# The British Breed

Extracted from Windsor magazine, v. 41 1914-15, pp. 540-548. Illustrations by A. Gilbert omitted
THE BRITISH BREED
By G. B. LANCASTER
PHYSICALLY speaking, there were four men in Terence's accommodation house on this winter night, when all the wild winds were out, and the snarl of rivers in spate brought a faint echo back up the gorges. But Stair had virtually ceased to count as a man ever since his folk in the Old Country sent him out to New Zealand and paid him to stay there. He was a mouth now, a "remittancer," a sodden log snoring on the window-settle over which the draught whistled, and unheeded by Sleenan and Tyrconnel at their nightly game of poker in the red light from the fire of kahikitea knots.
Nor did Terence heed him, either. Such men, such occurrences, were a natural part of this hard-bitten life on the rim of the road which thrust through the untrodden bush; and, in any case, he was concerned with grave business just now. In all his sixteen years of this work, he had never before been called on to shelter a wedding-party; and, reduced to its lowest common multiple as the party was—Terence had grudgingly conceded that it would be "onraisonable" to expect Jim to make it less than two—the affair was taxing his administrative powers severely.
All day he had been hanging things up and taking them down again. All day he had been "clanin' house," and so shuffling the belongings and senses of Stair and Tyrconnel that Stair had at last gone to sleep on the settle in a vague determination to annex a bed somewhere. Now he plumped a purple vase with red raised violets, and an orange one, freckled in blue, on the table among the cards, and requested a vote as to the suitability of one, or both, for the occasion.
"If they was bhut whole!" he said, and rubbed distressed hands over his little twinkling eyes and snub Irish nose. "Fleete shtuck a shtick through the bottom ov that—divil fly away wid him!—an' the yaller has a powerful crack in ut's hinder parts. Du ye think she wud be turnin' ut round tu see, now?"
Sleenan's red, over-full lips curled on the pipe-stem. He had heard of the wooing of Jim Tarrion.
"Do you think she'll see anyone or anything but Jim, you old fool?" he said. "Give 'em both, or none, if you like—it'll be all one to them."
"Bhut I would not like Jim tu be thinkin'——"
"Jim'll be thinkin' of the girl." Sleenan pushed the vases aside and made up the pack again. "Git out, Terry, and leave 'em alone. Your deal, Tyrconnel."
Tyrconnel was nodding, half asleep, in the heat and the flickering firelight. He yawned, lumbered heavily to his feet, and stretched his long, strong limbs.
"Had suff o' that," he said. "Had suff o' everything, 'cept bed. Ye-ow! I'm stiff. There's rheumatics layin' for me ter-morrer, shouldn't wonder."
"When I was your age, I wasn't always thinkin' o' myself," said Sleenan.
"Well, you make up for it now." Tyrconnel slouched up against the chimney-shelf and kicked the logs together. "Bring us another whisky, Terry, will you? An' if you'd bin haulin' logs through wet timber all day an' all week, you might have reason to be thinkin' o' yerself, Sleenan; but you ain't got to do nothin' but sit round watchin' the grass grow for yer blamed sheep." He rubbed his aching arms with a groan. "Reckon there ain't no power on earth will take me further than my bed to-night," he said.
The clink of bottles and glasses roused Stair. It was popularly believed that an invitation to drink would call him from his grave with more celerity than the final trump. He rolled off the settle and came forward—a tall, weedy figure, with a face which had been beautiful before his life blurred the fine lines of it and put cringing into the bloodshot eyes.
"B-brandy—and soda, Terry, old cock," he said, glancing at Tyrconnel.
Tyrconnel, hands in pockets and shoulders against the chimney-shelf, stared at him with sleepy insolence.
"Who's payin' for you?" he demanded, and Stair's voice dropped to a whine.
"Oh, come, now, you never care to drink alone, Tyrconnel—you so sociable!"
"Oh, git, you blighter!" Tyrconnel took the glass from Terence and drank deliberately. "Go and sponge on somebody else!" he said.
