BEHIND THE LINES
WE had been talking about the war and had found it rather a mild and soothing topic after the unrests and the discontents of peace. For what with strikes and lockouts and the threat of both and Ireland Russia, and India, and France and Germany and Turkey, all simmering or in active eruption, we seemed to be ever so much more unsettled than we had been and there looked to be no end to it. And so we had turned back for a moment to dwell out there again, amid those four strained years that are so difficult of obliteration.
It was my friend Vignolles who began it.
"Do you know," he had asked, "there are people who almost go down on their knees and beg you to tell them something hair-raising? It's the civilians, of course, who haven't been out. They want to hear stories that'll make their flesh creep. They almost implore you to lie to them, and I've no doubt a good many fellows oblige. But modern war—what is it? Mechanics! A man ten miles away, who's never seen you and doesn't know you, lets off a gun and it blows you into small pieces. That's all the fun he gets out of it, and most times he doesn't know whether he's hit anybody or not. Or you squirm on your belly in the mud and a chap up in the air drops bombs on you, and you're stiff with funk and he's not specially enjoying it. He dumps down his load and goes home. Or, once in a blue moon, you may be able to empty your revolver into a man or two who's trying to bayonet you. Nobody's very sane in those moments, and I grant it's exciting. But you finish with it, and it evaporates. It's a kind of debauch. You were drunken and glorious, and now you're sober."
"What about the generals?" I put in here. "They get a good deal of sustained excitement. Foch must have had months of it, and so must Ludendorff."
"One man in a million; that's not much to go round. But if you want drama, true drama," he went on placidly, "sustained and covering months and weeks, it's among the men behind the lines that you must look for it; among the Staff people the Supply people, the Intelligence people. They've got the time and the opportunity. They carry on more or less as people do at home. They go to their office in the morning and leave again at sunset. They've the time for drama, for histories, for all the excitements that the fighting soldier has to do without."
I remember the contentment of that afternoon. Vignolles was leaving England in a day or two. He was going back to the hot and steamy place, down in the Malays, where before the war he had grown rubber and thought to stay for many a long year. So, more or less, it was a day of parting, and we two had decided to spend it outdoors, amid the English country-side that Vignolles loved so well, but had never made his own.
We had caught an early train that took us to Oxted Junction and then we had tramped from Surrey over the Kentish border, eating our sandwiches in the open and anchoring at last on a high spot, green and lonely and pied with flowers—it may have been in somebody's park or just outside. We lay stretched in the sun till the rabbits grew used to us, till the cock pheasants strutted by and a cuckoo struck his notes on a branch above our heads. Far away in the valley ran a thin ribbon of water, and beyond it the blue dimness of the hills. It was a perfect hour, a perfect landscape; the freshness and surprise of spring were not yet over. Nor was I astonished when Vignolles, starting up and looking around us, exclaimed, "All said and done, England's about the best place in the world!"
"Then why don't you stop here?" I asked at that.
"No room for me here; there never was." And then, explaining himself: "It's all right if you've money or get in with the people who'll push you if you do as you're told; or you may be an unscrupulous rascal till you're forty and spend the rest of your life covering it up. But people like me have to get out of it—too much of a crowd. Still, it's a fine country, the very best. Ridiculous having that war and cutting down half the trees. Look at them; naked, numbered, and ready to be dragged away."
Over the near fence were a good many trunks that had lately been cut down and trimmed for the sawmills. Still, there were plenty left that hadn't been touched.
"I've always thought the German a damned fool," my friend resumed. "If he'd had any sense he'd have squared France; given her back Alsace-Lorraine shaken hands with her and won her confidence. Then he could have walked into Russia with nobody to disturb him; helped himself to chunks of it, as much as he wanted. All the Baltic part was half German already, and it had actually been German. He could have begun on that. Worth six Alsace-Lorraines. And then I don't know that if he'd wanted colonies in the tropics there would have been anything very serious to stop him collaring a slice of South America. There'd have been the Monroe Doctrine and little else if he'd played his cards well. He'd friends everywhere. He'd friends with us of a sort, chaps who were out to help him, though I don't suppose that was the way they looked at it. Those fellows behind the lines—I ran into a nest of them. You remember—or didn't I tell you?—I got sent to hospital early in nineteen-fifteen. I was in France then, with a mounted regiment. We were exercising the horses and something must have happened. I remember exercising the horses, and next I remember waking up in hospital and wondering how the deuce I'd got there.
