Part 13
“Naycher! Naycher!” he almost screamed. “Don’t talk to me about Naycher! What sort of friend is Naycher to me or you? Naycher gives you inclinations, and then breaks you for following them! Two men fall into a pond—what does Naycher care that one man was trying to drown his enemy while the other was trying to save a dog? They both stand their chance of death. Naycher leads you up blind alleys and into marshes and lets you rot. Besides, isn’t man Naycher? Isn’t it Naycher for me to work and make money, as it is for these blighting birds to sing? Aren’t roll-top desks as much Naycher as—these blasted trees?”
He blinked savagely at the surrounding scene. The smoke from a distant hamlet drifted sleepily heavenwards, like incense to the gods of the Downs.
“My father was a turner in Walham Green, and he apprenticed me to the joinery, but I had my ambitions even in those times.” He nodded knowingly, and mopped his brow. “At eighteen I was a clerk in a wholesale house in St. Paul’s Churchyard. For three years I worked there underground, by artificial light. Then I got made sub-manager of a wharf at the South end of Lower Thames Street. I was there for five years, and saved nearly three hundred pounds out of a salary of £120 a year. Then I met Jettison, and we started that office together, Jettison & Gateshead, Commission Agents. Work and struggle, work and struggle, year after year. But it was not till I got on to rubber that I began to make things move. That was eight years after. Do you remember the boom? I got in with Gayo, who had lived out in the Malay Straits—knew everything—we got the whole game at our fingers’ ends. We knew just when to buy and just when to sell. Do you know, I’ve made as much as four thousand pounds in one afternoon, just talking on the telephone! And we done it all in that little room”—he gazed jealously round the little arbor in the hills, and scowled at me. Then he produced a packet of cigarettes and lighted one from the stump of the last.
“In those days, through Gayo’s friends, we followed the whole course of the raw stuff. Then Gayo went out to Malay, and he used to cable me every few days, putting me on to the right thing. My God, he was a man! It went on for two years, when suddenly a cable came to say he was dead—fever, or something, up-country. That was the end. The slump came soon after. I worked hard, but I never got control back. Down and down and down they went, as though Gayo was dragging them through the earth.” His lower lip trembled as he rolled the emaciated cigarette over.
“Lord, what a fight I had, though I sat in that office there, in my shirt-sleeves, day and night for months on end, checking tapes, cabling, lying, faking, bluffing”—he chuckled with a meditative intensity. “I’d have done it then, if they’d given me time. But they closed in; there were two Scotch firms, and a man named Klaus. I knew they meant to do me down. There was a set against me. I wasn’t there in the end. I was sitting in the office one night....” He passed his hand over his brow and swept away a wasp that had settled there. He sat silent for some moments, as though trying to recall things, and twice started to speak without framing a sentence.
“My brother was very good to me,” he said suddenly, waving his hand toward the red-brick gable in the trees. “He was very good to me all through.” Then he added, with a sort of contemptuous shrug, “In the cabinet-making he was; got a little works at Bow—made about four hundred a year—married, and five children.”
He sat for some minutes with his head in his hands, and then he sat up and gazed upon the joyous landscape with unseeing eyes.
I ventured to remark, “Well, I’m sure this place ought to do you good.” He turned his melancholy eyes upon me, and sighed.
“Yes,” he said, after a pause. “You’re just the sort. I’ve seen so many of you about. Some of you have butterfly nets.” He kept repeating at intervals, “Butterfly-nets!” One felt that the last word in contumely had been uttered. He sank into an apathy of indifference. Then he broke out again.
“I tell you,” he uttered fiercely, “that I had millions and millions. I controlled the work and the lives of millions of men, and you come here and talk to me of Naycher. Look at these damned trees! They go green in the summer, yellow in the autumn, and bare in the winter. Year after year, exactly the same thing, and that’s all there is to it. I’m sick of the sight of them. But look at men! Think of their lives, the change and variety! What they can do! Their clothes, their furniture, their houses, their cities! Think of their power! The power of making and marring!”
“You mean the power of buying and selling,” I ventured.
“Yes, that’s just it!” he said, feeling that he was converting me.
“The power of buying and selling! Of making men rich or poor!” He stood up and waved his thin arms and gazed wildly round him. “Not chasing butterflies!”
