Far-away Stories

"What the devil's the meaning of it?" said Godfrey.

Sybil, kind-hearted, began to cry. Something strange and piteous, something elusive had happened. The awful, poverty-stricken room chilled her blood, and the sight of the venomous scourge froze it. She caught and held Godfrey's hand. Had their father gone over to Rome and turned ascetic? They looked bewildered around the room. But no other sign, crucifix, rosary, sacred picture, betokened the pious convert. They scanned the rough deal bookshelf. A few dull volumes of English classics, a few works on sociology in French and Italian, a flagrantly staring red Burke's Landed Gentry, and that was practically all the library. Not one book of devotion was visible, save the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and a little vellum-covered Elzevir edition of Saint Augustine's Flammulæ Amoris, which Godfrey remembered from childhood on account of its quaint wood-cuts. They could see nothing indicative of religious life but the flagellum over the bed – and that seemed curiously new and unused. Again they looked around the bare characterless room, characteristic only of its occupant by its scrupulous tidiness; yet one object at last attracted their attention. On a deal writing-table by the window lay a thick pile of manuscript. Godfrey turned the brown paper covering. Standing together, brother and sister read the astounding title-page:

"An enquiry into my wife's justification for the following terms of her will: —

"'I will and bequeath to my husband, Sir Hildebrand Oates, Knight, the sum of fifteen shillings to buy himself a scourge to do penance for the arrogance, uncharitableness and cruelty with which he has treated myself and my beloved children for the last thirty years.'

"This dispassionate enquiry I dedicate to my son Godfrey and my daughter Sybil."

Brother and sister regarded each other with drawn faces and mutually questioning eyes.

"We can't leave this lying about," said Godfrey. And he tucked the manuscript under his arm.

The gondola took them through the narrow waterways to the Grand Canal of the Giudecca, where, on the Zattere side, all the wave-worn merchant shipping of Venice and Trieste and Fiume and Genoa finds momentary rest, and across to the low bridge-archway of the canal cutting through the island, on the side of which is Lady Layard's modest English hospital. Yes, said the matron, Sir Hildebrand was there. Pneumonia. Getting on as well as could be expected; but impossible to see him. She would telephone to their hotel in the morning.

That night, until dawn, Godfrey read the manuscript, a document of soul-gripping interest. It was neither an apologia pro vita sua, nor a breast-beating peccavi cry of confession; but a minute analysis of every remembered incident in the relations between his family and himself from the first pragmatical days of his wedding journey. And judicially he delivered judgments in the terse, lucid French form. "Whereas I, etc., etc…" and "whereas my wife, etc., etc…" – setting forth and balancing the facts – "it is my opinion that I acted arrogantly," or "uncharitably," or "cruelly." Now and again, though rarely, the judgments went in his favour. But invariably the words were added: "I am willing, however, in this case, to submit to the decision of any arbitrator or court of appeal my children may think it worth while to appoint."

The last words, scrawled shakily in pencil, were:

"I have not, to my great regret, been able to bring this record up-to-date; but as I am very ill and, at my age, may not recover, I feel it my duty to say that, as far as my two years' painful examination into my past life warrants my judgment, I am of the opinion that my wife had ample justification for the terms she employed regarding me in her will. Furthermore, if, as is probable, I should die of my illness, I should like my children to know that long ere this I have deeply desired in my loneliness to stretch out my arms to them in affection and beg their forgiveness, but that I have been prevented from so doing by the appalling fear that, I being now very poor and they being very rich, my overtures, considering the lack of affection I have exhibited to them in the past might be misinterpreted. The British Consul here, who has kindly consented to be my executor, will…"

And then strength had evidently failed him and he could write no more.

The next morning Godfrey related to his sister what he had read and gave her the manuscript to read at her convenience; and together they went to the hospital and obtained from the doctor his somewhat pessimistic report; and then again they visited the Albergo Tonelli and learned more of the strange, stiff and benevolent life of Sir Hildebrand Oates. Once more they mounted to the cold cheerless room where their father had spent the past two years. Godfrey unhooked the scourge from the nail.

"What are you going to do?" Sybil asked, her eyes full of tears.

"I'm going to burn the damned thing. Whether he lives or dies, the poor old chap's penance is at an end. By God! he has done enough." He turned upon her swiftly. "You don't feel any resentment against him now, do you?"

"Resentment?" Her voice broke on the word and she cast herself on the hard little bed and sobbed.

IX

And so it came to pass that a new Sir Hildebrand Oates, with a humble and a contrite heart, which we are told the Lord doth not despise, came into residence once more at Eresby Manor, agent for his son and guardian of his daughter's children. Godfrey transferred his legal business from Haversham to a younger practitioner in the neighbourhood to whom Sir Hildebrand showed a stately deference. And every day, being a man of habit – instinctive habit which no revolution of the soul can alter – he visited his wife's grave in the little churchyard, a stone's throw from the manor house, and in his fancy a cloud of pigeons came iridescent, darkening the air…

The County called, but he held himself aloof. He was no longer the all-important unassailable man. He had come through many fires to a wisdom undreamed of by the County. Human love had touched him with its simple angel wing – the love of son and daughter, the love of the rude souls in the squalid Venetian Campiello; and the patter of children's feet, the soft and trusting touch of children's hands, the glad welcome of children's voices, had brought him back to the elemental wells of happiness.

One afternoon, the butler entering the dining-room with the announcement "His Grace, the Duke of – " gasped, unable to finish the title. For there was Sir Hildebrand Oates – younger at fifty-nine than he was at thirty – lying prone on the hearthrug, with a pair of flushed infants astride on the softer portions of his back, using the once almighty man as a being of little account. Sir Hildebrand turned his long chin and long nose up towards his visitor, and there was a new smile in his eyes.