"'You've taken a toss,' said the sister, 'and now you must keep quiet.'
"I knew I hadn't been thrown and I wondered how it had come about. My head hurt and the doctors looked into the pupils of my eyes, and felt my skull to see whether there was any fracture. There was a dead blank between going out with the horses and waking up in hospital. Concussion's like that and I had more than was pleasant. It feels like neuralgia down both sides of your brain and aches like blazes. Crowe, one of our officers, came in next day and told me what had happened. A long-range gun had dropped a shell among us and I'd been blown off or thrown. The poor old horse had been more damaged than I. It took me three months to get over it, and then I was only fit for light duty.
"'We're sending you down to the Army Service Corps,' said the depot chief where I'd reported; 'till you're right again. You'll be in a base and they won't overwork you.' And that's how I got right among the people who live behind the lines.
"The Army Service Corps had always been a bit of a mystery to me before that. I discovered how it dealt primarily with supply and transport; so that you might be a gay young fellow riding along with a string of wagons, or you might be stuck in a grocery stall for the duration of the war; or you might be out with a division or a brigade and have to answer for their meals and forage, or you might be in charge of a row of three-ton lorries and have a car so as to run round with them; or you might be given the wheeled part of a field ambulance, or you might be dishing out frozen meat from a cold-storage depot. Very versatile, isn't it? And that's not the half of its versatility, either.
"Down at the base, of course, we weren't particularly heroic, and most of our work was unloading supplies off steamers and stacking them and sending 'em up the line by rail. I wasn't wanted for that job. I wasn't wanted much for anything, it seemed, and every morning I went down to the supply depot, reported to the adjutant, and he smiled and said, 'You just play about.' So off I'd go to the sea-front and have a bathe and talk to French families on the beach and try to keep out of mischief till bed-time. It was a fair-sized town, with a good harbor and business going on and summer visitors who'd come for the sea-bathing, though most of these were refugees and people who'd been driven out from the places overrun by the Germans. I lived at a hotel, full of staff officers, and was in clover, and the tariff was fixed by the army, so it came cheap.
"One morning the adjutant said, 'You've got a French name, haven't you? Can you speak French?'
"About as well as English.'.
"'I thought so,' said he; 'just come along to the colonel.'
"He led me into another office, and there I was introduced to the head of the supply depot, a tired man, obviously overworked, perhaps a bit too old for his job, or perhaps gone soft from many years of peace soldiering.
"He asked me a few questions about myself and seemed satisfied.
"'Major Colgate, who does the local purchase,' he said, 'has got to go under an operation. He'll show you the work and then you can carry on till he comes back.' And with that he returned to his papers and we two saluted and went out again.
"'You'll see an office marked "Local Purchase" on one of the quays,' said the adjutant; 'you'll find Colgate there. It's rather a nice job.'
"Major Colgate was expecting me. He was a large, florid man with a breezy manner, and not much troubled, apparently, by his impending operation or by its cause.
"'A11 you've got to do,' he said, 'is to let the office run itself, and sign papers. Corporal Cliffe knows all about things; you leave it to him and you can't go wrong. And if you're asked for something fresh, there's the interpreter. Audibert'll always find a good man for you and do the bargaining. I'll take you round to the bank and introduce you. There won't be many checks to sign and I'll be out and about again before you can turn round. There's nothing in it really if you're used to big business. And there's a car. You'll have a car.'
"We took the car and drove to the bank and I gave them my signature and found I had a credit balance of a good many thousand francs. 'When this is gone, you put in to the base cashier for more,' said Colgate, 'and let him have the receipts. But Clifife'll do all that. You've only got to sign for it.'
"Next we went to the fish-market and ordered fish, and to a fruiterer's and ordered fruit, and to a butcher's and ordered veal, and to a wine-merchant's and ordered wine. 'It's for the hospitals,' he explained, 'what I call the retail trade. They send us a list, and we do that first thing every morning. Those oysters we ordered—they're for a general. Mind you give him what he wants. It pays to look after 'em.'
"He kept on explaining as we went; and when we got back to the office, 'This base feeds and maintains its share of the Expeditionary Force,' he ended. 'All the things that can't be supplied from home or which are best dealt with locally come to us. It's our business to find the stuff. That's why we're called Local Purchase. Simple as ABC. Corporal Cliffe knows all about it. Don't you, Cliffe? Now I'd best be off. We'll drive to the hospital.'
"I went along with him and on the road he told me what an important fellow he was at home. 'A big employer of labor,' he said, 'but of course I joined up. Can't ask other men to join if you funk it yourself, can you?' He laughed at his major's pay. Before the war he was making as many pounds as he was making shillings—or was it pence?—to-day; and he asked me about my own modest affairs and intimated that if I came to him later on, when things were peaceful, he might be able to find a place for me. I was only a second lieutenant, and he looked at me condescendingly. I suppose his own rank went with the job and hadn't much to do with the individual. 'So this is the kind of thing that grows in a base,' thought I, and I gave him an extra good salute when he departed. I was glad I hadn't got to work with him. I couldn't have stood it for very long.
"I went back to the hotel for lunch after that and told the car to fetch me at two-thirty.
"There was nothing much to do in the office of an afternoon and I yawned and signed a few papers. Corporal Cliffe seemed busy with a long letter home; there was a private who entered figures in a book and kept accounts; and Monsieur Audibert, the interpreter, looked in and asked for money. It was he who went round and paid the small bills we owed. 'You see, I get a commission,' he said; 'it is the custom of the country.'
"I knew that to be the case and could offer no objection.
"'The corporal and I divide it,' he added genially, when Cliffe produced a cigar-box full of notes and handed some over.
"The private looked on and said nothing.
"No more did I. I knew it was contrary to King's Regulations for anybody below commissioned rank to handle money, and quite rightly. It protects the man and makes the officer responsible. But if the major liked to chance it, that was his lookout. I left about tea-time and went into the town. Cliffe said I wouldn't be wanted and if anything special required signing, he'd send it down to my hotel. But it was highly unlikely. I walked back feeling rather pleased at being some use in the world again, and next morning I turned up early, prepared to deal with what the major had called the 'retail trade.'
"This didn't amount to much, though it gave us a lot of trouble. Sick men have strange fancies, and when their rank is high enough the hospital does its best for them. There was that general who was always calling for wild birds and oysters, and the birds were difficult to come by. I often felt like sending him a ten-franc note and asking him to pass the job on to his servant.
"The really serious business of that office, however, lay in getting fresh vegetables for the troops, bran for the horses, and yeast for the bakeries. We used up quantities of these, and France just then had enough and to spare for everybody. They're a nation of market-gardeners, and there were lots of millers with bran, and the yeast came from the distilleries. Every base had its own area and we were not allowed to poach on each other's preserves. Still, we were given a large slice of country, and having a car one could get about quite comfortably. And in the office I found that everything was pretty well cut and dried and it would be simple to carry on with the contractors and people Major Colgate had left to us. So that when I'd done with the hospitals and the unexpected things that cropped up now and again I could take life fairly easy. I enjoyed running round the coast or exploring the country in the car and it wasn't difficult to find excuses. After a battle—there was the one at Loos, for instance—the hospitals cried for thousands of oranges. I crossed my whole territory looking for them, paid in cash, and loaded them up where I found them. The dealers rather held me up over that and made us pay through the nose. But no one questioned me. Our tradition was to trust people and the main thing was that the stuff should be on hand when it was wanted.
