The Human Boy and the War Part 17

"That means the Army, of course," she answered. "I hope you will pa.s.s well."

I then thanked her for this kind wish, and said I hoped so, too.

"Owing to the War," I explained, "there is no very great difficulty in pa.s.sing into Woolwich at present, and I hope to get on quickly, and take my place in the fighting-line before the War is over."

She approved of this.

"Quite right," she said. "I never wanted to be a man before the War, but I do now."

She spoke in a very martial and sporting way, and rang for tea.

This was good of its kind, and when I had eaten pretty well everything, after handing her each dish first, she asked me if I would like an egg, and, of course, I said I would. Then she ordered the old servant to boil two eggs; and the old servant did so, and I ate them both. We talked of the War, and, funnily enough, I quite forgot all about the "Turbot" till a clock chimed on the mantelshelf the hour of five.

This, as it were, reminded me of my mission.

"I must soon go back to the station," I said, "so perhaps you will now be so kind as to tell me about 'Turbot.'"

"And who is 'Turbot'?" she asked.

So I had to explain that we were all called fish, owing to a silly joke, and I also hoped that she would not think that I meant anything rude to her nephew by mentioning him in that way. She was not in the least annoyed, and said:

"Ralph came to me on Sat.u.r.day, and he left me on Sunday morning."

"Do you know where he has gone?" I asked.

And she said: "I haven't the slightest idea where he has gone, Travers."

"That's very serious," I said, "because your nephew's guardian hasn't the slightest idea, either."

Her lips tightened over her dazzling teeth at the mention of the guardian, and I could see she didn't like him. She spoke in a sneering sort of voice and said:

"Ah! Really?"

Then, feeling there was nothing more to discuss, I got up and cleared.

"Let me know if anything transpires," she said, and not happening to remember exactly what "transpire" meant, I merely said that no doubt the Doctor would tell her all that might happen in the future about Bradwell.

She shook hands in a kindly manner and saw me to the gate. And such was her friendly spirit that she picked a small blue flower and gave it to me to wear.

"Put it in your b.u.t.tonhole," she said, which I did do until I was out of sight, and could chuck it away without hurting her feelings.

The Doctor didn't seem to like what I had to say, and evidently thought I hadn't got it right.

"His aunt appears as callous as his guardian," said the Doctor. "I am to understand that he went out on Sunday morning and did not return, and that Miss Mason has not the slightest idea where he has gone to?"

"That's what she made me understand, sir," I said.

"I fail to credit it," answered the Doctor. Then he dismissed me, rather slightingly, and sent for Brown, who always does the detective business at Merivale.

There was a good deal of quiet excitement about it, and, of course, we all thought "Turbot" would be run to earth in a few hours, or days, at most. But he never was; and though the police looked into the matter, and hunted far and wide, they never even got a clue, because apparently there wasn't one to get. In fact, "Turbot" vanished off the face of the earth as far as Merivale was concerned; and it was a nine days' wonder, as the saying is, and no light was ever thrown upon it till long afterwards. The aunt was cross-examined by the police; but she knew nothing, and cared less, as Brown said, for he cross-examined her also.

All she could say was that "Turbot" had gone out early, and not come home in time for church, as she naturally expected a boy brought up at Merivale to do. Which was one in the eye for Merivale. As for the guardian, he offered a reward of ten pounds for the recovery of "Turbot," and no more, which showed the market value of "Turbot" in that guardian's opinion.

The only person who really worried was the Doctor, and I believe he didn't leave a stone unturned to rout up "Turbot." But all in vain. He had entirely disappeared, and being so ordinary in appearance, without any distinguis.h.i.+ng marks, he simply "vanished into the void," as Tracey said, and we sold his cricket bat at auction, and one or two other things of slight value which we found in his school locker. But a portrait of his mother we did not sell, and I gave it to the Doctor, who sent it to the aunt, who was much obliged for it, and wrote to old Dunston with great thanks, and said she would keep it until the happy day when "Turbot" turned up out of the void again. And that, I believe, made the Doctor more suspicious than ever, for he always believed that Miss Mason knew more about the "Turbot" than she pretended. In fact, he told Mr. Fortescue that she was prevaricating, and Fortescue said it looked as though she might be. As a matter of fact, Fortescue had his own theory about "Turbot," and though he never told anybody what it was till afterwards, then he told everybody because he proved to be perfectly right.

This was that Fortescue, who wrote such splendid War poetry, but was prevented from enlisting unfortunately by an illness of the aorta, which is part of the heart, and, when enlarged, is fearfully dangerous. But while he taught at Merivale, his soul was entirely in the War, and in his spare time he did good work, chiefly at the Red Cross Hospital in the town, where fifty wounded men were always on hand. When they got well, they went and others came; and sometimes, when the War slacked off, the numbers sank to thirty-two, or even thirty, and then, when it burst out more fiercely, they quickly rose to fifty again.

