Book: The Red Planet

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"It is because I do understand, my dear," said I, enjoying the
flashing beauty of her return to Artemisian attitudes, "that I
particularly characterised the dear lady as a disappointment."

"I think," she said, in dejected generalisation, "the working out
of the whole scheme of the universe is a disappointment."

"The High Originators of the scheme seem to bear it pretty
philosophically," I rejoined; "so why shouldn't we?"

"They're gods and we're human," said Betty.

"Precisely," said I. "And oughtn't it to be our ideal to
approximate to the divine attitude?"

Again Betty declared that I was odious. From her point of view--
No. That is an abuse of language. There are mental states in which
a woman has no point of view at all. She wanders over an ill-
defined circular area of vision. That is why, in such conditions,
you can never pin a woman down with a shaft of logic and compel
her surrender, as you can compel that of a mere man. We went on
arguing, and after a time I really did not know what I was arguing
about. I advanced and tried to support the theory that on the
whole the progress of humanity as represented by the British
Empire in general and the about-to-be Lieutenant Tufton in
particular, was advanced by the opportune demise of an
unfortunately balanced lady. From her point--or rather her
circular area of vision--perhaps my dear Betty was right in
declaring me odious. She hated to be reminded of the intolerable
goosiness of her swan. She longed for comforting, corroborative
evidence of essential swaniness for her own justification. In a
word, the poor dear girl was sore all over with mortification, and
wherever one touched her, no matter with how gentle a finger, one
hurt.

"I would have trusted that woman," she cried tragically, "with a
gold-mine or a distillery."

"We trusted her with something more valuable, my dear," said I.
"Our guileless faith in human nature. Anyhow we'll keep the faith
undamaged."

She smiled. "That's considerably less odious."

Nothing more could be said. We let the unfortunate subject rest in
peace for ever after.

These two episodes, the death of poor Reggie Dacre and the Tufton
catastrophe, are the only incidents in my diary that are worth
recording here. Christmas came and went and we entered on the new
year of 1916. It was only at a date in the middle of February, a
year since I had driven to Wellings Park to hear the tragic news
of Oswald Fenimore's death, that I find an important entry in my
diary.





CHAPTER XVII


Mrs. Boyce was shown into my study, her comely Dresden china face
very white and her hands shaking. She held a telegram. I had seen
faces like that before. Every day in England there are hundreds
thus stricken. I feared the worst. It was a relief to read the
telegram and find that Boyce was only wounded. The message said
seriously wounded, but gave consolation by adding that his life
was not in immediate danger. Mrs. Boyce was for setting out for
France forthwith. I dissuaded her from a project so embarrassing
to the hospital authorities and so fatiguing to herself. In spite
of the chivalry and humanity of our medical staff, old ladies of
seventy are not welcome at a busy base hospital. As soon as he was
fit to be moved, I assured her, he would be sent home, before she
could even obtain her permits and passes and passport and make
other general arrangements for her journey. There was nothing for
it but her Englishwoman's courage. She held up her hand at that,
and went away to live, like many another, patiently through the
long hours of suspense.

For two or three days no news came. I spent as much time as I
could with my old friend, seeking to comfort her.

On the third morning it was announced in the papers that the King
had been graciously pleased to confer the Victoria Cross on Lt.
Colonel Leonard Boyce for conspicuous gallantry in action. It did
not occur in a list of honours. It had a special paragraph all to
itself. Such isolated announcements generally indicate immediate
recognition of some splendid feat. I was thrilled by the news. It
was a grand achievement to win through death to the greatest of
all military rewards deliberately coveted. Here, as I had strange
reason for knowing, was no sudden act of sublime valour. The final
achievement was the result of months of heroic, almost suicidal
daring. And it was repayment of a terrible debt, the whole extent
of which I knew not, owed by the man to his tormented soul.

I rang up Mrs. Boyce, who replied tremulously to my
congratulations. Would I come over and lunch?

I found a very proud and tearful old lady. She may not have known
the difference between a platoon and a howitzer, and have
conceived the woolliest notions of the nature of her son's
command, but the Victoria Cross was a matter on which her ideas
were both definite and correct. She had spent the morning at the
telephone receiving calls of congratulation. A great sheaf of
telegrams had arrived. Two or three of them were from the High and
Mighty of the Military Hierarchy. She was in such a twitter of joy
that she almost forgot her anxiety as to his wounds.

"Do you think he knows? I telegraphed to him at once."

"So did I."

She glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece.

"How long would it take for a telegram to reach him?"

"You may be sure he has it by now," said I, "and it has given him
a prodigious appetite for lunch."

Her face clouded over. "That horrid tinned stuff. It's so
dangerous. I remember once Mary's aunt--or was it Cook's aunt--
one of them any way--nearly died of eating tinned lobster--
ptomaine poisoning. I've always told Leonard not to touch it.

"They don't give Colonels and V.C.s tinned lobster at Boulogne," I
answered cheerfully. "He's living now on the fat of the land."

"Let us hope so," she sighed dubiously. "It's no use my sending
out things for him, as they always go wrong. Some time ago I sent
him three brace of grouse and three brace of partridges. He didn't
acknowledge them for weeks, and then he said they were most handy
things to kill Germans with, but were an expensive form of
ammunition. I don't quite know what he meant--but at any rate they
were not eatable when they arrived. Poor fellow!" She sighed
again. "If only I knew what was the matter with him."

"It can't be much," I reassured her, "or you would have heard
again. And this news will act like a sovereign remedy."

She patted the back of my hand with her plump palm. "You're always
so sympathetic and comforting."

"I'm an old soldier, like Leonard," said I, "and never meet
trouble halfway."

At lunch, the old lady insisted on opening a bottle of champagne,
a Veuve Clicquot which Leonard loved, in honour of the glorious
occasion. We could not drink to the hero's health in any meaner
vintage, although she swore that a teaspoonful meant death to her,
and I protested that a confession of champagne to my medical
adviser meant a dog's rating. We each, conscience-bound, put up
the tips of our fingers to the glasses as soon as Mary had filled
them with froth, and solemnly drank the toast in the eighth of an
inch residuum. But by some freakish chance or the other, there was
nothing left in that quart bottle by the time Mary cleared the
table for dessert. And to tell the honest truth, I don't think the
health of either my hostess or myself was a penny the worse. Let
no man despise generous wine. Treated with due reverence it is a
great loosener of human sympathy.

Generous ale similarly treated produces the same effect. Marigold,
driving me home, cocked a luminous eye on me and said:

"Begging your pardon, sir, would you mind very much if I broke the
neck of that there Gedge?"

"You would be aiding the good cause," said I, "but I should
deplore the hanging of an old friend. What has Gedge been doing?"

Marigold sounded his horn and slowed down round a bend, and, as
soon as he got into a straight road, he replied.

"I m not going to say, sir, if I may take the liberty, that I was
ever sweet on Colonel Boyce. People affect you in different ways.
You either like 'em or you don't like 'em. You can't tell why. And
a Sergeant, being, as you may say, a human being, has as much
right to his private feelings regarding a Colonel as any officer."

"Undoubtedly," said I.

"Well, sir, I never thought Colonel Boyce was true metal. But I
take it all back--every bit of it."

"For God's sake," I cried, stretching out a foolish but
instinctive hand to the wheel, "for God's sake, control your
emotions, or you'll be landing us in the ditch."

"That's all right, sir," he replied, steering a straight course.
"She's a bit skittish at times. I was saying as how I did the
Colonel an injustice. I'm very sorry. No man who wasn't steel all
through ever got the V.C. They don't chuck it around on
blighters."

"That's all very interesting and commendable," said I, "but what
has it to do with Gedge?"

"He has been slandering the Colonel something dreadful the last
few months, sneering at him, saying nothing definite, but
insinuatingly taking away his character."

"In what way?" I asked.

"Well, he tells one man that the Colonel's a drunkard, another
that it's women, another that he gambles and doesn't pay, another
that he pays the newspapers to put in all these things about him,
while all the time in France he's in a blue funk hiding in his
dugout."

"That's moonshine," said I. And as regards the drinking, drabbing,
and gaming of course it was. But the suggestion of cowardice gave
me a sharp stab of surprise and dismay.

"I know it is," said Marigold. "But the people hereabouts are so
ignorant, you can make them believe anything." Marigold was a man
of Kent and had a poor opinion of those born and bred in other
counties. "I met Gedge this morning," he continued, and thereupon
gave me the substance of the conversation. I hardly think the
adjectives of the report were those that were really used.

"So your precious Colonel has got the V.C.," sneered Gedge.

"He has," said Marigold. "And it's too great an honour for your
inconsiderable town."

"If this inconsiderable town knew as much about him as I do, it
would give him the order of the precious boot."

