Читать книгу No Hero—This - Warwick Deeping - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The Spring becomes Summer, and our lives seem to have subsided into pure routine. We bathe; I have even had a game or two of tennis. I am still struggling to penetrate the mysteries of military formalism, but I have not much spare time. I am taking my turn at admissions, as well as functioning in the Company Office.

Macartney tells me that I am approved of by Barter. I am considered to be a conscientious and hard-working officer. Does anyone suspect that I am furiously eager to cultivate this reputation, with the idea of making myself seem somewhat indispensable? Every morning at ten o’clock I report to Colonel Barter, and though I have nothing of importance to tell him, he appears to derive satisfaction from the ritual. There is no more screaming. He treats me with a courtesy and a kindness in which there seems to lurk a little serpent of suspicion.

Macartney tells me that Barter’s one fear is that “someone should sell him a pup.” For a superannuated old gentleman he is drawing very good pay and allowances, and he dreads any scandal that might cause Olympus to thunder. I begin to understand old Barter. Like myself, he wants to stay put. There are other men who are ready to push him off his comfortable perch, and he clings to it like a scolding old parrot. But I like him, perhaps because he approves of me. In one’s innocent beginnings one did not suspect that life in the army would be fiercely competitive and self-protective. One is ready to snarl over one’s particular job and growl, “My bone. Keep off!”

I can remember speculating in my student days as to what was the ultimate fate of the many casual young men of limited intelligence who contrived to scrape through their examinations, often after much coaching, and who departed to exercise their skill upon a confiding public. It would have filled me with dismay to contemplate trusting anyone I cared for to the rather fumbling hands of these men who were lacking both in character and efficiency.

We appear to be rediscovering some of these botchers and their work here. While acting as admissions officer I am confronted by the most extraordinary cases in the way of diagnosis. I discuss the matter with other members of the staff, and find that their experience has been the same as mine.

There is one M.O. in charge of a battalion who has become notorious for his careless and incredible blunders. The man is either grossly ignorant or bored, perhaps both.

One morning I find a case sent in for admission by him, diagnosed as acute lumbago. The patient is collapsed, pinched, and clay coloured, and to me an obvious and acute abdominal. I bring Dartnell in to check my diagnosis. He is shocked and scornful.

“Lumbago! It’s a perforating duodenal. I’ll swear to it.”

Within an hour or so the man is operated on, and our diagnosis found to be correct. They manage to save him.

Dartnell says to me later in the common-room, “That fellow So-and-So ought to be chucked out into the street.”

But what right have I to despise any man for being inefficient and without conscience? My own conscience is none too clear. I am doing my best here, but what is the esoteric significance of my striving? Is it the work for the work’s sake, the fine frenzy of professional idealism, or am I hiding behind my work and trying to make of it a protective shell? No, I have no right to cast stones at other men, for my own glasshouse is so very fragile and transparent.

My house of glass begins to tremble.

Mary has been with me for another week-end, and we have been happy together. On the Monday, after she has gone, I hear the news. Bisgood has passed it to Macartney. Colonel Barter is to be suspended, just why nobody appears to know.

I go in to report and find him shuffling his papers in decrepit agitation. He is lachrymose, and quite lacking in dignity or reticence.

He says, “They have sacked me, Brent.”

I say that I am sorry, which is true, though my sorrow is largely selfish, and tinged with apprehension. I feel that my fate may be in strange, new, and unfriendly hands.

And I despise myself.

The new C.O. has arrived, a Field Ambulance colonel who has been invalided from France, and given a home service post. His name is Parker Steel. I go in to report and find myself in the presence of a man not much older than myself. He is very fair, very tall, very thin, with an alert and jejune face and peculiarly pale blue eyes. He is sitting behind the desk, reading a letter; he looks up at me with a kind of cold quickness, and goes on reading. I have saluted and I stand there and wait, observing him, disliking him. Even his small fair moustache, and his long, deliberate fingers are supercilious. I feel myself to be the complete amateur, and rather like a boy dragged before the head master.

He puts down the letter, stares at me, but does not speak. His deliberate and critical poise is disconcerting. I gather that he is waiting upon his dignity for me to explain myself.

“I am the Company Officer, sir.”

His face remains cold and unfriendly. He glances at his wrist-watch.

“In future, you will report to me daily at nine o’clock.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long have you been here?”

