Chapter VII: Act IV: Scene 4 (2)

“The one the telegram came to you about, at Sampoux, that you wanted me to explain--the one that you were talking of in the passage out here just now when you began: ‘O Auntie,’ and changed it to ‘O Gawd,’ when I collared you?”

“That’s her! I haven’t a chance with you, Doctor. _I_ didn’t know there was anything wrong with those braziers. How could I? We’re always usin’ ’em. Honest to God, I thought at first go-off he might wish to warm himself before the leaf-train. I--I didn’t know Uncle John meant to start--’ouse-keepin’.” He laughed horribly, and then the dry tears came.

Keede waited for them to pass in sobs and hiccoughs before he continued, “Why? Was Godsoe your Uncle?”

“No,” said Strangwick, his head between his hands. “Only we’d known him ever since we were born. Dad ’ad known him before that. He lived almost next street to us. Him an’ Dad an’ Ma an’--an’ the rest had always been friends. So we called him Uncle--like children do.”

“What sort of man was he?”

“One o’ _the_ best, sir. ’Pensioned Sergeant with a little money left him--quite independent--and very superior. They had a sittin’-room full o’ Indian curios that him and his wife used to let sister an’ me see when we’d been good.”

“Wasn’t he rather old to join up?”

“That made no odds to him. He joined up as Sergeant Instructor at the first go-off, an’ when the Battalion was ready he got ’imself sent along. He wangled me into ’is Platoon when I went out--early in ’Seventeen. Because Ma wanted it, I suppose.”

“I’d no notion you knew him that well,” was Keede’s comment.

“Oh, it made no odds to him. He ’ad no pets in the Platoon, but ’e’d write ’ome to Ma about me an’ all the doin’s. You see,” Strangwick stirred uneasily on the sofa, “we’d known him all our lives--lived in the next street an’ all.... An’ him well over fifty. Oh dear me! _Oh_ dear me! What a bloody mix-up things are, when one’s as young as me!” he wailed of a sudden.

But Keede held him to the point. “He wrote to your Mother about you?”

“Yes. Ma’s eyes had gone bad followin’ on air-raids. ’Blood-vessels broke behind ’em from sittin’ in cellars an’ bein’ sick. She had to ’ave ’er letters read to her by Auntie. Now I think of it, that was the only thing that you might have called anything at all----”

“Was that the Aunt that died, and that you got the wire about?” Keede drove on.

“Yes--Auntie Armine--Ma’s younger sister an’ she nearer fifty than forty. What a mix-up! An’ if I’d been asked any time about it, I’d ’ave sworn there wasn’t a single sol’tary item concernin’ her that everybody didn’t know an’ hadn’t known all along. No more conceal to her doin’s than--than so much shop-front. She’d looked after sister an’ me, when needful--hoopin’ cough an’ measles--just the same as Ma. We was in an’ out of her house like rabbits. You see, Uncle Armine is a cabinet-maker, an’ second-’and furniture, an’ we liked playin’ with the things. She ’ad no children, and when the War came, she said she was glad of it. But she never talked much of her feelin’s. She kept herself to herself, you understand.” He stared most earnestly at us to help out our understandings.

“What was she like?” Keede inquired.

“A biggish woman, an’ had been ’andsome, I believe, but, bein’ used to her, we two didn’t notice much--except, per’aps, for one thing. Ma called her ’er proper name, which was Bella; but Sis an’ me always called ’er Auntie Armine. See?”

“What for?”

“We thought it sounded more like her--like somethin’ movin’ slow, in armour.”

“Oh! And she read your letters to your mother, did she?”

“Every time the post came in she’d slip across the road from opposite an’ read ’em. An’--an’ I’ll go bail for it that that was all there was to it for as far back as _I_ remember. Was I to swing to-morrow, I’d go bail for _that!_ ’Tisn’t fair of ’em to ’ave unloaded it all on me, because--because--if the dead _do_ rise, why, what in ’ell becomes of me an’ all I’ve believed all me life? I want to know _that_! I--I----”

But Keede would not be put off. “Did the Sergeant give you away at all in his letters?” he demanded, very quietly.

“There was nothin’ to give away--we was too busy--but his letters about me were a great comfort to Ma. I’m no good at writin’. I saved it all up for my leafs. I got me fourteen days every six months an’ one over.... I was luckier than most, that way.”

