Chapter IX: Act V: Scene 3 (2)

“Ye-es,” Pole said suddenly. “It’s the eternal mystery of personality. ‘God before Whom ever lie bare----’ Some people can occlude their personality like turning off a tap. I beg your pardon. Carry on!”

“Granted,” said Bevin. “I think I catch your drift. I used to think I was a student of human nature before I joined up.”

“What was your job--before?” Orton asked.

“Oh, I was _the_ young blood of the village. Goal-keeper in our soccer team, secretary of the local cricket and rifle--oh, lor’!--clubs. Yes, an’ village theatricals. My father was the chemist in the village. _How_ I did talk! _What_ I did know!” He beamed upon us all.

“_I_ don’t mind hearing you talk,” said Orton, lying back in his chair. “You’re a little different from some of ’em. What happened to this dam’ drover of yours?”

“He was with our push for the rest of the war--an’ I don’t think he ever sprung a dozen words at one time. With his upbringing, you see, there wasn’t any subject that any man knew about he _could_ open up on. He kept quiet, and mixed with his backgrounds. If there was a lump of dirt, or a hole in the ground, or what was--was left after anythin’ had happened, it would be Hickmot. That was all he wanted to be.”

“A camouflager?” Orton suggested.

“You have it! He was the complete camouflager all through. That’s him to a dot. Look here! He hadn’t even a nickname in his platoon! And then a friend of mine from our village, of the name of Vigors, came out with a draft. Bert Vigors. As a matter of fact, I was engaged to his sister. And Bert hadn’t been with us a week before they called him ‘The Grief.’ His father was an oldish man, a market-gardener--high-class vegetables, bit o’ glass, an’--an’ all the rest of it. Do you know anything about that particular business?”

“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Pole, “except that glass is expensive, and one’s man always sells the cut flowers.”

“Then you _do_ know something about it. It is. Bert was the old man’s only son, an’--_I_ don’t blame him--he’d done his damnedest to get exempted--for the sake of the business, you understand. But he caught it all right. The tribunal wasn’t takin’ any the day he went up. Bert was for it, with a few remarks from the patriotic old was-sers on the bench. Our county paper had ’em all.”

“That’s the thing that made one really want the Hun in England for a week or two,” said Pole.

“_Mwor osee!_ The same tribunal, havin’ copped Bert, gave unconditional exemption to the opposition shop--a man called Margetts, in the market-garden business, which he’d established _since_ the war, with his two sons who, every one in the village knew, had been pushed into the business to save their damned hides. But Margetts had a good lawyer to advise him. The whole case was frank and above-board to a degree--our county paper had it all in too. Agricultural produce--vital necessity; the plough mightier than the sword; an’ those ducks on the bench, who had turned down Bert, noddin’ and smilin’ at Margetts all full of his cabbage and green peas. What happened? The usual. Vigors’ business--he’s sixty-eight, with asthma--goes smash, and Margetts and Co. double theirs. So, then, that was Bert’s grievance, an’ he joined us full of it. That’s why they called him ‘The Grief.’ Knowing the facts, I was with him; but being his sergeant, I had to check him, because grievances are catchin’, and three or four men with ’em make Companies--er--sticky. Luckily Bert wasn’t handy with his pen. He had to cork up his grievance mostly till he came across Hickmot, an’ Gord in Heaven knows what brought those two together. No! _As_ y’were. I’m wrong about God! I always am. It was Sheep. Bert knew’s much about sheep as I do--an’ that’s Canterbury lamb--but he’d let Hickmot talk about ’em for hours, in return for Hickmot listenin’ to his grievance. Hickmot ’ud talk sheep--the one created thing he’d ever open up on--an’ Bert ’ud talk his grievance while they was waiting to go over the top. I’ve heard ’em again an’ again, and, of course, I encouraged ’em. Now, look here! Hickmot hadn’t seen an English house or a field or a road or--or anything any civ’lised man is used to in all his life! Sheep an’ blacks! Market-gardens an’ glass an’ exemption-tribunals! An’ the men’s teeth chatterin’ behind their masks between rum-issue an’ zero. Oh, there was fun in Hell those days, wasn’t there, boys?”

“Sure! Oh, sure!” Orton chuckled, and Pole echoed him.

“Look here! When we were lying up somewhere among those forsaken chicken-camps back o’ Doullens, I found Hickmot making mud-pies in a farmyard an’ Bert lookin’ on. He’d made a model of our village according to Bert’s description of it. He’d preserved it in his head through all those weeks an’ weeks o’ Bert’s yap; an’ he’d coughed it all up--Margetts’ house and gardens, old Mr. Vigors’ ditto; both pubs; my father’s shop, everything that he’d been told by Bert done out to scale in mud, with bits o’ brick and stick. Haig ought to have seen it; but as his sergeant I had to check him for misusin’ his winkle-pin on dirt. ’Come to think of it, a man who runs about uninhabited countries, with sheep, for a livin’ must have gifts for mappin’ and scalin’ things somehow or other, or he’d be dead. _I_ never saw anything like it--_all_ out o’ what Bert had told him by word of mouth. An’ the next time we went up the line Hickmot copped it in the leg just in front of me.”

“Finish?” I asked.

“Oh, no. Only beginnin’. That was in December, somethin’ or other, ’16. In Jan’ry Vigors copped it for keeps. I buried him--snowin’ blind it was--an’ before we’d got him under the whole show was crumped. I wanted to bury him again just to spite ’em (I’m a spiteful man by nature), but the party wasn’t takin’ any more--even if they could have found it. But, you see, we had buried him all right, which is what they want at home, and I wrote the usual trimmin’s about the chaplain an’ the full service, an’ what his captain had said about Bert bein’ recommended for a pip, an’ the irreparable loss an’ so on. That was in Jan’ry ’17. In Feb’ry some time or other I got saved. My speciality had come to be bombin’s and night-doings. Very pleasant for a young free man, but--there’s a limit to what you can stand. It takes all men differently. Noise was what started me, at last. I’d got just up to the edge--wonderin’ when I’d crack an’ how many of our men I’d do in if it came on me while we were busy. I had that nice taste in the mouth and the nice temperature they call trench-fever, an’--I had to feel inside my head for the meanin’ of every order I gave or was responsible for executin’. _You_ know!”

