Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (725 page)

‘Till he died,’ said the Australian, his voice lowered.

‘And afterwards,’ Bevin added, lower still.

‘Christ! Were you there that night?’

Bevin nodded. The Australian choked off something he was going to say, as a Brother on his left claimed him. I heard them talk horses, while Bevin developed his herb-growing projects with the well-groomed Brother opposite.

At the end of the banquet, when pipes were drawn, the Australian addressed himself to Bevin, across me, and as the company re-arranged itself, we three came to anchor in the big anteroom where the best prints are hung. Here our Brother across the table joined us, and moored alongside.

The Australian was full of racial grievances, as must be in a young country; alternating between complaints that his people had not been appreciated enough in England, or too fulsomely complimented by an hysterical Press.

‘No-o,’ Pole drawled, after a while. ‘You’re altogether wrong. We hadn’t time to notice anything-we were all too busy fightin’ for our lives. What your crowd down under are suffering from is growing-pains. You’ll get over ‘em in three hundred years or so-if you’re allowed to last so long.’

‘Who’s going to stoush us?’ Orton asked fiercely.

This turned the talk again to larger issues and possibilities- delivered on both sides straight from the shoulder without malice or heat, between bursts of song from round the piano at the far end. Bevin and I sat out, watching.

‘Well, I don’t understand these matters,’ said Bevin at last. ‘But I’d hate to have one of your crowd have it in for me for anything.’

‘Would you? Why?’ Orton pierced him with his pale, artificial eye.

‘Well, you’re a trifle-what’s the word?-vindictive?-spiteful? At least, that’s what I’ve found. I expect it comes from drinking stewed tea with your meat four times a day,’ said Bevin. ‘No! I’d hate to have an Australian after me for anything in particular.’

Out of this came his tale-somewhat in this shape:

It opened with an Australian of the name of Hickmot or Hickmer-Bevin called him both-who, finding his battalion completely expended at Gallipoli, had joined up with what stood of Bevin’s battalion, and had there remained, unrebuked and unnoticed. The point that Bevin laboured was that his man had never seen a table-cloth, a china plate, or a dozen white people together till, in his thirtieth year, he had walked for two months to Brisbane to join up. Pole found this hard to believe.

‘But it’s true,’ Bevin insisted. ‘This chap was born an’ bred among the black fellers, as they call ‘em, two hundred miles from the nearest town, four hundred miles from a railway, an’ ten thousand from the grace o’ God-out in Queensland near some desert.’

‘Why, of course. We come out of everywhere,’ said Orton. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘Yes-but — Look here! From the time that this man Hickmot was twelve years old he’d ridden, driven-what’s the word?-conducted sheep for his father for thousands of miles on end, an’ months at a time, alone with these black fellers that you daren’t show the back of your neck to- else they knock your head in. That was all that he’d ever done till he joined up. He-he-didn’t belong to anything m the world, you understand. And he didn’t strike other men as being a-a human being.’

‘Why? He was a Queensland drover. They’re all right,’ Orton explained.

‘I dare say; but-well, a man notices another man, don’t he? You’d notice if there was a man standing or sitting or lyin’ near you, wouldn’t you? So’d any one. But you’d never notice Hickmot. His bein’ anywhere about wouldn’t stay in your mind. He just didn’t draw attention any more than anything else that happened to be about. Have you got it?’

‘Wasn’t he any use at his job?’ Pole inquired.

‘I’ve nothing against him that way, an’ I’m-I was his platoon sergeant. He wouldn’t volunteer specially for any doings, but he’d slip out with the party and he’d slip back with what was left of ‘em. No one noticed him, and he never opened his mouth about any doings. You’d think a man who had lived the way he’d lived among black fellers an’ sheep would be noticeable enough in an English battalion, wouldn’t you?’

‘It teaches ‘em to lie close; but you seem to have noticed him,’ Orton interposed, with a little suspicion.

‘Not at the time-but afterwards. If he was noticeable it was on account of his unnoticeability-same way you’d notice there not being an extra step at the bottom of the staircase when you thought there was.’

‘Ye-es,’ Pole said suddenly. ‘It’s the eternal mystery of personality. “God before Whom ever lie bare — ” Some people can occlude their personality like turning off a tap. I beg your pardon. Carry on!’

‘Granted,’ said Bevin. ‘I think I catch your drift. I used to think I was a student of human nature before I joined up.’

‘What was your job-before?’ Orton asked.

‘Oh, I was the young blood of the village. Goal-keeper in our soccer team, secretary of the local cricket and rifle-oh, lor’!-clubs. Yes, an’ village theatricals. My father was the chemist in the village. How I did talk! What I did know!’ He beamed upon us all.

