The Penguin Book of First World War Stories (34 page)

He laughed. He was happier than he had ever been before. The whole world seemed to be at his feet, and he no longer wished to judge it, to improve it, to dictate to it, to dogmatize it, to expect great things of it, to be disappointed in it…

He would never do any of those things again.

He addressed it:

‘I did passionately wish you to be improved,'he said, ‘but I didn't love you. Now I know you will never be improved, but I love you dearly –all of you, not a bit of you. Life simply isn't long enough for all I'm going to see!'

4 IN RETROSPECT

There being no one to observe him, the tramp could be frank with his cynicism; but inside the building, in the platform ante-room, Mr Edward Fosdike, who was Sir William's locally resident secretary, had to discipline his private feelings to a suave concurrence in his employer's florid enthusiasm. Fosdike served Sir William well, but no man is a hero to his (male) secretary.

‘I hope you will find the arrangements satisfactory,' Fosdike was saying, tugging nervously at his maltreated moustache. ‘You speak at seven and declare the canteen open. Then there's a meal.' He hesitated. ‘Perhaps I should have warned you to dine before you came.'

Sir William was aware of being a very gallant gentleman. ‘Not at all,' he said heroically, ‘not at all. I have not spared my purse over this War Memorial. Why should I spare my feelings? Well, now, you've seen about the Press?'

‘Oh, yes. The reporters are coming. There'll be flash-light photographs. Everything quite as usual when you make a public appearance, sir.'

Sir William wondered if this resident secretary of his were
quite adequate. Busy in London, he had left all arrangements in his local factotum's hands, and he was doubting whether those hands had grasped the situation competently. ‘Only as usual?' he said sharply. ‘This War Memorial has cost me ten thousand pounds.'

‘The amount,' Fosdike hastened to assure him, ‘has been circulated, with appropriate tribute to your generosity.'

‘Generosity,' criticized Rumbold. ‘I hope you didn't use that word.'

Mr Fosdike referred to his notebook. ‘We said,' he read, ‘“The cost, though amounting to ten thousand pounds, is entirely beside the point. Sir William felt that no expense was excessive that would result in a fitting and permanent expression of our gratitude to the glorious dead.”'

‘Thank you, Fosdike. That is exactly my feeling,' said the gratified Sir William, paying Fosdike the unspoken compliment of thinking him less of a fool than he looked. ‘It is,' he went on, ‘from no egotistic motive that I wish the Press to be strongly represented to-night. I believe that in deciding that Calderside's War Memorial should take the form of a Works Canteen, I am setting an example of enlightenment which other employers would do well to follow. I have erected a monument, not in stone, but in goodwill, a club-house for both sexes to serve as a centre of social activities for the firm's employees, wherein the great spirit of the noble work carried out at the Front by the YMCA will be recaptured and adapted to peace conditions in our local organization in the Martlow Works Canteen. What are you taking notes for?'

‘I thought –' began Fosdike.

‘Oh, well, perhaps you are right. Reporters have been known to miss one's point, and a little first aid, eh? By the way, I sent you some notes from town of what I intended to say in my speech. I just sent them ahead in case there was any local point I'd got wrong.'

He put it as a question, but actually it was an assertion and a challenge. It asserted that by no possible chance could there be anything injudicious in the proposed speech, and it challenged Fosdike to deny that assertion if he dared.

And Fosdike had to dare; he had to accuse himself of assuming too easily that Rumbold's memory of local Calderside detail was as fresh as the memory of the man on the spot.

‘I did want to suggest a modification, sir,' he hazarded timidly.

‘Really?'– quite below zero–‘Really? I felt very contented with the speech.'

‘Yes, sir, it's masterly. But on the spot here –'

‘Oh, agreed. Quite right, Fosdike. I am speaking tonight to the world – no; let me guard against exaggeration. The world includes the Polynesians and Esquimaux –I am speaking to the English-speaking races of the world, but first and foremost to Calderside. My own people. Yes? You have a little something to suggest? Some happy local allusion?'

‘It's about Martlow,' said Fosdike shortly.

Sir William took him up. ‘Ah, now you're talking,' he approved. ‘Yes, indeed, anything you can add to my notes about Martlow will be most welcome. I have noted much, but too much is not enough for such an illustrious example of conspicuous gallantry, so noble a life, so great a deed, and so self-sacrificing an end. Any details you can add about Timothy Martlow will indeed –'

Fosdike coughed. ‘Excuse me, sir, that's just the point. If you talk like that about Martlow down here, they'll laugh at you.'

