Three hours later he climbed stiffly from a lorry at the crossroads in Candas. He beat the white dust from his uniform and set off to walk the few remaining miles. He was glad to breathe air untainted by petrol fumes and the smell of warm oil. It was real country here: not the kind of country just behind the line, where every village was filled with troops and every plot of uncultivated ground exuded huts, horse-lines, canteens, or latrines. There was not a hut in sight; only peaceful fields and green woods dozing in the afternoon sunlight. A car gave him a lift, and he was carried swiftly along the sunny country road and down the steep hill into the clean, broad, quiet street of Domart, where white-washed cottages snuggled against the hills and the flag of a reserve Army Corps hung above the door of the Hôtel de Ville.
II
At dusk a lorry loaded up in the village street. Bretherton sat in front with the driver and a sergeant; the dozen men in the body of the lorry with their packs and steel helmets piled in a corner were happy and sang their mournful, sentimental songs. They rolled out of the village and on through the quiet country roads. Darkness settled upon the fields, and from the front seat nothing was visible except the illuminated, uneven surface of the road ahead and the white wall of a cottage or barn as it sprang up suddenly in the glare of the headlights. From behind came fitfully the chorus of song timed to the rumble of the lorry.
Bretherton found the darkness, the cool air, the singing, and the rumble of the wheels soothing, and he dozed throughout the journey. Presently they were bumping over cobbles, and he opened his eyes to find that they were passing through the narrow streets of Abbeville. Outside the station the lorry stopped; the men clumped down to the road, passed out packs, rifles, and steel helmets, and trooped into the station.
It was past midnight when he reached Boulogne. He went to the Officers’ Club for a bed, but all were taken. He tried the Meurice, the Folkestone, and several other hotels without success. A military police-sergeant he met in the deserted Rue Thiers suggested a small hotel on the other side of the harbour. He tramped back to the dark open space and chill wind that was the harbour, found the hotel, and was told that there was no room free, but that he could share one if he cared to do so. He closed with this offer, and was shown up a narrow flight of stairs to a small room at the top of the house. By the dim light of one candle he perceived a sam-brown belt and tunic with one star on the cuff hanging over the back of a chair; a pair of field-boots and riding-breeches lay on the floor. In one of the two beds a fresh-faced boy with tousled fair hair lay asleep in his khaki shirt. Bretherton undressed quietly, blew out the candle, and crept into the other bed.
III
Bretherton strode happily along the quay in the morning sunlight. The leave-boat lay moored between two cargo-boats. She was painted black from stem to stern, and a few white whisps of salt encrusted on her funnels told of a recent dirty crossing. He handed half of his yellow leave-warrant to the sergeant-major at the gangway and went aboard. A tip to a deck-hand secured a chair on the boat deck. He put his lifebelt underneath the chair, and filled in his embarkation card with indelible pencil. Two boats moved slowly out of the harbour, and then the gangways were drawn in, and the leave-boat slid into the fairway. It slipped swiftly between the piers at the harbour mouth and began to rise and fall to the motion of the sea.
A mile or more from the shore two destroyers steamed restlessly to and fro, and then took position on either beam of the little convoy of three ships. Lifebelts were put on, and half a dozen men with rifles were posted along the decks to fire at prowling periscopes.
The long, low destroyers buried themselves in the green seas, rose again, and shook themselves free from water like dogs. Cape Gris-Nez fell slowly astern. The two cargo-ships ahead wallowed drunkenly in the seas and trailed two long black plumes of smoke across the sky. Far away to port an observation balloon, towed by a destroyer, was hunting for submarines or mines. A blimp hove out of the distance and circled above the convoy; and an airman in leather coat and crash helmet waved his hand from the cockpit.
Bretherton went below in search of the Pullman man. The saloon was full of officers drinking and smoking and talking in high spirits; nearly everybody had met some acquaintance and was swopping experiences or discussing what shows one ought to see in London.
England was in sight when he returned to the deck; the white cliffs showed faintly across the heaving waste of grey-flecked water. Smudges of smoke showed where the ships of the coastwise traffic passed at the regulation number per hour. Three miles from Folkestone the two destroyers circled the convoy and went bucking back towards the French coast. The blimp had gone to roost somewhere on the cliffs above the harbour. One of the two cargo-boats steamed off up the coast in the direction of Dover; the other passed behind the breakwater. The leave-boat followed her in and berthed beside the train that stood waiting on the quay. The troops shouldered pack or haversack and streamed down the gangways.
Bretherton found his seat in the Pullman and studied the menu with leisurely enjoyment. The train moved slowly from the harbour through the streets of the town. Children climbed upon the gates of level-crossings and shouted shrilly as it went by; carters waved their whips and shouted unintelligible witticisms; women leaned from open windows and waved handkerchiefs. The leave-train from the front was passing by.
CHAPTER XII
I
Behind the barriers of Victoria Station the same eager throng of mothers, wives, and lovers awaited the arrival of the leave-train as had waited there every day for the past two years. Among them were others, neither relations nor friends, but kindly people who liked to share at second hand the fierce joy of those reunions, and grateful citizens past fighting age who came to murmur a word of thanks to the fighting men or to press a present upon a grinning Tommy. Predatory women were there too in search of prey, and idle sightseers who ran excitedly to another platform, as to a rival show, when a long hospital train slid slowly in.
But Bretherton had neither friends nor relatives awaiting him, and he threaded his way through the throng on the platform to join the crowd that waited on the pavement outside the station. Every minute a taxi with an urchin hanging out from the footboard descended the slope with a pleasant crackling sound of wheels on tarred wood blocks, loaded up, and whirred off. But the supply was unequal to the demand, and ten minutes elapsed before Bretherton secured a car.
He had been warned that he would find London crowded, but he had not expected to spend two hours in a fruitless search for hotel accommodation. The taxi driver insisted on dropping him at the end of twenty minutes, and he had to continue the search on foot.
After tea he found himself again in the neighbourhood of Victoria, and his attention was attracted by a party of half a dozen men who were moving parallel with him on the side of the road. They were in full marching order—enamel mugs dangling from haversacks, steel helmets under pack-straps, and slung rifles with khaki breech-covers. But it was the way in which they were marching that arrested his attention.
They were on the right side of the road, and that in itself was enough to show that they had come recently from France. The traffic streamed past them on one side, and on the other the throng of pedestrians moved along the pavement or loitered by the shop windows; but the busy life of London passed unheeded by these men. With heads thrust forward, expressionless faces, and hands clutching the web braces of their equipment, they trudged along with the slow, fatalistic, beast-of-burden step that was so familiar on the tracks leading to the trenches. And at their head walked a guide; not a man in fatigue dress and gas-helmet nor an old-young subaltern, but a girl in the neat blue uniform of a V.A.D., with head erect and elastic step. Presently she led off the road across the pavement, and the six trudging figures followed her like sheep up the steps of a large building which had been turned into a soldier’s home.
Bretherton walked on, thinking of Joan of Arc at the head of the dejected veterans of the English wars, till a short distance beyond the buil
ding he saw an empty taxi coming towards him. He signalled to the driver, and as he stood waiting for it to come up he saw the little V.A.D. run back down the steps of the soldiers’ home and walk quickly towards him. Then suddenly she glanced at the watch on her wrist and broke into a run.
He acted upon impulse. He had opened the door of the taxi, but he left it, and as she drew level with him he saluted and said, “I’m afraid you have made yourself late by showing those fellows the soldiers’ home. Won’t you take my taxi?”
She looked up at him quickly, and there was a glint of suspicion in her grey eyes; but his face reassured her apparently, for she smiled frankly and said, “That’s awfully good of you. I am so late. But taxis are scarce; couldn’t we share it?” Her voice was low, clear, and unhurried.
“By all means, if you don’t mind,” he said.
She gave the address of one of the many improvised hospitals, and he followed her into the cab.
“It was very good of you to guide those poor fellows,” he said conversationally.
She turned a face full of distress towards him. “Oh, weren’t they too tragic!” she cried. “I found them outside Victoria Station—standing like dumb animals in a market. They are going north, and there is no train till the early morning. The soldiers’ home is full, but they will be looked after.”
Bretherton nodded. “They will get a hot drink and something to eat, anyway. They have had a rough time by the look of them.” There was silence for a moment, and then he said, “London is very full. I haven’t found even a soldiers’ home yet.”
She turned from the window. “Can’t you get in anywhere:” she inquired.
“I’ve tried dozens of places, and so far I’ve had no luck.”
“But that’s serious at this time of the day. Would you like me to ask at the hospital? They may know of some place.”
“That’s very good of you, but please don’t bother. A subaltern of mine lives at Woodside Park, and I’m sure his people would put me up, if necessary. But you might be able to tell me the best way of getting there.”
She laughed. “Rather! I live at Woodside Park. You want the Piccadilly Tube.”
“Then you may know his people; Gurney is the name.”
Her eyebrows went up in two little arches of surprise. “Know them! Yes, I know them. Why, David Gurney is my brother. I am his sister, Helen.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Bretherton, sitting up in surprise.
“And of course you are G. B.—sorry! I mean Captain Bretherton.” She regarded him with engaging friendliness. “I feel I know you awfully well, though we’ve never met before. I feel I know you all—Melford, Dicky Baron, Pagan, Dodd, Hubbard, that nice American doctor, and that awful man Groucher.” She clasped her hands round one knee. “And to think that you are the great G. B.!” She examined him with her small head on one side like a bird’s.
“And to think that you are young Gurney’s sister!” he retorted smiling. “You are very much alike.”
“We are twins,” she said with twinkling eyes. “Of course we will put you up. We will kill the fatted calf for you. You are rather a hero, you know. We have heard all about you from Davy. Davy’s friends are my friends; and as for Mummy and Daddy—well, you know what parents are in these warlike days! They will probably weep over you.”
“You are very kind,” he said.
Her little face became very earnest. “You have been kind to Davy,” she answered simply.
She was on duty till nine o’clock, and Bretherton suggested calling for her at that hour so that they could travel to Woodside Park together. She agreed, and he left her on the steps of a large house that had been turned into a hospital by the generosity of its owner.
II
Bretherton was welcomed very warmly by Gurney’s people. In those trying days parents were greedy of first-hand news of their soldier-sons, and their sons’ comrades-in-arms were treated as honoured members of the family. He was pressed to stay, and willingly consented. He played tennis with Helen in her limited spare time, and an evening which she had free from the hospital duty they spent at the theatre. And he passed quiet half-hours in the study discussing the military situation with Mr. Gurney senior, an alert, white-haired man who was an enthusiastic member of the Royal Defence Corps, known as the Gorgeous Wrecks from the letters G.R. on their armlets.
On Sunday afternoon, which Helen had free, they walked across the fields towards Totteridge, but a sudden rain-squall drove them to take shelter in an inn. A piano stood in one corner of the parlour, and she insisted on his playing.
“Do not pretend that you cannot,” she said severely, “for I know that you can.”
Obediently he played, passing from one air to another—grand opera, Gilbert and Sullivan, ballads, and selections from the latest revues—while the rain beat against the window-panes and the little low-ceilinged parlour was in semi-darkness, Helen sat in an old horsehair armchair near the piano, occasionly singing the words of a song and suggesting an air when he was at a loss.
“Play ‘Tipperary,’” she cried as he hesitated with his fingers caressing the keys.
Obediently he played the music-hall air that had become the marching-song of the first Expeditionary Force. Helen had risen from her chair and stood beside him singing the words.
“I wish I were a man,” she said suddenly, when he had ended.
He turned on the stool to look at her. “Why?” he demanded.
“A woman is so useless in a time like this.” There was a faraway look in her eyes. He was strumming the air again very softly with one hand.
“I think it’s splendid the way men back one another up in times of danger. I wish I were a man.”
“And what would you do if you were one?” he asked, amused at her earnestness.
She turned to the window and stood watching the rain running down the panes. “I should be a private in A Company,” she said at last.
“Splendid! And why A Company?” he asked.
“Because I feel that it is mine. I feel I know its officers, its men, its spirit. I am my brother’s twin. It is the best company in the battalion, and its company commander…”
“Well, what about him?” asked Bretherton, swinging round to face her.
She turned from the window, and her intense, serious look gave way to a mischievous smile.
“Davy says he is a woman-hater,” she ended.
He made a grimace. “I shall run Davy in for ‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline,’” he grinned. “Now you play.”
She moved to the piano and began to play softly. And presently she began to sing in her clear little voice: “Just a song at twilight.”
Bretherton listened enchanted, and turning from the window saw her at the piano, flooded in the sunlight which had at last broken through the rain-clouds—a picture framed in the old parlour with its low-beamed ceiling and antimacassared chairs.
He crossed the room and stood beside her. “That makes me think of what is going on out there—in the line,” he said. “Contrast, I suppose. Out there we get a song of hate at twilight—and dawn.”
She looked up at his serious face with its contracted brows.
“Don’t wish to be a man,” he said suddenly. “Remain a woman; and comfort some poor broken devil who comes back.”
Her grey eyes followed him as he turned abruptly away and slowly unrolled his tobacco-pouch. She struck a note two or three times with her finger. “Sometimes I think war is almost worth all the bloodshed and filth,” she said irrelevantly.
III
On the last night of his leave he fetched her from the hospital in a taxi, and they sped through the dim streets, to which the blue-shaded lamps gave a ghostly air.
“It is funny to think that to-morrow you will be with my brother,” she said.
“You are awfully alike,” he answered thoughtfully; “both in looks and ways.”
“We are twins, you know,” she reminded him. “I believe
that when you are with me you feel that you are with him, and so you don’t hate too much being with a woman.”
“I say!” he protested. “I suppose I have to thank Master David for this reputation.”
She nodded. “Do you know how he described you in one of his letters? He said, ‘G. B. is a thundering good soldier and a topping fellow, but he’s a woman-hater!’”
“That’s not true,” he protested. “The truth is I have always been busy getting on with my job and I’ve had no time for philandering. It’s true I’m not one of those fellows who fall in love with the first pretty face they meet and ten minutes later fall in love with another one. But it does not follow that I haven’t the capacity for appreciating one.”
“I was only ragging you,” she said seriously. “And I only hope that when the girl does come along she will appreciate you as you deserve.”
He gazed out of the window at the passing blue-shaded lamps for a moment or two. And then he said briefly, “She has come along.”
“Oh! I had no idea,” she said gently. “And—have you asked her?”
Again he was silent for a moment or two, and then he replied slowly and gently, “No; I’m asking her now.”
She shot a sudden, startled look at him. “You mean … me?”
He nodded. She saw his face fitfully in the passing lights, solemn and serious.
“But—but you’ve known me only a week.”
He laughed unsteadily. “Is it really only a week? It might be years… all my life. Does it matter how long?”
She was silent.
“I… I’m in deadly earnest… Helen, speak to me.”
“What can I say—what can I say?” she answered in a stifled voice. “I hardly know you.”
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