Front matter (continued 2)

"He is with her, Pest."

"Who?"

"Wait…. I have kept a surprise for you."

A minute later I saw his wife at the end of the path as she waved to him. She came through the leafy garden with a grace of movement that made the scene a delicate, colorful picture, and even before she had reached us I could see that her beauty was as exquisite, as perfect, as an orchid's. All sacrificed to an invalid….

With the tenderest of smiles in her eyes, which were blue as the sky, she advanced towards us and kissed him; and I, who detest things sentimental as I would the plague, thought it was the loveliest tribute I had ever seen. Before he could speak, she turned and gave me both her hands.

"I won't apologize," she said, and her voice was as sweet as a brook's, "because I know you both enjoyed your talk of old times the better for my absence."

"It was a wonderful afternoon," I said, "but it would have been doubly so with you here."

And then I, the Pest, the cynic, the modernist, stooped and kissed her hand. It seemed the natural thing to do, and she accepted it with the understanding heart that Nature had given her.

"But, Lilias, where is the lad?"

"Oh," she laughed gaily, "the station-master kept him a moment to show him an entirely new button he had thought of. But here he is now."

Coming up the path, carrying a couple of parcels, was a boy of, perhaps, ten years of age. His hair was golden and curly, and his eyes had a dreamy look that contrasted strangely with the strength of his chin. He had the poise and the appearance of a thoughtful, well-bred youth; but there was something, I could not say what, that told me he was not English.

He touched his cap to me as he came on the lawn and smiled cordially to Basil.

"Do you remember the gentleman?" asked Norman.

The boy shook his head and unconsciously moved nearer to the woman, who placed her hand on his shoulder.

"You shouldn't forget each other," laughed Norman, "for once he played the drums under your baton."

A few minutes later we went in for tea, the boy and Mrs. Norman going first. I waited while Sindbad prepared to move the invalid, and then turned to him for an explanation.

"Klotz was killed," said Norman swiftly, "and his wife died a month later, after she heard of his death. We have adopted Siegfried as our ward."

XIII

That night a storm came up from the sea, and the house rattled and shook in the clutch of a November gale. The trees that looked like palms swayed and bent before the wind, and the many-colored leaves in the garden fled like refugees before an attack, and covered the ground with their quivering bodies.

We were gathered in the music-room, the cosy warmth from a fire of logs making pleasant contrast to the snarling wind outside. The evening had been a memorable one. The woman whose beauty was so delicate had charmed us with her voice, her playing; charmed us without effort or knowing how.

From a lounge, Norman's vivacity, which always had in it the quality of sympathy, illuminated everything that happened. When she sang a little extract of the eighteenth century, "Bergère Légère," it was he who knew that it had been a favorite of Marie Antoinette's. When she played the love theme which Puccini gives the strings in the first act of Madame Butterfly, it was Norman who, by a dozen deftly chosen words, created the atmosphere of Japan and brought before us the cruel tenderness of Pinkerton's love for Cho Cho San. After Siegfried had played MacDowell's conception of "Mid-ocean," Norman recalled in a moment the genius of America's greatest composer, the genius that had finally crossed the thin barrier to insanity. From that we talked of the sea, while the wind howled outside, and I spoke of the many moods of blue that colored it in a single day, and, without giving the effect of quotation or of monologue, he brought his artistry into play with three lines of Keats's sonnet "Blue."

Whenever any of us spoke, his sensitive rhythmic intellectuality seemed to hover about us, acknowledging thought where it struggled to the surface, adding some subtle touch of color when our efforts seemed too drab. Under its influence we talked our best, we thought our best, we were our best.

At nine o'clock Siegfried rose to go to bed, and advanced to shake hands with me.

"Well," I said, "and do you still intend to be a conductor?"

He smiled a little self-consciously.

"There is much to learn," he said, "and—I do not want to leave my home."

Norman lit a cigarette—his old mannerism when emotions were taut.

"Parents," he said, "and quasi-parents like us, march straight towards loneliness. Our greatest concern is to have our children ready to leave us as soon as they hear the call of the world, knowing that such a moment will be the proudest and the saddest of our lives."

"Good-night," said Siegfried to me. "Goodnight, Uncle Bubbles." He turned wistfully to Mrs. Norman, who smiled and linked her arm in his.

"Won't you come along?" she said to me. "Siegfried is very proud of his room, and would like you to see it." It was her way of hiding her knowledge that the little chap was frightened by the storm. So we saw him safely in bed, and admired his books, and wished him pleasant dreams. We had just left his room and were about to descend the stairs, when we paused as the sound of rain beating against the house came to our ears. We hurried about for a few moments seeing that all windows were closed, and were going to rejoin Norman, when I stopped her.

"Mrs. Norman," I said haltingly, "it is never easy for an Englishman to express the emotion he feels, but may I tell you how touched I am by your devotion to your husband? Without you, his life would be—unbearable."

She did not smile or protest, but her eyes looked straight into mine.

"To live day by day," she said slowly, her fingers playing with a necklace that hung about her full white throat, "near a soul like Basil's, to commune with a brain like his … to feel the inspiration of his nature that is so in tune with the beauty of the world, is a happiness few women can experience. If it were not too cruel, I could feel thankful for his wound that has given him so completely to me."

I stood by her on the creaking stairs as the rain swept in torrents against the house, and her murmuring tones mingled with the sounds of the storm.

"Perhaps you cannot understand," she said gently, "but loving Basil as I do, and having him dependent on me, is a selfish happiness that only a woman could really know."

And out of the night a truth came to me that, though it never, never could be mine, the most precious thing in this world is a woman's heart.

XIV

It was eleven o'clock, and Basil Norman and I were alone. The storm had subsided, and, through the sound of the rain, we could hear the waves breaking against the shore.

"I do not want Siegfried to go to school yet," he was saying; "he is so full of promise and latent genius that I dread the risk of having it all standardized into what we call a public-school man. I am coaching him in languages and the three R's, but more than anything else I want him to form his own conception of the scheme of the universe, so that when he takes his position among the world's musicians—as I am confident he will—he'll have the echo of what he interprets in his own breast. Music is so vast, yet musicians, as a class, are people of little depth."

"Has the lad a chance in England with his German name?"

"Yes. England must realize that genius has no nationality."

"What was Siegfried like when you took him first?"

"He was arrogant, sullen, and in his child's brain was the knowledge that his father had fought against us. To make him forget his unhappy past, and partly to satisfy a caprice of my own, I—well, you would say I blew bubbles. We invented a little city of make-believe. From the hill at the back of the house you can look down on all these houses, and at dusk, when the mist rises from the sea and the windows begin to glow with light, it is quaint enough for a study by Rackham. In our little City of Bubbles there dwelt such celebrities as Aladdin, Jack the Giant Killer, Midshipman Easy, Peter Pan, poor Wilde's Happy Prince, and Heaven knows how many more. They were very real to Siegfried and me, and Lilias used to have many a laugh over the troubles of our little family. But I had not counted on Sindbad; he was filling Siegfried with stories of buried treasure and men forced to walk the plank (all of them absolutely authenticated by the narrator), and the lurking Prussian began to appear. He stole down to Ventnor and bought books on the war … he began to glory in the stand Germany was making. So I was not surprised when, one day, he suggested that we should play soldiers.

"Pest, you should have been there. Siegfried was Napoleon, and I was Hindendorff, his chief of Staff. Sindbad was given command of a naval brigade, and was also in charge of a large fleet lying in hiding to cope with the Spaniard, should he emerge. In addition to these modest duties, he had to wheel my chair. Lilias came along as a composite representative of all the women's services. Napoleon's plans were that we should attack the City of Bubbles, which was being defended by a heavy force on the fringe of the hill. I omitted to mention our flying cavalry in the person of Mr. Jones; but owing to a misunderstanding of our objective he waged separate war on birds all afternoon, inflicting no casualties, but covering an immense area of ground. We began the attack about half-a-mile back; but when Napoleon ordered Sindbad's naval brigade into action, we were unable to find him, until Mr. Jones discovered him behind a rock, scrutinizing a passing merchantman through the inevitable telescope. After some persuasion, we induced Sindbad to attack, but half-way to his objective he remembered that he had left his pipe in the kitchen, to which he repaired, leaving his troops in the air, as we used to say in France, and taking away the mobility which, as Chief of Staff, I needed urgently. There is no question that Sindbad possesses imagination, but it is an unreliable one.

"To make the story short, we won by a brilliant ruse of Napoleon's, who got word to the enemy that the tuck-shops in Ventnor were being evacuated, which was as effective as his famous "Sauve qui peut" at Waterloo, for they fled ignominiously, and we captured the city, after inflicting heavy casualties."

I looked at him and waited. Behind the nonsense I could see some serious thought was lurking, but what I could not conjecture.

"The next day," he resumed, "Siegfried was tired, and asked me to tell how Peter Pan frustrated the pirates. 'Peter is dead,' said I. Siegfried suppressed a sob, and asked when he died. 'He was killed in our attack,' I said. After a long pause, he mentioned the probability of Mr. Midshipman Easy being at home. 'He is dead,' said I. Again his question, and again my answer: 'He was killed in our attack.' He went out; but on going to bed that night he asked if Cinderella was really very pretty. 'Not now,' I said, 'for she is lying dead.' Does it seem ludicrous, Pest? That night he cried himself to sleep, and it is not easy to listen to a youngster's sobs when you know that a word from you will do away with them. For two long dreary weeks our City of Bubbles was a City of the Dead…. Then I suggested that we play soldiers again and make another attack. After all, Pest, it isn't every Tommy gets a chance of being Chief of Staff. I wish you could have seen his face. It was as though I had struck him with a whip, and he left me without a word. That afternoon the Wizard of Oz visited our city and brought them all back to life. That was some months ago, and our little dream-world is only a serio-humorous memory for Siegfried and me now. But during that night he cried himself to sleep I think the Prussian in him died."

