-horns, vagrant clarionets, and irresponsible
trombones in the mélange of discord which always precedes the entrance
of the conductor. Norman, who had been enjoying the scene to the full,
suddenly rose to his feet.

"Herr Klotz," he said sternly, "I protest."

The tuning ceased, and the violinist looked anxiously at his guest.
"You do not like dis, zumtimes?" he faltered.

"I object," cried Basil, "to being left out.--Herr Siegfried!" He
raised his voice. "Herr Siegfried!"

The little chap walked solemnly in, a baton in his hand. "Yeth?" he
said.

"_Mein Herr_, my friend and myself desire to join your orchestra."

The youthful conductor considered, ruminatingly. "You blay goot?" he
said.

"Wonderfully. I was comb-and-tissue-paper-player in the Cascade Steam
Laundry Orchestra, and my friend----"

"He ith goot alzo?"

"Pest, speak for yourself."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Far be it from me to brag," I said, rather
lamely, "but I was first violinist to His Majesty the King of
Diddle-doodledums."

"Ah, yes," cried Norman; "and you were dismissed because of your
unfortunate habit of playing an octave flat." He leaned over and put
his lips to Siegfried's ear. "Let him play the drums," he said in a
stage whisper.

Amidst roars of delight from the older Klotz, the youngster left the
room, and returned in a minute's time, carrying an immense tin dishpan
and a broken broom-handle, which musical impedimenta he entrusted to my
tender mercies, and then sedately stalked from the scene once more.
With mixed emotions I carried my pan and stick over to the extreme
right, and placed a chair beneath the spot where the stage-box would
be, calmly surveying the assumed audience with that look of waggish
melancholy one associates with gentlemen of the drums. Norman, whom
Klotz had armed with the combined ingredients of his instrument, placed
a chair halfway between the conductor's stand and myself, and together
we joined Herr Klotz in a two-minutes' orgy of discordant preparation.
With a desire to increase the variety of my percussion effects, I
conscripted an extra chair into service, placed it back towards me, and
prepared to use my cane as an auxiliary drumstick.

By common consent we achieved a moment's unanimity of silence, which
was seized by Herr Siegfried as the auspicious moment for his entrance.
Without the least loss of dignity he clambered onto his chair, as we
applauded, perfunctorily, by hammering our alleged music-stands with
non-existent bows; and, turning to the audience, he bowed with the
restraint of genius--a feat of condescension which appeared to delight
the throng hugely, for he was constrained to turn about and acknowledge
their plaudits a second time before they would allow him to proceed.

As drummer I assumed an air of morose boredom.

The noise of the audience having subsided, the conductor opened his
score and nodded to his _Concertmeister_, Herr Klotz, who carefully
found the required place in the orchestration.

"Blay der 'Liebestod' music," said he in his most professional manner
to us. We nodded knowingly, and found the required part in the last act
of our scores, after turning over a vast number of visionary pages.

"Do we begin at the beginning?" asked Norman.

"Yes," I answered, "and leave off at the end." After which sally I
laughed immoderately, and began to understand the instinct which causes
a humorist to enjoy his own wit more than any other's.

A rap on the stand brought my mirth to a close. Both arms were extended
in the air--a last look at both sides of the orchestra (there must have
been a hundred of us)--the left hand slowly poised to indicate
"piano"--the right hand gently raised--and then the strings were
brought into action. I had intended, as another excellent jest, to give
a tremendous crash on the pan at the start, so as to bring down the
leader's wrath, but something in the little chap's attitude stopped me.
This was not play to him--it was real; and, to my amazement, it seemed
no less vivid to my fellow-burlesquers. Herr Klotz was playing the
chromatic development of the opening as if it had been Covent Garden
and the real Nikisch conducting. The Blower of Bubbles was giving one
more proof of his amazing versatility. In some manner he was imitating
a cello, and he _knew_ the music. Where he had learned it one could
only conjecture--but when did he learn anything?

Silently I watched the serio-comic development. The boy was conducting
remarkably, with unerring artistry, sustaining the exact Wagnerian
_tempi_, and, with little exaggeration, indicating the crescendo
and diminuendo which colors all the great master's composition. How
much of it he knew or whether he was following his father's violin I
could not make out, but his earnestness fascinated me; and suddenly his
eyes turned towards mine. I gripped the broom-handle--but no, it was
merely a warning that my time was imminent. I think my breath came
short as I waited. Then his eyes sought mine once more, and inclining
towards me, his baton called for the drums. It was _I_ he was
conducting, and no one else! And I vibrated the broom-handle against
the dish-pan, only to stop instantaneously as his baton moved to
subtler instruments. He never failed to warn me with that preliminary
glance, and when the magic wand followed I gave him all I had. The
little beggar was a hypnotist.

Towards the climax I could have sworn the whole orchestra was there.
Klotz was playing superbly, and Norman was roaming from one instrument
to the other with a remarkable combination of accuracy and imitative
versatility. As for me, I supplied dynamic effects that would have
satisfied even the great Beethoven, who once asked for guns.

Then it was over.

Herr Siegfried bowed twice to the audience, indicated his entire
orchestra with an all-embracing wave of the baton, and ended by
solemnly shaking hands with his father, who stood up to accept the
honor. After that, with a self-conscious wriggle, he became the boy
once more, and removed his spell from us. With roars of delight we
gathered about him, making a circle by joining hands, and dancing
extempore, we sang a chorus consisting of constant repetitions of
"Hilee-hilo! Hilee-hilo!" That may not be the correct spelling, but
then we were singing, not writing it--which is one advantage music has
over literature.

Before we went, Herr Klotz took us into the room where his wife lay
ill, and by her eyes--for she was too weak to speak--she thanked us for
our part in making the day a festival one for their lonely little
household. With an instinctive gentleness that a woman might have
shown, Norman spoke of the things she wanted to hear about: how her
husband had been missed at the restaurant, of the desire of every one
to make a little present to them, of the great future that lay before
their son, and of the genius of Herr Klotz that would some day be
recognized. With the cheeriest of good-byes, he lightly touched her
shoulder with his hand and said he knew she would soon be well again.

He lied. In half of what he said he lied. He was blowing bubbles that
the woman stricken with fever might see in them some little
compensation for her life of drudgery.

With the guttural good wishes of Herr Klotz still in our ears (we had
pledged eternal friendship in three foaming mugs of beer), we sought
the street, to find that dusk was settling over the city. For some
moments neither spoke, but feeling that perhaps I had descended too
abruptly from my pedestal, I cleared my throat and ventured on a
remark.

"A decent fellow," I said patronizingly, and felt my dignity
reasserting myself; but Norman failed to hear me. He was lost in some
memory. Now that I look back, I wonder was it the picture of the sick
woman he saw or his vision of the mother with her two sons; or, with
his gift of intuition, could he see, less than a year ahead, Klotz, in
a German soldier's uniform, marching through Belgium with an army of
lust and rapine, gorged like gluttonous, venomous beasts?

I wonder.


VIII

It was from an aunt of mine that I first heard of Norman's attachment
to Lilias Oxley.

Whenever I received a letter from my relative, I had first to realize
that its mission was to educate, not to entertain. She was a woman of
strong ideas, and, as my mother died very early in my life, she seldom
lost an opportunity of impressing a moral--like the Queen in _Alice
in Wonderland_. In her correspondence, and to a large extent in her
conversation, my aunt was given to dashes, underlines, and
exclamation-marks. It is perhaps unnecessary to state that she was a
single woman.

I received the letter two months after Christmas; it was dated from the
Beacon at Hindhead.

    "MY DEAR NEPHEW,--You will find mentholated crystals--carried in a
    small bottle--a splendid preventive against the present epidemic of
    cold in the head! Sniff a little every night before going to bed.

    "When are you going to marry? For goodness' sake, marry a _dark_
    girl when you do. Our family is growing positively colorless!

    "Your friend, Mr. Norman, is visiting the Oxleys down here. It
    seems young Oxley is trying to write a play with some ideas in it,
    and Norman thinks he can help him! Who in the world wants to see a
    play with _their_ ideas! It's a pity you couldn't teach him to do
    something useful--Norman, I mean.--Young Oxley is going into the
    Church! Why doesn't he go to Canada! I mean _Norman_.

    "Do you remember little Lilias Oxley? She had pneumonia last year,
    though I _warned_ her mother about flannel soaked in goose-oil and
    turpentine! She always looked like a hothouse flower, and now she
    is simply _frail_. Of course, she's pretty and has eyes that always
    makes fools of the men--not that _that_ signifies! Everybody says
    she's artistic, but all I ever hear her play is by some newfangled
    foreigner named Debussy, and it's all discord. She's only nineteen
    and looks sixteen.

    "Of course, young Norman comes along, and instead of picking out
    some healthy _buxom_ girl, he falls in love with this bit of tinsel
    china! It's criminal, and should not be _allowed_. What kind of
    children will they have, if any! He calls her his
    _Beatrice_--Heaven knows why!

    "They are together _constantly_. I would write to the _Times_ about
    it if I thought that Lord Northfellow would publish it. We should
    have a Minister of _Eugenics_! Surely Winston Churchill would be
    better employed at that than trying to build up a huge navy we'll
    never need! By the way, I see he's taken to writing _novels_ now!

    "Do talk to young Norman! Tell him your uncle is doing very well
    with pigs in Canada; and why not induce your friend to go _there_,
    and get some _common-sense_, because every Canadian I meet has a
    head on his shoulders? It must be the climate!

    "I am going to stay here for a month, and then visit my cousin in
    Scotland. She has six children. Whatever induced her to marry a
    minister? He has no money and no _prospects_--except more children,
    I suppose!

    "Does that Mulvaney woman see that your room is kept aired? When
    you write you should have the window open and a cap on your head.

    "I hope you will never write books! It is quite a _distinction_
    nowadays not to.

    "Where did you go for Christmas?--Your loving aunt,

    "HANNAH.

    "Feby. 8/1914."

The only way I can account for my aunt's love of exclamation-marks was
her delight at seeing a sentence round to a good finish. I have known
authors to be so overcome with the dramatic significance of their work
that they put them in as a sort of public recognition thereof.

_En passant_.... I wonder why my aunt never wrote a serial story
for one of the London dailies.


IX

War.

Our world of artificiality lay like a cracked eggshell. As drowning
men, we clutched at everything that seemed stable ... to find nothing
that was not made of perishable stuff. Our pens that had criticized so
long mocked us as we gazed at the pages which seemed to reject our
thoughts before we gave them life. A few of us turned into special war
writers and comforted the nation with statistics. We showed that
Germany was beaten--it was a mathematical truth that could be proved.
While we demonstrated our immense superiority to the enemy in figures,
a little British Army was fighting against odds of six to one.

And the Fates stood by with poised shears, ready to cut the thread of
Britain's destiny.

It is not pleasant to recall the arraignment of the year 1914. The Boer
War had shown our weakness to every nation but ourselves; our educated
men had graduated into the world using their abilities as
obstructionists. We had discouraged everything that had the very odor
of progress.

Yet--we muddled through. Men still use that word as if it were
something creditable instead of hideous. We won, because, behind the
Britain that muddled and obstructed, there was the Britain of noble
mothers and noble sons.

And into the first winter our orgy of statistics went on, like an
endless Babylonian feast ... while the British fleet--which we should
never need--strained and plunged in the icy gales of the North Sea,
grimly, silently, saving the world for Civilization.

Great days. Fateful days. Terrible days.

One Friday night early in December I received a note from Norman,
asking me to meet him for dinner at "Arcadia." I had not seen him for
six months, but his debonair charm was as potent as ever, and we
chatted of the past like friends who had not met for years. As if by
mutual consent, we avoided the present until I noticed that the
orchestra was different.

"Where is Klotz?" I asked suddenly.

"Gone."

"Where?"

"To the war. He was a German reservist and got away."

"And his wife?"

"She is confined to her bed all the time, but fortunately there is an
excellent woman looking after her and young Siegfried. By the way, what
a conductor he'll make some day!"

By the subterfuge I knew who was paying for the woman, though his
income was always slender. Stimulated by a British-born orchestra that
played with a respectability beyond question, we pursued bubbles of
conversation for half-an-hour, saying many clever things and arriving
at no conclusions; but both of us knew that, behind the badinage, there
was the consciousness of war gripping our brains like a fever.

"What do you think," I said at last, "of the question of enlisting?" It
would have been a mockery to deny the fever any longer.

"Why should I enlist?" His smile was so disarming that I regretted my
move at once.

"Don't misunderstand me," I said hastily. "You are not needed, and you
never will be. Besides----" My voice trailed off into the insincere
platitudes that always come to the lips when conscience is to be
drugged.

He lit a cigarette. "Pest," he said, "most men are participants in
life; a few, like myself, are onlookers. It was my choice when I was a
mere youngster--wisely or not, I do not know--but the pose has become
reality now. I am a jester at the court of the world, a wordy fellow
with a touch of melancholy in his humor, watching and commenting on the
real things of life. Before there was a war I blew bubbles, and now I
am fit for nothing else. Have a cigarette?"

"Thanks."

He passed his hand across his brow with the same weariness I had
noticed before.

"To gaze on life," he went on after a pause, "and not to live it,
spares one many sorrows. Even love, which comes to most men as an
overwhelming passion, stole into my life like a perfume of Cashmere.
When I was twelve years of age and living on the south coast, I used to
pass a little dream-girl of seven years or so. The purity of her face
stayed with me like a melody a mother sings to her child. Then she was
ill, and for three weeks I never saw her. Finally she came one day in a
chair, and her beauty was the most exquisite thing I had ever seen. It
made me think that the God who gave us this beautiful world sometimes
cherishes a soul as sweet as hers and keeps it in a body that is frail,
so that through life He can watch it like a flower, tenderly,
lovingly;... and when He wants it back again He has but to whisper,
and, like a violet bending to a summer breeze, it hears and obeys.... I
have sometimes thought that even tears shed for such a one have in them
the quality of dew, and serve to keep the memory green and pleasant.

"The next day I brought her a rose. Though we had never spoken, she
took it, and gave me her face to kiss.... I lost my mother when I was
very young, but this dream-girl's kiss supplied that inspiration for
the ideal that a child takes from its mother. I could not have been
impure after that--I could not have been unkind. The next day she was
gone, and I never saw her again until I went to Surrey to visit young
Oxley. She was his sister."

"And you found?"

"That the dream-child had become a woman--the charm of Spring had
softened to the witchery of Summer."

He shrugged his shoulders and relit his cigarette, which had gone out.

"That, my dear Pest, is how love came to me."

I frowned in an endeavor to pierce his apparently superficial dismissal
of the subject.

"Don't you intend to marry her?" I said.

"Marry her?" He laughed, but there was little mirth in the sound. "Does
a jester marry?" His eyes hardened, and there was a new ring to his
voice. "Who am I to take a wife? A _poseur_, a _flâneur_, in a world of
men, I stand discredited beside the poorest workman whose toil brings
in a pittance for his wife and kiddies. England is calling for men--for
men, I say." He brought his fist with a crash on the table. "What can I
offer her--my parlor accomplishments? My minstrel's mummery that
shudders at the sight of a sword? Can I blow bubbles in a world where
hearts are breaking?"

There were tears in his voice, but his eyes were flashing furiously.

"Hexcuse me." A man had stepped up to us, wearing the armlet of a
recruit. His face was oddly familiar, but I could not recall it until a
light was switched on just behind him, and I recognized the
pumpkin-faced man of Christmas Eve.

"I just thought of 'ow I'd like for to tell you as I've been took for
the Army O.K."

We shook his hand and wished him the best of luck.

"Funny thing, sir, as 'ow the 'ole bloomin' time I was planning to sign
hup I was a-thinkin' of you and that there fiddle. 'You wouldn't like
to meet 'im,' I kind o' sez to myself, 'and you not in the harmy, you
wouldn't,' I sez."

"Instead of which," smiled Norman, all trace of his intensity gone, "I
am the one who is the slacker."

"But didn't I see you in the line the day we was going for to join
hup?"

Norman laughed. "I was probably a hundred miles away," he said. "Pest,
have I a double?"

The recruit scratched his head. "I could 'a sworn hit was you," he
said, and launched into a graphic description of drill and the
absurdities thereof, a recital which appeared to have no prospect of an
ending until we were interrupted by the restaurant proprietor, who took
Norman to one side for a consultation concerning the medieval cook.