Milly Dunston was one of the workers there, but only for sw.a.n.k and the sake of the uniform. I believe she peeled onions and sh.e.l.led peas, and cut up meat and so on in the kitchen; and sometimes she was allowed to go and see the wounded; but I never heard that they cared much for her until they knew she worked in the kitchen. Then they took interest in her, because she could tell them what they were going to have for supper that night, and what they were going to have for dinner next day, which, naturally, are things very important to the mind of a wounded hero.

Mr. Fortescue was well liked at the hospital, and took many cigarettes there, also books suited to the Tommies, and he got to be so popular that there was a fair fight for him; and if he favoured one ward, and didn't go into the other for half the time, the other ward got vexed about it, for Tommy has a jealous nature in some ways, though so heroic in the field.

Then there came rather a bad cot case called Ted Marmaduke, and as soon as he arrived, he sent a special message to the school for me and for Fortescue; and Fortescue went to see him.

Of course, this happened long after I had left Merivale, and it was, in fact, my brother who wrote to me about it; for after six months at Woolwich, owing to luck and the War, and so on, I got a commission in the Royal Engineers, and went to France. And there I heard from Travers minor about the chap who wanted to see Fortescue. He had been wounded in the cheek and also in the leg, and his face was almost hidden; but his eyes were all right, and what was Fortescue's amazement to see the eyes of Ted Marmaduke goggle in the old familiar way the moment he came to his bedside. For there lay the "Turbot," and fearing that he was going to die, he had determined to tell somebody the truth, and not die anonymously, so to speak. And when he found he was at Merivale, of all places, naturally he thought of Fortescue and me. But I was gone to do my bit, so Fortescue went, and heard the true story of the wily "Turbot."

He could only tell it in pieces, because it hurt him awfully to talk, and, in fact, he wasn't allowed to talk much at a time. But what happened was this. He had gone to the aunt for his birthday, and told her in secret that he hated Merivale worse than ever, and was ashamed to be there, with a moustache and everything; and she was a very martial and fine woman, and entirely agreed with him. She had told him that he was just the sort they wanted in the Army, and that though he could not distinguish himself at school, that was nothing at such a time, and she felt positive that he would jolly soon distinguish himself in the Army, and do things at the Front that would make Merivale fairly squirm to remember how it had treated him. And such was the aunt's warlike instinct that when he reminded her he was only seventeen, she scorned him for remembering it. "Go to the recruiting people," she said, "on your seventeenth birthday, which is to-morrow, and when they ask you how old you are, say you'll be eighteen on your next birthday, which will be true." And he gladly did so. But the aunt was fearfully crafty as well as warlike, for when "Turbot" decided to go off and enlist at Plymouth under his own name, she pointed out that he would instantly be traced by Dr. Dunston, and ignominiously dragged back out of the Army to Merivale.

So she advised him to take a train to the North of England, and enlist up there, which he did do. And he changed his name to Ted Marmaduke, and the enlisting people in the North never smelt a rat, and were quite agreeable to take him when he said he would be eighteen next birthday.

And such was the fine strategy of the aunt that she expressly made "Turbot" promise not to write a line to her till he was under orders for the Front. Therefore, when she was asked if she knew where he was, she could honestly say she didn't.

Of course, long before he came back wounded, he was entirely forgotten at Merivale, and when Fortescue discovered him in our Red Cross Hospital, and then confessed that he had always believed this was what "Turbot" had really done, the excitement became great, and many of the chaps asked to be allowed to go and see him, and some were allowed to do so.

But it was not till the "Turbot" had recovered, and was going back to fight, that Dr. Dunston forgave him; and he never forgave the aunt.

Yet that amazing aunt was more than a fine strategist; she was a prophet also, for Fortescue found out in the papers that Ted Marmaduke, of the 3rd Yorks.h.i.+res, was promoted a sergeant, and had won the D.C.M. for splendid bravery in Gallipoli, just as his aunt had always prophesied he would. Of course, she came to see him at the hospital, but she didn't come to Merivale.

When he got nearly right, the old "Turbot" took tea at Merivale, and the Doctor let the past bury the past, as they say, and made a speech, and hoped that the chaps would follow "Turbot's" lead in certain directions, though not in all. But privately to the "Turbot" he said more than this. In fact, he dug up the past again, and reminded "Turbot" that he should not do evil that good may come.

And "Turbot" quite saw this, and said he never would again.

Then he went back to the wars once more, and had good luck, I'm glad to say, and before he'd been a soldier eighteen months, he got his commission. For though such a mug at school, the military instinct was in him all the time, and the War naturally brought it out. When he became Lieutenant Bradwell, his guardian tried to make friends again; but he scorned him, as well he might, though no doubt he will always be friendly with his crafty aunt, for you may say that he owed pretty well everything to her masterly mind.