For several minutes we listened to the rain.

"The greatest of the Arts," said Norman, very slowly, "is life. I don't think our writers, our painters, our men who dream in bronze realize that. If they did, it would not be said that the English are the least artistic people in the world; for you and I know that is not true. Scott going to his death in the Antarctic snow was a great artist. The sailor standing to one side when the last boat is filled, and those six Tommies at Grieswald in Germany, holding their ground against a row of bayonets and taking a sentence of two years' imprisonment rather than aid the Hun in making munitions—are they not artists? Where we fail as a race is in our authors, composers, painters, who divorce themselves from the real spirit of England and wonder that the products of their brains quicken no pulse and stir no imagination. Our educationists, our leaders in every movement allied with culture, have too often striven to choke the imaginativeness and blind the eyes of our youth to the beauty of life, which is one of its greatest truths. One has but to read the despairing lines written by bereaved mothers for their sons who have fallen, to feel the sorrow of England crying for expression; instead of which, our triumph, our courage, our artistry are mute and inarticulate."

The rain had ceased, and the wind was moaning over the sea as if it had been balked of its prey.

"Mark my words, Pest," he said dreamily, "as a nation we shall have no self-expression until our artists take for their model the greatest of all Arts—Life."

His eyes were fixed on the smouldering coals, and over his face there was a mystic veil—a thing not of this world but born of the undying spirit. It was like a mist that settles on a river in the hour between sunset and night.

"Basil," I cried; and the sound of my own voice startled me. I do not know what words were surging to my lips, for he turned to me and the smile of compassion in his eyes held me silent.

Something choked in my throat…. I felt that I wanted to struggle to my feet and stand at the salute. For the face that looked into mine was that of a CONQUEROR.

A burning ember fell from the grate and lay on the tiled surface of the hearth.

PETITE SIMUNDE

I

Three hundred miles north of Toronto, the Cobalt mining country surrenders its daily toll of silver to the world. In that region there is mostly rock. Where woods exist, the trees are gaunt and defiant, as though resentful of the approach of man; in winter they stand like white-shrouded ghosts, and the wind howls dismally through them until in the little settlements across Lake Timiskaming men draw closer to the fire, and women croon comfort to frightened children, yet half-believe, themselves, the Indian legend that another soul is on its way to the Great Unknown.

Five miles north of Cobalt the town of Haileybury straggles down a hill to the lake, on the other side of which can be seen the blue shores of Pontiac, Quebec, where lies the sleepy little hamlet known as Ville Marie, possessed of its church, its wayside public-house, "Les Voyageurs," and a few vagabond frame buildings. The ring of the blacksmith's anvil can be heard throughout the day, for there is little else to drown the noise. But when the lumber-jacks come in from the woods, or the river-runners from their convoys of logs, there is always the sound of a noisy chorus from "Les Voyageurs," led (in the times we write of) by Pierre Generaud, who knows that singing a constant fortissimo stimulates thirst in participants and auditors alike. On Sunday there is the sound of the organ, and the villagers walk about in ill-fitting garments of respectability: a simple God-fearing community, knowing no world but their own, and finding their joy of life in mere existence.

It was gathering dusk, one summer evening in the year 1914, when the figure of a young officer wended its way towards "Les Voyageurs."

He had crossed from Haileybury on the afternoon boat, causing not a little comment by the uniform he wore. All in the mining country knew him as "Dug" Campbell, manager of the Curran Like Mine—they were hardly prepared for the sudden transition from his usual costume of riding-breeches, brown shirt, and lumberman's boots, to the trappings of a British officer. He was a young man of big stature, with broad, restless shoulders that seemed to chafe under the bondage of a tunic, and he had a long, loose-limbed stride oddly at variance with the usual conception of military bearing. His eyes were light blue, his hair an unruly brown that flirted with red—and his name was Campbell. Such men do not wait for the second call when there is war.

Wherever civilization is forcing her right of way, wherever she is fighting for her existence, the descendants of Scotland will be found. When a new railroad struggles over unnamed rivers and through untrodden forests, somewhere ahead there is always a son or a grandson of old Scotia, whose eyes are a humorous blue and whose hair has more than a tinge of red. There is no part of the world to which the Scot is a stranger, but he rises to his best in a new country where waterfalls must be harnessed to give power; where great rocks must be blasted from age-old foundations; where rebellious nature in her primeval state must be taught that the world was made for man.

On that August evening in that most fateful of years, the figure of Captain Douglas Campbell, tall and somewhat rugged, like one of the northern trees, might have served as a sculptor's model for the spirit of Scotland confirming and strengthening the purpose of young Canada.

Rich in tradition as she is, what glory of her past can Scotland have that is greater than this—that, strong in the manhood which seems to spring from the soil of her country, she sent her sons to every corner of the world; and when the shadow of war fell upon her—they came back! Sons, grandsons, those to whom their Scottish blood was little more than a family legend, they came back.

Scotland needs no other monument than those three words.

II

Nearing "Les Voyageurs" the young officer paused at a sudden burst of sound that came from the inn. In place of the usual chorus, one voice, a slovenly but powerful one, was bellowing forth a ribald song, remarkable only for its noisy coarseness. Reaching the hostelry, Campbell hammered at the door, which was opened by mine host himself.

"Ah!" he gesticulated eloquently, "Monsieur Cam-pell?" (Pierre Generaud, like all French-Canadians, invariably reversed his accents on English words.) "For why you come, eh?"

"My dear Generaud, must I give reason for visiting the famous 'Les Voyageurs'?"

"Ah! By gosh, no!" He beamed welcome in every pore—then struck an attitude of despair. "You come, is it not, as an officier, perhaps no—yes?"

"Correct. I want to speak just for a minute to the men inside."

"Oh, mais non!" The good host's gesture was a masterpiece, even among a race of gesticulators. "Not to-night, monsieur."

"And why not?"

"By Gar! Who you theenk is inside now? Listen—she sing!"

Campbell was too well acquainted with the universal French-Canadian use of the feminine pronoun to express any surprise when "she" proved to be the possessor of the aforesaid raucous, bass voice, which had broken into some song anent the passion of a sailor for a Portuguese young lady of great charm but doubtful modesty.

"Who is our friend?" asked the officer.

"What—you know not? She is the terrible Des Rosiers!"

"Well, I don't like Mr. Des Rosiers's voice."

"You nevair hear her name, monsieur? Sometime she is called 'Jacque Noir.' Mon Dieu!—she sleep with le diable."

The landlord's eyes grew wide with horror; his shoulders contracted until they touched his ears.

"Look here, my friend," said Campbell, with a tinge of impatience, "Jacque Noir or Jacque Rouge or Jacque Blanc is not going to keep me out here."

"But, monsieur, once she keel a man."

"My dear fellow——"

"One winter, a man has insult Des Rosiers, and—voilà! Jacque Noir burn her house—keel her family—murdair her"——

With a laugh, the newly created officer thrust the little man aside and entered the sacred precincts of "Les Voyageurs." A big, dirty, bearded fellow of about thirty years of age was leaning against the counter, waving a mug and bellowing a song. He looked formidable enough, but hardly justified the diabolical qualities attributed to him by Pierre Generaud. In spite of his unshaven face with its bloodshot, inebriated eyes, there was something not unpleasing about the fellow, and when his lips parted they disclosed teeth that were gleaming white.

A group of villagers sat in open-mouthed admiration beneath the singer, for Des Rosiers's reputation had gathered velocity like a snowball rolling down the side of a hill, gaining in size every time it came into contact with the drifts of rumor, until it had become almost a legend of wickedness. His audience felt a timid pride in the event. It was as if his Satanic Majesty himself had condescended to appear from below and sing comic songs for their benefit.

On the entrance of the officer, the song ceased, and all eyes were turned to the new-comer.

"Holà," said Des Rosiers, with extraordinary resonance. "You drink by me, eh bien?"

"No, thanks. I must only stay a minute."

"You no drink?" roared the lumber-jack, whose hospitality was not unlike the forcefulness of the muscular Christian in "Androcles and the Lion." "You drink, or, by Gar, I brak your neck."

A hum of admiration rose from the villagers. They bore no possible malice towards the officer, but it was gratifying to find Jacque Noir living up to his reputation.

"Messieurs," said Campbell, ignoring the gentleman in question, "there is a war. La belle France fights for her life, and Canada must help. She needs you—and you—and you."

With their meager knowledge of English, he was forced to a simplicity of language that depended almost entirely on the personal appeal for effect. "Come with me to the war. We pay you one dollar ten a day, and your wife and garçons get money too."

Mr. Des Rosiers laughed, scornfully and sonorously. "I laugh," he said. "You theenk we go to war, and you English, by Gar, no leave Canada, but steal all we leave behind. The French-Canadian—he go; the English-Canadian, non." He roared a vile oath, and laid his hand on Campbell's shoulder. "I brak your neck," he said comfortingly.

In a moment Campbell's tunic was off and he was facing Jacque Noir. "You are a liar, Des Rosiers," he said. "You are the greatest liar and the worst singer in the province of Quebec."

The Frenchman tore the red kerchief from his neck and hurled the mug to the floor, where it broke into a hundred pieces. "By gosh, me!" he bellowed in a voice that would have terrified a bull. "I keel you!"

