Men, Women and Guns Part 24

Occasionally a soldier-waiter pa.s.sed behind the officers' chairs, armed with a business-like bottle and a box of dangerous-looking cigars; and unless he was watched carefully he was apt to replenish the liquid refreshment in a manner which suggested that he regarded soda as harmful in the extreme to the human system. Had he not received his instructions from that great man the regimental himself?

For an hour and a half the smoking concert had been in progress; the Brothers Bimbo, those masterly knock-about comedians, had given their performance amid rapturous applause. In life the famous pair were a machine-gun sergeant and a cook's mate; but on such gala occasions they became the buffoons of the regiment. They were the star comics: a position of great responsibility and not to be lightly thought of. An officer had given a couple of rag-time efforts; the melancholy corporal in C Company had obliged with a maundering tune of revolting sentimentality, and one of A Company scouts had given a so-called comic which caused the padre to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the floor, though at times his mouth twitched suspiciously, and made the colonel exclaim to his second in command in tones of heartfelt relief: "Thank Heavens, my wife couldn't come!" Knowing his commanding officer's wife the second in command agreed in no less heartfelt voice.

But now a silence had settled on the great room: and all eyes were turned on the regimental sergeant-major, who was standing up behind the table on which the programme lay, and behind which he had risen every time a new performer had appeared during the evening, in order to introduce him to the a.s.sembly. There are many little rites and ceremonies in smoking concerts....

This time, however, he did not inform the audience that Private MacPherson would now oblige--that is the mystic formula. He stood there, waiting for silence.

"Non-commissioned officers and men"--his voice carried to every corner of the building--"I think you will all agree with me that we are very pleased to see Colonel Johnson and all our officers here with us to-night. It is our farewell concert in England: in a few days we shall all be going--somewhere; and it gives us all great pleasure to welcome the officers who are going to lead us when we get to that somewhere.

Therefore I ask you all to fill up your gla.s.ses and drink to the health of Colonel Johnson and all our officers."

A shuffling of feet; an abortive attempt on the part of the pianist to strike up "For he's a jolly good fellow" before his cue, an attempt which died horribly in its infancy under the baleful eye of the sergeant-major; a general creaking and grunting and then--muttered, shouted, whispered from a thousand throats--"Our Officers." The pianist started--right this time--and in a second the room was ringing with the well-known words. Cheers, thunderous cheers succeeded it, and through it all the officers sat silent and quiet. Most were new to the game; to them it was just an interesting evening; a few were old at it; a few, like Jim, had been across, and it was they who had a slight lump in their throats. It brought back memories--memories of other men, memories of similar scenes....

At last the cheering died away, only to burst out again with renewed vigour. The colonel was standing up, a slight smile playing round his lips, the glint of many things in his quiet grey eyes. To the second in command, a sterling soldier but one of little imagination, there came for the first time in his life the meaning of the phrase, "the windows of the soul." For in the eyes of the man who stood beside him he saw those things of which no man speaks; the things which words may kill.

He saw understanding, affection, humour, pain; he saw the pride of possession struggling with the sorrow of future loss; he saw the desire to test his creation struggling with the fear that a first test always brings; he saw visions of glorious possibilities, and for a fleeting instant he saw the dreadful abyss of a hideous failure. Aye, for a few moments the second in command looked not through a gla.s.s darkly, but saw into the unplumbed depths of a man who had been weighed in the balance and not found wanting; a man who had faced responsibility and would face it again; a man of honour, a man of humour, a man who knew.

"My lads," he began--and the quiet, well-modulated voice reached every man in the room just as clearly as the harsher voice of the previous speaker--"as the sergeant-major has just said, in a few days we shall be sailing for--somewhere. The bustle and fulness of your training life will be over; you will be confronted with the real thing. And though I do not want to mar the pleasure of this evening in any way or to introduce a serious tone to the proceedings, I do want to say just one or two things which may stick in your minds and, perhaps, on some occasion may help you. This war is not a joke; it is one of the most hideous and ghastly tragedies that have ever been foisted on the world; I have been there and I know. You are going to be called on to stand all sorts of discomfort and all sorts of boredom; there will be times when you'd give everything you possess to know that there was a picture-palace round the corner. You may not think so now, but remember my words when the time comes--remember, and stick it.

"There will be times when there's a sinking in your stomach and a singing in your head; when men beside you are staring upwards with the stare that does not see; when the sergeant has taken it through the forehead and the nearest officer is choking up his life in the corner of the traverse. But--there's still your rifle; perhaps there's a machine-gun standing idle; anyway, remember my words then, and stick it.

"Stick it, my lads, as those others have done before you. Stick it, for the credit of the regiment, for the glory of our name. Remember always that that glory lies in your hands, each one of you individually. And just as it is in the power of each one of you to tarnish it irreparably, so is it in the power of each one of you to keep it going undimmed. Each one of us counts, men"--his voice sank a little--"each one of us has to play the game. Not because we're afraid of being punished if we're found out, but because it _is_ the game."

