THE WATCH DOGS.
LVI.
MY DEAR CHARLES,—The weather is very seasonable for the time of year, is it not? A nice nip in the air, as you might say; thoroughly healthy for those at liberty to enjoy it al fresco. I assure you the opportunity is not being wasted out here; all the best people are out-of-doors all the time. For myself, with thirty degrees of frost about, it seemed to be the exact moment to slip over to England and help keep the home fires burning.
Accordingly I repaired to a neighbouring port, and when I got there an officer, who appeared to be looking for something, asked me what my rank was. In peace times I should have loved a little unexpected sympathy like this; as a soldier, quite an old soldier now, I dislike people who take an interest in me, especially if they have blue on their hats. I thanked him very much for his kind inquiry, but indicated that my lips were sealed. His curiosity thereupon became positively acute; he was, he said, a man from whom it was impossible to keep a secret. He still wished to know what my rank was. I said it all depended which of them he was referring to, since there are three in all, the "Acting," the "Temporary" and the Rock-bottom one. In any case, at heart I was and always should remain a plain civilian mister. Should we leave it at that, and let bygones be bygones? He was meditating his answer, when I asked him if he realised how close he was standing to the edge of the quay, and when he turned round and looked I also turned round and went....
The fellow who was standing next to me all this time was either too young or too proud to conceal his stars beneath an ordinary waterproof. Blue-hat didn't need to ask him what his rank was; he recognized at a glance just the very type of officer he was looking for. So he led off the poor fellow to the slaughter, and put him in charge of two hundred N.C.O.s and men proceeding on leave to the U.K. I've no doubt the fellow spent the best part of his days on the other side trying to get rid of his party. I have not been two years in France without discovering that you simply cannot be too careful when you are attempting to get out of it.
When I reached England my feelings with regard to myself changed. I was no longer reticent about my rank. I displayed my uniform in a public restaurant, without any reserve. In consequence they'd only let me eat three-and-sixpence worth for my first meal. This time I was not so clever, it appeared, as I thought. I had erroneously supposed that by not being a civilian I should get more than two courses. As it was I got less, and so it was with a full heart and an empty stomach that I fell in for home. If I'd known I should have kept my waterproof on for luncheon.
Do you realise how dismal a thing it is for us to be separated from our own by a High Sea all these months and years? It ain't fair, Sir, it simply ain't fair. In my case there is not only a wife amongst wives, but also a son amongst sons. Now, Charles, I am the very last person to call a thing good merely because it is my own, nor am I that kind of fool who thinks all his geese are swans. If my son had a fault I should be the very first to notice and call attention to it. But he has not; dispassionately and from an entirely detached and impersonal view, I am bound to say that there is about him an outstanding merit which at once puts him on a different level from all others. It isn't so much his four and a half teeth I'm thinking of, nor is it the twenty-seven overgrown and badly managed hairs which wander about at the back of his bald head and give him the look of a dissipated monk. It is just his intrinsic worth, clearly evidenced in everything about him. Obviously a man of parts, he has brains, a stout heart and an unfailing humour. Blessed with a keen perception, he delights those who can understand him with his singularly happy and apt turn of speech. You will, I think, accept my word as an officer and a gentleman that he is unique.
Anticipating the welcome greeting of my wife and many pleasant hours to be spent in discussing with my son the things which matter, I put on all my waterproofs, gave the porter a twenty-five centime piece, which he mistook for a shilling, even as earlier on I had myself been led to mistake it for a franc, and hastened home.
The welcome greeting seemed all right, but I had not been long in the company of my wife before I discovered that Another had come between us. I had not been long with my son before I discovered who that Other was.... I determined to have it out with him at once. Feeling that the situation was one for tactics, I manoeuvred for position and, to get him entirely at a disadvantage, I surprised him in his bath and taxed him with his infamy. I addressed him more in sorrow than in anger. I told him I was well aware of his personal charm, but in this instance I was bound to comment unfavourably on the use he had made of it. The very last thing I had expected of him was that at, or indeed before, the early age of one he would be stealing the affections of another man's wife.
He was not ashamed or nonplussed; he was not even embarrassed by his immediate environment. In fact he turned it to his own advantage, for his hairs, duly watered and soaped down on to his cranium, lost their rakish look and gave him the appearance of a gentleman of perfect integrity, great intellect and no little financial stability. As between one man and another, he did not attempt to deny the truth of my assertion, gave me to understand, with a jovial smile, that such little incidents must always be expected as long as humanity remains human, and repudiated all personal responsibility in this instance. He even went so far as to suggest that it was the woman's fault; it was always she who was running after him, and his only offence had been that of being too chivalrous abruptly to repel her advances. I confess I was painfully surprised at the attitude he adopted; it consisted in putting his foot in one half of his mouth and breathing stentorously through the other moiety. And when he started making eyes at the nurse I was too shocked to stay any longer.
Never a man to take a thing sitting down, I waited till the next morning for my revenge. As the trustee of his future wealth I had him in my power. Stepping across to the nearest bank I borrowed an immense sum of money in his name and passed it all on to the Government, then and there, to be spent, inter alia, on the B.E.F. And what's more, I told him to his face that I'd done it. What reply do you suppose he made? He merely called for a drink.
However, my revenge did not end there. On my way back to France I seized the opportunity of looking in at Cox's and there took back from the Government for my own sole and absolute use some of those very pounds my son had borrowed from the bank to give it. But I lost in the end, for my wife, whom I had taken with me to witness her and his discomfiture, had all the money off me again, in order, I gather, to put it in my son's money-box, for him to rattle now and spend later. The only result of my efforts therefore was to land me in a financial transaction so complicated that I cannot even follow it myself.
Yours ever,
HENRY.
Shocked Sister. "OH, BOBBY, YOU MUSTN'T HAVE A SECOND HELPING! YOU'LL LENGTHEN THE WAR."
[Bobby, like a true Briton, desists.]