There are other forms of competition. The owner of Hameau Farm is on active service, but his wife, a big, broad, buxom woman is carrying on. She sits sewing at a window with an air of deliberate and amused aloofness. Already, Carless and Bamborough Brown are in competition for her favours. They challenge each other in the mess as to who shall be the first to consummate the seduction. The idea nauseates me.
I tell Brown to shut up, and he turns on me, and tries to upset me and my chair. But he has not reckoned with Gibbs, who has been waiting for a chance to chasten this truculent young Juan. Gibbs intervenes, picks Brown up like a baby, carries him out into the yard, and holds him sprawling over the manure pit.
“Want to go in, my lad?”
That settles the question as to who is the strong man in our mess, and whenever B.B. shows signs of arrogance we have only to say, “Want a bath, my lad?” and he dries up.
* * *
I lie in this comfortable French bed and watch the moonlight shining through the poplars, and try to imagine how I should feel if there were no more war and this was my home. What is the Frenchman like whose home it is, and do his bowels yearn for it as mine do for my own home? And does he suspect that two lustful young Englishmen are proposing to seduce his wife? Sex seems full of treachery. Or is it the false idea of sex that is born of a sentimental and false delicacy?
I am of the same flesh as Carless and Brown, but I resist and struggle, and strive to subdue the elemental man in me.
Am I right? Is there virtue in refraining, or am I a fastidious fool?
I lie on my back and watch the moonlight and think of my wife.
Surrender seems so much more final and utter in a woman. But why should it be so?
I lie there and desire my wife.
Uxorious ass, but I have her letters under my pillow!
* * *
Poor Margy has had to be sent down sick. He was spending his time mooning about the fields here like a love-sick girl. The very peace of this place seems to have exaggerated his emotional strain. Hallard found him in his bedroom one afternoon, kneeling by the bed, praying aloud, and in tears. Fairfax, Hallard and I held a kind of private medical board upon his case, and we decided that for his own sake and for the good of the unit it would be better to send him down.
Fairfax went to see Cleek about Margy’s case, and Cleek’s idea of treatment was a ruthless exposure of Margy to what he called, “The discipline of danger,” but Fairfax stuck to his guns, and Cleek gave way.
Apparently, he said to Fairfax, “You are creating a dangerous precedent. If any other officer of yours thinks he can snivel himself into safety——” Fairfax came back to us with his blue eyes on stalks. “By God, Stephen, I nearly asked him why he hadn’t indulged in more self-discipline on that occasion when he took a mud-bath in the trenches above Semelles.”
* * *
Our Advanced Dressing Station on this sector is known as Country Cottage, and that is what it is, a little, low, single-storied white house in which a very hairy and misanthropic old Frenchman still occupies the kitchen. You come to the place by a country lane between rows of pollarded willows, and clouds of aspens. There are a few cattle in the fields, and some of the land is cropped with wheat or tobacco. Nearly opposite to our cottage is another house in which a Frenchman, his wife and two children are living. He has been released from the army on account of wounds, and is cultivating his land, and from our window I can see him and his family weeding the tobacco crop. In appearance he is just like one of our Sussex labourers, blue eyed and fresh of face, and with flowing, fair moustachios. Still farther down the lane in a minute red-brick cottage lives an unexpected and anomalous creature, a youngish woman with a bold, broad face, and jocund eyes that look at one slantingly. Rumour has it that the mysterious lady is a spy, but I rather credit her with being an obscure member of the oldest profession, and as a rustic courtesan functioning within a mile or two of the reserve trenches she must have sold many a kiss to men who now are dead. One passes her cottage as one goes up to the line, and often she is sitting in her doorway, sewing, and as I pass she gives me a Mona Lisa smile.