‘Laugh?' gasped Rumbold, his sense of propriety outraged. ‘My dear Fosdike, what's come to you? I celebrate a hero. Our hero. Why, I'm calling the Canteen after Martlow when I might have given it my own name. That speaks volumes.' It did.

But Fosdike knew too well what would be the attitude of a Calderside audience if he allowed his chief to sing in top-notes an unreserved eulogy of Tim Martlow. Calderside knew Tim, the civilian, if it had also heard of Tim, the soldier. ‘Don't you remember Martlow, sir? Before the war, I mean.'

‘No. Ought I to?'

‘Not on the bench?'

‘Martlow? Yes, now I think of the name in connection with the old days, there was a drunken fellow. To be sure, an awful
blackguard, continually before the bench. Dear me! Well, well, but a man is not responsible for his undesirable relations, I hope.'

‘No, sir. But that was Martlow. The same man. You really can't speak to Calderside of his as an ennobling life and a great example. The war changed him, but – well, in peace, Tim was absolutely the local bad man, and they all know it. I thought you did, or –'

Sir William turned a face expressive of awe-struck wonder. ‘Fosdike,' he said with deep sincerity, ‘this is the most amazing thing I've heard of the war. I never connected Martlow the hero with – well, well,
de mortuis
.' He quoted:

‘Appropriate, I think? I shall use that.'

It was, at least, a magnificent recovery from an unexpected blow, administered by the very man whose duty it was to guard Sir William against just that sort of blow. If Fosdike was not the local watchdog, he was nothing; and here was an occasion when the dog had omitted to bark until the last minute of the eleventh hour.

‘Very apt quotation, sir, though there have never been any exact details of Martlow's death.'

Sir William meditated. ‘Do you recall the name of the saint who was a regular rip before he got religion?' he asked.

‘I think that applies to most of them,' said Fosdike.

‘Yes, but the one in particular. Francis. That's it.' He filled his chest. ‘Timothy Martlow,' he pronounced impressively, ‘is the St Francis of the Great War, and this Canteen is his shrine. Now, I think I will go into the hall. It is early, but I shall chat with the people. Oh, one last thought. When you mentioned Martlow, I thought you were going to tell me of some undesirable connections. There are none?'

‘There is his mother. A widow. You remember the Board voted her an addition to her pension.'

‘Oh, yes. And she?'

‘Oh, most grateful. She will be with you on the platform. I have seen myself that she is –fittingly attired.'

‘I think I can congratulate you, Fosdike,' said Sir William magnanimously. ‘You've managed very well. I look forward to a pleasant evening, a widely reported speech, and –'

Then Dolly Wainwright came into the ante-room.

‘If you please, sir,' she said, ‘what's going to be done about me?'

Two gentlemen who had all but reached the smug bathos of a mutual admiration society turned astonished eyes at the intruder.

She wore a tam,
²
and a check blanket coat, which she unbuttoned as they watched her. Beneath it, suitable to the occasion, was a white dress, and Sir William, looking at it, felt a glow of tenderness for this artless child who had blundered into the privacy of the ante-room. Something daintily virginal in Dolly's face appealed to him; he caught himself thinking that her frock was more than a miracle in bleached cotton – it was moonshine shot with alabaster; and the improbability of that combination had hardly struck him when Fosdike's voice forced itself harshly on his ears.

‘How did you get in here?'

Sir William moved to defend the girl from the anger of his secretary, but when she said, with a certain challenge, ‘Through the door,' he doubted if she were so defenceless as she seemed.

‘But there's a doorkeeper at the bottom,' said Fosdike. ‘I gave him my orders.'

‘I gave him my smile,' said Dolly. ‘I won.'

‘Upon my word –' Fosdike began.

‘Well, well,' interrupted Sir William, ‘what can I do for you?'

The reply was indirect, but caused Sir William still further to readjust his estimate of her.

‘I've got friends in the meeting to-night,'she concluded. ‘They'll speak up for me, too, if I'm not righted. So I'm telling you.'

‘Don't threaten me, my girl,' said Sir William without
severity. ‘I am always ready to pay attention to any legitimate grievance, but –'

‘Legitimate?' she interrupted. ‘Well, mine's not legitimate. So there!'

‘I beg your pardon?' She puzzled Sir William. ‘Come now,' he went on in his most patriarchal manner, ‘don't assume I'm not going to listen to you. I am. To-night there is no thought in my mind except the welfare of Calderside.'

‘Oh, well,' she said apologetically, ‘I'm sorry if I riled you, but it's a bit awkward to speak it out to a man. Only' (the unconscious cruelty of youth – or was it conscious?) ‘you're both old, so perhaps I can get through. It's about Tim Martlow.'