At that moment we both became aware that a third person was on the scene. He was a well set-up man, with broad shoulders and narrow hips. He was dressed in a dark-blue serge suit and a tweed cap. He stepped quietly through the trees, and went up to my companion, and said:
“Ah! there you are, Mr. Gateshead. I’m afraid it’s almost time for your afternoon nap, sir.” And then, turning to me, he nodded and remarked: “A warm afternoon, sir!” He spoke with a quiet, suave voice that somehow conveyed the feeling of the “iron hand in the velvet glove.” His voice seemed to have a sedative effect on Mr. Gateshead. My companion did not look at him, but he seemed to shrink within himself. A certain flush that had accompanied his excitement vanished, and his face looked old and set. He drew his narrow shoulders together and his figure bent. He stood abstractedly for a few moments, gazing at the trees around him, and then, with a vague gesture that was characteristic of him, he clutched the lapels of his coat, and with his head bent forward he walked away towards the building. He did not cast a glance in my direction, and the man in the serge suit nodded to me and followed him leisurely.
I clambered down the slope of the wood, and for some reason felt happy to get once more upon the road.
About half a mile from Corlesham I met the postman coming up the hill, wheeling his bicycle. He was a sandy-haired man, splendidly Saxon, with gray-blue eyes and broad mouth. I asked him if there was a footpath to Corlesham, and he directed me.
“Do you have a long round?” I asked.
“Three or four mile, maybe,” he said, looking at me narrowly.
“It’s a good pull up to the Institution,” I ventured.
“What institution might that be?” he said, and his mild blue eyes disarmed me with their ingenuousness.
“The house with the three red gables,” I answered.
“Oh!” came the reply. “You mean old Gateshead’s.”
“Does he own it?” I said incredulously.
“Ay, and he could own six others for all the difference it would make to his money. He owns half the county.”
“And yet what a strange idea,” I murmured insinuatingly. “To own a large house and yet to have one’s letters delivered in a wood!”
The postman swung his bag into a more comfortable position and looked across his machine at me with a grin.
“Those as has money can afford to have any ideas they like,” he said at last.
“I’m afraid his money doesn’t make him very happy,” I ventured, still groping for further enlightenment.
The postman gave his right pedal a vigorous twirl as a hint of departure. He then took out a packet of Navy Cut cigarettes and lighted one. This action seemed to stimulate his mental activities, and he leant on the handle-bars and said:
“Ay, if one has no money maybe one can make oneself happy thinking one has. And if one has money, may be one can make oneself happy by thinking one hasn’t.” He blinked at me, and then added, by way of solving all life’s mysteries: “If one—puts too much store by these things.”
I could find no remark to complement the postman’s sententious conclusions, and, dismissing me with a nod, he mounted his bicycle and rode off up the hill.
THE GREAT UNIMPRESSIONABLE
THE GREAT UNIMPRESSIONABLE
Ned Picklekin was a stolid chunk of a young man, fair, blue-eyed, with his skin beaten to a uniform tint of warm red by the sun and wind. For he was the postman at the village of Ashalton. Except for two hours in the little sorting-office, he spent the whole day on his bicycle, invariably accompanied by his Irish terrier, Toffee. Toffee was as well known on the countryside as Ned himself. He took the business of delivering letters as seriously as his master. He trotted behind the bicycle with his tongue out, and waited panting outside the gates of gardens while the important government business was transacted. He never barked, and had no time for fighting common, unofficial dogs. When the letters were delivered, his master would return to his bicycle, and say: “Coom ahn, boy!” and Toffee would immediately jump up, and fall into line. They were great companions.
Ned lived with his mother, and also he walked out with a young lady. Her name was Ettie Skinner, and she was one of the three daughters of old Charlie Skinner, the corn-merchant. Charlie Skinner had a little establishment in the station-yard. He was a widower, and he and his three daughters lived in a cottage in Neap’s Lane. It was very seldom necessary to deliver letters at the Skinners’ cottage, but every morning Ned had to pass up Neap’s Lane, and so, when he arrived at the cottage, he dismounted, and rang his bicycle bell. The signal was understood by Ettie, who immediately ran out to the gate, and a conversation somewhat on this pattern usually took place:
“Hulloa!”
“Hulloa!”
“All right?”
“Ay.”
“Busy?”
“Ay. Mendin’ some old cla’es.”
“Oo-ay!”
“Looks like mebbe a shower.”
“Mebbe.”
“Coomin’ along to-night?”
“Ay, if it doan’t rain.”
“Well, so long!”
“So long, Ned.”
In the evenings the conversation followed a very similar course. They waddled along the lanes side by side, and occasionally gave each other a punch. Ned smoked his pipe all the time, and Toffee was an unembarrassed cicerone. He was a little jealous of this unnecessary female, but he behaved with a resigned acquiescence. His master could do no wrong. His master was a god, a being apart from all others.