“And when you came home, used you to bring ’em news about the Sergeant?” said Keede.

“I expect I must have; but I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was took up with me own affairs--naturally. Uncle John always wrote to me once each leaf, tellin’ me what was doin’ an’ what I was li’ble to expect on return, an’ Ma ’ud ’ave that read to her. Then o’ course I had to slip over to his wife an’ pass her the news. An’ then there was the young lady that I’d thought of marryin’ if I came through. We’d got as far as pricin’ things in the windows together.”

“And you didn’t marry her--after all?”

Another tremor shook the boy. “_No!_” he cried. “’Fore it ended, I knew what reel things reelly mean! I--I never dreamed such things could be!... An’ she nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt!... But there wasn’t a sign nor a hint from first to last, so ’ow _could_ I tell? Don’t you _see_ it? All she said to me after me Christmas leaf in ’18, when I come to say good-bye--all Auntie Armine said to me was: ‘You’ll be seein’ Mister Godsoe soon?’ ‘Too soon for my likings,’ I says. ‘Well then, tell ’im from me,’ she says, ‘that I expect to be through with my little trouble by the twenty-first of next month, an’ I’m dyin’ to see him as soon as possible after that date.’”

“What sort of trouble was it?” Keede turned professional at once.

“She’d ’ad a bit of a gatherin’ in ’er breast, I believe. But she never talked of ’er body much to any one.”

“_I_ see,” said Keede. “And she said to you?”

Strangwick repeated: “‘Tell Uncle John I hope to be finished of my drawback by the twenty-first, an’ I’m dying to see ’im as soon as ’e can after that date.’ An’ then she says, laughin’: ‘But you’ve a head like a sieve. I’ll write it down, an’ you can give it him when you see ’im.’ So she wrote it on a bit o’ paper an’ I kissed ’er good-bye--I was always her favourite, you see--an’ I went back to Sampoux. The thing hardly stayed in my mind at all, d’you see. But the next time I was up in the front line--I was a Runner, d’ye see--our platoon was in North Bay Trench an’ I was up with a message to the Trench Mortar there that Corporal Grant was in charge of. Followin’ on receipt of it, he borrowed a couple of men off the platoon, to slue ’er round or somethin’. I give Uncle John Auntie Armine’s paper, an’ I give Grant a fag, an’ we warmed up a bit over a brazier. Then Grant says to me: ‘I don’t like it’; an’ he jerks ’is thumb at Uncle John in the bay studyin’ Auntie’s message. Well, _you_ know, sir, you had to speak to Grant about ’is way of prophesyin’ things--after Rankine shot himself with the Very light.”

“I did,” said Keede, and he explained to me: “Grant had the Second Sight--confound him! It upset the men. I was glad when he got pipped. What happened after that, Strangwick?”

“Grant whispers to me: ‘Look, you damned Englishman. ’E’s for it.’ Uncle John was leanin’ up against the bay, an’ hummin’ that hymn I was tryin’ to tell you just now. He looked different all of a sudden--as if ’e’d got shaved. _I_ don’t know anything of these things, but I cautioned Grant as to his style of speakin’, if an officer ’ad ’eard him, an’ I went on. Passin’ Uncle John in the bay,’e nods an’ smiles, which he didn’t often, an’ he says, pocketin’ the paper: ‘This suits _me_. I’m for leaf on the twenty-first, too.’”

“He said that to you, did he?” said Keede.

“_Pre_cisely the same as passin’ the time o’ day. O’ course I returned the agreeable about hopin’ he’d get it, an’ in due course, I returned to ’Eadquarters. The thing ’ardly stayed in my mind a minute. That was the eleventh January--three days after I’d come back from leaf. You remember, sir, there wasn’t anythin’ doin’ either side round Sampoux the first part o’ the month. Jerry was gettin’ ready for his March Push, an’ as long as he kept quiet, we didn’t want to poke ’im up.”

“I remember that,” said Keede. “But what about the Sergeant?”