CORNWALLIS AND ME AND FATE

Dr. Dunston was always awfully great on the cla.s.sic idea of Fate. He made millions of efforts to make us understand it, but failed. Blades said he understood it, and so did Abbott, and, of course, the Sixth said they did. But they always pretend to understand everything, including the War. Fate is the same as Greek tragedy, and a very difficult subject indeed.

Anyway, Cornwallis and me couldn't understand Fate, or how it worked exactly, until that far-famous whole holiday and the remarkable adventure which made Cornwallis and me blaze out into great fame, though only for a short while. As long as it lasted, however, the fame was wonderful; for the sudden, curious result of being somebody, after you have for many years been n.o.body, not only leaves its mark on your own character, but quite changes the opinion of other people about you, and also the way they behave to you. Enemies slack off and even offer to become friends, and people who have been your friends when you were n.o.body, redouble in their affection, and even get a sort of feeble fame themselves, owing to being able to approach you as a matter of course and not as a favour.

All this happened to Cornwallis and me; and though fame is said to have a very bad effect on some people, and make them get above themselves, like the Germans and Austrians, for instance, in our case, though dazzling in its way, the fame died out almost as quickly as it sprang up. In fact, to show you what people are, and what envy may do, just as Cornwallis and me began to sink back into our usual obscurity in the Lower Third, some beasts, such as Pegram and the master, Brown, said in public that the whole excitement was a mild attack of hysteria and utter footle, and that neither Cornwallis nor me had done anything but make little a.s.ses of ourselves, and that it was all pure luck and not fame at all.

But, anyway, the adventure did this for Cornwallis and also for me--it explained what the Doctor really meant by Fate; and afterwards we were always tremendously keen about Fate, and spoke well of it, though before, it had, if anything, rather bored us, because, at the age of ten, your fate is generally so far off. Until the great adventure I can't honestly say I had seen Fate bothering about Cornwallis, and he had never seen it bothering in the least about me; but afterwards, having, as you may say, got thoroughly to understand its ways, and its special interest in us on a very important occasion--in fact, what you might call a matter of life and death--we always felt a sharp interest in it, and often noticed little marks of Fate at work both in school and out--sometimes for us and sometimes for other people. Not, of course, always for us, because, as Cornwallis said, and I agreed, we weren't everybody, and when it came to prizes and getting into "elevens," and other advantages, Fate undoubtedly favoured various chaps far more than us. But as I pointed out to Cornwallis, after saving our lives in a very ingenious and unexpected way, no doubt it had done enough for us for some years, and intended to give us a rest. We both saw the fairness of this, and did not complain in the least at our rather bad failures in the Lower Third afterwards. But, curiously enough, Dr.

Dunston, though so well up in Greek tragedy and the ways of Fate as a rule, missed this, and said our reports were a scandal and a source of the utmost discomfort to him, and far from showing our grat.i.tude to Fate as we ought to have shown it after the terrible affair of "Foster Day."

"Foster Day" was an important day at Merivale. It arose from the mists of antiquity, as they say, because among the first pupils old Dunston ever had, when he started Merivale, was a chap called Foster. He was very rich, and his father lived at Daleham, on the sea coast, and had a mansion and thousands of acres of land running down to the sea. This Foster seems to have liked the Doctor, and been a great success at Merivale; and his rich father evidently liked the Doctor, too, and so, when young Foster had the bad luck to fall for his country in the Boer War, the rich father Foster built a beautiful and precious chapel to his memory at Daleham, and had his soldier son carved in pure marble and put in the chapel. It was known as a memorial chapel, and simply couldn't be beaten in its way. And, not content with doing this, the rich father arranged with Dunston that fifty boys from Merivale should once every year come to a service in this chapel, and, after the service was over, be entertained in his grounds and on the sea-sh.o.r.e with games and luscious foods. The Doctor fell in with this excellent plan readily, and now for some years, on the seventh day of July, which was the day the splendid young soldier Foster had fallen, fifty chaps from Merivale drove over in brakes to Daleham and attended the memorial service, and sang a hymn, and afterwards enjoyed themselves in the s.p.a.cious grounds and on the beach. For though not actually belonging to the rich old Foster, the beach finished off his estates, and so he had a special sort of right to it, and had built a boat-house, where he kept a steam launch and other vessels.

The day came round as usual, and, by rather exceptional luck, Cornwallis and myself got into the fifty, for n.o.body was barred, and it was always arranged that a certain number of chaps from the lower school should join the giddy throng. So we went in white flannels and the school blazers, little knowing what lay before us.