Читать книгу The Human Boy and the War - Eden Phillpotts - Страница 5

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My name is Abbott, and I came to Merivale two years ago. I have got one leg an inch and three-quarters shorter than the other, but I make nothing of it. A nurse dropped me on a fender when I was just born, owing to a mouse suddenly running across her foot. It was more a misfortune than anything, and my mother forgave her freely. When I was old enough I also forgave her. In fact, I only mention it to explain why I am not going into the Army. All Abbotts do so, and it will be almost a record my going into something else.

Many chaps have no fighting spirit, and, as a rule, it is not strong in schoolmasters; yet when the call came for men, three out of our five answered it and went. Two, who were well up in the Terriers, got commissions, and the other enlisted, so we were only left with Brown, who can't see further than a pink-eyed rat and isn't five foot three in his socks, though in his high-heeled boots he may be, and Fortescue.

You will say this must have had a pretty bright side for us, and, at first sight, no doubt it looks hopeful. In fact, we took a very cheerful view of it, because you can do what you like with Brown, and Fortescue only teaches the Fifth and Sixth.

On the day that Hutchings cleared out to join the Army, and we were only left with Fortescue, Brown, and the Doctor, we were confronted with serious news. In fact, after chapel on that day, we heard, much to our anxiety, that old Dunston himself was going to fill the breach.

Those were his very words. He talked with a sort of ghastly funniness and used military terms.

He said--

"Now that our valued and honoured friends, Mr. Hutchings, Mr. Manwaring, and Mr. Meadows have answered their nation's call, with a loyalty to King and Country inevitable in men who know the demands as well as the privileges of Empire, it behoves us, as we can and how we can, to fill their places. This, then, in my contribution to the Great War. I shall fight in no foreign trenches, but labour here, sleeplessly if need be, and undertake willingly, proudly, the arduous task that they have left behind. I shall confront no cannon, but I shall face the Lower School. Henceforth, after that amalgamation of class and class which will be necessary, you may count upon your head master to answer the trumpet call and fill the breach. But I do not disguise from myself that such labours must prove no sinecure, and I trust the least, as well as the greatest, to do their part and aid me with good sense and intelligence."

Well, there it was; and we saw in a moment that you can't escape the horrors of war, even though you are on an island with the Grand Fleet between you and the foe.

When it came to the point, the Doctor was fairly friendly, but there was always something about him that was awful and solemn and very depressing to the mind. You could crib easily enough with him, for he had a much more trustful disposition than Hutchings, or Brown, or Fortescue, and was also short-sighted at near range; but the general feeling with the Doctor was a sense of weariness and undoubted relief when it was over. It was as near like being in church as anything could be.

Beginning at the beginning of subjects bored him. In fact, he often found, when he went back to the very start of a lesson, he'd forgotten it himself, moving for so many years on only the higher walks of learning; and then, finding that he had forgotten some footling trifle on the first page of a primer, he became abstracted and lost heart about it, and seemed more inclined to think than to talk.

Another very curious habit he had was to start on one thing--say Latin--and then drift off into something else--say geography. Or he might begin with algebra and then something would remind him of the procession of the equinoxes, or the nebula in Orion, and he would soar from earth and wander among the heavenly bodies until the class was over. And if he happened to be very much interested himself, he wouldn't let it be over; and then we had to sit on hearing the Doctor maundering about double stars, or comets perhaps, while everybody else was in the playground.

I think he got rather sick of the Lower School after about a month of it, and Fortescue took over a good many of the classes in his normal style, which was more business-like than the Doctor and more punctual in its working. Fortescue was cold and hadn't much use for us in school or out, but he was just, and we liked him pretty well until the mystery began. Then we gradually got to dislike him, and then despise him, and then hate him.

He was rather out of the common in a way, being an Honourable and related to the famous family of Fortescue, which has shone a good deal in history off and on. And, of course, when the war broke out, we naturally expected that the Honourable Howard Fortescue would seize the opportunity to shine also, which he could not do as an undermaster at Merivale. He was a big, fine man, six feet high, with a red complexion and a Roman nose. Certainly, he did not play games, but he was all right in other ways, and had been a lawn-tennis player of the first-class in past times at Oxford, and, in fact, got his half-blue for playing at that sport against Cambridge.