“We do. Go on!” said Pole in a tone that made Orton look at him.

“So, you see, the bettin’ was even on my drawin’ a V. C. or getting Number Umpty rest-camp or--a firing party before breakfast. But Gord saved me. (I made friends with Him the last two years of the war. The others went off too quick.) They wanted a bombin’-instructor for the training-battalion at home, an’ He put it into their silly hearts to indent for me. It took ’em five minutes to make me understand I was saved. Then I vomited, an’ then I cried. _You_ know!” The fat face of Bevin had changed and grown drawn, even as he spoke; and his hands tugged as though to tighten an imaginary belt.

“I was never keen on bombin’ myself,” said Pole. “But bombin’-instruction’s murder!”

“I don’t deny it’s a shade risky, specially when they take the pin out an’ start shakin’ it, same as the Chinks used to do in the woods at Beauty, when they were cuttin’ ’em down. But you live like a home defence Brigadier, besides week-end leaf. As a matter o’ fact, I married Bert’s sister soon’s I could after I got the billet, an’ I used to lie in our bed thinkin’ of the old crowd on the Somme an’--feelin’ what a swine I was. Of course, I earned two V. C.’s a week behind the traverse in the exercise of my ord’nary duties, but that isn’t the same thing. An’ yet I’d only joined up because--because I couldn’t dam’ well help it.”

“An’ what about your Queenslander?” the Australian asked.

“_Too de sweet! Pronto!_ We got a letter in May from a Brighton hospital matron, sayin’ that one of the name of Hickmer was anxious for news o’ me, previous to proceedin’ to Roehampton for initiation into his new leg. Of course, we applied for him by return. Bert had written about him to his sister--my missus--every time he wrote at all; an’ any pal o’ Bert’s--well, _you_ know what the ladies are like. I warned her about his peculiarities. She wouldn’t believe till she saw him. He was just the same. You’d ha’ thought he’d show up in England like a fresh stiff on snow--but you never noticed him. You never heard him; and if he didn’t want to be seen he wasn’t there. He just joined up with his background. I knew he could do that with men; but how in Hell, seein’ how curious women are, he could camouflage with the ladies--my wife an’ my mother to wit--beats _me_! He’d feed the chickens for us; he’d stand on his one leg--it was off above the knee--and saw wood for us. He’d run--I mean he’d hop--errands for Mrs. B. or mother; our dog worshipped him from the start, though I never saw him throw a word to him; and--_yet_ he didn’t take any place anywhere. You’ve seen a rabbit--you’ve seen a pheasant--hidin’ in a ditch? ’Put your hand on it sometimes before it moved, haven’t you? Well, that was Hickmot--with two women in the house crazy to find out--find out--anything about him that made him human. _You_ know what women are! He stayed with us a fortnight. He left us on a Sat’day to go to Roehampton to try his leg. On Friday he came over to the bombin’ ground--not sayin’ anything, _as_ usual--to watch me instruct my Suicide Club, which was only half an hour’s run by rail from our village. He had his overcoat on, an’ as soon as he reached the place it was _mafeesh_ with him, as usual. Rabbit-trick again! You never noticed him. He sat in the bomb-proof behind the pit where the duds accumulate till it’s time to explode ’em. Naturally, that’s strictly forbidden to the public. So he went there, an’ no one noticed him. When he’d had enough of watchin’, he hopped off home to feed our chickens for the last time.”

“Then how did _you_ know all about it?” Orton said.

“Because I saw him come into the place just as I was goin’ down into the trench. Then he slipped my memory till my train went back. But it would have made no difference what our arrangements were. If Hickmer didn’t choose to be noticed, he _wasn’t_ noticed. Just for curiosity’s sake I asked some o’ the Staff Sergeants whether they’d seen him on the ground. Not one--not one single one had--or could tell me what he was like. An’ Sat’day noon he went off to Roehampton. We saw him into the train ourselves, with the lunch Mrs. B. had put up for him--a one-legged man an’ his crutch, in regulation blue, khaki warm an’ kit-bag. Takin’ everything together, per’aps he’d spoken as many as twenty times in the thirteen days he’d been with us. I’m givin’ it you straight as it happened. An’ now--look here!--this is what _did_ happen.

“Between two and three that Sunday morning--dark an’ blowin’ from the north--I was woke up by an explosion an’ people shoutin’ ‘Raid!’ The first bang fetched ’em out like worms after rain. There was another some minutes afterwards, an’ me an’ a Sergeant in the Shropshires on leaf told ’em all to take cover. They did. There was a devil of a long wait an’ there was a third pop. Everybody, includin’ me, heard aeroplanes. I didn’t notice till afterwards that----”

Bevin paused.

“What?” said Orton.

“Oh, I noticed a heap of things afterwards. What we noticed first--the Shropshire Sergeant an’ me--was a rick well alight back o’ Margetts’ house, an’, with that north wind, blowin’ straight on to another rick o’ Margetts’. It went up all of a whoosh. The next thing we saw by the light of it was Margetts’ house with a bomb-hole in the roof and the rafters leanin’ sideways like--like they always lean on such occasions. So we ran there, and the first thing we met was Margetts in his split-tailed nightie callin’ on his mother an’ damnin’ his wife. A man always does that when he’s cross. Have you noticed? Mrs. Margetts was in her nightie too, remindin’ Margetts that he hadn’t completed his rick insurance. An’ that’s a woman’s lovin’ care all over. Behind them was their eldest son, in trousers an’ slippers, nursin’ his arm an’ callin’ for the doctor. They went through us howlin’ like _flammenwerfer_ casualties--right up the street to the surgery.