“About four months, sir.”

“Are you one of the home service heroes?”

“No, sir.”

He is staring at the buckle of my Sam Browne belt.

“I wish to inspect the men. You will parade them at ten. I shall also inspect kits and billets.”

“Very good, sir.”

I dislike him more and more, and I have a feeling that the antipathy is mutual.

“That is all for the moment, Mr. Brent.”

I salute and turn to go, and suddenly he calls me back.

“Has anyone ever taught you to salute?”

“No, sir.”

“Things seem to have been rather fortuitous and happy-go-lucky here. You will remind me to arrange for an officers’ parade.”

“Very good, sir.”

“I will inspect the men at ten.”

In the corridor I run into S.-M. Bisgood, but a very different Bisgood. He is in a hurry, and looking hot, angry and flustered. His blue eyes are standing out on stalks, and the complacent crown of the autocrat no longer adorns him. He gives me a peculiar look, hesitates, and with a blink of the eyes passes on. I gather that he too has been receiving shocks.

I am afraid our parades have been much too informal, friendly affairs with a roll-call and a passing inspection of buttons and chins. The good feeling between the men and myself has been such that any criticism I have had to make has taken the shape of a paternal request. I have even had smiles on parade when I have twitted some offender.

It is a blazing August day, and already the tarred road upon which we parade outside the Company Office is feeling the heat. The men are standing at ease. Colonel Steel appears, and I call the men to attention. I turn and salute him, and in return he gives me a casual lift of the hand. His face is as cold as the morning is sultry.

He takes the parade from me.

“Stand at ease! Shun!”

The feet do not come together with a crisp and simultaneous click. There is some lagging and shuffling.

“As you were!”

His voice rasps out stimulating brevities. It is a quiet voice, but it has an edge that cuts. I realize that this parade is to be a ferocious business, and the men’s faces become wooden.

“Is Sergeant-Major Bisgood on parade?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

I explain that Bisgood has been a busy satellite revolving round Colonel Barter.

“Is that so. Send a sergeant for S.-M. Bisgood.”

He proceeds to inspect the men with a merciless and minute thoroughness that is disconcerting. The sergeant who accompanies us is ordered to produce a notebook. Some twenty men need their hair cutting. Belts and buttons are not what they should be, and certain pairs of boots are a disgrace. Sergeant-Major Bisgood joins us, flushed and apologetic, but Steel ignores him. The excoriating of Bisgood is to be reserved for a more private occasion.

I share in it. When the parade has been dismissed, I and Bisgood are ordered to report at eleven o’clock in the Colonel’s office. I can appreciate the fact that Steel is a new broom sent down to sweep away the Barter cobwebs, but the symbol of the broom is not adequate. Steel suggests metal at white heat, or a pale and flaring torch. Bisgood and I stand before his desk. There is no senile screaming. His words sting.

Later, in the Common Room, I find myself involved in an atmosphere of restlessness and anger. Nearly everybody is feeling a little hot and humiliated. Old Macartney is unusually quiet. Dartnell, with his high colour and quick temper, is not to be repressed.

“Supercilious swine.”

Old Macartney reproves him. Steel is only doing his job, and it may not be an easy one. Besides, he is our commanding officer.

Malim is the only man whose toes have not suffered, but Malim is a cool customer, and inexorably efficient.

“He did not get any change out of me. I suggested that he should squint down my microscope.”

“And did he?”

“Yes.”

“Any results?”

“O, yes, I found out that he hadn’t the faintest notion of what he was looking at.”

There is a ruthlessness about this man that both frightens and impresses me. It is the first time that I have come into contact with such ruthlessness, and though I can respect it and appreciate its efficiency, I hate the man who exercises it. Sometimes it is difficult to suppress the civilian in myself. I am inwardly shaken with an anger that is tinged with fear. But I suppose these regular soldiers have their problems, and that Steel regards us as a crowd of undisciplined civies who have to be tamed.

The man is indefatigable and tireless. His strenuous pallor is deceptive. He is everywhere, in the wards and the kitchens; he even appears in the operating theatre and watches Smythe explore an abdomen. Smythe is furious about it, and says that he would like to have taken a bloody hand out of the patient’s belly and smacked Steel’s face. I am ordered to produce for inspection all my pay-books and accounts. Steel sits up with me till half-past twelve, exploring and checking figures. He tells me frankly that my handwriting is slovenly, and that I had better detail a clerk to make all the entries in the Impress Ledger. Apparently I have not understood the essential duties of an officer. It is not my business to play about with pothooks, but to supervise, stimulate, control.

