Mufti Part 3

"I can't help laughing at the comparison," said Margaret suddenly.

"Five years ago you and I were sitting in Rumpolmayer's, surrounded by sugar cakes, being smart."

"They're doing that now in London except for the sugar cakes."

"We shouldn't have been silent for a moment, and we should have enjoyed ourselves thoroughly . . . I wonder--"

"It was our only standard, wasn't it?"

"And now we can sit over a cup of weak and nasty tea--without milk and not talk for effect. . . . What's going to happen, Derek, to you and me afterwards? We can never go back to it?"

"No--you can't put back the clock--and we've grown, Margaret, years and years older. So have thousands of others--the boys up yonder, their people at home. But what about the business train to Brighton, and the occupants thereof? . . . Have they felt this war, except to make a bit more boodle out of it?"

"They're only a small minority."

"Are they? They're a d.a.m.ned powerful one." He laughed a little bitterly. "And they're artificial--just like we were before the war."

"That's why it's we who have got to do the rebuilding. Even if it's only the rebuilding the house in our own little tiny circle, with simplicity and reality as the keystones. . . . You see, if you get enough tiny circles sound and good, in time the others may follow. . . ."

"Dear lady, you've become very optimistic." Vane's eyes smiled at her.

"Let's hope you're right." He paused and looked at her quietly.

"Margaret. I've never asked you before--but you're different now--so different. Incidentally so am I. What was it, that made you alter so suddenly?"

Margaret rose to her feet, and shook her head. "I'll tell you some day, Derek, perhaps. Not just now. I must be getting back to the hospital."

"Will you come out and have tea with me to-morrow?" For a few moments she looked at him as if undecided, and then suddenly she seemed to make up her mind.

"All right," she said with a smile. "I'll come, I want to deal with this jaundice of yours. One must live up to a professional reputation."

CHAPTER II

A hospital is much the same anywhere, and number 13 General at Etaples was no exception. On each side of the big marquee ran a row of beds in perfect dressing. The sheets were turned down on the design so ably portrayed in the War Office Sealed Pattern X.B.451.--"Method of turning down sheets on Beds Hospital." On "Beds Barrack" the method is slightly different and is just as ably shown on Sealed pattern X.B.452.

During moments of intense depression one is apt to fear the war-winning properties of X.B.451 and 452 have not been sufficiently appreciated by an unintelligent public.

The period of strain incurred on entrance was over as far as Vane was concerned. For the sixth time since leaving his battalion he had, in a confidential aside, informed a minion of the B.A.M.O. that he was a Wee Free Presbyterian Congregationalist; and for the sixth time the worthy recipient of this news had retired to consult War Office Sealed List of Religions A.F.31 to find out if he was ent.i.tled to be anything of the sort. In each case the answer had been in the negative, and Vane had been entered as "Other Denominations" and regarded with suspicion. One stout sergeant had even gone so far as to attempt to convert him to Unitarianism; another showed him the list, and asked him to take his choice.

In the bed next to him was a young Gunner subaltern, with most of his right leg shot away, and they talked spasmodically, in the intervals of trying to read month old magazines.

"Wonderful sight," remarked the Gunner, interrupted for a moment in his story by the eternal thermometer. "Firing at 'em over open sights: shrapnel set at 0. Seemed to cut lanes through 'em; though, G.o.d be praised, they came on for a bit, and didn't spoil our shooting."

Vane, sucking a thermometer under his tongue, nodded sympathetically.

"A bit better than sitting in a bally O.P. watchin' other fellows p.o.o.p at the mud."

"How did you get yours?" he queried, as the Sister pa.s.sed on.

"Crump almost at my feet, just as I was going into my dug-out. . . .

Mouldy luck, and one splinter smashed the last bottle of whisky." The gunner relapsed into moody silence at the remembrance of the tragedy.

Two beds further along the Padre was playing a game of chess with a Major in the Devons; and on the opposite side of the tent another chaplain, grey haired and clean shaven, was talking and laughing with a boy, whose face and head were swathed in bandages.

The R.C. and the C. of E. exponents hunting in couples as these two always did. . . . They are not the only two who before the war would have relegated the other to the nethermost depths of the deepest h.e.l.l; but whose eyes have been opened to wisdom now.

Vane was no theologian--no more than are the thousands of others across the water. Before the war he had been in the habit of dismissing any religious question by the comforting a.s.sertion that if all one's pals are in h.e.l.l, one might as well join them. But in the Game of Death the thoughts of many men have probed things they pa.s.sed over lightly before. It is not doctrine they want; faith and belief in beautiful formulas have become less and less satisfying. They are beginning to think for themselves, which is anathema to the Church. Of old she prevented such a calamity by a policy of terrorising her followers; of later years she has adopted the simpler one of boring them. And yet it is only simplicity they want; the simple creeds of helping on the other fellow and playing the game is what they understand. But they will have to be reminded of it from time to time. One wonders whether the Church will be big enough to seize the opportunity that stares her in the face.

