Mufti Part 14

"Sir John is marking it all up in the 'All on the map, with flags,"

continued the worthy old woman. "I can't make 'ead or tail of it all myself--but my 'usband likes to 'ave everything up to date. 'E can't form any real opinion on the strategy, he says, unless he knows where everybody is."

Vane preserved a discreet silence.

"But as I tells 'im," rambled on Lady Patterdale, "it doesn't seem to me to be of much account where the poor fellows are. You may move a pin from 'ere to there, and feel all pleased and joyful about it--but you wouldn't feel so 'appy if you was the pin."

Vane laughed outright. "You've got a way of putting things, Lady Patterdale, which hits the nail on the head each time."

"Ah! you may laugh, Captain Vane. You may think I'm a silly old woman who doesn't know what she's talking about. But I've got eyes in my 'ead; and I'm not quite a fool. I've seen young men go out to France laughing and cheerful; and I've seen 'em come back. They laugh just as much--perhaps a bit more; they seem just as cheerful--but if you love 'em as I do you come to something which wasn't never there before.

They've been one of the pins. Lots of us 'ave been one of the pins, Captain Vane; though we ain't been to France you can lose other things besides your life in this world."

She nodded her head at him solemnly and waddled on, while Vane stood for a moment looking after her. a.s.suredly this common old woman possessed in her some spark of the understanding which is almost Divine. . . . And Vane, with a quick flash of insight, saw the proud planting of the pin on Rumfold Hall--a strategic advance, but the casualty list had never been published. . . .

He strolled along the veranda and into the hall. Sir John with a very small audience--mostly newcomers--around him was holding forth on the new developments in France and Vane paused for a moment to listen.

"You mark my words, me boys," he was saying, "this is the big thing. I put my trust in Foch: he's the fellow who's got my money on him. No nonsense about Foch. Of course it's going to be costly, but you can't have omelettes without breaking eggs. An old proverb, me boys--but a true one."

"More than true, Sir John," remarked Vane quietly. "And one that from time immemorial has proved an immense comfort to the egg."

He went on up to his room. It was too early yet to start for Blandford, but Vane was in no mood for his own thoughts. They had reached a stage, indeed, whence he preferred not to follow them further. Doubtless by the time Margaret returned on leave, the beaten track would have revealed itself; until then--_cui bono_? . . . .

He looked at his watch, and it occurred to him that he would just have comfortable time to pay a visit to old John before starting on his walk through the woods. From Robert he had found out where the old man was living in the village, and, a few minutes later, he was strolling down the drive towards his house. He found the little garden, just as perfectly kept as had been the one at the Lodge: the white muslin curtains in the front rooms were just as spotless. And old John himself was watering a row of sweet peas as he came to the little gate. . . .

"Ah! Mr. Vane, sir," he remarked, putting down his can and hobbling forward. "I'm honoured to see you, sir." Then as he saw the three stars on Vane's sleeve, he corrected himself. "Captain Vane, sir, I should have said. . . ."

"I don't think we're likely to fall out over that, John," laughed Vane.

"One never knows what anybody is these days. You're a Colonel one minute, and a subaltern the next."

Old John nodded his head thoughtfully. "That's true, sir--very true.

One doesn't seem to know where one is at all. The world seems topsy-turvy. Things have changed, sir--and I'm thinking the missus and I are getting too old to keep pace with them. Take young Blake, sir--down the village, the grocer's son. Leastways, when I says grocer, the old man keeps a sort of general shop. Now the boy, sir, is a Captain. . . . I mis'remember what regiment--but he's a Captain."

"And very likely a devilish good one too, John," said Vane smiling.

"He is, sir. I've seen reports on him--at schools and courses and the like--which say he's a fine officer. But what's going to happen afterwards, sir, that's what I want to know? Is young Bob Blake going to put on his white ap.r.o.n again, and hand the old woman her bit of b.u.t.ter and sugar over the counter? What about that, sir?"

"I wish to Heaven I could tell you, John," said Vane. "Bob Blake isn't the only one, you know."

"Them as is sound, sir," went on the old man, "won't be affected by it.

They won't have their heads turned by having mixed with the gentry as their equals--like. And the real gentry won't think no more nor no less of them when they goes back to their proper station. . . . But there'll be some as will want to stop on in a place where they don't rightly belong. And it'll make a world of unhappiness, sir, for all concerned. . . ."

Unconsciously the old man's eyes strayed in the direction of Rumfold Hall, and he sighed.

"You can't alter the ways of the Lord, sir," continued old John. "We read in the Book that He made them richer and poorer, and some of one cla.s.s, and some of another. As long as everybody remembers which cla.s.s he's in, he'll get what happiness he deserves. . . ."

Vane did not feel inclined to dispute this from the point of view of Holy Writ. The trouble is that it takes a stronger and more level head than is possessed by every boy of twenty to understand that a khaki uniform unlocks doors on which a suit of evening clothes bought off the peg and a made up tie fail to produce any impression. If only he realises that those doors are not worth the trouble of trying to unlock, all will be well for him; if he doesn't, he will be the sufferer. . . . Which is doubtless utterly wrong, but such is the Law and the Prophets.

"I reckons there are troublous times ahead of us, sir," went on the old man. "More troublous than any we are going through now--though them's bad enough, in all conscience. Why, only the other evening, I was down at the Fiddlers' Arms, for a gla.s.s of what they do call beer--'tis dreadful stuff, sir, that there Government beer. . . ." Old John sighed mournfully at the thought of what had been. "I was sitting in there, as I says, when in comes some young feller from Grant's garage, up the road. Dressed cla.s.sy he was--trying to ape his betters--with a yellow forefinger from smoking them d.a.m.ned stinking f.a.gs--and one of them stuck behind his ear.

