Part 4

“Can you walk, uncle?”

He replied: “Ay, I can walk all right.”

“That’s an old sport!”

The young man took his arm and helped him out of the room, into a courtyard. They entered another room, where an elderly, kind-faced officer was seated at a desk. The officer looked up, and exclaimed:

“Good God! Bradshaw, do you know who you’ve got there?”

The younger one said, “No. Who, sir?”

“By God! It’s Paul Jouperts!” exclaimed the colonel.

“Paul Jouperts! Great Scott!”

The old officer addressed himself to Sam. He said:

“Well, we’ve got you once more, Paul. We shall have to be a little more careful this time.”

The young officer said:

“Shall I detail a squad, sir?”

“We can’t shoot him without a court-martial,” replied the kind-faced senior.

Then Sam interpolated:

“Look’ee here, sir. I’m fair sick of all this. My name bean’t Paul. My name’s Sam. I was a-thinnin’ a line of tarnips—”

Both officers burst out laughing, and the younger one said:

“Good! damn good! Isn’t it amazing, sir, the way they not only learn the language, but even take the trouble to learn a dialect?”

The older man busied himself with some papers.

“Well, Sam,” he remarked, “you shall be given a chance to prove your identity. Our methods are less drastic than those of your Boche masters. What part of England are you supposed to come from? Let’s see how much you can bluff us with your topographical knowledge.”

“Oi was a-thinnin’ a loine o’ tarnips this morning at ’alf-past seven on Mr. Dodge’s farm at Halvesham, when one o’ these ’ere airyplanes come roight down among the swedes. I tells ’ee to get clear o’ that, when the feller what gets owt o’ the car, ’e drahs a revowler and ’e says, ‘You must ’company I—’”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted the senior officer; “that’s all very good. Now tell me—Where is Halvesham? What is the name of the local vicar? I’m sure you’d know that.”

Old Sam rubbed his chin.

“I sits under the Reverend David Pryce, mister, and a good God-fearin’ man he be. I took him a cookin’ o’ runner-beans on’y yesterday. I works for Mr. Dodge what owns Greenway Manor and ’as a stud-farm at Newmarket they say.”

“Charles Dodge?” asked the younger officers.

“Ay, Charlie Dodge. You write and ask ’un if he knows old Sam Gates.”

The two officers looked at each other, and the older one looked at Sam more closely.

“It’s very extraordinary,” he remarked.

“Everybody knows Charlie Dodge,” added the younger officer.

It was at that moment that a wave of genius swept over old Sam. He put his hand to his head, and suddenly jerked out:

“What’s more, I can tell ’ee where this yere Paul is. He’s actin’ a gardener in a convent at—”

He puckered up his brow and fumbled with his hat, and then got out:

“Mighteno.”

The older officer gasped.

“Mailleton-en-haut! Good God! What makes you say that, old man?”

Sam tried to give an account of his experience, and the things he had heard said by the German officers. But he was getting tired, and he broke off in the middle to say:

“Ye haven’t a bite o’ somethin’ to eat, I suppose, mister, and a glass o’ beer? I usually ’as my dinner at twelve o’clock.”

Both the officers laughed, and the older said:

“Get him some food, Bradshaw, and a bottle of beer from the mess. We’ll keep this old man here. He interests me.”

While the younger man was doing this, the chief pressed a button and summoned another junior officer.

“Gateshead,” he remarked, “ring up G. H. Q. and instruct them to arrest the gardener in that convent at the top of the hill, and then to report.”

The officer saluted and went out, and in a few minutes a tray of hot food and a large bottle of beer was brought to the old man, and he was left alone in the corner of the room to negotiate this welcome compensation. And in the execution he did himself and his country credit. In the meanwhile the officers were very busy. People were coming and going and examining maps and telephone-bells were ringing furiously. They did not disturb old Sam’s gastronomic operations. He cleaned up the mess tins and finished the last drop of beer. The senior officer found time to offer him a cigarette, but he replied:

“Thank’ee kindly, but I’d rather smoke my pipe.”

The colonel smiled, and said:

“Oh, all right. Smoke away.”

He lighted up, and the fumes of the shag permeated the room. Some one opened another window, and the young officer who had addressed him at first suddenly looked at him and exclaimed:

“Innocent, by God! You couldn’t get shag like that anywhere but in Norfolk.”

It must have been over an hour later when another officer entered, and saluted.

“Message from G. H. Q., sir,” he said.

“Well?”

“They have arrested the gardener at the convent of St. Eloise, and they have every reason to believe that he is the notorious Paul Jouperts.”

The colonel stood up, and his eyes beamed. He came over to old Sam and shook his hand.