I felt a hand on my arm and turned to see our friend of the pumpkin
face making secret and terrifying signs for me to lend him my ear.

"'E's a-'iding something," he whispered hoarsely. "I ain't been a
chandlery merchant hall my life, wot does most o' 'is business hon
tick, without hit learning me to remember faces. Hit _were_ 'im.
'E was turned down for a bad 'eart!"

Whereupon he made a semi-mystic sign with his thumb and forefinger to
indicate that the whole affair was a secret between gentlemen.

That night, in bed, the sensitive, delicate features of Basil Norman
remained in my memory. I had surprised his secret which he would admit
to no one; not to the girl he loved; not to himself. It was the same
spirit that had made him defy the whole of Westminster. We had called
him Puck and the Blower of Bubbles, and he himself had said he was
lighter than air.... But Basil Norman's life had been one endless
battle with an indomitable soul that refused to yield to the body.

I could not sleep well that night.


X

I did not meet Basil Norman for nearly four years. I joined the
Artists' Rifles early in 1915, fought for eleven months, and was given
a commission. After a short time in England I went out in all the glory
of a Sam Browne and one star, but in a few months I was wounded in the
chest, which earned me Blighty and a surfeit of Aunt Hannah, who still
contended that had we only concentrated on an _army_ instead of a
_navy_----

As I write, it all seems a blurred memory of colorless monotony, mud,
fatigue, death, and grim humor. In January, 1918, after a term of duty
as musketry instructor, I returned to France, and fought through the
horrible spring battles until, with cruel coincidence, I was wounded
again in the same place, and once more came to England with a bullet in
my chest--a bullet they dared not extract. In September I was
discharged.

One morning in November I sat by the fire in my den at Sloane Square. I
had resumed the tenancy of the rooms, and Mrs. Mulvaney looked upon me
as being even less mature than before, warning me about goloshes when
it was wet, and umbrellas when it wasn't, but appeared likely to be.

How long I sat there I do not know, but memory began to weave its
spell, driving my surroundings into a dim obscurity and bringing back
incidents of the past with vivid clarity. I gripped my head with both
hands, and, for the hundredth time, sought the truth that lay buried in
the holocaust of the nations.... My wound hurt again, and a dizziness
crept over me like a fog that rises from the sea and enshrouds the
land.

Futile.... Futile....

Had some one spoken? The words sounded distinctly.... I could have
sworn I heard them.

Was the whole war a dream, or was it real? Once more I was in Sloane
Square; there was my desk with its litter of papers, my pipe-rack, my
books.... Had I ever left them? Could it be true that I had led men
against machine-gun fire--and that I had killed? Were those boys who
died beside me, smiling like children in their sleep, really dead? Was
it all some hideous fantasy of an unhealthy brain--a gigantic charade
invented by the greatest buffoon of all time?

Futile.... Futile.... Futile.

I cursed, and pressed my brow with my hands. It was a fight for sanity,
as so many men have fought in the solitude of their rooms since the
hell of Flanders.

Like a panorama the events of the war crossed my mind, and yet those
that stood out most clearly were the unimportant things that came as
mere incidents during the unfolding of the world's destiny. The senior
chaplain's dog, which was shot by an A.P.M. and mourned by a whole
division ... the new arrival who thought he was a special charge of the
Lord's, and who persisted in looking over the top during the day--we
buried him next morning ... the night that the female impersonator from
a divisional concert-party lured the colonel into amorous confession
... the little chap who got no mail at Christmas, and said he hadn't
received a letter for two years ... one after the other these human
trivialities coursed through my brain, forcing the vaster issues aside.

From no apparent cause, the strain of reminiscence turned toward Basil
Norman. I had seen him somewhere, but whether in London or in the
country my poor tired brain seemed unable to determine. And then, with
no regard for relevancy, I was with my battalion once more, marching
with the Australians to hold a strategical point that one of our
brigades had saved from the disaster of March. Who was it said that the
Australians lacked discipline? Look at them grinning like youngsters at
a game, with the odds against any coming out alive! Discipline? Hell!

We rested at a cross-roads and smoked; one of our Tommies was singing
the refrain of a song that urged the country to call up all his
relations, even his father and his mother, but "for Gawd's sake" not to
take him. The sublime incongruity of it was so thoroughly British that
we laughed and called for a repetition. A few minutes later the
Australians passed us, going forward, and there was a reckless air of
bravado about them that boded ill for the Hun.

We waited an hour, two hours--perhaps more.

By Jove! Coming around the bend in the road was the brigade that had
held the line. Good work, you chaps! Well done! Bravo! That's it, you
fellows; give them a cheer! Beneath the mud and the dust and the
beards, they were livid with fatigue; the skin beneath their eyes had
dropped, and their jaws hung impotently, like those of idiots. There
wasn't a sound from their ranks as, too weary to lift them, they
dragged their feet through the dust of the road. They had held their
position for fifty-six hours, attacked incessantly from three sides by
overwhelming numbers. Damned good, you fellows; damned good!

Still buffeted by imagination, my memory of the scene seemed to fade;
yet one impression lingered that was both livid and blurred. It was
when that brigade, or what was left of it, had almost passed, and we
were tightening up the straps of our kits, that I caught a glimpse of
his face, or that of a man who could have passed as his twin. The
soldier beside him was limping painfully and leaning on him heavily in
an endeavor to keep up, and beneath the grimy pallor of that face I
could see the old wistful, whimsical smile.... I tried to cry out, but
something stuck in my throat, and next moment we were falling in.

It was Basil Norman, and the lame soldier beside him was the man with a
face like a pumpkin. Either that or my brain had become the plaything
of fancy.

Again my memory became a blank, and for a few minutes everything seemed
obscured. Some one was shouting! It was taken up by another, then by
many--the whole air was filled with noise.... I heard a woman's voice.
Good God! Had the Germans broken through?... "_Steady, men--get your
aim first._"... The shouting grew in intensity, and I pressed my
brow with my hands until the marks stood out like wounds. With a cry as
of an animal in pain, I rose to my feet and shook the shadows from my
eyes. There was my room--the smoldering fire--my chair ... but the
shouting--it was louder than before.

Feeling my reason tottering, I crossed to the window and threw it open.
People were running, and crying some word as they ran; one woman wept
openly, and no one heeded her; a taxi passed crowded to the roof with
hatless, gesticulating enthusiasts. Was the whole world mad? From every
direction came the noise of deep-throated shouting, swelling into a
vast _Te Deum_ of sound. A soldier with one foot leaned against a
lamp-post and rested his muscles from their labor with the crutches.

"Hello!" I cried. The khaki seemed to restore my grip on things. "I
say--hello!"

He turned round and hobbled over to my window. "Wot's the trouble?" he
said.

"This shouting," I cried; "these people running like rabbits. What does
it all mean?"

"Wot! don't you know?" He smacked his lips in appreciation of the
surprise he had in store for me. "Why, Fritz 'as took the count, 'e
'as."

"Then,----" Confound it; what made my lips quiver so? "Then--it's
peace?... You mean ... it's peace?"

He nodded half-a-dozen times. "The war," he said, feeling the
importance of his declaration, "is napoo. Kaiser Bill 'as 'opped the
twig, and the hold firm of 'im and Gott is for sale, with the goodwill
thrown in, I _don't_ think."

I leaned out of the window, and we grasped hands.

Futile.... Futile.... Futile.

No--by Heaven, no! Not while we remember our dead; not while the spirit
of comradeship still lives in the breasts of those who went out there;
never, if the Britain of the future is worthy of her knights of the
greatest crusade of all, and of the mothers who gave that which had
sprung from their very heart-beats.

"_Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a
child or a star there is pain._"

Half-mad with joy, I rushed into the street and urged my hospitality on
the mutilated soldier, who came into my den and took a seat by the
fire, while I fetched a decanter and cigars that we might make the
occasion a jovial one. As I came into the room I noticed that he was
examining me curiously.

"Hexcuse me," he said, "but if I may make so bold--wasn't you 'is pal?"

"Good heavens!" I cried, a light bursting upon me. "You're the man with
a face like a--like a----" I suppose I blushed.

"Don't 'esitate," he grinned. "Many a time over there 'e told me you
called me Pumpkin-Fice,' and, beggin' your pardon, sir, I likes it a
sight better than 'Pest.'"

"Then--it was Norman I saw in March?"

"Ay." He sipped his glass meditatively. "'E lied about 'is 'eart, and
was took O.K. late in 'fifteen. 'E was a ranker like the rest of us,
but 'e was a proper gentleman, 'e was--that is, not just like we
hunderstands the word in Hengland, but a _real_ gentleman. 'E never
preached and 'e never whined, but them two heyes just kept twinklin',
and whenever hany of us was a bit windy, 'e 'd sort of buck us hup by
that there smile 'e 'ad. I ain't much on langwidge, not 'avin' no
eddication to speak of, or I'd hexplain better; but when little Sawyers
got 'is from a sniper, and 'e knew 'is ticket was punched for to go
West, the sergeant says, 'Fetch the padre,' but Sawyers 'e says, 'No,
it's Bubbles I want.'... I ain't much on religion neither, and I've
done a 'eap o' filthy swearin', which I guess is all down agin me in
the book; but wherever Bubbles is goin' is good enough for me, whether
it's brimstin and blazes or hangels playin' 'arps."

"Tell me"--I dreaded the answer to the question--"where is he now?"

"'E's took a cottage hover in the Hisle o' Wight," he said, clearing
his throat and speaking slowly, "and 'e's married to the sweetest
creetur I ever saw houtside a book. Blime! after I gets hout o'
'ospital, me not 'avin' any hold woman of my own, 'e finds me hout and
sends a letter sayin' to go there for my convalessings, which likewise
I did. That's 'is haddress on the top of that there letter."

I took the paper from his hand, but kept my eyes on his face; he was
keeping something from me. "Tell me the truth about him," I said, and
waited.

He shifted uneasily in his chair. "'E got a blighty near 'is 'eart," he
said, making a supreme effort, "and 'e'll never get hup from 'is chair
no more."


XI

The packet for the Isle of Wight threaded its way through the traffic
of incoming vessels, and ran by a cruiser that had just come from the
bloodless Trafalgar of German shame, where the second navy of the world
surrendered without a fight.

A man next to me grunted. "It's all right for us to crow," he said;
"but Germany was beaten, and she did the right thing."

I looked at him--he was quite sincere. His hair was unduly long, and he
carried a manuscript case--probably one of the statistical writers
still going strong.

"In your wildest flights of imagination," I said, "even if the combined
fleets of the world were against him, could you picture Beatty leading
the British Navy out to surrender?"

"Supposing he were ordered?"

As if in answer to his question, our course took us by the hull of the
_Victory_, straining at her moorings in the November wind.

"In that case," I said, "Beatty would have had two blind eyes."

Which was the sum total of our conversation until we landed at Ryde,
when our paths diverged, never, I hope, to meet again. Probably, over
the week-end, he was polishing up some powerful articles on the
absurdity of Reconstruction.

By the time the train had reached the little station of St. Louis, just
beyond Ventnor, the wind had blown away any clouds, and the sun was
shining radiantly. As I emerged from my carriage I felt a throb of
exhilaration shoot through my veins, but depart as quickly as it had
come, when I realized how near was the tragedy which I had soon to
witness. I heard my name spoken, and, turning, saw a ruddy-faced,
storm-blown fellow of fifty odd years, whose whole bearing smacked of
nor'-westers and mizzen-tops. When I admitted to my name, he seized my
bag without a word, and started down the road with the swaying motion
peculiar to mariners.

We had hardly gone any distance, when he stopped at a gate which proved
to be the back entrance to a garden, and following him through it, I
was led along a path which was strewn with leaves in all the wealth of
autumnal coloring, while through the trees there was the deep blue of
the sea, flecked with crests of foam. We had gone about fifty yards
when we came upon a cottage, in front of which, on a promontory, was a
neatly trimmed lawn, guarded by six trees that stood like sentinels.
The lower branches had been cut to give a better view, and their
appearance lent a quaintly tropical look to the place, as if they were
palms. In front of the house, fields sloped gradually to the edge of
the cliff, which overlooked the sea beneath.

"My dear old Pest!"

Against the background of trees I had failed to notice him sitting in
an invalid's chair. In three strides I was by his side, his hands in
mine ... but no words came to my faltering lips. For a moment the gray
of his eyes softened to a look of understanding; then the old smile,
just as charming as ever, irradiated his face.

"This is an event," he said, "to be entered in the log.--Sindbad!"

The ex-seaman who had acted as my guide pulled at his forelock.

"Ay, ay, cap'n!"

"Take this gentleman's things to the guestroom upstairs."

"The cabin to starboard? Werry good, cap'n."

Heavens! such a voice! There were fog, gale, piracy, rum, and combat in
it.

"Sindbad," said Norman, in answer to my look, "is one of my
indiscretions--like 'Arcadia.' He turned up here one day with such a
tale of the sea as would have shamed Robert Louis Stevenson at his
best. So far as I can discover, he has been in every naval fight since
Aboukir Bay. He's a bit hazy on the Jutland scrap, but hints darkly at
the possibility of an invasion by Spain. He is convinced that the
_Armada_ is only hiding and waiting its time."

In spite of myself, I laughed.

"As he refused to go, I decided to employ him as a man-of-all-work,
and, as he appeared to have forgotten his own name, I gave him that of
'Sindbad,' which pleased him as much as me. As a result of my engaging
him, the lawn you stand on is the quarter-deck which he never fails to
salute. As nearly as I can discover, we are sailing a perpetual
voyage--you see by this view that the illusion is possible--and we're
living in the imminent danger and hope of an attack by the Spanish. By
the way, old man, would you rather go upstairs and clean up? Are you
cold sitting there? Sometimes, being so comfortable myself, I forget
all about my guests."

I protested, sincerely, that I was quite contented where I was.

"Good!" he smiled. "Now tell me all about London.... I see you were hit
twice. From more than a dozen sources I've heard how splendid you were
in France."

His voice was so bright, with its old, happy mannerism of rapidity of
words, with the occasional slurring rallentando, and his gaiety so
infectious, that, under his influence, I felt the clouds about my brain
lifting--not only those caused by grief for his helpless condition, but
those born of my own black moods which drove sleep from my eyes for
nights at a time. I had come determined to be cheerful and to bring
encouragement to the invalid, but already I was drinking in the elixir
of his spirit and feeling my arteries throb with a kind of ecstasy. His
charm was more potent than before.

For a few minutes we chatted about France and the old Westminster boys
who had won renown. We talked of many things, and laughed to find that
we were still boys.

"By the way," he said, during a momentary lull in the stream of
reminiscence, "I must apologize for my wife. She is doing some
necessary shopping in Ventnor, but will be back by the next train."

"I heard you were married," I said, but got no further. Delicacy
forbade my asking him how his dream of love had become a reality. He
must have read the question in my eyes, however, for he offered me his
cigarettes, which, with him, was always a prelude to a change in the
tone of conversation.

"I did not write to her after I went to France," he said quietly,
"because ... well, I've spoken to you before of my sense of
intuition--and I knew that mine would be a heavy price to pay. It was
not fair to fasten her with a life none too robust at its best, because
of a love-fantasy between two children. When I was hit, and they broke
the news to me that--that this was to be my luck, the one thing that
comforted me was the thought that she was free and would not have to
share my captivity. By-the-by, Pest, isn't the sea fascinating? It is
never the same for two days together."

He was still a Puck, lightening his moods whenever they threatened to
hurt the listener with their intensity.

"Pest," he said, after a pause, "she came to me.... When everything was
dark, and I was groping blindly for some hand that would start me just
a--a little on my path, she came--out of the mists. I urged her to
leave me. I argued that she was not fair--and for answer she kissed
me.... Pest, it was a moment of such exquisite happiness, a happiness
so poignant, that I wish I could have died then. I was never so fit for
heaven."

The figure of Sindbad appeared from the house, tugged at its forelock,
and disappeared into the garden to trim some shrubs.

"How did you happen to come here?" I asked.