“I must have met him, on an’ off, I expect, goin’ up an’ down, through the ensuin’ days, but it didn’t stay in me mind. Why needed it? And on the twenty-first Jan., his name was on the leaf-paper when I went up to warn the leaf-men. I noticed _that_, o’ course. Now that very afternoon Jerry ’ad been tryin’ a new trench-mortar, an’ before our ’Eavies could out it, he’d got a stinker into a bay an’ mopped up ’alf a dozen. They were bringin’ ’em down when I went up to the supports, an’ that blocked Little Parrot, same as it always did. _You_ remember, sir?”

“Rather! And there was that big machine-gun behind the Half-House waiting for you if you got out,” said Keede.

“I remembered that too. But it was just on dark an’ the fog was comin’ off the Canal, so I hopped out of Little Parrot an’ cut across the open to where those four dead Warwicks are heaped up. But the fog turned me round, an’ the next thing I knew I was knee-over in that old ’alf-trench that runs west o’ Little Parrot into French End. I dropped into it--almost atop o’ the machine-gun platform by the side o’ the old sugar boiler an’ the two Zoo-ave skel’tons. That gave me my bearin’s, an’ so I went through French End, all up those missin’ duckboards, into Butcher’s Row where the _poy-looz_ was laid in six deep each side, an’ stuffed under the duckboards. It had froze tight, an’ the drippin’s had stopped, an’ the creakin’s had begun.”

“Did that really worry you at the time?” Keede asked.

“No,” said the boy with professional scorn. “If a Runner starts noticin’ such things he’d better chuck. In the middle of the Row, just before the old dressin’-station you referred to, sir, it come over me that somethin’ ahead on the duckboards was just like Auntie Armine, waitin’ beside the door; an’ I thought to meself ’ow truly comic it would be if she could be dumped where I was then. In ’alf a second I saw it was only the dark an’ some rags o’ gas-screen, ’angin’ on a bit of board, ’ad played me the trick. So I went on up to the supports an’ warned the leaf-men there, includin’ Uncle John. Then I went up Rake Alley to warn ’em in the front line. I didn’t hurry because I didn’t want to get there till Jerry ’ad quieted down a bit. Well, then a Company Relief dropped in--an’ the officer got the wind up over some lights on the flank, an’ tied ’em into knots, an’ I ’ad to hunt up me leaf-men all over the blinkin’ shop. What with one thing an’ another, it must ’ave been ’alf-past eight before I got back to the supports. There I run across Uncle John, scrapin’ mud off himself, havin’ shaved--quite the dandy. He asked about the Arras train, an’ I said, if Jerry was quiet, it might be ten o’clock. ‘Good!’ says ’e. ‘I’ll come with you.’ So we started back down the old trench that used to run across Halnaker, back of the support dug-outs. _You_ know, sir.”

Keede nodded.

“Then Uncle John says something to me about seein’ Ma an’ the rest of ’em in a few days, an’ had I any messages for ’em? Gawd knows what made me do it, but I told ’im to tell Auntie Armine I never expected to see anything like _her_ up in our part of the world. And while I told him I laughed. That’s the last time I _’ave_ laughed. ‘Oh--you’ve seen ’er, ’ave you?’ says he, quite natural-like. Then I told ’im about the sand-bags an’ rags in the dark, playin’ the trick. ‘Very likely,’ says he, brushin’ the mud off his puttees. By this time, we’d got to the corner where the old barricade into French End was--before they bombed it down, sir. He turns right an’ climbs across it. ‘No thanks,’ says I. ‘I’ve been there once this evenin’.’ But he wasn’t attendin’ to me. He felt behind the rubbish an’ bones just inside the barricade, an’ when he straightened up, he had a full brazier in each hand.

“‘Come on, Clem,’ he says, an’ he very rarely give me me own name. ‘You aren’t afraid, are you?’ he says. ‘It’s just as short, an’ if Jerry starts up again he won’t waste stuff here. He knows it’s abandoned.’ ‘Who’s afraid now?’ I says. ‘Me for one,’ says he. ‘I don’t want _my_ leaf spoiled at the last minute.’ Then ’e wheels round an’ speaks that bit you said come out o’ the Burial Service.”

For some reason Keede repeated it in full, slowly: “If, after the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me if the dead rise not?”

“That’s it,” said Strangwick. “So we went down French End together--everything froze up an’ quiet, except for their creakin’s. I remember thinkin’----” his eyes began to flicker.

