The Golden Virgin (23 page)

A wonderful dinner. The host, when he had paid the bill and tipped the waiter five shillings and pressed upon each of his friends a pound note, followed them into the warm darkness of Piccadilly, to be led by Gene to the Empire Palace Hotel, and sit in an immense room of cream and gilt, with walls like Gorgonzola cheese from which the blue had been transmuted into veins of gold, where a thousand odd people sat at tables drinking coffee and liqueurs, eating pastry of Oriental splendour, while thick-red-lipped they stared around with mental hunger in dark brilliant eyes for glimpses of beauty and distinction to uplift them from their levels of living; and finding nothing, sat back upon those levels, ruminating prospects of more and more business due to war. They sat, seldom moving, secure in their fat, transients from the east, from Whitechapel, Aldgate, and Houndsditch to the west and north-west, Maida Vale, Hampstead, and Golders Green, families rising on the tide of clothing, furniture, and armament contracts.

Eugene, looking round with superior feelings, began to say that Phillip had let him down, by not being in uniform. He would be
dismissed as a slacker. That’s right. Also, if he had worn his’h uniform, he wouldn’t mind betting that those two birds in the Gild Hall would have come to his flat s’ afternoon.

“Well, to tell you the truth, dear boy,” said Phillip, “I was’h thinking of someone called—hush!—Lily—so—you see—I stopped ’em from comin’.”

*

A taxicab took them to Westbourne Terrace, and the driver, deeming them to be seeing double, sympathetically adjusted the fare to this state; and was surprised to be paid treble the sum on the clock.

It took twenty merry minutes, while doors opened to emit angry human barks before abruptly closing to loud
cuck-oos
by Phillip, before the attic flat was reached, where they slept, fully dressed. All night trains whistled and shunted in the yards of Paddington station below the row of tall seedy houses, heard remotely by Phillip as he tottered to the lavatory with aching head, throat, and gut; murmuring never again.

The repentance of the sick devil, or weak saint, went the way of most good intentions, including the romantic determination under the tawny flag to return to Grantham early on the Monday morning; for after spending Sunday in bed at home, and missing the supper party next door, on the following morning, when he got up at his mother’s earnest request, to say goodbye to his father, he felt so weak that he decided to see Dr. Dashwood again, and ask for an extension of leave.

When Richard had left for the office, Mavis ran downstairs, and after swallowing her breakfast, said, “Mother, I must have ten shillings, quickly! I promised to pay for my new boots today, and have only nine and ninepence, which will leave me threepence when I’ve paid for them. Quick, quick, you must help me!”

“You’ve had a pound this month already, Mavis, and it is only the second week. I really cannot afford any more out of the housekeeping.”

“But I must pay for my new boots! I must! I must! I must! Don’t waste any more ti me, or I shall miss my train!”

“I really cannot affor d any more, Mavis. You must wait till pay day.”

“Give me ten shillings! I saw a note in your bag. Let me have it!”

Hetty looked at the face of her child, which was contorted, and near to frenzy.

“Quick, I say!” cried Mavis, as she stamped her foot.

“You did promise it would be the very last time, only on Saturday, Mavis.”

“Oh Mother, don’t waste time!”

Hetty looked helplessly at her daughter. “Oh very well, but this is the very last time, remember.”

Mavis snatched the note, and ran out of the room.

“Don’t bang the door!” yelled Phillip.

“Mind your own biz!”

The door clashed behind the hurrying girl.

“That stained glass will get loose in the lead strips. Why do you give in to her, Mother?”

“What can I do, Phillip? She works herself up so——”

“Why does she always want to dress herself in all these ridiculous fashions? And why must Nina always go with her, ‘to help her to choose’ this and that? She doesn’t. It is always Mavis who chooses, and Nina who must agree with her. Mavis only wants someone to fetch and carry for her. They’re like two birds together, a parakeet mincing along beside a thrush, Mavis in her finery and Nina in her tweed overcoat, and plain little hat. And they’re always having tiffs, Nina always humbly asking how she has offended Mavis, and it usually ends in her crying; while Mavis holds out, won’t say what Nina has done, but seems to enjoy prolonging Nina’s distress. You say that Father often accuses you of what you haven’t done, then sulks and withdraws into himself, letting you suffer; well then, can’t you see that Mavis and Nina are in the same relationship? Why do you pander to her? It only makes her worse.”

“Phillip, my son,” said Hetty, looking at him with a steadiness near to despair, “‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ Mavis has been very unhappy. The boy she loved long ago, Albert Hawkins, was killed last October, at Loos, the same day that Bertie was killed. Do you begin to understand, my son?”

Phillip sat still. Then he gave a long sigh and said, “Yes, I think I do. Mother, at least let me give you this money, it’s only three pounds, only you must swear never to say that I gave it to you. Help Mavis. Help yourself, too. Before Desmond or Gene borrows it first!” he laughed. “No, I didn’t mean that. I’m very glad to be able to share with my friends. Oh dear, I can’t go back today, I’ll have to get twenty-four hours’ extension. Never again.”

Dr. Dashwood, that most courteous and titubating practitioner, after insisting on what he called a couple of pick-me-ups and the
patient considered to be potential lay-me-downs, insisted on a medical examination in the billiard room.

“Definitely a dull patch on this lung, Middleton. I can’t let you return to duty until you have consulted my colleague Toogood. I will give you a chit to take to him, Middleton.”

To the Military Hospital Phillip went, and without further examination Lt.-Col. Toogood, R.A.M.C., gave him another chit and told him to report forthwith to Millbank Military Hospital.

There Phillip—having left his motorcycle in the porch of his father’s house, where it dripped oil that stained the terra-cotta tiles, hitherto kept scrupulously clean by Mrs. Feeney the charwoman—was put in the Observation Ward, and told to get into bed, after the usual preliminaries of written-down details; and await an examination.

A condition of anaemia was found. The left lung showed symptoms of phthisis; a sputum test having proved negative, it was considered possibly to be due to chlorine gas inhalation. The action of the heart was intermittent.

“Of course,” he heard the R.A.M.C. major say to the lieutenant, “the absence of tubercle in the sputum is not conclusive. He needs building up.” Phillip heard this with impassive face, while thinking what a fraud he was.

He was put on a diet of milky foods; this was succeeded by white fish, and chicken, while he had to remain in bed.

The ward had twenty-four beds, twelve a side. Each bed was occupied by an officer. He noticed, during the morning inspection by the R.A.M.C. lieutenant on duty, and more pronouncedly when the major and the colonel came round during the bi-weekly inspection, how some of the faces opposite took on expressions of dullness or weakness specially for the occasion.

Some of them talked among themselves of having had medical boards, one after another, until an original three months' leave had been extended to six, then nine, then twelve; and one officer, a senior subaltern seconded to the R.F.C. from a regular battalion of an infantry regiment, had been on sick leave, with brief periods in hospital such as the present period, since November 1914.
He seemed to have had a wonderful time. His talk was of dancing at Grafton Galleries, actors and actresses like Teddie Gerrard, Phyllis Monkman, Matheson Lang, Gaby Deslys, Vi Lorraine, and other famous people.

His bedside companion was also in the R.F.C. He had P.U.O. on his temperature chart, and said it was trench fever, probably from lice. He spoke of the coming Great Push. It was to be in the chalk country known as the Garden of Eden, the quietest and most peaceful sector of the British front. This sector, he said, had been taken over from the French, since the German attack at Verdun. A new British Army, the Fourth, had been formed under General Rawlinson, especially for the Push.

“Does the R.F.C. have liaison officers in the trenches, as the gunners do?”

“No. My engine went dud and I crashed my undercart behind the front line near Hebuterne, in our new sector. The Old Hun strafed my bus, but I got away into the trenches, where I got crummy but thought no more about it after a lysol bath. Then I had ten days' leave and here I am.”

He went on to say, “In that trench they were digging a large rectangular pit, with a notice board stuck in it, SITE FOR WATER TANK. They groused like hell having to hack out all that chalk, and the skipper who entertained me in his dugout said it was a blind, in case the Hun raided, to give the idea that our trenches there were a fixture. It was just like the staff, he said, to think out such a Boy Scout idea to deceive the Old Hun.”

“Don't you believe it!” called out a man across the ward. “Those pits are for a new kind of armoured land-fort, on caterpillar tracks. They put up the notice about water tanks to bluff Jerry.”

The man in the next bed to Phillip was quite old, and in the Indian Army. He cursed things violently, and grumbled most of the time: a yellow-faced swarthy officer who, when he got up, put on a light khaki drill uniform. He had served in Mesopotamia, and was one of the few who had got awa from the siege of Kut-el-Amara, after the battle of Ctesiphon. He was in hospital because he had what he called the Tigris Jigger in his guts. This, he explained, was a swimming organism with a corkscrew on its head, with which it burrowed, causing pain and bleeding. He had permanent screens around his bed, because he could not hold his water. He was given sandalwood oil in capsules, and hexamine; and he was privately dosing himself with whiskey. “Fire drives out
fire, and corkscrew corkscrew,” he said. The whites of his eyes, Phillip noticed, were as yellow as his Indian drill uniform.

