“Fair hair and blue eyes,” said Shendish.
The kindly question, half idle yet unconsciously tactful, was one of those human things which cost so little but are worth so much. It gave Doggie a devoted friend.
“Mo,” said he, a day or two later, “you’re such a decent chap. Why do you use such abominable language?”
“Gawd knows,” smiled Mo, unabashed. “I suppose it’s friendly like.” He wrinkled his brow in thought for an instant. “That’s where I think you’re making a mistake, old pal, if you don’t mind my mentioning it. I know what yer are, but the others don’t. You’re not friendly enough. See what I mean? Supposin’ you say as you would in a city restoorang when you’re ’aving yer lunch, ‘Will yer kindly pass me the salt?’—well, that’s standoffish—they say ‘Come off it! ‘But if you look about and say, ‘Where’s the b——y salt?’ that’s friendly. They understand. They chuck it at you.”
Said Doggie, “It’s very—I mean b——y—difficult.”
So he tried to be friendly; and if he met with no great positive success, he at least escaped animosity. In his spare time he mooned about by himself, shy, disgusted, and miserable. Once, when a group of men were kicking a football about, the ball rolled his way. Instead of kicking it back to the expectant players, he picked it up and advanced to the nearest and handed it to him politely.
“Thanks, mate,” said the astonished man, “but why didn’t you kick it?”
He turned away without waiting for a reply. Doggie had not kicked it because he had never kicked a football in his life and shrank from an exhibition of incompetence.
At drill things were easier than on Salisbury Plain, his actions being veiled in the obscurity of squad or platoon or company. Many others besides himself were cursed by sergeants and rated by subalterns and drastically entreated by captains. He had the consolation of community in suffering. As a trembling officer he had been the only one, the only one marked and labelled as a freak apart, the only one stuck in the eternal pillory. Here were fools and incapables even more dull and ineffective than he. A plough-boy fellow-recruit from Dorsetshire, Pugsley by name, did not know right from left, and having mastered the art of forming fours, could not get into his brain the reverse process of forming front. He wept under the lash of the corporal’s tongue; and to Doggie these tears were healing dews of Heaven’s distillation. By degrees he learned the many arts of war as taught to the private soldier in England. He could refrain from shutting his eyes when he pressed the trigger of his rifle, but to the end of his career his shooting was erratic. He could perform with the weapon the other tricks of precision. Unencumbered he could march with the best. The torture of the heavy pack nearly killed him; but in time, as his muscles developed, he was able to slog along under the burden. He even learned to dig. That was the worst and most back-breaking art of all.
Now and then Phineas McPhail and himself would get together and walk into the little seaside town. It was out of the season and there was little to look at save the deserted shops and the squall-fretted pier and the maidens of the place who usually were in company with lads in khaki. Sometimes a girl alone would give Doggie a glance of shy invitation, for Doggie in his short slight way was not a bad-looking fellow, carrying himself well and wearing his uniform with instinctive grace. But the damsel ogled in vain.