Mufti Part 4

He slept maybe for two hours, and then he found himself wide awake again--every nerve intent, like a man aroused by a sudden noise.

Margaret was reading at her table; the man at the other end still groaned feebly in his sleep; the boy was staring dazedly at nothing in particular--but there was something else. He knew it.

Suddenly Margaret put down her book, and half rose from her chair, as if listening; and at the same moment the Gunner woke up. Then they all heard it together--that high pitched, ominous drone which rises and falls in a manner there is no mistaking.

"Boche," said the Gunner, "Boche, for a tanner. And lots of them."

"d.a.m.n the swine," muttered Vane. "Can't they even leave a hospital alone?" The next minute any lingering hope was destroyed. Both men heard it--the well-known whistling whooce of the bomb--the vicious crack as it burst; both men felt the ground trembling through their beds. That was the overture . . . the play was about to commence. . . .

All around them bombs rained down till the individual bursts merged into one continuous roar. The earth shook and palpitated, and, to make matters worse, the lights suddenly went out. The last thing Vane saw was Margaret as she made her way, calmly and without faltering, to the boy's bed. He had a picture, printed indelibly on his brain, of a girl with a sweet set face, of a gaping boy, stirred into some semblance of remembrance by the familiar noise around him. And then, in the darkness, he made his way towards her.

There was a deafening crash close to him, and a fragment tore through the side of the tent. He could see the blinding flash, and involuntarily he ducked his head. Then, running and stumbling, he reached her. He felt her standing rigid in the darkness, and even at such a moment he felt a sudden rush of joy as her hands come out to meet him.

"Lie down," he shouted, "lie down at once. . . ."

"The boy," she cried. "Help me with him, Derek."

Together they picked him up, fumbling in the darkness, and laid him on the ground beside his bed. Then Vane took her arm, and shouted in her ear, "Lie down, I tell you, lie down . . . quite flat." Obediently she lay down, and he stretched himself beside her on the ground. To the cras.h.i.+ng of the bombs were now added the shouts and curses of men outside; and once Margaret made an effort to rise.

"The patients, Derek. Let me go."

With his one sound arm he kept her down by force. "You can do nothing," he said roughly. He felt her trembling against him, and a wave of fury against the airmen above took hold of him. He was no novice to bombing; there had been weeks on end when the battalion had been bombed nightly. But then it had been part of the show--what they expected; here it was so different.

A sense of utter impotence filled his mind, coupled with a raging pa.s.sion at the danger to the girl beside him. And suddenly his lips sought hers.

"It's all right, my dear," he kept on saying, "quite all right. It'll be over soon." And so almost unconscious of what they said or did, they lay and listened to the tornado of Death around them. . . .

It is on record that one man once said that he thought it was rather amusing to be in a raid. That man was a liar. He was also a fool. . . . To be bombed is poisonous, rather more poisonous than to be sh.e.l.led. If there are no dug-outs there is only one thing to be done, and that is what Vane was doing.

To lie flat on the ground minimises the danger except from a direct hit; and a direct hit is remarkably sudden. And so--since every occupant of Number 13 was well aware of this fact, approximately five seconds elapsed after the light went out before all the patients who could move, and most of those who couldn't, were lying on the floor beside their beds.

Gradually the explosions became fewer and fewer; though the earth still shook and throbbed like a living thing, and at last it seemed to Vane that the raid was over. He was lifting himself on his elbow preparatory to going outside and exploring, when an ominous whistling noise seemed to pierce his very brain. He had just time to throw himself on to the girl beside him so that he partially covered her, when the last bomb came. He heard the top of the marquee rip: there was a deafening roar in his ears: a scorching flame enveloped him. He lay stiff and rigid, and the thought flashed through him that this was the end. The next moment he knew he was safe, and that it was merely another close shave such as he had not been unaccustomed to in the past. The bomb had burst in the tent, but the Fate which ordained things had decided it should miss him. It had done so before, and Vane laughed to himself . . .

