Chapter XXIX (4)

Now those birds of passage, the Sahibs, go home by that familiar waterway, but for the man of the Punjab it was a summons to ‘Active Service Overseas’ and a strange land. Yet death is the strangest land of all to both Sahibs and sepoys, and in its vast region lies the eternal home of every traveller, so that they faced the way to the unknown right gladly together, and the reservists hastened to join them. There were as many rumours as there were men in the ranks, and each rumour was an enemy. To the Dogras there was the suggestion of violated caste in foreign lands; to the Sikh the pleasant whisper that the Raj feared the Khalsa and was carting the Sikhs away in ships to sink them; to the Pathan the assertion that the German Emperor and his Army were of the Mahomedan faith. But little cared the sepoys in the outposts—where doubtless they knew of the order before their officers, for the wires whisper many things well understood by the babus e’er ever they give official utterance—as they made haste to hand over to the Mahomedan regiment that marched hot foot to relieve them, while a regiment from down-country was railed north with all speed to keep the frontier cantonment at full strength. The Punjab regiment tramped into Dera Ismail Khan in little brown detachments that crossed the wide pale desert to the jingle of mules and the rumble of transport carts, and encamped on a bare parade ground awaiting orders. The General commanding the Derajat Brigade had his orders by then for the great war, so that the cantonment knew yet one more change. The Punjab regiment was extraordinarily busy; all the paraphernalia wherewith each human being encumbers himself, multiplied by one thousand, had to be dealt with. Mess trophies and treasures had to be packed; the regimental office had to be packed; all surplus kit had to be packed. Officers’ bungalows found new tenants; officers’ dogs found new owners; officers’ wives stood ready for their voyage to England on such dates and in such ships as the embarkation officer’s wire should direct. Very quickly the armed host shook itself free of encumbrance and stood equipped for war, the while post-cards from the sepoys’ homes fluttered into their camp, pleading ‘Come to me. Don’t go.’ And the voices that answered this pleading of hidden wives, the voices that replied to the hundred rumours—deep voices of sepoys speaking in the vernacular—will ring in my heart till I die. Thus, a Sikh, speaking to his officer’s wife of his ‘house’: ‘Nay, Huzur, I have not written. What profit to write? She will but say, “Take leave and come, I am ill,” and at this hour what man can get leave? This is without doubt no hour for leave. She will say, “Do not go,” having no understanding, but the Presence knows that there is an Order to go. Therefore from Karachi I will send a post-card saying, “I have gone. _Bǎs!_”[8]’ Yet it took thought for the welfare of its wives, this regiment of married men, and there was satisfaction in their tones when they announced to the Englishwoman,—‘The Colonel Sahib says that the Government will make provision for them, and that it will be in no man’s power to take it from them. _That_ money will be no one’s “hukh,”[9] Protector of the Poor.’ Some hundred husbands knew content at the word of one man,—‘the Colonel Sahib says.’ And thus the Indian officers, very courteously,—‘We have eaten your salt and we fear nothing: it is good that we go.’ The Hindus spoke ever of the King, ‘Our King calls us,’ but the Mahomedan looked to his officer, ‘My Sahib is pleased to go; I also am pleased.’ All ranks spoke of the regiment’s name: ‘It is good for the name of the regiment that we go.’

A stripling rose up from among the hot shadows on the veranda, ‘Huzur, I am now the Sahib’s orderly. When the regiment went to Somaliland my father was the Sahib’s orderly. My father is dead, but I am the orderly of the Sahib.’ Something more here than the vow taken on enlistment: some vow this of the heart’s own making. And in the camp a spirit stirring among the menials: a young sweeper, son of a line sweeper, salaaming low to his Memsahib, ‘I am known to all men of the regiment, I go with the regiment.’ Surely they go upward as they go onward, these armed hosts of men who lift such humble beings out of the dust of themselves?

The club in the evenings was very gay, as though the fierceness of man was forged from bright metal. The comradeship was deep; ‘brothers in arms’ meant much to those soldier folk; the unspoken word was expressed in every handgrip, ‘Honorary member of my table, you give me orders, or take mine, but both serve King and Country—here’s luck to you.’ And when, on October 27, the Punjab regiment went forth to the war of the world, the courtesy and the tremendous sentiment which the Army feels for the Army was written plain by the cantonment for the city to see. And the city watched in little groups that drifted out through its narrow gates and took up positions where the desert breaks away from the military roads, and the piety of a Hindu has built a bathing place for such pilgrims as desire to perform orthodox ablutions in the waters of the hurrying river. Balu Ram’s Ghat was bleached by vivid sunshine, and an old Brahman accepted the respectful greetings of such as were not thrice-born. The portly tradesman of the cantonment, Beli Ram, whisked up on his bicycle and waited to watch them pass—those Sahibs who jested with him and paid his big bills when promotion worked miracles. Fat and lazy, yet not without shrewd enterprise; plausible and intriguing, but keeping faith in much; charitable, good-natured, indulgent to little children, he was well known to every man, woman, and child in the throng, and those sacrificial men of war, about to set forth on their perilous way, would carry him with them in their memories as ‘not half a bad fellow, old Beli Ram.’

In an empty bungalow among the litter of packing-cases, one young bearer was weeping shamefacedly. For many days he had protested his wish to follow his Sahib’s fortunes, but the night before departure the unknown had assumed a terrific aspect: the landsman dreaded the sea, the servant feared the bloody service of war—the spirit failed. His small bundles swayed aloft on a laden camel towards Darya Khan, but he stayed behind.