"I had always looked on the island," he said, smiling, "as the only
spot in England where a twentieth-century Robinson Crusoe could find a
sanctuary from the world, and, by the courtesy of the gentleman who
owned the place, I was able to purchase it at a ridiculously low price.
As a matter of fact, he was offered twice the amount quoted to me, but
refused because I was a disabled Tommy. We came here strangers, but
really the kindness of every one is so great that the ordeal is turning
into a privilege. You have no idea, Pest, how extraordinarily
sympathetic and courteous these people are."

"I suppose, though," I said softly, "that it is rather--lonely."

"Lonely?" he laughed. "Bless your heart, old boy! talk about a French
savant and his _salon_--this place is a positive Mecca for all the
distinguished pilgrims on the island. For instance, there is the editor
of the _Tribune_--a man who thinks editorially and talks colossally.
He claims that any one who has read Boswell's _Life of Johnson_,
Cervantes' _Don Quixote_, and Carlyle's _French Revolution_ is
educated. He never reads anything else, but keeps on reading these
three in an endless cycle. We have perfectly stupendous arguments that
never get anywhere, but utterly exhaust both of us. Then there's the
station-master. How many passengers boarded the train here when you
were coming off?"

"Four, I think."

"Ah, yes; this is Saturday--a busy day. Some trains we don't get any,
and others just one or two; but in anticipation of a rush at some
future date, he's invented a scheme of getting tickets out of a drawer,
stamped and all complete, by merely pressing a button. I assure you
it's going to revolutionize the booking systems of the world--we've
been working on it for weeks, but so far all we've got is the button.
The plans are prodigious, though. And the Tommies! Gor blime, Pest!
there's a convalescent home just down the road, and it's a queer day
that at least two of the beggars don't come up for a 'jaw' about old
times. You talk about your officers' messes and brass hats; why, it's
real life in the ranks. I tell you, Pest, I would rather be the man
that coined the word 'Cheerio' than the greatest general the world has
seen."

A merchant-ship, still wearing its strange motley of camouflage, sailed
past only a couple of miles from shore.

"Look!" whispered Norman, and pointed down the garden.

Sindbad was crouched behind some bushes, surveying the vessel through a
dilapidated telescope. After a careful scrutiny, he resumed his labors,
shaking his head and muttering darkly to himself.

Norman chuckled hilariously. "He's on the look-out for Spaniards," he
said.

"What a villainous telescope!"

"Isn't it? He always has it by him, though. I'll swear you can't see
half-a-mile with the blessed thing."

A huge black hound appeared from the direction of the conservatory,
and, after the canine manner, expressed his wriggliest delight at the
sight of Norman, ending by sitting solemnly beside the chair and laying
one paw on the invalid's knee.

"Good-afternoon, Mr. Jones," said Norman.

The dog thumped the ground four times with his tail, and emitted a yawn
like the sound of a train emerging from a tunnel.

"Mr. Jones," said I, "changes from cordiality to ennui with rather
startling rapidity."

The hound acknowledged his name by a solitary thump, and then groaned
with the air of a Stiggins contemplating the wickedness of a Weller.

"What breed is he?" I asked.

"Dog--just dog. He is, if I may say so, the battle-ground of his
ancestors. Every breed but that of bull can be traced in him, and each
has its moment of ascendancy. Mr. Jones possesses a most remarkable
hereditary system."

The subject of our conversation became suddenly tense. A bird had
hopped on to the quarter-deck, and was pecking at the ground in a
manner that would infuriate any self-respecting dog.

Gathering up his loins, Mr. Jones stalked the intruder to within four
yards, and then fell in a heap on the spot--where the bird had been.
After surveying the landscape with a puzzled air, as if to indicate to
us that foul work was afloat, he walked to the end of the lawn and
gazed thoughtfully at the sea. Having thoroughly demonstrated his
indifference as to whether he ever caught a bird or not, he yawned
terrifically, and left the scene for the comfort of the kitchen.


XII

And so, partly with banter, but with many moments that were tense with
feeling, we talked while the afternoon wore on. Norman was in the midst
of some anecdote of either Sindbad or Mr. Jones, when he paused, and a
look of delighted anticipation lit his countenance.

"That's the whistle," he said. "The train's right on time to-day." He
sighed happily, as a lover about to meet his sweetheart after a long
absence.

"Sindbad," he cried, "pipe all hands to tea. Tell Mrs. M'Gillicuddy
we'll have it in the music-room."

Telescope under his arm, the worthy buccaneer--for I am convinced he
sailed under Captain Kidd--shuffled into the house, and the noise of
the train could be distinctly heard as it emptied its crowd of one or
two at the little station.

"I shall go and open the gate," I said, but he stopped me.

"He is with her, Pest."

"Who?"

"Wait.... I have kept a surprise for you."

A minute later I saw his wife at the end of the path as she waved to
him. She came through the leafy garden with a grace of movement that
made the scene a delicate, colorful picture, and even before she had
reached us I could see that her beauty was as exquisite, as perfect, as
an orchid's. All sacrificed to an invalid....

With the tenderest of smiles in her eyes, which were blue as the sky,
she advanced towards us and kissed him; and I, who detest things
sentimental as I would the plague, thought it was the loveliest tribute
I had ever seen. Before he could speak, she turned and gave me both her
hands.

"I won't apologize," she said, and her voice was as sweet as a brook's,
"because I know you both enjoyed your talk of old times the better for
my absence."

"It was a wonderful afternoon," I said, "but it would have been doubly
so with you here."

And then I, the Pest, the cynic, the modernist, stooped and kissed her
hand. It seemed the natural thing to do, and she accepted it with the
understanding heart that Nature had given her.

"But, Lilias, where is the lad?"

"Oh," she laughed gaily, "the station-master kept him a moment to show
him an entirely new button he had thought of. But here he is now."

Coming up the path, carrying a couple of parcels, was a boy of,
perhaps, ten years of age. His hair was golden and curly, and his eyes
had a dreamy look that contrasted strangely with the strength of his
chin. He had the poise and the appearance of a thoughtful, well-bred
youth; but there was something, I could not say what, that told me he
was not English.

He touched his cap to me as he came on the lawn and smiled cordially to
Basil.

"Do you remember the gentleman?" asked Norman.

The boy shook his head and unconsciously moved nearer to the woman, who
placed her hand on his shoulder.

"You shouldn't forget each other," laughed Norman, "for once he played
the drums under your baton."

A few minutes later we went in for tea, the boy and Mrs. Norman going
first. I waited while Sindbad prepared to move the invalid, and then
turned to him for an explanation.

"Klotz was killed," said Norman swiftly, "and his wife died a month
later, after she heard of his death. We have adopted Siegfried as our
ward."


XIII

That night a storm came up from the sea, and the house rattled and
shook in the clutch of a November gale. The trees that looked like
palms swayed and bent before the wind, and the many-colored leaves in
the garden fled like refugees before an attack, and covered the ground
with their quivering bodies.

We were gathered in the music-room, the cosy warmth from a fire of logs
making pleasant contrast to the snarling wind outside. The evening had
been a memorable one. The woman whose beauty was so delicate had
charmed us with her voice, her playing; charmed us without effort or
knowing how.

From a lounge, Norman's vivacity, which always had in it the quality of
sympathy, illuminated everything that happened. When she sang a little
extract of the eighteenth century, "_Bergère Légère_," it was he
who knew that it had been a favorite of Marie Antoinette's. When she
played the love theme which Puccini gives the strings in the first act
of _Madame Butterfly_, it was Norman who, by a dozen deftly chosen
words, created the atmosphere of Japan and brought before us the cruel
tenderness of Pinkerton's love for Cho Cho San. After Siegfried had
played MacDowell's conception of "Mid-ocean," Norman recalled in a
moment the genius of America's greatest composer, the genius that had
finally crossed the thin barrier to insanity. From that we talked of
the sea, while the wind howled outside, and I spoke of the many moods
of blue that colored it in a single day, and, without giving the effect
of quotation or of monologue, he brought his artistry into play with
three lines of Keats's sonnet "Blue."

Whenever any of us spoke, his sensitive rhythmic intellectuality seemed
to hover about us, acknowledging thought where it struggled to the
surface, adding some subtle touch of color when our efforts seemed too
drab. Under its influence we talked our best, we thought our best, we
were our best.

At nine o'clock Siegfried rose to go to bed, and advanced to shake
hands with me.

"Well," I said, "and do you still intend to be a conductor?"

He smiled a little self-consciously.

"There is much to learn," he said, "and--I do not want to leave my
home."

Norman lit a cigarette--his old mannerism when emotions were taut.

"Parents," he said, "and quasi-parents like us, march straight towards
loneliness. Our greatest concern is to have our children ready to leave
us as soon as they hear the call of the world, knowing that such a
moment will be the proudest and the saddest of our lives."

"Good-night," said Siegfried to me. "Goodnight, Uncle Bubbles." He
turned wistfully to Mrs. Norman, who smiled and linked her arm in his.

"Won't you come along?" she said to me. "Siegfried is very proud of his
room, and would like you to see it." It was her way of hiding her
knowledge that the little chap was frightened by the storm. So we saw
him safely in bed, and admired his books, and wished him pleasant
dreams. We had just left his room and were about to descend the stairs,
when we paused as the sound of rain beating against the house came to
our ears. We hurried about for a few moments seeing that all windows
were closed, and were going to rejoin Norman, when I stopped her.

"Mrs. Norman," I said haltingly, "it is never easy for an Englishman to
express the emotion he feels, but may I tell you how touched I am by
your devotion to your husband? Without you, his life would
be--unbearable."

She did not smile or protest, but her eyes looked straight into mine.

"To live day by day," she said slowly, her fingers playing with a
necklace that hung about her full white throat, "near a soul like
Basil's, to commune with a brain like his ... to feel the inspiration
of his nature that is so in tune with the beauty of the world, is a
happiness few women can experience. If it were not too cruel, I could
feel thankful for his wound that has given him so completely to me."

I stood by her on the creaking stairs as the rain swept in torrents
against the house, and her murmuring tones mingled with the sounds of
the storm.

"Perhaps you cannot understand," she said gently, "but loving Basil as
I do, and having him dependent on me, is a selfish happiness that only
a woman could really know."

And out of the night a truth came to me that, though it never, never
could be mine, the most precious thing in this world is a woman's
heart.


XIV

It was eleven o'clock, and Basil Norman and I were alone. The storm had
subsided, and, through the sound of the rain, we could hear the waves
breaking against the shore.

"I do not want Siegfried to go to school yet," he was saying; "he is so
full of promise and latent genius that I dread the risk of having it
all standardized into what we call a public-school man. I am coaching
him in languages and the three R's, but more than anything else I want
him to form his own conception of the scheme of the universe, so that
when he takes his position among the world's musicians--as I am
confident he will--he'll have the echo of what he interprets in his own
breast. Music is so vast, yet musicians, as a class, are people of
little depth."

"Has the lad a chance in England with his German name?"

"Yes. England must realize that genius has no nationality."

"What was Siegfried like when you took him first?"

"He was arrogant, sullen, and in his child's brain was the knowledge
that his father had fought against us. To make him forget his unhappy
past, and partly to satisfy a caprice of my own, I--well, you would say
I blew bubbles. We invented a little city of make-believe. From the
hill at the back of the house you can look down on all these houses,
and at dusk, when the mist rises from the sea and the windows begin to
glow with light, it is quaint enough for a study by Rackham. In our
little City of Bubbles there dwelt such celebrities as Aladdin, Jack
the Giant Killer, Midshipman Easy, Peter Pan, poor Wilde's Happy
Prince, and Heaven knows how many more. They were very real to
Siegfried and me, and Lilias used to have many a laugh over the
troubles of our little family. But I had not counted on Sindbad; he was
filling Siegfried with stories of buried treasure and men forced to
walk the plank (all of them absolutely authenticated by the narrator),
and the lurking Prussian began to appear. He stole down to Ventnor and
bought books on the war ... he began to glory in the stand Germany was
making. So I was not surprised when, one day, he suggested that we
should play soldiers.

"Pest, you should have been there. Siegfried was Napoleon, and I was
Hindendorff, his chief of Staff. Sindbad was given command of a naval
brigade, and was also in charge of a large fleet lying in hiding to
cope with the Spaniard, should he emerge. In addition to these modest
duties, he had to wheel my chair. Lilias came along as a composite
representative of all the women's services. Napoleon's plans were that
we should attack the City of Bubbles, which was being defended by a
heavy force on the fringe of the hill. I omitted to mention our flying
cavalry in the person of Mr. Jones; but owing to a misunderstanding of
our objective he waged separate war on birds all afternoon, inflicting
no casualties, but covering an immense area of ground. We began the
attack about half-a-mile back; but when Napoleon ordered Sindbad's
naval brigade into action, we were unable to find him, until Mr. Jones
discovered him behind a rock, scrutinizing a passing merchantman
through the inevitable telescope. After some persuasion, we induced
Sindbad to attack, but half-way to his objective he remembered that he
had left his pipe in the kitchen, to which he repaired, leaving his
troops in the air, as we used to say in France, and taking away the
mobility which, as Chief of Staff, I needed urgently. There is no
question that Sindbad possesses imagination, but it is an unreliable
one.

"To make the story short, we won by a brilliant ruse of Napoleon's, who
got word to the enemy that the tuck-shops in Ventnor were being
evacuated, which was as effective as his famous "_Sauve qui peut_"
at Waterloo, for they fled ignominiously, and we captured the city,
after inflicting heavy casualties."

I looked at him and waited. Behind the nonsense I could see some
serious thought was lurking, but what I could not conjecture.

"The next day," he resumed, "Siegfried was tired, and asked me to tell
how Peter Pan frustrated the pirates. 'Peter is dead,' said I.
Siegfried suppressed a sob, and asked when he died. 'He was killed in
our attack,' I said. After a long pause, he mentioned the probability
of Mr. Midshipman Easy being at home. 'He is dead,' said I. Again his
question, and again my answer: 'He was killed in our attack.' He went
out; but on going to bed that night he asked if Cinderella was really
very pretty. 'Not now,' I said, 'for she is lying dead.' Does it seem
ludicrous, Pest? That night he cried himself to sleep, and it is not
easy to listen to a youngster's sobs when you know that a word from you
will do away with them. For two long dreary weeks our City of Bubbles
was a City of the Dead.... Then I suggested that we play soldiers again
and make another attack. After all, Pest, it isn't every Tommy gets a
chance of being Chief of Staff. I wish you could have seen his face. It
was as though I had struck him with a whip, and he left me without a
word. That afternoon the Wizard of Oz visited our city and brought them
all back to life. That was some months ago, and our little dream-world
is only a serio-humorous memory for Siegfried and me now. But during
that night he cried himself to sleep I think the Prussian in him died."

For several minutes we listened to the rain.

"The greatest of the Arts," said Norman, very slowly, "is life. I don't
think our writers, our painters, our men who dream in bronze realize
that. If they did, it would not be said that the English are the least
artistic people in the world; for you and I know that is not true.
Scott going to his death in the Antarctic snow was a great artist. The
sailor standing to one side when the last boat is filled, and those six
Tommies at Grieswald in Germany, holding their ground against a row of
bayonets and taking a sentence of two years' imprisonment rather than
aid the Hun in making munitions--are they not artists? Where we fail as
a race is in our authors, composers, painters, who divorce themselves
from the real spirit of England and wonder that the products of their
brains quicken no pulse and stir no imagination. Our educationists, our
leaders in every movement allied with culture, have too often striven
to choke the imaginativeness and blind the eyes of our youth to the
beauty of life, which is one of its greatest truths. One has but to
read the despairing lines written by bereaved mothers for their sons
who have fallen, to feel the sorrow of England crying for expression;
instead of which, our triumph, our courage, our artistry are mute and
inarticulate."

The rain had ceased, and the wind was moaning over the sea as if it had
been balked of its prey.

"Mark my words, Pest," he said dreamily, "as a nation we shall have no
self-expression until our artists take for their model the greatest of
all Arts--_Life_."

His eyes were fixed on the smouldering coals, and over his face there
was a mystic veil--a thing not of this world but born of the undying
spirit. It was like a mist that settles on a river in the hour between
sunset and night.

"Basil," I cried; and the sound of my own voice startled me. I do not
know what words were surging to my lips, for he turned to me and the
smile of compassion in his eyes held me silent.

Something choked in my throat.... I felt that I wanted to struggle to
my feet and stand at the salute. For the face that looked into mine was
that of a CONQUEROR.