‘Ah,' said Sir William encouragingly, ‘our glorious hero.'

‘Yes,' said Dolly. ‘I'm the mother of his child.'

We are all balloons dancing our lives amongst pins. Therefore, be compassionate towards Sir William. He collapsed speechlessly on a hard chair.

Fosdike reacted more alertly. ‘This is the first I've heard of Martlow's being married,' he said aggressively.

Dolly looked up at him indignantly. ‘You ain't heard it now, have you?'she protested. ‘I said it wasn't legitimate. I don't say we'd not have got married if there'd been time, but you can't do everything on short leave.'

There seemed an obvious retort. Rumbold and Fosdike looked at each other, and neither made the retort. Instead, Fosdike asked: ‘Are you employed in the works here?'

‘I was here, on munitions,' she said, ‘and then on doles.'

‘And now you're on the make,' he sneered.

‘Oh, I dunno,' she said. ‘All this fuss about Tim Martlow. I ought to have my bit out of it.'

‘Deplorable,' grieved Sir William. ‘The crass materialism of it all. This is so sad. How old are you?'

‘Twenty,' said Dolly. ‘Twenty, with a child to keep, and his father's name up in gold lettering in that hall there. I say somebody ought to do something.'

‘I suppose now, Miss –' Fosdike baulked.

‘Wainwright, Dolly Wainwright, though it ought to be Martlow.'

‘I suppose you loved Tim very dearly?'

‘I liked him well enough. He was good-looking in his khaki.'

‘Liked him? I'm sure it was more than that.'

‘Oh, I dunno. Why?' asked the girl, who said she was the mother of Martlow's child.

‘I am sure,' said Fosdike gravely, ‘you would never do anything to bring a stain upon his memory.'

Dolly proposed a bargain. ‘If I'm rightly done by,' she said, ‘I'll do right by him.'

‘Anything that marred the harmony of to-night's ceremony, Miss Wainwright, would be unthinkable,' said Sir William, coming to his lieutenant's support.

‘Right,' said Dolly cheerfully. ‘If you'll take steps according, I'm sure I've no desire to make a scene.'

‘A scene,' gasped Sir William.

‘Though,' she pointed out, ‘it's a lot to ask of anyone, you know. Giving up the certain chance of getting my photograph in the papers. I make a good picture, too. Some do and some don't, but I take well and when you know you've got the looks to carry off a scene, it's asking something of me to give up the idea.'

‘But you said you'd no desire to make a scene.'

‘Poor girls have often got to do what they don't wish to. I wouldn't make a scene in the usual way. Hysterics and all that. Hysterics means cold water in your face and your dress messed up and no sympathy. But with scenes, the greater the occasion the greater the reward, and there's no denying this is an occasion, is there? You're making a big to-do about Tim Martlow and the reward would be according. I don't know if you've noticed that if a girl makes a scene and she's got the looks for it, she gets offers of marriage, like they do in the police-court when they've been wronged and the magistrate passes all the men's letters on to the court missionary and the girl and the missionary go through them and choose the likeliest fellow out of the bunch?'

‘But my dear young lady –' Fosdike began.

She silenced him. ‘Oh, it's all right. I don't know that I want to get married.'

‘Then you ought to,' said Sir William virtuously.

‘There's better things in life than getting married,' Dolly said. ‘I've weighed up marriage, and I don't see what there is in it for a girl nowadays.'

‘In your case, I should have thought there was everything.'

Dolly sniffed. ‘There isn't liberty,' she said. ‘And we won the fight for liberty, didn't we? No; if I made that scene it 'ud be to get my photograph in the papers where the film people could see it. I've the right face for the pictures, and my romantic history will do the rest.'

‘Good heavens, girl,' cried the scandalized Sir William, ‘have you no reverence at all? The pictures! You'd turn all my disinterested efforts to ridicule. You'd – oh, but there! You're not going to make a scene?'

‘That's a matter of arrangement, of course,' said the cool lady. ‘I'm only showing you what a big chance I shall miss if I oblige you. Suppose I pipe up my tale of woe just when you're on the platform with the Union Jack behind you and the reporters in front of you, and that tablet in there that says Tim is the greatest glory of Calderside –'

Sir William nearly screamed. ‘Be quiet, girl. Fosdike,' he snarled, turning viciously on his secretary, ‘what the deuce do you mean by pretending to keep an eye on local affairs when you miss a thing like this?'

‘'Tisn't his fault,' said Dolly. ‘I've been saving this up for you.'

‘Oh,' he groaned, ‘and I'd felt so happy about to-night.' He took out a fountain pen. ‘Well, I suppose there's no help for it. Fosdike, what's the amount of the pension we allow Martlow's mother?'

