“What sort of trouble was it?” Keede turned professional at once.
“She’d ’ad a bit of a gatherin’ in ’er breast, I believe. But she never talked of ’er body much to any one.”
“I see,” said Keede. “And she said to you?”
Strangwick repeated: “‘Tell Uncle John I hope to be finished of my drawback by the twenty-first, an’ I’m dying to see ’im as soon as ’e can after that date.’ An’ then she says, laughin’: ‘But you’ve a head like a sieve. I’ll write it down, an’ you can give it him when you see ’im.’ So she wrote it on a bit o’ paper an’ I kissed ’er good-bye—I was always her favourite, you see—an’ I went back to Sampoux. The thing hardly stayed in my mind at all, d’you see. But the next time I was up in the front line—I was a Runner, d’ye see—our platoon was in North Bay Trench an’ I was up with a message to the Trench Mortar there that Corporal Grant was in charge of. Followin’ on receipt of it, he borrowed a couple of men off the platoon, to slue ’er round or somethin’. I give Uncle John Auntie Armine’s paper, an’ I give Grant a fag, an’ we warmed up a bit over a brazier. Then Grant says to me: ‘I don’t like it’; an’ he jerks ’is thumb at Uncle John in the bay studyin’ Auntie’s message. Well, you know, sir, you had to speak to Grant about ’is way of prophesyin’ things—after Rankine shot himself with the Very light.”
“I did,” said Keede, and he explained to me: “Grant had the Second Sight—confound him! It upset the men. I was glad when he got pipped. What happened after that, Strangwick?”
“Grant whispers to me: ‘Look, you damned Englishman. ’E’s for it.’ Uncle John was leanin’ up against the bay, an’ hummin’ that hymn I was tryin’ to tell you just now. He looked different all of a sudden—as if ’e’d got shaved. I don’t know anything of these things, but I cautioned Grant as to his style of speakin’, if an officer ’ad ’eard him, an’ I went on. Passin’ Uncle John in the bay,’e nods an’ smiles, which he didn’t often, an’ he says, pocketin’ the paper: ‘This suits me. I’m for leaf on the twenty-first, too.’”
“He said that to you, did he?” said Keede.
“Precisely the same as passin’ the time o’ day. O’ course I returned the agreeable about hopin’ he’d get it, an’ in due course, I returned to ’Eadquarters. The thing ’ardly stayed in my mind a minute. That was the eleventh January—three days after I’d come back from leaf. You remember, sir, there wasn’t anythin’ doin’ either side round Sampoux the first part o’ the month. Jerry was gettin’ ready for his March Push, an’ as long as he kept quiet, we didn’t want to poke ’im up.”
“I remember that,” said Keede. “But what about the Sergeant?”
“I must have met him, on an’ off, I expect, goin’ up an’ down, through the ensuin’ days, but it didn’t stay in me mind. Why needed it? And on the twenty-first Jan., his name was on the leaf-paper when I went up to warn the leaf-men. I noticed that, o’ course. Now that very afternoon Jerry ’ad been tryin’ a new trench-mortar, an’ before our ’Eavies could out it, he’d got a stinker into a bay an’ mopped up ’alf a dozen. They were bringin’ ’em down when I went up to the supports, an’ that blocked Little Parrot, same as it always did. You remember, sir?”