Mufti

by Sapper

  “’Tis well for those who have the gift

  To seize him even as he flies…”

  “Oh! you fool – you fool! Why didn’t you?”

  That was all, and for a long while he lay and stared at the bare wall opposite.

  “Why didn’t you?” The words mocked him, dancing in great red letters on the pale green distemper, and he shook his feet at them childishly.

  “It’s not fair,” he raved. “It’s simply not fair.”

  And the god in charge took a glance into the room, though to the man in bed it was merely a ray from a watery sun with the little specks of dust dancing and floating in it.

  “Of no more account than a bit of dirt,” he muttered cynically. “It wasn’t my fault… I never asked to be torpedoed. I only did what I thought was right.’ He buried his head in his hands with a groan.

  The nurse came once more into the room, and eyed him reproachfully. “The bovril is quite cold,” she said picking it up. “That’s very naughty of you…”

  He looked at her and started to laugh. “I’m a very naughty man, Nurse. But for all that you’ve got to do something for me. No – take away that awful basin and sponge… I don’t mind if I am dirty… You’ve got to go and bring the doctor here, and you’ve got to get my clothes. And between us, Nurse, we’ll cheat ’em yet.”

  “Cheat whom?” she asked soothingly.

  “The blind, malignant imps that control us wretched humans,” he answered. “For Heaven’s sake! my dear woman, do what I say. I’m not light-headed, believe me.”

  And the nurse being a stoical and unimaginative lady, it was just as well that, at that moment, the doctor entered the room. For had she murmured in her best bedside manner… “That’s quite all right. Just a nice wash, and then we’ll go to sleep,” there is but little doubt that a cup of cold bovril would have deluged her ample form. As it was the catastrophe was averted, and Vane turned to the doctor with a sigh of relief.

  “May I have a word with you alone, Doctor?” he said. “And, Nurse, would you get my clothes for me?”

  “Doctor,” he went on as the door closed behind her. “I’ve got to go – at once.”

  “My dear fellow,” began the other, but Vane silenced him with a wave of his hand.

  “I may have had concussion; I may have been nearly drowned. I may be the fool emperor for wanting to get up,” he continued quietly. “But it’s got to be done. You see, I’m having a bit of a tussle with…” he paused for a moment as if at a loss for a word, and then added whimsically, “with the Powers that run things. And,” savagely, “I’ll be damned if they’re going to have a walk over…”

  The doctor eyed him gravely for a few moments without replying.

  “You oughtn’t to get up yet,” he said at length.

  “But you’ll let me,” cried Vane.

  “There’s a good train in two hours,” replied the other briefly. “And the result be upon your own head…”

  Vane opened the remainder of his letters on the way up to London. He felt a little dazed and weak, though otherwise perfectly fit, and when be had glanced through them, he stared out of the window at the landscape flashing past. They were passing through the Black Country, and it seemed to him to be in keeping with his thoughts – dour, relentless, grim. The smouldering blast-furnaces, the tall, blackened chimneys, the miles of dingy, squalid houses, all mocked the efforts of their makers to escape.

  “You fashioned us,” they jeered; “out of your brains we were born, and now you shall serve us evermore… You cannot – you shall not escape…”

  To Vane it was all the voice of Fate. “You cannot – you shall not escape. What is to be – is to be; and your puny efforts will not alter a single letter in the book…”

  And yet of his own free will he had left Joan; he had brought it on himself.

  “What if I had done as she wished?” he demanded aloud. “What would you have done then, you swine?”

  But there is no answer in this world to the Might-have-been; only silence and imagination, which, at times, is very merciless.

  He stepped out of the train at Euston and drove straight to his rooms. For the first time in his life he took no notice of Binks, and that worthy, knowing that something was wrong, just sat in his basket and waited. Perhaps later he’d be able to help somehow…

  “The young lady who came to tea was round here four or five days ago, Mr Vane,” said Mrs Green, when she had set a match to the fire.