‘Double it, add a pound a week, and what's the answer. Mr Fosdike?' asked Dolly quickly.

Sir William gasped ludicrously.

‘I mean to say,' said Dolly, conferring on his gasp the honour of an explanation, ‘she's old and didn't go on munitions, and didn't get used to wangling income tax on her wages, and never had no ambitions to go on the pictures, neither. What's compensation to her isn't compensation to me. I've got a higher standard.'

‘The less you say about your standards, the better, my girl,' retorted Sir William. ‘Do you know that this is blackmail?'

‘No, it isn't. Not when I ain't asked you for nothing. And if I pass the remark how that three pounds a week is my idea of a minimum wage, it isn't blackmail to state the fact.'

Sir William paused in the act of tearing a page out of Fosdike's note-book. ‘Three pounds a week!'

‘Well,' said Dolly reasonably, ‘I didn't depreciate the currency. Three pounds a week is little enough these times for the girl who fell from grace through the chief glory of Calderside.'

‘But suppose you marry,' suggested Mr Fosdike.

‘Then I marry well,' she said, ‘having means of my own. And I ought to, seeing I'm kind of widow to the chief glory of –'

Sir William looked up sharply from the table. ‘If you use that phrase again,' he said, ‘I'll tear this paper up.'

‘Widow to Tim Martlow,' she amended it, defiantly. He handed her the document he had drawn up. It was an undertaking in brief, unambiguous terms to pay her three pounds a week for life. As she read it, exulting, the door was kicked open.

The tramp, whose name was Timothy Martlow, came in and turning, spoke through the doorway to the janitor below. ‘Call out,' he said, ‘and I'll come back and knock you down again.' Then he locked the door.

Fosdike went courageously towards him. ‘What do you mean by this intrusion? Who are you?'

The tramp assured himself that his hat was well pulled down over his face. He put his hands in his pockets and looked quizzically at the advancing Mr Fosdike. ‘So far,' he said, ‘I'm the man that locked the door.'

Fosdike started for the second door, which led directly to the platform. The tramp reached it first, and locked it, shouldering Fosdike from him. ‘Now,' he said.

Sir William was searching the wall. ‘Are there no bells?' he asked desperately.

‘No.'

‘No?' jeered the tramp. ‘No bell. No telephone. No nothing. You're scotched without your rifle this time.'

Fosdike consulted Sir William. ‘I might shout for the police,' he suggested.

‘It's risky,' commented the tramp. ‘They sometimes come when they're called.'

‘Then–'began the secretary.

‘It's your risk,' emphasized the tramp. ‘And I don't advise it. I've gone to a lot of trouble this last week to keep out of sight of the Calderside police. They'd identify me easy, and Sir William wouldn't like that.'

‘I wouldn't like?' said Rumbold. ‘I? Who are you?'

‘Wounded and missing, believed dead,' quoted the tramp. ‘Only there's been a lot of beliefs upset in this war, and I'm one of them.'

‘One of what?'

‘I'm telling you. One of the strayed sheep that got mislaid and come home at the awkwardest times.' He snatched his hat off. ‘Have a good look at that face, your worship.'

‘Timothy Martlow,' cried Sir William.

Fosdike staggered to a chair while Dolly, who had shown nothing but amusement at the tramp, now gave a quick cry and shrank back against the wall, exhibiting every symptom of the liveliest terror. Of the trio, Sir William, for whom surely this inopportune return had the most serious implications, alone stood his ground, and Martlow grimly appreciated his pluck.

‘It's very near made a stretcher-case of him,' he said, indicating the prostrated Fosdike. ‘You're cooler. Walking wounded.'

‘I … really … '

‘Shake hands, old cock,' said Martlow, ‘I know you've got it writ up in there' – he jerked his head towards the hall – ‘that I'm the chief glory of Calderside, but damme if you're not the second best yourself, and I'll condescend to shake your hand if it's only to show you I'm not a ghost.'

Sir William decided that it was politic to humour this visitor. He shook hands. ‘Then, if you know,' he said, ‘if you know what this building is, it isn't accident that brings you here to-night.'

‘The sort of accident you set with a time-fuse,' said Martlow grimly. ‘I told you I'd been dodging the police for a week lest
any of my old pals should recognize me. I was waiting to get you to-night, and sitting tight and listening. The things I heard! Nearly made me take my hat off to myself. But not quite. Not quite. I kept my hat on and I kept my hair on. It's a mistake to act premature on information received. If I'd sprung this too soon, the wrong thing might have happened to me.'