‘I don’t mind hearing you talk,’ said Orton, lying back in his chair. ‘You’re a little different from some of ‘em. What happened to this dam’ drover of yours?’

‘He was with our push for the rest of the war-an’ I don’t think he ever sprung a dozen words at one time. With his upbringing, you see, there wasn’t any subject that any man knew about he could open up on. He kept quiet, and mixed with his backgrounds. If there was a lump of dirt, or a hole in the ground, or what was-was left after anythin’ had happened, it would be Hickmot. That was all he wanted to be.’

‘A camouflager?’ Orton suggested.

‘You have it! He was the complete camouflager all through. That’s him to a dot. Look here! He hadn’t even a nickname in his platoon! And then a friend of mine from our village, of the name of Vigors, came out with a draft. Bert Vigors. As a matter of fact, I was engaged to his sister. And Bert hadn’t been with us a week before they called him “The Grief.” His father was an oldish man, a market-gardener-high- class vegetables, bit o’ glass, an’-an’ all the rest of it. Do you know anything about that particular business?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid,’ said Pole, ‘except that glass is expensive, and one’s man always sells the cut flowers.’

‘Then you do know something about it. It is. Bert was the old man’s only son, an’-I don’t blame him-he’d done his damnedest to get exempted-for the sake of the business, you understand. But he caught it all right. The tribunal wasn’t takin’ any the day he went up. Bert was for it, with a few remarks from the patriotic old was-sers on the bench. Our county paper had ‘em all.’

‘That’s the thing that made one really want the Hun in England for a week or two,’ said Pole.

‘Mwor osee! The same tribunal, havin’ copped Bert, gave unconditional exemption to the opposition shop-a man called Margetts, in the market- garden business, which he’d established since the war, with his two sons who, every one in the village knew, had been pushed into the business to save their damned hides. But Margetts had a good lawyer to advise him. The whole case was frank and above-board to a degree-our county paper had it all in, too. Agricultural producevital necessity; the plough mightier than the sword; an’ those ducks on the bench, who had turned down Bert, noddin’ and smilin’ at Margetts, all full of his cabbage and green peas. What happened? The usual. Vigors’ business- he’s sixty-eight, with asthma-goes smash, and Margetts and Co. double theirs. So, then, that was Bert’s grievance, an’ he joined us full of it. That’s why they called him “The Grief.” Knowing the facts, I was with him; but being his sergeant, I had to check him, because grievances are catchin’, and three or four men with ‘em make Companies-er-sticky. Luckily Bert wasn’t handy with his pen. He had to cork up his grievance mostly till he came across Hickmot, an’ Gord in Heaven knows what brought those two together. No! As y’were. I’m wrong about God! I always am. It was Sheep. Bert knew’s much about sheep as I do-an’ that’s Canterbury lamb-but he’d let Hickmot talk about ‘em for hours, in return for Hickmot listenin’ to his grievance. Hickmot ‘ud talk sheep-the one created thing he’d ever open up on-an’ Bert ‘ud talk his grievance while they was waiting to go over the top. I’ve heard ‘em again an’ again, and, of course, I encouraged ‘em. Now, look here! Hickmot hadn’t seen an English house or a field or a road or-or anything any civ’lised man is used to in all his life! Sheep an’ blacks! Market-gardens an’ glass an’ exemption-tribunals! An’ the men’s teeth chatterin’ behind their masks between rum-issue an’ zero. Oh, there was fun in Hell those days, wasn’t there, boys?’

‘Sure! Oh, sure!’ Orton chuckled, and Pole echoed him.

‘Look here! When we were lying up somewhere among those forsaken chicken-camps back o’ Doullens, I found Hickmot making mud-pies in a farmyard an’ Bert lookin’ on. He’d made a model of our village according to Bert’s description of it. He’d preserved it in his head through all those weeks an’ weeks o’ Bert’s yap; an’ he’d coughed it all up-Margetts’ house and gardens, old Mr. Vigors’ ditto; both pubs; my father’s shop, everything that he’d been told by Bert done out to scale in mud, with bits o’ brick and stick. Haig ought to have seen it; but as his sergeant I had to check him for misusin’ his winkle-pin on dirt. ‘Come to think of it, a man who runs about uninhabited countries, with sheep, for a livin’ must have gifts for mappin’ and scalin’ things somehow or other, or he’d be dead. I never saw anything like it-all out o’ what Bert had told him by word of mouth. An’ the next time we went up the line Hickmot copped it in the leg just in front of me.’