I go down to Trafalgar Terrace, tired and discouraged. I feel that my peaceful days are ended, and that this man regards me as a shirker, and that I shall be bundled overseas. But can I complain? Steel is a soldier, and we are at war, and as a realist he is justified in his ruthlessness for the obtaining of results. I suppose he has ideals of his own, and he does not spare himself.

But could it not be done more kindly? Or is it necessary to exercise fear in order to compel men to face death and wounds. We are not free men any longer, and slavery is founded upon fear. If we were conscripts——? But is there any essential difference between the volunteer and the conscript when once they have been fed into the hopper of the war-machine? Why did I surrender my freedom? Through fear. Because I was afraid of being despised by my neighbours, and was conscripted by public prejudice. Thousands of men must have been coerced by a cowardly conscience.

Bisgood stops me in the corridor with an air of almost servile yet mysterious politeness. He has become servile under the metal of Steel’s tongue, and so, in a sense, have I. Men like Steel manufacture servility. I loathe myself and him for being tempted to propitiate him, as a slave may fawn before the man who holds the whip of authority.

Bisgood says to me, “Just a word, sir. If I were you I’d apply for leave.”

I thank him for the hint, and realize with an inward shock that my time is running short, and that I shall soon cease to be embusqué. But what do I fear, death or wounds, or is it the dreadful uncertainty, the realization of one’s complete helplessness, the knowledge that one can be pushed hither and thither like a piece on a board? It is the sensitive, individual I that protests and struggles.

I ask Colonel Parker Steel for leave. I feel that I am asking a favour of him, and that if he grants it it will be as a favour. My request hardly seems to command his attention. He is signing returns, and he goes on signing them.

“Take seven days while you can, Mr. Brent.”

“When shall I go, sir?”

“To-morrow. I am expecting you to be warned for overseas service.”

I stand hesitant.

“I suppose you cannot tell me, sir, when I shall be sent?”

He looks at me for a moment with his cold eyes.

“I have not the least idea.”

Nor does he care. But why should he care, why should any man care? This war has stripped us of so many comfortable illusions, the superstition that one’s individual fate seriously matters to more than two or three people. Even in this communal crowd, and in the thick of all the guff about comradeship, one is conscious of a dreadful isolation, and of a loneliness that is Arctic. My people are dead; I have a few uncles and aunts and cousins, but when blood is to be spilt, it may be no more than water.

I suppose there is no one but Mary who will care.

But what an egoist I am!

It is a day early in September, and I have opposite me in the first-class carriage a combatant officer who is also going on leave. I look at the peaceful country, and marvel at the infinite and sweet greenness of it. There is a tinge of gold in the green. The harvest is in. I watch the cattle and the trees, and villages and isolated farms, and the pointed caps of oast-houses. I have a conviction that I am saying good-bye to all this, and that I must look at it with hungry tenderness.

But the man opposite me wants to talk. He has a soft, pink, otiose face, and facetious manner, but his eyes and hands are uneasy, and his cheerfulness is thin ice. I realize that he is just as obsessed with the war and his individual fate in it as I am. He is secretly afraid, and afraid of all sorts of things, of being killed, and perhaps of making a shameful fool of himself.

He says, “In the infantry we’re such utter amateurs. It’s easier for you doctors. You do know your job. We don’t, and we expect to be pushed out soon.”

I sympathize with him, but confess that I have felt equally bewildered, and horribly unsure of things. His eyes set in a stare. He is looking into the future.

“You know what Kitchener said about our crowd.”

“What?”

“That it would be our job to tear the guts out of the Germans.”

He sniggers, and his mild, fat face is utterly unferocious.

“Nice job, what! And we’re as raw as unhung meat. It isn’t only the bloody mess we’re in for, but the bloody mess we may make of it. The C.O. and the adjutant are the only regulars in our crowd, and the C.O. is sixty-three. Sometimes I feel so horribly sure that the Huns will do the gut-pulling.”

I am ceasing to feel sympathetic. I wish he would stop talking about the war. I ask him what his job is in civil life. He tells me that he is a schoolmaster. But he reverts to the great obsession.