He advanced in windmill fashion, but his opponent, who had been one of the best boxers of his year at Toronto 'Varsity, stopped him with a blow known technically as a "straight left to the jaw." Des Rosiers paused to collect his thoughts. He was wondering whether to kick with one foot or with both, when something happened, and oblivion settled over him like the curtain on the last act of a melodrama. Campbell had stepped forward, and, putting his shoulder behind it, had delivered a blow on the lower part of the jaw with force enough to fell an ox. For Des Rosiers the rest was silence.

Concluding his recruiting speech to the dazed villagers, Campbell put on his tunic and strode down the street…. But the fall of Mr. Pecksniff in the eyes of Tom Pinch was not more complete than the collapse of their idol, Jacque Noir, in the eyes of the inhabitants of Ville Marie.

III

A sky that was hung with stars looked down upon the shimmering roof-tops of Haileybury. The streets were deserted except in the main thoroughfare, where a group of men were seated in an irregular line, their pipes glowing in the darkness. They had been there since dusk.

Midnight passed, and the shadowy line was longer as each hour struck. Men with heavy packs; men with the mud of the northern wilderness still on their boots; men who had walked for sixty miles; men whose beardless chins bespoke the schoolboys of a year before; men whose faces would have looked coarse and cruel in any light but that of the stars; one by one or in pairs they came. For each there was a yell of welcome, a ribald jest or two—then silence once more, and the glowing pipes. The first glimmering streaks of dawn showed the queue in all its picturesque grotesqueness. The man in front was leaning against a frame store that bore the placard "Recruiting Office."

Some three thousand miles away, a Hohenzollern Emperor had said that the British Empire would crumble into disintegration at the first sound of war. And through the forests of the north and over weary trails men were staggering on, mile after mile, fearful of one thing only—that they might be too late to answer the call which had come, from across the Atlantic, speeding over forests, cities, prairies, lakes, and mountains until echo answered from the shores of the Pacific Coast.

The early boat from Ville Marie discharged its half-dozen passengers. A powerfully built French-Canadian strode up the hill and stopped at the crowd of men. With a worried contraction of his heavy eyebrows he surveyed the formidable length of the line.

"Godam!" said he.

Heedless of the jests and the comments of the mob, he went slowly down the line, carefully scrutinizing each man, until he stopped at a half-breed Indian. For a moment only they argued in French, then he produced a roll of dollar notes in one hand, and brandished the other hand threateningly in the half-breed's face. The combined arguments proved too much; when the enrollment of recruits took place, number eighteen was Jacque Des Rosiers, sworn to serve His Majesty the King for the duration of the war and six months afterwards—in witness whereof he had drawn an inky cross after his name.

It would be difficult to give the exact motive for his action. He probably had never heard of Belgium, but—well, take horns and tail from the devil, and what is left?

Three weeks later the company of amateur soldiers were warned to proceed to the concentration camp. Willing, but puzzled by the infliction of army discipline, they had struggled past the first pitfalls of recruitship. For the sake of Captain Douglas Campbell, their "boss," they had suppressed their grumbling and submitted to the rites and ceremonies of military routine, arguing that, inexplicable as it was, it had some connection, however remote, with the ultimate goal of warfare. The afternoon before their departure Campbell spoke to them for exactly five minutes. His hair looked redder and his eyes seemed bluer than before. His powerfully built shoulders and the rhythm of his muscles lent a grace to his entire body, despite its ruggedness.

"Look here, you fellows," he said, "you signed up to fight—so did I. We will fight, too, but Kitchener can't use us until we're ready. You wonder what all this drill is about. Well, here's my idea about it. There isn't a coward in this crowd; there isn't a man who wouldn't go down a shaft after a pal, even if the chances were a hundred to one against his coming back. But you're not ready for the front. You've got the heart, but your bodies must have training and discipline. Watch me with this cigarette. In flicking the ash I burn my finger; the next time I want to touch the ash, my finger avoids it by a quarter of an inch. I laugh and try again. You all know what I mean. I am not afraid of the cigarette, but my finger is. If you've ever been kicked in the leg by a horse, the next time that horse kicks, which of your legs is drawn back first? In some strange way your body has instincts of its own, and though you might have a heart like a bull, your muscles and nerves—your body—might fail you when you needed them most. As I understand the army system, it is to train you to obey, not only mentally but physically. Eight months from now we may be lying half-dead with the enemy's guns playing hell all around us. We may want to quit, we may be 'all in,' but, if the order comes to advance, we'll go forward, because our bodies will be disciplined to obey.

"Be patient then, men, and just grin when things go wrong. I would gladly have gone with you in the ranks, and there are lots of you chaps better able to lead than I, but a commission was given to me, and I'm out to do my best with the finest company of men in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. I'm learning all the time—as you are. You will have bad times, and so shall I; but let's help each other to laugh and make the best of it, for, after all, we're just great big children playing a mighty big game…. And when we reach France we'll show them all that the old Cobalt gang is afraid of nothing in this world or the next."

They cheered—and the man who shouted loudest was Jacque Des Rosiers…. And somewhere in the speech esprit de corps had been born.

IV

Four winters passed by.

France lay in the warmth of a late spring evening, like a stricken deer that has thrown off its pursuers momentarily, but is bleeding from a hundred wounds. Month after month she had endured the invader, and the cycle of years, instead of freeing her had only deepened her agony. What had she left? The next attack would see Arras and her remaining coalfields gone, the Channel ports captured, and then … Paris?… Paris?

Unperturbed, however, by any such thoughts, Petite Simunde—no one thought of her by any other name—was driving four cows home from pasture. The setting sun shed a kindly hue on her gingham garment that was neither a frock nor an apron, yet served as both. Nor was the mellowing sunlight unkind to her face, for the racial sallowness of her cheeks, accentuated by too constant exposure to the elements, was softened and shaded into a gentle brown. Her shoes, which were far too large, were in the final stages of disrepair. About the brow her hair was braided with a simplicity that was by no means devoid of charm. Her eyes—but there she was really French. Simunde had never been farther from the village of Le Curois than the neighboring town of Avesnes Le Comte (unless one counts the momentous occasion, a year after her birth, when she was taken to Arras for exhibition before an esteemed and wealthy relative, who was so little impressed that he bequeathed his entire estate, consisting of eight thousand francs, to a manufacturer of tombstones); but a French woman does not acquire coquetry—she is born with it. Even in church Simunde would cast such languishing yet mischievous eyes upon the curé himself, that the poor little man, who had never liked Latin at any time, used to stammer and mumble his orisons like an over-conscientious penitent at confessional.

When her two brothers went to war Simunde, who was then sixteen, assumed their tasks in addition to her own, in all of which she had the able direction of "madame" her mother. Between them they performed a day's work that would have exhausted two husky laborers. As is the custom in most of northern France, their home was not on the farm, but in the village, for one of the first essentials of existence to a Frenchman is companionship. On the outskirts of Le Curois, just on the hill, there was a great château, beautifully, gloomily aloof; but in the one street of the village itself, pigs, cows, hens and their offspring wallowed in mud and accumulated filth.

It is difficult to know which is the more striking: the French peasant's stoicism in the presence of war, or his indifference to dirt.

On this particular evening in May of 1918 Simunde was frankly regretting the absence of men. Not that she had ever been in love or known the rapture of wandering in the moonlight with a man (France is almost the only civilized country remaining that has not relegated chaperons to the realm of fiction); but she wanted to use her eyes on something more susceptible than a cow or a curé. It was spring, and she felt pretty, and when a woman is conscious of her own charm she seldom wishes to prove miserly with it.

She had just run across the road to convince a cow of its loss of the sense of direction when she heard the neighing of a horse. Glancing behind her, she looked directly into the eyes of a mounted British officer, whereupon that gentleman brought his steed to a standstill.

"Bon soir, mademoiselle," he said.

"Bon soir, monsieur," she answered demurely. Her eyes were lowered shyly, and her fingers played over the stick she was carrying, like a flute-player caressing his instrument. The officer bowed slightly and tried to recall his French vocabulary, though it must be admitted he was never loquacious in any tongue when conversing with a daughter of Eve. As for her, since it is a woman's rôle, she waited. Would he speak again or would he pass on, leaving the memory of yet one more meeting with a gentleman of adventure—one more roadside drama in which the dialogue consisted only of an exchange of salutations. Most men who have returned from France will recall for years to come how, a few kilometres back from Hell, they often caught a glimpse of two dark eyes and a tender smile. Just that and—

"Bon soir, mademoiselle."

"Bon soir, monsieur."

Commonplace, perhaps, in the telling, but in France it was the commonplace that became romance.

A smile crept into the officer's eyes, which were blue and kindly, though they had a glint in them—something like metal—a look that a mother always noticed first when her son returned from the line.

"Où est le village?" he ventured.

"Le Curois?"

"Oui! Le Curois."

"Mais, monsieur"—her eyes widened and her hands indicated the village dwellings—"c'est ici Le Curois!"

He breathed deeply and ventured again.

"Connaissez-vous un billet pour dix officiers?"

He felt rather pleased with the sentence; it was true he had intended to get accommodation for eleven officers, but it was moderately accurate for a foreign tongue.

For answer Simunde led him, preceded by the four cows, to her domicile as "Madame," like all French housewives had received billeting instructions in the first year of the war. In conjunction with her neighbors on either side, she speedily arranged accommodation for eleven officers in their cottages, and for the officers' domestiques in the barns.

One hour later the guests of war, their battalion having come out for a rest, were dining comfortably in the home of Petite Simunde, while a sow, attended by ten small pigs, snorted approvingly outside the door.

Less than an hour afterwards Private Des Rosiers, acting as temporary batman to Major Douglas Campbell, was sitting on a chair in the farm-yard, in the glittering moonlight, regaling Simunde and her mother with grossly exaggerated stories of the mining country of Cobalt. He told them of his misdeeds, not in humility, but with much braggadocio, and his auditors listened, lost in gesticulatory admiration. Simunde was thrilled from her ill-shod feet to her braided brow. Jacque Des Rosiers was the first really wicked man she had met, and, woman-like, she was fascinated; also he had nice teeth and flashing eyes.

The picture of a young officer on horseback whose brown hair was almost red and whose humorous blue eyes had a glint in them like metal, faded as completely from her mind as the memory of the sunset that had thrown its spell upon them.

Unromantic?… Que voulez-vous? C'est la guerre!

V

Two weeks passed, during which period the placid fields about Le Curois resounded to the shouts of Canadian troops rehearsing open warfare (for rumor had it that the hour was almost at hand when Foch was to release the forces of retribution). For pastime, the troops played baseball and held field-days of many and varied sports. Whatever they did, they shouted lustily and continuously while doing it, for they had mastered one elemental truth—that nothing can be accomplished without intensity.

Des Rosiers explained baseball to Simunde, who enjoyed the description without allowing it to interfere with her innumerable domestic and agricultural duties. It was quite true that Jacque Noir had never played the game or even mastered its rudiments, but he had the narrator's instinct that rises above mere accuracy of detail.

Every evening he accompanied Simunde to the pasture-land, and together they guided the patient cows homeward. When darkness set in and Simunde's tasks were finished for the day, he sat with her in the farm-yard and told lurid tales of northern Canada—to all of which "madame," whose tasks were never finished, lent a delighted and adjoining ear.

He pictured to Simunde the snow—how it filled the rivers till they ran no more; how it covered the great pine-trees until, as far as eye could see, there was nothing but white; and he told of the wind that was never still. And she listened, as only a Frenchwoman can listen, with every emotion he called forth registering in her face, as clouds racing across the sun will throw their shadows on the ground.

Just before the battalion was to return to the line, the second in command, Major Douglas Campbell, was called to Divisional Headquarters for a prolonged conference. As a result Des Rosiers was returned to his company for duty, though he contrived to spend every free hour with the little belle of Le Curois. As the time for parting approached with cruel celerity, he talked less and took to long spells of moody silence. His heart had been melted as completely as the snow in his Northland is thawed by the sun in spring. As for her, the little artifices of gesture and the ceaseless coquetry of the eyes became less noticeable. For the first time in her life she felt the anguish of a woman's tears; Petite Simunde's guileless and innocent heart had been won by Jacque Des Rosiers, the bad man of Northern Quebec.

In a tempest of passionate ardor, but with becoming deference, he addressed his suit to the mother, who promised consideration that night and her answer on the morrow.

It was hardly twilight when he wandered back along the main road towards the fields where his battalion was bivouacked. Full of the picture of the little woman who had bewitched him, he failed to notice the approach of an exceedingly smart young staff-officer, ablaze in a glory of red and brass. With unseeing eyes, Des Rosiers looked directly at the young gentleman, but failed to make any sign. The officer, fresh from a staff course in England, stopped him with a sharp command.

"Just a moment, my man. Don't you know enough to salute?"

Des Rosiers awoke from his dream, came to attention, and saluted very badly.

"I no see you, sair," he said.

"Don't lie to me," snapped Brass Hat (who wasn't a bad chap on the whole); "of course you saw me. Damn it, you looked right at me. It's fellows like you who give the corps a bad name."

He was wrong there. It was the presence of several thousand men like Des Rosiers that had given the Canadian Corps a wonderful name—but let that pass, as Jack Point would have said.

The element of tragedy seldom enters the lists of life with a fanfare of trumpets. It steals in unobtrusively, like a poor relation. It comes in the garb of the commonplace, or masked in triviality or gaiety. One is unaware of its presence until it throws off concealment and points its yellow fingers at the throat of its victims. What dramatist would have read tragedy into the absurd tableau presented by a slouchy French-Canadian soldier and a youthful staff-officer? Yet, as inexorable as Fate, it was approaching Jacque Des Rosiers, and only a few yards away, hiding its skeleton's grin behind the mundane countenance of Sergeant Smith, returning to the battalion after a day's work in the orderly room.

The officer, who had just made a move to resume his walk, noticed the sergeant, and called him over.

"You are from the same battalion as this chap?"

"Yes, sir."

"Report him to his company commander for failing to salute an officer. Impress upon him that I would not have made this complaint, but your man looked directly at me, and—well, discipline must be maintained, especially out here."

Whereupon, feeling that he had rendered unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's, the youthful captain sauntered on to the château, occupied by Divisional Headquarters, and dined with extra zest. And if it be thought that this narrative treats him unkindly, let it be written that, three months later, he was badly wounded while performing a very gallant action. He was a professional soldier, somewhat lacking in psychology; that was all.

A little later Private Des Rosiers was arraigned before his company commander, a gentleman who was neither a soldier nor a psychologist. The heinous crime of passing an officer without acknowledgment was laid to the charge of the battle-worn and love-lorn villain from Quebec.

"What have you got to say for yourself?"

Des Rosiers said it. The officer shook his head.

"It's not good enough," he said. "You French-Canadians seem to think there's one law for yourselves and another for everybody else. You throw all your comrades down by deliberately insulting an officer—a staff-officer, who reports it to the G.O.C., and there you are. We're known as a bad battalion just because of a few slackers like you. Put him on the horse line picket for two nights, and confine him to camp during the day."

The prisoner started. "Sair," he said, "I can no be here to-morrow night. C'est impossible."

"Oh, is it emposeeble?" answered the officer, who prided himself on a gift of neat retort. Des Rosiers's eyes protruded to their utmost.

"By Gar!" he cried, "and nex' morning we go back to the line encore, yes?"

"Well? Have you any objections? If so, I am sure the divisional commander would appreciate hearing them."

"Ah, but monsieur l'officier"—his hands were stretched forth in an agony of appeal—"Petite Simunde, she wait for me. I promise to come—I no come—it is terrible!"

The judge in khaki laughed.

"I am fed up with the stories of you French-Canadians and your village sweethearts—and, confound it, stop waving your hands about!"

"Standt'attenshun!" bellowed the sergeant-major.

"Consider yourself lucky to get off so lightly, my man.—That will do, sergeant-major."

"Escor' a'prisoner—ri tuh—qui' mawch.—Lef' ri', lef' ri', lef' ri—Pawty, ha't.—Report to horse line N.C.O. right away.—Escor', dees-mi!"

Rather late for mess, by reason of holding orderly room at an unusual hour, the company commander sat down to dinner with a glow of virtue in his bosom. He had been a lawyer-politician in a small Ontario town, and it pleased him to find that he had not lost the art of Buzfuzian browbeating.

And through it all the Fates had woven a thread of tragedy about the life of Jacque Noir, using in their scheme of things a non-psychological staff-officer, a non-military and non-psychological company commander, and a sergeant whose name was Smith.

"There is humor in all things," said Jack Point. Gilbert would have been equally correct if he had substituted the word "tragedy."

Before sundown of the next day the prisoner was reported absent, and when the battalion marched away for the line Jacque Des Rosiers was not with it.

VI

Four days had passed before the second-in-command rejoined his unit in the trenches. Campbell had been held at Divisional Headquarters, and now for the first time learned of Des Rosiers's desertion. With a stiffening of the jaw and an ugly contraction of his shoulders, he quickly interrogated tragedy's mummers—a sergeant named Smith and a politician-lawyer company commander. To the former he said nothing; the man had done his obvious duty. To the company commander he gave a careful hearing; then, in short staccato sentences that had an odd resemblance to a machine-gun in action, subjected him to brief questioning.

"What is Des Rosiers's conduct-sheet like?"

"Pretty bad, sir."

"What were his crimes?"

"Oh, the usual things—dirty on C.O.'s inspection, equipment missing, late for parades, and generally slovenly. If he hadn't had such a poor sheet, he would have been decorated."

"In other words, his crimes are rest-billet ones. Is that correct?"

"Well—yes, sir."

"But in the line he earned a decoration?"

"Yes—at Vimy, he——"

"Have you known him to lie?"

"Well, you know what these French-Canadians are like."

"You understand what I mean. Have you ever known him to lie when put on his honor?"

"Er—no."

"When he told you that he had to see this girl, did you find out if he was speaking the truth?"

"No, sir, I——"

"Did you look for him at this girl's place when you were coming away?"

"I sent a picket through the village."

The blue in Campbell's eyes became unpleasantly light. "I had Des Rosiers in my company at Ypres when the Hun sent over his first gas—you were addressing meetings in Canada at the time—and I know him for a brave chap, as faithful as a dog. It's men like you with a sense of vision no better than a mud-puddle that are making the French-Canadian question another Irish one. They are like children, easily swayed and true as steel to those they trust; but as long as you and your kind make a political cat's-paw out of them, alternately yelling 'Kamerad' and 'Traitor,' according to the political exigencies of the moment, so long will Canada be without the sympathy and the enriching of a wonderfully virile race."

The junior officer's face flushed. "I acted according to the evidence," he persisted hotly.

"Damn the evidence!" said Campbell furiously. "Play the man, not the charge-sheet. Does Des Rosiers strike you as a chap who would deliberately insult a staff-officer? When he is caught he will be shot. It can't be helped—discipline must be maintained; but I tell you, when, every few days I read in the adjutant-general's orders that Private So-and-So, charged with desertion in the presence of the enemy, was apprehended in a certain village, tried by court-martial, and sentenced to be shot, sentence duly carried out at 4:15 A.M. on such and such a date—you know the ghastly rhythm of the thing as well as I do—I never read one of these announcements without having a bad ten minutes afterwards. I don't question the decision of the court—a deserter must pay the penalty—but, mark my words, behind every one of these offences there is the unseen part played by some officer or N.C.O. who punished at the wrong time or failed to punish at the right. There are far too many machine-made routine-fed chaps in the army, with stars on their cuffs, who don't know that there are times when the grip of a hand on a Tommy's shoulder, and a few words as man to man, free of any cursed condescension, are worth all the conduct-sheets in existence."