“Mr. Gates,” he said, “you are an old brick. You will probably hear more of this. You have probably been the means of delivering something very useful into our hands. Your own honor is vindicated. A loving government will probably award you five shillings or a Victoria Cross, or something of that sort. In the meantime, what can I do for you?”

Old Sam scratched his chin.

“Oi want to get back ’ome,” he said.

“Well, even that might be arranged.”

“Oi want to get back ’ome in toime for tea.”

“What time do you have tea?”

“Foive o’clock or thereabouts.”

“I see.”

A kindly smile came into the eyes of the colonel. He turned to another officer standing by the table, and said:

“Raikes, is any one going across this afternoon with dispatches?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the young officer. “Commander Jennings is leaving at three o’clock.”

“You might ask him to come and see me.”

Within ten minutes a young man in a flight-commander’s uniform entered.

“Ah, Jennings,” said the colonel, “here is a little affair which concerns the honor of the British army. My friend here, Sam Gates, has come over from Halvesham in Norfolk in order to give us valuable information. I have promised him that he shall get home to tea at five o’clock. Can you take a passenger?”

The young man threw back his head and laughed.

“Lord!” he exclaimed. “What an old sport! Yes, I expect I could just manage it. Where is the Godforsaken place?”

A large ordnance-map of Norfolk (which had been captured from a German officer) was produced, and the young man studied it closely.

At three o’clock precisely old Sam, finding himself something of a hero and quite glad to escape from the embarrassment which this position entailed, once more sped skywards in an “airyplane.”

At twenty minutes to five he landed once more amongst Mr. Dodge’s swedes. The breezy young airman shook hands with him and departed inland. Old Sam sat down and surveyed the field.

“A noice thing, I must say,” he muttered to himself, as he looked along the lines of unthinned turnips. He still had twenty minutes, and so he went slowly along and completed a line which he had commenced in the morning. He then deliberately packed up his dinner-things and his tools, and started out for home.

As he came round the corner of Stillway’s Meadow, and the cottage came in view, his niece stepped out of the copse with a basket on her arm.

“Well, uncle,” she said, “is there any noos?”

It was then that old Sam became really irritated.

“Noos!” he said. “Noos! drat the girl! What noos should there be? Sixty-nine year I live in these here parts, hoein’ and weedin’ and thinnin’, and mindin’ Charlie Dodge’s sheep. Am I one o’ these here storybook folk havin’ noos ’appen to me all the time? Ain’t it enough, ye silly dab-faced zany, to earn enough to buy a bite o’ some’at to eat, and a glass o’ beer, and a place to rest a’s head o’night, without always wantin’ noos, noos, noos! I tell ’ee, it’s this that leads ’ee to ’alf the troubles in the world. Devil take the noos!”

And turning his back on her, he went fuming up the hill.

THE BROTHERS

THE BROTHERS

In the twilight of his mind there stirred the dim realization of pain. He could not account for this nor for his lack of desire to thrust the pain back. It was moreover mellowed by the alluring embraces of an enveloping darkness, a darkness which he idly desired to pierce, and yet which soothed him with its caliginous touch. Some subconscious voice, too, kept repeating that it was ridiculous, that he really had control, that the darkness was due to the fact that it was night, and that he was in his own bed. In the room across the passage his mother was sleeping peacefully. And yet the pain, which he could not account for, seemed to press him down and to rack his lower limbs. There was a soothing interval of utter darkness and forgetfulness, and then the little waves of febrile consciousness began to lap the shores of distant dreams, and visions of half-forgotten episodes became clear and pregnant.

He remembered standing by the French window in their own dining-room, his mother’s dining-room, rapping his knuckles gently on the panes. Beneath the window was the circular bed of hollyhocks just beginning to flower, and below the terrace the great avenue of elms nodding lazily in the sun. He could hear the coffee-urn on its brass tripod humming comfortably behind him while he waited for his mother to come down to breakfast. He was alone, and the newspaper in his hand was shaking. War! He could not grasp the significance of the mad news that lay trembling on the sheets. His mother entered the room, and as he hurried across to kiss her he noted the pallor of her cheeks.

They sat down, and she poured him out his coffee as she had done ever since he could remember. Then, fixing her dark eyes on his and toying restlessly with the beads upon her breast, she said:

“It’s true, then, Robin?”

He nodded, and his eyes wandered to the disfiguring newspaper. He felt as though he were in some way responsible for the intrusion of the world calamity into the sanctity of his mother’s life; he muttered:

“It’s a dreadful business, mother.”

