Our Casualty, and Other Stories Part 7

"Don't you worry about my being here," he said "If things are cleared up in the end I shan't mind a bit about spending a night or two in this cell. With all the things you've brought me"--the cake, chocolate, and cigarettes were spread out on the floor--"I'll have a merry Christmas, better than the trenches, anyhow. But, I say, don't tell Nelly. She might fret."

The Christmas festivities in the Camp were enormously successful. The men had cold ham for breakfast, a special treat paid for by the Major.

They a.s.sembled for church parade, and Digby gave them the shortest sermon ever preached by a padre. The Major, who liked to play the piano at church service, was so startled by the abrupt conclusion of the discourse, that he started "O Come, All ye Faithful," in a key so low that no one could sing the second line. The Major pulled himself together.

"As you were," he said, and started again.

The men, thoroughly roused by the novelty of the proceedings, yelled the hymn. The dinner was all that could be hoped. Sweating cooks staggered into the dining-hall with huge dishes of meat and steaming cauldrons of potatoes. Sergeants, on that day acting as servants to the men, bore off from the carving-tables plates piled high. The Yorks.h.i.+re pudding looked like gingerbread, but the men ate it The plum pudding was heavy, solid, black.

The Major, smiling blandly, went from table to table. Miss Nelly, flushed with excitement and pleasure, laughed aloud. Only Miss Willmot looked on with grave eyes, somewhat sad. She was thinking of Tommy Collins in his cell, with the weight of an intolerable accusation hanging over him.

Later on, not even Miss Willmot had time to be thoughtful. There was a pause in the festivities for an hour or two after dinner. The men smoked, slept, or kicked at a football with spasmodic fits of energy.

Then the canteen was opened. Miss Willmot's great cake was cut The men pa.s.sed in a long file in front of the counter. Miss Willmot handed each man a slice of cake. Other ladies gave crackers and mince pies. Digby, garrulous and friendly, distributed cigarettes. The Major stood at the far end of the room under the glistening white star. He was waiting for the moment to arrive at which he should make his speech, a speech sure to be received with genuine applause, for it was to be in praise of Miss Willmot The Major did that kind of thing well. He had the proper touch, could catch the note appropriate for votes of thanks. He knew his talent, and that Christmas Day he meant to do his best.

An orderly entered the canteen, looked round it, caught sight of the Major. He pushed his way through a crowd of laughing men who munched cake, smoked furiously, and decked each others' heads with paper caps from crackers. He reached the Major at last, and handed him a note.

The Major read it and swore. Then he began to push his way towards the counter. The orderly followed him.

"Gangway," he called, "gangway, men. Make way for the Major."

Way was made at last The Major seized Digby by the arm.

"It's a d.a.m.ned nuisance," he said. "I beg pardon, padre, an infernal nuisance. I've got to go to the orderly room. Those fellows in No. 3 Hospital are ringing me up. Why couldn't they keep quiet on Christmas Day? I must go though, and I may be kept. You'll have to make the speech and thank Miss Willmot."

Digby escaped making the speech in the end. Just as the distribution of cakes and mince pies had finished, when Digby was searching frantically for an opening sentence, the Major returned. He made two speeches. One was in a low voice across the counter to Miss Willmot. The other was to the men. It was all about Miss Willmot. It was beautifully phrased.

But she did not hear a word of it She was scarcely aware of the men's cheers, though the paper festoons swayed to and fro, and the Chinese lanterns shook with the violence of the shouting. For the Major had said this to her:

"It's all right about that boy in the guard-room, the prisoner you know, who was to have been court-martialled. Some blatant idiot of an orderly sergeant mixed up two sets of papers, and put the wrong man under arrest. They're sending over the right man now. I told Sergeant O'Rorke to bring that poor boy straight here from the guard-room. Keep a bit of cake for him."

It was while the men were cheering the Major's other speech that Tommy Collins, guided by Sergeant O'Rorke, entered the canteen.

Miss Nelly saw him at once. She stretched herself across the counter to grasp his hands, upsetting the few remaining mince pies, and scattering crackers right and left. If the counter had not been so broad and high she would in all probability have kissed him.

"Oh, Tommy!" she said. "And I'd given up all hope of seeing you. This is just a perfect Christmas box. How did you get here?"

Tommy Collins looked appealingly to Miss Willmot. His eyes begged her as plainly as if words had crossed his lips not to tell the story of his arrest.

"Now you are here," said Miss Nelly, "you must help us with the carols.