"Close, my lady, very close," he whispered--"but not quite close enough." With a quick, savage movement he turned Margaret's face towards him, and kissed her on the lips. For a while she clung to him, and then he felt her relax in his arms. She had fainted, and as he realised this, he felt something pressing down on him. With his sound arm he fumbled above his head, and found it was the canvas of the tent.

Tugging and scrambling, he half dragged, half carried Margaret through the entrance which still remained intact, and laid her down on the gra.s.s outside. Men and nurses were moving about in the darkness, stumbling over guy ropes and tent pegs. For the moment every one was too intent on his own affairs to bother over a mere faint, and Vane left her lying against the side of the tent. Then he cautiously felt his way round to investigate the damage. A great crater midway between Number 13 and the next tent showed where the first close one had fallen, but he had no wish to explore that any further. He stumbled round the edge and went on. Then in the faint light given by the moon, he saw what had happened when the last bomb had burst. It was nothing worse than many similar sights he had seen, but Vane as he looked at the wreckage cursed bitterly and fluently. And then of a sudden he stopped cursing, and drew a deep breath. . . . Staring up at him in the cold white light was what was left of the Gunner subaltern. The bomb had burst at the foot of his bed . . . A cheery soul . . . A bitter end . . .

Opposite, the bed blown in half, the boy who would not have lasted through the night sprawled uncouthly on to the floor. G.o.d knows! a merciful release. . . . A few hours sooner--that's all. . . . And to both--Kismet.

All around lay fragments and debris. For a few seconds he stood there motionless, while every now and then the canvas heaved where it lay on the ground, and someone crawled out into the open. Then he felt a touch on his arm, and, turning, he saw Margaret. Dry-eyed, she watched with him, while the wounded dragged themselves painfully past the still smoking crater, and the acrid smell of high explosive tainted the air.

In the far distance the drone of aeroplanes was getting fainter and fainter. Success had crowned the raider's daring exploit; they were ent.i.tled to their well-earned rest. And so for a s.p.a.ce did Vane and Margaret stand. . . . It was only when very gently he slipped his arm round her waist that a hard dry sob shook her.

"Oh! the devils," she whispered--"the vile devils."

CHAPTER III

The following afternoon Vane turned his steps once again towards the beach at Paris Plage. The wreckage in the hospital had been cleared away, and there were rows laid side by side in the mortuary. Over everyone there breathed a sense of restless excitement and fierce anger, and Vane wanted to get away by himself. He felt that he had to think.

For suddenly and quite unexpectedly Margaret Trent had become a factor in his life. After long years their paths had touched again, and Vane found that he could not turn away with the same careless indifference as he had in the past. Though she had always attracted him, he had never seriously contemplated the final step; he had had far too good a time as a bachelor. And then when she had so unaccountably cooled towards him, he had shrugged his shoulders and sought distraction elsewhere.

Before the war Derek Vane had been what is generally described as a typical Englishman. That is to say, he regarded his own country--whenever he thought about it at all--as being the supreme country in the world. He didn't force his opinion down anyone's throat; it simply was so. If the other fellow didn't agree, the funeral was his, not Vane's. He had to the full what the uninitiated regard as conceit; on matters connected with literature, or art, or music his knowledge was microscopic. Moreover, he regarded with suspicion anyone who talked intelligently on such subjects. On the other hand, he had been in the eleven at Eton, and was a scratch golfer. He had a fine seat on a horse and rode straight; he could play a pa.s.sable game of polo, and was a good shot. Possessing as he did sufficient money to prevent the necessity of working, he had not taken the something he was supposed to be doing in the City very seriously.