“Well, there wasn’t anything to do except let the show burn out. We hadn’t any means of extinguishing conflagrations. Some of ’em fiddled with buckets, an’ some of ’em tried to get out some o’ Margetts’ sticks, but his younger son kept shoutin’, ‘Don’t! Don’t! It’ll be stole! It’ll be stole!’ So it burned instead, till the roof came down top of all--a little, cheap, dirty villa. In _reel_ life one whizbang would have shifted it; but in our civil village it looked that damned important and particular you wouldn’t believe. We couldn’t get round to Margetts’ stable because of the two ricks alight, but we found some one had opened the door early an’ the horses was in Margetts’ new vegetable piece down the hill which he’d hired off old Vigors to extend his business with. I love the way a horse always looks after his own belly--same as a Gunner. They went to grazin’ down the carrots and onions till young Margetts ran to turn ’em out, an’ then they got in among the glass frames an’ cut themselves. Oh, we had a regular Russian night of it, everybody givin’ advice an’ fallin’ over each other. When it got light we saw the damage. House, two ricks an’ stable _mafeesh_; the big glasshouse with every pane smashed and the furnace-end of it blown clean out. All the horses an’ about fifteen head o’ cattle--butcher’s stores from the next field--feeding in the new vegetable piece. It was a fair clean-up from end to end--house, furniture, fittin’s, plant, an’ all the early crops.”

“Was there any other damage in the village?” I asked.

“I’m coming to it--the curious part--but I wouldn’t call it damage. I was renting a field then for my chickens off the Merecroft Estate. It’s accommodation-land, an’ there was a wet ditch at the bottom that I had wanted for ever so long to dam up to make a swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks.”

“Ah!” said Orton, half turning in his chair, all in one piece.

“S’pose I was allowed? Not me. Their Agent came down on me for tamperin’ with the Estate’s drainage arrangements. An’ all I wanted was to bring the bank down where the ditch narrows--a couple of cartloads of dirt would have held the water back for half a dozen yards--not more than that, an’ I could have made a little spillway over the top with three boards--same as in trenches. Well, the first bomb--the one that woke me up--had done my work for me better than I could. It had dropped just under the hollow of the bank an’ brought it all down in a fair landslide. I’d got my swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks, an’ I didn’t see how the Estate could kick at the Act o’ God, d’you?”

“And Hickmot?” said Orton, grinning.

“Hold on! There was a Parish Council meetin’ to demand reprisals, of course, an’ there was the policeman an’ me pokin’ about among the ruins till the Explosives Expert came down in his motor car at three P.M. Monday, an’ he meets all the Margetts off their rockers, howlin’ in the surgery, an’ he sees my swim-hole fillin’ up to the brim.”

“What did he say?” Pole inquired.

“He sized it up at once. (He had to get back to dine in town that evening.) He said all the evidence proved that it was a lucky shot on the part of one isolated Hun ’plane goin’ home, an’ we weren’t to take it to heart. I don’t know that anybody but the Margetts did. He said they must have used incendiary bombs of a new type--which he’d suspected for a long time. I don’t think the man was any worse than God intended him to be. I don’t _reelly_. But the Shropshire Sergeant said----”

“And what did _you_ think?” I interrupted.

“I didn’t think. I knew by then. I’m not a Sherlock Holmes; but havin’ chucked ’em an’ chucked ’em back and kicked ’em out of the light an’ slept with ’em for two years, an’ makin’ my livin’ out of them at that time, I could recognise the fuse of a Mills bomb when I found it. I found all three of ’em. ’Curious about that second in Margetts’ glasshouse. Hickmot mus’ have raked the ashes out of the furnace, popped it in, an’ shut the furnace door. It operated all right. Not one livin’ pane left in the putty, and all the brickwork spread round the yard in streaks. Just like that St. Firmin village we were talking about.”

“But how d’you account for young what’s-his-name gettin’ his arm broken?” said Pole.

“Crutch!” said Bevin. “If you or me had taken on that night’s doin’s, with one leg, we’d have hopped and sweated from one flank to another an’ been caught half-way between. Hickmot didn’t. I’m as sure as I’m sittin’ here that he did his doings quiet and comfortable at his full height--he was over six feet--and no one noticed him. This is the way _I_ see it. He fixed the swim-hole for Mrs. Bevin’s ducks first. We used to talk over our own affairs in front of him, of course, and he knew just what she wanted in the way of a pond. So he went and made it at his leisure. Then he prob’ly went over to Margetts’ and lit the first rick, knowin’ that the wind ’ud do the rest. When young Margetts saw the light of it an’ came out to look, Hickmot would have taken post at the back-door an’ dropped the young swine with his crutch, same as we used to drop Huns comin’ out of a dug-out. _You_ know how they blink at the light? Then he must have walked off an’ opened Margetts’ stable door to save the horses. They’d be more to him than any man’s life. Then he prob’ly chucked one bomb on top o’ Margetts’ roof, havin’ seen that the first rick had caught the second and that the whole house was bound to go. D’you get me?”

“Then why did he waste his bomb on the house?” said Orton. His glass eye seemed as triumphant as his real one.

“For camouflage, of course. He was camouflagin’ an air-raid. When the Margetts piled out of their place into the street, he prob’ly attended to the glasshouse, because that would be Margetts’ chief means o’ business. After that--I think so, because otherwise I don’t see where all those extra cattle came from that we found in the vegetable piece--he must have walked off an’ rounded up all the butcher’s beasts in the next medder, an’ driven ’em there to help the horses. And when he’d finished everything he’d set out to do, I’ll lay my life an’ kit he curled up like a bloomin’ wombat not fifty yards away from the whole flamin’ show--an’ let us run round him. An’ when he’d had his sleep out, he went up to Roehampton Monday mornin’ by some train that he’d decided upon in his own mind weeks an’ weeks before.”

“Did he know all the trains then?” said Pole.