"You are making a mountain out of a mole-hill, sir. I consider you are very unfair to me."

"You do, eh?… What about your unfairness to Des Rosiers and his little French girl, when he faces a firing-squad in the early morning?"

With an angry gesture, Campbell left the dugout and hurried to Battalion Headquarters. For twenty minutes he and the colonel, a gentleman and a soldier, quietly but firmly discussed the case of desertion.

"I agree with everything you say, Campbell," said the older man, "and I will strongly recommend mercy to the court; but I am commanding a unit made up of many personalities, and must think of the example to all."

"Very good, sir. By the way, colonel, I know where Des Rosiers is."

"You do? Then send word to the A.P.M."

"Excuse me, sir; may I go and bring him myself? I ask this as a very great favor."

The colonel pondered for a moment. "When will you be back?" he said.

"Before 'Stand to' in the morning."

"Right—but, Campbell, my boy."

"Sir."

"Whatever you have in mind, remember that your duty and mine is to think of the example to the battalion."

The blue in Campbell's eyes deepened; then, with an imperious gesture of the head, like that of a horse that hears the sound of galloping hoofs a mile away, he saluted.

"I shall not forget what you say, sir."

"Thank you, Douglas."

With a restless impatience for delay, Campbell left the dug-out and climbed from the trench to open land. Heedless of a machine-gun that spat at him from the enemy lines, he hurried on until he reached the brigade transport lines, where he secured a motor-car.

"Where to, sir?" asked the driver.

"Le Curois," said the major; "and drop me just before you come to the village."

VII

In the scorching heat of a summer afternoon, Petite Simunde was washing some linen outside her cottage home. The silence, like the heat, was oppressive, and seemed more so by contrast with the noise of the troops who had been there a week before. An apple falling from a tree to the ground; the restless pounding of a horse's hoof in its stall; the distant hum of an aeroplane; the rumble of guns, faint but ominous—these and the sighs of the little woman at her task, were the only sounds that broke the stillness of the air.

She heard footsteps, and her heart, more than her eyes, told her that the man she dreaded had come. Her face blanched, and she caught her breath with a spasm of pain.

"Simunde"—Campbell's voice was gentle but firm—"where is Jacque?"

She continued her work without looking up.

"Simunde"—again the quiet monotone—"where is Jacque?"

She shook her head. "No compree" she faltered, falling into the jargon of war.

"Simunde!" There was an inflection in his voice, an almost imperceptible note of severity, that set her heart throbbing with fear. This was a new person to her, this calm, stern, blue-eyed man who showed no excitement, no anger, only a quiet, kindly severity that gave her no chance for subterfuge. She hated him for his calmness—because he was English—because he was unfair. If he had only shouted or gesticulated—but this brown-haired giant! To oppose him was like trying to stem the incoming tide.

She looked up suddenly, and her dripping hands were clenched in a fever of supplication. Madly she pleaded for her lover, as a woman will plead only for the man she loves or for her child. Tears ran down her cheeks, and her voice was choked with sobs.

Patiently he listened, gathering from the anguish more than from her words the story he had already guessed. In a climax of grief, she groped for him with her hands and would have cried on his breast. But he made no move; only his eyes were very grave and tender.

"Simunde," he reiterated in English, "where is Jacque?"

With a shrill cry of rage, she stamped her foot on the ground. This great iceberg of a man was a devil! He had come for her lover. He would take Jacque away to be shot. With an involuntary instinct of dismay, she glanced at the barn some little distance away; then, fearful that he had read her meaning, she forced a smile with her lips.

Without a word, he put her gently aside and started for the barn. He had gone ten steps before she moved, when he heard her hurried breathing and her hands were on his arm.

"Monsieur" she cried—"monsieur le major—Jacque—Jacque keel you!" She spoke in broken English, remembering one of Des Rosiers's stories of his misdeeds. Releasing her fingers, he reached the barn in a few short paces. Opening the door, he cautiously entered and tried to accustom himself to the semi-darkness—and saw the barrel of a rifle in the loft slowly aligning itself in his direction.

"Des Rosiers!" His voice rang out like a pistol-shot. "It is I—your officer!"

There was no sound for almost a full minute, then the rifle was withdrawn, and the unshaved, disheveled French-Canadian stood before him.

"Why you come?" he said brokenly. "I can no shoot my officier. Why you come, eh?"

"Because you will go back with me, Des Rosiers."

The deserter's eyes filled with tears. "By Gar!" he said, "it is not, what you say, play fair. I say I shoot who come, and Jacque Des Rosiers, he is no afraid. But you—my boss—mais non! Maybe I go back with you and maybe they shoot me, yes?"

"You have deserted, and the punishment is—well, you know as well as I. If you come with me now there is a small chance of mercy."

The man's eyes flashed. "I no ask for mercy," he cried. "I, Jacque Des Rosiers want mercy? Pouf! I laugh. They tell me I no see Simunde again, when I do nottings wrong. Très bien—I say sometings about it too. I go, I stay—mêm' chose; I am shot. Good! I stay with Simunde."

Campbell took a step forward, and there was metal in his voice as well as in his eyes. His hand fell on the other's shoulder and gripped it like a vice. "You will come back with me," he said, and again there was a strange similarity to a machine-gun; "not that you may receive mercy, but because you are a coward, and must face your punishment for desertion in the presence of the enemy."

Des Rosiers's face darkened.

"Now, at this minute," went on Campbell, "the battalion, your battalion and mine, is in the line. Because you were not there, another man is in your place, perhaps at sentry duty. He may be dead by now—and why? Because he did his duty, and took the place of a man who was afraid."

The French-Canadian's breath was hot with fury. He clenched his fists, and great veins stood out on his forehead. "By gosh, me!" he yelled; "who say Jacque Noir, she is afraid?"

With apparent calm, but his muscles poised for action, the officer looked squarely at him. "I say you are a coward," he answered. "You were afraid to go to the line with your comrades. You are afraid now to face your punishment."

He noticed that Jacque was crouching for a spring. With a shrug of his shoulders, he produced a cigarette-case and put a cigarette into his mouth.

"Well?" he said.

It was the second time he had beaten Des Rosiers. The poor fellow paused, then fell at his feet and exhausted his passion in a sobbing explanation that would have been ludicrous but for the sincerity of anguish behind it.

A few minutes later they went together from the barn. Simunde was standing by her door. From the interior of the house the lamentations of "madame" could be heard. With a simplicity that strangely ennobled the rough fellow, Des Rosiers stopped and spoke to Simunde in French, then kissed her on the lips with a reverence that was more moving than the deepest passion. Without a word, he entered the motor-car and stared fixedly ahead at the road which climbed by the château. With a half-sob, Simunde turned to the officer. She said nothing, but her tears spoke a language that needed no words. The metal in his eyes melted into a deep compassionate blue; and Petite Simunde's troubled little heart thanked God for the great, broad-shouldered man with the hair that was almost red.

VIII

The two men slept in a deserted hut that night, but an hour before daybreak they were wending their way through the communication-trenches to the front line. It was half-an-hour before "Stand to" when the major and his unkempt companion reached the last dark trench where sentries were straining their eyes at the blackness of No Man's Land. A junior officer stepped up to the major and reported, quietly, the situation during the night.

"They've got a machine-gun post," he said at the end, "somewhere over by those three trees. Can you see them, sir? They got five of our chaps last night and two the night before."

"Humph! They tried for me too, yesterday afternoon. Can't the guns do anything?"

"They've tried, sir, but the rise in the ground seems to protect them from anything except a direct hit."

Even in the darkness the young lieutenant could notice the sudden look of decision which flashed into Campbell's eyes.

"Give me an A form," he said tersely.

The lieutenant handed him a message-pad on which he wrote a few words.

"See that the colonel gets this," he said, "and pass word along to the other companies that Private Des Rosiers and I are going to get that machine-gun post; so if we come back don't give us too hot a reception from your sentries.—Sergeant, some bombs.—And let Des Rosiers have that revolver, old chap. My batman will give you one of mine. Right—thanks."

"But, sir"—the young officer was vastly troubled—"it's not up to you. I'll go, major. Honestly, I want to——"

"Thanks, old man; but this is a bigger job than it looks. Not that you couldn't do it as well or better, but—well, I've set my heart on going, that's all."

He glanced at Des Rosiers, and noticed that his face was grim and set.

"But, my officier, it is not fair," began the French-Canadian; "it——"

"Not fair?" There was a rasping sound in the major's voice.

"For me, mais oui, but for you, non. Please—I do my bes'—I go alone."

Without a word, the second-in-command put out his hand and grasped that of the deserter; and Des Rosiers felt that death for the other would be easy. Truly, as Campbell had said, war is a great big game, and men are like children.

Three minutes later two figures were crawling like panthers towards the German lines.

IX

The colonel of the battalion took the message from the runner's hand. It contained seven words:

"As an example to the battalion.

"Campbell."

"What's that noise?"

"Sounds like Mills bombs," said the adjutant.

"And revolvers," muttered the colonel, and swore softly to himself with a lip that quivered strangely.

X

If ever you go to the Cobalt country, do not fail to take the boat to Ville Marie, on the blue shores of Pontiac.