In one of the city dwellings two low-caste men, a syce and his brother, argued through the drowsy noon. Family debt, family affection cried ‘Stay,’ and so the charger was led to the door by an orderly who, saluting, announced ‘The syce has run away, what can be done? Nothing can be done. He has entirely departed, the son of Satan.’

The General and his Staff rode through the troops and took up a position beyond the Ghat. The band of a Sikh regiment sent its music rolling out over the river and the dunes. The wives of the officers made a little knot close to the shrine.

The disciplined wheat-coloured companies rippled out on to the dusty road, and those waiting by Balu Ram’s Ghat heard a shout rise deep-throated from its ranks, heard a cheer rise from the troops, horse, foot and guns, that lined its route, and heard the echoes die away across the desert sands, to rise and fall again and again.

In England regiments were marching through London Town, and the traffic was being held back at the crossings, while the housemaids threw open the upper windows and waved handkerchiefs; but by October crowds were silent, having grown weary of cheering the new warlike pageant of their thronged streets. In the hearts of the watching wives, and in the hearts of the British officers, the thoughts were of that hour at home, and not a little of the verdict which the people of those busy streets would pass on these Indian soldiers marching out of Dera Ismail Khan: men of strange faiths, men of diverse tongues, men of no education save for that stern schooling of war decreed by David the soldier poet—‘Thy right hand shall teach thee _terrible_ things.’ Doran had raised this clan in 1857 at the urgent bidding of Lawrence, and it had crossed the seas in turn to China, Burma, and Somaliland, but never with so ill a wind, blowing no man aught of good, as is brewed to-day in Germany’s poisonous cauldrons. It had fought its way to Kabul, and been taken out of victorious action by a subaltern at Ali Masjid, but no mine nor shell had laid its young men low. It had nursed a British regiment that was sick unto death with cholera, and knew no white man by name, or sight, who would slay women, children, and the wounded. Long ago, in November 1858, it had passed from the service of stout John Company to the great service of the Crown, and for fifty-three years it served Empress and Emperors before it laid eyes on the person of its Sovereign, what time each Hindu officer and sepoy, among the millions of Calcutta folk, accounted that sacred privilege of beholding King George more favourable to the soul than three pilgrimages piously performed. In all its history only one man had set foot in England, an Afridi subadar, who attended the Coronation and returned full of mighty tales of the fabulous amount of milk given by our cows, of the work of scavengers done by Jews only, and many things hard to credit. But it was familiar with things strange to the far-off British Isles, this Indian regiment; earthquakes had tossed the villages of the Dogras to rubbish heaps in the spring of 1905, and for weary years plague had stricken the homes of Sikhs and Punjabi Mahomedans, while the neighbours of the Khattaks and Afridis ever held finger to rifle trigger. Neither pestilence, famine, battle, murder, nor sudden death were unknown to the men whose footsteps the knot of watchers by the Ghat could hear approaching, though months of sunless skies and sodden ground, bitter poverty of European slums, flowers tossed to the man of the East by white women, vast lands without mosque or temple or breath of the thronged bazaar, were things outside their experience, and beyond their imagination, on that October noonday.

The lay mind may fear or favour a regiment’s violence, but it is extraordinarily prone to lose sight of a regiment’s vocation. Now it had been brought home to one of the Englishwomen watching that regiment go forth to war that its strength was dedicated; for on a cold November morning in the Punjab she had seen a line of recruits drawn up opposite the battalion, and had heard the oath and affirmation taken in the vernacular which appointed each recruit a soldier and not a mere public executioner. Roughly translated, this is what she had heard,—‘I do swear,’ the Hindu youngster vowed; ‘I do swear by the holy Granth,’ declared the Sikh stripling; ‘I do solemnly affirm in the presence of Almighty God,’ the youthful Punjabi Mahomedan and Pathan said;—‘that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty the King Emperor, his heirs, and successors, and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully serve in His Majesty’s Indian Forces, and go wherever I am ordered by land or by sea. And that I will observe and obey all commands of any officer set over me, _even to the peril of my life_.’ Thus, all the lusty yeomen of the northern plains and hills, among whom the Hindus added, ‘So help me God.’ Whereupon, very impressively, the battalion paid its highest honour, and gave its most profound welcome, to its sworn men by presenting arms to them. Moreover, in this matter of vocation, the handful of British officers, who, from the day of the regiment’s birth, had guided it in the way it should go through succeeding generations, held a mandate that invoked supreme authority:

‘_By the Grace of God ... Defender of the Faith_ ... to our
trusty and well beloved ... Gentleman, greeting. We, reposing
special trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage, and good
conduct, do by these presents constitute and appoint you to be
an Officer ... and you are at all times to exercise and well
discipline in arms, both the inferior officers and men serving
under you, and use your best endeavours to keep them in good
order and discipline. And We do hereby command them to obey you
as their superior officer, and you to observe and follow such
orders and directions, as from time to time you shall receive
from Us or any your Superior Officer, according to the rules
and discipline of war in pursuance of the trust hereby reposed
in you.’

And so when, across the shadeless parade ground where only the clouds threw shadows, the shouting ranks approached the Ghat, it was plain that each soldier felt with the Israelites of old that it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes or in man, for the Dogras were calling on Kali, the Sikhs on their Gurus, and the Mahomedans on Allah the God of Battles.

Only a bugler was given to frivolity. Some weeks before, in the pride of his schooling, he had questioned a Memsahib eagerly, ‘Can the Presence read? Can the Presence write?’ and was crestfallen at meeting his match. Yet a professional hope remained. ‘Can the Presence beegle?’[10] he challenged, and established complete superiority. His mother had stood by his side that day; a tall, dignified, strictly secluded woman of the purdah, but neither she, nor any Indian wife or mother of the sepoy folk, stood watching the regiment depart. Only the Englishwomen bade all God speed, while the happy little bugler went forth to war and cheered his own performance.

