Part 34 (1/2)

When his s.h.i.+p reached Ma.r.s.eilles it was to find that the world was buzzing with strange rumours. There was talk of war in Europe. Russia was said to be mobilising; Germany was said to be mobilising; France was said to be mobilising; it was even rumoured that England might be drawn into some t.i.tanic struggle of the nations. And yet no accurate information was obtainable. The English papers they saw were somewhat old and their reports vague in the extreme.

Much excited, like everyone else, G.o.dfrey telegraphed to the India Office, asking leave to come home direct overland, which he could not do without permission since he was in command of a number of soldiers who were returning to England on furlough.

No answer came to his wire before his s.h.i.+p sailed, and therefore he was obliged to proceed by long sea. Still it had important consequences which at the moment he could not foresee. In the Bay the tidings that reached them by Marconigram were evidently so carefully censored that out of them they could make nothing, except that the Empire was filled with great doubt and anxiety, and that the world stood on the verge of such a war as had never been known in history.

At length they came to Southampton where the pilot-boat brought him a telegram ordering him to report himself without delay. Three hours later he was in London. At the India Office, where he was kept waiting a while, he was shown into the room of a prominent and hara.s.sed official who had some papers in front of him.

”You are Major Knight?” said the official. ”Well, here is your record before me and it is good, very good indeed. But I see that you are on sick leave. Are you too ill for service?”

”No,” answered G.o.dfrey, ”the voyage has set me up. I feel as well as ever I did.”

”That's fortunate,” answered the official, ”but there is a doctor on the premises, and to make sure he shall have a look at you. Go down and see him, if you will, and then come back here with his report,” and he rang a bell and gave some orders.

Within half an hour G.o.dfrey was back in the room with a clean bill of health. The official read the certificate and remarked that he was going to send him over to the War Office, where he would make an appointment for him by telephone.

”What for, Sir?” asked G.o.dfrey. ”You see I am only just off my s.h.i.+p and very ignorant of the news.”

”The news is, Major Knight, that we shall be at war with Germany before we are twelve hours older,” was the solemn answer. ”Officers are wanted, and we are giving every good man from India on whom we can lay our hands. They won't put you on the Staff, because you have everything to learn about European work, but I expect they will find you a billet in one of the expeditionary regiments. And now good-bye and good luck to you, for I have lots of men to see. By the way, I take it for granted that you volunteered for the job?”

”Of course,” replied G.o.dfrey simply, and went away to wander about the endless pa.s.sages of the War Office till at length he discovered the man whom he must see.

A few tumultuous days went by, and he found himself upon a steamer crossing to France, attached to a famous English regiment.

The next month always remained in G.o.dfrey's mind as a kind of nightmare in which he moved on plains stained the colour of blood, beneath a sky black with bellowing thunder and illumined occasionally by a blaze of splendour. It would be useless to attempt to set out the experience and adventures of the particular cavalry regiment to which he was attached as a major, since, notwithstanding their infinite variety, they were such as all shared whose glory it was to take part with what the Kaiser called the ”contemptible little army” of England in the ineffable retreat from Mons, that retreat which saved France and Civilisation.

G.o.dfrey played his part well, once or twice with heroism indeed, but what of that amid eighty thousand heroes? Back he staggered with the rest, exhausted, sleepless, fighting, fighting, fighting, his mind filled alternately with horror and with wonder, horror at the deeds to which men can sink and the general scheme of things that makes them possible, wonder at the heights to which they can rise when lifted by the inspiration of a great ideal and a holy cause. Death, he reflected, could not after all mean so very much to man, seeing how bravely it was met every minute of the day and night, and that the aspect of it, often so terrible, did but encourage others in like fas.h.i.+on to smile and die.

But oh! what did it all mean, and who ruled this universe with such a flaming, blood-stained sword?

Then at last came the turn of the tide when the hungry German wolf was obliged to abandon that Paris which already he thought between his jaws and, a few days after it, the charge, the one splendid, perfect charge that consoled G.o.dfrey and those with him for all which they had suffered, lost and feared. He was in command of the regiment now, for those superior to him had been killed, and he directed and accompanied that charge. They thundered on to the ma.s.s of the Germans who were retreating with no time to entrench or set entanglements, a gentle slope in front, and hard, clear ground beneath their horses' feet. They cut through them, they trod them down, they drove them by scores and hundreds into the stream beyond, till those two battalions, or what remained of them, were but a tangled, drowning mob. It was finished; the English squadron turned to retreat as had been ordered.

Then of a sudden G.o.dfrey felt a dull blow. For a few moments consciousness remained to him. He called out some command about the retirement; it came to his mind that thus it was well to die in the moment of his little victory. After that--blackness!

When his sense returned to him he found himself lying in the curtained corner of a big room. At least he thought it was big because of the vast expanse of ceiling which he could see above the curtain rods and the sounds without, some of which seemed to come from a distance. There was a window, too, through which he caught sight of lawns and statues and formal trees. Just then the curtain was drawn, and there appeared a middle-aged woman dressed in white, looking very calm, very kind and very spotless, who started a little when she saw that his eyes were open and that his face was intelligent.

”Where am I?” he asked, and was puzzled to observe that the sound of his voice seemed feeble and far away.

”In the hospital at Versailles,” she answered in a pleasant voice.

”Indeed!” he murmured. ”It occurred to me that it might be Heaven or some place of the sort.”

”If you looked through the curtain you wouldn't call it Heaven,” she said with a sigh, adding, ”No, Major, you were near to 'going west,'

very near, but you never got to the gates of Heaven.”

”I can't remember,” he murmured again.

”Of course you can't, so don't try, for you see you got it in the head, a bit of sh.e.l.l; and a nice operation, or rather operations, they had over you. If it wasn't for that clever surgeon--but there, never mind.”

”Shall I recover?”

”Of course you will. We have had no doubt about that for the last week; you have been here nearly three, you know; only, you see, we thought you might be blind, something to do with the nerves of the eyes. But it appears that isn't so. Now be quiet, for I can't stop talking to you with two dying just outside, and another whom I hope to save.”