Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Among many pathetic things I had seen, none seemed to me more pathetic than the sight of those two war-shattered boys together. Alfred, nearly speechless, his poor wits all astray, tried to make himself lucid, while Jock, with infinite pity on his face, tried to understand and to help. The one looked like an angel of mercy, the other like some poor soul in search of peace. I don’t know how they talked, but somehow they made friends. Alfred was utterly unwilling to go back to his own ward, though he returned laden with cigarettes and apples. From that day the friendship grew. Every day Alfred visited Jock, and Jock, when he could get into a chair, returned the call. Somehow they talked. Jock has infinite patience and tact; he has graduated in the college of suffering and has learnt the whole art of compassion. He found out that Alfred knew most things knowable about football, that he was, in fact, a ‘real little sport.’

The ward adopted Alfred as a sort of mascot; he might do and have what he liked. He was just an unhappy child, humoured at all points.

Then arrived someone who solved the riddle of the medals and the picture of which Alfred talked so much. This man had seen a picture of Alfred boxing another celebrated pugilist. Alfred was a well-known character in the Ring—he had won his nine medals in various contests. To name a boxer was to set Alfred blazing with excitement and fearful efforts to stammer out some story of an encounter in which he had taken part.

We learnt more of Ada at last. Ada was ‘his girl,’ and he had left the pigeons in her keeping.

‘Poor Ada,’ I said one day to Jock, ‘what would she say if she saw Alfred?’

‘Alfred writes to her,’ Jock replied solemnly. ‘At least I write for him.’

‘But,’ I objected, ‘Ada may fall in love with your letters—it’s not fair to her.’

‘Oh! I put “Jock helped to write this” at the top,’ he explained earnestly.

What Ada thought of these dual letters I cannot say. I suppose she minds Alfred’s pigeons and hopes on. As for Alfred, I think his real love was for Jock. When he was restive and talked of going away we could soothe him by saying that he surely would not leave Jock alone. Everything he had he brought to his idol to share it with him. He made himself bath-chairman, and the two would go off to the one window that commanded an amusing street view. Together they hung out in perfect amity and understood each other in silence, for Alfred could barely get the words for even a short sentence. Alfred was the sheep-dog, Jock the shepherd.

It was understood that if one was asked to tea anywhere the other must go too. With Jock Alfred was known to be ‘all right.’ So things went happily until the inevitable parting. Jock was sent to a Red Cross hospital almost at a moment’s notice. Alfred was inconsolable; he wandered, red-eyed, forlorn, piteously incoherent, from ward to ward, searching vaguely and vainly for his chum. He shed bitter childlike tears, while Jock, for his part, suffered for Alfred’s trouble and his own. Such is the pathos of hospital. Later, Alfred was sent to the Scottish hospital of which mention has been made. He and Jock write to each other—perhaps some day they will meet.

As for Jock, I think a star laughed when he was born—though he can suffer to the full capacity of a Celtic nature. Good angels have him in their keeping and save him—only Heaven knows how—from being spoilt.

I was present when the sergeant of the guard met Jock being wheeled down the corridor. He interrupted the triumphal progress with six foot of stalwart manhood.

‘That,’ said he, ‘is by his looks the happiest boy in this hospital. I’ve never seen him sad, I’ve never heard him grumble. He’s the boy for my money—he’s a good boy, a great boy! We need more like him, we do!’

This was embarrassing, but Jock took it quietly and politely. More touching was the devotion of the corporal of the guard. ‘I had a son just like him, killed at Suvla Bay,’ he explained.

But Jock was of those who have fairy godmothers. If you imagine Bonnie Prince Charlie before his heroism was tarnished, you have Jock; or if you imagine Malcolm, Marquis of Lossie, in a lighter vein, you have him; and if you picture young Lochinvar, or Jock of Hazeldean, or some other hero of Scottish ballad, you see our Jock.

When first we saw him—it was an October day soon after the battle of Loos—he looked haggard, unshaven, and quite unlike the boy of a later date. He had a shockingly wounded knee, and was running a temperature. His dressing was a daily torture. We knew it was agony, because he whistled and sang the whole time and talked the most fascinating nonsense in beautiful Doric—only he gripped the head rail of his bed with an iron ‘grup,’ as he would have called it, and looked within measurable distance of fainting.

Movement was dreadful to him, but he had journeys to the X-ray room and to the operating theatre. Even in semi-consciousness he was true to himself—true to the self which was always pushed out of sight. I remember his sitting up just after an operation, and casting a distracted look round the ward.

‘Are the troops safe and in their places?’ he asked wildly. Reassured, he asked again ‘Is Paddy all right?’ Paddy was our orderly and a devoted friend of Jock’s. Then with a sigh of relief he lay down.

The following day he had an extension put on the injured leg. If you can imagine what it is to have a terribly injured knee, then to have it cut about, and finally to have it held up for half an hour or more while the extension is put on, you have just a faint idea what Jock suffered in grim silence. He was in the torture chamber but he never winced—only the youth went out of his face and a sort of grey old age seemed to come upon him.

I said to him later: ‘You’ve had an awful time of it to-day, Jock.’

He was still faint with pain, but he murmured: ‘No so bad. Oh! it was no so bad at all, Nurse.’

To these bad times belonged his polite requests, ‘Will you pull my leg a wee?’ and ‘Will you sort my leg?’—a phrase which always delighted me; but, as a Scottish captain asked seriously when I had quoted this latter request, ‘What else _could_ he have said?’

Often in those bad winter days when Jock’s temperature rose with such alarming bounds, I used to wonder if he would ever see Scotland again. There was the dreadful bugbear septicæmia, and there was always the likelihood that he would have to lose his leg. But he had a good angel in Sister B. No one could ‘sort his leg’ as she could, no one could hurt him so little or so quickly as she, and no one could put in what he called ‘they tubes’ as she could—those deadly tubes that seemed to go by winding alleys and narrow desperate ways under his patella and right through the back of his knee. I think she staked her soul (and no one gave more life and soul to her patients than she did) that Jock should keep his leg. She was the first who dared to get him into a wheel chair; she taught him to walk again; she comforted him and helped him to face the long months, for even Jock had his dark days—more of them than he let us know. He used at these times to read Burns with devotion, and he told me that ‘Desolation’ and ‘Man is made to Mourn’ were his favourite poems, and exactly expressive of his feelings.

‘One gets a wee bit fed up at times,’ he confessed, ‘thinking one’ll never play football again.’

Football had been his joy, and somehow I think he went out to the war as to football on a larger scale. Quite casually he described the Highlanders’ charge at Loos. He was out of it very soon himself, but even at that moment his thoughts had all been outside himself.

‘I prayed then as I never prayed before,’ he remarked.

‘For the stretcher-bearers to come to you,’ suggested a listener.

‘No, of course not’—this with surprise—‘I prayed for the boys. Man! it was grand to see the kilts go by.’

Casually he told of his effort to save one of his officers who was severely wounded. But both of them were unable to move and they lay on the field for twenty-four hours.

Patrick MacGill in his terrible description of Loos tells how the Jocks were scattered, dead and wounded, on the battlefield, their bare knees gleaming in the pale morning light. But for many there was no return.

However, this is a happy story. I firmly believe that Jock is the true fairy-tale hero who marries the princess and lives happily ever afterwards, even as he deserves. But he will always suffer for the suffering of others. He confided to me with shame that certain books brought him inexplicable sensations rather like wanting to cry. ‘It’s a sort of soft spot in my wooden heart,’ he explained. All alone in the ward he would solace himself by singing Burns’s songs—with tears in his eyes. He accounted for them by saying the light had dazzled him.

To the sorrows of the ward he gave all his heart. One of the ineffaceable memories of hospital is the morning when Patterson died. Patterson, a man of very different temperament, had loved Jock too and had, during his long-drawn weeks of dying, found comfort, I believe, in the atmosphere of cheeriness that emanated from Jock’s bed, when he could not move. They were two of the worst cases, and they could only exchange greetings by shouting across the ward.

On this morning there was a terrible silence. No one had the heart for song or gramophone. Patterson’s pain was too apparent; the coming end of it held the men in a hushed suspense. Then suddenly Patterson made an effort and called to Jock, ‘How are you, Jock?’ And Jock, white with sympathy, called back, ‘Champion! What way are you, Patterson?’ The pity of it....

But Jock’s story is only a quarter written. Its chapters have been fine reading for those who have had the luck to read them so far, but I believe there will be finer chapters yet.

Often I said to myself in fear for him, ‘Whom the orderlies love die young’—for the orderlies adored Jock, but the adapted proverb did not come true, for he is walking about now and ‘enjoying life fine to make up for all the months in bed—not that I suffered so much at all, Nurse.’

This is a happy story, but we saw sad ones.

Death is just an incident in hospital life. Alas! one sometimes forgets that it is all-important to the dying. A household seems to hold its breath when somebody dies; a ward continues its automatic routine. There is pity—much of it—but it is a common-sense pity, that accepts death as just an inevitable happening to be finished and then forgotten.

I remember so well the night when old Sergeant Meadows died. He had only been in the ward for three days, so that his personality had had no chance to impress us. All the men settled down to sleep except Harman, who had suddenly gone mad. He shrieked if anyone went near him, tried to push us away, then to blow us away. A hypodermic of morphia seemed to produce little effect on him except that he was a shade quieter; he did not sleep but remained sitting up in bed, watchful and terribly alert.

Meanwhile the poor old sergeant was dying. Nothing could be done for him. Morton, the orderly, always pitiful, came and looked at him.

‘Well,’ he said philosophically, ‘this is a queer night we’re having. A man in the other ward tells me ’e’s been seein’ rabbits. It’s too much! I just says “This must stop. There’s too many seein’ rabbits to-night.” I knew a man what saw red, white, and blue rats—had ’em proper, ’e did.’

Morton sighed. He was a gentle soul, capable of infinite tenderness and patience, as many orderlies are. They are, one sometimes thinks, gentler than women, less conventional, and stereotyped in their kindness.

‘Poor man!’ Morton murmured. ‘A good old soul. It’s queer how little one thinks of it. When the young ones die it comes worse on one.’

A few minutes afterwards the sergeant was dead. Unused to death, I hardly realised it. At once preparations were made for his laying-out and subsequent removal. There is a routine about death as about birth. The immensity of the spiritual change is obscured by the methodical functions of material life. Yet death is the supreme adventure.

It seemed sad for the old man to have met this great adventure among strangers, to go forth silently, without tears or prayers or love from us who watched. Yet I think this quiet, unemotional passing is dignified. Very soon afterwards the orderlies came with a stretcher and the Union Jack for pall, and so the old man left us. His body went to the mortuary, and his soul—surely, ‘his soul goes marching on.’ And all the time the other men slept like weary children. Only Harman sat up, still awake and watchful in his terrible nervous tension.

Hospital is a world to itself, and those outside know little of it; so one often thought, when visitors expressed surprise that we all seemed cheerful. Of course we were not all cheerful or always cheerful. The cheerfulness of the Tommy is a composite thing. In part it is due to his youth and his character, and is in that sense natural; but it is in part his religion—in some cases his only real religion. To be cheerful is ‘to play the game’—that wonderful, indefinite, sacred ‘Game’ of the English, which demands the utmost of body and soul. Just sometimes a man who had become one’s friend would admit the bitterness of his heart, would say that he was ‘fed-up,’ only to laugh it off and ask the eternal riddle, ‘Where’s the good of grumbling?’ So we were really cheerful at most times, but I always thought the most cheerful time the hours between five o’clock and eight in the morning.

In a surgical ward dressings are begun between four and five o’clock, but the general stir is not till five. It was customary in many wards for Sisters and nurses to provide an early cup of tea for the patients, and the Jocks and a few others had porridge. This was the time of sing-songs. Torrey-Alexander hymns were sandwiched between such cheerful ditties as ‘What’s the Matter with Father?’ and ‘Hulloa! hulloa! Who’s your Lady Friend?’ Then of course we had the inevitable ‘Little Grey Home,’ and as surely ‘Michigan’ and ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling.’ Meantime the bed patients were washing and beds were being made. The men who could get up were the last to move. If the delay became insupportable, their more active companions would tip them on to the floor—I have seen the whole bedstead turned upside down. The men themselves were great bed-makers, and one could nearly always find someone to give a hand in quite professional style.

Yes, things were cheerful in the mornings, and informal too. If work was done early the Sisters and nurses had time for a private and hasty cup of coffee in one of the dug-outs, and there was time, too, for talk with the men, and always we had a cheery visit from the ‘night super,’ Sister L. As for the war—the very reason of our present estate—it was the subject least discussed. Sometimes one almost forgot that there was a war. Every private house worries and thinks more of war than any hospital ward does—or it seems so. There might be dark thoughts under all the trivial discussions, the little jokes, the conventional badinage that we carried on, but they did not appear.

At eight o’clock the day staff arrived and our night was over—always, I was a little sorry. There is a vague but eternal feud between ‘the day people and the night people.’ The night staff is ‘the cat’ for the day staff. Whatever is missing—spoons, mugs, dressings, instruments—the solution of the mystery is clear—‘it’s those night people.’ The day orderlies lay on the souls of the night nurses dozens of spoons, forks, and knives. The day Sister thinks the night Sister either too easy or too harsh with her patients. It is just one of the inevitables of life.

I shall think often now of those whose watch is by night—not with any pity, for it is a strange, quiet life, but a happy one. I only knew it in a rather dead season, not in the busy time when trains were coming in and patients arriving nightly. There the night staff has small time for reflection. The hours pass in a whirl of bed-baths, dressings, and settlement. But it was not my good fortune to know such nights.

‘HALLOW-E’EN.’

_THE ROMANCE OF THE BARBER._

‘We’re much too early, John. I said we should be. There’s not a sign of a bass.’ I lifted the sail and peered across the shining water.

‘Nought’s lost by bein’ in time, sir,’ said the old boatman. ‘They’ll sport with the flood. And there be another boat over there. Mr. Harris and his little boy.’

‘He never misses these early tides,’ I said. ‘I suppose they just suit him. He can have his sport before he has to open his shop. He’s pretty venturesome to come out here by himself. But I suppose he knows the Bar as well as you sailor-men?’

‘He didn’t at one time, sir. He’d as soon have set himself down on a hot stove as come out here.’ And old John’s deep-set blue eyes twinkled. ‘What changed him? Well, it all had to do with his courtship, and getting of his wife. There’s a bit o’ ebb to run, and whilst I fixes they minnows I’ll tell ’ee about it. Just let me get at that locker fust. Thank ’ee, sir. That’s it.

‘Well, except that the good Lord had ordained his place in the world, and so he were bound to fill it, I dunno but what the most curious thing weren’t Mr. Harris coming to Appledore village at all, and living among us rough fisher-folk, for to all appearance he were as much out o’ place as a limpet in a garden rockery. And you’ll agree, sir, when you hears ’ow I fust became acquainted with him.

‘’Twas some while ago now, sir, and I’d a-been away from home, out foreign down along the coast o’ Cuba, and ’twas a wretched night when I sets foot once more on Appledore quay. Dark, and wet, and blowy. No one weren’t about, and the shops were all shut, and the street lamps had blowed out. The light from the barber’s shop at the far corner were the only cheerful thing in sight. When I gets to it, what should I see but a little, youngish, clean-faced, bald-headed man in his shirt-sleeves, and with a white apron on, and big gold spectacles, crouching against the wall, trying to shelter hisself from the wind and wet. He looks up in a queer, blinky way, and I stops.

‘“Why,” I says, “what’s this? Where’s old Puggy?”

‘“Mr. Pugstiles is dead,” pipes the little man, “and I’ve bought his business. And some young men have thrown me out o’ the shop,” and he coughs behind his ’and very genteel.

‘I opens the door. There was a dozen half-growed young chaps sprawling about the shop and roaring with laughing, and playing the fool. I never had no use for they scamps what hangs about the ferry and won’t go to sea, and I was going to put ’em out when the little man stops me.

‘“No, thank you,” he says very polite, “I would rather manage this alone.”

‘So, as he wouldn’t let me help ’im, I goes off home. And that, sir, were the fust time as ever I see Mr. Harris. I’ve known him a long time now, but I’ve never forgot my fust sight o’ him, crouching under the window, with the rain and wind beating down upon him.

‘He were small and weak, and his chest were bad. That was why he come away from London. His voice were peepy like a chicken calling the old hen. He didn’t drink, and he didn’t smoke, and he didn’t swear, and to say truth there was so many things against him, no one could say which was the wust. He were the fair butt o’ the place; even the women and girls derided him.

‘I was always a wanderer, and soon I goes off again, to Antwerp, and then away to Java. I were three good years older when next I landed on Appledore quay. ’Twas much such a night as t’other, cold and wet and blowy. But the light from the barber’s shop was shining out on the wet stones, and Mr. Harris, who I do believe I hadn’t thought on since I went away, comes into my mind again, all of a sudden.

‘“He’m gone. The place looks quiet enough now,” says I to myself. Then I shoves open the door.

‘’Tis a long, narrow room, with benches at the side. They benches were full o’ men sitting quiet waiting their turn. At the far end I see Mr. Harris shaving away like a good ’un, his bald head and his gold specs shining in the lamplight. I were so astonished I stood still without speaking. Then he says in the peepy little voice I remembered so well,

‘“I will ask one of you gentlemen kindly to shut that door, and keep it shut.”

‘And I’m blest if the most cantankerous chap in the place didn’t get up quite quiet, and shut it without a word. And then I went home.

‘Well, sir, I found Mr. Harris had got to be boss of the village. ’Twas the wonderfullest thing! He was the same little weak man I had fust seen, a surprised-looking creature with his big gold glasses, and his pale face, and his mouth half open, but lor bless you! the whole place bowed down to him. He were Secretary to the Regatta, and Churchwarden, and sang in the choir, and sometimes read the lessons, and when the Vicar put in they peal of bells, with the thing by which you can play times on ’em, it was Mr. Harris who played on ’em all his spare time, till some folks who lived near the church, and didn’t care for music, wished they bells further.

‘I saw what he was for myself a few days after I got home. Me and Tom Jenkyns was passing his shop one fine morning and Mr. Harris, in his white apron and gold specs, was on the quay peering about in the sun. Tom ain’t a beauty when he’s sober, which he weren’t then by no means, so I gets in between ’em. Mr. Harris looks up in his gentle way through his glasses.

‘“Dear me, Mr. Jenkyns,” he says, “I am sorry to see you with such a dirty chin! It wouldn’t do for you to meet a young lady with that chin! Oh, no. You’d better come inside,” and he ’as Tom in the shop and in the chair, and shaves him, and has ’im outside again, before Tom could think where to tell him to go to. Now that was a wonderful thing. Don’t ’ee think so, sir?’

‘Indeed I do,’ I said, for I knew Mr. Jenkyns pretty well. ‘How on earth did he manage him? How did he work it?’

‘You may well ask that, sir. But ’tis more easy asked than told. How did he do such things? None can say. He never lost his temper; he never raised his voice, he never laughed—not out loud. And he looked at you in that queer, wondering way. And then his manners, and his politeness! And he never give in to nobody.

‘Time went on, and he prospered. He was clever at his job, having the London tricks, and he went about attending on gentlemen’s houses. His ’ealth come back, and he got smarter and younger looking, and he wore a white collar and a white shirt every day, even under his apron. How ’e could abear they collars I can’t think. When my wife puts one on me I feels like a bird in a cage. But there, I s’pose it is all use. His white linen used to shine, and his eyes shine through his glasses. And he painted his ’ouse white, and put boxes of flowers in the windows. He rigged up a big red and white barber’s pole, and on Sundays he ’oisted the Jack on it. He did well, and we was proud of him.

‘And then, well then, just as everything was going so well, what do you think happened, sir?’

‘Perhaps I can guess,’ I said. ‘The ladies. They took a hand?’

‘They did, sir. They did. They’d looked on Mr. Harris all along with scorn, and troubled noth’en about him. Then all of a sudden it come to ’em how blind they’d been. And that here were a nice young man, for he were only a little over thirty, with collars and shirts and a business, and beautiful manners, and a white house with flowers in boxes, and all agoing begging. From that moment he hadn’t a single hour’s peace. They was all at him, though the old ’uns was the wust. They sent him things to eat, and tried to get him to convoy ’em back from church. Old Widow Paul were took ill on his door-step and had to be carried into the shop. Miss Belcher, she as married pore old Tom Cole after he ’ad broke his leg, attacked him on his business side, and sent him a parcel of combings to be made up. Me and a lot o’ chaps was there when they come, and all I can say is, if they was all out of her ’ead, she must have ’ad a scalp like a tortoise-shell cat.

‘But it was all o’ no use. Mr. Harris didn’t like any o’ them, maid or widow, and he kept away from ’em. He was well guarded too; always there were someone in his shop. And the old woman who kep’ house for him, her ’usband being in an ’ome for uncurables, helped to keep ’em off.

‘Well, sir, things jogged along quite comfortable like till a queer thing happened. Me and Jenkyns was in his shop one brisk morning, when Tom, who ’ad a drop o’ beer in him as usual, winks at me and says:

‘“You did ought to see my sister-in-law, Mr. Harris,” says he; “she’d be the very young lady for you!”

‘Mr. Harris was stropping a razor. He looks round in his queer blinky way, but instead o’ putting Tom down he says:

‘“And what might she be like, Mr. Jenkyns?”

‘“She’m the fust girl in these parts. She lives with her mother to Lundy Island. She can cook, and she’m house-wise; what’s more she’m a heaven-born laundress, and she’m big and dark with red cheeks and blue eyes, and her name is Mirandy,” says Tom all in a breath.

‘Mr. Harris listens with his ’ead on one side, and a funny look comes over his face and his eyes sparkles. Tom forgets hisself and spits on the floor, but instead o’ requesting him to leave the shop Mr. Harris only says,

‘“And does the young lady ever come over here, Mr. Jenkyns?”

‘“She does not,” says Tom; “she bides to home and ’elps her mother. Capt. Dark, who goes to Lundy every week with the mails, have many a time offered her a free pass on his lugger, but she wouldn’t accept.”

‘“But—but her affections?” says Mr. Harris presently very gently; “perhaps they are engaged? Such a young lady!”

‘“She ain’t got no chap, if that’s what you mean,” says Tom; “there ain’t none to Lundy. Last time I come away I thought ’twere a pity there weren’t no young feller to arm ’er up the rocks. She were as pretty as a picture, with the waves breaking all about her feet.”

‘“Sea King’s daughter,” says Mr. Harris to hisself. But I heered ’im.

‘“She knows about you,” Tom goes on. “I tells her in general conversation what a deal people think o’ you. ‘He must be a leader o’ men,’ says she. But there is a phottygraf o’ her to home. I’ll fetch ’un,” and with that he goes out and Mr. Harris has me in the chair, and shaves me. His ’and were shaking so I were glad to escape without bloodshed. Then Tom comes back, and hands over the photty. Mr. Harris looks at it, and drops the razor. He gets pinker and pinker, and smiles and laughs and sets it on a little shelf and gazes upon it. As he doesn’t speak we goes out quietly. Then I remembers I hasn’t paid for my shave. So I goes back just in time to hear ’im say:

‘“An arrow—an arrow from the blind god’s bow at last!”

‘I says nothing, but puts down my penny and comes away on tiptoe.

‘Well, sir, that puzzles me. And I asks my darter the school-mistress what he meant. All I can say is, sir, if that little god as she telled me of did shoot one o’ his arrows at Mr. Harris, he must ha’ got him right in the wes’cot. For from that moment he were a changed man.

‘He were properly in love and no mistake! He worn’t a bit ashamed o’ it. He went about smiling and blushing, and very proud. The news soon got abroad, and the girls, some jeered, some laughed. Things moved along quickly. Letters passes between ’em. He ’ad his picture took, smiling, in a long black coat and a flower in his button-hole and a book in his ’and. He sends over bottles o’ scent and sweet soaps and such truck from his shop. Then, one beautiful morning in the beginning o’ October, he dresses hisself very smart, with a white wes’cot and shiny boots and new straw hat, and embarks on Dark’s lugger to go to Lundy to call on his young lady.

‘Now, living as he did on the quay, no one ’adn’t partic’ly noticed that Mr. Harris never went on the watter. Still Dark were surprised when he tells him he ’ad never yet crossed Appledore Bar. There was no wind, and Dark drops down with the ebb to the Bar, just about where we be now, and then all of a sudden Mr. Harris begins to be sea-sick. Dark carries many passengers, and ’tis a queer bit o’ watter ’twixt here and Lundy, but he says he never see anyone so bad as Mr. Harris was that day. It fair tore the inside out o’ him. He gets in such a state that Dark, seeing the job would be a long ’un for want o’ wind, puts him in his dinghy and lands him on the golf-links. Mr. Harris crawls into one o’ they bunker things and there he lay, and I did ’ear that the gentlemen played their golf right on top o’ him afore he could move. In the evening he creeps back home and goes to bed.’

‘Poor Mr. Harris!’ I broke in, ‘that was rough luck. How did he take it?’

‘Well, he didn’t give in, sir. Twice more he tried, but he never even got to the Bar. The second time they had to call the doctor to him. The doctor says his heart were weak, and it were very onwise to put such a strain on it, and he mustn’t try them tricks again. Then the doctor puts a mustard plaster to him, and goes away.

‘After that no one would take him. Steamers from ’Coombe had stopped running or ’e might ha’ gone by them. He felt hisself beaten, and his pride were broken. ’Twas a melancholly affair altogether. He thought he ’ad made a fool o’ hisself, though how a man can be stronger than his stomach I can’t see.

‘And the wust o’ all was to come. Mirandy thought she were a laughing-stock, and wouldn’t help. She wouldn’t come to him. If he wanted her, ’e must fetch her. She wouldn’t leave Lundy by herself for any man, so she said. And everyone were laughing, and talking, and taking sides.

‘He goes about neat and particular as usual, but the life and sparkle had gone out o’ him. He were looked up to, and had ’is business and his nice house, but he didn’t want ’em. He wanted Mirandy by his fireside, and her ’and in his.

‘Late one evening I was on Look-out Hill, when I hears a footstep and sees Mr. Harris. He stands staring out to sea, and presently up pops Lundy Light and twinks and goes out, and pops up and twinks and goes out again.

‘“When I sees that light,” says Mr. Harris at last, “I thinks she is beckoning me”; and from the sound o’ his voice I guessed he were near crying.

‘“It is not the fust time a queasy stomach have kept loving hearts apart,” says I, wishing to comfort him.

‘“Love against stomach,” he says very bitter, and walks away without saying good night.

‘The fine weather held well into October that year, sir; then one night there come the wust blow known in these parts. It blew hurricane hard from the nor’-west on a big spring flood. The watter come right up the streets and flooded the houses. The whole place were in an uproar. And to make things wuss, about midnight, when the storm were at its height, the lifeboat rocket was fired. A big ship were ashore on Lundy.’

‘I heard of that gale,’ I said; ‘a barge was put over the sea-wall at Instow.’

‘That’s right, sir. Well, you knows the rule about the lifeboat, fust come fust served. They that gets there fust goes. I grabs my oilies and runs. Me and Tom Jenkyns get there amongst the fust. Old Batten, the cox’un, gives us our cork jackets. ’Twas pitchy dark. There was no lights but the hurricane lamps and rope flares, and they kept blowing out. You couldn’t hear yourself speak for the wind and watter. What was done were done dumb show, and the boys and people all yelling and shouting.

‘We mans the boat. She was on her cradle and Batten were just giving the word to let go, when who should come shoving and pushing through the crowd but Mr. Harris. Tom and me was in the bows, and he spies us and clasps his ’ands.

‘“Take me, take me,” he cries, and stretches up to us.

‘Someone gives him a hoist up, and I grabs him, and pulls him in. I don’t think Cap’n Batten see’d him till it were too late, what with the wind and watter and blowing about of the lights, and general confusion. And at that very moment the boat goes down the ways like a rocket, and if Mr. Harris ’ad been half a minute later she’d ha’ been over him. And that would have been the end o’ his troubles for good and all.

‘He crawls under our seat and lays down. He had got on a little thin overcoat over his other clothes, but nothing to be no good. I throws down a spare jersey, and Tom a oilskin. Then I tosses him a bottle o’ tea and brandy as my missis always gives me.

‘“You’ve done it this time!” I yells. “You must fend for yourself now. I can’t help you.”

‘We drops down the river, for the tide was ebbing strong. And then I realises what the weight o’ wind was. I’ve see’d some queer seas in my time, but never a wuss bit o’ watter than the Bar here was that night, smooth as oil though it be now. The great wind met the great tide, and raised a hurricane sea; the boat herself couldn’t ha’ faced it if the wind hadn’t just then hauled a couple o’ points, and let us get a bit o’ sail on her. Even then I didn’t know half the time whether I were right side or wrong side up. Cold, wet, and rough work it were. But at last we gets over and away and shapes a course for Lundy.

‘Before long the wind takes off a bit, and the sea begins to moderate. ’Twas a queer blow altogether. Not a drop o’ rain to it, and all the wind’ard side o’ the hedges were crisp and black as if fire had burned ’em. Then the sky cleared and the day broke. There were the barque ashore on the Hen and Chickens Rocks, north end o’ the island. Two boats was standing by her, the Braunton and ’Coombe boats; so we rows along to the landing-place, which were sheltered, and brings up. And then me and Tom bends down and fishes up Mr. Harris.

‘You recollect, sir, he ’ad been rolling about in the watter in the bottom of the boat the better part o’ the night. I never see such a melancholly sight! He ’ad no hat, one shoe were gone, his shirt and wes’cot were half tored off. And the queasiness—! But never mind that! His gold glasses were smashed, and he ’ad a great bleeding cut over one eye from the bottle o’ tea and brandy, which had broke. I judged him pretty near gone; he were cold as a stone, and half drowned.

‘We turns to, and gives him a rub, and shoves a warm jersey on him, and Cap’n Batten, without making no remark, shoves down a bottle to us, o’ brandy. That pulls him round a bit. He looks about him and points to the island. We nods, and he slips down again.

‘Just then a boat puts off, and when she gets alongside I see Mirandy was in her. She looks as pretty as a picture, with her red cap and red cheeks, and blue eyes all of a sparkle. One o’ our chaps clears his throat and coughs, and then another till all the boat were doing it. And even Cap’n Batten, though he were high up in the Wesleyans, and ’ad ninety-eight grandchildren, winks at her.

‘Then she says, looking up very demure, and trying not to laugh:

‘“If you please, Cap’n Batten, is my brother-in-law Tom Jenkyns in the boat? And if he is may he come ashore? Mother wants to see him.”

‘“He be aboard, my dear,” says Cap’n Batten, “but I can’t let no one leave the boat. We been out all night, and we’m for home now. But you can give ’un a message. He’m down there forrard.”

‘The boat comes down and she gives the message, and then Tom says,

‘“We got something nice for you, Miry.”

‘“For me?” says Mirandy, shaking her curls. “What can that be?”

‘“We’ve brought your young man. He’m come to fetch you after all,” says Tom.

‘We pokes up Mr. Harris from the bottom of the boat, and then, sir, they two has their fust look at one another.’

‘By Jove, John!’ I said, ‘that must have been a moment! What happened?’

