Also, John Hazel had learned to hold the Battalion in limitless esteem; to regard the Regiment he had once despised as a mob of clerks, shop-boys and warehousemen—as the pick and pride of the Territorial Forces, and to graft on the slang of the modern Londoner, the polyglottic argot of the War.
Finally, and subsequently to Beryl's defection, he had reconstituted his standard of the Ideal in Woman, after what fashion and under what circumstances may now be set forth.
III
In the April of 1915, east of "that mad place called Ypres,"—a city of ruinous white towers reddened by an angry sunrise, lying ahead and to the left. A grim grey road leading from Divisional Headquarters to the battle-front, a double crescent of blown-in trenches ankle-deep in water, and bottomed with West Flanders mud. A road fanged with the stumps of trees shattered by H.E. and scarred by iron-shod wheels; pitted with shell-holes, and generally knee-deep in sludge of an adhesive character. A road along which progressed, under cover of the darkness, long columns of men, guns and Army-lorries; A.S.C. cars and motor-cycles carrying ammunition, supplies, mails and despatches for the advanced trenches; unless German star-shell or searchlights made it daylight, when traffic stopped dead, to move on when the menace passed.
Day found the road deserted as a rule, though German hate played on it regularly at intervals, with rifle and machine-guns and clouds of poison-gas. But sometimes under the leaden scowl of a rainy day, or the brassy glare of a sunny one, the road displayed a double moving line. This, when one of the myriad little wars, presently to be merged in Warfare,—demanded the attainment of some objective infinitely insignificant,—at the cost of some great sacrifice of human life.
On this particular April day, what time the British line from Ypres southwards was strengthened—in default of missing sandbags—with tins of uneatable jam of the apple-blackberry brand, and equally bad corned-beef: columns of muddy Londoners and Scotsmen with helmets and gas-respirators at the alert, were going up to Support-trenches. Afoot now,—having disembarked at a marked danger-point from the grey Army lorries—or green and yellow motor 'buses that had carried many of the Londoners to business in the days that seemed so dim and so far off. And as they went, though shrapnel burst about them, and High Explosive dug new craters beside old, and wiped out a platoon or so in doing it,—they sang to the accompaniment of mouth-organs; "Keep the Home Fires Burning," or "Piccadilly," or "I Love a Lassie," or excruciatingly-parodied hymns.
But the troops that were coming down from the fighting-line to rest-billets (mostly Canadians, red with rust, muddy to the eyebrows, marching raggedly in companies or jumbled up anyhow in the lorries), did not sing "The Maple Leaf" or "My Little Grey Home." Many wore First Aid bandages smeared with iodine; nine out of ten hobbled and coughed and vomited; and the mucus they wrenched from their labouring lungs was yellow and mingled not infrequently with blood. It was their first experience of a German gas-attack, and the horror of the strange and evil thing was upon them; and the reek of it was in their clothes and breath. Yet those who could—called out cheerfully to recognised friends; or grinned with their cracked and swollen mouths in answer to cheery hails. Their reddened eyes of sleeplessness stared out of haggard, unshaved faces, and their muddy shoulders humped under their muddy kit-packs, as though the muddy ground were drawing them to lie down upon it and sleep. And every now and then one would falter in his stride and smile stupidly; and heavily and soggily collapse in the gluey mush. A comrade who had energy enough left in him would kick and shake such a sleeper into temporary wakefulness; or one of the men who perched beside the drivers of the Hospital cars and ambulances,—R.A.M.C. orderlies or Red Cross bearers, would play the Samaritan thus, when the subject would stagger on, to fall again. Or room would be made for him in some omnibus or lorry where lightly-wounded or badly-gassed men were packed like bloaters in a barrel, and so the game went on.
Private John Hazel, crunching a muddy apple, trudged through the sticky mud as part of a somewhat straggling route-column representing the Fourth Battalion of the Fenchurch Street Regiment. One novel sensation had that morning thrilled the Terriers, stale with the deadly boredom of life in the rear lines. Necks were yet being twisted to get the last of it, and joyous comments tossed it from tongue to tongue. A cow,—hidden away for months by an ancient peasant in some subterranean stable in No Man's Land (whence her milk had been retailed at the price of Veuve Cliquot to the Canadians in the firing-line)—was being brought down to the rear by her proprietor; her late lodgings having been discovered and thoroughly spring-cleaned by a German H.E. shell....
"Moi hoi, if it be-ant a cow!" said a voice that had the roll and twang of Berkshire. "Coosh-coosh, Snowdrop, ole beauty!"
"My Gawd, she don't 'arf look natural, do 'er?" came from a Cockney tongue....
Not a human unit of all those trudging columns but had slewed his head to stare at Crummy, and sniff the homely odours of hay and farmyard-muck that shook from her muddy flanks as she kloop-klooped by. What though she had raw patches of mange upon her withers—testifying to the poorness of her diet and the closeness of her quarters! To men who had not seen a cow, pig, cock or hen for weeks, moving upon that devastated country of once prosperous farms, productive fields, fruitful orchards, and stately rural mansions, the sight was comforting; bringing reassurance that in regions as yet unscathed by the frightfulness of War, yet were to be found quiet and order, laughter and pleasure, savoury food, sleep in one's own bed, and the humble, harmless things of everyday use, that make life sweet by their very homeliness.
Another sensation was in store that day, and though the novelty of it wore off with retrospection, John Hazel's keen enjoyment of the episode never blunted....
Down through the return-traffic on his left hand side, came a stately fleet of motor-waggon ambulances of the Red Cross, British and American; escorted by a train of Auxiliary Army Service cars of all imaginable makes, nationalities and sizes, from the aristocratic Rolls-Royce to the runabout Ford; from the Mercedes-Daimler of the Parisian boulevards to the roomy Schneider touring-car,—bringing wounded from the advanced dressing-stations down to the clearing-hospitals six miles back of the Reserve Lines.
The grey ambulances passed, in a mingled whiff of carbolic and iodoform: leaving a sense of grey paint, mystery and merciful swiftness. The cars, mostly carrying sitting-cases—flowed after them; steering neatly among the shell-holes, picking their way with practised smoothness among the various obstacles encumbering the road. And they left behind an impression of still figures wrapped in brown Army blankets: and grey-green or livid faces with closed or staring eyes, shaded by sacking-covered steel hats or bloody bandages: of an even stronger blast of carbolic and iodoform, and of Beauty, calm, alert, composed and eminently practical.
For all these auxiliary ambulance-cars were driven by women: in the black leather overcoats of Foreign Service, with D.B. Kitchener collars, and plain shoulder-straps with the button of the Red Cross Society's V.A.D. The pick and pride of the Old Country they seemed,—all young, or in the splendour of the early thirties. The best blood in Britain, John Hazel could have sworn,—raced under the sunburn of those quiet clear-cut faces, topped by peaked storm-caps of Navy blue cloth. He saw the neck of the lieutenant leading his platoon blaze red between his sweat-blackened collar and the edge of his tin hat, and the muddy glove swing up in the salute, as a clear voice rang out gaily from a driving-seat:
"He knows one of 'em. Lucky beast! I wonder—" John had reached thus far in his conjecture when a pip-squeak burst overhead with three sharp crashes; and a shell from a German howitzer dropped in an ancient neighbouring shellpit, considerably enlarging it—and producing the fantastic smoke-effect known as "Woolly Bear."
John Hazel bolted the core of his muddy apple, and mechanically made sure that "they" had not got him this time. The head under his tin hat was ringing, his eyes and lungs were full of acrid vapour: but no shrapnel was located in any portion of his frame. The cars were running by as smoothly as ever.... You could see through the thinning fumes the faces of the drivers, set like rock to confront War's risks and chances: and a blatant pride in them surged up in John Hazel and he caught his breath... They were his countrywomen.... Then Wallis, his front-file man, suddenly fell back upon him, knocking him breathless with his pack, and cutting his top lip badly with the edge of his shrapnel hat. With blood running over his long chin, blue and stubbly with bad shaving, John held up Wallis, who was making queer, clucking, farmyard noises:
"Auch—auch—auch! ..."
"The bloody 'Uns," growled John's left-hand man to his neighbour, "'as copped pore Ginger!" and the lieutenant ahead looked around. Wallis had ceased clucking by now; and the hand of John's supporting arm, where it went round across his cartridge-belt under his tunic-pockets, was wet with the usual warm, sticky stuff. And a voice that was clear-cut and ringing called out something, and a car slowed down its speed, and those behind it swept round and on.... And the lieutenant was shouting through the myriad noises of traffic: "If you can, it would be topping of you.... This isn't a healthy road to stop on. Thanks frightfully! ... You, Hazel, hoist him in and catch us up after! ... Forward. March! ..."
The V.A.D. driver had never quite stopped her car, John Hazel remembered. She had checked it to a crawl and he had kept pace with it, carrying the now rapidly-buckling Wallis—whose head had dropped forward, and whose helmet had fallen off—at the full stretch of his long arms since he stripped the pack from him. A Red Cross orderly had taken it together with Wallis's rifle.
"No room behind!" came in the ringing, feminine tones. "We're four over the proper load already! ... This seat beside me ... the orderly can sit on the step. You'll be all right there, won't you, Martynside? Now please lift when I give the word; Go! ... Don't worry about the blood. Lean your head against my shoulder!" She added for the cheer of Wallis, who was trying to say something apologetic: "Quite all right, if you're careful of my steering arm.... Comfortable? ... All right, Martynside! And—don't be too anxious about your friend. We shall look after him!"
Perhaps something in the comrade's gaunt brown face, a flare of wistfulness burning in his big hollow black eyes had drawn the attention of the speaker. As a matter of fact, the way in which her strong womanly shoulder had swayed to meet Wallis's limply sagging head, had given John Hazel a sensation as of plucking at the heartstrings. And—where had he heard that voice before? ... She went on, answering the hungry look in the gaunt black eyes that met hers:
"You shall hear of him, if news can possibly be got to you. I'll send a post-card if you'll give me your name. 'Private John Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, 448th City of London Regiment, Support Trenches, Ypres.' That's quite all right! ... Your Reserve is at St. Jean.... Hang on to this!" This being a thick, squat packet of Dundee Butterscotch. "Good-bye and good luck! ... You'll be coming down this way in a week or two."
"If I don't get gassed or wounded.... Good-bye and thanks tremendously!"
John grinned, showing his big white teeth with the effect of a sudden illumination in his gaunt brown face; and there and then,—with a snort from the now rapidly-moving car, and a nod and smile from the driver,—the little episode had ended. Leaving John Hazel with a pleasanter flavour upon his mental palate than the sour American apple had left in his mouth. Something that was sweet with the aromatic sweetness of the ripe gold-and-crimson pippin whose rich juices have been perfected by the lightest touch of frost. And She had had the frankest and most candid eyes, of the clearest cairngorm golden-brown, that John had ever seen in a woman's head, and a wide, kind, charming mouth, that had shown two rows of dazzling teeth in a parting smile that had crinkled the eyes deliciously at the corners.... And so they had parted; going east and south-west, the V.A.D. to her clearing-hospital, the Londoner with a new, strange warmth about the heart, catching up his Company on the edge of a new-made crater, in time to take over the duty of Harris, now platoon-Sergeant, killed with three other men by a shell from "Silent Lizzie," the terrible 5.9 German Navy gun.
Thus the mantle of heroism had been transferred to the broad, unwilling shoulders of John Hazel, from those of the energetic young N.C.O. who had been to him as a thorn in the flesh. He had loathed Harris, with his pink and white complexion, his auburn quiff, and his appalling, crushing efficiency. And Harris, who as a Boy Scout had passed every imaginable test of ability and gained every badge obtainable,—had warmly abhorred John, as the shrieking example of everything a British soldier should not be....
"It's for your good I keep on what you call nagging at you, Hazel!" would be the introduction to every exordium: "A dirty soldier is a disgrace to his King and Country, and that's what you'd be if you couldn't afford to bribe men you consider your inferiors to wind your puttees tight, and fasten 'em properly, and keep your straps and buckles clean."
Or:
"It's for your good I follow you up, as you express it; and when you're able to make a fire out of mud and rotten beet-leaves, and an 'ot meal out of bully beef, ration-biscuit and an onion, more like an Egyptian 'All professor of ledgerdemang than a British Tommy'—which is like your nerve to use such language, so much the better it'll be for you! Don't tell me you can't keep your puttees from trailin' about your legs like snakes and the rust from disguising the metal on your 'coutrements. Don't say you can put up with 'ardships, and that you mean to stick it, ... To make Bad Better is your duty! and to 'unker like an 'og in the slush of Belgium, when you could sit on a faggot and keep reasonable dryish: and shiver when you could 'eat yourself inside and out by a bit of forethought—is your disgrace and not your praise!"
And Harris would light the fire and set the stew going, or thrust on his unwilling subordinate a portion of his own; and depart cheerfully whistling, and ostentatiously in possession of the equable temper which a Scout must never, never lose!—leaving the prodded object of his zealousness frothing with impotent rage.
Small wonder that the alert personality of Harris, his observant glance, unsparing criticism and unfailing Preparedness in every emergency were,—with his orange quiff and the trench-rings on his little fingers—by Private Hazel utterly abhorred.
After the clubbing of a certain German prisoner who had treacherously shot a comrade of John's, Harris did not hesitate to denounce Private Hazel as "a butcherly brute." Yet dying on the edge of the big new crater hollowed at the roadside by "Silent 'Lizzie," he used his last forces to faintly shout in the stooped ear of his platoon-lieutenant:
"Let Hazel carry on in my place, Sir! He's a filthy fighter—but the best man we've got!"
So, ex-Scout Harris died, true to the last to his ideals, having played the game for his side right up to the end.... And within twenty-four hours of reaching the second-line trenches, Harris's reluctant deputy, saddled with the necessity of keeping up Harris's reputation as a daredevil, had led a company to the support of the front line in the place of a lieutenant wounded—and had won the D.C.M. by a single-handed bomb-attack upon an enemy machine-gun position,—which enabled our London Terriers to charge over the parapet and clear out the wasp's nest. Had been offered and respectfully declined promotion—on the grounds that he didn't like responsibility!—and had subsequently, in the act of drinking tea at the door of the platoon dug-out—been knocked out of action by a splinter of shell.
Thus, adhering in death as in life to his policy of well-meant aggravation, Sergeant Harris came between his bugbear and the promised, longed-for post-card. For if indeed it had been sent, it had never reached John.... Damn Harris! But what good was there in damning Sergeant Harris? Hell wasn't the place you'd catch that efficient young beggar going to. Hadn't he, assiduously as he kept his body, looked after his cocky little soul! In the gusts of fever that shook his brain as he lay in his cot at the Receiving Hospital, John pictured Harris with his quiff all curled and shiny,—dressed in the spruce white clothing of the righteous—heard him with the ears of imagination, shouting hymns that went with a marching swing.
The fever subsided by and by, and, after four months of bitter fighting, Private John Benn Hazel, No. 000, X. Platoon, F. Company, 4th Battalion, (subsequently to a brief sojourn at a French Base Hospital) found himself back in Blighty, well pleased to be alive. He ended his final period of residence as a patient at the Auxiliary Military War Hospital of Colthill in Middlesex, in the July when German South-west Africa surrendered to Smuts and Botha: and was pronounced convalescent by the C.M.O. in the first week of December, 1915; the self-same raw, bleak and nipping day that saw the Fenchurch Streets'—with other British forces transferred to the Egyptian Expeditionary—embark for Salonika.
IV
The bit of shrapnel irritating his left lung,—located there by the X-Ray, but deemed by the surgeons unreachable, had ceased to bother much; and the gas-bronchitis—another souvenir of that mad place called Ypres—had quieted down to a wheezy cough. John was lying back, rather damp and exhausted after an access of this cough, when the Ward Sister in charge that afternoon looked round the screen—there had been three; but two of them had been taken away because the patient was getting on so nicely,—to say that a visitor wished to speak to him, Number Forty—if he felt well enough?
"Tell the old girl they won't allow me to eat anything but apples or Brazil-nuts,—and that I'm not to smoke more than two cigarettes at a time!"
John's homely effort at wit evoked an approving nod and smile from the Sister. She vanished as the Hospital porter, a one-armed ex-Guardsman who previously to Mons had been a famous Regimental pugilist—came stepping lightly as a cat over the highly-polished floor, carrying a 200-weight coal-bucket. As the replenished fire began to crackle and blaze, the Ward Sister returned, ushering a little, frail, bent old man, with flowing hair and a patriarchal beard of the white that has passed into straw-colour; sharp twinkling eyes under penthouse eyebrows lighting a face of innumerable wrinkles, reddish-pink and leathery like a marmoset's. He carried a tall hat in one hand and a brown leather bag in the other, and wore a black velvet skull-cap, greasy with faithful wear. A round-collared, single-breasted overcoat of brown cloth, with yellow horn buttons, revealed the bottoms of shiny black trousers, ending in square-toed, black cloth-topped boots. The boots were clogged with Middlesex mud, as though he had walked from the station. A purple woollen comforter and mitts to match, defied the December blasts.
Firelight played bo-peep on the white ceiling, and chased dodging shadows in and out between the neat beds, ranged along the creamy walls of the long, cheerful ward, and winked in the dark polish of the boards, and was reflected in the glass-topped tables supporting pots of hyacinths and daffodils as well as big blue-glass stoppered bottles of Perox: Hydro: and Mercurial Sol:. But the unexpected appearance of his ancient visitor had cast a glamour over Number Forty. His body lay in bed in Colthill War Hospital. But in spirit he stood in his Grandfather Simonoff's Hull counting-house, a boy of three in diamond socks, strap-shoes and a blue jean round-about, straining his sharp young ears for the rustling of a paper bag.
Peppermint rock, brown or white, was John Hazel's darling weakness. His letters Home, during his sojourn in the trenches, had invariably ended with a prayer for more peppermint rock. And the sight of this queer old man evoked all sorts of pungent memories connected with the favourite sweet stuff. His big black eyes and the sharp little red-veined old eyes met, and something like an electric shock passed between them. And the shaggy penthouse eyebrows of the old man came down, and then shot up to meet his velvet skull-cap—or the cap came down to meet them,—and at the same moment his ears wagged, and John Hazel knew him again. Twenty-seven years were temporarily blotted out, and he was once more a five-year-old—and old Mendel was feeling in the pocket that bulged—and John Hazel found himself licking his lips—but nothing but a blue-spotted cotton handkerchief came out of the bulgy pocket. With this, Mendel—had he ever had another name?—loudly blew his nose, and as the Ward Sister placed a chair, and vanished with a whisk of cotton-print skirts (notably shorter in this December of 1915 than the previous uniform pattern), he uttered something in a strange, unknown and yet familiar tongue:
"Shalôm—shalôm!" He added as he met the astonished stare of John's gaunt black eyes. "You are like your father as pea is like pea; and yet—when I wish peace to you in the Holy Tongue, you don't understand me! A shame and a sin!—but I'm not here to reproach you for being a Meshumad! That's not my affair! You're not my grandson,—the Holy One be praised!"
"Mr. Bartoth—" John had exhumed the other name by a strenuous effort of memory: "whether you are pleased to see me or not, I'm very glad to see you! Do you object to shaking hands?"
"Behold!" Mendel blew his nose again loudly, and said as he restored the blue-spotted handkerchief to the bulgy pocket; "I am 'Mr. Bartoth' to the child I dandled.... You have not kept the good way, but there is a good heart in you.... You sit there with your medal on your breast—" a famous Divisional Commander, visiting Blighty to enjoy a brief leave, had looked in at the Hospital on the day previous, and conferred on Private Hazel—with some laudatory expressions, the Medal for Distinguished Conduct in the Field—"and you're not too proud to offer your hand to Old Mendel—nor you've not forgotten his name! Yet you were a babe of three years when your father died, peace be upon him! and but four when we lost your grandfather, peace be upon him! and too young to say Kaddish; and now that your grandfather and your uncles and your cousins are dead, peace be upon them! you, a grown man of thirty-three, are ignorant as a babe. Shaigatz! But it's no use to be angry. Besides, I must get back to London in time to catch the four o'clock Express from St. Pancras. I came by the 5.48 from Hull and got in at two o'clock noon."
"Haven't you had anything to eat?—Won't you—" John was beginning when the old man, who had sunk upon the chair with a boneless limpness eloquently expressive of his weariness, silenced him with a gesture of fierce abhorrence, and he was fain to hold his tongue.
"I have had all I want. Do you think my wife sent me forth upon this journey without provision for my necessities?" He had unbuttoned the brown coat and was fumbling in an inner pocket, from which he finally drew forth a little packet and a key. "Here—this belongs to you. It comes from your grandfather Eli Hazaël—peace be upon him! and may his soul be bound up in the Bundle of Life!"
John received in his big palm a small but heavy something rolled up in tissue-paper and tied with a little wisp of black floss silk. Without opening, he sat staring at it, while Mendel boggled about opening the shabby brown bag with a tarnished Bramah key.
"How did my grandfather and my uncles and my cousins die?" he queried, rousing himself from a state of mental stupefaction accompanied by a profound physical weariness, a singing in his ears, and a familiar sweetish-saltish taste at the back of his throat. And Mendel looked up from rummaging in the now open bag with his veinous, knotted, shaky old hands, to say resentfully:
"How does any one die in these days except through the War? ... The people of all the nations of the earth are tearing at each other's throats—and not only the young fighting-men, but the children and the aged, both men and women!—these must suffer also.... Soon after the Ashkenazim—" John knew he meant the Germans—"invaded Belgium, the Turkish Army was—what is the word?"
"Mobilised. Yes, the dirty beggars!" said John, employing a less savoury term than beggar, "they've been stuffed up with lies about the Kaiser being a Mohammedan, and they're ready to back him for all they're worth. At Abu Zenima and at Tor they gave us plenty of trouble; and they nearly rushed Aden, last summer, when our best brigades and batteries serving on the Suez Canal had been sent to the Dardanelles. Lucky we gave them a gruelling at Serapeum—and stopped their little game at mining the waterways of the Canal. As it was they jabbed up the Grand Senussi to make Western Egypt hot for us. His Bedwân are sniping at British troops like blazes—our black garrison at Port Sollum are just sitting on their thumbs. But anyhow we're keeping up our end at Anzac and Gallipoli, and my crowd will be helping, I expect, pretty soon. They've—damn this beastly cough! They've—"
"Tsch—tsch!"
John stared as Mendel, who raised himself from stooping nearly double over the bag, gesticulated at him violently with papers in his withered claws.
"Tschah! ... Have I time to hear you tell of what is in the newspapers these three weeks back? ... What I have to do is to make known to you what the British Press thinks not worth telling—the griefs of our people—and the manner of their deaths. The idolaters—accursed be they! mobilised after the Invasion. As their Young Turk Constitution of 1909 made Arabs, Christians and Jews equally liable to military service, your cousins,—like all other young men of the district,—were marched to the recruiting office by the Turkish soldiers who accompanied the mouchtar who came with the lists. They were not allowed to return home for food, or money, or clothing,—or to obtain the blessing of their parents,—but hurried off to the Hân, locked up like animals with hundreds of filthy Arabs: and sent from thence like prisoners—bare-footed and half-naked—to reinforce the garrisons in Northern Galilee. And your grandfather—he was living at the house of his son Isaac, a country place near Haffêd—for years were growing heavy on Eli Hazaël.... Even the strong back bows under the burden of ninety-nine! And the spirit of Prophecy came on him as he watched the young men Elias and Jacob departing,—and he turned to his son Isaac and said: 'They will not return, they are gone from us for ever, and you and your brother will be the next to go!' This was on the 8th of August of the Christian Era 1914, or, as we say, the 30th Ab of 5674.... Meanwhile the German Consul at Haifa is going about the country, preaching to the Arabs how Germans are not Christians like the French or British, but Children of Mohammed the camel-driver, and worshippers of the Black Stone. And that their Kaiser is the Messiah of Islam:—and in all their Mosques prayers are made for the Sultan and Hadji—"
"Bill! ... Haw-haw!" John guffawed, pleased and tickled by his own apt joke.
"Peace, boy! and let me finish. This is no chine to set a Schlemihl grinning. There is blood in it and anguish, and tears! For Jewish and Christian recruits at the training-camps were disarmed and stripped of their uniforms,—(khaki and enveriehs which most had bought new at Turkish value for fear of getting infected garments),—and put to labour under the whips of Turkish gang-masters in the taboor amlieh. Those are the working-corps that are building a new railway-branch of the Central Palestine from El Tineh in Philistia southwest to Gaza and southward to Beersheba—and making military roads for the Turks between Saffed and Tiberias—in case the railways should be cut off by the British by and by! And others are sent to labour at construction-camps at Hebron and Samaria. While at home in the other towns of Palestine and the villages of the Colonies—the goods of Christians and Jews were requisitioned, and silver and gold and jewels plundered; fences torn up and olive-groves cut down, and evil worked in many ways. Worse than all, shame has been brought upon the matrons and daughters of Israel, even such as Esther, the only daughter of your Uncle Isaac, a virgin of eighteen years!"
John flushed dark purple under his mahogany skin and rapped out an ugly epithet:
"Who was the ——— hound?"
"He is one Hamid Bey, a Colonel of Turkish gendarmerie, Vali of the labour-camps near Nazareth—high in the confidence of the Turkish commander of their Eighth Army Corps, and, like all the rest of the idolaters, lustful as an ape. And she—Achi Nebbich! she was as a rose of Sharon! And word came to her brother Jacob, who was working with the road-gangs at Tiberias, his cousin Elias being a labourer on the railway near Beersheba—peace be upon them! Therefore, Jacob, with one Reuben Ephraim—their playmate from childhood, and a fellow-labourer—who had an affection for Esther—as she unto him, poor creature!—broke out of camp and struck across the hills to Nazareth—careless of peril, raging like furious wolves."
"Wish I'd had the chance to make one of the party!" John murmured. Old Mendel's croaking voice went on:
"Now these two had determined to purchase exemption from service,—notwithstanding that they were already enrolled,—for such things can be done where the officers are Turks!—and they brought with them the money, forty gold pieces of twenty francs for each,—that is eighty pieces!—meaning to buy with them the honour of the girl! They found out where Hamid Bey was quartered—in the large new Khân near the Hammâm that is at the north-east end of Nazareth, looking towards the fig-orchards and vineyards and olive-groves that are as a green fringe upon the borders of the Tiberias Road. News had come through that Turkey was at War, and there was terror in the hearts of the people.... First, the French Christian Orphanage—then the Scotch Medical Mission—then every hospital, school, convent or mission in the town had been taken over by the Turkish Army Corps' Commander for military uses—and Jewish and European houses were gutted by the score. The streets were full of howling rioters—there was concealment in such confusion,—so the young men lurked in the gardens through the day, and Jacob kept close to the sentry-posts and heard the password—thus when dusk fell they passed the sentries, and came into the lower part of the Khân. And with cunning they made their way up to the Bey's apartment—and found him there with Esther. Achi Nebbich!"
Mendel's parchment forehead was wet with perspiration. He mopped it and went on, screwing up his nose and blinking:
"When she leaped from the divan shrieking and fell upon her face at the feet of her brother and lover, the Bey's eyes barely followed her,—he was already weary of his toy. He covered the boys with his big German Army revolver—his companion even in pleasure—and told them that he was willing to hear what they had to say.... They said it, and offered the money—as the price—not of Esther's honour—for she was ruined already!—but to purchase her deliverance from slavery with him."
The veins on John's forehead were swollen and blackening. Mendel's voice had sunk to a penetrating hiss.
"The Turk—may Fire from Heaven consume him!—was immovable by arguments and deaf to prayers. He would take the eighty gold pieces—what Turk can resist money!—but his Jewish concubine he would keep also. Then Jacob asked to speak to Esther apart. No farther than the end of the room, distant from the door and windows.... To this the Bey agreed, smiling, turning his tongue between his lips, and—keeping the German Army revolver—they all have them—and Zeiss binoculars!—ready in his hand. Then—Reuben says:—"
"Was it he who told you?"
"Of that presently! Then Jacob embraced Esther and Reuben as one that taketh farewell for a journey—while Reuben watched them shudderingly, knowing what should come! The Turk signed that Jacob should hand him the bag of money—and this Jacob did. Bowing obsequiously before the son of Satan—who, thrusting the revolver in its pouch—gripped the bag, with one hand—and with the other patted the youth upon the cheek that was as fair as Esther's—and touched with the first growth of the black silken down...."
John would have said "Go on," but he couldn't. The little, eyes like glowing embers held him spellbound, as they burned into his own....
"Suddenly Jacob sprang like a leopard on the revolver, wrenched it away and leapt to his feet. The Bey set his whistle to his lips and blew,—and his servants and orderlies came running in tumultuously. But not so quickly but that two shots had cracked out—and the room was ringing!—and the brown cordite smoke hung under the ceiling in a thin cloud, smelling of aniseed, and mingled with the smell of scorched flesh and hair. For—Jacob—peace be upon him!—had thrust the pistol-muzzle close against the girl's temple when he shot her—and fired the next bullet into his own mouth!"
"How on earth did Reuben get off?"
"He cannot tell me. The Lord knoweth! But he found himself running through the night like a deer,—with shots and shouts dying out upon the distance—and when he ran into the dawn of the mild November day, lo! there was blood upon his naked feet! Esther's and Jacob's! ... But why should there have been blood upon his hands, and a dagger in one of them—bloody also? ... He does not know! ... A frenzy was upon him. The country was searched for him, but he had found a friend who kept him well hidden. He was the American Consul at Jaffa, and in the safety of his shadow Reuben dwelt for many days. Then he found means to communicate with his family. From them he learned that Elias—the cousin of Jacob and Esther who was working on the Beersheba Railway,—had suffered the punishment of the falagy. Why? For abetting his cousin—of whose deed he knew not!—in an attempt upon the life of the Bey at Nazareth—"
"What is the falagy?"
"The bastinado. Beating with green rods—asâyisi."
"On the soles of the feet. Oh—well! One's often heard of that, hasn't one?"
"Schlemihl! Are there not beatings and beatings? The asâyisi to punish—the asâyisi to maim and torture! The asâyisi until there is no shape of humanity left in the body, and even the mother of the man would not know the putrid mass of bloody flesh for the child she bore and bred! So thy cousin Elias died. And after that there was no peace for the house of thy grandfather Eli. His son Amos, and Shemuel,—the second son of Amos,—were mobilised to go south with Labour Corps of Jews and Syrians.... Digging trenches for the Turks to hold the railway at El Arish, they dug their own graves, upon them be peace! The two sons of their sister Sara were taken prisoner by the British at Kantara, and related their story, and were kindly used. They joined the Zion Mule Corps and went to Gallipoli. Perhaps they live, perhaps they met their deaths—carrying ammunition under shell-fire on the Peninsula! But they are the sons of daughters—not the sons of sons! To make an end—being warned that the vengeance of Hamid was to fall upon his house, thy Uncle Isaac—the father of Esther and Jacob—took the child that remained to him, even Benjamin, his darling—who was not of age to serve,—and with money and papers hidden upon them, the two escaped in disguise. I will not tell you after what fashion—but wives and mothers are cunning at these deceits when their dear ones are in danger!—and father and son arrived in safety at Beirut."