The British officers wheeled their chargers up to the group of their countrywomen; and the Indian officers left the shouting companies to step aside, salute, and shake hands. Then all passed on. The Sikh band struck up ‘For Auld Lang Syne,’ and many thought of the gallant comrade who would never be forgotten by his regiment, now leaving his lonely grave behind. It was a strangely dramatic chance that turned this regiment of all regiments away from the hills of the Mahsuds, for scarce six months were gone since that day when, with reversed arms, it had laid to rest the great Dodd, soldier, ruler, and friend of the frontier where he fell, foully murdered, amid the false peace of his own border garden. On the day of his burial the thunder roared from the treacherous hills, the Last Post bade him sleep well, the solemn volleys promised stern remembrance, and every officer and man of his regiment longed to avenge him according to the Rules of War. But the orders and directions ran otherwise, and so ‘Doran Sahib-ki-Paltan’ marched away from Waziristan, through Balu Ram’s Ghat, with all the officers of the brigade bearing it good company as far as the bridge of boats across the Indus, whence it set forth to a destination unknown, with the trusty and well-beloved Gentlemen leading.

That night the young bearer realised suddenly that his Sahib had gone, and, like a dog that misses his master and gives chase, he stood up and clamoured to the officer’s wife, ‘Huzur, get me an ekha that I may now drive to Darya Khan while there is yet time. Without doubt I must of necessity go with my Sahib.’ Half an hour later a scarecrow wrapped in a blanket stood at her door, and a syce’s voice insisted, ‘Memsahib! Memsahib! get me an ekha and I will go to the Sahib and Moti the mare. And give no money to my brother, Huzur, for he has taken all my clothes so that I should not go. But I go now very swiftly. There is four annas to pay to the khansamah, if the Presence will give it? Salaam!’

And over the dim desert, through the starless night, by the groping light of little crazy oil lamps, with endless joltings and bumpings, to where the sleeping regiment waited to entrain at dawn, there drove urgently Burgwan Das, bearer, and Bhagu, syce.

JOHN TRAVERS.

FOOTNOTES

[7] _I.e._ alluvial plain.

[8] ‘Enough!’

[9] Perquisite.

[10] Bugle.

_THE DAY._

As the cathedral chimes struck eleven, Hubert Quality raised the corner of the blind and looked into the street.

A deep peace reigned; the cobbles of the road glistened from recent rain; wet wads of yellowed leaves padded the pavements. Very far away on the horizon, a fitful red quiver told of heathen fires lighted to the dark god Thor.

No human form was visible in the street. Yet Quality shrank from the uneasy sensation that some one was spying upon him.

Bracing himself with an effort, he looked up furtively into the indigo vault of the heavens—knowing the while that he was about to be subjected to some fresh demonstration of trickery on the part of his nerves.

Instantly, he started back with a stifled cry.

A face was watching him from the moon.

For several full seconds it bleached him, the unhuman stare of century-old eyes, before it blended again into the blank silver disc.

With shaking fingers, Quality dropped the curtain—the pallor of his face and the twitching of his features testifying to the cumulative effect of oft-repeated shocks.

For the past two weeks, his terror-maddened nerves had rent him with the strength of lunatic devils—making every heart-beat leap like a bead of quicksilver, and chopping up each breath into demi-semiquavers of panting panic. Only the consciousness of one supreme fact held them back from their objective—the wreck of Quality’s sanity.

On the morrow, their victim was going home.

It was his day.

The most cursory glance at his face proclaimed him the predestined prey of his imagination. His dreamy eyes, sensitive mouth, and delicate physique denoted him student—or visionary—rather than man of action, and, as such, averse from any act or form of violence.

During the siege and occupation of the town by the enemy, in his rôle of spectator, he had been plunged into a super-hell, in which he groped in a red delirium—fire-flecked and blood-smudged. His razor-keen sympathies supplying the lack of experience, he had died, by proxy, many deaths a day. He had seen human faces blasted by the red-hot touch of the Martian hand, and the sight had not been good to see. Above all, his ears were deafened by the constant terrific speech of great guns that spoke.

Peace—passionately he prayed for it. And to-morrow that peace would be his.

Soothed by the mere thought of his imminent release, he turned back again towards the room which he had grown to hate. It was a prim, mid-Victorian-looking apartment, stuffy from a porcelain stove and crowded with horsehair furniture. At the round table of highly polished walnut-wood, his landlady sat at her knitting.

Apparently about forty years of age, madame was of ponderous build, clumsy as a Flemish horse, with massive heaving shoulders, and broad hips. Abundant black hair was brushed back from her face and gathered in a knot on the top of her head. Her sallow skin was partially redeemed by the beauty of her eyes—velvet-brown and fringed with thick lashes. Her full lips were pencilled with a fine line of black down. It was a typical enough face of a daughter of the people, sprung from peasant stock and now the wife of a small tradesman.

This was the woman whom Quality feared with his very soul.

When he had first rented her apartment, she had reminded him of a woman in a fairy-tale, who, while apparently honest and homely, concealed under her ordinary exterior that element of the sinister supernatural that often accompanies such histories. Thus looked the pleasant-faced female, who afterwards figured as the ogress; thus appeared the harmless peasant, who changed nightly into a were-wolf.

