But we who have met heroes know that they are very seldom of the type which achieves the immortality of the picture post card.
The stalwart with pearly teeth, lilac eyes and curly lashes is C3 at Lloyd's (Sir Francis), and may be heard twice daily at the Frivolity singing, "My Goo-goo Girl from Honolulu" to entranced flappers; while the lad who has Fritzie D. Hun backed on the ropes, clinching for time, is usually gifted with bow legs, freckles, a dented proboscis and a coiffure after the manner of a wire-haired terrier.
The Reverend Paul Grayne, v.c., sometime curate of Thorpington Parva, in the county of Hampshire, was no exception to this rule. Æsthetically he was a blot on the landscape; among all the heroes I have met I never saw anything less heroically moulded.
He stood about five feet nought and tipped the beam at seven stone nothing. He had a mild chinless face, and his long beaky nose, round large spectacles, and trick of cocking his head sideways when conversing, gave him the appearance of an intelligent little dicky-bird.
I remember very well the occasion of our first meeting. I was in my troop lines one afternoon, blackguarding a farrier, when a loud nicker sounded on the road and a black cob, bearing a feebly protesting Padre upon his fat back, trotted through the gate, up to the lines and began to swop How d'y' do's with my hairies. The little Padre cocked his head on one side and oozed apologies from every pore.
He hadn't meant to intrude, he twittered; Peter had brought him; it was Peter's fault; Peter was very eccentric.
Peter, I gathered, was the fat cob, who by this time had butted into the lines and was tearing at a hay net as if he hadn't had a meal for years.
His alleged master looked at me hopeless, helpless. What was he to do? "Well, since Peter is evidently stopping to tea with my horses," said I, "the only thing you can do is to come to tea with us." So I lifted him down and bore him off to the cowshed inhabited by our mess at the time and regaled him on chlorinated Mazawattee, marmalade and dog biscuit. An hour later, Peter willing, he left us.
We saw a lot of the Padre after that. Peter, it appeared, had taken quite a fancy to us and frequently brought him round to meals. The Padre had no word of say in the matter. He confessed that, when he embarked upon Peter in the morning, he had not the vaguest idea where mid-day would find him. Nothing but the black cob's fortunate rule of going home to supper saved the Padre from being posted as a deserter.
He had an uneasy feeling that Peter would one day suddenly sicken of the War and that he would find himself in Paris or on the Riviera. We had an uneasy feeling that Peter would one day develop a curiosity as to the Boche horse rations, and stroll across the line, and we should lose the Padre, a thing we could ill afford to do, for by this time he had taken us under his wing spiritually and bodily. On Sundays he would appear in our midst dragging a folding harmonium and hold Church Parade, leading the hymns in his twittering bird-like voice.