His gaze wandered again out of the window between the row of elms. Geddes, the steward, was walking briskly, followed by two collies. Beyond the slope was a hay-cart lumbering slowly in the direction of the farm. “Parsons is rather late with the clover,” he thought. He felt a desire to look at things in little bits; the large things seemed overpowering, insupportable. Above all, his mother must not suffer. It was dreadful that any one should suffer, but most of all his mother. He must devote himself to protecting her against the waves of foreboding that were already evident on her face. But what could he say? He knew what was uppermost in her mind—Giles! He had no illusions. He knew that his mother adored his elder brother more passionately than she did himself. It was only natural. He too adored Giles. Everybody did. Giles was his hero, his god. Ever since he could remember, Giles had epitomized to him everything splendid, brave, and chivalrous. He was so glorious to look at, so strong, so manly. The vision of that morning merged into other visions of the sun-lit hours with Giles—his pride when quite a little boy if Giles would play with him; his pride when he saw Giles in flannels, going in to bat at cricket; the terror in his heart when one day he saw Giles thrown from a horse, and then the passionate tears of love and thankfulness when he saw him rise and run laughing after the beast. He remembered that when Giles went away to school his mother found him crying, and told him he must not be sentimental. But he could not help it. He used to visualize the daily life of Giles and write to him long letters which his brother seldom answered. Of course he did not expect Giles to answer; he would have no time. He was one of the most popular boys at school and a champion at every sport.

Then the vision of that morning when the newspaper brought its disturbing news vanished with the memory of his mother standing by his side, her arm round his waist, as they gazed together across a field of nodding corn....

Troubled visions, then, of Giles returning post-haste from Oxford, of himself in the village talking to every one he met about “the dreadful business,” speaking to the people on the farm, and to old Joe Walters, the wheelwright, whose voice he could remember saying:

“Ay, tha’ woan’t tak’ thee, Master Robin.”

He remembered talking to Mr. Meads at the general shop, and to the Reverend Quirk, whose precious voice he could almost hear declaiming:

“I presume your brother will apply for a commission.”

He had wandered then up on to the downs and tried to think about “the dreadful business” in a detached way, but it made him tremble. He listened to the bees droning on the heather, and saw the smoke from the hamlet over by Wodehurst trailing peacefully to the sky. “The dreadful business” seemed incredible.

It was some days later that he met his friend Jerry Lawson wandering up there, with a terrier at his heels. Lawson was a sculptor, a queer chap, whom most people thought a fanatic. Jerry blazed down on him:

“This is hell, Robin. Hell let loose. It could have been avoided. It’s a trade war. At the back of it all is business, business, business. And millions of boys will be sacrificed for commercial purposes. Our policy is just as much at fault as—theirs. Look what we did at—”

For an hour he listened to the diatribe of Lawson, tremulously silent. He had nothing to reply. He detested politics and the subtleties of diplomacy. He had left school early owing to an illness which had affected his heart. He had spent his life upon these downs and among his books. He could not adjust the gentle impulses of his being to the violent demands of that foreboding hour. When Lawson had departed, he had sat there a long time. Was Lawson right?

He wandered home, determining that he would read more history, more political economy; he would get to the root of “this dreadful business.”

He wanted to talk to Giles, to find out what he really thought, but the radiant god seemed unapproachable; or rode roughshod over the metaphysical doubts of his brother, and laughed. Giles had no misgivings. His conscience was dynamically secure. Besides, there was “the mater.”

“When I go, Rob, you must do all you can to buck the mater up.” He had looked so splendid when he said that, with his keen, strong face, alert and vibrant, Robin had not had it in his heart to answer. And then had come lonely days, reading news books and occasionally talking with Lawson. When Giles went off to his training he spent more time with his mother, but they did not discuss the dreadful thing which had come into their lives. His mother became restlessly busy, making strange garments, knitting, attending violently to the demands of the household. Sometimes in the evening he would read to her, and they would sit trying to hide from each other the sound of the rain pattering on the leaves outside. He had not dared talk to her of the misgivings in his heart or of his arguments with Lawson....

And then a vision came of a certain day in October. The wind was blowing the rain in fitful gusts from the sea. He was in a sullen, perverse mood. Watching his mother’s face that morning, a sudden fact concerning her had come home to him. It had aged, aged during those three months, and the gray hair on that distinguished head had turned almost white. He felt within him a surging conflict of opposing forces. The hour of climacteric had arrived. He must see it once and for all clearly and unalterably. He had put on his mackintosh then and gone out into the rain. He walked up to the long wall by Gray’s farm, where on a fine day he could see the sea; but not to-day, it was too wet and misty; but he could be conscious of it, and feel its breath beating on his temples.