‘Finish?’ I asked.

‘Oh, no. Only beginnin’. That was in December, somethin’ or other, ‘16. In Jan’ry Vigors copped it for keeps. I buried him-snowin’ blind it was-an’ before we’d got him under the whole show was crumped. I wanted to bury him again just to spite ‘em (I’m a spiteful man by nature), but the party wasn’t takin’ any more-even if they could have found it. But, you see, we had buried him all right, which is what they want at home, and I wrote the usual trimmin’s about the chaplain an’ the full service, an’ what his captain had said about Bert bein’ recommended for a pip, an’ the irreparable loss an’ so on. That was in Jan’ry ‘17. In Feb’ry some time or other I got saved. My speciality had come to be bombin’s and night-doings. Very pleasant for a young free man, but-there’s a limit to what you can stand. It takes all men differently. Noise was what started me, at last. I’d got just up to the edge-wonderin’ when I’d crack an’ how many of our men I’d do in if it came on me while we were busy. I had that nice taste in the mouth and the nice temperature they call trench-fever, an’-I had to feel inside my head for the meanin’ of every order I gave or was responsible for executin’. You know!’

‘We do. Go on!’ said Pole in a tone that made Orton look at him.

‘So, you see, the bettin’ was even on my drawin’ a V.C. or getting Number Umpty rest-camp or-a firing party before breakfast. But Gord saved me. (I made friends with Him the last two years of the war. The others went off too quick.) They wanted a bomb in’-instructor for the training-battalion at home, an’ He put it into their silly hearts to indent for me. It took ‘em five minutes to make me understand I was saved. Then I vomited, an’ then I cried. You know!’ The fat face of Bevin had changed and grown drawn, even as he spoke; and his hands tugged as though to tighten an imaginary belt.

‘I was never keen on bombin’ myself,’ said Pole. ‘But bomb in’- instruction’s murder!’

‘I don’t deny it’s a shade risky, specially when they take the pin out an’ start shakin’ it, same as the Chinks used to do in the woods at Beauty, when they were cuttin’ ‘em down. But you live like a home defence Brigadier, besides week-end leaf. As a matter o’ fact, I married Bert’s sister soon’s I could after I got the billet, an’ I used to lie in our bed thinkin’ of the old crowd on the Somme an’- feelin’ what a swine I was. Of course, I earned two V.C.’s a week behind the traverse in the exercise of my ord’nary duties, but that isn’t the same thing. An’ yet I’d only joined up because-because I couldn’t dam’ well help it.’

‘An’ what about your Queenslander?’ the Australian asked.

‘Too de sweet! Pronto! We got a letter in May from a Brighton hospital matron, sayin’ that one of the name of Hickmer was anxious for news o’ me, previous to proceedin’ to Roehampton for initiation into his new leg. Of course, we applied for him by return. Bert had written about him to his sister-my missus-every time he wrote at all; an’ any pal o’ Bert’s-well, you know what the ladies are like. I warned her about his peculiarities. She wouldn’t believe till she saw him. He was just the same. You’d ha’ thought he’d show up in England like a fresh stiff on snow-but you never noticed him. You never heard him; and if he didn’t want to be seen he wasn’t there. He just joined up with his background. I knew he could do that with men; but how in Hell, seein’ how curious women are, he could camouflage with the ladies-my wife an’ my mother to wit-beats me! He’d feed the chickens for us; he’d stand on his one leg-it was off above the knee-and saw wood for us. He’d run-I mean he’d hop-errands for Mrs. B, or mother; our dog worshipped him from the start, though I never saw him throw a word to him; and- yet he didn’t take any place anywhere. You’ve seen a rabbit-you’ve seen a pheasant-hidin’ in a ditch?’Put your hand on it sometimes before it moved, haven’t you? Well, that was Hickmot-with two women in the house crazy to find out-find out-anything about him that made him human. You know what women are! He stayed with us a fortnight. He left us on a Sat’day to go to Roehampton to try his leg. On Friday he came over to the bombin’ ground-not saym’ anything, as usual-to watch me instruct my Suicide Club, which was only half an hour’s run by rail from our village. He had his overcoat on, an’ as soon as he reached the place it was mafeesh with him, as usual. Rabbit-trick again! You never noticed him. He sat in the bomb-proof behind the pit where the duds accumulate till it’s time to explode ‘em. Naturally, that’s strictly forbidden to the public. So he went there, an’ no one noticed him. When he’d had enough of watchin’, he hopped off home to feed our chickens for the last time.’