The goad of contempt rarely roused Stair now. He dragged in weak anger at his long, fair moustaches, and mumbled out his usual formula—
"You—no sense of decency, you Colonials. I was riding—riding in Row when you were feeding pigs. Got two brothers—b-brothers—Old England. Got a brother in the Guards—Colonel in the Guards, I tell you!"
"Chuck it! We're dead-sick of your brother, the Colonel. What's he do but ride round and draw a tidy screw for keepin' himself pipe-clayed, and let you draw a tidy screw for keepin' out of his sight? Send their skirtin's and scrapin's out here to fill us up—that's what your fine gentlemen in the Guards does. An' we've had suff of 'em. If I'd half the cash you git for makin' a beast of yourself, I wouldn't be askin' nobody to shout for me!"
Never before had Tyrconnel delivered himself of so impassioned a sentence. At the table Sleenan was laughing, and Terence, still obsessed by his duty to the bride, halted in the dusting of all outstanding articles with his old red bandana to blink in tolerant surprise. Stair retreated a step.
"Terry, Terry, old man, you're not like those brutes! You'll trust me a bit longer, Terry? My remittance is bound to turn up next week."
"Then, belike, your nixt dhrink will come wid your remittance, me persevayrin' pot-bhoy," said Terence, and fell to his dusting again.
The smell of the drink was torturing Stair. Red patches showed on his face.
"I'll pay!" he cried. "I'll pay! Can't you trust—gentleman's word when——"
"P'r'aps he can," said Tyrconnel nastily, "but he can't trust a gentleman's behaviour. Don't want to lose his licence over a drunk man, does yer, Terry?"
"You—you I'm not drunk!"
"Not so drunk as you'd like to be, I dare say." Tyrconnel put down the empty glass with a bang and turned on the other. His hulking body was rigid, and his rough, wind-burnt face flushed with disgust. "Oh, you rotter!" he said.
Terence looked on the two with little eyes screwed up. He had always seen the possibilities in Tyrconnel—the touch of imagination which made him shrink sometimes from Stair.
"What were ye afther findin' in the bush that your timper is that swate tu-night, Tyrconnel?" he asked, and the big, raw fellow gave a sudden shiver.
"My oath! I was nearer findin' my death than I ever want to," he said, and drew close to the fire, as though the last chill were on him. "Wire-rope broke haulin' on a big butt, an' it came screamin' back past the tender quicker 'n now. Thought I was come for, all right. Shouldn't wonder if I dropped bush work and went farmin', an' got fat, like Sleenan. It's safer."
"E-ternally thinkin' o' that blessed hide o' yours, ain't you?" Sleenan stretched his stout, short legs complacently and fingered the rolled-gold chain across the waistcoat which was only less assertive than himself. "But farmin' is all right when you knows how. Look at me, now! Top price for wool this year an' last, an' top price for fat lambs. How's that for high, eh? An' not a man but me got his last draft of lambs over before the floods. Top the market again, eh? Yes, you take up a selection, Tyrconnel, an' git a wife to help wi' the milkin', same as Jim Tarrion's doing, an' as I'm goin' to do, an' you'll make money if this blessed Government 'll keep its hands out of the pockets of a poor hard-working devil."
Terence flapped the dust from his handkerchief and thrust it back in his shirt.
"Ye an' your Socialism," he jibed; "'tis a worse plague to the community than Stair's brother, the Colonel!"
Stair turned miserable eyes on him. He was well used to being baited, and it was, perhaps, the howl of the wind which just now added so to the forlornness of life.
"Beasts you are!" he said half to himself, and went wandering round the room among the flickering shadows. "Beasts all, and I no better—no better!"
Outside came the grate of quick feet on the stones, the ring of a loud, cheery voice. Then the door swung open, and from the hollow dark the wind licked in, sending red wood-ash to whirl about the room and smoke to sting the eyes and set everyone coughing.