“Don’t think. Tell what happened,” Keede ordered.

“Oh! Beg y’ pardon! He went on with his braziers, hummin’ his hymn, down Butcher’s Row. Just before we got to the old dressin’-station he stops and sets ’em down an’ says: ‘Where did you say she was, Clem? Me eyes ain’t as good as they used to be.’

“‘In ’er bed at ’ome,’ I says. ‘Come on down. It’s perishin’ cold, an’ _I’m_ not due for leaf.’

“‘Well, I am,’ ’e says. ‘_I_ am....’ An’ then--’give you me word I didn’t recognise the voice--he stretches out ’is neck a bit in a way ’e ’ad, an’ he says: ‘Why, Bella!’ ’e says. ‘Oh, Bella!’ ’e says. ‘Thank Gawd!’ ’e says. Just like that! An’ then I saw--I tell you I _saw_--Auntie Armine herself standin’ by the old dressin’-station door where first I’d thought I’d seen her. He was lookin’ at ’er an’ she was lookin’ at him. I saw it, an’ me soul turned over inside me because--because it knocked out everything I’d believed in. I ’ad nothin’ to lay ’old of, d’ye see? An’ ’e was lookin’ at ’er as though he could ’ave et ’er, an’ she was lookin’ at ’im the same way, out of ’er eyes. Then he says: ‘Why, Bella,’ ’e says, ‘this must be only the second time we’ve been alone together in all these years.’ An’ I saw ’er half hold out her arms to ’im in that perishin’ cold. An’ she nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt! You can shop me for a lunatic to-morrow, but I saw it--I _saw_ ’er answerin’ to his spoken word!... Then ’e made a snatch to unsling ’is rifle. Then ’e cuts ’is hand away saying: ‘No! Don’t tempt me, Bella. We’ve all Eternity ahead of us. An hour or two won’t make any odds.’ Then he picks up the braziers an’ goes on to the dug-out door. He’d finished with me. He pours petrol on ’em, an’ lights it with a match, an’ carries ’em inside, flarin’. All that time Auntie Armine stood with ’er arms out--an’ a look in ’er face! _I_ didn’t know such things was or could be! Then he comes out an’ says: ‘Come in, my dear’; an’ she stoops an’ goes into the dug-out with that look on her face--that look on her face! An’ then ’e shuts the door from inside an’ starts wedgin’ it up. So ’elp me Gawd, I saw an’ ’eard all these things with my own eyes an’ ears!”

He repeated his oath several times. After a long pause Keede asked him if he recalled what happened next.

“It was a bit of a mix-up, for me, from then on. I must have carried on--they told me I did, but--but I was--I felt a--a long way inside of meself, like--if you’ve ever had that feelin’. I wasn’t rightly on the spot at all. They woke me up sometime next morning, because ’e ’adn’t showed up at the train; an’ some one had seen him with me. I wasn’t ’alf cross-examined by all an’ sundry till dinner-time.

“Then, I think, I volunteered for Dearlove, who ’ad a sore toe, for a front-line message. I had to keep movin’, you see, because I hadn’t anything to hold _on_ to. Whilst up there, Grant informed me how he’d found Uncle John with the door wedged an’ sand-bags stuffed in the cracks. I hadn’t waited for that. The knockin’ when ’e wedged up was enough for me. ’Like Dad’s coffin.”

“No one told _me_ the door had been wedged,” Keede spoke severely.

“No need to black a dead man’s name, sir.”

“What made Grant go to Butcher’s Row?”

“Because he’d noticed Uncle John had been pinchin’ charcoal for a week past an’ layin’ it up behind the old barricade there. So when the ’unt began, he went that way straight as a string, an’ when he saw the door shut, he knew. He told me he picked the sand-bags out of the cracks an’ shoved ’is hand through and shifted the wedges before any one come along. It looked all right. You said yourself, sir, the door must ’ave blown to.”

“Grant knew what Godsoe meant, then?” Keede snapped.

“Grant knew Godsoe was for it; an’ nothin’ earthly could ’elp or ’inder. He told me so.”

“And then what did you do?”

“I expect I must ’ave kept on carryin’ on, till Headquarters give me that wire from Ma--about Auntie Armine dyin’.”