He stood there, then, for several hours, under the protection of the wall, listening to the wind and to the gulls who went shrieking before it. He could not remember where he had wandered to after that, except that for some time he was leaning on a rock, watching the waves crashing over the point at Youlton Bay. And then in the evening he had written to Lawson.

“I want to see this thing in its biggest, broadest sense, dear Jerry.”

He knew he had commenced the letter in this way, for it was a phrase he had repeated to himself at intervals.

“Like you, I hate war and the thought of war. But, good heaven! need I say that? Every one must hate war, I suppose. I agree with you that human life is sacred.... But would it be sacred if it stood still?—if it were stagnant?—if it were just a mass affair? It is only sacred because it is an expression of spiritual evolution. It must change, go on, lead somewhere....

“Don’t you think that we on this island have as great a right to fight for what we represent as any other nation? With all our faults and poses and hypocrisies, haven’t we subscribed something to the commonwealth of humanity?—something of honor, and justice, and equity? I don’t believe you will deny all this. But even if you did, and even if I agreed with you, I still should not be convinced that it was not right to fight. As I walked up by the chalk-pit near Gueldstone Head, and saw the stone-gray cottages at Lulton nestling in the hollow of the downs, and smelt the dear salt dampness of it all, and felt the lovely tenderness of the evening light, I thought of Giles and what he represents, and of my mother, and what she represents, and of all the people I know and love with all their faults, and I made up my mind that I would fight for it in any case, in the same way that I would fight for a woman I loved, even if I knew she were a harlot....”

Lying there in his bed, these ebullient thoughts reacted on him. Drowsiness stole over his limbs, and he felt his heart vibrating oddly. There seemed to be a sound of drums, beating a tattoo, of a train rumbling along an embankment. And in fancy he was on his way to London again, with the memory of his mother’s eyes as she had said:

“Come back safely, Robin boy.”

The memory of that day was terrifying indeed. He was wandering about a vast building near Whitehall, tremulously asking questions, wretchedly conscious that people looked at him and laughed. And then that long queue of waiting men! Some were so dirty, so obscene, and he felt that most of them were sniggering at him. A sergeant spoke sharply, and he shuddered and spilt some ink on one of the many forms he had to fill up. Every one seemed rough and violent. After many hours of waiting he was shown into another room and told to strip. He sat on a form with a row of other men, feeling incredibly naked and very much ashamed. The window was open and his teeth chattered with the cold and the nervous tension of the desperate experience. A doctor spoke kindly to him, and an old major at a table asked him one or two questions. He was dismissed and waited interminably in another room. At last an orderly entered and called his name among some others, and handed him a card. He was rejected.

He returned to Wodehurst that evening shivering and in a mood of melancholy dejection. He was an outcast among his fellows, a being with a great instinct towards expression, but without the power to back it up. The whole thing appeared so utterly unheroic, almost sordid. He wondered about Giles. If presenting oneself at a recruiting office was such a terrifying ordeal, what must the actual life of a soldier be? Of course Giles was different, but—the monotony, the cheerlessness of barrack life! And then the worse things beyond.

After that he would devour the papers and tramp feverishly on the downs; he tried to obtain work at a munition factory, and was refused; made himself ill sewing bandages and doing chaotic odd jobs. And all the time he thought of Giles, Giles, Giles. What Giles was doing, how Giles was looking, whether he was unhappy, and whether they spoke to him brusquely, like the sergeant had to himself in London.

Then came the vision of the day when Giles came and bade farewell, on his way to France—a terrible day. He could not bring himself to look into his mother’s eyes. He felt that if he did so he would be a trespasser peering into the forbidden sanctuary of a holy place. He hovered around her and murmured little banalities about Giles’s kit, the train he was to catch, the parcel he was to remember to pick up in London. When it came to parting time, he left those two alone and fled out to the trap that was to take his brother to the station. He had waited there till Giles came, running and laughing and waving his hand. He drove with him to the station, and dared not look back to see his mother standing by the window. They were silent till the trap had passed a mile beyond the village; then Giles had laughed, and talked, and rallied him on his gloomy face.

“I’ll soon be back, old man. Buck the mater up, won’t you? Whoa, Tommy, what are you shying at?... By jove! won’t it be grand on the sea to-night!”

Oh, Giles! Giles! was there ever any one so splendid, so radiant, so uncrushable? His heart went out to his brother at that moment, and he could not answer.

So closely were his own sympathies interwoven with the feelings of his brother that he hardly noticed the moment of actual separation on the platform. His heart was with Giles all the way up to London, then in the train again, and upon the sea with him that night.