There is an excellent hostelry at Ville Marie called "Les Voyageurs," where a little lady, known as Petite Simunde, has worked wonders in making it the cosiest, snuggest, neatest little place that ever warmed the heart of a lumberjack or a mining-prospector. At night her husband leads the singing with a mighty voice that shakes the rafters; for did not the former proprietor, Pierre Generaud, say that singing encouraged thirst?

At times, when Madame Des Rosiers is away for a day, Jacque Noir will regale his old friends with tales of his past life, stories that differ with every telling, and seem to indicate that the narrator himself is beginning to doubt their accuracy. At these times, too, he has been known to sing of a sailor who loved a Portuguese maid; but at the first sound of his wife's footsteps outside Monsieur Des Rosiers is the model husband, a rôle, to be frank, which suits him quite well.

When the snow is very thick on the ground, and the wind howls mournfully over the lake, Jacque Noir talks of France and the weary years of war. He will point with pride to his artificial foot, and then to his decoration, and slowly tell how two men went out into the dark after a machine-gun post.

And when the guests are gone and the fire is low, when the wind is moaning quietly, while the snow falls thick—thick—thick—they speak to each other of the officer who will never come back; of the one whose hair was brown, almost like red; whose blue eyes were stern, and yet so kind.

Hand-in-hand they sit close together, and the only sounds are those of the crackling logs and the wind that is never still.

THE MAN WHO SCOFFED

I

Dennis Montague of Toronto emerged from his bath, glowing and talkative. A luxurious deep-blue dressing-gown was wrapped about his form, its color accentuating the gray-blue of his eyes. His valet stood beside his bed, on which there reposed a set of garments suitable for a gentleman bent on spending an evening out.

"Ah, Sylvester! That's right. We poor devils must look as well as the abominable fashions will permit. Did you ever wonder why the men of to-day are so commonplace? It is the clothes they wear."

Mr. Sylvester took the dressing-gown and hung it in the closet.

"For instance, my dear fellow, to-night I am in a devilishly brilliant mood; almost any moment now I might say something clever. If I had my way, I should dress in scarlet, like a toreador, and when I spoke, my sentences would have something of the dart about them…. Such would be the fusion of temperament and costume. Instead of which—by the way, mix me a cocktail—I am forced to put on this hideous shirt and a swallow-tailed monstrosity that gives one the appearance of a reformed chimney-sweep. A greater man than either of us, Sylvester, said that the world was all a stage. Then why the deuce don't we dress for our parts?"

"'Ere's your cocktail, sir."

"Good—excellent. What's the time?"

"Gone past seven-thirty, sir."

"By Jove! I shall be late. I am always late, my dear chap; it partly accounts for my extraordinary popularity. A hostess is so relieved to see me by the time I turn up that for years afterwards she associates my face with pleasant sensations. Any mail, Sylvester?"

His servant crossed to the table, on which there reposed four letters. "These came in this afternoon, sir."

"Read them to me while I dress."

"Read them, Mr. Montague?" The valet's face was a study of respectful expostulation.

"Is the idea so preposterous, my dear fellow? I believe most people write letters with the idea of having them read."

The decorous Sylvester sighed, and broke the seal of the first letter. "I would beg to remind you," he read, "that your account——"

Montague made a deprecatory gesture. "How polite these trades-people are!" he said. "I shall expect one some day to enclose forget-me-nots. The next letter?"

Sylvester solemnly opened a diminutive envelope. "Mrs. W. De-Ponsy Harris requests the pleasure——"

"Another request! What is it—a tea or a dance?"

"A dinner, sir."

"Good! I shall go. Mrs. Harris is the worst hostess in the city, but she keeps the best cook. Proceed."

The worthy Sylvester took from the table a delicately scented letter that breathed its delightful suggestion of romance to his grateful nostrils, whereupon he promptly blushed a deep, unlovely, tomato-like red. "It starts," said he, "'My Dearest Love——'"

His master glanced at him. "Don't blush," he said. "The grande passion is nothing to be ashamed of." He carefully adjusted his tie. "What is the young lady's name?"

"Myrtle, sir."

"Ah, yes; poor little Myrtle! What a pity a woman clings to a romance that is dead. There is something morbid in women that makes them do it. It is like embracing a corpse."

"Shall I read it, sir?"

"No, no; don't bother. I know what is in it. On the third page she declares she hates me, and on the fifth she denies it. Myrtle runs so deucedly to form."

A look of relief crossed the rotund countenance of Mr. Sylvester as he took up the last letter. "It's from a society for educating the poor, sir."

"Tear it up. What we need is a society for educating the rich." Completely dressed, Montague turned round and struck an attitude. "It is my intention some day," he said with mock airiness, "to found a Conservatoire Universelle, where philanthropists will be taught charity, ministers of the gospel gain humility, musicians learn to feel, and newspaper writers take up the elements of language. Heavens! such scope as I should have! Stick your head out of the window and see if a taxi is waiting."

Sylvester raised the window and surveyed the street below. "It's there, sir," he said, drawing his head in.

"Then I shall leave you. Mrs. Le Roy is giving a dinner-party this evening, and she invariably has guests who listen charmingly. Good-night, Sylvester."

"Good-night, sir."

When he was gone, William Sylvester scratched his thinly covered head. He then shrugged his shoulders, and followed this action by pouring out a glass of sherry. He took a sip. "'Eavens!" he said aloud; "'ow 'e do talk!"

II

Montague leaned back in the taxicab and, enjoying that sense of contentment almost invariably engendered by a smooth-running vehicle, allowed his mind to browse in the meadows of memory.

It was a process which gave him considerable pleasure, for he was a man who respected his own accomplishments—though given to satirical comment on those of others. Satisfaction with his past had bred in him a contentment with the present…. And he never doubted the future; for was not to-morrow merely to-day carried on?

There were many reasons tending towards his peace of mind. One: that he was twenty-eight years of age. At such a period in a man's life he meets older men on a footing of equality, and younger men with patronage. Women of all ages admire him, and their husbands ask him to lunch at their clubs. There is no age more gratifying to the vanity.

The man of twenty-eight is an Ambassador of Youth meeting the Plenipotentiaries of Age as an equal.

Unfortunately for Dennis Montague, he allowed his own excellent opinion of himself to deepen with the admiration of others until it completely outstripped all rivals. At twenty-six he had his first great love affair—with himself. At twenty-eight it had ripened into a sort of reverence. Occasionally he flirted with women, but such incidents were mere inconstancies, peccadillos, which never seriously threatened his own overwhelming affaire d'amour.

Born in Ottawa, Dennis was the son of an ambitious mother and a high-placed Government official. Educated for the law, he had applied a dexterous intellect to that noble and musty study, and had succeeded in having himself called to the Bar when he was twenty-three. Up to that time he had known no other civilization than that found in the capital of his native land, where a peer of the realm, graciously appointed by the Imperial Government to act as interpreter between the Mother Country and the Dominion of Canada, regularly spends his appointed term at the Government House, thereby stimulating Ottawa's social activities to fever-heat. It even produces a philosophy of its own among the capital's tuft-hunters. For, even if this governor-general doesn't ask us to dinner, there's always a chance that the next one will.

Montague became a noted figure in Ottawa's younger social set, and, though he expressed contempt for all such things, found a certain gratification in seeing his name appear constantly in the social columns of the city's press. It was a soothing sensation to read the chronicle of his adolescent activities…. Few people can resist a glow of pleasure on seeing in the morning paper that they were where they were the previous evening.

Even in the remotest rural districts of America the weekly journal records that "Hank Wilson went over to Hiram Johnston's farm at Hen's Creek to see his new barn. Hiram Johnston is one of the most enterprising farmers that we got."

But—there is something solid about that barn.

After the legal profession had opened its portals to Montague he moved to Toronto, accepting a junior partnership in a firm of some standing. To his amazement, he found that in Toronto the entrée into the best circles—and he could not exist in any other—was more difficult than in Ottawa. Though both cities had that reverence for wealth which is universal, Toronto's large population made a sudden and successful début far from easy. There were so many sets—those who yachted, danced, and golfed; those who danced and golfed; and those who merely golfed. Montague decided that the last class was too fatiguing.

Then there were those extraordinary people who practiced the arts in an amiable way. There is probably no city in the world where there exists more comfortable talent than in Toronto. For a time music was the occupation of musicians, but society embraced it, to the benefit of them both, with the result that musical homes abound.

This worried Montague. The younger set in Ottawa knew no such phenomena.

Looking farther afield, he next caught a glimpse of the University family, an after-growth of the larger life of Toronto 'Varsity. But he avoided that. His mind was dexterous, but needed lesser minds beside it to give it the sparkle of contrast.

In desperation he turned to the purely nouveaux riches, only to find that they had made entangling alliances with all the other fraternities.

There was only one well untapped—the Canadian Militia; but his mind rejected that at once. He had always agreed with Disraeli that soldiering was fit only for fools in peace-time and for barbarians in times of war.

He joined the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.

His dinner-parties on the verandas of that beautiful place caused him to be noticed. A friend of his introduced him to one of the society reporters. He invited her to a dinner, and sent her home in a limousine.

Toronto wavered. He was certainly good-looking, and had not the "C'est entendu" column of one of the largest dailies recorded that "Mr. Dennis Montague's dinner-parties at the Yacht Club have a——" followed by several French words that were most impressive?

With the genius of a great general, he saw that the gates were unlocked. Now for some stroke to thrust them open! For two months he cogitated, and then one day it came to him with a flash, as ideas occasionally present themselves to authors.

He engaged Mr. Sylvester as a valet. Toronto society surrendered unconditionally.