“There is one comfort, we have a priceless little doctor man. If you are going to be smashed up, you do think of these things.”

Pathetic forethought! But why had not my selfish little soul grasped the human fact that we doctors may help these poor devils who must suffer?

My companion leaves the train at Pondbridge and I wish him good luck, and travel on alone. The country is becoming dear and familiar with its high woods and secret valleys, but the empty seat opposite me retains a presence, humanity in the shape of the average man. How little of the essential savage is left in most of us! We ask neither to kill nor to be killed, and yet we are involved in this bloody and senseless butchery. I find that I have been touched, and perhaps inspired by the schoolmaster’s ingenuous confession, and I so badly need inspiration. If I can feel convinced that I can help, and that my knowledge may be of use to some of these martyred men, I may attain to courage, the courage that quakes but endures.

Brackenhurst station. I lean out of the window and look for Mary, and with a sudden pang of disappointment realize that she is not there. Has my wire reached her? These tremblings of the heart-strings make one terribly exacting. I find old Sellers and his ancient fly in the station yard; he touches his hat to me.

“Glad to see you, sir.”

I gather that he has been sent to meet me, and I get into the vehicle that smells faintly of horsy things, straw and dung, the odours of the stable. Sellers wears a straw hat. He has always worn a straw hat over his whiskered face in summer ever since I remember him, and there is something both consoling and poignant in changelessness when the whole world is in flux. Sellers cracks his whip, and his horse goes clop-clopping up the hill towards the church. I see the squat stone tower and the high elms, and the profiles of cottages and houses that seem to emerge like friendly and familiar faces out of my subconscious. I pass our postman, and the vicar’s groom, and they salute me, lucky fellows who have not suffered change. I get a glimpse of old Vance in his butcher’s shop, rather like a burly red joint dressed up in blue, and busy hacking at some mass of meat with a cleaver. The elms are like ascending billows of green smoke. The cab stops outside my door, and Sellers gets down to manhandle my kit-bag. I open the familiar white door, and Sellers puts my bag inside and I pay him.

The house seems strangely silent and I had not expected silence. Is Mary in? Surely——? I hear a door open, and a maid appears. I have not seen her before. She stares at me.

“Is Mrs. Brent in?”

“Dr. Brent, sir?”

How queer not to be recognized in my own house!

“Yes. I sent a telegram.”

“Mrs. Brent asked me to say that she has been kept at the hospital, sir, but that she would be back any minute.”

I leave my kit-bag in the hall, and go through into the drawing-room and out into the garden. How familiar all this is, and yet how strange! But I am a little piqued and hurt. This coming home has meant so much to me, and Mary is not here. I wander round the garden, and sit down under the lime tree at the end of the lawn. The borders are full of flowers; the grass has been cut, and the shadow of the tree lies gently upon the mown turf. I sit there, and look about me, and watch the french window. I see the sunlight on the leaves of the vine that covers the wall.

Mary appears at the french window. She is dressed in that dark blue uniform and a kind of cap, and to me she looks taller and thinner. I rise and go towards the house, and we meet in the middle of the lawn.

“I’m so sorry, dear; we had a convoy in, and I had to stay.”

I kiss her, not on the lips but on the cheek, for I am conscious of a cold and active cheerfulness in Mary; she has become a woman of affairs, almost an official, and liking her new authority. She is more of the matron, and less the mother, and my secret self has been such a babe at the breast.

“Did Sellers meet you?”

“Yes.”

I tell her that the garden is looking unusually lovely. Obviously, the man who gives three days a week to our garden has not yet volunteered. I find myself inwardly questioning his lack of patriotism, but, good God, am I becoming one of those who would push other men into the shambles? I remember that Carter is thirty-nine, married, and with four children. Meanwhile, the new maid appears at the window and tells us that tea is ready.

Mary is very full of her new hospital. I want to talk about my affairs, and particularly about the advent and significance of Colonel Parker Steel, but Mary is so interested in her new responsibilities that I let her talk. Surely I should be interested in what interests her? Yet I am conscious of being a little peeved, and selfishly so, for I suppose that to my wife I want to appear the hero. It is the first time that our personalities have clashed, but Mary is not aware of it, or my sense of secret hostility. Am I jealous because my wife is interested in activities that are hers and not mine?