It cannot be said that Ned was a romantic lover. He was solemn, direct, imperturbable. He was a Saxon of Saxons, matter-of-fact, incorruptible, unimaginative, strong-willed, conscientious, not very ambitious, and suspicious of the unusual and the unknown. When the war broke out, he said:
“Ay, but this is a bad business!”
And then he thought about it for a month. At the end of that time he made up his mind to join. He rode up Neap’s Lane one morning and rang his bell. When Ettie appeared the usual conversation underwent a slight variant:
“Hulloa!”
“Hulloa!”
“All right?”
“Ay.”
“Doin’ much?”
“Oo—mendin’ pa’s night-gown.”
“Oh! I be goin’ to jine up.”
“Oo—oh! Be ’ee?”
“Ay.”
“When be goin’?”
“Monday with Dick Thursby and Len Cotton. An’ I think young Walters, and Bibbie Short mebbe.”
“Oh, I say!”
“Ay. Comin’ along to-night?”
“Ay, if it doan’t rain.”
“Well, see you then.”
“So long, Ned.”
On the following Monday Ned said good-by to his mother, and sweetheart, and to Toffee, and he and the other four boys walked over to the recruiting office at Carchester. They were drafted into the same unit, and sent up to Yorkshire to train. (Yorkshire being one hundred and fifty miles away was presumably the most convenient and suitable spot.)
They spent five months there, and then Len Cotton was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps, and the other four were placed in an infantry regiment and sent out to India. They did not get an opportunity of returning to Ashalton, but the night before he left Ned wrote to his mother:
“Dear Mother, I think we are off to-morrow. They don’t tell us where we are going but they seem to think it’s India because of the Eastern kit served out and so on. Everything all right, the grub is fine. Young Walters has gone sick with a bile on his neck. Hope you are all right. See Toffee dont get into Mr. Mears yard for this is about the time he puts down that pison for the rats. Everything O. K. Love from Ned.”
He wrote a very similar letter to Ettie, only leaving out the instructions about Toffee and adding “dont get overdoing it now the warm weathers on.”
They touched at Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria and Aden. At all these places he merely sent the cryptic postcard. He did not write a letter again until he had been three weeks up in the hills in India. As a matter of fact it had been a terribly rough passage nearly all the way, especially in the Mediterranean, and nearly all the boys had been sea-sick most of the time. Ned had been specially bad and in the Red Sea had developed a slight fever. In India he had been sent to a rest-camp up in the hills. He wrote:
“Dear mother, everything all right. The grub is fine. I went a bit sick coming out but nothing. Quite O. K. now. This is a funny place. The people would make you laugh to look at. We beat the 2nd Royal Scots by two goals to one. I wasn’t playing but Binnie played a fine game at half back. He stopped their center forward, an old league player, time and again. Hope you are keeping all right. Does Henry Thatcham take Toffee out regler. Everything serene. Love from Ned.”
In this letter the words “2nd Royal Scots” were deleted by the censor.
India at that time was apparently a kind of training-ground for young recruits. There were a few recalcitrant hill-tribes upon whom to practice the latest developments of military science, and Ned was mixed up in one or two of these little scraps. He proved himself a good soldier, doing precisely what he was told and being impervious to danger. They were five months in India, and then the regiment was suddenly drafted back to Egypt. Big things were afoot. No one knew what was going to happen. They spent ten days in a camp near Alexandria. They were then detailed for work in connection with the protection of the banks of the Canal, and Ned was stationed near the famous pyramid of Gizeh. He wrote to his mother:
“Dear mother, everything all right. Pretty quiet so far. This is a funny place. Young Walters has gone sick again. We had the regimental sports Thursday. Me and Bert Carter won the three-legged race. The grub is fine and we get dates and figs for nuts. Hope your cold is all right by now. Thanks for the parcel which I got on the 27th. Everything all right. Glad to hear about Mrs. Parsons having the twins and that. Glad to hear Toffee all right and so with love your loving son Ned.”