So it seemed to us pretty low down that he didn't join Kitchener's Army. As a matter of fact, he didn't even try to. He was a very sublime sort of man and not what you might call friendly to us, yet if anybody appealed to him in any sort of way, he generally thawed a bit and responded in quite a kind manner.

We argued a good deal about him, and Travers major said it was natural pride, because, being of the family of Fortescue, he knew there was a gulf fixed between him and us. And Travers did not blame him, and more did I, or Briggs. But Rice, who is Irish, and who had got sent up on the report of Fortescue for saying, as he thought, something disrespectful about the British Army, hated Fortescue with a deadly hatred. Which was natural, because Fortescue had misunderstood, and Rice had really said nothing against the Army, but against Protestants, which, being a Roman Catholic himself, was merely his point of view and no business of Fortescue's.

And when Fortescue wouldn't become a soldier, Rice left no stone unturned, as they say, to worry him about it. At that time Milly Dunston, the Doctor's youngest daughter, had just come back from a school where she had been finished, and Rice's sister was at the same school, so she took notice of Rice. And it soon turned out that Milly Dunston also hated Fortescue. I believe he had snubbed her in some way over English literature, at which Fortescue was said to be a flyer, but Milly Dunston was not. She had, in fact, praised a novel to him, and he had laughed and told her it was quite worthless, and advised her to read some novels by people she had never heard of. And then he had slighted the school where she had finished, and so, when Rice explained that Fortescue was a coward and preferred the comparative comfort of Merivale to the manly business of going to Salisbury Plain and living in mud and becoming useful to the Empire, Milly Dunston quite agreed with Rice, and said something ought to be done about it.

We helped because we thought the same. In fact, everybody seemed to be of one opinion, and little by little Fortescue began to see signs of great unpopularity growing up against him.

At first he ignored these signs, being evidently unprepared to take what you might call a delicate sort of hint. For instance, he smoked a pipe and kept a Japanese vase on the mantelpiece of his study full of black crows' feathers, which he was in the habit of picking up on Merivale Heath, where he often went for lonely walks. With these feathers he cleaned out the stem of his pipe.

Well, Milly Dunston bought a white fowl for the Doctor's dinner, and told the man at the shop to send it without plucking the feathers off. Which he did do, and she got them and gave them to Rice, who dexterously took away Fortescue's black feathers and substituted the white ones. But Fortescue went on just as though he hadn't noticed it, and when Saunders was with Fortescue, having his special coaching lesson for a Civil Service exam., he said that Fortescue took a white feather and cleaned his pipe with it as though quite indifferent to the colour.

Then Milly Dunston got a ball of knitting wool and four knitting needles, for all of which she paid herself, and Rice once more did the necessary strategy and arranged them on Fortescue's desk, where his eyes would fall upon them on returning to his study. But they merely disappeared, and Fortescue gave no sign.

Then Travers major started a very interesting theory on the subject, and he said there must be some reason far deeper than mere cowardice behind the mystery of Fortescue. He said that it was impossible for a Fortescue to be a coward in the common or garden sense of funking danger, but he admitted that he might be a coward in some other way, such as not liking discipline, or living in a tent, or wearing uncomfortable clothes, or getting up early to the sound of a bugle. And Briggs said that he thought perhaps Fortescue was keeping a widowed mother and sisters, or an old aunt, or some such person by his exertions at Merivale, in which case, of course, he couldn't go. But Rice didn't see why not, even if it was so; and more did I, because the Government gives full compensation for women relations in general; but Briggs said I had got it all wrong, and that if Fortescue had an aunt, she wouldn't gain a penny by his going to the war, however old and poor she was. In fact, he believed that only a wife who was going to have a baby got anything at all, owing to the great need for keeping up the race.

Then Rice said that it didn't make any difference to his deadly feeling against Fortescue, and he also said that he was going on rubbing it into Fortescue, and leaving no stone unturned to make his life a burden to him until he enlisted; and Travers major said that Rice was feeling the instinct of pure revenge, and Rice said he might be, but that was what he intended to do. Anyway, he was sure the War Office and Admiralty didn't care a button about aunts.

Then we divided into two factions on the subject of Fortescue, and one faction decided to leave him to his conscience and mind its own business, which wasn't driving Fortescue to war; while the other side took the opposite course, and decided to work at Fortescue with the utmost ingenuity until in sheer despair he was driven to do his duty. And Briggs and Travers major and Travers minor and Saunders and Hopwood abandoned the pursuit, so to say; while I and Rice and a chap called Mitchell, all ably assisted by Milly Dunston, continued in our great attempt to wake Fortescue to the call of his country and storm his lines, as Rice said.