  Vane sat very still. “And what did she want Mrs Green?”

  “To see you, sir. She said that she had rung up the depot, and the man who answered said you were on leave…”

  “He would,” said Vane, grimly.

  “So she came here,” Mrs Green paused, and watched him with a motherly eye; then she busied herself needlessly over the fire. “I found her with Binks in her arms – and she seemed just miserable. ‘Oh! can’t you tell me where he is, Mrs Green?’ she said. ‘I can’t, my dear,’ said I, ‘for I don’t know myself.’ And then she picked up a piece of paper and wrote a few words on it, and sealed it up, and addressed it to you at Murchester…”

  “Ah!” said Vane quietly. “She wrote it here, did she?” He laughed a short, bitter laugh. “She was right, Mrs Green. I had the game in my hands, and I chucked it away.” He rose and stared grimly at the houses opposite. “Did she say by any chance where she was staying?”

  “Ashley Gardens, she said; and if you came in, I was to let you know.”

  “Thank you, Mrs Green.” He turned round at length, and took up the telephone book. ‘“You might let me have some tea…”

  The worthy woman bustled out of the room, shaking her head. Like Binks, she knew that something was very wrong; but the consolation of sitting in a basket and waiting for the clouds to roll by was denied her. For the Humans have to plot and contrive and worry, whatever happens…

  “Is that Lady Auldfearn’s?” Vane took the telephone off the table. “Oh! Lady Auldfearn speaking? I’m Captain Vane… Is Miss Devereux stopping with you? Just left yesterday, you say… Yes – I rather wanted to see her. Going to be where? At the Mainwarings’ dance tonight. Thank you. But you don’t know where she is at present…”

  He hung up the receiver, and sat back in his chair, with a frown. Then suddenly a thought struck him, and he pulled the letters he had received that morning out of his pocket. He extracted one in Nancy Smallwood’s sprawling handwriting, and glanced through it again to make sure.

  “Dine 8 o’clock – and go on to Mainwarings’ dance afterwards… Do come, if you can…”

  Vane, placing it on the table in front of him, bowed to it profoundly. “We might,” he remarked to Binks, “almost have it framed.”

  And Binks’ quivering tail assented, with a series of thumps against his basket.

  “I hope you won’t find your dinner partner too dreadful.” Nancy Smallwood was shooting little bird-like glances round the room as she greeted Vane that evening. “She has a mission…or two. Keeps soldiers from drinking too much and getting into bad hands. Personally, anything – anything would be better than getting into hers.”

  “I seem,” murmured Vane, “to have fallen on my feet. She isn’t that gargantuan woman in purple, is she?”

  “My dear boy! That’s George’s mother. You know my husband. No, there she is – the wizened up one in black… And she’s going on to the Mainwarings’ too – so you’ll have to dance with her.”

  At any other time Vane might have extracted some humour from his neighbour, but tonight, in the mood he was, she seemed typical of all that was utterly futile. She jarred his nerves till it was all he could do to reply politely to her ceaseless “We are doing this, and we decided that.” To her the war had given an opportunity for self-expression which she had hitherto been denied. Dreadful as she undoubtedl
y thought it with one side of her nature, with another it made her almost happy. It had enabled her to force herself into the scheme of things; from being a nonentity, she had made herself a person with a mission…

  True, the doings and the decisions on which she harped continually were for the benefit of the men he had led. But to this woman it was not the men that counted most. They had to fit into the decisions; not the decisions into them…

  They were inexorable, even as the laws of the Medes and Persians. And who was this wretched woman, to lay down the law? What did she know; what did she understand?

  “And so we decided that we must really stop it. People were beginning to complain; and we had one or two – er – regrettable scandals.”

  With a start Vane woke up from his reverie and realised he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Indeed,” he murmured. “Have a salted almond?”