“Ask me another. I only know that if he wanted to get from any place to another without bein’ noticed, he did it.”

“And the bombs? He got ’em from you, of course,” Pole went on.

“What do _you_ think? He was an hour in the park watchin’ me instruct, sittin’, as I remember, in the bomb-proof by the dud-hole, in his overcoat. He got ’em all right. He took neither more nor less than he wanted; an’ I’ve told you what he did with ’em--one--two--_an’_ three.”

“’Ever see him afterwards?” said Orton.

“Yes. ’Saw him at Brighton when I went down there with the missus, not a month after he’d been broken in to his Roehampton leg. You know how the boys used to sit all along Brighton front in their blues, an’ jump every time the coal was bein’ delivered to the hotels behind them? I barged into him opposite the Old Ship, an’ I told him about our air-raid. I told him how Margetts had gone off his rocker an’ walked about starin’ at the sky an’ holdin’ reprisal-meetin’s all by himself; an’ how old Mr. Vigors had bought in what he’d left--tho’ of course I said what _was_ left--o’ Margetts’ business; an’ how well my swim-hole for the ducks was doin’. It didn’t interest him. He didn’t want to come over to stay with us any more, either. We were a long, long way back in his past. You could see that. He wanted to get back with his new leg, to his own God-forsaken sheep-walk an’ his black fellers in Queensland. I expect he’s done it now, an’ no one has noticed him. But, by Gord! He _did_ leak a little at the end. He did that much! When we was waitin’ for the tram to the station, I said how grateful I was to Fritz for moppin’ up Margetts an’ makin’ our swim-hole all in one night. Mrs. B. seconded the motion. We couldn’t have done less. Well, then Hickmot said, speakin’ in his queer way, as if English words were all new to him: ‘Ah, go on an’ bail up in Hell,’ he says. ‘Bert was my friend.’ That was all. I’ve given it you just as it happened, word for word. _I_’d hate to have an Australian have it in for _me_ for anything I’d done to _his_ friend. Mark _you_, I don’t say there’s anything _wrong_ with you Australians, Brother Orton. I only say they ain’t like us or any one else that I know.”

“Well, do you want us to be?” said Orton.

“No, no. It takes all sorts to make a world, as the sayin’ is. And now”--Bevin pulled out his gold watch--“if I don’t make a move of it I’ll miss my last train.”

“Let her go,” said Orton serenely. “You’ve done some lorry-hoppin’ in your time, haven’t you--Sergeant?”

“When I was two an’ a half stone lighter, Digger,” Bevin smiled in reply.

“Well, I’ll run you out home before sun-up. I’m a haulage-contractor now--London and Oxford. There’s an empty of mine ordered to Oxford. We can go round by your place as easy as not. She’s lyin’ out Vauxhall-way.”

“My Gord! An’ see the sun rise again! ’Haven’t seen him since I can’t remember when,” said Bevin, chuckling. “Oh, there was fun sometimes in Hell, wasn’t there, Australia?”; and again his hands went down to tighten the belt that was missing.

WE AND THEY

Father, Mother, and Me
Sister and Auntie say
All the people like us are We,
And every one else is They.
And They live over the sea,
While We live over the way,
But--would you believe it?--They look upon We
As only a sort of They!

We eat pork and beef
With cow-horn-handled knives.
They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,
Are horrified out of Their lives;
And They who live up a tree,
And feast on grubs and clay,
(Isn’t it scandalous?) look upon We
As a simply disgusting They!

We shoot birds with a gun.
They stick lions with spears.
Their full-dress is un--.
We dress up to Our ears.
They like Their friends for tea.
We like Our friends to stay;
And, after all that, They look upon We
As an utterly ignorant They!

We eat kitcheny food.
We have doors that latch.
They drink milk or blood,
Under an open thatch.
We have Doctors to fee.
They have Wizards to pay.
And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We
As a quite impossible They!

All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!) looking on We
As only a sort of They!

ON THE GATE

A Tale of ’16

ON THE GATE

A Tale of ’16

If the Order Above be but the reflection of the Order Below (as that Ancient affirms, who had some knowledge of the Order) it is not outside the Order of Things that there should have been confusion also in the Department of Death. The world’s steadily falling death-rate, the rising proportion of scientifically prolonged fatal illnesses, which allowed months of warning to all concerned, had weakened initiative throughout the Necrological Departments. When the War came, these were as unprepared as civilised mankind; and, like mankind, they improvised and recriminated in the face of Heaven.

As Death himself observed to St. Peter who had just come off The Gate for a rest: “One does the best one can with the means at one’s disposal but----”

“_I_ know,” said the good Saint sympathetically. “Even with what help I can muster, I’m on The Gate twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four.”

“Do you find your volunteer staff any real use?” Death went on. “Isn’t it easier to do the work oneself than----”

“One must guard against that point of view,” St. Peter returned, “but I know what you mean. Office officialises the best of us.... What is it _now_?” He turned to a prim-lipped Seraph who had followed him with an expulsion-form for signature. St. Peter glanced it over. “Private R. M. Buckland,” he read, “on the charge of saying that there is no God. ’That all?”

“He says he is prepared to prove it, sir, and--according to the Rules----”

“If you will make yourself acquainted with the Rules, you’ll find they lay down that ‘the fool says in his heart, there is no God.’ That decides it; probably shell-shock. Have you tested his reflexes?”

“No, sir. He kept _on_ saying that there----”

“Pass him in at once! Tell off some one to argue with him and give him the best of the argument till St. Luke’s free. Anything else?”

“A hospital-nurse’s record, sir. She has been nursing for two years.”

“A long while,” St. Peter spoke severely. “She may very well have grown careless.”

“It’s her civilian record, sir. I judged best to refer it to you.” The Seraph handed him a vivid scarlet docket.

“The next time,” said St. Peter folding it down and writing on one corner, “that you get one of these--er--tinted forms, mark it Q.M.A. and pass bearer at once. Don’t worry over trifles.” The Seraph flashed off and returned to the clamorous Gate.