"And what do you know?" asked Marigold.

"That's what all you downtrodden slaves of militarism would like
to find out," replied Gedge. "The time will come when I, and such
as I, will tear the veils away and expose them, and say 'These be
thy gods, O Israel.'"

"The time will come," retorted Marigold, "when if you don't hold
your precious jaw, I and such as I will smash it into a thousand
pieces. For twopence I'd knock your ugly head off this present
minute."

Whereupon Gedge apparently wilted before the indignant eye of
Sergeant Marigold and faded away down the High Street.

All this in itself seemed very trivial, but for the past year the
attitude of Gedge had been mysterious. Could it be possible that
Gedge thought himself the sole repository of the secret which
Boyce had so desperately confided to me? But when had the life of
Gedge and the military life of Leonard Boyce crossed? It was
puzzling.

Well, to tell the truth, I thought no more about the matter. The
glow of Mrs. Boyce's happiness remained with me all the evening.
Rarely had I seen her so animated, so forgetful of her own
ailments. She had taken the rosiest view of Leonard's physical
condition and sunned herself in the honour conferred on him by the
King. I had never spent a pleasanter afternoon at her house. We
had comfortably criticised our neighbours, and, laudatores
temporis acti, had extolled the days of our youth. I went to bed
as well pleased with life as a man can be in this convulsion of
the world.

The next morning she sent me a letter to read. It was written at
Boyce's dictation. It ran:

"Dear Mother:

"I'm sorry to say I am knocked out pro tem. I was fooling about
where a C.O. didn't ought to, and a Bosch bullet got me so that I
can't write. But don't worry at all about me. I'm too tough for
anything the Bosches can do. To show how little serious it is,
they tell me that I'll be conveyed to England in a day or two. So
get hot-water bottles and bath salts ready.

"Your ever loving Leonard."

This was good news. Over the telephone wire we agreed that the
letter was a justification of our yesterday's little merrymaking.
Obviously, I told her, he would live to fight another day. She was
of opinion that he had done enough fighting already. If he went on
much longer, the poor boy would get quite tired out, to say
nothing of the danger of being wounded again. The King ought to
let him rest on his laurels and make others who hadn't worked a
quarter as hard do the remainder of the war.

"Perhaps," I said light-heartedly, "Leonard will drop the hint
when he writes to thank the King for the nice cross."

She said that I was laughing at her, and rang off in the best of
spirits.

In the evening came Betty, inviting herself to dinner. She had
been on night duty at the hospital, and I had not seen her for
some days. The sight of her, bright-eyed and brave, fresh and
young, always filled me with happiness. I felt her presence like
wine and the sea wind and the sunshine. So greatly did her
vitality enrich me, that sometimes I called myself a horrid old
vampire.

As soon as she had greeted me, she said in her downright way:

"So Leonard Boyce has got his V.C."

"Yes," said I. "What do you think of it?"

A spot of colour rose to her cheek. "I'm very glad. It's no use,
Majy, pretending that I ignore his existence. I don't and I can't.
Because I loved and married someone else doesn't alter the fact
that I once cared for him, does it?"

"Many people," said I, judicially, "find out that they have been
mistaken as to the extent and nature of their own sentiments."

"I wasn't mistaken," she replied, sitting down on the piano stool,
her hands on the leathern seat, her neatly shod feet stretched out
in front of her, just as she had sat on her wedding eve talking
nonsense to Willie Connor. "I wasn't mistaken. I was never
addicted to silly school-girl fancies. I know my own mind. I cared
a lot for Leonard Boyce."

"Eh bien?" said I.

"Well, don't you see what I'm driving at?"

"I don't a bit."

She sighed. "Oh, dear! How dull some people are! Don't you see
that, when an affair like that is over, a woman likes to get some
evidence of the man's fine qualities, in order to justify her for
having once cared for him?"

"Quite so. Yet--" I felt argumentative. The breach, as you know,
between Betty and Boyce was wrapped in exasperating obscurity.
"Yet, on the other hand," said I, "she might welcome evidence of
his worthlessness, so as to justify her for having thrown him
over."