"Hallo!" said the big voice. "Hallo, you fellows! Got a fire there?" And then Terence pounced at the door and slammed it, the men shouldered back against each other like nervous sheep, and Jim Tarrion carried his wife over to the chimney-piece and proceeded to unwind her from a network of shawls and cloaks.
Jim was well enough known to these men as a good fellow and a comrade. Even Sleenan had never quarrelled with him, and the whole district allowed that this was Jim's biggest bid for glory. But, in some unaccountable way, the noisy greetings and jests died in their mouths now. These two, coming together out of the wild and lonely night, seemed to express a new factor in life, a new stage in man's existence; and "Jim's girl," with eyes shy as a bush-robin's and wrists as thick as Tyrconnel's thumb, was simply alarming.
By the rules of humour, as they knew it—Jim on his knees in the firelight, loosing wrappings from a yellow head with curling ends of hair about a blushing, drooping face; Jim searching in a valise for slippers, and rubbing cold, small feet and half-frozen hands in great hard paws; Jim fussing over the tea-making, in order that Annie might not have it too strong—Jim under these conditions should have been funny. But he was not, although, perhaps, it was only Tyrconnel who knew why, and he could not have told. And it was only Stair who boldly stormed the breach when Jim gathered up his tired girl-wife and demanded a candle of Terry.
"Confound you, man, what are you about?" cried Stair then, and clapped Jim on the shoulder with a flash of his old swagger. "Twenty minutes you've been here, at least, and never asked us to drink your wife's health!"
Jim's wind-driven, searching eyes ran over Stair sharply. Then his brown face broke up into laughter.
"Stair, you're—you're inimitable!" he said. "All right. I'll be back in a shake. Get their orders, will you, Terry, old boy?"
But Tyrconnel had been stirred by that sense of the picturesque which occasionally showed him the fitness of things. He ordered drinks to his own charge—"against when Jim comes back. But if you give Stair even the smell of a nip to-night, I'll bash you, Terry!" he said.
Sleenan was knocking his pipe-dottle into his palm reflectively
"Jim's mad," he said. "How many cows can a girl like that milk in a day?"
"She—she's got a pretty smile," ventured Tyrconnel, growing red.
"A pretty smile! What good will that do? You've no more sense than Jim."
"Tell him so, and why you think it, then," said Tyrconnel viciously, as Jim came back to pick up the wraps with which he had covered that little fair-haired girl from the cruelty of the long, bitter drive. There was a deep and genial content over him which set Stair scheming for a second drink, and Terence nodded, chuckling.
"The ould woman's thraps, is ut?" he said. "Well, now, ut is settlin' down at lasht ye are, Jim, wid a farm ov your own an' a wife ov your own, an' the childher growin' up about your knees, as is proper an' convaynient. No more South African campaigns an' that thruck, eh, bhoy?"
Tenderly, clumsily, Jim was folding the feminine things and laying them aside. He stopped a moment to laugh. That wild year at the skirts of Death had been a thing which he would not have foregone. But this hour of his ripe manhood was better.
"No, no," he said, "I've done my share, Terry. It's the home and the missus for me now. That's all I want of life. What is it, Stair?" He listened to the stammering whine a moment, and then he shook Terence by the arm. "You old villain," he said, "didn't I say he was to have one?" Then, in Terence's ear: "He's got to be happy to-night, Terry. Can't allow less to anyone—to-night!"
Terence blinked up into the kindly, clean-cut face. Muddied and wearied of body, wind-whipped and reddened of skin and eyes, Jim yet looked equal to financing the happiness of the whole world at this present. "Have ut your own way, ye spilin' spalpeen," he said, with a twinkle. "Bedad, 'tis over-fond ye are of sharin' all bhut your throubles, Jim! An', sure, ye've a right tu be grinnin'. All the swateness ye said an' more she is, bhoy!"
"What do you know about her yet?" demanded Jim, with a great laugh. He settled his shoulders against the chimney-shelf beside Tyrconnel, and filled and lit up his pipe with leisurely, large movements. "Well, what's the world been doing down this way?" he said.