"And did they get away?"
"Woe, woe! Isaac was recognised by the Turkish wharf-inspector even as he lifted the boy into the boat that was to take them to the American steamer. They were dragged to prison—they died in prison, and that last blow slew your grandfather. Peace,—peace upon them all! The wives of Amos and Isaac live still, and two of Amos's daughters; but what are women to a house that needs sons that are begotten of sons! Now that the old man's white hairs have been brought to the grave by sorrow, the house of Eli Hazaël is represented by whom?" Mendel blew his nose sonorously and finished: "Whom but your brother Maurice and yourself!"
John was conscious at the back of his mind of a tingle of eager—let us call it expectation. He asked, carefully divesting his tone of excitement in any undue degree.
"Do I understand that—there's money in this business?"
"There is much property, both in land south of Mount Carmel, and in the export business-houses at Alexandria, and at Jaffa and elsewhere. There is money lying at the Crédit Lyonnais," John's black eyes kindled. "Also at the Deütsche Palästina Bank Branch at Jaffa,"—John whistled dismally—"and the Anglo-Palestine Banking Co."—John blew a sigh of relief. "And there is the stewardship of the olive-groves and vineyards of Kir Saba—the title-deeds of which property (the original mortgage on it having now expired, and the sum lent having been recovered, with the interest)—must—this is the word of your grandfather!—be formally given over to those to whom it rightfully belongs. Here! Take the documents! Thou hast the ring aready!"
Mendel jumped up quite briskly, and deposited a double-handful of documents, account-books and bank pass-books of foreign appearance and exotic odour, in the hollow where the coverlet dipped between John Hazel's knees.
"A copy of your grandfather's Will is with them—" He picked out a long, tough, yellow envelope, directed in a round Levantine banking-house handwriting to "John Ben Hazaël, Esquire, London, England," and resumed: "This is it. The original is in the keeping of the old gentleman's solicitors, 'Abel Manasseh, Ephraim & Co., Rue Jerusalem, Jaffa.' Reuben,—who brought the news and the papers!—is the junior partner in the firm. There's a holograph letter from your grandfather, peace be upon him! written in Hebrew—and a sheet with a translation I have made for you, seeing that you, Eli Hazaël's heir, know nothing of the Holy Tongue!"
"His heir! ... Look here! ... You ain't talking through your hat when you say there's a goodish property?"
"Your English slang sounds unto me as Hebrew to you, a mere gibberish without sense or meaning!"—Mendel shook off the large, loose grip of the young man from his arm. "The Sons of Perdition—the Turks!—have wasted and spoiled much land that lay under cultivation; and the wine-vaults of the Colonies have been gutted, by those of them who break the Law of their Prophet,—and also by their German Allies. Also, of the money in the Deütsche Palästina little, if any, may be recovered now. But, despite this, and the provision for the females living—there is still a great property! Supposing three hundred and eighty thousand pounds British," the glowing eyes were watching John's face narrowly: "is enough to make it worth your while to live as a good Jew?"
V
"What? ... Who? ... Me! ... Great Moses in the Bulrushes!" ...
"Profane not the name of the Lawgiver," said Mendel sternly. "Is it not reasonable that the father of your father should desire you to cast off your Epicureanism, take upon you the Yoke of the Torah, and cease to become a sinner in Israel?"
"Reasonable—from his point of view! But—Me kiss a Mezuzah nailed on the doorpost, and reel off long prayers in a synagogue with my hat on—and my head wrapped in a shawl!"
"The Orthodox would respect instead of despising you."
"But my own set! What price they, I should like to know?"
"Their price—do you ask their price?" The fierce eyes flashed, the beaky nose looked capable of pecking. "For half of the great sum that is in question, there are not three among your associates—lewd men and loose women!—that would not kiss the buttocks of the Goat of Mendes, and spit upon the Cross! For they are not even Christians. They are as the brutes that perish. And you—another brute!—plant your hoofs and lay your ears back—and bite at the hand that tries to pluck you by the garment back from the brink of the bottomless Abyss!"
"Look here! ..."
Under the accusing glare of Mendel's little red-hot eyes, various deviations from the straight path of morality condoned by John as natural and even pardonable,—assumed a much less harmless character, and even took on an ugly and sinister hue....
Since John Hazel had left school at the age of eighteen, a string of young women of garish attractions and uncommonly easy virtue,—flaunting blossoms plucked by the wayside—in the City or the West End—had succeeded one another in his temporary affections. There had been several more or less quite serious entanglements, one of which had threatened to effloresce in a Divorce Case, but fortunately had not. There had been—previous to John's engagement—numberless rather rowdy jaunts; all-night Launch Parties; excursions to Pleasure Resorts: Seaside-hotel, Thames-side-hostelry-Saturday-to-Mondays,—enjoyed by John as member of an association, small, select, eclectic, expensive; rather artistic, decidedly sporting; semi-literary, slightly theatrical and wholly Bohemian in character,—rejoicing in the title of the Cocky-Locky and Henny-Penny Club.
Not so out-and-out Improper, these gay and giddy galas.... Of course you couldn't take your mother to them! but you could, with a little careful editing, tell her amusing stories about them—now and then.
It was at a symposium of Club members, assembled at a riverside hostelry in the summer of 1913, that John had encountered Birdie Bright. Ostensibly a Beauty of the Chorus, Birdie, a young person of lowly origin, pronounced good looks, accommodating affections and expensive tastes in jewelry, furs, sweets and lingerie, had played the part of Zobeide to John's Harûn Er Raschid—practically until the arrival of Beryl on the scene.
She had vowed herself "broaken harted" in several despairing letters, written in an immense angular hand in ink of vivid green, upon sheets of pink ribbed note. But John had been generous—even Birdie admitted it!—as she took his advice, and put away the consolatory wad of crisp ten-pound notes that had sweetened the bitterness of parting, carefully in the Brixton Branch of a solid and reliable Bank.
Since Beryl's heartless breakage of her betrothal vows, the image of Miss Birdie Bright, previously effaced from the surface of John's heart, had revived in all its pristine charm through the whitewash that had coated it. To a letter from John in Hospital, Birdie had effusively responded—in passionate purple ink this time,—and in a bigger hand-writing than ever. The telegram appointing a day and an hour for her visit to her erstwhile lover's bedside was written, and wrapped round a half-crown in the pocket of his pyjama-jacket, in readiness for despatch.
That wire would have been sent an hour ago—had not the convalescent Sapper of Engineers—to whom belonged the next bed—gone off in such a hurry to the Pictures with his young woman that he forgot—and now Birdie would never get it! Nor would the letter enclosing John's cheque, soliciting from the Secretary of the Cocky-Locky and Henny-Penny Club, re-election as a member of that interesting association, ever be posted now....
Seen through the stern medium of Old Mendel's spectacles, the periodical revels of the C.L.H.P. took on a tinge of hellishness—became a very Witches' Sabbat. And Birdie, viewed through the same merciless, unsparing lenses, became even as one of the harpies that devour young men and lead them in the Way of Destruction.
VI
"And what more is required of you, young man," the harsh voice went on croaking, "in return for this fortune, than to carry out the instructions of your elders: to follow cleanliness; to do justly; to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God! But I have done. Time does not avail for more. Study what is written on that paper I have pinned within the letter in Hebrew. I am old, and the fountain of my tears is dry, but mine eyes were moistened when the good old man entreated of his last descendant—even with his foot upon the threshold of Death.... Stay, I will read to you his letter. Listen to this!"
