Chapter VII

Three weeks at a Soldier's Seaside Convalescent Home on the outskirts of a West Coast Winter resort, intervened before John's return to Campden Hill Terrace.

It had been strange to recognise upon his mother's cheerful, well-preserved comeliness the strained and sharpened look that is the stamp of War upon the human countenance. Maurice--who was later on to develop into a mechanic-private in what was then the Royal Flying Corps--the chrysalis or pupa-stage of ultimate transformation into a Lieutenant-Pilot--was Overseas at an Advance Depot of the A.S.C. and didn't write punctually. And the double-fronted millinery and florist's business in Dove Street was languishing. Fruit and flowers were only bought to be sent on to the Wounded in the Hospitals. Nobody wanted ravishing hats when the men the hats were meant to slay were being killed in the trenches; besides, British women were all agreed by now that in War-time some kind of uniform was the only possible wear. So Lady Delphinia had departed to France to open a Hostel for Officers at one of the Allied Bases, and the huge benevolent octopus of Organised Activity had enveloped within its tentacles Mrs. Hazel and her set. They spent their days strenuously at various West End Centres, in making every imaginable aid,--from list slippers to body belts, from artificial legs and arms to life-saving waistcoats--for the Fleet and the Forces; and if they took comfort from the knowledge that their neighbours at the trestle-tables in the crowded work-rooms were occasionally Duchesses, who shall grudge John's mother and her intimates the gratification they derived from this fact!

Of the visit of Mendel Bartoth to the Hospital at Colthill, John said nothing to his mother. After all, it was his affair. His and Maurice's--because it was provided under the conditions of the Will of Eli Hazaël that, should the elder of the two surviving male representatives of his House decline to adopt the Judaism of his forefathers (and incidentally forfeit a sum of £380,000), the younger should be offered the fortune thus foregone.

Justice and wisdom went to the making of the Will, with consideration and magnanimity. John was to have two years clear in which to make up his mind. In the meanwhile, there was the acceptable sum of £500 to be earned by taking a run up North as soon as his health was sufficiently restored.

Consequently upon a bitter grey-white morning in the February of 1916, Private John Hazel found himself seated in a grimy third-class compartment of the Kelso Express, steaming out of a vast and murky London terminus, upon the strangest errand of his life.

The thing was real. He might have dreamed old Mendel: but that there could be no doubt in face of all those proofs. The typewritten papers and the queer crumbly parchments were in the brown calfskin bag beside him. And, queerest of all, the ring: the intaglio of the bust of Hercules in black onyx in its ancient setting of pale greenish gold, incredibly battered, was on the third finger of his big left hand....

He squeezed the back sheet of his _Pall Mall Gazette_ into a ball, observant of the inferior quality of the paper--cleared away the clammy fog and grime that obscured the window next him--and settled down to read the News.

Front after front had burst into roaring flame; the brown shuttle of the Army and the dark blue shuttle of the Navy, driven back and forth with dizzying rapidity, wove the bloody web of War upon the loom of Fate daily, hourly, momentarily....

Sir Douglas Haig had succeeded Sir John French in command of our Forces in France in the previous December. De Wet and other South Africans had been pardoned. General Smuts had been appointed to command in East Africa; the Germans had been repulsed at Loos, a Zeppelin raid on Paris had twice been unsuccessfully attempted; the Senussi Arabs had been beaten in West Egypt, the Kut Relief Force were at grips with the Turkish forces;--France was fighting superbly to hold Vimy Ridge her own. And the Military Service Bill was effective in Great Britain; and the final act of the Evacuation, ringing down the curtain on the unsuccessful tragedy of the Gallipoli Peninsula was fading from the minds of men.... A bad, bad business! John commented mentally. He wished the Blooming Bungler who was responsible for all that waste of blood and prestige and money could be jammed into a British trench-mortar of the old-fashioned, big-bellied, Jumbo pattern--and biffed--say 450 yards--into the Turkish lines! And then he fell to staring at the women in blue overalls not innocent of grease, with the initials of the Railway Company in braid that was no longer white--and blue caps with shiny peaks and white braid badges. And the other women who tapped and greased wheels, and rattled along luggage trucks, and trolleys of lamps and foot-warmers;--not forgetting yet other women in dark blue serge uniforms with bright steel buttons, who had clipped his ticket for Scotland when he passed the Barrier.

For London was astonishingly altered by the War. Not only by the temporary War Constructions, the Specials, and the sand-bagging and wire-netting of public and private buildings: not only by glassless windows--shattered walls and holes in the concrete pavement,--wounds torn by High Explosive bombs dropped by Zeppelins and Gothas on the grey breast of the City, that in John Hazel's estimation was built about the hub of the world. The most remarkable of all the War-changes was in the women. In Belgium and France the women young and old had done men's work, and sometimes looked as though they enjoyed doing it. Somehow one expected it of Continental womanhood. But that British womanhood should conduct trams and omnibuses in dark grey jackets with black leather buttons and belts, short skirts to suit, and black leather gaiters, slouch hats or shiny-peaked caps,--intrigued John Hazel wonderfully. A young woman had driven him to King's Cross from Campden Hill, smart and business-like in a yellow oilskin coat, peaked yellow oilskin cap--_toujours_ the peaked cap--big leathern gauntlet-gloves, strap-satchel and general air of confident competency.... She had not overcharged: and had thrust back John's proffered _douceur_ with the succinct statement: "We don't take tips from soldiers, _these_ days!"

And whizzed smoothly out of John Hazel's ken, leaving the young man standing staring after her, with the calfskin bag in one hand and a suit-case in the other; amidst the very audible smiles of the lady-porters and luggage-clerks.

The door of the compartment opened at this juncture, admitting a drab-faced elderly woman in greasy blue overalls. With a grimy duster she flapped the seats of the comfortless third-class, raising a cloud of cindery dust that made the sole passenger sneeze; whisked a collection of orange-peel, nut-shells, toffee-papers and "Puss-Puss!" and "Woodbine" cigarette wrappers under the opposite seat, and fell out again over John Hazel's boots, leaving the atmosphere murkier than ever.

Fear--the acquired fear of encountering the glare of a Sergeant, or the chilly stare of the wearer of a Sam Browne, had hitherto arrested the hand of the Junior Partner in the thriving Cornhill firm of Dannahill, Lee-Levyson and Hazel, Insurance-brokers,--when it would fain have placed on the rubber pad of the Booking Office pigeon-hole, the fare for a First Class Return.

But now, the prospect of a run of some three hundred and fifty odd miles North in captivity so grim, chilly and unsavoury, prompted a young man with muscles still soft from confinement to a Hospital bed, and the kindly coddling of Hospital Sisters,--and with the warning of the C.M.O. with regard to avoidance of bronchitis still fresh in mind,--to extract a soiled ten-shilling note or "pinky" from a pigskin wallet; to project the upper half of his big body from the carriage-window, and endeavour, not unsuccessfully, to catch the eye of the guard.

"Na, na, nae Second Class. Ye'll have hearrd that ava' at the Booking Office!"

The silver-braided functionary, checked momentarily in his stride by the appeal of an agitated old lady, presented his highly-dried and sandily-bearded countenance upon a level with the buttons of John's front tunic-pockets, and inclined a freckled ear to the young man's appeal. The answer came in the droning chant of Berwick:

"Ye can pay the differ between the firr'st an' third-class--I'm no' for stopping ye. Though, ye ken, wi' ilka officer that gets in, ye'll rin the same risk!"

"Of being turned out with a flea in my ear, you mean," returned John Hazel, not unobservant of the mahogany _reflet_ of certain Sam Brownes, isolated or in knots, upon the platform, in juxtaposition with open carriage-doors, or mingling with the scanty groups of would-be passengers under the arc-lights (camouflaged with blue paint) that cast false pallor on the freshest cheek, and made sickly faces masks of Death; and threw long purplish shadows of people and things (at angles suggestive of Futurist Art) upon the greasy asphalte of the Northern terminus....

"O, ay! If ye're willin' to tak the risk...."

The glitter of a certain medal on the Private's breast, and the shine of two parallel strips of gold braid upon his cuff, had caught the sharp grey eyes of the guard. He thrust back the offered note on the confounded John, leaped at his suitcase and tore it from the rack, and shepherded his huge charge through the clank and rattle and roll of luggage trucks, foot-warmer barrows, and lamp-trolleys, shouting:

"Come awa' wi' you, man!--there's a firr'st weel forward, wi' a twa--three women-bodies that would gie guid skelps to the officer that daured look crookit at ony Tommy--forbye a lang black lad wi' the D.C.M.!"

Thus John Hazel, suffering for once from an acute attack of bashfulness, found himself installed in a corner of a fairly-warmed if faintly-lighted first-class compartment, containing in addition to many cloaks, rugs, pillows, tea-baskets, and other cosy accompaniments of travel,--three ladies of uncertain ages, but very definite position in life,--also a Young Person of highly-coloured exotic charms, clamorously perfumed; whose crimson hair was surmounted by a French officer's tasselled _képi_, and who displayed, below marvellously abbreviated skirts, silk stockings of open trellis-work, ending in such boots of yellow leather with tinsel cross-laces as are commonly associated with Principal Boys in Pantomime....

Of the three ladies, two carried the dark blue uniform of a Voluntary Aid Detachment of the British Red Cross Society and held officers' rank of sorts, for both were pipped. While the third, an incredibly tall, thin woman, with eyebrows arched and black as musical slurs, pale greenish-gold hair, a white, triangular face, and a V-shaped mouth as scarlet as a Pierrot's, wore upon her khaki sleeve the brassard of the Liberal Ladies' War Service Legion, with the lapel, shoulder and hat-badges distinctive of a Commandant.

All three displayed the roughened hands and damaged finger-nails characteristic of British womanhood at this strenuous period. Theirs was the unabashed and frank regard, born of the calm self-confidence which springs--not from the conviction, but from the established fact of being Somebody in Society. All three were loud of voice, long of limb, easy if abrupt of movement: prone to discuss their own and their friends' private affairs in the presence of strangers; as though the man or woman in the corner, palpably an alien from Their Set, must in consequence be deaf and dumb.

"Howling swells!" was John Hazel's pithy mental comment, recognising upon three of his fellow-travellers the unmistakable cachet of Good Society. "The Mums," he reflected, rather wistfully--one of the Nice Things about John was his belief in his mother--"the Mums would be in her element here!" And he leaned luxuriously back upon a plump cushion that one of the V.A.D. ladies had deftly thrust behind him, in the corner that had been unostentatiously vacated when the big young man, with hollow black eyes and prominent cheek-bones, and khaki baggily hanging upon a huge frame wasted by hæmorrhage and strict dietary, had heaved in sight. And the Commandant handed him the day's issue of an expensive _Illustrated Society_; saying, with a characteristic emphasis suggestive of large capitals:

"Of course, I really don't believe you'll Cotton Much to this, but it may get you over an hour! Pass it on to somebody else when you've done--I Don't want it back!"

She nodded smilingly in acknowledgment of Hazel's gratitude, and the young person in the gilt-tasselled French _képi_ followed suit by giving John the current number of "_Frillies_," a purely feminine publication--devoted to the puffing of silk pyjamas and embroidered underwear, with Piffel Pearls (warranted to outshine real ones) and Face Creams guaranteed to remove Complexion Blemishes contracted at Munition Factories, or in Labour on the Land....

Then she suddenly saw a friend, seized her handbag and suit-case, and departed on the corridor-side of the compartment in a gale of violent perfume. John opened the sliding-door, shut the same on her departure; pulled up his rug and began to sip the honeyed sweetness of "Loveliness in Lingerie," and the three ladies, as the savage tang of verbena died upon the air, unleashed their loud, high voices apparently upon the trail of some subject mooted before.

"You have heard that Evelyn Graynger has consoled herself?" asked the startlingly thin woman in khaki, lifting her musical slurs of eyebrows towards the peak of her badged cap, from the back of which a short square veil depended, and momentarily glancing as she did this, at a three-inch band of black crape upon her left arm. "Though I am quite sure that the poor child _really_ did care for my poor Wastwood and my poor Jerry--you know she became engaged to Jerry not long after Wastwood--" She blinked and broke off.

"Really! ..." the dark blue ladies chorused; and the elder exclaimed sympathetically.

"How awfully difficult it must have made their mother's position! Didn't it, Trixie dear?"

"Now Evelyn is going, I hear, to marry the popular Anglican preacher, Mr. Amice-Bellows," continued the khaki Commandant. "He likes to be called 'Father,' don't you know!--and has still a great many wealthy lady-penitents; never having felt any irresistible call to volunteer as a Chaplain accompanying Forces to the Front. He opens Soldiers' Refreshment Buffets with prayer, and figures on Red Cross Bazaar Committees, and visits wounded Tommies in Hospital and all that, and of course there must be people to do these things.... And they say he has a consoling manner with his clients--I should say Congregation--when they're knocked out by Bad News! Though I remember when the second bomb dropped,--I mean in the shape of another wire from the Casualty Department of the War Office--and I was rather off colour in consequence--he advised me to drink a pint of hot water regularly every morning with Bi--something-of-something-or-other stirred in."

The two V.A.D. ladies shrieked. The triangular-faced Commandant in khaki continued, all unconscious that the illustrated periodical bestowed on John Hazel displayed her photograph, with the appended description:

"Trixie, Lady Wastwood. Mother of the late, and aunt of the present Earl. Who has been doing splendid service as a Commandant of the Liberal Ladies' War Service Legion at one of our principal Bases in France, in adherence to the well-known motto of the Legion: _Do Anything, Go Anywhere, Stick at Nothing, and Never Grouse_!"

* * * * * * *

"Well-meant"--the elder of the two blue women was speaking through her laughter, "but hardly tactful of Mr. Amice Bellows--to suggest that biliousness and bereavement produce symptoms practically the same!"

"Anyhow," the khaki woman's laugh rattled out as though a stick had been drawn over the keys of a piano, "I took the parson's counsel--vicariously. Went down every day to Waterloo Station and poured tea and coffee into thirsty Tommies at a Soldiers' Free Refreshment Buffet--instead of irrigating myself. Found it swamped the blue devils quite as effectually. And"--she touched her khaki lightly--"that's how this--began. Same with both of you--I rather fancy?" ...

"I entered as Probationer at St. Francis and St. Clara's after the Third Reserve Battalion of the Loyal North Linkshires got gassed at Ypres last Spring," said the younger of the V.A.D. women, who had also a mourning armlet, and could not have been older than twenty-two or three. "And I found scrubbing floors and carrying buckets better--oh!--miles better than all the veronal in all the chemists' shops."

"I agree with Cynthia," said the other blue lady, "I think the V.A.D. was meant to keep the women who have lost their all from lying down and dying--or running _amok_. Hark! Was that a Take Cover?" ...

A detonation in the distance had been followed by a wailing hoot of peculiar ugliness. Silence descended upon the Terminus. Most of the faces that turned to each other in inquiry, seemed to have suddenly been powdered white. The three women in John's carriage betrayed no emotion. They waited in silence, but no second detonation followed. And John Hazel said as his gaunt black eyes, met Lady Wastwood's, that were green and singularly brilliant:

"I think the tyre of a motor-'bus burst--just before they sounded the dinner-hooter at some near-by factory. I know Longmore's Locust Bean chocolate used to be turned out at a place close here."

All three women nodded and smiled in recognition of the soldier's civility. The hollows about his eyes, and under his cheek-bones, the bagginess of his khaki--in favour of which he had gratefully abandoned the suit of Reckitt's Blue flannel with white lapels, and the scarlet cotton necktie of Hospital wear, had--in combination with the medal and the wound-stripes, won him favour in their eyes....

Lady Wastwood gave him another paper, a _Morning Post_, and the younger of the V.A.D.'s was following suit with a packet of chocolate, when the first starting-gong clangalanged,--the carriage-door was wrenched open, and a tall thin officer, followed by a porter carrying a Gladstone bag and tartan rug, was in the very act of entering when he encountered Lady Wastwood's glance....