"So there I was, carrying on under the guidance of my little staff, the corporal full of precedent, the interpreter not much occupied, the private keeping the books and looking after the accounts. In that huge supply depot we formed a tiny island, a very peaceful spot. Sometimes I wandered round and marveled at its industry; saw the ships unloading at the quays, saw the mountains of bully-beef and jam and biscuits that were stacked in the hangars, the cases of tea and bacon, the bags of flour and sugar and salt, the sacks of oats and barley and the bales of hay, and my own bran that arrived here. I'd wander among the fuel, and the petrol and lubricating-oils, or into the carefully guarded 'cage where they kept 'medical comforts,' stout and ale, champagne and arrowroot, port and brandy and tinned chicken. Or through the Indian section, with its rice and strange odors. The men who worked among these things led a rather monotonous life, dishing out the same stuff day by day, or loading up trains with it and despatching them and standing about on those weather-swept quays by the hour. It wasn't heroic, but it was dashed hard work. I can't say that I envied them. But they rather envied me, with my freedom and my car and little office. I still had my comfortable quarters at the hotel, my headaches were gone, and I was fit and hearty. It was pleasant to be of some use again, and everything seemed to be going swimmingly and without much effort.
"At the end of each week we got sheets from the other bases giving the prices they were paying in their area, and the private who never said much got out one of our own and placed it on my desk for signature. The first week they came separately. But the second week the private waited. I suppose he waited; for when the corporal had gone out, he placed them on my desk together. It was almost an invitation to make comparisons and I began idly, till after a while it struck me that we were paying more dearly than anybody else.
"The corporal came back and I mentioned it and he threw a look at the private.
"'I wouldn't trouble about these, sir,' he said, 'it's quite all right'; and when I asked for reasons, 'This is a dear district,' he answered. 'They've got us here. Major Colgate always says so. Not enough competition. And, of course, it's the quantities that make the price. They don't tell us the quantities.'
"It might easily be true and one knew what these contractors and people were, all out to rob and make the most of their opportunity; still, I didn't quite see why vegetables should cost from fifteen to twenty per cent. more here than a few miles away, though they might have one over yeast and things like that, for instance.
"I ran into the adjutant in the depot that day and mentioned it to him casually.
"'I shouldn't be surprised,' he answered; and then he gave me his views about Major Colgate. They weren't exactly complimentary; and adjutants are pretty careful as a rule. But this one let himself go.
"'Says he's got no end of money—a big employer of labor—bought and sold things all his life, and no one's ever heard of him. The colonel believes him; I don't. He's what I call an opportunist. Strikes me he was out of a job and living on his wits when the war came.'
"No doubt Colgate was the type that impose upon a certain kind of regular soldier. In the civilian world they are often pretty helpless; and I dare say the colonel had listened to this man and had accepted his pretensions, believing him to be a wealthy fellow whom one could trusty used to commerce, and quite capable of holding his own with a handful of French contractors.
"Now, I hadn't meant to take that job very seriously; I was only a stop-gap and my heart was up the line. But once I started to doubt, I became a regular Sherlock Holmes. I couldn't get away from the meaning of those figures, and there was Cliffe handling the petty cash as though he owned it and obstructing me in his obliging and probably artful way, and Monsieur Audibert, the interpreter, taking his commission on the small things, and possibly on the large as well, and the private who said nothing and looked nothing, but who I fancied now was watching me, as much as to say, 'Are you going to be in it as well, or are you going to keep out of it?' He himself was keeping out of it, I imagined.
"When once you begin to suspect things, you see certain other things in a new light. At one of the cafés in the place I had struck up an acquaintance with a couple of local gentlemen; business men, I supposed they were, and in a fairly big way. To these I had mentioned that I was attached to the Intendance, as they call it, and was buying supplies locally for the British Army. They had not said anything, but they had exchanged glances. I remembered those glances now. And that evening I again visited the café where I had found them and one of them was in his place.
"'I want you to be frank with me,' I said, after an opening round of conversation.
"'In what respect?'
