He smiled disarmingly and answered ‘I haven’t much of an eye for scenery: I don’t seem to notice it much, anyway; and, to say the truth, I’m keen on getting to a place in Hampshire called A⸺ where a big swell a friend in Westralia gave me an introduction to lives. There’ll be more people there, and I’ve not seen many so far outside the hospital at X⸺.’ ‘Were they good to you there?’ I asked. ‘Good as gold, but uncommon strict, and there were more flowers to smell than food to eat on the table at meals some days. But they were kind, and no mistake. The ward-sister opened all the windows of the ward I was in to let me hear the gramophone in another wing spouting out “Australia will be there.” There were a lot of enterics among the patients, poor chaps. Queer, isn’t it? how the ones I’m most sorry for seem to get the least attention from visitors. Why, I wouldn’t wear my wound stripe in hospital for fear they’d feel out of it, but there were ladies, young and pretty and old and ugly, who’d come into the ward and, if they saw a man with a couple of fingers missing or a bandage round his head, it was “Oh, I am so sorry you are wounded! Does it hurt much? Would you care to come out for a motor-ride and have tea at our house this afternoon?” ... The wounded chap would say “My wound’s all right, thank you, I’m only wearing that bandage to please the doctor”; but she’d go on pouring out sympathy and invitations till the poor devil was forced to accept. Next bed, perhaps, there’d be an enteric, dead sick of hospital and feeling like nothing on earth. “Where were you wounded?” the lady would ask. “Not wounded, miss—enteric (or perhaps dysentery)’s my trouble.” “Ooo-hh!” says the sympathiser with wounded men only, and on she goes to the next bed. No drives or tea-parties for the men that were lying there weeks and weeks, while we that were well and fit, but for a bullet-hole or two or a scratch of a shell, would be fairly smothered with attention. My word! it used to make me feel sick and ashamed.’
Phœbe was in Cairo in March and had seen the shocked faces and up-raised hands of those who unsparingly condemned the mad pranks of idle Anzacs in that city, the most unsuitable headquarters for half-disciplined troops imaginable. ‘Were you one of the men who decorated Ibrahim Pasha’s equestrian statue by putting a nose-bag on his horse?’ she asked. ‘I wasn’t in that,’ said Corporal Macleod, ‘but I helped to throw a piano out of the window of one of the houses we wrecked in the quarter that ruined so many of our men. I wish the fire that followed had burnt the whole beastly place up.’ ‘So do I,’ Phœbe agreed. ‘Why, in the name of common sense, they didn’t create a camp city on the banks of the canal I shall never understand. It was a crazy thing to turn loose a pack of new-made soldiers, cramped and restless after a six weeks’ voyage on board crowded troopships, in a place like Cairo, that breeds more harpies and sharpers to the square yard than perhaps any other city in the world, unless it’s San Francisco.’
‘What about General Birdwood?’ I asked. ‘Have you ever spoken to him?’ The Anzac’s eyes disappeared behind their lashes and his teeth flashed in a glad grin. ‘Once,’ he answered. ‘There’s hardly one of us who can’t say he had the opportunity. He asked me when I thought the war’d be over, and I had to smile. My word! he’s a fine chap.’
The gentlemen of the School Board Committee had done their work, and when we saw the ‘machine’ drive round from the stables we left our rock and returned to the hotel. The minister climbed stiffly into the front seat, and our Anzac, after a warm handshake, saluted and took his place beside the white-haired grocer at the back. Phœbe and I gazed and waved from the door till the merry face with its strong oval framed in the curve of a brown chin-strap receded in a blur of white dust from the long straight road. ‘I wish he had seemed the least little bit impressed by the Highlands,’ I said regretfully.
‘You needn’t worry,’ answered Phœbe. ‘When he gets back to West Australia and has time to sort out his memories and talk things over with his people he’ll be just as proud of being a Highlander as he is of being an Anzac.’
THE BRINK OF ACHERON.
Far down the glen, on the crest of a conspicuous spur—a bright spot of colour. Major Duckworth of King George III.’s Own Fusiliers dived his hand into the mighty pocket of his overcoat, drew out his glass, and focussed it on the object. It was a scarlet coat—the King’s uniform.
Four hours had passed since then, and at length Duckworth was forced to recognise that not alone would he have only his pains for his labour, but that he was hopelessly lost amongst the intricacies of the Sierra de Avila. The valley that had seemed so full of feature at first, was for him featureless. Each subsidiary glen seemed exactly like the other; every spur looked the twin of the next. To add to the difficulties of the situation the mists had come down to within a hundred feet of the bottoms.