“Which Department is Q.M.A.?” said Death. St. Peter chuckled.

“It’s not a department. It’s a Ruling. ‘_Quia multum amavit._’ A most useful Ruling. I’ve stretched it to.... Now, I wonder what that child actually did die of.”

“I’ll ask,” said Death, and moved to a public telephone near by. “Give me War Check and Audit: English side: non-combatant,” he began. “Latest returns.... Surely you’ve got them posted up to date by now!... Yes! Hospital Nurse in France.... No! _Not_ ‘nature and aliases.’ I said--what--was--nature--of--illness?... Thanks.” He turned to St. Peter. “Quite normal,” he said. “Heart-failure after neglected pleurisy following overwork.”

“Good!” St. Peter rubbed his hands. “That brings her under the higher allowance--G.L.H. scale--‘Greater love hath no man--’ But _my_ people ought to have known that from the first.”

“Who is that clerk of yours?” asked Death. “He seems rather a stickler for the proprieties.”

“The usual type nowadays,” St. Peter returned. “A young Power in charge of some half-baked Universe. Never having dealt with life yet, he’s somewhat nebulous.”

Death sighed. “It’s the same with my old Departmental Heads. Nothing on earth will make my fossils on the Normal Civil Side realise that we are dying in a new age. Come and look at them. They might interest you.”

“Thanks, I will, but----Excuse me a minute! Here’s my zealous young assistant on the wing once more.”

The Seraph had returned to report the arrival of overwhelmingly heavy convoys at The Gate, and to ask what the Saint advised.

“I’m just off on an inter-departmental inspection which will take me some time,” said St. Peter. “You _must_ learn to act on your own initiative. So I shall leave you to yourself for the next hour or two, merely suggesting (I don’t wish in any way to sway your judgment) that you invite St. Paul, St. Ignatius (Loyola, I mean) and--er--St. Christopher to assist as Supervising Assessors on the Board of Admission. Ignatius is one of the subtlest intellects we have, and an officer and a gentleman to boot. I assure you,” the Saint turned towards Death, “he revels in dialectics. If he’s allowed to prove his case, he’s quite capable of letting off the offender. St. Christopher, of course, will pass anything that looks wet and muddy.”

“They are nearly all that now, sir,” said the Seraph.

“So much the better; and--as I was going to say--St. Paul is an embarrass--a distinctly strong colleague. Still--we all have our weaknesses. Perhaps a well-timed reference to his seamanship in the Mediterranean--by the way, look up the name of his ship, will you? Alexandria register, I think--might be useful in some of those sudden maritime cases that crop up. I needn’t tell _you_ to be firm, of course. That’s your besetting--er--I mean--reprimand ’em severely and publicly, but--” the Saint’s voice broke--“oh, my child, _you_ don’t know what it is to need forgiveness. Be gentle with ’em--be very gentle with ’em!”

Swiftly as a falling shaft of light the Seraph kissed the sandalled feet and was away.

“Aha!” said St. Peter. “He can’t go far wrong with that Board of Admission as I’ve--er--arranged it.”

They walked towards the great central office of Normal Civil Death, which, buried to the knees in a flood of temporary structures, resembled a closed cribbage-board among spilt dominoes.

They entered an area of avenues and cross-avenues, flanked by long, low buildings, each packed with seraphs working wing to folded wing.

“Our temporary buildings,” Death explained. “’Always being added to. This is the War-side. You’ll find nothing changed on the Normal Civil Side. They are more human than mankind.”

“It doesn’t lie in _my_ mouth to blame them,” said St. Peter.

“No, I’ve yet to meet the soul you wouldn’t find excuse for,” said Death tenderly; “but then _I_ don’t--er--arrange my Boards of Admission.”

“If one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help itself,” St. Peter laughed, as the shadow of the main porch of the Normal Civil Death Offices darkened above them.

“This façade rather recalls the Vatican, doesn’t it?” said the Saint.

“They’re quite as conservative. ’Notice how they still keep the old Holbein uniforms? ’Morning, Sergeant Fell. How goes it?” said Death as he swung the dusty doors and nodded at a Commissionaire, clad in the grim livery of Death, even as Hans Holbein has designed it.

“Sadly. Very sadly indeed, sir,” the Commissionaire replied. “So many pore ladies and gentlemen, sir, ’oo might well ’ave lived another few years, goin’ off as you might say, in every direction with no time for the proper obsequities.”

“Too bad,” said Death sympathetically. “Well, we’re none of us as young as we were, Sergeant.”

They climbed a carved staircase, behung with the whole millinery of undertaking at large. Death halted on a dark Aberdeen granite landing and beckoned a messenger.

“We’re rather busy to-day, sir,” the messenger whispered, “but I think His Majesty will see _you_.”

“Who _is_ the Head of this Department if it isn’t you?” St. Peter whispered in turn.

“You may well ask,” his companion replied. “I’m only--” he checked himself and went on. “The fact is, our Normal Civil Death side is controlled by a Being who considers himself all that I am and more. He’s Death as men have made him--in their own image.” He pointed to a brazen plate, by the side of a black-curtained door, which read: “Normal Civil Death, K.G., K.T., K.P., P.C., etc.” “He’s as human as mankind.”

“I guessed as much from those letters. What do they mean?”

“Titles conferred on him from time to time. King of Ghosts; King of Terrors; King of Phantoms; Pallid Conqueror, and so forth. There’s no denying he’s earned every one of them. A first-class mind, but just a leetle bit of a sn----”

“His Majesty is at liberty,” said the messenger.

Civil Death did not belie his name. No monarch on earth could have welcomed them more graciously; or, in St. Peter’s case, with more of that particularity of remembrance which is the gift of good kings. But when Death asked him how his office was working, he became at once the Departmental Head with a grievance.

