THE WORLD WAR COLLECTION OF H. C. MCNEILE (SAPPER). Sapper
Hebraic features of Mr. Jones.
While it lasted it must have been great. They'd locked the door, and when they'd finished the poker looked like a hairpin. After that they each did six months' hard.
It was the end. The General gave his son five hundred pounds, packed him off to Australia, and forbade his name ever to be mentioned again. With a stiff upper lip the old soldier had carried on, and not even his wife quite realised the aching blank that was left in his life. No one to carry on: the line would pass—or go to a disgraced man. For in some things the father's code of honour was almost puritanical.
And then had come the atonement in France. For Jack had died—wonderfully. No more wonderfully perhaps than thousands of others; but he'd died with his back to the wall—in an isolated post— without thought of surrender. And the General's back had straightened since he'd heard the news; he was that manner of man.
It was Peter Drayton who had written to him—telling him the details. He'd been with Jack at the time—had been, in fact, the sole survivor.
"If ever," the letter had concluded, "a man deserved the V.C. it was your son. His behaviour in the face of what seemed certain death was magnificent, and but for him, and his example, the post would not have been held."
Una knew the letter by heart, and it came back to her now as she sat staring over the park. For there had been no question officially of recommending Jack for any decoration: the only intimation received had been the bald announcement of his death, and a colourless letter of regret from his platoon commander. And it had hurt her father. Not, as he had said on the only occasion she had ever heard him refer to the matter, that he attached any importance to the getting of a decoration. Enough for him that the boy had died as one of his line should die. He had done his duty, and that was enough. But still, in view of what Drayton had written, it seemed—odd. Surely he must have told the Commanding Officer. And if so, it was strange that nothing had been done. It would have been rather fine—though wild horses would not have dragged such an admission from the General—to have two V.C.'s in the family.
With a little sigh the girl rose and went indoors. "It was the Colonial part that stuck." Her father's words were ringing in her ears, and she wondered who the man was, who was even now doing his one month's hard—the man who had masqueraded with a D.C.M.
There had been so much of it—this old soldier stunt, and though, at first, her naturally soft heart had impelled her to take them all at their face value, gradually she had come round to her father's point of view. If they were genuine—let them prove it. Then there was always something for them at Lovelace Towers. If they weren't—it was a despicable form of fraud, and they deserved all they got. Particularly when they dared to use a medal for conspicuous gallantry. That made matters a thousand times worse. It seemed like robbing the dead of their honour.
She met her father as she crossed the hall. "I'm glad you gave that man a month, Daddy," she said. "I wish you'd given him more."
John Brownlow stood in the street outside the jail, looking about him with a faint smile. The prison authorities had returned him one shilling and four coppers, which represented his entire worldly wealth. They had also given him some excellent advice concerning the reprehensibility of his mode of life, and the advisability of at once finding some honest work. As to where it was to be obtained they were a little less concise, but when all is said and done, free advice and a free shave are more than a lot of us get during life.
There was some free information he'd had also given him by the prison doctor, a kindly man with a shrewd face. But that information was stale—stale and unprofitable. And useless, too, for a man whose capital is one shilling and fourpence.
After a while he turned and strolled towards the town that lay in the hollow below the prison. The smile was still on his lips as he jingled his fortune in his pocket—an introspective smile, the smile of a man who possesses that most wonderful of gifts—a real sense of humour. After all, there are worse things than having a clean chin and one and fourpence.
He walked on slowly down the main street of the country town. The shops were just beginning to open, and after mature consideration he entered a tobacconist's and bought a threepenny packet of cigarettes. One and a penny. Still, that was a shilling more than he'd had for some time now. In fact, it might almost be described as affluence. Shifting six loads of wood at threepence a load was certainly the way to become a millionaire.
Suddenly he stopped abruptly: a car was coming towards him. A girl was driving, and by her side sat General Sir Hubert Lovelace, Bart. The car passed him, and still he stood there staring with a strange look in his keen grey eyes.
"A fine old man," said the voice of the tobacconist behind him. "And a fine girl. Pity the boy turned out a wrong un."
"He did, did he?" said Brownlow.
"Terrible," remarked the tobacconist. "Fell in with all sorts of bad companions, he did. Robbed and stole and was sent to prison. And drank, too—so I've been told. Fair broke his father up for a time—him only having the one son, too. That was his daughter with him."
"The son is dead, is he?" said Brownlow quietly.
"Killed in the War. And a good job too. But he died, I'm told, as a Lovelace should die, surrounded by dead 'Uns." A faint smile flickered over his listener's lips and was gone. "Yes—he died well. And my niece—wot was in service up at Lovelace Towers at the time— says as how he ought to have been given a medal. Miss Una—that's the daughter—told her as much. It's made the General a bit stern. If there's one thing that sends him off the deep end it's a man masquerading with medals that ain't his, to get people's sympathy. Sort of feels his son not having one, I suppose. Well, good morning to you."
He turned back into his shop, and with no fixed idea in his mind John Brownlow swung round and walked in the direction the car had gone. Masquerading with medals that weren't his! And suddenly the humour of the situation struck him and he smiled. Truly life was a gorgeous jest if you took it the right way—and had he not got a shilling and a penny in his pocket? Far more, he reflected gravely, than many men who had betted in monkeys.
Suddenly he paused and leant up against some railings. One of his paroxysms was coming on, and they left him so terribly exhausted. This one was mild—only about two minutes, and luckily there was no one to see. For John Brownlow, when he started to cough, was not a pretty sight.
He rested for a little: then he strolled on again. And as he rounded a bend in the road he saw the Lovelace car drawn up outside the station. The girl was getting in, and the London train which was even then steaming out of the station evidently contained her father. And a moment later she drove past him, all unconscious of the broken-down waster who stared at her so intently from the pavement, with that faint smile twitching once more round his lips.
He watched her disappear from sight; then realising that he was in a cul-de-sac which only led to the station, he turned and followed the car. It was all one to him.
For an hour he walked along briskly until, rounding a bend in the road, he came on a sight that made him pause abruptly and then go forward at a run. The car was standing by the side of the road, and peering into the bonnet was Una Lovelace. But it wasn't that which had caused his haste: it was the appearance of an unpleasant-looking tramp, who was creeping up behind the unsuspecting girl's back. The tramp was so intent on his victim that he never noticed John Brownlow, and he had his hands on her before the other man could get up.
With a little cry she swung round, though there was no sign of fear on her face. And the next instant, with a sound like the crack of two billiard balls, Brownlow's fist took the tramp on the jaw. He staggered back with a snarl, but he was a powerful brute, and, what was more to the point, he had a heavy stick in his hand. And the next two minutes were rapid ones.
An unarmed man is at a disadvantage against one with a cudgel, and when in addition the unarmed man has red-hot knives going through his chest, the thing becomes hopeless. He tried to close, but the tramp was too wary. And with a sudden sinking feeling he realised that all the odds were on the tramp. If only the swine had been unarmed.
"Get the car going, Miss Lovelace, if