  “Don’t you think we were right, Captain Vane?” she pursued inexorably. “The men are exposed to so many temptations that the least we can do is to remove those we can.”

  “But are they exposed to any more now than they were before?” he remarked wearily. “Why not let ’em alone, dear lady, let ’em alone? They deserve it.”

  At length the ladies rose, and with a sigh of relief Vane sat down next a lawyer whom he knew well.

  “You’re looking pretty rotten, Derek,” he said, looking at Vane critically.

  “I’ve been dining next a woman with a mission,” he answered. “And I was nearly drowned in the Connaught.”

  The lawyer looked at him keenly. “And the two combined have finished you off.”

  “Oh! no. I’m reserving my final effort for the third. I’ll get that at the Mainwarings’.” He lifted his glass and let the ruby light glint through his port. “Why do we struggle, Jimmy? Why, in Heaven’s name, does anybody ever do anything but drift? Look at that damned foolishness over the water… The most titanic struggle of the world. And look at the result… Anarchy, rebellion, strife. What’s the use; tell me that, my friend, what’s the use? And the little struggles – the personal human struggles – are just as futile…”

  The lawyer thoughtfully lit a cigarette. “It’s not only you fellows out there, Derek,” he said, “who are feeling that way. We’re all of us on the jump, and we’re all of us bottling it up. The result is a trial such as we had the other day, with witnesses and judge screaming at each other, and dignity trampled in the mud. Every soul in England read the case – generally twice – before anything else. You could see ’em all in the train – coming up to business – with the sheet on which it was reported carefully taken out of its proper place and put in the centre of the paper so that they could pretend they were reading the war news.”

  Vane laughed. “We were better than that. We took it, naked and unashamed, in order of seniority. And no one was allowed to read any tit-bit out loud for fear of spoiling it for the next man.”

  Jimmy Charters laughed shortly. “We’re just nervy, and sensationalism helps. It takes one out of one’s self for a moment; one forgets.”

  “And the result is mud flung at someone, some class. No matter whether it’s true; no matter whether it’s advisable – it’s mud. And it sticks alike to the just and the unjust; while the world looks on and sneers; and over the water, the men look on and – die.”

  George Smallwood was pushing back his chair. “Come on, you fellows. The Cuthberts will advance from their funk-holes.” He led the way towards the door, and Vane rose.

  “Don’t pay any attention to what I’ve been saying, Jimmy.” The lawyer was strolling beside him. “It’s liver; I’ll take a dose of salts in the morning.”

  Jimmy Charters looked at him in silence for a moment.

  “I don’t know what the particular worry is at the moment, old man,” he said at length, “but don’t let go. I’m no sky pilot, but I guess that somewhere up topsides there’s a Big Controller who understands… Only at times the pattern is a bit hard to follow…”

  Vane laughed hardly. “It’s likely to be when the fret-saw slips.”

  Vane strolled into the ballroom and glanced round, but there was no sign of Joan; and then he saw that there was another, smaller, room leading off the principal one where dancing seemed to be in progress also. He walked towards it, and as he came to the door he stopped abruptly and his eyes narrowed. In the middle of it Joan was giving an exhibition dance, supported by a youth in the Flying Corps.

  The audience seated round the sides of the room was applauding vociferously, and urging the dancers on to greater efforts. And then suddenly Joan broke away from her partner and danced alone, while Vane leaned against the door with his jaw set in a straight, hard line. Once his eyes travelled round the faces of the men who were looking on, and his fists clenched at his sides. There was one elderly man in particular, with protruding eyes, who roused in him a perfect fury of rage…

  It was a wild, daring exhibition – a mass of swirling draperies and grey silk stockings. More, it was a wonderful exhibition. She was dancing with a reckless abandon which gradually turned to sheer devilry, and she began to circle the room close to the guests who lined the walls. There were two men in front of Vane, and as she came near the door he pushed forward a little so that he came in full view. For the moment he thought she was going to pass without seeing him, and then their eyes met. She paused and faltered, and then swinging round sank gracefully to the floor in the approved style of curtsey to show she had finished.