"An' how wud we be knowin' more than yersilf?" cried Terence. "Wid all the rivers in flood, an' the wires down wid the washout at the Point, 'tis cut off entirely from ut's natural mother is this shlip of a worruld just now. Whirroo! There is Pat himsilf here on the word ov ut. Hey, Pat! Hev ye come over the river, through the flood an' the night an' all? 'Tis the bould bhoy ye are, entirely!"
Pat staggered in as though blown on the blast. He thrust the door shut with an effort, and shed his oilskins in a dripping heap on the floor. Exhausted and draggled, he was as a man has a right to be who has borne a heavy load of mail across a flooded river in the dusk. And yet he was scarce a man yet, this slack-limbed, gawky youth, saddle-worn and cramped, who dropped the mail sack with a grunt of relief, and lurched forward to warm his frozen body at the fire.
"Have a drink, Pat?" Stair improved the occasion skilfully. "Jim's shouting."
"Oh"—Tyrconnel straightened with a jerk—"wouldn't he make a camel sick? Anything happened anywhere, Pat?"
"Dunno." Pat seized the glass Terence brought and drank with teeth chattering on the rim. Then his benumbed senses stirred. "Oh, yes, there's war—whips o' war," he said, and drank again.
"War?" Spoken like that, the word seemed to have no meaning. The men stared at Pat, with the lank, black hair in wisps about his sallow, bony face, and his lean body shivering as he turned it before the glow of the logs. "War?" they repeated stupidly, and then Terence found speech.
"Arrah, ye haythen! War, wud ye say, an' no more to ut? Wid whom and by whom, then? Shpit it out!"
Pat scratched his head. Collins, bringing the mail to the ford, had told him.
"Germany," he said, with a wrench at his memory, "an' Ostria, an' Servia, an' Monte—Monte Carlo!"
"Montenegro," said Jim briefly. "Well?"
But Pat's mind was thawing now.
"France, Rhoosia, an' Belgium," he said in a breath, and retired behind his long glass again.
Jim did not move, although the men had fallen upon the sack and were scattering the papers out into fluttering flags of threat and horror. A voice seemed suddenly chanting in his ears: " This is the beginning, the beginning!" But, oh, Heavens, the beginning of what?
"An' England!" Pat searched his mind again. "That's all—yet."
"All!" The yell of derision came from Terence, but it set Pat knitting his brows.
"All I can think on. Are there any more places? That little snipe Collins told me. Didn't see it myself." He picked up a paper at random and peered into it. Evidently this matter, which was driving the men about him into a whirl of words and actions, demanded some interest of him.
"England!" said Stair, and there was a note in his voice which brought all eyes on him for a moment. But the blaze in face and soul died out even as they looked, and they turned in bewildered haste to the papers again.
Jim only, of all these men, knew in the least what war meant, and their questions pattering over him seemed like the hail of bullets already. Dazed he stood, shuddering under the shock, sickened by the memories, the knowledge which leapt up to confront him. This was the Great War—the Great War which each generation had been promised. This was Germany's long-delayed threat to England. This was the ghastly reality before which the whole world was reeling already. Out of the papers head-lines seemed to spring at him, blood-red and audible with horror. This was the Great War!
"My fat lambs—oh, my fat lambs!" Sleenan's voice cut shrilly through the noise. "This will knock the market all to smithereens. There's a dead loss to me—a dead loss! Curse the war! Curse England! What's she want to go poking her nose into this for? She needn't have." He spread a paper in shaking hands. "This says she needn't have," he cried, and his voice went up in a squeak. "What business had she to interfere? She should think of her Colonies—of the mess she's making of her commerce. She should think—— Oh, my fat lambs!"
He trod the crisp sheets underfoot, scarlet with futile rage, but Tyrconnel rescued them. The long roll of names held a hint of the unknown, the picturesque, and through the intricacies of print he was seeking information, with his weariness forgotten. Terence thrust a paper into Jim's hands.
