And a treble voice piped back, and stumbling over the moraine of débris tongueing from the avalanche of broken tiles and masonry, came—not the Troll-dwarf in his huge disguising helmet and outsized pneumatic jacket—but an urchin of twelve or thirteen—in the familiar dress of a Boy Scout—minus the smasher hat and staff.
"Me for the gay old life!" meditated Franky. "Thought I was getting groggy in the upper works—and now I know it! A British Boy Scout in his little khaki shirt, with a row of gadgets on his left sleeve, and ribbon tags to his little garters, all on his little lone in the middle of this—Gehenna!" He spoke to the fever that galloped through his veins in the tone of a patron presiding at the test-display of a Cinema Film Company: "Pretty good, but you can do better. Roll along with a troop of blue-eyed Girl Guides, old Touch-and-Go!"
The Scout's figure vanished out of the glass. There was a sound of scratching and scrambling. The broken floor jarred to the impact of a light body, and a boyish treble called:
"Is—is anybody here? Anybody—English?"
The voice quavered on the last word. Franky knew that this was delirium. He grinned under his four-days' beard, and the grime and soot and plaster that masked him, and answered in a series of Bantu clicks, so leather-dry was his tongue:
"Me as per descrip: to fol: Young British sossifer of good fam: irrepro: ref: and tophole edu: badly dam: by Hun shell! Greatly in need of the com: of a ref: Chris: ho: Mus: in the eve: and intell: conver: greatly appre:" He shut his stiff eyelids and opened them again, but the imaginary Scout had not gone.
"You're dreadfully—hurt. Couldn't I do—something?" the treble voice piped. Its owner was now squatting on his heels in the shade of Franky's penthouse of planks. The knuckles he rested on the floor were cracked and grimy, and his deeply-freckled, fair-complexioncd face was lined, and anxious and thin. His blue eyes were swollen with crying, though his sensitive lips wore a wistful, crooked smile. "You are real?" he asked wistfully, and Franky answered, huskily:
"Rather! In fact, I'm a lot more real than you. Who are you, since we're gettin' personal?" He repeated slowly after the boy:
"'Bawne Mildare Saxham, Scout No. 22. Fox Patrol, 331st London W.' Seems good enough." He shut his hot eyes wearily. "But if you're solid—you'd get me a drink!"
There was a little stir. The Scout had gone. Franky knew it without opening his eyes, yielding to the deadly sinking faintness engendered by the effort of speech. A mountainous weight crushed his chest, and his legs were cold and heavy as ingots of pig-iron. It occurred to him that at this rate the—wind-up—could not be far off. And a great horror fell upon him like a pall, and cold sweat broke forth and streamed upon his haggard face and broken body. Death for one who so loved Life and the pleasant things of a commonplace existence.... A cricket-match, a day with the hounds, a funny revue, a game of polo, a break at billiards, a clinking run with the car, a fine cigar. Mess in camp after the hard day's march, long, cool drinks with bits of ice tinkling in the tumbler. That new, fierce pleasure tasted in his first experience of real fighting.... And oh! how much sweeter than these the scent of Margot's hair, the light of Margot's eyes, the clasp of her arms about his neck, the hope of fatherhood, never now to be realised....