"That's it," said 'Enery, "business-like is the word for 'em. I noticed them 'airy-faces shootin' to-day. They did it like they was sent there to kill somebody, and they meant doin' their job thorough an' competent. Afore I come this trip on the Continong I used to think a Frenchman was good for nothing but fiddlin' an' dancin' an' makin' love. But since I've seen 'em settin' to Bosh partners an' dancin' across the neutral ground an' love-makin' wi' Rosalie,[Footnote: Rosalie—the French nickname for the bayonet.] I've learned better. 'Ere's luck to 'im," and he drained the mess-tin.
And the French, if one might judge from the story mon capitaine had to tell his major, had also revised some ancient opinions of their Allies.
"Cold!" he said scornfully; "never again tell me these English are cold. Children—perhaps. Foolish—but yes, a little. They try to kill a man between jests; they laugh if a bullet wounds a comrade so that he grimaces with pain—it is true; I saw it." It was true, and had reference to a sight scrape of a bullet across the tip of the nose of a Towers private, and the ribald jests and laughter thereat. "They make jokes, and say a man 'stopped one,' meaning a shell had been stopped in its flight by exploding on him—this the interpreter has explained to me. But cold—no, no, no! If you had seen this man—ah, sublime, magnificent! With the whistling balls all round him he stands, so brave, so noble, so fine, stands—so! 'Vive la France!' he cried aloud, with a tongue of trumpets; 'Vive la France! A bas les Boches!'"
The captain, as he declaimed "with a tongue of trumpets," leaped to his feet and struck an attitude that was really quite a good imitation of 'Enery's own mock-tragedian one. But the officers listening breathed awe and admiration; they did not, as the Towers did, laugh, because here, unlike the Towers, they saw nothing to laugh at.
The captain dropped to his chair amid a murmur of applause. "Sublime!" he said. "That posture, that cry! Indeed, it was worthy of a Frenchman. But certainly we must recommend him for a Cross of France, eh, my major?"
'Enery Irving got the Cross of the Legion of Honor. But I doubt if it ever gave him such pure and legitimate joy as did a notice stuck up in the German trench next day. Certainly it insulted the English by stating that their workers stayed at home and went on strike while Frenchmen fought and died. But it was headed "Frenchman!" and it was written in French.
THE FEAR OF FEAR
"At —— we recaptured the portion of front line trench lost by us some days ago."—EXTRACT FROM DISPATCH.
"In a charge," said the Sergeant, "the 'Hotwater Guards' don't think about going back till there's none of them left to go back; and you can always remember this: if you go forward you may die, if you go back you will die."
The memory of that phrase came back to Private Everton, tramping down the dark road to the firing-line. Just because he had no knowledge of how he himself would behave in this his baptism of fire, just because he was in deadly fear that he would feel fear, or, still worse, show it, he strove to fix that phrase firmly in front of his mind. "If I can remember that," he thought, "it will stop me going back, anyway," and he repeated: "If you go back you will die, if you go back you will die," over and over.