Just beyond her cottage and before the green and ruined wilderness begins, the lane is made strange and sweet by a bank of great red thorn trees which are in flower. It is difficult to believe in the actuality of these fragrant trees. They are like Mademoiselle Hortense of the cottage, somehow incredible and disturbing in their suggestions. The meadow behind them is full of old shell-holes, and across the lane the ruined houses of Rosambert are just visible between the trees of a derelict orchard.
* * *
Carless is with me. We sleep and feed in the same room together, and I have to suffer Carless and his nudities. He goes to bed in blue and white silk pyjamas, and in the morning seems to spend an unconscionable time over his toilet. His getting up is an almost feminine business, and one morning I time him by my watch while he is attending to his hair. It has a wave to it, and it has to be oiled and glossed and brushed until it is just so. He dedicates seven and a half minutes to this ritual.
But he is a good-natured lad, and I suppose one must allow him his looks and his vanity. Moreover, he has been educated, and he provides one with surprises in the way of temperament. He has quite a nice taste in music, and he tells me he has composed one or two songs. Love songs, of course. Sex must sing and display itself. But Carless is relatively easy to live with, and he does not seem to suffer from nerves. His manners can be almost too exquisite, like his hair and his breeches and his salute.
* * *
Carless has discovered M’amselle Hortense. I suppose this was inevitable. He comes in with a lyrical air, and tells me he has been promoted to be her medical attendant. Apparently she suffers from migraine, and I suggest to Carless that her indisposition may be due to the overpowering perfume of the may trees.
“You’re jealous, daddy.”
“Don’t you know what she is, a sort of Belle Dame Sans Merci who kisses men before they die.”
Carless passes a hand over his hair.
“That’s rather pretty, daddy. And so is she, and sweetly scented with sin. Besides, she’s woman.”
“Don’t be an ass, man.”
“Sententious old dear!”
But when I wake up in the night, and hear a sound of movement in the room, and see by the light of the moon Carless pulling on a pair of slacks over his pyjamas, I feel it my business to be sententious.
“Carless.”
“Hallo! Thought you were asleep.”
“So I was. Look here, man, you’re not going——”
“Dry up, daddy, a doctor must visit his patient.”
“Don’t be an ass. Damn it, as a doctor you ought to be wise.”
“Got all the necessary precautions with me, daddy.”
“But don’t you realize she has had scores of other men?”
“Makes her more interesting. It means she knows her job.”
I lie down again.
“O, well, it’s your funeral, my lad.”
He steals out, and I feel strangely jealous of him, and angry with myself for feeling so. Moonlight, and the scent of may trees in flower, and a woman! Does it matter how often a woman has been enjoyed? Carless may be right. She may be wise as to all the profound provocations. After an hour of restlessness I go to sleep, and I wake in the morning to find Carless back in bed, and sleeping like a serene child.
I am shaving when he comes to life. He yawns, stretches, and smiles at me like some sleek and satisfied young animal.
“Good morning, daddy.”
I am apt to be peevish when I am shaving.
“Patient doing well?”
“Gorgeously, old thing.”
“Why not make a nice drawing-room ballad of it?”
“Petulant fellow! That sort of song is only sung in the singing. Don’t be jealous, daddy. Now, you’ve cut yourself. I was afraid you would.”
I cannot help laughing with him and at myself.
“Perhaps I’m a damned humbug, my lad, but as doctor to doctor——”
“Cheerio, Brent, I’m not quite such a damned fool as you seem to think.”
“Enough said. You ought to know.”
“That’s a good, kind daddy.”
* * *
Hallard has come down to have tea with me, and since Carless has gone to visit one of the battalions, Hallard and I are alone. We sit out in the Frenchman’s garden by a big lilac bush which is in flower, and Finch brings us tea there. Hallard, like Fairfax, is a man after my own heart; we belong to the same generation and can talk to each other without restraint. I tell him about Carless and Hortense, and he laughs.
“We’re lookers-on at that game, Stephen. In my youth I was a bigger imp than Carless will ever be.”
“Did King Hal ever cease from lusting?”