"Give a lick ov the eye over that, an' that, bhoy," he said. "We're intu ut, all right—tu the hilt, an' beyant ut, Mary Mother have marcy on us!"
But Jim looked over the little man's head at Stair, and there was a light in his eyes, strange and grim, which stirred the other man's muddled senses.
"Stair, you ought to know," he said. "How many men can England put into the field at the jump—now? France and Russia aren't mobilised yet."
"I—I—— Not many, I think," stammered Stair, and Terence's voice rose.
"How many can Germany putt intu the field, wid Austria tu help her? I've a notion that's what we're wantin' to know. An' how many can she putt tu sea wid that grand new fleet of hers? That's what we're wantin' tu know, too."
"What's going to happen to our commerce? That's what we want to know!" Sleenan shook a crackling sheet furiously at Jim. "Germany's the second strongest Power in Europe, and look at her merchant traffic! England's bitten off more than she can chew, if she thinks to reduce Germany. If she'd united with her, we could have stood against the world. Now we'll have German vessels shelling us before the week's out. That's the way England looks after her Colonies!"
"'Tis always that talk wid ye, Sleenan," began Terence. And then Tyrconnel looked up with puzzled anger clouding his rough, ruddy face.
"I say," he said, and his voice seemed to appeal to a judgment wider than any in this little room, "they do seem to be treatin' that there Bel-gum in a darned skunky way. What in thunder are they doin' their fightin' on her for? It don't seem right to me, someways."
"Right!" sneered Sleenan. "Who thinks of right when ambition gets in the way? Here's New Zealand offering troops already, The Press says. Same old rotten madness as at the South Africa time. We gave our men and money then, and what good has it done us? Not one penny will I give towards encouragin' this kind o' craziness—not one!"
"When did ye iver give anything tu anybody, 'cept opinions, and thim not asked for, bedad?" said Terence viciously, and then Jim put down the paper in his hand.
"Kitchener is calling for more troops," he said, and in some way his voice steadied the men. "Stair, how many can England put in the field—now?"
"There's his brother, the Colonel," said Sleenan. "How many more do you want?"
Stair straightened up slowly. He rubbed his hands over his face, as if to clear dull eyes and brain.
"I can't tell you," he said, and paused. Then, with a flash: "But I know how many will be there—and that's every man of fit or fighting age she's got!"
Sleenan laughed. And a vision of the men with whom he had once stormed the kopjes and lain in the trenches, swept, vital and exulting, over Jim. He faced round and his voice rang.
"Stair's right!" he cried. "So they will! I've been in England, and I've fought with the English, and I know that they'll just be tumbling over each other to get into this. They're not fools. They'll see quick enough that it's the biggest thing they've ever had a chance to handle, and, by George, they'll rush it like hot cakes—rush it!"
The passion in the words shot like electricity through Stair, loosing in him something of the spirit of his brother, "the Colonel in the Guards."
"Rush it!" he echoed. "That's it! They'll rush it, like the sports they are! C-call us a sporting nation, don't they? And so we are, and so is sport the finest preparation for the finest game—fellow can play. We'll be a sporting nation to-day, don't you make any mistake about that. We'll be rolling up in our thousands in Old England to-day—off the cricket-fields and the tennis-courts and the football grounds—yes, and from the boat-sheds and the shooting-lodges and the—the cinemas!" He looked round, with his bleared eyes blazing and his thin, trembling hands clenched. "They'll be coming from everywhere—coming like locusts—the men of England, the rich and the poor—all the men who know how to play the game. And who does know if an Englishman doesn't? They'll be there—the men of England—the men of England!"
His strained voice broke and quavered into a sob. There were beads of sweat on his face. He pressed his hands over it as though to shut off the staring eyes, and dropped into a chair. There was a little silence, so sharp that it seemed to tingle men's blood. Then Pat said, in a half-whisper—
"With all them, they won't be wantin' us!"