"Sorry, Duke," said he, "but you see, I can't get up."

MY SHADOW FRIENDS

My gentle readers have been good enough to ask me what some of the folk whose adventures I have from time to time described have done in the Great War. It is a large question, for they are so many. Most of them have done things they never dreamed they would be called upon to do. Those that survived till 1914 have worked, like the rest of the community in England and France, according to their several capacities, in the Holiest Crusade in the history of mankind.

Well, let me plunge at once into the midst of things.

About a year ago the great voice of Jaffery came booming across my lawn. He was a Lieutenant-Colonel, and a D.S.O., and his great red beard had gone. The same, but yet a subtly different Jaffery. Liosha was driving a motor-lorry in France. He told me she was having the time of her life.

I have heard, too, of my old friend Sir Marcus, leaner than ever and clad in ill-fitting khaki, and sitting in a dreary office in Havre with piles of browny-yellow army forms before him, on which he had checked packing-cases of bully-beef ever since the war began. And if you visit a certain hospital – in Manchester of all places, so dislocating has been the war – there you will still see Lady Ordeyne (it always gives me a shock to think of Carlotta as Lady Ordeyne) matronly and inefficient, but the joy and delight of every wounded man.

And Septimus? Did you not know that the Dix gun was used at the front? His great new invention, the aero-tank, I regret to say, was looked on coldly by the War Office. Now that Peace has come he is trying, so Brigadier-General Sir Clem Sypher tells me, to adapt it to the intensive cultivation of whitebait.

And I have heard a few stories of others. Here is one told me by a French officer, one Colonel Girault. The scene was a road bridge on the outskirts of the zone of the armies. His car had broken down hopelessly, and with much profane language he swung to the bridge-head. The sentry saluted. He was an elderly Territorial with a ragged pair of canvas trousers and a ragged old blue uniform coat and a battered kepi and an ancient rifle. A scarecrow of a sentry, such as were seen on all the roads of France.

"How far is it to the village?"

"Two kilometres, mon Colonel."

There was something familiar in the voice and in the dark, humorous eyes.

"Say, mon vieux, what is your name?" asked Colonel Girault.

"Gaston de Nérac, mon Colonel."

"Connais pas," murmured the Colonel, turning away.

"Exalted rank makes Gigi Girault forget the lessons of humility he learned in the Café Delphine."

Colonel Girault stood with mouth agape. Then he laughed and threw himself into the arms of the dilapidated sentry.

"Mon Dieu! It is true. It is Paragot!"

Then afterwards: "And what can I do for you, mon vieux?"

"Nothing," said Paragot. "The bon Dieu has done everything. He has allowed me to be a soldier of France in my old age."

And Colonel Girault told me that he asked for news of the little Asticot – a painter who ought by now to be famous. Paragot replied:

"He is over there, killing Boches for his old master."

Do you remember Paul Savelli, the Fortunate Youth? He lived to see his dream of a great, awakened England come true. He fell leading his men on a glorious day. His Princess wears on her nurse's uniform the Victoria Cross which he had earned in that last heroic charge, but did not live to wear. And she walks serene and gracious, teaching proud women how to mourn.

What of Quixtus? He sacrificed his leisure to the task of sitting in a dim room of the Foreign Office for ten hours a day in front of masses of German publications, and scheduling with his scientific method and accuracy the German lies. Clementina saw him only on Sundays. She turned her beautiful house on the river into a maternity home for soldiers' wives. Tommy, the graceless, when last home on leave, said that she was capable of murdering the mothers so as to collar all the babies for herself. And Clementina smiled as though acknowledging a compliment. "Once every few years you are quite intelligent, Tommy," she replied.

I have heard, too, that Simon, who jested so with life, and Lola of the maimed face, went out to a Serbian hospital, and together won through the horror of the retreat. They are still out there, sharing in Serbia's victory, and the work of Serbia's reconstruction.

In the early days of the war, in Regent Street, I was vehemently accosted by a little man wearing the uniform of a French captain. He had bright eyes, and a clean shaven chin which for the moment perplexed me, and a swaggering moustache.

"Just over for a few hours to see the wife and little Jean."

"But," said I, "what are you doing in this kit? You went out as a broken-down Territorial."

"Mon cher ami," he cried, straddling across the pavement to the obstruction of traffic, and regarding me mirthfully, "it is the greatest farce on the world. Imagine me! I, a broken-down Territorial, as you call me, bearded a lion of a General of Division in his den – and I came out a Captain. Come into the Café Royal and I'll tell you all about it."

His story I cannot set down here, but it is not the least amazing of the joyous adventures of my friend Aristide Pujol.

What Doggie and Jeanne did in the war, my gentle readers know. Their first child was born on the glorious morning of November 11, 1918, amid the pealing of bells and shouts of rejoicing. When Doggie crept into the Sacred Room of Wonderment, he found the babe wrapped up in the Union Jack and the Tricolour. "There's only one name for him," whispered Jeanne with streaming eyes, "Victor!"

To leave fantasy for the brutal fact. You may say these friends of mine are but shadows. It is true. But shadows are not cast by nothingness. These friends must live substantially and corporeally, although in the flesh I have never met them. Some strange and unguessed sun has cast their shadows across my path. I know that somewhere or the other they have their actual habitation, and I know that they have done the things I have above recounted. These shadows of things unseen are real. In fable lies essential truth. These shadows that now pass quivering before my eyes have behind them great, pulsating embodiments of men and women, in England and France, who have given up their lives to the great work which is to cleanse the foulness of the Central Empires of Europe, regenerate humanity, and bring Freedom to God's beautiful earth.

THE END

1

The bloody and hideous incident related here is not an invention. It is true. It happened when and where I have indicated. – W.J.L.