“When had your Aunt died?”

“On the mornin’ of the twenty-first. The mornin’ of the 21st! That tore it, d’ye see? As long as I could think, I had kep’ tellin’ myself it was like those things you lectured about at Arras when we was billeted in the cellars--the Angels of Mons, and so on. But that wire tore it.”

“Oh! Hallucinations! I remember. And that wire tore it?” said Keede.

“Yes! You see”--he half lifted himself off the sofa--“there wasn’t a single gor-dam thing left abidin’ for me to take hold of, here or hereafter. If the dead _do_ rise and I saw ’em--why--why _anything_ can ’appen. Don’t you understand?”

He was on his feet now, gesticulating stiffly.

“For I saw ’er,” he repeated. “I saw ’im an’ ’er--she dead since mornin’ time, an’ he killin’ ’imself before my livin’ eyes so’s to carry on with ’er for all Eternity--an’ she ’oldin’ out ’er arms for it! I want to know where I’m _at_! Look ’ere, you two--why stand _we_ in jeopardy every hour?”

“God knows,” said Keede to himself.

“Hadn’t we better ring for some one?” I suggested. “He’ll go off the handle in a second.”

“No he won’t. It’s the last kick-up before it takes hold. I know how the stuff works. Hul-lo.”

Strangwick, his hands behind his back and his eyes set, gave tongue in the strained, cracked voice of a boy reciting. “Not twice in the world shall the Gods do thus,” he cried again and again.

“And I’m damned if it’s goin’ to be even once for me!” he went on with sudden insane fury. “_I_ don’t care whether we _’ave_ been pricin’ things in the windows.... _Let_ ’er sue if she likes! She don’t know what reel things mean. _I_ do--I’ve ’ad occasion to notice ’em.... _No_, I tell you! I’ll ’ave ’em when I want ’em, an’ be done with ’em; but not till I see that look on a face ... that look.... I’m not takin’ any. The reel thing’s life an’ death. It _begins_ at death, d’ye see. _She_ can’t understand.... Oh, go on an’ push off to Hell, you an’ your lawyers. I’m fed up with it--fed up!”

He stopped as abruptly as he had started, and the drawn face broke back to its natural irresolute lines. Keede, holding both his hands, led him back to the sofa, where he dropped like a wet towel, took out some flamboyant robe from a press, and drew it neatly over him.

“Ye-es. _That’s_ the real thing at last,” said Keede. “Now he’s got it off his mind he’ll sleep. By the way, who introduced him?”

“Shall I go and find out?” I suggested.

“Yes; and you might ask him to come here. There’s no need for us to stand to all night.”

So I went to the Banquet which was in full swing, and was seized by an elderly, precise Brother from a South London Lodge who followed me, concerned and apologetic. Keede soon put him at his ease.

“The boy’s had trouble,” our visitor explained. “I’m most mortified he should have performed his bad turn here. I thought he’d put it be’ind him.”

“I expect talking about old days with me brought it all back,” said Keede. “It does sometimes.”

“Maybe! Maybe! But over and above that, Clem’s had post-war trouble, too.”

“Can’t he get a job? He oughtn’t to let that weigh on him, at his time of life,” said Keede cheerily.

“’Tisn’t that--he’s provided for--but”--he coughed confidentially behind his dry hand--“as a matter of fact, Worshipful Sir, he’s--he’s implicated for the present in a little breach of promise action.”

“Ah! That’s a different thing,” said Keede.

“Yes. That’s his reel trouble. No reason given, you understand. The young lady in every way suitable, an’ she’d make him a good little wife too, if I’m any judge. But he says she ain’t his ideel or something. ’No getting at what’s in young people’s minds these days, is there?”

“I’m afraid there isn’t,” said Keede. “But he’s all right now. He’ll sleep. You sit by him, and when he wakes, take him home quietly.... Oh, we’re used to men getting a little upset here. You’ve nothing to thank us for, Brother--Brother----”

“Armine,” said the old gentleman. “He’s my nephew by marriage.”

“That’s all that’s wanted!” said Keede.

Brother Armine looked a little puzzled. Keede hastened to explain. “As I was saying, all he wants now is to be kept quiet till he wakes.”

GOW’S WATCH