Vane nodded to the grey-haired Roman Catholic as he paused at the foot of his bed.

"Shoulder painful?" The priest held out a lighted match for Vane's cigarette.

"Throbs a bit, Padre; but it might be worse." He smiled and lay back on his pillows. "An arm makes one feel so helpless."

"I think I'd sooner lose an arm than a leg," remarked the Gunner from the next bed. For a while they pursued this debatable point, much as men discuss politics, and incidentally with far less heat. . . . It was a question of interest, and the fact that the Gunner _had_ lost his leg made no difference to the matter at all. An onlooker would have listened in vain for any note of complaint. . . .

"Time you were getting to sleep--both of you." Margaret's voice interrupted the conversation, and Vane looked up with a smile. She was shaking an admonitory finger at Father O'Rourke, and with a sudden quickening of the pulse he realised how perfectly charming she looked.

"Sister, dear," said the Gunner, "you're on my side, aren't you? It's better to lose an arm than a leg, isn't it?"

For a moment she affected to consider the point. Then suddenly she smiled, and came between their beds. "Unless you both of you go to sleep at once I'll come and wash you again."

With a groan of horror the Gunner hid himself under the bed-clothes, and Margaret, still smiling, turned to Vane.

"Good night, Derek," she said very low. "Sometimes I just want to sit down and howl. . . ." And Vane, looking up into her face, saw that her eyes were a little misty. . . .

Gradually the ward settled down into silence. Right at the other end a man was groaning feebly; while just opposite, looking ghastly in the dim light, a boy was staring round the tent with eyes that did not see.

For hours on end he lay unconscious, breathing the rattling breath of the badly ga.s.sed; then suddenly he would lift his head, and his eyes, fixed and staring, would slowly turn from bed to bed. He looked as a man looks who is walking in his sleep, and Vane knew he was very near the Great Divide. He had been hit in the chest by a piece of sh.e.l.l, and a bit of his coat impregnated with mustard gas had been driven into his lungs. . . . Every now and then Margaret pa.s.sed noiselessly down the centre between the two rows of beds. Once she lent over Vane and he closed his eyes pretending to be asleep. But every time as she came to the boy opposite she stopped and looked at him anxiously. Once she was joined by a doctor, and Vane heard their muttered conversation . . .

"I can't get him to take his medicine, Doctor. He doesn't seem able to do anything."

"It doesn't much matter, Nurse," he whispered--why is it that the sick-room whisper seems to travel as far as the voice of the Sergeant-Major on parade? "He won't get through to-night, and I'm afraid we can't do anything."

The doctor turned away, and Margaret went to the end of the tent and sat down at her table. A reading lamp threw a light on her face, and for a while Vane watched her. Then his eyes came back to the boy opposite, and rested on him curiously. He was unconscious once again, and it suddenly struck Vane as strange that whereas, up in front, he had seen death and mutilation in every possible and impossible form--that though he had seen men hit by a sh.e.l.l direct, and one man crushed by a Tank--yet he had never been impressed with the same sense of the utter futility of war as now, in face of this boy dying in the bed opposite. To have come so far and then to pay the big price; it was so hard--so very pitiful; and Vane turned over to shut out the sight. He felt suddenly frightened of the thing that was coming nearer and nearer to the dying boy; furious at the inability of the science which had struck him down to save him. . . .

Vane closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep was far away that night. Whenever he opened them he saw Margaret writing at her table; and once there came to him an irresistible temptation to speak to her.

He felt that he wanted her near him, if only for a moment; he wanted to lean on her--he wanted to be taken in her arms like a little child.

Angrily he closed his eyes again. It was ridiculous, absurd, weak. . . . But there have been times in this war when the strongest man has sobbed like a child in his weakness. . . .

"Sister!" Vane hardly recognised it as his own voice calling.

"Sister!" Margaret came towards him down the ward. "Could you get me something to drink?"

In a moment she had returned with some lemonade. "I thought you were asleep, Derek," she whispered. "Are you feeling feverish?"

She put a cool hand on his forehead, and with a sigh of relief Vane lay back. "I'm frightened, Margaret," he said so low that she scarce could hear him. "Just scared to death . . . of that boy opposite. Ain't I a d.a.m.ned fool?"

Her only answer was the faintest perceptible pressure on his forehead.

Then his hand came up and took hers, and she felt the touch of his lips on it. For a moment she let it rest there, and then gently withdrew it, while with a tired sigh Vane closed his eyes. . . .