He looked round the room slowly, almost searchingly, while the arc light spluttered and then burnt up again with a hiss.

"The Regiment, my lads--the Regiment." His voice was tense with feeling.

"It is only the Regiment that counts."

He raised his gla.s.s, and the men stood up:

"The Regiment."

A woman sobbed somewhere in the body of the gym., and for a moment, so it seemed to Denver, the wings of Death flapped softly against the windows. For a moment only--and then:

"Private Mulvaney will now oblige."

Jim walked slowly home. He remembered just such another evening before his own battalion went out. Would those words of the Colonel have their effect: would some white-faced man stick it the better for the remembrance of that moment: would some machine-gun fired with trembling dying hands take its toll? Perhaps--who knows? The ideal of the soldier is there--the ideal towards which the New Armies are led. Thus the first incident....

CHAPTER V

THE CONTRAST

The following afternoon Denver, strolling back from the town, was hailed by a man in khaki, standing in the door of his house. He knew the man well, Vane, by name--had dined with him often in the days when he was in training himself. A quiet man, with a pleasant wife and two children.

Vane was a stockbroker by trade: and just before Jim went out he had enlisted.

"Come in and have a gargle. I've just got back on short leave." Vane came to the gate.

"Good," Jim answered. "Mrs. Vane must be pleased." They strolled up the drive and in through the door. "You're looking very fit, old man.

Flanders seems to suit you."

"My dear fellow, it does. It's the goods. I never knew what living was before. The thought of that cursed office makes me tired--and once"--he shrugged his shoulders--"it filled my life. Say when."

"Cheer oh!" They clinked gla.s.ses. "I thought you were taking a commission."

"I am--very shortly. The colonel has recommended me for one, and I gather the powers that be approve. But in a way I'm sorry, you know.

I've got a great pal in my section--who kept a whelk stall down in Whitechapel."

"They're the sort," laughed Jim. "The c.o.c.kney takes some beating."

"This bird's a flier. We had quite a cheery little show the other night, just him and me. About a week ago we were up in the trenches--bored stiff, and yet happy in a way, you know, when Master Boche started to register.[1] I suppose it was a new battery or something, but they were using crumps, not shrapnel. They weren't very big, but they were very close--and they got closer. You know that nasty droning noise, then the h.e.l.l of an explosion--that great column of blackish yellow smoke, and the bits pinging through the air overhead."

"I do," remarked Jim tersely.

Vane laughed. "Well, he got a bracket; the first one was fifty yards short of the trench, and the second was a hundred yards over. Then he started to come back--always in the same line; and the line pa.s.sed straight through our bit of the trench.

"''Ere, wot yer doing, you perishers? Sargint, go and stop 'em. Tell 'em I've been appointed purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse of the 'Un Emperor.' Our friend of the whelk stall was surveying the scene with intense disfavour. A great ma.s.s of smoke belched up from the ground twenty yards away, and he ducked instinctively. Then we waited--fifteen seconds about was the interval between shots. The men were a bit white about the gills--and, well the feeling in the pit of my tummy was what is known as wobbly. You know that feeling too?"

"I do," remarked Jim even more tersely.

Vane finished his drink. "Then it came, and we cowered. There was a roar like nothing on earth--the back of the trench collapsed, and the whole lot of us were buried. If the sh.e.l.l had been five yards short, it would have burst in the trench, and my whelk friend would have whelked no more."

Vane laughed. "We emerged, plucking mud from our mouths, and cursed. The Hun apparently was satisfied and stopped. The only person who wasn't satisfied was the purveyor of winkles to the Royal 'Ouse. He brooded through the day, but towards the evening he became more cheerful.

"'Look 'ere,' he said to me, ''ave you ever killed a 'Un?'

"'I think I did once,' I said. 'A fat man with a nasty face.'

"'Oh! you 'ave, 'ave you? Well, wot abaht killing one to-night. If they thinks I'm going to stand that sort of thing, they're ---- ---- wrong.'

The language was the language of Whitechapel, but the sentiments were the sentiments of even the most rabid purist of speech.

"To cut a long story short, we went. And we were very lucky."

"You b.u.mped your face into 'em, did you?" asked Jim, interested.

"We did. Man, it was a grand little sc.r.a.p while it lasted, and it was the first one I'd had. It won't be the last."

"Did you kill your men?"

"Did we not? Welks brained his with the b.u.t.t of his gun; and I did the trick with a bayonet." Vane became a little apologetic. "You know it was only my first, and I can't get it out of my mind." Then his eyes shone again. "To feel that steel go in--Good G.o.d! man--it was IT: it was...."

Then came the interruption. "Dear," said a voice at the door, "the children are in bed; will you go up and say good night."... Thus the second incident....

As I said, taken separately the two incidents mean but little: taken together--there is humour: the whole humour of war.