"If a woman isn't a dam-fool already," said Betty, "and I don't
think I'm one, she doesn't like to feel that she ever made a dam-
fool of herself. She is proud of her instincts and her judgments
and the sensitive, emotional intelligence that is hers. When all
these seem to have gone wrong, it's pleasing to realise that
originally they went right. It soothes one's self-respect, one's
pride. I know now that all these blind perceptions in me went
straight to certain magnificent essentials--those that make the
great, strong, fearless fighting man. That's attractive to a
woman, you know. At any rate, to an independent barbarian like
myself--"

"My dear Betty," I interrupted with a laugh. "You a barbarian? You
whom I regard as the last word, the last charming and delightful
word, in modern womanhood?"

"Of course I'm the child of my century," she cried, flushing. "I
want votes, freedom, opportunity for expansion, power--everything
that can develop Betty Connor into a human product worthy of the
God who made her. But how she could fulfil herself without the
collaboration of a man, has baffled her ever since she was a girl
of sixteen, when she began to awake to the modern movement. On one
side I saw women perfectly happy in the mere savage state of
wifehood and motherhood, and not caring a hang for anything else,
and on the other side women who threw babies back into limbo and
preached of nothing but intellectual and political and economic
independence. Oh, I worried terribly about it, Majy, when I was a
girl. Each side seemed to have such a lot to say for itself. Then
it dawned upon me that the only way out of the dilemma was to
combine both ideals--that of the savage woman in skins and the
lady professor in spectacles. That is what, allowing for the
difference of sex, a man does. Why shouldn't a woman? The woman,
of course, has to droop a bit more to the savage, because she has
to produce the babies and suckle them, and so forth, and a man
hasn't. That was my philosophy of life when I entered the world as
a young woman. Love came into it, of course. It was a
sanctification of the savagery. I've gone on like this," she
laughed, "because I don't want you to protest in your dear old-
fashioned way against my calling myself an independent barbarian.
I am, and I glory in it. That's why, as I was saying, I'm deeply
glad that Leonard Boyce has made good. His honour means a good
deal to me--to my self-esteem. I hope," she added, rising and
coming to me with a caressing touch. "I hope you've got the hang
of the thing now."

Within myself I sincerely hoped I had. If her sentiments were just
as she analysed them, all was well. If, on the other hand, the
little demon of love for Boyce still lurked in her heart, in spite
of the marriage and widowhood, there might be trouble ahead. I
remembered how once she had called him a devil. I remembered, too,
uncomfortably, the scrap of conversation I had overheard between
Boyce and herself in the hall. She had lashed him with her scorn,
and he had taken his whipping without much show of fight. Still, a
woman's love, especially that of a lady barbarian, was a curiously
complex affair, and had been known to impel her to trample on a
man one minute and the next to fall at his feet. Now the worm she
had trampled on had turned; stood erect as a properly
authenticated hero. I felt dubious as to the ensuing situation.

"I wrote to old Mrs. Boyce," she added after a while. "I thought
it only decent. I wrote yesterday, but only posted the letter to-
day, so as to be sure I wasn't acting on impulse."

The latter part of the remark was by way of apology. The breach of
the engagement had occasioned a cessation of social relations
between Betty and Mrs. Boyce. Betty's aunts had ceased calling on
Mrs. Boyce and Mrs. Boyce had ceased calling on Betty's aunts.
Whenever the estranged parties met, which now and then was
inevitable in a little town, they bowed with distant politeness,
but exchanged no words. Everything was conducted with complete
propriety. The old lady, knowing how beloved an intimate of mine
was Betty, alluded but once to the broken engagement. That was
when Betty got married.

"It has been a great unhappiness to me, Major," she said. "In
spite of her daring ways, which an old woman like myself can't
quite understand, I was very fond of her. She was just the girl
for Leonard. They made such a handsome couple. I have never known
why it was broken off. Leonard won't tell me. It's out of the
question that it could be his fault, and I can't believe it is all
Betty Fairfax's. She's a girl of too much character to be a mere
jilt."

I remember that I couldn't help smiling at the application of the
old-fashioned word to my Betty.

"You may be quite certain she isn't that," said I.

"Then what was the reason? Do you know?"

I didn't. I was as mystified as herself. I told her so. I didn't
mention that a few days before she had implied that Leonard was a
devil and she wished that he was dead, thereby proving to me, who
knew Betty's uprightness, that Boyce and Boyce only was to blame
in the matter. It would have been a breach of confidence, and it
would not have made my old friend any the happier. It would have
fired her with flaming indignation against Betty.