“Thanks to this abominable War,” he began testily, “my N.C.D. has to spend all its time fighting for mere existence. Your new War-side seems to think that nothing matters _except_ the war. I’ve been asked to give up two-thirds of my Archives Basement (E. 7--E. 64) to the Polish Civilian Casualty Check and Audit. Preposterous! Where am I to move my Archives? And they’ve just been cross-indexed, too!”

“As I understood it,” said Death, “our War-side merely applied for desk-room in your basement. They were prepared to leave your Archives _in situ_.”

“Impossible! We may need to refer to them at any moment. There’s a case now which is interesting Us all--a Mrs. Ollerby. Worcestershire by extraction--dying of an internal hereditary complaint. At any moment, We may wish to refer to her dossier, and how _can_ We if Our basement is given up to people over whom We exercise no departmental control? This war has been made excuse for slackness in every direction.”

“Indeed!” said Death. “You surprise me. I thought nothing made any difference to the N.C.D.”

“A few years ago I should have concurred,” Civil Death replied. “But since this--this recent outbreak of unregulated mortality there has been a distinct lack of respect towards certain aspects of Our administration. The attitude is bound to reflect itself in the office. The official is, in a large measure, what the public makes him. Of course, it is only temporary reaction, but the merest outsider would notice what I mean. Perhaps _you_ would like to see for yourself?” Civil Death bowed towards St. Peter, who feared that he might be taking up his time.

“Not in the least. If I am not the servant of the public, what am I?” Civil Death said, and preceded them to the landing. “Now, this--” he ushered them into an immense but badly lighted office--“is our International Mortuary Department--the I.M.D. as we call it. It works with the Check and Audit. I should be sorry to say offhand how many billion sterling it represents, invested in the funeral ceremonies of all the races of mankind.” He stopped behind a very bald-headed clerk at a desk. “And yet We take cognizance of the minutest detail, do not We?” he went on. “What have We here, for example?”

“Funeral expenses of the late Mr. John Shenks Tanner,” the clerk stepped aside from the red-ruled book. “Cut down by the executors on account of the War from £173:19:1 to £47:18:4. A sad falling off, if I may say so, Your Majesty.”

“And what was the attitude of the survivors?” Civil Death asked.

“Very casual. It was a motor-hearse funeral.”

“A pernicious example, spreading, I fear, even in the lowest classes,” his superior muttered. “Haste, lack of respect for the Dread Summons, carelessness in the Subsequent Disposition of the Corpse and----”

“But as regards people’s real feelings?” St. Peter demanded of the clerk.

“That isn’t within the terms of our reference, Sir,” was the answer. “But we _do_ know that as often as not, they don’t even buy black-edged announcement-cards nowadays.”

“Good Heavens!” said Civil Death swellingly. “No cards! I must look into this myself. Forgive me, St. Peter, but we Servants of Humanity, as you know, are not our own masters. No cards, indeed!” He waved them off with an official hand, and immersed himself in the ledger.

“Oh, come along,” Death whispered to St. Peter. “This is a blessed relief!”

They two walked on till they reached the far end of the vast dim office. The clerks at the desks here scarcely pretended to work. A messenger entered and slapped down a small autophonic reel.

“Here you are!” he cried. “Mister Wilbraham Lattimer’s last dying speech and record. He made a shockin’ end of it.”

“Good for Lattimer!” a young voice called from a desk. “Chuck it over!”

“Yes,” the messenger went on. “Lattimer said to his brother: ‘Bert, I haven’t time to worry about a little thing like dying these days, and what’s more important, _you_ haven’t either. You go back to your Somme doin’s, and I’ll put it through with Aunt Maria. It’ll amuse her and it won’t hinder you.’ That’s nice stuff for your boss!” The messenger whistled and departed. A clerk groaned as he snatched up the reel.

“How the deuce am I to knock this into official shape?” he began. “Pass us the edifying Gantry Tubnell. I’ll have to crib from him again, I suppose.”

“Be careful!” a companion whispered, and shuffled a typewritten form along the desk. “I’ve used Tubby twice this morning already.”

The late Mr. Gantry Tubnell must have demised on approved departmental lines, for his record was much thumbed. Death and St. Peter watched the editing with interest.

“I can’t bring in Aunt Maria _any_ way,” the clerk broke out at last. “Listen here, every one! She has heart-disease. She dies just as she’s lifted the dropsical Lattimer to change his sheets. She says: ‘Sorry, Willy! I’d make a dam’ pore ’ospital nurse!’ Then she sits down and croaks. Now _I_ call that good! I’ve a great mind to take it round to the War-side as an indirect casualty and get a breath of fresh air.”

“Then you’ll be hauled over the coals,” a neighbour suggested.

“I’m used to that, too,” the clerk sniggered.

“Are you?” said Death, stepping forward suddenly from behind a high map-stand. “Who are you?” The clerk cowered in his skeleton jacket.

“I’m not on the Regular Establishment, Sir,” he stammered. “I’m a--Volunteer. I--I wanted to see how people behaved when they were in trouble.”

“Did you? Well, take the late Mr. Wilbraham Lattimer’s and Miss Maria Lattimer’s papers to the War-side General Reference Office. When they have been passed upon, tell the Attendance Clerk that you are to serve as probationer in--let’s see--in the Domestic Induced Casualty Side--7 G.S.”

The clerk collected himself a little and spoke through dry lips.

“But--but I’m--I slipped in from the Lower Establishment, Sir,” he breathed.

There was no need to explain. He shook from head to foot as with the palsy; and under all Heaven none tremble save those who come from that class which “also believe and tremble.”

“Do you tell Me this officially, or as one created being to another?” Death asked after a pause.

“Oh, non-officially, Sir. Strictly non-officially, so long as you know all about it.”

His awe-stricken fellow-workers could not restrain a smile at Death having to be told about anything. Even Death bit his lips.

“I don’t think you will find the War-side will raise any objection,” said he. “By the way, they don’t wear that uniform over there.”