I feel that I want to impress her. She is pouring me out a second cup of tea when I break the news that this is my last leave before going on active service. Her hand is stretched out with the cup and saucer; I see it tremble and her face change.

“O, Stephen, I didn’t know.”

I am filled with sudden remorse and shame. I have been behaving like an unpleasant child who in the passion for self-expression will hurt its mother in order to obtain raw self-satisfaction.

“I’m sorry, I ought to have warned you.”

“When is it to be, dear?”

“Any day, I think.”

“And where?”

“I don’t know. The last fellow was sent to France.”

She appears to forget all about her precious hospital, and comes and sits by me on the sofa. We are silent with the silence of two people who feel suddenly close to each other, so close that each self is inarticulate. I am still feeling ashamed, because it is obvious to me that Mary’s nature is so much more positive and generous than mine. I feel that I have played a rather mean trick on her, and that the judgment of Solomon is against myself.

She says, “It may be a hospital in France. And yet, Stephen, when I have seen these wounded men I wonder whether one ought not to want to be——”

She hesitates and I supply the words.

“In the thick of things?”

She nods, and touches my sleeve.

“Yes. I don’t believe that you will be satisfied with less.”

How little she knows me!

“Is that how you would feel, Mary?”

“Somehow, yes. Even if it hurt me, and terrified me, I feel I should want to share some of the danger.”

“And understand it?”

“Yes.”

I put my arm round her, draw her to me, and kiss her.

“Thanks, my dear. I’ll remember. What you have said has helped me, perhaps more than you know.”

About six o’clock I go up to see old Randall, and on the way I meet Guthrie, red and flamboyant and foolish as ever. By way of greeting me he says, “Hallo, Brent, not abroad yet?” I smile a little homicidal smile at him, and say that I expect to be sent overseas in a very few days. I feel like asking him to put his tongue out, and suggesting that he cuts off some of the whisky. It would be no more impertinent than the attitude he adopts to me.

I find Randall in the surgery. He is looking tired, and to me, older, but his face and eyes light up when he sees me.

“Hallo, Stephen, well this is good. Bring Mary round and have some supper with us.”

He grips my hand hard, and his eyes are full of affection. I am glad that he does not know what a petty, self-centred little egoist I am. The outer room is full of people waiting to be seen, and I turn to and help Randall. I am still thinking over Mary’s words, and the particular message they have for me. I had been more deeply moved by them than she will ever know. Who was it who said that emotion is like alcohol, in that it stimulates the animal appetites without exercising any positive effect upon our intelligent and social actions? I don’t believe it. With me emotion seems to be like a flame setting one’s willing of the good alight. I cannot do things coldly. I must be touched, warmed by emotion before that which is creative and consciously purposeful in me is capable of the higher courage and the more selfless striving. Is this childishness? If so, it explains why I am rendered inert and sullen by the supercilious matureness of an intellectual adult like Parker Steel. Randall is so different, like rich, good, simple soil, and that is why I have found it easy to work with and for him.

Each day of my leave seems to pass more swiftly than its predecessor. Too much loafing encourages too much thinking, and I am coming to the conclusion that in these mass upheavals it may be more comfortable to diminish cerebration, and sink oneself in the careless crowd. War is a primitive business, and one should adapt by becoming primitive. I turn to and work, and drive round visiting some of my old patients. They are kind to me and tell me they will be glad to have me back.

My God, how I wish I was home for good, and part of this gentle English landscape, this Sussex that I love.

Randall has had no holiday, nor does a holiday for him seem possible. I suggest that he goes away for three days or so while I carry on. He smiles at me and says that he is not afraid of being tired provided that his temper remains sweet. Work is a sedative.

“Saves me from thinking too much about things I can’t alter.”

So, he too is feeling how futile it seems for any individual to attempt a solution of this riddle of the Sphinx. I suppose the only ultimate and valid solution will be the refusal of all the workers in the world to allow their old men to muddle them into war. There must be a universal strike against war. The individual who rebels is sure to be crucified. Our autocrats cannot crucify a whole continent.

On the fifth day of my leave I receive a telegram from Southcliffe.

“Report immediately.”

So, the call has come. This must mean that I am detailed for foreign service.

Mary decides to go with me. We reach Southcliffe about three o’clock in the afternoon, and drive to The Chequers and secure the same room there. I walk up to the hospital to report. The first person whom I meet is Bisgood, and he assumes a sympathetic air, and tells me that the C.O. expects me. I enter the office and salute. Steel pulls a paper towards him, and then glances at me.

