“Finish?” I asked.
“Oh, no. Only beginnin’. That was in December, somethin’ or other, ’16. In Jan’ry Vigors copped it for keeps. I buried him—snowin’ blind it was—an’ before we’d got him under the whole show was crumped. I wanted to bury him again just to spite ’em (I’m a spiteful man by nature), but the party wasn’t takin’ any more—even if they could have found it. But, you see, we had buried him all right, which is what they want at home, and I wrote the usual trimmin’s about the chaplain an’ the full service, an’ what his captain had said about Bert bein’ recommended for a pip, an’ the irreparable loss an’ so on. That was in Jan’ry ’17. In Feb’ry some time or other I got saved. My speciality had come to be bombin’s and night-doings. Very pleasant for a young free man, but—there’s a limit to what you can stand. It takes all men differently. Noise was what started me, at last. I’d got just up to the edge—wonderin’ when I’d crack an’ how many of our men I’d do in if it came on me while we were busy. I had that nice taste in the mouth and the nice temperature they call trench-fever, an’—I had to feel inside my head for the meanin’ of every order I gave or was responsible for executin’. You know!”
“We do. Go on!” said Pole in a tone that made Orton look at him.
“So, you see, the bettin’ was even on my drawin’ a V. C. or getting Number Umpty rest-camp or—a firing party before breakfast. But Gord saved me. (I made friends with Him the last two years of the war. The others went off too quick.) They wanted a bombin’-instructor for the training-battalion at home, an’ He put it into their silly hearts to indent for me. It took ’em five minutes to make me understand I was saved. Then I vomited, an’ then I cried. You know!” The fat face of Bevin had changed and grown drawn, even as he spoke; and his hands tugged as though to tighten an imaginary belt.
“I was never keen on bombin’ myself,” said Pole. “But bombin’-instruction’s murder!”
“I don’t deny it’s a shade risky, specially when they take the pin out an’ start shakin’ it, same as the Chinks used to do in the woods at Beauty, when they were cuttin’ ’em down. But you live like a home defence Brigadier, besides week-end leaf. As a matter o’ fact, I married Bert’s sister soon’s I could after I got the billet, an’ I used to lie in our bed thinkin’ of the old crowd on the Somme an’—feelin’ what a swine I was. Of course, I earned two V. C.’s a week behind the traverse in the exercise of my ord’nary duties, but that isn’t the same thing. An’ yet I’d only joined up because—because I couldn’t dam’ well help it.”
“An’ what about your Queenslander?” the Australian asked.
“Too de sweet! Pronto! We got a letter in May from a Brighton hospital matron, sayin’ that one of the name of Hickmer was anxious for news o’ me, previous to proceedin’ to Roehampton for initiation into his new leg. Of course, we applied for him by return. Bert had written about him to his sister—my missus—every time he wrote at all; an’ any pal o’ Bert’s—well, you know what the ladies are like. I warned her about his peculiarities. She wouldn’t believe till she saw him. He was just the same. You’d ha’ thought he’d show up in England like a fresh stiff on snow—but you never noticed him. You never heard him; and if he didn’t want to be seen he wasn’t there. He just joined up with his background. I knew he could do that with men; but how in Hell, seein’ how curious women are, he could camouflage with the ladies—my wife an’ my mother to wit—beats me! He’d feed the chickens for us; he’d stand on his one leg—it was off above the knee—and saw wood for us. He’d run—I mean he’d hop—errands for Mrs. B. or mother; our dog worshipped him from the start, though I never saw him throw a word to him; and—yet he didn’t take any place anywhere. You’ve seen a rabbit—you’ve seen a pheasant—hidin’ in a ditch? ’Put your hand on it sometimes before it moved, haven’t you? Well, that was Hickmot—with two women in the house crazy to find out—find out—anything about him that made him human. You know what women are! He stayed with us a fortnight. He left us on a Sat’day to go to Roehampton to try his leg. On Friday he came over to the bombin’ ground—not sayin’ anything, as usual—to watch me instruct my Suicide Club, which was only half an hour’s run by rail from our village. He had his overcoat on, an’ as soon as he reached the place it was mafeesh with him, as usual. Rabbit-trick again! You never noticed him. He sat in the bomb-proof behind the pit where the duds accumulate till it’s time to explode ’em. Naturally, that’s strictly forbidden to the public. So he went there, an’ no one noticed him. When he’d had enough of watchin’, he hopped off home to feed our chickens for the last time.”
“Then how did you know all about it?” Orton said.
“Because I saw him come into the place just as I was goin’ down into the trench. Then he slipped my memory till my train went back. But it would have made no difference what our arrangements were. If Hickmer didn’t choose to be noticed, he wasn’t noticed. Just for curiosity’s sake I asked some o’ the Staff Sergeants whether they’d seen him on the ground. Not one—not one single one had—or could tell me what he was like. An’ Sat’day noon he went off to Roehampton. We saw him into the train ourselves, with the lunch Mrs. B. had put up for him—a one-legged man an’ his crutch, in regulation blue, khaki warm an’ kit-bag. Takin’ everything together, per’aps he’d spoken as many as twenty times in the thirteen days he’d been with us. I’m givin’ it you straight as it happened. An’ now—look here!—this is what did happen.