"They will be wanting us." Jim spoke very quietly now, and Pat saw that his face was grey. "They'll want every man of us that they can get, and quick, too. Do you understand that this is going to be the biggest and bloodiest war the world has ever known? We're fightin' in millions this time, not in thousands. Was the river rising when you came over just now?"
"A bit, and she's dirty. No crossin' her by mornin', I shouldn't wonder."
"Then. I must go to-night," said Jim, half to himself. He turned, and Terence barred the way, staring and agitated.
"Jim, what fule-talk have ye got now? What is ut, ye wild gossoon?"
"The recruitin' offices have been open in Christchurch for more'n a week, and my name not given in. That's a week too long. I'll give it in by mornin'."
"Jim, is it mad ye are—mad? Jim, have ye forgotten—her?"
"Forgotten her!" Jim's control slacked for a moment, and his eyes sent Terence stumbling back. "Pat, d'you know when the transport is likely to leave?"
"Dunno. They was mendin' the tellyphone wires when I come by the Point. We'll git news 'fore long, likely. Jim, if they reelly was wantin'—us——"
Tyrconnel shouldered him aside. He seemed vaguely seeking something, and not even he knew yet that the something was a weapon. One call had come insistent to him through all this terrible reading—the call of Belgium's children and her women. Like the drafted lambs at shearing-time he heard them crying—pitifully crying, beyond their ravished homes, their murdered dead.
"Look!" he said hoarsely. "Read that! They're lettin' loose hell, them Germans, they're lettin' loose hell!" Then he fell away again, muttering and searching down the columns, and Jim jerked Terence aside quickly.
"Terry," he said, "you'll get her back to her mother to-morrow? And she'll come down to Christchurch soon's the rivers drop. What? Yes, they'll need me—they'll need me! I can lick the young 'uns into shape, and I'm seasoned."
"An' will not she need ye—the girl ye made a bride tu-day?"
It was a cruel hit, and Jim winced under it, but his eyes did not fall.
"Yes, she will need me, too, and she'll send me," he said. "The women won't fail us now any more than they ever did. That you, Pat? Of course I'm goin'—right away!"
"Ain't took long to throw you off your balance," said Sleenan. "We'd be as well off under German rule, anyways. That's what I say. Let England look after herself. I'd see her further 'fore I'd turn out an' git shot for her!"
Stair was roaming through the room. The blood of his forefathers was shouting out to him across the years, making of him for the moment a man again. He swung round on Sleenan, and his words licked out like some new-lit flame.
"In England's name, I thank you, Mr. Sleenan!" he cried. "She's going into this war with clean hands. She's fighting with gentlemen—gentlemen! And you and your kind won't be there, for she's doing it without conscription. England knows how to distribute her honours, sir. A place in the ranks is the highest honour she can give her sons to-day, and you can bet that miserable little shrivelled soul of yours they'll be jostling each other to get it!" His passionate eyes caught Jim's, and the souls of the two men spoke each to each.
"Jim," he said tensely, "Jim, it's going to be as bad as ever we thought!"
"Every bit, " said Jim, and smiled. "She's been getting ready. It will be worth while, Stair."
And then from the corner the telephone-bell rang, and the man from the Point desired to know if anyone had heard of the War. Terence had leapt at the receiver, and his voice was unsteady.
