Impossible that he should be useless and unused!
VII
A man came up in the dusk that was creeping into the streets of London, and walked alongside Bertram. He said something about no work, a sick wife, children, the war.
Bertram had heard it all a hundred times from other men, and tried to remember whether he had any money in his pocket. Then something in the man’s voice stirred an old memory. He halted and stared into the man’s face, and saw that it was one of his old company, Bill Huggett, the Cockney fellow from Camberwell.
He spoke his name, and the man was startled, and then shamefaced.
“Good Lord, Huggett! Have you come to this?”
Bertram was distressed. This man had been with him in the dirtiest places, on mornings of great battle, in the dreary old routine. He had always “groused,” but had never failed in pluck, and always cheered his comrades by his grim humour when things were bad, and death neighbourly.
“Well, what else?” asked the man, in a hostile voice. He wanted to know what a bloke could do on twenty-five shillings a week, out of work pay, and food prices rising every day, and a family of brats to keep. After saving the blasted country!
Bertram suggested that other men had helped to save the country, and were in the same trouble.
“Not you, anyhow,” said the man, with an ugly rasp in his voice.