Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  They sent him for many a motor-whirl —

  With the wistful, willowy, wisp of a girl

  Who never again lost touch.

  Their people were most of them dead and gone,

  They had only themselves to please.

  His pay was enough to marry upon,

  As every Ensign sees.

  They would muddle along as others did,

  On vast supplies of the tertium quid

  One brackets with bread and cheese.

  They gave him some leave after Belgrave Square —

  And bang went a month on banns;

  For Ermyntrude had a natural flair

  For the least unusual plans.

  Her heaviest uncle came down well,

  And entertained, at a fair hotel,

  The dregs of the coupled clans.

  A certain number of cheques accrued

  To keep the wolf from the door:

  The economical Ermyntrude

  Had charge of the dwindling store,

  When a Board reported her bridegroom fit

  As — some expression she didn’t permit...

  And he left for the Front once more.

  His crowd had been climbing the jaws of hell:

  He found them in death’s dog-teeth,

  With little to show but a deal to tell

  In their fissure of smoking heath.

  There were changes — of course — but the change in him

  Was the ribbon that showed on his tunic trim

  And the tumult hidden beneath!

  For all he had suffered and seen before

  Seemed nought to a husband’s care;

  And the Chinese puzzle of modern war

  For subtlety couldn’t compare

  With the delicate springs of the complex life

  To be led with a highly sensitised wife

  In a slightly rarefied air!

  Yet it’s good to be back with the old platoon —

  And some of the same old men;

  Each cheery dog is a henchman boon —

  Especially Sergeant Wren!

  Ermyntrude couldn’t endure his name —

  Considered bad language no claim to fame,

  Yet it’s good to — hear it again!

  (Better to feel the Sergeant’s grip,

  Though your fingers ache to the bone!

  Better to take the Sergeant’s tip

  Than to make up your mind alone.

  They can do things together, can Wren and Joy —

  The bristly bear and the beardless boy —

  That neither could do on his own.)

  But there’s never a word about Old Man Wren

  In the screeds he scribbles to-day —

  Though he praises his N.C.O.’s and men

  In rather a pointed way.

  And he rubs it in (with a knitted brow)

  That the war’s as good as a picnic now,

  And better than any play!

  His booby-hutch is “as safe as the Throne,”

  And he fares “like the C.-in-Chief.”

  He has “treated his chaps to a gramophone

  By way of comic relief.”

  (And he sighs as he hears the chaps applaud,

  While the Woodbine spices are wafted abroad

  With a savour of bully-beef.)

  He may touch on the latest type of bomb,

  But Ermyntrude needn’t blench,

  For he never says where you hurl it from,

  And it might be from your trench.

  He never might lead a stealthy band,

  Or toe the horrors of No Man’s Land,

  Or swim at the sickly stench....

  Her letters came up by ration-cart

  As the men stood-to before dawn:

  He followed the chart of her soaring heart

  With face transfigured yet drawn:

  It filled him with pride, touched with chivalrous shame

  But — it spoilt the war, as a first-class game,

  For this particular pawn.

  (The Sergeant sees it, and damns the cause

  In a duly sulphurous flow;

  But turns and trounces, without a pause,

  A junior N.C.O.

  For the crime of agreeing that Ensign Joy

  Isn’t altogether the officer boy

  That he was four months ago!)

  At length he’s dumfounded (the month being May)

  By a sample of Ermyntrude’s fun:

  “You will kindly get leave over Christmas Day,

  Or make haste and finish the Hun!”

  But Christmas means presents, she bids him beware:

  “So what do you say to a son and heir?

  I’m thinking of giving you one!!!”

  What, indeed, does the Ensign say?

  What does he sit and write?

  What do his heart-strings drone all day,

  What do they throb all night?

  What does he add to his piteous prayers:

  “Not for my own sake, Lord, but — theirs,

  See me safe through...”

  “They talk” — and he writhes—” of our spirit out here,

  Our valour and all the rest!

  There’s my poor, lonely, delicate dear,

  As brave as the very best!

  We stand or fall in a cheery crowd,

  And yet how often we grouse aloud!

  She faces that with a jest!”

  He has had no sleep for a day and a night;

  He has written her half a ream;

  He has lain him down to wait for the light,

  And at last come sleep — and a dream.

  He’s hopping on sticks up the studio stair:

  A telegraph-boy is waiting there,

  And — that is his darling’s scream!

  He picks her up in a tender storm —

  But how does it come to pass

  That he cannot see his reflected form

  With hers in the studio glass?

  “What’s gone wrong with that mirror?” he cries.

  But only the Sergeant’s voice replies:

  “Wake up, Sir! The Gas — the Gas!”

  Is it a part of the dream of dread?

  What are the men about?

  Each one sticking a haunted head

  Into a spectral clout!

  Funny, the dearth of gibe and joke,

  When each one looks like a pig in a poke,

  Not omitting the snout!