“You are to report at Chester to-morrow, Brent.”

“Chester, sir?”

He pushes the order towards me, and I read it mechanically.

“Why Chester, sir?”

“For Liverpool, I expect.”

“What does that mean?”

“Gallipoli, probably.”

I am conscious of a sagging of the stomach. Gallipoli! It seems so dreadfully far and strange.

“You had better clear up everything in the Company Office to-night.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Don’t fail to report at Chester before six. It is important.”

I hurry off to the Company Office, and find Cooper alone there. He has heard the news, and appears depressed. I sit down in my chair, and suddenly there is a crash, and the splintering of glass. I start up and look round, and so does Cooper. A picture has fallen, the photograph of some pre-war group of officers and N.C.O.s that had been relegated to the Company Office. The thing has fallen on its face, and broken glass litters the floor behind my chair.

Cooper has a shocked face.

“The cord must have rotted, sir.”

I know that he is thinking of the old superstition, and I try to say something facetious. Cooper is busy picking up glass.

“I have got to clear up other things, Cooper, to-night.”

“That’s all right, sir. I’ve got everything in order for you.”

“You always have.”

I feel that I must rush down and warn my wife, and I tell Cooper that I shall be back after tea. Moreover, I have some kit to collect from No. 7, and I want to say good-bye to Bicky and Bertha, and thank them for all their kindness. As I go down the hill I realize that I need not tell Mary about Gallipoli; I can assume that I shall be detailed for Malta or Egypt.

It is nearly five o’clock when I reach The Chequers. Mary has waited for tea. She looks at me steadfastly for a moment, and then sits down on the large sofa.

“When do you go?”

“To-morrow.”

“Where?”

“Chester, for Liverpool, I think.”

Her hands lie clasped in her lap.

“Liverpool. O, Stephen, that means the Dardanelles!”

I sit down beside her.

“O, possibly. But it may be Egypt or Malta.”

We are both very unhappy. I tell her that I have to go back and clear up all the work in the Company Office, and that she is not to wait dinner for me. She says, “Of course I shall wait. When have we to be at Chester?” Does she want to come with me on the last stage? She does, and though I know that it will mean a prolongation of the pain for us both, I want her with me to the last.

I go up to the hospital, find old Macartney and say good-bye to him. Cooper is alone in the Company Office. He has everything ready for me. I sign chits and letters, with Cooper standing by me. His manner is curiously gentle and paternal. I notice that he has cleared away the broken picture.

We finish. I push my chair back, and get up. I put out my hand to Cooper.

“Good-bye, Cooper. We’ve been good friends here.”

He wrings my hand, and I go quickly to the door. Something makes me look back. Cooper is blubbing in a corner by his pay-books.

There are a number of R.A.M.C. officers on the train to Chester, and it strikes me that we all look very new and raw. Mary and I travel with a delicate, black and white little man who also has his wife with him, and we strike up a conversation, and compel ourselves to seem cheerful. My fellow M.O.’s name is Clayton. Worry and sadness stick out of his eyes, and I feel protective towards him. He has been in uniform for just three weeks, and the situation in which he finds himself is as strange as his clothes. His outfitters have supplied him with an immense pair of brown leather field-boots, very loose in the upper part of the leg, incongruous, Charles I contraptions. Clayton keeps looking at them as though he is worried about these boots.

At Chester we all four of us crowd into a taxi and drive to the Grosvenor Hotel. It is teeming with R.A.M.C. officers. I go to the office and ask if they can let us have a double room for the night. The reception clerk seems wise as to the situation. Have I a lady with me? I have. She suggests that a single room may suffice.

Does this mean that officers are to be accommodated in barracks? I leave Mary in the lounge, and hurry out to report. I have no need to ask the way, for R.A.M.C. officers are coming and going like bees in flight to and from a hive. I find myself at the door of a semi-Gothic looking building, and go in. An orderly directs me to a room on the ground floor where an officer and clerk are sitting at tables. I salute the officer, and give my name.

He says nothing at all, but pushes across the table a scrap of paper that appears to have been torn from a piece of foolscap. On it is scribbled in pencil, “Secret. You will embark to-night at Liverpool on the Gigantic.”

