Part 10 (2/2)

As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of joy:

Le jour de gloire est arrive!

It was the note of the conqueror.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] German swine! Stinking Prussians!

[11] You speak German!

[12] Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!

XVI

PETER

My friend T---- and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term as a ”Political” in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up their minds to give you their friends.h.i.+p, give it handsomely and without reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill like a gully--between tall houses standing so close together that one might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite.

The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous stones, was unmistakable.

”New drafts!” said T----. Instinctively we both moved to the window. We knew that the Army authorities were rus.h.i.+ng troops across the Channel every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room, the upturned faces of the men.

”Bonjour, monseer,” they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that _vade mec.u.m_ (price one penny) of the British soldier: _French, and how to speak it_. It was night, not day, but that didn't matter.

”Good-night,” came a piping treble voice from the floor above us.

”Good-night”--”Good-night, old chap”--”Good-night, my son”--the men shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely saluted.

”It's Peter,” said T----; ”he'll be frightfully bucked up.”

”Let's go up and see him,” I said. We ascended the dark staircase--the rest of the household were plunged in slumber--turned the handle of the bedroom door, and could just make out in the darkness a little figure in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window.

”Peter, you'll catch cold,” said his father as he struck a match. The light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's shoulder from the window.

”All right, Dad. I say,” he exclaimed joyfully, ”did you see? They saluted me! Did _you_ see?” he said, turning to me.

”I did, Major Peter.”

”You're kidding!”

”Not a bit of it,” I said, saluting gravely. ”They've given you commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to salute you too, now.”

This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to Peter. ”Right oh!” he said. And from that time forward I always addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was ordering him to bed. At such times--there was a nightly contest on the matter--the paternal authority could not afford to concede any prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cas.h.i.+ered from the Army, only to be reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning.

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