Almost before Death ceased speaking, it was ripped off and flung on the floor, and that which had been a sober clerk of Normal Civil Death stood up an unmistakable, curly-haired, bat-winged, faun-eared Imp of the Pit. But where his wings joined his shoulders there was a patch of delicate dove-coloured feathering that gave promise to spread all up the pinion. St. Peter saw it and smiled, for it was a known sign of grace.

“Thank Goodness!” the ex-clerk gasped as he snatched up the Lattimer records and sheered sideways through the skylight.

“Amen!” said Death and St. Peter together, and walked through the door.

“Weren’t you hinting something to me a little while ago about _my_ lax methods?” St. Peter demanded, innocently.

“Well, if one doesn’t help one’s Staff, one’s Staff will never help itself,” Death retorted. “Now, I shall have to pitch in a stiff demi-official asking how that young fiend came to be taken on in the N.C.D. without examination. And I must do it before the N.C.D. complain that I’ve been interfering with their departmental transfers. _Aren’t_ they human? If you want to go back to The Gate I think our shortest way will be through here and across the War-Sheds.”

They came out of a side-door into Heaven’s full light. A phalanx of Shining Ones swung across a great square singing:

“To Him Who made the Heavens abide, yet cease not from their motion,
To Him Who drives the cleansing tide twice a day round ocean--
Let His Name be magnified in all poor folk’s devotion!”

Death halted their leader, and asked a question.

“We’re Volunteer Aid Serving Powers,” the Seraph explained, “reporting for duty in the Domestic Induced Casualty Department--told off to help relatives, where we can.”

The shift trooped on--such an array of Powers, Honours, Glories, Toils, Patiences, Services, Faiths and Loves as no man may conceive even by favour of dreams. Death and St. Peter followed them into a D.I.C.D. Shed on the English side, where, for the moment, work had slackened. Suddenly a name flashed on the telephone-indicator. “Mrs. Arthur Bedott, 317, Portsmouth Avenue, Brondesbury. Husband badly wounded. One child.” Her special weakness was appended.

A Seraph on the raised dais that overlooked the Volunteer Aids waiting at the entrance, nodded and crooked a finger. One of the new shift--a temporary Acting Glory--hurled himself from his place and vanished earthward.

“You may take it,” Death whispered to St. Peter, “there will be a sustaining epic built up round Private Bedott’s wound for his wife and Baby Bedott to cling to. And here--” they heard wings that flapped wearily--“here, I suspect, comes one of our failures.”

A Seraph entered and dropped, panting, on a form. His plumage was ragged, his sword splintered to the hilt; and his face still worked with the passions of the world he had left, as his soiled vesture reeked of alcohol.

“Defeat,” he reported hoarsely, when he had given in a woman’s name. “Utter defeat! Look!” He held up the stump of his sword. “I broke this on her gin-bottle.”

“So? We try again,” said the impassive Chief Seraph. Again he beckoned, and there stepped forward that very Imp whom Death had transferred from the N.C.D.

“Go _you_!” said the Seraph. “We must deal with a fool according to her folly. Have you pride enough?”

There was no need to ask. The messenger’s face glowed and his nostrils quivered with it. Scarcely pausing to salute, he poised and dived, and the papers on the desks spun beneath the draught of his furious vans.

St. Peter nodded high approval. “_I_ see!” he said. “He’ll work on her pride to steady her. By all means--‘if by all means,’ as my good Paul used to say. Only it ought to read ‘by any manner of possible means.’ Excellent!”

“It’s difficult, though,” a soft-eyed Patience whispered. “I fail again and again. I’m only fit for an old-maid’s tea-party.”

Once more the record flashed--a multiple-urgent appeal on behalf of a few thousand men, worn-out body and soul. The Patience was detailed.

“Oh, me!” she sighed, with a comic little shrug of despair, and took the void softly as a summer breeze at dawning.

“But how does this come under the head of Domestic Casualties? Those men were in the trenches. I heard the mud squelch,” said St. Peter.

“Something wrong with the installation--as usual. Waves are always jamming here,” the Seraph replied.

“So it seems,” said St. Peter as a wireless cut in with the muffled note of some one singing (sorely out of tune), to an accompaniment of desultory poppings:

“Unless you can love as the Angels love With the breadth of Heaven be----”

“_Twickt!_” It broke off. The record showed a name. The waiting Seraphs stiffened to attention with a click of tense quills.

“As you were!” said the Chief Seraph. “He’s met her.”

“Who is she?” said St. Peter.

“His mother. You never get over your weakness for romance,” Death answered, and a covert smile spread through the Office.

“Thank Heaven, I don’t. But I really ought to be going----”

“Wait one minute. Here’s trouble coming through, I think,” Death interposed.

A recorder had sparked furiously in a broken run of S.O.S.’s that allowed no time for inquiry.

“Name! Name!” an impatient young Faith panted at last. “It _can’t_ be blotted out.” No name came up. Only the reiterated appeal.

“False alarm!” said a hard-featured Toil, well used to mankind. “Some fool has found out that he owns a soul. ’Wants work. _I_’d cure him!...”

“Hush!” said a Love in Armour, stamping his mailed foot. The office listened.

“’Bad case?” Death demanded at last.

“Rank bad, Sir. They are holding back the name,” said the Chief Seraph. The S.O.S. signals grew more desperate, and then ceased with an emphatic thump. The Love in Armour winced.

“Firing-party,” he whispered to St. Peter. “’Can’t mistake that noise!”

“What is it?” St. Peter cried nervously.

“Deserter; spy; murderer,” was the Chief Seraph’s weighed answer. “It’s out of my department--now. No--hold the line! The name’s up at last.”

It showed for an instant, broken and faint as sparks on charred wadding, but in that instant a dozen pens had it written. St. Peter with never a word gathered his robes about him and bundled through the door, headlong for The Gate.

“No hurry,” said Death at his elbow. “With the present rush your man won’t come up for ever so long.”

“’Never can be sure these days. Anyhow, the Lower Establishment will be after him like sharks. He’s the very type they’d want for propaganda. Deserter--traitor--murderer. Out of my way, please, babies!”

A group of children round a red-headed man who was telling them stories, scattered laughing. The man turned to St. Peter.

“Deserter, traitor, murderer,” he repeated. “Can _I_ be of service?”

“You can!” St. Peter gasped. “Double on ahead to The Gate and tell them to hold up all expulsions till I come. Then,” he shouted as the man sped off at a long hound-like trot, “go and picket the outskirts of the Convoys. Don’t let any one break away on any account. Quick!”

But Death was right. They need not have hurried. The crowd at The Gate was far beyond the capacities of the Examining Board even though, as St. Peter’s Deputy informed him, it had been enlarged twice in his absence.

“We’re doing our best,” the Seraph explained, “but delay is inevitable, Sir. The Lower Establishment are taking advantage of it, as usual, at the tail of the Convoys. I’ve doubled all pickets there, and I’m sending more. Here’s the extra list, Sir--Arc J., Bradlaugh C., Bunyan J., Calvin J. Iscariot J. reported to me just now, as under your orders, and took ’em with him. Also Shakespeare W. and----”

“Never mind the rest,” said St. Peter. “I’m going there myself. Meantime, carry on with the passes--don’t fiddle over ’em--and give me a blank or two.” He caught up a thick block of Free Passes, nodded to a group in khaki at a passport table, initialled their Commanding Officer’s personal pass as for “Officer and Party,” and left the numbers to be filled in by a quite competent-looking Quarter-master-Sergeant. Then, Death beside him, he breasted his way out of The Gate against the incoming multitude of all races, tongues, and creeds that stretched far across the plain.

An old lady, firmly clutching a mottle-nosed, middle-aged Major by the belt, pushed across a procession of keen-faced _poilus_, and blocked his path, her captive held in that terrible mother-grip no Power has yet been able to unlock.

“I found him! I’ve got him! Pass him!” she ordered.

St. Peter’s jaw fell. Death politely looked elsewhere.

“There are a few formalities,” the Saint began.

“With Jerry in this state? Nonsense! How like a man! My boy never gave me a moment’s anxiety in----”

“Don’t, dear--don’t!” The Major looked almost as uncomfortable as St. Peter.

“Well, nothing compared with what he _would_ give me if he weren’t passed.”

“Didn’t I hear you singing just now?” Death asked, seeing that his companion needed a breathing-space.

“Of course you did,” the mother intervened. “He sings beautifully. And that’s _another_ reason! You’re bass, aren’t you now, darling?”

St. Peter glanced at the agonised Major and hastily initialled him a pass. Without a word of thanks the Mother hauled him away.

“Now, under what conceivable Ruling do you justify that?” said Death.

“I.W.--the Importunate Widow. It’s scandalous!” St. Peter groaned. Then his face darkened as he looked across the great plain beyond The Gate. “I don’t like this,” he said. “The Lower Establishment is out in full force to-night. I hope our pickets are strong enough----”

The crowd here had thinned to a disorderly queue flanked on both sides by a multitude of busy, discreet emissaries from the Lower Establishment who continually edged in to do business with them, only to be edged off again by a line of watchful pickets. Thanks to the khaki everywhere, the scene was not unlike that which one might have seen on earth any evening of the old days outside the refreshment-room by the Arch at Victoria Station, when the Army trains started. St. Peter’s appearance was greeted by the usual outburst of cock-crowing from the Lower Establishment.

“Dirty work at the cross-roads,” said Death dryly.

“I deserve it!” St. Peter grunted, “but think what it must mean for Judas.”

He shouldered into the thick of the confusion where the pickets coaxed, threatened, implored, and in extreme cases bodily shoved the wearied men and women past the voluble and insinuating spirits who strove to draw them aside.

A Shropshire Yeoman had just accepted, together with a forged pass, the assurance of a genial runner of the Lower Establishment that Heaven lay round the corner, and was being stealthily steered thither, when a large hand jerked him back, another took the runner in the chest, and some one thundered: “Get out, you crimp!” The situation was then vividly explained to the soldier in the language of the barrack-room.

“Don’t blame _me_, Guv’nor,” the man expostulated. “I ’aven’t seen a woman, let alone angels, for umpteen months. I’m from Joppa. Where ’you from?”

“Northampton,” was the answer. “Rein back and keep by me.”

“What? You ain’t ever Charley B. that my dad used to tell about? I thought you always said----”

“I shall say a deal more soon. Your Sergeant’s talking to that woman in red. Fetch him in--quick!”

Meantime, a sunken-eyed Scots officer, utterly lost to the riot around, was being buttonholed by a person of reverend aspect who explained to him, that, by the logic of his own ancestral creed, not only was the Highlander irrevocably damned, but that his damnation had been predetermined before Earth was made.

“It’s unanswerable--just unanswerable,” said the young man sorrowfully. “I’ll be with ye.” He was moving off, when a smallish figure interposed, not without dignity.

“Monsieur,” it said, “would it be of any comfort to you to know that _I_ am--I was--John Calvin?” At this the reverend one cursed and swore like the lost Soul he was, while the Highlander turned to discuss with Calvin, pacing towards The Gate, some alterations in the fabric of a work of fiction called the _Institutio_.

Others were not so easily held. A certain Woman, with loosened hair, bare arms, flashing eyes and dancing feet, shepherded her knot of waverers, hoarse and exhausted. When the taunt broke out against her from the opposing line: “Tell ’em what you were! Tell ’em if you dare!” she answered unflinchingly, as did Judas who, worming through the crowd like an Armenian carpet-vendor, peddled his shame aloud that it might give strength to others.

“Yes,” he would cry, “I am everything they say, but if _I_’m here it must be a moral cert for _you_, gents. This way, please. Many mansions, gentlemen! Go-ood billets! Don’t you notice these low people, Sar. _Plees_ keep hope, gentlemen!”