It was not his fanciful idea of a composite personality, however, which inspired Quality’s dislike of his landlady. That had come with the knowledge that she was utterly lacking in the usual sentiments of humanity. Undisturbed by any horrors of the siege, and showing neither pity nor fear, she continued her daily routine with the mechanical precision of a machine. The sole interest that she ever showed in her boarder was connected with the weekly note.

It was since the War that his distaste had magnified into fear. And his fear was the craven terror of one who, amidst hostile surroundings, carries his very life on a tongue-string. For Fate, choosing her instrument with callous cruelty, had ordained that he should serve his country by means of those subterranean methods, for which the punishment is summary death.

Quality now eyed the woman with the oblique glance of suspicion.

How much did madame know? Did she merely suspect? Was her inaction a sign of ignorance? Or was she on crouch, biding her time to pounce?

Yet through the shifting mists of those dream-days of doubt and fear—when rustling leaves tracked him homewards, and his own shadow slipped away to denounce him—one fact remained real and potent. He knew that all appeal to madame’s feminine compassion would be vain. If she possessed his secret, she would certainly betray him.

Again he looked at her, marking, with strong dislike, the rust-red grain of her skin over her cheek-bones, the tight tartan-silk blouse, the stiff linen collar that made her neck appear so dirty by contrast. The room, with its hideous-patterned paper seemed to wall him in alive; the charcoal fumes from the stove to suffocate him.

Then, suddenly, he smiled. All this, too, would pass away. Next week, he would rub his eyes and wonder if—somewhere—on some alien planet, there really existed a strange, hostile room, tenanted by an unhuman, sawdust-stuffed woman. Both would dwindle down to a name on an envelope—merely an address.

In the reaction of spirits, he stooped to pick up madame’s ball of worsted.

‘The last time I shall do this for you, madame!’

Even as he spoke, his morbid mind quarrelled with his sentence; it seemed as though its finality left a loophole for sinister interpretation.

‘_Bien!_’

‘Shall you miss me, madame?’

‘Yes.’ Her ‘_si_’ was emphatic. ‘As one misses all men. Less work, but, unfortunately, less money.’

The speech, typical of the frugal housekeeper of grasping spirit, was reassuring. He smiled once more as he looked at the clock.

‘You’re late to-night, madame! You should save your eye-sight—or, better still, your oil and fuel. Aren’t you going to bed at all?’

She shook her head vehemently.

‘For me, I have no stomach for bed, at all, at all. To sleep would be but to see again that which I have, this day, seen. What? Have you not heard?’

He shook his head.

‘Ah! What misfortune! To-day, at noon, they shot M. Lemoine!’

M. Lemoine—the prominent citizen and advocate! Quality could not credit the news. His mind conjured up a vivid picture of that portly form and plum-coloured face, as madame proceeded.

‘Yes, m’sieur, I saw it. It was horrible. Two soldiers ran him down the steps of the hotel—quick, quick! yet, at every step, one saw him shrink. It was as though a hole had been pierced in him, so that the _man_ came leaking through. At the top, there was the fine figure—so brave, so big; at the bottom, only a shrunken stranger, with eyes that ran, ran, and fingers that picked, and little bubbles around his lips, rising, rising. He—_himself_—was gone. There was no longer any M. Lemoine!’

Told in her native tongue, with pantomimic gesture to point her words, the recital was ghastly.

Breathing heavily, Quality cleared his throat to ask a question.

‘What was the charge?’

Surely the woman must notice the treacherous quiver of his voice! Her answer seemed to be delayed for an eternity.

‘The charge, m’sieur?—He was a spy!’

‘_Ah!_’

Quality sank down upon a bristly horsehair chair, the crocheted antimacassar slipping down behind his back. He looked around him with eyes of sick loathing. The clicking sound of madame’s needles maddened him; he had watched the incessant flash of steel for so many long-drawn-out evenings of strain.

The flawed mirror, set above the marble console table, reflected the room, duplicating the gilt clock on the mantelshelf and the pallid waxen fruit, cherished under crystal shades. Presently, however, the hateful vision blurred and faded away, and the home-sick man saw, in its stead, the picture that was engraved upon his mind.

Somewhere, far away from this place of thunder, bloodshed, and cold fears—geographical facts non-existent—was an isle that rocked gently, like an ark of safety, on the grey-green seas. And tucked away, within its very heart, approached only by grass-grown ruts, was a long, grey house. Sentinelled by age-old oaks, there brooded over it the very spirit of security and peace.

Again he sat in his own familiar study, surrounded by the good company of his books, while the fire burned red in the grate and his old hound dozed upon the rug at his feet. This was his proper place—his own _milieu_—of which he thought by day and dreamed by night.

His longings to escape magnified these nightly dreams into passions. He was always trying to get home. He took abortive railway journeys, when the train broke down and changed into inadequate rubbish, leaving him stranded in unfriendly country. Sometimes he boarded a steamer, which ploughed its way through fields and streets, ever seeking a far-receded sea. These nightmares were varied by the nerve-racking experience of ceaseless preparations for a journey, which ended in the poignant pang of reaching the station only to see the express dash through, its lighted windows merging into one golden streak.

Often, too, he tried to fly home—even as a bird—swooping from his bedroom window in vain essay at flight, and sinking lower into the darkness at each impotent stroke.

His distraught mind, flashing its S.O.S. signals across the sea, must have stirred the rest of those who slumbered safely in that lamppost-lit, policeman-guarded isle. For influence began its wire-pulling work, its efforts resulting in the promise of the special train that was to convey certain refugees homewards by way of neutral territory.

To-morrow would be the day.

‘I am going home—to-morrow!’

He silently repeated the words with a thrill of joyful anticipation, fingering his papers and passport the while, to assure himself of their truth. Thus fortified, he nerved himself for another question.

‘By the way, madame, speaking of poor M. Lemoine. Who—who gave information?’

‘A woman betrayed him.’

Involuntarily, Quality started. He had not before noticed the grating rasp of madame’s voice. It irritated him to unreasonable resentment and disgust.

‘A woman? Damnable!’

‘_Plaît-il?_’ Madame raised her brows in interrogation. ‘But why? M. Lemoine sold his secrets for gold. The woman sold her secret for gold. _C’est égal!_’

How furiously her needles flew! In just such manner must her forbears have sat, knitting and counting in the blood-sodden days of the Revolution.

‘But, madame’—Quality’s voice was vibrant with horror—‘how can you call it _equal_? It is inconceivable that a woman, with a woman’s heart beating within her breast, should sell a life merely for money!’

‘Ah, m’sieur!’—Madame laughed mirthlessly—‘it is easy to see that all your life you have had more than enough. For the others, though—What will they not do for gold?’

She proceeded to answer her own question by illustration.

‘My young brother killed the farmer that he worked for, the farmer’s wife, four children, and a farm-hand—all for the sake of the gold that was in the house. Alone he did it, with a hatchet—and he but a child of fifteen! Such a good lad, and regular with his Mass. It was merely the gold that maddened him, and yet they imprisoned him—_le pauvre!_’

At last Quality had heard the thrill of emotion in her voice. Looking up, he detected a bead of moisture in her eyes. The sight of her sorrow only added to the horror. On top of her calm recital of the crime, such sympathy for the juvenile monster was nauseating.

‘Your young brother must be a unique specimen,’ he said stiffly, speaking with an effort.

‘Not at all. Like all the rest of us. Like you, perhaps. Certainly, like me!’

A pleasant family history. To steady his nerves, Quality fingered his papers feverishly, repeating the while his magic formula: ‘To-morrow, I go home.’

Even as his lips silently framed the words, he started back, blinking his eyes, and momentarily stunned and deafened. For it seemed to him that a lighted express had shot, shrieking, through the room, like a rocket—thundering past him in a long golden streak.

It was only a fresh manifestation of infamous buffoonery on the part of his nerves, yet it left Quality utterly shaken. He felt suddenly stranded and abandoned. All his vague fears and doubts of the past days sharpened into a definite pang of fear.

_Was_ he, in actual fact, going home to-morrow? Or was he called upon to undergo the supreme anguish of cheated hope? To see his prison-bars opening—only to slam again in his face?

As, still unstrung from shock, he looked round the room, he was a prey of minor optical delusions. Madame seemed to have swollen in bulk—the apartment to have grown distinctly smaller. He hated it with the savage hatred of a convict for his concrete cell.

Inaction became unendurable, and he pushed back his chair.

‘I’m going out, madame.’

‘No, m’sieur. No, _no_!’

‘Why not?’

Suspicion stabbed him anew at madame’s vehement outcry. Yet her next words were reassuring by reason of their sound common sense.

‘Because, m’sieur, it is too late. See, it wants but a little to midnight. It might arouse suspicion in this place, where every brick has an eye. To-morrow, you return to your own country. How imprudent to risk your liberty thus, at the eleventh hour!’

His head approved the wisdom of the woman’s words. Once again, he saw her as she was—callous, mercenary, possibly—but, for the rest, an ordinary hard-working housewife of her class.

Again he sat down, watching the flashing points of her needles, until his mind gave a sudden slip—and he found himself thinking with drowsy amusement of the Sheep in ‘Alice through the Looking-glass.’

He roused himself with a violent start—to find that madame had laid down her wool, and was watching him intently. The reflection from the lamp fell on her eyes, lighting therein twin balls of orange flame.

‘What is it, madame?’

‘Nothing! I thought I heard a knocking at the street door, that is all.’

‘I heard nothing. But, then, I was nearly asleep.’

‘Best so.’ Her voice thickened. ‘Get all the sleep you can—in preparation for the morrow!’

As she snatched up her knitting, he stared at her, all drowsiness dissipated by her words. He watched her furious energy, trying the while to conceive some adequate motive for her unusual vigil and her evident wish for his own company.

Of a sudden, instinct supplied the knowledge.

_Madame was waiting for something to happen._

Like vultures scenting their prey, his nerves instantly swooped down on their victim, agonising him with the refined torture of mirage. As the parched traveller feasts hollow eyes on waving date-palm and bubbling well, so Quality, with aching intensity of longing, saw a clear picture of his own familiar room. He smelt the faint odour of worn leather; heard the crackling whisper of the wood fire; felt the muzzle of his hound moist against his hand.

Would the day never come? He looked at the clock, crookedly upheld by misshapen gilded cupids.

Only a quarter to twelve.

Slowly, slowly, the minutes ticked away. The night was dying hard.

Presently, Quality noticed that madame had laid down her needles and was again listening. Her tense attitude, flattened ears, and craning neck told of an intensity of purpose that would strain her aural organs beyond the limits of their powers.

He saw her sudden start—the involuntary wince.

‘_Footsteps_, m’sieur! Do you not hear them? Footsteps without in the street!’

‘I can hear nothing!’

‘But they are passing this way. Open the window, and see if there is anyone in the street!’

_What_ was she? Quality could not decide. Merely the shrewd, suspicious housewife, with natural fears—or the composite fearsome creation of his diseased imagination?

With the reluctant step of one who fears a snare, he walked to the window, and, opening it, looked out into the street.