"John, son of John, my youngest and best-beloved! All thine elders being removed by the Will of the Most High, it falls to thee to take upon thee the Guardianship of the Sacred Ashes, and the Keeping of the Ancient Shrine. Thou wilt not refuse? Oh, child of my child!—the hand that pens this page, before my very eyes into the dust is crumbling. Wouldst thou live as long? Then be dutiful. Wouldst thou be happy? Happiness is the gift of Heaven, but a good conscience brings peace. Seek then the peace, and happiness will follow. If the dying prayer of an old man is granted, Those Others that have been before me may be permitted to guide thee in the Way wherein thou shouldst go. Farewell! Forget not to say Kaddish for thy father's father;—Eli Ben Hazaël."
The voice: not Old Mendel's croak, but a deep voice rolling out of the mist of centuries, wakening sub-conscious memories, thrilling along the nerves to energise long-atrophied cells in the listener's brain, ceased: and the icy thrills left off coursing down John Hazel's spinal column, and his strong, wiry hair left off bristling and lay down. The paper crackled as it was thrust once more into the envelope, and tossed back upon John's lap. John said, clearing his throat and speaking with some degree of huskiness:
"I don't quite tumble to the meaning of all this about the Guardianship of the Ashes and the Keeping of the Shrine, but, of course, I'd say Kaddish for him—like a bird—if I knew it! I'm not quite such a howling brute as you seem to think! Didn't you make me say it for my father when I was a little kid in petticoats? I seem to remember something of the kind."
"Well, if I did, was it not a good deed? But now that you are man grown you have cast off the faith of your fathers. And Kaddish cannot lawfully be said by one who is not a Jew! When you have made up your mind whether you will be a rich Jew—or a heathen no better off than many others—write to me at your uncle's Hull address!" Mendel, who had resumed his seat, snapped his mouth shut, and snapped shut the calfskin bag—and stood up and went on—in the act of buttoning the single-breasted brown great-coat. "As to the Shrine, it's at Alexandria, and the Ashes are naturally where the Shrine is—not that I've any information to give you on that point. But the other—less sacred obligation—you may discharge as soon as you see fit. The accounts and the documents touching Kir Saba—some of them are very old and should be handled carefully!—must be taken to Scotland and delivered to the representatives of the original mortgagor, whose address is there written—by no other hands than your own. A gift of five hundred pounds English has been bequeathed you by your grandfather,—without further condition than that you render him this service. The cash will be paid you by a cheque upon London as soon as I receive the receipt for the documents. You will naturally not part with them without receiving this acknowledgment. Take care! Haven't I warned you?"
John's big fingers were prying into a flat wallet of mouldy parchment sewn with something like ancient silkworm-gut, and containing an oblong of crumbly brown....
"What on earth is it? ... It looks like seaweed.... Or an old felt sole out of somebody's boot! ..."
"It is the original Title Deed of the Tower of Kirjath Saba and the lands about it, granted by the Emperor Vespasian to the Tribune Justus Martius, of the Tenth Roman Legion: on the tenth day of the month of Ab—that is, August, in the second year of his reign."
"My holy hat! That was Anno Domini 70, when the Romans under Titus took the Temple at Jerusalem and burnt—"
"Not burned but demolished, according to Josephus—the walls of the Upper City alone being left standing—to shelter the garrison chosen from the Roman Tenth Legion!—together with the three great towers built by Herod—in order to demonstrate to Posterity how glorious a city had been cast down.... Woe! for the madness and the wickedness of the Pagans. Alas! for the Sacred City, a chattel in the hands of the filthy unbeliever even to this day! Who shall restore the glory of Jerusalem, or give back life to the dead place, or cleanse the robe of snowy wool that hath been defiled by pitch?"
"I've heard you reel off things like this before, haven't I, when I was a little beggar? I say! Do you know this rotten old sheepskin is pretty well priceless? Why, it's about one thousand eight hundred and forty-five years old! Those Johnnies at the British Museum would hand over a pot of cash for it."
"Have I not told you to lose no time in returning the document to its owner? Let him deal with it as he will! There is another parchment, the original Deed of Mortgage dated in your Christian Era 1146. Money was lent by Issachar Ben Hazaël, of Joppa (they spell it 'Jaffa' in these days)—to the Mortgagor, Sir Hugh Forbys, (they write his name 'Hew'), Knight, and lord of the Strong Tower of Kir Saba, in return for the right of user of the Tower, with its groves, gardens, springs and vineyards; and all the 'purtnans' for the 'makyn of wine.' When the cash with the interest, should be recovered, the Title-Deed was to be given back to Forbys.... These later records continue unbroken up to the June of the Christian year 1914. Examine them at your leisure. They are faithfully translated and clearly typed."
John answered and said unto the aged man, not being unmindful of the bequest of £500.
"You make my head spin, chuckling about centuries as though they were marbles! But I give you my word of honour, I'll swot all the documents up. When have I to go down to hand them over to these Scotch people? ... I suppose they do have some sort of a name?" ...
"They are a family of high repute and ancient standing on the Border. The Forbis of Kerr's Arbour, Tweedburgh, N.B. Have you at any time heard of them?"
"Never in my natural! They seem to have been thunderingly pally with us Hazels somewhere about the Bronze Age.... Do you know 'em at all?" ...
"Ask not foolish questions. What are the people to me? For a reason that the documents will clearly explain to you, they have had no intercourse with your family since the time of the Seventh Crusade."
"I wonder whether they'll be likely to know me when they see me?"
"Be not a Schlemihl! Where is the ring?"
"Which ring? You know, my head is fairly buzzing with all this business! ... You've dropped on me like a sandbag out of an Observation Rupert. Here—I've got it! Some ring!" ...
"It is a black onyx, a Greek gem of price, carved with a head of the Pagan Hercules and in an ancient setting of gold. It was given to your ancestor, Hazaël Aben Hazaël, by the Roman Prætor Philoremus Florens Fabius, at Alexandria, in the reign of the Pagan Emperors Diocletian and Maximianus—about the beginning of the fourth century of the Christian Era." Mendel added as John groaned again at this fresh evidence of antiquity, "This signet now belongs to you as head of the House of Hazaël. Let me see you put it on the third finger of your right hand!"
John obeyed. The great ring fitted the big finger as though it had been made for it. The intaglio, worn thin by time and chipped at the edges, was still beautiful, and though the tiny Greek letters at the lower left-hand corner signified nothing to its new owner—the signed work of a master-hand. John commented:
"He must have been a hefty chap, that old Hazaël!"
Mendel responded, buttoning up the brown overcoat:
"Your race have always been noted for breeding men of extraordinary strength and stature. There is a fellow-ring to this, I am given to understand, in the possession of the Forbis family. It is in high relief, this being the intaglio. Remember, you will bequeath the signet to your elder son, after you: as an heirloom which must always be in the possession of the chief male of the line."
"Carrying on as though one was Rob Roy M'Gregor," John remarked mentally. Then as Mendel made a strangle-knot in the purple woollen comforter, adjusted his mittens and was about to re-lock the brown bag:
"Here," he said suddenly, "you had better keep this for putting those papers in. Can't leave them lying about on the bed! It's a bit old, like me, and the worse for wear, like both of us. But I shan't improve, and you're getting over the wound you got"—he jerked his thumb as indicating a locality,—"over there. In the trenches. In Belgium."
John explained at some length, Mendel seeming to expect it—that the bit of shrapnel in his lung-tissue was of exceedingly small size. That the symptoms of slight pain and breathlessness which had persisted long after the healing of the chest-wound, had almost vanished under treatment which had involved absolute rest: the avoidance of talking; a sitting position maintained constantly, and small but frequent doses of morphia.