“It’s only that one has other affections and feels responsible. It seems rather beastly to go whoring when you have kids. Being a family man does tame one.”
“I know.”
Hallard’s lean face is in the shadow. Almost it is the face of an ascetic, or rather of a man whose teeth no longer tear at life. He lights a cigarette.
“Besides, the real hell lies before us. All this is like a prep, school. We don’t know what the real bloody business is like yet, Stephen. At least, I don’t.”
I understand him, and the tense deep lines in his sardonic face.
“Yes, that’s true.”
“When the Division is pushed over the top, and the whole world is shelled to blazes! I’ve got that ordeal on my mind. It gives one to think. Other things pull at one so.”
I light my pipe.
“Yes, this is just a pause. And, yet, if you had your choice, and could funk it and go home?”
He gives me one of his grim smiles.
“I should be packing my kit.”
“O, no, you wouldn’t. There’s something about the horror of this show that grips one and won’t let one shirk. I wanted to shirk, and somehow, I couldn’t.”
“Same here, Stephen. One tries to keep one’s poor damned shivering soul in training for the thing that one funks. We older men have to go in with our eyes open.”
“If the world had its eyes open these savageries wouldn’t happen.”
“Will the world ever have its eyes open? I doubt it.”
“Then, civilization, as we know it, is better dead.”
* * *
One of our battalions is to make a raid on the German trenches. The proposition is out of sympathy with this peaceful place, but the offensive spirit has to be stimulated or simulated. Blessed are the trees, which, rooted in the earth, cannot be dispatched with bomb and bayonet to slaughter other trees. How supremely ridiculous and ghastly it all is.
The M.O. of the battalion is to open an advanced aid-post nearer to the front line, and the regular aid-post is to become a dressing-station. Fairfax details Hallard for the job, and I ask if I may join him.
Fairfax hesitates for a moment.
“Do you expect me to risk both my senior officers, and the only married men?”
“In a way, that’s my reason, sir.”
“Keeping Hallard in countenance?”
“He won’t need that. Just my feeling about the thing.”
“All right, Stephen. I understand.”
The raid is to be a night affair and Hallard and I stroll up towards the line after having tea with Carless at Country Cottage. Mademoiselle Hortense’s door is shut, and the red petals have fallen from the may trees, but on this serene evening in June, with the deserted fields and orchards merged into a green wilderness, violence and death seem such absurdities. Our nursing-orderlies and bearers are following us in small parties, so as not to attract the attention of any interested Boche observer. We cross the track of a light railway; half a dozen trucks have been put at our service for the use of the wounded. Fairfax himself, with Gibbs and Carless, is to receive them at the A.D.S.
“Funny sort of evening for organized murder, Stephen.”
“I suppose we shall get hardened to the idea.”
“I wonder?”
We made our way across derelict fields and along a shallow trench screened by wire netting to the rampart of the Old British Line. It is a bank of sods and rotting sandbags, and full of dug-outs whose openings look like large rat-holes. The aid-post consists of two steel “Elephants” side by side, tucked up against the vallum, but quite unprotected in the rear towards the open country. The track of the light railway passes just behind it, and half a dozen trollies are standing ready.
We put our men and stretchers under cover, dump our supply of dressings in the steel shelters, and stroll along to the headquarters of the battalion making the raid. It is a sandbagged structure, and outside it someone has made a rather pathetic attempt to create a small garden. One or two rose bushes have been retrieved from the ruins of Festubert, and some pansies are in flower. Heart’s ease! We hear laughter and a burble of voices coming from the mess, and we find it crowded with officers. Gains, their M.O., drags us in and introduces us. Drinks are going round, and I gather that these lads who are laughing and joking with exaggerated cheerfulness are the officers who are to be in charge of the raid. I notice in particular one fair, good-looking lad with wavy hair and a Cupid’s mouth. He has put a pansy in the lapel of his tunic. Heart’s ease!