"'The Intendance of the British Army—what sort of a reputation has it in this town?'
"'You really want to know?'
"'Yes; I very much want to know.'
"'Well, I will tell you. When Major Baker was here it stood very high and was very competent; but the last six months with Major Colgate—we do not understand it. Or one can only suspect. It is difficult for honest people to deal with them. It is often so in our own army. I am not interested myself, but I have friends.'
"'Thank you,' I answered. It was enough. 'And may I exchange cards with you?' I added.
"'Certainly,' said he.
"I'm afraid my card was nothing better than an addressed envelop.
"'"Vignolles," you are French?' he asked reading my name.
"'On my father's side and distantly.'
"That had aroused his interest.
"'If I want the names of the best firms here for certain articles, could you give them to me?' I asked.
"'I think so,' said he. 'I know several who did business with Major Baker.'
"'Well, perhaps in a day or two I shall pay you a visit'; and with that I changed the subject
"Next day I went out in the car and called on our existing people. I had never met these except at the office when they came in for their money, and me they were rather apt to ignore, asking for Cliffe or the French interpreter.
"I began with our bran-contractor, who also delivered some of our vegetables. I found her—she was a tall and rather good-looking widow—in a back street where she had a small shop with a sign that announced her as a dealer in thread, wools, and sewing-cottons. This puzzled me a little; but what puzzled me more was when I discovered that the bearded man who sold us yeast was by profession a piano-tuner and repairer. The vegetable men, though they grew nothing themselves, really seemed to deal in vegetables. To each of these I suggested that they were making us pay too heavily. I mentioned the prices charged in other districts and said that, unless they met us, we would have to make a change.
"'The major has never complained; but I will see what can be done,' said the piano-tuner, sulkily. The widow was more loquacious and offered me a green liqueur and told me what trouble she had taken to get the enormous quantities we required and the capital that was necessary. She had called on every miller in the district; the major and the interpreter had come with her in the car. She was an eloquent woman. The vegetable men said that with poorer qualities they could make lower prices. From these I went to the man who supplied us with live sheep on the hoof for the Indian troops, who do their own killing. I couldn't find him and had to give him up. I wrote to him from the office.
"The next day I sought out my French acquaintance of the café and got him to give me a list of good addresses. It was he who told me that the piano-tuner was married to our interpreter's sister. The driver of the car had now become interested and I found him conferring with Corporal Cliffe, who had been conferring with the standing contractors I had visited the day before. The interpreter, too, had seen them; and I now learnt that prices had recently come down and that they were all willing to make reductions.
"Till Colgate comes back,' I thought to myself; but aloud I said, 'Well, that is good.'
The next day I called on some of the people whose names had been given me by my French acquaintance.
"I started with a real yeast merchant who was not a piano-tuner, a young fellow who had lost an arm early in the war and who was very bitter.
"'When Major Baker was here, he dealt with me; but now this Major Colgate has changed it,' he cried. 'He goes to a dirty civilian an embusqué; it is for this that one loses an arm!'
"His price had been satisfactory. We were paying twenty per cent. more than he had charged and he was still ready to supply us on the old terms. 'When Major Baker was here,' he repeated; 'that was a man! What must one think of the English when they treat a soldier who has done his duty in this fashion?' He was an excitable chap, and he had cause to be.
"At the largest vegetable-grower's of the district, a Monsieur Popinot, by an odd coincidence I found Major Baker himself.
"'Excuse he,' he said, 'if I'm poaching on your territory, but you seem to have no use for Popinot, and as I'm buying for the next district, I thought it a pity to waste him. I don't quite understand it. Popinot showed me a letter written by your Major Colgate giving him notice. He said he could buy better and cheaper elsewhere. He can't. I'll guarantee that.'
"I wondered whether Popinot still had the letter and whether he would lend it me or let me take a copy. He was willing enough. He didn't care. He was a rough man in a blouse, one of those French peasants who are worth thousands and whose heart is in their gardens and the work they do outdoors.