A burning ember fell from the grate and lay on the tiled surface of the
hearth.




PETITE SIMUNDE


I

Three hundred miles north of Toronto, the Cobalt mining country
surrenders its daily toll of silver to the world. In that region there
is mostly rock. Where woods exist, the trees are gaunt and defiant, as
though resentful of the approach of man; in winter they stand like
white-shrouded ghosts, and the wind howls dismally through them until
in the little settlements across Lake Timiskaming men draw closer to
the fire, and women croon comfort to frightened children, yet
half-believe, themselves, the Indian legend that another soul is on its
way to the Great Unknown.

Five miles north of Cobalt the town of Haileybury straggles down a hill
to the lake, on the other side of which can be seen the blue shores of
Pontiac, Quebec, where lies the sleepy little hamlet known as Ville
Marie, possessed of its church, its wayside public-house, "Les
Voyageurs," and a few vagabond frame buildings. The ring of the
blacksmith's anvil can be heard throughout the day, for there is little
else to drown the noise. But when the lumber-jacks come in from the
woods, or the river-runners from their convoys of logs, there is always
the sound of a noisy chorus from "Les Voyageurs," led (in the times we
write of) by Pierre Generaud, who knows that singing a constant
fortissimo stimulates thirst in participants and auditors alike. On
Sunday there is the sound of the organ, and the villagers walk about in
ill-fitting garments of respectability: a simple God-fearing community,
knowing no world but their own, and finding their joy of life in mere
existence.

It was gathering dusk, one summer evening in the year 1914, when the
figure of a young officer wended its way towards "Les Voyageurs."

He had crossed from Haileybury on the afternoon boat, causing not a
little comment by the uniform he wore. All in the mining country knew
him as "Dug" Campbell, manager of the Curran Like Mine--they were
hardly prepared for the sudden transition from his usual costume of
riding-breeches, brown shirt, and lumberman's boots, to the trappings
of a British officer. He was a young man of big stature, with broad,
restless shoulders that seemed to chafe under the bondage of a tunic,
and he had a long, loose-limbed stride oddly at variance with the usual
conception of military bearing. His eyes were light blue, his hair an
unruly brown that flirted with red--and his name was Campbell. Such men
do not wait for the second call when there is war.

Wherever civilization is forcing her right of way, wherever she is
fighting for her existence, the descendants of Scotland will be found.
When a new railroad struggles over unnamed rivers and through untrodden
forests, somewhere ahead there is always a son or a grandson of old
Scotia, whose eyes are a humorous blue and whose hair has more than a
tinge of red. There is no part of the world to which the Scot is a
stranger, but he rises to his best in a new country where waterfalls
must be harnessed to give power; where great rocks must be blasted from
age-old foundations; where rebellious nature in her primeval state must
be taught that the world was made for man.

On that August evening in that most fateful of years, the figure of
Captain Douglas Campbell, tall and somewhat rugged, like one of the
northern trees, might have served as a sculptor's model for the spirit
of Scotland confirming and strengthening the purpose of young Canada.

Rich in tradition as she is, what glory of her past can Scotland have
that is greater than this--that, strong in the manhood which seems to
spring from the soil of her country, she sent her sons to every corner
of the world; and when the shadow of war fell upon her--they came back!
Sons, grandsons, those to whom their Scottish blood was little more
than a family legend, _they came back_.

Scotland needs no other monument than those three words.


II

Nearing "Les Voyageurs" the young officer paused at a sudden burst of
sound that came from the inn. In place of the usual chorus, one voice,
a slovenly but powerful one, was bellowing forth a ribald song,
remarkable only for its noisy coarseness. Reaching the hostelry,
Campbell hammered at the door, which was opened by mine host himself.

"Ah!" he gesticulated eloquently, "Monsieur Cam-pell?" (Pierre
Generaud, like all French-Canadians, invariably reversed his accents on
English words.) "For why you come, eh?"

"My dear Generaud, must I give reason for visiting the famous 'Les
Voyageurs'?"

"Ah! By gosh, no!" He beamed welcome in every pore--then struck an
attitude of despair. "You come, is it not, as an officier, perhaps
no--yes?"

"Correct. I want to speak just for a minute to the men inside."

"Oh, _mais non_!" The good host's gesture was a masterpiece, even
among a race of gesticulators. "Not to-night, monsieur."

"And why not?"

"By Gar! Who you theenk is inside now? Listen--she sing!"

Campbell was too well acquainted with the universal French-Canadian use
of the feminine pronoun to express any surprise when "she" proved to be
the possessor of the aforesaid raucous, bass voice, which had broken
into some song anent the passion of a sailor for a Portuguese young
lady of great charm but doubtful modesty.

"Who is our friend?" asked the officer.

"What--you know not? She is the terrible Des Rosiers!"

"Well, I don't like Mr. Des Rosiers's voice."

"You nevair hear her name, monsieur? Sometime she is called 'Jacque
Noir.' _Mon Dieu!_--she sleep with _le diable_."

The landlord's eyes grew wide with horror; his shoulders contracted
until they touched his ears.

"Look here, my friend," said Campbell, with a tinge of impatience,
"Jacque Noir or Jacque Rouge or Jacque Blanc is not going to keep me
out here."

"But, monsieur, once she _keel_ a man."

"My dear fellow----"

"One winter, a man has insult Des Rosiers, and--_voilà!_ Jacque Noir
_burn_ her house--_keel_ her family--_murdair_ her"----

With a laugh, the newly created officer thrust the little man aside and
entered the sacred precincts of "Les Voyageurs." A big, dirty, bearded
fellow of about thirty years of age was leaning against the counter,
waving a mug and bellowing a song. He looked formidable enough, but
hardly justified the diabolical qualities attributed to him by Pierre
Generaud. In spite of his unshaven face with its bloodshot, inebriated
eyes, there was something not unpleasing about the fellow, and when his
lips parted they disclosed teeth that were gleaming white.

A group of villagers sat in open-mouthed admiration beneath the singer,
for Des Rosiers's reputation had gathered velocity like a snowball
rolling down the side of a hill, gaining in size every time it came
into contact with the drifts of rumor, until it had become almost a
legend of wickedness. His audience felt a timid pride in the event. It
was as if his Satanic Majesty himself had condescended to appear from
below and sing comic songs for their benefit.

On the entrance of the officer, the song ceased, and all eyes were
turned to the new-comer.

"_Holà_," said Des Rosiers, with extraordinary resonance. "You drink by
me, _eh bien_?"

"No, thanks. I must only stay a minute."

"You no drink?" roared the lumber-jack, whose hospitality was not
unlike the forcefulness of the muscular Christian in "Androcles and the
Lion." "You drink, or, by Gar, I brak your neck."

A hum of admiration rose from the villagers. They bore no possible
malice towards the officer, but it was gratifying to find Jacque Noir
living up to his reputation.

"_Messieurs_," said Campbell, ignoring the gentleman in question,
"there is a war. _La belle France_ fights for her life, and Canada
must help. She needs you--and you--and you."

With their meager knowledge of English, he was forced to a simplicity
of language that depended almost entirely on the personal appeal for
effect. "Come with me to the war. We pay you one dollar ten a day, and
your wife and _garçons_ get money too."

Mr. Des Rosiers laughed, scornfully and sonorously. "I laugh," he
said. "You theenk we go to war, and you English, by Gar, no leave
Canada, but steal all we leave behind. The French-Canadian--he go; the
English-Canadian, _non_." He roared a vile oath, and laid his hand on
Campbell's shoulder. "I brak your neck," he said comfortingly.

In a moment Campbell's tunic was off and he was facing Jacque Noir.
"You are a liar, Des Rosiers," he said. "You are the greatest liar and
the worst singer in the province of Quebec."

The Frenchman tore the red kerchief from his neck and hurled the mug to
the floor, where it broke into a hundred pieces. "By gosh, me!" he
bellowed in a voice that would have terrified a bull. "I _keel_ you!"

He advanced in windmill fashion, but his opponent, who had been one of
the best boxers of his year at Toronto 'Varsity, stopped him with a
blow known technically as a "straight left to the jaw." Des Rosiers
paused to collect his thoughts. He was wondering whether to kick with
one foot or with both, when something happened, and oblivion settled
over him like the curtain on the last act of a melodrama. Campbell had
stepped forward, and, putting his shoulder behind it, had delivered a
blow on the lower part of the jaw with force enough to fell an ox. For
Des Rosiers the rest was silence.

Concluding his recruiting speech to the dazed villagers, Campbell put
on his tunic and strode down the street.... But the fall of Mr.
Pecksniff in the eyes of Tom Pinch was not more complete than the
collapse of their idol, Jacque Noir, in the eyes of the inhabitants of
Ville Marie.


III

A sky that was hung with stars looked down upon the shimmering
roof-tops of Haileybury. The streets were deserted except in the main
thoroughfare, where a group of men were seated in an irregular line,
their pipes glowing in the darkness. They had been there since dusk.

Midnight passed, and the shadowy line was longer as each hour struck.
Men with heavy packs; men with the mud of the northern wilderness still
on their boots; men who had walked for sixty miles; men whose beardless
chins bespoke the schoolboys of a year before; men whose faces would
have looked coarse and cruel in any light but that of the stars; one by
one or in pairs they came. For each there was a yell of welcome, a
ribald jest or two--then silence once more, and the glowing pipes. The
first glimmering streaks of dawn showed the queue in all its
picturesque grotesqueness. The man in front was leaning against a frame
store that bore the placard "Recruiting Office."

Some three thousand miles away, a Hohenzollern Emperor had said that
the British Empire would crumble into disintegration at the first sound
of war. And through the forests of the north and over weary trails men
were staggering on, mile after mile, fearful of one thing only--that
they might be too late to answer the call which had come, from across
the Atlantic, speeding over forests, cities, prairies, lakes, and
mountains until echo answered from the shores of the Pacific Coast.

The early boat from Ville Marie discharged its half-dozen passengers. A
powerfully built French-Canadian strode up the hill and stopped at the
crowd of men. With a worried contraction of his heavy eyebrows he
surveyed the formidable length of the line.

"Godam!" said he.

Heedless of the jests and the comments of the mob, he went slowly down
the line, carefully scrutinizing each man, until he stopped at a
half-breed Indian. For a moment only they argued in French, then he
produced a roll of dollar notes in one hand, and brandished the other
hand threateningly in the half-breed's face. The combined arguments
proved too much; when the enrollment of recruits took place, number
eighteen was Jacque Des Rosiers, sworn to serve His Majesty the King
for the duration of the war and six months afterwards--in witness
whereof he had drawn an inky cross after his name.

It would be difficult to give the exact motive for his action. He
probably had never heard of Belgium, but--well, take horns and tail
from the devil, and what is left?

Three weeks later the company of amateur soldiers were warned to
proceed to the concentration camp. Willing, but puzzled by the
infliction of army discipline, they had struggled past the first
pitfalls of recruitship. For the sake of Captain Douglas Campbell,
their "boss," they had suppressed their grumbling and submitted to the
rites and ceremonies of military routine, arguing that, inexplicable as
it was, it had some connection, however remote, with the ultimate goal
of warfare. The afternoon before their departure Campbell spoke to them
for exactly five minutes. His hair looked redder and his eyes seemed
bluer than before. His powerfully built shoulders and the rhythm of his
muscles lent a grace to his entire body, despite its ruggedness.

"Look here, you fellows," he said, "you signed up to fight--so did I.
We will fight, too, but Kitchener can't use us until we're ready. You
wonder what all this drill is about. Well, here's my idea about it.
There isn't a coward in this crowd; there isn't a man who wouldn't go
down a shaft after a pal, even if the chances were a hundred to one
against his coming back. But you're not ready for the front. You've got
the heart, but your bodies must have training and discipline. Watch me
with this cigarette. In flicking the ash I burn my finger; the next
time I want to touch the ash, my finger avoids it by a quarter of an
inch. I laugh and try again. You all know what I mean. I am not afraid
of the cigarette, but my finger is. If you've ever been kicked in the
leg by a horse, the next time that horse kicks, which of your legs is
drawn back first? In some strange way your body has instincts of its
own, and though you might have a heart like a bull, your muscles and
nerves--your body--might fail you when you needed them most. As I
understand the army system, it is to train you to obey, not only
mentally but physically. Eight months from now we may be lying
half-dead with the enemy's guns playing hell all around us. We may want
to quit, we may be 'all in,' but, if the order comes to advance, we'll
go forward, because our bodies will be disciplined to obey.

"Be patient then, men, and just grin when things go wrong. I would
gladly have gone with you in the ranks, and there are lots of you chaps
better able to lead than I, but a commission was given to me, and I'm
out to do my best with the finest company of men in the Canadian
Expeditionary Force. I'm learning all the time--as you are. You will
have bad times, and so shall I; but let's help each other to laugh and
make the best of it, for, after all, we're just great big children
playing a mighty big game.... And when we reach France we'll show them
all that the old Cobalt gang is afraid of nothing in this world or the
next."

They cheered--and the man who shouted loudest was Jacque Des
Rosiers.... And somewhere in the speech _esprit de corps_ had been
born.


IV

Four winters passed by.

France lay in the warmth of a late spring evening, like a stricken deer
that has thrown off its pursuers momentarily, but is bleeding from a
hundred wounds. Month after month she had endured the invader, and the
cycle of years, instead of freeing her had only deepened her agony.
What had she left? The next attack would see Arras and her remaining
coalfields gone, the Channel ports captured, and then ... Paris?...
Paris?

Unperturbed, however, by any such thoughts, Petite Simunde--no one
thought of her by any other name--was driving four cows home from
pasture. The setting sun shed a kindly hue on her gingham garment that
was neither a frock nor an apron, yet served as both. Nor was the
mellowing sunlight unkind to her face, for the racial sallowness of her
cheeks, accentuated by too constant exposure to the elements, was
softened and shaded into a gentle brown. Her shoes, which were far too
large, were in the final stages of disrepair. About the brow her hair
was braided with a simplicity that was by no means devoid of charm. Her
eyes--but there she was really French. Simunde had never been farther
from the village of Le Curois than the neighboring town of Avesnes Le
Comte (unless one counts the momentous occasion, a year after her
birth, when she was taken to Arras for exhibition before an esteemed
and wealthy relative, who was so little impressed that he bequeathed
his entire estate, consisting of eight thousand francs, to a
manufacturer of tombstones); but a French woman does not acquire
coquetry--she is born with it. Even in church Simunde would cast such
languishing yet mischievous eyes upon the curé himself, that the poor
little man, who had never liked Latin at any time, used to stammer and
mumble his orisons like an over-conscientious penitent at confessional.

When her two brothers went to war Simunde, who was then sixteen,
assumed their tasks in addition to her own, in all of which she had the
able direction of "madame" her mother. Between them they performed a
day's work that would have exhausted two husky laborers. As is the
custom in most of northern France, their home was not on the farm, but
in the village, for one of the first essentials of existence to a
Frenchman is companionship. On the outskirts of Le Curois, just on the
hill, there was a great château, beautifully, gloomily aloof; but in
the one street of the village itself, pigs, cows, hens and their
offspring wallowed in mud and accumulated filth.

It is difficult to know which is the more striking: the French
peasant's stoicism in the presence of war, or his indifference to dirt.

On this particular evening in May of 1918 Simunde was frankly
regretting the absence of men. Not that she had ever been in love or
known the rapture of wandering in the moonlight with a man (France is
almost the only civilized country remaining that has not relegated
chaperons to the realm of fiction); but she wanted to use her eyes on
something more susceptible than a cow or a curé. It was spring, and she
felt pretty, and when a woman is conscious of her own charm she seldom
wishes to prove miserly with it.

She had just run across the road to convince a cow of its loss of the
sense of direction when she heard the neighing of a horse. Glancing
behind her, she looked directly into the eyes of a mounted British
officer, whereupon that gentleman brought his steed to a standstill.

"_Bon soir, mademoiselle_," he said.