  “Here’s your mask, Sir! No time to lose!”

  Ugh, what a gallows shape!

  Partly white cap, and partly noose!

  Somebody ties the tape.

  Goggles of sorts, it seems, inset:

  Cock them over the parapet,

  Study the battlescape.

  Ensign Joy’s in the second line —

  And more than a bit cut off;

  A furlong or so down a green incline

  The fire-trench curls in the trough.

  Joy cannot see it — it’s in the bed

  Of a river of poison that brims instead.

  He can only hear — a cough!

  Nothing to do for the companies there —

  Nothing but waiting now,

  While the Gas rolls up on the balmy air,

  And a small bird cheeps on a bough.

  All of a sudden the sky seems full

  Of trusses of lighted cotton-wool

  And the enemy’s big bow-wow!

  The firmament cracks with his airy mines,

  And an interlacing hail

  Threshes the clover between our lines,

  As a vile invisible flail.

  And the trench has become a mighty vice

  That holds us, in skins of molten ice,

  For the vapours that fringe the veil.

  It’s coming — in billowy swirls — as smoke

  From the roof a world on fire.

  It — comes! And a lad with a heart of oak

  K
nows only that heart’s desire!

  His masked lips whimper but one dear name —

  And so is he lost to inward shame

  That he thrills at the shout: “Re-tire!”

  Whose is the order, thrice renewed?

  Ensign Joy cannot tell:

  Only, that way lies Ermyntrude,

  And the other way this hell!

  Three men leap from the poisoned fosse,

  Three men plunge from the parados,

  And — their — officer — as well!

  Now, as he flies at their flying heels,

  He awakes to his deep disgrace,

  And the yawning pit of his shame reveals

  A way of saving his face:

  He twirls his stick to a shepherd’s crook,

  To trip and bring one of them back to book,

  As though he’d been giving chase!

  He got back gasping—” They’d too much start!

  “I’d’ve shot ‘em at sight!” said Wren.

  “That was your job, Sir, if you’d the ‘eart —

  But it wouldn’t’ve been you, then.

  I pray my Lord I may live to see

  A firing-party in front o’ them three!”

  (That’s what he said to the men.)

  Now, Joy and Wren, of Company B,

  Are a favourite firm of mine;

  And the way they reinforced A, C, and D

  Was perhaps not exactly fine,

  But it meant a good deal both to Wren and Joy —

  That grim, gaunt man, but that desperate boy! —

  And it didn’t weaken the Line.

  “Not a bad effort of yours, my lad,”

  The Major deigned to declare.

  “My Sergeant’s plan, Sir” —

  “And that’s not bad —

  But you’ve lost that ribbon you wear?”

  “It — must have been — eaten away by the Gas!”

  “Well — ribbons are ribbons — but don’t be an ass!

  It’s better to do than dare.”

  Dare! He has dared to desert his post —

  But he daren’t acknowledge his sin!

  He has dared to face Wren with a lying boast —

  But Wren is not taken in.

  None sings his praises so long and loud —

  With look so loving and loyal and proud!

  But the boy sees under his skin.

  Daily and gaily he wrote to his wife,

  Who had dropped the beatified droll

  And was writing to him on the marvel of Life,

  Which illumed and exalted her soul.

  Her courage was high, though she mentioned its height:

  But he saw not a joint in her Armour of Light,

  Nor the bee in her Aureole.

  And never a helm had the lad we know

  As he stole on his nightly raids,

  With a brace of his Blighters, an N.C.O.

  And a bagful of hand-grenades.

  But the way that he rattled and harried the Hun —

  The deeds he did dare, and the risks he would run —

  Were the gossip of two Brigades:

  How he’d stand stock-still as the trunk of a tree,

  With his face tucked down out of sight,

  When a star-shell burst and the other three

  Fell prone in the frightening light;

  How the German sandbags, that made them quake,

  Were the only cover he cared to take,

  But he’d eavesdrop there all night....

  Machine-guns, tapping a phrase in Morse,

  Grew hot on a random quest,

  And swarms of bullets buzzed down the course

  Like wasps from a trampled nest.

  Yet, that last night... They had just set off,

  When he pitched on his face with a smothered cough

  And a row of holes in his chest.

  He left a letter. It saved the lives

  Of the three who ran from the Gas;

  A small enclosure alone survives,

  In Battersea, under glass:

  Only the ribbon he tore from his breast

  On the day he turned and ran with the rest,

  And lied with a lip of brass!

  But the letters they wrote about the boy,

  From the Brigadier to the men!

  They would “never forget dear Mr. Joy,”

  Nor look on his like again.

  Ermyntrude read them with dry, proud eye.

  There was only one letter that made her cry.

  It was from Sergeant Wren:

  “There never was such a fearless man,

  Or one so beloved as he.

  He was always up to some daring plan,

  Or some treat for his men and me.