"Morphia, eh? Dangerous stuff. Done with it now, let's hope!" said Mendel jerkily. "Put back the papers in the bag when I've gone, and mind you always keep it locked! Look here!—I've left you the key. And so you're convalescent!" He went on in quite a different tone, suggesting that he had only dropped in to inquire about the patient's health about five minutes previously: "Well, well! And going out of Hospital in another week—I think you said?"
"Not quite that, I didn't say!" pronounced John in his English. "The C.M.O. pronounces me Posh, and the Military Medical Examination Board'll be sure to certify me Fit for Service. I expect to be drafted out to the Mediterranean pretty shortly—my battalion of the Regiment having got transferred to the Eastern Expeditionary Force."
"Say not to Gallipoli, that shambles whither British soldiers are sent as sheep to the slaughter! Stay, I babble foolishly! Have I not knowledge that the British forces were yesterday withdrawn?"
"The hell you have! Why, where did you get it?"
"I made no reference to the Place of Burning. As to my knowledge, it is common to the elders among our people: a nation that received enlightenment from the Most High in dreams and visions, when the naked woad-daubed savages of these British Isles were howling to the Moon.... Make not calf's eyes at me! ... Did not naked savages cry news for hundreds of miles from hill-top to hill-top in the War with the Booren!—and was not the murder of the Gentile General Gordon at Khartoum known within the hour to the idolaters in Damascus! What I tell you is—there is no doubt at all!"
"But—but—they don't say a word about it in the papers!"
"Prrtsch! Is not that what the papers are for? And now, when do you think to get back to business? I mean business in the City—not that of killing other men. Though, as to the slaying of enemies," added Mendel, with strange yellow fire burning under his shaggy eyebrows, "the Kings and warriors of Hebrew race have slain when slaying was necessary. Saul his thousands and David his tens of thousands and Joshua—who knows how many hundreds of thousands of the Amorites and Canaanites! Nay, in your own veins there runs the blood of famous men of battle. You should inherit, with your frame and muscles, a measure of their fighting blood."
"Can that be why I sing whenever there's a scrap on?" asked John, reflectively rubbing his ear.
"When scraps are on what? Tell me again, employing plainer language," acidly commanded the old man.
"I mean, when I've—not often it's not been—worse luck!" returned the young man in his slipshod grammar, "but now and then—come really to close quarters with the—the enemy, you know." ...
"The Germans? Have no fear!—I am a Damascus Jew and not an Hebrew of the Ashkenazim.... It matters not a yod to me how many you have killed. What is this about singing—when do you sing?"
John scowled and the dark red flush began to creep up under his dull brown skin. He said gruffly, avoiding the inquisitive old eyes that raked him, by looking past the edge of his sole remaining screen down the vista of the long, clean, shining ward, at the big fire blazing in a deep old-fashoined grate....
"Why, at first when I went to the Front—no amount of stabbing stuffed sacks and shooting at dummy men—and bombing others—could"—his prominent Adam's apple jumped as he gulped, and his speech came from him in spurts of broken sentences—"bring me to swallow the idea of—killing them. Well!—first two hours of the Real Thing—I was sick and cold with sheer fright—just gibbering with horror! Then we advanced, went in with the bayonet—and I—began to like it, quite! Though when—some of us—got back and I saw—a—a—Hair and a—a—Blood on my—on mine!—that I'd got to clean off or get Hell from the Sergeant!—I was as sick—I give you my word!—as a chap who's been ordered to drink a tin-cupful of cold-drawn castor without a bit o' lemon to chew. Well, then, you see, as I was retching, comes along the N.C.O. and hands me out some chaff! 'Sick now bedad!' he was a wiry little Irishman, with a brogue thicker than the mud—'Sick, are ye?—the big bucko that was singin' as he hoisted Huns to glory wid the Haymaker's Lift!' Well, of course I thought the beggar was joking—but next time—"
"Ay, yea!—what happened the next time?"
Old Mendel rubbed his withered hands and smiling widely, revealed the fact that his still sound and white teeth were worn down quite level with the gums.
"Next time? ..."
"Next time was—rather a personal affair. Mind you—I've never talked about this to any other Service fellow. There's something different about their point of view. It was in March last—we'd been doing reserves at Richebourg St. V.—in the Neuve St. Chapelle racket, and after the battle we were taking our turn in the front-line trenches and making barricades! Shooting, you may guess, for all we were worth, and Fritz was handing it back with the Mauser, besides throwing 15 and 17-inch shells at us and enfilading our parapet with sprays of bullets from one of their machine-guns. The air was full of bangs and squeals and whistles, and every minute men were toppling over: and the fellow on my right was a pal of mine: we'd chummed up together like—a—like bricks! Well, there was a badly wounded German near, lying outside in the thick of it. Harding—my chum—put down his gun, gave me a wink—went over the top—sniped at like anything!—brought the lousy beggar back—gave him a drink,—put a coat under his head: and stowed him away behind us at the bottom of the trench, to wait for the stretcher-bearers. Then he came back to his place by me, loaded and went on shooting."
"And then?"
"Then, he—my pal—Harding—started rotting in his usual way; and I'd just said to him in my usual way, 'Do dry up, you silly, brainless lunatic!' when a revolver banged behind us, and Harding fell over on me, and I was all one smother with blood and brains—his! When I'd just told him he hadn't—you see the point of it?" John's mouth was stretched in laughter, but he shuddered as though cold.
"He—" Old Mendel's eyes were fierce under their bushy brows as he nodded, saying:
"Day—day! ... It does not need to be more plain. I understand thee clearly. The German lying at the bottom of the trench had shot the man who brought him in, through the head, from behind.... We have wolves in the Anti-Lebanon—and when taken they will fight to the death.... It is wisest to despatch them at once with the loaded club, whenever you find them trapped. But what didst thou do to thy wolf, O David! when the blood of thy Jonathan was wet upon thee?"
"I—went for the brute with the butt,—like mad!—and bashed him into jelly." John shuddered and felt for his handkerchief and mopped his face and neck. "He shot at me—twice—and nearly got me, but I—just bashed on!"
"And didst thou sing as thou didst smite?"
"They—they said—when they got me away, and it took a lot to hold me!—they said I talked a gibberish that nobody could understand."
"But I—possibly—might have understood it!" Old Mendel nodded knowingly and briskly rubbed his hands. "Well, well?"
"Well, after that I made no bones about killing Germans. There were nights when I used to creep out of the trench (nights when there was nothing much doing) with a white cotton Pierrot's costume I'd picked up pulled over my khaki, because of the star-shell showing me up dark against the snow—and until the enemy got too knowing, I made quite a bag every week—of Lonely Fritzes on Advanced Posts. Fellows began to look at me rather queerly. I think I'd got a name for being a bloodthirsty kind of beast. And the officers of my platoon'd say to a man who was noisy and wanting in caution: 'If you let a cheep out of you, So-and-so, during such and such an expedition—I'll tell Hazel to kill you!' and he'd shut up—tight as a box."
"Aha!" Mendel hugged himself with his stiff brown sleeves and chuckled. "I, Jew of Damascus as I am, do not wonder!—do not wonder, knowing the stuff of which thy forefathers were made! Now I should depart, for we have talked much, and the young woman in starched linen is nodding at me and frowning. We Jews daily thank the Creator that He did not make us women: but when there comes pestilence, or War with wounds and fever, He cannot make too many women to satisfy us! Now is there anything more to ask before I leave you?"
"Nothing, I—Here, hold on for half a mo'! There is a question. If I stick to my guns and don't turn Hebrew, what becomes of my grandfather's cash?"
"Provision in the event you name is duly made in the Will. The three hundred and eighty thousand pounds will go to found an Orthodox Jews University that is to be built near Jerusalem—the money being vested in the hands of certain Trustees. There are three Trustees. Lord ——, Sir Arthur —— and Professor ——" the speaker named three names of power—not only in Israel:—"but you will not let the money go to found the University. Shalôm! Is that not all?"