"_Bon soir, monsieur_," she answered demurely. Her eyes were lowered
shyly, and her fingers played over the stick she was carrying, like a
flute-player caressing his instrument. The officer bowed slightly and
tried to recall his French vocabulary, though it must be admitted he
was never loquacious in any tongue when conversing with a daughter of
Eve. As for her, since it is a woman's _rôle_, she waited. Would he
speak again or would he pass on, leaving the memory of yet one more
meeting with a gentleman of adventure--one more roadside drama in which
the dialogue consisted only of an exchange of salutations. Most men who
have returned from France will recall for years to come how, a few
kilometres back from Hell, they often caught a glimpse of two dark eyes
and a tender smile. Just that and--

"_Bon soir, mademoiselle._"

"_Bon soir, monsieur._"

Commonplace, perhaps, in the telling, but in France it was the
commonplace that became romance.

A smile crept into the officer's eyes, which were blue and kindly,
though they had a glint in them--something like metal--a look that a
mother always noticed first when her son returned from the line.

"_Où est le village?_" he ventured.

"Le Curois?"

"_Oui!_ Le Curois."

"_Mais, monsieur_"--her eyes widened and her hands indicated the
village dwellings--"_c'est ici Le Curois_!"

He breathed deeply and ventured again.

"_Connaissez-vous un billet pour dix officiers?_"

He felt rather pleased with the sentence; it was true he had intended
to get accommodation for eleven officers, but it was moderately
accurate for a foreign tongue.

For answer Simunde led him, preceded by the four cows, to her domicile
as "Madame," like all French housewives had received billeting
instructions in the first year of the war. In conjunction with her
neighbors on either side, she speedily arranged accommodation for
eleven officers in their cottages, and for the officers' _domestiques_
in the barns.

One hour later the guests of war, their battalion having come out for a
rest, were dining comfortably in the home of Petite Simunde, while a
sow, attended by ten small pigs, snorted approvingly outside the door.

Less than an hour afterwards Private Des Rosiers, acting as temporary
batman to Major Douglas Campbell, was sitting on a chair in the
farm-yard, in the glittering moonlight, regaling Simunde and her mother
with grossly exaggerated stories of the mining country of Cobalt. He
told them of his misdeeds, not in humility, but with much
_braggadocio_, and his auditors listened, lost in gesticulatory
admiration. Simunde was thrilled from her ill-shod feet to her braided
brow. Jacque Des Rosiers was the first really wicked man she had met,
and, woman-like, she was fascinated; also he had nice teeth and
flashing eyes.

The picture of a young officer on horseback whose brown hair was almost
red and whose humorous blue eyes had a glint in them like metal, faded
as completely from her mind as the memory of the sunset that had thrown
its spell upon them.

Unromantic?... _Que voulez-vous? C'est la guerre!_


V

Two weeks passed, during which period the placid fields about Le Curois
resounded to the shouts of Canadian troops rehearsing open warfare (for
rumor had it that the hour was almost at hand when Foch was to release
the forces of retribution). For pastime, the troops played baseball and
held field-days of many and varied sports. Whatever they did, they
shouted lustily and continuously while doing it, for they had mastered
one elemental truth--that nothing can be accomplished without
intensity.

Des Rosiers explained baseball to Simunde, who enjoyed the description
without allowing it to interfere with her innumerable domestic and
agricultural duties. It was quite true that Jacque Noir had never
played the game or even mastered its rudiments, but he had the
narrator's instinct that rises above mere accuracy of detail.

Every evening he accompanied Simunde to the pasture-land, and together
they guided the patient cows homeward. When darkness set in and
Simunde's tasks were finished for the day, he sat with her in the
farm-yard and told lurid tales of northern Canada--to all of which
"madame," whose tasks were never finished, lent a delighted and
adjoining ear.

He pictured to Simunde the snow--how it filled the rivers till they ran
no more; how it covered the great pine-trees until, as far as eye could
see, there was nothing but white; and he told of the wind that was
never still. And she listened, as only a Frenchwoman can listen, with
every emotion he called forth registering in her face, as clouds racing
across the sun will throw their shadows on the ground.

Just before the battalion was to return to the line, the second in
command, Major Douglas Campbell, was called to Divisional Headquarters
for a prolonged conference. As a result Des Rosiers was returned to his
company for duty, though he contrived to spend every free hour with the
little belle of Le Curois. As the time for parting approached with
cruel celerity, he talked less and took to long spells of moody
silence. His heart had been melted as completely as the snow in his
Northland is thawed by the sun in spring. As for her, the little
artifices of gesture and the ceaseless coquetry of the eyes became less
noticeable. For the first time in her life she felt the anguish of a
woman's tears; Petite Simunde's guileless and innocent heart had been
won by Jacque Des Rosiers, the bad man of Northern Quebec.

In a tempest of passionate ardor, but with becoming deference, he
addressed his suit to the mother, who promised consideration that night
and her answer on the morrow.

It was hardly twilight when he wandered back along the main road
towards the fields where his battalion was bivouacked. Full of the
picture of the little woman who had bewitched him, he failed to notice
the approach of an exceedingly smart young staff-officer, ablaze in a
glory of red and brass. With unseeing eyes, Des Rosiers looked directly
at the young gentleman, but failed to make any sign. The officer, fresh
from a staff course in England, stopped him with a sharp command.

"Just a moment, my man. Don't you know enough to salute?"

Des Rosiers awoke from his dream, came to attention, and saluted very
badly.

"I no see you, sair," he said.

"Don't lie to me," snapped Brass Hat (who wasn't a bad chap on the
whole); "of course you saw me. Damn it, you looked right at me. It's
fellows like you who give the corps a bad name."

He was wrong there. It was the presence of several thousand men like
Des Rosiers that had given the Canadian Corps a wonderful name--but let
that pass, as Jack Point would have said.

The element of tragedy seldom enters the lists of life with a fanfare
of trumpets. It steals in unobtrusively, like a poor relation. It comes
in the garb of the commonplace, or masked in triviality or gaiety. One
is unaware of its presence until it throws off concealment and points
its yellow fingers at the throat of its victims. What dramatist would
have read tragedy into the absurd tableau presented by a slouchy
French-Canadian soldier and a youthful staff-officer? Yet, as
inexorable as Fate, it was approaching Jacque Des Rosiers, and only a
few yards away, hiding its skeleton's grin behind the mundane
countenance of Sergeant Smith, returning to the battalion after a day's
work in the orderly room.

The officer, who had just made a move to resume his walk, noticed the
sergeant, and called him over.

"You are from the same battalion as this chap?"

"Yes, sir."

"Report him to his company commander for failing to salute an officer.
Impress upon him that I would not have made this complaint, but your
man looked directly at me, and--well, discipline must be maintained,
especially out here."

Whereupon, feeling that he had rendered unto Cæsar the things that were
Cæsar's, the youthful captain sauntered on to the château, occupied by
Divisional Headquarters, and dined with extra zest. And if it be
thought that this narrative treats him unkindly, let it be written
that, three months later, he was badly wounded while performing a very
gallant action. He was a professional soldier, somewhat lacking in
psychology; that was all.

A little later Private Des Rosiers was arraigned before his company
commander, a gentleman who was neither a soldier nor a psychologist.
The heinous crime of passing an officer without acknowledgment was laid
to the charge of the battle-worn and love-lorn villain from Quebec.

"What have you got to say for yourself?"

Des Rosiers said it. The officer shook his head.

"It's not good enough," he said. "You French-Canadians seem to think
there's one law for yourselves and another for everybody else. You
throw all your comrades down by deliberately insulting an officer--a
staff-officer, who reports it to the G.O.C., and there you are. We're
known as a bad battalion just because of a few slackers like you. Put
him on the horse line picket for two nights, and confine him to camp
during the day."

The prisoner started. "Sair," he said, "I can no be here to-morrow
night. _C'est impossible._"

"Oh, is it emposeeble?" answered the officer, who prided himself on a
gift of neat retort. Des Rosiers's eyes protruded to their utmost.

"By Gar!" he cried, "and nex' morning we go back to the line _encore_,
yes?"

"Well? Have you any objections? If so, I am sure the divisional
commander would appreciate hearing them."

"Ah, but _monsieur l'officier_"--his hands were stretched forth in
an agony of appeal--"Petite Simunde, she wait for me. I promise to
come--I no come--it is terrible!"

The judge in khaki laughed.

"I am fed up with the stories of you French-Canadians and your village
sweethearts--and, confound it, stop waving your hands about!"

"Standt'attenshun!" bellowed the sergeant-major.

"Consider yourself lucky to get off so lightly, my man.--That will do,
sergeant-major."

"Escor' a'prisoner--ri tuh--qui' mawch.--Lef' ri', lef' ri', lef'
ri--Pawty, ha't.--Report to horse line N.C.O. right away.--Escor',
dees-mi!"

Rather late for mess, by reason of holding orderly room at an unusual
hour, the company commander sat down to dinner with a glow of virtue in
his bosom. He had been a lawyer-politician in a small Ontario town, and
it pleased him to find that he had not lost the art of Buzfuzian
browbeating.

And through it all the Fates had woven a thread of tragedy about the
life of Jacque Noir, using in their scheme of things a
non-psychological staff-officer, a non-military and non-psychological
company commander, and a sergeant whose name was Smith.

"There is humor in all things," said Jack Point. Gilbert would have
been equally correct if he had substituted the word "tragedy."

Before sundown of the next day the prisoner was reported absent, and
when the battalion marched away for the line Jacque Des Rosiers was not
with it.


VI

Four days had passed before the second-in-command rejoined his unit in
the trenches. Campbell had been held at Divisional Headquarters, and
now for the first time learned of Des Rosiers's desertion. With a
stiffening of the jaw and an ugly contraction of his shoulders, he
quickly interrogated tragedy's mummers--a sergeant named Smith and a
politician-lawyer company commander. To the former he said nothing; the
man had done his obvious duty. To the company commander he gave a
careful hearing; then, in short staccato sentences that had an odd
resemblance to a machine-gun in action, subjected him to brief
questioning.

"What is Des Rosiers's conduct-sheet like?"

"Pretty bad, sir."

"What were his crimes?"

"Oh, the usual things--dirty on C.O.'s inspection, equipment missing,
late for parades, and generally slovenly. If he hadn't had such a poor
sheet, he would have been decorated."

"In other words, his crimes are rest-billet ones. Is that correct?"

"Well--yes, sir."

"But in the line he earned a decoration?"

"Yes--at Vimy, he----"

"Have you known him to lie?"

"Well, you know what these French-Canadians are like."

"You understand what I mean. Have you ever known him to lie when put on
his honor?"

"Er--no."

"When he told you that he had to see this girl, did you find out if he
was speaking the truth?"

"No, sir, I----"

"Did you look for him at this girl's place when you were coming away?"

"I sent a picket through the village."

The blue in Campbell's eyes became unpleasantly light. "I had Des
Rosiers in my company at Ypres when the Hun sent over his first
gas--you were addressing meetings in Canada at the time--and I know him
for a brave chap, as faithful as a dog. It's men like you with a sense
of vision no better than a mud-puddle that are making the
French-Canadian question another Irish one. They are like children,
easily swayed and true as steel to those they trust; but as long as you
and your kind make a political cat's-paw out of them, alternately
yelling 'Kamerad' and 'Traitor,' according to the political exigencies
of the moment, so long will Canada be without the sympathy and the
enriching of a wonderfully virile race."

The junior officer's face flushed. "I acted according to the evidence,"
he persisted hotly.

"Damn the evidence!" said Campbell furiously. "Play the man, not the
charge-sheet. Does Des Rosiers strike you as a chap who would
deliberately insult a staff-officer? When he is caught he will be shot.
It can't be helped--discipline must be maintained; but I tell you,
when, every few days I read in the adjutant-general's orders that
Private So-and-So, charged with desertion in the presence of the enemy,
was apprehended in a certain village, tried by court-martial, and
sentenced to be shot, sentence duly carried out at 4:15 A.M. on such
and such a date--you know the ghastly rhythm of the thing as well as I
do--I never read one of these announcements without having a bad ten
minutes afterwards. I don't question the decision of the court--a
deserter must pay the penalty--but, mark my words, behind every one of
these offences there is the unseen part played by some officer or
N.C.O. who punished at the wrong time or failed to punish at the right.
There are far too many machine-made routine-fed chaps in the army, with
stars on their cuffs, who don't know that there are times when the grip
of a hand on a Tommy's shoulder, and a few words as man to man, free of
any cursed condescension, are worth all the conduct-sheets in
existence."

"You are making a mountain out of a mole-hill, sir. I consider you are
very unfair to me."

"You do, eh?... What about your unfairness to Des Rosiers and his
little French girl, when he faces a firing-squad in the early morning?"

With an angry gesture, Campbell left the dugout and hurried to
Battalion Headquarters. For twenty minutes he and the colonel, a
gentleman and a soldier, quietly but firmly discussed the case of
desertion.

"I agree with everything you say, Campbell," said the older man, "and I
will strongly recommend mercy to the court; but I am commanding a unit
made up of many personalities, and must think of the example to all."

"Very good, sir. By the way, colonel, I know where Des Rosiers is."

"You do? Then send word to the A.P.M."

"Excuse me, sir; may I go and bring him myself? I ask this as a very
great favor."

The colonel pondered for a moment. "When will you be back?" he said.

"Before 'Stand to' in the morning."

"Right--but, Campbell, my boy."

"Sir."

"Whatever you have in mind, remember that your duty and mine is to
think of the example to the battalion."

The blue in Campbell's eyes deepened; then, with an imperious gesture
of the head, like that of a horse that hears the sound of galloping
hoofs a mile away, he saluted.

"I shall not forget what you say, sir."

"Thank you, Douglas."

With a restless impatience for delay, Campbell left the dug-out and
climbed from the trench to open land. Heedless of a machine-gun that
spat at him from the enemy lines, he hurried on until he reached the
brigade transport lines, where he secured a motor-car.

"Where to, sir?" asked the driver.

"Le Curois," said the major; "and drop me just before you come to the
village."


VII

In the scorching heat of a summer afternoon, Petite Simunde was washing
some linen outside her cottage home. The silence, like the heat, was
oppressive, and seemed more so by contrast with the noise of the troops
who had been there a week before. An apple falling from a tree to the
ground; the restless pounding of a horse's hoof in its stall; the
distant hum of an aeroplane; the rumble of guns, faint but
ominous--these and the sighs of the little woman at her task, were the
only sounds that broke the stillness of the air.

She heard footsteps, and her heart, more than her eyes, told her that
the man she dreaded had come. Her face blanched, and she caught her
breath with a spasm of pain.

"Simunde"--Campbell's voice was gentle but firm--"where is Jacque?"

She continued her work without looking up.

"Simunde"--again the quiet monotone--"where is Jacque?"

She shook her head. "No compree" she faltered, falling into the jargon
of war.

"Simunde!" There was an inflection in his voice, an almost
imperceptible note of severity, that set her heart throbbing with fear.
This was a new person to her, this calm, stern, blue-eyed man who
showed no excitement, no anger, only a quiet, kindly severity that gave
her no chance for subterfuge. She hated him for his calmness--because
he was English--because he was unfair. If he had only shouted or
gesticulated--but this brown-haired giant! To oppose him was like
trying to stem the incoming tide.

She looked up suddenly, and her dripping hands were clenched in a fever
of supplication. Madly she pleaded for her lover, as a woman will plead
only for the man she loves or for her child. Tears ran down her cheeks,
and her voice was choked with sobs.

Patiently he listened, gathering from the anguish more than from her
words the story he had already guessed. In a climax of grief, she
groped for him with her hands and would have cried on his breast. But
he made no move; only his eyes were very grave and tender.

"Simunde," he reiterated in English, "where is Jacque?"

With a shrill cry of rage, she stamped her foot on the ground. This
great iceberg of a man was a devil! He had come for her lover. He would
take Jacque away to be shot. With an involuntary instinct of dismay,
she glanced at the barn some little distance away; then, fearful that
he had read her meaning, she forced a smile with her lips.

Without a word, he put her gently aside and started for the barn. He
had gone ten steps before she moved, when he heard her hurried
breathing and her hands were on his arm.

"_Monsieur_" she cried--"_monsieur le major_--Jacque--Jacque _keel_
you!" She spoke in broken English, remembering one of Des Rosiers's
stories of his misdeeds. Releasing her fingers, he reached the barn in
a few short paces. Opening the door, he cautiously entered and tried to
accustom himself to the semi-darkness--and saw the barrel of a rifle in
the loft slowly aligning itself in his direction.

"Des Rosiers!" His voice rang out like a pistol-shot. "It is I--your
officer!"