He had put in a periodical appearance at a desk and drawn pictures on the blotting paper; for the remainder of the time he had amused himself. He belonged, in fact, to the Breed; the Breed that has always existed in England, and will always exist till the world's end. You may meet its members in London and in Fiji; in the lands that lie beyond the mountains and at Henley; in the swamps where the stagnant vegetation rots and stinks; in the great deserts where the night air strikes cold. They are always the same, and they are branded with the stamp of the breed. They shake your hand as a man shakes it; they meet your eye as a man meets it. Just now a generation of them lie around Ypres and La Ba.s.see; Neuve Chapelle and Bapaume. The graves are overgrown and the crosses are marked with indelible pencil. Dead--yes; but not the Breed. The Breed never dies. . . .

We have it on reliable evidence that the breed has its faults; its education is rotten. Men of great learning and understanding have fulminated on the subject; women with their vast experience have looked upon the Breed with great clarity of vision and have written as their eyes have seen; even boys themselves who doubtless must be right, as the question concerns them most, have contributed to current literature one or two d.a.m.ning indictments.

It may well be that hunting b.u.t.terflies or dissecting rats are more suitable pursuits for young Percival Johnson than doing scram practice up against the playground wall. It may well be that it would be a far, far better thing for mob adoration to be laid at the feet of the composer of the winning Greek Iambic rather than at the cricketing boots of the Captain of the Eleven. It may be so, but, then, most a.s.suredly it may not. . . .

The system which has turned out hundreds of the Breed, and whose object is to mould all who pa.s.s through it on the model of the Breed, is not one to be dismissed lightly. Doubtless it has its faults; a little more lat.i.tude both in games and work might be allowed; originality encouraged more. But let us be very certain before we gaily pull the system to pieces that the one we erect in its place will stand the strain, and produce the one great result beside which everything else is as nothing. For if, at the price of team work and playing for the side, we can only buy two or three more years of individualism--at an age when the value of individualism is, at best, a doubtful blessing and, at worst, sheer blatant selfishness--we shall indeed have messed things up. The cranks will be delighted; but the Empire will gnash its teeth.

And now after nearly four years in the fiercest forcing house of character Derek Vane found himself trying to take an inventory of his own stock. And since the material question of money did not come in to cloud the horizon, he felt he could do it impartially. There are many now who, having sacrificed every prospect, find their outlook haunted by the spectre of want; there are many more, formerly engaged in skilled trades such as engineering or mining, who find that they have four years of leeway to make up in their profession--four years of increased knowledge and mechanical improvements--unknown to them, but not to their compet.i.tors, who remained behind. But such prospects did not trouble him. The future, as far as money was concerned, was a.s.sured.

Vane thoughtfully lit a cigarette. It seemed to him that he had wasted four of the best years of his life, sitting, save for brief intervals, on the same filthy piece of ground, with the sole object of killing complete strangers before they killed him. In this laudable pastime he had succeeded to the extent of two for certain and one doubtful. The only man whom he had really wanted to slaughter--a certain brother subaltern who offended him daily--he had been forced to spare owing to foolish regulations. . . . And now this youth was at home as a Temporary Lieutenant-Colonel in sole control of an ante-chamber in one of the large hotels, with a staff of four flappers, who presented papers for his signature every other Tuesday from 2.30 to 4.

With a short laugh he got up and shook himself. In the distance some sand dunes beckoned invitingly--sand dunes which reminded him of the width of Westward Ho! and a certain champions.h.i.+p meeting there long ago. Slowly he strolled towards them, going down nearer the sea where the sand was finer. And all the time he argued it out with himself.

Four years wasted! But had they been wasted? What had he got out of them anyway? Wasn't he twice the man that he had been four years ago?

Or had it all been futile and useless? . . .

No man who has been through the rapids can find his feet in an hour's self-a.n.a.lysis. It takes time; and during that time much may happen, good or ill, according to the manner of the finder. The great unrest of the world is not felt by the men in the trenches. It seethes and boils outside, and only when a man comes back to so-called peace does he reach the whirlpool, which lies at the end of the rapids. Then, if he be of the type of Vane, is the time of danger. To lose one's sense of proportion in France is dangerous; to lose it in England may be fatal. One has so much more freedom.