‘I never see’d anybody’s face, man or woman, change like Miry’s did, sir. What she had expected him to be like I don’t know; but not what he was like then, I be sure. And fust one o’ us laughs, and then another, till the boat’s crew were busting their sides. Mr. Harris draws hisself together, and looks at us in that blinky, half-puzzled way, and fust one chap looks shamed and stops, and then another, till there was silence. Then he looks down again at Mirandy, and she laughs and gets red, and a funny look, pitiful like, comes into her face, and she gets scarlet red, and stretches out her arms. We lifts him down, and she helps ’im into her boat, and she wipes the blood from his face, and he puts his arm round her, for I reckon he’d ’ad about enough o’ it. Then the boy rows them ashore, and we watches her ’elping him up the rocks, till we loses sight o’ them. And then, sir, we sets sail for home.

‘And that be the way, sir, that Mr. Harris come to Lundy Island for his wife. And I reckon he deserved her! Don’t you think so, sir?’

‘He did,’ I said warmly, ‘if ever a man did. Many a man has dared a lot for the sake of a girl, but I think Mr. Harris has earned a place among the bravest of them. He might well have died that night, and he must have known the lifeboat wouldn’t put back for him.’

‘Yes, sir. He did, o’ course. It were kill or cure, and he knowed it. I reckon he felt ’twere the only way to get there, so there it was! But ’twas all right. He stayed to Lundy, and Parson Heaven, who owned the island then, married them. And that’s the way Mr. Harris got his bride, sir.’

‘But hold on,’ I said; ‘that’s not all the yarn. How did he get back again?’

‘I’ll tell you how he brought her ’ome, sir, if you pleases. The tide and the yarn will about finish together.

‘Well, the fame o’ Mr. Harris soon spread abroad, and all were anxious to welcome him ’ome. The women forgave him, and spoke well o’ him, and were pleased he ’ad got Miry for his wife at last. The day Dark went over, chartered special, to fetch the happy pair home, Appledore were fair a-buzz. Dark, he puts a new suit o’ sails on the lugger, and when he gets to Lundy and ships Mr. and Mrs. Harris he rigs up every bit o’ bunting he can lay hands on. And home he comes booming with a nice soft breeze. Seventeen o’ our ketches and two small barques was on the Bar that evening, waiting for the tide, and when they see the lugger coming, all dressed and glorious, they cheers, and gives her the road, and falls in behind. Then the lugger reaches the sand-barges, and they cheers and falls in behind too. And further up the river she finds the town band on a barge, and the little rowing and sailing boats all come out to shout and welcome the bride and bridegroom home.

‘So up they comes. Up the river with a swingeing flood tide, and a fair breeze and a bright sky, and all shining and sparkling. The old walls and slips and yards was crowded, and everyone cheered and waved. The Vicar he started the bells, and hoists the flag on the church tower. ’Twas a grand and wonderful sight.

‘Fust comes the lugger, with Dark and his mate keeping well out o’ sight, and Mr. and Mrs. Harris standing well forrard so that all might see. And as they come Mr. Harris takes off his tall hat and bows and waves, this way and that way, while his bald head and new glasses shines in the sun. And Mrs. Harris, who ’ad got her wedding clothes sent over from ’Coombe, furls her white parasol, and bows that way and this way, very dignified, from the hips like. Then comes the band a-banging away, and then the little row-boats and sailing boats, and then the barges and ketches and trawlers, and two barques, and all shouting and cheering. And what was best o’ all, sir,’ said old John, tapping my knee in his earnestness, ‘there were no nasty steamers with their smeech and noise. ’Twas all good sails, sweet and pleasant.

‘Well, Dark brings to, and drops anchor off the quay. Cap’n Batten goes off with his gig, me bein’ one o’ the crew. We brings Mr. and Mrs. Harris ashore, and they lands on the quay. The mob form a lane, and Mr. Harris leads his wife along it. Outside his ’ouse he stops, and waves his ’at again, and bows and smiles, and then puts his arm round Mrs. Harris and kisses her afore everyone. Then he opens the door, and takes her in, and shuts it.

‘And that, sir, is how Mr. Harris brought his wife to Appledore.’

The old man paused and sighed. ‘It were a brave sight,’ he said. ‘Mr. Harris is up for the Council now. He says ’twill be the proudest day o’ his life if he gets put in. H’m wrong there. His proudest day were when he brought his wife home to Appledore.’

‘But what about the queasiness coming home?’ I demanded, ‘and why didn’t⸺’ but my questions were only partially asked. A shiver came over the shining water; a myriad trickles and rivulets spread themselves over the great mass of sand that lay exposed to our right hand. The tide had turned.

‘Get your rod, sir; they won’t be long now. Watch the gulls! The queasiness? Oh, that never come back. The doing in the lifeboat were kill or cure, and it cured him. Anyway, he never ’ad no more o’ it. He—but look there, sir! There’s the bass. My yarn’s spun just in time.’

I flicked the blue-and-white minnow free of the rod. Old John knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and grasped the oars. For the rest of the morning _Perca Labrax_ held the stage.

W. H. ADAMS.

_SIGNS AND NOTICES ON THE WESTERN FRONT._

BY F. J. SALMON.

From the military landing officer’s placard, telling you where to report and what to do, which faces you on the quay before landing in France, to the stencilled board informing you that the recently captured portion of German trench you are standing in was called ‘Stellung 19,’ the ‘Front’ is plastered with notices and signs of every description.