"All—except that I've not yet asked after my Uncle Benjamin Simonoff at Hull."
"Thy Uncle Benjamin prospers exceedingly. Trade failed with Russia when the North Sea Ports were closed; but the warehouses were full—and Government paid much money for tallow, tar, green hides and tanned skins. Benjamin is enlisted in a Home Defence Corps, and both his sons are on the sea, serving in converted Hull trawlers. They sweep for mines, set snares for what they call 'tin fish' and seem content with life.... Woman, I have said that I am departing! Had I not, it is not seemly for your sex to thrust themselves into the private talk of men!"
"But you've been here already over an hour, and the doctors—"
The Ward Sister had swept down on him:
"I go, I go! ... Nay, but, look to the boy! He is swooning! ... Woe to me! heedless and forgetful of his weakness.... I thought but of confuting the errors of an Epicurean—and lo! I have injured the child I loved!"
John, struggling in the clutches of a return-attack of breathlessness, propped up high against hard pillows, tried to tell Old Mendel not to bother, that he, John, was as right as nine-pence, or would be in the shake of a guinea-pig's tail. But the words were lost in suffocating gasps and pantings; from which, administered by Nurse's skilful hands, the prick of a subcutaneous injection of morphia presently delivered him....
The semi-relapse entailed another fortnight in Hospital: its tedium infinitely relieved by the fulfilment of John's promise to swot over the documents and papers in the bag. Which contained, besides a pair of well-darned spare socks, and a clean blue-spotted handkerchief of Mendel's, a bag of brown peppermint-rock, of the highly-flavoured kind most fondly associated by John Hazel with the blameless days of infancy. Alas! that the writer should be bound to the Wheel of Truth as concerning this young man, so unheroic a hero. As soon as he was well enough, he ate it all up.
VII
Three weeks at a Soldier's Seaside Convalescent Home on the outskirts of a West Coast Winter resort, intervened before John's return to Campden Hill Terrace.
It had been strange to recognise upon his mother's cheerful, well-preserved comeliness the strained and sharpened look that is the stamp of War upon the human countenance. Maurice—who was later on to develop into a mechanic-private in what was then the Royal Flying Corps—the chrysalis or pupa-stage of ultimate transformation into a Lieutenant-Pilot—was Overseas at an Advance Depot of the A.S.C. and didn't write punctually. And the double-fronted millinery and florist's business in Dove Street was languishing. Fruit and flowers were only bought to be sent on to the Wounded in the Hospitals. Nobody wanted ravishing hats when the men the hats were meant to slay were being killed in the trenches; besides, British women were all agreed by now that in War-time some kind of uniform was the only possible wear. So Lady Delphinia had departed to France to open a Hostel for Officers at one of the Allied Bases, and the huge benevolent octopus of Organised Activity had enveloped within its tentacles Mrs. Hazel and her set. They spent their days strenuously at various West End Centres, in making every imaginable aid,—from list slippers to body belts, from artificial legs and arms to life-saving waistcoats—for the Fleet and the Forces; and if they took comfort from the knowledge that their neighbours at the trestle-tables in the crowded work-rooms were occasionally Duchesses, who shall grudge John's mother and her intimates the gratification they derived from this fact!
Of the visit of Mendel Bartoth to the Hospital at Colthill, John said nothing to his mother. After all, it was his affair. His and Maurice's—because it was provided under the conditions of the Will of Eli Hazaël that, should the elder of the two surviving male representatives of his House decline to adopt the Judaism of his forefathers (and incidentally forfeit a sum of £380,000), the younger should be offered the fortune thus foregone.
Justice and wisdom went to the making of the Will, with consideration and magnanimity. John was to have two years clear in which to make up his mind. In the meanwhile, there was the acceptable sum of £500 to be earned by taking a run up North as soon as his health was sufficiently restored.
Consequently upon a bitter grey-white morning in the February of 1916, Private John Hazel found himself seated in a grimy third-class compartment of the Kelso Express, steaming out of a vast and murky London terminus, upon the strangest errand of his life.
The thing was real. He might have dreamed old Mendel: but that there could be no doubt in face of all those proofs. The typewritten papers and the queer crumbly parchments were in the brown calfskin bag beside him. And, queerest of all, the ring: the intaglio of the bust of Hercules in black onyx in its ancient setting of pale greenish gold, incredibly battered, was on the third finger of his big left hand....
He squeezed the back sheet of his Pall Mall Gazette into a ball, observant of the inferior quality of the paper—cleared away the clammy fog and grime that obscured the window next him—and settled down to read the News.
Front after front had burst into roaring flame; the brown shuttle of the Army and the dark blue shuttle of the Navy, driven back and forth with dizzying rapidity, wove the bloody web of War upon the loom of Fate daily, hourly, momentarily....
Sir Douglas Haig had succeeded Sir John French in command of our Forces in France in the previous December. De Wet and other South Africans had been pardoned. General Smuts had been appointed to command in East Africa; the Germans had been repulsed at Loos, a Zeppelin raid on Paris had twice been unsuccessfully attempted; the Senussi Arabs had been beaten in West Egypt, the Kut Relief Force were at grips with the Turkish forces;—France was fighting superbly to hold Vimy Ridge her own. And the Military Service Bill was effective in Great Britain; and the final act of the Evacuation, ringing down the curtain on the unsuccessful tragedy of the Gallipoli Peninsula was fading from the minds of men.... A bad, bad business! John commented mentally. He wished the Blooming Bungler who was responsible for all that waste of blood and prestige and money could be jammed into a British trench-mortar of the old-fashioned, big-bellied, Jumbo pattern—and biffed—say 450 yards—into the Turkish lines! And then he fell to staring at the women in blue overalls not innocent of grease, with the initials of the Railway Company in braid that was no longer white—and blue caps with shiny peaks and white braid badges. And the other women who tapped and greased wheels, and rattled along luggage trucks, and trolleys of lamps and foot-warmers;—not forgetting yet other women in dark blue serge uniforms with bright steel buttons, who had clipped his ticket for Scotland when he passed the Barrier.
For London was astonishingly altered by the War. Not only by the temporary War Constructions, the Specials, and the sand-bagging and wire-netting of public and private buildings: not only by glassless windows—shattered walls and holes in the concrete pavement,—wounds torn by High Explosive bombs dropped by Zeppelins and Gothas on the grey breast of the City, that in John Hazel's estimation was built about the hub of the world. The most remarkable of all the War-changes was in the women. In Belgium and France the women young and old had done men's work, and sometimes looked as though they enjoyed doing it. Somehow one expected it of Continental womanhood. But that British womanhood should conduct trams and omnibuses in dark grey jackets with black leather buttons and belts, short skirts to suit, and black leather gaiters, slouch hats or shiny-peaked caps,—intrigued John Hazel wonderfully. A young woman had driven him to King's Cross from Campden Hill, smart and business-like in a yellow oilskin coat, peaked yellow oilskin cap—toujours the peaked cap—big leathern gauntlet-gloves, strap-satchel and general air of confident competency.... She had not overcharged: and had thrust back John's proffered douceur with the succinct statement: "We don't take tips from soldiers, these days!"
And whizzed smoothly out of John Hazel's ken, leaving the young man standing staring after her, with the calfskin bag in one hand and a suit-case in the other; amidst the very audible smiles of the lady-porters and luggage-clerks.
The door of the compartment opened at this juncture, admitting a drab-faced elderly woman in greasy blue overalls. With a grimy duster she flapped the seats of the comfortless third-class, raising a cloud of cindery dust that made the sole passenger sneeze; whisked a collection of orange-peel, nut-shells, toffee-papers and "Puss-Puss!" and "Woodbine" cigarette wrappers under the opposite seat, and fell out again over John Hazel's boots, leaving the atmosphere murkier than ever.