One night he came back very late, saying that he had been arrested for “indecent exposure of the person in Trafalgar Square”. He swore and raged, saying it was the bilharzia in his bladder—the Tigris Jigger. He cursed the Government for letting down the Army in Mespot. “We defeated Adbul the Turk at Ctesiphon, eighteen miles from Kut—five thousand wounded, and only springless carts to bring some of the poor sods back, over rough tracks, while Arabs gnawed like bloody rats at the wounded left behind, cutting off their private parts and sticking them in their victims' mouths.” He told about the hospital ship
Mejidieh
floating down the river in a cloud of flies and stink for seventeen days, the wounded helpless and unattended on the decks, lying in their own fæces, black with flies—the lads who had fought at Ctesiphon.

In went the corkscrew, up went the bottle of whiskey.

After two days in slacks and carpet slippers, Phillip was told, “Matron says you may go out today. Have you friends or relations to go to? London is a naughty place nowadays, for a lonely soldier,” as she relished him with her eyes. He dissembled, looking innocent to keep his detachment. “Oh yes, thank you, I live not far away.”

“Then see that you are back in the ward by nine o'clock,” she said shortly, as she went away, with a glance of disdain at the yellow, leathery officer of Ghurkas, sitting on the next bed and manicuring his fingernails.

Phillip walked about on the Hill, talked to Gran'pa and Mr. Bolton in their shelter, and wondered what he could do until six o'clock, when Desmond would return.

At seven they were in Freddy's, at half-past eight he caught a 36 bus to Victoria, jumped off at the Embankment, and walked to Millbank Hospital. After a few days of this, he returned on his motor-cycle, wheeling it into the hall of the hospital, and leaning it against the wall near the foot of the stairs. In the morning he wheeled it out again, and in sunny weather went home. For a week he followed the same routine; until the D.M.S., the old boy whose velvet tabs and hat-band were the hue of claret, asked what this O.H.M.S. machine was, and what purpose did it serve, and to whom did it belong. On being told it was the transport of a young officer patient, he said, “A hospital is no place for transport, let him arrange accommodation for it with the D.Q.M.G. Horse Guards.”

“I think it might be simpler not to leave it here any more,” said Phillip to the Matron, who said, “We don't want to separate you from your beloved
Helena,
so the Senior Medical Officer has arranged a board for you both at Caxton Hall tomorrow.”

He felt he would be sorry to leave; his stay had been quite pleasant. Ah well, back to Grantham after a wonderful mike. But to his surprise the kindly old R.A.M.C. colonel—one of many white-haired dug-outs sitting solitary at little tables in the large hall, each with a convalescent officer seated before him—said, “I am giving you two months' convalescent leave. I would like you to go into the country and take things easily. Do you fish? The very thing to relax those tautened nerves of yours. Have you a good appetite?”

“Fairly good, sir.”

“Now have you friends or relatives who will take care of you? If not, Georgiana Lady Dudley will be able to fix you up at one of her places. Meanwhile two copies of the Leave of Absence Form D.3a will be sent to you, one for your retention, the other you should send to your regimental agents, if you draw your pay through that channel. Your own copy should be kept by you, in order to support any claim for allowances, should you be entitled to any. Now if you go to the sergeant's table over there, he will issue you with a railway voucher for the station you want to go to. Good morning!”

There were half a dozen officers waiting at the sergeant's table, where warrants were being issued. As more accumulated, the sergeant got another book of warrants from a drawer and said, “If you gentlemen will take turns to fill in the particulars of rank, name, and regiment in this book, I will fill in the counterfoils, and we shall halve the time of waiting that way. Block letters, gentlemen, please.”

The book of warrants went from one to another, with an indelible pencil. At last Phillip's turn came, and he made out his warrant for Lynton. He would stay in Aunt Dora's cottage, where he had spent his holiday just before the war.

When he got home, he fixed the warrant in the looking-glass frame above the fireplace. Lynton! Had not Father and Mother gone there for a holiday, too, just after he was born? A wonderful, romantic place. He hoped Father would notice it.

There it remained for several days, seen by Richard every time he went into the sitting-room; until at last he said, looking up from his magazine, “What is the wild boy up to now, Hetty?
What is all the mystery?” He indicated the pale green paper, which until now he had refrained from examining or asking questions about.

“Phillip stuck it there for safety, Dickie.”

“What is it, if I may enquire?”

“He is going to stay for a while with Dora. Apparently he is not very well, and the doctors have sent him into the country.”