"We found the original letter and he made me a present of it; and then I asked Baker, who seemed one of the best, whether he had really dealt with the yeast merchant who had lost an arm. He had. 'A very brave fellow, and straight and reliable,' he said; 'you don't mean to say you've chucked him?'
"I did mean to say it.
"'And what are you paying?'
"'I told him, and how the piano-tuner who was also a yeast merchant and Monsieur Audiberts brother-in-law had come to terms.
"'Looks a bit queer. But it's none of my business. Audibert's a curiosity; seems to think the war's on for his special benefit. He'd be in the infantry if we had no use for him. I used to threaten him. It kept him quiet'; and Baker rose and made for his car that stood with mine outside. 'I'll go on poaching,' he cried as he drove off.
"I went back to the one-armed yeast merchant after that and asked him if he too had received a letter from Major Colgate saying that the British Army could buy more cheaply elsewhere. He had, and he had preserved it. I made a copy and thanked him.
"It was the same with the bran; it was the same with the live-sheep dealer. Colgate had written himself down a liar if nothing worse. He was probably at the back of the widow, at the back of the piano-tuner, and was no doubt standing in with everybody else. We were paying fifteen to twenty per cent. above the market rates for practically everything we touched. Our yearly turnover was close upon two hundred thousand pounds. Joffre, French, and the Kaiser together weren't doing as well out of the war as Major Colgate, though they had a trifle more responsibility. I was rather in a rage when I got back to the office and found the corporal and the interpreter in consultation; and the corporal hadn't improved matters by forging my name to a voucher which said that we had received so much clover from somebody. He 'had often done the same for Major Colgate,' he prevaricated. 'It saved trouble.'
"With the exception of the private, they were disturbed and rattled. They had lost their nerve somewhat, and one of them went out to interview the driver of the car as soon as we returned. They wanted to know where I had been and what I was up to. They felt that they couldn't last much longer if the major didn't come back and chase me away. It was exactly like living in a wild detective story where every one is a liar and trying to throw you off the scent. And when I had done with the corporal and Audibert, I turned to the private and we looked up the prices we were paying for yeast, bran, and vegetables at the time the major's letters had been written, when he had stood the old contractors off and taken the new ones on. We found the date and the prices. The old contractors were ever so much cheaper than the new and the yeast was exactly the same yeast with the same trade-mark; and Popinot could hardly be beaten for potatoes, carrots, leeks, and other vegetables. The private said nothing, but I have a notion that he had concluded I was honest.
"Though my natural inclination is to sit in a trance and admire the wonders of the universe, when I do get going and steam up I'm about as wide awake as most people. On the Sunday afternoon, with everybody away, I went down to the office and set to work on my report. The colonel should have it that very evening. I had all the evidence that was needed, and I couldn't well look into anybody's banking-account. I was hot and angry and determined, and I knew I must get the report in early, before the major could queer it. If he were there I could not communicate with the colonel without my communication first passing through his hands. I must get this out before he came back; and now, warned and alarmed as he had doubtless been by his confederates, he might turn up at any moment. The operation he had undergone was not a very serious one, nor anything that could hold him back if he were resolved to go.
"I was rather in a rage. For here were these men, safe and snug at a base, sleeping in beds and getting their four regular meals, and it was now quite certain that, from the major downward and leaving out that silent private, they were doing their best to make us lose the war.
"That was the way I looked at it. It didn't so much matter that they were rogues and thieves and humbugs, but that fact did matter. They were on the enemy's side, the German side,—that's what it amounted to—working against us from within.
"I was as brief as possible. I put the real figures and the figures we were paying in two parallel columns. I mentioned that Major Baker's contractors, all genuine people, had been dismissed and that we were now dealing with men of straw. I said that they had climbed down in a body when I faced them, but that they would go up again on Major Colgate's return. I enclosed copies of the letters he had written and traversed these with the true facts of the case. I said that I had no confidence in anybody in the office with the one exception of the private. I reckoned the difference between what we were paying and what we ought to pay at thirty thousand pounds a year. When I was done I made three copies on a duplicating machine, and I was addressing the original to the colonel, when who should come in but Colgate himself, red, flustered, and uneasy! I did not rise as he entered.