Some are bald official orders of little interest, others are full of meaning and sometimes bring the grim realities of war home to one more than any other feature of the landscape, and yet others—the unofficial ones—are full of humour and eloquent of the cheerful spirit which comes uppermost in the British soldier, be his surroundings ever so miserable.

The most conspicuous ones are those that are intended to be seen by the swiftly passing motor-car—SPEED LIMIT X MILES PER HOUR,—GO SLOW PAST THE COLUMN,—AERODROME, DEAD SLOW TO AVOID DUST SPOILING THE ENGINES.

It is regrettable that sufficient notice is not always taken of such injunctions and those who are affected often have recourse to other tactics. Some are frankly threatening: DRIVERS’ NUMBERS TAKEN AND REPORTED TO THE A.P.M. Others appeal to our better feelings—the notice is put in the form of a request, and a large THANK YOU at the end of the restricted stretch shames the scorcher who has kept his foot on the throttle. Others again resort to subterfuges, such as MIND THE BUMP! There is, of course, no bump, but by the time the driver has found this out and got up his speed again the column of lorries, or whatever it may have been by the roadside, is passed.

In addition to the military road restrictions there are still, of course, the curious mystic signs of the French Auto Club—the grid showing the level crossing gate, the cross for the cross roads and the V or Z for single or double corners.

In order not to make things too easy for the Hun agent most units do not label their billets or transport with their full title, but adopt certain devices and signs which are allotted to them. These assume the form of flowers, animals, or geometric designs of every conceivable pattern and colour. They are to be seen everywhere—few people know what they mean and the spy who would sort out the signs and the units they represent has an unenviable job.

In some cases, however, where secrecy does not appear to be necessary, appropriate emblems are used. I remember one day my car broke down opposite a column of lorries belonging to an Australian unit. On the side and back of each of these vehicles was painted a white kangaroo.

My Scottish Sergeant-Major, though a fervent admirer of the gallant colonials, could not resist a gentle leg-pull. With an air of ignorant innocence he went up to a group of men and asked them what on earth they painted pictures of mice all over their lorries for! He affected to be immensely interested in their explanation.

As one approaches the front there are signs and directions innumerable—the arrows and flags showing the way to casualty clearing stations, signposts of all kinds showing the way to dumps, divisional baths, watering places for horses, canteens, headquarters, field cashiers, the local cinema show, or the Y.M.C.A. hut.

It is in the villages where the troops nearest the line are billeted that the greatest variety of amusing inscriptions is to be found. At a badly strafed cross roads in a certain village there is a small round shell hole, not unlike a booking office, in the wall of a house. Above it are the words: BLIGHTY CORNER—BOOK HERE! It was in the same village that the Xth Siege Battery had the whole side of their mess knocked out—you could drive a gun team through the hole where the door had been. On a bit of remaining wall are the words: DON’T STAND OUT THERE KNOCKING—COME RIGHT IN!

The streets are often labelled with names which at once give evidence as to the present or late occupants of the billets in them—Piccadilly, Prince’s Street, Black Watch Street, Quebec Street, Springbok Laager.

The French names have, however, often been retained, and everywhere, for the benefit of the civilian population, one sees the warning—TAISEZ VOUS, MÉFIEZ VOUS—LES OREILLES ENNEMIES VOUS ÉCOUTENT. In more than one French office this notice is decorated with amusing pictures of Huns with huge ears listening from round corners.

In one place it has been possible to devise a bi-lingual notice—

to the
DANGER pay ATTENTION TRAINS.
aux

A ‘poilu,’ who had come back to his village near the firing line on ‘permission’ and who wished to indulge in a little quiet gardening in the diminutive plot behind his cottage, was confronted with a large notice—DANGER—BLIND SHELL. His wife had to explain to him that a German 8-inch ‘dud’ had buried itself there. Being one whose duties lie on the lines of communication, he had not acquired that contempt for the unexploded shell which the ‘Bairnsfather’ Tommy has and so the garden was left severely alone!

The position of this good French soldier is worthy of remark. He was a farrier at some way back supply depot and, in his whole life, had not heard a shot fired in anger. It was only when he came home on leave that he experienced the thrills of being under shell fire, and it was from his women folk that he had to learn the precise moment when he could decently retire to the cellar without an undue display of timidity! Ye Gods! What a leave! We may well be thankful if we get nothing more alarming than a Zeppelin raid when doing our week in town!

The French villagers who sell groceries, eggs, wine, or ‘Anglish Beere’ in the many half-ruined shops in the shelled area advertise their goods often with notices in the weirdest of Anglo-French spelling, and it is extraordinary in what surroundings some of them manage to carry on business.

I know of one little ‘épicerie’ which does a roaring trade in a house that has no roof and practically only three walls. The place has been made more or less weatherproof with some pieces of tin and a few planks. The rest of the village has been smashed to pieces. The neighbourhood is shelled almost daily, and whenever I pass I look, not without anxiety, to see if the plucky old lady’s sign is still there.

At the ruined railway station of a certain town near the line the notice—‘BILLETS’—still stands over the shattered booking office, and, sure enough, if you hunt around among the débris you will find tickets to Charing Cross! At another station a few miles away and also within sight of the German trenches the door labelled—‘SORTIE’—is barred with wreckage and is about the only part of the building you can _not_ walk in and out of at will!

Not very far away some of my own unit were once billeted in part of what was once a French Barracks, and it was here that I was shown some inscriptions of quite historical interest.