General Bramble Part 6

"I'm going to shut my eyes," said one, "it's easier like that."

"My G.o.d," exclaimed another, "I can't move my legs an inch!"

"Fear," said the doctor, "shows itself in hereditary reflexes. Man, when in danger, seeks the pack, and fright makes his flesh creep, because his furred ancestors bristled all over when in combat, in order to appear enormous and terrible."

A terrific explosion shook the hill, and flames arose over the town.

"They're aiming at the station," said the colonel. "Those searchlights do more harm than good. They simply frame the target and show it up."

"When I was at Havre," Aurelle remarked, "a gunner went to ask the Engineers for some searchlights that were rotting away in some store or other. 'Quite impossible,' said the engineer; 'they're the war reserve; we're forbidden to touch them.' He could never be brought to understand that the war we were carrying on over here was the one that was specified in his schedule."

The great panting and throbbing of an aeroplane was coming nearer, and the whole sky was quivering with the noise of machinery like a huge factory.

"My G.o.d," exclaimed the doctor, "we're in for it this time!"

But the stars twinkled gently on, and above the din they heard the clear, delicate notes of a bird's song--just as though the throbbing motors, the whizzing sh.e.l.ls and the frightened wailing of the women were nothing but the harmonies devised by the divine composer of some military-pastoral symphony to sustain the slender melody of a bird.

"Listen," whispered Colonel Parker, "listen--a nightingale!"

CHAPTER VII

LOVE AND THE INFANT DUNDAS

"... Of which, if thou be a severe sour-complexion'd man, then I hereby disallow thee to be a competent judge."--_The Compleat Angler._

The Infant Dundas struck up a rag-time on the sergeant-major's typewriter, did a juggling turn with the army list, and let forth a few hunting yells; then, seeing that the interpreter had reached the required state of exasperation, he said:

"Aurelle, why should we stay in this camp? Let's go into the town; I'll get hold of the Intelligence car, and we'll go and see Germaine."

Germaine was a pretty, friendly girl who sold novels, chocolates and electric lamps at Abbeville. Dundas, who was not interested in women, pretended to have a discreet pa.s.sion for her; in his mind France was a.s.sociated with the idea of love-affairs, and he thought it the right thing to have a girl-friend there, just as he would have thought it correct to hunt in Ireland, or to ski at St. Moritz.

But when Germaine, with feigned timidity, directed on him the slowly dwindling fire of her gaze, Dundas was afraid to put his arm round her waist; this rosy-cheeked giant, who was a champion boxer and had been wounded five times, was as bashful and shy as a child.

"Good morning," he would say with a blush.

"Good morning," Germaine would answer, adding in a lower voice for Aurelle's benefit, "Tell him to buy something."

In vain did Aurelle endeavour to find books for the Infant. French novels bored him; only the elder Dumas and Alphonse Daudet found favour in his eyes. Dundas would buy his seventeenth electric lamp, stop a few minutes on the doorstep to play with Germaine's black dog d.i.c.k, and then say good-bye, giving her hand a long squeeze and going away perfectly happy in the thought that he had done his duty and gone on the spree in France in the correct manner.

"A nice boy, your friend--but he is rather shy," she used to say.

On Sundays she went for walks along the river with an enormous mother and ungainly sisters, escorted gravely by Dundas. The mess did not approve of these rustic idylls.

"I saw him sitting beside her in a field," said Colonel Parker, "and his horse was tied to a tree. I think it's disgusting."

"It's shameful," said the padre.

"I'll speak to him about it," said the general, "it's a disgrace to the mess."

Aurelle tried to speak up for his friend.

"Maybe," said the doctor, "pleasure is a right in France, but in England it's a crime. With you, Aurelle, when girls see you taking a lady-friend out, their opinion of you goes up. In London, on the other hand----"

"Do you mean to say, doctor, that the English never flirt?"

"They flirt more than you do, my boy; that's why they say less about it. Austerity of doctrine bears a direct proportion to strength of instinct. You like to discuss these matters, because you think lightly of them, and in that we Irish resemble you. Our great writers, such as Bernard Shaw, write thousands of paradoxes about marriage, because their thoughts are chaste. The English are far more prudish because their pa.s.sions are stronger."

"What's all this you're saying, doctor?" interrupted the general. "I seem to be hearing very strange doctrines."

"We're talking about French morals, sir."

"Is it true, Messiou," inquired Colonel Parker, "that it is the custom in France for a man to take his wife and his mistress to the theatre together to the same box?"

"You needn't try to convince Aurelle of your virtue, colonel," said the doctor; "he's been living with you for four years, and he knows you."

Meanwhile Dundas continued to go down into Abbeville every day and meet his friend. The sh.e.l.ling had got very bad, and the inhabitants began to leave the town. Germaine, however, remained calm. One day a sh.e.l.l hit the shop next door to hers, and shattered the whole of the whitewashed front of the house, and the plaster crumbling away revealed a fine wooden building which for the last two centuries had been concealing its splendid carved beams beneath a wretched coat of whitewash. So also did Germaine, divested by danger of her superficial vulgarity, suddenly show her mettle and prove herself the daughter of a race of soldiers.

Accordingly Dundas had conceived a warm and respectful friends.h.i.+p for her. But he went no further until one day when the alarm caught them together just as he was bidding her good-bye; then only did the darkness and the pleasant excitement of danger cause him to forget ceremony and convention for a few minutes.

Next day Germaine presented the Infant with a fat yellow book; it was Madame de Staels _Corinne_. The rosy-cheeked one looked askance at the small closely printed pages.

"Aurelle," he implored, "be a good chap and tell me what it's all about--I'm not going to read the d.a.m.ned thing!"

"It's the story of a young Scotch laird," replied Aurelle, "who wants to marry a foreign girl against his family's wish."

"My G.o.d!" exclaimed Dundas. "Do you think she expects me to marry her? My cousin Lord Bamford married a dancer and he's very happy; he's the gentleman and she has the brains. But in this case it's the mother--she's a terrible creature!"

"The Zulus," put in the doctor, who was listening, "have a religious custom which forbids the bridegroom-elect to see his mother-in-law.

Should he happen but to see her footprints in the sand, he must turn and flee. Nothing could be wiser; for love implies an absurd and boundless admiration for the loved one, and her mother, appearing to the lover in the very image of his beloved without the charm and liveliness of youth, will deter him from that brief spell of folly which is so necessary for the propagation of the species."

"Some mothers are charming," argued Aurelle.

"That's another danger," said the doctor, "for as the mother always tends to live her daughter's emotional life, there is a constant risk of her falling in love with her son-in-law."

"My G.o.d!" cried Dundas, horror-struck.

However, the German airmen set his fears at rest that very evening by destroying half the town. The statue of Admiral Courbet in the middle of the square near the bookseller's shop was. .h.i.t by a bomb. The admiral continued to point an outstretched finger towards the station, but the bookseller cleared out. Germaine followed him regretfully.

As she was unable to take her dog d.i.c.k--a horrid mongrel, half-poodle and half-spaniel--Dundas gravely consented to look after him. He loved dogs with a sentimental warmth which he denied to men. Their ideas interested him, their philosophy was the same as his, and he used to talk to them for hours at a time like a nurse to her children.

The general and Colonel Parker were not a bit astonished when he introduced d.i.c.k into the mess. They had found fault with him for falling in love, but they approved of his adopting a dog.

d.i.c.k, an Abbeville guttersnipe, was therefore admitted to the refinements of the general's table. He remained, however, a rough son of the people, and barked when Private Brommit appeared with the meat.