“Look here!” cried Richard. “What is the mystery about Master Phillip? Is he ill, or is he not ill? If he is ill, why have not I, as the boy's father, been told about it?”

“I think it is general debility, Dickie. He was never very strong in the chest as a child, you will remember, and we were anxious about his croup.”

“Oh. I had no idea. Was that decided when he went into hospital recently?”

“I think so, but Phillip does not say much to me, you know.” She said this to reassure her husband.

“Well, it beats me. I don't understand what is going on, not in the very least.” Richard picked up
Nash
'
s
,
and read more of the latest adventures of Chota in
Billet
Notes.

“Phillip is ordered lots of fresh air and cream, apparently, Dickie, so he is going to stay in Dora's cottage. He says the doctor told him to fish, so he is waiting for a few days, he says, until the trout are fat, at the end of May.”

“Good God!” cried Richard, now thoroughly aroused, “what sort of caper is this? Have the authorities gone mad? What are they doing, to allow a bit of a boy like Phillip to run wild—and then they send him fishing for trout! And he bides his time, mark you, he picks and chooses, he waits until they are fat, at the end of May! Then in Heaven's name how much leave has he got, pray?
Two
months?
Then why isn't he in hospital, if he is not well, instead of gadding about as he does, turning night into day? What are the powers-that-be doing, I should like to know, to leave a young fellow, if there is something radically wrong with him, to his own devices, until the Lyn trout are in condition? No, I do not accept that explanation! There is something very fishy about the goings-on of Master Phillip, if you ask me! Some things that want looking into very closely indeed!”

“I expect the authorities know what they are doing; please don't upset yourself about it.”

“Who's upsetting himself? Not me,” said Richard, and taking up
The
Daily
Trident,
he read about massed German assaults on
the forts of Verdun; after which, an attack on Asquith for mismanaging the war, signed
Castleton,
the name of the proprietor of the newspaper.

“Well, at any rate, Dickie, I notice a great improvement in Phillip lately. He was very poorly, you know, when he came back from France last winter, very much on edge. I promised not to tell you, but his superior officer wrote to him and said he deserved a military cross for what he did. I saw the letter myself. Phillip took charge, he said, when the other officers had been killed, and led the men to take the position.”

“Why didn't I know of this before?” cried Richard. “Now I come to think of it, Phillip always was a bit of an adventurer. Well I'm blest!”

*

Hetty felt happy, as she looked out of the back bedroom window at Phillip, whistling to himself as he worked in the garden below. The beautiful weather seemed to have entered into him; his almost feverish manner had calmed; he was like his old self, when all that had mattered to him was the countryside.

Phillip was varnishing his three-piece hickory rod, which he had bought before the war at a pawnbroker's for fifteen pence. Strands of a plaited silk line, speckled black and white, called
magpie,
were stretched between elm and fence, for rubbing with boiled linseed oil, for stiffening and waterproofing. His grandfather Maddison's japanned box of flies was open, for the points of the barbed hooks to be sharpened on oil-stone.

It was a fine morning in the second week in May. The sumach tree in one corner of the garden was in gentle leaf; the blossom of its neighbour, a lilac, was beginning to turn brown. Leaning a branch over the garden fence, as though to touch sumach and lilac, an apple tree planted by Thomas Turney at the same time that Hetty had planted the two trees on her side of the fence, soon after she had come to the house in Hillside Road, bore little green pouts of apples, their throats as though tied with brown bows. To Phillip's fancy the apples were the little eyes of the tree, whose fruit had been snatched, immature and sour, by the old man's grandsons during all the sunlit, peaceful years before the war. Never, never again! Gerry and Bertie, Tommy and Peter, Alfred and Horace, and for the boy he was, never the same again, for tree or man or bird. Did trees feel, did they mourn when their fruit, cradling their seeds, was lost to them before the time of ripening at the fall? Birds and animals suffered for loss of their
young; so did insects, such as earwigs and spiders which carried their eggs in a silken bundle; some fish did, like the stickleback, the little rufous-bellied father fish, with his spiny daggers, who built a nest among waterweeds and hovered on guard, dashing at beetles which dived down to snatch his young. Once he and Horace Cranmer had watched a stickleback dart at a big black water-beetle, called
dytiscus,
which Father had told him flew about at night, looking down for water (and sometimes flopping upon glass-houses in the moonlight). The beetle seized the little fish and chewed it up in its jaws. Cranmer had caught it, and put it in a matchbox, and it had started to tear the wood of the box.
Sticklebat,
Cranmer had called the fish. They had watched it in a pond in Whitefoot Lane woods, in the old Boy Scout days.