I suppose all this assumed gaiety is admirable, but it makes me sad. The C.O. is a hard-bitten regular whose business it is to fan the flame of courage. We are offered drinks, and accept them, lest we should appear even more sinister shadows than we are, prospective patchers-up of broken bodies. Surreptitiously I pinch Hallard’s backside, and he understands the signal. We excuse ourselves.
“Good luck, everybody.”
The boy with the pansy turns to us and laughs.
“You won’t see me in your little surgery. I’ve got a lucky flower.”
Gains comes out with us, and briefly we discuss our arrangements. We tell him to rush his casualties back to us and that we will deal with them. He is a stout little man who persists in being cheerful, though his position up yonder in a sort of crazy rabbit-hutch would not appeal to me.
We go back to our “Elephants,” and prepare for the show. There are two sets of rough trestles upon which stretchers can be laid, and a bench upon which dressings can be arranged in readiness, but we realize that with ourselves and our orderlies these shelters are going to be difficult places to work in by lamplight, especially if they become clogged with wounded. Hallard and I discuss the situation, and having made our plans, call in the sergeant in charge of the bearers. We impress upon him the necessity for getting the wounded away as quickly as possible, and that if he finds himself short of trollies, he is to try and scrounge some extra ones.
He is a laconic, lean, capable person.
“I know where to get ’em, sir. There are a dozen down by the R.E. dump.”
“Don’t stand on ceremony, Sykes.”
“I won’t, sir.”
A brilliant sunset, and then darkness. This night is to be full of incidents, both ridiculous and tragic. The first incident blows in on us just before the barrage is due, in the person of a perspiring and enthusiastic padre. He is large and big with emotion, and he brings into our steel cave a smell of sweat and a suggestion of simmering excitement. He sits down on a pile of dressings and confronts us with a shiny red face hot with perspiring enthusiasm.
“I felt I must be here, to help these dear brave boys.”
Hallard and I look at him askance. What are we to do with this large, clumbering, emotional person in our crowded quarters? Besides, this dear creature is the sort of officious and busy idiot who will get in everybody’s way and make himself a religious nuisance. I am afraid our welcome is cheerless and cold. The padre has a parcel with him, boxes of cigarettes. He proceeds to unpack them, and plants them amid our dressings.
I see Hallard’s teeth becoming more prominent.
>
“I’m sorry, padre, I’m afraid we can’t have them there.”
In fact there is no vacant place for anything here, not even for cigarettes. I am conscious of the good man’s face growing less genial. He takes off his tin hat and mops himself.
Hallard makes a suggestion.
“Why not empty all the cigarettes into your helmet?”
He is serious, but the padre eyes him with gradual suspicion. Are we treating him with irreverence? But he does empty the cigarettes into his tin hat, and squats with it between his knees. Hallard and I are sitting on a stretcher. There is an awkward silence, and I hear one of our orderlies tittering.
The padre’s face grows a deeper red. He looks solemnly at Hallard, and in a throaty and tonsillar voice asks him a question.
“Doctor, I am going to ask you to be quite candid with me. Do you think I shall be more use here, or at the main dressing-station?”
For a moment Hallard hesitates.
“Well, to be quite frank, I think you would be more use where there is more room, padre. You see, if we——”
But there is no need for him to finish the sentence. The padre is on his feet, and holding his helmet full of cigarettes. I appreciate his dilemma. Is he to abandon the cigarettes, or the helmet, or both? I take off my own tin hat, and offer it as a receptacle. But again he takes offence, and mumbling something about keeping the fags for the dear boys at the main dressing-station, he disappears like Peter into the night.
Hallard grins at me.
“I’m afraid that’s torn it. He’s gone off with the offertory and an insulted soul.”
We hear later that he blew into the Country Cottage station, and complained to Fairfax that his officers had treated him most cavalierly and turned him out of the aid-post. Well, I suppose, in a sense, we had.
* * *
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