There was no sound for almost a full minute, then the rifle was
withdrawn, and the unshaved, disheveled French-Canadian stood before
him.

"Why you come?" he said brokenly. "I can no shoot my officier. Why you
come, eh?"

"Because you will go back with me, Des Rosiers."

The deserter's eyes filled with tears. "By Gar!" he said, "it is not,
what you say, play fair. I say I shoot who come, and Jacque Des
Rosiers, he is no afraid. But you--my boss--_mais non_! Maybe I go
back with you and maybe they shoot me, yes?"

"You have deserted, and the punishment is--well, you know as well as I.
If you come with me now there is a small chance of mercy."

The man's eyes flashed. "I no ask for mercy," he cried. "I, Jacque Des
Rosiers want mercy? Pouf! I laugh. They tell me I no see Simunde again,
when I do nottings wrong. _Très bien_--I say sometings about it too. I
go, I stay--_mêm' chose_; I am shot. Good! I stay with Simunde."

Campbell took a step forward, and there was metal in his voice as well
as in his eyes. His hand fell on the other's shoulder and gripped it
like a vice. "You will come back with me," he said, and again there was
a strange similarity to a machine-gun; "not that you may receive mercy,
but because you are a coward, and must face your punishment for
desertion in the presence of the enemy."

Des Rosiers's face darkened.

"Now, at this minute," went on Campbell, "the battalion, your battalion
and mine, is in the line. Because you were not there, another man is in
your place, perhaps at sentry duty. He may be dead by now--and why?
Because he did his duty, and took the place of a man who was afraid."

The French-Canadian's breath was hot with fury. He clenched his fists,
and great veins stood out on his forehead. "By gosh, me!" he yelled;
"who say Jacque Noir, she is afraid?"

With apparent calm, but his muscles poised for action, the officer
looked squarely at him. "I say you are a coward," he answered. "You
were afraid to go to the line with your comrades. You are afraid now to
face your punishment."

He noticed that Jacque was crouching for a spring. With a shrug of his
shoulders, he produced a cigarette-case and put a cigarette into his
mouth.

"Well?" he said.

It was the second time he had beaten Des Rosiers. The poor fellow
paused, then fell at his feet and exhausted his passion in a sobbing
explanation that would have been ludicrous but for the sincerity of
anguish behind it.

A few minutes later they went together from the barn. Simunde was
standing by her door. From the interior of the house the lamentations
of "madame" could be heard. With a simplicity that strangely ennobled
the rough fellow, Des Rosiers stopped and spoke to Simunde in French,
then kissed her on the lips with a reverence that was more moving than
the deepest passion. Without a word, he entered the motor-car and
stared fixedly ahead at the road which climbed by the château. With a
half-sob, Simunde turned to the officer. She said nothing, but her
tears spoke a language that needed no words. The metal in his eyes
melted into a deep compassionate blue; and Petite Simunde's troubled
little heart thanked God for the great, broad-shouldered man with the
hair that was almost red.


VIII

The two men slept in a deserted hut that night, but an hour before
daybreak they were wending their way through the communication-trenches
to the front line. It was half-an-hour before "Stand to" when the major
and his unkempt companion reached the last dark trench where sentries
were straining their eyes at the blackness of No Man's Land. A junior
officer stepped up to the major and reported, quietly, the situation
during the night.

"They've got a machine-gun post," he said at the end, "somewhere over
by those three trees. Can you see them, sir? They got five of our chaps
last night and two the night before."

"Humph! They tried for me too, yesterday afternoon. Can't the guns do
anything?"

"They've tried, sir, but the rise in the ground seems to protect them
from anything except a direct hit."

Even in the darkness the young lieutenant could notice the sudden look
of decision which flashed into Campbell's eyes.

"Give me an A form," he said tersely.

The lieutenant handed him a message-pad on which he wrote a few words.

"See that the colonel gets this," he said, "and pass word along to the
other companies that Private Des Rosiers and I are going to get that
machine-gun post; so if we come back don't give us too hot a reception
from your sentries.--Sergeant, some bombs.--And let Des Rosiers have
that revolver, old chap. My batman will give you one of mine.
Right--thanks."

"But, sir"--the young officer was vastly troubled--"it's not up to you.
I'll go, major. Honestly, I want to----"

"Thanks, old man; but this is a bigger job than it looks. Not that you
couldn't do it as well or better, but--well, I've set my heart on
going, that's all."

He glanced at Des Rosiers, and noticed that his face was grim and set.

"But, my officier, it is not fair," began the French-Canadian; "it----"

"Not fair?" There was a rasping sound in the major's voice.

"For me, _mais oui_, but for you, _non_. Please--I do my bes'--I go
alone."

Without a word, the second-in-command put out his hand and grasped that
of the deserter; and Des Rosiers felt that death for the other would be
easy. Truly, as Campbell had said, war is a great big game, and men are
like children.

Three minutes later two figures were crawling like panthers towards the
German lines.


IX

The colonel of the battalion took the message from the runner's hand.
It contained seven words:

    "_As an example to the battalion._

    "CAMPBELL."

"What's that noise?"

"Sounds like Mills bombs," said the adjutant.

"And revolvers," muttered the colonel, and swore softly to himself with
a lip that quivered strangely.


X

If ever you go to the Cobalt country, do not fail to take the boat to
Ville Marie, on the blue shores of Pontiac.

There is an excellent hostelry at Ville Marie called "Les Voyageurs,"
where a little lady, known as Petite Simunde, has worked wonders in
making it the cosiest, snuggest, neatest little place that ever warmed
the heart of a lumberjack or a mining-prospector. At night her husband
leads the singing with a mighty voice that shakes the rafters; for did
not the former proprietor, Pierre Generaud, say that singing encouraged
thirst?

At times, when Madame Des Rosiers is away for a day, Jacque Noir will
regale his old friends with tales of his past life, stories that differ
with every telling, and seem to indicate that the narrator himself is
beginning to doubt their accuracy. At these times, too, he has been
known to sing of a sailor who loved a Portuguese maid; but at the first
sound of his wife's footsteps outside Monsieur Des Rosiers is the model
husband, a _rôle_, to be frank, which suits him quite well.

When the snow is very thick on the ground, and the wind howls
mournfully over the lake, Jacque Noir talks of France and the weary
years of war. He will point with pride to his artificial foot, and then
to his decoration, and slowly tell how two men went out into the dark
after a machine-gun post.

And when the guests are gone and the fire is low, when the wind is
moaning quietly, while the snow falls thick--thick--thick--they speak
to each other of the officer who will never come back; of the one whose
hair was brown, almost like red; whose blue eyes were stern, and yet so
kind.

Hand-in-hand they sit close together, and the only sounds are those of
the crackling logs and the wind that is never still.




THE MAN WHO SCOFFED


I

Dennis Montague of Toronto emerged from his bath, glowing and
talkative. A luxurious deep-blue dressing-gown was wrapped about his
form, its color accentuating the gray-blue of his eyes. His valet stood
beside his bed, on which there reposed a set of garments suitable for a
gentleman bent on spending an evening out.

"Ah, Sylvester! That's right. We poor devils must look as well as the
abominable fashions will permit. Did you ever wonder why the men of
to-day are so commonplace? It is the clothes they wear."

Mr. Sylvester took the dressing-gown and hung it in the closet.

"For instance, my dear fellow, to-night I am in a devilishly brilliant
mood; almost any moment now I might say something clever. If I had my
way, I should dress in scarlet, like a toreador, and when I spoke, my
sentences would have something of the dart about them.... Such would be
the fusion of temperament and costume. Instead of which--by the way,
mix me a cocktail--I am forced to put on this hideous shirt and a
swallow-tailed monstrosity that gives one the appearance of a reformed
chimney-sweep. A greater man than either of us, Sylvester, said that
the world was all a stage. Then why the deuce don't we dress for our
parts?"

"'Ere's your cocktail, sir."

"Good--excellent. What's the time?"

"Gone past seven-thirty, sir."

"By Jove! I shall be late. I am always late, my dear chap; it partly
accounts for my extraordinary popularity. A hostess is so relieved to
see me by the time I turn up that for years afterwards she associates
my face with pleasant sensations. Any mail, Sylvester?"

His servant crossed to the table, on which there reposed four letters.
"These came in this afternoon, sir."

"Read them to me while I dress."

"Read them, Mr. Montague?" The valet's face was a study of respectful
expostulation.

"Is the idea so preposterous, my dear fellow? I believe most people
write letters with the idea of having them read."

The decorous Sylvester sighed, and broke the seal of the first letter.
"I would beg to remind you," he read, "that your account----"

Montague made a deprecatory gesture. "How polite these trades-people
are!" he said. "I shall expect one some day to enclose forget-me-nots.
The next letter?"

Sylvester solemnly opened a diminutive envelope. "Mrs. W. De-Ponsy
Harris requests the pleasure----"

"Another request! What is it--a tea or a dance?"

"A dinner, sir."

"Good! I shall go. Mrs. Harris is the worst hostess in the city, but
she keeps the best cook. Proceed."

The worthy Sylvester took from the table a delicately scented letter
that breathed its delightful suggestion of romance to his grateful
nostrils, whereupon he promptly blushed a deep, unlovely, tomato-like
red. "It starts," said he, "'My Dearest Love----'"

His master glanced at him. "Don't blush," he said. "The _grande
passion_ is nothing to be ashamed of." He carefully adjusted his tie.
"What is the young lady's name?"

"Myrtle, sir."

"Ah, yes; poor little Myrtle! What a pity a woman clings to a romance
that is dead. There is something morbid in women that makes them do it.
It is like embracing a corpse."

"Shall I read it, sir?"

"No, no; don't bother. I know what is in it. On the third page she
declares she hates me, and on the fifth she denies it. Myrtle runs so
deucedly to form."

A look of relief crossed the rotund countenance of Mr. Sylvester as he
took up the last letter. "It's from a society for educating the poor,
sir."

"Tear it up. What we need is a society for educating the rich."
Completely dressed, Montague turned round and struck an attitude. "It
is my intention some day," he said with mock airiness, "to found a
_Conservatoire Universelle_, where philanthropists will be taught
charity, ministers of the gospel gain humility, musicians learn to
feel, and newspaper writers take up the elements of language. Heavens!
such scope as I should have! Stick your head out of the window and see
if a taxi is waiting."

Sylvester raised the window and surveyed the street below. "It's there,
sir," he said, drawing his head in.

"Then I shall leave you. Mrs. Le Roy is giving a dinner-party this
evening, and she invariably has guests who listen charmingly.
Good-night, Sylvester."

"Good-night, sir."

When he was gone, William Sylvester scratched his thinly covered head.
He then shrugged his shoulders, and followed this action by pouring out
a glass of sherry. He took a sip. "'Eavens!" he said aloud; "'ow 'e do
talk!"


II

Montague leaned back in the taxicab and, enjoying that sense of
contentment almost invariably engendered by a smooth-running vehicle,
allowed his mind to browse in the meadows of memory.

It was a process which gave him considerable pleasure, for he was a man
who respected his own accomplishments--though given to satirical
comment on those of others. Satisfaction with his past had bred in him
a contentment with the present.... And he never doubted the future; for
was not to-morrow merely to-day carried on?

There were many reasons tending towards his peace of mind. One: that he
was twenty-eight years of age. At such a period in a man's life he
meets older men on a footing of equality, and younger men with
patronage. Women of all ages admire him, and their husbands ask him to
lunch at their clubs. There is no age more gratifying to the vanity.

The man of twenty-eight is an Ambassador of Youth meeting the
Plenipotentiaries of Age as an equal.

Unfortunately for Dennis Montague, he allowed his own excellent opinion
of himself to deepen with the admiration of others until it completely
outstripped all rivals. At twenty-six he had his first great love
affair--with himself. At twenty-eight it had ripened into a sort of
reverence. Occasionally he flirted with women, but such incidents were
mere inconstancies, peccadillos, which never seriously threatened his
own overwhelming _affaire d'amour_.

Born in Ottawa, Dennis was the son of an ambitious mother and a
high-placed Government official. Educated for the law, he had applied a
dexterous intellect to that noble and musty study, and had succeeded in
having himself called to the Bar when he was twenty-three. Up to that
time he had known no other civilization than that found in the capital
of his native land, where a peer of the realm, graciously appointed by
the Imperial Government to act as interpreter between the Mother
Country and the Dominion of Canada, regularly spends his appointed term
at the Government House, thereby stimulating Ottawa's social activities
to fever-heat. It even produces a philosophy of its own among the
capital's tuft-hunters. For, even if _this_ governor-general doesn't
ask us to dinner, there's always a chance that the _next_ one will.

Montague became a noted figure in Ottawa's younger social set, and,
though he expressed contempt for all such things, found a certain
gratification in seeing his name appear constantly in the social
columns of the city's press. It was a soothing sensation to read the
chronicle of his adolescent activities.... Few people can resist a glow
of pleasure on seeing in the morning paper that they were where they
were the previous evening.

Even in the remotest rural districts of America the weekly journal
records that "Hank Wilson went over to Hiram Johnston's farm at Hen's
Creek to see his new barn. Hiram Johnston is one of the most
enterprising farmers that we got."

But--there is something solid about that barn.

After the legal profession had opened its portals to Montague he moved
to Toronto, accepting a junior partnership in a firm of some standing.
To his amazement, he found that in Toronto the _entrée_ into the best
circles--and he could not exist in any other--was more difficult than
in Ottawa. Though both cities had that reverence for wealth which is
universal, Toronto's large population made a sudden and successful
_début_ far from easy. There were so many sets--those who yachted,
danced, and golfed; those who danced and golfed; and those who merely
golfed. Montague decided that the last class was too fatiguing.

Then there were those extraordinary people who practiced the arts in an
amiable way. There is probably no city in the world where there exists
more comfortable talent than in Toronto. For a time music was the
occupation of musicians, but society embraced it, to the benefit of
them both, with the result that musical homes abound.

This worried Montague. The younger set in Ottawa knew no such
phenomena.

Looking farther afield, he next caught a glimpse of the University
family, an after-growth of the larger life of Toronto 'Varsity. But he
avoided that. His mind was dexterous, but needed lesser minds beside it
to give it the sparkle of contrast.

In desperation he turned to the purely _nouveaux riches_, only to
find that they had made entangling alliances with all the other
fraternities.

There was only one well untapped--the Canadian Militia; but his mind
rejected that at once. He had always agreed with Disraeli that
soldiering was fit only for fools in peace-time and for barbarians in
times of war.

He joined the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.

His dinner-parties on the verandas of that beautiful place caused him
to be noticed. A friend of his introduced him to one of the society
reporters. He invited her to a dinner, and sent her home in a
limousine.

Toronto wavered. He was certainly good-looking, and had not the "_C'est
entendu_" column of one of the largest dailies recorded that "Mr.
Dennis Montague's dinner-parties at the Yacht Club have a----" followed
by several French words that were most impressive?

With the genius of a great general, he saw that the gates were
unlocked. Now for some stroke to thrust them open! For two months he
cogitated, and then one day it came to him with a flash, as ideas
occasionally present themselves to authors.

He engaged Mr. Sylvester as a valet. Toronto society surrendered
unconditionally.

It was not so much that Sylvester was a valet, but that he had a nice
appreciation of effect. Sometimes, when his master was playing tennis
on the lawns of the Yacht Club, the unobtrusive servant would be seen
patiently waiting outside the wire-screen, with a letter, or a
suit-case, or some verbal question concerning domestic economy.
Montague appeared annoyed and raised his salary.

But triumph is satisfying only if it leads to further victories; and
Dennis began to cast about for some _rôle_ which would distinguish
him from his fellows. The death of his father handed on to him a yearly
income which made his position secure; but he was not satisfied. It was
then that he learned to scoff.

It was an experiment at first, but an immediately successful one. His
brain, always keen and linked to a facile vocabulary, became focused on
the unlovely task of ridiculing life; and as he was ever careful not to
satirize the set with whom he was dining, his popularity became
tremendous. By a process of catalogue culture he was able to talk on a
variety of subjects; his method being that if one heard the waltz from
_La Bohème_, one was entitled to discuss Puccini. One of Brangwyn's
earlier efforts in a friend's house was sufficient basis for him to
pose as a judge of etchings. He read part of one book by a myriad of
writers, then discarding their works, held forth on the authors
themselves.