A deep tranquillity reigned without. The old houses, steeped in the milky bath of moonshine, seemed to sway gently, as though in sleep; the sable shadow of the drinking-fountain seemed to rock, as though the ancient town slumbered to the croon of some unheard lullaby.

‘Ah, how peaceful!’ Madame had arisen and was now standing by his side. Her breath, onion-flavoured from her last meal, fell on his cheek in hot puffs.

‘What a picture! And see the leaves, how they fly!’

At a sudden gust of wind, the withered foliage arose from the bare boughs like a flock of birds, and soared into the air in a mad ecstasy of flight—rising, wheeling, swooping—only to sink, feebly fluttering, to the pavement.

With a cold chill of premonition, Quality recalled his own dream of impotent flight.

‘See, the floating leaves are like _revenants_! Or, perhaps, the souls—ever rising in their thousands—swarming from field and trench. Whither? Whither?—Ah!’

She recoiled with a cry as a leaf, fluttering in through the window, brushed against her face, and then fell, brown and shrivelled, at her feet.

She stooped and picked it up.

‘_Blasted!_’

The sound of her whisper was terrible. In the moonlight, her face appeared to be blanched to a greenish-white hue. Involuntarily, Quality saw, in a lightning flash of clairvoyance, the white, dripping face of a peasant boy, with wolfish eyes glowing yellow, as he felt the edge of his axe with tremulous fingers.

‘Ah, m’sieur, our last night together!’ Inspired by unusual affection, madame pressed his arm. ‘To-morrow, you will be gone. But what of me? _Hélas!_ what of me?’

‘You?’ Quality strove to speak naturally. ‘Oh, very soon I hope the Allies will make good, and your town be again cleared of the enemy.’

‘The enemy? Ah!’

Madame broke off abruptly. Following the direction of her gaze, Quality also looked at the fountain darkly carven against the luminous sky.

Obedient to the dictate of his mountebank nerves, it slightly altered its position. Or was it a shape that slipped farther into the depths of its shadow?

‘The enemy!’ Madame raised her voice shrilly, with startling lack of caution. ‘Who is the enemy? Have you ever given a thought to the lot of us who live in a province that to-day is French and to-morrow German? Can one say with certainty: “This one is French; that one German”? No, no, m’sieur! My name may be French as the wife of a French spouse, but I have German blood in my veins—German sympathies—love of the Fatherland—deep hatred for all his foes!’

Again the fountain moved, to give sign that it had heard.

In a last desperate effort to preserve his sanity, Quality slammed down the window, forcing a laugh the while.

‘Come, madame! That’s not a very friendly sentiment. You cannot mean what you say. You are overstrung—got nerves.’

‘Nerves? _Bien!_ To-night, I see always M. Lemoine.’

She sank down heavily, her fingers groping for her knitting. The steel needles began to click with mechanical precision.

Quality looked at the clock. It wanted but three minutes to twelve.

The day was near its birth.

At the same moment, madame broke the silence.

‘Courage, m’sieur!’ Her teeth flashed in a smile. ‘We were both wrong. There were no footsteps, after all!’

Her words, vibrant with cheerful sympathy, awoke in Quality a response that was almost electric. Suspicion and fear melted at the warm touch of humanity. The devils that had possessed and tormented him, went out of him, leaving him wrapped in a foretaste of that peace that passeth understanding.

He saw the room dimly, as though through a veil of blue transparency, in a new guise. It was the abode of warmth and comfort—a domestic interior. Madame, smiling over her work, was a type of tranquil femininity.

Suddenly, without warning, the all-pervading calm was shattered.

There was the sound of loud knocking on the street door. The violent double-beat of Quality’s heart seemed almost its echo. He started upright, every frayed nerve at utmost stretch; his eyes searching madame’s face as though he would read therein the Riddle of the Sphinx.

There was a rapid, breathless exchange of question and answer.

‘There is some one at the door, madame.’

‘I hear.’

‘Who can it be?’

‘Who knows? Visitors, perhaps.’

‘At this hour! Why do you not open to them?’

‘Why? Marie will doubtless hear.’

In the pause that followed, the knocking again sounded, louder and more peremptory, as though the door were battered by the impact of a mailed fist.

Still mute to its summons, madame sat motionless, her needles flying with incredible rapidity.

Then, higher up in the building, a door opened. Hurried shuffling footsteps descended the stair and pattered along the passage.

‘_C’est_ Marie.’

As she spoke, Madame raised her face, and, for the first time, Quality saw her eyes.

Swiftly he averted his own, shrinking back before that stare of unholy guilt.

She had betrayed him.

For a fractional measure of time, he was rent by the throes of an elemental passion to grip the woman’s throat and wring out her life in bubbling breaths. But the wholly foreign impulse came and passed almost simultaneously at the grating scream of a withdrawn bolt.

The sound of a man’s voice, sharp and peremptory, drowned the woman’s quavering tones in a rapid colloquy.

Then there was silence, followed by the slam of a door.

Quality’s whole frame shook in a tempestuous ague of suspense.

Had they gone again? Was the blow to be averted at the eleventh hour? Were his hopes yet to find consummation?

Even as he asked the question, the answer came.

There was the sound of heavy footsteps along the passage.

Once more, Quality’s hunted glance flickered around the room, with the sharpened sense of the trapped quarry, seeking desperately for some channel of escape.

His eyes fell upon the papers lying on the table before him. He began to read them with dull interest. _Who_ was this Hubert Quality whose harmlessness and integrity were vouched for in black and white! What of him?

