Part 19 (1/2)
”Oh, well, Mr. Montague”--the little woman looked frankly into his gray-blue, unreadable eyes--”the biby's a boy, and when he grows up I cawn't say to 'im, ''Arry, your father was a slacker!' Now, can I, Mr.
Montague?”
He made no answer, but a thoughtful look crept into the hard, unsmiling eyes.
”Come and have a bit of supper, pard?” Private Waller rubbed his hands together at the prospect.
”No--no, thanks,” said Montague hastily. He was longing for privacy and the solace that comes with solitude. ”Some other night, perhaps, when we have our uniforms.”
”Good enough!” cried the cheery little man. ”Then we'll do Queen Street together and show the girls--what ho--oh no!”
Montague raised his hat. ”Good evening,” he said.
”So long,” said Private Waller. ”See you in the morning.”
When they were alone the husband turned to his young wife with an air of pride. ”What do you think of my pal?” he asked, with an air of proprietors.h.i.+p.
”G'wan,” said Emily disdainfully; ”'e ain't your pal.”
”He is, too.”
”'E ain't!” She tossed her head. ”Don't I know one when I sees one; me, the daughter of a footman in Lady Sw.a.n.kbourne's? 'E your pal! 'E blooming well ain't--'e's a _gentleman_!”
Far up the street Montague was striding towards his home, wondering if any one had seen him with the Wallers, or had heard the garrulous little c.o.c.kney call him pard. Good heavens! what would his friends say; or, for that matter, how could he face Sylvester if he had been seen by that polite scion of servitude? ”But I'll see it through,” he muttered savagely, biting his lip, ”if only to prove that the under-dog, like all other dogs, is a thing without a soul!”
VIII
It was early in November about eighteen months later that Vera Dalton, returning from her self-imposed task at a Military Convalescent Home, found a letter awaiting her which bore the heading that will cast its unique spell over us and our children for generations to come--”Somewhere in France.”
Sorrow had come into her home, as it had into so many hundreds of others, but it had mellowed, not marred her womanliness.
Into the vortex of the nations she had seen the young men of Canada flinging themselves with laughing voices and st.u.r.dy courage. With the other women of the city she had watched the endless stream of youth as though, across the seas, some Hamelin Piper were playing an irresistible, compelling melody.... And still the cry was for more--more sons, more brothers, more fathers! Month after month the ceaseless crusade went on--month after month new battalions sprang into being, trained a short time, and then made for the sea.... Always the sea, waiting with its foaming restlessness to carry its human cargo to the slaughter.
The sea ... the sea....
It became the symbol of sacrifice to her. Across its turbulent expanse, youth was forfeiting its life for the blindness of the past. The hungry fire of war was being fed with human hearts.... But such is the nature of fire that what lives through it is imperishable.
A year ago Montague had gone with his battalion--without even a good-bye. She had never heard of him, but the ordeal of the flames had left him stripped of his artificiality as a tree stricken by a sudden frost is robbed in a moment of its foliage. It is not only the best in men that lives through war--vile pa.s.sions vie with courage and great sacrifice.... But artificial things succ.u.mb and crumple with the scorching heat, and are blown into s.p.a.ce by the breath of pa.s.sions, base or n.o.ble--it matters not--they are _real_.
With trembling hands she opened the letter.
”SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE.
”MY DEAR GIRL,--In a couple of hours we are going over the parapet to reach the German lines or gain oblivion--or worse. All around me the men I have worked with, slept with, fought with, are writing to, or thinking of, some loved one at home. I do not know whether the love you once felt for me has died or not, but it was once strong enough to hurt me as no one had ever done before--to tear my soul out to where I could see its rottenness with my own eyes. I could not live with myself after that, and as you must have heard, for I believe it was a drawing-room jest for some time, I joined a battalion composed almost entirely of men from the factories, the workshops, and the streets.
”It was partly a spirit of bravado made me do it, and partly a desire to wrestle with truth. I cannot say how hard it was at first to endure their company, their incessant, meaningless profanity. I hated every one of them. To salute an officer in the street caused me such humiliation that I thought of desertion a dozen times. From my contempt of my fellow-soldiers to an understanding of their n.o.bility has been a hard, cruel road to travel; but I have traveled it, and I think that somewhere on the road there is a cross whereon my pride was crucified. Vera, my prayer is no longer that of the Pharisee, but of the Publican. I was offered a commission; I was urged to join the signalers or the machine-gun section, because there I should find men more after my own stamp; but I refused--the memory of your words made me stick with the men I started with.
”I have found them crude, uneducated, unambitious, but true as steel, and asking no better reward for their heroism than that their 'missus and kids' will be looked after at home. I tell you, Vera, that when the war is over we shall have to realize that it is not only the consumptive and the imbecile that deserve care and thought. There is a grandeur, a manhood, in the ordinary, unlovely, unkempt man of the streets that our civilization has failed to bring out, but war has done it. So much has war given to us; so much has peace failed to give.
”Life has become a riddle to me, still fascinating, but fascinatingly puzzling. Perhaps I shall find the answer in No Man's Land.