"'Alone?' he began. 'You're a worker. What have you been up to now?'
"'Are you out of hospital,' I asked, 'or are you going back?' I had no respect for him. His rank was nothing to me. I treated him like the dog he was, throughout that interview.
"'I'm out,' he said, 'and you're getting out to-morrow.'
"'Then I was just in time,' I answered. And I picked up a pencil, fixed a sheet of carbon paper, and wrote a covering note addressed to him and asking him to pass my report on to the colonel. By the regulations he had to do it; but he would have first say. Or he might not do it, especially with me leaving.
"When I was done, I handed him his own letter and my report.
"He looked them through and his face grew more red.
"'You know what this means?' he asked. 'You must be mad!' And then: 'It's simply ridiculous—a man in my position—money—as though I wanted money! We may have been a bit careless,' he conceded; 'but in my position—a big employer—it's perfectly ridiculous!' And he tossed the papers on the desk. 'What shall I do with these?' he asked; 'burn them?'
"'I've three more copies,' I said.
"'Look here, Vignolles,' he answered; 'I'm a major and you're only a one-pip subaltern. This isn't going to go through.'
"'Oh, yes it is,' I corrected him; 'you've got to. It'll have to go through you, but you've got to pass it on.'
"He seemed rather relieved at that.
"'How did you get hold of those letters?' he asked. 'They're merely business letters and don't mean anything.'
"'No?' said I; for I knew that he was lying.
"My quiet frightened him. If I had got up and talked he would have talked back; but, icy, contemptuous, not to be turned, I only looked at him. It was disgusting to sit there, me a second-loot, and, metaphorically, spit upon his rank and uniform.
"'I say,' he resumed at last, 'is there anything I could do—a week's leave in England? I could work it for you.'
"'If I want leave. I'll get it from my own unit, and not from this institution,' I said coldly.
"He tried one more bluff before he was done with me.
"'Every man has his price,' he said; 'what's yours?'
"'I'm rather keen on winning the war,' I answered, 'if there's anything you can do to help that along. But you and your friends are getting in the way. That's why you're going to be kicked out. And you've rather rolled our name in the mud in this place haven't you?' I added, rising. 'But you're not likely to worry about that.'
"'All right,' he answered savagely, 'all right. There's nothing more for you to do here. You'll report to the adjutant to-morrow morning.'
"'Yes, I suppose I'm finished. You'll pass that on to the colonel; or, if you like, I'll buzz in one of my own copies. You're not here officially yet, are you? There's nothing about you in orders.'
"He winced at that.
"'I'll pass it on,' he said. But as I didn't believe him I passed on a copy, myself, that very evening, to make sure.
"Next morning early I had a written order to report back to the adjutant. It found me in my room at the hotel. I walked down to the depot. My car days were over. The adjutant received me with a question.
"'You've rather upset the old man,' he said. 'He was in his office last evening; and you're to pack up and be off to where you came from—the sooner the better, he says. What have you been up to?'
"'Ask Colgate.'
"'He's back all right,'
"I looked on the wall and Colgate hadn't wasted time, it seemed; for there hung this morning's orders, and I saw 'Returned to Duty,' and the first name on the list was 'Major E. P. Colgate.' Below this was a brief notice—I read it aloud—which told us that for stealing a tin of condensed milk in the depot a certain private had been sentenced to one year's hard labor. It was pretty ironic.
"'What's Colgate getting?' I asked; for now I was fairly roused and didn't care who knew it.
"'He'll be caught in time,' said the adjutant.
"'He's caught now.' And then I let fly utterly. 'He's a thief and a liar—been robbing the army these six months. I can prove it up to to the ruddy hilt and I've reported it. Here's a copy for you'; and I gave him one of the couple I still had over.