As for Mitchell, he came into it rather curiously, and it shows how an utter accident will sometimes reveal anybody in their true colours, and surprise other people, who thought they knew them and yet didn't. Mitchell was a mere rabbit in character and nothing in learning. And, in fact, he only had one feature besides his nose, and that was his love for money. Money, you might say, was his god, and his financial operations in the matter of loans to the kids were a study in themselves. But over Fortescue he came out in a most unexpected manner, and much to our surprise, made up a bit of poetry about him! Which shows nothing happens but the unexpected, and nobody was more astonished in a sort of way than Mitchell himself, because he never knew he could do it.

How to use the poem to the best purpose was a question that Milly solved. She typed it by night on her own typewriter, and then directed Rice, at the first opportunity, to put it on Fortescue's desk when his study was empty. And he did so, and this is what Fortescue found awaiting him when he returned:

"You ask us lots of questions

And we answer if we can,

And now we'll jolly well ask you one.

You call yourself a man,

Then why on earth don't you enlist

And try to do your share

Where the 'Black Marias' bellow

And the shrapnel's in the air?

And if you will not tell us why,

Then we'll tell you instead.

It's just because you funk it

And would hate to be shot dead.

In other words, in fact in one,

Most Honourable Howard,

Though of the race of Fortescue,

You are a bally coward!"

We didn't much envy Fortescue his feelings when he read these stirring lines, and in fact, I, in my hopefulness, believed they would actually win our object and start Fortescue on the path of duty and rouse him from his lethargical attitude to the war; but, strange to say, they went off him like water off a duck's back. Not a muscle moved, so to speak, or if it did nobody saw it do so. He went on his way for all the world as if civilisation was not in its death throes. And then Rice--to show you what Rice still felt about it--offered Mitchell a week's pocket-money if he would write yet another poem of even a more fiery and stinging character. And Mitchell gladly agreed, and took enormous trouble and burnt the midnight oil, as the saying is, and produced certainly a poem full of rhymes and great abuse of Fortescue, yet not nearly such a fine poem as the first. And Rice said it wasn't up to the mark and wouldn't pay for it, and Mitchell said it was a contract and written on commission and must be paid for by law. But Rice knew no law and he showed the poem to Travers major, who instantly tore it up and kicked Mitchell next time he met him and told him he was a dirty little cad.

So Mitchell cooled off to Rice, and, in fact, his next poem was actually about Rice--not written to order, but for pure hate of Rice--and it was undoubtedly a bitter and powerful poem; but Rice, being far stronger than Mitchell, made him eat it and swallow it in front of his class, though it was written in red ink. And Mitchell said if he died, Rice would be hung. But he felt no ill effects, though he rather hoped he would.

At this season, however, a far greater and more splendid poem than any Mitchell could do had appeared in England. In fact, it was set to music and England rang with it--also Ireland. At least, so Rice said, because his mother had told him so in a letter. There was a special mention of Ireland in it, and Rice's mother told him that it had made more recruits in Ireland than Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson put together.

Rice never does anything by halves, and he actually learnt the poem by heart, and also found out the tune somehow and sang it when possible. Once, in fact, he woke up in the night singing it from force of habit, as the saying is, and his prefect, who happened to be Mactaggert, said there was a time for everything, and threatened to report Rice if he did it again.

I asked Rice why he had made such a great effort and learnt anything he wasn't obliged to learn, and he said, firstly, because it was the grandest poem he had ever heard, and, secondly, because he had a great idea some day to sing it to Fortescue, as it applied specially to him by dwelling on the fearfulness of hanging back when the Empire cried out for you.

The poem said the Empire was calling to every one of her sons of low and high degree, and so, of course, it was also calling to Fortescue; and Rice thought that as it was pretty certain Fortescue wouldn't read it, and, no doubt, fought shy of patriotic poetry in general just now, he meant to wait for some happy opportunity when Fortescue was not in a position to get out of earshot and sing it to him.

But the opportunity did not come, so Rice adopted the former plan of leaving the poem in Fortescue's room. He had plenty of printed copies of the words, because the poem, after first appearing in a London newspaper of great renown, had been copied, at the special wish of the author, into hundreds and thousands of other papers; and to show you the tremendous liking people had for it, even the Merivale Weekly Trumpet printed it and Milly Dunston found it there.

She, by the way, had another pretty bitter cut at Fortescue, which cost more money, and she told Rice she had paid five shillings and sixpence for her great insult. In fact, she sent Fortescue a shawl and a cap, such as is worn by aged women, with red, white, and blue ribbons in it. Which, of course, meant that Fortescue was an old woman himself. It was frightfully deadly if you understood it, and Rice said that only a girl could have thought of such a cruel thing.

The parcel was sent by post, but once more we were doomed to disappointment, as they say, for nothing came of it except slight advantage to the matron in Fortescue's house. In fact, he gave her the five shilling shawl, but the cap we never saw again, and doubtless it was burnt to a cinder in Fortescue's fire.

Then Rice tried the patriotic poem, and so as there should be no mistake he covered the back of it with paste, and in this manner fastened it very firmly to the looking-glass, just behind the spot where Fortescue kept his pipes on the mantelpiece.

We didn't hope much from it, and expected he would merely scrape it off and take it lying down in his usual cowardly manner. But imagine our immense surprise when we found he had sneaked to the Doctor! And even that was nothing compared to the extraordinary confession that he had made to the Doctor. And it all came out, and, as Mitchell said, a bolt from the blue fell on him and me and Rice.

After stating the facts of the case, which were that Mr. Fortescue had been from the beginning of the term subject to a great deal of annoyance from boys, who laboured under the offensive delusion that he ought to go to the Front, the Doctor said--

"It is my honoured friend, Mr. Fortescue's wish that I inform you of the circumstances which prevent an action which he would have been the first to take did his physical welfare permit of it. But unhappily he suffers from an enlarged aorta and it is impossible for him to take his place in our line of defences, though that impossibility has caused him the sorrow of his life. It happens, however, that Nature has blessed Mr. Fortescue with abundant gifts while denying him his health, and in the pages of that work of reference known as 'Who's Who'--pages that I fear few among you will ever adorn--may be found the distinguished name of the Honourable Howard Fortescue in connection with notable achievements. For Mr. Fortescue is a votary of the Muses. Already he has two volumes of verse to his credit and three works of fiction; while in a subsequent edition of the volume, it will doubtless be recorded that he was the author of a certain admirable poem which has recently stirred the United Kingdom to its depths and sent more young men to the enlisting stations than any other inspiration of the time. But it was, it seems, left for one of my pupils to combine idiocy with insolence and affix a copy of his own immortal composition to Mr. Fortescue's looking-glass! This was positively the last straw, and my esteemed colleague who, up to the present time has allowed his sense of humour to ignore your insufferable impertinences, felt that it was bad for yourselves to proceed further upon so perilous a path. Very rightly, therefore, he called my attention to a persecution I should have thought impossible within these walls. He has no desire to give me the names of the culprits, and it is well for them that he has not; but having placed the whole circumstances in my hands, I cannot permit the outrage to pass without recording my abhorrence and shame. I may further remind you that Wednesday next is our half-term whole holiday, and if before that date no private and abject apology is committed to the hands of Mr. Fortescue by those who have disgraced themselves and put this affront upon him--if that is not done, and if I do not hear from him that he is thoroughly satisfied with the nature of that expression of regret, then there will be no half-term whole holiday and righteous and guilty alike will suffer."

Needless to say this tremendous speech made a very great impression on me and Rice and Mitchell. Milly Dunston did not hear it, but it made a great impression on her too, when she heard the facts, and we felt, in a way, that she was a good deal to blame, because she could easily have looked up "Who's Who," being free of the Doctor's library, which we were not.

Of course, there was no difficulty about the apology, which I wrote with help from Mitchell; but, showing what girls are, though she had invented most of the things we did to Fortescue, she calmly refused to sign the apology and said she should apologise personally to him. No doubt she didn't, and Rice chucked her afterwards.

Rice was the most cut up. He said he should never feel the same again after being such a simple beast, and he changed over from hating Fortescue to thinking him the most wonderful and splendid man in the world, and far the best poet after Shakespeare. And to show how frightfully Rice feels things and the rash way he goes on, I can only tell you that when we signed the apology, he cut himself on his arm, just above the wrist, and got two drops of blood and signed with them. And after his name he wrote the grim words "his blood," so that Fortescue shouldn't think it was merely red ink.

The apology went like this: