Tatterdemalion Part 12

Startled by the sound of her voice, Harburn jumped up and spun round towards it.

"Yes," she repeated quite quietly; "I came to speak to you; I came to put my curse on you. Many have put their curses on you silently; I do so to your face. My son lies between life and death in your prison--your prison. Whether he lives or dies I curse you for what you have done to poor wives and mothers--to British wives and mothers. Be for ever accursed! Good-night!"

She let the curtain fall, and had vanished before Harburn had time to reach the window. She vanished so swiftly and silently, she had spoken so quietly, that both he and I stood rubbing our eyes and ears.

"A bit theatrical!" he said at last.

"Perhaps," I answered slowly; "but you have been cursed by a live Scotswoman. Look at those dogs!"

The two Airedales were standing stock-still with the hair bristling on their backs.

Harburn suddenly laughed, and it jarred the whole room.

"By George!" he said, "I believe that's actionable."

But I was not in that mood, and said tartly:

"If it is, we are all food for judges."

He laughed again, this time uneasily, slammed the window to, bolted it, and sat down again in his chair.

"He's got the 'flue,' I suppose," he said. "She must think me a prize sort of idiot to have come here with such tomfoolery."

But our evening was spoiled, and I took my leave almost at once. I went out into the roupy raw December night pondering deeply. Harburn had made light of it, and though I suppose no man likes being cursed to his face in the presence of a friend, I felt his skin was quite thick enough to stand it. Besides, it was too cheap and crude a way of carrying on.

Anybody can go into his neighbour's house and curse him--and no bones broken. And yet--what she had said was no doubt true; hundreds of women--of his fellow countrywomen--must silently have put their curse on one who had been the chief compeller of their misery. Still, he had put _his_ curse on the Huns and their belongings, and I felt he was man enough to take what he had given. 'No,' I thought, 'she has only fanned the flame of his hate. But, by Jove! that's just it! Her curse has fortified my prophecy!' It was of his own state of mind that he would perish; and she had whipped and deepened that state of mind. And, odd as it may seem, I felt quite sorry for him, as one is for a poor dog that goes mad, does what harm he can, and dies. I lay awake that night a long time thinking of him, and of that unhappy, half-crazed mother, whose son lay between life and death.

Next day I went to see her, but she was up in London, hovering round the cage of her son, no doubt. I heard from her, however, some days later, thanking me for coming, and saying he was out of danger. But she made no allusion to that evening visit. Perhaps she was ashamed of it.

Perhaps she was demented when she came, and had no remembrance thereof.

Soon after this I went to Belgium to ill.u.s.trate a book on Reconstruction, and found such subjects that I was not back in Town till the late summer of 1919. Going into my Club one day I came on Harburn in the smoking-room. The curse had not done him much harm, it seemed, for he looked the picture of health.

"Well, how are you?" I said. "You look at the top of your form."

"Never better," he replied.

"Do you remember our last evening together?"

He uttered a sort of gusty grunt, and did not answer.

"That boy recovered," I said. "What's happened to him and his mother, since?"

"The ironical young brute! I've just had this from him." And he handed me a letter with the Hanover post mark.

"Dear Mr. Harburn,

It was only on meeting my mother here yesterday that I learned of her visit to you one evening last December. I wish to apologise for it, since it was my illness which caused her to so forget herself. I owe you a deep debt of grat.i.tude for having been at least part means of giving me the most wonderful experience of my life. In that camp of sorrow--where there was sickness of mind and body such as I am sure you have never seen or realised, such endless hopeless mental anguish of poor huddled creatures turning and turning on themselves year after year--I learned to forget myself, and to do my little best for them. And I learned, and I hope I shall never forget it, that feeling for one's fellow creatures is all that stands between man and death; I was going fast the other way before I was sent there. I thank you from my heart, and beg to remain,

Very faithfully yours HAROLD HOLSTEIG."

I put it down, and said:

"That's not ironical. He means it."

"Bos.h.!.+" said Harburn, with the old spark and smoulder in his eyes. "He's pulling my leg--the swinelet Hun!"

"He is not, Harburn; I a.s.sure you."

Harburn got up. "He _is_; I tell you he _is_. Ah! Those brutes! Well! I haven't done with them yet."

And I heard the snap of his jaw, and saw his eyes fixed fiercely on some imaginary object. I changed the subject hurriedly, and soon took my departure. But going down the steps, an old jingle came into my head, and has hardly left it since:

"The man recovered from the bite, The dog it was that died."

1919.

X

IN HEAVEN AND EARTH

We were yarning after dinner, and, whether because three of us were fishermen, or simply that we were all English, our yarns were taking a compet.i.tive turn. The queerest thing seen during the War was the subject of our tongues, and it was not till after several t.i.t-bits had been digested that Mallinson, the painter, ill and ironical, blue-eyed, and with a fair pointed beard, took his pipe out of his mouth, and said:

"Well, you chaps, what I saw last week down in Kent takes some beating.

I'd been sketching in a hay-field, and was just making back along the top hedge to the lane when I heard a sound from the other side like a man's crying. I put my eye to a gap, and there, about three yards in, was a grey-haired bloke in a Norfolk jacket and flannel trousers, digging like a fiend, and crying like a baby--blowing, and gasping and sobbing, tears and sweat rolling down into his beard like rivers. He'd plunge his pick in, scratch, and shovel, and hack at the roots as if for dear life--he was making the hole too close to the hedge, of course--and all the time carrying on like that. I thought he must be digging his own grave at least. Suddenly he put his pick down, and there just under the hedge I saw a dead brown dog, lying on its side, all limp. I never see a dead animal myself, you know, without a bit of a choke; they're so soft, and lissom; the peace, and the pity--a sort of look of: "Why--why--when I was so alive?" Well, this elderly Johnny took a good squint at it, to see if the hole was big enough, then off he went again, sobbing and digging like a fiend. It was really a bit too weird, and I mouched off. But when I'd gone about half a mile, I got an attack of the want-to-knows, came back, and sneaked along the hedge. There he was still, but he had finished, and was having a mop round, and putting the last touches to a heap of stones. I strolled up, and said:

'Hot work, Sir, digging, this weather!'

He was a good-looking old grey-beard, with an intellectual face, high forehead and all that.

'I'm not used to it,' he said, looking at his blisters.

'Been burying a dog? Horrid job that!--favourite, I'm afraid.'

He seemed in two minds whether to shut me up and move off, but he didn't.

'Yes,' he said; 'it's cut me up horribly. I never condemned a creature to death before. And dogs seem to know.'

'Ah! They're pretty uncanny,' I said, for I wasn't going to let on, of course, that I had seen him.

'I wouldn't have done it but for the War,' he muttered; 'but she stole eggs, poor thing; you couldn't break her of it. She ate three times as much as any other dog, too, and in spite of it was always a perfect skeleton--something wrong inside. The sort of dog, you know, no one would take, or treat decently if they did. Bad habits of every kind, poor dear. I bought her because she was being starved. But she trusted me, that's why I feel so like a murderer. When the Vet and I were in the yard discussing her, she knew there was something wrong--she kept looking at my face. I very nearly went back on it; only, having got him out on purpose, I was ashamed to. We brought her down here, and on the way she found the remains of a rabbit about a week old--that was one of her accomplishments--bringing me the most fearful offal. She brought it up wagging her tail--as much as to say: 'See--I _am_ some use!' The Vet tied her up here and took his gun; she wagged her tail at that, too; and I ran away. When the shot came, my own little spaniel fawned on me--they _are_ uncanny--licked me all over, never was so gus.h.i.+ng, seemed saying: 'What awful power you have! I do love you! You wouldn't do that to me, would you? We've got rid of that other one, though!' When I came back here to bury the poor thing, and saw her lying on her side so still, I made a real fool of myself. I was patting her an hour ago, talking to her as if she were a human being. Judas!'"

Mallinson put his pipe back into his mouth. "Just think of it!" he said: "The same creatures who are blowing each other to little bits all the time, bombing babies, roasting fellow creatures in the air and cheering while they roast, working day and night to inflict every imaginable kind of horror on other men exactly like themselves--these same chaps are capable of feeling like that about shooting a wretched ill cur of a dog, no good to anybody. There are more things in Heaven and Earth--!" And he relit his pipe, which had gone out.