They had not been at Gizeh for more than a week before they were sent back to Alexandria and placed on a transport. In fifteen days after touching at Imbros, Ned and his companions found themselves on Gallipoli peninsula. Heavy fighting was in progress. They were rushed up to the front line. For two days and nights they were in action and their numbers were reduced to one-third of their original size. For thirty hours they were without water and were being shelled by gas, harried by flame-throwers, blasted by shrapnel and high-explosive. At the end of that time they crawled back to the beach at night through prickly bramble which poisoned them and set up septic wounds if it scratched them. They lay there dormant for two days, but still under shell-fire, and then were hurriedly reformed into a new regiment, and sent to another part of the line. This went on continuously for three weeks, and then a terrible storm and flood occurred. Hundreds of men—some alive and some partly alive—were drowned in the ravines. Ned and his company lost all their kit, and slept in water for three nights running. At the end of four weeks he obtained five days’ rest at the base. He wrote to Ettie:
“Dear Ettie, A long time since I had a letter from you. Hope all right. Everything all right so far. We had a bad storm but the weather now keeps fine. Had a fine bath this morning. There is a man in our company would make you laugh. He is an Irish-Canadian. He plays the penny whissle fine and sings a bit too. Sorry to say young Walters died. He got enteric and phewmonnia and so on. I expect his people will have heard all right. How is old Mrs. Walters? Dick Thursby got a packet too and Mrs. Quinby’s boy I forget his name. How are them white rabbits of yours. I met a feller as used to take the milk round for Mr. Brand up at Bodes farm. Funny wasn’t it. Well nothing more now. I hope this finds you as it leaves me your affectionate Ned.”
Ned was three months on Gallipoli peninsula, but he left before the evacuation. During the whole of that time he was never not under shell-fire. He took part in seven attacks. On one occasion he went over the top with twelve hundred others, of whom only one hundred and seven returned. Once he was knocked unconscious by a mine explosion which killed sixty-seven men. At the end of that period he was shot through the back by a sniper. He was put in a dressing-station, and a gentleman in a white overall came and stuck a needle into his chest and left him there in a state of nudity for twelve hours. Work at the field hospitals was very congested just then. He became a bit delirious and was eventually put on a hospital ship with a little tag tied to him. After some vague and restless period he found himself again at Imbros and in a very comfortable hospital. He stayed there six weeks and his wound proved to be slight. The bone was only grazed. He wrote to his mother:
“Dear mother, Everything all right. I had a scratch but nothing. I hope you enjoyed the flower show. How funny meetings Mrs. Perks. We have a fine time here. The grub is fine. Sorry to say Binnie Short went under. He got gassed one night when he hadnt his mask on. The weather is mild and pleasant. Glad to hear Henry takes Toffee out all right. Have you heard from Ettie for some time. We had a fine concert on Friday. A chap played the flute lovely. Hope you are now all right again. Your loving son Ned.”
In bed in the hospital at Imbros a bright idea occurred to Ned. He made his will. Such an idea would never have occurred to him had it not been forced upon him by the unusual experiences of the past year. He suddenly realized that of all the boys who had left the village with him only Len Cotton, as far as he knew, remained. So one night he took a blunt-pointed pencil, and laboriously wrote on the space for the will at the end of his pay-book:
“I leave everything I’ve got to my mother Anne Picklekin, including Toffee. I hope Henry Thatcham will continue to look after Toffee except the silver bowl which I won at the rabbit show at Oppleford. This I leave to Ettie Skinner as a memorial of me.”
One day Ned enjoyed a great excitement. He was under discharge from the hospital, and a rumor got round that he and some others were to be sent back to England. They hung about the island for three days, and were then packed into an Italian fruit-steamer—which had been converted into a transport. It was very overcrowded and the weather was hot. They sailed one night and reached another island before dawn. They spent three weeks doing this. They only sailed at night, for the seas about there were reported to be infested with submarines. Every morning they put in at some island in the Greek Archipelago, or at some port on the mainland. At one place there was a terrible epidemic of illness, owing to some Greek gentlemen having sold the men some doped wine. Fifteen of them died. Ned escaped from this as he had not had any of the wine. He was practically a teetotaler except for an occasional glass of beer. But he was far from happy on that voyage. The seas were rough and the transport ought to have been broken up years ago, and this didn’t seem to be the right route for England.
At length they reached a large port called Salonika. They never went into the town, but were sent straight out to a camp in the hills ten miles away. The country was very wild and rugged, and there was great difficulty with water. Everything was polluted and malarial. There was very little fighting apparently, but plenty of sickness. He found himself in a Scottish regiment. At least, it was called Scottish, but the men came from all parts of the world, from Bow Street to Hong-Kong.
There was to be no Blighty after all, but still—there it was! He continued to drill, and march, and clean his rifle and play the mouth-organ and football. And then one morning he received a letter from his mother, which had followed him from Imbros. It ran as follows: