Читать книгу Alf's Button - W. A. Darlington - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The word "rest" as used at the front has been described as being purely a technical term, bearing no relation whatever to the other word of the same name. Certainly during the last fortnight of this particular period Alf Higgins and Bill Grant found cause to realize the truth of this description.

A new brigadier had just been appointed to command the Middlesex Fusiliers Brigade. He was an upstanding young giant of thirty, and the main tenets of his creed were fitness and efficiency. In pursuit of the latter he organized strenuous sham fights over miles of country, and he urged upon his colonels that only by encouraging athletic contests on a hitherto unheard of scale could they hope to attain the former.

Alf and Bill were no athletes, but they continued to play football with more vigor than skill until their platoon was knocked out of the battalion competition. They bore their defeat with stoicism, hoping that they would now be allowed to assume the much more accustomed and congenial rôle of spectators. Instead of this they found themselves (to their inexpressible indignation) called upon to sustain the battalion's honor in cross-country runs under the eye of that speechless but efficient officer Lieutenant Donaldson.

In the evenings, however, they were free to extract what amusement they could out of life. The pierrot troupe, without which no division at the front considered itself complete, played to packed houses every other night in the Y.M.C.A.; while a cinematograph show had been rigged up in a barn. Each day, also, a limited number of passes to Amiens entitled such as were favored of Fortune to a blissful day's taste of civilization.

To the officers, however, it seemed sometimes incredible that any of the men could patronize these delights at all.

"I believe," said Richards to Allen one evening, "that every man in this company must write to every relation, friend, acquaintance or business connection he has in Blighty seven times in the week, just to spite us!"

The company letters had just come in to be censored. Donaldson had gone to a Sports Committee meeting, and Shaw, as mess president, was in Amiens restocking the larder.

"Lord, what a pile!" said Allen, sitting down at the table and beginning his task. "It's lucky I've no letters of my own to write—or only a note."

He gave a sigh; the man at the front who has nobody in England to write to is not to be envied.

"I have, though," said Captain Richards. "My wife'll be thinking I'm dead if I don't write her a proper letter soon."

He also took a handful of letters and set to work.

"May I come in?" said a voice at the door. "Or are you too busy?"

"Come in, of course, major."

The second-in-command entered, glanced round and took in the situation.

"Don't let me interrupt you," he said politely. "I haven't come to see you at all, so don't flatter yourselves. I wanted to see Denis's Sketch and Tatler, that's all."

"On my bed, sir," said Allen.

"Thanks."

There was unbroken silence for some minutes. Then the major cast The Tatler from him with an exclamation of disgust.

"I wish," he said, "that that grinning little idiot would stop advertising herself for a bit. You can't pick up a picture-paper without seeing her selling things or dressing up or generally pushing herself into the limelight. She wants smacking."

Both men at the table looked up.

"Who's the grinning idiot in question, major?"

"Isobel FitzPeter. Here you are—a whole page of her and her bally bulldog, labeled 'A famous Beauty—and Friend.' Same photograph in The Sketch, called 'Beauty and the Beast'! It makes me sick!"

Allen suddenly got up and went out of the room without a word, very red in the face. Richards and Major Parker stared after him, the former very embarrassed, the latter simply surprised.

"What's the matter?" asked the major blankly.

"I expect poor old Denis felt he might have used language unbefitting your rank if he'd stayed. You see—don't let on to a soul, mind—he's most frightfully gone on the FitzPeter girl."

"Good God, Dickie, what have I said? D'you mean they're engaged or anything?"

"Oh, no. I don't believe she knows him at all. He used to play cricket at her father's place, and they were rather pals then, I believe. But since she's grown up, they've never met. But you know how it is out here. If I hadn't had my wife to think about, I'd have gone mad long ago. Denis doesn't seem to have many feminine belongings of his own, so he's simply installed this girl as a kind of goddess. He seems to live for the illustrated papers—simply devours them, and cuts out her picture. This is all rather confidential, major."

"Of course. Poor old chap. You know, Dickie, I do happen to know the lady. In peace time she was as nice a kid as you could want to meet. If Denis hasn't met her since then, I don't wonder at him, because she's really frightfully pretty. But her head has been utterly turned. She acts as parlor-maid once a fortnight in a hospital my sister runs in Kensington, and she's more hindrance than help, because she never arrives in time, and she's always got some footling reason for wanting to go early. But her photograph in V.A.D. uniform gets published about once a fortnight, usually headed 'Nursing the Wounded,' or, 'An Indefatigable War Worker'! The worst of it is she's got brains if she'd use them; only she won't. A spoilt, thoughtless little idiot, and as pretty as they make 'em. Poor old Denis."