  There wasn’t his match when he went away;

  But since he got back, there has not been a day

  But what he has earned a V.C.”...

  A cynical story? That’s not my view.

  The years since he fell are twain.

  What were his chances of coming through?

  Which of his friends remain?

  But Ermyntrude’s training a splendid boy

  Twenty years younger than Ensign Joy.

  On balance, a British gain!

  And Ermyntrude, did she lose her all,

  Or find it, two years ago?

  O young girl-wives of the boys who fall,

  With your youth and your babes to show!

  No heart but bleeds for your widowhood:

  Yet Life is with you, and Life is good:

  No bone of your bone lies low!

  Your blessedness came — as it went — in a day.

  Deep dread but heightened your mirth.

  Your idols’ feet never turned to clay —

  Never lit upon common earth.

  Love is the Game but is not the Goal:

  You played it together, body and soul,

  And you had your Candle’s worth.

  Yes! though the Candle light a Shrine,

  And heart cannot count the cost,

  You are Winners yet in its holy shine! —

  Would they choose to have lived and lost?

  There are chills, you see, for the finest hearts

  But, once it is only old Death that parts,

  There can never come twinge of frost.

  And this be our comfort for Everyboy

  Cut down in his high heyday,

  Or ever the Sweets of the Morning cloy,

  Or the swift foot falter or stray.

  So a sunlit billow curls to a crest,

  And shouts as it breaks at its loveliest,

  In a glory of rainbow spray!

  BOND AND FREE

  (THE BAPAUME ROAD, March 1917)

  MISTY and pale the sunlight, brittle and black the trees;

  Roads powdered like sticks of candy for a car to

  crunch as they freeze...

  Then we overtook a Battalion... and it wasn’t a roadway then,

  But cymbals and drums and dulcimers to the

  beat of the marching men!

  They were laden and groomed for the trenches,

  they were shaven and scrubbed and fed;

  Like the scales of a single Saurian their helmets rippled ahead;

  Not a sorrowful face beneath them, just the tail of a scornful eye

  For the car full of favoured mufti that went

  quacking and quaking by.

  You gloat and take note in your motoring coat,

  and the sights come fast and thick:

  A party of pampered prisoners, toying with shovel and pick;

  A town where some of the houses are so many heaps of stone,

  And some of them steel anatomies picked clean to the buckled bone.

  A road like a pier in a hurricane of mountainous seas of mud,

  Where a few trees, whittled to walking-sticks, rose

  out of the frozen flood

  Like the masts of the s
unken villages that might

  have been down below —

  Or blown off the festering face of an earth that

  God Himself wouldn’t know!

  Not a yard but was part of a shell-hole — not an

  inch, to be more precise —

  And most of the holes held water, and all the water was ice:

  They stared at the bleak blue heavens like the

  glazed blue eyes of the slain,

  Till the snow came, shutting them gently, and

  sheeting the slaughtered plain.

  Here a pile of derelict rifles, there a couple of horses lay —

  Like rockerless rocking-horses, as wooden of leg as they,

  And not much redder of nostril — not anything like so grim

  As the slinking ghoul of a lean live cat creeping

  over the crater’s rim!

  And behind and beyond and about us were the

  long black Dogs of War,

  With pigmies pulling their tails for them, and

  making the monsters roar

  As they slithered back on their haunches, as they

  put out their flaming tongues,

  And spat a murderous message long leagues from their iron lungs!

  They were kennelled in every corner, and some were in gay disguise,

  But all kept twitching their muzzles and baying the silvery skies!

  A howitzer like a hyena guffawed point-blank at the car —

  But only the sixty - pounder leaves an absolute aural scar!

  (Could a giant but crack a cable as a stockman cracks his whip,

  Or tear up a mile of calico with one unthinkable r-r-r-r-rip!

  Could he only squeak a slate-pencil about the size of this gun,

  You might get some faint idea of its sound, which

  is those three sounds in one.)

  But certain noises were absent, we looked for some sights in vain,

  And I cannot tell you if shrapnel does really descend like rain —

  Or Big Stuff burst like a bonfire, or bullets whistle or moan;

  But the other figures I’ll swear to — if some of

  ‘em are my own!

  Livid and moist the twilight, heavy with snow the trees,

  And a road as of pleated velvet the colour of new cream-cheese...

  Then we overtook a Battalion... and I’m

  hunting still for the word

  For that gaunt, undaunted, haunted, whitening, frightening herd!

  They had done their tour of the trenches, they

  were coated and caked with mud,

  And some of them wore a bandage, and some of

  them wore their blood!

  The gaps in their ranks were many, and none of them looked at me...

  And I thought of no more vain phrases for the things I was there to see,

  But I felt like a man in a prison van where the rest of the world goes Free.

  SHELL-SHOCK IN ARRAS

  (1918)

  ALL night they crooned high overhead