"'Hullo, gaffer,'" he says, 'how's the turnips?'

"'Looking worse in France than they do in England,' says I. 'Have you been to see?'

"That hit him, sir, that did," chuckled old John. "He fair squirmed for a moment, while the others laughed. 'Don't you know I'm on work of national importance?' he says. 'I'm exempted.'

"'The only work of national importance you're ever likely to do, my lad,' says I, 'won't be done till you're dead. And not then if you're buried proper.'

"'What do you mean?' he asks.

"'You might help the turnips you're so anxious about,' says I, 'if they used you as manure.'" Old John, completely overcome by the remembrance of this shaft, laughed uproariously.

"You should have seen his face, sir," he went on when he had partially recovered. "He got redder and redder, and then he suddenly says, 'e says, 'Weren't you the lodge keeper up at Rumfold Hall?'

"'I was,' I answered quiet like, because I thought young Master Impudence was getting on dangerous ground.

"'One of the poor wretched slaves,' he sneers, 'of a bloated aristocrat. . . . We're going to alter all that,' he goes on, and then for a few minutes I let him talk. He and his precious friends were going to see that all that wretched oppression ceased, and then he finished up by calling me a slave again, and sneering at his Lords.h.i.+p."

Old John spat reflectively. "Well, sir, I stopped him then. In my presence no man may sneer at his Lords.h.i.+p--certainly not a callow pup like him. His Lords.h.i.+p is a fine man and a good man, and I was his servant." The old man spoke with a simple dignity that impressed Vane.

"I stopped him, sir," he continued, "and then I told him what I thought of him. I said to him, I said, 'Young man, I've listened to your d.a.m.ned nonsense for five minutes--now you listen to me. When you--with your face all covered with pimples, and your skin all muddy and sallow--start talking as you've been talking, there's only one thing should be done. Your mother should take your trousers down and smack you with a hair brush; though likely you'd cry with fright before she started. I was his Lords.h.i.+p's servant for forty-two years, and I'm prouder of that fact than anyone is likely to be over anything you do in your life. And if his Lords.h.i.+p came in at that door now, he'd meet me as a man meets a man. Whereas you--you'd run round him sniffing like the lickspittle you are--and if he didn't tread on you, you'd go and brag to all your other pimply friends that you'd been talking to an Earl. . . .'"

"Bravo! old John . . . bravo!" said Vane quietly. "What did the whelp do?"

"Tried to laugh sarcastic, sir, and then slunk out of the door." The old man lit his pipe with his gnarled, trembling fingers. "It's coming, sir--perhaps not in my time--but it's coming. Big trouble. . . . All those youngsters with their smattering of edication, and their airs and their conceits and their 'I'm as good as you.'" He fell silent and stared across the road with a troubled look in his eyes. "Yes, sir," he repeated, "there be bad days coming for England--terrible bad--unless folks pull themselves together. . . ."

"Perhaps the Army may help 'em when it comes back," said Vane.

"May be, sir, may be." Old John shook his head doubtfully. "Perhaps so. Anyways, let's hope so, sir."

"Amen," answered Vane with sudden earnestness. And then for a while they talked of the soldier son who had been killed. With a proud lift to his tired, bent shoulders old John brought out the letter written by his platoon officer, and showed it to the man who had penned a score of similar doc.u.ments. It was well thumbed and tattered, and if ever Vane had experienced a sense of irritation at the exertion of writing to some dead boy's parents or wife he was amply repaid now. Such a little trouble really; such a wonderful return of grat.i.tude even though it be unknown and unacknowledged. . . . "You'll see there, sir," said the old man, "what his officer said. I can't see myself without my gla.s.ses--but you read it, sir, you read it. . . . 'A magnificent soldier, an example to the platoon. I should have recommended him for the stripe.' How's that, sir. . . .? And then there's another bit. . . . 'Men like him can't be replaced.' Eh! my boy. . . . Can't be replaced. You couldn't say that, sir, about yon pimply ferret I was telling you about."

"You could not, old John," said Vane. "You could not." He stood up and gave the letter back. "It's a fine letter; a letter any parent might be proud to get about his son."

"Aye," said the old man, "he was a good boy was Bob. None o' this new-fangled nonsense about him." He put the letter carefully in his pocket. "Mother and me, sir, we often just looks at it of an evening.

It sort of comforts her. . . . Somehow it's hard to think of him dead. . . ." His lips quivered for a moment, and then suddenly he turned fiercely on Vane. "And yet, I tells you, sir, that I'd sooner Bob was dead over yonder--aye--I'd sooner see him lying dead at my feet, than that he should ever have learned such doctrines as be flying about these days."

Thus did Vane leave the old man, and as he walked down the road he saw him still standing by his gate thumping with his stick on the pavement, and shaking his head slowly. It was only when Vane got to the turning that old John picked up his can and continued his interrupted watering. . . . And it seemed to Vane that he had advanced another step towards finding himself.

CHAPTER IX

Vane, conscious that he was a little early for lunch, idled his way through the woods. He was looking forward, with a pleasure he did not attempt to a.n.a.lyse, to seeing Joan in the setting where she belonged.

And if occasionally the thought intruded itself that it might be advisable to take a few mental compa.s.s bearings and to ascertain his exact position before going any further, he dismissed them as ridiculous. Such thoughts have been similarly dismissed before. . . .

It was just as Vane was abusing himself heartily for being an a.s.s that he saw her coming towards him through a clearing in the undergrowth.

She caught sight of him at the same moment and stopped short with a swift frown.

"I didn't know you knew this path," she said as he came up to her.