The Major's a perfect darling, but he can't sing ba.s.s for nuts. You'll do it, won't you? I'm singing, and so is Miss Willmot."

V -- HER RIGHT

Mrs. Jocelyn was generally considered a clever woman. Her husband respected her intellect. He was, and still is, Professor of Psychology in one of our younger Universities, so he could give an expert's opinion on any question of mental capacity. Her sons said she was clever. There were two young Jocelyns, Ned, a barrister, and Tom, a junior master in a public school. Ned used to give me his opinion of his mother very often.

"The mater is extraordinarily clear-headed," he would say. "If you want to see your way through a muddle, just you talk it over with her. It's an awful pity she----"

Then Ned would shrug his shoulders. He was a loyal son, and he never said in plain words what the pity was. Tom spoke in the same way.

"Dad's all right," he used to say, "European reputation and all that; but the mater has the brains of our family. If only she wouldn't----"

I agreed with both of them. Mrs. Jocelyn was one of the cleverest women I ever met, but--well, on one subject she was an intolerable bore. That subject was Woman's Suffrage. She could not keep off it for very long, and once she started there was no stopping her. All her friends suffered. It cannot be said that she argued. She demanded, aggressively insisted on s.e.x equality, on justice and right for women, right in every sphere of life, political right, social right, economic right, all kinds of other right.

This, of course, was in the old days before the war. Since August, 1914, most things have changed. Professor Jocelyn, indeed, still lectures on psychology, half-heartedly now, to a rapidly dwindling cla.s.s of young women. But Ned Jocelyn's name is painted in black letters on a brown wooden cross at the head of a grave--one of a long row of graves--in a French cemetery. Tom is trying to learn to walk without crutches in the grounds of an English hospital. Mrs. Jocelyn is out in France, working in a canteen, working very hard. It is only occasionally now that she demands a "right;" but when she does, she demands it, so I understand, with all her old ferocious determination to get it This is the story of how she once demanded and took a "right."

It was nearly midday, and the camp lay under a blazing sun. It was early in July, when all England and all France were throbbing with hope, pride and terror as the news of the "Big Push" came in day by day. There was little calm, and few hearts at ease in those days, but Number 50 Convalescent Camp looked peaceful enough. It is miles from the firing line. No sh.e.l.ls ever burst over it or near it. Only occasionally can the distant rumble of the guns be heard. A spell of dry weather had cracked the clay of the paths which divided it into rectangles. The gra.s.s was burnt and brown. The flower beds, in spite of diligent watering, looked parched. The great white tents, marquees guyed up with many ropes, shone with a blinding glare. In the strips of shade made by the fly sheets of the tents, men lay in little groups. Their tunics were unb.u.t.toned or cast aside. They smoked and chatted, speaking slowly and briefly.

Oftener they slept.

Only in one corner of the camp was there any sign of activity. Near the main entrance is the orderly room. Inside, a sweating adjutant toiled at a ma.s.s of papers on the desk before him. From time to time a sergeant entered the room, saluted, spoke sharply, received his orders, saluted and went out again. From the clerk's room next door came the sound of voices, the ceaseless clicking of a typewriter, and the frequent clamorous summons of a telephone bell. Outside, orderlies hurried, stepping quickly in one direction or another, to the Quarter-master's stores, to the kitchen, to the wash-houses, to twenty other points in the great camp to which orders must go, and from which messages must return. The bugler stood in the verandah outside the orderly room, ready to blow his calls or strike the hours with a hammer on a suspended length of railway line. At the entrance gate, standing sharply to attention as a guardsman should, even under a blazing sun, was Private Malley, of the Irish Guards, wounded long ago, now wearing the bra.s.sard of the Military Police. He saw to it that no person unauthorized entered the camp. Above him, limp from its staff, hung the Red Cross flag, unrecognizable that day, since there was no faintest breeze to stir its folds.

Close by the flag staff is the little dressing station. Here the men in the camp, men discharged from hospital, are seen by the doctors and the period of their rest and convalescence is decided. They are marked "Fit," and go to the fighting again, or sent back and enjoy good quarters and pleasant food for a while longer. Or--best hope--marked "Blighty" and go home. This is the routine. But sometimes there is a difference. There had been a difference every day since the "Big Push"