It was not so much that Sylvester was a valet, but that he had a nice appreciation of effect. Sometimes, when his master was playing tennis on the lawns of the Yacht Club, the unobtrusive servant would be seen patiently waiting outside the wire-screen, with a letter, or a suit-case, or some verbal question concerning domestic economy. Montague appeared annoyed and raised his salary.

But triumph is satisfying only if it leads to further victories; and Dennis began to cast about for some rôle which would distinguish him from his fellows. The death of his father handed on to him a yearly income which made his position secure; but he was not satisfied. It was then that he learned to scoff.

It was an experiment at first, but an immediately successful one. His brain, always keen and linked to a facile vocabulary, became focused on the unlovely task of ridiculing life; and as he was ever careful not to satirize the set with whom he was dining, his popularity became tremendous. By a process of catalogue culture he was able to talk on a variety of subjects; his method being that if one heard the waltz from La Bohème, one was entitled to discuss Puccini. One of Brangwyn's earlier efforts in a friend's house was sufficient basis for him to pose as a judge of etchings. He read part of one book by a myriad of writers, then discarding their works, held forth on the authors themselves.

With young men of observant and creative minds there are two paths which, early in life's journey, offer puzzling deviation. To follow one (and to youth it seems the less attractive), a man must bend his faculties to the discovering and the interpreting of the beauty of life; the other leads to the annihilation of everything that is genuine and that can be used as a target for cynicism. Montague chose the second path, and spared nothing but himself.

Even when the war gripped the city, and one by one the little gods of puny social life crashed impotently to destruction, he continued his glittering way unperturbed. The war was young, and the 1st Canadian Division was merely holding the line somewhere near a place called Ypres…. The market for superficiality was still brisk.

The taxi came to a stop outside a lovely home in Chestnut Park, and, paying the driver, Montague mounted the steps and rang the bell.

"I wonder," he mused, "who the deuce I shall have as a dinner partner?"

III

After his usual apologies for tardiness, Montague led Mrs. Le Roy in to dinner, and like the seasoned campaigner he had become, glanced at the guests for conversational adversaries. His host and hostess were noisy and given to platitudes; there was a soft-voiced American from the South who seemed only anxious to be attentive and courteous to the woman next him; on the other side there was a young woman who was so consistently effusive that she was the most invited-out guest in Toronto—but never had a love affair; beside her was a young subaltern in an obviously new uniform. Montague had a vague idea that he had seen that well-groomed uninspired face in some bank. And he was right. Less than six months back the bank manager had written to the General Office about this youth—"He's a decent enough fellow, but lacking in initiative."

Just beyond the subaltern Montague saw the finely chiseled features of Vera Dalton, and for some reason unknown to himself his color mounted as their eyes met. He had known her in Ottawa, though she had steadfastly avoided his friends, and later, when her parents had come to Toronto, he had seen her at odd intervals. He liked to think of her as an old friend, though there was something about her that made his flippancy difficult in her presence; but beyond their occasional meetings at certain houses, neither one had made any attempt to develop the friendship.

She was fair without being blond, and avoiding the riotous climax of color so tempting to fair women, she dressed in subtle shades, with colors suggested rather than displayed. Her face had a poise and a composure that had nothing in common with placidity; and she was feminine without being helpless or making a constant sex appeal. She had always interested Montague, and even though their conversations had consisted of neatly worded nothings, her memory had a habit of lingering with him in a way that disturbed his self-admiration. Two things he felt about her—one, that she disliked him; the other, that he held some power over her.

He removed his eyes from hers, and, glancing for a moment at the remaining guests, who sat like a jury with Mr. Le Roy at the end as foreman, he drained his glass and leaped into the conversational ring with a vivacious effrontery that was startling. Naturally of high spirits and easily stimulated by applause, he juggled phrase and quotation, tossed words into the air, and, as though he were a conjurer, watched them link together into ideas. He held his listeners in wonder and challenged them all on subjects ranging from New Thought to the latest scandal. Once the American held him with a witty retort, but Montague feinted with an epigram and stabbed him with a paradox. On one occasion the newly created subaltern, stirred by wine and a certain courage derived from his khaki, threw a truism into the arena in the hope that it would trip the talker, but Montague, catching it on the point of his wit, twirled it about, and hurled it at its source, laughing as the discomfited young officer retired behind the barriers of self-conscious silence.

His hearers applauded by look and word, and Mrs. Le Roy whispered to her servant to keep Montague's glass full…. She was delighted…. She had never seen him glitter so.

And Montague noted the applause, emptying his glass again and again; but it was neither wine nor the incense of flattery that had stirred his pulse to such energy…. In that glance from Vera's eyes he had read a truth. His power, whatever it was, had mastered her dislike, and he knew that in the evening before him she would bend in his arms as the bow yields to the strength of the archer.

IV

After dinner they danced. Mrs. Le Roy was not a gifted hostess, but she acted on the principle that food, wine and music—provided the food and the wine were high-class, and the music was not—would make any evening a success. Few of her guests disagreed with her; their feet and their tongues were light, and they danced and talked without self-consciousness or mental effort.

Twice Montague had danced with the girl, but it amused him to leave her each time with some mocking pleasantry, the only answer to the smoldering question of her eyes. It was nearly midnight when he led her, almost without asking, into the deserted recess of the Le Roy's conservatory, and, beckoning her to a settee, sat down beside her. With her hands clasped on her lap she gazed fixedly at the shadowy garden showing outside.

Montague looked at her, and his eyes grew bright as they noted her poise, tempered by fear of him. He leaned over and rested his hand on hers.

"Please don't," she said quietly, making no effort to withdraw her own.

"Women always say 'don't,'" he said. "I suppose they enjoy a sort of preliminary tête-à-tête with conscience before committing an indiscretion."

"But I mean it, Dennis."

"All women mean it, my dear Vera."

Her color deepened, and she tried to release her hands from his, but his grip tightened until it hurt. She made no further attempt, and he moved still closer to her.

"Please let me go," she said, keeping her eyes steadily from him.

"You are inartistic."

"But I ask you—and you are a gentleman." Something of the dislike that he had always known she felt for him crept into her voice and left a nice tinge of irony.

"I have a valet and three addresses," he said, "and only pay my tailor once a year…. In most countries that gives one the standing of a gentleman."

She bit her lip and glanced quickly at him. His pulses, already stirred by wine and the intrigue of a midnight amour, leaped into a fever at the glimpse of burning eyes and lips that slightly trembled. He placed his hand on her shoulder and drew her face towards his.

"Why," she said hesitatingly—"why do you want to kiss me?"

Montague smiled. "The eternal question, Vera. It has trapped more men into proposals than all the wiles of a generation of fond mothers."

"But you don't love me," she said, her hands pressed against the lapels of his jacket in self-defense.

"On such a night as this," he said, "who could help but love you?"

"Dennis, please let me go—I mean it—I shall call for help."

His brow contracted with a sudden frown. "You come here," he said, "at midnight—into a deserted conservatory … with me. Then, because I do what you knew from the start I would do, you suddenly decide to play 'Little Miss Prude from the Convent.'"

"I—I should not have come. I did not want to, Dennis."

His lips curved into a smile. "Then why did you?"

Her eyes pleaded with him not to prolong the scene, but he was mad with the joy of seeing this sensitive woman, who had so long kept him at a distance, caught in the meshes of his fascination, and he held her in his arms, confident of his power to sway her at his will.

"I fought against it, Dennis," she said quickly. "But—I had to come. Oh, why force me to say such a thing. Can you not see how unfair you are?"

She struggled to her feet, but he stood before her, barring the way to the door.

His breath came faster. This was a charming surrender! It had gracefulness, novelty, charm…. Only, something in her eyes warned him to come no closer.

"I have admitted, Dennis Montague," she said breathlessly, "that I came here because you fascinated me. It's true; you have always fascinated me. But I tell you that down in my heart I loathe you, detest you, for the coward that you are." Montague drew back as though fired upon by a masked battery. "In all the years I have known you," she went on furiously, as though fearing that her courage would leave her before the finish, "you have done nothing that was not selfish, mean, and cowardly—above everything else, cowardly. Look at the girls you have known——" Montague interrupted her with an impatient gesture, but she went on: "More than a dozen I could name have given you the depth and the sweetness of their first love, inspired by you, called forth by you. Do you realize what a woman's heart is and what she gives with it? And you—you are too cowardly to face marriage, too cowardly to love with your own heart—too selfish to leave women's hearts alone."

Montague took a cigarette-case from his pocket. "May I smoke?" he said coolly.

"You are a coward about your profession as well," she hurried on, ignoring his interruption. "Your mother, I know, had great dreams for you. She planned, worked, sacrificed for you. Yet you are too much of a coward seriously to face competition with what you choose to call 'the little legal minds of the city.'"

"And thirdly?" he said, lighting a cigarette.

"Yes, thirdly," she said desperately, although his easy nonchalance was fast undermining her courage, "you are not in the army. Yet no one could say that Dennis Montague is not fit. I can only presume, like every one else, that you are afraid."

"And lastly?" He was still calm, although keener eyes than hers would have noticed a dark, ominous flush under his eyes.

"And, lastly," she said, unconsciously repeating his formula, "you scoff at everything that is good and pure, sneering at religion, and drawing yourself aside from your fellow-creatures as though they were loathsome. Yet I say to you, Dennis, that there is not a man in the slums whose soul isn't far, far richer than yours. It is only a coward, afraid to face the real things, who scoffs at life."

Weak from the effort she had made, her voice subsided into silence and a cold sweat broke out on her brow and the palms of her hands.

"Will you smoke, Vera?"