Bereft of all sense of identity—calmly expectant—he watched the door burst open.

It seemed the final performance of an oft-rehearsed drama. Inside—they were actually inside at last; these oft-dreamed-of figures of his fears—stern-faced men, wearing the grey Prussian uniform.

Before him was the officer, seemingly magnified to unhuman stature, in long, belted coat and spiked helmet. His eyes, blue and polar, raked the room. His voice, sharp and metallic, gave the word of command. He was no man, but merely a vehicle of inexorable justice—a machine that has found its range.

Slowly, slowly, Quality arose to his feet. He stretched out his hands.

Arose—only to sink back in his seat. For, at the sound of a woman’s laugh, he realised that he was but the spectator in another’s drama.

With a soldier on either side of her, madame stood rigid and frozen. No need for plea or denial; in her lying outburst of apostasy to the fountain, she had made her ultimate appeal.

As the spy passed through the doorway, Quality saw her face. And it was even as the face of M. Lemoine.

* * * * *

The clock struck twelve.

Through the shrivelled sheath of the dead night broke the glorious promise of the new day.

E. L. WHITE.

_IN THE NORTH SEA._

BY LIEUTENANT R.N.

The operation that I am about to describe was not one of primary importance, nor is it likely to be chronicled in the History of the War when that comes to be written; but it was nevertheless an incident of some interest and hazard, and serves to demonstrate the completeness of England’s command of the sea.

It was one day in March 1915 that we left our base and steamed eastward across the North Sea towards the enemy’s coast. We were not a strong force, but we were all fast ships, light cruisers and destroyers, and could show a clean pair of heels to any German big ships that we might meet. It was not expected, however, that the Germans would show themselves outside their ports, for it was less than two months since the _Blucher_ had met her end at the hands of Beatty’s battle-cruisers, and the German squadrons were not prepared as yet, either morally or materially, for another encounter.

Accompanying us, that is escorted by us, were three seaplane carriers, the object of our operations being a repetition of the Christmas Day air raid.

All the way across we had fine calm weather, and our hopes ran high that the conditions would be sufficiently favourable for launching aircraft; for aircraft, and especially seaplanes which are encumbered with heavy air-resisting floats, are still sufficiently in their infancy to require very favourable weather conditions if they are to operate successfully at sea.

At daylight on the following morning we found ourselves some thirty odd miles off the enemy’s coast in a position favourable for launching our attack, and since, coincidently, some wily astrologer, in a fit of verbose optimism, had prophesied a naval battle for this date we had considerable hopes of ‘something doing.’

As day broke a heavy mist lay across our horizon which, spreading outward from the coast, limited visibility to two or three miles. We assured ourselves, however, that as soon as the sun rose the mist would clear, and so for about half an hour the squadron manœuvred to and fro, the while optimist and pessimist, according to their respective fancies, conceived momentary, and usually imaginary, changes in the density of the mist.

The pilots of the seaplanes were rapidly swallowing an early breakfast—it is one of the outstanding disadvantages of war that one has to eat and fight at times altogether repellent to the digestion—or else, with conscientious mechanics, were giving their engines a final test, as the familiar roar of the gnomes echoing from the carriers plainly told us.

But ere long the optimists proved themselves the truer prophets, for by 7 A.M. or so the mist was perceptibly thinner, and the flagship signalled the course which would bring us to our exact destination.

Stationed on each side of us as a submarine screen were divisions of destroyers, whilst the seaplane carriers, hauling out of line, formed up separately with their own destroyer escort.

At about 7.45 the preparatory signal flew from the flagship’s masthead, and with all hands at the guns we stood by, whilst the seaplane carriers prepared to hoist out their machines. But, alas for the aspirations of man, at this very moment a thick bank of fog gathered ahead of us, and in less than five minutes the squadron was enveloped in a ‘pea-soup’ fog, hiding ship from ship as effectively as if a cloud of poison gas had been launched at us.

Flying was definitely off, but only to be replaced by another game, for we were now steaming twenty knots direct at Germany, and it would ill befit the pride of the British Navy if a squadron of her daisiest ships stranded helplessly on the Hun coast.

But here was a problem. Before you turn a squadron the amount of the turn must be indicated to all ships; yet here visual signals were impossible—they would not have been visual in such a fog; syren signals were inadvisable on account of their noisy advertisement, and also the process of sound signalling is very slow; a wireless signal was an alternative, and was the quickest and surest way, but it was a way very liable to inform the enemy as to our whereabouts, for an English wireless call is as different to a German one as a gentleman to a Hun, so that any signal we made would be easily picked up by adjacent enemy stations, and the ‘strength’ of the signals would tell them how close we were.

War, however, is a succession of risks, and since the need demanded, the signal was made. (One hopes it caused a flutter in the German dovecots.)

The leading ships turned a right angle to starboard by two successive turns of four points, the rest of the squadron followed in their wake, and for a few minutes we ran parallel to the coast; the same signals and manœuvre repeated, and we had reversed our original course, and were steaming seawards with our stems to Germany.

How simple it sounds, doesn’t it? but the practical execution of such signals is not so easy in a fog, when the guide you are groping after cannot be seen and is able to show herself only by the bubbles which rise in her wake. Add to this that you have all had to reduce your speed by signal, which means that if you obey the signal a minute too late your excess speed causes you to rush up alongside your next ahead, or if you obey too soon you will drop astern and can no longer pick out those invaluable swirls and bubbles. But, worst danger of all, if one ship misses the signal and holds steadily on her course whilst her consorts ahead and astern and on each side of her turn at right angles, what is going to prevent a collision? ‘Joss,’ and ‘joss’ in large quantities, is the only preventative I can cite, and this was the very element that was absent that day.

One of the rear destroyers was the ‘lucky party’ who missed the signal—the first alter course signal by wireless—and she continued on her course, whilst those ahead and outside her altered across her bows.

The aforesaid ‘joss’ might have caused her to cross the line through a gap, but instead there suddenly loomed right ahead of her, out of the dense pall of fog, the blurred silhouette of a light cruiser, and before ever the engines could be reversed or the helm put over she had crashed bows on at twenty knots into the beam of the cruiser.

The comparatively frail bows of the destroyer crumpled under the blow like so much brown paper, and the boat recoiled with fifteen feet of her bow ‘concertina-ed’ in.

Yet never a soul on board of her was hurt. ‘Joss’ certainly made up leeway there, but in the bigger vessel such was not the case. The impact of the blow had lifted a torpedo tube off its mounting and had thrown it inboard against the casings, crushing five unfortunate men, of whom three lost their lives.

In addition the hull of the ship had suffered considerable damage, so that her speed was reduced to a bare ten knots, whilst the destroyer, at first able to steam six knots, could soon make no headway at all.

And all this, mark you, within thirty miles of the German coast in a ‘pea-soup’ fog, so that no sooner had the two ships collided and fallen apart than they were lost to sight of each other and of the remainder of the fleet, who continued their groping course seaward, the majority unaware that aught was amiss.

One destroyer, however, had noted the accident, and altering out from her station stood by her damaged consort and forthwith made preparations to take her in tow; for if one thing was more evident than another, it was the desirability of getting the damaged ships away to seaward before the fog should lift leaving them to be discovered by some inquisitive Hun submarine or aircraft patrol.

A wireless signal—it had to be done—was sent as soon as possible to the flagship from the damaged cruiser, and the squadron turned back on their track to try to locate and assist the damaged craft. But noon came—it was soon after 8 A.M. when the two ships collided—and there was no sign of the destroyer. The fog still hung thick over us all. Four P.M. came and passed and still we searched anxiously to and fro, peering continually into the thick wall of fog, and groping vaguely and blindly after our next ahead, catching a glimpse now and again of her mast or funnels only to lose her completely the next minute, and recommence the chase of her wake, assisted periodically by a fog buoy she veered astern.

From time to time, raucously and rashly, we would make signals on our syren hoping that the cripples would hear us, and periodically we tried wireless signals; but all to no effect, and night came leaving us still anxious for, and out of touch of our destroyer.

The damaged light cruiser was making her own way back to port, and two more destroyers that had lost touch with us during our fog manœuvring were also ordered home, but we should have been much happier for news of our ‘lame duck.’

The Germans still appeared to be unaware of our presence, despite our proximity to their coasts, but at any moment some prowling submarine might find us and give the show away, forcing us to scupper the destroyer lest she should fall into the enemy’s hands.

During the night the ships of our squadron were spread a couple of miles apart, so as to search over a greater area, but dawn on the next day came and still never a sign of our objective. We had received a signal of her estimated position, but neither she nor we were at all sure of our positions—it is not possible to be so in the North Sea amongst the variable currents, especially so in this case after so many alterations of course and speed and when it has not been possible to get a fix from the land or observations of the sun or stars for thirty-six hours. But with the new day the fog drifted away and there was soon a visibility of three or four miles.

Mr. Clerk of the Weather, however, was apparently unsatisfied with the capers he had already led us, and now substituted for the fog a rising wind and sea, so that we had visions of the damaged craft foundering before we might pick her up.

At 9 A.M. the flagship ordered one of the light cruisers to make all preparations for taking the destroyer in tow as soon as met with, but not until 2 P.M., thirty hours after the collision, did we at last sight her. She made a weird sight.

Her crumpled bows, unable to stand the strain of the ship’s motion any longer, had fallen off into the sea, so that from another ship one could look right into her and see her storerooms and other compartments, whilst the muzzle of her foremost gun, at ordinary times twenty feet or so back from her bows, now protruded over the ‘front’ of the ship like a tree outgrowing from a cliff.

The men’s living spaces right forward had retired to the bottom of the North Sea, and the waves were rolling in, unhindered, against the capstan engine, anchor chain lockers, and foremost mess decks. Yet the ship was still seaworthy, for a transverse bulkhead, which stretches across the ship and runs from the foc’sle deck right down to the keel, was keeping her watertight and preventing other compartments from being flooded—no small advertisement for the efficient work of our Corps of Naval Constructors.

The large area of this bulkhead, however, made it impossible to tow the ship bows first, for the pressure against it under such conditions would be tremendous and too much even for the efficiency of her construction.

The only alternative, therefore, was to tow her stern first. We knew this would be a fairly difficult operation, for she had already been twice in tow of the destroyer that had originally stood by her and each time the strain of the tow had parted the wires.

It was after an hour and a half’s work, by about 3 P.M., that we managed to get our wires into her, for it is no easy task in a seaway when one cannot have a boat, but must steam past as close to the other ship as safety will permit, towing astern of you a small hawser with a cask at the end, which the ship to be towed endeavours to pick up.

Then if she gets it you attach to the small hawser a larger hemp hawser, and to that the big wire by which you will tow, one end of which she hauls in and makes fast to herself, whilst you have the other end secured to your stern, and off you go. At least so you should in theory, but in this case we had secured the wire but two or three minutes when a wave lifted us up and simultaneously swung the destroyer’s stern off in an opposite direction, throwing a heavy strain on the wire which forthwith parted; so we had to start again.