"Young people," said I, "must arrange their own lives." And we
left it at that. Now and then, afterwards, she enquired politely
after Betty's health, and when Willie Connor was killed, she spoke
to me very feelingly and begged me to convey to Betty the
expression of her deep sympathy. In the unhappy circumstances, she
explained, she was naturally precluded from writing.

So Betty's letter was the first direct communication that had
passed between them for nearly two years. That is why to my
meddlesome-minded self it appeared to have some significance.

"You did, did you?" said I. Then I looked at her quickly, with an
idea in my head. "What did Mrs. Boyce say in reply?"

"She has had no time to answer. Didn't I tell you I only posted
the letter to-day?"

"Then you've heard nothing more about Leonard Boyce except that he
has got the V.C.?"

"No. What more is there to hear?"

Even Bettys are sly folk. It behooved me to counter with equal
slyness. I wondered whether she had known all along of Boyce's
mishap, or had been informed of it by his mother. Knowledge might
explain her unwonted outburst. I looked at her fixedly.

"What's the matter?" she asked, bending slightly down to me.

"You haven't heard that he is wounded?"

She straightened herself. "No. When?"

"Five days ago."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I haven't seen you."

"I mean--this evening."

I reached for her hand. "Will you forgive me, my dear Betty, for
remarking that for the last twenty minutes you have done all the
talking?"

"Is he badly hurt?"

She ignored my playful rejoinder. I noted the fact. Usually she
was quick to play Beatrice to my Benedick. Had I caught her off
her guard?

I told her all that I knew. She seated herself again on the piano-
stool.

"I hope Mrs. Boyce did not think me unfeeling for not referring to
it," she said calmly. "You will explain, won't you?"

Marigold entered, announcing dinner. We went into the dining-room.
All through the meal Bella, my parlour-maid, flitted about with
dishes and plates, and Marigold, when he was not solemnly pouring
claret, stood grim behind my chair, roasting, as usual, his
posterior before a blazing fire, with soldierly devotion to duty.
Conversation fell a little flat. The arrival of the evening
newspapers, half an hour belated, created a diversion. The war is
sometimes subversive of nice table decorum. I read out the cream
of the news. Discussion thereon lasted us until coffee and
cigarettes were brought in and the servants left us to ourselves.

One of the curious little phenomena of human intercourse is the
fact that now and again the outer personality of one with whom you
are daily familiar suddenly strikes you afresh, thus printing, as
it were, a new portrait on your mind. At varying intervals I had
received such portrait impressions of Betty, and I had stored them
in my memory. Another I received at this moment, and it is among
the most delectable. She was sitting with both elbows on the
table, her palms clasped and her cheek resting on the back of the
left hand. Her face was turned towards me. She wore a low-cut
black chiffon evening dress--the thing had mere straps over the
shoulders--an all but discarded vanity of pre-war days. I had
never before noticed what beautiful arms she had. Perhaps in her
girlhood, when I had often seen her in such exiguous finery, they
had not been so shapely. I have told you already of the softening
touch of her womanhood. An exquisite curve from arm to neck faded
into the shadow of her hair. She had a single string of pearls
round her neck. The fatigue of last week's night duty had cast an
added spirituality over her frank, sensitive face.

We had not spoken for a while. She smiled at me.

"What are you thinking of?"

"I wasn't thinking at all," said I. "I was only gratefully
admiring you."

"Why gratefully?"

"Oughtn't one to be grateful to God for the beautiful things He
gives us?"

She flushed and averted her eyes. "You are very good to me, Majy."

"What made you attire yourself in all this splendour?" I asked,
laughing. The wise man does not carry sentiment too far. He keeps
it like a little precious nugget of pure gold; the less wise beats
it out into a flabby film.

"I don't know," she said, shifting her position and casting a
critical glance at her bodice. "All kinds of funny little feminine
vanities. Perhaps I wanted to see whether I hadn't gone off.
Perhaps I wanted to try to feel good-looking even if I wasn't.
Perhaps I thought my dear old Majy was sick to death of the
hospital uniform perfumed with disinfectant. Perhaps it was just a
catlike longing for comfort. Anyhow, I'm glad you like me."

"My dear Betty," said I, "I adore you."

"And I you," she laughed. "So there's a pair of us."

She lit a cigarette and sipped her coffee. Then, breaking a short
silence:

"I hope you quite understand, dear, what I said about Leonard
Boyce. I shouldn't like to leave you with the smallest little bit
of a wrong impression."

"What wrong impression could I possibly have?" I asked
disingenuously.

"You might think that I was still in love with him."

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