started. Outside the dressing station was a group of forty or fifty men. They lay on the ground, most of them sound asleep. They lay in the strangest att.i.tudes, curled up, some of them; others with arms and legs flung wide, the att.i.tudes of men utterly exhausted, whose overpowering need is rest. Some sat huddled up, too tired to sleep, blinking their eyes in the strong suns.h.i.+ne. Most of these men wore bandages. Bandages were on their heads, their hands, their arms and legs, where sleeves and trousers had been cut away. Some of them had lost their caps. One here and there had lost a boot. Many of them wore tattered tunics and trousers with long rents in them. All of them were covered with mud, mud that had dried into hard yellow cakes. These were men sent straight down from the field dressing stations, men who had been slightly wounded, so slightly that there was no need for them to go to hospital. Among them there was one man who neither lay huddled nor sprawled. He sat upright, his knees drawn up to his chest, held tight in his clasped hands. He stared straight in front of him with wide, unblinking eyes. Of all the men in the group, he was the muddiest His clothes were caked with mud.

His face was covered with mud. His hair was matted with mud. Also his clothes were the raggedest of all. The left leg of his trousers was rent from knee to waistband. The skin of his thigh shone white, strangely white compared to his face and hands, through the jagged tear. The sleeves of his tunic were torn. There was a hole in the back of it, and one of his shoulder straps was torn off. He was no more than a boy, youthful-looking compared even to the men, almost all of them young, who lay around him. He had a narrow face with that look of alert impudence which is common on the faces of gutter snipes in large cities.

As he sat staring he spoke now and then, spoke to himself, for there was no one to listen to him.

"We beat them," he said once. "We gave them the d.a.m.nedest beating. We strafed them proper, and they ran. The Prussian Guards they was."

His accent betrayed him. He must have come from Lancas.h.i.+re, from some grimy Lancas.h.i.+re town, from Warrington or Bolton, from Liverpool itself perhaps, or Manchester. Before the war there were crowds of such boys there. They made up the football crowds on Sat.u.r.day afternoons. They made the countryside hideous on bank holiday afternoons. They were the despair of church and chapel, of the social reformer, and often of the police. This boy was under-sized, of poor chest development, thin-limbed, weedy; but there was a curious light in those staring eyes of his.

He turned to the man on his right, a great, heavy-jawed Irishman with a bandaged knee, who was sound asleep.

"Wake up, Pat," he says, "wake up till I tell you how we strafed Fritz.

Out in the open it was, the Prussian Guards."

But the Irishman slept on. Neither shaking nor shouting roused a sign of intelligence in him. The boy turned to the man on his left, a Canadian, an older man with a gentle, worn face. Perhaps because he was older or more utterly wearied out, or in pain this man waked and raised himself on one elbow.

"We went for them proper," said the boy. "Prussians they was and Guards.

They thought they'd walk over us; but by G.o.d we talked to them, talked to them with the bayonet, we did."

A slow smile played across the Canadian's face.

"Say, Tommy," he said, "what's your name?"

"Wakeman, Private Wakeman, No. 79362. Gosh, Canada, but we handled them and they ran."

"They certainly did run some," said the Canadian slowly.

Then Wakeman poured out his story, a wonderful story, told in jerky sentences, garnished with blasphemies and obscene words. He had been a member of the Lewis Gun team. Very early in the advance the bursting of a high explosive sh.e.l.l had buried him, buried the whole gun team with its officer, buried the gun. Wakeman and three other men and the officer had crawled out from the mud and debris. Somehow they had unearthed the gun. Driven on by a kind of frenzy, they had advanced again, halting, firing a drum of cartridges, advancing again. Once more a sh.e.l.l caught them and buried them. Once more Wakeman crawled out, clawed his way out with hooked fingers, bit the loose clay with his mouth, bored through it with his head, dug at it with his toes. This time he and the officer were alone. They struggled to recover their gun, working fiercely, till a bullet hit the officer. After that Wakeman went on by himself, managed somehow to get among the men of the company to which his gun team belonged, and possessed himself of a rifle. At that point his story became incoherent. But about one thing he was clear. He and the others of his company had met in straight hand to hand fighting the proudest troops of Germany. By stabbing, lunging, battering with clubbed rifles, they had put the Prussian Guard to flight.

"Well," drawled the Canadian, "they did run. They certainly did run some. And what's the matter with you, sonny? Hit?"

"Buried," said Wakeman, "buried twice, and shrapnel in my leg, little bits."

The bits were little, but there were a good many of them. Half an hour later Wakeman pa.s.sed into the dressing station in his turn. The doctor looked him over, scribbled a word or two on the label which hung from the lad's breast pocket, and patted him on the shoulder.

"You'll be all right, my boy," he said. "No sh.e.l.l shock. No D.A.H. Get along with you. Feeling a bit hungry, eh?"