"Do we know?" he cried. "Do we know, an' the hearts in us bristlin' like bay'nits already? Git along wid it, then! Whist, boys, till I tell ut! What? A little place called Liege is shtickin' to ut like the devil an' all, wipin' up the innimy be handfuls, no less. Servia behavin' like a nest o' hornets? Bedad, she has my blessin'! Rhoosia gettin' ready tu roll, is she? Troth, 'tis not me wud wish tu be undher her wanst she is started. France mobilising, Switzerland, Holland, Italy—wud ye hear tu that, bhoys? Is the whole worruld intu ut, then? Och, lyin' by for pickin's are they, now? So-o! Belgium shtandin' up tu Germany by her lonesome? Hurroosh for the little bantam! An' where wud we be oursilves? Are they goin' tu putt us acrost blue water? How? Sthair, wud ye git off of me feet, then? What? Bedad an' bedad, our Fleet has disappeared off the face of the earth. She wud be gone tu make ut hot for somebody. Och, why was I not there tu see the glory ov the worruld! Shtair, wud ye——"
But Stair was beyond holding now. He had questions to ask, and they and the answers tumbled out piecemeal to the waiting men. Where was the New Army? No, not the Regulars, nor the Territorials. "The New Army? What? Why, you owl"—Stair's yellow face was flushed and his voice strong—"I mean the Volunteers! What? Kitchener has called for a hundred thousand men? What for? Why didn't he call a million? He's got a million, hasn't he? What?" The sudden deep note brought a jump out of the men. "Say that again. Thirty thousand volunteered? Thirty? Curse it all! Don't you monkey with me! Jim, he says thirty. Look here, Betson, you've mislaid a nought. Go and look for it. What? Shut up! I tell you England would get that number in a day. Shut up! I'm English, and I know England. So does Jim. Go and hunt up that nought. You'll find it in the last papers." He turned, and in his eyes was a fear such as Jim hoped never to see in any other eyes. "He says only thirty thousand!" he whispered. "Why, you know—Test Match at Lord's—any second-class cricket match—do better than that! What?" Then Stair slammed down the receiver and turned on his heel, and no man cared to look at his face. Betson had not found the other nought.
For all the self-indulgence of his wasted life it is probable that Stair received some fairly adequate punishment in that moment when he realised that the Old Country needed men, and that his own hand had put it out of his power to be one of them. By the morrow he would be sunk among his swinish husks again, but for the moment manhood called in him, and he could not be a man for the land which had given him birth.
Jim's face had hardened as the news came over the wires. England would give her men, but she had always been slow to wake, and something in his keen vitality told him that there was not going to be time for dalliance now. He chafed at thought of the six weeks' voyage before him, the training of the men, the waiting, while the enemy would not wait. And then Tyrconnel was raging through the room, half drunk with horror. Belgium and her tragedy had in some way gripped his raw imagination—Belgium possessed him—and, as men under the stress of great emotion have done and will do, he saw red. Muttering, shouting now and again, rushing from one to another with rage and a half-crying pity, he flung the history of that violation before them as not one of them had seen it yet—he, the self-centred, clumsy bushman, torn out of his dulness by that agonised call from so far away.
"It's true!" he sobbed. "The papers say it. They're givin' that poor little devil of a Bel-gum hell! They're killin' women an' children! They're drivin' 'em up to the guns! Men are doin' that—men like it might be me. Is this war? Jim, is this war? Women an' children! It's gittin' too thick, this. I got to go an' tell 'em so. Let me by, Terry. Jim, did you hear? Men are doin' this! I got to git at 'em!" He straightened up his huge body and shook his huge fists in the air. "Men like it might be me! Ah-h! An' I'm twelve thousand mile away an' more, when women an' children——" He pulled up suddenly, looking round with strained eyes, and the anguish of his words rang in the ears of the others yet. "I got to go!" he said, with a sudden cold decision. "I got to go an' tell 'em I've had suff o' that! Come on, Jim!" He snatched up his hat and shook himself into his great-coat. Sleenan stared at him, with thick lips drawn back in a mirthless grin. There was a spirit abroad here with which he could not cope, and he did not know that it was the spirit of the lion cubs who had heard their mother's voice across the distant seas.
"Thought you were too dog-tired to go further than your bed to-night," he said. "And I thought you were too darned careful of your skin to risk a wire-rope breaking. You'll have to ride forty miles to-night, over rivers and all, and there'll be guns at the end of this—bayonets and guns, Tyrconnel, you ass!"
Tyrconnel did not heed. He pulled the door open and looked back. "Come on, Jim!" he said, and vanished into the howling night.
The rush of cold wind and sleet sent Sleenan closer to the fire. Jim said: "Cut after him, Pat, and help him saddle up. And you might lend me your second horse, will you? I'll send him back first chance."