"The adjutant whistled. He was rather alarmed. 'This is confidential,' he said hurriedly. 'I don't want to be mixed up in it.' And then, more coolly, 'They haven't treated you very well,' he added. 'Look in and report before you go. This afternoon, eh? The old man wants me to telephone; rather glad to see you out of the way.'
"'All right,' I answered more sick and more savage than ever. For I felt I'd done my duty, had even earned a word or two of praise; and to be treated like this, as though I were the criminal—it hurt.
"I'd left a few things at the office, including a pipe or two I valued. I went in for the last time, and there my enemies sat in a serried row, the corporal, the interpreter, and the major. They looked at me as though they had won a victory, as though they had downed me. Every one of them.
"I found the things I'd come for. The private made them up into a parcel for me; and as I turned to go, 'Oh, Vignolles, I saw the colonel,' drawled Colgate, 'I explained matters to him. You took a bad knock up the line, didn't you? Concussion? Makes a man a bit queer in his head at times, eh? I explained all that to him and he understands it. He's overlooking that unfortunate report.'
"The blighter had me every way, if the colonel played up to him; so there was no answer; and in that moment I felt that there wasn't much to choose between him and his precious chief. The colonel was getting rid of me to demolish the evidence. I was one of those inconvenient people who know too much.
"It was no good arguing and I went my way. And there it ended, or looked like ending. I was pretty bitter about it for several weeks. Till one day, not so very much later, as I was looking through a Gazette, I found that a Major E. P. Colgate of the Army Service Corps had 'relinquished his commission'; which meant that he'd been asked to leave and there was no refusing. I felt then that, whatever my subsequent history, I should have earned every penny I drew in pay and a bit over.
"I'd more or less gone past it all, till, only a few months back, I ran into that never-to-be-forgotten adjutant. It was at a rest camp in France. He was a major now and I a captain, and he remembered me.
"Naturally I spoke about the supply depot, about Colgate and the colonel.
"'I was rather sore,' I ended. 'You people hardly played the game.'
"'The colonel's a regular,' he said; what was he to do? He'd let the fellow carry on for six months and he'd be held responsible. He was overworked and worried, and it was his bread and butter and his wife's and four youngsters'. He'd trusted Colgate, who had let him down. So you were best out of the way; he didn't want any fuss. But it went off quietly. He looked into it, and Mr. Colgate had to go—quietly. They all had to go. He shored a new man in with orders to clean up. You'd really made a pretty thorough job of it, it seemed.'
"'Colgate got off fairly easy, then?'
"'Not quite. He was kicked out, wasn't he? That didn't do him any good. And he was young enough to be collared after he'd been kicked out. Went in one door a major and came out of another a private, so to speak. I don't think he'd enjoy that—"a big employer of labor—must set an example."' The adjutant imitated him to the life. 'He'd set more of an example than he'd bargained for. And there was that little interpreter, too. He got sent back to the French Army with a pretty rotten report. Hope he's alive to-day. He probably isn't. The corporal lost his stripes and went up the line with a couple of mules.'
"So that was how it had ended? I was hot about it, confoundedly hot about it for a season hotter than I'd ever been before. These things aren't written up. Yet they hold most of the drama, the real drama that goes on in a war—more exciting and more sustained than the fighting. But you've. got to go behind the lines to look for it." He stopped here and gave a little shudder. "By Jove, it's turning cold again!" he added.
The sun had gone down in the west, in a flush of pink and rose, and we, from our perch on the edge of a park, were looking out upon a valley fast losing itself in shadow. The rabbits nibbled around us, unafraid; the cock pheasants were calling; an owl was circling overhead. And Vignolles, looking out upon it all, upon this wide landscape, so full and so secure, that was about to go from us, stretched and shook himself and sprang to his feet and gazed upon it, darkling. And then, "England's a good country, the very best," he said; "but there are far too many Colgates running wild in it. I can't compete with them. I never could."
We climbed the stile and found the lane and so downhill till we came to the railway station. And that was the last day out I had with my friend Vignolles till he turned up again, resolved to stay, the following year.