Colonel Lavington was discussing the art of the sonnet and the influence of Italian culture in Elizabethan England. From that subject he travelled to the psychology of courage, which in his opinion, for the moment, was founded on vanity.

“Courage,” he said, with that gallant look of his which I had seen with admiration when he walked up the old duckboards beyond Ypres, with a whimsical smile at “crumps” bursting abominably near—he had done bravely in the old days as a battalion commander. “Courage is merely a pose before the mirror of one’s own soul and one’s neighbours. We are all horribly afraid in moments of danger, but some of us have the gift of pretending that we don’t mind. That is vanity. We like to look heroes, even to ourselves. It is good to die with a beau geste, though death is damnably unpleasant.”

“I agree, colonel,” said Charles Fortune. “Always the right face for the proper occasion. But it wants a lot of practice.”

He put on his gallant, devil-may-care face, and there was appreciative laughter from his fellow officers.

Harding, the young landowner, was of opinion that courage depended entirely on the liver.

“It is a matter of physical health,” he said. “If I am out-of-sorts, my moral goes down to zero. Not that I’m ever really brave. Anyhow, I hate things that go off. Those loud noises of bursting shells are very objectionable. I shall protest against Christmas crackers after the war.”

Young Clatworthy was in the sulks, and sat very silent during all this badinage.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, and he confided to me his conviction, while he passed the salt, that “life was a rummy game.”

“Hipped?” I said, and his answer was, “Fed up to the back teeth!”

That seemed to me curious, after the glimpse I had had of him with a little lady of Lille. The boy explained himself somewhat under cover of the colonel’s conversation, which was holding the interest of the mess.

“We’re living unnaturally,” he said. “It’s all an abnormal show, and we pretend to be natural and normal when everything that happens round us is fantastic and disorderly.”

“What’s your idea?” I enquired. It was the first time I had heard the boy talk seriously, or with any touch of gravity.

“Hard to explain,” he said. “But, take my case to-day. This morning I went up the line to interrogate the latest batch of P.O.W.‘s.” (He meant prisoners of war.) “A five-point-nine burst within ten yards of my car, the other side of Courtrai, killed my driver and missed me by a couple of inches. I felt as sick as a dog when I saw Saunders crumpled over his steering-wheel with blood pouring down his neck. Not that it’s the first time I’ve seen blood!”

He laughed as he gave a glance at his wound-stripe, and I remembered the way in which he had gained his M.C. at Gommecourt—one of three left alive in his company.

“We had been talking, three minutes before, about his next leave. He had been married in ‘16, after the Somme, and hadn’t seen his wife since. Said her letters made him ‘uneasy.’ Thought she was drinking because of the loneliness. Well, there he was—finished—and a nasty sight. I went off to the P.O.W. cage and examined the beggars—one of them, as usual, had been a waiter at the ‘Cecil,’ and said, ‘How’s dear old London?’—and passed the time of day with Bob Mellett—you know, the one-armed lad. He laughed no end when he heard of my narrow squeak. So did I—though it’s hard to see the joke. He lent me his car on the way back, and somewhere outside Courtrai we bumped over a dead body with a queer soft squelch. It was a German—a young ‘un—and Bob Mellett said, ‘He won’t be home for Christmas!’ Do you know Bob?—he used to cry at school when a rat was caught. Queer, isn’t it? Now here I am, sitting at a white table-cloth, listening to the colonel’s talk, and pretending to be interested. I’m not a bit, really. I’m wondering why that bit of shell hit Saunders and not me. Or why I’m not lying in a muddy road as a bit of soft squelch for staff cars to bump over. And on top of that I’m wondering how it will feel to hang up a bowler hat again in a house at Wimbledon, and say, ‘Cheerio, mother!’ to the mater (who will be knitting in the same armchair—chintz-covered—by the piano) and read the evening paper until dinner’s ready, take Ethel to a local dance, and get back into the old rut of home life in a nice family, don’t you know? With all my memories! With the ghosts of this life crowding up! Ugly ghosts, some of ‘em! Dirty ghosts!... It’s inconceivable that we can ever go back to the funny old humdrum! I’m not sure that I want to.”

“You’re hipped,” I told him. “You’ll be glad to get back all right. Wimbledon will be Paradise after what you’ve been through.”

“Oh, Lord, I’ve done nothing,” said the boy. “Fact is, I’ve been talking tripe. Forget it.”

But I did not forget, and remembered every word later, when I heard his laughter on Armistice night.

A despatch-rider stood outside the door in his muddy overalls and Brand went to get his message. It was from Pierre Nesle.

“I am mad with joy that you have found Marthe! Alas! I cannot get back for a week. Tell her that I am still her devoted comrade and loving brother.—Pierre.” Brand handed me the slip and said, “Poor devil!” I went back to my billet in Madame ChÉri’s house, and she made no allusion to our conversation in the afternoon, but was anxious, I thought, to assure me of her friendship by special little courtesies, as when she lighted my candle and carried it upstairs before saying good-night. HÉlÈne was learning English fast and furiously, and with her arm round her mother’s waist said, “Sleep well, sir, and very good dreams to you!” which I imagine was a sentence out of her text-book.

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