The fear of ridicule was the only fear Pat knew. He grew scarlet, muttering something. But Terence caught at the word.
"Is ut so? An' wud ye go, tu? Wid that ride tu take again, an' all that's at the ind ov ut? Wud ye be goin' wid Tyrconnel, thin, bhoy?"
"Might as well." Pat was apologetic and incoherent. "Can ride a bit, if they're wantin' anybody—might as well." And then he swept up his oilskins and fled out as though in utter shame.
Terence looked at Jim, and his little twinkling eyes were dimmed.
"Ah, my young day's pasht whin I wud ha' bin wid ye!" he said. "'Tis the divil's own luck ye have, Jim, to fight for the ould flag twicet in a lifetime, no less, an' to know how the bright eyes o' her will be shinin' wid pride!"
Jim walked slowly to the inner door. The dread of what he had to do was heavy on him. But well he knew that he dared not wait for the rivers to rise again. It was now that his soul's joy was required of him—now!
Even as his hand touched it, the door opened, and she stood there. Stair gave a nervous gasp and backed away to the settle, as though he had seen what he had no right to see. Then, with the others, he understood that it did not matter. For these two lovers the world held now nought but themselves—and the knowledge of their parting.
A gown of some blue soft stuff was wrapped round Annie, girdled at the slender waist, and misty about the shoulders with the fair curling hair. Her wide eyes were on Jim, and she moved and spoke as a sleep-walker might do.
"I heard," she said, "I heard it through the wall!"
"Och, fules an' all that we were!" cried Terence, with a half sob. But there was no weakness in Jim's voice when he answered her—
"Did you, darlin'? All right. I was just comin' to——"
"To say 'Good-bye.'" The voice was no more than a breath, but in the still room it was loud enough to touch the heart. Stair's face was hidden as he sat hunched on the settle, but Sleenan watched curiously. He had never really believed that Jim would go. He did not believe it now.
"To say 'Good-bye' for a little," said Jim steadily. "I'll see you again next week, dear." He drew her up against him closely. "Next week," he said. She put her hand up to his face. Her own showed the stunning blow yet.
Beneath the wind-burn Jim's face was whiter than her own. He tried to smile.
"Buck up, girlie! You got to send me an' be brave, just as all the other women who're sending their men will be brave, you know."
"Send you?" For all its softness, the whisper thrilled.
"That's it! Send me—send me, an' wish me luck. Come, my girl, you're not goin' back on me? You're not goin' to make this harder—harder than I——"
His voice broke, but he had struck the right note. A shudder ran through the little, clinging figure, and then she straightened up, leaning back in his arms.
"Of course," she said clearly. "Send you, and wish you luck. And more than that! Do your duty, my man, or never come back to me! Say that, Jim! Say it!"
Her voice rang now. The colour was hot in her face and her blue eyes burned. To Jim she was suddenly something dearer, more sacred, more longed for than ever she had been yet. For a moment he could not speak. Then—
"May I do my duty, or never come back to you!" he said. "Yes, you don't deserve anythin' less than that, my girl. I won't forget."
And the men listening heard a slight sigh, and she slipped down in his arms as water slips. But when they would have rushed to help, Jim turned on them with a snarl, and his eyes were wild. He carried her into the other room, shutting the door between; and after a few minutes he came back, and his face showed hard and grey.
"It's better this way," he said. "You'll look after her, Terry—you and Stair."
And then, without more words, without a backward look, he went away into the tumult of the dark night.
"Mary guard his sowl!" said Terence, and for once the twinkle was out of his eyes. But where he sat by the table Sleenan laughed.
"Why didn't you give him a message to your brother, the Colonel, Stair?" he asked, and from the settle the last fading spurt of Stair's pride answered—
"How should he find him? There'll be everybody's brother at the Front, and their sons and husbands, too! They'll be there! Yes! By Heavens, they will all be there!"
Copyright, 1915, by G. B. Lancaster, in the United States of America. Dramatic rights reserved.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1945, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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