At intervals during the War Vane had sampled the whirlpool, while on leave, and the effect it had produced in him had been transitory. The contrast was so immense that it had failed to move him permanently.

The time that he had been in its clutches was too short. He retained just a fleeting picture of feverish gaiety which seemed out of perspective; of profound bores who discussed the mistakes of the Higher Command in the arm chairs of the Club; of universal chatter concerning rations and meat coupons. Then he had left, and in a few short hours had been back once more in the mud holes. A good leave? Oh!

undoubtedly, just as it should have been, where the one thing necessary was contrast. But even then it had irritated him at times to realise how completely they failed to understand. He would not have had them understand--true. If the alternative had been put to him; if he had been told that it was in his power to make these people see the things that he had seen, and hear the things that he had heard, he would not have done so. They were better as they were--affording the contrast; enabling men to forget.

But leave is one thing, permanence is another. And at the moment Vane was faced with the latter. The doctor had talked airily of three or four months, and after that in all probability a spell of light duty, and to Vane that seemed like a permanency. It is one thing to drug oneself in the waters of Lethe for a fortnight of one's own free will: it is altogether different to be drugged by others for good. And dimly he felt that either he or they would have to go under. Two totally incompatible people cannot sit next one another at dinner for long without letting some course get cold. Unless one of them happens to be dumb. . . .

But were they totally incompatible? That seemed to be the crux of the whole matter. To the soldiers, pulling together, unselfishness, grinning when the sky is black, that is the new philosophy. One hesitates to call it new. It existed once, we are given to understand--or at any rate it was preached and practised in days gone by. Since then it has become unfas.h.i.+onable. . . .

And what about _les autres_--who have kept the home fires burning? For a moment Vane stopped and stared in front of him; then he laughed aloud. As has been said, he was jangled--so perhaps he may be forgiven.

It was on the other side of the dunes that he suddenly found Margaret.

She had her back towards him as he came over the top, and in the sand his footsteps made no noise. And so she continued her pursuit of throwing stones at a bottle a few yards away, in ignorance of the fact that she had an audience. It is a lazy occupation at the best of times and her rendering of it was no exception to the rule. For whole minutes on end she would sit quite still gazing out to sea; and then, as if suddenly realising her slackness, she would continue the bombardment furiously.

For a while Vane watched her thoughtfully. Was she the answer? To go right away with her somewhere--right away from the crowd and the strife of existence: to be with her always, watching her grow from the wife to the mother, seeing her with his children, feeling that she was his and no one else's. G.o.d! but to think of the peace of it. . . .

He watched the soft tendrils of hair curling under the brim of her hat; the play of her body as she picked up the stones and threw them.

Around him the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s bent slightly in the breeze and the murmur of the sea came faintly over the dunes. Away in front of him stretched the sand, golden in the warm sun, the surface broken every now and then by the dark brown wooden groins. Not a soul was in sight, and save for some gulls circling round they two seemed the only living things. . . .

With a sudden smile he stooped down and picked up a stone--several, in fact, and fired a volley. There was a tinkling noise, and the bottle fell. Then he waited for her to look round. For just a little while there was silence, and then she turned towards him with a smile. . . .

And in that moment it seemed to him that he had found the answer he sought. Surely it was just a dream, and in a moment he would wake up and see the dreadful face of the mess waiter appearing down the dug-out steps. It is impossible to stumble over sand dunes and find Margarets in France. These things simply do not happen. One merely stumbles over the cobbles and sees the woman who keeps the estaminet round the corner was.h.i.+ng the floor. And her lips do not part in the dawn of a smile--mercifully; her eyes are not big and blue. It was all a dream!

last night was all a dream. Just one of those pictures he had seen sometimes in the candle light, when it guttered in the draught, as the big crump burst outside. . . .

"Derek, that wasn't fair." With an effort he pulled himself together and regarded her gravely. Then he scrambled down the sandy bank to her side.

"Do you mind pinching me?" he remarked, holding out his hand.

"Hard--very hard. . . . I want to make certain I'm not dreaming."