I crumple up the piece of paper and go out. It seems to me an extraordinary way of giving one an order, an order that to me is so abrupt and significant. It means that I am to leave poor Mary alone in a strange hotel. I hurry back wishing that I had not brought her with me. Surely, the official world might have a little more human understanding? But how foolish of me to feel aggrieved! Wives are accessories that cannot be trailed about on active service.

I find Mary in the crowded lounge. I suppose my wretched face betrays the bad news to her, for I see her give me a little, flinching smile.

“Is it to-night?”

“Yes. I’ll go and book your room. I’m sorry I dragged you down here.”

“But you didn’t, dear. I wanted to come.”

We dine in the hotel. The train for Liverpool leaves soon after nine. It is a dreadful dinner, mute and anguished, and I do not notice what I am eating. I have ordered a bottle of claret, but Mary hardly touches the wine. The room is crowded and noisy, and brittle with artificial excitement. Two tough-looking officers are drinking champagne at the next table. They keep glancing at us, and I feel that they think me an uxorious sop to have brought my wife with me. Damn them! More than one man in the room has had more drink than is good for him. I see Clayton in a corner looking like a lost child.

Dinner is over, and we sit in the lounge. I find myself looking at the clock. This waiting is unbearable. Mary is very white and still, and I realize that I am making her suffer.

“I think I had better be going. Don’t come to the station.”

She gives me a poignant look. She is grateful to me for understanding that she cannot bear much more and retain her self-control. She comes with me to the lounge entrance. We kiss, and turn quickly away. I cannot bear to look at her again.

I find Clayton in the vestibule. He too is alone. He tells me that he has ordered a taxi, and offers me a lift.

“Thanks, old man, I will.”

I am glad of Clayton, and he is glad of me. As the taxi moves off he says, “I hope I shall never see that damned hotel again.”

At Chester station the platform is crowded with R.A.M.C. officers and their kit, and quite a number of them are drunk. Clayton and I withdraw to a quiet part of the platform. His eyes are infinitely sad, yet scornful.

“What swine, Brent, what swine!”

Liverpool. Clayton and I are tramping along a quay, with a couple of amateur porters carrying our kit. It is very dark and dim. I see nothing but granite setts and railway lines, and a few obscure gas-lamps. Other men are making their way along the quay, most of them like silent ghosts. I hear the clatter of boots on the granite setts. Someone behind us is noisy and intoxicated and begins to sing.

“She wore a wreath of roses

And no knickers on her legs!”

He is told to shut up, and becomes argumentative and quarrelsome.

I see Clayton’s face in the light of a lamp. It is bleached and strained.

Something vast and black and cliff-like looms up. We are approaching a large open building that appears to be all pillars and roof. The vast blackness is the side of a ship. I see gangways, and piles of baggage, and a few Tommies sitting on their kits. A voice shouts instructions in this great hollow building. “Report at the office, gentlemen, for cabins.”

There is a stampede towards the office at the far end of the great shed. Our draft of R.A.M.C. officers becomes a mob. It is like a crowd trying to rush the gates of a football ground. An elderly major who appears to be in charge of the embarkation shed tries to restore order and decency. He shouts indignantly, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, remember you are officers.” But his protests have no effect, and Clayton and I stand and watch the scrimmage outside the office. It is like a hospital rag indulged in by men who have reverted to irresponsible loutishness. We wait until the scramble is over, for neither of us has any desire to share in it. With a few others of the more tame or more sensitive members of the flock we approach the office.

The elderly officer who has tried to instil decency and discipline into this crowd of doctors is standing in the doorway. He smiles at us, but I divine in him an anger and contempt that are not appeased.

He speaks to the N.C.O. who is handing out cabin numbers.

“Now that the others have stampeded, we will attend to the gentlemen.”

It is a case of virtue rewarded. The worst cabins have been assigned to the pushers and the greedy. Clayton and I find ourselves in a three berth and outside cabin. We have asked to be together, and we have the cabin to ourselves.

Clayton sits down on his bed, and takes off his haversack. He looks infinitely weary.

He says, “What a business, Brent. It seems strange that men should want to be drunk and rowdy on a night like this.”

I unhitch my haversack and hang it on a hook.

“It seems to have been one of those rare cases when pushing doesn’t pay.”

Clayton bends over and looks at his boots.

“Why did I buy these damned things? Do you know, Brent, I thought that it was all going to be so different.”