The Bulgar. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD."
THE WATCH DOGS.
XXXVIII.
My dear Charles,—One of these days I will tell you the more intimate history of the Corps to which I have the honour to belong, and this will give you some cause for mirth. Its members are of all sorts, ages and origins, and they have had between them some odd experiences since that first day when, parading hastily in Kensington Gardens, they wished they hadn't been quite so glib, in their anxiety to get to war, about professing full knowledge of the ways and wiles of the motor bicycle. One at least of them paid the price of inexactitude then and there; he still shudders to think how, put to the test, he unintentionally left the Park for a no less fashionable but much more crowded thoroughfare, to arrive eventually, in the prone position, in a byway of Piccadilly, where small fragments of the machine may still be collected by industrious seekers of curios.
Another, whom the low cunning of the Criminal Bar enabled to avoid the immediate test, paid the full price, with compound interest, later on. Casual observers of the retreat, had there been any, would have become familiar with the sight of him bringing up the rear—a very poor last. To see him arrive, perspiring, over the brow of a hill, with his faithful motor at his side, was to know that the Huns were at the bottom of it. On one occasion they even beat him in the day's march, but were too kind or too blind to seize their advantage. As usual he was taking his obsession along with him, though, if he had but known, he might have got it to do the work by the simple formality of turning the petrol tap from OFF to ON. His was ever a curious life, from the first moment of his joining the Army in tails, a bowler hat, and a large sword wrapped in a homely newspaper. But the inward fun of it all is not for the present, Charles; our clear old friends, the Exigencies, forbidding.
I am reminded of it all by having just crossed with one of the later-joined members. He came fresh from the line to a Head-quarters, and he was walking about in a lane, working off some of his awe of his new surroundings, when he was overtaken by a car containing a General, who stopped and asked him what he was. So imposing was the account he gave of himself that it was said to him, "No doubt, then, you'll know the way to ——," a village at the back of beyond, where a division was lying at rest. In the Army, at any rate at a Head-quarters, we all know everything. So he said, "No doubt, Sir," hoping, if the worst came to the worst, to give some vague directions and not to be present when they were found wanting. But it was his bad luck to have struck one of the more affable Generals. Could he spare the time to come along and direct the driver?
So on to the box he got (it was a closed car) and, with the General's eye always upon his back, he did his best as guide, a task for which his previous career of stockbroker had ill qualified him. The first thing to happen was that the car, proceeding down a narrow lane, got well into the middle of a battalion on the march, which, when the car was firmly jammed amongst the transport, ceased to be on the march, and took a generous ten minutes' halt.... The second thing to happen was a level crossing; which, as they approached it, changed its mind about being a road and became a railway. A nice long train duly arrived, and (this needs no exaggeration) stayed there, with a few restless movements, for twenty minutes by the clock.... The third thing to happen was that he lost himself (and the General); the fourth was the falling of dusk, and the fifth a ploughed field, with which my friend, alighting, had to confess that he was not so intimately acquainted as he could have wished.