"No, thanks," she answered faintly.

"Do. It would soothe you."

"No, I thank you." She repressed a sudden desire to fly from the conservatory. She had become suddenly afraid of the cool, smiling figure beside her.

"As far as girls are concerned," he said quietly, replacing the cigarette-case in his pocket, "just as long as they angle for us with every artifice of dress and rouge and coquetry, so long will they catch us and the consequences. As for the law, which my mother planned for me, I regret that my father left me the instincts of a gentleman, not of an attorney. I am not boring you?"

She made no reply.

"As for the army, I don't happen to be interested in the war. I disapprove of the crudeness of our Canadian civilization. I disapprove of England's lack of the artistic. I disapprove of German militarism, Scotch bagpipes, Swiss cheese, Chinese laundries, and American politics. Why should I fight for one when I disapprove of them all? As for my fellow-man, I shun the ordinary man of the streets because he does not think, read, or bathe often enough. I am not hostile to him; I merely ignore him. I am not a coward at all, my dear Vera; I am merely an artist among artisans."

He bowed gracefully. "Let us return to the dancing," he said.

With a frightened, inquiring glance, she took his arm, and without a word they left the conservatory. At the door of the ballroom they paused, and she laid a timid hand on his arm. It will ever be a mystery to men how women can love and despise the same object.

"Dennis," she said, "will you try to forget what I have said?" Her courage had gone, fled before his coolness and the fascination he held for her, though she had striven with all her womanhood to free herself from it.

"I wish to Heaven I could," he said grimly.

V

The morning sunshine invaded the rooms of Dennis Montague with pervading cheeriness. It was nearing the end of April, and a hundred birds sang of the winter wonders of arid Africa, and of the witcheries of the Nile, where Pygmies are at war with the butterflies, and the great god Memnon raises his mighty shout to greet the dawn of day.

Oblivious to the sunshine and everything but his thoughts, Montague lay in bed, and sought to wrestle with the truth he had heard the night before. It was impossible to dismiss the thing from his mind. His brain throbbed with resentment, questioning, searching her words—striving to convince himself that her charge of cowardice was the vituperation of an unrequited love. But it was useless. He could explain her actions, dissect her motives, applaud his own pose, but he could not eliminate the feeling of personal nausea which clung to him, as though he had suddenly sickened of his whole nature.

A knock at the door interrupted the thread of his thoughts, and his valet entered with a tray of breakfast-things.

"Good morning, sir." Sylvester carefully rearranged the tray on a little table beside the bed. "It's a beautiful morning, sir. There's great news too."

"What is it?"

"Canadians 'ave saved Calais, sir—leastways they've stopped them for the time."

"They're in action, eh?"

"'Orrible, too, sir; the paper says the Germans used poison gas."

"Good God!"

"Yes, sir—the French Colonials gave way, yelling that 'ell was let loose, and the Canadians went up and 'eld the line."

Montague put down the cup of coffee untasted. "What does it say—about casualties?"

"Why, sir it looks as if some battalions was pretty well wiped out. 'Ere's the paper, sir——"

"No—no. I don't want to see it. Tell me—it says … the Canadians held against … gas?"

"Yes, sir."

"Are our Toronto chaps in it?"

"Very 'eavy, sir. It seems as if the 'Ighland Brigade got it the worst."

Montague sank back on the pillow, his face grim and pallid.

"Come along, sir; 'ere's your breakfast."

His master gazed at the ceiling. "Sylvester," he said listlessly, "for a long time you have ministered to my body. What can you do for a soul that is starving?"

The valet beamed reassuringly. A large and varied experience as a servant to young gentlemen had inured him to morning-after repentances.

"That's all right, sir," he said, rubbing his hands genially. "A bromo-seltzer will fix you up. 'Ello, sir!" The sound of a military band drew him to the window. "It's one of the new battalions—blooming near a thousand of them. Seems like 'ome, it does, when the Guards used to do London in all their swankin' regimentals."

A battalion swung past in steady rhythmical tread to the stirring strains of the Welsh hymn of freedom, "Men of Harlech"—and there was a youthful vigorousness about the men, a suggestion of unconquerable manhood…. And on every man's face there was written pride and determination. For their comrades had been tried at Ypres…. They had held the line…. And, by the living God, the Hun would pay for that foul gas given to the wind to carry against defenseless men.

The last ranks of the battalion passed, and the music ceased as suddenly as it had come. The birds resumed their chorus, and William Sylvester his imperturbable mask of deference. Languidly Montague rose from his bed and lit a cigarette.

"Our civilization," he said quietly, "need not pride itself on raising those men. Men have always been brave since the beginning of time. The terrible failure of our age is that it has produced men like me—a coward."

Mr. Sylvester scratched his head. "Lord bless me, sir!" he ventured, "you're not a coward. Why, look at the jump you took at last year's horse show."

Montague turned on him with a vehemence that the valet had never before seen in his master. "I tell you I am a coward," he said fiercely. "Don't I know that my place is with these men? In that battalion that passed there are married men with families, there are only sons of widows, there are brothers, sweethearts. Who is there to care if I go? My death would not cause a single tear; and yet I stay—not that I am afraid of bullets or death, but because I know that I should have to sleep beside men who are filthy, unclean, and that I should grow filthy too. I abhor it. I detest it. Yet I stand aside and let others go."

"You—you are a gentleman, sir."

"A gentleman!" Montague laughed raspingly. "My own definition last night was 'a man with a valet and three addresses.' What a fool I was! No, I am not a gentleman. I have never been one. The greatest gentleman of all time was a carpenter. That is the truth I have to burn into my soul."

He sank into a chair, and shadows of fatigue marred his face. "Last night, Sylvester," he said slowly, "I lay awake for hours, and sometimes in the awful darkness that surrounds one when sleep refuses to come, things seem clearer and more cruel than in daylight. Last night I saw myself for the first time…. I do not say I shall change…. It is too late, I think…."

An hour later he left his flat, fully dressed, and strolled into the sun-lit streets. A newsboy dashed past, screaming in strident tones, "All night fighting—Canadian Line still holding;" and then, apparently feeling the announcement needed identification, he shrieked, "All about that great big European War."

Montague heard his name spoken. It was the ex-bank clerk, the young subaltern with the uninspired face.

"Good-bye," he said rather shyly.

"Where are you going?"

"Marching orders," said the other. "We leave here to-morrow. By jove, we've got something to fight for now!"

Montague murmured his best wishes and moved on, but the words that kept running through his brain were those of the boy's manager who had written "A decent enough fellow, but lacking in initiative."

VI

His walk, unplanned as it was, drew him towards the center of the city. He mechanically avoided the streets that were crowded, and, like a bit of flotsam on the ocean's surface, was guided and buffeted until, turning down a quiet side-street, he emerged upon the corner of a huge stone building. He glanced up, to realize that it was the Armories and was about to change his course when a recruiting sergeant, noticing his hesitation, stepped up to him.

"Beg pardon," he said, "but was you lookin' to sign up?"

"Sign up?" Montague repeated the words automatically.

"Sure—sign up with the Brindle's Battalion."

"The Brindle's Battalion?"

"Come off that parrot stuff," growled Sergeant Saunders.

Montague shook himself together. "I beg your pardon," he said stiffly.

The sergeant shuffled uneasily. "Say, don't be so dashed polite," he said, not ill-naturedly. "I'm here to get recruits. We're a tough bunch; we're a rough bunch; but we're men. Our boys ain't strong on polish or eddication, and they're no boozeless, non-smoking crowd; but they're straight, and they're game, and they're men."

"They're men," repeated Montague, dazed by a dizziness that seemed to wrap himself and the sergeant in an enveloping mist.

"That's what I said," reiterated Sergeant Saunders, mentally noting that he would make Montague drop his sing-song if he ever got the opportunity. "What do you say, old scout?"

Montague glanced up. "Will you take me?" he said.

"Will we take you?" A broad, brown hand grasped Montague's arm, and he found himself being led into a room in the Armories, where he discovered that his full name was Dennis Oliver Montague, that he was twenty-eight years of age, that he was an Anglican, and that his Uncle Charles was his next of kin. He further found that he was the property of His Majesty King George the Fifth for the duration of the war and six months after. "So 'elp me; and shove 'im in to the medico.—Glad you signed up, my lad; you'll never regret it. We've got a man's job for you, and—close that bleeding door, Nokes.—All right.—Next!"

With whirlwind rapidity Dennis stripped for the doctor, who pronounced him an excellent example of cannon-fodder; and, still dazed, he put on his clothes and emerged into the open air, a red band about his arm proclaiming to the world that he was now Private D. O. Montague, of the Brindle's Battalion, C.E.F. He gasped, shrugged his shoulders, then went home.

VII

Sergeant Skimps surveyed the squad of recruits with the eye of a man who had seen recruits for twenty years and was impervious to any emotion on the subject.

"You're soldiers now," he began, his dialect strongly reminiscent of Bow Bells; "you're in the service now, so, kiss me, 'Arry, get your 'air cut, all of yer. We don't go in for Paderooskies in the harmy. Then 'old yer 'eads hup and put yer chests hout has though you was somebody. You ain't, but don't go tellin' no one." (A gentle murmur greeted this sally.) "Halways respeck yer hofficers and non-commissioned hofficers, and don't go slapping the colonel on the back and hoffering 'im a cigar. You're in the harmy—that bloke at the hend, spit out that there tobacco—g'wan!—a filthy 'abit on parade, and it'll get C.B. for yer. Where do you 'ail from, hany'ow?—a nice specimen, I don't think—chewing when a sawgeant's talking to yer. Now, then, fall in—hanother 'arf-hour's drill."