So it was all a strange tangle of friendship and animosity and good-nature and bitterness. Yet on the surface, you understand, we lived on terms of toleration and vague geniality; except for the disputations of Hewett and Eustace there was little open disagreement. In the confined space of a company mess permanent hostilities would make life impossible; it is only generals who are allowed to find that they can no longer 'act with' each other, and resign: platoon commanders may come to the same conclusion, but they have to go on acting. And so openly we laughed and endured and bore with each other. Only there was always this undertone of irritations and animosities which, in the maddening conditions of our life, could never be altogether silenced, and might at any moment rise to a strangled scream.
Harry's appointment as Scout Officer was the first thing to set Burnett against Harry, though already many things had set Harry against Burnett. It had been commonly assumed, in view of Burnett's 'backwoods' reputation, that he would succeed Martin as Scout Officer. The Colonel's selection of Harry took us a little by surprise, though it only showed that the Colonel was a keener judge of character and ability than the rest of us. No one, I think, was more genuinely pleased that Burnett was not to be Scout Officer than Burnett himself; but in the interests of his 'dare-devil' pretensions he had to affect an air of disappointment, and let it be known by grunts and shrugs and sour looks that he considered the choice of Harry to be an injury to himself and the regiment. As far as Harry was concerned this resentment of Burnett's was more or less genuine, for his reluctance to take on the job did not prevent him being jealous of the man who did.
Then Burnett was one of the people who had nothing of his own, and seemed to regard Harry, as the youngest of us all, as the proper person to provide him with all the necessaries of life. In those days we had no plates or crockery, but ate and drank out of our scratched and greasy mess-tins. Harry's mess-tin disappeared, and for three days he was compelled to borrow from Hewett or myself—a tedious and, to him, hateful business. One day Burnett had finished his meal a long way ahead of any of us, and Harry, in the desperation of hungry waiting, asked him for the loan of his mess-tin. Automatically he looked at the bottom of the tin, and there found his initials inscribed. It was his own tin. Further, some one had tried to scratch the initials out. Harry kept his temper with obvious difficulty. Burnett knew well that he had lost his mess-tin (we were all sick of hearing it), but he said he was quite ignorant of having it in his possession. When Harry argued with him, Burnett sent for his batman and cursed him for taking another officer's property. The wretched man mumbled that he had 'found' it, and withdrew; and we all sat in silence teeming with distrustful thoughts. We were sorry for the batman; we were sorry for Harry. Burnett may not have taken the mess-tin with his own hands, but morally he stood convicted of an action which was 'dirty.'
Then Burnett and Harry took a working-party together to dig in the gully. Burnett was the senior officer, but left Harry to work all night in the whispering rain of stray bullets, while he sat in an Engineers' dug-out and drank whisky. Harry did not object to this, the absence of Burnett being always congenial to him. But next day there came a complimentary message from the Brigadier about the work of that working-party. Burnett was sent for and warmly praised by the Colonel. Burnett stood smugly and said nothing. Harry, when he heard of it, was furious, and wanted, he said, to 'have a row' with him. What he expected Burnett to say, I don't know; the man could hardly stand before his Colonel and say, 'Sir, Penrose did all the work, I was in the Engineers' dug-out nearly all the time with my friends, and had several drinks.' A row, in any case, would be intolerable in that cramped, intimate existence, and I dissuaded Harry, though I made Egerton have a few words with Burnett on the subject. Harry contented himself with ironic comments on Burnett's 'gallantry' and 'industry,' asking him blandly at meals if he expected to get his promotion over that working-party, and suggesting to Egerton that Burnett should take Harry's next turn of duty 'because he is so good at it.' This made Burnett beautifully angry. But it was bitter badinage, and did not improve the social atmosphere.
There were a number of such incidents between the two; they were very petty in themselves, some of them, like a fly, but in their cumulative effect very large and distressing. In many cases there was no verbal engagement, or only an angry, inarticulate mutter. Public, unfettered angers were necessarily avoided. But this pent-up, suppressed condition of the quarrel made it more malignant, like a disease. And it got on Harry's nerves; indeed, it got on mine. It became an active element in that vast complex of irritation and decay which was eating into his young system; it was leagued with the flies, and the dust, and the smells, and the bad food, and the wind, and the harassing shells of the Turks, and the disgustful torment of disease.
III
For Harry was a very sick man. He had endured through all the stages of dysentery, and now lived with that awful legacy of weakness of which I have spoken. And the disease had not wholly left him, but some days he lay faint with excruciating spasms of pain. Slightly built and constitutionally fragile at the beginning, he was now a mere wasted wisp of a man. The flesh seemed to have melted from his face, and when he stood naked on the beach it seemed that the moving of his bones must soon tear holes in the unsubstantial skin. Standing in the trench with the two points of his collar-bone jutting out like promontories above his shirt, and a pale film of dust over his face, he looked like the wan ghost of some forgotten soldier. On the Western Front, where one case of dysentery created a panic among the authorities, and in the most urgent days they have never had to rely on skeletons to fight, he would long since have been bundled off. But in this orgy of disease, no officer could be sent away who was willing to stay and could still totter up the gully. And Harry would not go. When he went to the battalion doctor it was with an airy request for the impotent palliatives then provided for early dysentery, and with no suggestion of the soul-destroying sickness that was upon him. One day he would not come down to the rocks and bathe, so feeble he was. 'I know now,' he said, 'the meaning of that bit in the psalms, "My knees are like water and all my bones are out of joint."' 'Harry,' I said, 'you're not fit to stay here—why not go sick?' At which he smiled weakly, and said that he might be better in a day or two. Pathetic hope! all men had it. And so Hewett and I walked down, a little sadly, alone, marvelling at the boy's courage. For it seemed to us that he wanted to stay and see it through, and if indeed he might recover we could not afford to lose him. So we said no more.
But by degrees I gained a different impression. Harry still opened his mind to Hewett and myself more than to any one else, but it was by no direct speech, rather by the things he did not say, the sentences half finished, the look in his eyes, that the knowledge came—that Harry did want to go away. The romantic impulse had perished long since in that ruined trench; but now even the more mundane zest of doing his duty had lost its savour in the long ordeal of sickness and physical distress. He did want to go sick. He had only to speak a word; and still he would not go. When I knew this, I marvelled at his courage yet more.
For many days I watched him fighting this lonely conflict with himself, a conflict more terrible and exacting than any battle. Sometimes the doctor came and sat under our olive-tree, and some of us spoke jestingly of the universal sickness, and asked him how ill we must be before he would send us home. Harry alone sat silent; it was no joke to him.
'And how do you feel now, Penrose?' said the doctor. 'Are you getting your arrow-root all right?' Harry opened his mouth—but for a moment said nothing. I think it had been in his mind to say what he did feel, but he only murmured, 'All right, thank you, doctor.' The doctor looked at him queerly. He knew well enough, but it was his task to keep men on the Peninsula, not to send them away.