Foe-Farrell Part 1

Foe-Farrell.

by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.

BOOK I.

INGREDIENTS.

If the red slayer thinks he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pa.s.s, and turn again.

EMERSON: _Brahma_.

The best kind of revenge is not to become like him.

MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS.

PROLOGUE

Otway told this story in a dug-out which served for officers' mess of a field-battery somewhere near the Aisne: but it has nothing to do with the War. He told it in s.n.a.t.c.hes, night by night, after the manner of Scheherazade in the _Arabian Nights Entertainments_, and as a rule to an auditory of two. Here is a full list of:

PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE

NARRATOR.

Major Sir Roderick Otway, Bart., M.C., R.F.A.

AUDIENCE AND INTERLOCUTORS.

Lieut. John Polkinghorne. R.F.A., of the Battery.

Sec. Lieut. Samuel Barham, M.C. R.F.A., of the Battery.

Sec. Lieut. Percy Yarrell-Smith. R.F.A., of the Battery Sec Lieut. Noel Williams, R.F.A., attached for instruction.

But military duties usually restricted the audience to two at a time, though there were three on the night when Barham (Sammy) set his C.O.

going with a paragraph from an old newspaper. The captain--one McInnes, promoted from the ranks--attended one stance only. He dwelt down at the wagon-lines along with the Veterinary Officer, and brought up the ammunition most nights, vanis.h.i.+ng back in the small hours like a ghost before c.o.c.k-crow.

The battery lay somewhat wide to the right of its fellows in the brigade; in a saucer-shaped hollow on the hill-side, well screened with scrub. Roughly it curved back from the straight lip overlooking the slope, in a three-fifths segment of a circle; and the officers'

mess made a short arc in it, some way in rear of the guns.

You descended, by steps, cut in the soil and well pounded, into a dwelling rather commodious than large: for Otway--who knew about yachts--had taken a fancy to construct it nautical-wise, with lockers that served for seats at a narrow saloon table, sleeping bunks excavated along the sides, and air-holes like cabin top-lights, cunningly curtained by night, under the sh.e.l.l-proof cover.

"It cost us a week," he wrote home to his sister, "to get the place to my mind. Since then we have been adding fancy touches almost daily, and now the other batteries froth with envy. You see, it had to be contrived, like the poet's chest of drawers."

A double debt to pay: Doss-house by night and bag-of-tricks by day.

And here we have lived now, shooting and sleeping (very little sleeping) for five solid weeks. All leave being off, I have fallen into this way of life, almost without a thought that there ever had been, or could be, another, and feel as if my destiny were to go on at it for ever and ever. And this at thirty-five, Sally!

"It must be ever so much worse for the youngsters, one would say.

Anyway I have had ten good years that they are missing . . .

Cambridge, Henley, Lord's; Ascot, and home-to-tidy, and afterwards the little Mercedes, and you and I rolling in to Prince's and the theatre, whilst good old Bob is for the House, to take _his_ exercises walking the lobbies; clean linen after the bath, and my own sister beside me--she that always knew how to dress--and the summer evening over Hyde Park Corner and the Green Park. . . . No, I mustn't go on. It is _verboten_ even to think of a white s.h.i.+rt until the Bosch hangs out the tail of _his_.

"My youngsters are missing all this, I tell myself. Yet they are a cheerful crowd, and keep smiling on their Papa. The worst is, a kind of paralysis seems to have smitten our home mails and general transport for close upon a fortnight. No letters, no parcels--but one case of wine, six weeks overdue, with half the bottles in shards: no newspapers. This last specially afflicts young Sammy Barham, who is a glutton for the halfpenny press: which again is odd, because his comments on it are vitriolic.

"No books--that's the very worst. Our mess library went astray in the last move: no great loss perhaps except for the _Irish R.M._, which I was reading for the nth time. The only relic that survives, and follows us everywhere like an intelligent hound, is a novel of Scottish sentiment, ent.i.tled _But and Ben_. The heroine wears (p. 2) a dress of 'some soft white clinging material'--which may account for it. Young Y.-Smith, who professes to have read the work from cover to cover, a.s.serts that this material clings to her throughout: but I doubt the thoroughness of his perusal since he explained to us that 'Ben' and 'But' were the play-names of the lad and his la.s.sie. . . . For our personal libraries we possess:

"_R.O._--A hulking big copy of the _International Code of Signals_: a putrid bad book, of which I am preparing, in odd moments, a recension, to submit to the Board of Trade. Y.-Smith borrows this off me now and then, to learn up the flags at the beginning. He gloats on crude colours.

"_Polkinghorne_--A Bible, which I borrow, sometimes for private study, sometimes (you understand?) for professional purposes.

It contains a Book of Common Prayer as well as the Apocrypha.

P. (a Cornishman, something of a mystic, two years my senior and full of mining experiences in Nevada and S. America) always finds a difficulty in parting with this, his one book. He is deep in it, this moment, at the far end of the table.

"_Sammy Barham_, so far as anyone can discover, has never read a book in his life nor wanted to. He was educated at Harrow.

Lacking the _Daily Mail_, he is miserable just now, poor boy!

I almost forgave the Code upon discovering that his initials, S.B., spell, for a distress signal, 'Can you lend (or give) me a newspaper?'

"_Yarrell-Smith_ reads Penny Dreadfuls. He owns four, and was kind enough, the other day, to lend me one: but it's a trifle too artless even for my artless mind.

"Young _Williams_--a promising puppy sent up to me to be walked--reads nothing at all. He brought two packs of Patience cards and a Todhunter's _Euclid_; the one to rest, the other to stimulate, his mind; and I've commandeered the _Euclid_.

A great writer, Sally! He's not juicy, and he don't palpitate, but he's an angel for style. 'Therefore the triangle DBC is equal to the triangle ABC--pause and count three--'the less to the greater'--pause--'which is absurd.' Neat and demure: and you're constantly coming on little things like that.

'Two straight lines cannot enclose a s.p.a.ce'--so broad and convincing, when once pointed out!--and why is it not in _The Soldiers' Pocket-Book_ under 'Staff Axioms'?

"When you make up the next parcel, stick in a few of the unlikeliest books. I don't want Paley's _Evidences of Christianity_: I have tackled that for my Little-Go, and, besides, we have plenty of 'em out here: but books about Ireland, and the Near East, and local government, and farm-labourers' wages, and the future life, and all that sort of thing.

"Two nights ago, Polkinghorne got going on our chances in another world. Polkinghorne is a thoughtful man in his way, rising forty--don't know his religion. I had an idea somehow that he was interested in such things. But to my astonishment the boys took him up and were off in full cry. It appeared that each one had been nursing his own thoughts on the subject. The trouble was, none of us knew very much about it--"

Otway, writing beneath the hurricane-lamp, had reached this point in his letter when young Barham exclaimed to the world at large:

"Hallo! here's a tall story!"

The C.O. looked up. So did Polkinghorne, from his Bible. Sammy held a torn sheet of newspaper.

"Don't keep it to yourself, my son," said Otway, laying down his pen and leaning back, so that his face pa.s.sed out of the inner circle of the lamplight.

Sammy bent forward, pushed the paper nearer to this pool of light, smoothed it and read:

"'Thames-side Mystery

"'A Coroner's jury at C--, a 'village' on the south bank of the Thames, not a hundred miles below Gravesend--'"

"Seems a lot of mystery about it already," observed Polkinghorne.

"Don't they give the name of the village?"

"No; they just call it 'C--,' and, what's more, they put 'village'

into inverted commas. Don't know why: but there's a hint at the end."

"Proceed."