  The spectators clamoured wildly for an encore, but she rose and came straight up to Vane.

  “Where have you been?” she said.

  “Unconscious in hospital for ten days,” he answered grimly. “I went down in the Connaught… May I congratulate you on your delightful performance?”

  For a second or two he thought she was going to faint, and instinctively he put out his arm to hold her. Then the colour came back to her face again, and she put her arm through his.

  “I want something to eat. Take me, please… No, no, my dear people, no more,” as a throng of guests came round her. “I require food.”

  Her hand on his arm pushed Vane forward and obediently he led her across the ballroom.

  “If there’s any champagne get me a glass,” she said, sitting down at a table. “And a sandwich…”

  Obediently Vane fetched what she desired; then he sat down opposite her.

  “The fortnight is up,” he said quietly. “I have come for my answer.”

  “Did you get my letters?” she asked slowly.

  “Both. When I came to this morning. And I wasn’t going to be called a fool for nothing, my lady – so I got up and came to look for you. What of the excellent Baxter? Is the date for your wedding fixed?”

  She looked at him in silence for a moment, and then she began to laugh. “The ceremony in church takes place on his return from France in a week’s time.”

  “Oh! no, it doesn’t,” said Vane grimly. “However, we will let that pass. May I ask if your entertainment tonight was indicative of the joy you feel at the prospect?”

  She started to laugh again, and there was an ugly sound in it. A woman at the next table was looking at her curiously.

  “Stop that, Joan,” he said in a low, insistent voice. “For God’s sake, pull yourself together…”

  She stopped at once, and only the ceaseless twisting of her handkerchief between her fingers betrayed her.

  “I suppose it wouldn’t do to go into a fit of high strikes,” she said in a voice she strove vainly to keep steady. “The Mainwarings might think it was their champagne – or the early symptoms of ’flu – or unrequited love… And they are so very respectable aren’t they? – the Mainwarings, I mean?”

  Vane looked at her gravely. “Don’t speak for a bit. I’ll get you another glass of champagne…”
>
  But Joan rose. “I don’t want it,” she said. “Take me somewhere where we can talk.” She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm. “Talk, my friend, for the last time…”

  “I’m damned if it is,” he muttered between his clenched teeth.

  She made no answer; and in silence he found two chairs in a secluded corner behind a screen.

  “So you went down in the Connaught, did you?” Her voice was quite calm.

  “I did. Hence my silence.”

  “And would you have answered my first letter, had you received it?”

  Vane thought for a moment before answering. “Perhaps,” he said at length. “I wanted you to decide… But,” grimly, “I’d have answered the second before now if I’d had it…”

  “I wrote that in your rooms after I’d come up from Blandford,” she remarked, with her eyes still fixed on him.

  “So I gathered from Mrs Green… My dear, surely you must have known something had happened.” He took one of her hands in his, and it lay there lifeless and inert.

  “I thought you were being quixotic,” she said. “Trying to do the right thing – And I was tired…my God! but I was tired.” She swayed towards him, and in her eyes there was despair. “Why did you let me go, my man – why did you let me go?”

  “But I haven’t, my lady,” he answered in a wondering voice. “Tomorrow…” She put her hand over his mouth with a little half-stifled groan. “Just take me in your arms and kiss me,” she whispered.

  And it seemed to Vane that his whole soul went out of him as he felt her lips on his.

  Then she leaned back in her chair and looked at him gravely. “I wonder if you’ll understand. I wonder still more if you’ll forgive. Since you wouldn’t settle things for me I had to settle them for myself…”

  Vane felt himself growing rigid.

  “I settled them for myself,” she continued steadily, “or rather they settled me for themselves. I tried to make you see I was afraid, you know…and you wouldn’t.”

  “What are you driving at?” he said hoarsely.