At this point Allen returned and resumed his work without a word. The major fell silent. Richards cast about for some subject to cover the awkward break in the conversation.

"D'you know when we go back to the line, sir?" he asked at last.

"Not settled. End of the week, I think. Look here, I've interrupted you fellows quite enough. Give me some of those letters."

"Thanks awfully, sir. You're a sportsman."

By dinner time the pile was finished, and Allen had time to write his note.

"Dear Peggy," he wrote—

"Just a line to tell you I'm still alive, and hoping to remain so. You might write to me when you've time. In great haste,

"Your affectionate cousin,

"Denis.

"P.S. If you happen to see Miss FitzPeter, please give her my kind regards."

This missive he addressed to Lady Margaret Clowes, at an address in Mayfair. She was only a very distant cousin of Allen's, and there was, on the face of it, no particular reason why he should have written to her at all. The regularity with which he had recently done so, therefore, coupled with the unfailing manner in which the postscript contained a polite message to Isobel FitzPeter, had given away to Margaret the true state of affairs; and because she liked and admired her shy cousin, she had contrived to keep his name not too insistently, and yet quite firmly, before Isobel's mind. She had determined, also, that when next Allen should come home on leave, she would engineer a meeting between them.

If he had known this it would have filled him with joy, tempered with apprehension, for he was not blind to the fact that the Isobel he had known had developed into a new and rather formidable creature. She was now a public character, the last word in smartness, and sometimes rather a loud word at that. He felt that she was removed now to a sphere beyond his reach, for he was a very humble-minded person. Altogether, one way and another, he contrived to be acutely miserable when he had time to think about anything but his work, and he rather welcomed than otherwise the prospect of going back into the line.

In due course an operation order came through from Battalion Headquarters, setting forth in minutest detail the times at which officers' valises would be packed and sent to the transport, mess-boxes made ready, blankets tied into bundles and delivered to the quartermaster, billets cleaned and platoons ready to move. When the time came there was the usual air of hopeless confusion, the accustomed mutual recriminations between conflicting or overlapping authorities; and in the end—also as usual—the battalion marched out at the appointed hour, leaving behind it very little to show that it had ever been there.

The brigade was to take over the same part of the line it had last occupied; but in the three weeks' interval that had elapsed since they had been relieved, Hindenburg had carried out his famous "retirement according to plan," and our friends found themselves only just entering the shelled area about the point where, in the days of the Big Thaw, their front line had been.

The 5th Battalion this time moved straight up into the front line, where they were comparatively comfortable. The weather was still cold, but fine; the trenches—originally German property—had turned renegade and were now serving the British very efficiently against their old masters. The sector was still very quiet: to all appearance the enemy had gone away and left no address. Altogether things were very much pleasanter than last time up.

Alf, after his former fiasco, was no longer a "runner"; but his chum, Bill Grant, had been selected for this work, so that the two were no better off than last time, so far as being together was concerned. Alf felt lonely. None of the other men in his platoon took much interest in him. He wanted Bill's companionship—his contemptuous patronage of and his real affection for his slower-witted companion.

His loneliness increased daily, until it became acute; and at last one day, being on sentry-go in a bay all by himself, he bethought himself of his Button. His mates were snoring in a dug-out close by; no sign had been seen from the German trenches all day. He had strained his eyes across No-Man's-Land until he had begun to feel intolerably drowsy himself. If something did not happen soon, there was a danger that the officer or N.C.O. on duty might find him asleep at his post.

Eustace seemed to be his only chance.

He rubbed the Button.

"What wouldst thou have? I am ready. … "

"'Op it, quick!" was Alf's startling rejoinder.

Eustace, looking upset, complied. He was beginning to wonder whether he was being victimized. This new Master of his who gave incomprehensible orders and then seemed far from pleased when the orders were carried out, also seemed to have a taste for summoning him merely for the pleasure of seeing him vanish.

But Alf had a better reason than this. He had heard voices further along the trench. A moment after Eustace had disappeared, Lieutenant Shaw came round the traverse with the N.C.O. on duty, in the course of his tour of inspection along the "C" Company front.

"Alone, Higgins?" asked the officer, with a hint of surprise in his voice.

"Yessir."

"I thought I heard voices."

"Only me 'ummin', sir."

"I see. All quiet?"

"Yessir! Nothin' doin' at all!"

"Well"—Second-Lieutenant Shaw had not yet shed his youthful pride at being in the thick of things, and puffed himself out a little and became most impressive—"you want to keep an extra sharp look-out from now until we stand-to at dusk. We've an idea that something's going to happen. Probably Fritz will try a raid. This quiet is very suspicious."