With young men of observant and creative minds there are two paths
which, early in life's journey, offer puzzling deviation. To follow one
(and to youth it seems the less attractive), a man must bend his
faculties to the discovering and the interpreting of the beauty of
life; the other leads to the annihilation of everything that is genuine
and that can be used as a target for cynicism. Montague chose the
second path, and spared nothing but himself.

Even when the war gripped the city, and one by one the little gods of
puny social life crashed impotently to destruction, he continued his
glittering way unperturbed. The war was young, and the 1st Canadian
Division was merely holding the line somewhere near a place called
Ypres.... The market for superficiality was still brisk.

The taxi came to a stop outside a lovely home in Chestnut Park, and,
paying the driver, Montague mounted the steps and rang the bell.

"I wonder," he mused, "who the deuce I shall have as a dinner partner?"


III

After his usual apologies for tardiness, Montague led Mrs. Le Roy in to
dinner, and like the seasoned campaigner he had become, glanced at the
guests for conversational adversaries. His host and hostess were noisy
and given to platitudes; there was a soft-voiced American from the
South who seemed only anxious to be attentive and courteous to the
woman next him; on the other side there was a young woman who was so
consistently effusive that she was the most invited-out guest in
Toronto--but never had a love affair; beside her was a young subaltern
in an obviously new uniform. Montague had a vague idea that he had seen
that well-groomed uninspired face in some bank. And he was right. Less
than six months back the bank manager had written to the General Office
about this youth--"He's a decent enough fellow, but lacking in
initiative."

Just beyond the subaltern Montague saw the finely chiseled features of
Vera Dalton, and for some reason unknown to himself his color mounted
as their eyes met. He had known her in Ottawa, though she had
steadfastly avoided his friends, and later, when her parents had come
to Toronto, he had seen her at odd intervals. He liked to think of her
as an old friend, though there was something about her that made his
flippancy difficult in her presence; but beyond their occasional
meetings at certain houses, neither one had made any attempt to develop
the friendship.

She was fair without being blond, and avoiding the riotous climax of
color so tempting to fair women, she dressed in subtle shades, with
colors suggested rather than displayed. Her face had a poise and a
composure that had nothing in common with placidity; and she was
feminine without being helpless or making a constant sex appeal. She
had always interested Montague, and even though their conversations had
consisted of neatly worded nothings, her memory had a habit of
lingering with him in a way that disturbed his self-admiration. Two
things he felt about her--one, that she disliked him; the other, that
he held some power over her.

He removed his eyes from hers, and, glancing for a moment at the
remaining guests, who sat like a jury with Mr. Le Roy at the end as
foreman, he drained his glass and leaped into the conversational ring
with a vivacious effrontery that was startling. Naturally of high
spirits and easily stimulated by applause, he juggled phrase and
quotation, tossed words into the air, and, as though he were a
conjurer, watched them link together into ideas. He held his listeners
in wonder and challenged them all on subjects ranging from New Thought
to the latest scandal. Once the American held him with a witty retort,
but Montague feinted with an epigram and stabbed him with a paradox. On
one occasion the newly created subaltern, stirred by wine and a certain
courage derived from his khaki, threw a truism into the arena in the
hope that it would trip the talker, but Montague, catching it on the
point of his wit, twirled it about, and hurled it at its source,
laughing as the discomfited young officer retired behind the barriers
of self-conscious silence.

His hearers applauded by look and word, and Mrs. Le Roy whispered to
her servant to keep Montague's glass full.... She was delighted.... She
had never seen him glitter so.

And Montague noted the applause, emptying his glass again and again;
but it was neither wine nor the incense of flattery that had stirred
his pulse to such energy.... In that glance from Vera's eyes he had
read a truth. His power, whatever it was, had mastered her dislike, and
he knew that in the evening before him she would bend in his arms as
the bow yields to the strength of the archer.


IV

After dinner they danced. Mrs. Le Roy was not a gifted hostess, but she
acted on the principle that food, wine and music--provided the food and
the wine were high-class, and the music was not--would make any evening
a success. Few of her guests disagreed with her; their feet and their
tongues were light, and they danced and talked without self-consciousness
or mental effort.

Twice Montague had danced with the girl, but it amused him to leave
her each time with some mocking pleasantry, the only answer to the
smoldering question of her eyes. It was nearly midnight when he led
her, almost without asking, into the deserted recess of the Le Roy's
conservatory, and, beckoning her to a settee, sat down beside her. With
her hands clasped on her lap she gazed fixedly at the shadowy garden
showing outside.

Montague looked at her, and his eyes grew bright as they noted her
poise, tempered by fear of him. He leaned over and rested his hand on
hers.

"Please don't," she said quietly, making no effort to withdraw her own.

"Women always say 'don't,'" he said. "I suppose they enjoy a sort of
preliminary _tête-à-tête_ with conscience before committing an
indiscretion."

"But I mean it, Dennis."

"All women mean it, my dear Vera."

Her color deepened, and she tried to release her hands from his, but
his grip tightened until it hurt. She made no further attempt, and he
moved still closer to her.

"Please let me go," she said, keeping her eyes steadily from him.

"You are inartistic."

"But I ask you--and you are a gentleman." Something of the dislike that
he had always known she felt for him crept into her voice and left a
nice tinge of irony.

"I have a valet and three addresses," he said, "and only pay my tailor
once a year.... In most countries that gives one the standing of a
gentleman."

She bit her lip and glanced quickly at him. His pulses, already stirred
by wine and the intrigue of a midnight amour, leaped into a fever at
the glimpse of burning eyes and lips that slightly trembled. He placed
his hand on her shoulder and drew her face towards his.

"Why," she said hesitatingly--"why do you want to kiss me?"

Montague smiled. "The eternal question, Vera. It has trapped more men
into proposals than all the wiles of a generation of fond mothers."

"But you don't love me," she said, her hands pressed against the lapels
of his jacket in self-defense.

"On such a night as this," he said, "who could help but love you?"

"Dennis, please let me go--I mean it--I shall call for help."

His brow contracted with a sudden frown. "You come here," he said, "at
midnight--into a deserted conservatory ... with me. Then, because I do
what you knew from the start I would do, you suddenly decide to play
'Little Miss Prude from the Convent.'"

"I--I should not have come. I did not want to, Dennis."

His lips curved into a smile. "Then why did you?"

Her eyes pleaded with him not to prolong the scene, but he was mad with
the joy of seeing this sensitive woman, who had so long kept him at a
distance, caught in the meshes of his fascination, and he held her in
his arms, confident of his power to sway her at his will.

"I fought against it, Dennis," she said quickly. "But--I had to come.
Oh, why force me to say such a thing. Can you not see how unfair you
are?"

She struggled to her feet, but he stood before her, barring the way to
the door.

His breath came faster. This was a charming surrender! It had
gracefulness, novelty, charm.... Only, something in her eyes warned him
to come no closer.

"I have admitted, Dennis Montague," she said breathlessly, "that I came
here because you fascinated me. It's true; you have always fascinated
me. But I tell you that down in my heart I loathe you, detest you, for
the coward that you are." Montague drew back as though fired upon by a
masked battery. "In all the years I have known you," she went on
furiously, as though fearing that her courage would leave her before
the finish, "you have done nothing that was not selfish, mean, and
cowardly--above everything else, cowardly. Look at the girls you have
known----" Montague interrupted her with an impatient gesture, but she
went on: "More than a dozen I could name have given you the depth and
the sweetness of their first love, inspired by you, called forth by
you. Do you realize what a woman's heart is and what she gives with it?
And you--you are too cowardly to face marriage, too cowardly to love
with your own heart--too selfish to leave women's hearts alone."

Montague took a cigarette-case from his pocket. "May I smoke?" he said
coolly.

"You are a coward about your profession as well," she hurried on,
ignoring his interruption. "Your mother, I know, had great dreams for
you. She planned, worked, sacrificed for you. Yet you are too much of a
coward seriously to face competition with what you choose to call 'the
little legal minds of the city.'"

"And thirdly?" he said, lighting a cigarette.

"Yes, thirdly," she said desperately, although his easy nonchalance was
fast undermining her courage, "you are not in the army. Yet no one
could say that Dennis Montague is not fit. I can only presume, like
every one else, that you are afraid."

"And lastly?" He was still calm, although keener eyes than hers would
have noticed a dark, ominous flush under his eyes.

"And, lastly," she said, unconsciously repeating his formula, "you
scoff at everything that is good and pure, sneering at religion, and
drawing yourself aside from your fellow-creatures as though they were
loathsome. Yet I say to you, Dennis, that there is not a man in the
slums whose soul isn't far, far richer than yours. It is only a coward,
afraid to face the real things, who scoffs at life."

Weak from the effort she had made, her voice subsided into silence and
a cold sweat broke out on her brow and the palms of her hands.

"Will you smoke, Vera?"

"No, thanks," she answered faintly.

"Do. It would soothe you."

"No, I thank you." She repressed a sudden desire to fly from the
conservatory. She had become suddenly afraid of the cool, smiling
figure beside her.

"As far as girls are concerned," he said quietly, replacing the
cigarette-case in his pocket, "just as long as they angle for us with
every artifice of dress and rouge and coquetry, so long will they catch
us and the consequences. As for the law, which my mother planned for
me, I regret that my father left me the instincts of a gentleman, not
of an attorney. I am not boring you?"

She made no reply.

"As for the army, I don't happen to be interested in the war. I
disapprove of the crudeness of our Canadian civilization. I disapprove
of England's lack of the artistic. I disapprove of German militarism,
Scotch bagpipes, Swiss cheese, Chinese laundries, and American
politics. Why should I fight for one when I disapprove of them all? As
for my fellow-man, I shun the ordinary man of the streets because he
does not think, read, or bathe often enough. I am not hostile to him; I
merely ignore him. I am not a coward at all, my dear Vera; I am merely
an artist among artisans."

He bowed gracefully. "Let us return to the dancing," he said.

With a frightened, inquiring glance, she took his arm, and without a
word they left the conservatory. At the door of the ballroom they
paused, and she laid a timid hand on his arm. It will ever be a mystery
to men how women can love and despise the same object.

"Dennis," she said, "will you try to forget what I have said?" Her
courage had gone, fled before his coolness and the fascination he held
for her, though she had striven with all her womanhood to free herself
from it.

"I wish to Heaven I could," he said grimly.


V

The morning sunshine invaded the rooms of Dennis Montague with
pervading cheeriness. It was nearing the end of April, and a hundred
birds sang of the winter wonders of arid Africa, and of the witcheries
of the Nile, where Pygmies are at war with the butterflies, and the
great god Memnon raises his mighty shout to greet the dawn of day.

Oblivious to the sunshine and everything but his thoughts, Montague lay
in bed, and sought to wrestle with the truth he had heard the night
before. It was impossible to dismiss the thing from his mind. His brain
throbbed with resentment, questioning, searching her words--striving to
convince himself that her charge of cowardice was the vituperation of
an unrequited love. But it was useless. He could explain her actions,
dissect her motives, applaud his own pose, but he could not eliminate
the feeling of personal nausea which clung to him, as though he had
suddenly sickened of his whole nature.

A knock at the door interrupted the thread of his thoughts, and his
valet entered with a tray of breakfast-things.

"Good morning, sir." Sylvester carefully rearranged the tray on a
little table beside the bed. "It's a beautiful morning, sir. There's
great news too."

"What is it?"

"Canadians 'ave saved Calais, sir--leastways they've stopped them for
the time."

"They're in action, eh?"

"'Orrible, too, sir; the paper says the Germans used poison gas."

"Good God!"

"Yes, sir--the French Colonials gave way, yelling that 'ell was let
loose, and the Canadians went up and 'eld the line."

Montague put down the cup of coffee untasted. "What does it say--about
casualties?"

"Why, sir it looks as if some battalions was pretty well wiped out.
'Ere's the paper, sir----"

"No--no. I don't want to see it. Tell me--it says ... the Canadians
held against ... gas?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are our Toronto chaps in it?"

"Very 'eavy, sir. It seems as if the 'Ighland Brigade got it the
worst."

Montague sank back on the pillow, his face grim and pallid.

"Come along, sir; 'ere's your breakfast."

His master gazed at the ceiling. "Sylvester," he said listlessly, "for
a long time you have ministered to my body. What can you do for a soul
that is starving?"

The valet beamed reassuringly. A large and varied experience as a
servant to young gentlemen had inured him to morning-after repentances.

"That's all right, sir," he said, rubbing his hands genially. "A
bromo-seltzer will fix you up. 'Ello, sir!" The sound of a military
band drew him to the window. "It's one of the new battalions--blooming
near a thousand of them. Seems like 'ome, it does, when the Guards used
to do London in all their swankin' regimentals."

A battalion swung past in steady rhythmical tread to the stirring
strains of the Welsh hymn of freedom, "Men of Harlech"--and there was a
youthful vigorousness about the men, a suggestion of unconquerable
manhood.... And on every man's face there was written pride and
determination. For their comrades had been tried at Ypres.... They had
held the line.... And, by the living God, the Hun would pay for that
foul gas given to the wind to carry against defenseless men.

The last ranks of the battalion passed, and the music ceased as
suddenly as it had come. The birds resumed their chorus, and William
Sylvester his imperturbable mask of deference. Languidly Montague rose
from his bed and lit a cigarette.

"Our civilization," he said quietly, "need not pride itself on raising
those men. Men have always been brave since the beginning of time. The
terrible failure of our age is that it has produced men like me--a
coward."

Mr. Sylvester scratched his head. "Lord bless me, sir!" he ventured,
"you're not a coward. Why, look at the jump you took at last year's
horse show."

Montague turned on him with a vehemence that the valet had never before
seen in his master. "I tell you I am a coward," he said fiercely.
"Don't I know that my place is with these men? In that battalion that
passed there are married men with families, there are only sons of
widows, there are brothers, sweethearts. Who is there to care if I go?
My death would not cause a single tear; and yet I stay--not that I am
afraid of bullets or death, but because I know that I should have to
sleep beside men who are filthy, unclean, and that I should grow filthy
too. I abhor it. I detest it. Yet I stand aside and let others go."

"You--you are a gentleman, sir."

"A gentleman!" Montague laughed raspingly. "My own definition last
night was 'a man with a valet and three addresses.' What a fool I was!
No, I am not a gentleman. I have never been one. The greatest gentleman
of all time was a carpenter. That is the truth I have to burn into my
soul."

He sank into a chair, and shadows of fatigue marred his face. "Last
night, Sylvester," he said slowly, "I lay awake for hours, and
sometimes in the awful darkness that surrounds one when sleep refuses
to come, things seem clearer and more cruel than in daylight. Last
night I saw myself for the first time.... I do not say I shall
change.... It is too late, I think...."

An hour later he left his flat, fully dressed, and strolled into the
sun-lit streets. A newsboy dashed past, screaming in strident tones,
"All night fighting--Canadian Line still holding;" and then, apparently
feeling the announcement needed identification, he shrieked, "All about
that great big European War."

Montague heard his name spoken. It was the ex-bank clerk, the young
subaltern with the uninspired face.

"Good-bye," he said rather shyly.

"Where are you going?"

"Marching orders," said the other. "We leave here to-morrow. By jove,
we've got something to fight for now!"

Montague murmured his best wishes and moved on, but the words that kept
running through his brain were those of the boy's manager who had
written "A decent enough fellow, but lacking in initiative."


VI

His walk, unplanned as it was, drew him towards the center of the city.
He mechanically avoided the streets that were crowded, and, like a bit
of flotsam on the ocean's surface, was guided and buffeted until,
turning down a quiet side-street, he emerged upon the corner of a huge
stone building. He glanced up, to realize that it was the Armories and
was about to change his course when a recruiting sergeant, noticing his
hesitation, stepped up to him.

"Beg pardon," he said, "but was you lookin' to sign up?"

"Sign up?" Montague repeated the words automatically.

"Sure--sign up with the Brindle's Battalion."

"The Brindle's Battalion?"

"Come off that parrot stuff," growled Sergeant Saunders.

Montague shook himself together. "I beg your pardon," he said stiffly.

The sergeant shuffled uneasily. "Say, don't be so dashed polite," he
said, not ill-naturedly. "I'm here to get recruits. We're a tough
bunch; we're a rough bunch; but we're men. Our boys ain't strong on
polish or eddication, and they're no boozeless, non-smoking crowd; but
they're straight, and they're game, and they're men."

"They're men," repeated Montague, dazed by a dizziness that seemed to
wrap himself and the sergeant in an enveloping mist.

"That's what I said," reiterated Sergeant Saunders, mentally noting
that he would make Montague drop his sing-song if he ever got the
opportunity. "What do you say, old scout?"

Montague glanced up. "Will you take me?" he said.

"Will we take you?" A broad, brown hand grasped Montague's arm, and he
found himself being led into a room in the Armories, where he
discovered that his full name was Dennis Oliver Montague, that he was
twenty-eight years of age, that he was an Anglican, and that his Uncle
Charles was his next of kin. He further found that he was the property
of His Majesty King George the Fifth for the duration of the war and
six months after. "So 'elp me; and shove 'im in to the medico.--Glad
you signed up, my lad; you'll never regret it. We've got a man's job
for you, and--close that bleeding door, Nokes.--All right.--_Next!_"

With whirlwind rapidity Dennis stripped for the doctor, who pronounced
him an excellent example of cannon-fodder; and, still dazed, he put on
his clothes and emerged into the open air, a red band about his arm
proclaiming to the world that he was now Private D. O. Montague, of the
Brindle's Battalion, C.E.F. He gasped, shrugged his shoulders, then
went home.


VII

Sergeant Skimps surveyed the squad of recruits with the eye of a man
who had seen recruits for twenty years and was impervious to any
emotion on the subject.

"You're soldiers now," he began, his dialect strongly reminiscent of
Bow Bells; "you're in the service now, so, kiss me, 'Arry, get your
'air cut, all of yer. We don't go in for Paderooskies in the harmy.
Then 'old yer 'eads hup and put yer chests hout has though you was
somebody. You ain't, but don't go tellin' no one." (A gentle murmur
greeted this sally.) "Halways respeck yer hofficers and
non-commissioned hofficers, and don't go slapping the colonel on the
back and hoffering 'im a cigar. You're in the harmy--that bloke at the
hend, spit out that there tobacco--g'wan!--a filthy 'abit on parade,
and it'll get C.B. for yer. Where do you 'ail from, hany'ow?--a nice
specimen, I don't think--chewing when a sawgeant's talking to yer. Now,
then, fall in--hanother 'arf-hour's drill."

For five hours that day alternately Sergeant Skimps talked, and his
tired squad turned, marched, and wheeled about the gravel
parade-ground. Weary to the point of exhaustion, already deaf to the
interminable harangue of Sergeant Skimps, the hour of four-thirty found
Montague with his first day in the army finished. He had only one
desire--to seek his apartment, to feel the cool shower upon his body,
and to lounge in languid repose in his dressing-gown, soothed by the
inevitable cigarette. He broke away from the group, but was hailed by a
ruddy-faced Little Englander, who had made various overtures to him
during the day.

"Going up?" said the other, his accent proclaiming his British birth,
tempered by ten years of Canadian citizenship.

"Yes," said Montague; "but I'm in a hurry."

"Right-o! I'm with you." He swung along beside Montague. "This is the
life," he said cheerily.

"What?" asked Montague.

"Soldiering--a dollar ten a day, short hours, and no work--what ho!"

"Do you mean to say you like it?" asked Montague, wishing his companion
reeked a little less of his recent exertions.

"Why not like it?" said Private Waller. "We're in it, ain't we?"

"I suppose so," said the other shortly.

Private Waller rubbed his hands together. "He's a sergeant, ain't he?"

"Do you mean that strutting bounder who drilled us to-day?"

"Lordee! don't let him hear you say that." The little man went pale at
the thought. "Say, if you don't like him, just wait until you see
Sergeant-Major 'Awkins."

A cockney of even ten years' Canadian citizenship loses his h's when
excited. Montague began to wince under it, and wished a dozen times
that his companion would hold his tongue and give him a chance to
think, to separate the varied experiences of the day, and to edit his
thoughts. He shrugged his shoulders and acknowledged the greeting of
Mrs. Merryweather from a huge motor-car. Waller's eyes bulged.

"I say, you know some swells, don't you? What was you--a chauffeur?"

Montague considered. "No; I was a sort of social buffoon."

Waller considered. "Something in the plumbing line?" he ventured.

"Not exactly," answered Montague, and muttered, "Duration of the
war--and six months after--with plebs like this!"

"I'm a carpenter by trade," vouchsafed Private Waller, and then emitted
a shout of delight. "I say," he cried; "blime, if it ain't the missus!"

In a few moments they reached a little Englishwoman, not much more than
a girl, who was guiding a baby-carriage containing a chubby little
youngster of some two years of age.

"'Ello, Bill!" she said. "'Ow's the army?"

"Great," said her husband; "but meet my pal, Private Montague.--Private
Montague, meet my old woman."

"Glad to know any friend of Bill's," said Mrs. Waller warmly.

Montague bowed. "Thank you," he said gravely. "You are giving up a lot
in letting your husband go to the war."

"You said I had to, Emily."

The girl pouted. "'E would go."

"But you wanted to go, Bill."

"Of course; but I said----"

"I know--about the biby; but----"

"There you go again. Didn't you say I must?"

"Oh, well, Mr. Montague"--the little woman looked frankly into his
gray-blue, unreadable eyes--"the biby's a boy, and when he grows up I
cawn't say to 'im, ''Arry, your father was a slacker!' Now, can I, Mr.
Montague?"

He made no answer, but a thoughtful look crept into the hard, unsmiling
eyes.

"Come and have a bit of supper, pard?" Private Waller rubbed his hands
together at the prospect.

"No--no, thanks," said Montague hastily. He was longing for privacy and
the solace that comes with solitude. "Some other night, perhaps, when
we have our uniforms."

"Good enough!" cried the cheery little man. "Then we'll do Queen Street
together and show the girls--what ho--oh no!"

Montague raised his hat. "Good evening," he said.

"So long," said Private Waller. "See you in the morning."

When they were alone the husband turned to his young wife with an air
of pride. "What do you think of my pal?" he asked, with an air of
proprietorship.

"G'wan," said Emily disdainfully; "'e ain't your pal."

"He is, too."

"'E ain't!" She tossed her head. "Don't I know one when I sees one; me,
the daughter of a footman in Lady Swankbourne's? 'E your pal! 'E
blooming well ain't--'e's a _gentleman_!"

Far up the street Montague was striding towards his home, wondering if
any one had seen him with the Wallers, or had heard the garrulous
little cockney call him pard. Good heavens! what would his friends say;
or, for that matter, how could he face Sylvester if he had been seen by
that polite scion of servitude? "But I'll see it through," he muttered
savagely, biting his lip, "if only to prove that the under-dog, like
all other dogs, is a thing without a soul!"


VIII

It was early in November about eighteen months later that Vera Dalton,
returning from her self-imposed task at a Military Convalescent Home,
found a letter awaiting her which bore the heading that will cast its
unique spell over us and our children for generations to
come--"Somewhere in France."

Sorrow had come into her home, as it had into so many hundreds of
others, but it had mellowed, not marred her womanliness.

Into the vortex of the nations she had seen the young men of Canada
flinging themselves with laughing voices and sturdy courage. With the
other women of the city she had watched the endless stream of youth as
though, across the seas, some Hamelin Piper were playing an
irresistible, compelling melody.... And still the cry was for
more--more sons, more brothers, more fathers! Month after month the
ceaseless crusade went on--month after month new battalions sprang into
being, trained a short time, and then made for the sea.... Always the
sea, waiting with its foaming restlessness to carry its human cargo to
the slaughter.

The sea ... the sea....

It became the symbol of sacrifice to her. Across its turbulent expanse,
youth was forfeiting its life for the blindness of the past. The hungry
fire of war was being fed with human hearts.... But such is the nature
of fire that what lives through it is imperishable.

A year ago Montague had gone with his battalion--without even a
good-bye. She had never heard of him, but the ordeal of the flames had
left him stripped of his artificiality as a tree stricken by a sudden
frost is robbed in a moment of its foliage. It is not only the best in
men that lives through war--vile passions vie with courage and great
sacrifice.... But artificial things succumb and crumple with the
scorching heat, and are blown into space by the breath of passions,
base or noble--it matters not--they are _real_.

With trembling hands she opened the letter.

    "SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE.

    "MY DEAR GIRL,--In a couple of hours we are going over the parapet
    to reach the German lines or gain oblivion--or worse. All around me
    the men I have worked with, slept with, fought with, are writing
    to, or thinking of, some loved one at home. I do not know whether
    the love you once felt for me has died or not, but it was once
    strong enough to hurt me as no one had ever done before--to tear my
    soul out to where I could see its rottenness with my own eyes. I
    could not live with myself after that, and as you must have heard,
    for I believe it was a drawing-room jest for some time, I joined a
    battalion composed almost entirely of men from the factories, the
    workshops, and the streets.

    "It was partly a spirit of bravado made me do it, and partly a
    desire to wrestle with truth. I cannot say how hard it was at first
    to endure their company, their incessant, meaningless profanity. I
    hated every one of them. To salute an officer in the street caused
    me such humiliation that I thought of desertion a dozen times. From
    my contempt of my fellow-soldiers to an understanding of their
    nobility has been a hard, cruel road to travel; but I have traveled
    it, and I think that somewhere on the road there is a cross whereon
    my pride was crucified. Vera, my prayer is no longer that of the
    Pharisee, but of the Publican. I was offered a commission; I was
    urged to join the signalers or the machine-gun section, because
    there I should find men more after my own stamp; but I refused--the
    memory of your words made me stick with the men I started with.

    "I have found them crude, uneducated, unambitious, but true as
    steel, and asking no better reward for their heroism than that
    their 'missus and kids' will be looked after at home. I tell you,
    Vera, that when the war is over we shall have to realize that it is
    not only the consumptive and the imbecile that deserve care and
    thought. There is a grandeur, a manhood, in the ordinary, unlovely,
    unkempt man of the streets that our civilization has failed to
    bring out, but war has done it. So much has war given to us; so
    much has peace failed to give.

    "Life has become a riddle to me, still fascinating, but
    fascinatingly puzzling. Perhaps I shall find the answer in No Man's
    Land.

    "Good-bye, dear girl. Don't think from the tone of my letter that I
    have forgotten how to smile (this is where real humor is found, for
    humor was always a twin to tragedy). But I am forgetting how to
    scoff. I suppose, though, that I haven't changed beyond
    recognition, for I believe behind my back I am called 'The Duke.'

    "Like my comrades, I have written to a loved one at home.

    "I trust, Vera, that it is _au revoir_.

    "DENNIS.

    "D. O. Montague, Pte. No. 67,895,
    "Brindle's Battalion, C.E.F."


IX

"Four minutes!" A subaltern, who had reached the Brindle's Battalion
only the night before, stood with his back to the parapet, his wrist
turned so that he could study the face of his watch. Half-a-dozen
rifles spat at the German trench opposite. The attack was to be a
surprise, without preliminary artillery fire.

"Three minutes!" There was a slight catch in the lieutenant's voice as
he watched the ominous course of the hand of his watch ticking off the
seconds. Dennis Montague turned to look at him, wondering where he had
seen him before, and idly conjecturing how he had earned that little
splash of color on his breast.

A signaler looked up from his phone. "O.C. wants to know if everything
is ready, sir."

"Two minutes! Has every man his gas-helmet, water-bottle, iron ration?
Right. Tell the O.C. everything's O.K."

There was a coarse jest from a grizzled corporal; a few laughed
nervously. A little chap, who had lied about his age, caught his breath
in a sob he could not stifle. The young officer, who was beside him,
reached out his hand and patted the lad's shoulder.

"One minute!" Every man crouched for the spring--there was a mumbled
prayer--a curse--a laugh. Montague took a deep, quivering breath, and
his trembling hand felt for the bayonet-stud to see that it was firm.

"Come on, Brindles! Give 'em hell!" The subaltern leaped to the
parapet, stood silhouetted a moment against the dull, cloudy sky, and,
without a word, fell back into the trench--a corpse. And in that moment
Montague remembered him. He was the "decent enough fellow"--"lacking in
initiative."

Cursing, shouting, laughing, the men scrambled over the breastwork, and
were met by a torrent of machine-gun fire that swept through their
ranks with pitiless accuracy.

"Something's wrong!" yelled Major Watson from the center. "They knew we
were coming;" and he whirled around twice and dropped in his tracks.
Montague leaped forward with a hoarse, inarticulate shout, when he felt
a blow on his arm as though it had been struck by a red-hot iron. He
fell, but rose immediately, madly excited, muttering words that meant
nothing. The charge had stopped halfway, and all about him his comrades
stood irresolute, desperate, unable to advance, determined not to
retreat.

"Come on," shrieked the adjutant, "for God's sake!" And he fell,
choking, vomiting blood, with a bullet in his throat.

Without an officer left, the men looked wildly about, the bullets
spitting around them and taking their steady, merciless toll. With a
great feeling of ecstasy, Montague staggered to the front.

"Steady, the Brindles!" he yelled hoarsely. "Shake out the line to the
left--cold steel, Brindles! Come on!"

"Follow the Duke!" roared a dozen voices; and they hurled themselves
forward.

They hacked their way into the trench, but their triumph was
short-lived. Things had gone badly on the left, and the signal to
retire flashed along the line. With horrible blaspheming, the Brindles
gave up their trench and started back for their own line. When he was
half-way across a bullet struck Montague in the shoulder, then another
in the thigh, and he sank to the ground unconscious.

When he awoke the moonlight was streaming over the stricken field. He
bit his lip to keep from crying out at the sudden spasm of pain in his
shoulder, and then something he saw almost stopped the beating of his
heart. A figure was slowly crawling towards him, inch by inch, but
steadily, ominously coming nearer with every moment. His left arm was
helpless, and he tried to reach for his bayonet by turning over.

"Pard, are you dead?"

Never did sounds of sweetest music fall more gratefully on human ears
than the words uttered by Private Waller on the night of October 16,
1916, on No Man's Land, Somewhere in France.

"Thank God!" cried Montague, his voice weak and quavering.
"Waller--old--boy."

"Damn!" muttered Private Waller. The Germans, with customary
fiendishness, were searching the ground with rifle-fire to prevent any
attempt at rescue. "Are you much hurt, pard?"

"I'm used up pretty bad," Montague answered weakly, and in incorrect
English. Things change in No Man's Land.

"I'm the third as has come after you," whispered Waller; "Sykes and
Thompson got theirs."

"Coming--for me?" Montague's voice trailed off into a querulous sob.

"Sure--those of us as got back shook hands on it that we'd get the Duke
back dead or alive."

Montague tried to speak, but only two scalding tears slowly trickled
down his cheeks. He was weak from loss of blood, and he was learning a
bitter lesson in the moonlight on the stricken field.

"I'll hoist you up as easy as I can," whispered Private Waller eagerly,
"and I'll sort of crawl; and if they spot us, I'll let you down easy.
Come on, pard."

Fifty yards--that was all--but fifty yards of unspeakable agony. The
blood flowed again from Dennis's wounds and matted over Waller's hair.
A dozen times he would have fainted, but he grit his teeth, and
crawling, grasping, falling, Waller took him to the edge of the trench.
And then a bullet caught the little man, and he dropped.

"Good-bye, pard," he said.

So died Private W. Waller, of His Majesty's Canadian Expeditionary
Force.


X

Almost a year later, a one-armed man was walking along a quiet street
in the northern suburbs of a great Canadian city. He paused at a pretty
little cottage that nestled in a well-kept garden to speak to a young
woman whose black dress was mute testimony to her tragic bereavement.

"'Ow can I ever thank you, Mr. Montague," she said, "for giving me this
cottage and going guardian to little 'Arry? And your wife, too, is that
kind and beautiful that after she comes--and she is in and out nearly
hevery day--I feel as if an angel had been 'ere. Well, if here ain't
little 'Arry with his face all dirty!"

A sturdy urchin stumbled forward, and in some way the one-armed man
hoisted him to his shoulder.

"Hello, pard!" said Montague.

The little chap chuckled and pulled at his hat.

"I often wonders," said the little mother, "why you always calls him
'pard.' Bill used to call you his pard, but I knew all along you
wasn'

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