“Cads!... Cads!... Somebody ought to put them under arrest.”
“It doesn’t really impress the Germans,” said Fortune. “They know it’s only make-believe. You see, the foolish boys are paying their bill! Now, if I, or Blear-eyed Bill, were to do the Junker stunt, we should at least look the real ogres.”
He frowned horribly, puffed out his cheeks, and growled and grumbled with an air of senile ferocity—to the great delight of a young German waiter watching him from a corner of the room, and already aware that Fortune was a humourist.
The few cads among us caused a reaction in the minds of all men of good manners, so that they took the part of the Germans. Even various regulations and restrictions ordered by the military governor during the first few months of our occupation were resented more by British officers and men than by the Germans themselves. The opera was closed, and British officers said, “What preposterous nonsense! How are the poor devils going to earn their living, and how are we going to amuse ourselves?” The wine-concerts and restaurants were ordered to shut down at ten o’clock, and again the British Army of Occupation “groused” exceedingly and said, “We thought this war had been fought for liberty. Why all this petty tyranny?” Presently these places were allowed to stay open till eleven, and all the way down the Hohestrasse, as eleven o’clock struck, one saw groups of British officers and men, and French and American officers, pouring out of a Wein-stube, a Kunstler Conzert or a Bier-halle, with farewell greetings or promises of further rendezvous with laughing German girls, who seemed to learn English by magic.
“Disgraceful!” said young Harding, who was a married man with a pretty wife in England for whom he yearned with a home-sickness which he revealed to me boyishly when we became closer friends in this German city.
“Not disgraceful,” said the little American doctor, who had joined us in Cologne, “but only the fulfilment of nature’s law, which makes man desire woman. Allah is great!... But juxtaposition is greater.”
Dr. Small was friends with all of us, and there was not one among our crowd who had not an affection and admiration for this little man whose honesty was transparent, and whose vital nervous energy was like a fresh wind to any company in which he found himself. It was Wickham Brand, however, who had captured the doctor’s heart, most of all, and I think I was his “second best.” Anyhow, it was to me that he revealed his opinion of Brand, and some of his most intimate thoughts.
“Wickham has the quality of greatness,” he said. “I don’t mean to say he’s great now. Not at all. I think he’s fumbling and groping, not sure of himself, afraid of his best instincts, thinking his worst may be right. But one day he will straighten all that out and have a call as loud as a trumpet. What I like is his moodiness and bad-temper.”
“Queer taste, doctor!” I remarked. “When old Brand is in the sulks there’s nothing doing with him. He’s like a bear with a sore ear.”
“Sure!” said Dr. Small. “That’s exactly it. He is biting his own sore ear. I guess with him, though, it’s a sore heart. He keeps moping and fretting, and won’t let his wounds heal. That’s what makes him different from most others, especially you English. You go through frightful experiences and then forget them and say, ‘Funny old world, young fellah! Come and have a drink.’ You see civilisation rocking like a boat in a storm, but you say, in your English way, ‘Why worry?’ ... Wickham worries. He wants to put things right, and make the world safer for the next crowd. He thinks of the boys who will have to fight in the next war—wants to save them from his agonies.”